8

The maids here leave chocolate on the pillows when they finish cleaning. Isn’t that nice? And the soap is molded into a seashell shape. Even this far inland, there’s a certain charm in that.

Miranda is just trying her damndest to focus on the little things: the chocolates and “gently folded” towels, the soft lilac scent in the lobby, and the quiet overhang by the entrance under which any number of cigarettes can be smoked in peace. It’s the endless ice from the machine in the hall and the faintly nostalgic smell of community pool chlorine spread out all over the second-floor. And the children who jump about the place in their swim trunks.

Upon arrival last night, Miranda-cum-Samantha Obama lumbered with her heavy heart to the hotel computer, tucked unobtrusively beside the then-defunct Starbucks, and sat for nearly twenty minutes in front of the screen, debating what the best way to “@” Cindi would be. At the end of a long, mostly inconclusive rumination, Miranda decided to walk along Occam’s Razor, simply @-ing Cindi Lapenschtall the word Hilton from her own private account, the progenitor, @msgothkid666. Not really in the business of questioning Cindi Lapenschtall’s methods, she simply put her trust in the process and in the woman herself. Either Cindi or Big Banana are going to find her here, hiding in this hotel. In the meantime, she might as well enjoy it, right?

And so, the little things.

The bouncy bed, for example, the soft beige wallpaper, and the way exhaustion waited until she was safely atop a bed before coming upon her so suddenly and so completely. The sleep that refuses to be interrupted by any earthly stirring, not the raucous rumbling of nearby highway trucks nor the unseasonal mosquito feeding periodically on her earlobe. The small ocean of gummy pillows around her, that’s another thing. Miranda slept through the night and woke, early and refreshed, into Day One of her interval/internment here, at the Westchester Hilton.

It strikes her early in the day, as she skims Big Banana news on the lobby computer, that remaining here until the day of the announcement isn’t mandatory. Perhaps it would be better to keep moving, to make a wide berth around the City instead of remaining stationary. Cindi would be able to find her wherever she is, surely. Despite all the headache it would cause, Miranda knows leaving this place would be for the best, and the sooner the better. She knows it on the stairs and she knows it back in her room, and she knows it as she lay back down into the scintillating embrace of the pillow, knowing the thing but actively ignoring it.

Those thoughts of self-preservation prove not long for this world. They fade slowly and finally fizzle fully, pushed away because, simply, Miranda is tired. She doesn’t want to keep running. She’s been journeying for weeks now, unstoppable and unflappable in her resolve; well she finished the job, found the Woman with the Red Hair, got her next steps, and now she wants to rest, to idle, to hang around and chain-smoke and for just a short while worry only about here, divest herself from next. This, after all, might be the final week of this world as she knows it. Her and Cindi’s actions could very well have huge unintended consequences. Will they inadvertently usher a demon army into their earthly realm? Will Big Banana topple overnight? Will Miranda be driven underground, like Cindi, destined to a hideaway life as an enemy-of-the-state? Miranda isn’t sure how this story ends, so while it’s still possible, she wants to bask in a known quantity. Just to see what it’s like.

She wants to drink sugary gingerbread coffees in a Starbucks, wants to return home to a room that’s unpopulated, with a bed devoted to her form alone, with walls she can’t hear others through. She wants to eat bacon in the morning and ice cream before bed and just, for the love of God, spend a moment not caring just about the world or its soul or how a band of demon marauders are twisting it, pulling it apart, suckling at its fresh drippings. She wants to feel like any old person, for a moment, and not like Miranda Swami.

It’s what she thinks she wants, at least.

Day One passes without much to mention. It’s hard to fear anything evil or supernatural in a place so blasé, comforting, and blandly commercialized as a multinational hotel chain. Something about the aerosol smell and the focus-group-tested uniforms, the stock-photos of grass and the Empire State Building and smooth blue stones by the elevators in the lobby…it just doesn’t seem like the unruly forces of Hell can walk free in such a sanitized space. There are no dark corners in a hotel like this, no illicit alleys where horrible things occur. There’s a shadowy foot-and-a-half beside the first-floor vending machines, but everything else is brightly-lit, is security-camera captured, every act carrying with it a threat of litigation and an excess of liability.

For breakfast, she has a bellhop materialize with bacon and toast, but since the knock on the door nearly scares her half-to-death, lunch sees her trekking to a nearby Denny’s, because what bad shit happens at Denny’s? Too much commercial cuisine leaves Miranda feeling generally icky, so “dinner” is eaten in small installments, each course plucked from the nearby vending machines: a first-course of pork rinds and Nilla Wafers, an entrée of salted peanuts and Pop-tarts. Her stomach stays strangely civil despite the sugar and salt. And then the ice cream. She’s prepared for the knock this time.

And how nice it is, for just a day, to give in to the classic commercial consumerism of the able-bodied American. This weekend will see her toppling a stalwart of capitalism, so can’t she just, like, leave her principles on the mat outside for one measly evening? The eventual good outweighs the current bad.

In bed at night, after ensuring her door is locked and out-fitted with the proper do-not-disturb documentation (the chocolate, though a nice surprise, is too weak a treat to overcome her fear of unknown intruders in her private space), Miranda settles into bed in a black room, allowing any interested ideas into her tired mind.

The first thoughts to enter are of Cindi, and the offhanded remark she made the last time they spoke. “@ me,” she had said, and Miranda had. What is the woman doing now? Is she assembling a crack team to infiltrate the hotel and come rescue her? Is she spiraling into a depression, thinking that Miranda is in some terminal danger but unable and/or unwilling to come physically deliver the girl to glory? Or has she not noticed at all? Has Miranda’s quiet plea gone unread and unseen? Does Cindi sit somewhere poolside, Mai Tai in hand, basking, like Miranda, in this last week of normalcy before the world illegalizes the color yellow?

Thoughts of Caleb, which waited patiently outside the door for those of Cindi to finish with her, finally get fed up with the extended wait and bust in, rushing up and buffeting Miranda with the totality of their weight, heft, and rank smell. Wrangle us, they cry, wrangle with us, please!

Oh, they wrangle alright. And at the end of their tussle, this is what the two parties come to agree on:

Caleb Swami isn’t an especially smart man. He’s not an ambitious man, and he’s not overly lucky. These are things she understands now. What Caleb Swami is, more than anything else, is impatient. Miranda knows her brother is not evil, either. Evil is an absolute, and Caleb is nothing absolutely. This she knows. The man who held her on his shoulders once, who lifted her up so she could grab that apple there, that really red shiny one, Caleb, on that branch riiiiiiiiight theeeeeerrrreeeeeeee, he couldn’t be evil. There are wholly evil acts that do not completely tarnish a person’s soul, and there are evil people with malintent spread throughout their blood vessels. There is a difference. It’s unclear if Caleb also knows there’s a difference.

Caleb Swami impatiently waited for success and fame and a positive-self-image to beget him. But he simply could not wait for these things to accrue in their usual fashion, and so made his life a race after them, maintaining the cold, simple goal of collecting them as soon as possible. If that pursuit ruined his relationships, so be it. If it alienated his sister, that’s fine; she would understand.

And that’s the worst part about all of this. That’s the horrible rub. She does understand. As soon as the initial anger and hysterics gave way to more complex thought, she knew she’d understand. She, who looked in her mailbox and under her desk for a scratch-and-sniff letter. She, who looked everywhere. Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Miranda fears on her darkest days she would sell hers too, and mayhap for far, far less.

She does not hate Caleb for what he did, but she feels him leaving her, whatever strands of care that remained from before. He’s cut himself off from her; this was his doing, though she cannot help but feel his absence. The place on her heart where he sat, fat and satisfied, has been freed from his crushing weight. This feels both liberating and very, very lonely. But that’s okay. That has to be okay.

Despite their best efforts, the Caleb thoughts do not destroy her. They do not strike fear into her heart, not do they succeed in jumping her bones with electric anxiety. Despite all the power they promised when they rushed in, they merely sapped energy, sapped care, sapped a little more life from a body already drained of so much. They leave her thinking what a slog this whole ordeal is for body and mind alike. They leave her thinking that whatever she does next, it will be with more care for others than Caleb, in his life’s one meaningful decision, showed for his only sibling, the girl he lifted up for apples. The girl who reached for the one riiiiiiiiight theeeeeerrrreeeeeeee, all shiny and red.

🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌

Day Two is more eventful.

Miranda is woken late by a phone call from the front desk.

“Ms. Obama — oh I love saying that — good morning! You have a visitor downstairs in the lobby. She was asking after your room number.”

“Uhm, okay, can you ask her name?”

There’s a silence. “She says her name is Cindy.”

Jesus.

“Okay, uhm, yeah, tell her I’ll be down to chat in a bit, thank you.”

“Yes’m,” and then, further from the receiver, “She says she’ll be right down.”As Miranda stalls, brushes her hair and applies mascara, as she brushes her teeth for two, three, four, five! minutes, she tries to keep her mind from ruminating on all the possible situations waiting for her in the lobby. She tries quashing them through unrelated action, and is surprisingly semi-successful. It’s only with slight sweats, with her teeth quietly crunching on the inside of her cheek, that she dresses and takes the stairs down to the lobby.

Once down there, Miranda is at once accosted by…accosted by…accosted by? Absolutely no one? Neither Cindi Lapenschtall nor any other Cindi is obviously waiting for her. There’s an older man in a tan jumpsuit resting in a chair beside his tennis-balled walker, and a pair of bored-looking employees man the front desk, presumably in the event of a sudden check-in rush. Otherwise, the lobby is deserted. This means either A) something has happened to whoever wanted to see her, B) someone is playing upon her a horrible prank, or C) this was all a ruse to lure her face out of hiding.

But honestly, whatever.

Her response to each of these scenarios would be the same, to pack her things right up and immediately leave the hotel, walk to the nearest bus station and head out on the road to nowhere, but just as she’s about to turn tail back to her room, a gentle Porter, an older gentleman with a Friar John ring of hair and one rusted-silver hoop earring, kind of half-jogs over to her, taking the big strides of the blessedly long-legged. “Samantha Obama?” he asks her, seeming out of breath, like the simple act of getting to her was its own sort of exhausting adventure.

“Yes?”

“Your visitor had to go. She asked me to give you this note.”

Within a sealed envelope, on a small piece of hotel stationary, is a scribbled note in near-calligraphic script reading, One quarter-mile down the road, past the second McDonalds, is a picnic table aloft in a small glade. Meet me there. The note is unsigned.

Miranda takes a few absent-minded steps outside, deems it too cold for a mere cardigan, and returns up to her room for a winter coat. So as to prepare for an ambush, she packs her meager things and hangs ‘em on her back. This might be a one-way trip.

Past the first McDonalds and then on to the second, past that and Miranda espies a short dirt path cut out of the resiliently plump pine thicket in the woods beside. Unable to spot the glade from outside the wood, it only takes a few steps onto the trail for the clearing to reveal itself, a conspicuously carved-out little flat with a picnic table and a dripping water pump. There is indeed someone waiting for her here, but it’s not Cindi Lapenschtall as she had hoped, nor is it the trench-coated Banana Demon she feared. It’s someone distinctly other.

You want proof that our fair heroine has been changed by her journey thus far? She goes towards the table-sitter freed of all anxiety, every bit of her having quietly acquiesced to the principle of whatever-happens-next.

“Hello?”

Contrary to what Miranda momentarily believed might happen, the Woman does not, upon closer inspection, reveal herself to be Cindi Lapenschtall in disguise. The figure seems quite content remaining a prim and proper type of older woman, a bit younger than Mother, who has matched the lines in her face with those in her outfit, producing an appearance at once austere and wizened and a tad off-putting. She looks ready to shush someone crunching on cashews at the library. Her two sharp, inquisitive eyes tell stories of harsh judgments passed. They look up blankly in Miranda’s direction. A phantom streak of blonde hair fissures an otherwise homogeneously oil-black head. Miranda says “Hello?” again, and again, and after the woman refuses to answer this third request for salutation, Miranda simply sits on the bench in front of her.

It’s not my story anymore, Miranda tells herself. I’m at the whim of the plot. I do not move it; it moves me.

(Which is about half-true.)

The woman takes those eyes of hers and uses them to look Miranda up and down, like scanning her for some defect. Not so unlike Mother at all. An obnoxious Bluetooth headset hangs from one of her ears. Although she doesn’t speak or move or even blink (freaky old thing), faint murmuring voices coming from the headset make it clear this woman is taking orders or receiving information. Or perhaps she’s just lost in a podcast.

From out of her pocket: the woman takes a facsimile headset.

From out of her pocket: Miranda takes a cigarette.

“I suppose you want me to put this thing on?” Miranda asks, lighting up. The woman looks on blankly, pushes the headset further across the table. ‘Great,’ she says, smoke billowing from between her front teeth.

Two things happen after Miranda hooks the Bluetooth into her ear and says, “Okay, so what’s all this about?”

1) Cindi Lapenschtall’s unmistakable red velvet voice saunters into Miranda’s ear, saying “Oh! Oh! Miranda! You’ve come! Are you okay? Is everything okay? Sorry it took so long, we had to get to you quietly.”

2) The woman across the table begins, with about a quarter-second delay, mouthing each individual word Cindi says in Miranda’s (and assumedly her own) ear.

So, Miranda is staring at this Mother-like lady speaking with a slight lag, like some half-telepathic circus performer, wondering in order of importance: How did this woman get so good at such a specific task? How does she know Cindi? Is Cindi reading off a pre-written script? 

“Okay,” Miranda says, “this is trippy.”

“What is? Oh, Linda? Yes, odd I imagine, especially if it’s your first time seeing it. Please understand though, it’s absolutely necessary. We have no idea if people are watching ya’ll from afar or whatnot. After as much time underground as I’ve spent, you learn to cover even your most farfetched of bases. I know it’s, like, completely effin’ paranoid, but just go with it. Linda is a trusted advisor and a dear friend. I trust her with my own life.

“Now, is everything all right? We saw you trying to get in contact and had your location traced. Big Banana isn’t the only one with hands in puppets.”

Miranda nearly blurts out something about Caleb, but is it her place to spew such news? Wait, fuck, of course it is. The only question is, how much does Cindi already know? And if the answer to that is “not a whole lot,” how will she react when she’s told?

“Yeah, I’m physically okay, but, uhm, my brother —”“Yeah. Your brother,” Cindi says, hesitating. “Don’t trouble yourself with that right now, there will be plenty of time.”

All this while good ol’ Linda mimics the voice in her ear. If Miranda only looks at the woman through her peripheral vision, it appears that Linda is speaking in Cindi’s luscious warm butter voice. Spooky; she wonders how someone even goes about practicing this.

(A flashback plays, in black and white, of a little girl, the least-nuclear member of a four-part, 50’s family; father’s just got home from work and is putting his first one back while mother makes dinner, Jimmy is practicing his violin and everything is quiet except for Leave it to Beaver on a tiny TV; the girl, eyes wide, looks to the screen with complete preadolescent reverence, her mouth moving in close time with her beloved friends on the screen as she relives an adventure she’s had the good fortune to have already experienced two, three, four times now. Father coughs and mother drops a glass onto the linoleum floor, shattering it; Jimmy breaks a string, but still the girl watches, her eyes beautiful and blank and unblinking.)

“Do people actually spy on you from afar?” Miranda asks after a quiet moment, carefully ashing her cigarette into a small concavity of grey fluid on the table.

“People do all sorts of odd things, whether they have malicious intent or not. SO many crazies out there, all with their own well-researched and fully hashed-out mental machinations. Whenever you have any kind of success — as I’m sure you know — there’s always bound to be a lot of, uhm, uhm — Linda what word am I thinking of?”

Out loud, Linda says, “Vitriol.”

“Vitriol! Yes!” Cindi shouts, which is weird to watch because it means Linda says and then mouths the word vitriol in rapid succession. “Yes, much vitriol, surrounding especially all the facets of my person. Add into that mix the very real and present power of Big Banana and, and, and it just helps to be safe. Let’s not dwell on all that though, not when — wait, did you hear that? Is someone else there?”

If Miranda hadn’t been looking directly at Linda in that moment, she wouldn’t have seen the lady’s eyes just-barely widen in surprise. This is a woman/puppet/pawn/caregiver no doubt accustomed to Cindi’s moments of sudden emotional turmoil, and nothing, certainly no shrill shriek of paranoiac panic in her ear, will disturb her clean facial façade for more than the briefest immediate moment.

Displaying what can only be described as a superhuman, possibly supernatural sense of hearing (or perhaps the Bluetooth amplifies the sounds going into it), Cindi says “I think there’s someone else in the wood.”

Miranda starts asking, “How could you possibly —”

But a sharp laugh and a hand on her wrist cut Miranda off mid-thought. Out of Linda’s otherwise stoic mouth comes this folksy kind of hooting laughter, the laugh and the warm touch of her fleshy fingers preceding the rest of her bizarre and sudden metamorphosis.

At once, Linda’s face loosens, her shoulders drop, her entire demeanor becoming light-hearted and laugh-heavy. Miranda’s never seen anyone with control over their skin like that. Octopuses once in a David Attenborough documentary but never a person. Linda’s lolling her head to the side as if under the calming spell of some joke, some soft monologue delivered by an honored guest. Her eyes curve upwards in a gesture of kindness and ease. She’d fool any lie detector, or anyone versed in facial recognition, let alone the two jamokes strolling over right about now.

It’s a father — or appears to be — with his young son, both of them in tan fishing vests and waders, both with bucket hats and armfuls of fishing supplies. Dad’s got a tackle box, sonny’s got the rods. “Hey! Hey, yes, hello ladies! Well, look here Tyler, some luck; perhaps these nice women can help us. How are you two? My boy and I are supposed to be on or around Wampus Pond Park? Seems we’ve gotten a bit lost.”

And Linda’s voice, well, it’s like fresh-baked cookies, and with a smile to match. “Oh, you poor dears. Well, Sheila and I would love to help you, but we’re from out of town. Don’t know the area too well. Can’t offer you directions, but maybe a bite to eat perhaps?” From around her feet, Linda lifts up a previously unseen Little-Red-Riding-Hood picnic basket, open on one side to reveal a bounty of red grapes, wrapped cheese, and a chopped baguette, salami and chorizo and the promise of more underneath.

The boy yelps “Ooo! Ooo! Daddy! Can we —”

“Oh ho ho,” the father says, patting the boy’s head with his off-hand. “That is very sweet of you ladies, but we should be going, right Tyler? We want to get some fishing done today, don’t we? All the best to you two. Enjoy your picnic!”

“And you two enjoy the lake…if you can find it!” Cue sitcom laughter, cue slow-walk away, smiles all ‘round, dad grips son by shoulder, zoom in on the queer wholesomeness of the entire interaction, and, finally, cue the cuteness lingering on Linda’s face as her voice reverts back to its harsh normalcy. “We can’t stay here; you have to go back to the hotel.”

“Is everything okay?” Cindi’s voice says on the headset, but Linda’s mouth makes no moves to mimic it.

“We’re going to walk to the parking lot like we’re old pals,” Linda says sternly, “and if we run into our friends out there we’ll simply say we forgot something in the car, then go on our merry way.”

“Wait — what’s happening?”

“Miranda!” Cindi says sharply into the headset. Is that a hint of genuine worry or just Miranda’s imagination? “Please be quiet and listen to Linda. If she smells something, then something smells. We need to get you inside and to safety. Something is afoot.”

As they walk, Linda maintains her posturing warmth, moving slowly, leaning on Miranda’s arm as if for support, her beautiful blue eyes looking every which way. As Miranda looks down to the deliciousness poking out from the picnic basket’s mouth, she realizes her stomach is rumbling, the gnawingly empty thing. The sensation of a self-consuming stomach keeps Miranda from fully appreciating what Cindi is saying in her ear.

“— same method available to us, possibly. Hard to tell, since everyone we get on the inside ends up being cooked over an open fire or torn apart by wildebeests, so we stopped sending people inside. We had this one guy with a pager programmed to send out automatic pings in time of trouble. They lost him in Richmond and finally, after a wild goose chase of epic proportion, picked him up somewhere in Bali. He’d been drawn and quartered by a quarter of rabid, pachyderms kept on a nearby farm. All I’m saying is, if we were able to find you, I guess they might be able to as well. Gotta get you to a safer location, but don’t worry, it’s all good for now. They don’t ever act impulsively. Bureaucracies move slowly. We’ve got the upper hand there.”

When they part in the parking lot, it’s with Linda encouraging Miranda to keep the picnic basket. Supplied with a sufficient alibi, Miranda prepares to head back to the hotel, her hungry stomach in a dreadful knot.

“Just get back and wait for us to contact you. We will. Don’t be afraid, you’re in good hands,” Cindi says, prompting Linda to offer her own soft, flabby hands up to Miranda’s eyeline for examination. “And keep the basket, a proper meal will make you feel better.”

In Miranda’s brief absence, the hotel has become a hotbed of activity, what with a recently-arrived wedding party, a hundred-or-so-strong, having taken over the lobby. Elegant suits of beige and white and black, and the elevator stinks with enough hanging hairspray to tear a fresh hole in the local ozone. Miranda just hopes they won’t be too loud, she could use a rest. Fear and mal-information take a lot out of her apparently.

As Miranda returns upstairs to properly stew in her expectations — to hear again from Cindi, to meet again this Linda, to get on with the events of five days hence — she hopes to God the new guests won’t be too loud.

Tearing into the picnic basket, Miranda finds hard Italian sausage and wedges of aged Manchego cheese. There are a bevy of red-and-white striped napkins, a too warm bottle of Chenin Blanc, and two types of bread: long, smooth baguette, and a sesame-seed crusted sourdough loaf. It’s as close to a home-cooked meal as she will have for some time.

Surrounded by charcuterie scraps, Miranda spends the rest of the day waiting to be contacted. Every time a phone rings in another room, Miranda’s sweet little heart skips a beat. She waits and waits and waits, too nervous to nap, too manic to make headway into anything good on TV.

Night crashes down upon Westchester county like an Acme-brand piano, and Miranda thinks, after all this time, despite all that’s happened, really truly absolutely believes, in every part of her system, she’s been forgotten about by a very busy universe.

She opens the door, letting in all the patiently waiting thoughts. Please, only one of you at a time, she begs. They ignore her intonations.

🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌

Some hours later, it’s midnight, and Day Three begins the same way Day Two ends: with Miranda still wide-awake, thinking about demons. It’s not the thoughts that are keeping her awake, not solely at least, but that the returned wedding partiers have decided that simply being loud isn’t emphatic enough for their ends. If the well-traveled sonics of their celebration are to be believed, they may have devolved back from their humanity to some primitive ape-like state. Someone is very clearly playing trombone.

Bottles breaking and the loudest of thumping beats, coming from not just rooms on this floor or the next, but from every one around her. The screaming and the swearing and the laugh-filled prank-knocks upon all the doors down the hall. No girl could sleep; a walrus couldn’t catch z’s with this racket.

Where are the authorities? Who is in charge of busting hotel hallway bangers? Does a hotel itself have any real power to diffuse this situation? Especially if their guests are high-rollers getting raucous on an expense account, they’d probably just sacrifice the comfort of their less well-endowed clients, fucking capitalist bastards. Whatever options are at their disposal, they’ve obviously chosen inaction from the quiver upon their backs, letting this band of cumberbunded ruffians do whatever they like in the rooms they purchased and the halls they most definitely did not.

By the time the sun comes up, Miranda has only half-heartedly flirted with sleep — “So…what do you do for work?” — having spent most of the night watching Friends reruns, then the informercials which replaced them, and now, coming up at 7, the day’s first traffic reports, only on A-B-C Morning News at 7.

The partiers are semi-tamed but still engaging in serious chandelier-swinging shenanigans when, as if a sudden-onset black hole has sucked them all from the premises, the wild yellers, swingers and noisemakers all go silent. A strangely juxtaposed quiet returns to the Westchester Hilton, one that forces your sonically-salient senses to focus on the sounds that remain: the heater bustling in the Key of D, the squealing tires coming to rest in the hotel parking lot.

Miranda stays in bed for a few hours more, trying to coax her body into late-game REM, but it’s to no avail. She takes a hot shower and orders some yogurt and a coffee up to her room. There are quiet sirens in the parking lot. With her piqued curiosity overruling any power of self-preservation, Miranda opens the blinds, looks out the window, and sees that the hotel is inundated with police. Dozens of cop cars flash as the officers beside them loll about, a hand on their holsters, a hand on their hearts. Meanwhile, the weird cops on horseback trot in circles, probably positive they look nearly Napoleonic.

Holy shit, she thinks. That’s what must’ve happened: so many people must have complained without success to the front desk, and one concerned citizen must have finally worked up the courage to call the local authorities, who came around in sufficient number to kill whatever wildness had overtaken the hotel’s denizens. The bastards must be getting rounded up from every conceivable room — “Anyone with a tuxedo is going down, hard!” — and it wouldn’t be surprising if a few officers knock knock knocked on her own door pretty soo — 

Knock knock knock.

Look at that, right on time.

Miranda opens the door, expecting the arrival of either the authorities or her breakfast, but does not in any universe expect to see Linda, certainly not a version of her dressed as a hotel maid, pushing a cart full of cleaning supplies, towels and bedsheets into the room.

“Does ‘do not disturb’ not mean anything anymore?” Miranda says, unable to resist.

“No time,” Linda says, “Just get your things and hop onto the cart. Down on the bottom there. As quick as you can.”

Stealing glances at Linda as she robotically culls her things together, in a prolonged post-wakeup daze, Miranda sees in the steel-veined woman a gripping, truly terrifying nervousness. Fresh worry sends her colon up esophagus-high, prompting her to increase even the already great speed at which she brings her things together.

Would she need a toothbrush where she’s going?

“You’ll have to curl up, but don’t worry, you’ll fit, we tested it,” Linda says, helping Miranda squeeze her form and backpack both onto the cart’s lower platform, which, when shielded on all sides by towels and hanging bedsheets, is actually quite cozy. She’s like a café cat, all bundled up into herself.

The creaking cart begins bumping around as it is moved down the hall, and the slam of the door behind her means they’re out into the world, the cruel, hostile world. Then, quietly, Linda starts talking.

“They know you’re here. Or, they know someone of interest is here. We don’t think they know it’s you. It was wise to check-in under a false name, slows them down. They’re going through the hotel real slowly, taking their time, not letting anyone in or out, doing sweeps of entire floors before moving up, and also — Oh, no sir, my apologies, I’m off-duty. Just give the front desk a call and they’ll be happy to…oh okay, sir…yeah you too. Okay, I’m going to stop talking, don’t want to appear suspicious. Just hang on, it’ll all be over soon. And whatever you do, do not come out until I personally tell you it’s okay. I will do so by saying the words Fat Marge’s Lovely Antique Pies For Sale Here, and you will know by my saying those words that I’m not under duress. If anyone tries to remove you from the cart without hearing those words first, make a run for it or play dead, whatever you think is best, but that’s a last resort.”

Shit, Linda really sounds out of breath. Miranda, trapped in the cart and in her head, has no concept of how far they travel, just that they keep steadily moving forward, now slightly downhill, now apparently into a shaky service elevator, down some ramps, and judging by both the low rumbling of a nearby engine and the shaking metal beneath her, up a truck ramp into the back of some vehicle.

Linda does not say another word, not of good luck nor parting advice. The cart is stopped, the nearby footsteps distance themselves and disappear, and there’s silence. Miranda dares not speak Linda’s name, although God knows she wishes to; a profound comfort would come with knowing her guardian angel remains nearby. In reality though, all her pent-up emotion is just looking for an escape. She just wants to cry out.

There’s a jolt as the vehicle begins moving. There are muffled voices in conversation somewhere outside her immediacy, both of them dark and gruff and too low for their stray syllables to be properly heard. Onward she goes, slow movement. The bumps of potholes and short stops of sudden suburban stop-lights. The rolling streets of a way forward.

But forward to where?

The rumbling intensifies, the engine beneath her growing impatient and enraged as more of its power is called upon. For so long, Miranda nearly sleeps, wakes and nearly sleeps again, the general turbulence of the truck taking on a soothing, regularized gait. There’s a comfort in this, a strange comfort Miranda would never have guessed she’d find in such tight quarters. It’s nice to be assaulted by respite instead of anxiety. And assault her it does: she’s warm, she’s sleepy, she really truly believes she’s safe.

Then there’s a sudden, sharp turn, and Miranda feels the cart nearly tip over. She has to shift her weight quickly and drastically to keep the thing on its four wheels. Each consecutive bump takes on a more violent force, and the once comfort recedes from around her. Her back and elbows slam into the cart’s plastic posts, and when the truck again jerks, Miranda-upon-pushcart is sent hurtling from wherever she is in the carriage to the opposite wall, smashing into it with a loud and shocking slam.

Whatever this vehicle is, it feels like it’s traveling at light speed and hitting every possible celestial pothole along the way. There are fresh bruises forming on her elbows and shins. It seems entirely plausible she has left Earth, that Cindi, by way of certain safety, has set up a Moon base, or perhaps something on the near side of Mars. Miranda would not be surprised to find herself in some strange alternate reality, Cindi’s triumphant hiding spot being in a world that does not know who she is.

Amidst the barrage of bizarre thoughts, the truck begins slowing, and the rough ride smooths out. Soon everything slows to a standstill. There are noises, the same muffled voices speaking again in just-barely unintelligible verse. A door nearby is opened and shut with a metallic clang. Fresh, cold autumn air flings itself forward into Miranda’s temporary prison.

There are footsteps; The footsteps are close, close, closer, and the shadow of a hand approaches the cloth nearest to Miranda’s face.

Linda’s soft voice coos “Fat Marge’s Lovely Antique Pies For Sale Here.”

Her hand helps Miranda from the cart, though Miranda proves too heavy and, it’s only her head and shoulders which emerge from her hiding spot. The bright light enters into and burns her eyes, purifying them by fire. 

The light slowly settles, and with each cone in Miranda’s eye coming around to the idea of daylight, fall foliage emerges into further definition. Through the opened back of the truck (she’s in a U-Haul trailer), Miranda sees she’s been brought to the middle of a red-and-orange-tinged wood, well-crunched leaves all upon the ground and lichen loose upon all the tree branches she can see.

Moving to the middle of the leaf-lined scene is Linda, out of her maid outfit and into a long yellow robe, like a monk’s, with big open wizard sleeves that hide her conjoined hands within. Apparently, she feels Miranda can remove herself from the cart without any further help.

More figures in the scene include a bald man in a similar robe conversing with a falcon on his shoulder, a very tall woman with a waterfall mane of hazel hair standing with her back turned to Miranda, and further off, a pair of yellow robes coming closer, four pairs of dirty brown feet sticking out from beneath them. Miranda, scrunching herself in all sorts of twisty new directions, succeeds in removing herself from the cart, and jumps to her feet, stretching and standing straight up, arms overhead. Just then, as the tall woman begins to turn around, the blood either rushes to or from Miranda’s head. Her vision goes black, and both she and the world topple right over.

The world is all white, all warm, and a hand brushes Miranda’s hair from her face. The ground beneath her is hard and it’s cold but the hand is warm, and so is the light from above.

“Am I dead?” Miranda asks, able to hear the dynamics of her own voice. 

“Yes,” comes another voice, luscious as fondue and thick as dark chocolate. 

“Really?”

“No, not really, Miranda, God, you’re very much alive. Just give yourself time to adjust.” The hand continues removing strands of sweat-caked hair from Miranda’s head before moving down along the length of her body. Miranda’s daze isn’t relegated to just her aching skull, but has spread throughout her nervous system, rendering so much of her body immobile and unfeeling.

But as the hand moves down her body, hovering just above it, Miranda can feel its heated reiki energy radiating through her, a warm pathway of minor electricity that snakes down her shoulder and torso, to her forearm and onto her hand. Sensation returns, softly at first, just a recognition of temperature, which gives way to goosepimples and shivers, to the warm throb of the bruises. The magic hand stops over her own, and takes it within itself. The hand is hard and rough and calloused and large enough to grip her full mitt, could rip it into bits should it wish. Miranda extends a finger up and feels long, acrylic nails capping the fingers, smooth as dried glue.

A gentle pressure is applied to her back, and Miranda feels herself lifted from the cold ground upon which she lay, the cold wet ground, and onto two feet that miraculously do not give way under her weight. Vision comes back in a rush, smacking her all at once with its breadth, knocking into her head with fully saturated colors, with mid-afternoon mist, with soft light upon stubborn leaves swaying gently in the winteresque wind. She looks upwards, but a perfectly-positioned sun eliminates the bulk of the forest she expected to see. It also silhouettes the entire torso of the person standing before her, leaving only their yellow Chuck Taylors and brown leggings and cross-stitched belt and the bottom of their Versace-looking vest to assist in possible identification.

“Miranda,” so spake the voice. Her own name, never sounding sweeter, slithers into the cleft within her ear, curls tightly and nestles itself in, the warmth of the word feeling like a tiny fireplace in her head. Miranda feels light, feels lit up from within.

She knows this voice now; it’s completely unique, and not unfamiliar. As the identity comes clear into Miranda’s mind, so does the face it belongs to. The head upon which it rests moves in front of the sun, projecting around itself a Christ-like corona. Nothing could be more fitting.

The last time she saw this face, Miranda was dressed like a dragon. Though not in ballgown, though not dolled-up, though not surrounded by fans, Cindi Lapenschtall nevertheless projects a radiant, queenly beauty. She’s redwood tall with shoulders somehow both mega-dainty and NBA-broad; Miranda’s never seen a body shaped or shapely as hers is. Never has she seen a body you could so easily fall in-love with, so delicate where you want it to be — that slim neck — but such strong secure hands and ankles and sunlit eyes sharp as uncut diamond. Miranda — who, I swear, never gets this way — turns beet red, and blushing, turns to face the dark-skinned queen of any reasonable person’s dreams.

“Hi,” Miranda putters, the word falling flat, a misshapen paper plane crafted with the best of intentions.

Cindi doesn’t say another word, just slowly wraps Miranda in a long hug. Cindi’s breath is on Miranda’s neck, almost like she’s nuzzling, while her big hands seem liable to stretch all the way across Miranda’s back. Miranda’s no small-fry, standing a solid 5’7”, but she’s never felt so small as in Cindi’s embrace, like a little bean, like a string-bean, like a sun-struck fern wanting desperately to curl.

“Come with me,” she says, her voice like velvet and her hand all over Miranda’s.

As Miranda walks forward, she hears herself saying “Where’s Linda?” but it doesn’t seem like it’s her actually saying it, but instead the words come out of that body, that one, all the way up there, walking five or six feet in front of Miranda proper, that body which looks like hers but seems somewhat robotic, like a husk, like something remote-controlled.

In answering, Cindi doesn’t look at the body, but back at Miranda’s soul, which floats a few feet behind her form. “She’s inside, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is you aren’t totally in your body right now. Don’t freak out, this kind of thing happens here. Scared me near to death the first few times I got that way, all distended and what-not. Just focus on your body, focus hard, and the whole thing will go away in time. It’s the runes.”

“Runes?” Miranda says, but no voice comes out. She’s so far away from her body now, she can’t will it into creating words, so it’s just following Cindi along dumbly, a vessel dragging a leashed soul around by its heels.

Cindi directs the body with two hands on its shoulders, moving it forward through some thick trees towards a cave’s shallow mouth, one hidden by brush and branch. A great hiding place in the buxom warmer months, this place must become far-less accommodating for Cindi and Co. in the spry, timid winter. Still, it makes a sick sense that Cindi would be holed up in a cave somewhere in, presumably, the Upstate New York woods, in a place you’d have to be dumb-lucky or whip-bright to find.

Into the center of the cave Cindi steps, lowering herself to the ground. Miranda tries to will her soul forward so as to see what Cindi is doing over there, succeeding herself forward only a few paltry feet. The reduced distance lets Miranda see the blue candle between Cindi’s legs, and the light and the fuse and Cindi stepping back, and a subtle, courtly flame reaching the candle, hitting the wick with a burst of blue starlight, and, finally, the spreading of said starlight all through the ground and onto the walls, where symbols like hieroglyphics burst with ambient cerulean light all around the cave mouth and far, far beyond, revealing the cavern’s hidden, deep throat, all lit up like a constellation, like constellations litter the walls. And they do. While obvious now that the cave only appeared shallow, Miranda could never have guess it stretched so far inward, down into the Earth’s belly. And the light stretches on, way way down into the cave until it reaches a faraway crescendo, an overwrought sunburst of ocean blue in an assumed antechamber some ways away.

Something about the light maybe, or else it’s Cindi’s cold stare which sends Miranda’s soul whipping back into her body, the spirit-substance collision forcing Miranda’s rejoined form forward with such lurching force she falls to her knees. Her kneecaps hit the cold stone and come damn near to cracking outright.

“Ooooooh! Shit, shit, shit. Miranda, I am so sorry. I always forget that happens. Come on, Cindi, come on and think!” yells the former CEO of Big Banana as she smacks herself on the head six times in quick succession, as if to shake awake some snoozing synapse. Then she looks forward. Linda, wearing her head-to-toe monarch yellow robe, steps forward from within the cave’s far recesses.

“How is she?” Linda growls, her voice made warbly and rugged by the echo of the cave walls, an echo that, for some reason, only her voice seems able to coax from the ether.

“Good,” Miranda says, looking dazed, “just my knees are bothering me a bit.”

Cindi helps her upright and shifts most of Miranda’s weight onto her own shoulders, carrying the girl further into the cave, towards the big bright blue beyond.

“I thought maybe you were going to get vaporized out there,” Cindi says softly in her ear. “I had a somewhat sinking feeling you were too good to be true.”

“I don’t suppose you have some kind of magic salve to mend my knees, do you?” Miranda says, pushing slowly off Cindi onto her own power, grimacing in what is a much more severe pain than she wants to let on. She relapses somewhat. That or she doesn’t want to totally lose the feeling of Cindi’s skin upon her own.

“I have some CBD lotion somewhere in my bag.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind.”

If she weren’t in such medically profound pain (seriously, how hard did she fall?) Miranda might be driven into a starry-eyed trance by the cavern they finally come into. Situated at the end of the long, blue-lit, glow-worm tunnel, is a huge Parthenon space, covered soil-to-scalp in the same unintelligible Betelgeuse markings as the cave mouth. Cindi follows Linda dutifully, mimicking her very footsteps even. Miranda draws close to Cindi, puts a hand on her arm and feels the muscles rippling underneath. A little something in her swoons.

Linda takes a slew of slow steps forward, and eventually stops before a conspicuously bare patch of the rock wall, about person high, about as wide as someone coming forward for a hug.

It takes only Linda’s soft handprint on the wall to send a shockwave through the chamber, one that reverberates through and then up and back down the walls, as the barren section of rock crumbles to the floor, the stone dissolving into a glittery dust as it reunites with the Earth below it. “Watch your step,” she says to Cindi and the scintillating Miranda behind her, the latter woman freshly settled into her throbbing knees and now able to stand on her own. Perhaps she milked her suffering an extra moment to stay longer on Cindi’s arm. She can’t remember having ever felt this specific combination of intimidated, turned-on, and reverent. At least not about a person. It’s a strange mix of sanctified and sinful.

“Come, Miranda. Come sit over here,” Cindi says, allowing Miranda through the crumbled rock and then ushering her towards a long marble table at the center of a great, empty hall. Cindi is much too nonchalant about it. I mean, it’s like a castle was carved into the cave system! The long tapestry-wrapped hall stretches on for a few-hundred feet, starting here, with the crumbled rock entrance on this side of the room, and culminating way over there in a raised dais that would well-fit a throne, but which now coronates only a pair of black torch-holders. All lit up and painting the room a fiery, sensual orange, they stand guard over the two-pronged hallway splitting off to the east and west of the hall’s northernmost section.

Approaching the table, Miranda sees it’s an unbroken extension of the slate stone floor underneath it, as if the table were carved out of the room. A real chicken-or-the-egg situation. A gilded red and gold dressing flows down the table’s exact geometric center, falling to the floor in elegant rumples. 

“Linda, will you fetch us a beverage? Miranda could probably use some electrolytes.” Linda bows solemnly and leaves the two sitting at the corner of the rectangle table (these are the only two chairs around it anyways), darting through a lip in the rock at the room’s midsection and into an unseen part of the complex.

It’s altogether unclear whether Cindi’s overall cool demeanor is reassuring or freaky. Miranda tries not to betray much of the uncertainty welling up within her.

The torches on the wall shine with an almost fluorescent brightness, and with a moment to examine her surroundings, Miranda sees that the tapestries on the wall tell a continuous story, each one displaying a segment of what looks to be a great prolonged battle between a half-naked swordsman and all manner of kooky flying and crawling and slithering things.

“So, is this like your secret demon-slaying base?” Miranda asks sardonically. 

“I need to talk to you about your brother.”

Miranda gulps. She feels her eyes become hot with latent, unwanted tears. She simply nods. She did not expect this, not so soon, and can only nod.

“So, you know then,” Cindi starts. “That’s good. That makes my life a lot easier. I’m so sorry. I knew, but I didn’t know if…so I didn’t want to bring it up until…I don’t know. Anyways, you’re going to meet some people. And it’s important you don’t say anything about it. Nobody else knows. Nobody knows except for you and I, actually.”

“— My parents,” Miranda chokes out.

“Oh, well, and your parents I guess, and the Board of course. You have to understand how sensitive this information is. How powerful it is that we have this information. And how powerful your brother is going to be.”

Miranda takes a couple of deep breaths, and after a few starts and stops finally says, “He’s such an asshole.”

Cindi shakes her head. “He’s not an asshole, Miranda, you just don’t understand what they can do to a person. No, no, don’t say anything. I know…I know, but I need to say this quickly. Your brother is at the mercy of powers much stronger than he is. Much stronger than I was, and I was one hundred times more prepared for this than your brother was. I knew all about your brother. We met in passing a couple times, and I always recognized something in his eyes, something that wasn’t there with anyone else I worked with. Even some of the lowlier employees, the very much humans, they lacked a certain commitment to their employment. Do you understand what I’m saying? Caleb was willing to give up everything for that position, and if they did to him what they did to me, they found him at his weakest moment, they pounced upon his uncertainty and his fear, because that’s what they do.

“And now they’re going to name him their CEO, although God knows what they have planned for him after. If we do this right, if we can pull this off successfully, we may be able to save him. Otherwise, I fear, the all-too-powerful forces are going to have their way with his weak, empty soul.”

All those words, and their intrigue, pull Miranda from her emotion. Stone-faced, she admits “I, like, 60% understand. You keep talking in these vague undertones, and I need clear answers. Are we —” 

But she’s interrupted by Linda’s return. Upon a jewel-encrusted silver tray sit an orange can and a steaming mug full of a dark brown liquid. “Tea-time, Mistress,” Linda says to Cindi.

“I hope you like Fanta,” Cindi says, handing a can to Miranda, “Go on, the electrolytes will be good for you. If you’d prefer something else —”

“No, no. This is perfect. Just perfect.” Miranda sips her first bit of soda, feeling the acid bubbles attack the open wounds on the inside of her mouth then go off pillaging the rest of her throat. She coughs while trying to say “So, where exactly are we?”

Cindi shoots Miranda an appreciative look, a Thank you for playing along with my ridiculous request kind of look, before saying “I can’t rightly tell you that. Not that I don’t trust you implicitly; it’s just part of an oath I took. Certain things I can’t divulge. Breaking a lot of rules just having you here. I promise, I’ll answer what I can.”

“Totally, yeah, cool.” There’s an awkward silence as Linda takes up a place against the nearest wall, standing board-straight against it, unmoving and unblinking and unspeaking. Unlistening, though? Cindi, despite gushing about Linda in the past, seems on-edge. “Personal bodyguard?” Miranda says, motioning her head towards Linda.

“Helper. Bodyguard in some ways. Part of my staying here entails having an escort. It makes sense, I promise.”

“Sure, yeah, totally. Makes as much sense as any of this. I mean, what are we doing right now? Are we inside a fantasy novel? Secret club, magical runes, demon-hunting…magic doors? Are you about to tell me I’m some long-prophesied warrior? The only one capable of stopping the demons and restoring balance to the world?”

“No, no — oh Miranda — don’t be preposterous.” 

“Oh, thank God, because actually this is like —” 

“I am.”

“What?”

“What you said. That’s me. I’m the long-prophesied warrior capable of stopping the demons and restoring balance to the world.”

Cindi just lets that hang in the air for a moment, perhaps expecting it to have a more physical effect on Miranda than it does. Nope, nothing to see here folks.

“Oh. Oh! Uhm, wow, totally. Cool,” Miranda says, disassociating and suddenly very tired. “Honestly, that’s not even very surprising. Were you like working undercover for Big Banana and they found you out? Or —”

“No, I’m sad to say. I’ll avoid specifics, but to get to the top of that company you have to do a very bad thing. It was a near-total sacrifice of myself that made me the eventual vessel for the work I’m doing now.” Cindi grabs Miranda’s hands with a sudden earnest and fervor. “This is a story of redemption, Miranda Swami, and I’m nearing the end of my arc.” 

“Oh, well, Mazel! Where, uhm, if you don’t mind me asking, do I fit in? Am I just a courier? A helper a —”

“Possibly. I’m not rightly sure yet. Depends how you interpret the prophecy. You may either be my greatest friend and ally — a true Samwise —, or my foil. We’re here together in the middle of the arc, destined to become friends and confidantes and possibly even lovers —”

“Lovers?”

“And while we will ultimately succeed in our mission here — Yay! — it will have one of two effects. Either we will become a two-headed monster, together vanquishing the great beasts in their well-guarded dens, or all of this will only serve to create in you some untamable evil, which it will eventually be up to me, and me alone, to destroy. We are either Gilgamesh and Enkidu or Obi-Wan and Anakin.”

“Woah. Heavy. Your prophecy is that specific? I guess it’s nice just to be prophesied about at all. But you know we’re not in a story, right? Right? If you really believe all that, then aren’t you a slave to your own destiny? Why bring me in at all if you know I’m just going to turn heel and betray you?”

“But Miranda, I don’t know. All prophecies are open for interpretation.” Cindi takes a long contemplative pause. Miranda wants to light a cigarette but is concerned about the ventilation in here. This seems like a good conversation to have within a cloud of smoke. “All of life is an endless story, the battles and set-pieces laid out before us, waiting for us to walk into them. Everything is predestined, pre-written, outlined and sketched-out and decided for you, in some manner. No matter how you fight, it will occur as it must. But really, don’t let that get you down if you can help it. It’ll all feel natural. And if they’ve done a good job, you’ll have your own totality and opinions and a head full of ideas you might even be able to convince yourself are your own.

“Right now, I need you, Miranda Swami. We’ll do this together, overcome this, and then deal with that. One problem at a time. One arc, one central conflict; save the rest for book two.”

Sensing her exhaustion, Cindi abruptly offers to take Miranda to her room, with Linda pulling up the trio’s rear. The cave system, past the great hall, opens into a sequence of narrow, ornately decorated hallways, covered floor to stalactite-tiled-top with red and gold and lacy accents, the rugs and tapestries hella baroque, and ditto all the shelves holding Grecian urns, so intricately designed Keats would have a stroke trying to wax poetic about them. She tries and fails to keep from making eye contact with the dozens of portraits hanging about the walls, the high lords and ladies (presumably of the demon-slaying variety) looking generally snooty and disapproving; Miranda wonders if they change their faces depending who walks by. That’d be a fun, imaginative detail! The long, uncut rug underneath her feet appears, like the tapestries in the hall, to tell a lengthy, textile story of some hero’s journey, though Miranda in not wanting to trip only looks down every couple seconds. Here the hooded hero wades through a river; here they’ve let their long locks out from under their hat and, well look at that, it’s a woman! Can’t you see the circular curves on her chest?

“Ya’ll are really big into your prophecies, aren’t you?”

“It’s nice to be told what you’re going to do…who you’re going to be,” Cindi says, looking back at Miranda with a tall smile. “It’s hard to have all these choices before you. It was hard for me. It’s always been hard for me.”

They come to another fork in the hallway. To the left, an unfurnished alcove guarded by a thick wooden door, all strong oak and wrought-iron and requiring a serious siege vehicle to ram through. To the right, an equally bare stretch of hallway, under an abbreviated ceiling, with a sequence of blasé, balsa-wood openings every few feet, the barest and basest of doors. Cindi takes Miranda’s shoulder and urges her on. “Second on the left, if you please.”

The “room,” lit up by torch-light, is scarcely more than a hole in the wall. A stone slab sticking horizontally out is the room’s only furniture, a sleeping arrangement made tolerable by a memory-foam mattress-topper thoughtfully laid over it. There’s no obvious bathroom in the tiny space, although there is a small ledge where Miranda can and does place her things. Perhaps, should she need to pee in the middle of the night, a toilet will appear in some sudden moonlight. Or she can squat over a hole leading down to Hell. That’ll show the demons below.

A glistening chamber-pot in the corner of the room portends a much lamer fate.

Cindi leaves her to sleep, a sleep that arrives in short bursts, escaping always before it will envelop her totally. Like in the Program, there are no windows in this underground sanctum. Besides the torch burning and crackling on the wall, there is only darkness, only silence, the totality of it punctuated by far-off footsteps and the tiny canoodling of rats, hopefully in the next room over.

Hours later (probably), right when she’s finally gotten to sleep, Miranda is quite literally shaken awake. Her still-strained eyes at this uncertain time are only half-open, but nevertheless recognize the tall wisp of Cindi standing over her, breathing real close, the burning torches coloring her face like an oil-painting. Miranda’s abruptly-awoken brain cannot quite comprehend A) why this woman is standing over her, or B) where she even is right now, let alone all the other questions and comments which come with sudden consciousness in an unfamiliar place. But Cindi is smiling and obviously excited and says in a flurry, “Hey, come on, you have to get up. We have to go see something!”

She grabs Miranda by the hand, very literally pulling her out of bed and out of the room. This cat’s got kitten energy. It’s fortunate Miranda slept in her clothes, as it doesn’t seem Cindi is very concerned with her companion’s possible indecency. Cindi, of course, is immaculate. It’s one of life’s great mysteries (and well-documented as such) how she gets her hair to wave as gently as it does, especially in as dingy and dry a place as this. Maybe her room is nicer. The chosen one’s digs probably have a private bathroom and walk-in closet. Maybe there’s a Versace outlet somewhere down in these tunnels.

Soon Miranda is saying something about coffee, about god my stomach is rumbling, but is ignored and ignored again. Finally, she shuts up. Cindi is either too preoccupied for conversation or too tongue-tied by the threat of it. The thick silence lasts until the two reach the great hall, where, in a line by the resurrected rock wall, four men in yellow robes stand at proper attention, each with a specific facial signifier that identifies them from their compatriots.

There stands Scar and there Eyepatch, Gold Tooth and Hook Nose, all utterly disinterested in Miranda, but boy howdy, do they fall right to one knee — and with such fervor! — at the approach of their God-queen, Cindi Lapenschtall.

“They’re off to put Phase One of our master plan into effect,” Cindi starts explaining. “Capturing one of the Bananas and bringing it back here is of prime importance. A difficult task but necessary, and not our first time at it. We’ll be broadcasting everything from a command center within these caves. You may rise,” she says, and the men do indeed rise. “Go,” she commands them, and they obey, leaving through the again-busted cave wall. The hungry blue glow of the far-off runes soon swallows the men clean up. The rock, understanding its place in this whole thing, builds itself back into a wall.

“Oh shit, so you were serious about all this?”

From a shadowy corner unseen, Linda makes a snickering sound. Surprised, Miranda turns to face her, and is surprised further still to find the woman smiling, a kind smile, one Miranda returns.

“Oh yes. Serious as a stroke. Come on, now you’re up, I want to show you something else.” Cindi says. “Linda will stay here and keep guard.”

Linda nods slightly, brushing her robe aside as she turns, exposing the great silver broadsword hidden beneath. At this reveal, she looks at Miranda and winks. For the first time, Miranda thinks hey, maybe I could get used to this place.

Poor girl, she won’t have much of a chance to.

🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌

“Are you sure I’m allowed in there?” Miranda asks, hesitating before another doorway, this one somehow more bedazzling than the others. A door made of pure gold, as shimmery and heart-stopping as you’d imagine so much precious metal to be. It has no handle, no accents, is simply a mesmerizing slab of solid wealth placed carefully in between some stone. And it takes Miranda’s breath away.

“As long as you are pure of heart and pious of mind.” 

“Well…hopefully my good looks will be enough.”

The door gives way with a slight push. In fact, Cindi opens it with only her index finger, indulging in the serious strength her extremities seem to command.

A gorgeous door, and behind it, a room to match. Mammoth. That’s a good word to describe it. A truly titanic hole in the Earth big as a basketball arena, one that doesn’t seem even possibly congruent with the cave system’s otherwise understood dimensions. Maybe she actually is in another world. Immaculately wood-paneled, and with bulging bookshelves rising up from floor to ceiling, this Library of Legend must be home to millions of tomes. Are those clouds all the way up there? And if you should require a selection from up in the stratosphere, fear not. Skyscraping ladders on monster truck wheels lay periodically upon the shelves, like tests of courage, though a sign on each cautions users to wear a harness, for the house isn’t liable for on-site accidents.

“All the world’s literature not fit for the common man,” Cindi says in absent-minded admiration, hands on her hips. “Too much power is in these pages for the average, reticent human. Answers and secrets galore, unauthorized biographies of history’s intelligencia and compendiums of all the world’s shadow beasts. Summoning rituals and Dionysian dances; I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s here, or so I’ve been told. This whole complex, all of these caves, it was all built off of this, the Library.”

“So the Library preceded all of this?” Miranda asks, incredulously scanning the spines of anything at nearby eye-level. Their titles are in Wing-Ding (or look like it), and when she runs her finger over their exposed mid-sections, a strange gossamer residue sticks to her skin.

“A remnant of some old civilization, an old branch of an organization like ours. People have been interested in creating a the occult as long as there has been occult. My predecessors found it hundreds of years ago, but some of these books are eyewitness catalogues of civilizations older and more advanced than anything else on record. Here, watch this.”

Cindi takes a few steps forward to a lamp-lit reading podium atop which a dense book of runes sits open. “Happened to leave this open last night,” she says, flipping the pages for a few moments, lost in thought, eventually letting forth an “Ahah!” as she finds what she was after. Cindi begin moving her hands tepidly through the air, as if she’s trying to remember a past life as an orchestra conductor. Small, semi-silent words sneak forth from her lips. A few moments of this, of Miranda looking on nervously, and Cindi brings her hands together in a thunderous, reverberatory clap. The air goes freezing cold, and atop the spell-book forms a black-and-purple portal about Chihuahua-wide. Miranda hugs herself tight, her teeth chattering, watching in awe and horror as something completely, ridiculously, parodically fantastic happens before her eyes. The portal shakes and churns and passes through it, like an interdimensional kidney-stone, three action-figure-sized skeletons, all in mariachi regalia, with a guitar, trumpet, and tambourine respectively.

“Eee-hee-hee!” Cindi yelps, jumping up and down, clapping in excitement. “I did it! I did it!”

As the skeletons play a little Mexican marching tune, Miranda leans against the nearest wall, fanning herself with a free hand and slowly turning purple. Cindi does a little jig, for the skeletons’ sakes, until their finish their song, and showers the bowing band with applause. Again, the portal burbles and burps, making a show of its incontinence before swallowing up the songsters. It closes, taking the cold with it, belching a wave of warm, swampy air into the Library. Cindi turns back to her audience.

To her dismay, however, Miranda isn’t pepped-up and excited by the little show of magic, but is shaking, looking pale, lips going indigo, eyes glazed a bit over, the teeth inside that closed mouth of hers finding and biting the nearest possible clump of gums.

“I really can’t do this,” Miranda says suddenly, quietly. “I don’t want to do this. Why did you bring me here? Why are you making me see all of this?”

“Oh, come on! That was supposed to be fun!” In awaiting a response, or at least a smirk, Cindi seems to realize the gravity of what Miranda is struggling with. “It gets easier,” Cindi says at last, “but I know it’s a shock at first. Tears down everything you think you know and forces you to build it back up into something new.”

“This isn’t what I wanted for myself. Getting mixed up in all of this…I didn’t know it was going to be so —”

“So, what? Extraordinary? Fantastic? Otherworldly? Come on! Miranda! This is an adventure! And it’s not that bad. You weren’t going to sit behind that screen all your life, were you? Were you really going to paint away your days? Get a Graphic Design degree? Go work for a start-up? You were never meant for that. Think of this as, like, going to Thailand! It’s a culture shock at first, that’s all: the food is weird, the language is incomprehensible, but then you learn how to say ‘Hi’ and ‘where’s the bathroom?’ and it gets better. This is normal. What you’re feeling is normal. Pretty mountains, tuk-tuks. You get used to it. It will settle into normalcy. Life always becomes itself. Everywhere, under any circumstance.”

“Did you come here,” Miranda asks, staring deeply into Cindi’s eyes, those opal eyes with their long, mascara-blackened lashes, “or did they bring you here?”

Cindi exhales what seems like a week’s worth of air. “Miranda, can I be honest with you?”

“If you think I can handle it, sure.”

Cindi smiles sadly, knocking her knuckles against a near bookshelf. “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but how much do you know of my life story?”

“Well enough. I’ve read the Vogue piece. A few times. Many times. Start with whatever I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, let’s see, let’s see. After I started transitioning, there was an assault, and then another assault in college, and then a third rather grisly one outside of a bar in St. Louis, where I was living at the time. After the third, I knew if I didn’t get above that world, I was looking at a short life. You know the statistics, I assume. I needed to become untouchable. So, I started the fund with money from a second mortgage, and compounded that with a small inheritance my Aunt Shelly left when she passed. I built it slowly, but, anyways, all of that is well and good and documented, and if you were interested further, I could craft you a pretty compelling reading list. The more esoteric thing I’m getting at is I always felt there was something watching out for me, guiding me, some force, some power, and at the time I called it God. Ever since I started building a staircase out of the shit that was my life, it seemed like the world was being manipulated for my benefit. Big gains when everyone else was failing. And I mean everyone. Interest from all over the place; people shoving their money in my face. That’s true! That actually happened! I was always reluctant to think that ‘God’ was actually looking out for me, but I knew there was more than sheer happenstance at my sails.

“And for the record, I’m not devaluing what I did. I literally built my fortune from nothing, from word-of-mouth, from little bits of wealth and trust here and there, hiring one employee at a time. I did that. I pulled myself up into a better life.”

“But?”

“But…I caution you to suspend your disbelief.”

Carefully, Miranda says, “I’m pretty open to new information at this point.”

“Yes, I know. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: I met the one who claimed to have been manipulating things. And honestly, what he said all checked out. All the suspicion, the apprehension, the feeling that I was taking advantage, not of God, but of some dark force…

“I was approached by the Devil, Miranda Swami. The God-Damned Devil.” Cindi says his name with hard, furtive eyes and a mouth wholly uninterested in cracking any knowing, half-disbelieving smile. It remains taut, hard, discomfiting. “I met the Devil, and he told me it was he who had been there for me, had been looking out for me, had taken a special interest in me, and me alone. He said — this is what he said — he said he wanted to give me a platform, so I could make positive change in my community, in the world, wanted to make me so famous and powerful it would normalize everything that I am, my transition and my gender and my color, on a world stage. He said he had that power; he said he could make all of my dreams a reality. All my other dreams. That’s a direct quote. ‘My other dreams.’ He said he was interested in justice. In reparations. And all I had to do was sign away my soul. He said he’d do the rest.”

“Yeesh.” What else can you say after someone admits to selling their soul?

“Yeesh, is right! But think! Think, Miranda Swami! It was giving my soul, my little life, my own eternal whatever in exchange for the uplifting of my entire community. All of my communities! It was a selfless act, I swear. It wasn’t ever about me, even for a moment. And that doesn’t make me a saint, and it doesn’t make me worthy of reverence, it’s just a fact. But that was his fatal miscalculation. It made all the difference.

“Now, I don’t pretend to understand the politics of soul-selling, but something about that selflessness, in hindsight, must have, if what I’ve been told is true, negated part of the deal. Because there I was, CEO of Big Banana, with all of my other dreams a reality, but for some reason I wasn’t the soulless, easily-manipulatable monster they needed me to be. Or the one they thought I would eventually become. I learned from some well-calculated eavesdropping that I was an almost-Biblical-level disappointment. When I realized that things were going to go south for me and fast, I started investing in the infrastructure of the Program, the one I used to find you. And when I caught wind that my death wasn’t just being discussed, but was imminent, I executed my plan. I made a big public spectacle — at your show — and then disappeared outright.

“My friends here found me soon after. They won what was essentially a race between them and Big Banana’s bloodhounds to sniff me out. That was not part of my plan, but it was welcome nonetheless. That was my second act break. They brought me here and installed me with the technology and confidence I needed, got me up-to-date on all the necessary prophecies, had me take an oath or two, and then, well, then I sent you a text. You’ve been a part of the rest.”

Miranda sits in silence for a while, awaiting the arrival of a witty response. And then it comes to her. “Pretty cool you can get out of a deal with the Devil on a technicality.”

That fact stays with Miranda for days, mostly solitary days, as Cindi’s time is spent dealing with some snafu in her otherwise fool-proof plan to topple the world’s fastest-growing company. A technicality. A bloody technicality. That is just classic morality for you. Somewhere Nietzsche’s ghost howls with laughter.

While Cindi is off in other, members-only rooms of the underground sanctum, Miranda spends her time in the Library, tracking down the few books written in comprehensible English and having a hard-enough time deciphering their contents.

If what she reads is to be believed, Abraham Lincoln had a twin brother he struck down in childhood like Cain did Abel, Marilyn Monroe and JFK were reincarnations of two eternally-spawning soulmates (who may or may not now inhabit two elderly rhinoceroses in the Atlanta Zoo), the War in Korea was fought in actuality over a space-stone upon which a tiny, hyper-advanced civilization lives to this day, and Roman horses in the first few centuries B.C. could be coaxed into a very mangled, slow but still understandable version of human speech. That characteristic was bred out successfully by the early French. The world around her, it seems, has been more subjectively set down than she had appreciated. Salinger wrote eight otherwise-lost sequels to Catcher in the Rye discussing the other members of the grain-based baseball team, and Virginia Woolf’s lost notes detail how, against the advice of close confidantes, she spent the last decades of her life researching a secret Spanish treasure hidden somewhere in the Sierra Nevada. Some say she hid a codex leading to the bounty in later publications of To the Lighthouse.

Two nights before Miranda is to be in New York for the announcement, Cindi enters the Library, coming upon Miranda suspended in a make-shift hammock, reading about how the pre-Reformation Catholic Church drove faeiries out of Great Britain in the years after Columbus set for America. Riveting stuff. Actually makes a lot of sense.

“I have to leave,” Cindi tells her.

“So soon? Is everything okay?” Miranda asks.

“That’s what I’m off to find out,” Cindi responds, looking very regally into the middle-distance. “When it’s time to take you back into the city, Linda will come for you. Best of luck, Miranda Swami. I’m sorry to skedaddle so unceremoniously. Until we meet again.”

Cindi extends her long fingers for a shake, and her grasping of Miranda’s hand is like wrapping it in a soft, luscious blanket. Miranda feels tears in her eyes, tears from nowhere, about nothing, but tears nonetheless. Perhaps her tear ducts understand more of her hopes than she does. After all, they might’ve been lovers. Cindi said it was possible. Cindi said.

They share a longing look, a direct plea sent from one pair of eyes into the other’s, both women feeling briefly all the infinite other thems turning and pushing within themselves, ones in just slightly askew situations with just slightly askew emotions and outcomes, before the electric spell is broken. Their foreheads both burn. Cindi turns quickly to leave.

“Wait!” Miranda calls. “I keep forgetting to ask: why did you pretend to be Lakshmi?” 

“What?”

“In the Program. I met someone who was impersonating my friend Eric Lakshmi. That was you, right?”

Cindi thinks for a moment. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The nature of the Program is that, within, it’s very difficult to track people down. I didn’t know where you were until you showed up on my doorstep. And just in time, might I add.”

“Interesting. Cool.”

“Until we meet again, Miranda Swami. It’s been very nice being so close to you. I wish you the best of luck if-slash-when we take our rightful place as foes.”

“Likewise, I guess.”

In her room, Miranda is suddenly crept upon by two old friends. Depression and Anxiety take her into a series of darkness-and-delirium induced daydreams. You’ve had this happen to you, too, I’m sure. In places of certain special darkness, where time ceases to move in any calculable way, the machinations of your mind seek to fill the nothingness with sensation, intense enough at times to produce trancelike-visions. And in a place of such magic and power, no less, those kinds of visions are worth something immense.

In her head, a simple train of thought about Fake-Lakshmi’s identity leads her subconscious mind, dead-tired and already sick of the sudden solitude, to create before her a familiar desert of red and beige and sandstone. Half-asleep somewhat, but more like she’s astral-walking, Miranda sees herself climbing to the top of a huge red-stone pillar jutting straight up out of the Earth. She ascends a winding path around the spire’s edge until she’s standing at the very top, balancing on one sturdily-planted foot, looking out as the planet below her exposes its curvature. Dotting the far-off land are all the world’s nation-states, scribbled over by their bold-faced names, each with well-defined black borders. Within every plot is, say, a towering mountain covered in poplar fur or a rainforest milieu with a lemur head poking around, a distillation of each area into its sexiest geographic feature.

O’er yonder is a burbling, bubbling volcano. Two polar bears frolic in the snow down south.

But in the faraway distance, a gargantuan black cloud slowly obscures the lands underneath it. The cloud seems to shake with laughter as it sends enormous yellow thunderbolts down to the Earth, incinerating every nation they strike. Crash-bang-zap-boom, and a mountain range is blown to snow-capped smithereens. Crash-kaboom-crunch-krinkle, and a field of poppy flowers turns to cinders.

The lightning continues floating forward, quicker and more severe in its manner as it does, and while Miranda wants to run, she can’t seem to move her legs. Not a great time for dream logic to kick in. She looks down, focusing her will into movement, directing all her energy into the simple art of stepping. But when she finally does gain a little control over her leaden limbs, it matters not. The ramp she followed up here has disappeared. She’s trapped atop the spire.

When she looks up from her shoe-laces, it’s to come face-to-face with bad news. The storm cloud is upon her. It has left so much destruction in its wake, the world appears nothing more than a blackened mass of burnt toast and red-hot ash. With the thundercloud so close, Miranda can make out its details. It’s taken the shape of a head and face.

Which wouldn’t be that terrifying excepts it’s Cindi’s head and Cindi’s face. And when Cloud Cindi opens her mouth, things are destroyed underneath her. The cloud-head-of-Cindi-Lapenschtall comes close, hangs over Miranda, and opens wide, saying aaaaaahhhhhh...

A violent barrage of lightning rains down upon her, shocking the world, flooding it with bright, electric-blue light. Yellow and red from instant fires, and Miranda can’t open her eyes with all the smoke.

There’s coughing and so much dust, but still the lightning rains down, still it must destroy, still it desires a further-flung world turned to soot.

And then nothing. It all stops. The air lightens, and the slick bright of a sunlit day washes over Miranda’s shut-tight eyes.

Opening them, she finds herself still somehow standing. The world below her smolders, but she is literally above all that. The spire was somehow unperturbed by the rumbling doom. The cloud has dissipated, and the sky is a beautiful robin’s egg blue. Two sing-song swallows soar above her, and then someone coughs.

Miranda looks over and almost dies of shock. A human-sized Banana, twisting devil’s tail behind it and two yellow wings squelched tight against its body, sits next to her, its legs hanging off the edge of the spire, looking out at the world. It clears its throat, removes its derby hat as if in reverence.

“Say, that was a close one, wasn’t it, kid?” The Banana says this, looks up at her, seems to contort its face halfway between a grimace and a scowl, and as it does so, the hallucination vanishes.

Miranda wakes with a sudden jolt and a deep intake of breath. She is, in fact, panting. And someone has refreshed the torch upon her wall. Her door, she sees, is cracked open, and after taking stock of her body, ensuring it is currently safe, she stands upright, following the leaking light into the hallway. Stoic as a statue, Linda waits for her, in normal-person clothes, a smart mix of blouse and blue pants, of flats and a fleece.

“You’ve been asleep for two days” Linda says, which can’t possibly be true. “It’s time.”

In a few minutes, Miranda will say goodbye to these caverns forever, heading out into early morning sunshine with unbrushed teeth and uncombed hair, letting fresh sunlight kiss her gently on the cheek, the soft shine of a known world.

Within the half hour, she will be blindfolded in the back of an SUV en route to further civilization.

By 11:30, she’ll be on a train for New York City, an unlocked and untraceable phone in her pocket, purchased for her with plenty of 4G by some fine folks who slay demons and live in caves. By 3pm today, the world will cease to show its usual face, will act with unusual candor, will display different colors.

A New World and a New York await. Miranda hopes she’ll be brave enough to face them, limber enough to enter them both at once.