r/HFY•8 mo. ago

[The Shotgun Girl] Chapter 7 of 17

OC-Series

----

"What? You mean..." I blinked and glanced around, but as usual, no enlightenment was to be had. "...Blondie and Red?"

"No, obviously I mean the other forty-six people in this house with us. Of course I mean Blondie and Red."

I could only shake my head. "Your sense of humor is really hard to follow, sometimes. You're so dry, I can never be sure when you're being sarcastic."

"Which is part of why I so enjoy banter with you, Brown. But there was no sarcasm, I assure you."

I don't know why that statement about Red and Blondie should have hit me the way it did. I suppose that a person, especially one confronted with endless unchanging days and limited outside influences, just gets very set in their thought processes. Used to viewing things in a certain fixed way, an easy groove for the mind to roll into. Getting out of that groove, that entrenched habit of mind, took some serious effort, at least for me. "Blondie. And Red. Huh."

Blackie cocked her head like I'd just said the stupidest thing she'd heard all day. "Really, Brown?" she repeated. "You've never noticed?"

Obviously, I hadn't. "What's there to notice? They're friends, right?"

"You've never noticed the way they gravitate together? The tenderness between them? The gentle way they touch each other?"

I shrugged. "So what? You touch me a lot, too." And that was true. The feel of Blackie's steadying hand on my back or arm or shoulder was long-familiar and instantly recognizable. If not always entirely welcomed.

"Yes, I suppose I do, don't I?" There was a certain mild acid in the way she said that. But instead of giving me a chance to argue the point further, she just pulled out one of the chairs beside the chessboard and sat down. One slim hand waved grandly across the table in invitation. "Let's play, Brown." She began lining the black pieces up in front of herself.

I shook my head. "Why? You always win." And that was the unvarnished truth. If a game had a physical component, like shooting billiards or playing croquet, Red or I could usually win against her. Blackie was lithe and slim and graceful, but we two were stronger and more coordinated than her. Mental games like chess or cards, on the other hand... I don't feel like a particularly stupid person, except when I'm pitting my brain against Blackie's.

"And why would my always winning dampen my desire to play?" she said, that infuriatingly charming smirk in its usual place. "Come on, Brown. Show some spirit. I'll even make it worth your while."

"How so?"

"A wager. We'll play for demands. What's more, I'll give you two-for-one."

That did pique my interest. I didn't care much about playing chess for the fun of it -- I'd rather be productive. But with something to gain from it...

Money meant nothing to us. We found it sometimes, during our ransacking. Elaborate printed notes with portraits of stern-faced monarchs and proclamations of fiduciary integrity, coins engraved with eagles and lions and proud coats-of-arms. Sometimes we used the bills to kindle our cooking fires. Red had tried using rolled-up coins in her fist to fight mirror-clones, but that had hurt her knuckles and wasn't as effective as just beating them to death with a chair leg. Jewelry was likewise worthless. It could look cute on us, but so what? Rings and bracelets were just dead weight to lug over the next wall, a necklace just a convenient garrote for the next mirror-clone to choke you out. Hell, we couldn't even admire our reflections wearing the stupid stuff. And yet, we still had a currency, of sorts.

Demands. When you traded one of the others a demand, or they won one from you in a game, you'd given them the right to ask anything of you, to be fulfilled to the best of your ability. A demand could be for an immediate action: 'Braid my hair.' 'Make me a sandwich.' 'Slap yourself as hard as you can.' It could be for something frivolous: 'Wear your dress backwards.' 'Talk only in rhyme for the rest of the day.' Red was fond of silly ones like those. A demand could also be for some future action: 'Next mirror-room we find, you have to lead the breaking attempt.' But the most important, most serious of all demands, was for truth. 'Tell me what you really think about such-and-such.' We didn't use that one often, because four women living together with no way to separate for any real length of time have to have some secrets from each other, or else they -- we -- would go insane. Assuming we hadn't already. Human beings have to have some amount of privacy, some personal zone into which no others can intrude. Also, knowing too much of other people's true and honest feelings seems like a good way to start hating them. It's one thing to be pretty sure Blackie thinks I'm dumb. It'd be another to have her come right out and say, baldly and in absolute earnest, that she considers me an utter cretin that she only tolerates because she has no choice.

"Two for one, eh?"

She gave me the kind of smug look that says, 'I knew you'd be hooked.' "That's right. You beat me, I'll give you two demands." She wiggled paired fingers at me, then turned them around to a 'come hither' gesture. "Two, Brown. Don't act like you don't want it."

And the hell of it was, I did want it. Just like she said. The dark thoughts I'd been having, the doubts and little resentments about how things always seemed to work in Blackie's favor began to simmer in the back of my mind and the idea that with two demands I might get some answers, could maybe turn suspicions into actual information, just wouldn't go away. I mean, yes, I was almost certainly going to lose the game, because none of us seemed able to out-think Blackie... but what if? There was a chance, right? Maybe I would be lucky. Maybe some bit of random fortune would tip things in my favor. Maybe maybe maybe...

I'm still a fool when it comes to hope, apparently. Those maybes, slim as they were, turned out to be enough to put me in the chair on the other side of the chessboard, lining up my own tarnished-white pieces.

At least she didn't say, "Good girl." I might not have been able to stop myself from kicking her in her pretty little shin if she had. But she didn't. I was doing what she wanted, as usual, and that was enough for her. She just gestured at my pieces and said, "White moves first." Her smirk widened at my grunted response and she added, "Age before beauty, after all."

"Pearls before swine," I muttered, sliding out a pawn.

"Ah. There's that banter that makes our friendship such a delight." She immediately moved a pawn of her own in response.

I moved another pawn, giving one of my bishops some maneuvering room. I'd try to get a rook freed-up in the next few moves, because if you've got force available, you use it to hit hard and fast as soon as you can. That's how I killed mirror-clones, that's how I took out clockwork soldiers. Straightforward blunt force was just in my nature, I guess.

Blackie's own moves were less dramatic. She inched pawns forward rather than making bold sweeps and lunges. Every piece covered, no gaps or weaknesses. Every position a potential ambush.

I fell for one a dozen or so moves in, snapping up an exposed pawn, only to lose a knight in response. "You need to pay better attention, Brown," she teased. "It amazes me that someone so unrelentingly paranoid can be so blind to the obvious at times."

"Are you talking about the game, or this supposed thing with Blondie and Red?"

"I'm talking about you not seeing what's in front of your face." She slid a bishop out, threatening one of my own. "And 'thing'? That's really what you're going to call their relationship?"

"What should I call it? A 'torrid love affair'?" I moved my bishop out of danger, unfortunately freeing up the enemy knight it had been keeping pinned. "If that's even what it is. I've only got your word that they're being... touchy-feely... with each other. Or more touchy-feely than normal, anyway."

"And my word isn't good enough for you?"

I didn't answer that, which was answer enough. She looked vaguely offended by that and we played the next few moves in silence.

But she'd planted a seed in my mind, the idea of Blondie and Red... together. If they truly were, I mean. The two of them an item. A pair. Bonded, I suppose, and in a way that neither Blackie nor I could share with them. As I burned one of my pawns in an effort to get another rook into the fray, I asked, casually as I could, "So... were they, like, kissing or something?"

Blackie's eyes stayed on the board, but her smile widened just a little. "Not while I was in the room. But there was a lot of giggling and nudging each other while they mixed up the bread dough."

I shrugged internally. Red and Blondie were both kind of flighty and whimsical sometimes. At least, compared to Blackie and me. Them being giggly and playful didn't mean anything out of the ordinary.

"And then Blondie put her arms around Red to show her how to work the dough into a ball and Red made this little purring sound. That's the moment I decided that our friends deserved a little privacy and came to seek amusement with my dear friend Brown."

I just stared at her.

"What?"

"Red purred?"

"She did, indeed."

"Purred?"

Blackie held up a hand. "If I'm lying, I'm dying."

The words 'if only' slid through my mind but not out of my mouth. When had Blackie last died? I'd slipped off into the dark so many times myself from one misadventure or another... although not lately, because we'd gotten pretty good at dealing with this place. But still. The slow, sleepy fade of bleeding out from a throat cut by a mirror-clone or an artery severed by a dying friend murdered in the throes of pointless rage. The pain-wracked wasting of poison after falling for sucker bait. The agonizing rot of bone spider venom turning my guts to liquid shit. The abrupt blackness of a head-first plunge from roof or wall. I remembered holding and comforting Red and Blondie more than once as their own lives drained away from a mirror-clone's fury or a clockwork soldier's lucky thrust or even just from some dumb accident. But not Blackie. Never smart, pretty, ever-fortunate Blackie. Blackie who never theorized about where we were and always seemed amused by some joke only she was privy to.

Apparently, she misjudged the cause of my sudden silence. "Does that make you jealous? The idea that Red and Blondie might be in love?"

"Why would I be jealous?" That probably came out sharper than I meant it to, but the question was genuine.

"Lots of reasons." Blackie toyed with the knight she was about to move. "Jealous of them having something that you don't. Jealous because you wanted one of them for yourself. Jealous because their being together severely limits your own choice of romantic partners. I'm sure I could think of others."

"No." I shook my head firmly, distinctly. "I'm definitely not jealous. I just wonder what happened to Red's worries about falling into sin. I mean, she talks all that moral stuff and then gives right in to lust." I couldn't help but snicker a little.

That seemed to incense Blackie and she spoke with rare heat. "That isn't lust, Brown. Lust would be if they just paired off because they had a metaphorical itch to mutually scratch, or because they looked 'hot' to each other, or simply to have something to do. Purely physical acts for purely physical wants. That would be the sin of lust. But two people who truly know and appreciate and care for each other the way they do, sharing simple acts of love, there's purity in that. And we see so little of purity. We should cherish and nurture it every chance we get."

"If you say so." I pointed at her knight. "Are you moving that piece or not?"

Blackie arched her brow and slid the knight into position to cut off my rook's approach. "Really, Brown?"

"You say that a lot."

"Because you give me so many reasons to. What, you don't believe in love? Because love requires trust and your unending paranoia doesn't let you believe in that, either?"

She, of all people, had a lot of nerve bringing up the concept of trust. I caught some anger building and turned my inner focus on keeping it under tight control. Ever since that time with Red, I tried to be on guard against letting my emotions run too wild. I didn't always succeed, obviously, but I tried. Trust issues with my own self, Blackie would no doubt say. So I kept a close rein on all the dark thoughts and suspicions that wanted to come boiling out and just said, quietly, almost coolly, "Blackie... why can't I remember the last time you died?"

----