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She was still at the table.
Ragatha felt like a kid again. God, she felt like a kid. A child shrinking down into her seat under a long shadow as it towered above, hand raised, face split with a scowl. It didn’t speak, didn’t need to. She knew the words by heart. Glowing eyes fixed on her and Ragatha was swept over with a wave of helplessness.
Suddenly she was small and young and terrified.
She was at the table. No, she was in the circus. Everything was falling apart. The places were neatly set, napkins perfectly creased.
She shook herself, attempting to shrug off the reverie but might as well have been underwater. The shadow glared at her for trying. That alone was enough to make her feel sick with anxiety.
The circus. You are in the circus. Please. Please get out of there. It’s not safe.
Ragatha’s vision was blurred, tilted to one side ever so gingerly. It was like one half was being fed through wax paper; nothing would focus. She grasped for a scrap of logic, something real. Things she could be certain were fact. Things she could feel and touch and see. She knew she was standing, she knew there were people around her, that they were speaking, and she knew that whether it be Caine’s version or the real thing, Ragatha was not at that table.
But she was.
She could feel and touch and see it. She was watching the secrets she’d kept all her life be splayed out like a carcass on a butcher's block. It fell open in front of her, flesh and guts wrung bloodless and ribs cracked into a wide arc. The insides spat out in heaps, a gruesome set of dirty laundry to be aired over an open fire lest it gain maggots.
She'd never told anyone for a reason. It was ugly to look at.
It had to be real. The details were too accurate for it to just be a hallucination.
God, she was in the fucking dining room, wasn’t she.
She was pinned down like a butterfly being stuck with needles as it was inspected and rearranged. Blades held her down, skewering the fabric of her arms and chest, keeping her in place.
As if she’d try to move anyways.
She wouldn’t. She had that bravery wrung out of her before she’d lost all her baby teeth. Ragatha learned the lesson early and thoroughly that it wasn’t worth it to raise her voice. Not here. It wasn’t worth it to run. She lived here, after all. Where else would she go?
Ragatha’s mind spun. What had she done this time? What had she said? How did she offended or disrespect? Please, she just wanted to know why she was so angry.
The shadow glowered. She stayed very still. No, she would not move. Not of her own accord.
Lucky, then, that someone made the choice for her. They grabbed hold of her arm, yelling something. Ragatha barely registered the rippling remains of the circus’ tent. It was so cloudy and the dining room was clear. The bright eyes were clear and the gleam of metal was clear. A voice called, the sound smearing against her ears like wet ink on a page. The messy stencil of their touch warped as it tightened around her wrist.
All she could make out was: “—atha!—go, come on—!”
Ragatha just nodded in response to whoever was shouting and hoped that was the correct answer. The pixels crackled, wheezing for the attention she couldn’t give them.
She maintained contact with the shadow.
Everything around her, the circus’ decaying pieces and the frightened shouts of her friends passed over her like water. It didn’t feel real. The knife was real. She knew it was real because she was still feeling it. And if that was real, so was the rest of the room. She looked down as her legs kicked into a run, spurred by the pulling on her arm. There was the hole in her chest leaking cotton down the front of her dress. It felt like hot blood.
The farmhouse rippled. Her mouth filled with water as it covered her. The circus vanished from sight.
Ragatha was sinking. She was drowning. And the water wasn’t clear, or blue or even green. It was dark red.
Snap out of it, a small voice in her pleaded. You’re not there.
Her feet were moving, racing, but she was still skewered to that old, creaking wooden chair, not daring to open her mouth because that never went well.
A dark stain sat on the table’s wooden surface, pitted in some places and scuffed in others. She remembered what caused it and she remembered never telling a soul.
She hated this room. There were doors on all sides, unlocked, sure, but they might as well have been bolted shut. There was one window vomiting light from the far end of the room. It backlit the figure. It eclipsed her.
Ragatha lived in that shadow every evening. It was the only thing between her and the sunlight.
She could smell varnish. Heat rose from the plates as they steamed, humid against her face. She pressed back into the chair, blades threatening to widen her wounds if she moved any more. The chair legs whined as she begged herself not to cry because god, what good had that ever done?
The voice flickered again, fearful. “—hurry, Kinger said we—“
Ragatha nodded a second time.
The hand yanked a little harder. A seam snapped. Wrong answer, then.
There was never a right answer anyways. She had tried everything, but somehow it always whipped back around at her, full force. She had her defaults, a script used when silence was no longer an option: okay’s, you’re right’s, it won’t happen again’s, and I’m sorry’s. But she seldom lasted that long. There were so many sharp things to be found on a a kitchen table, after all, so much to choose from.
Glasses, forks, the ceramic plates when they smashed, knives.
And the poor table, battered in the crossfire. A tablecloth was unfolded from the linens closet before guests made it onto the porch, shucked to reveal the bruises and notches only once they’d returned to their cars, red-faced on wine.
What she said was always wrong. It always justified what came next. It was her fault.
An apology was insincere, an explanation was talking back, a plea was guilting, a sob was childish, and crying, oh god, that was grounds for the screaming to start all over again. She couldn’t win, she couldn’t even diffuse, Ragatha just endured. Her lung capacity grew to accommodate.
Oh god she was drowning.
The other shoe always dropped. The next blow was never out of place. Knowing the timing was the tricky part.
“—careful—“ The voice cut in like a radio channel being flipped, thrashed by static.
She knew the voice. Fuck, fuck, fuck, she knew the voice! She was in the circus. She was not in that house. Snap out of it!
Ragatha looked up. The tent’s ceiling was wilting, not quite caving but something close. Gaps dotted the canvas.
There was a red ribbon tied around her wrist. Her palm had been punched clean through. Something sharp.
Her secondary set of replies would come later, once it’s rage had slowed to a sneering crawl and the shadow left, the bathroom sink on and her hands held firm under the water. Ragatha would recite like an actor on stage, monotone to herself as she lied: I’m okay.
As if the repetition would worm its way into reality and make it true. Like infection. Like a virus. It was the same thing she recycled when people questioned her, when a nurse with a clipboard tried to tweeze details out of her or a worried friend asked why she flaked again.
No, no, no! The hand on her wrist wasn’t clawed, it wasn’t angry, it was only scared. It was silk. It was a friend. Her hand could be tended to later. Focus.
There is no table, Ragatha told herself. There is no chair. There is no shadow. Snap out of it. They’ll need you soon. They need you now. Snap out of it!
Just in time, it clicked that they’d hit a set of stairs, pitching up them frantically. She had the wherewithal to lift her feet a little higher to keep from tripping. She tried to zero in on the steps, watching her shoes to keep her balance.
No table, no chair, no shadow, Ragatha repeated to herself. They were running up, away from the crumbling floors. She was in the circus. She was running. She was not in that house.
Someone was helping her keep pace. The ribbon. Gangle.
Ragatha needed to say something. Let them know she had one foot in another room. The words stuck to her mouth, curdling against her throat as she tried to spit them out.
But then there was a jolt on her arm, a mere stumble from whoever was hanging onto her for dear life. The slice wedged against her shoulder grew, creeping up towards her collar.
Her heart dropped. The shadow was moving down the table. An arm moulted from it’s side. It lifted towards her.
Ragatha felt like she was bailing a half-sunk boat with a teaspoon. She couldn’t… she couldn’t stay above the surface. It would keep pulling her under. There was an anchor under the wood chair and a rope around her neck. The closer to the surface, the more she choked. Even if she managed to claw her way up for air, it was going to swallow her up again.
The circus didn’t seem real but the cut was real. The knife that had made it was real. The fucking dining room was real.
Ragatha went back under before she got a chance to hold her breath. She couldn’t feel her feet hitting the plastic stairs anymore, but she felt slashes and tears.
Which couldn’t be right. It was over. Caine had snatched her out of the nightmare only minutes after she’d been thrown in, but Ragatha swore there had been flesh and blood and sinew parting under the blade. The twitch of a severed muscle or skin as it was shaved away.
She was at the table.
She was half falling up the stairs as they spiralled up but really she knew she was at the table.
Pincushioned, afraid, alone.
She was back. Maybe she had never left. Maybe some piece of her had splintered off all those years ago and stayed in place like a good daughter should, sitting quiet in the dining room for twenty years as the house rotted around her. And she was only just now realizing it.
The figure finished rounding the table. It’s fingers touched her cheek. They cradled her, digging in.
Ragatha was still there, having dinner with her mother, and she was still terrified.
She kept clawing towards the surface.
They crashed into the cafe at near terminal velocity. The trapdoor slammed shut behind them. Pomni’s chest heaved.
The circus had fractured around them, jagged gaps spattering into existence across the floors, the ceilings, the walls, slowly chewing against the structure like open mouths. The void yawned below them and the circus rolled beneath their feet. Glitches spasmed wildly across the tent as the circus settled into its new fragmented, godless shape.
And despite being shellshocked, despite being terrified, and despite everyone having just gone through actual hell, not one person argued when Kinger blindly snagged Pomni by sheer proximity, and shouted: “Come on, we need to get somewhere stable!”
He didn’t need to say it twice, he didn’t need to justify it; they all ran.
Pomni threw a glance over her shoulder as Kinger dragged her forward, just to be sure that everyone was still behind her, that they were following. A glance was all she allowed herself spare lest she lose her footing.
It practically slapped her in the face she she saw it; Ragatha’s eye was cracked.
The button was split, threatening to hang loose in two halves if not for the rim, a wisp of cotton peaked out from underneath. The thread was half-severed; the button listed sideways.
She was the farthest behind, being hauled along by Gangle, but behind nonetheless.
So Pomni kept running.
They scrambled up the stairs at full tilt, stumbling when the circus jerked sideways unannounced. The group slammed through the cafe entrance so violently the glasses rattled, whipping the trap door shut hard enough for a glitch to shiver up the walls as it reverberated.
The cafe was, mercifully (miraculously) still intact, not holes gnawed through the roof, though it has been bled dry of its colours and tilted of it’s old axis by a few degrees.
Pomni panted, hands on her needs.
“Is…” She started between gasps. “Is everyone okay?”
And of course they weren’t. Not mentally, not emotionally, not in most of the ways that mattered, but that wasn’t what she was asking.
Physically. Physically, is everyone okay. Is anyone maimed or mauled or in pieces. She needed to know they were all still here, that they hadn’t lost someone back there. She needed, needed needed to be certain that her stunt hadn’t cost them a life. Pomni was certain of very little in that moment, but she was certain of the fact that she could not take any more hits today. She couldn’t lose anyone right now.
Deep scratches laid against her own pale skin, tooth-shaped pockmarks left in the shape of narrow jaws on her forearms and calves. There was no blood, her flesh was more rubber than meat, but they ached sharply. As long as this was the worst of it, though, they could pull through.
She scanned the group, still trying to catch her breath.
Zooble was missing an antenna and half an arm, leaving an empty joint where an elbow should be, but they still weakly flashed a thumbs up; Gangle’s mask was nothing but shards cradled in the lace tips of her hands, offering a nod; Jax’s inhales were fast and one hand gripped the nape of his neck as if to hold his head in place, his back against a wall, slumped but kickin’; Kinger, thankfully, seemed unscathed, the bucket still firmly on his head as he starting dragging a table towards the stairs in a makeshift barricade. And Ragatha—
—they weren't running anymore.
Nails pricked against her cheek, dragging in a long line. It took it's time. It often did. Ragatha shook.
They reached some destination. Up the stairs, through a trapdoor, a collection of little round stools and the curve of a countertop. Ragatha’s head was buzzing.
There no colour here. It was so easy for the red to seep in.
The nails on her face. They pressed in enough to scrape.
The crash of a shutting door had thrust her upwards, back into her body for just long enough to think to find something to lean against lest she collapse in a trembling heap.
Please just let me stay here. I don’t want be back there.
Water kept rising, lapping at her hands, elbows, neck. Ragatha knew how to tread, but her stamina was low.
Please.
The shadow held her face, staring at her, daring her to so much as lean away.
Her eye kept blurring—
—Pomni sucked in a sharp inhale.
Cotton poured from her. The fabric of her skin was split open and she was bleeding as much as any of them were capable of bleeding. Stuffing pooled at her feet.
One eye was unfocused, staring at the floor numbly.
The other was cracked down the middle.
A cut sliced down her cheek.
“Oh my god, Ragatha,” she said, horrified, starting towards her hesitantly. “What happened?”
Ragatha looked up, bleary-eyed where she stood, one hand braced on the counter. Ice cold dread scraped down Pomni’s spine. Even from across the room, Pomni knew she was staring right through her as if made of glass.
Her tone must’ve been dire, because Zooble spun around. “What’s the mat—holy fuck oh my god. Dude are you okay?”
Ragatha’s looked hazy, eyes darting like she was seeing something they weren’t. “Where…?”
“We’re in the cafe.” Pomni supplied, unsure, before repeating a bit louder than Zooble had: “Are you okay?”
Her hand was slipping from the counter; Pomni’s chest seized.
“I… I’m okay.” she said quietly, as if trying to convince herself.
Then her legs gave out.
“Hey, wait—!” Pomni lunged to catch her before she hit the ground. Zooble shot forward too with a shout and Pomni heard the tinny clatter of Kinger’s bucket being whipped around.
“What?” His voice echoed under the metal. “What’s going on?”
There was the distinct scramble of someone getting to their feet, the shriek of a stool being pushed over the tiles.
“What just happened.”
“Is she okay?”
Ragatha was light under her grasp, the two clumsily sinking to the ground. She was still staring ahead with that shaky, blank expression, fixed on some point on the far wall. She, like the button, was listing. Pomni kept ahold of her shoulders, kneeling in front of her. It was all she could do to keep Ragatha from collapsing. The wall behind her offered little support.
Pomni looked down and felt dizzy at the sight. There must’ve been a dozen wounds on her, all wide open, stuffing spilling out. There were so many. Too many, made too cleanly and too quickly for the one minute and sixteen seconds Pomni had forced herself to count out when they’d been isolated from each other. A dozen thoughts raced through her head, but only one was so loud it breached the barrier between thought and spoken: “That’s really really bad.”
Something soft, stringy, was under Pomni’s legs. Under her hands. There was pressure on her palms. She ignored it.
Zooble dropped down next to them with wide-eyes. Their hand reached out, but did not make contact. They drew back as if erring too close to open flame. “Ragatha?” They prompted. “What’s going on? C’mon, man talk to us.”
It took Pomni a beat to realize their hesitation wasn’t uncertainty. They literally couldn’t find a spot that was safe to touch. It took two beats for Pomni to realize what the pressure on her palms was. She yanked her hands back.
Two gashes carved just below where her collarbone would be, almost matching. Cotton swelled out in her hand’s absence. The cold feeling spread through her, winding down her arms. A blade, Pomni realized, these had been made by a blade. They were too clean and too deep to have been anything else. The threads weren’t torn, they were cleaved.
Correction: blades. Plural.
Pomni felt a little unwell.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of blue fall to the ground, dropped in two parts with a clatter.
The button’s halved pieces scattered over the tiles. Ragatha simply recoiled
Pomni held her breath, another cold rush of dread spreading down the walls of her chest. Her hands hovered uselessly trying to catch the doll’s gaze. Pomni, it seemed, was still glass to her.
It hit her like a ton of bricks just how gone she was. Ragatha was not there. She was not with them. She was not in the cafe and she maybe wasn’t even in the circus. She was somewhere else but she was clawing to get back.
“Ragatha?” She pleaded. “Come on, snap—
—out of it! Listen, she’s in front of you. Zooble is beside you. Pomni is in front of you.
The shadow hummed. Its nails finally left her skin, carding gently through her hair. Nausea swayed through her.
Was there an anchor? There might. The rope around her neck. It was pulling.
Ragatha wanted to scream at herself. You have to get out of here. She can’t be here. Ignore the stupid knives it wasn’t real.
There is so fucking table you know this, the knives were real but they’re gone now you are not there anymore, you have to come up for air. You’re drowning. Swim. You’re scaring them. You’re scaring them and they want to help but they can’t do that if you don’t fucking—
“—say something. Please?”
Ragatha was fighting. Pomni watched her lurch between half-present and fully-absent.
She reached up with her shredded hand, fingertips gingerly touching where the button had been and she flinched hard. Ragatha’s breath hitched. “We’re in the cafe.”
And then the cold congealed, calcifying around her. It grew gnarled hands as Ragatha’s head lifted. They wrapped around Pomni and began to squeeze.
“Pomni. Zooble.” She finally looked at them as if just noticing they were there, a slash down her face and her eyes—fuck, no, her eye—bright with pain. “It’s not… it’s not supposed to hurt this much.”
“Shit.” Zooble said.
“Shit.” Pomni agreed.
Ragatha’s voice was suddenly strangled. “This isn’t supposed to be real. This feels real.”
“We’ll figure it out, okay?” Zooble tried to assure but their voice was frantic. “Just—fuck, I’m sorry—just hang in there.”
Pomni caught Ragatha a second time. She curled in on herself. “I… I don’t think I’m here.”
It registered belatedly to Pomni that the soft thing under legs was not simply the cafe’s tiles having suddenly grown a carpet. It was cotton, collecting under her. It was still falling.
“Caine,” Gangle spoke in quiet horror. “He can change that, can’t he.” Couldn’t he, Pomni’s mind corrected though her mouth stayed shut, couldn’t he, past-tense. “What things feel like?”
Kinger’s words reverberated through the bucket. “He could,”
“The cafe.” Pomni reminded. “We went up to the cafe. That’s where you are.”
Ragatha scanned, locking onto something behind Pomni. She was terrified. “I’m not.”
“You are.” Pomni insisted, seizing Ragatha’s hand. Her eye kept flickering like a telephone lens rack focusing in rapid fire. “We all are. We came up like five minutes ago. You were with Gangle.”
“You can turn it off though, can’t you?” Zooble was asking, panicked. “You can just change that right?”
“Or reset her?” Gangle added.
Ragatha shuddered. “We’re at the cafe.” She ground out weakly.
Pomni felt a small spark of relief. “Right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s okay,”
“I’m not in the—“ Ragatha shook her head. “I’m trying. I swear I-I’m… I don’t think I can see.”
Alarm bells blared through her head. “Guys?” She called nervously.
“Pomni, I can’t see the cafe.”
A lump crawled up from Pomni’s chest, lodging at the back of her throat, eyes blurring, and, fuck, she just wanted to cry. Her face burned at the realization. Ragatha was in pieces. Pomni couldn’t fit the puzzle pieces together. She needed to do something. She needed her friend to not have open wounds. She needed a needle and thread. “Guys!”
Kinger shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Are you serious?”
“You can’t?”
“Why not?!” Zooble demanded. “You were already changing Caine’s code! Just do that!”
“I don’t know how! I knew Caine’s code, but he made the circus, not me. I’m sorry, I don’t know how it works.”
“You have got to be—“
“Hey!” Pomni shouted or maybe screamed. “Knock it off!”
Zooble whirled. “But—“
“We can fight about it later!” They all shut up in short order. An angry part of her rattled. Good, it thought. “Do any of you know how to sew?”
Ragatha had grown up close to a lake.
The walls had sunken in, she was sure. It was claustrophobic. Broken glass carpeted the floorboards under her. A bottle hit the table. The pieces scattered. Her fingers felt raw, clawing at the underside of the chair to keep from jumping.
Not some little pond or a mud pool, a lake that’s opposite occupants were only winking lights in the distance on clear nights. It had freights resting peacefully at the bottom and icy gales that ripped off the surface.
It was a frigid thing, but that never stopped her.
There is no table. There is no chair. There is no shadow.
Ragatha had been warned when she was young. She knew all too well about the undertows. She knew they couldn’t pull you under, but they could wring you out. The real thing that would do someone in was trying to brawl with the current. You will not win. It drained you, disorientated you. Exhaustion was the danger, not a riptide or shore break.
The shadow sloughed down the wall like a spill of molasses, arm reeled back. Ragatha braced. A glass hit the plaster behind her. Shards burst outward, shrapnel glinting as it flew. The shining carpet below her spread. She would clean it up eventually. Once she wasn’t pinned to her seat.
She’d been dragged out in the lake once, but remembered the advice of a teacher. Don’t try to go against it, go parallel.
But to be entirely fair, this wasn’t a rip and she was not in that lake.
As far as she could tell, she was in the old farmhouse with voices echoing around her that didn’t belong there.
Zooble, their words hoarse and Kinger, docile as ever. Occasional interjections from Gangle and if she heard right, even Jax tossd out the odd shout. Pomni. Hers was closest, thin and reedy.
Ragatha clung their voices like a drowned animal to driftwood. It was a life raft.
Ragatha couldn’t trust what she was seeing, so she grabbed hold of the sounds. It kept her head above the water, if only barely. Water kept filling her mouth. Wave after wave and plate after broken plate.
The cafe, Pomni had said. That’s where they were, apparently. Ragatha wasn’t sure if she was there too.
She couldn’t see it. It hurled in and out of existence, only ever materializing long enough for smudges to clarify into silhouettes before it was swept back by the rising tides. Ragatha couldn’t… she just couldn’t see it.
She saw the dining room. She saw someone very tall and very angry at the far end of the room. Another glass broke against the wall.
When she was thirteen a wineglass had smashed on the table hard enough it burst. The dent it left was pronounced. The dent it left on the table, too.
It’s not real. You’re not there. Come on. You know how to swim.
The cafe's outlines faded every time she caught a glimpse like a flicker of light from glasses on a passerby. All the while, the afterimage of that old house was seared into her vision. It didn’t move, it didn’t fade away. It was crystalline in comparison, all sharp edges and no fuzzy lines. Hard and clean. God she was scared.
Ragatha remembered her teacher's advice.
It wasn’t real. She was just seeing it, smelling it, feeling it, plastered like a negative to her eyelid and reflecting against the unoccupied space she stared into. The shadow couldn't touch her. It did but it shouldn’t have. The open cuts on her burned, evidence of the blades, urging her to believe her eyes.
Zooble bellowed.
Ragatha clung to her driftwood.
Pomni said they were in the cafe. Ragatha wanted to be there too. She wished she was there, that there wasn’t a shadow stalking along the wall, eyeing her, loosing a wet crack as its mouth opened, ready to fling a saucer against the floor.
She tracked it, watching its hands. That was where the warnings came. There was always a twinge, some kind of coil, a sign that there was an explosion incoming. Another lesson she had spent too much time internalizing, ingesting.
Pomni. Her hand on Ragatha’s, squeezing too tightly. She was trying to come back. God was she trying. Her chant returned, louder, more desperate to be heard. There is no table. There is no chair. There is no shadow.
Ragatha grasped for purchased, anything that could keep her here. She listened to the argument, she felt herself rise just a little more when Pomni started shouting too. She did not want to go under again.
Pomni said they were in the cafe. Ragatha wasn’t, but she wanted to be. Pomni wouldn’t lie, she had no reason to, so despite every physical sensation and racked through her like hot iron against her skin, Ragatha decided that she was in the cafe too. She would just pretend for now. Don’t acknowledge the shadow. No, not even as it comes closer, not when that fork lodges into her hand or another plate whistles past and crumples into shards. Stay afloat.
The shouting died down and Pomni stood, determined. She was quickly replaced by a twirl of red and a stark white mark.
“We’re gonna find something to do stitches, okay?” Gangle’s voice wobbled like a fiddle in her ear. Tears hung at the corners of her eyes.
She nodded weakly. Please keep talking, she wanted to say. Please. Don’t leave me alone here.
Gangle sniffled. “We’ll fix this. Promise.”
“Mm-hm.” I don’t know what’s going on.
Gangle scrubbed at her own face for a half second, sniffling. Ragatha wished she could do something. A comforting word or a hug. Everything she would normally offer had been stripped away. She was a shell, running on survival instincts and little else. There was glass everywhere.
Something on the floor caught Gangle’s attention. She picked up whatever she’d found with a tiny little gasp.
Blue, maybe a bit of purple. Plastic.
That was her eye, wasn’t it? It was on the floor. No wonder she could barely see. It was halved.
She cradled the button for a beat before looking to Ragatha.
Gangle reached out, the end her ribboned hand brushing Ragatha’s cheek ever so slightly. The shadow smiled. It’s hands parted, reminding her of the nails it wore.
With all her might, she fought the instinct to wrench away.
“Oh Ragatha.” She sounded absolutely devastated. “What happened?”
Happening, she almost wanted to correct. It’s not done yet.
“Ragatha? You holding up okay?” Zooble asked, pausing before they added: “Should I, like, stop?”
They were tying off the second line of stitches, vivid red stark against the pale fabric. Pomni wasn’t about to judge, but Zooble hadn’t been kidding when they said they barely knew how to sew. Apparently their knowledge started and stopped at sticking the odd patch onto their jeans and Pomni wasn’t about to comment, but she could sorta tell.
The stitches were a bit too far apart, slanted, uneven in places. They kept cursing under their breath when they over or under tightened, clearly out of their depth but unfortunately, they were still crowned the leading expert by default. Their wobbly stitches would have to do. She was willing to be that Ragatha knew more, but—
Pomni nudged her gently. “Ragatha?” She prompted.
“I can stop.” Zooble repeated.
Pomni hadn’t been the only one to see her jolt every time they’d pulled the thread taut. Zooble and Gangle had heard the breath snagging and thick gulps as well. She was glad she wasn’t the only one.
“No.” Ragatha shook her head, flexing her newly repaired hand absently. Zooble had started at the smaller ones. “Keep going.”
They shifted awkwardly. “Are you sure?”
“Mm.”
“Ragatha—“
“I’m okay.” She did not look okay. “I’m… still there.”
Pomni exchanged anxious looks with Zooble and Gangle. What? Gangle mouthed to her, eyes big and shiny. Pomni could only provide a helpless shrug in return.
“That’s okay.” Zooble assured. “Just let me know, I guess?”
“Hm.”
Another set of looks traded between the three. Kinger sat nearby, words of support drifting over every now and again, but he clearly didn’t want to crowd. Three people were already crammed around Ragatha, adding another would probably take it from tolerable to actually suffocated. At least, Pomni knows she would feel like that if it were her.
A little current of guilt skated over the back of her neck as she sat there, playing with the ends of her stupidly oversized hat.
She didn’t need to be there. Zooble was handling sewing and Gangle was providing the thread. She didn’t have to be here. She could be giving them some more space. It would be the noble thing to do right now, but Pomni never claimed to be all that noble. She wanted to stay. She was too ansty to leave.
Besides, Kinger wasn’t about to take the bucket off anytime soon. Her giving up her spot wouldn’t do much for him either. Even with the sudden dimness to the circus, the lack of colour slapping all of them upside the head in contrast to what it normally looked like, no one wanted to roll those dice. Kinger least of all.
Pomni sent a sidelong glance to the other side of the room where Jax sat with an oddly stoney look on his face, watching. She had a brief moment of indignation earlier when she caught him staring, on his feet and a few paces nearer. She’d wanted to snap at him to cut it out, to leave it alone, that he should keep whatever jab he was preparing to himself for once.
It occurred to her, thankfully before she opened her mouth, that she was perhaps off base this time. He hadn’t said anything yet. For a while, really. Maybe for the first time, he didn’t have anything to say.
She considered, only a minute or so later, that with the hell they’d all gone through the past week, complete jackass or not, he might actually be worried.
Beside her, Ragatha flinched again.
Pomni worried at her bottom lip.
Call her selfish, but Pomni wished Ragatha would let herself drift.
It was obvious that some part of her was trying to save her from all of this. It was a survival tactic most people had, and it redoubled in the circus. They couldn’t exactly pass out here, unless a respawn counted. They could sleep but it wasn’t physiological. So it made sense that the next best thing any of their brains could do was neatly cleave the space between body and mind for a little bit.
Pomni had certainly done it, zonking out primarily on the occasions where she couldn’t be bothered to negotiate with the circus’ fuckass physics engine anymore.
The core of it though, humiliating and shameful as it felt, really was selfish.
Pomni wished Ragatha would just let go not just because it would be easier on the doll, but because she couldn’t stand to watch her jump one more time. Her stomach turned with every wince and ragged a gasp. She didn’t want to hear her friend in pain. Sue her!
But Ragatha was few things if not stubborn. For someone that tended to willow to others so frequently, bending and twisting for their sake, she held fast when she wanted to.
Willows had thick trucks, Pomni supposed. The branches might rearrange at a breeze, but she had never seen a willow that was pushed over by anything less than a hurricane.
Another line of stitches was snipped. Gangle handed over a fresh line of red.
Zooble rethreaded their makeshift needle. One handed! Pomni might’ve been more openly impressed if not for literally everything else.
After she’d snapped at them, no one had wanted to risk going back down the steps in the hopes of retrieving supplies, and god knows none of them carried a travel kit for sewing.
“Needle and thread. Or, I don’t know something similar.” Pomni had said as people started to rummage through the cafes drawers and cabinets. She came up empty handed, all the occupied the shelves were mugs and plates and for some reason tiny plastic ducks. Sure. Fucking whatever. What if the world was made of pudding.
Kinger clasped his hands a few times, concentrating, only for nothing to appear. “It’s not working.” He sounded confused.
“Doesn’t matter, there’s gotta be something around here—“
Jax, seemingly without thinking, unceremoniously grabbed a mug and threw it against the bar countertop. Pomni had jumped half a foot in the air at the sound. He plucked out a thin shard of ceramic, shoving it towards their freshly elected D.S.(designated sewist) Zooble. “Needle.” He explained, expression flat.
They glared at him. “Seriously?”
“You have a better idea?” He challanged. His hand had not left his neck.
“And what about—“
Gangle tugged at a loose string on her arm, letting the row unravel. “Thread.” She offered.
Pomni would’ve preferred the real thing, but pickings were slim and no one wanted to waste more time. “Close enough.”
Zooble worked meticulously and Pomni settled in beside them, serving as a literal extra hand and little more.
She didn’t know jack shit about sewing herself. Her first and only attempt had been to erase the evidence of her plushie getting caught in the teeth of an escalator circa second grade. The poor thing wound up in the trash she’d mangled it so bad.
No, sewing was not her wheelhouse. What was her wheelhouse, or at least she liked to think, were her friends.
Ragatha was still fighting hard. She shook her head, a perfect visage of a desk jockey limping to stay awake at the end of a long day. Every time she got that distant look about her, her head would bow. Pomni could hear her muttering something but hadn’t been able to decipher it yet. And that was all… scary. It was scary to see her friend half awake, there only in physicality and having to gnash her way to the present tense.
Pomni didn’t get why. If it were her, she would’ve floated off ages ago and let the repairs happen without her supervision. She didn’t understand why Ragatha was so desperate to be here right now, feeling this.
She flinched again.
“You know…” Pomni’s fingers twisted in her lap. “It’s okay if you need to, like, check out for this part?”
Her jaw was clamped. “I can’t.” She said through her teeth. Zooble pinched the needle through the fabric.
“You can.” She urged as softly as she could. “It might help, you know?”
She shook her head. “I really can’t.”
“I promise we’ll make sure nothing happens.”
Ragatha shook her head faster.
Pomni’s brows crease together. She bit her tongue. “You can.” Pomni said a final time.
“I’d… rather be here.”
Pomni’s mouth curled down.
Her arms were still sore, the bites she’d received cooling into what she could only assume was the circus’ approximation of a scab. She felt like she’d gotten skinned around the wrists and ankles. It hurt more than anything else in the circus had. The closest point of comparison she had was the time she had sliced her hand open sliding down a fire escape. She’d gotten bold, thinking the metal wouldn’t saw through the gardening gloves she liked to wear when she was out exploring. That hand was in wraps for three full weeks.
Pain here was strange. Touch in general was. It didn’t feel the same as it did out in the real world. It wasn’t quiet that it was numbed, though that certainly was part of it. It was more so that it left so quickly. There was no lasting consequence to an injury after it had occurred. If Pomni was shot, it only hurt until the next life bounced her back onto her feet. If she hit the ground, it only lasted for the duration of the impact.
Pain ricocheted. It was a game mechanic. They took damage, they felt it, but it wouldn’t persist. It was that and not the slight easing of the sensations that made a wound different here. It didn’t stick around. They didn’t need time to heal broken bones or cuts. As far as Pomni knew, thy couldn’t heal at all. They were all static, repaired only when Caine snapped his fingers.
Ragatha had already said it. It's not supposed to hurt this much. This feels real.
And if Pomni’s injuries were anything to go off of…
She was trying not to dwell on it too much. Failing, but hey, trying had to count, right?
Zooble finished another set of stitches. Gangle passed along a length of thread. Her arm was a pinkie’s width thinner than it had been. She told them she had lots to spare, and promised it only stung a little to unwind the loose strings.
“This is gonna take a while.” Zooble mumbled, as if the reality of that was just dawning on them. “I-is this even helping?”
Ragatha did not comment.
“It has to be.” Pomni answered, chewing at the inside of her cheek.
Her eyes traveled, counting again all the punctures. They’d repaired four. Many more waited. Pomni wanted to be angry, but mostly she was just afraid.
Caine had done a number on her in that minute and sixteen seconds.
What the fuck happened? Pomni thought.
“What the fuck happened?” Zooble asked. She always could count on them to say what they rest of them were thinking.
“The dining room.” Ragatha replied numbly, as if that would explain it all.
It was another row of stitches later that Ragatha inhaled carefully. Her finger inched towards Pomni’s open palm, left there for her just in case. “Could you…” She choked for a split second. “Could you guys… talk?”
“Y-yeah.” Pomni stammered. “For sure. About what?”
“Anything.”
Stitch by stitch, the dining room got farther from her. Every inch the wounds closed was another inch away. Which wasn’t nothing, really, but it was only inches. The figure did the opposite, lurching closer.
The water kept trying to weigh her down and she was tired. Losing battle and all that. Every now and again in her exhaustion, it eclipsed her, lungs filling. Her only rest available was an exercise drowning before scrambling back up. Ragatha was too worn down to be terrified, the feeling dulling to fear.
She wondered how she’d survived it, back in the real world. Maybe this was worse. Or maybe she was just out of practice.
The string knit together.
It sucked. There was no nice way to put it. She was getting jabbed every few seconds, skin stretched uncomfortably to fill the gaps, suffocating, the push and pull between a rope and an anchor. A noose and a counterweight.
And the chair wobbled. The shadow paced. Ragatha had a good idea of what it would be saying.
She could feel the dip of the needle as it fed through her shoulder, punching across to the other side. It was the needle and not the hail of glass from earlier. Ragatha forced herself to believe that.
A hand awkwardly tried to replace some of the cotton that had been lost along the way. She swallowed an awful lot of screams. They broiled in her stomach, but anything was better than being in that house. She would take this happily.
Zooble asked her frequently if they should stop. The shadow dragged itself another step closer. She said no each and every time.
She listened to conversation that buffed around her like winds to a cliff, eternally grateful that she’d been able to wring the request out in the first place. They’d all been so quiet, so reverend, when all she wanted was to hear them again. Ragatha would take everyone screaming at each other again over being alone with that dark and jittering thing, with the pooling red light and broken glass and the table.
Those first few blips of conversation that dotted the quiet room felt like breaks in the clouds.
Ragatha’s request was fulfilled. It started out awkward. With everything they’d survived in the past week, it was no surprise.
She heard them talking around her, sometimes to her, but Ragatha was concentrating so hard on keeping her grip that she didn’t risk a reply beyond nodding or shaking her head. Her replies were sparse when they happened.
There was a hand resting over hers, periodically tightening. Ragatha managed to close her hand a few times, but could not fully return the favour. Pomni’s fingers tapped against hers.
The red crosshatching grew neater, but Zooble was still being so gentle and cagey. She wanted to tell them to hurry. Please. Just a little faster, I don’t want to be here anymore, I don’t want to be staving it off.
Ragatha would rather the sewing hurt than have to wrestle with the open waters trying to drown her. She was growing more and more certain of an anchor’s presence. What else could be snagging around her throat every time she breached?
She had a feeling they wouldn’t listen if she said that, though.
A particularly harsh pull had a yelp pulled from between her teeth against her will.
“We’re taking a break.” They said firmly.
“Keep going,”
“I need a break.” They said, less firmly. “I know this is—I’m sorry man. I know this really sucks. Just give me a second.”
She didn’t know how long the second was. Footsteps, a bit heavier than Zooble’s retreating ones. “Is she, like, good?”
Pomni huffed. “Look me in the eye and ask that again.”
“Okay point taken. Geez.” Jax sounded less annoyed than he usually did. He kicked the ground, grumbling as he left. “Don’t be gone long, Rags.”
Trying. I’m trying.
The farmhouse. It changed.
The dining room warped. The curtains paled, desaturating into an off-white, though the red glow longued overhead still.
Hands came down heavy onto her shoulders, pushing her down into the chair, into the water. She caved under it. Ragatha mentally sent out an apology to her teacher for not heeding her warnings. She'd been swimming upstream.
A woman with scrubs was talking to her. A pen moved in fast circles, grating against the paper. The table stayed the same, the smoking plates and block worth of kitchen knives all firmly stuck into the wood. The woman looked out of place and Ragatha saw her mouth moving. No sound came from her, but Ragatha knew what the shapes spelled out. She remembered the pattern the pen had made and the melody it sang against the clipboard.
Cli-click.
“Can you tell me your name?”
Scritch.
“Full name, I mean.”
Scr-scritch
“And what happened?”
A raised brow. “Is that so?”
Scratch. Scri-scri-scritch.
“Okay.”
Scritch. Scratch.
“I won’t.”
Pause. Tap.
“Okay, I promise I won’t.”
Cli-click.
Ragatha didn’t dignify the mouthed questions with any kind of reply. She didn’t acknowledge it. True to life. The shadow bore down on her, air pressed from her body to ensure no admission would slip out. The hold would have bruised on a human. Fabric, though? Oh, no one would know.
Ragatha never told a soul. She used to like that about herself, that she could keep it a secret. There was a weird sort of pride. Loose lips sink ships and all that.
Ragatha couldn’t help but feel bitter. She was sinking anyways. What good did those lies do? How many times could she have gotten out if she wasn’t so convinced that the ability to keep her mouth shout was a virtue? Maybe a million, maybe none.
She heard Zooble grumble. “Crap. I can’t do some of these.”
“Why not?”
“There’s just too much space to cover. I don’t think there’s enough fabric left.”
The dining room reared as the woman in scrubs fractured out of sight. The gravity finally lifted from her shoulders, and she swore claw mark opened in their wake. She breathed in the hot air. The dining room heaved like it was alive as the shadow curled around her. It's hand lingered at the back of her neck for a blink. Ragatha's ears filled with static. It returned to the end of the end to servery her. It seemed the fit was over.
A sink that didn’t belong there appeared to her right. That sink belonged in the bathroom.
A dark sunset streamed through the window. The tap ran, basin filling. It was the only room in the house that had a lock. Every other room was barred only by hollow thresholds or rattling hinges, but the washroom locked from the inside. She wished that the sink had brought that safety with it.
All it gave was the rush of water.
She thought back to the times bugs had slid out of the sink and tub. Ragatha didn’t like most bugs, they freaked her out, but she knew what being swept away was like.
She never washed them back down the pipes when they peeked out, curious and despite her knee-jerk reactions, harmless. She liked ladybugs, they were supposed to be lucky and she needed all the luck she could get.
Fireflies held a place in her heart, mostly accompanied by nostalgia. But the ones that wriggled up from the tall grasses that surrounded the house, land locking them from a paved road, made her skin crawl. She ought to be used to it by now, living in the heart of a yawning field. Sometimes, bugs simply leaked into the house no matter how clean it was and no matter how diligently the cracks were sealed.
She never did make peace with that. She would share a room with spiders until she was twenty. The basin was overflowing.
The sound of fabric stretched and then torn rasped out.
“Huh. Yeah that works.”
“Me too! Here.”
Rip.
“What’s—oh. Oh! Yes, just a second.”
Rip.
Ragatha kept two cups in the bathroom one for water and little intruders. She was jumpy about it, holding the cup and slip of paper far away from her as she shouldered open the window.
Ragatha just didn’t have it in her to drown the little things. It felt too cruel. She loosed many harvestmen onto the shingles of that house, slamming the window shut in a panic as they scampered back to thank her. Her heart always raced. She did her best to be mindful with them.
Mindful. Zooble.
They was holding her still with more delicacy than she’d come to expect from them. Zooble was rarely so gentle about anything.
Red water poured down the counter. She sat there, helpless to stop it. Flashes of colour caught her attention, through the ripples.
Against the checkered floor, monochrome, there was sparks. Purple and pink and red and blue. Fabric. They were choppy, the edges all loose strings. No, on in the dark panels of the dining room. Those were tiles. Those were the cafe’s tiles.
One by one, the patches graphed onto her, bandaging in effect against the widest cuts. The water reached up to her chin.
A hand against hers.
“Ragatha? Did you hear what they asked?”
“No. Sorry.”
Zooble cleared their throat. “Do you want me to—shit, I don’t know man. Can I fix the one on your face? Or should I just leave it? I can’t tell.”
“The one on…?”
“Your eye.” Pomni clarified. “It’s one of the last ones. We were waiting cause it’s, I mean, you know,” She gestured vaguely, hands fluttering in a messy arc. Ragatha wasn’t sure she did know, actually.
Zooble agreed, though, so Ragatha must be missing something. “Yeah. I didn’t wanna jump you with it.”
“Fix,” Ragatha echoed back, turning the words over. Right. Right, that’s what was happening.
“Right.” She remembered that. Ragatha felt herself nod. “Cause the knife.”
“Yeah the—I’m sorry, the fucking what?”
The thing she'd never brought up. The thing she knew for fact no one besides her knew.
But someone else did.
“Because of the—“ All at once, everything snapped back into place. The cafe was in blinding focus and Ragatha’s button was cracked in two. She broke through the surface a final time and sucked in a breath.
“—he knew.”
It almost gave her whiplash how fast it happened. Pomni straightened up at the quick change in tone.
Ragatha inhaled sharply and just like that, the lingering fog that hung over her since they’d scaled the steps was gone. In a blink, Ragatha’s expression was severe, eye clear as day, back stiff.
“Ragatha?” Kinger stood.
Gangle rubbed at her eyes, startled awake. “He?”
“Can we go back to the fucking knife thing?!” Zooble exclaimed. “Hello?”
Ragatha blinked a few times. “I’m in the cafe.” She said and this time she was sure. Pomni could hear it, she wasn’t asking and she wasn’t repeating back what someone else had said, she was stating this as a fact.
Pomni almost wanted to weep out of sheer relief. The fear that Ragatha just wasn’t coming back to them had sprung up more than one, teasing at the edges of her mind, hissing at her until she whacked it away. If she’d gone through anything like what Pomni had, she wouldn’t blame her for just being at the halfway point between here and some distant elsewhere for the foreseeable future. Fuck, the only reason Pomni hadn’t spent an hour screaming into her hands was that she had something to put her focus on. She watched as that train of thought was finally derailed, crashing into a cliffside. Get fucked.
The cold feeling that has been soaking into her, the dread, it finally made way for a little pulse of warmth in the centre of her chest.
“You are.” Pomni’s mouth bent into a frail smile.
“In the circus.” Holy fuck, Ragatha sounded like herself again.
It took a lot of self control for Pomni not to leap to her feet and cheer as that relief roared through her. Finally, she wanted to yell, I fucking missed you. Where were you. Please never do that again. All that came out was: “The one and only.”
“Is she normal again?” Jax called warily.
“Zip it!” Zooble chucked their antenna at him.
“Ow! I was being genuine!”
Ragatha looked at her, an unreadable expression etched onto her face. It lasted for no more than a beat, but it felt longer. Like she was trying to communicate something but literally didn’t have the words. Not that she couldn’t say it, but that the language just didn’t exist. Pomni searched for something recognized, a letter or punctuation mark that was legible. She came up empty handed. These were not words she had either.
Gangle’s ribbon fell against her shoulder. “You said he? Who?” She asked, concerned.
“The knife thing?” Zooble begged. “Are we just fucking skipping that part?” They rounded on her with a desperate edge to their voice.
Ragatha’s eye darted between them, pressing back against the wall.
A little suggestion bubbled in the back of Pomni’s mind, that they were crowding her. A lot.
“Hey,” she barred her arms outward, leaning back. “Back up a bit.”
They all realized their error pretty fast, which was good because Pomni was feeling (justifiably, she thinks) a little more defensive than usual. Gangle scooted back, leaving an arms width of space alongside Kinger.
Ragatha looked down at herself, noting the splashes of colour, all completely out the palette she’d been assigned. The royal purple collided harshly with the cloth of her dress, plastered diagonally in opposition to the existing patches, all symmetrical to the hem. The pink was downright ugly against her shoulder, and Pomni’s now torn cap didn’t fair much better were it was sewn onto her palm.
“You didn’t have to do that.” She said.
“Oh okay so we are skipping it. Cool cool cool.” Zooble sounded incredulous. Pomni had half a mind to kick them and hiss time and place, man.
“Yes we did.” Gangle told her.
Ragatha didn’t argue. She touched the red threads tentatively. “It’s not bad.”
Zooble was still holding the haphazard needle. They sighed. “Can I at least finish up before you jinx it?”
It was hard to know if anyone was really asleep.
They turned their backs to each other, or in Kinger’s case, had a bucket over their head, so closed eyes wasn't the best metric. Pomni was relatively sure Gangle was out, bundled in a corner with her eyes closed. She had learned just that day that when the girl slept, she literally unspooled. It was a little unsettling, but Gangle had drowsily babbled that it was more comfortable. To each their own, she supposed.
Kinger was laid out like a corpse, hands folded. It would have been eerie if the bucket wasn’t still slotted onto his noggin like a metal eye mask. Zooble was particularly hard to gauge, tucked against the bar and halfway out of sight. And of course Jax was anybody's guess, though the limp swag of his hand hanging from the bench he crashed onto was a good indicator.
Pomni was, decidedly, awake.
Ragatha was awake, too, one hand balled around the remains of her eye that Gangle had regifted to her, and one pushing absently, experimentally at the new array of patches that were now incised onto her.
She had declined, earlier. Zooble asked and she said no with a surprising certainty. “Later.” She’d promised. “Not now, though. I just got back.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. You look like you need a break anyways. I kind of need one too.”
Zooble’s resounding laugh was humourless. “Oh, now you want a break.”
Pomni watched everyone crash one by one like dominos in a line until it was just the two of them sitting against the wall farthest from the stairs. The bar half shielded them from the rest of the room.
The circus was so quiet. It was never quiet before. There was always something happening, canons and foghorns blasting in the distance, music that no one could ever find the source of, winding through the hallways. She’d even seen the music floating, notes wafting through the air. The ghostly silence set her teeth on edge.
The cafe was still intact hours later. Pomni had wondered if those holes would keep growing. No one had dared breach the threshold and see what the rest of it looked like. Kinger had peaked out a few times an reported back that the rot was not yet spreading. They had a bit of time.
“It’s unstable,” he explained, “but I don’t think there’s much friction around here. It’s like a house with bad bones. It gets dangerous when there’s a storm, but for now I think we’re fine up here.”
She caught a glimpse of Ragatha tracing the stitching, running her thumb over one of the patches that had been added, gouged by needlepoint into furrowed lines. The image of a mosaic came to mind. She hoped that Ragatha didn't hate it, though it might be hard not to. Who wants a reminder of this? Of Caine had done to them?
It was so quiet. Silence did not suit the circus.
It also didn’t really suit Pomni.
So she broke it. “You okay?” Pomni shot over a sidelong look, cringing a little at the sudden sound.
Ragatha shrugged. “No, but. You know.”
“Yeah, I know.” She didn’t.
“Um, thank you, by the way. For all of that.”
“No problem.” She wanted to laugh a bit. She’d barely done anything. She didn’t need a thank you.
“And sorry.”
Her head tilted. “What are you apologizing for?”
Ragatha leaned back against the wall. “I feel like I freaked everyone out.”
“I think that was gonna happen no matter what. With the day we just had?” She rubbed at her wrists. It had been only ten minutes of lucidity before Ragatha had locked onto them with a narrowed eye. Her bow had been shortly thereafter repurposed as bandages. The snapping of jaws and wet slap of feet against the floor rang in her head. Pomni shivered. “Hard not to be freaked out.”
“I guess so.”
“You don’t have to be sorry, I mean.”
Ragatha gave her a smile, but with the cut in her face, it just didn’t read quite the same.
Pomni bit the inside of her cheek. “Can I ask you something?”
“I’ll let Zooble fix it later,” Ragatha said, resigned. Her thumb slid back over a patch. It was the purple one, courtesy of Kinger.
She floundered through, tongue tripping over the words as if the syllables were black ice. “No, no, not that. Something else.”
“Oh. Yeah, shoot.”
“I uh… shit, okay like you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Seriously, I will never ask again if you say so. But…” She trailed off. She picked at her gloves, aching to get this out in a way that wouldn’t just be another closed fist of a sentence.
Ragatha tensed. “Pomni?”
“I’ve never seen you like that before. I don’t think anyone had, and you were right, it did freak me out—not your fault.” she said quickly when Ragatha’s mouth opened into the silhouette of sorry. “I was scared and you were scared and…” Pomni hesitated before breaching the subject she had been stewing over for hours now, the first question she had asked that had gone unanswered: “Ragatha, what happened?”
Ragatha’ mouth pressed into a line. Her thumb stopped moving over the patch, hovering where it split between red and blue.
The line began to curve, then crease, then it trembled. A soft, shaky exhale was the only warning.
Water lapped at her feet. It seeped through her skin. A flash of red and the long curve of the shadow. The table, the drapes, the chairs and silverware shot through her head.
Ragatha started to cry.
Pomni only seen her cry once. For all the times Jax had sneered at her for being too sensitive, accusing her of being not being able to take a joke, or a look of hurt winked across her face, the only time it had happened in earnest was Kaufmo’s funeral.
Ragatha pulled her legs to her chest and buried her face in her knees. It was the quietest sob Pomni had ever heard.
She wondered briefly how that had come to be.
“Fuck, sorry, I shouldn’t have asked—“
“It’s fine.” She breathed, “I just… I don’t know what I could’ve done,” Ragatha laughed to herself, pressing deeper against her knees, her arms curling protectively, “to make someone that angry.”
Pomni’s head tiled, still a bit stun locked by the fact that Ragatha had actually broke down in tears. Number one hider of negative emotions allowing herself to cry in front of someone. The world really must be ending,
“Caine?” She guessed.
Ragatha’s face was buried in her hands. It was so low, the sound muffled by her hands.
“My mom.”
And Pomni’s heart broke firmly in two.“Oh.”
Her shoulders shook.
“Is that what Caine…” She cut herself off. Of course it was. Of course. Fuck. “Oh my god I am so sorry.”
“I think she hated me.” Ragatha confessed. “I don’t know why.”
She hiccuped, still so quiet in her own breakdown that Pomni was certain she’d be sleeping through it if she’d laid down like the rest of them. She was relatively certain all of them were sleeping through it.
“And he knew.” She brushed against the cut on her face, head lifting just enough to rest her chin on her bent knees. “I never told anyone.”
Pomni’s mouth shut. Whatever attempt at assurance she’d been brewing died in her mouth, left to rot on her tongue.
“I never told anyone.” Ragatha repeated in a whisper. A tremor scraped through her. “I-I lied to the nurses. I lied to everyone. And he just knew. God, he probably knew the whole time.”
Puzzle pieces in her head started to click together, a picture building from the outer corners in. It was not a hard one to parse out. Pomni had not forgotten the shape of the wounds. Their cleanliness and precision.
The cut on her face. The two pieces of the button that Ragatha was still gripping in one hand unwilling to let any of them try to stick them back together.
Cause the knife, she’d said with solemn resolve. No, it was not a hard puzzle at all.
A sinking feeling flushed through her. “The dining room…?” Pomni recalled.
“The stupid fucking dining room.” The swearing jarred her. Both the fact that it was uncensored and the fact that it was from Ragatha.
Her gaze slid to Ragatha’s closed hand, still guarding the button.
Pomni did not know what to say. There wasn’t much to say. She stayed there with Ragatha, curled up and heaving. For some odd reason, Pomni wished she would be louder. She really wished that even after all of that, she was still making herself quiet for everyone else's sake. As if she didn’t want to interrupt. Pomni would rather she interrupted and be loud and be upset. She had every right to be. God Pomni really, really hated being useless. She didn’t want to just sit there.
She went to rest a hand on her shoulder, but waited. “Is it okay if I give you a hug or something?”
“Please don’t.”
She held up her hands in surrender. “That’s fine. For sure. Is… is there anything I can do?”
Ragatha sniffed. Her face was damp, a haggard look plastered atop. She gestured vaguely to her face. “Could you help me with this?”
“Yeah of course.” She blanched, suddenly embarrassed. “I-I don’t actually know how to sew.”
“That’s okay. I’ll talk you through it.”
“If you’re sure…”
“Positive. I probably should’ve just let Zooble do it early but, you know."
And this time she did. “Yeah, I know. Hang on a sec.”
She nicked the needle, finding the ripped end of her cap and yanking out the first string her fingers pinched. Tears were still slipping down her face. Pomni made no comment.
She followed the instructions she was given, wincing sympathetically as she poked her for the first time. Ragatha stayed quiet still throughout. Like she had experience.
Pomni was halfway finished before she said something that wasn’t guiding the needle.
“I think it was an accident.” She muttered. “I’m not sure. But I think it was.”
Pomni’s heart fractured a second time. “I don’t think that’s the important part.”
“No. It’s probably not.”
“I’m sorry that happened.”
She shrugged. “Me too.”
It was another twenty minutes or so before Ragatha was telling her how to tie it off.
They both breathed a sigh of relief. Pomni slumped down beside her, spent. “I don’t know how you do that. My hands kinda hurt.”
“Practice, I guess. Does it look okay?”
Pomni gave her a once over. Credit where due, it wasn’t horrible. At the very least it wasn’t a repeat of Pomni’s attempt at fixing her poor plushie. The stitches were a bit awkward, placed with hesitance, dancing in a slight curve halfway to her chin, but it was holding. It didn’t appear to be overly loose or pinched. “Could be worse.” She decided. “Does it feel okay?”
Ragatha touched the crooked line.
“Yeah.” She decided after a moment. “Yeah, it feels fine.”
Ragatha fell asleep against the wall.
She was stitched and patched and she was not at the table. The evidence of the knives had become evidence of something far more comforting. She was not in the chair or pinned in place. She was in the circus. She was in the cafe. She had a friend beside her and more within her line of sight.
The shadow retreated. The dining room dissolved.
She was treading water.