The Town That Never Sleeps
WHO(?): Raivis (?) and Peter
WHERE(?): Quiet Mound, a sleepy little town outside of Liberty, in the foothills of the _____ mountains in____, _____.
WHEN(?): Friday October 8 to Sunday, October 10 (?)
WHAT(?): It was meant to be an escape. The truth however, cannot stay hidden in the fog.
( Calls to you... calls you back... back to that place you used to love... )
WHERE(?): Quiet Mound, a sleepy little town outside of Liberty, in the foothills of the _____ mountains in____, _____.
WHEN(?): Friday October 8 to Sunday, October 10 (?)
WHAT(?): It was meant to be an escape. The truth however, cannot stay hidden in the fog.
( Calls to you... calls you back... back to that place you used to love... )
"Quiet Mounds." He said at last. The cell he pulled from his pocket showed the same dismal 'NO SERVICE' across its screen. He stuffed it back in hastily. "At least, I'm fairly certain that's what it was called." Waving away a plume of moisture spiraling by his ankles, crawling its way along his leg, Raivis shuffled sideways on the ground now beside his husband to curl an arm around him. "We're already within its city limits. If we walk a little bit, we...well, we should come across someone. Maybe we'll catch a ride along the way."
The clouds of their conjoined breaths blended into the thick air. Raivis gave Peter's waist a gentle squeeze. "H-here, put your arm over my shoulders. We can't stay here, it's going to get cold..."
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"Raivis, come back," Peter beckoned softly, arm shaking out for Raivis' touch. He didn't know if Raivis had really heard him or if it was only mere coincidence, but his heart ceased to panic when he saw the familiar figure coming out of the fog.
And for a moment, perhaps he had lost too much blood, the figure that emerged from the fog was not Raivis Galante. Rather, it looked to be a troubled person with arms bound behind his back and legs that shook violently as he walked. Peter recoiled, and the vision was gone. It was Raivis after all.
He let Raivis help him up from the ground and used his husband as a temporary crutch.
"Quiet Mound," he repeated; his breath added to the fog as he spoke. "Why does that sound familiar? Have we ever been here before? Maybe... No... That's not it..."
Their footsteps grind against the earth. Each step was a drag toward an unknown destination. Was there salvation beyond the fog was it just eternal damnation?
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At every stumbling, shambling movement onward his fervent hope mutated further into an obsessive, oppressing mantra.
It will be there, it will be open. It will be fine, it will be alright. We will be okay.
Burden, comfort. Repeated through each jerky tripping on loose debris, through the taxation on their bodies of awkwardly distributed weight, the wavering to reestablish balance. When a shingled peak broke the monotony of the gray above them and looming shadows rose in the paleness ahead, the internal struggle to contain an instinct to run toward it was monumental.
He kept with Peter's slow speed despite impending darkness. "W-we're almost there..."
And they were. The road had become a street, the shapes and shadows buildings, one of which- the closest- had a faint glimmer of illumination slipping through its windows. It was toward that beacon that he directed them, relieved when the door handle gave way to his tug and more so to find it looked like something of a waiting room on the inside. Police department? Doctor's office?
The walls were curiously bare. There was no one behind the receptionist's(?) window. Raivis couldn't tell.
He tried to set Peter down gently into a chair. "H-how's your head?"
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He walked lightly, as if afraid that his footfalls would shatter the ground beneath. He leaned his weight on Raivis; his fingers awkwardly clutched the Latvian's shoulder as they steadied themselves toward the unknown.
"It's cold," Peter said, unsure if it was his breath hanging in front of him or only another whisper of fog. "Ah, wish I brought my other sweater... or a scarf, you know... A scarf would be nice right now..."
And then the town suddenly appeared in front of them. So sudden that Peter drew a shaky gasp. He followed Raivis' lead to the first building. It came as a surprise that the door gave way so easily, considering that the office looked closed. The blinds were shut, and the office was only lit by the outside daylight---daylight which was fading fast.
"I'm all right," Peter answered, forcing a smile on his paling face as he sat in the plastic chair. "Where is everyone? Too early to close down for the day, isn't it? What... is this place anyway?"
The walls gave no answer. The missing receptionist was no help. The only notable object was a piece of half-torn and crumbled note on the chair next to Peter's. He picked it up, showed it to Raivis briefly, before he began to read.
"J___, I am leaving you. I am taking L____a and we are never coming back. You brought this on. You ____ it happen. I can't take ____ anymore. You never ... I can't quite make out what it's saying then..."
He released a deep sigh and put the note back on the chair. Even though they were indoor, there was still a thin layer of gray circling around them.
"You think there is a phone somewhere here? Maybe the land line still works?"
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As Peter recited the small bit of text, Raivis carefully brushed hair from his lover's face. Delicate sweeps with his fingertips, rhythmic and almost hypnotized motions he did without thought because his focus was partially elsewhere. Around them, scanning the office as though it might yet yield answers if he stared hard enough.
"They must have just stepped out for a moment- it can't be so bad to borrow their phone and explain things when they return, right? It's an emergency. I-I'm sure they'd understand..." He lay the back of his hand against Peter's cheek, withdrew to square his shoulders and approach the windowed area. There was a land line stashed away below the counter but a thin film of dust colored it a sickly cobalt when once it must have been black.
Unused. Likely- Useless.
"This place doesn't feel-"
He shouted, Peter flinched. From within the folds of his jacket came a sudden blaring of sirens, piercing and loud against the contrast of silence around them but every ring a new, blessed potential bid for help. The terror that had momentarily stopped his heart was forgotten and he scrambled, shooting Peter an earnest smile as he pressed the cell to his ear, wishing, praying.
Static.
Raivis cursed again. "I guess that's all we're going to get-"
'H-....o...?'
Something. Someone. A voice. A human being on the other end. Salvation. "Hello-?"
'...n't....hea..g..o...tsid...'
"H-hello? Please, please don't hang up, we just have bad reception let me-" Raivis tried to walk the perimeter of the office to seek clarity. A bit more- that's all they needed, a little more- "Try to move around..."
Nothing near Peter. Nor the door by the receptionist's niche, no improvement until he wandered near the entrance again and paused there as the stranger from afar gained slight comprehensibility.
' ...eed to find...Mari...do you know where...?'
Unknown number, unknown name but it didn't matter as long as the call didn't drop. "S-sir, if you could just wait one moment-"
'...who...you? Do you know where...to...she's not...'
"Sir? Sir? Oh God, don't be gone- Shit- Suuds...M-mīlet, stay here, I think we might have more of a chance with this out in the open. Y-yell for me if-"
Raivis yanked at the door- "You start feeling- Ah- hello? C-can you hear me-?"- then, with a click, he was gone.
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He surveyed the bulletins tacked on the notice board across his way. For some reason he would not be able to explain later, he felt compelled to head over to read the prints. With Raivis circling the office, Peter maneuvered his way over. His head throbbed as he closed toward the board.
The first thing he noticed was that most, if not all, of the prints had turned yellow and gray from age. The second thing he noticed was a missing person poster that looked strangely out of place amongst pamphlets on dental hygiene and advertisements for new teeth whitening technique.
"It's a dentist's office," Peter said out loud for Raivis to know. "Maybe they are closed for the day then. My dentist in Glasgow never opens on Tuesdays."
He moved the bulletins away until he could reach the missing person poster. He inwardly flinched when he saw the whole poster. The missing person's photo had been ferociously scratched out, rendering it impossible for Peter to see how the person looked like. The photo was also in black and white, and he was only able to deduce that the person had light-colored hair and a hollow smile.
The poster listed the person's body measurement and stated that he was last seen by the carousel in the local amusement park. A desperate handwritten "PLEASE HELP!" shouted in faded red ink. He read the description over and over again, secretly disturbed that the missing person was similar to him in body shape.
"Raivis, take a look at this," he called out again, turning with the poster in hand. When he looked up, he gasped as he registered that he was alone in the office. "Raivis? Raivis!"
Abandoned.
Peter rushed to the front door and pushed against it. The door refused to budge, as if it did not just open for them moments ago. He pounded his fists on it, willing it to move with his body. The poster fluttered to the cold ground. As it landed, Peter stopped punching the door.
He had heard a noise. He stood still, held his breath, and waited for the noise to sound again.
It did, a few seconds later. The noise was originating from within the office. The hallway was lined with many dental rooms, each of which was closed. The noise was coming somewhere behind one of those doors---a guessing game that Peter was in no mood to play.
"Raivis?"
Unwillingly but with no choice, Peter made his way down the hallway. His voice kept calling out his husband's name, hoping for some kind of response that was not a muffled and disembodied noise.
He paced outside each door, leaned in to listen for the clue, and moved on to the next when he found that he had picked the wrong door. The process continued until he was at the dead of the hall, where the washroom awaited him.
"Raivis?" he called again. He knocked on the door twice, paused, and was startled when two knocks answered him. "Raivis, you in there? You could have told me you were in the loo, you know."
He waited and shuffled his feet aimlessly. A shudder chilled up his spine. He could feel the air becoming colder. He looked up to the ceiling and saw that he was standing beneath the ventilation vent. But if he knew anything about vents, he was aware that this particular one was shut.
A click and the squeak of hinges drew his attention away. His eyes fixated on the opening door. As the door fully opened and revealed its occupant, Peter stumbled backward, his shoes wailing against the ground in fear.
It was not Raivis. It was not Raivis at all.
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Not Toris, then, just someone strikingly similar. Someone with a mimicking hint of sadness about the eyes- also brown, he noted- and the downward slope of posture Raivis's cousin had when the man thought no one else was watching.
Save that Peter was watching now but the slouching never stopped. The stranger did not nervously straighten as Toris would have, eager to please, to avoid conflict. He shuffled out of the stall with a tenuous sigh as though breathing itself were simply too much to bear; like the air expelled from his collapsing, expanding lungs was just a coincidence. Incidental living.
"Oh." The doppelgänger tilted his chin up slowly, matching Peter's stare with something blank, vaguely curious. "So you were the one shouting. Haven't seen other people around here for a while. Excuse me..."
His head drooped, he shambled by without another word.
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On second impression, the person, though strikingly similar to Raivis' cousin, was nothing like Toris after all. There was a brooding and depressed aura about the stranger that felt unfamiliar. Subconsciously, his brain sent signals to his legs, beckoning them to take a few steps back.
"Who are you?" Peter's words came out strong and rude, almost interrogative if not for the curiously raised eyebrow. "Have you been there the whole time? Do you work here, maybe?"
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The young man pivoted in place, as sluggish as his voice, drawling on each syllable with such moroseness it induced an urge to punch the words out of him. "No... No one works here anymore. We got lost in this place, my friend and I. Then I ran away. He was... bullying me."
His gaze slid to the floor and remained there, locked on his own feet nervously shuffling about. Backwards. Away from Peter. "But I have to go find him again. Always have to go back. Don't you have to find your friend? 'Raivis' is your friend, right? You should..." Again, he turned for the hallway and his last words floated over his shoulder as a quiet, eerie murmur. "Find him."
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Peter's eyes drew to Toris' doppelganger. The unknown phantom's gesture, movement, mannerism all hinted to a tormented soul. Peter would feel bad, should feel bad for the bloke, but his own heart was filling with worries over the whereabouts and safety of Raivis.
"You all right, mate? You look... Maybe we should go together, you know. It'll be good to have a buddy around! And, you are from this town, aren't you? So you can show me the way. I need a car shop. Raivis and I were in an accident."
Even as he spoke, the young man was already gliding away like a ghost. If Peter didn't know better, he would have thought it was only a figment of his tired imagination. He loitered behind the man, stepping in footprints that the stranger didn't leave.
"What do you say? This place, it just doesn't... feel safe, you know."
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Either the doppelganger did not hear him, did not deign to answer or could not answer for lack of energy- for the only exertion it seemed able to utilize thereafter was a single-minded forward motion that carried them back into the waiting room, crinkled poster still abandoned on the carpet where it had fallen.
"I wonder..."
It curled in on itself under the presence of the Toris-that-was-not-Toris's heel.
"I wonder if he knows you're missing." Lingered faintly in the air, so hushed whether it had been spoken at all was as questionable as the man's existence.
"-Or is he the one that isn't here?"
A snippet of English. Addressed to the frantic youth or to no one, that too remained ambiguous. Not once had the specter matched gazes with Peter or even acknowledged the other's position at his side. He displayed no emotion save 'resigned' and when the doorway was miraculously cleared, an unnamed individual's siren call beckoning, the peculiar man drifted over the threshold into the cold, silent and dazed and unmoved by questions or concerns.
No Raivis could be seen.
Anti-Toris, meanwhile, was all too suddenly a good distance down the length of a sidewalk and getting father away when blinking against lighting changes momentarily took focus from him. Several hurried strides later, the Sealander had caught up again but the phantom was gone. Stalked around a corner and vanished.
Peter was, once more, alone.
Or may have been. There was a flicker of color in a diagonal direction, several yards off yet too obscured by fog for an accurate read.
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