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... )
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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