The day started off admirably. It was almost like summertime again. The sun woke the city with an abnormally early burst of cloudless radiance, a few confused dragonflies and birds emerged for late outings. The loose carpets of fallen leaves in red, brown and gold betrayed the time, but what resulted was a bright sky over ember and autumnal hues, a gracious and welcoming warmth.

The white canopies glowed over the ocean of glittering grass. Patches got out of bed early, but there were several up before him. Preparations were already in full swing. He had been woken up by the technical crew testing the sound system. Tinny, muffled sounds of a woman warbling over piano floated through the cloisters, permeated the walls of the dormitories, the kitchen and even the sealed tiles of the bathroom.

Castor, ever the more sensitive one, was in a slump at the dining table by the time Patches walked in. “What a noise to hear first thing in the morning.”

Patches looked out the window. “It’s a nice tune.”

Castor’s face creased slightly. “So this is your kind of thing? I wouldn’t have guessed.” She gulped coffee as Patches prodded around the shelves. “And you’re all dressed up already.”

“I have to meet somebody. My friend,” he said.

“Ah. The one Cain’s met?”

“Cain hasn’t met him yet, he only heard--” Patches stopped. Val had made it clear that he didn’t want to be seen or discussed. His threats hadn’t been particularly convincing, but he'd been unhappy. There was no need to wreck things further.

“Well, then,” Castor said. “I hope we’ll be able to meet him soon.”

"Maybe. He's secretive. Not shy, but... he doesn't like meeting people. I'm sorry."

"Huh." Castor took a long look out the window. "As long as he's fine by you, we have no reason to force him."

Patches was not sure.

He departed for the gray stacks of the residential district. The streets were as barren as ever, to jump from the festive church grounds to the faceless blocks was jarring. Blinds were drawn and windows were closed, the air was hushed and the only the thinnest breezes made it through the concrete maze. There was not a person to be seen, but signs of residents existed in the form of cars (few, most were packed safely in garages), bundles of black garbage bags sitting on the pavement, and scant balcony furnishings. One apartment seemed to be raising a full garden on the top floor’s sagging outcrop.

It must have been Val’s house.

The ground floor was connected to the garage, and Patches could imagine who it belonged to before he even saw the door. It was white, with a black circle for a spyhole. This flat had a simple doormat, and a custom sign nailed beside the door with the number #01 and the word URIEL.

Patches looked up and down the street. In spite of the name tag indicating the house was correct, he felt like an intruder. But there were no objections - no passerby - so he headed up the stairs.

He visited the top flat first. It was the most prominent, and its garden was how Val had identified the house to Patches, so it was his best guess for Val's actual residence. The door was unmarked and locked tight, but there was a white plastic bag in front of it. A supermarket bag, packed with slender branches, blackend flowers, and various other trimmings. Stuffed among the leaves was an empty paper bag from GREYHOUND COFFEE AND BREAD, a place he hadn’t heard of. Patches knocked on the door and tried the doorbell, but he heard nothing from within. He did not even hear the doorbell, which was not a fantastic sign, but perhaps the door was very thick. He knocked harder, but stopped promptly when the hinges launched a terrible rusty creak, the wall crackling as though deep cracks lay just under the paint. Whatever the problem was, nobody answered.

Patches looked up and down the street. Not a soul. He moved down a floor.

The middle level had an identical white wooden door. There was absolutely nothing significant about it or its surroundings - there were no signs or mats and the balcony was untouched, though it was heavily shaded by the overgrowth above.

Not even a speck of dust or trash. It may as well have been abandoned. But Patches knew now that three people lived in this building. It had to belong to someone he knew. it would be no great offence if it were Ritz who answered.

He knocked and listened. And this time, he heard something.

It was so faint it could only be heard if his ear was held against the wood, but once there, holding his breath - yes, it was definite. Flat tones, but with pauses - not music, but a conversation. But too muffled to hear any words or identify the voices.

Patches pressed towards the door and the cool shaded surface touched his face. He shifted, just slightly, to push his ear flat. Leaned in just a twitch, not enough to make any noise of his own - so he thought.

But he nearly fell inward. The second his weight fell on the door, the whole thing gave way. The metal clicked, hinges that had long been broken snapped from their tenuous balance, and entire thing fell forward. Patches leapt to grab hold of it - the knob, the inner edge - before it crashed to the ground.

With the utter silence of the street, it still made a tremendous noise as it scraped the floor.

Patches stood, frozen, with the detached door in his hands, one foot inside the hall.

The apartment was cool, a twilight blue in its shade from the morning sun. It was a blue that the brown wood and red drapes of his old dormitory could never achieve. But once he’d been staring for a while, he saw the corners of the room were slightly stained, darkest where the walls met the floor and ceiling, and the wooden floor was discolored as well. The stains on the wall were dark, but the stains on the ground were light, nearly white dots stuck to midtone brown tiles. Bleach. The air too, seemed blue with antiseptic.

The kitchen stood to his left in the hall. Through the door, he saw a mass of snack wrappers piled on the counter - but not hastly tossed there and forgotten, they were stacked with intention. Piled like a stack of file paper, and pinned with a clip, as though their owner needed them for reference in the future, or enjoyed browsing them. There were a few pages with the distinctive coloration of the licorice company.

Patches set the door back in its frame as best he could. Surprisingly, it slotted right into place without much force, all set for the next foolish visitor to tip through.

Past the kitchen and an empty shoe rack, the hall led to an open living area, with a single, thoroughly abused leather couch and a rectangular carpet with a generic pattern of wine-colored stripes. On the carpet sat a heavy coffee table that much resembled the one in Patches’s room: only knee height with a thick, square wooden base, and a glass panel over the top.

There was a jug of water on top of the glass, with two cups and a note on a piece of lined paper. BACK IN 1--. V. Once again, half of some crucial number was lost to scratchy marks on the paper, as if a pen had run out of ink at the worst of times. However, the signature at the end of the note had been scribbled in without any trouble.

Patches laid the note down.

So it was Val’s home. It was such a blasphemous thought - he had become so used to Val turning up out of nowhere, existing in some fringe where he could go unseen at will - that it seemed insane that he could have lived all along in such a mundane setup.

Other than the sofa and the table, there was a long cabinet made of plain black panels of wood that sat along the opposite wall. Each shelf was different width, the panels were arranged at random, and it seemed there were a few shelves that would be to small for anything. The largest of the shelves was packed with several cardboard boxes. None of the boxes were much longer than Patches’s arm, and none of them were labelled. They were also all opened at the top, lined with ripped tape and frayed edges, but the flaps were all pushed down. There was no telling what was in them. They could already have been unpacked.

At the center of the shelf was a the tallest opening, for a television or similarly sized item. There was nothing like a television in the room. Upon realizing this, Patches once again took note of the quiet, fuzzy conversation coming from the back hall that must have led to the bed or bathroom. He listening intently, and most definitely heard some talk of the “Farmer’s Market” and then “Tower” and “missing man”. It must have been the radio.

For a while, Patches remained at the couch. He drank a glass of water from the jug and waited patiently. Val's note had signified that he was out, but was clearly expecting his visitor to be there. There was no reason to go investigating his bedroom without him. Val already seemed to be stumbling on the point of trust.

For whatever reason.

The radio's conversation continued, muffled and dim. Patches was tempted to open a window, but after the incident with the door, he could wait. The air was stifling, though. It seemed to grow more so as the sun slid in and the room warmed up, like an oven. Patches grew drowsy. He unbuttoned the top of his coat.

The radio was still muttering something of the missing contestant.

As his eye drooped, a strange fact crawled into mind; there was no clock.

...and no leads yet, was all we’ve been able to gather. Not the news we’d like to hear on this fine day, but the investigation continues, and I’ll remind our listeners again that the hotline for any information is 0000 0000, again that’s a line straight to our representatives, that’s 0000 0000. We’ll keep you posted. Now get out and enjoy the beautiful weather…

The radio was inexplicably clearer now, it was as if in his drowsiness, his hearing had doubled in sensitivity. Patches rubbed his eyes, and the bandage came loose. He frowned at it, for a second he had forgotten where it may have come from.

The couch was soft, much softer than the bench in his bedroom. Val had commented that beds were difficult to 'break in'. Perhaps he slept on this couch. Patches could certainly have laid down then and there. Could have, but he wouldn’t. He rubbed his eyes again. His ears, having become sensitive as a bat's now, were picking up on a ringing like a bell - no, a much longer noise. More of a high pitched whine.

The smell of bleach and cleaner had fallen away and now there was a much more obtrusive odor. It was something that was strictly frowned upon in the Ring, Tiamat would throw a huge fit. Loss of business. Loss of dignity. Loss of hygiene. All the organizers would have had a mouthful. And no wonder. It was an awful stench.

Only half controlling his limbs, Patches lurched off the sofa and down the hall. There was the radio again, running the disappearance by someone who had no idea of what it meant.

Yeah, that’s really bad. I, uh, just hope he gets found, Alive of course. Gets home safely to his family. And, uh…

The noise in his ears ratcheted up to a hissing scream. Before him stood two separate doors. One was a few inches ajar. In it, he saw the almost navy-blue outline of a bedsheet and the burn of ultraviolet streaming in from a gap in the curtains. The radio broke to commercial.

He rubbed his eyes again. What a disgrace. He’d been out of work so long his stamina was shot. And he needed the bathroom. With the kitchen, living room and bedroom out of the way, that left only this door. It looked a lot like the door outside. He hoped it wouldn’t collapse. He’d like to open it slowly - because it seemed the stench was coming from behind it.

It was unlocked. Well, one problem out of the way. It opened smoothly on it’s hinges. Fine. Good.

A blast of fumes erupted from the open door. It was a disgusting mix of blood and excrement, antiseptic washed limply over the whole mess, then more fresh blood and excrement washing over that again. The walls were clumped with wads of mould or spit or blood or some other rotted organic substance, caking between the tiles and gathering in full black plumes in any dark corner that had made itself available.

The toilet bowl was a sight, but far, far worse than that was the thing lying in the shower. The curtain was tied back as if it were a showroom, and the creature was tucked into the corner of the stall under a rusted water heater. At first, Patches thought it was a pile of steaks. Having seen a closet of steaks, it didn't seem impossible. But unlike uncooked steaks should have, this thing moved. And it had hair. A person.

It was definitely a person at its core, but what were supposed to be limbs were bent and twisted so thoroughly in ways that a human’s limbs should not have been able to sustain, that from a distance the entire thing seemed to be made of bundles of wine-colored rope. Red jelly seeped from openings that may have originally served as eyes, nose and mouth, light hair was matted down with water, industrial cleaner, and deep black globs. The shape of a torso was still intact, absurdly so, and wiped clean. But the chest and guts were not spared for their exceptional qualities - no, things had been left that way intentionally, just enough to function, just enough to the supply the rest of the broken form just enough life to be stuck in its torment.

Pale hair was not out of the ordinary. Patches would not have recognized this dying creature if he had not been forced, specifically to make his acquaintance, and prepared to identify and dispose of that specific set of unremarkable traits. The height, the weight of the torso, the accentuated collarbones and welts from being restrained by the priests, the first time around. One person he'd actually recognize.

It was the old contestant, the 'very important' guest, the inspector Mr. Verd, no longer fit to even observe even a single round, stuck listening to the news of his own investigation in this putrid apartment complex on a barren street.

The shape moved and issued a sound that attempted words but failed, and instead fell into a low, terrified, terrifying moan.

And Patches, who had not been truly moved by anything for a long, long time, felt himself turned back to the hall and stumbled backward, catching the walls, his throat and face starched and stiff. He wasn’t moving particularly quickly, not nearly as fast as he'd like, in fact his legs were failing fast beneath him.

The hissing he'd noted had grown louder than ever and on the way back to the living room he knocked the bedroom door with an arm that was trying to rip itself from his deteriorating control. The door swung open and the radio on the bed screeched, and the bodies lying wrapped in sheets flew into his vision. The glint of two pairs of glasses and the dark lines of two ties stung like wasps, stank like a ditch, and then there were the canisters lying behind the bed that spat and he choked and gasped, he turned towards the room then away, then back and it seemed like he had only moved a few inches, and then the length of wall at his side ran out and his arm pressed nothing and he dropped like a boulder to the ground.

His one good eye rotated in a frenzy, his inability to see the source of the shadows that now fluttered throughout the room drove him crazy. From where he had fallen, he could see was the hall leading to the front door, which was closed, back in its hinges, likely still broken. What a flimsy, simple trap. But effective, it was so easy to reset, even guilt the hapless victim into resetting.

And all he could think was how much he did not want to deal with it on his way out.

He didn’t make it out, of course.

---

“I didn’t hear a thing for, what, half an hour? Thought you weren’t even here yet.”

Patches lost consciousness after falling on his face at the entrance to the hallway. Once he had fully settled, he was gently dragged to the living room carpet. His jacket was removed, and the unexpected waistcoat underneath pulled open. Patches had really been dressed for the occasion. Perhaps overdressed. Under his coat, heaving muscles packed in a tight, uncomfortable space pressed against his shirt. He was sweating profusely, twitching and tense. In spite of his frailty, his body seemed larger and more unweildly than ever. Val tugged a few more buttons free for him.

Patches's hands were bound by several fasteners that made locked together with a click. When preparations were complete, he was turned over like a side of meat, for inspection. Lying on his back, his breathing evened out, gradually.

Val sat on the couch and leaned over his fallen guest, fingers bridged under his chin. He tilted down to brush Patches’s hair out from under his bandage, carefully. There was a slight response to that, just a throaty noise and a flicker of the eye, but no further struggling.

“Don’t strain. You’ll be down for a while.”

Val glanced at the bathroom. He had closed the door again, then ducked into his bedroom to turn the radio off. Didn't want anyone else's voice talking over him. When he returned, Patches wasn't moving, his face had relaxed and his eyes were mostly lidded, the sliver of uncovered white was dry and dull. Val pressed two fingers to his eyelids to fully close them and crooned, as if trying to coax him to sleep.

“Patch? Do you hear me?"

The dosage had been heavy, but he was still breathing. He could have been listening.

"How did you like your gift? I wasn’t done yet, but he’s still alive. I can even give him to back to you. Or your boss.” Val sighed. “And then you can give him back to Magnus if you want. It doesn’t matter. He’s not in the best of condition either, but - man - I’m not like you, you know. I get mad. And that guy, he was trying to piss me off. I could tell. He was prepared to take this whole place down.”

No response, that was good.

“I knew he was trouble, ungrateful piece of-- you didn't even get to do your job, but he really cursed you out. You and your friends, and Magnus. Oh, but he said he’d make a special exception for me, for helping him out, can you imagine that? For me… He thought he had to pay me back.” Val licked his lips. “It's all about payback in the end, isn't it? I didn’t know how to pay you back for all the things you got me, but then I thought, what can I get for you that nobody else can? Magnus added the value to this guy, and all you had to do was take it. The right moment never came, though. And now it’s a little late.”

He glanced at the bathroom and sighed. “Not a good present either. I realized too late you wouldn’t like it anyway. You became the kind of person who wouldn't appreciate it. But you don’t like much of anything, do you? That’s what I gathered from yesterday. You only take things out of minimal interest. To fill in time. Aping real human beings. I gave a lot of thought to what you said, and you know what? You also really piss me off.”

Val slid off the couch and went to scout the cardboard boxes on the shelf. He rummaged through the largest of the group and drew out a knife from a sea of bubble wrap. It was a carving blade - simple enough to find in a suburban home, though too large for everyday kitchen use - and old. It wasn’t ancient, but a dull crust had built on its edge, some mildew plastered to the handle. He hadn’t taken particularly good care of it, but it had always been more about the sentiment than reusability. Well, until now.

He held it behind his back as if it were a shy secret, and knelt over Patches, slow and smooth, as if afraid of scaring him off. His friend’s head was slack jawed and lifeless; tilted to the side. Had he been facing that way to begin with? Had he moved? Val frowned and lowered himself onto one knee. He dropped closer and closer, digging his knee into Patches's waist and crawled over. He held a hand to a strip of neck muscle, and set down, his knee impaling Patches’s gut. Discomfort for them both. There would be no hiding.

But there was no movement. Val breathed a long, hot sight and flicked his free hand forward. He setted his full weight, picked a flake of dust from Patches’s forehead and smiled hollowly. He waved the knife inches from Patches's nose.

“If you want to stop me now, you can wake up."

He flicked the bandage off and caught his breath when he saw the sight he had been looking for. A crevasse of swollen tissue, sticky with sweat and, finally in the free air of a well lit room, he could see small bloated pink folds, swollen and huddled together like fat, spotted worms. Surrounding the socket, several smaller holes had opened up around it, small dark clusters, with edges that hung like netting over a hollowed space, and a long, pink scar ran horizontal to the socket. Some nice handiwork. His fingers hovered above it for a moment and then grasped into that ashen face, letting his thumbnail sink into the empty socket, digging into the old bloody swells. He felt some infected bulge pop like a grape. A stream of clear fluid bubbled from the cracks. Grip firm, Val dragged Patches’s heavy head from the carpet. Eyes forward. Even if they weren’t open to see it.

Pus streamed out of the edge of Patches's eye like a single, implausible tear. Val could have laughed.

"Then I'll go on ahead. Remember all this? I don’t see how you could have forgotten. This is the real reason you’re here, isn’t it?”

He now dragged the knife forward, a long, cumbersome movement, letting it catch in the thick fabric of those black church-standard pants. A strong tug and a little movement in the wrong direction, and the seams ripped, and so did some of the flesh underneath. A ribbon of red formed along Patches’s leg and looped up to his waist.

There was not so much as a blip in his heartbeat and breathing.

“Oh, what the hell. You remember. You made that clear. What was it - the one time you felt anything? The last time? Whatever. What kills me - no - what amazes me, is that you have no fear chasing this down again. You actually managed to get around the fear, maybe you never even had it. You could look me in the eye and threaten me. Drag me out into the open, flaunt it to the people I’ve been working so hard to hide from. And then, say there’s nothing I can do to you and that there’s nothing I can take that would matter. Like it’s the only thing you were sure of. How can you be sure? How can you say that? As long as you’re breathing, there’s always something I can take.”

Val twirled the knife in his hands like a tiny baton. He paused for a second, took aim, and stabbed it down into Patches’s shoulder, through the thin white fabric, ripping into skin and muscle, through the freshly healed wound from that fatal night.

"Well, what can I say? If you were looking to get cut up again, I was here."

He still received no reaction. Val’s teeth scraped like chisels against each other.

“Your mistake was thinking that I was just here to hand over that service. That the little distractions didn't mean anything. That being brave and happy would give you all the time in the world. You could hang around, eat up a few kisses, drain some time and then take off when you want. You only start fights for yourself, you hold it off like a treat, because you know you’ll win. As nice as it is to think I make you happy, I can’t let that happen. I- I couldn't live with it. So here’s what I’ve decided: I'll give you that time agan - and whether or not you feel what you're looking for - I can’t let you live.”

Clumping the damp fabric in his hands, Val wrenched out the knife. “Nobody will be coming to help you. The guy in the back is proof of that. But don’t worry about getting all twisted up, he was a different experiment altogether. I intended to keep him alive. I won’t play around with you. Anyway, that didn’t work the first time.”

The knife moved up and pressed to Patches’s cheek. There was still a meaty string of blood sticking to its edge, that connected to the gash on his shoulder. His arms, that could have ended the confrontation in moments, were tucked against his sides, hands bound behind his back.

Val inclined his head, admiring. “Relax. Try to think of nice things, whatever you might find nice. I hear your life can flash before your eyes when you know it’s coming. Did your contestants ever feel that? I suppose they wouldn't tell you. What do you see? Do you even hear me? Maybe you're already dead. Maybe I put too much in the water jug, maybe you hit your head when you fell, but you know me, can’t stop talking. Just have to keep the mouth moving. Ha ha. Are you comfortable? Don't worry. You won't feel a thing. I won't touch your face, I think. You look so... ...”