Part Nine of the Switch AU
A JSE Fanfic
[This is part of an ongoing fic series I started in April 2019. Marvin feels that someone is watching him, and it probably has something to do with the fact that he's starting to remember things. Luckily, others are noticing he's acting a bit odd.]
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Anti didn’t get a lot of visitors. Even the people he considered friends didn’t stop by that often, and when they did, they usually called or texted to let him know. Which is why, when his doorbell rang on Saturday morning, he elected to ignore it and continue editing the video for tomorrow.

And then it rang again. And again. And again. And by that point Will had knocked on the door to his recording room and said “Dad, I think someone’s at the door” and Anti realized that this person wasn’t going to go away. He sighed, saved the project, and stood up. Before he went to answer the door, he grabbed a switchblade from the nearest shelf and shoved it in his pocket. Just in case. You never could tell with people, sometimes.

Luckily, he opened the front door to a familiar face. Though an unexpected one. He blinked. “Marvin, what’re you doing here?”

“Well, nice t’see you too,” Marvin commented. “Fancy seein’ you here.”

“This is my apartment.”

“I know. T’at was a joke.”

“What are you doing here?” Anti repeated.

Marvin sighed, shifting position. “T’is may sound odd.”

“Just say it, dude.”

“I need a knife.”

Well, that was certainly unexpected. Anti leaned against the doorway. “Um. Why? If you’re gonna go mug someone, I don’t want my knife at the scene of the crime.”

“I’m not goin’ t’mug someone,” Marvin said, rolling his eyes. “I jus’…need to borrow one. For some time.”

Anti narrowed his eyes. Marvin was being weirdly evasive about this. But he wasn’t the type of person to go out and stab someone, so the evasion probably wasn’t one of suspicion. Maybe the best course of action would be to let him in, and then try to get the reasoning out of him. “Alright, fine. Come on in.” Anti leaned back and stepped aside, letting Marvin come into the apartment.

“Hi Mr. Marvin,” Will said, sitting at the coffee table with his DS.

“Hello, William.” Marvin smiled. “How’re you?”

“Good. It’s the weekend!” Will looked up briefly. “I think Dad wants to hurry with whatever you’re doing.”

Anti, standing next to the door to his recording room with his hand on the knob, coughed awkwardly. “Don’t call me out like this, kid,” he laughed.

“Well, it’s true,” Will said.

“I’d hate t’keep you from what’s it you were doing,” Marvin said. “We can hurry.”

“Thanks,” Anti said. “C’mon, follow me.”

Anti’s recording room had a lot of stuff on the shelves mounted on the walls, but there was one shelf in particular that he was interested in. It was surrounded by a glass case that he kept locked. This was his knife shelf. He kept it locked because one could never be too sure, having knives and a nine-year-old kid in the same apartment. “Here we are,” Anti muttered, unlocking the case.

Marvin stared at the shelf. “I…was not expectin’ t’at. Why d’you have so many?”

Anti shrugged. “Knives are cool. And you never know what sort of situation will arise. What’re you looking for? I can help you figure out which one you want.”

“Ah…” Marvin looked a little lost. “I don’ know…”

Well, this might take a while then. Anti sighed quietly, picking up one of the knives at random. “Look, the shape of the knife determines its purpose. This one’s a needle-point blade, which means it’s good for fighting, particularly stabbing. A lot of stiletto blades have a form like this.” He picked up a different one. “Or there’s a clip-point, which is good for cutting, but not so much for piercing, unless you sharpen the other side. It depends what you need the knife for.”

“You know quite a lot about t’is, don’ you?” Marvin whistled.

“I do.” Anti wasn’t able to keep a tinge of pride out of his voice. “Which is why I’ll be able to get you the best knife you need, but I need to know what you want it for.”

“Well, I…” Marvin took a step backwards. “I’m not quite…sure. I was just t’inkin’ t’at…I needed somet’ing for defense.”

Anti set down the knife. “Wait. You mean, like, to keep?”

“Not necessar—”

“No, if you want a knife for self-defense, you need your own,” Anti insisted. “Because you’ll need to carry it on you.”

Marvin squirmed a bit. “I didn’—didn’ mean t’at I wanted to keep one of yours for meself. I didn’…I suppose I didn’ t’ink I would need…I t’ought I could just borrow one of yours.”

“Yeah, well.” Anti took his phone out of his pocket and opened up his browser. “You will. I know a couple websites, I can get you something.”

“You don’ have t’do t’at,” Marvin muttered. “Jus’ forget everyt’in’.”

“Shut up, I’m doing this. I can get you a simple style, the sort of thing for beginners.” Anti scrolled through the options on his phone. “Some of them have designs or colors, you want anything like that?”

“Anti, if you’re so insistent, you can give me the website name and I’ll do it on my own,” Marvin said. “I have my own money, wouldn’ want you t’spend yours.”

“Yeah, but you’re an old man who doesn’t know how to navigate anything online,” Anti joked. “Trust me, I can spare it. Why the sudden interest in defense, anyway? You’ve been here for, what, at least a year and a half now. Seems kind of out of the blue.”

“…oh.” Marvin hesitated, looking reluctant. “Well…since Jackie…y’know, disappeared—”

Anti squeezed his phone so tightly he could’ve sworn the case cracked. “Oh.”

Marvin was quiet for a while, feeling the shift in the atmosphere. “I jus’ t’ought it would be a good idea,” he finally mumbled.

“It is,” Anti said shortly. All of a sudden, he wanted Marvin out of his apartment even more than he did earlier. “I’ll get you something, send it to you and Jackson’s house.”

Marvin nodded. “T’ank you.”

“Welcome. Now, if that’ll be all—”

“I-I’ll be goin’,” Marvin said. “See myself out.”

“Yeah, go on.”

Without another word, Marvin turned and strolled out of the room, and then the apartment, saying nothing more than a brief goodbye. Anti sighed deeply. He put all the knives back in their places on the shelf, locking the case. He probably should’ve returned to editing, but…he suddenly didn’t feel like it. With nothing else to do, he left the recording room and ended up in the living room again, sitting down on the sofa.

“Dad, what’s wrong?”

“Hmm?” Anti looked over at Will, who was staring at them. “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

“You’re rubbing your neck,” Will pointed out. “You do that when you’re upset.”

Anti froze, and lowered his hand, just then realizing that he had, indeed, been rubbing his throat. “You’re an observant kid, you know that, Will?”

“Yeah,” Will nodded solemnly. “So what’s wrong?”

“…it’s nothing,” Anti said, turning his head to stare out the window. “Nothing that you need to worry about, anyway.”

Will set his DS down on the coffee table. “Is this about Uncle Jackie?”

“No,” Anti lied.

“You miss him, huh Dad?”

Anti didn’t say anything.

“I think I get it,” Will said, kicking his feet. “I’d miss Taylor if he went away.”

“You would,” Anti agreed. “I know that.”

“So that’s how you’re doing.” Will paused. “Dad, aren’t you always saying it’s good to talk about your problems?”

“It is,” Anti said, turning away from the window. “And you know I’d listen if you wanted to talk about your problems. But this is different. This is grown-up stuff. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand a lot,” Will said defensively. “Like, I know that you say Uncle Jackie saved your life, and that’s why you’re friends with him. And that people sometimes don’t talk a lot when they get upset, and that’s what you’re doing.”

Anti smiled a bit. “Yeah, you got those parts right. But it’s a little more complicated than just that. Will, I don’t mean to say that you’re not smart for not understanding. You just haven’t been around as long, so you haven’t seen as much as I have. It’s like you and Michelle. You’ve been in second year, but she hasn’t, so you know a little bit more. You get that?”

Will nodded, slowly. “Then maybe you should talk to people who’ve been around as long as you.”

“Maybe,” Anti admitted. Silence fell for a moment. “Hey, don’t you have homework?”

Will squirmed. “I have all day, Dad. And Sunday!”

“If you get it done early, then you won’t have to worry about it!”

“I know what I’m doing!”

Anti laughed. “If you insist, bud.”
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Two months.

That was how long Jackie had been gone.

And that was how long Marvin had been having nightmares for.

He wasn’t exactly sure they were nightmares, per se. Nightmares implied dreaming, which implied that nothing in them was actually real or had actually happened. But Marvin was dead sure that these nightmares were more than just figments of his sleeping brain’s imagination.

It started maybe three days after Jackie had been taken. Marvin went to bed as usual, and he dreamed that he was trapped in a tiny room. No more than a closet, really, completely dark and with a door that wouldn’t open when he pulled and pushed on it. His vision wavered, and the ground swayed beneath his feet. The walls felt like they were getting closer, sucking the air out of his lungs. He wasn’t sure how long he was stuck in the darkness, but eventually the door opened, and he fell out, landing hard on the floor outside. He felt dizzy, and his thoughts wouldn’t stay in one direction. But when something grabbed his arm, he had the presence of mind to shout and try to pull away. That movement resulted in a long line of pain running down his forearm, pain so real that it woke him up.

And getting ready that morning, he screamed when he saw a long, thin scar along his left forearm, in the exact spot he’d been cut in the dream.

Jameson had heard him, of course, and come running, barging into the bathroom where he was. “Marvin?! What happened?! Are you hurt?!”

Marvin could only shake his head, and hold out his arm for Jameson to see. “When was t’is? H-how did it happen?!”

“I…Marvin?” Jameson had been confused. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?!”

“Because you’ve had that longer than I’ve known you,” Jameson said patiently. “I remember seeing it that first night you stayed over.”

Marvin stared at him, then looked back down at the scar. “T'en…how come I’m only noticing it now?” He whispered.

Jameson could only shake his head.

And the nightmares—the memories—only got worse from there. Marvin didn’t know what to do about them. Jameson had made every member of the group a small charm meant to ward off any…mental intrusions during sleep, but his didn’t seem to be working. He wasn’t about to go bother JJ about it; the magician was busy with an approaching show, and when he wasn’t practicing for that, he was trying to learn a scrying spell to find Jackie. He had a lot on his plate, and Marvin didn’t want to add to that.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was approaching. He found he was constantly looking over his shoulder, tensing at every little creek in the house. He’d recently found a job, at a nice little bookstore that he could take the bus to, and on his way there and back every day, he found his head was on a swivel, looking around for anything that could be causing this terrible feeling. That was why he’d made the impulsive decision to go over to Anti’s apartment and ask for a knife. So that when the terrible something arrived, he’d be at least a little prepared.

Coming back from that little outing in the morning, Marvin found the house quiet. He wasn’t sure what time JJ’s rehearsal started. Maybe he’d left already. Marvin sighed, and went into the living room. Immediately, Mr. Fluffington the cat appeared, winding around his ankles. “Hello, Mister,” Marvin said, bending over to pet the fluff. “How’re you today?”

Mr. Fluffington looked up at him with big green eyes, and mewed exactly once.

“T’at’s good to hear. Tell me if y’need anyt’ing.” Marvin carefully untangled his legs from the wandering kitty and walked over to his usual armchair, sitting down. He’d left a book on the nearby table last night, and was delighted to see that it hadn’t been moved at all. Jameson was trying to get him into more modern books, and it was working, Marvin was interested in many of these stories. Maybe he could finish this one today! There was apparently a sequel.

But about ten minutes later, a strange hissing sound interrupted his reading. Marvin looked up. Mr. Fluffington was standing on the windowsill, staring outside. The fur on his tail was standing up, his ears flat against his head. As Marvin watched, the cat hissed again, and briefly batted at the glass of the window with his front paw.

“What’s wrong?” Marvin marked the place in his book and stood up, walking over to the window. “Somet’ing bothering you?”

He looked through the glass to the outside. The street was empty, so there was nothing to be freaking Mr. Fluffington out. Yet, here he was. Looking…maybe scared, maybe angry? Marvin couldn’t quite remember what these signs meant. He searched the outside, scanning the street with his eyes.

And then he saw someone standing on the sidewalk across the house. Someone wearing all gray and smiling—

Marvin shrieked, scrambling backwards. He tripped over a wrinkle in the rug and landed hard on his backside. Even after falling, he kept backing up until he hit the opposite wall. “What the hell? What the hell?!” Marvin shook his head, holding his cane out in front of him like it was some kind of shield. “Leave me alone! Haven’ you done enough?!”

There was a small mrow? next to his elbow. Marvin looked down to see Fluffington nearby. The cat butted his head against Marvin’s arm.

Marvin stared at him for a while longer, then scooped Fluffington up in his arms and managed to stand up. Nope. Leave his cat out of this, thank you very much. “C’mon, we’re goin’ t’stay in my room today,” Marvin muttered. He grabbed the book off the nearby table as well. And without turning his back to the window once, he left the living room.
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A little under a week later, Anti received a phone call. That was just as unusual as having someone knock on his apartment door, but at least this one came with caller ID so he could see who it was. Didn’t make it any less weird, though, especially when he saw who it was. “Why’re you calling me?” He said immediately upon picking up the call. “I thought you got phone anxiety and couldn’t talk on the phone.”

“Charming way to start a conversation,” JJ muttered. “And no, I don’t have phone anxiety. Going silent when talking to people I don’t know is entirely different. Anyway, are you busy?”

Anti paused. “That depends on what you’re about to say.” He wasn’t, really. It was Friday so Will was at school, and he hadn’t started recording yet.

“This may sound odd, but…do you mind checking on Marvin for me?”

“That does sound odd,” Anti said flatly. “First, where are you? Second, why me? Third, Marvin is a grown man, why are you asking me to check on him? Is he sick again?”

“I’m at a rehearsal,” JJ explained. “I wanted to cancel, but Darla wouldn’t let me. Said we’re getting too close to the show to skip rehearsals now. And I need you to check on him because…well, he’s not sick. At least, I don’t think so. But he’s been acting…strange.”

“Hmm. How so?”

“Well, I don’t think he’s been sleeping well,” Jameson confided. “Sometimes, if I stay up late, I can…hear him. And he hasn’t left his room unless he needs to for work. He even takes his food in there, which is something he DEFINITELY doesn’t do. I think he’s worried about something, but won’t tell me. So maybe you could check on him? See if he’s…I don’t know, just alright?”

“Okay, back to my second question, then,” Anti said flatly. “Why me?”

“Well, normally I’d ask Jac—” Jameson cut off. Then when he spoke again, it was a bit slower, more cautious. “I tried calling Henrik, but he’s not picking up. Not responding to texts either. So it has to be you.”

Anti was silent for a while. If Marvin was worried about something, maybe that had to do with his knife-themed visit last week? Maybe it was a bigger problem than he’d let on. “Alright, fine, I can check on him,” he finally said.

JJ exhaled a breath of relief. “Thanks, Anti.”

“I’m going to bill you for my bus fare, Jackson.”

“That’s fine, just make sure everything’s okay.”

Anti hung up. Guess it was time to travel across town. Before he left, he grabbed one of his knives, and, after a little bit of hesitation, his gun as well. Just in case.

Travelling by bus, it was a little over thirty minutes to get from Anti’s apartment to Marvin and JJ’s house. Anti arrived at a little past midday, and found the door locked. Made sense, but he couldn’t exactly check on someone inside if he was stuck outside. Anti looked around to make sure the street was empty, then pulled a pair of paperclips out of his pocket, straightened them, and after a little bit of fiddling with the lock he was inside.

“Hello?” Anti slowly shut the door behind him. “Marvin? Jackson told me to check on you.” His calls received no answer. Didn’t Jameson say Marvin was staying in his room all the time? He was probably still there, then. Anti walked down the hall until he found the door to Marvin’s room, and he knocked. “Marvin? Are you in there?”

After a moment of silence, footsteps approached the door. It opened a crack, through which Anti could see a familiar turquoise-blue eye staring, wide, and then it opened all the way and Marvin was there. “Anti? What’re ye doin’ here?” he asked, surprised.

“Jackson told me to check on you,” Anti explained.

Marvin frowned. “Well, consider me checked on. T’ank you.” He started to close the door again, only to find Anti’s foot in the way. He sighed. “Really, I apprec’ate Jems’ concern, but I am fine.”

“If you’re fine, can I come inside?” Anti asked.

Marvin blinked. “Ahm…sure.” He stepped aside, letting Anti push the door open.

Marvin’s room looked the same as ever. Just a little messier than usual. Mr. Fluffington was sitting on the bed, in a loaf formation. “Please tell me you’ve been letting that cat out to eat and do his business,” Anti muttered.

“Well, of course. What am I, an animal?”

“I don’t know, if Jackson’s right and you’ve been staying in your room all day, then I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been keeping the cat in there with you all the time.”

Marvin bristled. “I haven’ been staying in my room all day. I go to work.”

“And apparently that’s about it.” Anti turned on Marvin. “Look, as someone whose job doesn’t give me an excuse to leave the house, I can tell you from experience that staying in one place all day is bad for you. It’ll bring you down.”

“I…I know,” Marvin stuttered. “But…t’is is…isn’ what you t’ink it is. Or what Jems t’inks it is, it sounds like.”

“Alright, then what is it?”

Before Marvin could answer, Mr. Fluffington hissed. Both men looked over at the cat in unison as he stood up, fur on end and ears flattened, and stared out the room’s door.

Marvin paled. He spun around and backed away from the doorway, eyes wide. “Close the door,” he said.

Anti blinked. “What?”

“Close the door!” Marvin yelled. He turned and ran until he was as far from the door as possible, gripping his cane tight. “Why are you jus’ standin’ there?! Close it!”

“Why are you freaking out so much?” Anti said, exasperated. “What, ‘cause the cat’s freaked out?”

“Jus’ close it! Do it!” Marvin closed his eyes, covering his ears with his hands. His cane clattered to the floor.

“I don’t under—alright, fine.” Anti huffed. He turned, and reached for the doorknob. And then he stopped. His eyes lost focus for a moment, staring into nothing. Thoughts got lost inside a gray fog.

And then Marvin screamed.

Anti had his knife drawn and his gun halfway out before he knew what was happening. He spun around to see Marvin had fallen to his knees, burying his face in his hands. “Hey!” Anti ran across the room to stand next to him. “What happened?”

Marvin didn’t move for a long moment. And then he raised his head. Two thin streams of blood were leaking from his eyes.

Anti stumbled back. He remembered this. It had happened before, a few months ago, and it had happened when—

His head whipped around the room, scanning the surroundings. “I know you’re there,” he growled. “Scared to show yourself?”

Silence. Anti backed up, pulling his gun from its holster. He turned his head left, and then when he turned it back to the right there was a grinning face inches from his own. Anti cried out and started to raise his gun, but then a blackened hand snapped out, fingers wrapping around his throat. The hand smacked his head against the wall once, twice, three times, then let go, letting him sink, dazed, to the floor.

He stayed there, slumped, for a while, until he heard a loud meow. Anti shook his head, looking down to see the cat next to him, resting his front paw on his leg. Fluffington butted his head against Anti’s arm, then darted towards the door and back again. “Wh…?” It was only then that Anti realized Marvin was gone. “Oh, I think the fuck not.” He climbed to his feet. His gun was missing, possibly dropped by him, but he didn’t have time to look for it. “Kitty, stay here, I’ll get him back.” And he ran.

The front door was wide open. Running outside, Anti looked around. He caught the tail end of a brown jacket—Marvin’s jacket—disappearing around the corner. He growled, slammed the door behind him, and broke into a sprint.

He turned the corner and saw Marvin right away, walking down the empty street as if in a daze. “Hey! Get back here!” Anti ran, catching up to Marvin easily. He grabbed him by the back of the jacket and spun him around, staring into wide, blank, bleeding eyes. “Marvin, snap the fuck out of it! You’re stronger than this!”

Marvin’s head slowly tilted to the side, as if trying to hear the words but finding it difficult. Laughter came from somewhere, and the sound of whispering. Marvin’s eyes suddenly narrowed. Anti saw what was coming a moment before it happened, throwing himself backwards in time to avoid the sudden swing of Marvin’s cane. When had he picked that back up? Anti shook his head. Not important. “I’m not your enemy! Put that down!”

Another swing. Anti couldn’t quite avoid this one, but managed to cover his head, so the topper of the cane hit his arms and not his temple. He backed up, eyes searching the street. “Where’s your gray friend now?” He half-yelled. “What, he’s gonna make you do all the fighting? Come on, Marvin! It’s Distorter! Remember what he is!”

The blank expression on Marvin’s face shifted a little, but then the blood streams from his eyes thickened. A small sound of pain came from his throat, and he swung again. Sloppily this time, and Anti dodged easily.

“He tried to kill Henrik!” Anti shouted. “He tried to kill me! He probably would’ve killed Jameson—your best friend Jems, remember?! Hey, remember how he kidnapped Jackie and we haven’t seen him in months?! Or how he’s probably done something awful to you that you that you’ve forgotten?!” His voice dropped to a low tone. “Or are you too afraid to remember?”

Marvin froze, eyes flickering. Slowly, he reached up and grabbed his head with one hand. His expression became pained. His breathing started speeding up, and for a moment, his eyes settled solidly on a spot next to Anti.

A message. Anti lunged to the side, towards the spot Marvin was looking at. He connected with something solid, which cried out as both of them fell to the ground.

Anti blinked, and it was like a curtain had been lifted. Distorter was there, clearly visible now that whatever mental trick he’d been using to filter out his presence had been lifted. Anti had him pinned to the ground, practically kneeling on his chest. Yet he was still smiling. “/Oh, nice job,/” he said, tone cold. “/Maybe you’re smarter than you look./”

“What,” Anti growled, “the fuck are you doing to him?”

“/Maybe he’s just remembering who his friends are./” Distorter shrugged awkwardly. “/You should be worried about what the fuck I’m gonna do to you./”

There was movement in the corner of Anti’s vision. He glanced toward it, seeing Distorter’s arm was moving, slithering across the sidewalk pavement. He was holding something—

Anti yelped, scrambling sideways, just in time to avoid—

BANG!

The sound of the gunshot left ringing in his ears. He shook his head, climbing to his feet. Distorter stood up, too. His left shoulder twisted awkwardly, arm dangling., but he showed no reaction. In his right hand, he was holding Anti’s gun. “/Hmm…that’s a bit too quick, huh?/” Distorter dropped the gun, kicking it away. “/For the likes of you, at least/.”

“What is your deal with me?!” Anti suddenly screamed, snapping completely. “I get it, Volt and Jackson got in your way, what did I do?!”

“/Well, you did shoot at me that one time,/” Distorter drawled. “/Do you even remember that?/ Eh. /It’s also the fact that you EXIST, you know?/”

“Oh really? Maybe I have a problem with you existing, too!” Anti reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife again. “Maybe you should just get out of here and leave us all alone!”

Distorter laughed. “/Not the best comebacks you can come up with, huh? /Or is it just that you don’t want to voice your actual thoughts where they can be heard?/”

Something inside Anti’s chest froze, beating ice through his veins. “Wh…what do you mean…?” He asked, voice hushed.

Distorter’s head lolled to the side. /“Oh, I’ve seen inside your head, remember? /All the sordid details of your past are there for me to see! /All those bloody thoughts are broadcast clearly, brainwaves more like radio waves./ Wow, they let you have a kid with you, when you think the things you do?/ Unbelievable! /Does he know how often his dad thinks about drawing strangers’ blood, or—/”

Anti screamed, and lunged. He was holding a knife in his hand. Next thing he knew the blade was covered in red, and Distorter was laughing, laughing, laughing, as the same red soaked through his gray shirt in five different places. Anti staggered back, breathing hard. He looked down at his hand. And the knife fell from his shaking fingers as horror dawned on him.

“/Are you trying to prove my point?!/” Distorter was bent over with laughter. “/God, I couldn’t have planned that better if I tried!/ Seriously!/ You—/”

BANG!

Distorter staggered sideways, a sixth red stain blossoming on the side of his shirt. Anti stared at it, then followed the path the bullet would’ve taken…over to Marvin, pointing the gun with trembling hands.

“I t’ink it’s a little diff’rent when it’s you,” Marvin said. He sounded a little shocked, but his voice didn’t waver. “How many of these do you t’ink you can survive?”

Distorter’s smile never wavered, but something changed in his black eyes. Somehow, he now looked distinctively…displeased. “/Marvin… /Marvin, I can’t believe you would do this./”

“Don’ sound so betrayed!” Marvin shrieked. “I remember what you did to me!”

Tension filled the moment, each pause waiting for something to happen as all three remained frozen. Then, without another word, Distorter turned on his heel and started walking away. Only a few steps later, and anyone watching had their vision fuzz over, and he was gone.

Marvin let out a breath he’d been holding. He turned to look at Anti, still standing frozen, and walked toward him. As soon as he got close enough, Marvin leaned down and picked up the blood-covered knife from where it had fallen on the ground. “Do you…want this back?” he asked.

“Don’t give that to me,” Anti whispered.

Marvin seemed a little surprised at the response, but he nodded, flipping it closed and stuffing it in his pocket. He looked a little unsure about what to do with the gun, and ended up just holding it. “We should…should go back, right?”

Anti didn’t say anything. But he nodded. And when Marvin started walking, he followed.

They arrived back at the house, finding that nothing inside had changed. Anti settled down on the sofa in the living room, staring into nothing while Marvin made sure the cat was alright. When Marvin returned, holding Mr. Fluffington in his arms, Anti was still in the same place.

Marvin sat in his usual chair, letting Fluffington loaf on his lap. “Anti…” He cleared his throat. “You seem kind of…shaken. Do you…want to talk abou’ it?”

“No.”

Marvin watched Anti for a while more. Then nodded. He set the gun and the knife on the nearest table, then picked up a book and started to read.

A few minutes passed in silence.

“It’s not my fault,” Anti suddenly blurted out.

Marvin looked up. “Of course not.”

“It happens sometimes. You know, your thoughts get kind of carried away?”

“Of course.”

“And you don’t really even want them.”

“No, not at all.”

“But sometimes you just keep thinking the same thing, just kind of going in circles and feeling the same thing and it’s like you can’t let go of it like some kind of fucking obsession and you know it’s not—” Anti broke off, taking a deep shaky breath.

Marvin nodded. “It’s not good, is it?”

“No.”

More silence.

For a while, they just stayed there. After a few minutes passed, Anti shifted position on the sofa, ending up closer to Marvin. After ten more minutes, he relaxed a bit, curling into the couch cushions. Twenty minutes after that, and Anti had closed his eyes. He wasn’t asleep. But he felt like he could’ve fallen asleep, if he wanted. The silence was as warm and soft as being wrapped in a blanket.

Marvin didn’t say anything. Sometimes you needed words. Sometimes you’d already said all you could. And that was fine. You’re allowed to take your time.

Part Twenty-Three of the PW Timeline
A JSE Fanfic
[This is part of a complete series I wrote from July 2019 to July of 2022. Chase and Marvin set about finding information and people that will help in their investigation into where Anti took Schneep and JJ. Meanwhile, Mina continues to gather information about what happened to Schneep during the time she was away—turning to unlikely sources to do so—and Anti continues his attempts to manipulate Jameson.]
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Someone was at the front door. They had been for the past minute or so, knocking regularly every couple seconds. Given the very clear ‘No Solicitors’ sign out front, this person was either a very stubborn salesman or visiting for some other reason.

But Jennifer Newson—formerly Dr. Newson, now unsure if she had the right to call herself that—didn’t trust visitors who dropped by without a call. They were usually strangers, and not the nice kind who were all “Oh I baked too many cookies so I’m delivering them to the neighborhood!” No. Recently, all the unexpected visitors she had were either journalists or there to tell her what an awful person she was. Which…they had a point. But it didn’t give them the right to harass her.

Still, out of curiosity, she peeked through the peephole in the door. The visitor was a dark-haired woman, wearing a brown jacket. She kept checking the time on her phone. Worried about something? Did she have somewhere to be? That possibility only further intrigued that curiosity. Newson hesitated, then slowly opened the front door a crack. “…hello?”

“Hello, I am sorry to bother you.” The woman’s voice was instantly familiar. Or rather, her accent was. “I just wanted to ask you some things. You are Newson, yes? The doctor who was on trial?”

“Why are you asking?” Newson narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She’d instantly known where she heard that accent before, and her mind was already forming connections. Could this woman know Henrik von Schneeplestein? A friend, perhaps? If she was, there could only be unpleasant reasons for this visit.

“I wanted to talk to you,” the woman said. “My name is Mina Pfeiffer—”

“You’re his ex?!” Newson blurted out.

“No! No, we are not exes,” Mina said. “We may have separated, but we did not get a divorce. It is different, a-and for different reasons. Anyway, can I talk to you?”

Newson was too shocked to say anything at first. What was Henrik’s ex-wife—or separated wife, whatever—doing here? Again, Newson was struck by the thought that nothing good could come from this. “I’m sorry, I’m actually uhhhh busy right now.” She started to slowly close the door. “You know how it is. Sorry.”

“Wait!” Mina hurriedly put her foot in the door, just in time to prevent it from closing. “This is not what you think! I am not angry with you.”

…That was even more unexpected than her appearance in the first place. Newson was stunned into silence again, for a significantly longer period of time, as she processed the possibility that someone so close to Henrik wasn’t angry at her. Was this…a trick?

Mina tried to fill the silence. “I know, I probably should be. And I have to be honest: I cannot say I…like you. But I need to—I-I need to know everything that happened. I have seen the news stories, and I’ve talked to the other doctor at the hospital, but…I-I don’t know. I do not know. I think you could help.”

Newson couldn’t help but laugh. Without opening the door any further, she said, “If you saw the trial, you know I was fucking awful to your husband. Why would you want my help for anything?”

“Because nobody will talk to me!” Mina’s voice cracked. “His friends hate me, Dr. Laurens was nice but I know she cannot discuss details. I even tried to find some of Henrik’s coworkers, but they were all busy and awkward and didn’t want to talk to me. I-I have—” She let out a small breath, heavy with exhaustion, and ran her hand through her hair. “I have been trying so hard to make up for the lost time. I-I need to talk to him so badly. But then, Dr. Laurens says he is…gone. Again. That he has been taken. So I cannot do that, a-and I…might not be able to ever again.” She pauses, blinking.

Unconsciously, Newson has opened the door a bit. It was…scary. Having someone so close to you disappear. She knew that. “You never know. The police could find him,” she said gently.

“But if they do not, I am missing this time,” Mina said quietly. “I need…I need to know what happened to him while I was gone. So that I can…” She pauses significantly, hesitating to finish that sentence. “I just need to know. Everything. You are the last person I can talk to.”

Newson laughed again, grimly. “Things must be really bad, then.”

Mina didn’t say anything more. She just…looked at her.

After a few moments, Newson sighed, and opened the door. “Alright. I can talk to you about him. It’ll put me in a horrible light, but I’ll help.”

Mina brightened up immediately. She started to step forward, but then hesitated. “You will tell me…everything you know? Even though it will make you look bad?”

“Yeah. I mean, I can’t hide from it, you know? I was…terrible. Can’t pretend I wasn’t, that’s how you stay stuck.” Newson sighed. “At least, that’s what Tom says.”

“Who?”

“My, uh…counselor,” Newson said awkwardly. “I should have gone to see someone sooner, but—a-anyway, I get it. You’re missing someone, so you’re trying to do what you can to make up for that. Seeking out information is pretty harmless.” At least compared to what she herself did in that same situation. “So…yeah, you can come on in. You don’t have to stay, though. If you decide you actually do hate me.”

A pause. “Thank you very much,” Mina said, her voice almost a whisper.

“You’re welcome, I guess.” Newson stepped aside so Mina could come in. She really hoped this wouldn’t turn out to be a mistake.

But…somehow, she didn’t think it would be. Maybe it was because…for the first time in a while, she felt there was someone who knew, if only a little.
.............................................................................................

“I must say, I’m surprised to see you, Mr. Brody. Is everything okay? People don’t usually just drop by the police station.”

Chase laughed awkwardly, shifting in his chair. For some reason, he was flashing back to the couple times he’d gotten in trouble in elementary school. Probably because it was the same setup, with him sitting across from an authority figure sitting at a desk. But this was different. Detective Nix was much nicer than his school principal. Of course, he also had the power to get him in much more trouble. So maybe that was why he was a bit nervous. “No, everything’s fine. I was heading somewhere else and this was on the way. I, um…I wanted to ask you about something.”

“Oh?” Detective Nix idly straightened some of the papers on his desk. “And what is it?” He sounded like he already had a good idea.

“Well…” Chase hesitated. “I just wanted to know if you could…like…tell me how the case is coming along. With the search. And stuff.”

Nix nodded, his expectations fulfilled. “You know you could have called me. You still have the number I gave you, right?”

“Yeah. But, uh, like I said, it was on the way.” Chase laughed again. God, why was he laughing? That didn’t sound suspicious at all. Not that there was any reason to suspect him of anything illegal. Nope. Just nerves. “Anyway…do you guys have anything new? Figured out?”

A pause. Then, Nix sighed. “Mr. Brody. If you’re worried about us being able to find Anti and your friends, you don’t have to. The police force is very capable, after all.”

“You didn’t manage to track down Anti or Schneep during those nine months.” Chase immediately regretted saying that the moment the words left his mouth. He hadn’t meant to; it was just a knee jerk sort of reaction.

But, surprisingly, Nix gave him a small smile. “Well. That’s true. But that was because this Anti was well-supplied, with various stashes and safe houses across the city, and probably outside of it as well. Now, we know about his existence, we’ve found many of those safe houses and confiscated their contents. And, with your help, we’ve even uncovered his website on the dark web. He’s running out of places to hide, and it’s really only a matter of time before we corner him.”

Chase nodded. “I know, I know. I’m not doubting you guys or anything. I don’t know why I said that, really. Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “But…even knowing you guys are on the case, I’m still worried. A bit less worried, but…still. That doesn’t just go away. And I’d really like to get updated on what’s happening. Preferably…frequently? If it’s not too much trouble.”

Nix stared at him. The silence that followed could not have been longer than a few seconds, but it felt like minutes to Chase. What he said, about being worried, that was true. But he and Marvin had decided they would no longer sit on the sidelines and wait for something to happen. They were going to look into this on their own. Which required information. And that was the true main purpose of his stop by the police station.

It was also why he was so nervous. Sure, doing an investigation on their own time wasn’t illegal. There was nothing saying that only the police could look into cases. Private investigators existed, after all. Not to mention true crime shows and podcasts did their own amateur investigations anyway, and those weren’t against the law.

But still. He was nervous. If Nix, an experienced detective, figured out what they were planning and tried to talk them out of it, Chase was worried he would cave easily and give up. And that meant going back to just watching…and waiting…and worrying. And he was so tired of that. He so badly wanted to help, and this was what he could think of doing.

“Alright, I can tell you a couple details,” Nix finally said, breaking the silence. He leaned back in his chair and pulled open one of his desk drawers. “Just so you know we’re on the case.”

Chase slumped in relief. “Thank you.”

“It’s no problem.” After a short moment, Nix pulled out a file and set it on the desk, opening up to a printed street map of the city. “Here’s an example of our progress.” He pushed the map towards Chase, which had circles and dots on it in pen. “Those circles are where we suspect Anti has safe houses and weapon stashes. If it’s crossed out, that means we’ve found something there. Those two scribbles were mistaken locations.”

Chase looked over the map. “That’s a lot of X’s,” he muttered. There were about ten circles drawn on the map, and only three remained un-crossed out.

“Exactly.”

“How’d you find all these places?”

“Well, it appears that Anti has himself a symbol. Hang on.” Nix pulled a loose piece of notebook paper out of the stack on his desk, then grabbed a pen from the nearby cup and started drawing. “It’s a semi-common practice, often used in gangs. It signals to other gangs, as well as anyone deep in the black market or various criminal enterprises, that this territory belongs to them. Anti seems to be using it for a similar purpose. Possibly to either attract his ‘customers’ or warn off threats.” And Nix slid the drawing across the table to Chase.

At first, the symbol appeared simple. A circle, inside a diamond, inside a square. But in actuality, it was a bit different. The ‘circle’ was actually a dot inside a hollow circle, and the left and right corners of the diamond were curved. The overall impression was that of an eye tilted ninety degrees so it was vertical instead of horizontal. “Huh.” Chase furrowed his brow. “Isn’t that…the one…?”

“That your friend Henrik saw, that led us to finding the first safe house with your friend Jackie inside,” Nix nodded. “It was painted on the street sign, but we’ve also found it scratched on fences and spray-painted on building walls. Never any bigger than hand-sized. It always means that Anti has something nearby.”

“That seems…kinda stupid, honestly,” Chase muttered. “If someone figures it out, it’s all over.”

Nix shrugged. “Gangs usually bank on the safety of numbers, thinking we’d be too scared to get in a fight with them. But in this case, we know it’s just one person. Not as much risk.”

Chase nodded slowly. “Um…can I keep this?”

“Sure.” Nix shrugged.

“Thanks.” Chase folded up the paper and put it in his coat pocket. “Uh…do you have any ideas…where Anti himself could be?”

“Hopefully, at one of these remaining locations,” Nix said, gesturing at the map again. “We haven’t found the symbol at any of these places yet, but we’re looking. And if he’s not in any of those, well, there’s only so many places in one city someone can hide.”

Again, Chase nodded. But what if…what if they weren’t in the city? What if Anti had fled, taking Jameson and Schneep with him? He pushed the thought out of his head. No, he shouldn’t assume things that they had no proof of. That wasn’t good for his mental state, he knew. “Thanks, Detective,” he said, standing up. “Can you…You have my number, right?”

“I’ll call you with any updates,” Nix assured him.

“Thanks.”

Nix tilted his head. “You have a good day.”

“Yeah, you too. Bye.”

“Goodbye.”

Chase turned around, trying not to walk too fast as he left the police station. He came for information, and he was walking away with some. Not as much as he would have liked. But it was a start.
.............................................................................................

Marvin took a deep breath as he stood outside the door. It was cool. Everything was okay. Nothing to worry about. In fact, shouldn’t he be happy? He was visiting a friend, one they had feared they’d never see again. That was great. He was just anxious. That’s all.

He cleared his throat, and stepped inside the room.

Jackie yelped, sitting straight up in bed and wildly looking around. He calmed down when he noticed Marvin, but still looked a bit shaken. “By jesus! Marvin!” He leaned forward, breathing out. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry, I thought you’d noticed me. I mean…the door is open. I was standing right there.” Marvin shifted awkwardly on his feet.

“You were. I was just, uhh…not paying attention,” Jackie said.

Marvin narrowed his eyes. The TV wasn’t on. Jackie didn’t have a book or a phone or computer. When Marvin had approached the doorway—and stood there for quite a while—Jackie had just been staring at nothing. Marvin assumed he didn’t say anything for some other reason, but…“Daydreaming again?”

“Yeah,” Jackie mumbled. “But hey. You’re here now. C’mon, sit down.” He gestured to a nearby chair.

Walking closer to the hospital bed, Marvin grabbed said chair and pulled it over. He sat down slowly. “So…How are you?”

“Uhhhh good, I guess. I mean, all things considered.” Jackie shrugged. “I can, like, walk better. But apparently I still have to stay in bed most of the time, unless it’s for physical therapy. Kind of boring. But that’s fine.”

“You’re…impatient, right?” Marvin asked. “It’s only been like two weeks, you know. This kind of thing doesn’t just fix itself overnight.”

“No, no, I know that.” Jackie waved off Marvin’s comment. “Doesn’t make it better, though.”

“Yeah.” Marvin nodded understandingly.

“Especially since…” Jackie hesitated. Then he scooted a bit closer to Marvin. “I met up with Jack a few days ago. He told me…he told me that Anti got Schneep again.” His voice cracked.

“…he did,” Marvin growled. “Fucking freak.”

Jackie was gripping the edge of the hospital blankets. He squeezed them tight, wringing them back and forth. “I—I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said quietly. “Schneep…Hen. The thought of—Anti—and Hen being stuck there again, it’s—it’s just awful.”

Marvin nodded awkwardly. He wasn’t sure if Jackie was looking for reassurance or just venting his anxieties. “Do you…want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“I—I don’t know. Why it’s so awful, I guess.”

Jackie looked at Marvin directly in the eyes—something that his friends rarely did, since they knew how Marvin wasn’t comfortable with eye contact. “Because Anti is FUCKING TERRIBLE,” Jackie said, dead serious. “Nobody else was there. I know how he interacted with Schneep. I-it was…” Jackie took a deep breath. “Are you sure you want to hear about this?”

“If you want to talk about it,” Marvin said evenly.

“I-it was just—the things he DID, Marvin. It was like the whole thing was a game for Anti. I mean, I wasn’t there for all of it. Hen and I were separated a lot, I was stuck in the basement most of the time and he was upstairs. But what I did see a-and experience…fuck, man. I’d go a few days without seeing Schneep, maybe even a week or two, and then he’d show up again, a-and he’d just be a wreck. Half the time, he’d be sobbing because of what Anti made him help with. The other half, he wouldn’t even know where he was, o-or what he was doing there, because Anti would feed him a bunch of these lies, fucking… DELIBERATELY twisting his delusions.” Jackie shuddered, his tone disgusted. “Fucking…evil. Evil is the only word I can say.”

He paused, but then continued. “I-I remember one time, Schneep came down the stairs, and I had to just sit with him because he was terrified. He kept saying ‘Anti gets power from speaking his name,’ over and over, in English and German, too. Crying about Anti’s eyes being in the ceiling, or something. Calling him some sort of shadow monster. A-and I had to—I had to help him. He was having another panic attack, and I had to ground him.” Jackie’s eyes grew distant. “It…it hardly ever worked. Usually he just wore himself out and eventually fell asleep. I wonder if Anti was drugging him or something. Using some sort of substance to make it all worse. Because…it never worked. It never worked. He was just so…so scared of it all.”

Marvin couldn’t say anything. He was stunned, shocked speechless. Even if he could put the horror he felt into words, his throat had closed up. All he did was shake his head.

Jackie buried his face in his hands. He took a few more deep breaths, until the shakiness eventually subsided. “Sorry, Marv,” he mumbled. “You didn’t come here to hear all my trauma.”

“U-uh a-act—” Marvin struggled on his words for a bit before giving up and turning to sign language. 'Actually…I did come here to talk about something serious. I guess it’s related.'

Jackie looked up at him. “What d’you mean?” he asked cautiously.

'Chase and I are going to investigate,' Marvin said. 'We’re going to find out where Anti is, and where Schneep and JJ are.'

“…what.” Jackie blinked. “You…are going to…Marvin. I’m not sure if you know this, but that’s exactly how I got kidnapped. And I have experience in investigation.”

'We’re not going to confront him or anything. Might not even go to any physical places. But we have to do SOMETHING,' Marvin emphasized. 'So, if we can at least figure that out, we can tell the police and they can do all the dangerous shit.'

“…okay.”

Marvin made a strange choking sound. “Y-you—just—like that?!”

Jackie smiled sadly. “I told you, right? I can’t stop thinking about Schneep being back there. And JJ, too, fuck. Anti was pulling every trick in the manipulation book on him, and it’s probably even worse now. So. Yeah. What can I do to help?”

Honestly, Marvin hadn’t expected it to be this easy. He didn’t know if Jackie would want to talk about the serious stuff. But apparently, he did. So…might as well. “Um…just talk about what you remember, I guess. Like, any details that might help find him.”

Jackie nodded. “Right. Of course. This detective came by a while ago, asked about the same thing. Only fair that you guys know too. Apparently the police have found a whole bunch of locations, including the first house.”

“First house?”

“The one Schneep and I were trapped in,” Jackie explained. “And Rya, too—er, Dr. Laurens. You know her?” He waited for Marvin to nod. “Yeah. She was there for a bit, but she escaped. And after that happened, Anti moved me back to that second house, where the police eventually found me. Well.” He paused, thinking about it. “Actually, I was in that flat for a while.”

“…you were in an apartment?” Marvin asked, confused. “Do the police know about that?”

“Yeah, yeah, I told them, too. It was—okay, let me start over.” Jackie sat up straight, holding his hands out in front of him as if indicating the length of something. He gestured vaguely along this imaginary length, silently getting his thoughts in order. Putting together a timeline. “Okay. I track down Schneep. He’s in this house with Anti, and I get caught and also kept there. That’s the first house. After months, Anti abandons Schneep or something, and for some reason takes me to this flat. I don’t remember much of that trip, I was drugged for most of it. But eventually, we go back to the first house. Rya—Dr. Laurens—is there for a while, then she escapes, and Anti takes me back to the flat. I think he was out of sedatives, because I was conscious for this. Then JJ gets caught, and Anti takes us to a second house, where we stay until he decides to take just JJ…and Schneep, apparently. And leaves me behind.”

Marvin nods. “So, those two trips to an apartment. You’re sure it was the same place both times?”

“Uh-huh. I recognized the wallpaper and stuff.” Jackie shrugged. “Probably not all that reliable, considering the drugging I mentioned before, but I’m like 90% sure.”

“Huh.” Marvin pulled his fingers. “Sounds like he retreats to this apartment or wherever when things get tight for him. It sounds like the two times he brought you there, he was worried about information about him getting out through Schneep or Dr. Laurens.”

“I thought so, too,” Jackie muttered.

“Do you think he’s there now?”

Jackie blinked. “Huh?”

“I mean…if he goes there when shit gets rough, and the last times he did was because he lost a hostage or whatever, wouldn’t he do it now?” Marvin reasoned. “After all, you could tell the police information same as Schneep or Laurens.”

“…huh. I…hadn’t thought of that.” Jackie sat back, and considered it. “But…I know about this flat. Would he risk going there?”

“You don’t know anything about what’s outside, though, right? And that’s what’s important.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” Jackie looked at Marvin, impressed. “Good job, man. I didn’t catch that possibility. You ever think about being an investigator?”

“Nope. Sounds like too much pressure.” Marvin shrugged.

“But…you’re doing investigator stuff right now.”

“Yeah, but only for JJ and Schneep. I can’t imagine doing it for strangers like you do. Seems…overwhelming,” Marvin said carefully.

Jackie gave him a small smile. “Well…if you ever change your mind.”

“I’ll make a note of that.” Marvin returned the smile, then dropped it, going back to the serious matter at hand. “Now. Is there anything else you remember?”
.............................................................................................

Laurens wasn’t sure why she continued to come in to work. She hadn’t had anything to do for the past two weeks. Dr. Fells didn’t want to assign her any more patients because of the “pressure she must be under,” and without patients, there was nothing for a psychiatrist to do.

Yet, it seemed a good thing that she kept clocking in. Because visitors kept coming here looking for her.

She was working the front desk today. Technically, she didn’t HAVE to, but again, there was practically no job for her without anyone to work with. So, she volunteered to take over the desk during her shift so that busier people could do their duties. She was idly playing solitaire on the desktop computer when the front door opened. And when she looked up, she saw a pair of familiar faces.

“Oh cool, you’re just right here.” Chase smiled and waved at her, quickly closing the distance between them as Marvin followed.

Laurens nodded at them, faintly surprised. “Um…hello. What are you two doing here? You know, now that…” She hesitated to say it. “Well, there’s no reason to.”

“We, uh, wanted to talk to you, actually.” Chase fidgets with the zipper on his jacket. “See…we had this idea. We really wanted to, like, do something to help. You know? A-and we thought…you might want to help, too?”

Laurens stared at him over the edge of the desk. “Sorry, I’m a bit confused. Help what?”

“Uh—”

“So you remember how I broke in here?” Marvin asked. “To do some investigating? We’re gonna do more of that.”

“Breaking and entering?!” Laurens asked, alarmed.

“No, investigating!” Marvin hurried to correct. “We’re probably not gonna break into anywhere.”

“He means we’re DEFINITELY not going to do that!” Chase added, somewhat panicked. “Because that’ll be illegal and dangerous!”

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to be so loud about it.” Laurens was still unsure what the two of them were proposing. “What do you mean by investigating?”

Chase coughed, clearing his throat. He leaned closer to Laurens, across the front desk. “We’re going to try and find Schneep and JJ.”

Laurens blinked. “…wait. You mean…like vigilantes?”

“We were thinking more like private eyes,” Marvin said.

“But…don’t you need a license for that?”

“Actually, no,” Chase said. “I mean, you CAN get one. It gives you some credibility. But it’s not required by law, according to Jackie. At least, not in the UK.” He paused. “HE has one, though. Says it makes it a lot easier. But, uh…we’re not becoming investigators. We’re just…looking for them. On our own. And…we wondered if you wanted to help.”

“I…” Laurens had to process this. Honestly, it seemed like a very dumb idea. Because…what if, in the course of looking for their friends…they found them? And, therefore, found Anti? What would he do if he knew they were searching for them? “Ar-aren’t the police handling this? You two really don’t need to—”

“We’re not going to just WAIT,” Marvin interrupted, frustrated.

“Well, why not?” Laurens stood up from her seat at the desk. “Yes, it’s terrible waiting, but it’s a lot less dangerous than looking for a serial killer!”

“Look, we might be in danger anyway,” Marvin said. “We’re friends with the two guys who Anti seems to be obsessed with. I wouldn’t be surprised if he decides to kidnap or murder us one day.”

“Grim, much?” Chase muttered.

“Grim, but possible,” Marvin insisted. “So, might as well try to do something along the way.”

Laurens started to protest again, but then stopped. Didn’t Marvin have a point? After all, Anti had…taken her, as well. Just because she was assigned to Schneep’s case. She didn’t like reflecting on the month she’d spent in captivity with Jackie, but that didn’t erase it from the past. Or erase the possibility that Anti could, once again, try to find her. She shuddered. “…alright. I guess…I can help a bit. I don’t really have much else going on, anyway.”

Chase and Marvin exchanged a look. Happy that she agreed, but also not forgetting the seriousness of what they were doing. “Thanks,” Chase said softly. “Is there…a time we can get together to talk, or…?”

“I have a pretty regular schedule. My shifts are around ten to three each day,” Laurens said.

“Great. Neither of us have anything to do, really. My only thing is when I have the kids over for the weekend, and it’s Monday so they’re already back with Stacy.”

“Yeah I got nothing. Sooner the better,” Marvin added.

The three of them talked for a few minutes before agreeing to meet tomorrow at 3:30, with Chase’s house as the designated meeting spot. Once they decided on that, the two men quickly left the hospital, with Chase once again thanking Laurens for agreeing to help them. Marvin didn’t say anything, but he nodded every time Chase thanked her.

Now alone again, Laurens sat back down, leaned back in her chair, and let out a long, slow breath. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. Her every instinct was screaming “Danger! Danger! You’re going to get killed!” But…Anti had already planned to do that. So, really, what was stopping him from doing that on his own? Marvin was right. Might as well try to fix this mess on the way. So, even if she was still uneasy about it, she would try. She would try.
.............................................................................................

It had been two weeks exactly. JJ could tell that Anti was going crazy being stuck in the tiny apartment. He was spending more and more time pacing about randomly, or muttering to himself angrily while on the computer. When not doing either of those two things, he was either messing with Schneep—he tried to do it when Jameson wasn’t paying attention, but JJ could still hear the things he was saying to Henrik—or pretending everything was normal.

That seemed to be his new strategy for dealing with Jameson. Pretend everything was normal. Like they were a normal family, and not, in fact, an assassin/serial killer and his estranged brother who he’d kidnapped. At first, Jameson tried to resist this strange new change. It was…weird. But that only led to Anti’s mask cracking, giving in to threatening him and Schneep. So, now? Jameson just went along with it. Not to say he cooperated. But he didn’t cause any trouble. Maybe, if Anti slowly lowered his guard enough, JJ and Schneep could find some way to escape.

Part of the “normalcy” strategy was dinner. For the past five nights, Anti had dragged Jameson over to the apartment’s kitchen, where there was a small square table set up, and made him eat dinner with him. As if that could convince Jameson to be friendly again.

Either way, Jameson refused to participate. Every night, he would just sit there quietly, listening to Anti talk. Afterwards, he would go back to the bedroom to bring Schneep some food, since he wasn’t allowed out. He’d stay there, talk with Schneep some more, and eventually fall asleep, waiting to see if the next day would bring an opportunity to get out of here.

This night was no different. At around 6:00, according to the living room’s wall clock, Anti put away his computer and silently appeared in the bedroom doorway, staring at Jameson until he stood up and followed him into the kitchen. Tonight was soup. Not that it mattered. The same thing happened anyway, they sat down, and Anti started talking about something or other.

It was always the same. Why? Didn’t Anti know by now that this wasn’t going to get Jameson to like him again?

Maybe he knew. But maybe, he just wanted to pretend.

“—swear to god, it’s like they’re trying to be as annoying as possible.”

Anti sounded irritated. Jameson briefly snapped out of his internal reflection on the fruitlessness of this exercise, wondering what he was going on about tonight.

“Maybe I just never noticed it because I never spent this long in this place,” Anti was saying. He scowled. “But I don’t think that’s it. I think they’re new in the building. Fucking hell, though, I swear they’re tap dancing up there. Have you noticed it?”

Jameson blinked, and said nothing.

“Of course you have, not sure how you couldn’t,” Anti continued. “It’s at like three a.m., too, fuck.”

Wait a minute. Jameson actually knew what he was talking about. A couple times the past few nights, when he couldn’t sleep, he could hear the sound of heavy footsteps from upstairs. It didn’t help the sleeping matter. Partially because of the noise, partially because it was really bizarre to think about other people, going about their lives, completely unaware of what was happening literally beneath their feet.

“I don’t want to talk to them or anything,” Anti muttered. “Don’t want to show my face to anyone around here. It’s very identifiable.” His tone sounded bitter as he unconsciously reached up to touch the scars on his face. “And I don’t even have anything here to make a proper disguise. Shit sucks.”

Jameson started to space out again. This wasn’t anything important. He looked down at the table, stirring his soup with a spoon. He wondered where all the utensils were. He hadn’t seen any in the two weeks he and Schneep had been stuck here.

“Luckily, nobody here cares. Which is good, that’s why I picked it out. This neighborhood sucks, most people know not to poke their heads into places where they might lose it.” Anti chuckled, but then his expression darkened. “Although…there was this one guy. A real fucking pox. He’d show up at everyone’s doors asking them to keep the place neat. Shut the fuck up, nobody cares about neatness in a place like this.”

Where was this apartment located, anyway? That bit about the neighborhood sucking was the first hint Jameson had gotten about that. Huh. Maybe, if he figured it out, he could then find some way to get a message about where they were to…someone? The police, maybe?

“He might’ve just been annoying if he hadn’t gotten all hot about the graffiti.” Anti leaned back in the chair. “Wanted to find out who in the building was doing it. And at that point, he crossed the line. Can’t have anyone paying too close attention to that.” A smile twisted his face. “Well. Doesn’t matter now. That guy’s been taken care of.”

He said it so casually. Jameson tried to keep his expression neutral. It didn’t matter. He already knew what sort of person Anti was. Anti had made that abundantly clear two weeks ago, when he’d left Jackie behind.

Was he still talking? He was. Jameson gave up on paying attention and let his mind wander. He wondered if Schneep would be awake when he went back to the bedroom. Wondered if he’d ask him about how dinner went. Wondered if…if Anti would follow through on any of his threats he’d made towards Schneep.

Well. According to Anti, that depended on Jameson.

And he knew he couldn’t let that happen.

So, for now, he sat at the table and pretended to listen to Anti. Pretended Anti was right, in thinking everything would go back to normal.
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It was late into the night by now. Newson could see the moon through the gap in her curtains. She couldn’t remember the last time she spent so much time with someone. And of all the people, it was Henrik’s ex-wife. Neither of them had meant this to happen. But somehow, they were here now. Honestly? Newson strongly suspected the half-empty bottle of wine on her coffee table had something to do with it. But she didn’t care.

“It’s the chance that…that we could have missed this, you know?” Mina was saying, half-lying and half-sitting on Newson’s sofa. “I think we never should have took a break in the first place. That everyone was right, I should have stayed by him both times.”

Newson leaned back in her chair, settling against the upholstery. “What was the deal in the first place? Why’d you take that break? Fighting or something?”

“He started to act strange,” Mina said. Her eyes glazed over with recollection. “Looking back now, I recognize the symptoms. But at the time, I just thought he was having weird mood swings from stress. I did worry he was depressed. But he did not want to talk about it. Eventually, out of nowhere, he accused me of…of…ah, what’s the word? Being…unfaithful.”

“He thought you cheated on him?” Newson repeated, surprised. “You seem really nice, though.”

“Danke. I mean, Thank you. But see, this is the strange part. He thought the other man was my tennis instructor. But…I do not have one. I like playing, but only with friends, for fun. Why would I have an instructor? And I think, at the time I think, I think…” Mina stumbled over her words for a bit. “I think he is wanting me out of the picture for some reason, and making up an excuse. So I say, ‘we take a break.’ And we do, and then about a month later he realizes the truth. This disorder that he has.”

“But you said you wanted to get back together, right?”

“Well, this is the thing. We were starting to. Around in…last June…ish.” Mina shrugged. “His idea. But he was not quite sure, so he didn’t want to be public about it in case we didn’t fit anymore. I say, yes. I want this. And…and things were all going great. Until that August.” Her eyes started to tear up. “And then I left. And I never should have done that.”

“Hey, I mean, it’s not your fault, is it?” Newson shrugged, mirroring Mina exactly. “Everyone was fooled. That other guy, uhhhh I’ve forgot his name, but the real bad guy. He did a good job of setting him up. We all thought he did it.”

“His friends hate me now,” Mina muttered. “Because I left.”

“Tell them to fuck off next time you see them. I bet they thought he did it, too.”

“I should have come back sooner.” Mina leaned forward, rubbing the sides of her head. “Before he was taken again. Because now…now I may not see him again. I may not get to tell him I’m sorry, or that I really…I really still love him. Or that…” She trailed off. “They’ll never meet. A-and I cannot bear to think of that. I should have come back sooner. Should have kept up with the news. But I did not. And now I’ve missed him. I-I cannot see him again. It’s too late.”

Newson fell quiet. Then, she nodded. “It sucks, doesn’t it? It’s like having a hole inside you.”

“You understand?” Mina asked, looking up.

“Kinda. It’s not exactly the same thing, but…kinda.” Newson paused. “I had a brother, you know. Jeremy. We were twins, each other’s only family. But he’s gone now. I thought Henrik killed him, but apparently it’s that other guy who did it.” She blinked. “That lost time…I hate it. I hate that we’ll never celebrate our birthday again. Or that I can’t text him and ask if he wants to go to dinner at that new shop that opened recently. Even the little things, you know? Like, he used to constantly complain about people vandalizing the building he lived in, talked about all this little graffiti. It was annoying, sometimes, but…now I miss it. He was determined to find the culprit. But he never did.”

Mina nodded. “The little things. Henrik and I would watch TV together. Only with each other.” She giggled a bit. “He would always complain when a character was injured and then instantly got back up. He said it was inaccurate and no fun, anyway.”

It was strange to hear these things about Henrik. And, really, it made Newson feel even worse than she already did about how she treated him. For the longest time, he was just the bad guy in her mind. The one who killed Jeremy. Not someone who had friends and a job and a partner. Not someone who did things like complain about TV shows. Maybe that was why she didn’t have any problem doing those things. Hard to be cruel to someone you knew was a person.

“…Mina. Listen.” Newson sat straight up. “You have a chance.”

“Huh?” Mina glanced at her, confused.

“Henrik isn’t dead. I don’t think this bad guy would hurt him. Er…at least not permanently. You have a chance to talk to him a-and watch TV shows together again.”

“Jennifer, they can’t find him,” Mina said softly.

“Well, then, you fucking do it. I don’t know.” Newson shook her head. “And if you can’t, get help. Henrik had friends, they’re probably as upset as you are.”

“Did you hear me? I said they probably hate me now.”

“I dunno,” Newson said vaguely. “Maybe they’ll put that aside if you’re real with them. Like you have been with me. I mean, seriously. How did this happen?”

Mina didn’t say anything, but she still looked unsure.

“Hate is a product of love,” Newson said quietly. “If you love someone, you hate those that hurt them. Even if it was an accident or misunderstanding or you only thought you knew what was going on. Henrik’s friends love him a lot. He’s lucky like that. Not everyone has that. So it makes sense they’re defensive of him. It’s not really your fault. After all, you didn’t mean any harm. So you have that going for you.”

“It is getting them to listen that’s the problem,” Mina mumbled.

“Well they can’t listen if you don’t talk,” Newson pointed out. “You gotta try, at least. Maybe you start out with the big news. You know. Come right out and say it. That’ll get them to think about it further.”

“I think…you are right,” Mina said tentatively. “It will be tough. But I have to try.”

“You have to,” Newson repeated. “Oh. And, uh, if I can give you any other advice? Just…about life in general? Don’t…hate. Even if it seems right. It’s just poison.” Her voice fell quiet. “It’s just poison.”

Mina stood up, staying surprisingly steady. She walked over to Newson, and took her hand, squeezing it tight. “Thank you,” she said softly.

Newson rolled her eyes. “It’s still weird to me that you showed up. But…well. You’re welcome, I guess.” Her voice softened. “I should be thanking you, actually. So…thank you. You’re a good person.”

Mina smiled a bit. “I will be seeing you, then.” And without another word, she left, heading out into the hall. The front door opened and slowly closed.

Newson stared at the moon out the window for a moment. She leaned back into the chair. “You’re a good person,” she repeated. “Better than me.” She closed her eyes, and slowly drifted into sleep.

Part Twenty-Three of The Stitched AU
A JSE Fanfic
[This is part of a completed fanfic series of mine with 24 total chapters. I started this October of 2018 and finished it May of 2021. The four boys confront Jackie and Marvin for the last time.]
.............................................................................................

Twilight had covered the city, and the last of the sunlight was quickly fading. There were cars out, but no pedestrians. Well, actually, there were four pedestrians. They’d been running for a while, but were now slowing down, as the spinning blue disk they’d been following was gradually losing speed. If anyone had bothered to look, they would have thought it weird to see four men following a flying, glowing disk. But the four didn’t care.

'If it’s slowing down, that means we’re getting close,' JJ explained as the group shifted from jogging to walking.

Jack looked around. They were now surrounded by apartment buildings. Not particularly tall ones, all boxy and generally looking the same. “This place…we’ve been here before,” he muttered.

'Really? It doesn’t look familiar to me.' JJ looked around as well, confused.

“I don’t think it would be, J,” Chase said absentmindedly. “Not to you.”

“Where are we?” Schneep asked, tightening his grip on Jack’s arm. “It does not sound too busy.”

“We’re near Jackie and Marvin’s old apartment is,” Jack explained quietly. “I think…I think that’s where we’re heading.”

“…ah.” Schneep’s expression fell. “So. They decided to head there.” He took a deep breath. “It makes sense, I suppose. We are coming full circle.”

“Well, now that we’re getting close, we should figure out what to do.” Chase’s hand drifted to his belt, where he’d tucked his gun. “I-I don’t want to hurt them. But…would we have to?”

'We’ll have to defend ourselves, at least,' JJ anticipated.

“What we really need to do is get rid of the strings,” Jack said. “But, well, we can’t destroy them, apparently.”

“Maybe we can contain them, somehow?” Chase speculated. “Like, while they’re in that box, they didn’t really affect Jackie for a while. I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s working anymore, but something like that?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said quietly. The disk is slowing even further, and the area is definitely becoming familiar. He recognized the striped [awning] set out in front of one of the apartment buildings. They’re getting close. “Maybe…if we put them far away, a-and somehow contain them, then they’ll stop influencing them. JJ, you’re the magic man, do you think you can do that?”

JJ looked skeptical, clearly frowning under his mask. 'I don’t think so,'he signed slowly. 'I tried before, back when the strings first came after Jackie, remember? He just used his new magic to destroy the brief moment I had them under control.'

“I don’t remember that,” Chase said.

'Well, it definitely happened,' JJ said. He paused for a moment, thinking. 'Henrik. I have a question. Where do your scissors come from?'

Jack translated the signed question for Schneep, who frowned, confused. “I…am not sure. They sort of come from nowhere.”

“Hey, y’know…back there, you pulled out like three of those, right?” Chase asked. “And that cane you sometimes use comes from nowhere, right?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Well, if you can take things out of nowhere, do you think you can put things away into the nowhere?” Chase asked. JJ nodded eagerly, apparently having had the same idea.

Schneep blinked. “Oh. I had not tried that, not with things I had not already pulled out. Perhaps.” He nodded, slowly at first, then with increasing surety. “Yes, it makes sense that I would be able to do that. And we might as well try, yes? That would probably contain the strings, and put them far away.”

“Great, so we have a basis,” Jack said. “Now we just—” He suddenly stopped walking. The tracking disk had turned a corner, and there it was. “Oh. We…we’re here.” The building with Jackie and Marvin’s apartment. It looked exactly the same, even years later. Despite the disk not changing pace, the boys hurried up, getting ahead of it.

Once the disk caught up, it headed down a side alley. Then, strangely, it paused. And floated upward. Up to a fifth story window, with a fire escape outside. Once it reached there, it disappeared. 'Is that their apartment?' JJ asked.

“Yeah,” Chase muttered, nodding. “That’s it. Wonder if it’s still empty.”

“Wonder how we are going to get inside,” Schneep added. “Can we just…walk in?”

Jack leaned to the side, looking through the glass front doors of the building. “Well I mean…no one’s in there.”

“It can’t be THAT easy,” Chase said.

But it was. The boys walked right into the apartment building’s waiting area, heading straight for the elevators. Nobody appeared to stop them. The elevator doors slid open, and the four of them piled inside.

“Shit. I forgot about this,” Jack swore. He pointed at a keyhole in the elevator’s button panel. “To access the floors with rooms you need a room key. Otherwise…” He pressed the button for the fourth floor above the ground story. It didn’t light up. “Yeah, that.”

“I do not suppose either of you two kept a copy of their room key,” Schneep muttered.

“No,” Chase said. “God. I really don’t want to climb up the fire escape. I know Jackie always said it was fine, but that thing looks rickety as all hell.”

'Hang on, let me try something,' JJ said, pushing past the others to be closest to the button panel. He stared down at the keyhole, then pressed two fingers on either side of it. A small bit of blue magic flickered into existence, flat and long. It slid right into the keyhole, and JJ made a turning motion. Then he pressed the same button Jack had. This time, it lit up, and the elevator started moving upward.

Chase whistled, impressed. “I didn’t know your magic included picking locks, J.”

'It’s not exactly like that,' JJ explained. 'It’s just that my magic is purely focused on helping others. I concentrated on ‘we need to move the lift so my friends can get upstairs,’ and it worked.'

“Still, that’s pretty cool,” Jack said. “But okay, while we’re here, we need to figure out what exactly we’re going to do. Get a game plan going. Anyone have any ideas?”
.............................................................................................

The fifth story hallway was eerily normal. It felt out of place for what they were about to do. Jack, Chase, and Schneep still remembered the room number: 515. Near the end of the hall. The group walked silently down the corridor, until they stopped outside the room with the number stenciled on its door. After a moment of hesitation, Jack reached out and grabbed the knob, turning it. “It’s unlocked,” he said, surprised.

“Either that’s how they got in here, and they left it open, or they knew we would come,” Chase guessed.

'Personally, I hope it’s the former,' JJ said.

Jack looked at the other three, taking in their expressions. Nervous, but not backing down. “Are we ready?” he asked. They all nodded. “Alright. Let’s get in there fast. On three. One…two…” He pulled the door open. “Three!” And the four of them hurried inside, the door shutting behind them.

The apartment hadn’t changed at all in the past few years. That was a bit odd, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t it have been sold to new owners, or at the very least cleaned up to show it off to potential buyers? But no. Perhaps being the apartment where a murder-suicide happened was enough to scare people off. Or perhaps there was a supernatural reason for it. Either way, everything was the same. EXACTLY the same.

All of the living room’s furniture had been pushed to the walls, even blocking the doors to the other rooms. There was a circle burned into the wooden floor, with five melted black candles along the perimeter, now just lumps of wax.

Jackie and Marvin were kneeling on the floor inside the burnt circle, facing each other with the box containing the strings between them. The coppery metal sides were pretty banged up, covered with scratches. But the box was still holding strong. The moment the four entered the room, Jackie and Marvin’s heads shot upward and turned to stare at them. “Leave,” they said, in perfect, eerie unison.

Jack instinctively took a step backwards, bumping into Chase. The moment he did, Chase reached out and squeezed his hand, giving him an encouraging nod. Jack nodded back. He took a deep breath. “No,” he said. “We can’t let you do this.”

“Why not?” They asked, still perfectly in sync. “We need them. We need to be whole.”

“You two are whole by yourselves,” Jack insisted. “You’re two people, not one.”

“Can’t it be both?” They tilted their heads. “Things can be two and one, half and whole.”

“Not people,” Chase added. “C’mon, guys. You remember who you were before! I know you do!”

They looked at each other. “The memories are there,” they conceded. “But which is which? We don’t know. We can’t tell. It’s all mixed up. But when we are whole, it doesn’t matter. Because our memories are mine. My memories are ours. Everything is there. Everything is complete.”

“But do you know what that—that ‘whole’ does?” Jack asked. “He hurts people! You two don’t like to hurt people. You never have. So how can you let this—this black magic do things like that?”

“It doesn’t matter. We need to be complete.” They stand up. “Back off. Or we’ll make you.”

Jack clutched his chest, as if this was physically hurting his heart. “No,” he whispered. “I already said so. We can’t let you.”

“One more chance,” they warned. “We WILL open this.” They pointed at the box—no. At the spot on the floor where the box had been. But it wasn’t there anymore. When they glanced down and saw that, they froze. Then looked up, towards the back of the room. Schneep, who’d jumped behind the two while the rest of the group was distracting them, had slowly pulled the box away, dragging it out of the circle. The moment the silence fell, he realized that the jig was up. And he picked up the box.

“No!” The two broke up. Jackie lunged backwards towards Schneep and tackled him to the ground, where the two of them struggled over the box. Marvin ran forward towards the other three, blue strings of light appearing around him, reaching forward.

Jameson pulled up his shield, diverting the strings to either side. Chase pulled his gun out of his belt and pointed it towards Marvin. “We don’t want to hurt you!” He shouted.

“Oh, shu̧ţ ̴u̵p,” Marvin snarled. He pounded on the shield with a fist. “We don̢'͟t̸ ̵c̵ar͢e.̧”

Schneep suddenly cried out as Jackie threw him backwards, hitting the draped windows. Now clutching the box, Jackie retreated to the circle in the center of the room, kneeling on the floor again. The burnt circle sizzled, like embers coming to life, and suddenly huge red spikes shot out from the black circle, each half the size of a person and sharp as a knife. Jackie was now defended in the middle, as he struggled to open the box.

“Fuck!” Chase darted out from behind the shield, running towards Schneep. But a blue string wrapped around his ankle, lifting him up. He yelped in surprise, dropping the gun. Jameson looked towards him and made a gesture like he was throwing something. A light blue disc sailed through the air, slicing through the darker blue of the string and dropping Chase to the floor. Unfortunately, as a result of this magic, the part of the shield covering himself flickered a bit. Just enough for two different strings to snake through and wrap around him, pinning his arms. The rest of the shield then died.

“Schneep, get Marvin, I got Jackie!” Jack shouted, jumping straight into a sprint to avoid more of Marvin’s strings.

“Right!” Schneep got to his feet, now holding two pairs of scissors, one in each hand. His eyes briefly glowed turquoise, and he disappeared. Then he reappeared behind Marvin, practically on top of his back. “Jamie! Catch!” He threw one of the scissors in Jameson’s general direction. It clattered to the floor, and Jameson immediately got down, awkwardly picking them up while his arms were still pinned. Meanwhile, Schneep held the open blade of the scissors to Marvin’s throat. “Sorry about this.”

Marvin shrieked, grabbing Schneep’s arm and trying to push him away. But Schneep held fast, trying to keep the blade close, but not touching. Unfortunately, after one particularly hard shove from Marvin, he overcorrected. The blade sliced—not through Marvin’s skin, though. Instead, the scissor blade cut through the green stitches holding his neck wound closed. Immediately, Marvin cried out, finally managing to push past. He leaned forward, bracing against the wall, and made several uncomfortably harsh choking sounds as the strings wriggled out, falling to the floor. They inched past Schneep, heading towards the circle where Jackie was.

Meanwhile, Jack and Chase had met up on the edge of the circle of spikes, giving each other unsure looks. Slowly, Chase raised his gun again. “Jackie!” He shouted. “Put the box down!”

Jackie ignored him, frustratingly prying at the seam where the lid met the rest of the box. He growled, and the spikes got a little longer, forcing Jack and Chase to back up. “Shit, okay, not the way to do it,” Jack muttered. He hesitated, then reached out and touched one of the spikes. Immediately, he withdrew his hand, hissing. “They’re, like, hot or something.”

“Right. Okay.” Chase took a deep breath, then pulled the trigger on his gun.

The BANG! filled the small room. The bullet hit one of the spikes, shattering it like ceramic. Jack and Chase covered their faces, but bits of the shards still cut their arms. Jackie, to the side of the spike when it shattered, cried out as shards bit into his arm as well. One of them sliced right through the green string wrapped tightly around his wrist, which fell to the floor. That finally made Jackie look up. “Go a͟w̢ay̧.”

“No,” Jack said. “In fact, we’re getting closer!” Quickly, he grabbed Chase’s arm and ran, darting into the circle through the gap caused by the broken spike.

Jackie screamed as the two of them entered the circle, and shot to his feet. “Leave us a̷l̶o͞n̕e!̡” He ran at the two of them, and Jack stepped in front of Chase, grabbing Jackie’s arm as he went to hit him. Then when Jackie’s other hand shot up, he managed to grab that one, too. He looked pretty shocked and impressed with himself, until Jackie stomped on his foot and made him let go in surprise.

But during that brief window, Chase dove forward, and managed to snatch up the box. He gave a triumphant grin, which faded as he realized he was still trapped in the circle.

Back on the other side of the room, Jameson finally cut through the strings with the scissors, quickly regaining his feet. Marvin, recovering from the slice, noticed this. “F͝a̶k̵e̛ magician,” he hissed, and pounced.

Before he actually got to JJ, Schneep grabbed him, knocking him to the floor. The two of them rolled across the room, struggling with each other.

Jameson quickly backed up, looking around to regain his bearings. His eyes landed on the circle of spikes, with Chase holding the box inside. Jackie had turned on him, and Chase was backing up, head darting from side to side. Jameson started waving his arms, drawing Chase’s attention. Chase nodded, and got ready to throw the box.

Just then, Jackie ran at Chase and grabbed him. He still managed to throw the box, but his aim was now off, and the box landed on the floor in the corner of the room. Jameson hurried to get there, but then tripped. Another blue string. Schneep had managed to pin Marvin to the ground, but accidentally left one of his arms free, which he used to send a string to grab Jameson’s legs. Eyes wide, Jameson raised his own hand, conjuring a protective blue dome around the box.

“I’ve had ęno͢ug̴h͝ of this!” Jackie shouted. He made a throwing motion, and a streak of sharp red light headed straight for the box, piercing through the dome and slicing right through the coppery metal side, leaving a huge gash.

For a moment, everyone froze. For a moment, everyone was waiting.

And then the strings poured out of the new opening, moving almost like a liquid as they pooled on the floor. The strings from Marvin’s neck and Jackie’s wrist inched over to join the lump of writhing green threads. And once they were all together, the strings began to slither forward across the floor.

Jackie and Marvin started to laugh. Their eyes started to glow green, Marvin’s right, Jackie’s left. A static buzz filled the air.

“No!” Chase cried, breaking the stillness of the moment.

Jackie started to run, but Jack and Chase grabbed him and held him back. Schneep doubled down on keeping Marvin pinned, and Jameson hurried over to help. This only lasted for a moment before Jackie grabbed a knife of glowing red light and slashed at the two, cutting up their arms further, and Marvin’s strings burst outward, wrapping around Schneep and Jameson and tying them back to back. The two ran for the strings, which wriggled closer to them.

Schneep quickly cut through some of the blue strings, giving Jameson enough room to pull an arm out. A blue sphere enveloped the green strings, flying into the air where it hovered near the ceiling, keeping them temporarily contained in a glowing bubble. Marvin and Jackie shrieked in frustration.

“God damn it,” Chase muttered, pressing a hand against a particularly nasty cut on his upper arm. He looked up at Jackie and Marvin, just in time to see Jackie holding another red knife, gearing up for a throw. “JJ, watch it!”

The sphere jerked to the side, just in time to avoid the streak of red, which embedded itself in the ceiling. Marvin tried next, blue strings shooting forward to try and wrap around the sphere. It dodged them, weaving through the air in a series of maneuvers, but Jameson was starting to look a bit strained. Schneep was about halfway through the strings binding them.

“Chase?” Jack glanced at him, then nodded at Jackie and Marvin. He nodded back.

The two were distracted, standing beneath the sphere and shooting magic towards it, attempting to get it down. Jameson was fully concentrated on keeping it out of their grasp. He didn’t even notice when Schneep finally cut through the last of the strings. But he was slowly losing speed, the sphere becoming a little bit more unwieldy every second. One of Jackie’s knives sliced through the side, and he diverted focus to fixing that before the green strings could escape. In the process, the sphere temporarily stopped, and Marvin’s strings started to wrap around it.

Luckily, before they could get a good grasp, Chase and Jack sprang forward, grabbing Jackie and Marvin, respectively. “Take it now!” Jack shouted, knowing they couldn’t hold them much longer.

The sphere lurched through the air, crashing down on top of Jameson and Schneep and immediately breaking up. Schneep took off his coat and used that to catch the strings as they fell, wrapping up the bundle so none of them could escape.

“Give them b͞a͢ck̴!” The two yelled.

Anticipating an attack, Chase let go and ducked, barely missing a whirl of blue magic strings. Jack wasn’t so quick, and cried out as a red glowing blade lodged itself in his side, losing his grip and staggering backwards. The two rushed forward the moment they were free, and Jameson barely managed to conjure a shield in time. They slammed into it, stumbled back for a few seconds, and then immediately pressed forward against the blue magic, their expressions twisted viciously.

“You…two…” Jack panted. “You have to let this go! Let THEM go!”

“They are p͢ar̵t͝ of u͝s̛!” They cried.

And for a moment, Jack hesitated. They all did. Because wasn’t it true, on some level? Those strings were black magic, but trapped in their twisted fibers were actual bits of Marvin and Jackie’s souls. Would it be cruel, separating them from those shattered remains?

But what would happen? What would happen if the strings took hold of them? The magic they were made of was a poison. The two would be poisoned in turn, and the rest of them would have to fight back once again, starting everything over. That couldn’t happen. Something had to change. “We’re sorry,” Jack whispered. “But we have to.”

The two snarled, and shoved forward, breaking through the shield. Jameson backed up, raising his hands to defend himself, but the attack never came. Because the strings weren’t there. Schneep had been holding them, and Schneep wasn’t there anymore.

In unison, the two whirled around, and saw him. Schneep was standing against the far wall, his eyes glowing turquoise with black scleras. His coat was wrapped around the strings, but they still struggled against the fabric. Sensing the attention on him, he raised the scissors, and made a slashing motion. And the world…the world was sliced. A tear opened up in the air, beyond which could be seen only darkness.

“Ņ̴͓̹͞o̸̩̟̪̬̥͎!̡͇͞” The two started to rush at him, but they were just too far away. Schneep threw the ball of fabric just as a few green threads started to slip from in between the folds. It was a perfect throw. For just a second, the ball of strings was frozen in the middle of its arc, a few strands trying to escape but not fully able to.

And then, with an anticlimactic quietness, the strings slipped through the rip in the air and disappeared from this world for good.

The two screamed, piercing the silence, and everyone hurried to cover their ears. Those screams could be heard all throughout the building. But then the rip closed itself up, disappearing as if it had never even been there, and they stopped. And the instant they did, the two of them collapsed, falling to the ground like puppets whose strings had been cut.

For a moment, the other four just waited, staring. What now? Was it really…over? They weren’t moving.

Then Schneep gasped. “Th-their souls!” he said. “I-I can feel them! Like with you!”

That broke the spell. Jack, Chase, and Schneep all ran forward, [getting down next to] Jackie and Marvin. They shook them, checked their pulse, called their names. JJ stayed back for a few seconds, before slowly walking closer, wary.

“They are alive, at least,” Schneep said. “Heartbeats.”

“That’s not a sign,” Chase said, shaking Marvin’s shoulder. “Remember what they were like the first time Jack grabbed the strings and Anti disappeared? Alive, but all…empty.”

“No no, I-I think this is different.” Jack tried to sound confident. “I think that, whatever happens, it’s not going to be that.” He rolled Jackie over, onto his back, noticing his eyes were closed. “Jackie? Jackie? It’s us. You need to wake up.”

They must have sat there for a couple minutes, trying their best to get a response. Jameson was just about to suggest they get out of there, when something finally happened.

It started with a small groan, then a whimper. Marvin moved first, lifting up his head before squeezing his eyes shut and burying his face in his arms with a small cry. “M-Marv…?” Chase whispered. “Are you awake?”

Another whimper. Marvin blindly reached up and grabbed at his face, pulling his mask off and dropping it before once again hiding his eyes.

“A-ahh.” That was Jackie. He opened his eyes, squinting, even though the light was fairly dim. “Wha…? Wh-where…?”

“Jackie! You’re up!” Jack laughed, beaming. “Oh thank fucking god.”

“How are you feeling?” Schneep added.

Jackie didn’t answer, turning his head to look around. “Where…am I?”

“You’re in your apartment,” Jack explained. “Do you…know what happened?”

“What…happened? I…” Jackie reached upwards, watching his hand as he turned it around. Almost as if he couldn’t quite believe it was his.

“Marvin, are you okay?” Chase asked, leaning down closer to the floor. “Do you need us to—well, we can’t turn the lights down, there’s only one ceiling lamp and there’s no dimmer. But…can we do something?”

After a moment, Marvin raised his head, covering his eyes with his hands and looking out through his fingers. “I…don’t know…what’s happening,” he said quietly. “Chase?”

“Yeah, it’s me, bro,” Chase nodded.

Marvin’s eyes darted over towards Jameson. “Who…is that?”

“That’s JJ, don’t worry, he’s a friend.” At Chase words, Jameson waved, still a bit wary but relaxing just slightly. “You’re alright, right? Are you?”

“…my neck hurts,” Marvin said quietly. “And my head.”

“Oh.” There was an open wound across Marvin’s neck. Not too deep, but definitely there. Chase tried to smile. “Well, we’ll get that fixed. Can you sit up?”

Marvin closed his eyes again, making a quiet keening sound. But he sat up. Slowly. And once he was upright, he swayed a bit in place.

“Someone tell me what happened,” Jackie said.

“Well, what do you remember?” Schneep asked.

“I…think I talked to you? And…and Chase? My chest hurt…it doesn’t…doesn’t anymore, but my head…” Jackie pressed his hands to either side of his head. “I gotta—gotta get up.”

“Oh, here.” Jack offered his hand, and Jackie let him pull him upright. “You look a bit off balance there. Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Head,” Jackie repeated. He started to look around. “What happened to this pla—”

Jackie glanced to the right. Marvin glanced to the left. The two of them made eye contact. They stared for a few seconds…and then screamed. Jackie scrambled backwards until he ran into Schneep, while Marvin grabbed Chase by the shirt and buried his face in him.

Then they both seemed to lose all strength, slumping down. Jackie’s eyes glazed over, and Marvin let go of Chase’s shirt.

“What was that?!” Schneep hissed.

“I-I don’t know!” Chase shook his head, at a loss. “They saw each other and—and flipped out.” He tried to shake Marvin, but got no response. “Are they…okay?”

“I think they’re just overwhelmed,” Jack speculated, waving his hand in front of Jackie’s eyes and getting nothing.

JJ snapped his fingers, drawing everyone’s attention. 'I hate to interrupt the moment,' he said, 'but don’t you think we should get out of here? We’ve caused quite the commotion, with smashing against the walls and screaming and such. And Chase did fire a gun, as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if the neighbors are calling the police.'

Schneep nodded. “You are right, we have to leave here. It would be difficult to explain everything.”

“But where do we go?” Chase asked. “I don’t think we can find our way back to the magicians without, y’know, magic. A-and I don’t want to go to Stacy’s place, just in case…things…happen.”

Jack sighed. “Can I be honest, you guys?” He looked at each of them in turn. “I just want to go home.”
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Opening the door led them to a disaster zone. The last time they’d been in Jack’s apartment, it was falling to pieces around them as Anti and Schneep fought, their magics colliding and tearing everything apart. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling, leaving the beams overhead exposed in some places. The paint on the walls had peeled, more plaster fallen out in chunks. Some furniture was completely unusable, and the furniture that wasn’t still leaked stuffing or was missing legs. Jack didn’t even want to look at the rest of the house.

Sighing, he reached over to turn on the lightswitch, relieved when the ceiling lamp half-dangling from the ceiling still turned on. He stepped inside, feet crunching on the plaster, and the others followed. Chase was carrying Marvin in his arms, JJ was carrying Jackie in his. Schneep kept a hand on the wall and slowly inched into the room, not raising his feet so he wouldn’t trip over any debris he couldn’t see. “This place…is a wreck,” Chase said plainly.

“Yeah, I know, but we gotta stay somewhere, right?” Jack asked. “I figured this place was pretty safe. For now.” The sofa was mostly intact, save for the cotton tumbling out of bursts in its seams. But it was soft, and would hold weight, so Jack brushed off the plaster that had landed on it and hit the cushions a couple of times to get rid of dust. “I guess eventually we’re all gonna have to try to go home.”

Chase laughed. “I bet the landlord sold my house a month into me not showing up. God. All my stuff, gone.” He gently set Marvin down on the sofa, who blinks, briefly looks around, then curls into the broken cushions, eyes still open and glazed.

“Oh, not all of it, Chase,” Schneep says, slowly creeping around the room. “When it was clear the landlord was going to sell, Stacy had to go to collect your belongings. I think all the furniture is gone, but your clothes and things like your computer are okay. Did you ever check that spare storage room while we were with her?”

“O-oh. No, I didn’t…didn’t think to.”

JJ put Jackie down on the sofa, next to Marvin. Similarly, Jackie looked up, took in the state of the room, then just…mentally checked out. 'Well, my shop should still be fine, at least,' JJ signed. 'I do own the building, after all. Henrik, what about your flat?'

Chase translated the question, and Schneep shrugged. “I am not sure. I was there a few times, and everything seemed the same. But I am sure that the situation is more complicated.”

“Well, I’M probably going to be living here for a bit, at least,” Jack muttered. “So we should clean up. Um…maybe we could start by getting all this plaster into a corner of the room? A-and we should see what the damage is everywhere else.”

It was slow going. A brief look at all the rest of the rooms showed the kitchen and the living room were the worst off. The walls and ceilings were more intact in the rooms down the hall, and Jack’s room, at the very back, even had all its furniture together. So they did start by cleaning up all the plaster. Jack found his cleaning supplies in the hallway, some of which weren’t alright, but at least the broom could still be used, even with its handle snapped in half. They cleaned silently, starting by making the living room…livable, then spread out through the rest of the apartment, getting all the broken bits of ceiling and walls out of the way.

“Done in here!” Chase called from the kitchen. “With the plaster shit, anyway!” There was still a lot wrong. Cabinet doors had fallen off, every single dish was shattered, and the table was missing one of its legs and part of its surface. He didn’t even want to think about all the perishable foods that had no doubt gone bad inside the fridge.

“Great.” Jack appeared from down the hall, white dust in his hair. “Everything’s stable in the bathroom. I even found a first aid kit, so we can wrap up these cuts. Hope we have water. I think we should, I mean, I didn’t see—oh shit!” He jumped backwards. While they were talking, Marvin had appeared in the entrance to the living room, and was now staring very intensely at Jack. “Oh my god, Marv, you scared me,” Jack breathed. “Um…is everything good?”

“What happened?” Marvin asked bluntly.

“Oh, uh, we took you and Jackie over to my place. It’s…terrible, but it was close by. So now we’re cleaning—”

“No, I don’t mean that.” Marvin’s eyes were wide and a bit wild, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his entire body visibly shook. “I mean what happened to me. A-and to Jackie too. What happened to us? What happened?!”

Jack took a step backwards. “Whoa, calm down a bit—”

“Why do we remember the same things?!” Marvin stepped forward, leaning closer. “I-I don’t understand! You know, right? Tell me. Please!”

“Marvin, please, I know you’re freaked out, but you need to breathe, okay?” Jack said, fighting the urge to step back again. “You’re just going to spiral at this rate.”

Suddenly, Jackie appeared, peering around Marvin’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, Jackie, hi.” Jack looked back over towards Chase, who was still in the kitchen.

Nodding, Chase joined the rest of them in the hallway. “Marvin’s a bit freaked out,” he explained.

“I-I-I’m freaked out too.” Jackie tried to laugh, but it just came out as a wheeze. He wrapped his arms around himself. “A-after everything, I—we talked about it and—you guys have to know, right? You can tell us what happened, right? You can—please? Please explain. I-I’m so confused.”

Chase and Jack glanced at each other. “You go get Schneep and JJ,” Chase said. “We’ll sit down in the living room.” Jack nodded, and disappeared down the hall.

It took less than a minute for all of them to gather together. The sofa was the only piece of sitting furniture that was still usable, so they sat on the floor in a circle, unconsciously not wanting anyone to be above the others. Marvin and Jackie sat next to each other, a slight gap between them and the other four. Jack was the first to speak, clearing his throat. “So…what do you two remember?”

Marvin and Jackie glanced at each other, and Marvin made a ‘go ahead’ gesture. “W-well…chronologically,” Jackie started. “We…remember doing the spell. We did a spell, i-it was supposed to—” He took a deep breath, steadying himself. “It was supposed to make us…b-better. Stronger. But…” For a moment, his eyes glazed over, then he squeezed them shut and opened them wide again, and he pressed forward. “It didn’t work. And from there, it was just…ni-nightmares. Awful, awful things…”

“Nightmares,” Schneep muttered to himself.

Taking that as a cue to elaborate, Jackie nodded. “Like…i-images of terrible things…happening to…people.”

“Don’t say people,” Marvin said quietly. “It wasn’t just people.”

Jackie flinched. “W-well sometimes they were just faceless people. But…i-it was…you guys. Most of the time. E-even him.” He pointed at Jameson. “A-and we talked about it, and we had the exact same ones, and we’re—neither of us are sure, if we were just…imagining them, thinking really hard about these things. Or if…they were real.”

“What do you remember after that?” Chase asked gently.

“Just…a lot…of bad things,” Marvin said haltingly. “More…nightmares. Tha-that seemed to go on forever. A-and then suddenly…my chest hurt. And I was on this street, but then…things got…jumbled up. And then I was in the flat. And now I’m here.”

“I had something that was like that,” Jackie said. “With you guys, and then thing were…my thoughts all…” He put his hands on the side of his head. “Mixed up. And then there. A-and it’s weird, that was the only place where our memories were different.”

A moment of silence. Marvin and Jackie waited for the others to respond, but they just looked at each other. “Do…do we tell them?” Jack asked quietly.

“They said they wanted to know, yes?” Schneep added.

“But it’s so fucked up,” Chase whispered. “All of it.” He glanced towards the two. “Maybe we just…just keep to the basics? Not tell them about…us?”

Jameson shook his head. 'They’ll find out eventually, and we can’t keep it from them forever.'

“Okay, but we don’t have to do it all now,” Jack said.

Schneep huffed. “I think we should. Ripping off the band-aid, as it is.”

“What if they get overwhelmed?” Chase asked. “You remember what happened last time. And back at the apartment? They just had to look at each other to go unresponsive.”

'We can check in on them as we explain, make sure everything is fine,' Jameson suggested.

“I…okay, after all that, I…think we should tell them everything now,” Jack said. “It’s gonna suck for all of us, but…if we do it all together, we’re getting it all out. We won’t have to drag it out.”

Chase hesitated, but then nodded slowly. “I guess that makes sense,” he said reluctantly. “It’ll be easier to move on if nothing’s holding us back.”

“Okay, then. I’ll start.” Jack turned back to Marvin and Jackie, who looked decidedly uneasy about the explanation that was about to follow. But their expressions weren’t identical. Marvin was rocking a bit where he sat, face drawn in dread. Jackie’s eyes were wide and he leaned back, like getting distance would help. The differences made Jack relax a bit. They were two people. Not halves of a whole. “Well, you said you remember casting a spell, right? We figured out what it was for. And that it went wrong. When the spell was over…both of you…were dead.”

Explaining everything took nearly an hour. Jack laid the groundwork, explaining what Anti was and the early days of haunting them, with the others jumping in to add their experiences. Jameson, of course, couldn’t tell his experiences by himself, as neither Jackie nor Marvin understood sign language. So Jack translated that as well.

They progressed to how Anti slowly took them out. Chase took off his bandanna briefly, showing the stitches that remained, and Jameson did the same with his mask. Schneep told the story behind why he couldn’t see anymore, and Jack explained why one of his eyes was a slightly different blue. For many of these moments, it was the first time they’d said anything about what happened to them, about all the physical and mental scars left behind. They had to pause several times to collect themselves. Ironic that they were the ones being overwhelmed by emotion, when they’d been worrying about Jackie and Marvin.

Then there was the discovery of what Anti was, them fleeing to Stacy’s house, finally taking Anti apart, and keeping Jackie and Marvin—in their distant, not-quite-there state—away from the strings that remained. Marvin and Jackie sat quietly through everything, nodding when the others asked if they were still listening, if they were okay, but not saying anything. Finally, Jack, his voice now hoarse, told them about what had happened that evening, ending with bringing the two of them to the apartment.

And it was all out there. They waited for a response, but got none. Jackie’s eyes had glazed over again, and Marvin had stopped rocking and was just leaning against the base of the sofa. “I guess it was a lot,” Chase said. “Hey.” He started to reach forward, but then stopped, not knowing if either of them wanted to be touched. “It’s fine if you two need some time. That would make sense. Don’t worry about it.”

“Is it okay if we keep cleaning up around you?” Schneep asked gently.

Nothing. Then, after a few seconds, Jackie nodded.

“Alright.” Schneep stood up, and was soon followed by the other three. “We will try to be quiet about it.”

They left, discussing in low voices what to do next. The living room was left alone for now, as none of them wanted to disturb Jackie or Marvin. So they dispersed throughout the rest of the house. Jack took Chase into the bathroom, and the two of them used up all the first aid kit’s bandages on their various wounds. JJ started with the kitchen. It looked like all ceramic dishes had been shattered, but the trash bin was intact, so he started sweeping all the broken pieces into there. Schneep did his best to get order together in the bedrooms, feeling around for things that were too broken to salvage.

At some point, Chase joined Schneep in the spare bedroom, where he found something under a fallen shelf. It took both of them to get it out, one to hold the shelf, the other to grab it. “You want to keep that, yes?” Schneep asked.

“Of course,” Chase said. “But, uh…h-hang on, I’ll be right back.”

He returned to the living room. Jackie and Marvin were still sitting on the floor, turned slightly away from each other. Chase cleared his throat. “Hey, uh…so. I found this.” He held up the object in question—his weighted blanket. “Jack got it for me a while ago, but like…it’s supposed to help with anxiety and stuff, and it does kinda work, so…I thought you guys might want it.” Walking over, he set the blanket on the sofa. “It’s heavier than you expect, ha. But…yeah. I’ll just leave it here.” He backed up, then turned to leave.

Before returning to the hall, he heard the slight rustle of fabric, and glanced back to see they’d pulled the blanket off the sofa and were now sharing it. Chase smiled softly, then left, heading back towards the bedrooms.

All the digital clocks had stopped functioning, but the analog clock in the kitchen slowly ticked through the minutes. Eventually, the apartment was made livable again. There was still the problem of the broken ceiling and occasionally broken walls, not to mention the furniture that was now unusable. But livable was the ideal.

As they finished up, the boys would occasionally glance into the living room, asking the two if they were okay. There was never a spoken response, but eventually, Jackie started to nod, and then Marvin. And then they stood up and moved to the sofa. And eventually, Jackie started walking around the room, pushing the plaster and broken bits of furniture into the corner. Marvin dusted rubble off the sofa and half-intact coffee table, then tried to put the stuffing back into the torn pillows. It took both of them a while, dazed as they were, but once the rest of the boys were done with the apartment, they were done with the living room.

The clock read 12:35. Judging by the darkness outside, that meant midnight. Everyone was exhausted, but they were also hungry. Most of the food in the kitchen was ruined, but there were boxes of dry pasta and a single, large pot. The water worked. It only took another half hour to make the pasta and scoop it into six tupperware boxes, those being the only bowl-like things to survive fully intact. The utensils were okay, too. No glasses, so they used more tupperware.

Once the food was ready, Jackie and Marvin joined the others in the kitchen/dining room. They took the only two chairs left and sat at the half-table to eat while the other four stood at the counter or sat on the floor. Everyone ate silently.

Now the clock read 1:20. “I think…” Jack spoke up for the first time in a while. “…we should go to bed.”

Jameson nodded. 'The beds are alright. And there are still blankets in the closet. We might have to double up.'

“Doubling up is fine for me,” Jack said. “Chase? Schneep?”

“Yes, fine,” Schneep agreed, yawning.

“I’ll just sleep on the floor again,” Chase mumbled. “My sleeping bag is alright.”

“Are you sure, Chase? It is all dusty, and there could be things inside that we missed,” Schneep said.

“I…” Chase hesitated. Then he took a deep breath. “Alright. I can double up with someone. But can we put a pillow or something in between?”

“That’s fine, Chase,” Jack said. “You can stay with me.”

'What about these two?' Jameson asked, gesturing to Jackie and Marvin.

“Well…” Jack looked at them. “Do you two want to have a bedroom, or are you okay with the living room? Or, uh, I have my recording room, but that’s kind of a mess, computer parts all over.”

No answer for a bit. Then Marvin held up two fingers.

“The second option?”

He nodded.

“Alright. Jackie, what about you? Do you want the same?”

Jackie nodded too.

“Okay, then. We’ll bring you guys some blankets,” Jack said. “And some spare pillows.”

And slowly, everyone drifted off. They made up the beds, gave Jackie and Marvin any blankets and pillows they could find, and one by one, they all went to sleep. Jameson went first, Schneep following soon after, closing the door to the spare bedroom. Then Jack, disappearing into his own room.

Chase lingered for a bit, cleaning up dinner as much as possible. He yawned, and eventually concluded there was only so much he could do. So he headed out.

“Um…Chase?”

The soft question made him jump. He turned to see Jackie standing awkwardly in the doorway to the living room. Behind him, Marvin was lying on the sofa, Chase’s blanket pulled up to his neck, facing away from them with his head cushioned by two pillows. All the other blankets and pillows had been made into a bed underneath the half remains of the coffee table.

“Y-yeah, Jackie?” Chase asked. “Is everything okay?”

Jackie hesitated. “I…everything you told us…it really happened. Some of the memories th-that Marvin and I share, they…line up.”

“Oh.” Those memories weren’t really theirs, were they? They were Anti’s. “I see.”

Jackie took a deep breath. “Which is why…I’m sorry, Chase. I-I’m so, so sorry.” Tears started to gather in his eyes. “I-I don’t even know if I can apologize, but I really am, I feel so fucking sorry, a-and I just hope that—I just want you to know that—”

“Hey, Jackieboy.” Chase stepped forward, gently grabbing Jackie’s hand and holding it. “It’s fine. You weren’t…yourself. There was some black magic going on, and it…made things different.”

“…but still…” Jackie whispered.

Chase smiled softly. “It’s okay. I forgive you. And Marvin, too. Tell him that.”

Jackie nodded. “He’s sorry too, you know.”

“I know.” Chase squeezed his hand. “It’s late. You should go to sleep.”

“Alright. Alright.” Jackie let go, and backed up. “Good night.”

“Good night, Jackie.” Chase waited for him to get under the blankets of the bed under the table. He watched for a minute, and then turned to go, walking down the hall to the room at the end.

And for the first time in years, everyone rested. Truly, fully, at peace.

Part Twelve of the Inverted AU
A JSE Fanfic
[This is part of a fic series I wrote from December 2018 to August 2021. Stacy's been having the strangest feeling that someone's watching her, and Anti figures this is as good a time as any to catch her up to speed on the group. Meanwhile, Marvin goes to Schneep for help with a problem (even though he'd rather not trust anyone with this.)]
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Stacy liked to think that her computer was secure. She kept up-to-date on her antivirus software, didn’t give trust anything that asked for her security information, and kept her passwords on a sheet of paper in her nightstand drawer instead of anywhere digitally that could be hacked. However, she quickly learned that all these precautions were for naught when it came to the living glitch who decided he wanted to check on her every ten hours or so. She’d be browsing the Internet and suddenly the webpage would freak out. That didn’t mean she was being hacked (actually, technically she was) it just meant Anti decided to pop in.

Honestly, she was starting to warm up to him. Maybe that was because he hadn’t showed up in person for the last week so she didn’t have to deal with his personality. Occasionally she’d get an email or text from a blocked user, asking her how life was, if she was safe. And, well, life was better. She’d gotten a new job at a department store with better pay. The hours were good too, now she had time to spend with her kids and also get enough sleep. Things in the city seemed to have calmed down, in that there was less death and disappearance on the news.

But…something was off. There were times when she was out and about, driving the kids to places or running errands on her own, when she felt like someone was watching her. When she looked around, she usually didn’t see anyone. But there were times when she thought she saw…him. To the point where it was starting to freak her out.

One night, after putting the kids to bed, she sat down at her computer and typed a simple phrase into Google: “how to tell if someone is stalking me.” Immediately, the page froze. She hit enter several times, trying to search, but a strange, rapid staticky beeping just came out from her speakers. And it was that moment when she realized it wasn’t just something wrong with her Internet.

A fizzing of pixels later, Anti was sitting on her desk, legs dangling off the side. “What are you, seven?” she asked before her brain could catch up with her mouth.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anti said. “So what’s up with that search?”

“Are you spying on me whenever I use Google?”

“No, I just installed a program to let me know when certain words were searched. Such as ‘stalk’ or ‘stalking.’” His eye narrowed. “So? What’s the deal? Is it him?”

“I’m…not sure,” Stacy said slowly. “Sometimes I think I see him, other times I just get a…a vague sort of sense that…someone’s watching me. It’s probably nothing, I’m probably just being stupid, but…better safe than sorry, y’know?”

“Definitely, especially considering they could be magically tracking you.”

Stacy gaped at him and his nonchalant statement. “Excuse me?”

“Come on, you were there that night at the diner. You saw that magic was real. Didn’t you think something like that was possible?”

“No, I didn’t.” Stacy leaned back in her swivel chair. “I guess it never occurred to me that that was a-a possibility. I didn’t know the rules for this sort of thing. Sorry, I should have thought—I should have known.”

Anti stared at her, then glitched off the desk and into a standing position. “No, you really shouldn’t have, because nobody told you. It’s not your fault, so don’t assume it is. I could possibly give you a brief overview, let you know what you’re in danger of.”

“Oh! Th-thank you!” Stacy hadn’t realized she was apologizing for things that weren’t her fault. Force of habit, she assumed. She looked at the computer screen, where her question still lingered, unsearched, in the search bar. “Do you think…I-I mean, I know Chase doesn’t have any magic, unless he does and I didn’t know, so…are they teaming up?”

Anti considered this. “Probably. Your ex and the magician aren’t on the best terms, but they’re civil. You’d be in more danger of having the doctor or the vigilante stalking you for him, those guys are closer.”

For some reason, that simple statement made dread pool in her stomach. “H-how many of them are there again?”

“Five.”

“And…and they could all help Ch—help him follow me?”

“Mmm, probably.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god.” Stacy sat on her hands to keep them from shaking. She’d never done anything in her life to warrant so many enemies. And, if she remembered correctly, these guys were responsible for most of the current chaos and terror in the city. She worked hard to take deep, controlled breaths. “Do you…do you have any, uh, um, any info on these guys I could see? You’re all computery, do you have files on them or something?”

“I do. But you don’t want the full files, you’ll lose sleep. I can maybe give you some edited versions…” Anti’s head tilted to one side. He stared intently at her computer screen. She watched as her browser closed and her file explorer opened. By itself, the computer navigated to the downloads folder, then five new folders appeared, each one labeled with a name, followed by (edit).

“Huh…that’s handy.” Stacy scooted her chair closer to the desk, grabbing the mouse. She stared at the folder with his name on it for a while, but she couldn’t bring herself to click on it. Instead, she clicked on the next one down, opening up the folder to reveal various .txt files.

“There used to be photos and videos in here,” Anti said, peering over her shoulder.

“Why’d you remove them?”

“How squeamish are you?”

“I mean…my daughter broke her arm once. It was all bent but I could look at it.”

“I probably made a good call then.” Anti pointed at one of the files, and it opened up. “Brief overview: guy’s a doctor. Not really, ‘cause he got booted from medical school for maltreatment. Didn’t stop him from faking graduation, getting a job at a hospital, and then stealing the patients who wouldn’t be missed.”

“This sounds like the backstory of a horror movie villain,” Stacy laughed nervously.

Anti didn’t laugh. “I’m sure the patients thought they were stuck in a horror movie.” He gave Stacy a dead-eye stare until her smile faded. Then he turned back to the screen. “Police in his home country found out. He ran, ending up here. Started a nice little black-market clinic and kept up his hobby.”

“You know I think I’ll read this one later, when it’s lighter outside.” Stacy hurried to click out of the folder. She opened up the next one instead. This one had videos as well as text files. “…should I be worried about these?” she asked, circling one of the videos with the mouse.

“Nothing explicit, just violence like you’d see in a movie. Criminals get the shit beat out of them. The works.”

“Wait…this is for that vigilante, isn’t it? The one on the news?” Stacy looked at the folder name. “That’s his real—”

“Yep. So if you see a guy who looks like this—” He opened one of the videos, fast forwarding until he got to a good image of the vigilante’s face. “—and he introduces himself to you as that, you better run. Actually, don’t, he’s probably faster than you. Distract him until you can sneak away.”

“He can’t be that bad, can he?” Stacy asked, skeptical. “I mean…getting rid of the criminals in the city? It’s like a real-life superhero.”

“Well, superheroes don’t beat confessions out of mob members and then murder them. He’s probably the safest to have a conversation with, though. Assuming you haven’t done anything illegal.”

“O-kay…then…” Stacy was starting to realize just how deep this trouble she was in really was. She could feel the beginnings of panic edging in on her, but she pushed it away. She’d let herself freak out later. “Wh-what about that magician guy? I think you called him Marvin in the diner? Can he really…magically track me?”

“Probably.” Anti closed the vigilante’s folder and opened up the magician’s. There were a lot of images in this one, what looked like pictures of pages from books. “I’ve been trying to keep track of the spells he knows, but it can be difficult. There’s a good chance he knows a tracking spell, but he probably wouldn’t use it unless someone, like your ex, asked him to.”

“…do I want to know why?”

“Eh, he doesn’t really care for spells like that. If they can’t produce effects he can see, he won’t use them unless necessary. He’s a flashy bitch like that. Has a style and sticks to it. Like that cape, which he only takes off maybe one day per week, and that mask, which I actually haven’t seen him take off yet.”

“Really? Never? Not even to sleep or take a shower or anything?”

“Sleeps with it on. And I’m don’t know about that shower thing, I didn’t put a camera in their bathroom.”

Stacy briefly wondered if his knowledge about sleeping with the mask meant he’d put cameras in the bedrooms, but she pushed that out of her mind for now. “Why? Seems uncomfortable…”

Anti laughed. “Well, a long time ago, he tried a spell he wasn’t ready for, and it blew up in his face. I’m pretty sure he’s embarrassed about what it looks like underneath there…”
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“Schneep! I know for a fact you’re in there!” Marvin banged on the door. When there was still no answer, he sighed, looking around the reception room of the clinic where he was standing. He didn’t like this place. It was that kind of almost-nice that looked like it was trying to fool you into thinking it was less shady than it actually was. The good doctor really needed to upgrade his decor.

Having enough of contemplating his dislike of this place, Marvin turned back to the door and started banging harder. “Hey doc! I’m not against melting your door down if you don’t come out in the next thirty seconds!”

The door flung open, and Marvin barely jumped out of the way in time to avoid getting a whack to the face. Schneep poked his head out. He was wearing his mask, which he proceeded to pull down in order to scowl at Marvin. “There is no need for such a commotion, my friend!” he scolded. “I was in one of the back rooms, I did not hear you for a while and then it took me a tick-tock to get here.”

“Whatever. Get a security camera wired up here, or a buzzer or something. I could’ve been a customer who just decided to take business elsewhere.”

Schneep barked out a laugh. “If people come here, it is not because they have options to take business to. But enough of this, what did you want?”

Marvin shifted on his feet. “I…need you to take a look at something.”

“Oh, is that all?” A wave of relief crossed Schneep’s face. He stepped back, opening the door wide enough for Marvin to pass through. “Come in, come in, I can see what it is back here.”

Marvin let Schneep lead him into the operating part of the clinic, but he refused to sit down on the table. “It seems not so serious, so if you would please wait a moment while I take care of this…” Schneep vanished through one of the metal doors leading deeper into the building, leaving Marvin to tap his feet impatiently. He didn’t like this. First of all, this place looked like it was thrown together, and also needed an upgrade. Second of all, he was already having doubts about this, he didn’t want them to have time to fester.

Schneep reemerged, tossing an empty syringe on a nearby tray. “There we are, we will not be disturbed now,” he said. “What is it you need help with?”

Marvin started fidgeting, pulling on his fingers. “Okay. So. I am—look, I’m trusting you with this. You can’t tell anyone, alright?”

“That is no problem.”

“I’m serious. I will literally put a fucking curse on you if I find out you told anyone.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve been working on one that can make it feel like pins are being shoved in your eyes whenever you look at something, and that something can be as vague as a specific color. Y’know, like the literal version of ‘cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.’”

“Now you are going overboard with this. I have no intention of telling anyone whatever it is this is about. This secret of yours is safe with me.”

Marvin exhaled slowly, and looked toward the ceiling. “Okay. Okay, good. Fuck. Here goes nothing.” Before he could change his mind, he reached up and undid the straps of his mask, then pulled it off. He slowly looked back towards the doctor.

Schneep’s eyes were wide. He stepped forward until he was uncomfortably close to Marvin. He raised his hand. “May I…?”

Marvin hesitated. “…fine,” he grumbled. “But take off your gloves, they’re still messy. And be careful.”

The doctor pulled off his gloves, then put his hands on either side of Marvin’s head, turning it from side to side so he could get a better look. “My god,” he muttered. “What happened to you?”

“That’s not your fucking business,” Marvin said through gritted teeth. “But they’ve been…itching for a while now, and I’m wondering if they’re infected or something.”

“I would be surprised if they were not. They look…angry.” Schneep’s eyebrows furrowed. “How old are they?”

“I think about…four years at this point?” Marvin started turning his mask over in his hands. It was hard to remember sometimes.

“Really? I would think only a couple months.”

“Doc, I’ve been living with you for two years and haven’t once taken off my mask. You didn’t think there was a reason for that?”

“Ah yes.” Tentatively, Schneep reached out and tapped Marvin in the middle of his forehead. “What is this?”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Marvin yanked his head back.

“Excuse me, I am concerned! That looks like bone!”

“It’s not bone, it’s just—making my first mask out of ceramic was a really bad idea, ‘cause even magically-enhanced pottery can still shatter.”

“Why do you have ceramic embedded in your face?!”

Marvin resisted the urge to touch the places where the shards had ended up lodging. He had them memorized by now, mostly because of the dead spot in his nerves there. Forehead, upper cheeks, one between his nose and left eye, one above his right. He could have dealt with the rest of the scars, if only the shards weren’t there. “Look, I was wearing my old mask at the time this happened, it broke, I ended up getting pieces of porcelain fucking stuck to my face, can we move on?!”

Schneep raised his hands in surrender, stepping back. “Okay, okay, fine!”

“Thank you.” Marvin began spinning his mask around his pointer finger, using one of the eyeholes. “Anyway, can you tell if they’re infected? And can you help if they are?”

Schneep bit his lip, eyes scanning the damage. “Well, I would have to know what caused them. They look a bit like burns, but in the pattern of knife slashes. Like hot glass.”

“What?”

“Bits of broken glass, heated up so they will burn, flung at your face. That’s what it looks like. There are also parts where I am reminded of Lichtenburg figures.”

“What?” Marvin repeated, exasperated.

“When things are struck by high voltage, patterns will appear. These are not quite the same as scars of lightning, they are…bigger. But I am reminded of them.”

Marvin sighed. “You know what? Let’s just work under the assumption that someone took a hot, electrified knife and repeatedly applied it to my face, that’s probably as accurate as you’re going to get. There might also be some lingering traces of magic in there.”

Schneep rolled his eyes. “Well, I cannot do anything about that, but if they are itching and irritating you, I have some salves that may help. They are in the other back room, the storage one, if you would kindly follow me.”

“Alright, alright, but I hope you find this stuff quickly. Chase is making me watch his ex for him, and I don’t feel like getting into a shouting match with him over not actually doing it.”
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It was around midnight when Stacy decided to go to bed. She’d tried to read through the file Anti had given her on the magician, but had to stomp halfway through. Some of these spells…why would anyone want to use spells like that? Instead, she switched to reading the vigilante’s file, managing to finish it. Then she realized it was way too late, and she had to get up early to make breakfast for the kids, get ready for work, take the kids to school, and go to work herself. That was only four things, but that was too much.

She was walking down the hall to her room when there was a knock on the front door.

Fear jolted through her. Who could be knocking this late at night? Nobody good, probably. She stood shock-still in the hallway, waiting for something else. When nothing happened, she swallowed her nerves and crept toward the living room and the front door. Maybe it was nothing?

When she flipped the lights on, the front room looked exactly the same as it had earlier that day. Except for one thing: there was now a brown envelope sitting on the floor, in the perfect position to have been pushed through the mail slot. Stacy slowly stepped forward. She peered through the peephole on the door, seeing nothing on the other side. So she looked down at the envelope on the floor, then bent over and picked it up. She turned it over in her hands.

There were words written on the back of the envelope. “Hello sweetheart.”

Stacy recognized that handwriting.

She collapsed on the couch, staring at the envelope, listening to her heart pounding in her ears.

He’d found her.
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