The next morning, the smell of spinach, foul and sour, yet somewhat sweet, emanates from the staff room kitchenette.
“Day four.” Eli rolls the mint tin in his hand before his thumb clicks it open. He places it on the countertop behind a napkin lying with its fold marks flattened out.
“Halfway-ish to… whatever this counts as.”
“Indigestion.” Maz taps her phone screen and ticks the day off the calendar.
They stare at the scales that have surrendered their individuality to merge into one lump of darkened green blobs.
His hand digs in, prying a swampy fudge of a scale loose.
“Huh, good attempt to flatten the… tissue.” He taps the napkin before centring the greenish chunk on it.
And small talk is going to help me how exactly?
“I don’t need a guide anyway. Those notes… They never said how many we’d need to… Unless you have a theory on when… the forgetting should start doing its thing?”
She lets out a “Hmm”, but it arrives more as a grunt.
He takes the letter opener out of the pen holder. As he aligns the length of the notched brass on the scale to halve it, pressing into the middle and leaving a thin dent, the thing bulges at its ends. He pushes the sharp edge forward to start sawing. The blob resists the motion and springs back to its shapeless form, forcing the blade upwards and sending the fringe of the napkin sliding off the countertop.
“It’s getting a bit…” He sighs as he tries to drive the tip of the letter opener into the scale. Without digging so much as a dip, it bounces off and clatters onto the counter.
“Grudgey.”
His finger hooks the handle of the cutlery drawer.
“Should we refrigerate the rest? It might firm up to be more… crackable?” He drags it open.
Maz crosses her arms and leans over the scale, her head tipping from side to side as she studies its surface.
“Or slather it in jam to make up for the missing honey. Or steam it in the microwave and… sell it as a ‘functional detox programme’ curated by someone with a smug podcast.”
“Pretty sure that breaks at least three workplace rules and possibly an appliance.” Eli pulls out a bread knife and hips the drawer closed.
She shuffles the napkin back into place.
“Pretty sure spinach doesn’t deserve the hate I have for it right now.”
“Come on, we’re not losing to a…” He holds the knife poised above the napkin.
“Spinach lord of fridge prophecies?” She braces the edges of the scale, both hands pinching either end.
The tilt of his head passes for a thoughtful nod. He lowers the knife onto the scale, and all the while he saws through it, the blade grinds, green sludge smearing the serrated edge. He keeps going until it tears into two rough pieces with a defeated schlup.
He lifts the larger one with a flopped wrist and resignation in his eyes.
“Half for you.”
“Half?” She steps back. “Oh, no, nope, you take the bigger bit this time.”
A sheepish scoff escapes him.
“Yeah, okay. Fair’s fair, we clearly established that sticking with habits doesn’t fix anything, let alone the flavour.” He puts the knife down on the countertop and offers her the other piece.
She takes it from his hand before they tip the crookedly split scales into their mouths at the same time.
“So.” He turns, leaning his back against the countertop.
“Three more. Then either it does something, or we send a complaint to customer services.”
“Ari is the customer service, I suppose,” she tells the green stain on the napkin.
“Oh, lucky us.”
“And–” Her phone vibrates in her hand, the screen coming to life with a notification from her ‘Bind.Breathe.Stay.’ story, its fresh exclamations flashing at her. She taps it open without thinking.
***
‘Comment:
“Measure, don’t guess. Hit seven, and the seam decides what opens, not you.”
– Mod‘
***
Maz’s brows draw together as she reads.
Since when do you get any comments? This story is so old. What’s a ‘Mod’ got to do with anything? And… ‘Measure’ what exactly? This was already about counting.
Eli leans over and looks up at her after peeking at her screen.
“What’s up?”
“That’s a bit odd, no?” She tilts the phone his way.
“The only comment this receives is, and apparently just has to be… a cryptic one from a mod? Or from someone called Mod.”
“Alleged ‘Mod’. You absolutely sure that’s not just a scam bot ramping up to get you to pay for a service they won’t deliver? Unless they changed the app guidelines or something… and your story got flagged… for unmeasured seams?” He straightens after the words leave his mouth.
Yeah, I’m making perfect sense here, for an idiot.
Her blank gaze stays on him before she returns her attention to the screen, scrolls up through the comments section, and, when she notices a previous one, stops.
What? When did the Weaver’s comment come in, and why don’t you remember seeing that?
“It’s nothing, Maz. People don’t leave riddles on others’ stories for–”
“You don’t have to turn everything into a square bit.” She looks up through her narrowed eyes.
“Some of us might be just fine panicking in a sideways line. Not fine fine, but you know, right? Never mind. I presume you didn’t notice the earlier comment.”
“No?” His shoulders pull back.
“What’s the other about?”
He comes to stand beside her and reads the lines.
Mod can’t be talking about the seventh Viper day, that’d be too weird. Does it relate to Weaver’s door seam? Some other kind of countdown? Do I even know who these people might be?
She tries to scroll up to the story, but the page refuses to move. The app jitters with a seizure of glitches running through the page. When it settles down, only the comment section refreshes. Mod’s line disappears for a blink and returns, some letters sliding over each other, a few of them dropping to the bottom of the box in a loose heap. What letters remain eventually swap places to change the words and carry a different meaning.
***
Comment:
“When time steps on madness, seven is a cage, not your key to heed.”
– Mod
***
A sound snaps out of Maz, a breath short of turning into a whimper.
What the–
She locks the screen and shoves her phone, with her trembling hand wrapped around it, deep into her pocket.
“We should really stop–”
“This happened before.” Eli looks at her.
“I mean, all this.”
Her glance finds the floor.
“Yep. There was another comment, but I don’t rem–”
“No. I mean, all of this.” He reaches for her shoulder. His fingertips feel a prickling buzz as he watches the hairs along his arm begin to slowly lift.
Right. So. Obviously, the text has changed. Now being close to her feels like I’m about to get zapped. But, but, but… She’s seen this whole thing before, and I know that somehow. I could file it under… actually, leave the drawer open on this one.
He lowers his voice.
“The part when the words…” His other hand taps the corner of the phone in her pocket with a knuckle.
“…did that. I know that’s not new. Don’t ask me why, as I’m not even sure when or how, but it only happened for you… or to you, or with you.”
She looks at him, gripping the phone tighter in her pocket.
Did it? Don’t be silly. It can’t be, but he’s… not wrong? You do have a vague memory of that. Maybe somewhere with worse lighting and a mirror… that was being strange?
“Who knows, Maz, but spinach should clearly deserve some points for perception value.” He gives her shoulder a squeeze, the static, or the feeling of it, biting harder under his touch.
A slight suggestion of a smile appears on her face before she responds.
“All right. Well… Let’s try to work it out, then. Weaver has… seams, whatever that means, and Mod has the… ugh, this is stupid, measure. What have we got? Patchy memories and words in broken order?”
“‘Broken ord–?’ For anything to break, it would need to… fail or be opposed or… Oh. Does that mean we neglected something?”
“Don’t tell me that Mr. H was right about the entropy nonsense.”
“If that’s the case… What else does he know that we don’t?”
Advance chapters available on Patreon now! https://www.patreon.com/TolaLone