Happy new years! You have no idea how hard I tried to get this chapter done before year changed... didn't succeed. I had such a fun time with this!
Also a reminder that I'm crossposting plant to comicfury now! In case you find it easier to track it there, or if tumblr one day sinks to the bottom of the sea and never comes back. LINK.
I am still testing out the new scanner, somehow can't get the pages look as crispy online in my end, than the old scanner pages...
Part 41 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.
This chapter is going to hit like a dose of Buckley's cough medicine okay? A tiny gets injured in this. I'm sorry.
“Joe, what the hell were you thinking doing this? Do you have any idea how much danger you’ve put yourself in!?”
Joe didn’t even have the wherewithal to roll his eyes as Harry scolded him. He danced along with him atop the chandelier instead until he was given a chance to get a word in.
“That doesn’t matter to me, Harry. It never did.” He insisted as he foxtrotted in time to the doctor's pace.
Harry was leading, but only just. Every so often Joe would make a power grab and try to wrest control from him. Even in this context where they were roughly the same size, Harry was still a good head taller than Joe was and far stronger, making it easier said than done.
“So you want to die?” Asked Harry. “Is that it?”
A plume of smoke rose up from the dance floor below.
"Ever think that maybe there's a reason I am the way I am?” Joe countered. “Think about it: I live in a world where nobody really sees me. Where nobody really knows me. Why in the hell would I care about living?"
“Because people care about you! I care about you!” Harry protested, and the dance hall began to glow bright red.
“Not in the way I need to be cared about.” Joe argued.
Wrenching himself back, he forced Harry to follow along with him.
“So I should just let you die then, is that it? Let this whole place burn to the ground with the both of us in it?” Ranted Harry, reluctantly letting Joe take the lead.
In spite of the fire that raged below them, the band somehow kept on playing as if nothing was wrong.
When Joe extended a hand to caress Harry’s face, his heart began to soften. His frazzled hair, his wide eyes, his sweaty forehead, everything about Harry radiated fear. It was a fear like his mother’s fear; the sort of fear that could only stem from misplaced love.
“Harry...” He began, pulling his partner into an embrace, “...I want you to let me live.”
The flames had just started devouring the rafters when the lurch of a falling sensation and the shock of cold water pulled Joe back into the waking world. When he opened his left eye, he found himself staring down a deep tunnel. The right half of his face was submerged, and when he sat up and wiped himself off he was suddenly gazing down a narrow ribbon of piano-black water. Harry, Tiny Town, the fire, all of it had disappeared when the flash of a fist had knocked Joe unconscious, and now he was dazedly trying to piece the rest of the day together. The light was to his back, a dim daylight that Joe couldn’t tell from sunrise or sunset. Footsteps sloshed behind him and the smell of the smoke never quite left his senses – it merely mingled with the pungent scent of algae resting in standing water. From that he could only hope that Tiny Town was still nearby.
He reasoned that he had to be in a drainage pipe of some kind, in all likelihood one that ran out from Tiny Town itself.
“I’m the new Dawson, and that means you pin-heads have to do everything I say!” Barked a voice that Joe knew all too well.
His heart dropped into the pit of his stomach as the sound of it echoed down the tunnel.
“Why do you get to be the new Dawson?” Protested another voice Joe didn’t recognize.
“Because I have the most scraps.” Said O’Grady. “And we’ll get more if we send him down to the lake.”
Looking over his shoulder, Joe could see that O’Grady and his band of merry Irishmen had momentarily left him unattended while they set a tethered tin can onto the water that ran below the opening of the pipe. He started to ease his way into the darkness opposite their direction, keeping low and taking great care not to be heard. Maybe if he were careful enough, he thought, he could lose them if he went further in.
“It’d be too kind to kill him. It's not enough for him to die. He has to suffer.” O’Grady continued.
As he shivered in the draft of the drain pipe, Joe was thrilled to find that he could still move most of his legs. He looked back to the three silhouettes at the opening, now an arm's length further away than they had been before, then into the darkness again, trying to judge its depth.
“She’s floating.” Said a third voice. “You sure it’ll go to the lake?”
“That’s how Dawson did it!” O’Grady insisted.
“And when do we get our payment?” Asked the skeptical second voice.
“We… we’ll figure that out later!” O’Grady said.
Joe could make out the sight of O'Grady turning in his direction through the reflections in the water, and his heart leapt into his throat and froze there.
“Wait, where'd he go!? Weren't you idiots watching him!?”
Joe didn't move a single atom of his body as he silently wished himself invisible. It proved a futile exercise.
"You're the idiot," said thug number two, "he's right there! Can't ye see him?"
That was the moment Joe launched himself to his feet and sprinted with the last of his strength down the tunnel. What he hadn’t counted on was the water, knee-deep and sticky, which only grew deeper the further he went. It slowed his efforts considerably to the point that all he could do was throw himself face first into it and hope the thugs wouldn't be able to reach him. He held his breath as long as he could and swam as far as he could, but he could only do either for so long in his battered state. Soon enough a large hand closed around his ankle and dragged him back towards the light as he thrashed with primal fear.
“There he is, our little giant-lover! You’ve been hiding a lot from me, haven’t ya’ Joey?” O’Grady snarled, pulling him by the leg all the way to the opening of the pipe.
Joe didn’t have enough wind in him to scream, let alone speak. He simply trembled in silence as O’Grady lifted him clean off the ground and single-handedly dangled him above the tin can that bobbed sadly in the vast, rushing waters of the Don river.
“What’s the matter? Don’t wanna tell me about your new best friend? That giant that broke the wall – he was the one calling for you like a dog at Calloway’s, wasn’t he?” A hand reached out and placed a knife into O’Grady’s free hand, and his eyes darkened along with his voice. "I thought we were friends, Joe."
Joe squeezed his eyes shut as he stammered helplessly at Tim.
“Tim… come on… what’s the point of this stuff?” Joe gasped, in one last, desperate attempt to get his friend to see reason. “Dividing people, othering them, fighting over scraps… all it ever does is start a war!"
O’Grady’s face curled into a twisted grin, and in that chilling moment Joe had no choice but to accept that O’Grady was not his friend, that he never could be his friend, and perhaps most worrisome of all, that he never really had been his friend to begin with.
"Oh, but how mighty we could be if we could wage war!" O’Grady spat. “We could be powerful and prosperous and safe and respectable. We could live like the giants. Command and conquer and control just like they do. We wouldn’t have to slobber all over them the way you do. We wouldn’t have people like you at all!” He narrowed his eyes, squeezed Joe’s throat, and leaned in closer. “What a happy place this world would be without people like you in it.” He growled.
“What about your family?” Joe croaked. “The fire? We shouldn’t be doing this. We should be… helping them.” He pleaded through breath that was swiftly leaving him.
“They’re all dead!” O’Grady shouted as he wrung Joe's neck for good measure. “You killed them, Joe! That’s what you giant-lovers always do.”
Joe squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. As he glanced down at the reflection on the water below he saw the glint of the knife in O’Grady’s hand.
Even in a distorted reflection, Joe would recognize that knife anywhere. Lightweight and elegantly curved, it was the knife O’Grady had forged himself out of spare parts at the watchmaker’s. It was the knife that had cut the brick of chocolate Harry had given to Joe, the one that had saved him from the snatcher and pried the diamond out of the ring for good measure. It was the knife that had once been a symbol of friendship between the two of them, and now as the clammy hand of one of the thugs pinched Joe's left ear, it was poised to slice that bond in two. It was this knife that would irreversibly alter the course of Joe’s life and leave him a marked man until the day he died.
This was the knife that claimed Joe’s ear.
Do something nice for yourself okay?
Next part coming someday!
uhmm.. So... New obsession?? I've been looking for a good read and I found this AWESOME series by @fireflywritesgt , The Art Of Love and War so I decided to do a few doodles ^v^ (The designs are partially based off of @remordsposthume's designs because they are awesome and I am jealous xD.. I decided to give Harry longer hair but idk if that'll stick)
SPOILERS UNDER CUT - - - - - PLEASE READ THE STORY PLSSSS... IT'S ON FIREFLIES ACCOUNT.
*lick*
DUDEEE When Harry finds out that Joe was marked he's going to be so pissed haha.. Ugghh that cliffhanger was BRUTAL. ;-;
I love Mr. Smalls he's such a fun character.
The idea of Tiny Town being a experiment really cements how just.. unnatural this whole "ward" thing is. How these people who are so tired of not being recognized as human and desperate to be recognized would imitate giant societies even if it's at the detriment of themselves. Joe throughout the series has shown little to no knowledge of how giant society works, countries, cultural norms, etc.
So to see his people go to war, and discriminate against others for something that realistically has NO meaning or weight on any Tinies life must be jarring. Uhh.. I really love the naming in this, especially for Tinies. It's kind of genius actually.. Haha...
"The Fallen Angel" seemed to be an appropriate adaptation for this moment of chapter 37 from The Art of Love and War written by @fireflywritesgt, the description of Joe's determination stuck the painting immediately in my mind and I had to draw this
Joe's design was heavily inspired by @remordsposthume art, check them out! And go read TAOLW, it deserves all the love and attention it can get!
(btw I know the butterfly wasn't with Joe in the jar, but I thought it would complement the composition better so there you go!)
“Wha…” Ruyak laughed quietly, looking at Kaelin with a quizzical expression, “what in Aluok’s eyes are ‘butterflies?’”
Kaelin glanced at him, wondering if he was joking, but soon enough she realized that Ruyak was truthfully oblivious.
“Well uh…” Kaelin fumbled, “they’re these… little flying creatures with colorful wings. They fancy flowers, and springtime and things. They’re rather small, too. I suppose that’s why you’ve never noticed them. The largest I’ve ever seen was no bigger than my palm,” Kaelin held up her hand as reference.
Ruyak stared blankly at her open hand for a moment, then smiled mischievously. “You’re making that up.”
“I swear to you I’m not.”
“Draw me a picture, then.”
Kaelin couldn’t help but notice his strangely calm enthusiasm. It was a welcome relief to his usual demeanor, and a stark contrast to his mood just moments before. She limped back to her desk, preparing to doodle a butterfly, when she remembered the moth design she’d sketched as an alternative Adinen.
“I’ve… already got a drawing. Of a moth, actually. Moths are like… nighttime butterflies. They sometimes fly around lanterns.”
Ruyak waited as Kaelin began rummaging through her pile of parchments until she finally dragged to light the scrawling moth.
check out my book here
Sometimes I just like to animate little things from my stories for fun when I’m having trouble writing. I actually kind of forgot I did these.
I love the idea of giants being utterly astounded by insects in the same way I am by microscopic things like tardigrades and such. If you’re too big to be able to see a moth, a drawing of one would be pretty bewildering, wouldn’t it?
In other news, Ruyak secretly likes tiny things. More at 11.
Part 34 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here. TW for mild emeto and an animal death mention.
And Now They Yearn. Or at least one of them does.
July the 17th had been a strange enough day on account of the interview, but Harry had no idea it was about to get even stranger. He was too fixated on his earlier exchange with Joe, and as he lay with his legs dangling over the parlour sofa, his skin sticky in the summer humidity, he replayed the events of the last half month in his mind. How quiet Joe had grown after his father’s visit. How he had stopped joining Harry for breakfast. How he had taken to sleeping downstairs in the days leading up to the interview, even without a bed. Harry had wondered the entire time what was driving Joe away from him. Now that he finally knew the answer, he didn’t understand it.
He did know better than Joe, after all. He knew how the doctors and the lawyers and the politicians of the world thought of others. He knew of the things they would find respectable and the things they would find abhorrent. Protecting Joe from the ill will of such men wasn’t nearly as simple as flinging a circus manager over a folding chair; all of it was a matter of image, and shallow as it may have been, for Joe to be seen as a simple-minded vermin was a death sentence. His own father had proven that much to be true! No, Harry wasn’t trying to patronize Joe, he told himself. He was just trying to help him.
So busy was he stewing away in the heat that when the phone rang the sound made him jump out of his skin. His stomach twisted into knots as it rang once, twice, three times and kept on going. All the while he debated with himself over whether or not to answer it for fear it might be more bad news from the CPSO.
When he finally worked up the nerve to answer, two familiar voices greeted him instead.
“Good afternoon, doctor Avery. Mother had something private to discuss with you. Here you go, mother.” Said the voice of Susie Wilkins, and Harry had no chance to greet her in return before she handed the phone off to her mother.
“HELLO?” Said Aggie Wilkins, who was clearly a little too far away from the mouthpiece.
“…you speak into this end.” Susie explained in the background.
“Yes, yes, thank you dear. Off with you now.” Aggie said to Susie.
Harry stood and blinked with the receiver in hand all the while, looking for any possible excuse that could get him out of giving a house call. One that would give him plausible deniability for a period between one and six months, no less. Aggie Wilkins spoke again before he could find one.
“IS THIS THE AVERY RESIDENCE?” She continued, still not speaking into the proper end.
“Yes it is, Mrs. Wilkins.” Harry tried his best to cover up the fear in his voice with congeniality. “How are you doing today?”
“Ah! Doctor Avery. Brilliant, brilliant, I’m doing brilliant darling.” Aggie, now close to the mouthpiece, sounded elated to hear him.
Something about this conversation was already odd. Aggie was hardly so cheery the last time he had heard from her, understandably so given the circumstances. With Roger Wilkins in the hospital for tuberculosis, Harry had no idea how she and Susie planned to go on without him. Little did he know, he was about to find out.
“I was wondering if I might invite you to dinner.” Aggie said.
Harry nearly dropped the receiver.
“To dinner? I-I don’t know about that, Mrs. Wilkins, I-” Harry stuttered.
“Please, doctor, I insist! Susie and I are both so grateful for all you’ve done for the family as of late. It’s the least we can do.”
Harry wondered how grateful either of them would be if they knew he was about to lose his medical licence. In spite of that, with the house empty, Joe angry at him, and his sanity dwindling away, dinner didn’t sound like such a bad idea. At the very least it would help him take his mind off of things. He could go and pretend that he was a normal person who had normal people problems, instead of problems like Joe Piccoli. He could remind himself that he was, in fact, a good doctor no matter what the CPSO might have to say about it. Besides, if Joe was having a night out it was only right that Harry should go someplace too.
With all that taken into account, Harry replied,
“…very well, Mrs. Wilkins, if you insist…”
If Harry knew what a headache this outing was about to cause him, he never would have answered the phone at all.
-
The building’s staircase swayed with each and every footstep. With the house sold, it was a Cabbagetown apartment building that the Wilkins family now temporarily called home, one that was not two blocks away from Riverdale Park. How tragic Harry found its rusty radiators and musty wooden frame – it was crime enough that society allowed miniatures to live in squalor, let alone his fellow giants. Once he reached the top of the stairs and turned right down the stained carpet to room 201, he stopped to admire the door’s peeling paint as he rethought his plans for the night all the while.
Then his father’s voice echoed in his head.
“Bloody hell, Herman, if you’re going to disappoint people at least have the decency to greet them first.”
Outside of his head, he could hear the sound of Aggie Wilkins chortling from behind the door as kitchen utensils clanked together. From out in the hallway he could smell what he could only hope was a lovely pot roast, one the Wilkinses had bought with their limited funds specifically for this occasion in all likelihood. His father’s introject was right as it always was: he was going to disappoint them, and so he had to greet them first. He cleared his throat, wiped his sweaty hands, and knocked on the door.
Harry barely got to the third knock before the door was flung wide open, and it was not Aggie who greeted him. Standing in the doorway like a deer stood in a hunter’s crosshairs was a young woman with dark hair, dark eyes with dark circles around them, and a face like Mary Brian’s. She had made an earnest attempt at dressing like a flapper, and she just might fit in with a gaggle of them had she not appeared so frazzled. Something seemed to be bothering her from the second Harry laid eyes on her, and she hardly gave him the welcoming smile he expected of a host. Her face, for a brief moment, contorted into a look of sheer disgust before quickly being painted over with a plasticine smile.
This was Susie Wilkins, Joe’s first caller, and Harry’s first epilepsy case.
“…doctor.” Was all she said to him through her gritted teeth.
“…Miss Wilkins.” Harry swiftly removed his hat and greeted her in turn as the awkwardness of the moment seeped through his skin and into his very bones to such a painful extent that he had no choice but to say something about it. “I’m sorry, miss, is there something wro-”
Harry had no hope of finishing his question, for Aggie Wilkins had already glided into the doorway and swept poor Susie aside. She had greying hair and a face wide-eyed and owl-like – graves’ disease, Harry suspected.
“Why doctor Avery! It’s so lovely to see you!” She crowed, curtseying to him in Victorian fashion in a way that reminded him of his aunt. “We have been eagerly awaiting your company, haven’t we, Susie?”
Susie stood stiff as the coatrack beside her, dwarfed by the shadow of her mother. Her right hand gripped her left wrist and her nails dug into the skin. In a flash she tugged on her exasperated mother’s sleeve and said,
“Mother, may I speak with you for a moment?”
That was what Harry thought she said, at least, for the last few words of hers came out in a jumbled mess.
“Yes, yes, and perhaps you can change into something more decent.” He heard her mother whisper of the boxy green dress she was wearing.
With that, the two retreated to the only other room in the unit, and Harry was left alone in a relatively strange family’s apartment – though he soon realized he may as well have not been left alone at all, for whatever wall was covering the adjacent room was paper thin, and he could hear both mother and daughter’s voices clear as day.
“Come now, Susie, he’s a good man, well employed-”
“Mother, he’s my doctor!”
“And wouldn’t that be just the perfect thing for you? A doctor. With those seizures you’re having-Susie?”
“I’ve had enough, mother.”
“Susie!?”
The floors shook again as Susie, a tempest in a teacup despite her small frame, stomped out of the other room with enraged eyes fixed ahead. The look in them burned right through Harry, who had to step aside quickly for fear she might stomp over him too. She paid him no mind as she grabbed her hat off the coat rack, and the floor did not stop shaking until she was through the door, down the stairs, and out of the building.
All the while, her mother screeched, “SUSIE!? SUSIIIIIE!”
Aggie’s fingers clawed into Harry’s shoulder as she turned to him in her time of need.
“Oh, this is no good, doctor, no good at all! She has seizures whenever she goes outside, you know! We must bring her back right away, doctor Avery.”
“Seizures…?” Harry repeated.
This was the first time Harry had heard of Susie’s seizures being triggered by such a thing. So far as he knew, lack of sleep and improper diet were what brought them about. Still, with Aggie’s advancing age and the sky threatening rain all day, he knew that seizures or no seizures, it was his implicit duty as a man to go out and bring her home.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Wilkins, I’ll talk some sense into her.” He said.
As he turned to follow Susie, he couldn’t help but think that old Mrs. Wilkins had looked a little too pleased with herself at Harry’s offer.
-
Susie had made it all the way to the streetcar stop before Harry caught up with her.
“Susie, please, could you come back home? Your mother’s very worried about you. I don’t know what’s going on, but is it really worth ruining dinner over?” He huffed as he raced behind her.
Susie’s quick stride stopped suddenly, and she turned to him with eyes narrowed and said,
“Yes.”
It struck Harry that he didn’t know what other answer he expected from Susie.
“What about the seizures? The rain? What is there to do on a night like this?”
Susie, to Harry’s surprise, didn’t argue. She simply chuckled, as though she knew something he didn’t know.
“I know what I’ll do.” She replied. “I’ll make you work for me. That’s what I’ll do.”
“Work for you!?”
Harry puffed up indignantly. He had no idea what sort of indecent euphemism she meant by making him work for her, and he didn’t want to find out. For a moment he was tempted to give up on the whole ordeal and call the Toronto Morality Police instead, but the thought of poor old Aggie Wilkins suffering the humiliation of having her daughter dragged in by an officer was enough to dissuade him.
Susie, smug as a cat who ate a canary, simply turned heel and boarded the coming streetcar, leaving Harry with no choice but to follow her.
“Mother thinks I’m a frail little thing who’s always at death’s door, but I can go outside. That’s not what gives me seizures. I’ll show you. Come on, let’s go to the picture show.” She said as she hung carelessly out of the streetcar doorway.
The picture show. A dark room with a great big flickering light. There was no way this could end well for Susie, Harry figured, but he had no hope of dissuading her. Fortunately, the streetcar's operator did, and he raised a wedged hand and stopped her two steps up the stairs.
“You gonna pay the rest of that fare you owe me?” The surly operator asked Susie.
Susie appeared unfazed. She simply smiled, batted her eyelashes and said,
“No, but I can make your wife another hat. How’s that sound?”
The operator, who had clearly been had, looked her up and down and pretended to deeply consider the offer before waving her aboard.
It really was a fine hat she was wearing. Bucket shaped, sapphire blue and clearly hand felted.
“You made that hat?” Asked Harry, as he sat down in the crowded car next to her and felt like a bull in a china shop.
“I make a lot of things, doctor.” She curtly replied.
It was no wonder Joe was so fond of Susie, Harry thought. They were quite alike in thought and habit, let alone looks. A sickliness came over him as the car lurched forward, and suddenly he wanted to be back home. Deep down, he knew what Susie’s mother was expecting of him. He knew what she was expecting of Susie, too. Perhaps in some other world he could propose to Susie, save her from abject poverty, make her mother – and his father – proud, for once. Perhaps he could do that, he reasoned, but it would have to be a world in which he possessed the total absence of a heart.
At least in this world, he had greeted her before disappointing her.
“Doctor…” Susie’s sheepish voice pulled Harry out of his ruminations, “can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” Harry said.
“Do you think people can cause seizures?”
“I… don’t know about that, Susie, but you know what can cause seizures? The picture show.” Harry answered. "Maybe instead we could go to a-a bookstore or something."
Susie rolled her eyes in response.
“I’ve been sticking to the diet you gave me, doctor, just like you said. The last thing we have to fear is the picture show.” Said Susie. “…I think it’s my mother we need to be worried about.”
She was just as frustratingly stubborn as Joe was too, Harry noted.
-
Harry chaperoned Susie into the theatre as she chattered away.
“My uncle used to own this plot of land, but he sold it off. The buyer built this here picture palace and now every time he stops by this place, he kicks himself for selling it instead of building one here himself…”
He half-listened as his hand crept up to his shoulder out of habit, only for him to remember too late that Joe wasn’t there. Disastrous as their last trip to the picture show had been, Harry couldn’t help but want him to be there. He could see the latest Charlie Chaplin short if he were, or entertain Susie Wilkins so Harry didn't have to. If he was lucky, with the aid of a scarf, he could avoid detection and have a nice evening for once.
Harry was hardly enjoying himself. The theatre Susie had chosen was downright gaudy by Harry’s standards, and the piano player was only half as good as his usual spot. It was a crowded Saturday evening show, and the audience had little respect for art; they hooted, hollered, clapped their hands, crunched peanuts, and all around behaved like animals.
Joe would love this place, he decided.
Although Joe was not there, Harry was unware that there were three miniatures at the theatre that night, and one of them was the last man he wanted to see. Shortly after the words Tiny Tappers in... Taking the Cake appeared onscreen, three miniatures entered stage right with Danny’s unmistakable, obnoxious face front and center, colossal on the silver screen.
Harry sank down into his chair with his arms crossed and gritted his teeth.
“Oooh, that reminds me! Do you know what that Joe Piccoli told me today?” Said Susie.
Harry didn’t respond. He simply endured Susie’s tapping on his shoulder, knowing she would tell him one way or another. Hell, even if she didn’t tell him, he could hazard a guess!
“He said he’s one of those tiny people.” She continued. “Now, I know Joe, and he’s a real joker. He can’t be serious, right doctor? You don’t have a tiny person using your phone, do you?”
“Susie, I…” Harry scowled, once again searching for a good lie. “I’m trying to watch this.” Was the best he could come up with.
“Sorry, sorry! I’ll be quiet.” Susie murmured.
Harry had to hand it to Danny, he really had danced himself until he broke. He watched as the larger-than-life doppelganger performed downright Olympian feats as he tapped along with his two cohorts, each just as inhumanly talented as the other. This short was set in a kitchen, and Danny and company tapped over rolling grapes and the rims of boiling pots, the spout of a kettle, up the kitchen faucet, then backflipped off of it to make a perfect landing on the edge of an upright knife-blade. The objective, it seemed, was to borrow some cake that the giant housewife had set down to cool in the windowsill on the other side of the room. Harry tried not to get sucked into it as the audience oohed, aahed, and laughed along at the sight. To do that would be to care for Danny in any capacity, after all, and Harry couldn’t have that!
“…is it true he goes wherever he wants by himself? That Joe Piccoli, I mean.” Susie whispered, already breaking her vow of silence.
Torn between two unwelcome experiences, there was nothing Harry could do but grind his teeth.
“I find that funny, y’know, that a tiny, if he is one, can go wherever he wants, but my mother won’t let me outside without a chaperone.” She continued. “I suppose it’s a good thing you came to dinner after all. Maybe you can talk some sense into her once you see I won't have a seizure.”
So that was Susie’s master plan, Harry noted. Maybe it was what she meant when she said she was making Harry work for her; she was using him as a way to get her mother to take her seriously.
Harry, who had spent years trying to get his father to take him seriously and failed, had far less confidence in himself than she did.
-
“See? No seizures! I’m telling you, the only thing that triggers them nowadays is my mother.” Susie laughed as they exited the picture palace.
Playfully she clasped Harry’s hand, and Harry felt ill at the touch. His nausea only worsened at her next suggestion.
“Well, now that we’ve seen a movie, why don’t we go get dinner at Sunnyside and dance the night away? Or are you still scared of my seizures?” She taunted as she let go of him.
Harry could barely stammer out an answer. Any uneducated onlooker would think it was because he was on a date with a beautiful young woman, but that wasn’t why he was tongue tied. No, Harry was speechless because he knew Joe was going to be at Sunnyside, and the last thing Harry wanted was to see Joe carousing with that guy from the movies.
“No, I want you to go home. It’s late. Your mother’s worried sick about you, isn’t she?” Said Harry.
“Oh, she’s not worried at all. She wants you to be my knight in shining armour, and you can go ahead and do that so long a I get to have some fun first.” Susie countered, leaving Harry speechless. “I bet that’s what you want, too, isn’t it? To run out and save some damsel in distress from the evils of the Sunnyside Dance Hall.” She cackled.
Harry didn’t know what to do with himself. Yes, he wanted to save her from the evils of the Sunnyside Dance Hall, and to save Joe from the CPSO. He wanted to save his mother from hemorrhagic brain bleed for that matter, Georgie from machine gun fire, his feral cat from a little boy’s arrow. Harry had accomplished none of these things, but still he had to try, for he believed deeply in the chambers of his heart that trying was the point.
Whether he liked it or not, Susie was already on her way to Sunnyside, and Harry was already on his way to save her.
-
The Sunnyside Amusement Park was not yet the realm of children. For the moment it still belonged to the lecherous youth of the day, a welcome third place where they could stretch out and enjoy all the thrills and spills and freedoms the park had to offer. It was nascent in that day, blissfully unaware of its eventual – and quintessentially Canadian - fate as one stretch of bland highway identical to the next. For now, it was a neon carnival of whirling lights and magic, something special and unique, a Coney Island of the north with a reputation that was only half as bad.
Crown jewel of the place was the Palais Royale Dance Hall. Susie was making a bee-line for it, past the Sunnyside Flyer with its dippiest-dips on the continent and the Sunnyside Pavilion, where the first Miss Toronto had been crowned the previous year. It was the dance hall that attracted the most revelry by far, and it was for precisely this reason that Harry had avoided it up to this point in his life. Harry had attended as many amusement parks as he had circuses, after all, and he was not about to become a regular of either.
Still, as he squeezed his way through the wall of Saturday night dancers in pursuit of Susie, he soon found himself on another rescue mission: he had to make sure Joe was okay. As the army of giant feet hammered on the floor below, Harry had no idea how it would even be possible for Joe to enjoy himself at a place like this, let alone survive it. Harry didn’t know how he would survive it himself as he danced along, keeping pace with Susie while also keeping an eye out for Joe.
He could only look around for so long before Susie stole his attention back, of course.
“You looking at other women? You could at least pretend to be interested in me, y’know!” She scolded him over the sound of the live band.
The opposite was true, it seemed. Other women were looking at him, though he couldn’t be sure why. Nonetheless, Harry did as he was told and pretended, excruciating as it was. What more was there to do? Here he was, helpless in this crowd, helpless before this woman, in the last place in the world he wanted to be. He felt like a fraud in this hell of stomping feet, a fake, like everybody knew it, like Susie herself knew it as her dark eyes – so much like Joe’s – locked onto his and scrutinized his very soul. She knew. She knew Harry wasn’t right. She knew about Georgie and about Joe, the voice in the back of Harry’s head insisted as his temples throbbed. She was going to tell his father.
The music died down as the band prepared to play another number, and when Susie took the opportunity to speak, the lilting reediness of her voice had been purged in favour of a tone that was dry, sharp, and focused. She spoke the way a soldier spoke.
“I know you won’t take me seriously when I say this, or maybe you don’t care, but my mother only invited you over so she could force me to marry you. She’s after your money. She thinks you’re rich ‘cause you’re a doctor, and if I marry you we won’t have to move to London.”
With those words, Harry felt oddly relieved. He could handle a conniving mother. He would rather be confronted with that than with the truth of what he was. Now that the song was over and his anxiety had died down, he could finally think, and his mind was on Aggie, and the ring, and his father. On his upcoming 30th birthday. On the skin he wanted to rip clean off and -
“...though I really ought to apologize.” Susie continued, the insincerity creeping back into her voice. “You’re a swell fella, I know that. It’s not you I’m angry at. It’s my mother. What I want for myself never matters. It’s like I’m a thing to her and not a person. You ever feel like that, doctor? ‘cause let me tell you, it drives you crazy.”
-and now Harry realized he was looking into a mirror.
“All the time.” He replied.
Susie appeared skeptical at this.
“Really? Who decides your life?” She said.
“My father, I suppose.” Admitted Harry.
“Why do you listen to him?”
As Harry’s mind short-circuited at the question, the first note of the next song began to play.
“Well, what else is there to do?”
Harry tried to look at Susie and strain his ears for her answer, he truly did, but when a passing shadow fell over the wall behind her he couldn’t help but crane his neck upwards.
There on the disk-shaped chandelier above stood two tiny figures, one of which Harry immediately recognized as Joe, dressed in his finest, of course. He glowed like an angel in the light, a sight so beautiful it was downright painful to witness. Harry could only wonder what the view from up there must be like; he couldn’t tell if Joe even saw him! In spite of that, when Joe turned away from him, accompanied by the taller tiny who was no doubt Danny Smalls, Harry couldn’t help but feel as though he had been cut to ribbons.
Joe had it all figured out. Of course he did. He hadn’t needed Harry to save him from the feet. That wasn’t the point, of course, and Harry kept his eyes glued to that chandelier in spite of all that, not looking away until Joe’s shadow passed all the way across the wall and disappeared for good. He was so engrossed he hadn’t even noticed that Susie was now standing still.
“Why’d you stop dancing?” Asked Susie over the music. “What is it? What’s up there?”
Harry hadn’t even noticed that he had been the first one to stop dancing.
“I don’t know.” He lied.
Susie wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and her eyes mirrored his own feigned romantic interest back at him.
“Well, to answer your question, doctor, about what else you could do… you could try being honest.”
first set of zodiac angels from a series I started earlier this year; these were available as postcards for april through july on the patreon, along with the working file and the high rez ~
