Chapter Three: Extenuating Circumstances
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The drive back took two hours. Marco spent most of it not thinking about what was in the passenger seat.
He thought about other things instead! He thought about the permit in his bag and whether “Category Three” covered this specific situation.
And concluded that it almost certainly did not.
He thought about the forum post, and the dead man who'd written it, and whether there was any universe in which that man had known what was in the box.
And then concluded that there probably wasn't, before immediately reconsidering.
He thought about his mother.
He thought about the candlestick, which was going to be worth maybe forty euros if he was lucky.
And the tiles, which might do better. And the clay figure with the missing leg, which he'd looked up on his phone at a rest stop and found nothing useful about.
He did not think about the woman in the passenger seat, who had come out of the underground wrapped in a furniture cloth he'd found in the chest (The same onethat dissolved at the edges, which had turned out to be more structurally sound than it looked. Mostly) and had gotten into his car without being asked after a struggle with opening the door, and had sat with her knees pulled up and her forehead against the window for the entire drive and had not said a single word.
He did not think about the part where getting her out of the underground had taken forty minutes of careful navigation through a body that kept going wrong. The stairs had been a problem. The rope had been a problem. The light, when they finally got above ground, had been a significant problem; she'd stopped at the mouth of the exit and stood there with her face turned up for so long that Marco had started to worry, and then she'd exhaled slowly and walked to his car and gotten in, and he'd stood by the driver's door for a moment before deciding that whatever was happening was happening and he, well, might as well drive.
He also did not think about the fact that he had absolutely no plan for what came next.
The radio was on, playing the latest hit between one robot monster he wasn't exactly too knowledgeable about (and probably will never care enough to be) and Ms. Stoneface. The only reason he really liked listening to this specific radio station is because they had a very unhealthy obsession with putting Stoneface's songs on. It was probably just one of those themed radio stations. Whatever. He liked it.
She hadn't reacted to the radio atfirst, and then at some point on the motorway she'd reached out and turned the volume down without asking (rude?) and then after a few minutes turned it back up again. And one more, turning it down. Marco had kept his eyes on the road and not said anything about it, really.
This woman could probably kill him if he did. Sigh.
He pulled into his street at half past nine. Turned off the engine. Sat there.
In his peripheral vision she was still looking out the window. At his street. At the terraced houses and the sodium lights and the bin bags someone had been left out a day early. And the cat that lived two doors down sitting on a wall watching the car an odd contempt?
"right," He finally spoke “okay.”
His flat was on the second floor. One bedroom, a kitchen that was also part of the living room (if you were being generous about definitions,) a bathroom with a showerhead that ran cold for the first three minutes no matter what you did. He'd actually been meaning to call the landlord about that for eight months.
Kelsey stood in the middle of the living room and looked at it.
She looked at it with a flat, thorough attention that didn't telegraph anything, taking inventory of each thing in turn.
The stack of courier packages in the corner he kept meaning to deal with.
The shelf of books he'd had since university and hadn't opened since.
The plant on the windowsill that was somehow still alive despite everything.
She crossed to the plant. Looked at it up close. Touched one of the leaves with two dirty, almost half-eaten looking fingers, carefully.
"what's it name. this," she said.
"Pothos," Marco said. "it's uuuh, hard to kill. Apparently."
She looked at it for another moment. Then she moved on to the kitchen.
Now, he had no issue with this. The problem with the kitchen was that she opened every cupboard.
Not aggressively. But, just. She kept opening them. One after another, looking at the contents, closing it again. Like she was building a map. Marco stood in the doorway and watched her open the cupboard with the mugs, and the one with the tinned food, and the one where he kept the pasta and the rice and the things he bought with good intentions and rarely used. She opened the fridge and stood in front of it for a long time. The cold air came out around her.
"is all of this for you," she said.
She reached in and picked up a block of cheese. Looked at the packaging. Took a bite WITH the packaging on. Put it back. Picked up the leftover container from two nights ago, sniffed it through the lid, put it back. She picked up an apple and looked at it like she was deciding something, then took a bite standing right there with the fridge still open and the cold air pooling out around her feet.
"you can. okay. yeah, just help yourself," Marco said.
She took another bite. Closed the fridge with her hip.
She ate standing at the kitchen counter. The apple, then most of a block of crackers she'd found in a cupboard, then a banana that had been browning on the counter for a few days. Marco made tea mostly to have something to do with his hands and stood on the other side of the counter and tried desperately to think about how to start any of the conversations they needed to have.
"what year is it," she said, around a cracker.
She chewed. Swallowed. Picked up another cracker. "ind the monsters. they just. Out."
"they've been out for three years. there's a whole— there was a summit. a treaty. it's been a whole process."
"aye." She didn't sound surprised exactly. More like she was slotting it into a structure she was building in real time. "n’ mind tellin who's in charge of allat."
Marco opened his mouth, thought about it for a second, and gave her the short version.
"no one single," He said.
"it, well. I guess it used to be kings. then countries. then groups of countries. now it’s just layers. governments and councils and corporations."
"whoever can. Depends on, like. The situation. money, votes, pressure. Sometimes even force."
She listened without expression. When he finished she was quiet for a moment.
"different," she said. "from my time."
"yeah, i mean. i'd imagine.” he so desperately wanted to ask what time she came from. But. Was it really appropriate to right now?
She looked at the banana peel on the counter. Looked at the window. Outside the street was quiet. Just the sodium light and the cat still on the wall and the stillness of a Tuesday night somewhere nothing much happened.
"i need a bath," she said.
"right. yeah, i'll. the shower takes a minute to warm up, I'll show you—"
"a bath," she said. "Not a shower. fuck's a shower."
"It's like.” He sighed, “ it's water, from above, it's— I'll show you both, it's fine."
She followed him to the bathroom. He demonstrated the taps, handed her a towel, found a spare toothbrush still in its packaging under the sink and left a clean t-shirt and a pair of joggers outside the door because he couldn't think of a better option. Then he stood in his own kitchen and listened to the pipes complain as the bath filled.
He also made another cup of tea he didn't want.
He thought: I don't know her last name. He thought: I don't know if she has one. He thought: I found her in a box in the castle of the monster king and she ate all my crackers and she's in my bath and I have to be at work in eleven hours.
He thought: I am not going to be at work in eleven hours.
From the bathroom, the sound of water. Then silence. Then, very faintly, something that might have been humming. Low and tuneless, not quite in a scale Marco recognised.
And then that stopped too, and the flat settled around him, and the cat was still on the wall outside, and Marco stood in his kitchen and drank his tea and did not think about any of it. Not until he absolutely had to.
