Low Tide in Fel-Worth: Part 2

Read part 1 here!

The story thus far: Julia, a human witch, and Kellic, a satyr, have broken into a low-rise warehouse on a search for Kellic's sister.

“Chaos always extracts a price.”

Who said it? She couldn’t tell. Time was rushing past, future and past blurring together.

Decision. She stood at the intersection of a decision, completely disconnected from how she got here. Thought was painful, like barb-wire flossing her brain.

Where am I now?

At her feet was a a ragged-edged hole dug through concrete, like something had burrowed its way through the foundation to find a place to hibernate for winter. A set of prefab steel stairs were jammed into the naked dirt, leading below the warehouse, lit by a string of naked light bulbs.

Kellic looked up from the bottom of the stairs. “Who’s Rachel?”

He was at the top of the stairs. His face was a mask of fury one moment, then a look of concern next. Rachel? She hadn’t said anything about Rachel.

Julia wiped cold sweat from her brow and tried to orient herself in causality.

When did I get unstuck?

She focused on the moment after she and Kellic had slipped through the door.

They’d found nothing but debris of the drug dealer’s operations: scraps of cardboard boxes, a pile of torn fertilizer bags like a snowdrift in a corner, and long trails of dirt. If Kellic’s sister had a green thumb, she could make a crop grow several times faster than normal. Quite a boon for an operation that relied on speed and secrecy.

A painful sensation sparked inside her, like bad food twisting through her gut, but she ignored it and kept searching. But it grew so strong she could barely move. While Kellic poked through a side room, Julia leaned against a grafittied wall. The merciful face of the Lady of Guadalupe looked down benevolently, as if it was she was understanding of these tiny vices, like drug dealing, or breaking and entering.

She looked at a pipe sticking out of the cinderblock wall, which was dripping noisely. No…it was un-dripping, up from the floor and back into the pipe, totally anachronistically.

“What do you mean, a time loop?!” Kellic shouted.

Julia spasmed, holding tight against the railing that led down into the basement. Was this the present? Need to put it back together! She tried to force time into a tunnel, into a series events.

She was outside in the alley, casting her chaos magic to open the lock.

Chaos always extracts a price, whispered Rachel.

Then the door slammed shut. Then it slammed open. A woman, her form a ghostly blur, burst out of the shut door, dragging an injured satyr along. The woman looked up, and their eyes locked.

The sweat-matted black hair. The brown pupils.

It was herself.

“Oh, fuck. It’s a temporal rift,” she said. “We’re in a time loop. We’re gonna fight another chaos user.”

Memories that hadn’t happened flooded her mind. Causality took a quick cigarette break.

“Kellic, we should–” she croaked.

“What do you mean, a time loop?! Another chaos user?!” he shouted, from the top of the stairs this time. A bald man, every inch of his face tattooed, lurched out of the darkness and fired his submachine gun.

She tried to explain the unexplainable. Down the stairs were many futures, mostly ones that contained gunshots, screams, and blood. A bald man with empty eyes and a big gun. Kellic crying. Julia crying.

Back up the stairs there were safer futures. Futures where they never found Kellic’s sister, but safer futures nonetheless.

She stood at the edge of the ragged concrete hole, teetering on the edge of decision. Stay, or run? The sizzle of her fates flied past her like hot shell casings ejecting from a gun. There may or may not be a fight. She might convince Kellic to come back later, though they’d never find his sister. The bald man might shoot Kellic, or Julia. Death was one of many outcomes.

“Julia, where are you?” Kellic voice called.

Time itself was just an illusion–everything was happening, all at once. She was stuck here at this decision. Run, or fight.

Chaos always extracts a price. Are you prepared to pay it? Rachel asked her, when they were but young witches.

Rachel, who now occupied a coffin. Rachel, who’s killer hadn’t been caught yet.

The thought buoyed her, anchored her. The pain lessened. Time enough at last to focus on the choice.

There was only one decision, really. Julia Ito was many things, but she wasn’t a quitter.

“Kellic, found something,” she croaked.

The satyr shuffled up from behind her, and took a doubtful look below.

“What’s down there?” he whispered.

“A future where we might find your sister,” she said, “and we might die.”

The satyr hesitated, then nodded. He wasn’t a quitter either.

She gripped his hairy arm tightly, and they descended into the darkness.

WC: 799

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