Imaginary Friends
“This will be the year. It’ll be this year. This year.” Art paced feverishly across the living room, gnawing on a fingernail as he muttered to himself.
Last year had been a bust, so he was eighteen now. That was fine, he’d get in this year and would have a lifetime of magic in front of him. The Attacks didn’t bother him too much. If he was forced to participate, he would avoid hurting anyone. Plenty of Attacks turned out that way, and more each year. True, the bad ones were getting worse, sometimes much worse-
He slapped his cheeks with both palms, shaking his head. Positive thoughts. In the next few hours, people across the world would be getting the news. He’d be one of them, he was sure of it. Enoch wouldn’t pass over him again, not when he’d done so well on the exam. All last year Arthur had studied, scraping together every idle moment. Friends, games, school, internet - he’d cut back on everything else, instead dedicating his hours to researching successful applicants, reviewing previous tests, doing practice exams. Barron’s published a study guide now, as did Kaplan.
It was one of their best sellers. The SAT was given more, but the students that took Enoch’s exam were far more motivated.
Everything came down to this. The fights with his parents (they barely tolerated him), the breakup with Joan, the friends lost, the grades lost... none of it mattered, as long as this one thing went through. None of it mattered, as long as he heard from Enoch.
Was it normal to sweat this much? Probably not, but nothing about this was normal. Maybe it was a good sign?
The hour ticked away, second by second.
And the next.
And the next.
And the next, which was the last, and then Enoch was out of time. The tight, electric ball of tension in his chest seemed to fall, down through his stomach and further, down into a pit that had no bottom. Vertigo gripped him for a second, nausea and a hopeless lightness in his chest, and his scattered, panicked thoughts were full of the fear that it might fall forever.
Slowly, shudderingly, Arthur exhaled.
Ah, well. Maybe next year. If he could even bring himself to do this all over again for a year.
He couldn’t, he already knew that. Maybe that was why... Maybe that was why he wasn’t good enough.
Hours passed, but he didn’t bother counting them. It felt like his mind was full of static, unable to focus on a single train of thought. Habit compelled him to look over his study guides, but even the thought of putting pencil to paper brought the vertigo back. Something welled up within him, an indescribable emotion, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ignore the tears.
For a long time, he sat and thought about nothing at all.
“Heard about what happened.” All of a sudden, his father was standing in the doorway, expression somber. Bookish, slim, hair more grey than brown, Tomas Drake didn’t cut a particularly imposing figure.
Arthur turned anyway, hiding his face.
“It’s bullshit, the things that man does,” his father continued, shaking his head. “Simple and complete-”
“I don’t,” Arthur’s voice hitched as he angrily brushed aside tears. “want to talk about it.”
He knew sounded petulant. Who was he even angry at? His parents, for being right? Himself, for being stupid?
“Hey.” His father stepped forward and placed a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “A man doesn’t ever need to feel embarrassed, shedding tears. There’s nothing shameful in caring about something, no matter what the movies say.”
Art had heard all about the things “A man” did and didn’t ever need to do, but this one was new. He found himself appreciating the sentiment.
“Alright,” Arthur said, turning to face his dad. “Get on with it.”
There was a pause.
“You think I’m here to say I told you so.” His father said, smiling tightly. “Oh, man...”
He blinked. Why was the man here, then? Delivering a ultimatum? Kicking him out?
“Look, kiddo,” His father sat down on the bed beside him, looking up at the ceiling. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. How I handled this whole magic school thing,” He grimaced. “It wasn’t great.”
“But you were right,” Arthur said, disbelieving, sitting up to look down at him.
A shrug. “Maybe I was right, maybe I wasn’t. I just-” He sighed. “After your mother told me the news, I couldn’t stop thinking about how stupid the whole thing was. How unbelievably stupid. And how I’d let something as stupid as that get between me and my son. I know I’ve never been a cool dad, but we could do better than this, I thought.”
He cleared his throat, somewhat embarrassed. “You’re tough, Art. Tougher than I gave you credit for. Maybe not in the ways I expected, but you are. Tougher than your old man was at your age, I could never do what you did. Not for an entire year. Must be your mother in you.”
“I could never do what I did this year, either,” Arthur shook his head, grinning slightly. “Never again.”
“Don’t sell yourself short! Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can have some creepy old guy pop in and tell them they’re a wizard. That’s the easy road. Us Drakes, we...” For a moment, a shadow of deep resignation passed over his father’s face. Then it was gone, so fast Arthur could almost convince himself he’d imagined it.
His father shook his head, smiling slightly, “We never take the easy road.” He sighed and straightened himself.
“Anyway, what I came up here to say was that we screwed up. We tried to act in your best interests, but you’re a man now, and free to decide what’s best on your own. Our only job is to stand by you, no matter what happens. I- your mother and I- that’s what we’re going to do. Even if you don’t see us-”
“That's enough.” Abruptly, there was another man in the room with them.
Arthur sprang back, struck his head on a bedpost, and tumbled to the ground. The world spun.
His father turned to the man, smiling shakily. “I'm as good as done, sure.”
There was a discontinuity, as if the reel of Art’s life had skipped a frame. And then his father’s head was flying through the arc, trailing a bloody arc. His mouth still tried to work, eyes blinking.
The third man advanced on Arthur, stepping through the moonlight which fell like a soft curtain across the room. He was an Asian man, handsome but for the seam running down the left side of his face, glittering like a vein of raw gold.
“Sorry about this, eh?” The man said, picking Arthur up by his throat. He sounded so apologetic, as if he really were sorry. Sighing, the man cocked back a fist.
Before he could throw the punch, though, there was a tap on Arthur’s window. A face leaned in from the side, a face anyone in the world would recognize.
“Thank you, Ken,” said Atrianome Enoch. “We’re finished here.”
The gold-seamed man nodded. “Sir,” he said perfunctorily, and dropped Arthur.
It was many hours later, and early into the dawn, when the national guard found him. The entire town of Mayeville, Iowa, had been silently slaughtered in the night. He was the sole survivor of the Attack.
What was it that he’d been thinking earlier?
The fights with his parents, the breakup with Joan, the friends lost, the grades lost... None of it mattered, as long as he heard from Enoch.
---
Relatives in Brooklyn took him in. He made up his remedial classes, got a GED. Time passed, though never comfortably. Everyone in the media had been sympathetic, but there were fringe elements online that believed he had been involved in the Attack, or that he’d somehow instigated it. With no way to prove otherwise, he’d had no choice but to keep his head down and endure the harassment. They organized local Brooklynites, fearful for their lives. His uncle’s apartment was picketed multiple times. There were break-ins, death threats. The police helped deal with that, scoffing at the idea that it might happen again. Sure, Enoch was crazy, but why pick on some random kid?
Then came the Attack on Brooklyn. It was the gold-seamed man, obvious this time, standing in the air, limbs a furious blur as he deflected tank shells and machine-gun fire. Buildings fell in quick succession, belching smoke and dust, and soon the entire city was covered in a thick, choking mist that smelled of blood and grime. Madly, ludicrously, Arthur had rushed towards the man, shouting recriminations, but he was tackled by a police officer and subsequently ignored.
Many managed to flee the borough as the massacre commenced, but by the end the only living souls were, again, Art and “Ken.”
Some invisible aura around Ken rebuffed Arthur’s flailing charge. This time, the man said nothing, giving Arthur a weary look before Enoch appeared to collect him.
---
After that, there was no sympathy. Not from the media, or the government, or the internet, or anyone. Who could believe that he had been uninvolved? And even if they could, was he still not cursed? Marked by Enoch, or one of his strongest students, for some obscure or sorcerous purpose. Brooklyn had been the worst Attack in history, bar none.
He wandered, managing to pick up odd jobs when he wasn’t recognized. Most days he simply felt numb, but sometimes it would all come to overwhelm him. He spent days scrolling through memorials for the fallen, trying to memorize every name. He read endless pages of vitriol directed against his person, searched compulsively for more like a panner after gold. Long, sleepless hours he wondered if he’d done something to deserve it.
When he passed through, occasionally people would smile at him. Reflexive smiles of politeness, warm smiles of hospitality: they would overtake a face like the sun at dawn, only to cloud over as they recognized him. The aborted half-smile. Sometimes, he thought about collecting them, snapshots in his mind. But it was less hurtful to let them all merge together. The aborted half-smile was the face the world showed him. Six billion pairs of eyes looked out from its awkward grimace.
When he got on the bus, people got off on the next stop. Those who didn’t recognize him were alerted by the exodus of those who did. Often the driver would leave as well, in protest or in fear. He grew experienced at hiding himself, concealing his face, but there were internet threads about the color of his jacket, his build, height, eye color and favorite disguises. He wondered if men who looked like him were often bothered about it.
Probably.
He was surprised he hadn’t been abducted by the government, or even some international agency, organization, or cult. Perhaps they were afraid of what would happen if they interfered with one of Enoch’s toys. As far as he knew, there were no others like him. No survivors carefully singled out when everyone else had died. No provocateurs who earned Enoch’s attention with their very existence. No one else attacked, or spared, by the gold-seamed man.
At the end of that year, he submitted another application to Terrascape, though for unkinder reasons than before.
After all, if magic was real, why couldn’t justice be more than a fairy tale?
But there was no reply that year, either. Not that he’d expected one. If Enoch had wanted him in, it would’ve been a simple matter to tell him when they had met in person.
---
A year and a half after the Attack on Brooklyn, Art had made his way to the West Coast. Memories of horror were long, but still finite, and this far from New York there were fewer that recognized him. He’d established a stable migratory pattern through the Oregan and Washington countrysides, doing his best to minimize time spent in Seattle or Portland. He’d sent in his fourth and final application to the Academy, out of irony more than anything else. Along his route were a number of families that knew his story and accepted him anyway. Work was hard, but plentiful.
On Christmas Eve, he popped into Seattle to do some last-minute shopping for those families. In particular, Caroline Gladstone was college-bound and had applied to the Terrascape. He was standing in a department store, brainstorming a gift to deter that ambition, when the gold-seamed man appeared again. No longer was there a single seam across his face. He was like porcelain shattered and welded back together with gold, though his flesh seemed no less natural, his movements no less fluid or devastating.
Art was ready.
He had run through the plan in his mind a thousand times. Without thinking, he pulled the switchblade from his belt and held it to his own throat.
“Stop!” He roared, and was unable to keep anguish from warping his tone. “S-stop, or I’ll do it.”
There was no time for contemplation, only deathly resolve. He faced an enemy of superhuman speed.
The gold-seamed man sighed. “I don’t like this any more than you do, eh? Sorry.”
And then Art was flat on his back, the knife clattering from his hand, and some invisible pressure kept him from moving his limbs as the man killed and killed and killed.
On Christmas day, it rained in Seattle. Snowflakes hit the wave of smoke and superheated air that rose from that burning cairn of a city, and turned to rain. The gold-seamed man had ripped the top six floors off of the building to use them as a projectile against the Navy. Rain struck Arthur as he lay, helpless.
Save for the rain, his eyes were dry. A man never needed to feel embarrassed, shedding tears, but that didn’t mean they were useful either. When the pressure let up, he was going to finish it. He was going to cut short this experiment of Enoch’s, or bring it to its inevitable conclusion, whichever. It was the only form of power he still had. He felt as if he had hurdled long past misery, past bleakness, past worry, past guilt and self-doubt, past all the ills of the human condition that were born of hope or the absence of hope. Only determination remained.
All paths were closed to him, but he could still make his own.
You’re not alone.
The voice was like steel sheathing ice, like lightning kissing blood, like black ink dripped across the whole expanse of the sky. The hairs on his neck rose up in a shiver, as if a blade had been passed lengthwise across it.
It was a voice that promised neither mercy nor kindness. But that was fine.
You are my Host.
Was this, also, part of the plan?
Arthur realized that he didn’t care. Maybe justice was a fairy tale, but there was still vengeance, and that was a damn sight better than nothing. He'd dance until he could strangle the puppeteer with his own strings.
Do you accept?
He accepted, and closed his eyes. For a long time, they remained closed.
When he opened them again, Atrianome Enoch was standing over him, an unreadable expression in his gaze.
Enoch smiled.
“Well,” said he, “it certainly wasn’t an easy road for you. Cutting it a bit close, hm? You very nearly didn’t make it. I’m glad we could help you through in the end. Allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your successful admittance to the Terrascape Academy of Magical Endeavour.”
He extended a hand, five fingers in a white velvet glove, unstained by the ash or the blood or the rain, to shake.
[ ] Shake It
[ ] Don’t Shake It
[ ] Write-in - Somehow you know instinctively that he won’t answer any questions, if that’s what you’re planning.
How does Arthur feel about his situation?
[ ] Confused - Enoch implied Arthur's own desire to be admitted was the cause of the Attacks around him, possibly as some means of turning Arthur into a Conjoined. That may or may not be true, but the uncertainty certainly takes the wind out of vengeance’s sails. It seems there is no path but forward. There may or may not be more levels to Enoch’s plan, but he has no choice but to face them head-on.
[ ] Guilty - Except for some jokes told during interviews, Enoch has never lied before in any interaction on record. He may not want it to be true, but the most likely explanation is that Enoch really did kill all those people to make Art a Conjoiner. Arthur may never have asked for it, but that is the probable truth. The only thing he can do now is accept the burden of their lives - because Enoch certainly won’t - and make the most of this opportunity that was purchased with so costly a coin. [Accepts partial blame, may sometimes ignore Procrastinator when studying]
[ ] Filled with Determination [Requires Will 4] - This changes nothing. Art never asked for or desired anyone to die. The choice was Enoch’s, and “Ken’s” for following him. Call it justice or call it vengeance, but Arthur will see Enoch dead one day, and “Ken” as well. Enoch took everything from him and presumes to call it a gift. A gift like that should be repaid in kind. [Unlocks certain choices in the future]