Mad -COMPLETED-

The Trickster King

The Trickster King

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This chapter - this whole story, really - is for my wonderful friend PolkaDotSplash. She's the one who sticks with me AND who created this beautiful cover that was so much better than my original.

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There is no argument. The hundred nights they'd sat up debating the pros and cons of self destruction with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall.

~Cormac McCarthy, The Road

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I think it will be just Henry and me, but he insists that Alice is needed.

Why, I don't know, but it makes me worried. I don't want her here in a world she doesn't understand, in a place where she could all too easily get hurt.

"Wear as much jewelry as you can," advises Henry. "The Trickster may be a king, but he is subject to the weakness of his kind. And try and look pretty, would you?"

"Thanks," says Alice dryly.

Henry ignores her. We're in a dingy café three blocks from my apartment. The coffee is awful and tastes like dirty water.

"So what are we going to do?" I ask, "Exactly?"

Henry glances at Alice and heaves a sigh. "You won't like it. Either of you. But I'm promising it's the only way."

He tells us. It is faulty. It is probably going to fail. But it has got to work.

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"The fairies have embraced their place in this world, more than any of the other species..."

We're driving down a dilapidated block in Alice's car. Henry will not meet us there. We are on our own. We find what we are looking for, a large abandoned warehouse that looks like it could fall apart at any moment.

Alice turns off the car, and we sit there for a moment. She has got to be wearing every piece of jewelry that she owns. Rings glitter on her fingers, bracelets up to her elbows, and so many necklaces I'm surprised her neck doesn't snap. Heavy gold earrings dangle from her ears and several different jeweled combs are stuck into her upswept hair. She's wearing a simple blue dress that brings out her eyes.

"You're staring at me," says Alice, rifling through her purse. "What is it?"

"I don't like this," I mumble.

"What's going to happen to me, TJ?" asks Alice.

I can think of several things, but I don't say anything.

"Are you pouting?" asks Alice, withdrawing a tube of lipstick from her bag and applying it. It's crimson.

I frown, "No."

Alice merely smiles. "Where's Henry?"

Here is the news. "He's not coming."

Alice looks up, alarmed, before I can finish my sentence, "What?!"

"Calm down, Al. He's not coming. Yet," I say.

"Why?" she asks.

"He says that if he was part of the picture, we'd never get through. He wouldn't tell me why," I say. Henry. Only now do I remember the frustrating traits of my brother: stubbornness, secrecy, and apparently still, a grand taste for drama.

"So we're going in there alone?" asks Alice. She looks to the warehouse, cracked mortar, spray painted profanity, and weeds sprouting like second-class grass.