MIDNIGHT_DISPATCH.EXE (Part 2)

tonight's tune: Röyksopp , "She's So"

You’re sitting in a diner. 

The room is dim, though your seat is well-lit. Rustling shadows and the gentle murmuring of voices suggest the presence of other patrons. Stretching away from you in either direction is a formica countertop fronted by a row of stools, with fluted aluminum stems that flower into round red vinyl cushions.

On the one nearest you sits the man, cigarette in hand. In front of him, a half-eaten eclair rests on a plate beside a circular metal ashtray. 

> ask Where are we?

“Are you feeling better? You looked a little - “ he pauses, and those bright eyes go glassy, as if searching an internal database for the right translation. “Spaced out .”

> ask How did we get here?

“We drove. You don’t remember?”

You do, vaguely, remember. His truck. The empty highway. Looking through the windscreen at a blank sky, searching for stars that weren’t there. Feeling unmoored, sinking deeper into the night, until you woke up, here, just now...

> look 

Though you see no windows, the light here has the weak, milky texture of daytime TV. The faint hum of jukebox doo-wop floats above the muffled din of spatulas scraping the grill, burbling coffee makers, and hushed conversations.

At the edge of your vision, a row of booths sits adjacent to the wall nearest your seat, upholstered in more vinyl padding, and dotted with round nubbins like seeds in strawberry flesh. The floor is a scarred red and white checkerboard. A plasma TV hangs from the wall behind the counter, somewhat upsetting the ambience.

The man pivots in his seat to face you.

“Wouldn’t you like something to eat, or drink? You must be thirsty.” 

> say No thanks

He doesn’t wait for your response, already raising a hand to signal for service, but he tries on a look of concern.

“Nothing? The coffee here is worth your while.” From the shadows behind the counter, a waitress silently appears, pad and pen poised. 

> look waitress

She’s wearing a crisp white uniform shirt with a square plastic nametag. On her left wrist is a slim gold watch. Her face is just outside the cone of light that illuminates your pair of seats. 

> look nametag

Her nametag is blank.

“Coffee and a water, please” the man says, then motions to his own cup. “And I’ll have another.” The waitress turns and is gone.

> look TV

Some kind of rocket launch is playing on a loop. Amidst a winter landscape, a succession of thin missiles shoot from a scaffold, the snowy ground sparkling under their exhaust plumes. As the projectiles vanish into the night sky, strange lights begin to emerge, glowing purple clouds with orbs of greenish-blue below, like luminous men ‘o war trailing tentacles of white vapor. 

The waitress returns, setting a tumbler of ice water in front of you. Beside it she lays a coffee cup on a saucer, before sliding a folded napkin underneath. Silently, she pours the coffee, first for the man, then for you. After a moment’s pause, she vanishes back into the gloom.

> look coffee

It looks dark and rich. Smells good too. 

> drink coffee

Mmm. Now that’s a damn fine cup of coffee.

> ask What’s on the TV?

“The Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment,” says the man. He stirs sugar into his coffee in a slow, rhythmic pattern, as another salvo climbs into the starry night. “Project AZURE. Launching sounding rockets into the upper atmosphere to study the flow of charged particles in the earth’s ionosphere. Soothing, isn’t it?” 

You do feel quite relaxed, in fact, feeling the warm liquid pooling in your gullet. Sleepy, even. Maybe this is decaf.

> ask What kind of coffee is this

“Special blend,” he replies, his whole body eerily motionless except for the stirring, fingers poised at the rim of his cup. “Can’t get it anywhere else. That’s why I come here - I’m not much for fast food, but the pastries and java are really out of this world.”

You find yourself transfixed by the motion of the man’s hands, the spoon repeatedly tracing the cup’s circumference in a precise, perfect period. He stares at you, lips curled in the faintest of smiles, eyes reflecting the dim light like hungry mirrors.

He lifts his coffee cup and takes a sip, and you feel yourself mimic the gesture, unable to break eye contact as your muscles gently uncouple from your conscious control. A dull pang of alarm shoots through you, and your hand shakes, accidentally dribblling a bit of coffee down your chin. 

> wipe mouth with napkin

The man glances down at the puddle forming on the counter, and you feel a bit of your own will churning back, a nauseous sensation like a ship in heavy seas suddenly reversing its roll. You pick up the napkin and dab your mouth, then the counter. As you do, you notice a little black mark on the edge of the napkin, near the fold.

> look napkin

It looks like a spot of ink has bled through the surface. There appears to be something written on the inside.

> read napkin

Discreetly, you peel back the corner while pretending to wipe the counter again. A single word is handwritten in cursive: “bathroom.”

> ask Where’s the bathroom?

The man looks at you for a long moment before silently pointing the way.

> take napkin

You crumple the napkin in your fist, careful not to leave any evidence behind.

> go to bathroom

You stand up, and turn to walk in the diretion he indicated, passing the huddled shapes of other diners as if moving through a fog. Eventually you find your way to a door marked TOILET, through which you enter.

> look

The restroom appears to be empty. A small sink, porcelain with a dull metal faucet, drips quietly in the far corner. There is a row of three stalls, each painted a vibrant red in striking contrast to the dull burgundy trim and scuffed white tile floor. High on the opposite wall is a sliding window. 

> open stall

Which stall do you want to enter?

> open first stall

You press open the door of the stall closest to the door. It’s strangely dark inside.

> look

There doesn’t seem to be a toilet in here at all. Peering into the blackness, you can’t even make out the rear wall to get some idea of its depth. The partitions on either side fade into a distanceless void. The sound of running water echoes from somewhere unseen.

> enter stall

You trudge with hesitation into the dark interior, footsteps gliding over an invisible floor. The flourescent stab of the bathroom lights quickly retreats, and turning to glance over your shoulder, the doorway you came through looks surprisingly small and faint, as if you’ve been walking for some time already. 

> walk more

Your apprehension builds as the light continues to fade. Just before slipping into total darkness, you notice a feeble red glow farther down the path.

> touch wall

You put your hands out and feel nothing but a cool breeze sliding between your fingers.

> keep walking

You press on, concentrating on the red glow. To your relief, it seems to be brightening.

After another few minutes of walking, you notice the floor has returned.

> look floor

It seems to be a sort of brown cobblestone, rather unfinished and almost chunky-looking. In fact, this material now extends to the walls as well, and you realize you’re inside some kind of stone corridor. 

> keep walking towards glow

You can see the source of it now. A tangle of vines is growing all over one section of the wall, producing a series of bright red blossoms that shine like night-lights.

> look flower

They are quite beautiful, and large, almost the size of your hand. The light from within them ebbs and pulses with an intense glow that cycles from blood red to a nearly neon fushcia. The petals, which surround a shimmering yellow pistil, are strangely blocky and squared-off, not particularly organic in appearance at all.

> take flower

You reach out and pluck one of the blossoms from the wall. It detaches with a soft popping noise. The flower is warm in your hand, and its inner light continues to pulsate.

> put flower in pocket

You carefully fold the petals over one another. They click into place like legos, forming a sort of glowing rectangular prism with a beating yellow heart. You place the object into the pocket of your shirt.

> inventory

You are carrying:

your wallet

cell phone

pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum

folded-up piece of paper

strange man’s wallet

wadded-up napkin

luminous flower cube

> continue walking

Eventually the corrdior leads to a grotto. There is a pool here with a fountain, the origin of the soothing water sound you heard earlier. Above your head is a thatched canopy criscrossed with more green vines. Moonlight filters in between the leaves, creating undulating patterns on the water’s surface.

> look

The grotto is made of the same rough brown stone as the corridor. A mounted mirror covers one section of the wall, and the cistern is built into the face opposite that. Water burbles gently from a raised spout that juts above it, falling into the pool below. The atmosphere is very peaceful. The only exit appears to be back the way you came.

> look pool

Upon closer inspection, the water seems to be composed of tiny blocks of shifting color. You gaze into the pool, watching the intricate patterns of aquamarine, blue, and silver wriggle and writhe, dancing in shadow and light as the leaves sway gently overhead. You feel very relaxed. A little thirsty, too, come to think of it. Must be all that walking.

> drink from fountain

You cup your hands and dip them into the water. It feels cool, and wet, but instead of a seamless liquid, tiny cubes dribble from your hand like sparkling silver sand.

Before you can bring the water to your lips, you notice one wave in the pool begin to coalesce into a long, rippling shape. Something is rising from the water - a pair of yellow eyes suddenly appears at the surface - and before you can withdraw your hand, a silver snake, body shining like mercury, darts from the cistern and sinks its teeth into your palm!

> jump away

The snake releases you as you jerk your hand back and stumble away from the pool. It hovers there, swaying for a few seconds. Its body is like writhing glass, shimmering with refracted light. The bright embers of its eyes lock your gaze. Then it sinks back into the water, its motion so fluid that it’s not clear whether its body submerges or simply dissolves.

Suddenly you don’t feel so good.

> walk back to corridor

You manage a few steps before your legs buckle. You nearly fall to the ground, but catch yourself on the wall, one hand on the cool, polished mirror.

> look mirror

You stare at your reflection, pulling your hand away as you struggle to your feet, and watch your hot handprint evaporate from the mirror’s surface. You still look like you, more or less, but as your vision begins to blur and distort, you gasp at the sight of your own eyes, a pair of glowing yellow coals now burning in your sockets.

The grotto reflected behind you bends, details dissolving and flattening out, like someone turned down the resolution. Then the quiet cavern starts to warp, expanding suddenly in all directions before boiling away into the distance, carrying you with it. In the mirrored glass you watch yourself shatter like broken shards into a thousand million interations, cycling individually through different poses - laughter, tears, screams, agony, contentement, an infinite line of selves stretching out into a vast and empty space.  You shut your eyes, unable to process it, half terrified that the vision will follow you behind closed lids, but are relieved to find only an endless, dark chasm staring back at you.

Somewhere in that unending darkness, those pale, luminous eyes hover, laughing.

You feel yourself fall as you slip away into nothingness. Time passes, but you’ve no idea how much. Eventually your consciousness ebbs back into the world.

Everything is dark.

> look

You can’t see anything. A faint blood-warm glow hovers around the edges of your vision.

> turn on cell phone

You feel around in your pockets for your phone, probing for the little nub of the power button. You’re not sure if you succeeded. You continue to swim in limbo, the emptiness infused with a faint red patina.

Your emotions hover somewhere between fear and placid acceptance, like a newborn waiting for that first instinct towards breath to kick in. You have a gnawing feeling that there’s a very simple way out of this predicament...

> open eyes

Oh, that’s right. 

You’re lying on the floor of the bathroom. 

> sit up

Gingerly you struggle to a sitting position. You feel a bit achy and sweaty, but otherwise fairly normal. There’s a foul taste in your mouth.

> spit

You hork up a prodigious wad of phlegm and smack your lips. Satisfying, but it doesn’t really help. 

The flavor in your mouth is really disgusting. It’s like you ate a rotten ham sandwich, washed it down with stale, expired beer, chewed on some sour coffee grounds you found in the trash, and then didn’t brush for a week. 

> look gum

You have five sticks of Wintergreen flavored chewing gum left.

> chew gum

You draw a piece from the pack, removing its foil wrapper and crumpling it into a tiny ball. The cool, minty flavor soothes your taste buds, overpowering the terrible, lingering aftertaste.

> look phone

Your phone is on, but the status bar shows no signal.

> stand up

A bit unsteady, but you manage.

> enter second stall

Oh, boy. Here we go again.

You push open the second stall door to reveal: a toilet.

> look stall

Looks like a normal bathroom stall, actually. There’s a commode, white porcelain with a black seat cover. Toilet paper roll appears stocked. Nothing else really.

> use toilet

You do sort of have to go, so you enter the stall and do your business.

> wash hands

You go over to the sink, pump a little pink soap into your palms, lather up, and rinse. When finished you dry your hands with a coarse, brown paper towel, and chuck it in the adjacent bin.

> enter 3rd stall

You try to open the door, but it’s locked from the inside.

> check under stall door

Hmm. No feet. Doesn’t look like anyone’s in there…

> look over stall door

You’re not that tall, and there’s nothing to stand on.

> inventory

You are carrying:

your wallet

cell phone

pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum

folded-up piece of paper

strange man’s wallet

wadded-up napkin

luminous flower cube

> use folded up paper to open stall

You take out the note with the directions to Woodlawn and try to fashion it into some kind of crude pick, in order to defeat the latch mechanism. You succeed in making a crumpled mess of the paper, but the door remains locked.

> use flower on door

You hold the flower cube up to the door. It continues to glow warmly as usual. 

> use man’s wallet on door

You open the wallet and present the badge inside to the closed bathroom stall. It does not yield to your authority.

> crawl under stall door

Even if you wanted to slide around on the floor of a public bathroom, which you don’t, the gap is too narrow for you to pass through.

> open window

You walk over to the window and undo the small latch, pulling back the beveled glass pane. Immediately you can hear the sound of rushing water, as if the diner’s bathroom is just a stone’s throw from a large and fast-moving river. 

> look out window

It just looks like night out there, but you can’t see very well from this position.

> lean out window

As your head passes the barrier of the window’s open pane, a sensation like pins and needles starts to prick at your neck and scalp. You can feel no wind, though - can not even detect any temperature . The outside seems totally black and empty. There is not even the hint of moon or streetlamp. No breeze or whisper of passing traffic. There is only the sound of an invisible river, coming through even clearer now, and the alert thumping of your own heart.

> jump out window 

Cautiously, you hoist yourself up, gripping the shelf in which the window frame is set. As you push your head and shoulders through the window, the lights inside the bathroom begin to flicker. Your pulse jumps. That rushing river sound becomes noticably louder, seems to expand somehow, directionless and encompassing, as if by coming nearer to it, you have already started to submerge. You hesitate.

Are you sure you want to do this?

> go back to bathroom

Maybe that’s for the best. You slide yourself back down and gently close the window. As you do, the sound fades away; the lights return to normal.

> look stall door

You walk back to the second stall and examine the door. It seems pretty standard. The privacy lock is a simple latch that locks when flipped up (making the latch handle parallel to the floor), and permits the door to open when flipped down.

> leave bathroom

You are standing outside the bathroom door, at the end of a hallway which leads back to the dining area.

> walk to dining area

Cautiously, you walk back down the corridor, pausing at the point where the hallway opens up into the dining room. From here you have a vantage on the patrons seated at their tables, but are relatively hidden from most of the tables. 

> look

The shadows in the passage cloak you somewhat, making the hallway even dimmer than the rest of the restaurant, which is not otherwise very brightly lit. You can still only see a vague outline of the other patrons, make out some details of their posture and clothing, but you can at least get a sense of the size of the dining area now.

The counter where you were sitting before is at the opposite end of the room. The man is still sitting  there, waiting patiently, with his back to you. Between the counter and the hallway are large double doors that apparently lead into the kitchen. This entrance is shielded from the dining room by a partition that intersects the counter at one end, providing a small, private lane for the comings and goings of the waitstaff. There is a coat rack on the wall near the kitchen. The front doors of the restaurant are on the far side of the dining room.

> sneak out front door

You start to cross the dining room, keeping half an eye on the back of the man sittng at the counter. As you cross in front of the TV, the picture suddenly changes from the endless loop of rocket launches into a commercial. A pair of women, twins with matching green outfits, walk along a stone pathway overlooking the ocean. A jaunty, whistled melody begins piping over the speakers as they remove sticks of gum from the pockets of their identical jackets, sliding them into their mouths with the precise timing of synchronized swimmers.

> keep walking

You take a few more steps. A pair of young men, sunglasses nested in perfectly coiffed hairdos, cardigans tied across their shoulder blades, notices the women, and glance knowingly at one another. 

The volume of the jingle jumps up a few notches. As the men approach the women, The TV blares:

A DOUBLE PLEASURE 

IS WAITING FOR YOU...

The strange man's head perks up. He hasn’t turned around yet, but you can see the tension in his form, elbows bent, palms planted on the chrome counter.

> go back to hallway

You quietly retreat back into the shadows. The TV goes back to replaying missile launches; the man reaches a hand up to scratch his head, then resumes his previous, more relaxed posture.

> go to kitchen

You walk over to the kitchen entrance, careful to stay behind the partition and thus out of the man’s line of sight, but keep to the side of the doors so as not to block the exit. There is a coat rack and small metal trash can here.

> look coatrack

The coat rack is just a rectangle of polished aluminum, from which six short pegs protrude. A white chef’s jacket and hat hang from one of them.

> get uniform

You’re holding the chef’s uniform. (It is a bit too bulky to fit in your pockets.)

> put on uniform

You throw the bulky jacket on over your clothes. The hat is slightly too large, and keeps trying to slip down over your forehead.

> sneak out front door

You make another attempt at the front exit. As soon as you pass the TV, a different commerical starts playing. Two secretaries, wearing the same lime-colored sport coats with oversized shoulder pads, smile at each other as they slide mint-green sticks of gum out of wrappers in unison.

> keep walking

The volume ramps up as a pair of buff, bespectacled junior executives approach the twin secretaries’ desks, smiles beaming. The secretaries share a wink. Each of the men hands his feminine counterpart an identical manila folder, and receives a stick of gum in return.

A DOUBLE PLEASURE

FROM DOUBLEMINT GUM...

You see the man sit up straight, his head swivelling from side to side. 

> keep walking

The executives both take a seat, perched on the edge of the secretaries’ desks. Flirtatious grins beam from their faces as the boys begin to chew. The TV is almost unbearbly loud now.

A DOUBLE FRESH FEELING

MAKING YOU REALIZE

DOUBLEMINT’S THE ONE FOR YOU...

The whole atmosphere of the room seems to have changed. The murmur of conversation, the dull rustle of silverware and the clink of ice cubs in glasses has faded into an eerie silence, like a forest gone quiet at the approach of a hidden predator.

The man whips around in his chair to face in your direciton. He’s staring right at you; though he doesn’t seem to see you, his eyes shine with the feral intensity of a hunter who has just caught the scent.

> go back to kitchen

You creep back towards the kitchen. Gradually, the atmosphere of the restaurant returns to normal. The man continues to scan the room suspiciously for a few moments before shaking his head and swivelling his seat back around to face the counter.

> spit out gum

You disgorge the wad of gum in your mouth into the trash can. In an instant, the unbearably foul taste returns.

> enter kitchen

Sorry, what? You really can’t focus on anything with this wretchedness crawling all over your taste buds. It’s like you’re sucking on a moldy old sock marinated in motor oil and rancid cooking fat. 

> chew gum

You take out another stick and cram in into your mouth, chewing furiously. To your great relief the bad taste immediately evaporates, overwhelmed by a crisp gust of wintergreen flavor.

> enter kitchen

The interior of the kitchnen is dark. Faceless chefs huddle around steaming pots and smoking griddles like early men hunched over a firepit. You can’t see their faces, can barely make out the long, flowing robes of their uniforms, but their eyes glow like cinders as they turn towards you in unison. Leaning against the wall by the door is a mop and bucket.

> get mop handle

The cooks continue to stare as you lift the mop. The handle easily unscrews from the metal head. You are now carrying a long stick.

> exit kitchen

You leave the kitchen, still carrying the mop handle. You are somewhat relieved to be on the other side of those doors.

> go to bathroom

You return to the restroom.

> use mop handle on 3rd stall door

You reach the handle over the top of the stall, probing and letting it fall until you can feel it contact the latch on the inside of the door. A little pressure and the lock clicks open.

> open stall

You push open the stall door. Instantly the lights in the bathroom go out, and you are plunged once again into darkness....

<<     Previous: MIDNIGHT_DISPATCH.EXE (Part 1)    ||    Next: MIDNIGHT_DISPATCH.EXE (Part 3)    >>