I’m not scared of the dark.
The apartment lights were left on when they went to Qisha’s apartment. The three of them, sullen and quiet, sit in a well lit room yet enveloped in darkness. Hidden in the shadows of their own near sightedness, they silently mourn the loss of Qisha, unable to comprehend the loss. Jamish’s phone sits screen up on the coffee table, its screen flashing “Paused” in and out. There is a soft ding coming from the phone every so often as the game’s almost inaudible background music plays on repeat. Jamish notices the flashing light first and snaps up from the comfy chair closest to the kitchen and makes his way to the coffee maker. Without a word he pulls three mugs from the cabinet above the single serving machine. One after another he puts in the most robust pod in the cupboard. To his and Diego’s he adds some cream and sugar. He leaves Penelope’s coffee black.
The sounds of the bubbling water and steady pour make their way to the front room along side the pleasant aroma of roasted coffee bean, nutmeg and cinnamon, Diego’s favorite pod. As the scent tickles his senses, Diego sits up, straightening his posture and takes sight of Penelope. She sits cross legged on the couch with her feet tucked under her. Her hands sit in the cradle of her lap holding her phone she periodically unlocks to reexamine the snapshot of the framed picture of her knobby kneed 11 year old self next to the lanky and ever stylish Qisha. She is slightly hunched over and her hair dangles freely covering her ears. Intermittenly holding her breath and letting out long sighs, Penelope steadily battles the tears welling up in her eyes.
Jamish returns from the kitchen with three mugs of piping hot coffee. He places coasters in front of Diego and Penelope and sets their coffee before them. Without a word the three sip from the dark, steamy beverage. Penelope turns her lip a bit and looks into the faintly reflective liquid. Black. She does not drink black coffee. Honey and cream. As if reading her mind, Jamish scurries off to the kitchen. He lays out a spread of milk, cream, honey, white sugar, Demerara sugar and a tiny stirrer. Penelope lifts her head and her eyes meet Jamish’s. Nothing comes out. In her head she says, “thank you, I have taken my coffee with cream and honey since I was a kid. Never milk. Never half and half. Never sugar. Just cream and honey.” Her lips don’t move and there is only silence. The connection between the three deepens in this moment. Her feelings of loss call out to Diego and Jamish. For the first time since the very first poof, Jamish feels connected. He smiles softly and says, “Don’t sweat it, Penny. I wasn’t sure how you took it so I pulled these out in case you didn’t drink it straight.” She returns the smile, only halfway, and as the crease of her mouth rises a tear escapes her eye and slides down her cheek. Diego looks up from his coffee and feeling everything Penelope is feeling also lets a tear loose.
Penny, I’m so sorry. I don’t know exactly how close you two were, but we will figure this out.
Penelope looks at him and dips her head for a moment. Taking a breath she responds aloud, “Let’s talk out loud so Jamish can hear too.”
Jamish, surprised and a little excited blurts, “Wait, was that in your head? I heard it. I heard him say he’s sorry. I heard you!”
Silently, Diego calls out to Jamish, You can hear me!? I was talking to her, but you could hear me?
The three continue communicating inaudibly, “Yes, I heard you! This is so exciting!”
Wait, can do I have to talk to both of you at the same time?
“Why? You two boys have secrets?”
“I think he means to say he wants to be able to talk to you in private. He mentions pretty regularly how much he enjoys your little chats. Usually though, he talks out loud when you two chat, but today, it’s different. Here we are, the three of us communicating, but without words.”
Do you talk out loud when you and I talk, or is that just me? I didn’t realize I was talking out loud at first. It’s pretty cool we aren’t now though.
“Yes, actually. Qisha told me that I did that. She hates it. Hated it. How is she gone? How?”
I don’t know, Penny, but we’re gonna figure it out.
“Why don’t we go get something to eat and let’s see if we can continue this in public. Penny, I’m sure Diego can take you home so you can change, or at least get some shoes.”
Penelope pulls her legs out from under her and extends them. She wiggles her toes and concludes, “Yeah, I should probably put some shoes on at least. Did we miss our reservation at that roof top place?”
Yeah. There’s a place I know of though. It’s pretty chill and it’s run by this set of triplets. It’s super weird. One is a host, one is a server and one is a cook. Like, the place is small enough to not have a host, but there he is greeting everyone that comes in. Today is Friday fish fry, so there’s also that.
“Dude, it’s Thursday.”
Not in Melbourne.
“Australia? I dunno, man. I don’t have a passport.”
We’re not going to fly there. You’ll be fine.
“Yeah, but what if we get stopped or we poof into someone’s backyard and they want to shoot us or something?”
Don’t worry. There’s a place I know we can poof safely and there’s rarely anyone around.
“Let’s go, Jamish. I could stand the distraction.”
“Fine. Let me put these coffee mugs away.”
“I’m not done with mine, can I take it with me?”
“Yeah. That’s fine,” Jamish relents with a smile. His tenderness has not gone unnoticed.
Wow, he hates when I take my coffee mugs outside. Like, gets loud.
“I trust her. Besides, she’s had a rough day and this is something small we can do to help elliviate that.”
The three gather themselves for a trip abroad with a quick stop at Penelope’s family home. Jamish quickly takes his and Diego’s half full coffee mugs, dumps the coffee and rinses them out. He hurries back to the living room where Diego and Penelope stand quietly looking deeply into each other’s eyes. No words. No thoughts. The two are simply taking solace in the company of one another. Jamish takes Penelope’s hand with his left and Diego’s with his right and softly says aloud, “Okay, Penny. Let’s go home.”
Penelope half smiles, closes her eyes and thinks of home. When the picture of her parents’ Queens house is clearly in her head she reaches out to Diego’s mind and says, “I’m ready. This is my house.”
Penny’s home, Diego calls out and in an instant, poof, the three are standing in her bedroom. It is mostly tidy. The bed is unmade, the dresser and vanity are both topped with a myriad of miscellaneous items. Make up and hair products, mail, other papers and notebooks are stacked unceremoniously two feet high on both pieces of furniture. A collection of unlit candles cover the night stands on both sides of her bed. Her closet door is open and is the floor is completely covered in shoe boxes. There are too many hangers and the items hanging are bursting from the clost making it impossible to close the door.
“What happened? This isn’t my room. I mean, it is, but this isn’t how I live. It’s not how I left it. I don’t even like candles.”
Let’s light one then.
“NO!”
Um, okaaaaay. Jees.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I reacted like that. Look, let me just get some clothes and then we can go.”
A voice calls from down stairs. A somewhat familiar voice, but foreign just the same. “Pen-el-oap! Are you up there? I hear talking. If you’re a robber, I will shoot you. I don’t want to, but I will.”
Diego’s eyes widen and a grin falls on his face. ‘Peneloap’? I love it. Who is that?
“I have no idea and don’t ever call me that again. I will kill you. Like, murder, dead.”
You gonna go kill that person too?
“No. And I don’t know why it feels normal to hear that voice and to hear that from that voice.”
Again the voice from below calls out, “I can hear you talking. I have enough bullets for all of you.”
“No you don’t. Shut it. You know full well mom and dad do not like guns, nor do they allow guns in their home.”
“So it is you. How did you get in without me hearing or seeing? I’ve been playing this game all day and I never saw you come in.”
“How do know I wasn’t just up here the whole time?”
“Cuz I got hungry and borrowed 20 bucks from your thingy.”
Instinctively, Penelope opens her vanity’s top drawer and sees a stack of ones and fives and several hand written notes that read “IOU for dinner”, “IOu for wrestling ppv” and the like.
“You little shit! How much have you ‘borrowed?’ There’s like $200 in IOUs here!”
“Chill. I will pay you back when summer comes around and I start mowing lawns again. And it’s definitely not $200, I only borrowed money tonight and yesterday. I don’t know who else wrote those.”
Penelope storms out of her bedroom and down the stairs into the den where she is met by a nervous looking gangly teenager with a video game character hoodie and matching sweat pants. His bare feet show unkempt toes tightly curled back making them into “feet fists” as he affectionately calls them. Through his braces he warns, “no, no, no, no, you better not. I’m streaming right now.”
Jamish, who had quietly stepped aside to admire the boy’s gaming rig chimes in, “But you don’t have any viewers. It says zero there. Nobody is watching you stream. Also, it looks like the camera is only catching your keyboard. Is this an ASMR stream?”
“What?! NO! Absolutely not. I just have super fast clicks so sometimes I stream my hands when I play so people get an idea of what it takes to be top 100 in “Steller BR.”
“That’s what you’re playing? That’s going to be shut down soon, you know that, right? Mike Steller is going to lose his fight. It’s obvious he ripped that cartoony battle royale.”
“Maybe, but people still play. I really like this one so, I’m going to play until the servers go offline.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?”
Gaming. It’s a shooter game. Whatever. Let’s just get going. You can talk to your brother later.
“I don’t have a brother.”
“Ouch. I’m right here you know. Just cuz mom and dad had me when you were already a teenager doesn’t mean I’m not your brother.”
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t know what I meant. I’m going upstairs to get dressed.”
“I’ll stay down here. I am eager to see what he’s running.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry, my name is James Ellison, VP of Hamen Games.”
“Oh my god! What are you doing in my house? You know my sister? You are a god at Tekken. I can’t believe it. Would you say hi to my stream? Please?”
We’ll leave you to it.
Penelope makes her way up the stairs to her childhood room she still inhabits with Diego shortly behind her. She slows her pace and examines all of the family photos hanging on the wall. There she finds herself, her baby brother and her parents. She and her brother have identical baby photos that are hung side by side. There are similar three member family photos of each of them with their parents. The children are similar in age, but their parents are 15 years apart. She is visibly shaken and Diego softly nudges her to let her know he’s there. She looks at him and then continues up the steps.
In the quiet of their minds, Diego reaches out, You okay? This seems to be news to you.
“Well, earlier this morning I didn’t have a brother and I had a best friend. I don’t know what the fuck is even going on. I really don’t.”
Oh, wow, I’m sorry. That is super weird.
“Let’s just get out of here. Please.”
Diego simply nods. Penelope rushes around the room and finds an chooses an outfit. She takes it into the shared bathroom between her bedroom and what she remembered being a spare bedroom. It is currently filled with her brother’s things. She glances quickly at the immaculate space adorned with every manner of pop culture posters. There are action figures on several hanging shelves. She closes the door and gets herself ready.
“Hello stream.” Jamish places his hand above the keyboard in sight of the camera and waves.
“You said I was a god at Tekken. I would say my favorite game is Street Fighter 2 and its subsequent iterations.”
“Really? You’re literally an undefeated champion of Tekken and you like Street Fighter better? Go figure. Why didn’t you compete in any of the SF tournies?”
Jamish has always had a spectacular poker face. He gives the kid a grin and decides to go with what he is saying instead of arguing. “Well, I suppose I was better at one than the other, so I competed in the arena I felt I had the best chance of winning.”
“I’d say! Do you still game?”
“Well, I probably spend more time trying to do speed runs of old 8 and 16 bit systems that I have emulated on my phone than I do live competitions. I’m in my mid twenties and I am not as sharp as I was. I mean, I like being on top, so if I am competing, it’s usually against myself. Besides, I sit in front of a monitor at work all day, so I play on my phone.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. You’re so amazing.”
“Ha. Thanks, kid. Let’s see what you’re working with, yeah?”
“Of course! It’s all middle of the road stuff I bought with my lawnmower money. I wont be able to upgrade right away, I do owe Peneloap a lot of money.”
“Peneloap, that’s funny. She let’s you call her that?”
“Nah, she hates it.”
“I’m sure. Here, how’s about I see what I can do about getting you some upgrades. I still have some pretty close relationships with a few of my sponsors. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh man, are you serious right now? Please don’t be messing with me. Please, I don’t think I could take it.”
He’s not messing. He doesn’t really do this sort of thing for anyone. Like, he has never made a call for me and I’ve been his best friend his whole life.
“Ignore him. Here, give me your email. I’ll message you within the next couple weeks.”
The boy scrawls hastily on a piece of printer paper he yanked from the small wireless printer under the computer desk. He trades his paper for a business card with Jamish and his eyes are wide with excitement.
“’Subatomic_chances’?” Jamish is mildly amused at the implications of the boy’s email address.
“Um, yeah. That’s my gamer name on pretty much every platform.”
“Because they have subatomic chances at beating you? Ha. Alright kiddo. I’ll shoot you a message soon.”
“Now that you two have bonded, let’s get going.” Penelope stands taller than usual in her 3 inch black ankle high boots. She is wearing dark blue skinny jeans, a white tank top under a half length leather jacket Qisha borrowed from her at least a year ago. Her hoop earrings bouncing against her neck as she looks back and forth for any other disparities between her memory of this house and the reality in which she currently finds herself.
You look amazing.
“All the boys do ask about Qisha, don’t they?”
Huh?
“Nothing, let’s go.”
The three make their way down to the furnished basement and to the back door. She stops them at the door and as she opens it there is a chime from the security system box. She immediately closes it and in her mind she says, “Okay, Diego. Take us there.”
Why did you open and then close the door.
“So no can see us disappear.”
Smart. Let’s go. The place is called ‘We are here, across them all.’”
“That’s a weird name for a restaurant. You work in the service industry, Penny, ever heard a name like that?”
“No. But so what? Restaurants can have weird names.”
The three take hands and with a thought and a breath, poof. The each look up and see in the distance a quaint diner with a flashing open sign. The sun is hot over head and each of them immediately regret all the layers they brought along for this trip. With a shared glance and not a word between them, they head toward “We are here, across them all.”