We walked in silence, side by side, though "together" felt like the wrong word to me.
It was a chilling winter night, and yet there was still sweat dripping from my brow.
I raised my hand to my forehead, but lowered it.
I resisted the urge to wipe away my sweat. What would be the point? With all this walking, I'd just be sweating again in a few minutes.
"Veri," Cacophony spoke, her voice as calm and poised as ever, cutting through the silence like a polished blade, "this walkway seems to stretch on for some time. How long will it be until we reach our destination?"
I shot her a weird look. It was her that I was following after all... Even if that didn't make much sense when I thought about it for too long.
She was the one walking ahead just moments ago, and yet now she acted like I was leading the way.
Looking away from her, I thought about the path ahead.
'Well, this is the correct path anyway, so it didn't matter much who was following who.'
As we crossed a small intersection, I put my head down and tried to think of a reply.
"Well... Not too much longer... I don't think..."
That was the best I could think of, and it was only a half-truth at best.
I was certain that we should've made it out of this neighborhood by now. If not made it out, then at very least we should've hit some landmark, or busier road, or anything really.
But we simply keep walking farther and farther, never reaching anything.
This place had the familiar appearance of the city where I was born and raised, but not the feel. It was empty, devoid of the warmth of a real cityscape. Even so, I could faintly hear sounds of life in the distance. Those sounds, people speaking, laughing, and going about their lives, those were the traces of a normal city that this place sorely lacked.
We just needed to keep moving. Eventually, we'd reach the source of those sounds and be reunited with human society.
The two of us kept on moving, marching like soldiers.
My legs moved on autopilot, the ache in my calves growing stronger.
And then, Cacophony turned to me with a faint smirk playing at her lips.
"You feeling alright there?" she asked. "Don't tell me you need a rest."
"No... I just need to activate my second gear. I'll get twice as fast and twice as strong. You might not even be able to keep up."
She gave me a sidelong glance. "Mm. A transformation, then? Shall I prepare a fanfare? Or will you simply explode into a cloud of smoke and emerge with more muscles? I have a similar spell, though I don't use it often."
I raised an eyebrow, "As a self-made master of the dark arts, I have to ask; you explode into a cloud of smoke and get super buff?"
"Of course not," she said dryly. "My transformation is far simpler and more elegant. Given your demeanor, if you saw it you'd..."
She didn't finish her sentence; she just stopped speaking, glanced at me, and let out a chuckle.
I scoffed under my breath, hiding a small, involuntary grin.
I should be on high alert, but something about her is so disarming.
"So," I said casually, "where exactly were you leading us earlier? Just taking the scenic route? Or were you hoping I'd get tired and collapse so you could drink my blood or something?"
She hummed, thoughtful. "I wished to enjoy the new scenery. This age is wonderfully beautiful, and I'd never imagined the world coming to look this way. And you never stopped me as I walked."
"I never stopped you?"
"You're the guide. If you didn't stop me, it meant that I was going the correct way. Unless you're attempting to misguide me. Was that the case?"
"No," I said quickly. "Such underhanded acts would tarnish my honor as an otherworldly hero."
I marched toward the sound of people, but those sounds remained faint. It's like we weren't getting any closer.
Everything about this place made me feel like a background character in someone else's hallucination.
Then my nose twitched. Something warm trickled down onto my upper lip.
I wiped at it absently with the back of my hand and pulled it away to check. There was a small smudge of red liquid covering it.
Blood?
As I came to that realization, a thin stream of blood trickled down onto my lips.
"...Tch."
'Must be the air.'
I quickly wiped it off on my sleeve and kept walking.
Cacophony hadn't spoken in a while. She was a few steps ahead now, again. Every so often, I'd catch her glancing to the side, not at me, but at the houses.
It was as though she was expecting something.
"The Null Streets must be bigger than I remembered," I said aloud, half to myself.
"The Null Streets?" Cacophony asked.
"Yes, that's what I've dubbed these backwaters. Quite fitting, don't you think?"
She didn't reply immediately, she just looked off to the side again. "Maybe."
I cleared my throat. The silence was gnawing at me. Every second that passed without a word made my skin itch a little more.
"So, uh…" I began, voice cracking on the first syllable. I winced. "Sorry, I mean—so, how did a creature as... fearsome as you end up in that coffin?"
Cacophony didn't slow her pace. She didn't speed up either.
For a moment, I thought it was like before, where she didn't react to anything I said or did, but then—
"That's not a very interesting story," she said flatly.
There wasn't any venom in her voice, but I could feel a degree of evasiveness. She'd shut the door before I even got a peek.
I smiled awkwardly. "Right. Yeah. Seeing as I'm a traveller of many worlds, I'm sure that I've heard a tale or two similar to yours. It's difficult to impress someone such as myself with only anecdotes."
She turned her head just slightly. The tiniest smile tugged at her mouth.
"What about you, Veri?" she asked. "How did you end up in the graveyard?"
I stumbled. One foot dragged behind the other, and I had to catch myself on the edge of a bench.
I wasn't prepared to have my question flipped back to me.
Clearing my throat, I ejected all nervousness from my body.
Puffing up my chest, I answered with pride. "Well, if you must know, as I was returning home from negotiations, I spotted something odd on the ground and—"
"Odd? Like what?
"Blue cracks all over the ground. Anyway, I—"
"I see... I can assume that they led you to my coffin?"
"Oh, yeah, but anyway—"
She turned her head slightly, enough that I could see the side of her face. The tip of her nose. A sliver of red in her eyes.
"Veri, what was it that you called this place?"
"Huh? The Null Streets..." Suddenly, I began to shift uncomfortably, "Cool name... isn't it?"
"And its actual name?"
"It... doesn't have one. Why do you ask? Do you know something?"
She didn't answer.
We passed another block. The houses here looked just like the ones before. Uncut lawns. Mailboxes with no names. Every house had that same feeling of stillness, too.
I tried not to look too closely. My eyes darted between shadows and telephone poles. I was scared that I might start imagining faces in the empty windows.
By now, my feet felt like they were dragging against the concrete. We'd been walking for what felt like an eternity.
My sense of time must be messed up right now. There was just no way that this simple walk could be taking so long.
When Cacophony took my blood, I thought the only side effects would be muscle weakness and fatigue, but I might have to add another one to the list: loss of internal rhythm.
Still, I hesitated to officially put that on the list of symptoms. It just didn't feel quite right.
I blinked slowly, eyes half-open, as we passed another mailbox that had long since rusted over. My fingers twitched at my side, and for a moment, I wondered if I'd accidentally stepped into a dream.
I glanced down at the sidewalk. Had that crack always been there? The one shaped like a lightning bolt? I couldn't remember.
"I should be keeping time," I mumbled. "Should've brought a watch…"
"A watch? Is that some timekeeping tool?" Cacophony asked idly.
"Yeah. It's something truly wonderful. It lets you travel through time and—
I began to ramble on and on about random, meaningless things that hardly connected to what she asked. Even so, Cacophony quietly listened to what I had to say.
As I spoke, I hardly focused on our surroundings.
Up ahead, a house blinked by on our right. It was covered in flashy, shining banners. I didn't pay attention to any of them. What caught my eye, if only for a second, was the large university flag hung from the roof's edge.
In large, bold letters, it read: Florida International University.
I paused whatever it was that I'd been saying.
"Huh, but I swear that we..."
I stopped mid-sentence. That flag… we'd seen it before. I was sure of it. I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything—
"People in this era must like cats quite a bit," Cacophony said suddenly.
I turned to look at her, then followed her gaze.
She was pointing toward a mailbox.
It was irregular, made more noticeable by being stationed next to all these other sameish-looking homes.
It was shaped like a cat, with its mouth open wide. It held a strange kind of cute charm.
'Looks like it's ready to swallow all your bills and junk mail.'
No.
Hold on, I'm almost certain.
"An idol, perhaps?" Cacophony mused. "Or a protective totem?"
I didn't reply to her joking questions.
But then I frowned. We'd already passed a mailbox like that earlier.
Or had we?
I had to have been wrong. There could be two pairs of FIU-committed and cat-loving families to live on the same street. It wasn't impossible, it's a big world after all.
I glanced behind us. The road was straight. Houses lined either side. I couldn't notice anything off about those houses... But it was still bothering me.
We kept walking, and for a time, the houses returned to that same, dull normalcy.
The next notable house was a ways down the road.
The home had a fence that seemed normal, but was completely broken in one single spot. It looked like a car had crashed straight through it, leaving tire marks scorched into the patchy lawn.
I slowed down, and my head tilted to one side.
Inside the yard, dozens of plastic swords were planted firmly in the dirt. There was a wide range of different designs. Foam handles, jagged edges, cheap injection-molded hilts. All sorts of colors as well. Bright blue, neon green, a poppy pink.
They were arranged in loose, erratic circles, all pointing inward toward a single object at the center.
A sun-bleached plastic lawn chair.
It sat there like a throne, utterly mundane and somehow… sacred. For some reason, I got the feeling that whoever it was that originally bought the chair never got the chance to sit on it.
'But, it looks so old... How long has it been here? Who is it waiting for?'
Hold on a moment.
Why did I even think it was waiting for someone in the first place? There wasn't any indicator or reason... I just knew...
The hairs on the back of my neck began to rise as the dreadfully eerie feeling came back in full force.
"What is this? We've been here before... This exact spot..." I whispered, my mouth suddenly dry.
I didn't expect an answer, and yet Cacophony gave one.
"I see then... I noticed something odd about this place earlier, but I didn't think it'd be something this irritating."
I took a step back from the fence. My heel scraped against the concrete.
I turned to Cacophony. She wasn't looking at the chair anymore. Her crimson eyes were fixed dead ahead.
So I followed her gaze.
And I froze.
Cacophony spoke. "No matter how far down we go, we won't get any closer to our goal."
The words hit me like a splash of cold water.
I turned back around, heart beginning to drum louder in my ears. I stared down the street, but there was just a long line of dull, similar-looking houses.
And, a small intersection.
"We've crossed that intersection already..."
I could still hear the distant city sounds. I could hear all of the same laughter and chatter, but I began to focus on them. When I listened closely, I could tell that something felt wrong.
It was all so clean.
Again and again.
The same sounds of the distant cityscape looped over and over.
A faint recording, playing just beneath the threshold of understanding. Like a reel caught on the same few seconds of background noise, over and over.
I turned back toward the cat-shaped mailbox.
Then, toward the university banner.
Then, toward the lawn with the broken fence.
And slowly, horrifyingly, I turned back toward the road ahead…
Had we made a mistake somewhere along the way... No, I'm certain that we just kept going straight... There's no chance of us getting lost...
That left me with a single conclusion.
"We're looping," I muttered. "We're stuck in some kind of loop!"
Cacophony tilted her head, not surprised. She was calm, like still water.
"You're right. We're in a space that's been separated from reality. If we continue down this path, it'll continue to loop infinitely. It seems that our enemy is more formidable than I anticipated. They have us trapped like rats."