Limbo’s Story Part 2

The first day of college always looked the same.

Parents pretending not to cry. Freshmen pretending not to be scared. Upperclassmen pretending they weren't watching the freshmen pretend not to be scared.

Boxes. Backpacks. Mini-fridges. A thousand little pieces of people's futures being hauled from trunks into buildings.

The Mortician had sent me here looking for a monster.

He didn't give me a picture.

Didn't give me a name.

Just a warning.

"You'll know him when you see him."

That wasn't as helpful as he seemed to think.

I wondered if he'd sent me here on purpose.

My boy should've been here.

Not this campus necessarily. Just... somewhere like this.

First day.

First dorm.

First roommate.

Instead, I got an assignment.

The optics weren't lost on me.

Then again...

I'd never known the Mortician to have a sense of humor.

I drifted through the crowd without really seeing it. My eyes skipped over the students. Kids weren't my concern. The Mortician didn't waste my time on kids. He dealt in warlords, terrorists, men who could erase cities with a phone call or a formula scribbled on a napkin.

So I watched the professors.

The chemistry department.

Engineering.

Computer science.

An aging physicist with coffee stains on his tie.

A woman carrying enough research binders to start a small library.

Those were the people I expected to interest the Mortician.

Not eighteen-year-olds trying to figure out where they left their dorm keys.

A laugh cut through the crowd.

For half a heartbeat...

I looked.

Just another group of boys shoving each other around.

Wrong height.

Wrong faces.

Wrong future.

I kept walking.

The campus was loud in the way only hope could be loud.

Plans.

Dreams.

Bad jokes.

Flirtation.

Everything my boy would never have.

I caught myself before finishing the thought.

My chest tightened anyway.

I stepped beneath the shade of an old oak and reached into my jacket.

Smoking was a filthy habit.

Today felt like the kind of day filth belonged.

The first drag settled my nerves just enough for me to think again.

Professionally.

Methodically.

If I were hiding someone capable of changing the world...

where would I hide them?

My eyes swept the quad once more.

A maintenance worker struggled across the brick walkway behind an overflowing trash cart.

Heavyset kid.

Green work shirt.

Bright knit mittens despite the warm afternoon.

He bent to catch a trash bag slipping off the side of the cart. The mittens couldn't grip the plastic. The bag fell anyway.

He sighed, picked it up, apologized to no one in particular, and kept moving.

Poor bastard.

Campus maintenance must've been short-handed.

I looked right past him.

"Mind if I bum one?"

A woman's voice pulled me out of the hunt.

She'd appeared beside me so quietly I hadn't heard her approach.

Shaved head.

Tattooed flames racing up one arm.

She smiled like we'd met before.

I offered her the pack.

She took one.

She inhaled deeply, then looked across the quad instead of at me.

“What brings a Pilgrim like you all the way out here?”

Every muscle in my body locked.

I turned slowly.

“What’d you say?”

“Pilgrim.” A grin spread across her face. “I was wondering if that would get your attention.”

“It did.” I faced her fully. “It’s not every day a stranger calls me by an old code name. How do you know it?”

Smoke curled lazily from her lips. She held up her hand.

"Relax. It’s not important. You don't look like a Pilgrim anymore."

"No?"

She studied me for another second.

"You look... lost."

I didn't answer.

She pointed with her cigarette toward the largest building overlooking the quad.

"If I were looking for impossible things..."

She flicked ash into the breeze.

"...I'd start in Registration."

Before I could ask how she knew I was looking for anything at all she was already walking away, “Don’t say a girl never gave you a tip.”

I watched as she flicked her cigarette into a crowd and disappeared into a river of students.

Something about that conversation felt rehearsed.

Like I'd just hit my mark in someone else's play.

My cigarette had burned nearly to the filter.

I dropped it.

Ground it beneath my boot.

When I looked back toward Registration...

the maintenance kid was still wrestling with his trash cart.

One mitten slipped off while he tried to catch another falling bag.

He scrambled after both.

The cart rolled away from him.

Students laughed.

He apologized again.

I barely noticed.

Registration was where the Mortician's answers waited.

Or so I'd just been told.

I started toward Registration.

The crowd had other ideas.

A red minivan sat half on the curb with both sliding doors open. Boxes, suitcases, lamps, plastic storage bins, enough junk to furnish a small apartment littered the sidewalk.

Two brothers argued in the middle of it like no one else existed.

One was all elbows and knees, tall enough to be awkward. The other looked younger by a year or two, shorter, louder, and entirely convinced volume made him right.

"Aaron!"

"What?"

"You've got my phone!"

"I do not."

"You absolutely do!"

"I put it on the brown suitcase."

"There are like six brown suitcases!"

Aaron pinched the bridge of his nose.

"There is exactly one brown suitcase."

His brother looked around dramatically.

"They're all brown."

"No, Dillon. That's tan. That's black. That's camouflage. The brown one is..." Aaron walked over, grabbed a phone off the nearest suitcase and shoved it into his brother's chest. "...this one."

Dillon looked down.

"...This isn't my phone."

Aaron sighed the sigh of an older sibling who'd been doing it his whole life.

"Yes. It is."

"No."

"Yes."

"It isn't."

Aaron snatched it back.

"It..." He frowned.

"...looks weird."

Dillon folded his arms.

"I told you."

Aaron turned the phone over in his hands.

"I swear it was newer."

"It was."

They both stared at it.

I almost kept walking.

Family arguments weren't exactly rare on move-in day.

Then Dillon looked up.

"I think somebody switched it."

Aaron glanced around.

"Who?"

"I don't know."

He looked genuinely rattled.

That got my attention.

Pickpocket.

I'd seen enough distraction crews over the years to recognize the setup. Cause confusion. Separate people from their valuables. Walk away before anyone realizes what happened.

My eyes started scanning the crowd.

Not the students.

Their hands.

Their pockets.

Their exits.

Movement caught the corner of my eye.

The maintenance kid.

Still pushing that overloaded trash cart.

Only now one mitten was hanging halfway off his hand while he tried to keep a bulging garbage bag from falling.

The bag split.

Soda cans rolled across the bricks.

Someone groaned loudly.

"For real?"

The kid's face turned crimson.

"I'm sorry."

He knelt to pick them up.

The mitten made it impossible.

A can slipped through his fingers.

Rolled into another student's foot.

"Sorry."

Another apology.

Always another apology.

The crowd flowed around him without stopping.

Some stepped over him.

One girl laughed.

He laughed too.

Not because it was funny.

Because embarrassed people laugh when they run out of ways to apologize.

He finally managed to throw the bag back onto the cart.

The whole thing listed sideways.

He caught it before it tipped.

Barely.

Poor kid couldn't catch a break.

I turned back toward the brothers.

Aaron was still examining the phone.

"Didn't these used to have antennas?" he muttered.

Dillon blinked.

"...Aaron."

"What?"

"I think it just grew one."

Aaron looked down.

Slowly.

Neither of them said a word.

The phone in his hand had changed again.

It wasn't much.

A little thicker.

A little older.

Enough to make my stomach tighten.

That wasn't a pickpocket.

That was impossible.

Around us...

someone shouted.

"My laptop!"

Heads turned.

Across the quad, a student slapped the side of an open computer that now looked old enough to belong in a museum.

Another voice.

"My watch!"

Someone else.

"My earbuds!"

The noise spread like birds taking flight.

Not one scream.

A hundred confused voices asking the same question.

"What just happened?"

I stopped looking at the devices.

Patterns.

Always find the pattern.

Every pair of frightened eyes...

Every confused face...

Every failing piece of technology...

They all pointed toward the same place.

Toward the kid with the trash cart.

He hadn't noticed.

He was too busy trying to pull his mitten back over trembling fingers before another bag slipped off the cart.

Then he looked up.

He finally noticed everyone staring at him.

And that's when the panic really began.

Fear spreads faster than fire.

One voice becomes three.

Three becomes thirty.

Within seconds the quad had stopped being a college campus and started acting like a herd.

Students pulled phones from their pockets.

Every face wore the same expression.

Confusion.

Then disbelief.

Then panic.

A girl dropped her tablet.

It hit the sidewalk with a hollow plastic clack.

She picked it up.

"...What?"

The sleek aluminum tablet she'd been carrying now looked like a chunky piece of beige plastic from another decade.

A boy ripped wireless earbuds from his ears.

Strings dangled between them.

"What the..."

Another student slapped the side of a vending machine.

Its bright digital display flickered.

The touchscreen disappeared.

Mechanical buttons pushed outward from beneath the plastic.

The machine groaned.

Someone screamed.

People began backing away from each other.

"No, don't touch me!"

"You touched my phone!"

"I didn't touch anything!"

"My laptop just—"

"What is happening?"

The panic wasn't organized.

It never is.

Everyone wanted an explanation.

Nobody had one.

Except...

Maybe...

I looked back toward the maintenance kid.

He hadn't moved.

Not really.

He stood frozen behind the trash cart.

One mitten halfway on.

One halfway off.

He looked more frightened than anyone.

Not guilty.

Scared.

There's a difference.

He looked around as if searching for whoever was responsible.

Then, little by little...

his eyes drifted down to his own hands.

Oh...

No.

He knew.

Not because he'd done something on purpose.

Because he'd done it before.

This kid was cursed with a capital C.

"Dillon..."

Aaron's voice was quieter now.

"We should go."

Dillon nodded without taking his eyes off the phone.

"I don't want to be here."

Smart kid.

Neither did I.

The maintenance worker jerked as another trash bag slipped off the cart.

The crash made him flinch.

His breathing quickened.

The phones around him changed again.

Faster this time.

The crowd noticed.

Someone pointed.

"It's him!"

Every head turned.

The kid's face drained of color.

"No..."

His voice barely carried.

"No, no, no..."

He grabbed the handle of the cart.

Turned.

Started pushing.

Not running.

Just...

trying to leave.

The cart squeaked pitifully across the bricks.

People stumbled out of his way like he carried the plague.

He wasn't escaping.

He was retreating.

Trying to put distance between himself and everyone else.

Trying to stop whatever was happening.

I watched him angle toward the Registration Building.

The same building.

How did she know?

Nothing about today felt accidental anymore.

"Dillon."

Aaron grabbed his brother's arm.

"Come on."

The brothers hurried toward the same entrance.

I fell in behind them.

Apparently, that was a mistake.

Dillon glanced over his shoulder.

Saw me.

His eyes widened.

"Aaron..."

Aaron looked back.

Saw six feet of scarred stranger in a leather jacket following twenty feet behind.

He reached exactly the wrong conclusion.

"Why's he following us?"

"I don't know!"

They sped up.

So did I.

Not because of them.

Because I wasn't losing the only lead I'd found all day.

The brothers broke into a jog.

I sighed.

"This is going to look bad," I muttered.

Then I started running too.

The brothers hit the doors first.

Aaron shoved one open.

"Dillon, move!"

They spilled into the lobby, nearly colliding with a campus tour weaving toward the exit.

I wasn't far behind.

"Hey!"

Aaron planted himself between me and his brother.

"You got a problem, mister?"

His voice cracked halfway through.

He was scared.

Trying not to be.

I stopped.

Not because he could stop me.

Because he reminded me of someone.

A good brother.

Wrong day to stand between me and where I was going.

"I don't want you."

Both boys blinked.

"What?"

"I'm not here for you."

Dillon held up the ancient-looking phone.

"Then why are you following us?"

"I’m not.”

Aaron frowned. “Then who-”

The lobby erupted behind them.

A secretary dropped the office phone.

Students backed away from the reception desk.

Computer monitors along the counter blinked.

Their flat screens thickened into bulky CRT monitors one after another.

Someone yelled for campus security.

Someone else yelled for maintenance.

Maintenance.

I looked past the brothers.

There he was.

The kid stood frozen beside his trash cart.

One mitten had fallen completely off.

He stared at his bare hand like it belonged to somebody else.

"No..."

He whispered it to himself.

"No..."

His breathing grew faster.

The receptionist’s computer aged another decade.

The monitor rounded.

The keyboard yellowed.

Students screamed.

He looked ready to cry.

Not because people were yelling at him.

Because they were right.

He'd done it.

"I have to go."

I stepped around Aaron.

He grabbed my sleeve.

"You can't just—"

I gently removed his hand.

"I can."

It wasn't threatening.

Didn't matter.

He stepped back anyway.

The kid finally noticed me.

Our eyes met.

He looked for an exit.

There wasn't one.

The lobby had boxed him in.

The crowd had become a wall.

He looked like a cornered animal.

I approached slowly.

"No sudden movements," I said.

He swallowed.

"I..."

His voice shook.

"I'm trying."

"I know."

"You don't."

"No."

"I don't."

I stopped a few feet away.

Close enough to hear him.

Far enough he wouldn't think I was grabbing him.

"What's your name?"

"...Eliot."

"One L?"

He nodded.

"Yeah."

I studied him another second.

"Fine."

He frowned.

"If you don't want to tell me..."

"I did."

"You'll be Mr. Poet."

His eyebrows knitted together.

"I... what?"

"I've known enough Eliots to know when somebody's lying."

"I'm not."

"Sure."

He looked genuinely confused.

For the first time all day...

I almost smiled.

Then I noticed the mittens.

One on.

One off.

His bare fingers trembled.

Not from fear.

From exhaustion.

I nodded toward the trash cart.

"What were you doing before the world ended?"

He looked over his shoulder.

Like he'd forgotten it was even there.

"...Just taking out the trash."

The words came out small.

Ashamed.

Like he'd somehow failed at that too.

I let out a long breath.

"Been there, kid."

Behind us...

the phones had stopped changing.

The shouting had quieted.

The room was settling.

I looked from Eliot...

to the mitten lying on the floor...

to the receptionist's computer.

Nothing else was changing.

The power hadn't stopped because of me.

It had stopped...

because he had.

The Mortician hadn't sent me after a monster.

He'd sent me after a frightened kid who couldn't survive a bad day without the world falling apart.