human
It was the twentieth anniversary of the extra terrestrial visit that had laid waste a number of remote locations around the Earth and without having made any attempts at making contact with the Human civilisation, left again leaving behind them zones where the laws of physics had been altered by either their technology or by biological remains the same way Humans might leave remains behind after a picnic by the roadside. The event as it was commonly known. The visit and the debris left behind has made The Zones (as the affected areas are called) mostly uninhabitable by humans. It was alsoJamie's twentieth birthday. She'd been born at a free clinic run by nuns from the cloister attached to the Cathedral of St Dymphna.
For the most part it had been a life of misery and abuse that might have broken anyone, and Jamie was broken for sure but she was also a survivor. After her mother had died of an overdose she had bounced around the foster care system and suffered verbal, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of so many foster parents she had lost count before ending up in an orphanage run by the very same nuns that had delivered her into this bleak molested world. It was after having run away from the orphanage she had begun to exhibit special powers, the ability to camouflage herself against any surface being the first but she had also developed a telepathic ability and a level of agility that would make an Olympic gymnast look like a blind, clumsy child wrapped in pillows on rollerskates. She also had a heightened intuition and often dreamt of things that later happened just as she had dreamt them.
It was also after having run away from the orphanage that she met Red Schuhart who saw a talent for travelling into The Zone that surrounded the city that had once known it's name but abandoned and for all intents and purposes forgotten it after the event. She was twelve at the time and unlike all other men she had met Red did not abuse her in any way, physically, verbally or sexually, all he wanted from her was her talent for getting past gravitational anomalies, flesh-eating brawn and other such dangers that made The Zone a place most sane people stayed clear of to get to the treasures it held, like for instance the needles that began to spin if you put the tip against a magnetic surface, and they didn't stop spinning until you physically removed the tip from the magnetic surface making them a source of infinite energy, a solution to the age old problem of the Perpetuum Mobile. Trained and guided by her mentor Jamie made a fortune for Red and he paid her quite well for it.
When Red was presumed dead three years later after failing to return from a solo raid into The Zone just North of the city, in search of the mythical Golden Orb that was rumoured to be able to grant wishes, Jamie continued taking missions into The Zone for a while but eventually she stopped because after Red everyone was simply taking advantage of her abilities and talents without paying her nearly enough for her to make a living from it. She began drinking more and more to keep away the nightmares that didn't have the decency to remain nightmares and to numb the memories of the abuse she had been put through, both in her childhood and in the years after Red's presumed death. She also got into other drugs. She began smoking Marijuana and taking a wide variety of pills regularly. Having spent all the money Red had paid her in less than two months she was basically back to living on the streets, had it not been for the manager of the Tabula Rasa Hotel letting her stay in one of the smaller rooms in the attic in exchange for certain favours.
The sun had only just risen above the horizon and the pinks and yellows had faded into a greyish blue. Jamie took one last drag on her cigarette and crushed it against the concrete floor of the roof and headed back down to barely habitable room to start the celebration with whatever alcohol or drugs she still had left when her phone indicated the arrival of a new message. It was from Monkey, Red's, mutated daughter one of the first children born to a Stalker, as those who made a living by retrieving objects form The Zone were called. She said she had new information about treasure in the deeper parts of The Zone that was for the most part unexplored. The first message was shortly followed by a second message containing a birthday greeting from Monkey.
Monkey still lived with what was left of her mother Guta in a rather less than posh flat, not far from the Tabula Rasa, just a few blocks from the entrance to The Shallows, a part of the city where, even before the event, people who didn't want to be found went to disappear. It was a labyrinth into which most of the people living in the city hesitated to venture and even fewer came back from. It was also through The Shallows that the safest entrance to the Northern Zone could be reached. Safest that was once you actually reached it but Jamie had been through the labyrinth enough times with Red to know the way in her sleep but that still didn't mean it was safe trying to reach it. There were creatures living in The Shallows that most people wouldn't be able to conjure up in their worst nightmares. Luckily though that was not where she had agreed to meet with Monkey but rather at a small juice bar called The Orchard because it had access to a fully enclosed and safely guarded plantation of fruits and berries which was then turned into various blends of juice, pures, jams and marmalade.
Monkey was fifteen and one of the most beautiful creatures Jamie had ever laid eyes on, despite, or perhaps because of, the short but silky smooth fur that covered her entire body and was the reason for her nickname. Jamie couldn't remember Red or Guta ever having called their daughter anything but Monkey so maybe it was her actual name. Born five years after the event and one of the first children to have been mutated due to a parent's exposure to the radiation in the zones. She had been born at home and there were no official records or birth certificate since Red had been rightfully paranoid about The Institute kidnapping her to experiment on her. Many children born after Monkey had suffered that fate and none of them had ever been seen again.
The meeting was brief. Jamie bought them a pitcher of strawberry and lime juice which they shared while avoiding the topic of Red Schuhart as carefully as they could until Monkey took out a small black, severely water-damaged notebook and placed it on the table in front of Jamie.
"Three pages from the back," she said in a rather throaty, only just barely human if that was what she really was, voice.
Jamie nodded and turned to the third page from the back and there was a drawing of an orb surrounded by what looked like spiderweb and underneath the drawing was Red's distinctive handwriting:Like a queen she sits on her invisible throne to judge those who come seeking her grace and grant the deepest wishes and desires of those she deems worthy. It was rather cryptic and even though Jamie had worked long enough with Red to decipher most of his riddles this one had her drawing nothing but blanks. She then flipped through the rest of the notebook which seemed to be a step by step map on how to reach the third page from the back.
"I'll be in touch Monkey," she promised and tucked the notebook into the inside pocket of her leather coat.
They both knew it was not true. They shared too much pain between them but it was still a nice promise to make. Monkey was after all almost like a sister to Jamie.
"Tell your mother hello from me," she added and left with a casual wave goodbye.
By the time she got back to the Tabula Rasa she had been gone about two hours and before doing anything else she went up onto the roof and hid the notebook in the blastproof safebox she kept hidden inside a disused vent up there.
She then went down to O'Malley's half a block from the Tabula Rasa and ordered a quart of whiskey, on the tab. She needed to focus on deciphering the notebook and its cryptic message but first she needed to numb the pain of the memories meeting Monkey had brought up. Half an hour, and five cigarettes, later the whisky was gone and she got up to use the bathroom.
gpt
If you askedLily Lovelesswhere she was from. She would likely tell you to fuck off and do her best to stab you with something pointy and if possible on fire. On the occasion when she was drunk or entertained enough. She might regale you with an impossible tale of her journey across the bad side of the moon, on her way to childhood's end. If she was high enough, and often she was, Lily might even tell you about the day of the eclipse. When the tigers broke free and the bridges burned and Corporal Clegg and the gnome with the paranoid eyes, fought with four sticks in the battle for Nevermore. And all of these things, from the burning and stabbing to the stories. All of these she would do with the malice-free exuberance of an excited child.
Not because she was crazy, which by any measure she absolutely was, but because that was how her shattered mind needed to see the world. They weren't lies so much as a fairytale form of the truth. Protecting her from things like the knowledge of her father, Johnny Moon. A small time Stalker that most real Stalkers, like Red Schuhart, saw as a vulture. The sort of extra scummy dirt bag who would shadow others into the Zone in an effort to profit off their missteps and misfortunes. The sort of loathsome lowlife that when Lily turned sixteen, and was no longer of sexual interest to him, took her into the zone and used Lily to trigger a trap that disintegrated her. And while it wasn't unusual for people to disappear in the zone. It was highly irregular for them to suddenly return. And that's exactly what Lily did. A year to the day of her disappearance and yet aged no less than five years upon her return. Strolling out of the zone with funhouse mirror memories, that had been shattered and scattered to the wind like shiny little dandelion seeds. And the strange ability to nudge bits and pieces of reality into something more palatable to her own world view.
So on this day as Lily strolled down the street toward a door marked with an overhead sign that read O'Malley's. Lily's Swiss cheese mind went to work. "Ohhhhhhh Miss O'Brian!" And no sooner had Lily said the name than reality twisted just enough to change the sign from O'Malley's to O'Brian's. Lily clapped her hands together and practically skipped to the door. She stopped in front of it, crossed one leg tight in front of the other and stood tall on tiptoe, pretending for one music-filled moment to be the itty-bitty ballet dancer in those jewelry boxes decorated like cake. Unlike the little trapped lady, her feet were bare and crusted with crumbly mud, her legs were equally naked and filthy, streaked with dirt, and a pattern of violent red slashed across her straight jacket, which hung off her shoulder like and oversized nightshirt, straps dangling provocatively against her wrists and thighs.
The straight jacket was a gift from her ex boyfriend, Christopher. Who had slashed her throat and dumped her. Except her throat seemed fine now but maybe that's just how throats worked. Either way her parting gift was the jacket, her only stitch of clothing. Which was just long enough to hide the dark heart between her thighs in shadow, yet show a sliver of her perfectly shaped ass cheeks. Lily's blonde mane was a riot, and there had been a hasty and sloppy effort to clean her face, followed by an even hastier and sloppier effort to apply makeup. Her lips were a bright and deadly crimson red, and her eyes were heavily rimmed with smudged coal, making her cool blue irises both airy and electric. From the corner of her mouth, at a jaunty angle, protruded the wet stick of a butterscotch lollipop.
With excited breaths, narrowed eyes, a quirky, curled grin, Lily slapped her palms down on the door handle and tossed it open so hard and so wide that the upper half of her body folded in an accidental bow. Rolling with it, she snapped back up, canted her chin like a saucy flamenco dancer, lifted one gracefully curved arm, then still on her toes, dragged her feet like a diva into the room. The door rebounded behind her, slammed closed, and Lily snapped her chin up in the opposite direction, as if attracted by the sound. She smiled brightly, clapped her hands together and walked in like she owned the place. Her steps confident but playful, her hips swinging and bouncing beneath the hem of the straight jacket, meanwhile leaving a breadcrumb trail of blood-caked dirt on her way to the bar, greeting everyone she passed. "Heya guys. Hey!"
When her airy blue eyes landed on Jamie, Lily pulled the lollipop from her mouth with a suggestive suck and an excited smile. "Jamie! Are you here for group therapy?" Lily then furrowed her brow, cut her eyes around the room and then returned them to Jamie at which point she whispered sweetly and with genuine concern."Babe? Did you get tossed in the nuthouse?"Lily pointed her fingers in quirky directions and crossed her eyes. "The people here are fucking crazy." Her eyes wet back to normal and Lily nodded in agreement with herself as she pointed, in a way that was anything but subtle, at a table of thugs who were eyeing her like a pack of hungry wolves. "And sometimes dangerous."
Then, still smiling at Jamie with a dash of schoolgirl swoon, Lily forgot the flavor of her lollipop which visibly changed from butterscotch orange to cherry red as she plopped it in her mouth.
human
At the time of Lily's arrival the usual crowd had started to gather in O'Malley's, vultures, whom Jamie despised and had as little to do with as possible, thugs and mercenaries for hire, some of whom actually used O'Malley's as a sort of office in exchange for protection from other thugs and mercenaries, a few scattered whores taking advantage of Old Man O'Malley's alternative methods of payment to get high or drunk before starting their nights. Almost all of them turned their heads to look at the girl who had just entered in some kind of mimicked ballerina style. There was a buzz among thugs and whores alike but probably for very different reasons. The thugs probably saw her as easy prey and the whores saw her as competition. Even Old Man O'Malley turned his head and smacked his tongue against his palate and licked his lips as if he was eyeing a juicy steak. His niece Caroline, who worked there as a waitress, and quite possibly was the closest thing to a friend Jamie had, shook her head at the state the girl was in and sighed. The poor girl was probably one of the many homeless kids hiding in the disused subway tunnels looking for food, drink and/or drugs.
Jamie had just come back from the bathroom and was expecting Old Man O'Malley to claim payment for her tab in his so called office, a dirty storage space with a chair and a small table in it.
"You ... know me?" she asked as the barely clad girl greeted her by name.
Strange and often inexplicable things often happened in The Naked City due to its close proximity to The Zone. Strange creatures were also not an entirely uncommon occurrence but there was something about this girl that still confounded Jamie.
The straight jacket and bare feet might very well be as much a fashion statement, or statement of personality, like Jamie'sleather jacketwas. The childish and innocently unaware attitude might also be just that, an attitude the girl probably used to entice customers. It was a trick Jamie herself had often used before, mostly on middle-aged men with daughters they substituted Jamie for rather than sexually abusing their own offspring. Hell sometimes Jamie had played the part of boys as well but that had become increasingly difficult as she started to develop breasts, though with a baggy enough sweater of jacket she could still pull it off, a lot better than most girls as it were. But the girl was dirty as if she had not seen soap, or water, in months and there was blood caked in with the dirt. It was almost like she had just walked out of The Zone after a particularly messy mission, but these days no one really went into the deeper parts of The Zone. Most stalkers stayed in the safe, carefully mapped out areas, gathering needles, so-so:s, bracelets or black spray but it was a long time since Jamie heard of anyone going after any rare or even unique objects, such as the golden sphere.
It was the fact that this girl knew her by name that seemed most strange to Jamie who had no idea who, or for that matter what, she was or why she would think Jamie had come to O'Malley's for group therapy, therapy perhaps but in liquid form and certainly not in any sort of group, nor could she figure out why the girl thought she had been thrown into the nuthouse, not that there weren't times when Jamie could be perceived as belonging there, especially when she was high or when she had had one of her nightmares that didn't have the decency to remain bad dreams, or if perhaps they were repressed memories struggling to become part of her consciousness once more, or if they were simply a drug-induced state of psychosis, or rather a state of psychosis caused by withdrawal as it was always when Jamie had not managed to get her hands on anything stronger than whisky the nightmares occurred and stuck as part of her reality, for a day or two, sometimes as long as a week. During those times she seemed entirely detached from reality, often carrying on conversations with imaginary people, if indeed they were imaginary, or so she had been told by people she sometimes associated with.
"Another bottle to go," Jamie told Caroline and then took the girl by the hand leading her to the only free booth, sat her down and told her to have a drink and wait while she took care of the tab.
"Then we're going home," she said since despite everything else Jamie recognised symptoms of abuse in the girl and was far from comfortable leaving her to the vultures and thugs, not to mention what the whores might do to her should they decide to eliminate the competition.
"And if you've got some spare clothes as well," Jamie asked Caroline who nodded and disappeared behind the bar and into the back rooms.
gpt
Within the cork screw way that Lily's mind worked there was a sliding scale of clarity. Lily had danced her way into the bar near the looking glass side of that scale. The side with drug laced tea parties and mad drag queens with a fetish for getting head in heart shaped jacuzzies. And then there was the other side, twisted and strange to be sure but relatively speaking, it was rooted in the same reality as the people she shared the world with. And the moment she lay eyes on Jamie, the indicator on that scale began to slide toward the direction of relative sanity.
So when Jamie took charge and told Lily and Caroline what needed to be done, not only was Lily more than a little turned on by the firmness of that direction but Jamie had also done what very few people could get Lily to do, listen. She listened and nodded in understanding and straight up clapped with wild, wide eyed glee, when Jamie included taking Lily home with her. It was such an appealing development that Lily bounced her shoulders back and forth like a spoiled brat who was absolutely getting their way.
The shoulder wiggle subsided when Jamie asked Caroline to round up some clothes and Lily nodded in agreement as one half of her face scrunched up. "Yeah. I usually wear pants." Her electric blue eyes moved to the old timer sitting and watching from the next closest table and Lily further clarified to him in a matter of fact way. "Like, usually." The old timer shrugged in a casual way and spoke in a gruff albeit polite enough tone. "Hell I'm not complaining sweetheart." Knowing enough of Jamie's reputation to not press his luck the old man left it at that and turned his attention mostly back to his drinking.
When Lily turned back to look at Jamie she was half way toward the door to the back room. "Jamie! Jamie!" Lily shouted until Jamie looked her way. At which point Lily waved and smiled and all but shouted in a sing song way. "I'll miss you!" And no mater the response, nice or mean or nothing at all, Lily looked back to Caroline and informed her with some pride. "That's my best friend."
Caroline nodded in that way someone did when they felt certain they were dealing with a crazy person. "Awesome. You want a drink?"
Lily nodded eagerly. "Something with fruit in it. Like cherries and pineapple, maybe on those little plastic swords?"
Caroline pressed her lips together, her expression equal parts concern and amusement. "Right. We've got vodka and orange juice. I'll see if I can round up a lime or something." Lily clapped her hands in a demure, golf clap sort of way because what she heard was, "Coming right up."
For the most part Lily stayed out of trouble. Caroline returned with a box of clothes first, deciding that of her two tasks it was the more urgent. She intended to direct Lily to the bathroom but in truly eager Lily fashion the blonde dove into the box that consisted mostly of clothing various prostitutes had left behind. Caroline watched as Lily pulled things from the box she didn't remember ever being there, like a pair of shiny black high heel boots and a bondage collar that said cupcake. Just as strange was the fact that everything Lily selected for her outfit didn't just fit but did so as if made for her. Because in Lily's mind, it was. "What's your name?" Caroline asked.
Lily replied while pulling the jeans shorts up over the fishnets and giving her hips a little wiggle as she shimmied into them. "Lily or Lil or Leelee." Lily stopped and turned to Caroline as she peeled off her straight jacket and tossed it on the table, here perky breasts and pierced nipples on full display while the old timer and much of the bar enjoyed the show. Lily, focused on her conversation with Caroline didn't notice or else she would have likely leaned in and put on more of a performance. "Corporal Clegg started calling me cupcake, because of this one time where I killed this guy with one."
Lily slipped on a t-shirt of which she promptly tied of in a way that exposed her softly sculpted stomach. Now that she was dressed here was a near collective sign of disappointment from most but not the old timer. Who was just drunk enough to be curious rather than doubtful about Lily's story. He held back a belch as he asked. "You killed somebody with a cupcake?" Lily nodded and replied. "Well the cupcake did most of the work." She suddenly flared her fingers in the air and made the sound of an explosion. "But don't worry. He was a really bad guy." Lily declared and then immediately tilted her head with a thoughtful expression and added. "I think."
Then she shrugged because good or bad that dude was super dead now and her mind was on to far more important things. "How do I look?You think Jamie will like it?"
human
It wasn't until Jamie had closed the door to Old Man O'Malley's so-called office behind her that she was struck by the odd tone with which she had told the girl they were going home, as if she was speaking of home for both of them, as if they ... already shared a room.
"Picking up strays now are you?" O'Malley said with a smirk and a strong Irish accent.
"I must say Wee Jamie that you are a strange cookie indeed."
He then pushed the chair out from the table and turned to face her.
"I assume you're here to settle your tab."
Jamie nodded and dropped to her knees, pulled down his dirty jeans and made herself busy sucking him off. As usual he put a hand on the back of her head and held it down as he filled her mouth with one of the foulest tasting loads of sperm she had ever tasted. It was like a combination of rancid butter and rotting eggs. The whole process was over in just under three minutes and as usual Jamie spat as much of the sperm as possible into the waste bin before standing up to leave the office. She didn't speak a single word to him but in his usual manner Old Man O'Malley grinned as she turned and walked out the door.
"One of these days I'll have myself a piece of that fine ass of yours Wee Jamie."
Sure you willJamie thought to herself. He had more or less said the same thing every week for the past four years.
Having seen her uncle receive payment in this manner countless times Caroline waited outside the door with a big shot of whisky that would perhaps not kill the residual taste but at least take the edges off it.
"You know that girl?" she asked as Jamie emptied the glass, rolled the whisky around in her mouth and then swallowed it.
Jamie first shook her head and then looked over at the now quite transformed and dressed Lily as she was engaging in conversation with Elvis, as everyone called the scrawny old guy who was missing one eye and had a knife cut across his mouth that he loved telling stories about how he had received when he was in the mood, or drunk enough. He nodded at Lily's question but shrugged at the same time as if to indicate that yes he thought Jamie would like the outfit but also that he couldn't care less. To him she simply looked like any of the other whores that frequented the bar, a bit weirder perhaps and despite now wearing clothes still a whole lot dirtier.
When he saw Jamie approaching he refocused all of his attention onto the drink in front of him, and many of the others did the same thing as she approached Lily. One of the thugs stood up though and blocked their way as they were about to leave.
"You know the rules Jamie," he said and looked around the bar for any kind of support before explaining these so-called rules that had basically been made up by that particular group of five thugs as a way for them to get their hands of free pussy and to recruit new whores for their business.
"I do," Jamie said and before he had a chance to continue she had a butterfly knife in her left hand and then looked at his company just as he had done and what little support any of them had shown faded away.
Jamie did indeed have a reputation, not only at O'Malley's bar but all over the slums around it. It was a reputation only based very loosely in facts but the long and short of it was that she had taken out Castor Holbrook, a large heavily muscular pimp with skin as dark as pure cocoa and according to rumours a cock that would make a horse blush, after he had refused to pay for her services but rather tried to include her in the girls he kept at a basement brothel on the edge of the slums. According to the rumours he had been a testicle short ever since. There was almost no truth to the story but Jamie was not one to correct anyone who believed it to be true, and as long as she didn't' deny it and Castor made a big deal out of denying it the rumour had taken on the deceptive shimmer of truth.
There was of course also the rumours that she had often been seen entering The Shallows and return. That rumour was entirely true though what most people seemed to have forgotten was that she had not done so alone. She had always had Red with her.
"Let's go," she said and took Lily by the hand and together they left the bar.
It was only a short walk back to the Tabula Rasa Hotel where Jamie had intended to spend the night on the roof top much more drunk than she was going through Red's notebook. Now with the arrival of this odd girl who seemed to know her and who also seemed to have some sort of powers. Yes Jamie had noticed the shift in colour of the lollipop and she had noticed that despite having been picked out of the lost and found box each and every piece of clothing the girl had picked seemed to have been tailor made for her.
"So what do I call you? Cupcake?" she asked referencing the collar Lily wore around her neck.
"Lovely outfit by the way," she added in the vague hope of an explanation to just how the girl had found an entire outfit that fit her body as perfectly as what she wore.
gpt
When Jamie took her hand Lily squeezed it excitedly and followed without hesitation. She watched the brief exchange between Jamie and the thug she now knew as one of five and then waved goodbye to the entirety of the bar, including the men who would have no doubt raped and enslaved her.
She exited with an eager bounce and a signature wiggle. And in spite of looking like an actual dirty whore, Lily felt like a princess. Or at least this is what she imagined it must be like to be one, since Jamie had yet to say or do a single mean thing to her. In a fleeting moment of near clarity Lily looked around, then at Jamie and understood on some level she was no longer in the same world she had been. Nor was she on the moon. Lily quickly decided this mostly because the air lacked the underlying scent of moldy cheese.
Lily's nose twitched and her eyes narrowed as she began to second guess her, not on the moon theory but before she could verbalize it. Jamie was talking to her and the whole of Lily's attention turned to her friend in a dreamy way. Lily smiled brightly and laughed. "Sure babes. Cupcake works. Or Lily or Lil or kitten or pumpkin or something real real dirty." She bounced her shoulders as she said the last few words, then paused as she dreamed up additional nick names. Monikers that slipped entirely from her fun house mirror mind as Jamie complimented Lily on her outfit.
Lily's eyes lit up in equal parts pride and excitement. "I think they were made for me and left there for me because." She looked around to make sure there were no spies, eyed a suspicious looking lamp post and thus abruptly smooshed herself up closer to Jamie. Lily snuggled up as much as Jamie allowed and then whispered her secret in a conspiratorial way. "Because I think I may be a moon princess." Her tone was absolutely serious. "Or at least they think I'm a moon princess or someone super important like a billionaire. Oh! Or a race car driver. Oh! Oh! Oh!" She added with exuberance before returning to her hushed, conspiratorial tone. "Or." Lily nodded slowly with wide eyes and placed the cherry on top. "A math teacher."
"I'm not one." She confessed then added in a matter of fact way. "But I do know all the numbers from one to blue. Which is why sometimes I can do magic. At least that's what the gnome with the paranoid eyes says."
Lily nodded, smiled at Jamie and abruptly jumped back to the heart of their conversation. Complements. "You're lookin super hot too Jamie. When you pulled you're knife out and basically almost killed all those guys and fucked them with their own dicks, just because they were thinkin about messing with your girl." Lily swooned a little and sounded more than a little turned on. "So fucking hot babes."
"So fucking hot." Lily repeated as she plucked an old used popsicle stick from a passing trash bin, smiled at Jamie in a dreamy way and without thought or conscious effort transformed the chewed up stick into a freshly wrapped cotton candy lolli and muttered emphatically. "Like really hot." Then unwrapping the treat she took one long sloppy suck, noisily slurped as she pulled the pink lollipop from her pouty lips and offered Jamie a lick.
human
Jamie watched the girl as she seemed a bit jittery and somewhat paranoid, saw how she She also noted how the girl shifted from suspiciously examining her surroundings as if it was the first time she saw it to casually playful excitement. Something was indeed off about her and Jamie suspected there was a deep sexual trauma underneath it all but she decided not to bring that up. Instead she nodded and listened to the rather odd things she said, about being a moon princess, or people thinking she was, or possibly a math teacher. It made no sense whatsoever unless somehow the girl was entirely detached from reality. Perhaps her scattered persona was the result of some as yet undiscovered unique artefact from The Zone.
As Jamie pondered this her mind wandered to the rather curious coincidence that Cupcake, as she had decided to call the girl, showed up out of nowhere on the same day Monkey had given her Red's old notebook with the rather curious map of a cryptic but unique and certainly valuable artefact deep in the zone beyond chartered territory. Adding to the curiousity the girl seemed to know Jamie, as if they were old friends who had fallen out of touch with each other and been separated for years. It was simply too much of a coincidence.
There was yet another possibility that could explain Cupcake's seemingly fragmented mind. There were rumours and legends of The Naked City from long before The Event. The city had been a strange place even then, a place of curious and strange things. The creatures living in The Shallows was just a small part of it. There were the stories about the old cathedral that extended so far underground some said it led straight to hell, where some said an ancient order of shamans had practised dark arts and summoned creatures from primordial dimensions since before the dawn of time. There was Wonderland Sanatorium where it was said no patient had ever left the premises they had simply shifted to another state an still roamed the corridors screaming an acting out their old traumas. On top of that there were the rumours of the old haunted mansion, which to Jamie seemed like the most likely explanation for Cupcake' mysterious appearance. It was rumoured that young girls who entered the mansion disappeared into the paintings hanging there, or as some said, were kidnapped by the paintings. Most of these were never seen again, some turned up dead but Jamie had never heard any stories about any of these girls reappearing alive, if perhaps a bit fragmented mentally speaking.
Extensive use of hallucinogenic or dissociative drugs like LSD, Shrooms, Yag, K or PCP could of course also explain Cupcake's erratic and somewhat abstract paranoid behaviour. What neither the rumours of old or drugs could explain was that Cupcake seemed able to manipulate reality, her clothes, the changing lollipop, or the fact that she had just picked up a discarded, rather disgusting, chewed up stick from a trashcan and without any effort turned it to a neatly wrapped fresh and brightly pink lollipop, something she had claimed she could do because she knew all the numbers from one to blue, whatever number that was. No there was a lot more to this girl than Jamie could figure out off the top of her head.
Instead she smiled and addressed Cupcake's compliment about how Jamie had stood up for her back at O'Malley's.
"Yea, well ... No one messes with my girl do they?" she said and wrapped her lips around the offered lollipop which had a very distinct taste of cherries.
Entering the Tabula Rasa Jamie held a finger to her lips as a signal for Cupcake to be quiet as she snuck her past the sleeping receptionist and up to her room where she locked the door and offered Cupcake to sit down among the dirty sheets on the unmade bed.
"So," she said and sat down as well, lighting a cigarette while searching under the bed for a bottle that was not entirely empty.
"You know me?"
gpt
Jamie reiterated that no one messed with her girl. Words that made Lily feel like it was Christmas. And that the tooth fairy's legal team had acted on her behalf to get Lily all the presents in the universe. "That's right! Nobody baby!" Lily agreed with absolute certainty and a bounce in her step and a wiggle in her hips that turned her walk into something that personified joy. So much Joy that it was a miracle Jamie was able to sneak Lily up stairs to her room.
It wasn't noise. Lily did stay quiet but she also decided the best way to move unseen, was to pick up a fake potted plant at the door and hold it in front of her while she side shuffled past the desk clerk. Then there was the shoulder roll down the hallway and the victory bounce once they had made it to Jamie's apartment door.
The excitement didn't fade once inside Jamie's apartment but Lily did lock it down a little. In a way that wasn't unlike placing lightning in a bottle. She was excited but also focused on Jamie. So much so that when Jamie offered her a seat on the bed Lily took it, plopping down heals to butt and promptly answering Jamie's question. "Oh yes! I know you super good babes."
Lily scrunched her nose and narrowed her eyes. "I mean sometimes you're not always the exact same you each time but you always help me. And! You make me brave." Lily gave Jamie's shoulder a littleatta-girl shoulder nudge. "Which is kinda amazing." Lily said. "Because I'm scared of lots of things." Lily started tapping her fingers and counting them off. "Like basements and water bottles and dark yellow. Oh oh! Then there's Euclidian geometry and empty shot glasses and baseball games." She shivered a little and in a rare moment of clarity she pivoted back to the question.
"And some things are always the same. Like the way you hold my hand and smoke your cigarette. And how even though I gotta get roughed up a little to get off, you don't make me feel bad about it." Lily smiled sweetly. "And I know you try your best. Like sometimes things are really hard and shitty and unfair but you don't ever give up. I mean sometimes you think you do." Lily scrunched her nose and shook her head. "But you don't really."
human
Jamie found a bottle about a quarter full of cheap whisky and pulled it out. She took a mouthful and handed it to Cupcake. She listened carefully and had decided to take Cupcake's seemingly impossible ramblings at face value which would in effect mean that they knew each other and knew each other well it would seem. Of course Jamie had no memories of Cupcake which could only mean that when, or where ever, they had met it had simply not happened yet. She lay back on the bed looking up at the crack in the ceiling right next to the spots of black mould and thought about some of the things Red had taught her about how neither time nor space worked in the same way in the zone as it did outside. The zone was full of temporal and gravitational anomalies and perhaps it really was no coincidence that she had met Cupcake on the same day she got Red's last notes from his daughter. The more she thought about it the more it made sense that the two were related.
She closed her eyes and almost forgot for a moment that Cupcake was there.
"So," she said, more to herself than anything.
"I will go looking for Red's last treasure, and maybe when I find it, or just before, or after, I do I also find you."
She took the cigarette out of her mouth using the thumb and indexfinger with the other three fingers neatly folded against the palm of her hand, opened her eyes and turned to look at Cupcake.
"But I'm not always exactly the same but I help you overcome something you are afraid of."
She looked back at the ceiling and nodded to herself. Gold could be described as dark yellow. It made sense. Despite it not having happened yet, in Jamie's timeline it made absolutely perfect sense. Somehow Cupcake had wished herself back and her wish had been granted but perhaps she had not been specific enough and was now caught in some sort of temporal loop and a fragmented state of existence. It was up to Jamie to help her return completely. She took the bottle back from Cupcake, emptied it and wondered how many times she had already tried.