Dimes was in her car. The street she'd parked on was mostly empty, no pedestrians, and only the occasional vehicle passing through on its way to somewhere else. That was good. She didn't like being out very much anymore, especially where there were people. People had started make her feel nervous and exposed as her grip on reality continued to loosen, certain kinds of people in particular. But she had needed to come out, there was work to be done. Now there she was, Dimes Kibuya, out in the open, sitting in her two door hunk of Japanese plastic, eating her dinner: General Tso's Chicken, from the hygienically questionable Chinese restaurant across the street. If she tried really hard she could almost pretend that it was a normal evening on a normal day in a normal life, like the one she'd been living before everything had gone sideways, that wonderfully boring life where she was sane and generally happy and wasn't afraid to go outside.
On the seat next to her, underneath the bag that her surprisingly edible meal had come in, was the map. Or maybe The Map. It was like no map she had ever seen before, perhaps like no map that had ever existed in the history of maps. It was composed entirely of names. Every inch of it. They crowded each other, pressing so close that they barely retained legibility. The names varied in size and shape, some snaking along in sharp curves or turning in on themselves in spirals, other formed carefully angled boxes containing still other names. They were written in pencil and ink, in every color she'd been able to find in her home. Each was written in the same painfully perfect hand so that each was perfectly readable despite the calligraphic chaos it languished in. After three solid hours of writing she had burned through every writing utensil in her house and was finally forced to venture forth in search of more. The fruits of that search now rested in a plastic bag in the passenger's foot well.
Once out in the world, her strange writing trance temporarily broken, she felt the gnawing ache of hunger settle into her stomach. Exiting the office supply store she'd seen a hanging sign further up the block that read “The Smiling Dragon, Authentic Chinese Cuisine” and the sharp, rich smell of that cuisine sent a rolling cramp through her belly that made it clear further delays would not be tolerated. “Authentic” turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration, as it so often was, but it was food and it turned out to be surprisingly good. Now, still hungrily shoveling food into her mouth, but with the sharp edge of her hunger slightly blunted, her eyes began to find their way back to her map.
It was Inlet City, she was sure of that much, though it bore no resemblance to any actual map of the city Dimes had ever seen, even taking into account that it was composed only of words. She had no doubt that anyone else would have found it impossible to decipher but to her eyes everything was perfectly clear, the general layout of the city seeming to rise up out of the mass of letters like an optical illusion. There were a few locations she recognized, their names small and black over their corresponding cartographical location, but most she couldn't place. The unfamiliar names felt old, like ancient words from dead languages. She couldn't read them but she felt a sense of what they represented; hazy, half formed concepts, like a word that has no literal translation in one's native tongue, or one meant to represent a complex belief with no cultural parallel to the reader. And mixed in with all the others were tiny names, each in red ink, written so small that they would be easily missed if not for their color. They faced every direction so that one would have to turn the map to read them. She had known from the moment the first one was written that they were people. What people and why they were assigned those particular locations was still a mystery but that was definitely what they were.
Dimes carefully eased another chopstick full of food to her lips, her aching fingers trembling slightly, as her eyes crawled over the sea of names to the same point they kept drifting back to, the first name she had written. It sat near the upper left corner, close to the harbor and the nearby warehouse district, etched in hard, red lines into the paper, almost glaring at her. “Gang”. The owner of that name wasn't there now, though how she knew that was as much a mystery as the map itself, but she felt confident that said individual would be soon, and that she would know when the time came. The name seemed to grow larger, as if her eyes were zooming in like camera lens, as she stared at it. Fear and exhilaration struggled for dominance over her emotions. She had no idea what she was going to find when she went there. She had asked for help and could only assume that help was what awaited her. And if it wasn't? What else was she to do? Time was growing short. Things were continuing to happen inside her head and control was becoming harder to maintain. Worst of all it seemed to be accelerating exponentially. The worse it became the faster it worsened. It was bad enough when she was alone in her apartment. Out here she had to grapple with the paranoia as well, because out here there were people, and people seemed to make it worse. Especially... she pushed the thought away, afraid of the road such contemplations would inevitably lead her down, and concentrated on her dinner. She lifted another pinch of food, a limp clump of broccoli dripping thick strings of brownish read sauce, raised it to her mouth, and froze.
The devil himself could not have conjured a more perfect temptation. She was crossing the street less than half a block away, appearing there as if summoned up from nothing by the power of Dimes' errant thoughts, the very thing she had dreaded encountering from the moment she'd stepped out her door. She could not have been more than 8 years old, probably younger. Her long, red hair was drawn back in a pair of tightly braided pigtails that bounced leisurely as she walked. She wore a pale yellow cotton sundress and white sneakers with pink roses stitched on the sides. She was smiling, carefree, and as perfectly innocent as any human in the world could ever hope to be, or at least that's how Dimes saw her. The piece of broccoli slipped from her chopsticks and splashed into the pool of congealing sauce beneath it, throwing tiny drops of sauce onto the front of Dimes' white tank top. The chopsticks followed shortly thereafter, sending more brownish red drops flying onto her shirt, leaving stains she'd never be able to wash out. Miraculously she somehow managed to lay the plastic container with her forgotten meal on the passenger seat, narrowly avoiding, through no effort on her part, spilling more of the sauce on her nearly completed map.
As the feeling of madness encroached on her mind so to did the urges like the one she was feeling. She liked women, had liked them since she was a teenager, but these feelings were something new. At first it had been little things, brief flashes, stray thoughts, easily dismissed. Now such girls held a fascination for her the she was no longer capable of denying. The things that her fevered mind conjured about them, things she would never have imagined herself capable of thinking, were simultaneously appalling and arousing, even those which were not inherently sexual. She wanted to touch them, to taste them, to feel them against her, to bask in the heat of their pristine flesh, and these were the most tame by comparison. Beneath those lurked far more terrible desires. She wanted to cut and tear, to peel and bleed, to spoil their perfect beauty with agonizing slowness. It was not, in her mind, evil or vindictive. There was no malice in her desire. She just wanted to bathe in the destruction of their innocence. It disgusted her even as the thoughts spun unbidden through her mind and, worst of all, that disgust seemed to make the thoughts even more enticing, as if her own debasement were part of the thrill.
A voice, the same voice every time, spoke to her, sounding disturbingly as if it were whispering into her ear. You could do it. She would come with you. You can be so charming when you want to be. Imagine the way her skin would feel beneath your fingers. Imagine the smell of her sweat, drenched with fear as she realizes what is happening to her, her eyes wide and pleading. Imagine her blood on your tongue. Imagine...
Dimes watched the girl cross the street with predatory eyes. Her fingers drumming unconsciously on her thigh, tapping out a Morse code of barely restrained longing. Her nipple swelled and ached. She felt heat and an all too pleasant dampness blossom between her legs. The thing in her head came alive like a rabid animal and she felt her left hand slip slowly towards the driver's side door. There was a moment, an absolutely unbearable moment when she thought it was finally over, that all sense and reason had left her, as she felt her fingers curl around the cool metal of the door's handle and tighten.
If you open that door it's all over, the barely audible voice of reason inside her mind said in a calm, hostage negotiator's whisper. You won't be able to stop it. No one will be able to help you. Once you cross that line there will be no coming back. You will be gone.
Slowly her fingers relaxed and slipped off the handle. Her eyelids felt pinned back, clamped open, but she managed to close them. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel painfully as she forced herself not to look until she was absolutely certain the girl had passed. Her jaw popped loudly as she pressed her teeth together until she felt sure they would shatter. After several minutes Dimes carefully opened her blurry eyes. For a moment she was certain she would see the girl coming towards her, sparkling green eyes (of course they would be green) meeting hers and banishing her tenuous self control. Tears of relief spilled down Dimes' cheeks as she looked out on the empty sidewalk.
Dimes sat for several minutes taking slow, steady breathes to calm herself. She looked over at her partially finished dinner and felt her stomach roll sickly. Apparently that meal was destined for the garbage. It was going to be some time before she was hungry again. She was about to pop the plastic top back on the container and shove it into it's bag but stopped. She fished around in the bottom of the paper bag and pulled out a fortune cookie sealed a clear plastic wrapper.
She'd received her first fortune cookie from her father. He'd come home one night after a dinner with some co-workers and handed it to her with a smile. When she asked what it was he knelt down and carefully explained the concept and history behind the fortune cookie to his fascinated daughter. When she asked why he'd given his fortune cookie to her he just shrugged and said he was sure the fortune inside it was not meant for him. The fortune inside had read: “Heeding the wisdom of an elder will bring you good fortune.” From that day on she had never failed to open any fortune cookie she was given.
Dimes removed the fortune cookie from the wrapper and cracked it open. The narrow paper strip unfurled as she pulled the two halves apart and tossed them back into the paper bag. Holding the paper between her fingers she read the words and a chill rippled through her body.
“Your charm has inspired a secret admirer.”
She turned the paper over. On the back, across the top, the paper exclaimed “Learn Chinese!” and beneath that, in tiny read letters, it said: “来, lái - 'Come'”.
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