A Name, a Nightmare, and a New Room.

“That was insane,” the girl pranced around in circles like a child on Christmas, “I’ve never seen anyone take one of those things out with a single hit, you caved it’s head in like a sinkhole!”

“One of those things?” Bentley sat on the curb, wrapped securely in a foil blanket. “Does that mean there are more?”

“Tons more,” the girl said as if it were common knowledge. Bentley had no shortage of questions left to ask but didn’t have enough energy to ask them, so he simply accepted this notion that the world was teeming with giant monsters he’d somehow missed until now.

The entire street had been roped off by two dozen men, all of whom Bentley noticed were bizarrely short. They all wore identical beige suits and sported matching buzzcuts. Half had taken up rebuilding the decimated bus stop and the other half attempted to remove all signs of the creature that had died just moments ago. The scene reminded Bentley of the tiny henchman from the book Harold and The Candy Factory who only appeared after disaster had fallen upon one of the members of the touring group. Bentley sensed a sinister air about this group though and wondered if monster corpses were the only thing that they were tasked with making disappear.

The band of cats, fresh from the trash can, helped the small beige lackeys clean up the eel monster’s body, having already stripped its head down to the bone. Bentley noticed one particularly round stray attempting to drag a crab leg ten times its size back into the alleyway with no success. The teacup auburn kitten sat away from the action licking the salt from Bentley’s sweaty shin, its rough tongue matting down his leg hairs.

“I have another question,” Bentley piped up, “Can I remove this foil blanket?”

“Sorry, it's standard protocol,” the girl shrugged, “You’re still a civilian regardless of whether or not you killed a Cerberus.”

“Isn’t Cerberus a three-headed dog?”

“Yeah but we use it as a catch-all term for the creatures that enter our world through the gate,” she said. Bentley nodded his head as if he understood what she was talking about, still too tired to unpack the comment.

“Anyways,” he said, “About the blanket, it’s already pretty hot outside so this thing might just cook me alive. Would protocol allow me to take it off then?”

“I’ll tell you what,” she said with a laugh, “If you can take the blanket off yourself, then I’ll let you keep it off.”

Bentley sighed in defeat before even attempting to remove the blanket. The sheer impact of his swing against the top of the creature’s head had simultaneously killed the monster and torn every single muscle in both of his arms, or so the on-site medical professional had said. Though Bentley questioned the medical knowledge of the pygmy clone, who had now been relegated to monster cleanup. Whatever the case, Bentley’s arms now hung like soggy noodles from both sides of his torso.

“You know what, the blanket isn’t half bad,” Bentley said. The girl let out another soft giggle.

“I’m in love,” Bentley decided.

“I never got your name by the way,” the girl said, swaying side to side with her hands clasped behind her back.

“AAAAHHHHHHH why am I such a scumbag? I said that I was in love with this girl and I never even asked for her name. There I go again shooting myself in the foot. She’ll never love me back. She probably thinks I’m an egocentric jerk by now. I’m going to die all alone in the streets with nothing but crippling medical bills to hold me as I fade into nothingness. I bet she’ll send me an invitation to her wedding out of spite when she marries some famous actor or prime minister. No, she looks way too nice to do something like that. I don’t deserve someone like her. I don’t deserve love at all for that matter. Life is pain.”

“I’m Chrysanthemum,” She shot out a hand, taking the initiative due to Bentley’s clear malfunctioning, “but most people call me Chrys.” Bentley got another look at the single painted nail, the white smiley face with X’s seemed to almost float above the surface of her dark nail like a galaxy ready to be sucked into a black hole.

“I’m Bentley,” he said, “And I’d shake your hand but… you know… my arms are kinda out of commission at the moment.”

“I’m so sorry, I totally forgot,” she said, quickly pulling her hand back and blushing.

“This girl is like two different people. One minute she’s calling me a pervert and fighting a giant monster barehanded. The next minute she’s blushing like a schoolgirl,” Bentley thought, trying to hide how upset he was about not getting to shake her hand.

“How old are you if you don’t mind me asking?” She acted as if the awkward almost-handshake was a distant memory.

“I’m 19 years old,” Bentley said, “And you?”

“I happen to be 19 as well,” said Chrys. Bentley would’ve pumped his fists in victory if he had any control over his arms, infinitely more excited about this than the blow he had delivered to the eel monster. At that moment, one of the little people came running up to Chrysanthemum’s side with a vintage-looking floral teacup in hand. He tugged at the corner of her jacket to alert her to his presence. She thanked him and tenderly took the cup, careful not to spill a single drop.

“Here,” she said, “I figured you could use something to calm your nerves.”

“What type of tea is it, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Lemon tea, it’s a personal favorite of mine.”

“Yep I’m in love,” Bentley confirmed, forgetting all about his earlier ramblings on not deserving love and life being pain.

“I suppose I’ll have to help you drink it, seeing as how you’re going to be wrapped up in that foil blanket until further notice,” she said with a smirk.

Bentley’s cheeks began to burn so hot that he was confident the cherry red glow would be visible from space. She slowly brought the cup to his lips and held it there until he took a sip of the simmering liquid. The familiar zest of lemon flavoring greeted his taste buds.

“This has to be a dream,” Bentley thought, “In no world would a failure like me have been able to kill a demon monster and then be served tea by a gorgeous woman afterwards.”

“Is this made with real lemons?”

“No, it’s artificially flavored,” Chrysanthemum admitted and rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment, “I’ve been told that I don’t have a very refined palate but I honestly prefer the cheap stuff.” Bentley wanted to melt into the floor, unsure whether it was because of his intensifying infatuation with Chrysanthemum or the fact that he was now drinking hot tea while wrapped in an aluminum blanket on an already scorching day. Bentley suddenly felt his eyelids get droopy.

“Maybe I am melting after all,” he thought.

“I see that it’s starting to work,” Chrysanthemum caught Bentley before he hit the sidewalk as he fell to the side.

“What’s working?” Bentley’s mouth was now as dry as if he had been traversing the desert for weeks without so much as a drop of water. The kitten licked the center of Bentley’s forehead now that he was at eye level, making it even harder for him to stay awake.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said with a coy smile, “I had Akihiro lace the tea with some sedatives so that you could get some rest.”

“This girl is terrifying,” Bentley thought, though his attraction to her was strangely only heightened by this realization. He was having trouble even thinking straight and knew that his time awake was limited. He wished he would’ve asked more questions, he was about to pass out despite not being any closer to understanding what all was going on.

“You still owe me some answers,” said Bentley, managing to squeeze out one more quick sentence before everything went dark.

“Don’t worry,” her voice sounded miles away, “Just sleep for now.”

***

“The poor kid,” an older gentleman said.

Bentley surveyed his surroundings. It was familiar but somehow also completely alien. He stood in a poorly lit hallway, the walls reached up infinitely on both sides of him into the night sky rather than a ceiling. The auburn kitten he’d saved sat on the ground in front of him patiently. He crouched down and began to pet it.

“My arms must be working again,” he thought. The kitten purred and marched in tight circles so that Bentley would be able to reach every inch of its back. It then stopped and opened its mouth. Bentley prepared for a soft yawn, figuring that the kitten must be tired.

“Follow the voices,” It said, perfectly articulated in a deep human voice. A zipper then appeared on the top of the kitten’s head and unzipped itself, leaving the cat’s hollow skin in a pile on the floor. A luminescent lime-winged butterfly emerged from the husk. It fluttered up a few feet before bursting into flames and falling back to the floor as a pile of ash. Both the kitten’s skin and the ash that sprinkled it then sunk into the linoleum floor beneath as if it were made of quicksand. Bentley didn’t blink. He was surprised to find that he didn’t think of this occurrence as particularly out of the ordinary.

“I guess that’s just how it goes,” he declared and began to listen for the voices just as the butterfly in cat’s clothing had advised him to do.

“It’s a travesty really,” the older gentleman’s voice reverberated throughout the hallway, “A one-in-a-million mistake.”

Bentley stumbled down the hallway in the direction of the voice, his legs strangely wobbly.

“We can’t tell the kid right?”

“Of course not,” the other voice said, “He’ll think it was his fault.”

“I mean it was, wasn't it?”

“My job isn’t to assign blame but if you’re really twisting my arm, then yeah to an extent.”

“Geez, now if only I could find a way to pull something like that off with my mother-in-law.”

Their laughs sounded eerily similar to applause. Bentley came to the end of the hallway and peeked around the corner. A nurses station sat empty in the middle of the room. Two tall middle-aged men with jet black hair leaned against it, taking slow, arrogant drags of their cigarettes. Smoke drifted up into the night sky above, hiding any stars behind a curtain of fog. Their chatter became inaudible as Bentley approached, as if the voices were coming through on a broken radio submerged in water. Bentley looked down and realized he was moving. He had not lifted a foot and yet was steadily approaching the nurses station. Still, none of this seemed unusual to Bentley. He simply allowed this invisible trolley to whisk him past the smoking duo and behind the desk. Three outdated computers sat equally spaced apart and a thin layer of dust had collected on the screens of all but one of them. Mountains of paperwork lay scattered about, leaving Bentley unsure if there even was a desk underneath all of it. A small jar of suckers was the only thing that gave this place even a hint of warmth or hospitality. Bentley sifted through them until he found a single lemon lollipop and tucked it into the pocket of his shorts. A sob escaped out from the darkness beneath the desk. Bentley lowered himself and peered into the shadows. He found a small boy sitting and crying into his folded arms. The kid wore a baseball uniform that Bentley vaguely recognized but couldn’t put his finger on from where.

“What’s wrong?” Bentley noticed that even his own voice sounded slightly distorted. The boy looked up and wiped his face on his sleeves. The baseball cap he had on shaded most of his face.

“I killed mom,” the boy whimpered.

Bentley tried to respond but no words left his mouth. His lips moved but the force responsible for creating sound had vanished. He wiped at his own eyes and found that blood had started trickling down them like tears. Resounding claps began to fill the hospital. Bentley now realized that the boy had disappeared. He peeked back over the desk and noticed that the two smoking doctors were gone as well. The only other person in the room was a figure seated in a waiting chair directly across from the nurses station.

There sat the lemur man, legs crossed leisurely and clapping with the same painstakingly precise rhythm that Bentley remembered from the ballpark. Never a second early, never a second late, the claps came with the unwavering consistency of a talented sniper.

Bentley felt something sprout from the top of his head. He looked for it with his hands until his fingers grasped the cold metal piece.

It was a zipper.

Bentley began to pull down the zipper, not breaking eye contact with the lemur man for even a second. He endured the horrible pain as he slowly unzipped himself all the way down past his stomach. As soon as the zipper reached the end of the line, he felt his body crumple to the floor like a pile of laundry. Bentley watched and waited for something to come out of his skin casing, but nothing ever did. The lemur man pushed himself up slowly from where he was seated and stood directly over Bentley’s vacant shell. He chuckled heartily before opening his fuzzy mouth and speaking for the first time.

“Nothing comes from nothing.”

***

Bentley woke up in a pool of sweat, frigid beads made their way from his armpits down the side of his body one by one. A blinding light was positioned directly above him. He squinted and tried to make out his surroundings. The room was almost completely bare besides for the spotless white bed that Bentley was tucked into. The only other thing in the room was a poster on the far wall with a picture of a tiny auburn kitten hanging from a tree branch, almost identical to the one Bentley had saved. Above the kitten on the poster, it read in big purple letters, “Hang In There”.

His thoughts were racing too fast for him to catch them. All he knew was that he could really go for a lemon Dinkie.