Little Things

It took a lot of courage for Marnie to reach forward and grasp the door handle to The Badlands. Which made it all the more disappointing when the door refused to open.

“What..? No, no, come on…”

He tugged on the door a few more times, each attempt to open it being met with the halting click of the door lock. It was then that he noticed a hand-painted sign hanging upon the door’s window from the inside, which read a simple and unapologetic “Closed.”

Marnie groaned and tossed his hair back in frustration. Of course, as soon as he made a decision for himself, some divine force would throw a wrench in the plans. Almost instantly, the seeds of doubt began to take root in his mind.

What if he was making a mistake, and this was some message from God trying to stop him one last time before his inevitable demise? Maybe he wasn't supposed to be here — he should have simply stuck to his routine and not dared to question his life. It had worked for him so far. Day in and day out of doing what others deemed to be “right” and “proper”, regardless of his desires, had always at least kept Marnie out of trouble.

But then, wasn't this also doing what he was told to? His therapist said he should be making friends and finding hobbies, so how could visiting Kaede be a mistake?

Marnie sighed in dismay, then a terrible realization hit him like a truck. He had said some truly harsh things to Kaede when they last spoke… What if the apothecary didn't want to be his friend? What if Kaede hated him? He could have seen Marnie coming and closed the store on purpose to avoid interacting. That was something people would do, right? It sounded like something people would do.

The door jiggled as Marnie gently thumped his forehead against it. His knees were suddenly getting weak, and he felt ridiculous. His thoughts were already tugging him back home, to his lonely ramen dinner while watching mind-numbing sitcoms before bed. Yet, still, something much deeper screamed in denial at those thoughts. It was as if he was completely incapable of moving himself in either direction — perpetually stuck watching life fly by around him.

Suddenly, Marnie felt something firmly slip onto his shoulder. Frightened, he whipped around and slammed himself flat against the door.

“Marnie, so it is you!”
The rapid comedown of adrenaline left Marnie's vision bobbing between focused and blurred. After a moment, it cleared to reveal Kaede standing before him, smiling nervously as he retracted his hand.

“Is everything all right? I didn't mean to frighten you.”

“You… Why did you touch me like that?” Marnie asked the first thing on his mind, still struggling to catch his breath and compose himself.

“To get your attention.”

“Then why didn't you just…just, I don't know, say my name or something?”

“Well, I didn't want to startle you…”

The two simply stared at each other for a moment, bathed in the irony of the situation. Kaede finally broke the silence with an awkward gesture to the door.

“Er… Care to come in for some tea?”

Swallowing one last bit of air into his lungs, Marnie nodded and stepped aside. Kaede unlocked the door to The Badlands and courteously let the strawberry-blonde enter first. The familiar earthy, herbal smell of the apothecary seemed to put Marnie at ease, much to his own surprise. It made him study the eclectic decor with new appreciation as Kaede began bustling around the cabinets behind the counter.

“So, uhm—” Clatter. “—Oh dear. Ahem, we'll just… There we are. Right! What brings you back to my humble abode?”

The question snapped Marnie's attention away from the shelf of jarred herbs he'd been examining. He was completely unprepared to answer that question.

“Oh, I…” he searched his mind frantically for an excuse, unsure why he felt the need for one in the first place. “I came to return your umbrella!”

Marnie grasped at the first thing he could think of and blurted out an answer. He considered it a pretty decent excuse, yet Kaede seemed unconvinced.

“I see…” he replied, peering at Marnie from over the counter with bemuse. “Then, why aren't you carrying it?”

A swing and a miss.

Marnie had completely forgotten that he never, at any point that day, took the charming clover umbrella with him out of the house. Now he was left standing in the middle of the apothecary with hands as empty as his head felt.

The awkward silence between them was deafening.

Luckily for Marnie, the apothecary was an understanding man. Instead of interrogating or belittling Marnie, he merely smiled in a gentle way, gathering his tea set and electric kettle onto a tray.

“Come, let's go into the lounge,” he offered, already leading the way. “We can have a nice chat this time over some oolong.”

Something within Marnie obliged without his explicit consent, yet it felt like the right thing to do. It felt like what he wanted to do, in some unconscious sense of the word, and it led him down the hall with much more courage than the previous day.

After a few minutes of Kaede brewing and setting up their tea, making idle chatter along the way, the two returned to their previously respective seats on the sofa and lounge chair. Marnie couldn't help but grin as he watched Kaede work — the eccentric man was so cheerful and flighty, it was like watching a dragonfly flit about the room.

“Right, now that we're all comfy,” Kaede opened the conversation warmly. “Why don't we talk a bit, hm? Honestly, I was sort of surprised to see you waiting at my door after lunch again.”

“Ah, I'm sorry about yesterday!” Marnie blurted out, almost urgently. “I-I think I might have hurt your feelings, and that wasn't what I meant to do.”

“Oh, that? Think nothing of it, I'm fine,” Kaede dismissed Marnie's concerns with ease, however a realization appeared to come over him. “Wait, don't tell me you came all the way here just to apologize.”

“N-no! That's not— I mean…” Marnie began to deny it, but his words fell short. He found it hard to voice why exactly he did come to visit Kaede. How was he supposed to put the compelling feeling in his core into words? Nothing he came up with felt right. All of his feelings and desires felt like a hazy storm swirling inside himself.

“Kaede, can…we be friends?”

It was a simple statement, yet immensely hard to utter. Marnie wasn't even sure he'd ever asked someone that before, and as soon as the words left his mouth anxiety grew within him like a mold.

“That sounds wonderful, Marnie! I'd love to be friends,” Kaede smiled, a soft ray of sunlight among an otherwise gloomy world. It made Marnie so happy that he didn't know what to do with himself, shyly burying his gleeful smile in a sip of tea.

“Then, Marnie, do you know what it is that friends do with one and other?” Kaede poised the question after giving the daydreamer a moment to process his emotions, chuckling to himself as he drank his own tea.

Marnie found the question to be a bit curious, and wondered if it was some sort of social trap. If he said no, he would probably be seen as immature and pathetic. But, if he said yes, he'd need an expert follow-up answer. An answer he didn't have. The predicament felt jarring.

“They share their thoughts and feelings with each other,” Seeing the mounting confusion on his face, Kaede elaborated before Marnie could start guessing. “Now, tell me if I'm being too presumptuous, but I don't think you really came all the way here just to ask me that simple question. So, Marnie…is there something you wanted to talk about?”

Marnie shifted his blue gaze around the room, his leg bouncing nervously. He felt like Kaede saw right through him to some truth unknown even to himself, and that should have made him feel uneasy. Yet, within the depths of The Badlands, bathed in incense and cradled by soft pillows, Marnie had never felt more comfortable.

Safe. He actually felt safe.

Something about that safe feeling made him want to run, in the back of his mind. But, despite the instincts trying to scream through his indifference, safety still worked wonders for loosening lips.

“Uhm… I snapped at a coworker today,” Marnie confessed, fiddling with the curls of his hair. “I've never done anything like that before. It just, sort of…boiled over…”

“Mm,” Kaede nodded in understanding as he swallowed more tea. “Did he deserve it? I mean, was he being a prick to you?”

“No! Well, I mean, not really,” Marnie answered. “He was kind of being a jerk, but I don't think he meant to be. He's usually pretty nice to me.”

Kaede raised an eyebrow. “Why'd you snap at him, then?”

Marnie rolled his shoulder, focusing his gaze on an indescript point on the coffee table. It felt strange, trying to sift through his emotions. Like wading through muck.

“I'm not…sure… There's a lot I could blame it on, but none of them really feel right,” Marnie was impressed at his own honesty. It was more honest than he'd ever even been with June, and once he started voicing the torrent of thoughts inside his mind it was hard to stop.

“Definitely nothing to do with him, like, as a person. It just feels like… all these things… Things I want, or need, or can't change. These things that poke and prick at me like needles, until they're all I can think about.”

“Ah, the little things,” Kaede nodded with understanding. “The ‘what-ifs’ and the ‘whys’. The faint annoyances that creep up on you and the desires we can't put into words. Unresolved idiosyncrasies that linger in the mind like noxious fumes.”

“Yes! All of that!” A rare light flashed through Marnie's blue eyes. “It feels like my head's so full of that crap that I can't focus! There's no space in there for… for me…”

Marnie couldn't continue — his throat felt tight, as if being choked. It was like something inside him wouldn't allow any form of self expression. As he struggled with this, Kaede patiently observed him. Somehow, when the eccentric apothecary did this, it didn't make Marnie feel like a lab rat. Instead he felt something much more foreign radiate from Kaede's gaze.

Care.

When he finally did decide to speak, it was only with a simple phrase.

“What exactly do you want to be, Marnie?”

It was uttered so casually, but it felt like a weight dropping into Marnie's stomach. The more he tried to think of an answer, the more his mind spun out. Stringing words together felt like grasping mist, and the more he struggled the more the fact that he was struggling filled him with fear.

“I don't… I don't know…”

“I see… Seems that the concept of wanting anything is so foreign to you that you don't know how to even put them into words,” Kaede's words were honest and sharp, but not cold. They were uttered with an air of guidance and wisdom, one which felt striking to Marnie's spiraling anxiety.

“It's a dastardly affliction,” he continued. “But be careful, or you'll end up drowning in a lake of your own desires. You should find some sort of outlet to express them before that can happen.”

After a moment, Marnie nodded. He couldn't bring himself to deny it. But, that brought forward another curiosity.

“When I took RabbitHole yesterday…” he started saying slowly. Gingerly. “I ended up in this place called The Other Side… When I was there, it wasn't as hard to sort out my feelings. It was a lot easier to just do or say whatever I wanted… and when I did, it didn't make me feel sick or anything like I did today.”

“That's the beauty of RabbitHole,” Kaede leaned back, looking at the ceiling contemplatively. “The Other Side is a place where you can live out any fantasy or desire you have, without any of the consequences that would normally come with it. Because of that, many people with trauma and psychological issues find it to be therapeutic. It can allow you a safe space to be truly free, and when you come out on the other side of it you become a better person.”

Kaede's words brought back the imagery of the black dragon in Marnie's mind. The one who had the gaze of his father, and how he'd so effortlessly vanquished it. Doing so felt like shedding a burdensome skin; a façade which itched and flaked and no longer fit. He wondered, if he could do more things like that, would he eventually shed enough layers that he could finally be real…?

There was only one way to find out.