The cultivation of authenticity.
Written by Priscilla Wong
The black tunnel swallowed the train at Powell Station, and Penrose Sage studied himself in the window glass like a man might study an old photograph. The countdown came mechanical and tired, same as it had come a thousand times before, until the train took hold of him. That's what the high speed underground did to a man - took hold until he wasn't himself anymore. And then he was gone, slipped sideways into that place they called the WaySide, where nothing ran true anymore. North bent itself toward West like a broken compass, and South stretched East like taffy pulled too far.
It hadn't always been such a sorrowful place. But that was before Kinsley came with her ten heads full of spite and hunger, before she planted herself atop the Empire State Building like a Queen on her throne.
That's what Kinsley did first - built herself a nest up there on steel and concrete, way up where the wind howls mean. And those children of hers, they came fast and furious, each one breathing fire like their ma taught them. A man couldn't turn his back on something like that, and Penrose Sage knew it best. The curse rode him hard and mean, like a burr stuck under a horse's saddle. That's what happens when a hydra takes you in - marks you as her own. Kinsley had raised him alongside those fire - breathing youngsters of hers, and a man doesn't just walk away without loosing a limb or three.
A man had to know the way of it with Kinsley's heads. It was a ritual, sacred almost - each head demanding its due, patient and slow-like, with words sweet as honey. Forget one, or rush the greeting, and there'd be hell to pay. That's the way it was with ten - headed beasts. They had their pride, and a man who didn't respect that pride would find himself inside their bellies quick enough.
Katherine
Kimberly
Kennedy
Kira
Karina
Karla
Kamara
Kalani
Kylie
Katja
The ten sisters all loved each other with a ferocity that would turn any man's face as white as a sheet. The Kinsley Klan, some called her.
Each day, Penrose was allowed a small window of time to leave WaySide to conduct business in the Ferry Building. He had a simple routine. A quick sip of espresso, Giant Steps. A thorough investigation of the daily market goods, a critical review of the South China Morning Post, pick up fresh flowers for the Kinsley Klan. For all ten ladies.
And last but not least, check on his secret catamaran, The Madison.
Above the fog-thick harbor, steel and iron rose like salvation itself - the freighter that would carry him beyond the reach of her serpentine grip. Each sunset marked his calendar like notches on a cell wall, and still he waited. It wasn't the movement itself that turned his stomach sour, no - it was how it had awakened something in her, something ancient and terrible that had always lurked beneath those scales. All ten mouths now spoke of justice, but their whispers in the dark were of vengeance.
"What sort of vengeance?" Penrose wondered. Kinsley already owned everything in the Wayside from top to bottom. All the way down to the Empire State Building. What could make her happier than total domination? Was it beauty she wanted? Power? Gold?
All mysteries.
Through the great nest, he moved like a man who knew the steps to every dance. The young Duchesses - Kira, Karina, Karla, and Katja - he fed like prized songbirds, scattering strawberry flakes gentle as morning dew. The Ladies were different - Kalani, Kylie, and Kennedy needed the soft touch of understanding, and Penrose gave it freely, his handkerchief ready as their tears. But it was the Mistresses who got the sweetest poison of all: great golden dreams of a crown, whispered like prayers in the dark. That's the way of men like Penrose, who know how to make every head feel like it wears the crown.
An honest day's work worth of coddling and cajoling led Kinsley to croon, "Eternal Youth. Bring us the potion of Eternal Youth." They spoke in sleepy unison, and at last they rest their heads.
In that hollow between the iron tracks at Powell Station, where the steel thunder of opposing trains could tear a hole in the world itself, that's where his old friend, Fennec Fox would appear.
It was always the same - when the trains screamed past each other, there he appeared, grinning that wild desert grin. Fen had found himself a place between the places, a patch of earth that didn't rightly belong anywhere but was happy for it. The Middling, they called it. It wasn't much to look at, just hills rolling one after another like waves in a golden sea, each valley cupping its own private joy like morning dew. It wasn't like the salt-bitter harbor of San Francisco or the desperate quiet of the Wayside. No, this was a different sort of place entirely. Some folks would call it monotonous, all those identical valleys stretching out forever, but for certain souls - the kind who could find peace in the sameness of days - it was as close to heaven as earth could manage.
Penrose needed to find the Potion of Eternal Youth for the Kinsley, and in exchange, he could afford his freedom boat ride on The Madison. Fen knew of every nook and cranny in the Middling. Anything that involved youth, had to be found, only in happy places. This, Penrose Sage knew in the pit of his soul. Would Fen help him find the Potion of Eternal Youth?
But asking Fen for help, that was like trying to catch smoke in your hands. The fox had his own wisdom about such things, and wisdom can be a dangerous friend to a desperate man.
Penrose and Fen traded collectors cards on the regular. He was prepared to trade his most precious limited edition platinum Air Risto baller card for such precious information. Fen could only dream of slamming a dunk like the Air Risto baller, himself. Fen was interested.
Where is the Potion of Eternal Youth?
Through one of those golden valleys lived the girl Paxton, tucked into the cliffside like a swallow's nest, and there wasn't a sweeter, more savage child in all the Middling. She had teeth, that one, and used them too. Penrose would have to work a dark kind of magic - steal her away, fill her head with sugar-coated promises, then draw out that youth-giving potion like pulling water from a deep well, straight through her eyes and mouth and ears. Fen watched him with those ancient fox eyes, knowing the spell would eat at Penrose's soul like acid on metal. The fox had seen a hundred years of men trying to catch youth in their hands, and he knew how such stories ended. But Penrose was young yet, and young men don't heed old warnings.
Penrose and Fen laughed and drank their fill of pomegranate juice and honeydew drops.
The fox had himself a machine that gleamed like starlight on water, and he drove it proud through those endless valleys, Penrose riding shotgun beside him. Time slipped away like sand until the moon hung fat and white above them and they found themselves before a place that was more rose than house, thorns and blooms eating at the walls like a slow tide. Fen knew the girl would come running at the sight of him - she always did - but Penrose, now there was the trouble. Paxton had a way about her, could smell a man's intentions like a snake tastes the air. And Penrose's intentions were about as pure as harbor water at low tide.
"Who are you and what do you want?"
A child's meanness was a pure thing, raw as new copper and twice as honest. There wasn't any of that polite society varnish adults paint over their cruelties - just the plain truth, laid bare as a winter branch. And that's what made grown folks squirm in their boots, seeing their own nature reflected back at them without the courtesy of politeness.
Paxton would be around136 years old by now, but who's counting?
She had taken her fill of those witches, with their greedy eyes and grasping hands, who saw in her nothing but a child to be played with like a cat's mouse. They knocked her this way and that across their chess board of life, as casual as men betting on horses, never asking where she might choose to land. The incompetence of it all lay heavy on her mind, like summer sun rays on parched leaves. When they cooed and fussed over her with their baby talk, something hot and fierce rose up in her throat - she would have loved to say, "How is it possible that a grown woman like you, can be so stupid?" But she kept quiet, knowing well how a witch's pride, once pricked, could turn mean as a rattler in Autumn.
She stared straight into Penrose Sage's raptor eyes and asked, "Are you a witch?"
He could tell right away that she wasn't the sort of girl, who would waste time playing his game of seduction. His party tricks on Kinsley would never work with this one. Paxton's demeanor coaxed a meanness out of Penrose that he had never known. "Are you a wizard witch? Or a warlock in drag? Which is it? Inflicted with the disease of youthfulness?" This was her cue to embrace Fen as the greatest and most feared warlock of all Middling. "How could it be that a fennec fox is more powerful than a grown man like yourself? Were you dropped as a baby, saggy ballsack cheek cheeks?"
It was enough to rattle his bones. Penrose chased Paxton through the rose thorns like a pompous man chases his own two Pomeranians - all self-important fury and red-faced determination. The thorns didn't trouble him none, though they left his fine coat in tatters. On and on they ran, as Fen watched from his perch on her Pinus tabulaeformis. At last, he caught her by the foot. She dangled there like a rabbit, her kitten tail whipping mad circles in the air. He figured now was his moment, time to cast the spell to draw out her Potion of Eternal Youth. But Paxton, she just let loose a burp that would've made a rice picker proud, right in his gentleman's face. The evening quickly descended into a feverish battle of charms.
"Fen, which of us is prettier?"
"Fen, which of whom is wiser?"
"Fen, who is more magical?"
The cliffside rose thorn cottage was engulfed with smoke. Poison pink blooms of dust, ultra violet and cerulean blue, until Penrose went down like a felled oak, babbling soft as a newborn. "Give me my freedom," he wheezed, "and you can have that youth potion. There's a curse on me worse than debt. Got me chained to a hydra with heads like a grove of twisted trees. Ten heads, twenty evil eyes and ten sets of murderous jaws gnashing at my feet. She treats me like her flesh and blood - son one minute, sugar daddy the next, then sweet-talking me like a lover. Please," he begged, voice rough as sandpaper, "let me take to the sea and vanish. Either free me or make her evaporate." The sweet child would much rather make the hydra evaporate.
Fen wholeheartedly agreed. "How can we make the hydra evaporate?" asked a befuddled Penrose.
"We make her go kerplop," said Fen.
"We make the hydra go boom boom. All ten of her heads," said Paxton.
"Kinsley goes bye - bye," said Fen.
"We'll make her take a tragic no make up selfie!" said Paxton.
"Yea, #nomakeup selfie." said Fen.
"#URsoFUGLY!!! #YwereUborn?" They all said in unison.
"Combustable breast milk."
"Cover your pussywillow, sex dragon!"
"Areolas?"
"SANDYCHEEKS!!!"
"No filter allowed!" said Paxton.
"In glorious10k HD 5g!" said Fen.
"She'll be so horrified that she'll fire herself." said Paxton.
"Straight up!" said Paxton and Fen together.
All three agreed to meet again at Powell Station, where it all begins and ends.
Penrose will announce that he has discovered the Potion of Eternal Youth.
Paxton will transmute herself into a bottle of potion.
Kinsley will drink Paxton down without a second thought.
Penrose will work Kinsley like a confident man works a mark, getting her to strip off that mask she hides behind, her clothes too, posting pictures of her bare face where everybody could see. The trick of it was, to make her believe that she is beautiful, when she is in fact ugly. That false potion would work on her mind, making her believe she was fresh as morning dew without all that paint. Fen's machine men - robot warlocks, all - would praise her like farmhands praise the boss's wife, until she struts around proud as a peacock in a summer breeze. But right when Kinsley feels as young as a spring lamb, Paxton would do her changing act again, turning from liquid back to flesh and blood inside Kinsley's gut. Then she'd cut her way out like a coyote from a trap, leaving Kinsley split open like a melon.
That's the way it would go.
The end.