“It could be worse.”
It was Felix’s favorite thing to say. And he said it a lot. What was even weirder was, he seemed to always mean it.
Like the time the two of them had been chased through four separate towns by palace guards. At first they had been on horses, at least, but then one of them had found a gopher hole and its leg had snapped like a particularly large twig and the other horse had freaked the fuck out, bucked Illa off, and run off across the field in solidarity. Then it was just the two of them on foot, running for their lives, dodging through copses of trees, flailing through corn and wheat. Until, finally, almost like it was always going to end that way, they found themselves atop a fifty foot cliff, staring down at the rough waters of the O’del’atai River.
And breath the gods’ name if Felix hadn’t looked down at the water, and then at the guards rapidly closing in on them, and then at Illa. And given her that shrug.
“It could be worse.”
He’d tossed himself over before Illa could even understand what he’d said let alone what he was about to do. And then she was tossing herself over, too, because dying to the river was a much better fate than dying to a bunch of palace guard pricks.
Felix had said it during illness. During battle. During jobs gone horribly gone, and a few that had gone horribly right. No matter how bad thing were, how hurt they were, how lost they were, whatever had happened, no matter how bad…things could always be worse.
She was waiting for him to say it now, and she was already pissed about it. Their luck had finally run out, in the worst way possible. A job, supposedly simple, in and out, set up by a mad bastard. Well, they had known Heldu was a mad bastard. They didn’t know he was a traitor as well.
“Not to mention an asshole,” Illa said, pacing around what little space the jail cell gave them. “He let us get all the way to the goods before springing the trap. He could have shown his hand as soon as we got into the palace, but noooo, he wanted us to make fools of us.”
It was the last time they would be taking a job from Heldu. Actually, if they couldn’t find a way out of this jail cell in time, it was the last job they’d be taking, period.
Felix was sitting on top of a barrel, stacked on top of a couple other barrels. That way he could reach the small barred window up near the ceiling of the cell. He had an arm draped casually over the stone and was staring dreamily out.
“You know, Illa,” Felix said.
Illa’s blood pressure skyrocketed and she squeezed her hands into fists.
“Felix, if you’re about to tell me it could be worse, save it, because otherwise I won’t be liable for my actions.”
Felix smiled at her and shrugged. It was as bad as if he had said it.
“You’re thinking it!” she screamed. A rat, startled by her outburst, tried to scuttle off. She attempted a kick and only managed to unbalance herself.
“How could anything possibly be worse? We’ve been betrayed. Sold out to the palace and that despotic psychopath. He’s wanted our heads for years and now he has them. And even if we somehow manage to get ourselves out of here, our reputation will be completely shot. Everyone will know we fell for Heldu’s bullshit. We are fucked! In every single direction! Fucked! Fucked! Fucked!”
She screamed again and was inches away from punching the wall before she remembered that the wall was pure stone and she’d already broken her other hand that way before. She settled for screaming some more.
“So don’t sit there and tell me that it could be worse! Because I don’t fucking see how!”
Felix, completely unbothered, shifted a little on his barrel perch, making them sway. When he was sure he wasn’t about to fall eight feet to the floor, he looked at her.
“Did I ever tell you where I came from?” he asked.
“Hama’tami,” Illa answered automatically.
Felix shook his head. “That’s where you found me. That’s where I arrived. But that’s not where I’m from.”
Illa moved cautiously, sitting on the floor in the corner. Felix never talked about anything before Hama’tami. It was as though there hadn’t been anything before that little seaside village, so Illa just assumed he’d grown up there and didn’t want to talk about it.
“So,” she said, when he spoke no more. “Where are you from?”
“I’m from a place called Ohio,” he said. “Specifically, Cincinnati.”
“Um…okay,” Illa said. She wasn’t sure where he was going with this. Or why he was telling her now.
The end is here. That’s why.
“I’ve never heard of Ohio. Or Cin…cinsi…
“Cincinnati. And you wouldn’t have.”
“Is it…are you from the other side of the ocean?”
“I’m from much farther than that,” he said, still calm. “Cincinnati isn’t in this world.”
Illa rolled her eyes, sure he was pulling her leg. “Okay. Sure. You’re an alien. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“No, no, of course not,” he said. “I’m an extradimensional being. I think. That sounds too fancy, but I think that’s correct.”
“A whatty what?”
“I’m not from this world. I’m from a different version of it. What I call Cincinnati, you call Hama’tami.”
He’s completely cracked. The pressure got to him.
If that was true, he wasn’t showing it. Besides talking utter nonsense, he was still the same old Felix, the one she’d known for almost twenty years. Calm. Leaning against the window like they weren’t blocked with cell bars. A laughing look in his eyes, like everything was the biggest joke.
They were stuck down here. Hours from death. There was nothing else to do.
Illa shifted, sitting forward. “So, what’s Cincinnati like?”
“It sucked,” he said. “Everything about it. But it wasn’t just Cincinnati. That city wasn’t any worse than any other place. The whole planet was shit.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’d seen the whole planet?”
“Yes. In a way. It’s hard to explain. We had this stuff. Called it technology. It was like magic. And everybody could see everywhere, anywhere, whenever they wanted to. You were always connected to everybody else, whether you wanted to be or not.”
“That sounds…” she trailed off. She couldn’t decide how it sounded. On the one hand, the idea of getting to talk to her grandmother back in her home village anytime she wanted sounded lovely. On the other hand, having her cousins back in the village be able to talk to her whenever they wanted to sounded like hell on earth.
“Yeah, it was a mixed bag. That was only part of the problem. Everything was the problem, I guess. Every day, I woke up just to go to work for nine and a half hours. I sat in this building, in this chair, in front of one of the things that let us connect, and I pressed buttons and clicked a mouse all day.”
“A…mouse?”
“Yeah, it’s…don’t worry about it. I don’t know how to explain without being here all night.”
“We are going to be here all night.”
He waved a hand at her, causing the barrel to shift.
“That was all I did. All day. Five days a week. Then I drove home in my car. That took an hour, each way. So by the time I got home it was time to eat dinner and then I was too exhausted to do anything else. Why would I leave the house again? I’d have to drive a half hour just to see anybody, and then a half hour back, and that left, what, an hour to socialize? It didn’t seem like enough. Besides that, there were always chores. Make dinner. Clean the kitchen after dinner. Scrub the toilets. Mow the lawn.”
None of these words made much sense to Illa, but they didn’t have to. She could hear what mattered in his voice. The sadness. The loneliness.
“You didn’t have anyone?”
“Friends, sure. My parents. But like I said, we barely saw each other. We were all run ragged. Exhausted. Too much work. No time for each other. It was…debilitating.”
He looked at her, and for a brief second Illa thought she could see what he was describing, etched into the lines in his face.
“One day, my car broke down. I was stuck on the side of the highway. Triple-A wasn’t going to be able to be there for four hours, it was rush hour, no one was stopping to even check on me, why would they? They all had their own misery to rush home to. So I started walking. Got off the highway. Found myself in a part of town I’d never been in before. I was heading for the gas station, get a bite to eat, and then I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“A portal. I’d never seen one before, but somehow I knew that’s what it was. Maybe just because of television and movies?”
“Movies?”
“Forget it. I saw it, on the side of the road, this silver pool of shimmering light just a little taller than me, right next to a post box. And I just…jumped in. I didn’t even hesitate. I figured, whatever was on the other side of the portal had to be better than where I was. And I was right.”
“Wait. You couldn’t see to the other side? And you still jumped?”
He nodded like it was the most logical thing ever. And, if he was telling the truth, maybe it was.
“I’m not kidding. Whatever I found on the other side had to be better, it had to be. Even if it killed me, at least I wasn’t stuck in the grind anymore. And then I came through, and I found Hama’tami. Like I won the fucking lottery. So, yeah, we might be hours away from being hanged in the palace courtyard by a piece of shit dictator, but at least I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.”
Illa blinked, unsure what, if anything, she could say to that.
“And anyway, we’re not about to be hanged.”
“Oh, really?” she asked. “How’s that?”
Someone appeared in the window. A child, a little girl, covered in grime but smiling like a rainbow. She handed something to Felix and scurried off before she could be noticed.
Felix finally jumped off the barrels and showed Illa what was in her hand.
A key.
“Because, now that it’s not impossible, I am very, very good at making friends.”
Illa grinned at him.
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 