Thanks for your patience with this one! A humble request: I work very hard on Paranatural and everything is incredibly expensive. If you were on the fence about supporting my work on Patreon or Ko-fi, now is a great time to hop on board and chip in a little to keep it going strong if you can! Tax season is always brutal for freelancers like me. Thank you very much!
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[Transcript]
“N-nothing! Nothing’s funny!” Mary Rose squeaked at June in her startled confusion.
The stranger danger alarm that June had set off by sneaking up behind them had been muffled in Mary Rose’s mind by the fact that she was pretty in a goth way. A similar lapse in judgment would one day lead Rose to worship a ten-foot-tall skeleton goddess, but for now it just spared June from getting reflexively throat-chopped by a yellow belt with poor impulse control.
“Nothing’s funny? That’s a depressing perspective for a kid your age. What about clowns and cartoons? What about little walleyed dogs with smushed-up faces?” June looked from one girl to the other. “C’mon, let me in on the joke! I could’ve sworn I heard you laughing.”
Mary Rose and Sophie only exchanged a nervous glance.
“...I could’ve sworn I heard somebody shouting for help, too,” June added, dropping to a disappointed, final-warning tone.
The bullies folded instantly, if to a crooked angle:
“Our, um... our friend’s stuck in the closet! The... the handle jammed!” fibbed Mary Rose. “We couldn’t get her out!”
“Y-yeah!” Sophie agreed. Had she continued to co-sign the lies of rotten ringleaders, her future jobby as a journalist would have proven much more profitable. Unfortunately, this incident was one of several that would one day burden Sophie Sybil with a conscience and integrity.
“Uh-huh,” droned a skeptical June, who’d seen the girls holding the double doors shut. She rose back to her feet. “Well, HEY. Maybe it’ll conveniently come unstuck now that I’M here, huh?”
She tried the doorknob. It didn’t budge.
Mary Rose and Sophie looked just as surprised as June. They shared exhales of relief and matching sneers of triumph, pleased that their lie had somehow accidentally proven true.
“...Maybe don’t gloat too soon, you two,” June sighed, glancing back at Mary Rose and Sophie Sybil. “Even the best bluffs need a poker face. Trust me, I was a delinquent mean girl for most of my life. Not every sign you’re up to no good needs to be admissible in court. In the real world, folks’ll slug you for a smug look and way less than solid proof that you deserve it.” June opened her mouth, then paused as she thought for a second. “Not that I’m going to punch you,” she added.
Both frightened girls nodded doubtfully. For a moment, June wondered why their eyes had gotten even wider, before she realized she’d unthinkingly pulled out a cigarette and put it to her lips.
“But, um, the best defense—in combat OR in court—is to, um... not commit an offense that you, uh... gotta cover for in the first place. Er, I don’t mean like a criminal offense, though, ’cause most laws are bullsh—UH. I mean some crimes are good.” A floundering June wagged her unlit cigarette at her eighth-grade audience. “And smoking isn’t a crime. Which is to say, ergo, that it is bad. You, uh. You got that?”
Both bullies nodded vigorously, discovering at the same time that they would rather die than disappoint her. June winced, far less taken by her own inspiring speech. Behind the girls, a silent Peter Puckett gave June the least-deserved thumbs up she’d ever earned.
“...Stay in school,” she sighed in summary, and stuffed her cigarette back in her pocket.
“We are in school,” said Sophie Sybil, hoping she might earn herself some praise.
“Great. That’s a great start to staying in it.”
“We had to stay,” bragged Mary Rose. “We have detention.”
“That’s not as great a start but, uh. Glass house. Shouldn’t throw stones. All that jazz.”
Before she’d dropped out of high school, June had gotten detention, once, for throwing a rock through her principal’s window; the wisdom of the idiom wasn’t particularly relevant when the glass house was some other dirtbag’s duplex.
Remembering her mission, June turned away to knock on the door of the closet.
“HEY. All good in there??”
Silence. June tried the doorknob again.
“She stopped answering us, too,” Mary Rose complained in solidarity, acting very much like she was now June Summers’ crony. A concerned, reproachful frown from her new role model reawakened the young bully’s guilt and cowardice, however. “C-c’mon,” Mary Rose whispered to Sophie, tugging her toady by the arm. “Let’s get back to the library before DuNacht comes looking for us!”
Peter slouched up behind June as Mary Rose Baxter and Sophie Sybil scurried off. Disciplining students was above his meager paygrade, and Mary Rose was known for fearlessly pelting faculty with milk cartons when she had somebody else around to blame, so Peter was relieved that June had dealt with them herself. Clayview Middle School was the Wild West for a student body who’d learned to be mean and merciless from their even meaner and even less merciful teachers; perhaps a black-leather-clad drifter vigilante was exactly what it needed to change for the better... or perhaps he’d let some total weirdo smoke indoors while telling children that she “wasn’t going to punch them.” Only time would tell, and hopefully it wouldn’t tell his boss.
“Is, uh... is the door locked?” Peter asked, fumbling with a keyring that he’d pulled out of his pocket.
“...I don’t think so,” June replied.
The doorknob hadn’t clicked or turned. When she had tried to force it, there had been the slightest hint of fleshy give... as though something much stronger than her held the door in place.
June set her hand on Peter’s to silence his jingling keys.
“Do you hear that?”
A whispering hiss, like the breath of a beast whose every exhale was a deathrattle, was drifting from within the darkened closet.
Peter blinked. He looked around.
“Hear what?”
June arched an eyebrow. Thought so.
“Hey,” she said, stepping back from the door. “Look away for a sec.”
Of all the requests she could have made of him, this one was the hardest to obey. A bewildered Peter Puckett did as June asked nonetheless, only pausing for one last look at her resolute expression, and her hair, which seemed to billow in a breeze he couldn’t feel.
THWACK!!
Peter Puckett whirled to find that June had struck the closet with... a rusty metal pipe?! Was THAT what he had felt when he had briefly held her jacket? Why, in hindsight, had he thought it would be impolite to ask?? Sparks swirled in the air as the doorknob clattered to the floor, misshapen to a molten wreck by the impact. It truly did look slightly melted—had Clayview’s desert heat deformed it? Could that have been why it was jammed? A different question drowned out the rest in importance as soon as June reared back from her battle stance, let out a satisfied sigh, and fixed the scarlet hair her swing had thrown across her face:
“...Can I get your number?”
“HUH??” June scoffed. She stared daggers back at Peter. “Later!!” June harrumphed, deploying a tone that much better matched outright refusal. In the heart of the weapon she’d set on her shoulder, Forge flared with a wordless objection June promptly ignored.
The closet door, nearly battered off its hinges, now creaked aside at Agent Summers’ slightest touch. A sliver of the sun’s last light fell across Mina’s face, for it had only set within her nightmares. Her eyes began to slowly flutter open.
“Hey!” said June, smiling down at Mina from the doorway. “Mind if I come in? Or, uh.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Did you maybe want to come out?”
An awestruck Mina Zarei blinked up at her, bringing her blurry image into focus. Mina’s memory of her dream began to fade, as all dreams do... replaced with a memory that Mina would never forget.