Goff the Rogue: "You run down a long hall. At the end is a red door and a blue door. When one is opened, the other closes forever. What are your choices?"

Rowena: "Red or blue, of course."

Goff the Rogue: "Nah. Just because there is a choice doesn't mean you have to choose."

Rowena: "Is that supposed to be deep?"

Goff the Rogue: "It's damned deep."

Rowena: "I choose the red door."

Goff the Rogue: "You died. Next."

Salome: "I choose the blue door."

Goff the Rogue: "Ooh, dead again."

Rowena: "I vote to depose our present game master in favor of someone who isn't an asshole. All in favor say aye."

Salome: "Aye."

Hunk: "Aye."

Valentine: "Aye"

Goff the Rogue: "This sucks. Who's grounded longest?"

Rowena: "Just the weekend."

Hunk: "Just the week."

Valentine: "Not grounded. Just a lecture."

Hunk: "Shit. And your dad is a cop?"

Valentine: "Trust me, it's agony. He gets all sad like he's the worst dad in the world. Wishes my mom were alive to guide me. Why can't he just beat me with an axe handle?"

Hunk: "What the hell was that lady-cop doing out there at night?"

Goff the Rogue: "We were ratted out. One of us is... a spy."

Valentine: "Wasn't me! If I'd told my dad, he'd have stopped us when we were on our way. Not on the way back."

Goff the Rogue: No, you're too obvious a suspect. It's someone else. And I have the proof, I will now reveal the traitor among us. Their name is ... aaarrggh"

Rowena: "Finished him off? Excellent work, anonymous someone."

Salome: "Seriously, everyone check their phones, see if parent snitch mode is on. In fact, next time we ditch all phones first."

Hunk: "And we take the quick way next time."

Valentine: "What way is that?"

Hunk: "We have an alternate route to the well."

Goff the Rogue: "Don't say. Probably all kinds of parental software watching. Spying. They are everywhere."

Valentine: "They?"

Goff the Rogue: "Parents. Authorities. The lady cop from Angelica. Them."

Rowena: "Any more letters from our pen pal?"

Valentine: "No letters."

Rowena: "Darn."

Valentine: "No letters. Now he's emailing. :)"

Salome: "Shit. No. You putting us on?"

Valentine: "Nope, nope, nope."

Rowena: "What'd he say? What'd he say?"

Goff the Rogue: "Jeez, Frankie. You crushing on Maddy's date? Forget it. He's her cyborg undead demon-angel."

Hunk: "Just like when I took Frankie to the water park. She kept getting stuck in the slide tube with that senior from Angelica."

Rowenda: "Drop dead, little boys. Tatterpatch is a real man. Real Angel. Machine. Alien. Devil. Etcetera."

Salome: "Shut it, fools. Read it, share it, post it."

To: Madeline

From: Tatterpatch

Subject: the void below the world

I have been wandering lost in the ruins of another failed world. Today I met an old man. He sat on a gravestone holding a candle. It had no flame, yet he shielded it with hands, sheltered it from the dead wind that moaned through the stones and bones of his fallen, still falling, fast falling world.

"I seek the stairs that climb the pillar of existence," I told him. "Where are the stairs that rise upwards?" He turned gaze from me to the candle. I do not know why he turned his head. He had no eyes. Only gaping holes.

"Why seek those stairs?" he asked. "Why seek to climb?"

"Once I was a stone that screamed at the bottom of the world," I explained. "Now I wish to rise up to s'mores and summer dances and Madeline Rupert."

He shook head at that. "You were wiser as a stone," he said. "Return to the abattoir below life and death. The fire of existence is hotter above than below. The pain of bearing the world is greater above than below. Above us the stones no longer have the will to scream."

I stood silent at his words. No one had ever spoken so. Spark had told me to rise upwards. The creatures of the underworld had commanded me to return below. Who knew where wisdom lay between the words?

The old man stood. Grasping his dead candle. "Follow," he commanded. We walked past endless graves. Through broken arches of temples thrown down. Through fields of statues showing faces of noble thought. At their bases scurried degraded beings. These things resembled men, Their faces seeming descended from the noble statues. They crawled as though they had forgotten how to walk. Mouths gaping in idiot hunger, eyes weeping in idiot sorrow. They wiggled maggot-like after us. Chittering in a language I did not know. They followed after me, as I followed the old man.

The dead ash sky swirled above us, the dead ash wind rushed about us. At times the ground shook beneath us. The wind of the falling world would have blown the old man's dead candle out, had it held fire. At length we came to the edge of an infinite cliff. Before us waited the void. Behind us crowded the horde of chittering clumping things.

"Life is endless falling," declared the man. He climbed upon a rock, held his dead candle high to illuminate the dead sky. "Behold eternity. All you seek by climbing, is plunging down upon you. There is no lasting world but the fallen and the falling."

"What of summer, what of Madeline?" I demanded.

"Those are things of life," scoffed the man. "Where existence has no least mercy of oblivion. Where the pain is unbearable, and yet must be born."

With these words he leaped into the void, the winds snatching him, twirling him down and away. Many of the chittering, scrabbling things leaped as well. But others gathered around me, chittering words I did not know, yet understood. They also wished to climb up from the low forgotten fires, the endless falling. Even if above us awaited only a realm of unbearable light and life.

I had no wisdom for them. I knew only a letter sent me. But the words still called me to climb. And so I turned from the void, continued wandering among the graves and tombs, wondering, wandering. The denizens following along behind, chattering, chittering. I call them the Crawlers, excepting the ones who leap. Some few can fly, though quite badly.

I talk to them of summer dances, of s'mores, of the world upwards, of Madeline Rupert. They want to see these things too. After weary searching we have found the spiral steps that wind about the pillar of existence. I continue upwards, along with the chittering things and the scrabbling things and the flapping things. We are friends now, of a sort.

More later,

Tatterpatch.

Rowena: "Best summer dance ever."

Goff the Rogue: "Are you out of your mind? A horde of hell-things are marching towards the town recreation center!"

Rowena: "Like I said."

Salome: "Maybe we should warn people?"

Rowena: "Like who?"

Salome: "I dunno. The cops?"

Hunk: "Right. 'Officer, there is an army of demons crawling up the sewers to the summer dance. I'm worried they lack chaperones and good Texas morals."

Salome: "Bard-girl, have you ever replied to his email?"

Valentine: "No."

Rowena: "Why not? Text him. Explain we are simple country folk unused to entertaining sophisticated hell spawn."

Valentine: "I can't, can't, can't. I keep writing stuff and deleting it. What am I supposed to say? What if I say something stupid and he thinks I'm a dork kid in a hick town? I AM a dork kid in a hick town."

Salome: "True. But what would Valentine the Bard tell this guy?"

Rowena: "Ooh, good question. WWVD?"

Valentine: ...

Rowena: "You there, bard girl?"

Valentine: ...

Goff the Rogue: "I think you crashed her system."

[Valentine the Bard has left the room]