At first, they didn't know it came.
The electronic bell buzzed, and the receptionist looked up and immediately recolied at the smell. "Can I help you?" She didn't bother to add 'sir.'
"Yeah. M' dog's gone."
"Gone? Well, I'm sorry, but we can't help you. Do you think the police have nothing better to do than find every lost animal in this city?" She turned back to her paperwork with a, "You'll just have to wait and see if it will come back...we can't do anything about it," and slid shut the glass partition.
Tap-tap-tap. Through the glass, a muffled protest.
She sighed and spun her chair towards the window. "Sir," she said, raising the partition only slightly, "if you won't leave I can easily get an officer - " she glanced meaningfully towards the break room - "to escort you off the premises."
"e's not lost, lady. e's Gone. I saw it myself. The park, it - left. Somethin' else was there...dunno what. Ralphie ran into the park - well it wasn't the park anymore, I mean, after that damn - err, that squirrel, and he - poof! Gone." He paused. "With the park," he added. "Somethin' else came then."
She rolled her eyes and pressed the intercom button. "Hey, anyone back there? Jeremy? Peter? We got us a live one here."
An officer poked his head out of the break room like a turtle. "Rose?" He glanced past her and saw something that could be a man, clothed in what could have once been a starter jacket. "Oh, it's just Jack. He comes in once every so often...don't worry. I'll take care of it."
"C'mon, Jack. What've we told you about coming around here?"
"But, m' dog's gone...."
Then, they didn't know where it came from.
"Hi, Rose."
"Rich."
He paused and looked at her. "What's up? You don't look too good. And it's not that early in the morning."
"You know that man Chuck took out of here yesterday?"
"Who? Oh, Jack. Why's he bothering you? He gets enough food at the soup kitchen. He's not going to starve." He glanced at her again. "You don't believe him, do you?"
"I didn't. Until I went by - my car got stuck in the rush hour traffic around the park circle after I left here yesterday - and saw it myself. There was some kinda pavilion there. Made of purple glass. I only got the edge of it, the trees hid most of it. "
"Rose?"
"Mmm?"
"You sure you don't need more time off? That psycho who came in with the semi four months ago - "
"No." She dug something out of her purse. "I've got proof."
He took the pictures gingerly by the edges, and tilted them to get the glare off. "Holy Jesus. Marco! Jeremy! Sally!"
"Yeah? Something wrong?" Two officers came over, and another trotted over from her corner desk.
"You come with me, Jamesway. Fields, Puentes, take car 3. And bring some of that 'do not cross' tape with you."
But they noticed when it left.
"Oh my God..."
One fifteen-minute walk into the heart of the park later, they stood and stared at the cluster of foot-high silver octagons floating in a pool of black - well, they hoped it was water.
"Well...let's get going. Don't touch those - things."
Marco and Sally were wrapping the yellow-and-black tape around the last pole, Marco on the inside, closest to the water, Sally on the outside, when it happened.
There was no pool, no octagons. There was no Marco. Instead, there was a streaked unicorn of a startling umber shade, staring at Sally before it took off into the pine trees.
"Marco?" she called weakly. "Marco?"
"What the hell happened?" Rich asked, walking over to Sally. "What was that? And where's Puentes?" He stopped, looked into the distance. Nothing. Looked at Sally. Saw something, and turned away. "God...it took him."
Now, you can get in.
There is no tape anymore.
It was replaced with a fifty-foot high concrete wall running around the perimeter of the park with barbed wire at the top, an admission booth in the front, and an immigration services booth in the back.
Only fifty dollars. Or twenty-five stellorian credits. Or eleven vorngash toenails for the ride of your life.
Most people don't Go.
They come and make a week of it, take in as many different places as possible, and all get out before the warning-bell rings through the park. Technically, you're not supposed to Go. But some of them do anyway.
Some of them want to Go: the jaded world-travelers, the disillusioned, the suicides.
Some of them don't.
Some of them come back.
Some of them don't.
And some wait for the ones who said they would come back and didn't.
"Come along, Jesse!" Richard said irritably as he pulled his dawdling younger brother behind him.
"Ow. Stoppit, Richard! I'll tell mother!"
"Tell her what? That you'd not finished washing your hands after I waited for you for fifteen minutes in the loo? Tell her that when I came back in to get you, you were playing with the soap-bubbles?"
The two boys pushed forward, ignoring the grumbling behind them, and soon found their mother. "Here you go, children," she said cheerfully. She handed each of them a brightly colored ticket. "We're going to meet outside for tea at eleven. Oh, and Richard! - mind your brother!"
Richard soon discovered that in the reality they'd been put into - some sort of children's special that came round every other month - there was no 'minding his brother.' At the sight of his first Cheshire cat, Jesse twisted expertly out of his brother's grip and ran off.
Richard couldn't, with a clear conscience, say he minded too terribly.
Richard had just finished his third "drink me" potion - one that had made him shoot up nearly twenty feet and left a delicious vanilla smell in the air - when he heard it. The bell.
"Jesse! Jesse!" Richard's voice blew leaves off trees. Jesse heard it, and came.
"Look, Richard!" he said, holding up what appeared to be a small rock, covered in seaweed and smelling terrible. "An oyster!"
"I don't care what it is!" Richard said. "Didn't you hear the bell? We've got to get out of here!" He scooped up his brother. //Is it five minutes, or three?// he thought. //Blast if I didn't pay more attention to that safety film.//
It must have been five. Nothing had happened by the time they reached the gate. Richard set Jesse down and shooed him through the entrance. "Tell mum I'll be along," he said. //You've still got time,// he thought, rummaging desperately in his pockets for the right potion - the door was too small for him to get through. //You've still got - //
The bell sounded again. Richard remembered. //I left the potion on the floor, and didn't pick it up again.// He looked around wildly. The Chesire cat's fading smile was all he saw.
"Jesse said Richard would be along."
"Excuse me?" The woman frowned as the old bag-woman pulled at her new coat. "Hello, dear. Do you see my Richard anywhere?"
The woman frowned. "Here. Is it money you want?" she held out a five dollar bill. "Take it. Leave me alone." The bag-woman still clung like a leech.
"Only twenty pounds to get in. The trip of a lifetime. There's a special children's showing on the seventeenth. Perhaps Jesse and Richard would like it, dear."
The woman shook off the bag-lady roughly and walked on, tucking the unwanted money back into her purse. "Crazy old people," she muttered.
"Tea at eleven!" the woman called after her.
The park staff calls them 'waiters.' They look, and listen, and hope.
Sometimes, their prayers are answered.
Sometimes, they're not.
Sometimes, they are and they wish they hadn't been.
*****
Eric and Oliver were not rich, but they were well-off.
A three tv's-two computers-one new VW bug kind of well-off.
They had both lived in the same neighborhood - the right one - since they had been small and had grown up slightly indulged together.
They had grown into boredom, too.
If praying is losing yourself in something bigger than you can understand, then they were praying. In their own way.
There are places. You know the kind. The semi-secret ones. They aren't much of a secret, but you have to look to find them. In the woods. In the cemeteries, the old overgrown ones.
Places where the night stretches out or speeds up, places where time is helped along by music and beer. Sometimes stronger things.
"Pass me another Jed's."
Eric grinned and started to hand a bottle of pink liquid over, but stopped and peered at it slowly. It seemed to be half-empty. It was his, he remembered. "Hang on," he said, and rummaged in the cooler. "Hm." He turned to the shape flickering black against the fire. "Oliver."
"Yeah?"
"How many have you had?"
"Dunno."
"You ain't gonna be having any more. They're all gone."
"All of them?"
"Yeah." He looked again. They were still gone.
"Well," Oliver said. A moment or two passed, or an hour. "We better go get some more."
Eric nodded. "You wanna drive?"
"Whatever." Oliver blinked as a silver bug flew at him through the fire - no, it was the keys. He picked them up and dropped them again. /Damn, those things are hot as hell./ They got in the tan SUV and drove off. The firelight still flickered through the branches.
They had to drive by the park to get to the right store, the one where there were no questions asked.
They never got to the store.
"Damn." Eric swore and kicked the tire. "Damn potholes."
The park was dark, but there was a light shining through the trees. "Eric. Maybe we can get help there."
"Ok." He shrugged and headed off.
"Fifty dollars?" They stared up at the sign. "What the hell kinda shop charges that much for advice?"
"Maybe they're holding out on us."
Oliver blinked. "Yeah." He looked at Eric. "We could get it ourselves."
"Huh?"
"Get in, dumbass. Steal it."
Comprehension dawned slowly in Eric's eyes. "Yeah. Yeah. Good idea."
"Of course it is."
That night, the last guard to leave had written a note on one of the side-doors, the old unused ones. 'Rusty lock. Please fix, Jim.'
"There. It's opened."
Oliver peered in. "How'd you do that?"
"Sister taught me," Eric grunted. "Let's go."
"What's that?"
"Nothing."
"I thought I saw red."
"You sure as hell will if you don't move your ass in there."
"But - "
Eric grabbed Oliver and pulled him bodily in. "Come *on!*" A moment later: "Hell, they're *all* red." He had never felt more sober, or less bored.
In the morning, they found the SUV.
They found the lock broken open.
They didn't find anything else. Most people say the management made up the stories to scare people, though some say they're true.
Sometimes, the guards, after turning off the dome-lights for the night, run into the safezone white-faced, licking their lips.
Sometimes, they tell about what they've seen.
Sometimes, they don't.
*****
Dan wrapped his hands around his - third, was it? - cup of coffee and held the warmth there for a moment before drinking it down in one long swallow. "Man," someone chuckled behind him. "You going to drain the whole pot again, Danny boy?"
"Maybe," he said, and poured himself another. Black.
"How late were you up last night?"
"Didn't go to bed."
"Again? How many nights has it been, now?"
"Hm. 'Bout 3. I think."
"How are you going to get up and go to school tomorrow?"
"Who said I was going?"
"Danny..."
Dan shrugged and yawned and got another coffee without even noticing he had already drank the last one. He turned the radio on to the classic rock station and nodded along to 'Stairway to Heaven.' "Hmm, it makes me wonder..."
"Danny, you know you've got to go sometime. How are you going to graduate, go to college?" A pause. "You can't tell me you don't want to get out of your house."
Dan grinned. "Yeah. Guess so."
"What do you want to do?"
"Huh." Another cup of coffee. "People have been too busy telling me what to do to let me ask that question."
A long silence muted further by shag carpet. "Well?"
"I guess I want to be a pastor."
"It's a hard job."
"Yeah."
"Do you think God is really calling you to do it?"
A glance up from the styrofoam cup. "Yeah. I do."
"You'll need to go to seminary. And to do that you need to graduate."
"I'll do it, man. Don't worry about it."
"Ok. Dan?"
"Yeah?"
"I think you can do it. And I think you'd do great at it."
"Thanks."
"How's Dan doing? It's too bad he's not here today; I wanted to say hi to him."
"Yeah. He's good, from what I've heard."
"I never see him or hear from him anymore. I'm worried about him."
"Yeah. Me too. But I think he'll hang in there."
"Yeah. I hope so."
"Are you sure you want to come back here?"
"Why not?"
"You're too innocent. It's different when you see your friends smoking it."
"All my innocence was gone a long time ago." She shrugged, and entered the clearing. She stood a moment in the sweet smell. /Damn. It is different./ She left.
"What's up with her, Dan?"
"Scared." He shrugged, and motioned for the pipe.
She blinked, and ran for the safezone.
"What?" Someone caught her, held her. She started crying. "Let me go. I'll be ok."
"Are you sure? What'd you see out there?"
She shook her head. "I- nothing. Nothing."
"Do you want something? Water?"
"No." She sagged over to a bench and sat limply, hoping it wasn't true, hoping it would never be true, hoping it hadn't been true, in whatever reality. "No. Thanks."
"Juice?"
She shook her head.
"Coffee?"
Sometimes, the workers at the park go a little bit crazy.
Sometimes, there are welfare checks, and formal apologies.
Sometimes, there aren't.
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