Quoted By:
"If you say so." He tilts his head back. "Spirit guide?"
[...I-I'm just a guy, Teddy.]
"It's not that bad. Weather's nice." He nods the cig up toward the sky, then takes a puff. "Don't have a lot of regrets. Was it drowning?"
You didn't say that, did you? Lottie mentioned drowning, but... [How did you know?]
"I'm on a boat by myself all day." He leans further back against the stand. "Always thought I'd be a fish, though. Die at sea, come back a big golden one... this isn't bad, but that would've been something."
"Huh?" Teddy says, but you're already kicking yourself for it— you were just trying to find something helpful to say, <span class="mu-i">you've</span> never talked to a dead guy before, you were feeling bad— "Don't think this was up to me."
No, you should be saying, no, no, of course it isn't, but you're nervy from the "what are you" question and from the lack of cigarette and from talking to a dead guy, and your brain-to-mouth filter isn't kicking in while you have no mouth. [I-I-I mean, not you specifically, but your... collective. Or whatever you call it. You know, um, the goo... the goo...]
The cig is slipping from your fingers. [Uh, Teddy?]
It's slipping from your fingers, and you can't <span class="mu-i">move</span> those fingers. You can't get back in. Shit! [Teddy! Teddy? Teddy, I didn't mean to—]
He's bricked. Just completely shut down. You shove yourself into your other bodies instead and cloud around his face and shoulders. "I'm sorry, I fucked up, I shouldn't have said— Teddy? Teddy? Teddy, please wake u—"
"Wake up" isn't out of your mouthparts before Teddy wobbles and slips downward and— it's not that he <span class="mu-i">melts.</span> He doesn't melt. After a moment of thought, you'd probably describe it as 'congealing': his hair thickens into a solid mass and molds onto his forehead, where his glasses are melding with the bridge of his nose; his fingers and his wrist and the cigarette and the sleeve of his slicker all run together; with a suckery noise his back welds to the wall and the soles of his feet to the ground, which is growing rubbery and unnaturally green. Within a six-foot radius, you are the only thing not coagulating with every other thing, and only because (you assume) you're touching none of them.
When it's over, there is still a Teddy and a balloon-toss stand and a weedy patch of turf, and identically there's none of those things. The life is all gone— it's a bad museum diorama, or a bad clay replica of one. You're wondering whether you should cut your losses (is this explainable to Lucky?) when Fake-Mannequin-Teddy shudders— everything in the six-foot radius wobbles— and locks eyes with you. Or the approximate location of "you," which if anything is eerier.
WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS he says— "he says." Teddy's voice is in there, maybe even the loudest in there, but it's part of such a clamor you don't think you can call this 'Teddy.'
(2/3)
