GHOSTS OF THE FACTORY

"I can't. I won't. I'm done."

Patricia Candor, bare under her sallow stain black and white housecoat, sits in a fog of coffin nail smoke at a slivery sort of shabby Lancaster kitchen table which bares a polluted lake cabin aesthetic. Surface swells with stains of acetone. Scratches and stabs from utensils and hunting knives like rages of hieroglyphs. Pock mark cigarette burns. Clutter of barrels and stocks and bolt handles and bullet assemblies and 9mm bullets lay like the inner workings of many types of gutted clocks. Time's no man's land.

Holds her oldest coffee cup with both hands. Elbows rest on a torn tether cloth placemat. Shakes her head. Sighs of indignation. Looks into the darkness of her pumpkin orange cup. Burns her cold hands. Wants such like calcine.

Sips. Cup's chipped in just the right unfortunate spot to make sipping uncomfortable sometimes. Still surprises her when she grazes a slight cut to her lip. Happens, yet she always forgets. Tells herself she'll be careful next morning sip. Isn't.

Sets the cup down after tasting the tiny cut. Touches her thumb to her lip. Blood. Hates her favourite cup. Loves it, too. Makes her feel something. Ruinous memory. Haunting keepsake. Holds onto things that force her to feel numb. Coffee cups and damaged men. The phenomenology of her teleology. Can't take it herself in this way anymore.

Patricia holds the cup by the handle. Gazes into it for the last time. Hurls it at the wall behind Garret. Smashes an explosion of orange white ceramic and black liquid. Damages the old paint on the ancient panel boards. Adds caffeine stains to the nicotine rivulets.

Garret doesn't move. Cigarette between his fingers. Rolls the inhalation around. Focuses on it. Doesn't look up. Doesn't blink. The fucking cup. Shitty coffee. Shitty relationship. But she loves him. Knows he's still grieving that girl and always will. After all these years, Terra still haunts him. Won't let her go. It's like the memory of her won't let him go. How it all ended.

"Ten years, Garret. I'm done. I'm fucking done."

And then there's David. Knows they've both failed Terra and their friends. Patricia's father and sister. Haven't killed David. They haven't come close to catching that monster. Haven't been able to let it go, either. But now Patricia has to. Has to or she'll die. Because she's decided to live. This apartment and this man are only apparitions in her life, now. Opens her eyes to the miracle and crawls out of the catacomb like Lazarus in the town of Al-Eizariya.

"I can't keep going like this. Garret. Please. Get help. I can't do anything for you. There's grief counselling in the city and..."

"I made a fucking promise to her. I'm not done. You do what you want. Take a fucking hike! I'm gonna kill him. He's the last one and I'm keeping my promise. I won't rest! I'm gonna kill him if it's the last fucking thing I ever do!"

"And what if it isn't? You can spend the rest of your life grieving her. It's ok. But you can't spend the rest of your life hating him. He's destroying you and he isn't here. Don't you see, he's destroying you Garret."

"I don't care. I died when she died. Thanks for your help, Patricia. I'll go it alone from here on."

"Fuck you! I love you...Terra would want us to live. This isn't living!"

Patricia stands. Lifts her chair. Slams it into the floor. Abandons the table. Runs into their bedroom. Stubs her toe on a dresser leg. Screams vulgarities. Heaves open their closet. Breaks the bifold door. Finds her black patchwork Ghost rucksack. Riffles any clean or dirty clothes she can find into it. Throws off her sallow stain white and black housecoat. Dresses into her Ghost attire. Black patchwork everything. Places her skull mask in the rucksack. Zips the whole thing up. Walks out of the room. Moves past Garret who still sits at the kitchen table. Stares head down at his dying cigarette.

"Garret. I need to leave or I never will."

Patricia says nothing more as there's nothing more to say. Slips her boots on and walks out of the shitty apartment. Slams the uneven front door behind her. Drops the key on the floor. Laces up her boots in the old dirty maroon carpet dust dim hallway. Waits and listens. Hopes for just a moment that Garret will come out and say something. Do something. He doesn't. She leaves.

On the way to the train jump that'll take her back to the city from the streets of the outpost, she lets it out. Her eyes douse tears down her cheeks. Not only for herself. For Garret. She can't watch him kill himself anymore and she can't follow him either. She wants to be happy. Wants to learn how to let the death of the past die. He can't. He's toxic for her. He's like how all of their friends ended up. Like living in a coffin that hasn't been buried yet. She's done with watching him die. Ten years of her life hunting David Leonard is enough.

~*~*~*~

Patricia sits on the inner edge of the boxcar like a hobo. Legs dangle from the cumbrous sliding door. Boots off. Bare feet. Stretches toes. Wind blusters her hair into a tangly mess. Smiles into the force of the rumbling train gusts.

Cloudless heavens above the city skyline come into view from the exit of the wretched valley outpost vicinity. Conurbations seem less decimate than even a month ago. Peripheries are either heaps of hoary cement and twists of rebar or shimmer of modern pristine structures. Silvern and monotone. Glassy solder alloy. Old Sol sparkles upon the phallus structures towering over last decades crenellations like trinkets upon fingers holding shovels to break the ground and burry the dead at their feet. Most of the city has transformed. Veridiction breaths itself in and heals itself with each new breath of time. It's a place that's been brought back. A city resurrected and resurrecting. Patricia wants this feeling for herself.

Has a mickey of cheap vodka with her. The drink of choice at the Factory due to its lack of calories. Patricia swigs and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. Swigs again. Coughs. Feels warm. Vodka and sunlight.

She's going home. No more hunting apparitions. No more hidden portals that won't open. No more David fucking Leonard. Just Patricia and what comes next. Training. The Factory. The underground city. Maybe some old friends. If she's let back in. Forgiveness. Home. Or prison. Execution. One or the other without a torpid intermediate.

The train moves past the old Poor district. Notices vast suburbs of construction. Cement trucks and work vans surround renovations of metonymy. Rebuilt puzzles made of fresh pieces. Brand new homes. Especially that of an enormous three story exactly where the Coal's little crumple house used to exist. Patricia wonders if one of the younger kids or even Alice survived the dark forest's Judith massacre. Maybe. Or someone else's building in that spot. Whatever. They're all long gone. She takes another swig and wipes her mouth with her wet sleeve.

The train rumbles along through the new city. Reaches the old city. Passes the old familiar brick and mortar roof tops. This is her stop. Caps the mickey. Shoves the thin bottle in a pocket of her rucksack. Slips her boots on. Ties them tight. Backs away to the far side of the box car. Dashes toward the tesseract opening. Two boots thunder through the car. Jumps off the moving edge. Hollers with glee into the passing molecules. Flies through the air. Lands upon the gravelly roof of an age old red brick building. Summersaults and stands up straight. Thin powdery dust blows away at her boots. Walks floury steps to the opposite edge of the passing train. Peers into the distance. The rolling hills are before her. The rolling hills of the Factory.

                       ~*~*~*~*~

The back door in the hidden little alley that turns into a hidden little dark tunnel is still there. Patricia walks through it like a ghost. Watches the sky become concrete ceiling. Continues to the end of the corridor. Knows that cameras will be operational and maybe there's enough people in existence now to actually form a proper security detail. But no one comes. Patricia finds no obstacles. Her steps are loud and echo off the walls on either side of the corridor. Makes it to the end of the alley and the entrance door. Pulls back the cover of the old code box. Looks like it's been untouched for years. No one has used this way into the complex in a long time. Types in her personal code numbers and the door light turns green. Clicks and unlocks. Steps inside the Factory and immediately feels the barrel of a shotgun at her temple. She's not even entirely through the door.

"Name?"

"Patricia Candor."

"Why are you here?"

"To make amends. Relinquish my rouge status and come home."

"And the old Grand Ghost?"

"He's lost himself."

"Access granted. Welcome home Commander Patricia Candor. The leaders await. Your old quarters are available. They want to see you before you freshen up."

"Who's in charge now?"

"The city and the people."

"No, I know but who's in charge?"

"Pete and Janice."

"Fuck."

Patricia remembers the two Ghosts. They were assholes, always very contemptuous in a privileged sort of way. She didn't care too much because she was their superior and her best friend was Terra Coal. Patricia was also an asshole in those days, specifically toward Janice. Her and Janice... Regrets. This is what she gets for being a rouge Ghost for five of ten years hunting David fucking Leonard. Five years that everyone else used their time to moved on. And why Janice and Pete? No one really liked Pete by the time Patricia left. How are they in charge? Must be Janice who's actually in control.

Patricia finds her way past the closed doors of offices and meeting rooms where the slaughter transpired ten years ago. Avoids each room as if they're portals to simulations of Muerte's horrific event.

Enters the skylight glisten of a three story foyer. Climbs the enormous caliginous triple twist square staircase. Touches ornate serpentine bannister and pillar carvings. Scaly stone skin. Shiny. Sharp barb fangs protrude like archer stakes for extinguishing a cavalry of coffin dwellers at each ouroboros face. Steps soundlessly like the apparition of an apparition. Crosses the stairway winding threshold into the Grand Ghost's gray scale zellige tile floor corridor. Becomes darker further through the corridor. Walls and ceiling are like a single pot light cavern. Can hear soft water. Notices a thin waterfall dribble down the wall into a slight chasm her left. Feels like urinating.

The hall continues along. Portraits of former Grand Ghosts decorate the walls. Terra. Malice. Garret. Gideon. Sasha. Every brush stroke countenance is a contortion of existential crisis.

Stops before a massive white wood skull carve set of doors which stand wide open on her right. Bulbous osteal faces laugh at her in a hollow language of unknown whispers. Shivers. Patricia's at the Grand Ghost's war room.

Notices Janice and Pete watch her enter from across the cold concrete room. Crossed arms and sullen countenances. Apprehensive. Every protruding corner in the room is of a sharp edge. Animal skulls and trophies litter each wall. No clutter but the place isn't something that's ever been truly sanitized. The pair wear what she wears. Patchwork black. Patricia walks up to both and glares at them.

Pete smirks.

"Nice to see you again, Pat. Seriously. Old faces are hard to come by these days. Most of em are rotting away."

Janice gives Pete a look of distain. Turns to Patricia.

"I'm not going to sugar coat this. If Malice was still in charge he'd have you executed for disobedience and deserting. Good thing that fuck face is dead. I'm willing to let you back in. We need solid people here. The city's rebuilding. And sunshine, we need to keep law and order. I need you here training people. No active duty. You'll never move up in command but you'll always have a job so long as you keep your shit tight. Capeesh?"

Patricia was right. Janice is the one in charge and Pete is...something. Her offer is a relief.

"Sounds good to me. Thank you, Grand Ghost."

"Welcome home, Pat. Welcome back to the Factory. Maybe you'll stick around this time. If you do leave again, I'll have you hunted down and executed."

Patricia wants to laugh at that last comment but knows better. The title of Grand Ghost warrants respect even if she's not sure she should respect who's wearing the title at the moment.

"I'm not going anywhere, my Queen."

Janice smiles. Nods. Winks. Looks away. Pete smirks and begins talking to Janice as if Patricia isn't there. She's been excused by being ignored. Assholes. Patricia leaves. Heads to her old greasy apartment to get settled and finish her bottle of vodka.