•
No, she wouldn’t. Mori would look anywhere, but not a mirror. Sounds like she’s guilty about something. “She can’t even look at herself herself in the mirror!” But she’s not guilty.
Yet.
* * *
Open notes for EV Episode 20, “Dark City, Despair…”
…which handily defeated the option of chronicling our heroes trek home by a margin of 72 to 28%. The readers have spoken! They want to see Mori down in the dumps, drowning in drink and despair in… The Dark City! (L—Wife, Warrior Woman—heartily endorsed calling the episode Despair and The City, and you know, it’s clever, it’s cute, but nah, it’s got to be Dark City, Despair.) A story really turns on a title for me. I kid you not. Example: Way, way back in the beginning, Admiral Blake liked the Exit but not the Vector, and I told her, “Look, I can write a story for you called Exit but it won’t be the same story we’ve been talking about for the past 48 hours, not even close.” A more recent example can be made by giving the readers the choice of the title for the prior installment; it really would have made a difference if the installment had been called Shift Eldritch Inferno instead of All Souls, Bright and Shining. The title is the start of the spell, everything proceeds from it. “Oh that Drax, he so crazy…” But it’s true.
Anyway. Open notes.
• In many ways we’ll be mirroring (ha) the opening of the story—Mori alone in a bar, hopeless. Only now we’ve spent some time with her, we have some inkling of her inner life, we have seen the mettle of Mori Kim Marr! And her situation is in so many ways worse than the story’s beginning: she’s been commanded to live… to wait… to die. She wants to get drunk. Alone.
• Only Mori knows damn well she’s not alone. She might have told the others, “Leave me the fuck alone, I want to float far away on a river of vodka,” but she knows Frost and Billy are in the shadows watching over her. No hope, no fear. Reckless.
• Brendan the bartender? Why not. It could be creepy. Going (coming) so far but still circling the same dead end with the same dead friends… “Cheers, Mori, this one’s on me…”
• Speaking of dead friends: The newsfeed will be blaring “GENOCIDE on the OTHER SIDE!” “Psychics and mediums the world-over report a massive disturbance on the spiritual plain!” “Supernatural APOCALYPSE!”
• And Mori’s laughing (cruelly, unthinkingly) at the footage of the batty old “psychic” telling the cameras how Uncle Herman’s spirit just melted screaming in a flash… it hasn’t sunk in, not yet. The souls destroyed within the Shift Eldritch. Absolute and total annihilation. Which is what the Exit Vector does. Something physically impossible: the destruction, not transfer, of energy. Those spirits, those souls—are gone. Forever.
• Working through all of this, almost right from the start, I’ll need to recap Trista, her moody silence, her “vanishing act…” Consequences, Trista had said, Because of our actions in the Shift Eldritch, there will be consequences to address… And then Trista said no more.
• Mori: Ah, fuck her, fuck it, fuck everything. I’m the most powerful thing in the fucking universe, and I’m going to die. Give me another goddamn drink!
• Dead friends: Fritz’s buds show up, his peeps. “You’re the bitch who ripped-off Fritz and gutted him like a fish!”
• And Mori, waaaay gone, turns in her seat, drink in hand, and laughs in their faces.
• And then… then….
I got it. I got it all. And that’s why I’ve got stop writing this, now. Hmm. Just over 22 hours till drop-dead-due-time. Oh, it’s in the bag, man. Just like poor Mori. Half in the bag.
And I am fond of that image at the top. Worked out well. Black and white photo, unknown source. Spanish language blog, no credit given. If you recognize it, please tell me. Anyway. See you on the other side…
Ω
Exit Vector runs weekly at UNDERLAND PRESS
