Final Hours

“I can’t sleep,” Miriam says, slipping onto the pull out couch, and bumping her head against my arm to get my attention. 

She gets me, at least, to notice her. Before this interruption, I’d been staring off at the crumbling motel walls. 

I’m the only one who’s supposed to be awake right now. Mrs. Forsythe told me to stay up until 3 AM tonight, as she was going to call between the hours of 1 and 3 in the morning, and needed me to be ready to anticipate the call. 

“There’s nothing better than a prepared employee, 213,” Mrs. Forsythe had told me, countless times over, including in her all-too gleeful demand that I stay up until 3 AM tonight. “Preparedness and dedication. That’s what you need, to show Faust you’re loyal. He needs to see that He is your priority.” 

I’d agreed with her, of course. It would be suicide not to nod along and grin with whatever Mrs. Forsythe says. She is a Wife of Faust, after all. To refuse her is to refuse Faust Forsythe, CEO of Everything and Everyone himself. I can’t refuse any Forsythe. You’d think from the way the Forsythe Conglomerate had its hooks in every thing, I’d know that from jump. 

No. I was stupid once, and I nearly paid for it with my life. I was stuck in the BIRDCAGE for a year and a half. I did a lot of thinking in there, as the avians tore at my skin and their chirps burrowed a permanent home in my ears. I knew better now. The sea of feathers and chirps that clogged up my mind, mucking up the memories of my earlier life and the stupid kid I’d been, told me what I needed to know. 

Faust was the reason I was alive. The reason the birds only took pieces of my skin, and didn’t just plunge their mechanical beaks into my heart. It was Him, holding the keys to my cage. He’d been merciful enough to let me out, even if I was leashed now. 

So, when Faust, and by proxy, one of His wives or His heirs said to jump, all I asked in return was how high. Even if one of those asks was to stay up awaiting a call between the hours of 1 and 3, that I knew would be at 3 AM on the dot because Mrs. Forsythe is petty like that. I know she’s asleep right now, having set an alarm for 3. I can see her usual red-lipped smirk sticking on, even in sleep. 

“Mister Frog-Face,” Miriam tugs at my suit jacket sleeve. “You aren’t in your jammies. You can’t sleep too?” 

“No,” I say, trying to school my face into an easygoing smile. It doesn’t quite reach my eyes. “I’m just waiting for a call from my boss.” 

“Oh.” Miriam taps her chin. “Well, Miss Metal-Mouth and Mister Monster are still asleep. I was gonna wake up Miss Metal-Mouth, but then I saw you.”

The sounds of wheezy breathing coming from the single, queen bed in the motel room account for 217, small and curled up in the bed she shares with Miriam. Of course, then, the deep but gentle snores coming from the armchair are coming from 210, his massive frame curled and crunched to fit onto the piece of furniture. 

I feel a bit bad. I had tried to insist he take the couch and me the chair, but he’d insisted. He knew that him and 217, while abetters, weren’t shouldering the ultimate burden of this particular assignment. 

I was. 

“Can we go on a walk, Mister Frog-Face?” Miriam asks.

I look down at Miriam. She’s in her pajamas, a fluffy pink nightgown with little puffballs at the hem, and a nightcap she insists is her ‘nighttime witch hat’. Whatever she says. I don’t know how, in a world like this, she believes in anything magical. Let alone, that she’s a fairy witch hero. It’s so, so…

I don’t have the heart to call it stupid. I used to think the same things, when I was her age. That the world could be a place of bright colors and if I wished it hard enough, I could sprout wings and fly. Nowadays, the mere idea of wings, all feathered and attached to bodies housing talons and beaks, makes me shudder. 

I’ve come to love the beiges and grays that Faust swaddles me in. It’s more comfortable like this, knowing I’m safe. That He can love me like this, all washed out and dulled. Every little jagged impulse to take up more space than I ought to was pressed out. Being wrung out isn’t so bad. 

It means that I’ll avoid the fate of someone like Miriam, who can’t shut her trap and dim herself to save her life. And I really mean save her life. 

Tomorrow, I’m going to kill Miriam Murray. I’m going to tear out her heart, on the order of my client. 

The Retribution Commission isn’t a fun place to work. It is where Faust assigns someone who stepped outside the lines, but is deemed fixable, and has been corralled back into the good graces of the Forsythe Conglomerate and its sponsors.  Then, put to work snuffing out the cases they deem beyond hope. Of course, we never know the exact reasons our targets are given to us. 

It’s just better that way. Even if in some cases, like in Miriam’s it’s pretty obvious. We’re trimming the fat. The only thing I wonder is what sets a case like hers apart from a case like mine. Or 210’s. Or 217’s. 

“You want to walk around?” 

I peer at my watch. It’s 2:15 AM. I know for a fact Mrs. Forsythe isn’t calling me until 3 on the dot. 

Miriam yanks on my arm, and despite her age, she’s making remarkable progress tearing my arm from my socket. I let her drag me to the door. “We can take a walk down the hallway. Then, we’re coming back, and you’re going to bed.” 

Miriam lets out a cackle. “I knew you’d lemme go out. I was casting a spell with my mind to convince you to let me go.” 

I place a finger to my lips, anxiously. “People are sleeping, Miriam.” 

Miriam grins like a jackal, but places her finger to her lips just the same. I open the hallway door, and she skips out. I close the door gently behind us, letting it click shut. Hopefully, we’d get a quick walk down the hallway without 210 or 217 knowing anything.

210 and 217 didn’t need to be a part of Miriam Murray’s final hours. It was a burden I’d shoulder alone. This was my assignment, after all. Besides, I already know they think I’m a monster. If they saw me, leading this hapless little girl down the hallway like a lamb to the slaughter, filling her head with lies, they’d be convinced I’m the most despicable snake to exist.  

I think I’m more of a frog than a snake. Miriam says it best, I have a frog-face. I’m like one of those small frogs that owls can swallow whole. Slimy and scared. I know 210 told me that he didn’t think that my face was so bad, but that’s just 210. He’s wrong about a lot of things. He told me he thought I could be a good person, once. 

What a fucking joke. 

At least 217 has the decency to show me to my face how much she dislikes me. She’s too new at this to know how to tell a believable lie. She stutters and stammers and wrings her hands in every conversation. I don’t know if she’s going to last. Even with 210 looking out for her. I’m certainly not going to be sticking my neck out for her. I need to survive, and she’s an anchor. I won’t hurt her, though. 

A lot of the other Commission employees like to encourage the decline of our more weak-minded ranks. To remind them of all the horrible things we do, for reasons we can’t even know. They hand them the blade and sit back, knowing the results. There’s even a betting pool in the office, organized and run by 066, 173, and 174, the 3 worst offenders of those who can’t wait to see who’s announced as a quitter next. 

217 is an obvious target for those three. I’m certainly not going to throw her to the wolves once we get back, but I don’t think there’s anything I could do for her anyway. At least she has 210, and he’s outwardly unnerving enough (to those who don’t know him well), to deter the initial onslaught.

I feel a small sure chomp on my right pinky. I’m snapped from thinking of my coworkers, to cradling my finger, beading up with the slightest drop of blood. Miriam’s grinning at me. 

“Sorry, Mister Frog-Face,” she says, not looking sorry at all. “But I needed to use my special hex to attack you. You weren’t paying attention to me.” 

“Sorry, Fairy Witch Hero Miriam,” I sigh. 

I really should’ve been more alert. I know well, after a month on the road with her, shepherding her to her demise, that Miriam Murray is a biter. A biter, that will bite you again and again until you address her by her chosen title. What she believes she is. 

She also believes that 217, 210, and I have been shuttling her on a sightseeing vacation. I’m not sure where she got that particular lie from, but it was one, that in a month of travel, I couldn’t find it in myself to correct. 

None of us could. I’d insisted, in fact, on keeping up the charade. I don’t know if it was better or worse that Miriam spent an entire trip she could’ve spent in tears, laughing and joking with us. Nicknaming the three of us. 

“Hey, Mister Frog-Face,” Miriam says, grabbing my arm as we walk down the hallway. “Do you think Faust is gonna like me?” 

“Why do you say that?” I ask, swallowing back the answer of He hates you. “You’ve been so excited to see him all month. You’re going to show him your magic, right?” 

“I know,” Miriam responds, tugging her nightcap down with her free hand. She looks unusually pensive. “But I know he likes pru-productive kids. And I get in trouble a lot.” 

That seemed to be a bit of an understatement. Miriam Murray’s report was riddled with behavioral infractions, disrupting class, and even a visit to Behavioral Correction Summer Camp, which I know is only issued in extreme cases. Not to mention the manner in which we found Miriam, not at her assigned rendezvous point, but stuck in a tree, while other kids threw stones at her. 

She’d been remarkably chipper that day, snarling at her attackers and calling them babies as they fled at the sight of older kids. (Mostly 210.) The little pudgy girl who’d hung around longer than the rest had called Miriam unhirable, with a sad expression. 

I think she knew why we were here. Even if she’d told Miriam, I don’t know if Miriam would’ve believed her. Miriam was someone who was so utterly in her own world. She didn’t know that her ideas of magic and limitless potential were things that Faust couldn’t abide by. The idea that someone could shine brighter than Him. That someone could exist in a way He didn’t like. 

She just assumed that Faust would love her, because she loved herself. Despite what seemingly everyone and everything in her life had told her. That she was destined for failure. She’d refused to believe what every Forsythe Conglomerate institution told her. 

I wonder, if they put her in the BIRDCAGE, if her beliefs, fuelled by childhood delusion and whimsy, would fare. Mine broke. It took a year and a half, and I was three years older than Miriam, but I was someone who could be swayed. 

Miriam was at a precipice here. At a motel hallway at 2 AM, here with me. I could push her in the right direction. I could tell her the truth, to get her to grovel at Faust’s feet in her witch’s hat and wilted fairy wings and say she’s sorry. She’d tell Him that everything she ever thought was wonderful was wrong, and that she was sorry for ever being herself in His world. 

He’d possibly spare her, after a few rounds in the BIRDCAGE to test her resolve. Then, she’d be like me. Someone so fake and empty that I could be replaced by a permanently smiling windup doll that spit out the phrase “Bless Faust” on loop and I don’t think anyone would notice. 

“Do you like you?” I swing Miriam’s hand as we near the end of the hallway. “Do you believe in yourself?” 

Miriam’s downcast expression vanishes in record time. “YEAH! I’M AWESOME!” 

I shush her, but she still grins, zooming down the hallway. She's pumped, telling me (as I try to keep pace) in whisper-yells (because she’s too excited to keep quiet) what she’s gonna ask Faust when they meet. That she can’t wait for everyone back home to be wrong about what they said about her. Her magic is real. Faust does love her. He’d never think there’s anything wrong with her. 

I suddenly feel more tired than ever. In this moment, trying to keep up with Miriam, I see why she and I are different. I, even in my brightest, was always hesitant. I cared too much what others thought of me. There was room for me to be swayed, to be stuffed into a cubicle-sized box. 

Miriam, though, is a calamity that will never be contained. For as long as she is alive, she’ll shine brighter and run faster than any doubts that’re placed inside her head. She could be put in the BIRDCAGE and believe that her magic will sway those shrieking, bloodthirsty things to her side. 

We do a few more laps down the hallway, before I see Miriam suddenly lurch to a stop. She’s swaying on her feet. I rush forward and hold out my hands, catching her in my arms. 

She snickers through a yawn. “Hah. I knew it. I was willing you to come and catch me, Mister Frog-Face. You always catch me.” 

“Always,” I choke out, scooping her into my arms, and making my way towards our room. 

Holding her in my arms, I remember in horrible clarity, me coaxing her down from her perch in the tree, when we first met. Promising her that nothing would happen to her. That she was safe with me. That I’d always catch her when she fell. 

She’d told me it was because she used her powers to make sure I caught her. But I could see it in her eyes. In the way she smiled her snarl-like grin at me, gap-teeth and all. She trusted me. She’d cling to me, and let her heartbeat sink into my clothes, all while I planned to rip it from her chest. 

I was under the power of someone. Just not her. 

I open the door to our room. I walk across the dark hallway, careful to keep my steps light. Both 210 and 217 are still asleep, thank Faust. 

I reach the bed, and go to the right side. 217 is on the left side, curled into a ball, facing away from Miriam. I lift the covers, slowly, then I set Miriam down on the bed. I tuck her in, creating a prison of blankets entrapping her. 

Miriam snuggles deeper into her prison, smiling. “Goodnight, Mister Frog-Face. See you tomorrow. It’s gonna be…” Miriam’s eyes shut, cutting off whatever she was about to say. 

Those would be some of the last words she would ever say. I stumbled to my pull out couch, putting my head into my hands. I felt the corners of my eyes burning. My whole body shook. 

I looked at my watch with blurry vision. 2:43 AM. I had 20 minutes to get it together before Mrs. Forsythe called me to confirm the details for Miriam’s death tomorrow. 

She’d be ringing in at 3, thinking I was going to be sleep deprived because of her. Getting her another petty victory over me. As if being my warden in the BIRDCAGE wasn’t enough for her. 

Regardless of this call, though, I don’t think I was going to get any sleep tonight anyway. Not with Miriam in the same room, sprawled out like a starfish in her sleep while a puddle of drool began to drip down her chin. 

I could never sleep. Not with Miriam nearby. 

So young. So alive. So confident in herself. Someone, even with all the Summer Camps and censures, would never allow herself to become a hollowed-out cog like me. Me, who snuffed out those so much better and brighter than myself. 

When we’d met, the first thing she’d done was bite my hand. To welcome me into her little coven with open arms and teeth. I still had the teeth marks around my hand to prove her innate kindness, her desire for a friend who’d embrace her as she was. 210 and 217 bore similar bite marks. 

Miriam had been so delighted, to finally have true friends. A coven, she said. A group of witches that she could show Faust as proof that she was productive. That all her little potions (glitter glue, grass, acorns, and miscellaneous rocks) were products. That she had friends to support her.

When we went along with her, all month, she believed us. That we were there to help, summoned by her will, by Faust’s (previously ungiven) love for her. 

She never had a chance. Not in this world.