#13 - Duality

The living room was dark. The streetlight outside dimly illuminated the giant pieces of furniture, the giant television, the couch, the distant kitchen and its large dinner table, which was so much bigger than the small living room table the friend group had come to call home.

Their friend, if that was still the word they should’ve used for her, had gone to bed after her horrendous shift in personality, leaving her friends to contemplate and regret their decision to ever trust her with their lives.

In the dark of night, each of the tinies had put in the effort to push the little beds of their encampment closer together, until they aligned like the four walls of a fort, not one that could withstand a giant like Robin, but one they could huddle up in together, and take some comfort; some imagined safety.

Jade and Theo sat on the ground inside the enclosure of beds, holding each other in a hug they had been holding for quite some time. Elias sat across from them, knees up, arms resting atop them. Oscar was the only one of them that had climbed into bed, but there was no way he could close his eyes. He lay on his side, looking at his friends.

“That wasn’t Robin,” he said.

“I don’t know,” Jade said. “It looked like her, sounded like her. Do you think she had a nervous breakdown or something?”

“She’s acted like that before,” Elias said. “When I found her murder box.”

Jade and Oscar looked at him with wide eyes, while Theo kept his closed, holding Jade.

“I was looking for a drink, when I found this shoebox beneath her bed. She had this bloody shoe, with a picture of the person that died under it, along with pages detailing who he was, and how good it felt to end his life. When she walked in, she intentionally freaked me out more just to trigger the mark to shrink me, after which, she almost killed me.”

“Are you sure she wasn’t just scaring you into silence?” Oscar said.

“How would that make this any better?”

“Cause maybe she just freaked out too. Suddenly flying off the hinges, that’s still the Robin we know.”

“No, I was going to die. She was playing with me, enjoying it. I had to argue my way out, say she wouldn’t be able to cover it up in front of you guys. You guys not knowing, is what has kept us all safe.”

“So what now?” Jade said.

“Now we’re her pets,” Theo said. “She’ll do with us whatever she wants.”

Oscar tugged at his pillow, as if it was responsible for his inability to find comfort. “No, we’re her friends, that’s gotta count for something.”

“Didn’t you hear her,” Elias said. “It’s counting against us. It makes her want to hurt us more.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Oscar shouted, as if fighting Elias on it would change the very words, he heard Robin say herself.

Jade squeezed Theo closer, “She cares about us, she has to. There is just this other thing we didn’t know about.”

“No this,” Elias’ eyes widened with intensity, “what you’ve just seen, that’s Robin. She’s a sadistic fucking monster who almost killed me with a smile on her face. If she’ll do that to me, she’ll do that to every single one of us.”

“Yes,” Jade said. “But wouldn’t she miss us. Don’t you think she’d be sad afterwards?”

“Who gives a fuck if she’d be sad about it,” Elias exploded. “We’d be dead!”

“I’m sorry Simon,” Oscar said, as he rolled onto his back. “I didn’t know I was introducing you to the fucking devil.”

“What about that stalker,” Jade said. “The one that actually killed Simon.”

“Chained Wraith, the troll from voice chat. The one I thought was just getting under my skin,” Elias explained. “But she did warn me, happily told me what Robin might have in store for us.”

“And you didn’t tell us,” Theo squeaked, with a rage unlike himself. “You didn’t think to get us out of here? At least warn us?”

“I didn’t believe it then!” Elias said. “Would any of us? Would any of us believe Robin could hurt us.”

“I would’ve,” Theo said. “I stopped trusting my instincts, let you guys turn me woke, let her convince me she was the safe version of Nora.”

“What are you talking about?” Jade almost let go of Theo completely upon hearing a buzz term she had never heard him use before. “Who’s Nora?”

Theo didn’t answer, the waterworks started flowing on his soft adorable little cheeks. Jade didn’t need the details to understand what type of a person he was talking about, why he’d reacted to her the way he did after shrinking. The hug which had almost broken, tightened again, harder than before.

“Show no fear,” Oscar growled, in a way he could imagine what his father would say. “I think that advice of her was genuine, as fucked as the delivery was.”

Jade nodded, “Right, maybe fear is her…”

“Her alcohol addiction,” Elias sighed. “She’s acted like that twice now, each time, it was the fear that caused her to snap.”

“She warned us,” Oscar said. “She still cares.”

“No, she’s playing with us,” Theo said, before hiding his face.

Jade turned her head towards the window, as she held Theo, looking out the massive glass panes at the little peek of night sky she could get just above the roof across the street.

She thought of her friend, the rough around the edges man-lady, who had this back and forth with Oscar, where they’d to shove each other into the bushes on campus. The skinny ginger with muscles, and this disheveled mid-western roughness, who seemed completely unaware of her toxic masculinity. The friend who did not tell off creeps flirting with Jade and Elena, but the wild animal that threw them off.

She could be chaos, she could be calm, she could be scary, she could be laid back, always willing to listen to someone vent, even if those vacant eyes never seemed to understand why people got upset about ‘dumb shit’.

She had always been such a hot mess of a person, Jade couldn’t help but imagine her as one of the men in Elena’s books, so much so that she forgot she was fawning over a woman. She had no idea how right she was, how closely Robin truly resembled the eroticized monstrosities she had read about.

Those lean arms, that strong jaw, that dirty, unladylike smirk.

“Robin, who the hell are you?”

Robin slowly opened her eyes to the sound of her alarm. The little tune that used to annoy her so much, the jingle that announced another awful day at work, was now a welcome change from the creepy lullaby which would accompany most of her dreams.

The events of the night prior slowly returned to her, in such a way that for a short time, her waking mind could still catalog it all as a dream. Something that hadn’t really happened. Something she hadn’t done, something she’d never do.

“You fucking idiot,” she whispered to herself, as reality clicked into place.

She trotted out of her bedroom, and walked straight for the fridge, feeling the eyes of her little friends on her neck. She took her morning can of energy drink and clicked it open, before pouring half the can down her throat in one go, and walking over to the living room table.

“Sup guys,” she said, with the lighthearted tone of depressive humor. “I had a really bad dream again, where someone killed Simon, and I told all of you guys what really goes on in my head.”

She put her can down hard on the table, causing nearly each of her friends to jump, before she dropped onto the couch in a slouched, leaned back posture. Her bare, foul-smelling morning feet rose up, one heel crashing down on the table, in front of her friends, while she rested the ankle of her other foot on top of the first.

They were long and elegant, yellow and pink on pale, with a shiny layer of dried sweat. She wriggled her square toes, as if she was fanning the horrid foot scent at them.

She looked at the horrified faces of her friends, huddled up in a construct of four beds. “You guys been able to sleep?”

“She’s talking so casually?” Jade whispered.

“Her feet fucking stink,” Oscar followed up.

“Don’t say a thing about them,” Theo said, his soft voice carrying a warning born from experience. “The first one that does, gets a face full of it. It’s a power move.”

Elias sighed, before climbing over his bed and leaving the comfort of the bed-fort to address the giantess, “When no one was looking, you said you wanted to make things right with me. Make me feel safe again.”

“Yeah, I did,” Robin said.

“I-I wanna-” Elias lowered his head; he couldn’t show fear. “I wanted to ask something about that, but I don’t know what the question is…”

Robin’s eyes darted away, “Yeah, I get it. I don’t know what the answer is either.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you calmer now, compared to last night?”

Her eyes immediately returned, that intimidating look locking with Elias, “the fuck you mean by that?”

“I mean you aren’t smiling the way you did yesterday. So maybe, you’re safer now.”

“Safer now,” she repeated, with a tone that neither affirmed or denied it, but lingered on the idea. “I don’t know.”

Jade climbed out of the fort as well, followed by Oscar who looked to Theo and said, “show no fear.”

Theo didn’t budge; he was terrified.

“Robin,” Jade shouted, pacing past Elias to get even closer to the giant’s feet, “did you really mean what you said last night?”

“Every word,” Robin said, as she slowly tilted her feet over Jade, letting some dirt between her toes wriggle loose, so that it would float down on the tiny woman.

“Then why aren’t we dead yet?”

Elias clenched his teeth, hissing through them, “Jade!”

Robin bit her lip before answering, “Cause I don’t wanna lose you guys.”

“You do care about us,” Jade said. “Don’t you?”

“I cared about who you were,” Robin explained. “Now that you know how fucked up I am, you’ll never be like that again. You’re just scared little playthings now. I honestly don’t even know how long I would have lasted without you guys knowing.”

“Well,” Jade paused. “What if we all just try to be ourselves despite knowing you have- What would you call them; fantasies, kinks-”

“Urges,” Robin said, before considering what Jade suggested. “The idea definitely appeals to the sadist in me, forcing you to act like my old friends, while you’re terrified of what I could do at any moment.”

“Robin, I beg you, please try to work this out with us.”

“I’m sorry, it’s over. I’ve already lost you guys.”

“So, we’re just waiting to die?” Oscar shouted. “Come on Robin, so what if you got a little psycho in you, that don’t mean the rest of you was fake, right?”

“You don’t get it, Oscar,” Robin said. “It’s not this small thing. If you could see in my head, you’d end things yourself before I could get my hands on you.”

“No, you’re my friend, I trust you,” Oscar said, crossing his arms and tensing his muscles.

Jade looked over at him, and remembered, show no fear.

“So do I!” she said

Elias shook his head, and stayed quiet while Theo didn’t budge even a millimeter.

“It doesn’t care.” Robin said quietly.

She finally took her feet off the table, got up and grabbed her can again, gulping down the other half, before going through the morning routine of refilling their food and water, without another word.

After getting herself ready for work, she looked at her playthings one last time before leaving. She spoke with a mournful voice, as if they had already died, “I love you guys.”

There wasn’t a single one of them that wasn’t stunned upon hearing those words. It sounded genuine despite conflicting with the way she carried herself so callously, confidently. Jade was finally starting to put together the puzzle that had been scattered in front of her the night before. She didn’t say she doesn’t care, she said ‘it’ doesn’t.

It wanted to kill, she wanted to keep; that was the duality of Robin Marrick.