Lights Out 2023 (Oct '23).

A phone rings. Incessantly and interminably, a phone rings.

Sunlight crept through the window, announcing that a new day had come to pick up from where the previous one left off. It illuminated the handful of items of furniture placed carefully around the sleek and minimalistic hotel suite. A Ming era Ta sofa beneath the window. A Quanyi chair wrought from amber huanghuali. A tall, narrow lamp that bloomed like the Yingkesong tree, with hanging lanterns in place of branches and candles instead of leaves. And, in a large alcove at the northern end of the suite, a canopy bed from the Qianlong period, an assortment of limbs protruding from the folds of its drawn curtains.

The phone still rings.

Elsewhere. Another time.

She reclined upon a low bed, situated on a raised kang surrounding a large, empty stage. There were others, on beds like hers and arranged in a horseshoe around the boards, hugging the outer wall of the low room around its entire perimeter. There was a sense of expectation about them, closer to agitation than excitement, but it wasn’t for the forthcoming performance. She absently scanned the faces of her peers: mostly male, mostly middle-aged, mostly local. They had little interest in her in return.

In her own personal recesses, a phone continues to ring.

She was uncomfortable but not because of the company. Uncomfortable in her own skin. Uncomfortable in a strange land, and - for the first time in quite some time - uncomfortable alone. More directly, she was uncomfortable underground, as she always was when the thought of surrounding earth invaded her mind like dirt seeping through a rotten coffin. They were in a basement den somewhere beneath the city, twenty six millionish pairs of feet gently troubling the ground above them. She thought she could hear rumbling from afar.

Attendants had been busy preparing around the other patrons’ beds and now one of them arrived at hers. She was young and pretty, with expressive eyes that seemed in stark contrast to the dead gazes of the men she and her colleagues served. She watched the deft manoeuvres of the attendant’s hands as she prepared the long, bamboo pipe at her feet. She placed it delicately on a stand, cleaned the bowl, and positioned it upon the collar. From around her slender wrist the attendant unravelled the ghee-rag, a short length of white cloth, and used it to form a seal between the bowl and the shaft.

The traveller watched the precision and fluidity of the woman’s movements with awe. They were hypnotic, nearly. Both the rumbling and the ringing receded. There was only the girl, her dexterous digits, and the focussed, expressive eyes that guided her work. Eventually she bowed, deferential and unsmiling, and then knelt down beside her bed.

The gongs, struck by a pair of women in red, floral-print cheongsam at opposite ends of the stage, heralded the entrance of the performers. Ten of them in total, actors in black robes and traditional masks, the troupe quickly dividing into an explicit dichotomy. Half of them, those that had peeled away in the direction of her bed, removed their robes in a simultaneous spiralling flourish, the greyscale discarded and in an instant replaced by a vibrant, pink blur. The four men in this cluster wore zhongshan, the woman adorned in a bright pink cheongsam with fine, green detail depicting an intertwining forest of stems and leaves. When she eventually stopped spinning, she seemed to be staring directly at the traveller. An auburn fox mask hugged her face and protected her anonymity. This veil had no mouth, and four elaborate bird’s feathers protruded from between her ears like a strangely macabre crown.

This shared moment lingered, stretched, and then passed. The actor placed her hands into another’s, whose fox mask was less solemn and who wore no crown, and she was carried by the dance to the opposite end of a stage. The others - a bear, an ocelot, and a reaching, groping octopus - went with them, their movements angular and slapstick but in harmony despite their innate chaos.

Only now did she notice the cluster of musicians in the corner of the room, the singular break in the circle of strung out and sallow patrons. They each played their irregularly shaped instruments: an old man plucking a large pipa rested against the floor, a woman of similar age with a yueqin perched upon her lap, and a teenage girl running a long, horsehair bow across an erhu balanced carefully between her legs. Their notes were low and lurching, the overall effect discordant and unpredictable. Lacking in unity. She imagined that they were a family and their music a product of the quiet antipathy she assumed plagued every such unit. The young girl wore a mask, but not like the actors’. Not like the traveller’s, either. It covered only her mouth and her nose, protecting her lungs from the smog that already hung thick in the room. It colluded with the erratic music to create a heavy atmosphere that stuck in the throat.

The actors who’d retained their black robes conducted their own dance that swept in the traveller’s direction, a mimicry of a drunk and debauched evening descending further through blind encouragement. When an opportunity presented itself, one would disappear into the folds of another’s robes, removing a purse or a locket or some other such trinket from the pocket of their unsuspecting companion. Their composition was a trio of birds - a brooding raven, a parading peacock, and a truculent cassowary - and a pair of interchangeable dogs. The two groups danced separately and in contrast, but for infrequent flashes that threatened drama and perhaps violence, like ripples on the surface of a pond.

“你想让我点亮它吗？” the attendant asked, in little more than a hushed whisper. The traveller didn’t understand the words but comprehended the box of matches in her hand. She nodded her head and leant forward, glancing at the two parted groups upon the stage. A new performer, bold and charismatic but imbued with low cunning, flitted between them, remaining ever alone. His dance was sad and slow, as if he was diminishing and fading before her eyes. The attendant struck a match. “准备好了。”

Michelle took a long draw from the pipe. Laid back. Closed her eyes. It had been a long day. Bad wait. The weed wasn’t strong enough anywhere and certainly not here. The coke was the wrong kind of high. She had to wait and it was a bad wait. But that was over now.

She opened her eyes, the actors circling before her, leaving traces of themselves behind that only she could see.

She closed her locker room door behind her and, the sounds of the rampant Mexico City crowd now muffled and faded, sunk into a seated position in the closest corner. Somewhere in the back of her mind, somewhere in the future, somewhere on the other side of the world, a phone rings…

The world didn’t feel real yet but the pain certainly did. It had taken a little more than twenty minutes to reduce her body to a collection of debilitating aches and throbbing bruises. She didn’t know the precise match time. In the moments between her humbling and now, she had mostly been occupied with regaining consciousness and listlessly finding her way to the sanctity of her locker room. Later, she’d learn that the second Hailstorm knocked her out at twenty three minutes on the nose. The kaiju would spend the proceeding one hundred and twelve seconds playing with his food and, ultimately, refusing her the warrior’s death that - whilst stranded on his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and on the cusp of lucidity - she’d come to accept. Perhaps even desire.

Then, roughly six minutes later, she woke up in Gorilla position. The roaring pains within her conspired like some vile orchestra to dredge up the memories of her humiliation. She assumed she had lost until the doctor shining a torch into her eyes told her otherwise. When he explained the manner of her ‘victory’, a hollow countout that the kaiju chose willingly, she had immediately understood the intent behind the mountain’s actions. She didn’t ask but knew that he’d already left the arena. He was done with her. That much was clear. If she was ever to see him again it would have to be her that sought him out, and she couldn’t imagine circumstances in which she’d present herself to her humbler. Her conqueror. This chapter, long and tumultuous though it had been, was now finally over, and with it so many other doors had closed forever.

Her mind was being crushed beneath the squeeze of past and future, both bearing down upon her, threatening to break her final resolve, to overwhelm her entirely. She only stood a chance if she focussed entirely on the present. It wasn’t easy. She catalogued the items in her locker room, a trick that Uncle had taught her during a potentially fatal bout of anxiety aboard the Octopi the previous winter. There was much more to catalogue on the ship. Here, there was her locker, her rucksack, her street clothes arranged carefully upon a low, flat bench… and two notes, face-down, near the gap beneath the door. She picked them up, turned them over, glanced at each in turn.

The first, brief and to the point:

‘Four Seasons. 327. B.’

The second:

‘Dreamer -- hell of a battle! A victory, but not the one you wanted, plainly. We think you’ve probably got some things to work through alone. At least for a little while. We’ll be off-planet whilst you focus on yourself. That’s important! Can’t just grab hands 24/7, you know? We’ll be preoccupied with a large-scale adventure. You’d have loved it, after the tepid manner in which you’re capable of love. But… I think this way is better, Michelle. JJJ!, x..

She crumpled both notes together into a tight ball with the intention of throwing it across the room, as if this trivial act would show them, but instead let it fall to the ground between her feet. It sat there, almost in confrontation, for an indeterminable amount of time. The realisation of how alone she was, of how alone she was again, was stark and heavy, and brought some respite from the bludgeoning past and a bleak, foreboding future. As she’d hoped, at least temporarily, there was only the present, and the crumpled ball of paper staring at her in accusation.

She managed to make it to the bathroom in time to vomit into the bowl. Blood in her sick, blood in her shit, blood crusting on her body and causing her clothes to stick to her. She removed her ring gear and left it in the shower. There was no need to keep hold of it. She always tried to travel light.

First, she slept for a while on the low bench, using her rucksack for a makeshift pillow. When she awoke there was no more crowd. The phone, though, still rings.

Russnow was waiting for her outside the locker room. She was surprised to see that he was still there, long after the show had ended. She presumed it was a time for celebration. Perhaps the rest of the show didn’t justify a party atmosphere. She hadn’t seen any of it. He was smiling, which she always found vaguely disconcerting.

Michelle slowly walked past him without word, her rucksack held at her side and dragging along the ground. She kept her snail’s pace towards the exit.

“I’ll see you in Cuba,” he said. She couldn’t determine whether it was a question or a statement. Either way, she shook her head. Didn’t turn back to face him.

“I’m done,” she said, simply. There was no room for argument.

“Where will you go?” he asked. She didn’t think it mattered to him. She wasn’t even sure if it mattered to her.

“I don’t know where the ship is going,” she answered. And then she left.

As she danced upon the cusp of consciousness, both in the hotel suite and in the basement den, a phone continues to ring.

Matching her internalised waltz, silent and without movement, the two dichotomous troupes continued their own elaborate dance upon the stage. She slowly drew from her pipe, held in front of her by the young, beautiful, expressionless attendant that was assigned to her. The traveller imagined this blank look was designed to appear non-judgemental but it had the opposite effect. The manner in which she looked only at the pipe and never at its smoker made the process feel mechanical and sterile. She tried not to think about the attendant. She tried not to think about anything. Another slow draw from the pipe assisted with that.

Upon the stage, two performers from separate parties peeled away from their respective troupes. In black, a tall man in a raven mask who made large, sweeping motions with his robe, spread out either side of him like massive wings. In pink, initially static and observant, one of the foxes, whose crown of feathers reflected her spotlight into the blackbird’s eyes. It appeared that, in this moment of passive contemplation, there was a sense of dull, distant recognition between the two protagonists. The traveller felt that one was dressed in black and the other in pink by a mere quirk or coincidence, and that in some alternate universe they would wear the same costume and dance the same dance, in unison instead of in contrast. Amongst the plucked strings rose beating drums, conspiring with the tireless and distant ringing of a phone to create a thumping, irrepressible rhythm.

As the two engaged in their private and secretive dispute, the rest of the patrons - assembled as a hitherto semi-interested audience - crept forward collectively, their engagement increasing with each savage and beautiful blow, their curiosity piqued by this Danse Macabre. The same was not true of their respective troupes, who were each engaged with their own insignificant movements, momentarily forming a near-static backdrop, ignorant of the ensuing melee. All except the scowling cassowary, who sat on the edge of the stage and watched the pair occupying the spotlight through a sidewards glance. She paid particular attention to the raven, whose strong and decisive movements held a strange, unnameable power over her.

More smoke entered her lungs as the peacock entered the fray. She closed her eyes, already knowing the story and finding it altogether too much to live through again. From the music alone she knew that the peacock and the raven were circling, their attacks uncoordinated but relentless. The cornered fox would lash out defensively, torn between separate but simultaneous battles.

Moments later, the scene - both imagined and real - faded away, drowned out by the shifting colours that now occupied the traveller’s mind.

She stood by the fencing around the perimeter of the harbour, lost according to the very definition of the word and further disoriented through nearly two weeks of travelling, by bus and then by boat. She wasn’t particularly concerned with the destination. She only wished to go in the opposite direction to the rest of the travelling circus, which was bound on an eastward route towards what the office had tactlessly termed an undiscovered market. Her own path ran further west: so far west that she came to the Far East, though not one of the dozenish Japanese cities with which she was vaguely familiar. This city, this sprawling coastal metropolis at the south-eastern tip of the Asian mainland, was alien in a subtly threatening way. It heaved with an oppressive buzz and a thick smog hung like a dread in the air. She lit a cigarette to give her lungs a break from it and sat on a bench, her eyes fixed upon the sea.

“你看起来迷失了。”

The woman who spoke, rather suddenly wrenching the traveller from her malaise, did so from a looming position between the bench and the water. Her name was 紫色, pronounced Zǐsè, Michelle learned a few moments later. These were the first words that 紫色 ever said to her, and - although she didn’t understand them - they were as true as anything she said afterwards.

“你是新来上海的吗？”

Michelle only returned a stare. Perhaps she offered a blink. It was difficult to recall the moment precisely. 紫色 was the first person to look directly at her since she’d stepped off the boat, in this very harbour, and she did so with eyes that shone brightly. At first, Michelle thought that this light was born of familiarity, maybe over-familiarity, but she soon knew that this energy was not externalised. It came from within, not the product of those without, and radiated irrespective of company. 紫色 was smiling but Michelle found the facial expression strange and unearned. She sucked on the end of her cigarette and said nothing.

“也许你需要一个指导，” she continued, undeterred. Michelle might’ve blinked again. “上海是一个很大的地方。Or maybe you don’t speak Mandarin?”

Slowly, as she realised that the last utterance utilised words she understood, Michelle nodded her head.

“Was that not obvious?” she asked.

“I didn’t want to assume,” 紫色 said. She held out her hand. “My name is 紫色.”

Michelle took her hand briefly in her own. The other’s grip was as firm as the ground she craved. Michelle returned to silence and neglected her cigarette, which continued to burn to the filter between her fingers. She was fixated on the girl’s sunken features, amplified further by her high cheekbones and severe jawline, framing her expressive face with a stark and drastic border. 紫色 removed a cigarette from her purse and leant forward for Michelle to light it. Her green eyes flashed brightly as she withdrew, her smile growing more subtle and suggestive.

“You don’t have a name?” 紫色 asked. Michelle thought about the question for longer than would usually be deemed appropriate.

“I don’t think I do,” she said, finally. “Not any more.”

The girl’s smile briefly grew, her energy pulsating, before she sat down on the bench. She turned away from the traveller to stare at the sea as she smoked.

Ten days later, they stood in the harbour once again, the sky scorched red by a dramatic sunset, the horizon foreboding and violent, as if its painters knew what scene they were framing.

Michelle was fixated on 紫色’s eyes, as she ever was. 紫色 stared only at the sky. It looked like the end of the world. To Michelle, it felt like the end of the world. It wasn’t. Only the end of an episode, and a brief, relatively insignificant one at that. She reached for 紫色’s hand. The gesture was only returned for a moment before 紫色 let go. Her grip was loose now. Firm ground had never seemed so far away.

On a rainy evening, one of the ten between those two bookend meetings at the harbour, 紫色 and Michelle sat in the corner of a dive bar in some forgotten corner of the city. 紫色 laughed her warm and welcoming laugh. Whilst lost within this sudden outburst, Michelle didn’t notice the two men that had arrived at her shoulder. It was only when she smelled the rotten fish on their clothes and under their fingernails that she realised they were there. It was obvious that they were fishermen. Bold fishermen, but fishermen none-the-less.

“漂亮女孩不应该自己买饮料，” the first said, whilst nodding towards 紫色 with a somewhat threatening glint in his eye. Michelle shuffled uncomfortably. 紫色 was still smiling, as if in encouragement. Their new friends misread her excitement.

“你很幸运，我们感觉很慷慨，” the other continued, emboldened by the perceived success of his friend’s opening gambit.

“你的口袋够深吗？” 紫色 asked. She held the neck of her beer bottle between her fingers and rotated it idly as she spoke. “你钓到很多鱼吗？”

The taller one, who had migrated to 紫色’s shoulder, was showing off a toothless grin. The other was breathing down Michelle’s neck. She could almost feel his paunch molesting her back. The stench of fish filled her nostrils.

“我现在正在钓鱼,” the tall man said, eliciting a thin, seedy cackle from his companion. 紫色 rolled her eyes in response. “恶人不得安息。”

紫色 said nothing. Michelle glanced at their unwelcome guests, was distressed to find the fat one staring directly back at her, and immediately averted her eyes. She stared down into her drink instead, hoping to find safety and comfort there. All hopes were futile, here and everywhere else.

“What do they want?” she asked, nervously.

“They say they’re fishing,” 紫色 explained.

“They stink of the shit already,” Michelle replied, shuddering at the sensation of the fat one’s warm, moist breath creeping down the back of her shirt. “Get rid of them.”

“If you insist,” 紫色 said, with a shrug.

“你的朋友不会说普通话？” the tall man asked.

“她学东西很慢,” 紫色 offered, whilst reaching for her bottle. Her new, unwelcome friend mistook the gesture for an opportunity, reaching towards the bar and 紫色’s hand.

He had barely brushed against her fingers when she tore away from his grasp. She flipped her bottle over in her hand and drove the neck down into the tall man’s outstretched digits. The bottleneck exploded into a fountain of shards upon impact, the resultant teeth biting into both the bar and the fisherman’s fingers, unrelenting and indiscriminate in their sudden hunger. 紫色 removed her hand from the upturned bottle and, along with the other one, placed them both into her pockets.

The fisherman stared down at the makeshift pincer. For a handful of moments he was shocked into silence. Then, as blood pooled around his hand - an image that bred an unfortunate, unwanted deja vu, a sensation that Michelle promptly shook loose - he began to panic. When he moved his hand, the glass teeth gnawed more deeply into what was left of his fingers. The fat one finally stopped breathing down Michelle’s neck to help his friend, yanking the bottle loose with a sickening crunch that turned Michelle’s stomach. It was loud and strange enough to draw the attention of one of the bartenders, who was understandably disturbed by the puddle of blood and flesh that had suddenly appeared next to his ice bucket. He screamed some unintelligible words in the direction of the fishermen. The tall one scooped up the tip of his right index finger with his as-yet-unmaimed left hand and the pair exited with their tails between their legs.

Michelle and 紫色 left shortly afterwards. They smoked a cigarette at the harbour, watching the moon rise from the black surface of the sea.

“That was unexpected,” Michelle said, suddenly. Neither of them had spoken since they’d left the bar, and the traveller’s abrupt words cut through the night like a ship’s beam through the fog.

“Unexpected?” 紫色 replied. “What was unexpected?”

“The violence,” Michelle answered. “Not that I’m a stranger to it, but… that was unexpected.”

“Sometimes it’s necessary,” 紫色 explained, with another shrug, a flippant and non-committal affectation. Michelle thought about this whilst she finished her cigarette.

“When is it necessary?” Michelle asked, in earnest. 紫色 didn’t answer.

Somewhere, perhaps over the sea that the two stood upon the edge of, a phone rings…

Only some nights were ruined by marauding interlopers. Others were scuppered by Michelle’s premature departure to the basement dens she’d become familiar with during her short stay in the city. 紫色 was never best pleased about playing second fiddle to the pipe, but kept her misgivings to herself. It was, afterall, 紫色 who introduced Michelle to the owner of the den she now frequented. She wasn’t to know about Michelle’s addictive personality, ofcourse.

Some nights, the rare privileged few, they would evade both of these potential torpedoes. On one such occasion they found themselves sitting on a round, central table at a cocktail bar in the Xintiandi district. Proceedings had been standard for the first three beers, with the smalltalk given life thanks to 紫色’s refusal to talk small. When she returned from the bar for a fourth time, her tray contained the customary two bottles along with a pair of amber shots. Michelle smelled the whiskey as soon as the tray was set down on the table. She hadn’t done shots of whiskey in a bar since… well, some memories shouldn’t be dwelled upon.

One round of shots turned into several, and soon enough Michelle found herself engaged in an impromptu contest with vaguely defined rules. As they sank shot after shot, 紫色 regaled her companion - temporarily her opponent, in some ill-defined way - with the story of her one journey to Europe, undertaken as she entered her liberated and naive early twenties. She had flown to Paris and met a boy there, wasting four of her six weeks on a summer romance that eventually diminished into nothing. Deciding to make the most of her final fortnight, she boarded a train to London, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and eager to make up for lost time. The remaining fourteen days of her European adventure were spent in a British border facility owing to irregularities with her visa, her eventual release coming just in time for her to catch a train back to Paris and fly home.

“I think the lesson is an obvious one,” 紫色 announced, at the end of the tale. Michelle thought it was a sorry story but the other saw the humour in it.

“The British are awful?” Michelle surmised.

“More than one lesson is obvious,” 紫色 corrected herself. “You shouldn’t delay too long. Opportunities don’t wait around forever.”

“Maybe you didn’t wait long enough,” Michelle suggested. 紫色 sighed, shook her head, and ordered another round.

Through all this, despite the lack of lecherous trogs to rain on their parade, Michelle wore her anxieties plainly upon her sleeve. They were born of their public setting, as indicated by her constant, uneasy glances in each and every direction. It was as if she was taking a frequent inventory of the other bodies in the room, half-expecting most of them to be in conspiracy against her. Michelle’s discomfort was contagious, and soon enough - in a move that the traveller took as submission - the other orchestrated their departure. The streets of Shanghai were cold and hostile at two in the morning, and the pair made their way wordlessly to 紫色’s apartment, their silence a sign of their resignation. To each other and to the night.

[ “These Days” || Nico. ]

紫色’s apartment was nestled upon the twenty-fourth floor of a tower block in the Jing’an district, with a view commanding the entirety of the city and much of the East China Sea beyond. Michelle stood upon her balcony, naked but for the black and gold scaramuccia mask that she’d found on 紫色’s dresser. The early morning air was cold against her pale, coarse skin. She sucked on the end of her cigarette, a thin suggestion of morning light appearing as an orange band above the sea.

They’d arrived two hours ago. Some of that was spent talking about the apartment, skirting around the obvious and unexplained luxury that 紫色 apparently lived in. The view, the bookcase, the Monet that was hung proudly above the fireplace. Afterwards, they fumbled around with each other’s clothes, Michelle struggling to recapture any of her former dexterity, remaining clumsy and ill-focused even in this intimate moment. Her hesitation continued when she was led into the bedroom. She spent most of her time hidden beneath the sheets, contemplating a tattoo of a bird emerging from its egg on the other’s inner thigh. The hatchling was already old, but still retained a pride in the way it held itself, the pronounced, dark green casque atop its head a statement of its uniquity.

“Is everything okay down there?” 紫色 had asked, whilst Michelle was buried beneath the covers. All movement but for the traveller’s gentle breathing had stopped some time ago. She had made an excuse and come outside to smoke, collecting the mask from 紫色’s dresser and inspecting it upon her in the mirror whilst on the way. She returned only when the oncoming sun began to peek out from above the sea.

Michelle stood in the bedroom doorway, watching 紫色 stub out her own cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table. She turned to face Michelle with a passive, non-judgemental, vacant expression.

“It’s cold outside,” 紫色 said, dully. Michelle didn’t give a reply. “You want to try again?”

Michelle nodded her head. She knelt down atop the bed next to the other, bright shards of light now pouring through the open window. 紫色 ran a pair of fingers delicately along the nose of her mask, studying her hard with her sunken eyes, the universe around them on hold as they became lost in one another.

The night before 紫色 left, Michelle met her outside of the 上海大剧院. She finished her cigarette as the other woman emerged from a taxi, looking radiant in a white cheongsam with pastel-coloured chrysanthemums embroidered around the neck and upon the sleeves. The traveller suddenly felt somewhat underdressed in her perennially casual attire, the only addition to her standard black ensemble the scaramuccia mask she’d taken from 紫色’s apartment three nights prior. The well-dressed woman’s smile shone brightly as she approached, lighting a cigarette of her own and joining Michelle in idly watching the passers-by.

“You aren’t going to tell me how great I look?” 紫色 asked, playfully.

“You look great,” Michelle offered. The words were clumsy and fell out of her mouth between drags from another cigarette.

“Other adjectives would’ve been acceptable,” 紫色 replied. “Stunning, incredible, radiant...”

“Radiant was what came to mind when you stepped out of the taxi,” Michelle said. 紫色 smiled at the commendable save.

“Thank you,” she said, taking Michelle by the hand and leading her to the back of the queue. “And you look vaguely terrifying.”

“Only vaguely?”

“Only vaguely.”

Michelle didn’t know what ballet they were watching until they took their seats. When Anna Karenina watched a railway worker throw himself before a speeding train, the traveller felt as though she was removed from her body, floating above the stalls and frozen in time. The ballet and the novel upon which it was based both dredged up bad memories, although at this stage it was difficult to remember any good ones. The performance was adapted for its current audience but the general thrust of it was still familiar enough to spike Michelle’s anxiety. The dread built as the play gathered steam, like the distant train that would, at its climax, offer Anna her exit from the stage.

The curtain was drawn for the intermission. When she suggested that they go to the bathroom and to smoke, it wasn’t Michelle’s intention to leave before the second act. Perhaps it was 紫色’s decision to remain in her seat that prompted the escape. Or, more likely, it was the long, searching look that the traveller was confronted with in the mirror when she removed her mask to splash water on her face. With the scaramuccia sitting atop her head, its long nose nose standing erect like a horn or a casque, she experienced a sudden and insurmountable sense of dread when she considered the play’s conclusion. Anna’s violent and abrupt resignation, her acceptance that nothing at all was better than the torments that plagued her, was as real as it had been in Moscow and in Tretyakova, and of course in Mexico City.

She paused as she reached the theatre’s exit. She closed her eyes and tried to remember 紫色’s face, as if this picture might drag her back inside. Amidst the buzz of the smokers beginning to return to their seats, and the distant, incessant ringing of a phone, she found it impossible to conjure the image. She left the theatre and, lighting a cigarette, started out in the direction of the basement den.

The next day, 紫色 arranged to meet Michelle at the harbour. It had been ten days since they’d last been here, exchanging their first awkward words. Now, they had returned to exchange their final ones. The traveller was fixated upon her guide, specifically her sunken, green eyes, reflective and sorrowful. 紫色, in turn, stared only at the sky. It was scorched by a violent sunset, the panoramic framing their goodbye a foreboding picture.

The end of the world, at least for Michelle. It always was.

She reached for 紫色’s hand and 紫色 withdrew it after only a brief moment. Michelle felt cold and, inevitably, alone.

“Where will you go?”

“Yunnan province,” 紫色 explained, although the explanation meant little to Michelle. She seemed as distant as the place she was going. “I have family there. I’m getting the train, but it felt fitting to meet you here. To say goodbye.”

“I could come with you?” Michelle offered, pathetically. 紫色 shook her head with her cigarette perched between her lips. Her hands were stuffed into her pockets.

“They don’t have basement dens in the village,” she said. The comment wasn’t meant to be stiff but it felt it nonetheless. “Besides, I think you have to work on yourself right now.”

“That’s what everybody always says,” Michelle replied. 紫色 finished her cigarette and flicked the end into the water.

“I don’t know what everybody always says,” she answered. “I know that I’m saying it now.”

She collected her bag and, after delicately lifting her mask from her eyes, kissed Michelle delicately on the cheek. Her expression was passive. She turned away, as if to leave.

“紫色,” the traveller said. The other waited. Turned around. “My name… my name is Michelle.”

For the first time since they’d arrived at the harbour that day, a sombre mood pervading the atmosphere, 紫色 afforded herself a smile.

“You don’t have a name,” she said.

Her eyes opened. The high, shrill ringing of a phone snapped her back to reality. It was closer now. Less abstract.

The male fox, the crownless companion, lay dead upon the stage. He had entered the battle to defend the other, who now knelt between the raven and the peacock. The performance reached its final throes, the victors emerging from the smoke of battle. The rest of the pink troupe - the bear, the ocelot, and the octopus - had already withdrawn, leaving the remaining fox to face her fate alone. She seemed diminished, somehow. By defeat and by betrayal.

The traveller had drifted in and out of consciousness throughout most of the performance’s final act but knew how it went. It was the same every night. Battered into submission, the fox would now retreat into the night, the stage yielded to her conquerors. First, though, they demanded their price. The raven and the peacock each took a feather that matched their own from her crown, returning it to their plumage, as if it was previously taken or, in a different time, willingly given. As a reminder and a warning, they then plucked the long, golden jewel from the fox’s crown, a token of this victory, devastating and absolute.

Left alone upon the stage, a solitary feather remaining on her sorry crown, the fox withered. From her seat upon the scene’s edge, a pair of keen, yellow eyes peered out from beneath a mask. Long after the other two birds had retreated, the third still lingered, ever watchful.

Michelle was sundered upon the other side of the curtain, straddling the boundary of consciousness, between dream and memory. She stood at the railing at the edge of a harbour, the scene’s soundtrack the gentle washing of the waves and, occasionally, the ringing of a phone carried upon the back of the wind. She knew where she was.

Elsewhere.

Manzanillo. The day after Mexico City.

She stared at the ship that she knew was hers. She was early and had time to wait and watch. It wasn’t hard to find passage, with plenty of self-proclaimed captains looking for replacements for their crew. Even with her limiting proviso that she wouldn’t work with fishermen, she had the choice of a handful of vessels with disparate destinations. Shanghai sounded far enough away, though past experience told her that it never really was.

As she waited next to the railing at the harbour in Manzanillo, familiar footsteps approached from behind. She would know them anywhere.

“I was told you were all off-planet,” she said, without turning. “Some large-scale adventure or another.”

“Not all of us,” came the reply. Gerald stood at her shoulder, following her gaze across the Pacific and wafting a column of her errant smoke from his face. “Where are you going?”

“Shanghai,” she answered. There was no reason to keep secrets. Not from him.

“What’s in Shanghai?” he asked. She shrugged her shoulders. “You want me to come with you?”

“Uncle thinks I need to work out some things on my own,” she replied.

“And what do you think?” enquired Gerald, almost immediately. She thought about the question and flicked away her cigarette.

“I think some time away from everything couldn’t hurt,” she answered, struggling to return his gaze. He nodded his head in agreement. “But it’s good to know that you’re here. On the same planet as me, at least.”

“I’m not so sure,” Gerald quipped, with a wry smile. Michelle tried to return the gesture but the attempt fell flat. Grayson appreciated the effort. “Look, I’ve got something for you. I know how you feel about these things but… well, you’ve got to trust me. Sometimes. I need to be able to find you. You can throw it away the second you’re back.”

He produced a cell phone from his pocket and held it out between them. She stared at the glass screen, uncomfortable with the way in which this black mirror reflected her image. She could hear a phone ringing but it wasn’t this one. Or, it was, but not right now. It was difficult to explain with her addled mind. She took the phone from Gerald’s hand and placed it in her pocket.

“How did you know I would be here?” she asked.

“Russnow said you were getting a ship,” he explained. “I assumed it would be sailing in the opposite direction to the rest of the circus. All signs pointed here. I’m just glad I made it in time. When do you leave?”

“Now,” she answered. “In a few minutes. It was good to see you, Gerald.”

“I’ll see you again soon,” he promised.

Elsewhere.

A Ming era Ta sofa beneath the window. A Quanyi chair wrought from amber huanghuali. A tall, narrow lamp that bloomed like the Yingkesong tree. A canopy bed from the Qianlong period.

A phone rings. Sunlight creeps through a gap in the curtains. An assortment of limbs protrudes from the bed. Finally, one of these hitherto lifeless forms drags themselves up and steps barefoot onto the wooden floor. Arriving at a desk in the far corner of the suite - upon the top of which rested her black and gold scaramuccia alongside a traditional shamanic mask depicting a cunning, auburn fox - she began to search through one of its drawers. Eventually, she found the phone, and - somewhat surprised that it still had battery - lifted it to her ear.

“紫色?”

This opening gambit resulted in an awkward, confused silence. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t remember her face: she could recall the feeling.

“Michelle?” came the reply, delivered in a familiar voice. “You know Mandarin now?”

“Gerald,” she said. “It’s early.”

“It’s really not,” he answered. “It’s after midday there. I looked it up. It’s earlier here.”

“Where are you?” she asked, whilst sitting down on the sill and pushing open a window. She settled in by lighting a cigarette.

“I’m back in Raleigh,” he replied. “It’s just after midnight. Can’t sleep.”

“And you thought you’d call me?”

“And I thought I’d call you.”

“Well, it’s good to hear your voice,” she said, honestly.

“Seemed like you were expecting somebody else,” he replied. “Has anyone else called?”

“No,” she said. “Only you.”

There was a brief pause. Michelle made an inference that was soon validated.

“Should I be expecting a call?”

Gerald hesitated again. He quickly changed the subject.

“Will you stay in Shanghai for long?”

“No,” she answered, quickly. “But I don’t know if I’m ready to come back yet, either. If that’s what you’re getting at. I told Russnow that I was done. That was only a month ago. Things haven’t changed. I just…”

She trailed off. The body in her bed turned over. Reorganised the sheets. Continued to sleep. She smoked her cigarette, struggling to find the words.

“Go on,” Gerald prompted, gently. “It’s me, Michelle.”

“How can I show my face there again?” she asked, her eyes darting from the early afternoon scene beneath the window of her hotel room and to the black and gold mask on top of her desk. “After what happened? You saw it, Gerald. Everybody saw it. And, in reality, it’s only the natural culmination of what had been building for the previous year. First Black, then Peacock, and then Black and Peacock. But you remember that, of course. You were there with me, when they took it all away from us.”

“They still have it now,” Gerald replied. Amidst the self-pity and shame and unending sorrow, anger stirred for the first time since she’d regained consciousness in Mexico City. This simple utterance drew a simple image, one powerful enough to awaken this dormant emotion, albeit briefly. “They still have everything.”

Michelle didn’t reply. Didn’t know how to reply. She watched a postman entering the tower block across the road from her hotel.

“Who is going to call me?” she asked.

“There’s a woman,” he began, with trepidation. “She spoke to Russnow first. Then she spoke to me.”

“And you gave her this number?”

“I did,” he said, without an apology. “But I don’t think she’s going to call. She gave me the impression of being a very direct woman. I think she’s going to come to Shanghai. I think she’s going to come and find you.”

“It’s a long way to come for nothing,” Michelle replied, with a derisive snort. She picked up her mask from the desk and, her cigarette held between her lips, pulled it over her eyes. “I have been hiding behind a mask here, where nobody even knows me. There is no Dreamer anymore, Gerald. There’s barely even a Michelle.”

Another pause. A deep breath on the other end of the line.

“As sad as that is,” he began. “That might just be perfect.”

Michelle didn’t know what he meant. Didn’t ask.

“What’s her name?” she asked.

“Her name is Wanda,” he said.

’Don’t confront me with my failures. I had not forgotten them.’