#Irong Lung

[sodafrog13]

you're a long way from home, son of eden

[leah1ssleepy]

Now live with a double feature of Squirrel Stapler and Iron Lung! Come say hi :3

https://twitch.tv/leahissleepy

[amee-racle-ofmyown]

ego doodles

[glsneeg-enthusiast]

agahhdhrheuehahshxh

[king-dra]

i saw iron lung trending on twitter and was like "oh yeah i remember that game" and i clicked the link and immediately got ran over by a semi-truck

[coutelier]

Irongate - The Natural Order

~1000 word excerpt-

Kaya and Sayuri just ran, vaulting over a fence into the next garden. Sayuri tapped on a black window, but Kaya wanted to get much, much farther away, grabbing an aluminum baseball bat from the lawn before dragging her friend round the side to the street.

“The car!” Sayuri panted, fumbling in her jacket for the keys only be pulled away from it.

“It won’t start,” Kaya explained as they hurried, “see? It’s like some kind of dampening field. Anything electrical just dead. Keep moving!”

And so they ran. No direction, no destination - just away. They ran until their lungs and muscles ached and they could run no more. They came upon what looked like a school building, collapsing behind a brick wall in an empty parking lot.

Sayuri counted her breaths, thumbs and middle fingers touching each other, Kaya recognizing it as the pose she went into to center herself. “You holding together?” She asked.

“Just. Is it-?”

“Still after us? Probably, yeah,” Kaya sighed, rolling her head against the brick. “I’m sorry. It was just after me, but now-“

“Stop,” Sayuri commanded, “you had no way of knowing what it would do. It’s pointless feeling guilty about it.”

Perhaps. Kaya couldn’t help but feel that if she kept going past the lighthouse and never returned to town, then maybe Lumina and Neil would have lived. But she didn’t know. Maybe these things were going to come for everyone, eventually, no matter what she did. She did know one thing; the streetlights were still dark. She didn’t know the range of the dampening field, but didn’t think it could be this far. Which meant it had followed them.

“Fuck it,” Kaya rolled to her feet, her baseball bat clanging on the asphalt.

Sayuri gasped, “what are you doing?!”

“Pretty sure I’m going to die,” Kaya admitted, thumping the ground again, “so you know what? I just don’t care anymore. So come on out, Treebeard! Let’s do this!”

There was thud, but not from her bat. The creature landed on the other side of the lot just in front of the school entrance. Kaya had no way of knowing it even understood what she was saying, but it seemed to be accepting her challenge, slowly extending an arm from which a blade grew out of.

“Yeah, yeah - nice trick,” Kaya chided, battering up, “now get yourself over here and lets fight.” The creature responded by extending its other arm and growing a second blade. Kaya rolled her eyes, “now that’s just cheating.”

She knew these things could move very fast when they wanted, but it took its time advancing across the lot, perhaps wanting to draw out its victims hopeless struggle for as long as possible. Kaya was the only thing between it and Sayuri, who she hoped would have the sense to get herself out of here. But the lights were all out. There was nowhere left to one, no one they could call. Kaya hadn’t achieved much in her life. She supposed at least her mother would miss her, but-

The gates blasted open, the creature finding itself in the glare of the headlights of a silver van, brakes screeching wildly as it struck. The creature twisted through the air, landing on its feet as burning rubber filled the air as the van began to slide sideways, a dark cylinder hanging out the door. The creature attempted to pounce on the metal beast, only to be pushed back again by a pulse from the cylinder, a wave catching and flinging the creature through the wall of the school.

Kaya, surprised to be alive, helped up Sayuri before inching around the van to glimpse their savior. First she saw big leather boots touch down on the ground. She followed them up; gray tights, blue skirt, tool belt, blazer, all worn by a pale blonde whose eyes were covered by leather and metal goggles while she held what looked like some super-sized taser. “Jennifer?”

Jennifer ignored her, focusing on the rubble where the creature had crashed. “I know you’re no spriggan,” she said to her it, her voice becoming louder and angrier the more steps she took toward it. “Where did you come from? Who made you?!” With a sharp intake of breath Jenn found herself pulled back around.

“It could still be dangerous,” Kaya told her. “Let’s get out of here before it wakes up.”

She wasn’t happy, but Jenn silently agreed that was the wisest thing to do. A breeze brushed by them on their way to the vehicle, carrying a voice, a whisper that said:

A i r h a r t…

It hadn’t come from the rubble. Glancing around there was a child - a small boy - standing at the entrance to the school. He showed no emotion as he regarded the three women through eyes that had no whites.

“This is unexpected,” a girl whose eyes were likewise entirely black stepped through the busted gate.

“But fitting that you should appear now,” another boy walked out from the hole the creature left.

Then back to first child to say, “at the end.”

Unsure which one to focus on, Jenn settled on the first boy. “Who am I speaking to?”

“I will leave that,” said the girl.

“For you to figure out,” said the other boy.

Then the first said, “I believe you know where to start looking.”

Sayuri muttered through the side of her mouth, “these kids are giving me whiplash.”

“Yeah,” Kaya nodded, “I preferred the thing trying to kill us. Fight or flight; that’s simple. This is just freaking weird.”

Jenn ignored them, continuing to question, “what do you want?”

The children were beginning to circle to van. “To preserve the natural order.”

“Natural order?”

“That parents die,” a boy said, the girl finishing, “so that their children may live.”

“Parents?”

“You spent so long waiting for yours to come home,” the chorus said, “if you had just accepted that they abandoned you, instead of boring your supposed friends with your mawkish sentimentality-“

“SHUT UP!” Jennifer was red, barely keeping her blood from erupting. “What do you know about my parents?”

“More than you. But if you want answers, you will have to find me. The real me. But you don’t have much time. I would say about one day. Starting now.”

“Why? What happens in a day?”

“Life is change, would you not agree? And a big change is coming,” the children turned, hopping and skipping over walls and buildings, disappearing into the night.

[lazycomet]

UNA BÈSTIA INCONTROLABLE / IRON LUNG tour Aug 2014

Sun 10 - Seattle WA @ Black Lodge w/ DREAMDECAY

Mon 11 - Olympia WA  Tue 12 - Portland OR @ w/ Bi-Marks  Wed 13 - DAY OFF Thu 14 - San Francisco CA @ El Rio (21+) w/  Fri 15 - Oakland CA @ 1234 Go! w/ Sat 16 - Los Angeles CA @ Los Globos w/ Green Beret Sun 17 (afternoon) - Los Angeles CA @ Vacation Vinyl Sun 17 (night) - Ventura CA @ w/ Condition Mon 18 - DAY OFF Tue 19 - Phoenix AZ @ w/ Growth, Destruction Unit & Detached Objects Wed 20 - Albuquerque NM @ Thu 21 - Marfa TX @ Padre’s Fri 22 - Austin TX  Sat 23 - Austin TX  Sun 24 - Houston TX @ Mangoe’s Mon 25 - Tulsa OK @ Soundpony (21+) Tue 26 - St. Louis MO Wed 27 - Springfield IL @ Black Sheep Thu 28 (5pm) - Chicago IL @ Saki Records w/ Stay Asleep Thu 28 (8pm) - Chicago IL @ Township (18+) w/ Violent End, Sea Of Shit Fri 29 - New York City NY Sat 30 - New York City NY

[off-my-chest]

Iron Lung - Temple of Boom

[sodafrog13]

sorta messily thrown together but!! '23 art summary ^^ i love using colors that would give a printer a heart attack

[coutelier]

Tenley Teaches a Lesson

This excerpt carries on from the last one (there may be a break for another scene focusing on a different character between them in the final version - I’ll move them around a bit then decide what I think works best):

Tenley Teaches a Lesson

Klaus, Tenley decided, was a sad man. She didn’t know what had made him sad and couldn’t be distracted by that right now either, so she left him and the library just as bells rang and other children poured into the halls. Tenley allowed herself to be swept up, bobbing around in the current until it took her outside. She overheard a great deal of chatter about shows and games and gossip about other children but had no interest in any of it. With her new senses Tenley was aware of so much more happening in the world, of patterns and colors no one else could see. Yet other things seemed less real. But then none of this had ever been real to her. This school had never been her life and it never would be.

Still, until she got word from the other Changelings she only had time to kill. There were several alley ways around so Tenley decided to just pick one to see where it led, wondering if Irongate had a museum. She’d always wanted to go a museum and look at all the bones. Mother rarely took her places, and one small upside of all this was that she could do pretty much whatever she wanted now. But Tenley immediately felt guilty for thinking there was any size of upside. She had to make sure people got what they deserved, then, maybe… she turned the corner and was immediately ran into by a boy. He was about the same age and hadn’t been looking where he was going either, but whereas Tenley immediately sprang back up he just pushed himself to his hands and knees and sat there, shoulders heaving as he moaned and wheezed.

“Careful!” Tenley grumpily admonished, annoyed that even with these new senses she’d allowed her mind to wander from her surroundings again. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you making that noise?” As she brushed herself she realized that the sound was one she hadn’t really heard in a long time. He wouldn’t look at her, so she got up and knelt in front of him, gently lifting his chin to see his wet red eyes. He’d been running from something and whatever it was must have frightened him. “What’s your name?” She asked.

“San… Sanjay,” he sniffed.

Tenley used to cry when she was much smaller. She would cry when she was hurt or hungry or afraid. But she’d learned something that this boy obviously hadn’t yet. “Tears are just wasting energy, Sanjay. No-one’s coming to help. Best learn to help yourself.”

Sanjay squinted in confusion, but then they saw why he was running. Three other boys hollering and running up the alley, one of them on a bicycle, and two more appeared at the other end to block his escape. They were on him fast, lifting and pinning him against the wall. One of them barked at Tenley, “this has got nothing to do with you, little bitch. Get lost.”

Tenley really didn’t like being told what to do, nor being called that word. The temptation to punch him in the nose was great, although it would have probably killed him. As she mulled it over the boy noticed that she hadn’t left. “You deaf or something? Get out of her before we hurt you to. Think we won’t because you’re a girl?”

She smiled sweetly at him, backing off and starting to walk away. They were right - she really didn’t know what was going on here and it was really none of her business. Fellow humans… why should she care about any of them? Except, Sanjay had been running and was scared. And it was five against one which wasn’t exactly fair…

With Sanjay pinned all hissed and snarled insults and started to punch him as he sobbed and whimpered, unable to fight back, the tormentors relishing the complete control that they had. Until one of them was yanked by his backpack and went flying across the alley. He slammed into the opposite wall, the pack absorbing enough of the force not to cripple him before he slid down into a seated position.

“What?” Tenley said as the other’s gaped at her. “Did you think I wouldn’t hurt you because I’m a girl? I wasn’t going to because I was trying to be nice, but then you jerks went and upset me.”

One of the boys lunged at her, Tenley deflecting then spinning. Seconds later he was heaving and sobbing on the floor, clutching his belly. Even without Titania’s strength it didn’t seem like these boys would be any match for her. Another of them tried with much the same result - Tenley just had to be very careful not to hit too hard. They were jerks but they weren’t people she wanted to kill.

The next one swung at her with a baseball, but she was too fast for him to connect and each subsequent swing of his only got slower, until he overreached and she swept his legs from under him. That meant there was just one left, who just stood next to Sanjay gawking, a patch appearing on the bully’s pants.

“I was just making things even,” Tenley said, wishing she could turn off her enhanced sense of smell. “You two carry on with what you were doing.”

The bully remained still and pale, until Sanjay took advantage of the moment to punch him hard in the cheek. The bully fell, probably more from the surprise than the pain, but Sanjay fell over him, pinning him down, as face taut as he screamed and bore his teeth, fist raining down again and again. After a moment of this, with the bully sobbing uncontrollably, Sanjay stood, shaking, shivering, first looking at Tenley then at his own fist. It seemed to her that it was now the later he was scared of, but before she could say anything he turned from her and ran.

Odd boy, Tenley thought. Could it really be that he had never fought back before? Never tried? She’d fought with her own mother. Admittedly that was because mother had made her. She had done a good deed here, hadn’t she? She didn’t feel as warm and fuzzy about it as she thought she might. Sanjay’s reaction was another reminder that this just wasn’t her world.

Oh well. She leaned down and took sunglasses from the pocket of one of the still squirming boys, while another was crawling back to his bicycle. “Say,” she grinned as she flicked open and put the shades over her eyes. “That’s a nice bike…”

[coutelier]

Another excerpt, a bit longer than the last couple I posted. According to Scrivener exactly 3000 words, which pleases me (although proofreading and editing may uncover some missing words etc - whatever - I’ll just take some away some place because I’m keeping that number).

Summer had ended. Now the skies were gray, the leaves brown, and from here on the days would only grow shorter and darker still. Kaya had ignored Sergeant Daramy’s warning, taking Greenback out to a clearing in the woods. She wasn’t one hundred per cent sure what instinct had brought her back; maybe she just wanted to return to the last place she remembered being happy - the site of her last great adventure. The clearing looked a different now - smaller - and the last time she’d been here there had been stars above. All of her life was here in the car, so after some rummaging she had a screen on her lap with an old hard drive hanging from it’s side.

“You’re looking at the past,” a girl inside the computer said. Jennifer, her voice made a little tinny by the machine’s speaker, but Kaya could her as clear as if she were in the car next to her. This would have been over ten years ago, when twilight still lasted forever. They’d ridden out here on their bicycles to find a fairy circle, then clasped hands and swung each other around until falling from exhaustion to look up at the twinkles in the sky.

Kaya’s younger self also lay on her back, leg kicking to a beat only she ever heard, face scrunched as she responded, “huh?” Her hair had been brown back then.

“The stars,” pretty blonde Jennifer answered, one arm already reaching for them. “They’re so far away that the light from them takes years to reach us, so what we see now is really how they were a long time ago. We wouldn’t even know the Sun had exploded for eight minutes.”

Little Kaya bolted upright, gasping, “the Sun has exploded?!”

Jenn seemed to catch some of the panic, flustered and confused as she too gasped, “What? No! I don’t think so. At least not for a very long time, probably.”

“I don’t get it,” little Kaya relaxed again. “Why are you so weird?”

“It’s not weird,” huffed Jennifer, “it’s science.”

“It’s freaky. Remember you made Cass cry because you said her cat was a zombie?”

“I said there was a fifty-fifty chance it was alive or dead,” Jenn sighed, “I just wanted her to let the poor thing out of the box. It was just a thing I read.”

“Didn’t you also read we’d see fairies out here?”

As the twilight dream came to an end, both girls had been disappointed. Jennifer’s book, ‘The Hidden People’, had indeed promised that being in the circle at twilight would allow them to glimpse the fae realm. Alas, the only lights they saw were the stars above and traffic lights from Irongate in the valley below.

“I guess not everything in books is true,” Jennifer conceded. “That’s why we have to test them. Maybe the camera saw something?”

Big red Kaya watching the scene on her laptop hadn’t yet seen anything unusual, cracking open a beer as the girls on screen lay in the circle a while longer. “We’re not little kids anymore,” her younger self said. “Maybe we should think about doing things a little more, you know, normal.”

Jennifer’s nose wrinkled, “that doesn’t sound like fun.”

“It could be; music, parties, games.”

“We do those things anyway.”

“But I mean with other people. It’s,” young Kaya chewed as she searched for the right word, “it’s networking.”

“Networking?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t get it.” Of course Jennifer would only understand that word in the context of machines and computers. Big Kaya chided her younger self for being a dumbass - she was never going to have it better than she had then - and waited for Jennifer to finally stand as the last of the Sun’s rays vanished. “We should get back,” she said, “dad’s probably looking for us.”

Little Kaya groaned having just gotten comfortable, “Do we have to?” She was never in a hurry to get home. Still wasn’t.

“We should have been back hours ago,” Jenn explained, holding out a hand to help Kaya up, “I’m probably going to be grounded again.” Unlike with other fathers, Jennifer never had cause to be fearful of her dad’s threats.

Young Kaya took the hand, but waited a moment to gaze up at Jenn with her fair skin and hair, almost silver-white now in the moonlight. “You look like a fairy,” she said. Jennifer obviously didn’t know how to respond to that, blushing nervously until Kaya was up and she went to pack away her book and other things.

This was the part big Kaya had been waiting for. As Jennifer picked up her backpack there was faint noise that reminded Kaya of hearing a tap left running in the bathroom at night. Then a gust of wind forced Jennifer’s dress to wrap tightly around her body pulling her backwards a few steps. Only there was no wind - Kaya rewound and played the video again to be sure, and indeed the trees and bushes behind Jennifer hadn’t moved. It was more like something had run past her very fast. Something that neither they or the camera could see. Jennifer at the time knew something was off as well, her blue eyes fixing on the shrubs and undergrowth. In particular there was a gap where branches touched to create a door, a portal to an inky black realm beyond. Before young Kaya registered what was happening, Jenn had already gotten her flashlight and was sticking her head in.

“What are you doing?” Little Kaya ran to her friend and the thorny arch, but Jenn was already through and searching the undergrowth.

“There’s something here,” she explained.

“What thing?”

“I don’t know, but it whispered to me. It said my name…”

“Okay, whatever it is it sounds creepy. Get back here!”

Unable to see anything, it seemed Jenn was going to comply. Then the ground beneath her shook. Jenn struggled to keep her footing, but then she was standing over nothing and being swallowed by the Earth, Kaya lunging to catch her but just too late. Young Kaya was then on her knees staring into a gaping hole, crying desperately, “Jenn! Jenn Air! Are you okay?!”

It was a minute before a faint plaintiff echo replied, “I’m okay! I think I’m in a cave.”

Irongate had started it’s life as a mining town, with shafts and tunnels as well as natural caves scattered all over the surrounding hills and valleys. Most were abandoned now as the town’s economy changed to technology and a university, leaving behind just a few remnants of its past, like the few elderly folks that still recalled the ‘good old days’ when most of their friends were crushed or choked by natural gas - while bemoaning the youth for not wanting to literally put their lives on the line everyday to help a billionaire fill his liqueur cabinet.

But big Kaya was digressing. Her younger self out of concern for her friend decided - without much thought - that she couldn’t leave Jenn alone and jumped into the hole after her. The camera however had been left in the clearing, so to confirm if what she’d seen down there was real she was going to have to leave the car and find another way into the cave - she was too big now to fit down the slide.

She remembered back then that, after bouncing down the tunnel with flecks of dirt tumbling all about her, Jennifer had jumped out the way just in time to avoid getting kicked in the face. Kaya had landed triumphantly on her feet, but Jenn seemed less than impressed.

“What are you doing?” She’d asked.

“What do you mean?” Little Kaya was genuinely surprised by her reaction. “I’m helping you get out of here.”

Luckily Jenn still had her flashlight or they wouldn’t have been able to see a thing. She illuminated the hole they’d fallen through, nearly a foot above their heads, asking, “suppose that’s the only way out?” Sure enough, even if they could have gotten up there the slide was too steep and the sides too loose to climb all the way back to the surface. It was a rare occasion when Jenn lost her temper but she did then, repeatedly slapping Kaya’s arm, hissing “idiot!”

But Kaya had always been the stronger of the two, easily shoving Jenn to the ground. “Relax,” she’d urged her friend, “there are loads of tunnels around here. Bound to be another way out.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. Gangs use them to hide all their stuff from police.”

Jennifer had eyed her a little suspiciously, “how do you know that?”

“Networking,” young Kaya exclaimed with her finger pointing up. “You can learn a lot from people you know. Not everything is in books.”

Although reluctant to put her trust in the sayings of ‘people’ Jennifer had seen they had no choice regardless, so that night they set about exploring the caves for an exit. What they found was another world. As they’d ventured forth, it soon became apparent that there was no need for Jenn’s flashlight as ahead of them the tunnel lit up. Thinking they’d found the way out they ran, and when they burst out the tunnel’s mouth they were in a forest. But not like the forest they’d started in - this was a forest made of luminescent mushrooms of all sizes, all glowing in various hues of pink and blue, all nestled in a cavern the size of a village.

The girls joined hands, dumbstruck until Kaya exhaled, “was this in the book?”

Jenn shook her head. “I think we have to go through it,” she’d said.

There had been a steep slope between them and the strange effervescent forest floor which they tackled the same way they’d tackled stairs when they were even younger - bouncing down it on their butts. It was then that Kaya cut her hand on a sharp, triangular piece of stone, spitting and swearing as the burning sensation spread across her palm. Fortunately, Jennifer had been prepared, coming to her with plasters from her backpack.

“A fairy arrow,” Jenn had said upon inspecting the stone. “Good find. It’s supposed to protect the holder from evil magics - here,” she offered it to Kaya who, after all, had found it and was still trying to shake out the pain.

Little Kaya pocketed it in her jeans. “You really think there might be fairies here?”

“I don’t know,” Jennifer admitted, “but, we’ll find out together.”

The mushrooms had been all sizes, some tiny ones forming a thick carpet across the cavern floor that squelched beneath their feet, while others grew to the size of a tree. Some were thin and tall, others wide enough to lie on. Jennifer fished her book out of her backpack to compare, but none of the illustrations in there were as bright and vivid as this. Young Kaya began thinking of her stomach and eyeing the bio-luminescent fungi like candy. “Think we could eat these things?” She asked. “They could be, like, magic or something.”

“Best not,” Jennifer answered. The fungi covered the walls and ceiling too, creating the illusion of another starry canvas. Awed Jennifer was taking it all in, not seeing the thing creeping behind her. Kaya did, Jenn gasping as she was yanked by the arm away from a sofa sized mushroom, dropping her book. Over the fungal seat the thing came crawling - a translucent glass spider as big as their heads. It reared back, pedipalps reaching out as if sensing the girls, as Jenn peered and squinted with Kaya making sure she kept a safe distance.

“It might have poison,” young Kaya whispered, “come on - let’s go.”

There were a few other tunnels around that might possibly have led to the surface. As Jenn was being led away she remembered her book, breaking free to run back, only to find herself looking at an empty floor. “It’s gone,” she said, perplexed. A search was off the table however, as then the cavern filled with a puffing sound like that of a hot-air balloon, then a jet of orange flame erupting from the mouth of one of the tunnels, instantly melting all the mushrooms it touched. Running was in order.

And so they did, sprinting from the gushing flames until they came to a wall, which they followed hoping for an exit. They did find another tunnel, but as they rounded the corner the girls screamed and immediately fell back, holding onto each other. Before them was a human figure covered in a silver space suit, a small blue flame in front of the nozzle he was brandishing. He looked down, the clutching girls reflected in his helmet then raised a hand as a voice crackled from inside, “Hold! There are kids here!”

A decade later, big Kaya entered the cavern the same way the spaceman had, carrying only a beer can and a lamp. The mushrooms, forest, glass spiders - all gone. All that was here now were cold stone walls and darkness. Kaya had convinced herself that her imagination had exaggerated the things she saw, but there had obviously been a clean-up operation going on here that night. After the girls were found, they’d been led outside where more people in space-suits and doctors bustled around vans that bore the logo of Stag Corp. Jennifer fell quiet in the face of so much activity and noise, holding onto Kaya’s arm more tightly - she should have chosen her confidante more wisely. She relaxed when they were taken into a tent with just one of the doctor’s examining them. They paid particular attention to Kaya’s cut, took a blood sample from each of them, then they were left alone until Jenn’s father came to collect them.

Jonathan Airhart had been what you’d expect a scientist to look like; glasses, tweed, minimal amount of hair maintenance. On that night he’d looked sweaty and exhausted, Kaya assumed out of worry for his daughter. She recalled yet another awkward moment when Jenn ran to hug him while Kaya was left sitting on a fold out table alone, kicking her feet and just staring absently at the corners of the tent. Of course he started to tell her off for disobeying, Jennifer performing a little furtive dance as she apologized and his stern demeanor quickly subsided. The only strange thing about him that night, Kaya recalled, was that he’d swiped the blood samples from the little machine the doctor had placed them in.

“Neither of you has any infection,” he’d said, “we should all just be grateful for that, I suppose.”

Then Jennifer asked, “what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he assured her. Then he took something out of his pocket - a small wood carving of an owl. “I got you a present.” With that, Jennifer seemed to forget about all the strange things they’d seen as she was hypnotized by the image of the silent bird of prey in flight. “Long ago,” her father told, “humans could only dream of what it would be like to fly high above the Earth. They couldn’t just grow wings of their own, but in time would learn to make balloons and planes and rocket ships flying higher than a bird ever could. That’s the power of the human mind - we can turn dreams into reality. Although, it doesn’t always turn out how we imagined.”

Jennifer sagely noted, “some dreams are scary.”

“I know,” Jonathan patted her softly on the head, “but we’re all fine now. Let’s get home.”

In the empty cavern in the present, big Kaya watched all this play out through the projector of her mind, but it seemed there really was no other trace here of anything that had happened back then. She couldn’t even ask Jennifer about it - they hadn’t really spoken since shortly after this and Kaya had no idea where she was now. But Jenn was smart - Kaya had no doubt she would have done well, despite her. Or in spite of her. In any case, when the phone rang it was Kaya’s mom.

Kaya put down the lamp, taking a moment to be mildly impressed that she got a signal down here - but then it wasn’t really that deep and it seemed another hole had opened in the ceiling since she was here last. “Hi mom,” she answered, sipping from her can whenever she had to wait for a response. “No, I’m fine… really… uh-huh… yes I’m brushing my teeth. You know I’m twenty-one now, right?” It seemed all she wanted was to check-up on Kaya, then shame her by telling her what all her friends from church and their kids had accomplished. Kaya knew that if she asked, her mother would help her find a place to live, a job, getting all her life in order. Or would try to. Unfortunately, it would mean having to deal with that other asshole she used to live with. “Is that dad?” Her face soured the moment she heard his voice in the background and she began to twist and dig her toe into the ground. “Yeah? Well you tell that bloated, decrepit, piece of human garbage, that I’ll-” Kaya bit her lip, realizing she was only going to create problems for her mom. “Look, I’ll see you soon, okay? Goodbye… love you.”

Kaya placed the phone back in her denim jacket as she began to pace like she could just walk off all the venom she had built up for that man. She couldn’t, so she crushed her beer can and with a snarl threw it across the cavern, gasping in shock and horror as it flew through Jennifer. Of course, she wasn’t really there - it was just a memory.

Coming here had been dumb. There was nothing to see. No revelation, no reconciliation - nothing. She was stupid, and was just going to have to live with that.