“Hey, look.” Vincent nodded across the length of the musty diner. “Looks like company.”
“Hmm?” Drey turned, glancing over his shoulder and seeing the silhouetted figures that sat in the room’s shadowed depths. “Oh, yeah. Looks like it.”
He returned to nursing his coffee mug, so long drained that the dregs had crusted to the bottom. After a few seconds of plaintive silence, he furrowed his brow in confusion.
“I didn’t see her come in. Did you?” he queried Vincent, who shrugged in response. “But we should have.”
“Don’t know.” Vincent seemed unconcerned. “I wasn’t paying attention, I suppose.”
“Neither.” Drey paused, staring into his empty mug. “That’s so weird. We should have seen her.”
They were sat directly adjacent the diner’s small door, in one of the few spots where sunlight could stream in through the crooked blinds and throw drifting dust motes into sharp relief. The woman's entry should have been impossible to miss.
Vincent, evidently nonplussed, planted his elbows on the table and leaned over his folded hands. “Well, aren’t you going to go insert yourself?”
“What?” Drey looked up at him, confused. “No. Why?”
Vincent looked back, seeming just as baffled. “Because that’s what you do. Like, all the time.”
“Is it?” Drey looked down, then away. “I… I don’t really remember.”
“Oh.” Vincent frowned, then shrugged again. “Alright then.”
Drey continued to ponder, troubled. “But really, I don’t remember anything before you pointed her out. It’s like… it’s like the last few years have been a blank, and everything before that is… it’s hazy.”
“Sounds like you need another cup.” Vincent lifted his and gave it an emphatic swirl, but Drey noted that it was completely empty.
He looked down into his own mug and paused, noticing that something about it seemed odd. Lifting the crucible and turning it so that a shaft of dusty sunlight could strike right into the bottom, Drey found that the ring in the bottom of the mug wasn’t actually coffee dregs – or… it was, but also a layer of mould that had grown over the top… and died.
“Okay…” He murmured, placing the mug down and pushing it away. “How long have we been here?”
“A very long while.” A new voice said, causing Drey to start, only now noticing the third man that occupied their booth. He seemed youthful – perhaps late twenties – but also carried himself as if he were several decades older. His clothes were a simple, almost nondescript military uniform, and adorning his head was a golden crown that at once seemed both resplendent, and cheap. Just looking at him made Drey feel cold.
“When did you get here?” Drey demanded, startled.
“A little after you,” the third man replied in a flat, dispassionate voice. “And… just now, also.”
“And you are…?” Vincent examined the man over the edge of his mug.
The man seemed to consider the question for some time, then finally responded with a simple “A poorly considered plot hook”.
“Ah.” Vincent nodded once and returned to swirling his unrelentingly empty cup, as if the man’s answer was perfectly normal.
Drey looked back and forth between Vincent and the new man, then groaned and started to massage his brow with one hand. “What the Hell is going on?”
“Hell,” the third man intoned. “What an odd allusion. Wherever did you get that?”
“Excuse me?” Drey turned back to the third man, who now bore a wry smirk. “Is that meant to mean- wait.”
Just as quickly, he turned back to Vincent. “Didn’t you die?”
“Hmm…” Vincent thought for a moment, then gave another shrug. “Does it matter?”
“
A little!” Drey exclaimed, slamming his palms down on the table. “Actually, a lot; Because I’m pretty sure that I killed you!”
Vincent pondered that for a moment, and then nodded slowly. “Oh yeah.”
“That’s it?” Drey insisted.
Yet again, Vincent shrugged. “It’s hard to remember. It was pretty chaotic, and wasn’t there some strange music that tried to draw focus from everything else?”
After a long pause, Drey could only muster a helpless, exasperated “
What? Vincent, you
died.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Vincent nodded. “That’s pretty rough, huh?”
“What is happening?” Drey looked helplessly at the third man, who remained impassive. “You’re being so strange, Vincent. Why can’t you just commit to an opinion?”
“He’s always been like this,” the third man interrupted. “Only there to do what was required of him. You just didn’t realize it.”
Vincent inclined his head to the third man. “This guy gets it. You were always too busy obsessing over being friends with the guy with the green shoulder snakes to notice anything else.”
“Or thinking of bad one-liners so you could be ‘cool’,” the third man continued, and then finally added an aside of “Or being condescending and argumentative in the spoiler tags.”
“Oh, no. That was someone else with the same name,” Vincent corrected him. “Easy mistake.”
There was silence for a few seconds before the third man responded with a laconic “Sure” that smacked of both indulgence and flat disbelief.
Drey – who had been shielding himself from the exchange by propping his arms on the table and massaging his temples – straightened up and clasped his hands together. “Okay. Everything is weird right now. This has gotten out of control.”
“Yep,” Vincent agreed, and the table lapsed into a lasting silence, Drey fidgeting with his hands, Vincent continuing to scrutinize his insistently empty mug, and the third man staring across the table at nothing.
“Speaking of…” The third man raised his gloved hand and gave a snowflake on one fingertip a dour inspection. “Do you ever feel like things… get away from you? Like something that was meant to be a small part of you just… grew and grew, until it ran out of control and consumed everything else, leaving you completely different to how you used to be?”
“All the time,” Drey and Vincent answered simultaneously.