#whumptober2020

A beam of light shines directly into the Whumpee’s closed eyes. They turn their head to avoid it, burying their face deeper into what they quickly realize is the Caretaker’s chest that they were laying against. They pull back and open their eyes, feeling startled at being so close to someone they barely know after having so recently escaped the Whumper’s grasp. Everything in their body still hurts, including a throbbing wound still plaguing their side. The person that had saved them sits on the ground with their back against a wall and looks at the source of the light. Slowly the Caretaker raises their hands and nods, then says something back to whoever is holding the flashlight in a language the Whumpee doesn’t understand. The Whumpee scrambles backwards as the light lowers and someone approaches the Caretaker - before they reach their target, the Caretaker speaks again but this time gestures at the Whumpee. The other person agrees, and at this the Caretaker looks at the Whumpee sadly. “You’re giving me to them, aren’t you?” the Whumpee accuses them frantically. The Caretaker pulls themselves to their knees and approaches the Whumpee, but the Whumpee just scrambles further back on the pavement, clutching their side and keeping their distance at all costs. The Caretaker hangs their head and seems to give up, then looks at the person holding the light again and nods. They say something resolutely, again in another language, that leads the person to come over and yank the Caretaker’s hands behind them and zip tie them together. The person looks up at the Whumpee as they do so, and the Whumpee recognizes the person as the Whumper’s right hand. “It’s your lucky day,” the right hand says in broken English as they roughly grab the Caretaker by their collar and yank them up to stand. Before the Whumpee or the Caretaker can react, the right hand wields a knife and thrusts it into the Caretaker’s side, effectively disabling them and putting the same injurious time clock on their captivity as the Whumpee received. “Today he gets to eat a new meal instead of having your leftovers.” From there the light abruptly turns off as the right hand pulls the Caretaker away, leaving the Whumpee alone with a worse fate than having been reclaimed by the Whumper: loneliness, lingering pain, no way out, and a rising, crushing sense of guilt.

The sound of piano chords playing draws the Caretaker nearer and nearer to the banquet hall on the main floor of an emptied hotel. The song is familiar, even though the piano is so out of tune that the notes are warbled and almost underwater in their lack of clarity. They arrive at the doorway and look in to see the Whumper with their back to them, sitting at the old piano and hitting at the keys. Their movements are fluid as they float above the keys but precise when they hit them. The Caretaker’s eyes meet the sight of the unconscious Whumpee on the floor near the piano, their head close to where the Whumper’s feet are gently tapping the piano’s pedals. The sudden lifting of both the Whumper’s foot and their hands from the piano silence the music and stop the resonating keys with a thud. The Whumper looks at the Caretaker over their shoulder with a sideways glance. “Pull up a chair, they won’t be back for a while.” The Caretaker feels a sinking feeling as they walk into the hall, closing the distance between themselves and their friend. “Who won’t?” the Caretaker asks, passing right by the table and chair that the Whumper mentioned. The Whumper laughs at the question, saying, “Who do you think?” before knocking the heavy cover to the keys down with their hand. It slams hard and bangs a deafening sound throughout the entire room. When the echo of it dies down their voice turns deadly serious. “I said sit the fuck down.” The Caretaker stops, then moves back a few steps and sits at the table and chair they were instructed to. Their eyes keep darting to the Whumpee on the ground, and the appearance of blood in and around their head now transferred to the floor. The Whumper hates that the Caretaker’s attention is divided. “Ignore that,” the Whumper says dismissively of the Whumpee, pointing at them like they’re litter on the floor. “It won’t be back for a while. So you and I have time to talk.” The Caretaker can’t hide their distress. “What won’t be back?” The Whumper clenches a fist and presses it to their mouth, trying but failing to suppress their rage. “Do not pay it any mind, or so help me god,” the Whumper says, one of their feet now on the verge of kicking the prone Whumpee’s head back into the piano’s leg. “It will be me, not your friend’s problems, that will become impossible to ignore,” the Whumper says.

The Whumpee sits across from the bound Whumper. They lean forward with their elbows on their knees while they fiddle with a piece of used duct tape between their hands, as their eyes dart to and from the Whumper. The Whumper stares back blankly, their wrists and ankles taped many times over holding them to a plastic patio chair, their mouth newly uncovered by the tape now in the Whumpee’s hands. “You first,” the Whumpee says quietly. The Whumper just glares. “Me first what.” The Whumpee runs a hand through their hair as they try to compose themselves, but can’t help but return to fiddling with the tape still stuck to their other fingers. “You gonna make me say it?” the Whumpee asks. The Whumper shifts their weight in the chair as best as they can while still being pinned in place. A smirk starts to form on their face despite their predicament. “I don’t know what it is you think I’ve got to say first, but I will say you don’t look so good, old friend,” the Whumper says about the battered and exhausted-looking Whumpee. They tilt their head to the side as they talk. “Surely I’m not the only doctor you’re seeing about that fact,” they say. The Whumpee stares at their hands and keeps fiddling with the tape. They truly are a mess. Physically they bear lingering marks of the torture inflicted by the Whumper, and mentally they seem like they’re on the brink of collapse. “I think I need a doctor,” they say mostly to themselves, but it prompts a nod from the Whumper. “But nobody can help me. Nobody knows just what exactly you did. I don’t even know.” The Whumpee now looks at the Whumper squarely. “All I know is ever since you took me, you took something from me. Everything started to heal but something left that never came back, like you took some kind of a piece out from a clock that means the whole thing doesn’t tick. I can’t believe I’m stopping to your level in bringing you here, but I need to know.” The Whumpee’s eyes water as they plead with the unmoved Whumper. “What the hell did you do to me?” The Whumper again just nods clinically. “Do you really need a doctor?” they ask. “Or am I here because the piece you need back can only be taken from someone like it was taken from you?” They lean against their binds in the chair as they close as much space between themselves and the Whumpee as they can. “Because if so: come take it.”

“What did you just say?” the Caretaker asks incredulously. They stand ten feet from where the Whumper stands, and where the Whumpee kneels with their collar grasped tightly in the Whumper’s clenched fist. The Whumpee pulls at their tightened shirt collar in vain but can’t escape the grasp that’s holding them. The Whumper stares at the Caretaker, poised at the edge of a building rooftop mere seconds away from dropping the Whumpee off its edge. The Caretaker seems fixated on the wrong problem at hand. “Say that again,” the Caretaker says, sounding as if it’s out of academic curiosity than an urgency to save their friend. “Say what you just said again.” The Whumper pulls the Whumpee towards them, the yank illiciting a strangled groan. “You’re one of those annoying people who listens to the same song over and over again, aren’t you?” the Whumper says, for the first time feeling unnerved and in less than total control. The Caretaker advances towards the two of them with their hands exposed in surrender, but their excitement over their realization is overtaking their sense of caution. “Your accent. It slipped out. You’re from here, right?” The prospect of someone knowing more about them gives the Whumper a surge of anger that they channel into a hard kick to the captive Whumpee’s knee. The Caretaker continues advancing. “I knew you looked familiar. You’re one of his, aren’t you?” The Whumper is now next to the building’s edge, and pulls the hobbled and struggling Whumpee over to it. The Caretaker finally stops, but presses on in their words. “You’re the one he doesn’t talk about, am I right?” The Whumper steels their face at the mention of both their father and their station in life as his unrecognized offspring. They muster only a shrug in response as they say, “My father isn’t known for making mistakes. But I guess accidents happen.” They look down at the Whumpee bitterly and prepare to take them both over the edge. “Don’t they, brother?” they say at the Whumpee through gritted teeth.

The Whumpee looks at the surface of a pond and its upside-down reflection of an ominous sky overhead. A deep rumble of thunder rolls through the ground and seems to linger in their feet and shoes as if it were some kind of signal. It’s then that the Whumpee looks around and notices the Whumper standing at the top of a hill immediately behind them leading down to the water. They are a dark figure in front of a dark skyline, barely distinguishable from it if not for the glow of their cigarette and the occasional flash of sheet lightning in the sky. “Maybe a coffee shop next time, huh?” the Whumpee says nervously. The Whumper stands there for a moment, looking down at the Whumpee who had obediently agreed to their meeting on short notice. “You ever seen that photo?” the Whumper asks as they walk down the dirt trail towards the water’s edge. “Always in photo compilations of people before something tragic befell them. And there are two young men standing in the frame with their hair stood almost straight up on end,” they say, miming the hair of the boys with their cigarette-wielding hand, the trail of its smoke creating a ghostly view of the hair. The Whumper nears the Whumpee as they speak. “Do you know what happened to them next?” The Whumpee subconsciously backs more towards the lake as the Whumper’s presence begins to close in on them, and their shoe is now partly submerged. “It’s what happens right before you get hit by lightning.” The Whumper nods and drops the cigarette to the ground, then crushes the butt with their toe. “What else happens before you get hit by lightning?” the Whumper asks calmly. Before the Whumpee can deign to shrug, the Whumper swiftly takes a knife from out of their own sleeve, and holds it with its tip pointed at the Whumpee. “If you keep breaking promises to me, you will get hit. And you will know when it’s coming. You may not be able to see it, but I promise you will feel the electric charge.” The Whumpee steps back again as the Whumper advances on them, this time falling backwards into the water and slipping under the surface onto their back. The Whumper walks forward and seizes the Whumpee’s jacket and before lifting them up, they pointedly submerge the Whumpee’s head below the water. They pull them back up and wait as the Whumpee sputters and gasps for air before saying: “Your life is now the moment before the strike, and it will not end until you do this. Don’t waste time taking pictures like you have been.”

It’s impossible for the Whumper to resist lifting their hand and touching a finger on the photograph pinned to the wall in front of them. Like a magnet pulling them in, their fingertip graces across the printed piece of paper, down the forehead and over the eyes of the image in the picture: it’s a picture of themselves. “Not my good side,” they say aloud. They turn to face the battered-looking Whumpee whose hands are handcuffed behind them as they sit in their office chair. The room is filled with paperwork, and a series of maps, photos, and string connecting networks touching on both dimensions are pinned as paths between them all. “I didn’t think you had one,” the Whumpee quips. The Whumper turns back to the photo to continue admiring it, equally as magnetized to the sight of their own image as their touch was to the ink. “No, my best side doesn’t come out on demand. It takes finesse, maybe even a little teasing to come out,” they explain. They turn back to the Whumpee, casually running a finger along their own jawline and chin. The Whumpee shrugs at the Whumper’s apparent vanity. “If you’ve got a glossy 8x10 to replace it with, by all means,” the Whumpee says. The Whumper stares them down. “You’ve got it all wrong, you know. All these little routes between me and my colleagues, these little externalizations and dependencies, and this one in particular-” the Whumper says, pointing at the photo of the Whumper’s superior stationed above them on the wall chart. “I knew you’d hate that one,” the Whumpee says, their sentence stopped with a hard slap across their face and eyes - one so strong it robs them of their vision entirely as their head hangs to the side as they recover. The Whumper grabs the armrests of the chair the Whumpee is sitting in and leans in close. “When it comes to your little story, you might as well have closed your eyes and pinned the tail on a donkey. All the pieces and yet so far off, a two sided puzzle with half the pieces flipped to either the good or the bad side.” They lean in closer and all but hiss this into the Whumpee’s bloodied ear: “And in case it’s not clear - my piece is on the bad one.”

The Whumper’s eyes follow the trail of smoke from their campfire as it climbs up towards the sky. The wind has stopped completely, and so it no longer blows the smoke out to the side and into the faces of themselves and the Whumpee, whose wrists are bound as they sit near the warmth of the fire. The Whumper’s chin lifts as they follow the smoke upward, the trail of it leading into the tree line above them, and beyond it into a blanket of stars in the black sky. They stare into space, their neck extended up fully in a rare moment of exposure to the Whumpee. Their vulnerability is on full display - from their skin, to their distracted attention, to the tears that form in their eyes as they start to feel fully and completely lost as they stare into the starry abyss above them both. They’re not sure when it happens, but at some point between looking up at the smoke and getting nudged awake by the Whumpee, they must have passed out. They open their eyes, surprised to find that they were closed, and stare up at the Whumpee who knocks their cheek gently with bound hands. “Don’t be dead, don’t be dead,” the Whumpee says urgently. The Whumper sits up, looking at the dirt and pine needles that cling to their coat and shaking the same crap off the back of their hair. “Someone has changed their tune from a few hours ago,” the Whumper says groggily. The Whumpee sits back against the log they’d been on when the Whumper collapsed. “I thought I saw a bear,” they say. The Whumper laughs as they dust themselves off, careful not to set off their mounting nausea from their persisting vertigo as they gently lift themselves onto their own log. “Have I become some kind of a bear to you,” the Whumper muses. “Some kind of bumbling scavenger they can’t stand on its hind feet?” The Whumpee points quietly at the woods nearby. “No, like, a literal bear.”

An itch on their forehead leads the Whumpee to try and scratch it against the sleeve of their shirt. Their arms are strung overhead and their bound wrists are tied above them. Not a moment after they rub their head against their upper arm, they feel but don’t see a powerful slap across their blindfolded face. “I said don’t rub it off,” the voice of the Whumper says impatiently. “Don’t tell me I gotta put a cone over your head.” There is the sound of a lighter flicking on, and then the quiet sound of flames crackling up a cigarette as the Whumper inhales. The Whumpee swallows, tasting blood in their mouth, but they are not otherwise the worse for wear. It’s quiet in the room for a minute, then the Whumper again breaks the silence. “I wonder what you picture me looking like.” The Whumpee instinctively turns their head towards the sound of the Whumper, almost straining to see them through the black fabric. “I can tell you’re thinking about it,” the Whumper says. “I’m good at putting myself in other people’s shoes. I’m an empath.” This makes the Whumpee laugh, and the Whumper almost audibly smiles at their own words too. They let out a long sigh and the Whumpee inhales the smoke like it’s a trail of perfume sent to captivate them. “Maybe you picture someone you already know when you hear me. A coworker, maybe. Someone you’ve seen on the train. Or someone you’ve just passed on the street, once.” The Whumpee pictures all of these scenarios in their mind, except the Whumper’s face in them is blank. “But then again, maybe you’re picturing someone you know. Someone close to you. Someone you already know very well,” the Whumper says, their voice getting quieter with every word as they tease the Whumpee with the prospect. “Someone you have something in common with. A lot, even.” The Whumpee shakes their head at the Whumper’s suggestions. “If this is how I find out I have an evil twin, I’m gonna be mad,” they say. The Whumper again has an audible Cheshire Cat smile, and the flame burns its way up the cigarette shaft again before they speak through another heavy exhale of smoke. “You’re half right.”

A ceiling fan twirls above the Whumpee, creating a blurred halo above them as the Caretaker looks up at them from the floor. The Caretaker coughs and still struggles to take in a breath after having been hit repeatedly by the Whumpee in their chest and stomach. The Whumpee clenches and unclenches their fist, staring at the door leading into the room they’re both in. Their shirt is stained with fresh sweat, and they wipe a bloodied knuckle across their forehead. “What’s it been, now?” the Caretaker asks from the floor. The Whumpee looks down at them with eyes that are both wild and glazed. “Where did you come from?” they ask the Caretaker, looking at them like a bear rug that is slowly coming to life as they squirm and struggle to get to their knees. Their fists stay clenched as the Caretaker lifts themselves up, nursing an arm across their bruised body. The Whumpee looks them up and down, still not able to wrap their brain around the reality in front of them. “It’s a dream, isn’t it?” the Whumpee asks. The Caretaker drops their head, and the ceiling fan above them slows as the whole world does too. When the Caretaker finally lifts their head, the face of the Whumper is on it instead. They close the distance between themselves and the Whumpee with an uncanny speed and grab them by the throat, pushing them back into a mirror hung on the wall. “What’s it been?” the vision of the Whumper repeats the Caretaker’s words almost fondly as they press the Whumpee hard enough into the mirror that it now cracks. When the Whumper eases up slightly, the mirror teeters on its nail but then falls with a crash behind them. The Whumpee shuts their eyes at the noise, but when they open them, they are looking at the worried face of the Caretaker kneeling next to them on the ground. The Whumpee’s breath heaves in their chest as they try and orient themselves, looking around for proof of anything they had just seen or done. No shattered mirror surrounds them - only the fan spins overhead as the Caretaker asks kindly: “How long’s it been since you got some sleep?” The Whumpee studies their friend for a moment before pulling them in for a desperate hug, unable to recall where reality ended and the hallucinations started.

The Whumpee clenches their teeth as the Whumper adjusts themselves behind them, shifting both their coat and the gun pressed into the Whumpee’s back. The two stand in the middle of a deserted city street in the winter night, the Whumpee facing an exterior ATM. “Colder than a witch’s tit,” the Whumper grumbles. The Whumpee presses buttons to withdraw from their account, repeatedly looking into the convex mirror above them to both survey the Whumper’s position and scan their surroundings for signs of other people. The Whumpee pulls out a stack of bills once the machine presents them. They pause as if unsure of what to do with it. “What now?” they ask. The Whumper looks over their captive’s shoulder and sees the cash. “Throw it in the air like confetti. What do you think what now?” they say sarcastically. The Whumpee takes the money and places it carefully in their own interior coat pocket, which aggravates the Whumper even worse than tossing it in the air - it is supposed to be theirs to take. They press the gun into the Whumpee’s back - hard - and the Whumpee can feel their hand tremors even through their own coat. “I bet it’s been a while since you last used,” the Whumpee taunts them. “I bet that’s why you need it so bad. And I bet you know you’re weak as a kitten, don’t you?” The Whumpee turns around to face the aggravated Whumper, though they keep their hands presented in calm surrender. “Or else what’s stopping you from just taking it from me? Go ahead,” they continue, nodding at the pocket containing the money. The Whumper narrows their eyes at the Whumpee as they keep their wobbling gun pointed forward without reaching for the Whumpee’s pocket. “You know what else tonight has in common with a witch’s tit?” they ask the Whumpee. In a swift move they grab the Whumpee’s arm closest to the pocket and press it hard into the atm, then place the tip of their gun over the Whumpee’s leg. They use their own knee and brute strength as leverage to keep the gun steady with precision aim at the Whumpee’s knee. The two have their faces inches apart as the Whumper pins the Whumpee in place, threatening to shoot at any moment. “It’s mine to take from, as I see fit.”

The Whumpee closes their eyes as they think of what to say, then open them with a stare just as blank as when they closed them. Nothing surfaces in their mind. There is no thought to speak of, no gathering of many thoughts to distill into one, there is nothing. They look around to see if they can figure out where they are. They are sitting in the middle of an intersection at night, lit only by two sets of stationary headlights and the slow ticking of alternating red, yellow, and green traffic signals. Glass is shattered all over the ground beneath them, and the Whumpee lifts their hand up to look at it when they realize that there is glass embedded in the skin. They look over their shoulder behind them and see the Caretaker is lying on the ground next to one of the cars. They can’t remember what happened. Nothing is adding up. It’s then that another nearby car door opens, then gently shuts, and the sound of glass crunching beneath the boots of the Whumper grows louder until they stand over the dazed Whumpee. The Whumpee looks up at them, blinking away the blood from their head that streams around their eyes. “I don’t feel so well,” the Whumpee says plainly, albeit with a slight croak. The Whumper looks down on them. “Yeah, well. You don’t look so hot, either.” The Whumper crouches until their face is mere inches from the Whumpee. Their eyes look the Whumpee up and down almost hungrily, then looks over at the Caretaker to confirm they haven’t woken up. “I’m going to need you to come with me,” the Whumper explains in a slow and deliberate tone. The Whumpee nods without understanding why, then looks at the Whumper again as if for the first time. “I don’t feel so well.”

The Whumper sits at a high table near an airport window overlooking the tarmac. The sound of the Caretaker’s shoes echo in the empty space as they walk towards the Whumper from behind, nervously clutching a set of papers as they do. The Whumper stares blankly out the window at a plane about to taxi towards the runway and barely acknowledges the presence of the Caretaker. “May I?” the Caretaker asks. The Whumper looks over at them and says nothing, which the Caretaker takes as a signal that they can sit. They set down and place a hand over the papers and prepare to begin a rehearsed spiel about the evidence they’ve gathered. “I don’t need to tell you-” they start before the Whumper cuts them off: “Then don’t.” The Whumper pushes the paperwork towards the Caretaker until it falls off the table into their lap and onto the floor. “You think I don’t know what you know, but I got news for you - I know everything you know. Absolutely everything.” The Whumper points out the window towards the tarmac where a black SUV pulls up, conspicious in being both out of place on a runway and staged so plainly in front of the two of them. The Caretaker watches as someone gets out of the driver’s seat, goes to the trunk, and pulls out of it a person with bound hands and a black bag over their head. The Whumper watches the Caretaker’s reaction as the bag is pulled off. “I don’t know where you think you are, but allow me shift your little black and white world into colour for you.” The Whumper slaps their hand on the table between themselves and the Caretaker to demand their attention as they finish: “I am not afraid of you. You are not in charge here. And take whatever law, or rules, or whatever it is you think you have over me - and you realize that a tornado has come, and brought you over the rainbow onto my land.” The Whumper looks out the window and waves a hand that prompts the bag to be pulled back over the Whumpee before they’re shoved back in the car. The Caretaker feels helpless, and is pale and disarmed as the Whumper sits back like an executive in a meeting that they’ve deemed is a waste of their time. “Anything else?”

The Whumpee enters their office with their head hanging low. It’s nighttime and they’ve long since finished teaching their last class, but it’s taken them some time to muster the wherewithal to exit the classroom and be ready to go home. They shut the door behind them and look up to see the Whumper is sat in the chair in front of their desk typically reserved for students. If their presence surprises the Whumpee, they don’t show it. “What do you want?” the Whumpee asks quietly. The Whumper has their feet up on the desk as they sit slouched in the chair, an over-poured rocks glass filled with the Whumpee’s secret stash of liquor resting in their lap. The flush on their face gives away that it is not their first. “Bottle’s emptier than last time I was here. By a big margin. Or was that me, too?” the Whumper asks, sipping the drink and watching as the Whumpee makes their way over to their desk and begins packing up. “Came here to gloat?” the Whumpee asks, setting their bag down and picking up pages. The Whumper shakes their head. “I came here to do what you can’t.” The Whumpee pauses and repeats themselves: “So to gloat, then?” The Whumper takes another sip before answering: “To grieve.” The Whumpee starts packing up again as the Whumper continues. “Speaking as someone who has personally caused more deaths than nature has done to me, I find your reaction to your brother’s passing to be a bit - would you fucken sit down?” The Whumper gestures at the Whumpee’s desk chair, irritated that they don’t have their full attention. The Whumpee begrudgingly complies and the Whumper pours them their own drink. “It’s inhumane.” The Whumpee accepts the drink from their enemy. “Death is.” “No, you are. Guy was sick, sure, but speaking from experience, it doesn’t make it any less of a surprise when they go. And take this advice, trust me you need it: shed a fucken tear for once,” the Whumper says, referring to the Whumpee’s typical stone faced demeanour. The Whumper stands and takes the rest of their drink in one gulp, then sets the glass down with an uncharacteristic gentleness that makes it barely clack against the wood. “I’m officially the least of your worries for the next little while. You’ve got time. Take it,” they say, then leave the Whumpee alone in the dark office with their unmet grief.

The Whumper runs a hand over the buttons of their uniform, their fingertips savouring the feeling of the cold metal and the rich fabric beneath them. They look down at themselves, surveying the badges and medals that adorn them, and feel the hand of someone else on their shoulders. The Whumper shuts their eyes as they feel a fatherly squeeze of a firm hand around their arm. The feeling of that familiar hand on them is a conflicted one, for they have just as many memories of this person’s grasp being a reassuring gesture as they have of it being one that preceded aggression. The Whumper, unsure of which it is, opens their eyes and finds themselves neither in uniform nor in the presence of their father. They stand face to face with the Whumpee, who stands defiantly before them even injured, backed into a corner, and with their hands bound behind their back. The Whumper shakes their head, then runs their hand over their plain clothes in the same manner as they had been to try and invoke again the memory of their dad - anything to find out what his intention was. “What was I saying again?” the Whumper asks, their voice suddenly soft and genuine. They pull their hands away from themselves to look at them and realize that they’re shaking. “Or was it you,” the Whumper says quietly. “Was it you that was talking?” The Whumpee says nothing out of fear and uncertainty. They eye the exit and begin to feel their muscles tensing, their body feeling like its own third base coach telling themselves to run for home plate. The Whumper is distracted, their breathing starting to both accelerate and heave, as the memory stirred within them evokes a sense of utter and total panic. The Whumpee has taken their last inhale before they plan on making a run for it when the Whumper’s hand quickly grabs them by the neck. They are pushed back into the wall by the claw-like grasp and hit their head hard against it, but the Whumper’s hand is merciless in its grip. It has now climbed from their neck to grabbing them beneath their chin. The Whumper appears angry, and carries themselves in a way that is unlike the soft self they’d shown just moments before. “I know a runner when I see one,” the Whumper’s possessed-sounding voice growls as their father’s influence inhabits them. “All that brass for hightailing it out of harm’s way. I don’t even know you. That’s not the boy I raised. Because I didn’t teach my boy to run from a fight.” The Whumper releases the Whumpee and drops them to the floor. The Whumpee tries to catch their breath as they watch the Whumper clutch their head in their hands, unsure of who or what would come out of them next.

The Whumpee sits in a row of seats in an open air bus station, wearing a fabric face mask and sunglasses as they look around nervously. They check their watch and their phone over and over, somehow the time feeling like it’s passing backwards instead of forwards. Their heart skips in their chest as they see someone start to walk towards them from the street. They recognize it as the Whumper, though the Whumper doesn’t seem to recognize them even though they sit down in the pre-arranged spot. The Whumpee’s heart thuds in their chest as the Whumper settles into their seat and looks in the opposite direction of them. “Take that thing off so I know who I’m talking to.” The Whumper’s glance darts towards the Whumpee to watch them sheepishly pull it down to reveal their bruised and cut up mouth. “Ugh, put it back,” the Whumper says with feigned disgust. The Whumpee shakes their head as they do. “You did it,” they say. The Whumper nods before they answer. “Sometimes an artist will draw something on a piece of paper and they’ll say ‘Wow, this is a masterpiece’, and other times they’ll just crumple it up and throw it into the wastebasket and pretend it ever happened. Which do you think you are to me?” The Whumpee bristles at the comparison, but their frustration mounts high enough that they no longer pretend not to know the Whumper sitting six feet away. “You’re the one that made me come here,” the Whumpee says, clenching their fists in their lap. The Whumper looks them up and down, then goes back to staring off in the distance and pretending not to know them. “Maybe the artist noticed something on that crumpled up piece of paper afterward and needed to pick it back out. Something like an important date, or a phone number you still need. Or maybe they see where they went wrong and have an idea for their next project.” The Whumpee runs a hand through their hair and lets out a long sigh. “So which is it?” The Whumper smiles. “All of the above.” The Whumpee’s mind races as they try to recall what they said when they were last in the Whumper’s hands - what did they reveal that the Whumper needs again? This is the question in their head but the one that leaves their mouth is instead: “Why should I help you?” The Whumper watches as the only remaining bus pulls away from the station, leaving the two of them temporarily alone. At this, they look the Whumpee dead in the eye even through their opaque sunglasses. “I’m the one that threw you away. And you know as good as I do, and as good as your friends do - there is no way of unfolding you without me.”

The Whumpee slams their car into park after they pull it to a stop outside of a country field. They’re late and don’t trust that they haven’t been followed, so time is of the essence as they climb out and rush towards the planned meeting spot. An enormous and conspicuous tree stands in the centre of a farmer’s field, a barn and property not too far in the distance but far enough away that their rendezvous won’t be seen. The Whumpee sees the outline of someone waiting for them. It’s just their silhouette visible in the glow of the setting sun, and the Whumpee relinquishes their paranoia that it might not be their friend when they get close enough to confirm that it is. It is only when they are face to face when they realize that their friend is crying. The Whumpee skips saying hello or asking what the matter is, and they go right to grabbing their friend and pull them in for a kiss, their hands desperately pulling the two of them as close as can be. They pull back and lower their hands to squeeze their friend’s shoulders, “Come on, we have to go.” Their friend still cries, and can’t lift their eyes to match the Whumpee’s. “I’m so sorry,” they say, and speaking the words themselves seems to cause them even more sorrow. “I’m so, so, sorry.” The Whumpee’s eyes dart between their friend’s as they struggle to understand. “Why?” they ask, to no response. The Whumpee shakes their friend’s shoulders again to try and elicit a real answer. “Why!” Their friend finally answers. “I told them,” they say quietly. “They’ll be here any second.” The Whumpee backs away, a pit now dug deep within their stomach, as they turn around to go back to their car. There is now another car parked next to theirs, with someone exiting it and approaching from the road. They turn around and see over their friend’s shoulder someone walking towards them from the farmhouse as well. The Whumpee feels like a trapped animal as the Whumper’s men close in on them. They can barely register how their friend drops to their knees and tugs at their clothes as they beg, “Please. Please forgive me. I’m so sorry.” The Whumpee looks down at them, then at the horizon where the sun finally sets behind it. It is gone after a long descent in the sky like an eye slowly closing to welcome sleep. “At least it’s over,” they say absently, feeling the chill of the night hit them all at once with the sun gone.