Hangman Chapter 63

Chapter 63-

Gallow noticed the cold, hard stone ground before he realized his eyes were closed.

Opening them didn’t do him much good. There was no light beneath the Heavensward Gladial, in the underground prison with no name, but known to the few who were aware of its existence as “Queen’s Box.”

He sat up in what he soon discovered was his cell, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head. He was ungodly sore and could still feel the sting of Jericho’s crop jittering in his muscles. The next thing he discovered was that he had been almost entirely stripped save for his pants, and felt the cold draft of air washing over him. The third thing he discovered was his cellmate.

A solid force slammed into his back, knocking him over from sitting.

“Gagh!!” he spat, picking himself off the ground. “What the hell was that for?!”

Before him towered a thirty-something man with a chiseled jaw and wide, well-built shoulders. He glared down at Gallow like he was staring at a dying ant.

“Who are you?!” Gallow grit his teeth and stood up.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” the man had a voice as rough as gravel and heavy as an anchor.

“And why would that question be stupid?” Gallow growled, rubbing the spot on his back that was still hurting.

The man wasted no time. “I don’t need to know your name, because I’m going to kill you, then myself.”

---

“How’s yer’ day, sport?”

Myst, dressed in his loose-fitting school clothes, craned his neck upwards without enthusiasm to peer at his father. It wasn’t that he feared or loathed him, Myst simply didn’t want him to see his face.

The instant Mr Hitchcock saw his son’s black eye, he looked like he had been punched himself.

“What’s this?” he pried with parental anxiety, kneeling down to his son’s eye level. “What happened? Did you get into a fight?”

Myst shook his head modestly.

“Then what happened? Did you run into something?”

With great effort, Myst parted his lips. “P-Pierre beat me up today…” his lip quivered like a guitar string.

Mr Hitchcock’s face seemed to harden as he processed this. He was a stoic man, calm and rational, a police officer well-respected in the community.

“Tell you what?” he put his finger on Myst’s chest. “I’m gonna go talk to the principal tomorrow and we’re gonna get everything sorted out, okay?”

Myst nodded in small increments. “Okay.”

In the spot his father had touched his chest, he felt like he had some new foundation, something to keep him from crying.

The next day, Mr Hitchcock did have that talk with the principal, who assured him that he would sort the problem out; after all, Mr Hitchcock was a police officer, and well-respected in the community. That foundation Myst felt, he would later call “comfort,” comfort in the fact that the world was an orderly place and just place.

“Of course it is,” he thought, in those days; he had seen it in his own father.

Three days later, Myst felt very free in the spring air, watching the leaves return to the trees after a long winter. His route home was dotted with trees, and he took pleasure in slowing down every now and again over a bridge to watch the river run through the city. Once or twice, he even saw a deer sneaking its way through the area of the river bank fenced off from passerby. He could afford to come home a little later than usual, as his father had just gotten a new schedule that moved his shift later, and his mother was usually out at her book club in the afternoon.

The sound of footsteps scraping against the cement sidewalk caught Myst’s ear. Even someone more diminutive like him still retained that primal sense for violent intent, something in the rhythm of the steps, their aggression.

He had just barely turned around before he felt himself grabbed by the shirt collar. The knuckles of Pierre’s meaty fist were digging into his chest, Myst’s big eyes found themselves close to his piggish face.

“Hey, spitzer,” Pierre huffed. Myst was so used to being called the slur that he barely flinched at it. “Your daddy went talking to the principal about me, didn’t he?”

“N-” Myst couldn’t even eke out a reply before Pierre’s other fist was buried in his face. It went on for what couldn’t have been more than a minute, but felt like hours. Blow after blow into his cheek, until the whiplash caused blood to stream from his nose. The side street was barren, no one around to see what was going on. At least, that’s what Myst had to force himself to believe in the moment.

The second thought that ran through his mind was just as vital to him:

“It’s okay that no one is stopping him now, because eventually, someone will, because the world is an orderly and just place.”

As Pierre stomped off, Myst slumped to the ground, not crippled, but exhausted. He didn’t have any tissues with him, so had to hold the bridge of his nose to slow the bleeding, not before more than a few drops had spilled onto his dress shirt.

When he was certain that the bleeding had stopped, he picked up his school bag and took a few steps towards home. Suddenly, as if possessed, he paused.

“I don’t want to go home,” he thought. Something had welled up inside of him, revolt against tiredness. Returning home was part of this routine that was closing in on him, of victimization. He now realized he could control this small part himself.

He walked all over the city, only stopping to take a break when the backs of his knees began to hurt. He went places he’d never seen, places he’d been with his parents, and places that he felt threatened in. Busy streets, apartment complexes, a gas station with an old man behind the counter who let him buy a chocolate bar for free. There were so many strange places around the city that entertained him enough to lift the burden off of his mind while he took in the sights and sounds.

By this time, the sun was just starting to go down, and Myst found himself sitting under the shade of a storefront’s steps, contentedly gnawing away at his treat.

Engaging in his first real bout of people watching, he took note of all the different couples, the people walking their dogs, the people walking alone.

The commotion had already passed him by the time he saw it. A young man tore his way down the sidewalk opposite where he was sat. A wailing siren pursued him, the police car speeding past the street’s moderate traffic. Myst hopped up to watch what was happening, as the car swiftly closed in on the man, who ducked into an alleyway.

Myst watched the officers scramble out of the car from down the road, edging his way closer to the alley, his curiosity egging him on, just to get a peek. He couldn’t make out any face, crouched behind a garbage can, but saw one last policeman leave the car, slowly stepping from the passenger seat; as he slipped his gun from its holster with all the casual energy of a pool player, only his wrist was visible, with a moderate black tattoo of a hen.

What struck Myst immediately was the sound of screaming coming from the alley. It pierced the air with the unmistakable intensity of pain. It was a bloodcurdling sound that only lasted five or six seconds before being cut short by the crack of gunfire.

Myst stood up and ran as fast as his legs could move.

That night at the dinner table was uncomfortable, and Mr Hitchcock saw his son’s shoulders tighten up in a way he hadn’t seen before.

“Is something wrong?”

The experience had been stewing inside of him ever since he got home and was able to process it, and because he knew his father was a good man, well-respected in the community, he could go to him with what he’d seen. Myst was too young to know the term “police brutality,” but everything he’d been taught told him that he did not like what he’d heard.

Mr Hitchcock smiled and patted his son on the shoulder. “Everything will be taken care of,” he said, and Myst once again felt that foundation in his chest strengthen.

Indeed, in a few weeks time, he asked again out of curiosity, and his father told him that they were dealt with by the higher-ups. Relieved, Myst felt somewhat comfortable returning to his routine, taking a different route to and from school every day.

Because the world was an orderly and just place.

On a holiday, Myst and his family went to a barbeque hosted by the police department. It was an all-around swell day for a picnic, basking in the springtime sun and breeze. Myst was introduced to a few other children from some of the police families, and played in the grass until he was hungry.

After taking a hot dog and some sides, he was walking away when he saw his father with some of his coworkers.

“Hi, Dad,” he grinned as he approached, munching his food. Mr Hitchcock smiled down at his son when he saw him. Turning to his coworkers he said,

“This is my little guy,” and turning to Myst said, “These here are the guys on my patrol.”

“Your patrol?” Myst asked.

“Yep, we’re out together on-duty,” Mr Hitchcock explained with a grin.

One by one, they introduced themselves, four in total.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Rodney,” said the third one. Myst reached out his hand to shake Rodney’s, and saw a small tattoo on his wrist.

A hen.

Myst shook the hand slowly, trying to choke down his alarm. That night, he lay in bed, sweating cold while awake. In the absence of sense he repeated the situation over and over again in his mind, never allowing the thought to be driven to its logical conclusion.

“If dad was on patrol with them-”

A black spike of dread stabbed his heart; he rolled around in his sheets, wanting so desperately to wail.

On his walk home from school, Myst decided to take one of the four routes he’d mapped out in his mind. This particular pathway took him down a quiet side street behind a body shop, where the road turned to gravel for a short stretch.

“Hey, spitzer!”

Myst stopped and turned around, but his eyes didn’t fill with fear when he saw Pierre approaching him with an aggressive gait, he simply turned back around and continued walking.

“Hey, you hear me?”

A blow collided with Myst’s back, sending him to the ground. Pierre picked him up off the gravel, tearing his shirt in the process.

“If your daddy doesn’t like you getting a black eye, I can make it hurt without showing,” he growled before pummeling Myst in the stomach. Myst took the beating without so much as a whimper, and after a few hits, Pierre pulled his arm back with a dopish look about him.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

But Myst didn’t answer, he looked like he wasn’t there, his mind was somewhere else, like he couldn’t even see Pierre. There was a thick glacial wall between him and the rest of the world; he could see the light on the other side, but he was submerged in a small, icy lake.

Something inside of him stirred, a sensation he’d never experienced. It was only with this realization that he was submerged that he first felt a new, raging strength in his spirit. Not hatred, not spite, not hope, not survival or faith, it was simply the acknowledgement that there was something beyond the wall of ice, that he said it without thinking.

“[DOME C]”

The body was left in the road to be found in a few hours by a worker at the body shop on break. It was declared a tragedy, and the perpetrator was never discovered. Myst could remember so clearly the funeral service held after school which he was forced to attend by his parents.

“No matter how much you disliked him,” his father had said. “You have to respect his life.”

Myst watched the procession in cold anger. It was all a joke, an invention. Holding up a life so highly was just another arbitrary way to make sense of the world, but Myst was no longer a part of the world, and had no need for these things intuited by people.

---

“Did you like killing the President?”

Myst nearly stopped in his tracks. He looked sideways at Sonsee and pushed his hands into his pockets.

“It’s not an accusation,” she pouted. “I don’t like that you did it, but I wonder why.”

The four of them were taking the low road through Galeton, surrounded on both sides by towering white brick walls that held up long rows of buildings, they passed below the shade of a bridge twenty feet above that ferried common folk from one side to the other.

“You asked if I liked it,” Myst coughed.

Sonsee clasped her hands behind her back. “I’ll ask both.”

“I don’t know if you’d understand,” Myst said, casting his eyes to the dirt path. “If you’ve never killed someone for another’s dream.”

“I don’t know that,” Sonsee replied as two threads tied in her mind. “Could you tell me why? Why would someone follow someone else so blindly that-”

“It isn’t blindness,” he cut her off. “When I knew Mello, I had both eyes,” he pointed to the black patch over his right eye. “I don’t think you’re like us, you have a direction in your life, don’t you? Or are you just alone? Because by now you would have found someone to follow. Some people get religious, y’know, some people fall in love, something’s at the center of their lives, and they can only be happy when they know what it is, they can start moving towards it. So, yeah, it felt good.”

A moment of silence.

“You wear a salamander, don’t you?” Sonsee’s eyes flashed at the golden necklace hanging from his neck. Myst didn’t say anything.

“You two need that,” Eroh yawned from up ahead. “I came along for money and killing.”

“That’s him…” Myst muttered under his breath.

Gruse pointed up at the sky to a tower in the distance. “That’s it, the Heavensward Gladial.”

Sonsee had seen it before, but now it stuck out among the surrounding buildings.

“Of course,” she thought. “It looks evil, even from here.”

The bird began squawking and flapping its wings, trying to take off but getting caught on the string that bound it to Gruse’s finger.

“Hm? What’s this thing’s problem?” Gruse held her other hand up, shielding her face from the flurry of wings and feathers.

Myst stepped forward to stand next to her, an anxious, focused crease in his brow. “You remember where this bird came from?”

“Yeah, New Hopeland,” Gruse retorted.

“No, did Mello ever tell you who it was?”

“Just his contact here,” Gruse yanked on the string to discourage the bird from trying to fly.

“You don’t see anything curious about that?”

Gruse slowed her walk to a crawl. “It’s trying to get… to the tower, isn’t it?” she posited, paying attention to the trajectory of the bird’s struggle.

“Is that where you want to go, girl?” Eroh cooed at it. It squawked enthusiastically in reply.

Gruse couldn’t stifle her mix of confusion, curiosity, and concern. “That’s… strange… Do you know who the contact was?”

“Nothing at all, he never said a thing,” Myst explained.

Gruse scoffed quietly. “If he was going to tell anyone, it would have been you. So we really know nothing, then?”

“Nope,” Eroh let out rather nonchalantly.

“I’m sorry,” Sonsee butt in. “What contact are we talking about?”

Myst turned to her and began the story. “Mello was contacted by someone in New Hopeland, we don’t know how or when, who gave him some information that led him to gathering us together again for the assassination.”

“Why did they want to kill the president?” Sonsee wondered.

“It was set up to start a war with New Hopeland, I have no clue,” Myst responded. “Mello probably could have done it without assembling the entire team, but there was obviously a lot more going on. He wanted to make sure Gallow was dead, for instance, he was told that much by the contact.”

“But you never knew why?” she repeated.

“Not a thing, but we did what he needed us to do. If the contact was in that tower, it does make all kinds of things fishy, though…”

“Fishy?”

Myst scratched his chin absentmindedly. “Just a lot of things adding up, a lot of things that didn’t seem connected, but there’s something in the center we don’t know about yet. Makes me worried we’re getting played.”

“A lot of things that didn’t seem connected…” A rapid series of thoughts flashed through Sonsee’s mind. “Gallow, The Serpent Isles, the orb, Disael’s family was from the Serpent Isles, he had spirit sight but no Vocation, Rodan was the same, Gallow told me once that Warren was visited by an angel…” Something just didn’t sit right with her, something was off.

“Let’s finish scouting out the area around the tower, and then we’ll make our move,” Myst declared. “See if we can get in by tomorrow.”

---

A fist whizzed by Gallow’s head. “What the hell?” he cried, swerving around the attack and delivering a counterblow to the bigger man’s chest, but the punch didn’t move him an inch.

“Huh?”

The man’s arm collided with Gallow’s side, knocking him into the wall. He launched himself forward, pinning Gallow against the wall and wrapping his hand around his throat.

“[AUSTERITY BLUES]”

“Not so fast, Gestalt.”

An unseen voice rang from the shadows, followed by the rough sound of metal sliding against metal. The man, apparently Gestalt, froze in place. Gallow could tilt his head just enough to see the voice’s owner. An older man in an ornately woven black vest and red monocle approached from outside the cell.

Gestalt released his grip on Gallow and stood as far away from him as possible, not letting the older man leave his sight.

“I thought the two of you would play well, but it appears you two will need to be separated.” He spoke confidently, each word painted in regal colors. “How about…” he looked around the hall before turning back around and pointing to the cell directly opposite theirs. “This one! Gestalt, your turn.” He smiled a big, plastic smile and produced a ring of keys from his vest.

“Oh, I almost forgot about you, Gallow,” he glanced at him, revealing what had made the sound earlier: a caliper held in his other hand. “You can’t be trying anything funny either.” After training his eyes on Gallow, he pointed the implement at him and, with the flick of his wrist, readjusted it.

“--!?”

Gallow felt his entire body seize up, but it was not the same as Jericho’s crop. It was a painless sensation, but just as unsettling as he felt he’d lost control of his muscles.

The older man unlocked the cell and let Gestalt out, who obediently entered the one opposite. As he closed the door to what was now Gallow’s cell, he hummed, “Don’t worry, you won’t have to endure this much longer, everything will be complete in due time…” It was an absentminded musing, as he refused to even make eye contact or raise his voice to be well audible.

As soon as he left the hall, Gallow felt control return to his body.

“What was that?!” he slammed his hands against the bars. “Who are you?! Who was that?!”

Gestalt took a seat on the ground, leaned back, and exhaled, looking none too happy.

“You really don’t know what you’re in for…” He chuckled sharply and stared into the back wall of Gallow’s cell for a moment. “Well, I could start, then. I’m Gestalt, nice to meet you.”

There were many things Gallow could have said, such as “How can you be so friendly after you tried to kill me?” but instead he went with:

“I’m Gallow.”

“Oh, are you?” he snarked, as if he already knew. “Last name?”

“None to speak of, you?”

“Hewl.”

“Hewl?” Gallow leaned up against the bars. “Sounds familiar,” he cocked his head and glanced down the empty hall.

“Maybe you’ve… read my writing?”

Gallow’s face turned white as a sheet. “You aren’t… you aren’t the Hewl?”

Gestalt flashed a thin smile and raised his brows. “I might just be.”

“You’re the reason I’m in this damn place!!” Gallow hollered.

“Hm? I am?” Gestalt’s look of pleasure was replaced by genuine confusion. “Maybe I’m just that clever…” he murmured.

“You know that artist, Rodan Calari?”

Gestalt threw his hands up. “You met Rodan? Oh, mercy on your soul…”

“It was his little coup attempt that I got roped into that landed me here in the first place! I could have had anyone else to stay with, but he gets taken away all of a sudden into the night and we’re stranded in this city with nowhere to go but the palace to kill the king, how smart do you think I am?”

The question at the tail end of his rant caught Gestalt off-guard. “Smart? Not really, I wish I’d been awake earlier to end your suffering.”

“What?”

“When you were dropped off here, I was sleeping. Murder is bad for the stomach unless I’ve been awake for at least forty minutes.”

Gallow blinked emptily at him. “And why do you want to kill me?”

Gestalt laughed. “I don’t think you need to know that.”

Gallow’s head drooped by a few degrees, his eyelids sinking just enough that Gestalt could tell he was looking deeply at him. “Really? You don’t think?”

“Naw, I actually don’t want to talk to you anymore, I don’t like humanizing someone I want to kill.”

Gallow stretched himself away from the bars. “Alright, if you say so.”

They passed the next few hours in silence. Every once in a while, Gallow would press himself up against the bars and look up and down the hall. It wasn’t terribly long, with only eight cells total, all empty save for the two occupied by he and Gestalt. There was no natural light, only a few burning torches that never seemed to go out or weaken, their glow bathing the stone floors and walls in the only warmth afforded to them.

Gallow lay in the lower bunk of his cell, staring at the bed above him. He’d taken the sheets and balled them up, then tied it into a ball with some loose thread he’d found under the bed. He threw it up and caught it over and over, saliva rolling slowly from his tongue to the back of his throat; not enough to choke on, but enough to notice.

On the voyage, he’d also had this kind of free time, but it was always underscored with a duty, there was always something to do in the future, whether it be the next shift, the next day, or the coming week. He could lay here and think about what his immediate goal was, but it seemed so abstract,

“Escape, I suppose.”

When was the last time he’d felt this aimlessness? Back in the desert, in the midst of desperation. Those feelings he’d bottled up for so long, the guilt, however irrational, that bubbled up to the surface whenever his thoughts wandered to Warren. What was he doing there, in the desert? He was wandering as well, until…

Gallow caught the ball and held it for a second in his palm.

When he met Sonsee, that was the first sense of direction he had ever experienced, maybe in his life.

“No…”

It wasn’t that she had directed him anywhere, it was as if she had confirmed the existence of a direction, an endpoint to his wailing and writhing life.

The words she’d said when she gave him the sigil of the Navigator…

The skies were clouded that night, and the moon only peeked through the cracks in the sky every now and again. The darkness was overbearing, and his legs were exhausted when he saw a light in the distance, down in the plains.

Sonsee looked like an angel in the golden blaze of her campfire, and he thanked her like she really was one for a bit of food and rest. Before they retired, she took his hand and stared into him with fierce eyes.

“Before you head out tomorrow, I want to give you something.” She took a dark berry from a pouch and chewed it for a moment without swallowing. Then, holding the back of his hand closer to her face, spit onto it.

“Wha-?” Gallow barely knew what to say, but her grip on him was so fast that he had no choice but to let her proceed.

Sonsee placed her thumb on the dark wad of saliva and rubbed it back and forth in a very specific pattern; first a diamond-shape, then four lines extending inward from the corners with two hashes each. She did this motion for a few minutes in the silence of the black desert. When she was seemingly finished, tapped a small dab at the center two or three times.

She stopped and examined the back of his hand for a moment. Gallow’s eyes glanced from the sign to her face, but he could never make out exactly what she was feeling or thinking. It wasn’t sorrow in her eyes, it was a little more complex than that. A sense of sadness, maybe, but also peace, and a hint of happiness. It felt like, gazing into her heart, he could see a tumultuous mess of emotions, a kaleidoscopic melancholy.

“This is a symbol from my people,” she’d said. “It means Navigator.”

“Navigator?” Gallow had asked. “Do you mean I’m a Navigator?”

Sonsee looked up at last and said, “Does it matter so much if you lead yourself or it leads you?”

Silence settled between them.

“I think so,” he’d replied. “I think it matters a lot to me.”

When he awoke the next morning, she was gone, and had taken everything with her. A few weeks later, he wandered into Sigrit.

“How much did it matter?” he wondered. The ball was still in his hand, held in front of his face, his eyes trained on the sigil.

“It mattered a lot to me back then, but I haven’t thought about it very much.”

“Hey, Hewl.”

No response.

“Hewl!”

Nothing.

“Do you believe in fate?”

Nothing from the other cell.

Gallow leapt up from the bed and threw himself against the bars, catching Hewl in view, just sitting against the back wall of his cell.

“Hewl! Do you believe in destiny?!” he nearly shouted his question. Gestalt made eye contact, but said nothing. “Come on! You’ve got an opinion don’t you?”

Gestalt just breathed a little heavier, inciting Gallow to keep going.

“You’re a philosopher of sorts, you hang around with smart people who pass pamphlets on government around, you have to have some inkling of a bit of an idea of what you think, am I right?”

Finally, he relented. “Why do you want to know, don’t you have an opinion for yourself?”

“That’s the thing,” Gallow was like a rabid dog speaking. “I don’t know for myself, and I figured that it’s an important thing, don’t you think? Because it changes the way we live our lives, and that’s a big blind spot if there’s this big hole where we never agree on something so important, it seems like it would just cause a lot of fuss of people arguing over something without ever realizing that the real problem is this thing that’s under the surface-”

“It doesn’t matter!” Gestalt hollered. “It doesn’t matter, would you just shut up?!”

His outburst just made the ensuing quiet all the thicker.

“Hm?” Gallow chirped. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter?”

“Don’t play stupid with me, kid!”

“No, really,” Gallow gestured for him to continue. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Gestalt rolled his head around, exasperated. “It means it doesn’t matter if something’s predetermined as long as you got there the right way.”

“What?”

Gestalt huffed. Now he felt obligated to engage more, because he hadn’t articulated himself well enough. “You can’t know whether or not something is preordained, so you shouldn’t act like you know one way or the other. We’re here for a very short amount of time, I’m forty, okay? If I live to sixty or seventy before I get taken out by some disease, I’m over halfway to the grave, so all I can do is live in the best way I can, to do the most good for the most people, and that’s-- I think it is-- that’s what I try to do with everything I do. And that’s including making sure you’re dead!” He raised a finger and pointed like a fighter at Gallow.

Gallow chewed on his words for a moment. “So, say something bad happens, like someone’s whole family dies in an accident, the survivor feels pretty bad about it, especially if they could have done something about it.”

“Why does that matter?” Gestalt snapped. “Actions in the past don’t matter in the present.”

Gallow squinted at him. “Oh, so you don’t believe in cause-and-effect?”

“No,” he huffed again. “I mean that you aren’t stuck doing anything forever. Just because you did something you feel bad about doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it, are you stupid or something?”

Gallow just kind of stood there against the bars for a solid ten seconds before Gestalt followed up,

“Hello? What kind of look is that?”

Gallow’s eyes were focused sharply on Gestalt, but far beyond him, far off in the distance, deep in thought. He started subtly nodding.

“What? What are you doing?”

Gallow didn’t answer him. “No, this is good, that’s… huh…” he whispered to himself.

“Whatever,” Gestalt stood up and flopped over onto the bed, head towards his prison mate.

Gallow snapped to attention. “What if we got executed here?”

“I hope so.”

“What would your last meal be?”

“What?” Gallow’s question provoked Gestalt to twist himself to look up-- or maybe, across-- to him.

“I think it’s a good question,” he explained. “My mom used to volunteer at this orphanage and it’s one of the things she would ask in a roundtable every now and again.”

Gestalt gave up and resumed looking at the bottom of the top bunk. “Uh… Hm… You know, it might sound strange, but I think I’d like- well, there’s a tradition in my family of baking sourdough bread.”

“What?!” Gallow was electric, but Gestalt didn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah, I think I’d like to make my own sourdough one last time, maybe make a sandwich with it, probably get some pastrami on that, with some cheese, oh God, and some pickles… gotta add mayo…” As he droned on over his recipe, his voice tapered off until he was just speaking to himself in a tone hushed but intense.

“You don’t understand,” Gallow interjected, breaking him out of his ramble. “I love sourdough.”

Gestalt sat up and spun himself around to look at him, hair tousled. “Really?” he sounded incredulous.

“It’s my favorite bread.”

The two men shared a silent moment together, eyes like stone, temperaments like monoliths.

Gestalt was the first to speak.

“Have you ever made it?”

“No.”

“Do you wanna know?”

Silence. Gallow’s mouth was open long before the words came out.

“Could you teach me?”

Gestalt slanted his eyebrows, smiling and like he was defacing property, nodding in rhythm with his words.

“F*** yeah, I could.”