The men sit around the table, their paper women visible behind them on the wall. Sebastian, at the head, appears grim in his lack of movement. Caleb appears guilty in his restlessness. Several decks have been brought to the table but they remain unopened and tenuous- each an unanswered question.

Will there be a game tonight?

Will there be another game at all?

I’m not sure what Eddie told them but I trust that it was more heartfelt than anything I could have said. That’s the crux of it all- in order to get in close with those who hold the cards a sacrifice is in order. Something pure, offered violently.

There are many types of friendships and a path to each. The path to common friendship is long and tedious and something that is done almost subconsciously. It consists of a hundred little interactions drawn out over months or years. It comes upon two people like sleep, or love, or old age.

I don’t know when I’ll have the time for something like that.

So, to secure admission to ‘The Library of Urban Legends,’ I chose to pursue the quick and dirty camaraderie of us-vs-them, the sort of friendship and mutual respect that forms when a newcomer seems to offer up themselves for the good of an existing group.

“It was Eddie’s idea,” I tell them.

“Eddie was tired of losing.”

“He knew it would be suspicious if he tried to pull something himself.”

“He said I could join if I threw the game.”

“He said it would be less suspicious because I wouldn’t know what I was doing.”

“But you’ve all been so kind.”

“And my time here is running short.”

“And I couldn’t leave the group like it is.”

Eddie doesn’t say a thing. He doesn’t seem to hear it at first, so sure, is he, that I would be selflessly sucking the venom from their wounds and ingesting the poison myself. Eddie would not turn on Caleb, would not stand up to Sebastian. He was not my first choice, but he was never not an option.

When Eddie does hear me, he does not know what to say. And when he thinks he knows what to say, he says all the wrong things. He tells them everything I told him, that Sebastian was behind the upset shelf and the upset mechanics of the game. He forgets to cite me, though, and by the time he remembers it seems petty. He guarantees that Caleb will not confess to the shelf. He ensures Sebastian will be too angry to think straight.

The room is silent when we are through and the men seem to consider all that has been said. Sebastian (and this is what I feared most) seems unconvinced, and I feel his eyes on me as he clutches a Traitor. He folds it, carefully, over and over.

The cheese, now green around the edges, warms at my chest, wringing out a line of grease that slides down toward my bellybutton. The card has no power over me.

They turn on Eddie all at once, spitting pretzels again, throwing cards. He defends himself, of course, and he tries desperately to trace the lines of my treachery but he buries himself in the holes of the story I told and the others step in to defend me.

I turn to leave, gathering my jacket from the pile on Sebastian’s bed, and I feel him in the room with me. The Traitor in Sebastian’s hand is becoming denser with each bend. It is folded beyond recognition, resisting him now. He pops it in his mouth and starts to chew.

“I’m sorry I blamed you,” he says, “I thought Eddie was a good guy.”

“Me too,” I tell him, “I’m sorry I got involved.”

“Know where you’ll go next?”

“I’ve got family a couple states over,” I tell him.

It’s not a lie.

“You said you were a traveler when you showed up here. Said you were looking for a museum.”

“Never did find it.”

“Well, I think I might know a guy that works there. Could get you in on your way out. We owe you that much for being honest.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Consider it a friendly gesture, then.”

-traveler

“You know I don’t fuck around with that satanic shit,” Eddie says, sitting up through a cloud of cigarette smoke. He grimaces and clutches broken ribs through the brown flannel shirt I’ve lent him. His bandages bulge underneath.

I am homesick, reader- ready to return to my old life on the Wayside. There are dangers there, of course, but there is also space to run from them. Given a room to live in I have begun to claw at the walls like a cornered animal. Given friends I have begun to tear them apart. Sometimes I dream about Veronica and her red door. I dream that I am trapped inside the freezer like so much meat.

I relax my fingers when I feel my nails digging into my palms.

I regard Eddie through the smoke.

“Suit yourself,” I tell him, “But I saw it clear as day- Sebastian pushed the shelf over.”

The cheese itches under my shirt where the top peels away and tugs on the hairs of my chest. I smell it, faintly, in the air that pushes out from my collar. It is rotting.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, “Sebastian wrote the game.”

There is a moment’s silence between us before he leans forward and reaches for me. I stop him, afraid of revealing Brendan’s talisman.

“I got the letter today,” I tell him, “Seasonal work has ended.”

“Shit,” he says.

“If Sebastian wants me out…”

“You don’t need to stock shelves to play the game.”

“Won’t be able to afford it for long,” I remind him, “You’ve seen how I play. So I’m thinking, if Sebastian already wants me out…”

“Fuck that.”

“If Sebastian wants me out, if he thinks I’m screwing with the game, why not just admit it and head off?”

“It’s not fucking fair,” he says, “That’s why. It’s a slight to your fucking honor, dude.”

“I don’t care what they think,” I lie, “And you’ll know why I’m leaving. Let me do this for you, man. As a friend.”

Eddie huffs and picks and his nailbeds but I know he misses the game.

“Get the guys together this Friday,” I tell him, “I’ll ‘come clean’ and bow out, no problem.”

He is quiet for a long time and when he finally does speak he points to one of the discarded Traitors on the table and shakes his head and smiles.

“Fucking Sebastian,” he laughs, “That thing doesn’t look anything like you.”

-traveler

There is a staff shortage at the store’s pizzeria and I am shifted there for an afternoon, my seasonal position stretching uncomfortably toward infinity and my arm aching under the weight of the peel. When the others there are tired of me burning the food, they send me to the back where a 18 year old boy is frantically cutting occult symbols into old pizzas. He takes them apart and rearranges them on the floor. He licks his fingers.

“Why are you doing that?”

“You think I’m doing this?” he asks, wiping his nose with his sleeve, “It’s the pizza cutter. The thing’s cursed to cut pizzas this way. Try it.”

He hands me the pizza cutter and I carefully cut a mushroom-sausage into eight equal slices.

“Shit,” he says, “Maybe it is me.”

“They sent me back here to help,” I explain, “Anything specific that needs to be done?”

“Name’s Brendan and you can start by showing me how you did that.”

When the woman from the front pushes her head into the kitchen I’m close up behind Brendan, holding his right arm ahead and trying to guide it in a straight line. After several promising starts he’s managed to carve the crude visage of a goat-eyed being in a four-cheese, the marinara seeping from between its clenched teeth. She closes her eyes very slowly and opens them in a fraction of a second.

“Leave him alone,” she tells me, “Wipe down the counters. Brendan, I need a classic pepperoni. Don’t fuck this one up.”

“Yes ma’am!” he says, and he dusts himself off as the door closes. “Thanks for trying,” he whispers, and he points out a rag near the sink.

I clean while Brendan arranges the pizza, placing and re-placing the pepperoni slices to form a pattern that likely has some esoteric significance. Despite the close quarters, he doesn’t pay me much mind and so an hour passes in relative silence as orders trickle in from the front and Brendan’s work occasionally undoes mine. It isn’t until he goes on break before the dinner rush that I catch up and survey the empty room for hidden filth. I find it in the southeast corner, lurking behind a refrigerator- a matte-black spot with gray fringes that extend a yard in every direction. The core of the thing sucks heat from the humming underbelly of the fridge and glares darkly as I crack my knuckles and soak a new rag in bleach.

“Place is looking good,” Brendan says, his return filling the room with a smell like burning paper, “Mind helping me pick up the mural?”

“The…”

From my crouched position on the floor I turn and, for an instant, an image coalesces in the pizzas arranged there.

“That’s… Caleb,” I say, “From hardware. And Eddie on the floor.”

“Really?” Brendan asks, “From here it looks like a dog or a small horse.”

“How are you supposed to view this?” I ask him, trying to kneel back into a position where the tableau made sense, “Did you… make this for the thing under the fridge?”

“Hell no,” he says, “I made it for you.”

As I stand, a new image forms across the toppings, this one static. It’s me and Brendan, our earlier roles reversed. He stands behind me and holds my arm into the pizza oven. Brendan’s head rests, with sympathy, on my shoulder. My own face is screaming.

“Wait, no. I saw my friend on the floor before this.”

It was Eddie, I’m sure, spilled across the tile in crimson tomato, sandwiched between the floor and a shelf of thick crusts. Caleb’s form in curved bell peppers turned away from the scene on the left, his hand still outstretched from tipping the shelf. Sebastian on the right, having narrowly skirted the threat in red meat and olives.

“Old news,” Brendan says, “They took that guy to the hospital hours ago.”

And before I can stand to grab my things, I feel his hand on my back.

“Hold up. We’ve got to deal with that arm first.”

When the store closes I am lying on my back on a table in the kitchen. My shirt dangles over the dishrack and I am cold.

“You chilly, man?” Brendan asks, “You’ve got some bumpy topography here.”

“I’m fine,” I tell him, “Just do what you need to do.”

“Aye aye, captain.”

Brendan peels cheese from another slice of pizza and cuts a long rectangle from it, draping it carefully over my arm. He licks his finger and runs it over my bare skin, clearing away grease that has spread into the negative space of his design.

“This is good,” he says, “Some of the best I’ve done.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“How do you think I got this job?” He lays out a small, mozzarella pentacle over the inside of my wrist and massages it until the slick underside sticks. “I think we’re ready to bake this in.”

We move into the darkened store, our faces orange in the glow of the oven. Brendan tells me it won’t hurt, but I saw the tableau and I know he’s lying. He watches me reach in between the racks. He pretends to believe me when I tell him I’ll endure it on my own but he is there the moment I try to withdraw, holding my arm to the blazing heat. I smell the hair burn from my arm and watch the cheese rise and bubble and brown.

I find myself screaming:

“How much longer?”

And he screams in reply:

“A man makes his own pizza.”

He does not release my arm until the cheese is blackened and the skin is red. The design sloughs off as soon as I bend my elbow and Brendan howls. He drops to his knees and begins to furiously consume the crisp remains. I slump to the floor beside him and cradle my stinging limb.

When Brendan has finished he turns to me with black powdered lips and says:

“You should probably go to the hospital before that blisters.”

Before I leave the store, he rolls a long rectangle of cheese along my sternum, telling me that as long as it sticks there I will be protected from further assaults. I plan to peel it away in the parking lot but it remains there like a fat leech even as I step from the curb and into a crowded bus.

The doctor at the free clinic does not ask about the gray stain that grows from under my t-shirt as she bandages my arm. She doesn’t ask about the patterns in the burns.

“Does this hurt?” she asks, and I tell her what I realized as I slipped out of the pizzeria and into the brisk moonlight.

“Not at all.”

-traveler

They remove the woman from the room next to mine. Not dead, no. The opposite, actually. She’s never looked more alive than when they drag her out of the room, screaming and clawing at the door. I am already awake when it happens, staring out at the highway through a thin slat in the blinds. I am a few uninterrupted minutes away from leaving the motel and this town. My legs have been shaking for weeks. I dream of running and it feels like flying. My racing heart wakes me in the middle of the night.

An ambulance arrives silently. A police car after that. I gather, from the eventual confrontation, that she is being taken to some home for the terminally ill. Some estranged family member has made that choice for her.

Eddie is out of the bed and in the lot before I even wonder if the noise will wake him. He shouts at the paramedics until the police pull him aside and warn him against further interference. The woman screams after him- him, and eventually me, standing in the doorway- to convince them that she’ll be all right on her own. Neither of us do. How could we?

The woman’s room is left unlocked in the chaos, her door ajar. The sickly smell and yellow light seep out onto the pavement outside my room. I hesitate to cross it and, when I do, it’s only to close the woman’s door. I see the indention of her body on the comforter and the path of her pacing in the carpet and I shut them quickly away. Eddie jogs over.

“Think we should take some of her stuff to her?” he asks.

I demonstrate the locked handle and he puts on a face that he wears the rest of the evening. He’s wearing it at the table near the window, looking out the slat with me, when he says:

“I’m sorry things have been so shit recently.”

I thumb a card in my pocket, a picture of the Traitor, and I scratch my nose.

“Me too.”

Another Friday arrives and we play a few broken rounds of the game before Sebastian steps away to smoke and several others linger, bound by cautious unrest. Caleb is the first and only one to broach the subject.

“We need to change it back.”

Nobody disagrees, which is as much a mutiny as these men will ever conspire toward. They begin to drop the Traitor from their hand, drawing up as though someone had dealt them a missing card. Even Sebastian seems relieved, at first, to find himself lost in the old, familiar archetypes and their old familiar behaviors for an evening.

It isn’t until later, when Diego stands and drops a card from his sleeve that Sebastian sees what has happened. He seems to see them all- all the Traitors, all at once, secreted in pockets and stuffed between the pages of old novels on his shelf, folded under baseball caps and into shoes.

“What’s this?” he asks, picking the card up from the rug, “You cheating, Diego?”

“No, man,” Diego says, squirming in his clothes, “No… Me and the guys thought…”

His move to snitch sets the others off. They throw down their cards and shout about the problems with the game and threaten Diego and try to excuse the subterfuge. They spill beer and chew pretzels so that they can spray the crumbs from their mouths and make angry gesticulations. Sebastian is silent, for a moment, and I swear his eyes are on every card in the room. For that moment, he’s in the place he goes to make these things. Then, he holds up his hand and he says:

“I know who’s doing this.”

And, as sure as I am that he’ll say Caleb he turns to me instead.

“You.”

He bends the Traitor in his hand, folding off-center so that the illustration crumples on its arm.

“You all better be out of here by the time I get back,” he says, and he goes for another cigarette.

Everyone moves to pack up, the game abandoned on the table like a half-finished story. Eddie, seeing that I haven’t moved, sets a hand on my shoulder.

“I don’t know what that was,” he whispers, “But he’ll get over it.”

I should be embarrassed, I realize, to be called out like that. I should be thinking of every reason it couldn’t be me that’s ruining the game. Instead, I try to keep a straight face as pain racks the left side of my body, radiating from the arm Sebastian would have me lose.

-traveler