Overstuffed fabric wraps around his throat, soft yet rigid, as sharp nails tap-tap-tap against his cheek. Wake up, they seem to say, you need to wake up. But he can't. He can't wake up, but he does open his eyes to see Jeremy sitting at the foot of the bed. In his lap is a too-large marionette, that same spindly creature that keeps muttering into Ricky's ear.
He tries to shoo it away. Where that thing goes tragedy always follows. Besides, there are better toys for Jeremy to play with, cooler ones. Toys that aren't seven feet tall or as horrific as the tear-stained mask the marionette wears.
He tries to speak, but opening his mouth results in the limb around his throat tightening. It's mad. Ricky has upset it.
Jeremy cradles it like a baby. When he opens his mouth it's not his voice that comes, but that of a little girl's. The same voice that drifts in and out of memory and nightmare, anonymous yet familiar. "Don't listen to the yellow rabbit," she sings, using his brother's voice box, "don't follow the yellow rabbit."
The bed rocks and Ricky jolts, the image behind his eyelids moving away from ghostly apparitions to a screen of sunset orange.
He cracks open an eye. He stretches out a leg as he grows increasingly aware of his physical body rising from the depths of a sleep like no other.
He's in his bed. The blinds are open and it is daytime and it is so goddamn bright and his head is killing him and--music? There's music coming from somewhere in his apartment.
Arms and legs are as sluggish as his thoughts, but he manages to roll onto his back. He blinks up at the popcorn ceiling, staring at the circular rainbows cast off melted snow on the inaccessible back porch.
When you put your arms around me—
God, the music.
—I haven't been there for the longest time.
Thumb and forefinger massaging the bridge of his nose, he pauses at the sight of the unbuttoned cuff and the marred, dark skin beneath it.
The night hits him like a freight train.
Ricky bolts upright, heartbeat in his throat and nausea rocking the boat as he tries to pop off the already missing buttons of his collar. He's suffocating. The idea of melting off his skin becomes not only welcome but necessary when it all trickles back with sickening intensity.
The pressure of dozens of eyes, the smell of cigarettes and sweat, the burn of alcohol—of Vodka. Vodka he stupidly drank without considering who was handing it to him.
"Son of a bitch."
Crawling off the bed on unsteady legs, he chases the music drifting in from beyond the bedroom. He trips over his feet in his haste, blinded by a rage only Afton is capable of triggering. The thought that he should arm himself sparks deep in the throbbing folds of his brain, but another more animal instinct belays the suggestion. He's got his hands, and that's all he needs.
Stopping at the mouth of the kitchen slows down his murderous impulse however, mostly by way of confusion.
"Look who's decided to join the land of the living," William says, flipping a sausage patty and pressing it down onto the cast iron skillet with a spatula. "I sure hope you had nowhere to be today 'cause it's almost noon." He looks freshly showered, sporting a worn UCLA shirt.
There are several grocery bags on the kitchen counter.
"I didn't come across anything edible in your fridge so I took the liberty of making a quick run while you snoozed away. You know, to return the favor." He winks as he flips the sausage onto a plate. "My little girl would swear up and down that I make a better Egg McMuffin than the leading competitors. How about I let you decide, huh?"
There is only so much sensory input Ricky can take at that very moment: the smell of food, the sight of him dressed down in Ricky's space, the tight itchiness of his own skin. The room shifts at odd angles, but not in the usual way. "What happened?"
William stalls, opening the fridge to pull out a carton of milk he pours into two mugs. "Last night? You got wasted. Utterly sloshed. Had a little too much to drink, my friend."
"No. You tell me the truth."
"That is the God-honest truth."
"I know what a fucking hangover feels like, and I—I remember, bits and pieces, in the bathroom. And now I'm here."
The skillet is switched out for a clean pan, and William loads up two sliced English muffins to crisp up. He keeps time with his watch, flipping them over once before layering on cheese, sausage patties, perfectly circular sunny side ups, and closing them up.
"You, uh, you got a little bit handsy," he says, "delivered that touch of the under kind. We got up to some mischief, nothing too wild, nothing like that, and then I brought you back home. Tucked you right in. Kmart couches continue to be the most uncomfortable pieces of furniture in all of known history."
Ricky doesn't believe him.
Then, William raises his eyebrows as if catching on. "Oh." He pushes his glasses up his nose and has the gall to look offended. "What kind of monster do you take me for? No point in forcefully taking what is already freely given."
"Then why the hell did you—" before he can finish the question, William drops his plated breakfast on the island with a deafening clatter.
The island that has been cleared of Ricky's tools, and now hosts the wooden box he had hid in the closet.
"I hope you don't mind toaster hash browns. They were the only ones I could find," William says as if nothing is out of place, as if he hadn't dug out the box Ricky swore he had discarded and placed it center stage.
The lid is closed but its seam carries the scars of Ricky's savagery. The splinters have been either plucked out or trimmed down, and there is no evidence of any kind of maintenance in its immediate area.
"Breakfast first and then we'll chat," he continues as he walks by Ricky with his own plate and mug in hand, hip-checking him on the way. "You're looking a little pale, and speaking from experience, that's nothing a good meal can't fix."
He sounds chipper as he takes a seat on the lesser of the rickety chairs at the repurposed garden table, and tucks into his breakfast like a man starved. He sucks sausage grease off his fingers and hums his job well done.
Ricky forgets how to work his legs. The fact that William has moved away, leaving him within reach of the knife block without a care in the world tells him he knows Ricky won't try anything. He takes note of that fact, and weighs it against all his previous assumptions regarding the man in his makeshift dining room.
"Who's in the box?"
The music is loud enough to pop into Ricky's attention again. The TV is on and the Billy Joel concert he recorded off HBO plays on the screen. While the rest of the living room is tidy, the bookshelf that holds all of his VHS tapes has been rummaged through. An eye for an eye and all that.
William holds a hand to the wicker chair across from him. "Sit, sit. Your food's getting cold and there's nothing worse than rubbery cheddar."
Ricky joins him, every joint wound tight and ready to spring. Towards the knives or the door, he's yet to decide. Weapons are the safest option, but the traitorous part of his brain that's hung up on his fantastical promises keeps stilling his hand.
Also, yeah. The breakfast sandwich is pretty damn good.
"I didn't mean for him to die," William offers halfway into his food. The way he dips a chunk of his hash brown in ketchup is too aggressive to match the pleasant look on his face. "I…" He pauses, staring at his plate as if seeing something that isn't there. "I took something from him. In return, he took himself from me."
Ah.
"Your old pal," Ricky says, recalling the tone in his voice from the last time the topic came up. It isn't grief, but anger. An anger so deep and cutting he wouldn't hesitate to call it hatred. "What'd you take from him?"
"His son."
William says it so matter-of-factly Ricky ends up swallowing wrong, a toasted edge of English muffin scraping down his gullet. "Jesus."
"He understood the stakes, you see. Proposed half of them himself and then, and then when he realized what he had to do, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Tried to remove himself altogether from his own equation. So, I did it for him. I needed to remind him." His laugh is dry and humorless. "Thought he had what it takes but in the end… in the end he was a damn coward."
William looks up and Ricky holds his gaze, looking for half-truths he does not find.
"When you said we could bring Jeremy back."
"We?"
"What did you mean by that?"
"That's not what I said."
"Yes, you did. Before the cop busted us at the restaurant."
The scrutinizing look reminds Ricky of the first time they met. That beige hell of a box whose stink still haunts his nightmares now feels like a pleasant dream, a place where in his fantasies he can entertain different ends to their appointment.
William leans forward, elbows on the table. He strokes his graying beard, consumed by his thoughts but attention still sharp on Ricky. "You'd have to trust me."
"Ha!" The laugh punches out of him so abruptly he spits traces of food onto his plate. "That's fucking rich."
"It is what it is."
"You pull my chain, spike my drink, act like a total dickwad, and you want me to trust you."
"I don't want you to do anything." William reaches for his coffee and takes a loud sip, the melancholy of the box once more shuttered away. "You're the one who wants your brother back. I couldn't give less of a fuck about some kid." He waves Ricky off when he grips the side of his plate with unlawful intention. "If you want what I have, if you want us to 'work together', then you're the one that has to stop trying to shank me at every given moment of the day."
"I don't—"
"I've been nothing but kind and understanding towards you. All I've done is–is show you a great time, time and again. Show you sites, tuck you in."
"Stalk me, harass me."
"No, no, you stole my car and then got on my case when I kindly requested you return what was mine." He takes another obnoxiously loud sip. "I'm the victim here."
"You've got a lot of fucking balls, man."
"As I'm sure you know."
Ricky bounces his leg underneath the table, watching him finish up his meal. "How do I know this isn't a trap?"
"Whyever would I want to lure you into a trap?"
"Same reason you offered me that security gig."
"Still on about that."
"Wrap up those loose ends."
"I didn't kill your brother," William says.
This he doesn't believe. He doesn't have any proof, just vivid nightmares and muddy memories that blend together into an amalgamation he has never been able to purge, but what he does know is that Afton had something to do with Jeremy's death. They were his machines, after all. His and…
"Henry," Ricky says. "Oh, my God. It's Henry."
The old pal. The man that sat beside him as his parents and first responders arrived on the scene. The man who Ricky saw, out of the corner of his eye, rub elbows with the man now sitting across from him. Entrepreneur and entertainer, William once said.
A fork clinks the side of the plate, measured and methodic, as William watches him eerily still.
"You want to bring him back," Ricky murmurs, bewildered by the thought, the impossibility, and the intrigue of whatever William thinks himself capable of pulling off with his help.
"No," he says, cradling his mug with both hands now. "I want to put him back together so that I can take him apart myself."
Whatever those two had going on, it seems, came with a body count.
Both men having stakes in this fucked up little game of whatever cards William thinks he has up his sleeve makes Ricky feel better about his own prospects and chances of survival.
"If you want me onboard, you have to show me what the fuck it is you're talking about."
William snaps his fingers and points at him, a twisted smirk making his face comical. "There we go." He clicks his tongue, then goes back to his coffee. "Took you this long to realize, and not even on purpose, that you were making the wrong demand all along."
Ricky shakes his head, tired of the word games. "And what demand was it?"
"Not for me to tell you, but for me to show you."
• 
