Last night we played Don't Rest Your Head, so I'm gonna do a write-up because every time I think "it's a one-shot, why bother, I won't need to refer to it" a year later I find myself thinking "ooh, what happened in that [blah] one-shot?" and then I get mad at past Matt.
SO ANYWAY.
Our story opens on a subway car. Five people are sitting around - well, four are sitting, one is standing. None of them have slept in days or longer.
Jamie Keller is a college student who got on the Red Line to go meet some friends at a bar. She's overwhelmed and struggling and homesick and just trying to get through her midterms alive. She's loud and frazzled and has a strawberry-shaped purse (on her) and a dog named Sam (at home).
Hiei is a loner and orphan who just stole an ancient artifact from the Natural History Museum and escaped onto the subway. He's got something of a past - his mother's people tried to kill him as a baby. He carries a sword. He'll fit right in in the Mad City.
Carla is an artist, kept awake by her inspiration and her obsession. She's seen her masterpiece in dreams and nightmares, and she's trying to finish it, so she went out for supplies tonight. Her half-finished works have come to life and talked to her, demanding to be finished. It's urgent.
Lydia is a mother of two and a devoted wife. She's been having night sweats and anxiety, and she just had a huge fight with her husband and stormed out. She got on the train to just travel and think. Things have been off lately. She doesn't know why.
FredBob is a janitor and custodian at a private school. He's been awake for weeks because of guilt and flashbacks; he's always using (or withdrawing from) stimulants. He was at home in his apartment when millions of spiders started crawling out of the sink, and so he ran to the RTA station and got on.
All five of these people got on trains or subways in different cities, but that's the least weird thing that's going to happen to them tonight. As they ride, the door at the end of the carriage opens, and a man (?) in a crisp blue uniform with shiny buttons, a perfectly straight hand, immaculate white gloves, and with no discernable face walks in and up to Lydia. "Ticket, please?"
Lydia looks blank. "I...don't think I got one."
The ticket-taker is calm. "I'm sure you did. I suggest you check."
Lydia checks her pockets, and sure enough, there's a ticket. She hands it to the ticket-taker and her punches it, and then walks on to Jamie. "Ticket, please."
"I don't have a paper ticket...I used my pass-" she holds up her phone. The ticket-taker nods, takes her phone, and punches it, putting a hole straight through it.
Carla, FredBob, Hiei all have their tickets punched, and the ticket-taker moves on. All of the passengers look perplexed, and then they all feel a jolt, like a myclonic jerk. Carla looks at her ticket and finds it's dark blue or black, so much so that she can barely see it. She manages to make out the word "BIZARRE", but the hole is punched through the "I".
Jamie stands up and looks for a route map, and there's on the wall, but her eyes try to slide off of it. She finally manages to stare at it hard enough to read it, and somehow realizes that where you get off is dependent on what car you're in (which is weird because that's not how trains work). This car is getting off in the "Bizarre Bazaar," but other options include "13 Police Plaza," "the High School," "the Chop Shop," and someplace that's just designated with a drawing of a candle.
Carla, surprisingly unfussed by all of this, decides to get out in the Bizarre Bazaar and try to do some shopping. Everyone else agrees, not because they want to shop necessarily, but because none of the other options sound great. They disembark into a city street...but it's not their city.
The sky is dark, but there are no stars. There are buildings, none of them taller than the ones in their cities, but they can't see the tops. There are people - many, many people - but they're mostly dressed in greys and blacks and old-timey hats and fashions, and their faces don't seem to have features unless you really stare. They travelers turn around and see the train has gone...and so have the tracks.
The street is lined with stalls, one of which has a sign reading "FOOD." Hiei gets closer and sees that people are walking up and ordering "one food, please," and getting a non-distinct something wrapped in newspaper. The food smells edible, but not something he can place. He gets in line and gets to the front, and as he watches the man in the FOOD truck makes up a food...but when he does, his arm splits in half down the middle and becomes two smaller arms, allowing him to grab two food components and put them together quickly.
Hiei's eyes get wide. The proprietor turns to him. "Yeah?"
"Um. Is it gluten-free?"
"What? Not free."
"No, but is there gluten in it."
"I didn't put no glutens in. Just food."
"That doesn't really answer my-"
"You want answers? That's down the road. I sell FOOD."
Hiei steps away, not willing to risk it. FredBob, having heard this exchange, wants to go in search of answers, and Lydia and Hiei join him.
Meanwhile, Jamie goes looking for a phone. She finds a booth that sells them, but the phones being sold are the old-timey handset, or rotary dial, or those gigantic 1980s portable phones. She asks the proprietor if there are any newer phones.
The proprietor is a woman with an immense beehive hairdo with switchboard wires emerging from it. She swivels around in her chair (surely there are legs that Jamie just isn't seeing?), and pulls a wire from her hair and plugs it into a counter in front of her. The counter slides open and reveals newer-ish phones, one of which is a flip phone. The woman picks it up and shows it to Jamie, who figures it'll at least take her SIM card. "That'll be 30 seconds."
"...30 seconds of what?"
"You." The woman holds up another wire.
"But I don't have a...port."
"I assure you, you do." Jamie blanches. "Not like that. I'm not interested in biology."
Jamie is nonplussed, to say the least, but she wants the phone, and agrees. The woman leans forward and plugs the wire into Jamie's temple, and Jamie feels the woman rifling through her mental Rolodex, looking for...something, anything important. She feels the woman homing in on Sam, and she focuses on other things, steers the woman away, but every so often the woman plucks out a "card" and Jamie feels herself lose something, something small and barely noticeable, but something.
Carla, meanwhile, finds a booth that says "COLORS." The proprietor here is very large, but completely covered in a muumuu and a cowl. Carla, however, is taken with the fabric - it's a riot of color that she's never seen, and the colors swirl and move in amazing ways. She asks about it, and the proprietor says (in a somewhat electronic-sounding voice) that they made it. Carla asks to see some colors - how about purples? - the proprietor produces a horrible lobster-like claw from under their muumuu and swipes it over the counter. Carla doesn't have time to be horrified, though - after the swipe, the counter is covered with a swath of different shades of purple. She finds that she can pick one up, like a sheet of gelatin, but then she notices at the end of the swath there are a couple of patches of dull grey.
She asks after those, but the proprietor wipes them away. "You can't see those."
"Why not?"
"Because you don't have the right kind of eyes. You can't see those colors."
"How could I see them?"
"Get better eyes. Try the Pawn Shoppe or the Chop Shop."
Hiei, FredBob, and Lydia are in line to get answers. This line is longer (everyone wants answers), but it's moving pretty quickly. They're talking about what they might like to know, and the man in front of them turns around and interjects helpfully. He's got a fedora and a magnificent mustache, and he's pretty affable, which is nice. FredBob asks his name, and he says he doesn't know - he traded it away to pay a tax bill. It was either pay a big bill up front or a bunch of little ones, and he doesn't like needles.
The travelers are, needless to say, a little disquieted by this. The man says that the answers guy will take all kinds of things in trade - most people here will. Blood, memories, songs, feelings, whatever's important. Lydia asks where "here" is, and the man tells them it's the Bizarre Bazaar. They clarify: no, not here, but this whole place?
The man smiles and his eyes get wide. "Oh, my, you're Awake? Ooh. Well, I'd keep that under your hats, if I were you. Anyway, you're in the Mad City."
"Of course we are," mutters Hiei.
They get the front of the line and the man walks in - the answers booth looks like a phone booth, from the outside. He's only in there a moment, but then he steps out, mouth slightly agape, his eyes fixed on a point a million miles away. "Did you find out what you wanted to know?" asks FredBob. The man just stares, and walks away.
This is not encouraging, but FredBob still wants answers. He steps into the booth, and the doors close behind him. There's a man sitting at a desk, but his head appears to be made of white smoke. "What do you want to know?"
"How does this work?" asks FredBob.
"Is that what you want to know?"
"No, I..." FredBob considers. "I want to know if I'll ever feel better again. If I'll ever feel...OK."
"I can't tell you that. That's not the kind of answer I give."
"OK, can you tell me who could tell me that?"
"Yes." The smoke-head man considers. "Two seconds of pain."
"What? How does that work?"
"Is that what you want to know?"
"Jesus. This is like that Monty Python sketch." He sighs. "Fine."
"Put your left hand on the desk, fingers splayed." FredBob does, and the man smashes his pinky with a ball peen hammer.
FredBob yanks his hand back, but the pain is already fading. The man notes something, and then answers the question. "The question was: who could tell you if you'll ever feel OK again? The answer is: you."
FredBob stares. "Are you kidding me?"
"Is that you what you want to know?"
"NO." He sucks his finger. "That's exactly what my therapist told me." The smoke-man doesn't respond. "How does all this work? What if I wanted to know that?"
The smoke-man considers. "Your right hand."
FredBob looks at his hand, but refuses. "No, I have a lot of use for this. Let's see. How can I get home?"
The smoke-head man considers. "Four heartbeats."
FredBob agrees...and his heart stops. It stays stopped just long enough for his vision to start to fade, and then starts again, pounding. "The question was: How do I get home? The answer: Take the train. You'll need a ticket."
"Where do I get a ticket?"
"Is that what you want to know?"
FredBob leaves the booth, and tells Hiei and Lydia what happened. That's enough to put Hiei off - there's nothing he needs to know that much. Lydia goes into the booth, however. "Am I dreaming?"
"Is that what you want to know?"
"Yes."
The smoke-head man considers. "One laugh." Lydia forces a laugh. "Not from you. From your oldest." Lydia agrees, a little bewildered, and then remembers an afternoon at home, watching some Disney movie with her son, and him laughing like a maniac...but in her memory he doesn't laugh, he just looks at her. She snaps back to now.
"The question was: Are you dreaming? The answer is: no."
Lydia leaves the booth. "Well, this is real. We're not dreaming."
Jamie and Carla catch up to the others. Jamie shows off her new phone, and this inspires FredBob to check his phone and see if they can get home. The phone works, he has signal, and Google maps says they're in the Bizarre Bazaar. ("Are there any reviews?") He tries to put in directions to get home, but gets the "we could not calculate directions" notification.
The five of them talk, and Jamie figures that they'll be able to get home on the train if they have tickets. She yells to a passerby and asks where one could buy train tickets, and is pointed to a peddler up the way. The peddler, indeed, is standing there with what looks like an barrel organ, hawking tickets. Carla asks about cost for a ticket, and he smiles and says "the smell of ceramic." That's much too high for Carla, but the peddler has another idea.
"See, the Pawn-broker has something I want, a Little Wooden Boy. But we have history, you see, and he'll charge me an arm and a leg. But you, strangers, he'll give a more reasonable price to. You get me the Little Wooden Boy, I'll give you all a ticket for the train."
Hiei asks if they need to buy the Little Wooden Boy, and the peddler smiles and says that all he's asking is that they get the Little Wooden Boy from there to here. Once it's in his possession, they get the tickets. He points them to the Pawn Broker, and the five them head that way.
The Pawn Shoppe has a chess pawn hanging on the sign, and when they walk in, the door hits a bell shaped like a head, which screams "DING!" FredBob tries to engage it in conversation, but all it says is "DING!", so he goes looking around. Everything in this pawn shop is representation of people - reliefs, busts, paintings, statues - everything has a face.
The Pawn Broker stands behind the counter, a large man in a wife-beater with multiple tattoos. He asks what they're after, and Carla takes the lead, telling him that she's looking for eyes that will let her see new colors. The Pawn Broker opens the glass case on an older carnival fortune-teller machine (think Big), and points to the eyes. "These would work," he says, "but you'd need something to install them. I don't do that. The Chop Shop would do it, but of course you'd have to pay for the work."
"How much for the eyes?"
The Pawn Broker considers. "Twenty moves, without trade-in for your old eyes."
"But if I trade in my eyes now, how am I going to get to the Chop Shop?"
The Pawn Broker shrugs. "You've got friends."
"More acquaintances, really," mutters Carla. "OK, twenty moves." She's not sure what that means, but it doesn't sound bad. The Pawn Broker pulls up a chess board with a single pawn on it, and has Carla move it twenty times. As she does, she feels an increasing sensation of deja vu.
Meanwhile, Lydia and Hiei look for the Little Wooden Boy. Lydia finds it, and stares...it seems to have her son's face, but that can't be right. The Pawn Broker spots her looking and asks if she wants to see it, but she doesn't. The Broker grabs it down and sets it next to the cash register. "Shit!" whispers Hiei.
FredBob looks through the store and finds a little porcelain doll with a frilly pink dress. Its eyes snap open as he walks by. "Are you my daddy?"
"No," says FredBob. "Did you lose him?"
"I did not lose him," says the dolly. "I am in 'hock!' This is what this shelf is called. My daddy put him here but will come back for me."
"Can you move?"
"No! I am in 'hock!' Not 'hawk' like the bird, but 'hock!'" The Pawn Broker appears behind FredBob.
"You interested? She's a bargain."
"No," says FredBob, staring at the doll's unnervingly sad smile.
Hiei takes this moment to snatch the Little Wooden Boy, put it under his coat, and head the hell out. Lydia follows, as does FredBob. The Pawn Broker might notice, but Carla's the only one left and clearly she didn't take the Little Wooden Boy, so the Pawn Broker pulls out the fortune teller's eyes and puts them nicely in a little box for her.
Outside, they all meet up. Carla asks Hiei "Do you have the Little Wooden Boy?"
Hiei confirms he does, but Carla doesn't have any memory of asking. They head for the peddler, and notice two policeman walking behind them. The policemen are stiff and jerky, wearing old-timey Bobby outfits, but they're definitely following. One says "HALT CITIZENS."
Hiei doesn't consider himself a citizen, so he keeps walking. Lydia, a skilled runner, zooms off, and FredBob breaks off into the crowds. One policeman follows Lydia but can't keep up, and she loses him. The other stops in front of Jamie and Carla and demands to know if they shoplifted from the Pawn Shoppe. Carla says she didn't - she has something from the Pawn Shoppe but she bought it. The cop asks to see a receipt, and Carla winds up leading the cop back to the Pawn Shoppe so the Broker can write her one.
Meanwhile, though, Hiei gets back to the peddler. He cranks out five tickets, takes the Little Wooden Boy, and puts it into his drawstring sack with a smile. The characters are a little disturbed by this, but they can't quite say why. After all, he's just a Little Wooden Boy.
Back together again, they talk about heading for the train, but Carla wants to go to the Chop Shop and get these eyes installed ("anything for art"). She asks around and finds that taking a hack is probably the quickest way, but the person she asks advises paying coin, because hacks will rip you off if you try paying in trade. Carla has no coin, but the man says he'll trade her one for a scream - she just has to put something behind it. Fear, anger, ecstasy, whatever.
"Well, we're in public," says Carla, and screams into a jar, putting artistic frustration behind it. The man is pleasantly surprised - artistic frustration isn't something you hear every day. He gives her two coins, and goes on his way. The coins have a crown on one side and the same candle symbol that Jamie saw earlier on the other, and feeling vaguely waxy. Carla whistles loudly, and a carriage pulls up, drawn by something that resembles, but has too many legs/fingers to be, a horse.
She asks to go to the Chop Shop, and the hack charges both coins to take all five of them. They get on board and the carriage rattles away, but stops short a little ways out. The hack holds his head next to the window. "Coppers," he says. "One of your carrying stolen goods?"
"I HAVE A RECEIPT," Carla reminds them, but they all wind up getting out for a pat-down. Hiei is last, and he remembers, suddenly, that he is carrying stolen goods - the talisman he stole from the museum. But it wasn't stolen in the Mad City, so does that count? Probably. Fortunately it's in his shoe, and the cop misses it...but does find his sword.
"DO YOU HAVE A PERMIT FOR THIS WEAPON?" it asks. Hiei says he does, and hands the cop a Chinese food menu with a sword on it. The cop starts reading it carefully, and Lydia tells him to hurry up, the permit is legit, and pushes, controlling the cop's mind. The cop agrees, hands back the permit and the sword, and lets them all go.
The hack takes them to the Chop Shop, an immense junkyard surrounded by a chain-link fence. As they walk in they hear dogs barking ("DOGGIES!" exclaims Jamie), but the dogs have machine parts spliced in; exhaust pipe for a tail, engine thingie for a throat so the dog goes "BRUMM" when it barks, that kind of thing. The travelers look at the dogs and the piles of parts (some are machine parts, some...aren't), when a man in a biker vest and a doo-rag waves them in.
They enter the garage and meet Chopper. He's a biker from the waist up, and a motorcycle chassis below the waist, and he's got no time to waste. He and Carla haggle a bit for the removal and installation of her new eyes, and eventually settle on her appendix and tonsils as payment. The Chopper sets up his machine, which uses compressed air to suck out her eyes and slam in the new ones. He then grabs a jar and opens it under her mouth. She feels something crawl in, work its way up her sinus and into her ocular cavity to reattach the optic nerve...and everything around her explodes into color.
New cones and rods activate, and she can see colors that simply do not exist to people. Stunned by it all, she sits and marvels as the Chopper slices open her throat to extract her tonsils, and her side to get her appendix. Even these lumps of flesh look and fantastical to her new eyes.
As she recovers, FredBob asks if the Chopper could make him into a car-centaur. Chopper says he could; what kind of car? Compact, mid-sized, maybe a Hummer if he feels like he needs to compensate? He does point out, though, that something that radical would prevent FredBob from going home.
FredBob says that maybe it's his destiny to be a half-car. He ran over two students from his school some time ago. He isn't sure if they lived. He's been carrying that ever since, and he figures maybe staying here would be better.
This confession hangs in the air, and the Chopper sucks it up with a handheld vacuum and puts it in a jar. FredBob asks for it back, but the Chopper refuses - this is far too valuable. He's going to send it to auction. And seemingly on cue, a man rides up and asks if Chopper has anything for the auction. Chopper hands over the confession, but also the eyes and organs ("Eyes of an artist, that should get a good price").
FredBob wants the confession back, but the Chopper says he can go and bid on it. He'll even give the characters a ride to the auction, if they want. Jamie advises leaving - there's a train station near here, remember - but FredBob asks what happens if someone buys the confession. "Depends on who," says the Chopper. "I mean, if it's the Paper Boys, that might be bad."
"Why, what would they do?"
"Publish it."
The characters decide to got to the auction, though Chopper does make it clear that they'll be cutting it close. The auction will end just before thirteen o'clock, when all the doors close for the First Hour. No one gets between the Mad City and the City Slumbering during that hour.
He swaps his body from the motorcycle chassis onto a truck and gives them a ride to the auction. Looking around, they spot more stranger beings: young boys with ashy skin and the scent of newsprint. Three young women with Victorian dresses and high collars. Two courtiers with blue-flamed candles in their eye sockets. And perhaps strangest of all, a man in a grey suit with an immense push-pin for a head and needles for fingers. FredBob remembers what the nameless man in line for answers said: the Tacks Man.
The auctioneer, an unctuous fellow with a plague doctor mask, comes out and begins bidding with Carla's organs. The courtiers buy them ("Sold! To the Wax King, my compliments"). Next up is her eyes; the auctioneer shines a lantern behind them and projects pictures of Carla's art onto the walls. The bidding is a little more intense, but the three women in the high collars win ("Sold! To Mother When via her Ladies in Hating, my compliments").
The next item is a metronome, and the auctioneer leans in to the crowd with a conspiratorial air. "Now this is special! Four heartbeats," he pauses for effect "from one of the Awake!" The crowd goes abuzz with excitement. "And I'm told the Awake individual is still in the Mad City! Better hurry!"
"Let's fucking go," whispers Jamie. FredBob taps his chest, and the metronome pulses slightly. Jamie stands, and the auctioneer spots her.
"Please wait until the auction is concluded," he says.
The characters feel this is unwise. Jamie calls on her power of mimicry, and makes someone seem to make a large bid from the other side of the room. Everyone turns to look, and Hiei slows down the molecular movement, keeping them from turning. Carla, with her heightened perception, spots a way out, and Lyda zooms away while FredBob takes control of the cops working security and shuts them down momentarily. The travelers leave, but they don't see who wins the heartbeats.
They're walking (rushing, really) back toward the train station, but when they get there, they see another clockwork cop - clearly the one in charge, his face is a stopwatch and the lower half reveals gears that sometimes synch into a smile - along with a dog with a needle for a head and a spool of thread in its haunches. The cop checks each of their tickets, but also listens carefully to their chests. FredBob is the last one to get on the train, but Jamie stands behind the cop and mimics her own heartbeat, disguising FredBob's. The five of them collapse into their seats...
...but then hear two train workers talking. "Yeah, I don't know why it's delayed. We're gonna miss departure, though, and be stuck her the whole First Hour."
Jamie leans out. "Excuse, what the entire fuck?"
"Yeah," says the worker. "Conductor says we're delayed. Don't know why."
"How can we...make that not happen? We need to get going."
"Could ask the conductor. Front of the train."
The travelers rush to the front of the train. They pass through a car that smells of wax, a car with one of those women in the high collars (she sniffs at them primly), and a car with half the seats converted into cells. A man in the cell screams for them to free him - he doesn't want to face trial. They ignore him (for the moment) and get through to the head of the train.
The conductor, a little man sitting on a stool, tells them that he's got no control here - if Officer Tock says delay, they're delayed. Confidentially, though, he suspects this "delay" is just to keep the train from leaving until the clock strikes 13, so that Tock can-
"Yeah, we know," says Jamie. "But you can leave, right? The controls are right there?"
Lydia takes control and pushes, making the conductor obsessed with his timetables, and it works - the conductor starts the train. "Better get to your car!"
The travelers rush - they have no idea how long it'll take, but they do know if they're not in the right car when the train stops, they're properly screwed. They rush through the jail car, and the prisoner screams again. Hiei, no fan of the penal system, melts the bars and lets him out, and they all rush into the next car. The Lady in Hating stands and orders them to sit, but Lydia, in no mood, points at her and says "you sit," and she does.
They rush through the car that smells of wax, into the car where they got on, and Jamie looks at the map to find the right car for the City Slumbering. It's the next car back, and they all run for the car, and Jamie steps through the door...
...and out onto the platform where her friends are waiting. "Where the hell have you been, girl?" Jamie holds up her phone. "Look what happened! Some guy punched a hole in it!"
Lydia steps through...and out onto the platform where her husband is waiting with a rose. "I'm sorry about earlier," she says. "No, I am," he replies. "Come on."
Hiei steps out onto the platform...alone. He hitches his coat up and runs off into the night.
Carla steps out onto the platform...and cannot tells where objects begin and end. The colors are too new, and she can see sound and scent and texture. "This is amazing," she whispers, and the words light up in her field of vision. She very carefully starts for home.
FredBob steps out of the car into the RTA station, and sees two cops outside, chatting. They're not here for him, but he walks by them, anxiously, telling himself not to fuck it up. They spot him, but they don't recognize him - at least not yet. We'll see what happens when the paper comes out.
Somewhere in the Mad City, the clock strikes 13, the doors close, and the travelers are safe in the City Slumbering. For now.
