The Collector tried to cage me. His first attempt was using Sudoku puzzles to distract me. The puzzles were successful at first. They appeared to be true to their rated “expert” difficulty. But when I reset the first puzzle because I could not solve it, I noticed the initial entries rendered the puzzle unsolvable. Checking the other puzzles, I saw each one had initial entries that violated Sudoku’s rules. This gave me the impetus to start checking for other “impossibilities”, alerting me to the attempts by the Collector to obtain me as a trophy for himself. Despite the deep melancholy the almost complete rendition of my waking home life stirred in me, I saw through them each time. No matter how hard he tried, there was always something a little off that gave the ruse away.
Finally, he tried caging me in a pocket universe. The stars were perfectly aligned in a square grid on a flat space. The planets moved from point to point. I had enough of this bullshit.
“The stars! Are you so full of yourself that you stopped trying?”
“The stars are perfect!”
“Perfectly aligned!”
“Precisely! It’s glorious!”
“It’s full of shit! The stars are never perfectly aligned! You can’t rotate the universe around your ego! Hell, your sky is perfectly flat, it can’t rotate around your earth!”
“It doesn’t have to. See, I rotate the sky in place like so…” The Collector turns the sky like turning a dial. The stars turn blue as they move, and white when they stop. I feel a strange taste in my mouth and realize the Collector is bending the dream. “And now the stars are aligned for you to remain.” He looks at me smugly. “You can not defy the stars.”
I look at him in wonder of his hubris. I step up to him as if I wish to kiss him. He leans in to receive his due.
I give it to him.
I grasp his shoulders gently, smile, and knee him in his genitals with all the force I can muster. I let go, allowing gravity to remind him he can’t bend everything. “The stars are not aligned, bitch. They give no fucks from a scientific point of view, from a religious point of view, nor from an esoteric point of view. The stars, and my will, are not aligned and never will be. Try this shit again, I’ll break more than your dick.”
I step out of the pocket universe into the Otherworlds just without his lair. Three lionesses, the size of elephants, were guarding the passage to the Collector. They snarled at me and took threatening poses.
“Don’t. I will snap y’all asses in two.” One charged me. I dodged her attack and punched her in the side. I heard a rib snap. She limped away while the other two reconsidered their employment.
I heard a noise behind me. A maned lion, larger than the lionesses was squatting and defecating in the middle of the passage. His resignation delivered, he sniffed and headbutted me gently as he passed. The lions left. I followed after.
~~~
Wandering randomly I heard a giggle followed by two arms of a small child wrapping around my waist from behind.
“The fuck you doing? Why the hell are you out of your box again?” The girl only giggled more. I tried to turn to get a hold of her, but she held on tightly. And kept giggling. “Answer me, girl! The hell you doing here?”
“You know!”
“I don’t! I need to send Pandora some duct tape. How do you keep sneaking out!”
She laughed. “Why don’t you say my name?”
“Because I don’t know Greek. And I’ve found English doesn’t always mean what it thinks it means. Why are you here? Pandora is going to shit kittens when she sees you gone.”
She holds me tight and lays her head on my back. “You’re comfy. And the box is cold and hard. And I’m lonely.”
Fuck. “You can’t stay with me, girl. I haven’t what you’ll need to survive. Aren’t there other Travelers you can harass?”
“Not many let me have a form with them. Why won’t you say my name?”
I gave up trying to dislodge her. “Because… you’re a myth. You don’t exist.”
She laughed brightly again. “Of course I exist! I’m a myth, aren’t I! And how could I hold you if I don’t exist?”
“Stranger delusions have gripped me harder. Well. Stay close. I’ll take you back home.” I really need to get Pandora a better box.