Chapter Sixteen

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peppersghostinthemachine: morning. how’s the vixengoth?

I laughed at that nickname. I laughed hard enough that Capinera, who was sitting on the other side of the room reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, was looking over at me curiously. EmeraldKeychain: Okay, vixengoth is pretty good, I’ll have to pass that one along. She’s doing well, and remains insatiable. Also, referencing Pepper’s ghost? Seriously? Also, you’re up early.

I wasn’t. I was up late. Though in my defense, I had caffeine on hand now and was largely nocturnal by preference. Sitting around on a laptop until dawn was pretty standard behavior from me.

peppersghostinthemachine: thank you, thank you, i owe it all to the pernatal toxin exposure. also i haven’t slept.

EmeraldKeychain: Again?

peppersghostinthemachine: yup. i never sleep on christmas eve.

I winced. From most people, that statement might indicate excitement. It might hint at fond memories. It might suggest an investment in the shared cultural exuberance around the holiday. Hell, it might even reflect Christian beliefs and an engagement with the religious significance around this date.

From Pepper? Not so much. I didn’t know what her relatives did for Christmas, but I knew enough about them to be dead certain I was happier that way.

EmeraldKeychain: Oof. Hate that for you. I…kinda know the feeling. Not about Christmas specifically, and probably not as bad, but yeah.

peppersghostinthemachine: which one haunts you?

EmeraldKeychain: Plenty. My birthday is…not a topic you want to bring up. New Year’s Eve and lunar new year are the worst for actual holidays, though.

peppersghostinthemachine: wai t, really? lunar new year?

I laughed again, though softer this time. I saw that kind of response often, and it always got a chuckle. EmeraldKeychain: Yeah. Keep in mind that I wasn’t born in the states. Cultural fixations are different in Asia.

peppersghostinthemachine: key. this is the first time you’ve mentioned where you were born, at all.

I blinked. I knew that I was intentionally cagey about my real life and identity with Pepper, but I’d assumed that I’d at least shared this much at some point. EmeraldKeychain: wait, seriously?

peppersghostinthemachine: yes. you haven’t previously mentioned a birthday, where or how you grew up, or the real names of anyone except Raincloud. i’m pretty good about tracking that kind of thing.

EmeraldKeychain: Oh, I believe you. I just hadn’t realized. I grew up mostly in Tokyo, aside from stays in Osaka visiting family. Occasional trips to the U.S., China, and parts of Europe. Lunar new year was…yeah. I don’t sleep well that night.

peppersghostinthemachine: huh. that acutally explainos some things about tyou

EmeraldKeychain: How so?

peppersghostinthemachine: the way you use languae. esl peopo;le tend to use bettere grammar than native speakers. i think because natives mostly never actuolyy learned the grammar rules and just go on o instinct.

EmeraldKeychain: Present company included, apparently. And calling me English second language is a slight stretch, I was raised bilingual. But otherwise, I tend to agree. Languages can be hard to see from the inside.

peppersghostinthemachine: i know the grammar. i have too manoy issues with motor coordination to type right but i don’t like susing speech-to-text. and editingoj everyinghing i type takes wayy too lon;g. so in casual conversation p;i mostly don’t.

I winced again. I could imagine how nasty that might get. When I considered how rough my own intermittent language difficulties could be…yeah. EmeraldKeychain: Shit, didn’t mean to rub that in your face. Sorry. Mind if I ask what’s wrong?

peppersghostinthemachine: it’s fine. so, i’m not actually joking about the prenatal toxin exposure. nicotine cocaine, a;dn i think probably lead or some;other heavy metal. i have some npeurologiacal issues from that, tics and stuff. then when i aw;as fifteen someone called child protective serveices about my parents. the outcome was me spaendin;gt a month and change in the psych; ward. got a l;ot of antipsychotics, and what wasn’t already broken got wrecked by that. chronic tardive dyskinesia, guessing you’re familiar.

Oh. Well then. Suddenly, my jokes about Pepper’s typos felt a whole fucking lot less funny. I was, in fact, familiar, and tardive dyskinesia could be devastating. I was guessing she’d been given the older, harsher antipsychotics. The side effects on those could get brutal, and the one she’d mentioned was among the worst, a permanent neurological disorder that had a lot in common with Parkinson’s. A mild case might just involve a little twitching or a mild tremor. Severe cases were…much worse in how they impacted movement.

I doubted Pepper’s case was mild. She just wasn’t that lucky. And that was coming on top of existing damage from someone else’s poor life choices.

EmeraldKeychain: well then. That is extremely fucked up. Do you at least have treatment for it, an atropine derivative or something?

peppersghostinthemachine: your ability to guess that is kind of creepy. benzotropine, and it’ snot enough. also, that was only moderately fucked up. the *extremely* fucked up part was the party when i go tout of the hospitalj.

Apparently my reaction to this story was pretty noticeable, because Capinera had set the book aside and was now just watching me quietly from across the room. Her expression was…hard for me to read.

EmeraldKeychain: To paraphrase: Pepper, sometimes you say these things, and I’m not sure whether you’re being a drama queen, or I should actually be incredibly disturbed and freshly upset at the world.

peppersghostinthemachine: i prefer to think of myself as a hybrid. a trauma queen, if you will. also, since apparently we’re trading unusually personal questions tonight, why that screen name? i’ve never understood where that came from.

I sighed. Unusually personal conversation or otherwise, Pepper’s sense of humor remained…unique. EmeraldKeychain: I will not. And that’s actually pretty simple. I have green eyes, and I’ve used the nickname Key ever since I was a teenager and doing things I didn’t want associated with my real name. I don’t like using multiple screen names, so I tried different combinations of Key until I found one I liked which was obscure enough not to be taken most places. That’s…pretty much all there is to it.

peppersghostinthemachine: huh. that’s a lot less exciting than i was expecting actually. though i ohbserve that you mention doing unspecified things that; you wou;d rather keep anonymous, so still keeping up the dramatized vs. creepy balance well done.

EmeraldKeychain: Thank you, it requires constant diligence to maintain a proper spooky mystique. Okay, I think it’s my turn then? This game is actually weirdly fun. Why do you use all these bizarre puns as handles?

peppersghostinthemachine: copycat. and they aren’t puns per se. it’ smo re about concatenating different cultural idioms and des;critpison. i think that juxtapoisng differen t elements li;e this maikes it feel strange and absurdist, and that in turn makes peopl esee how absurd and incoherent their own cul’tural zeitgeist is. i like to confront people with that absurdism because it show;s how fundamentally arbitrariy language is.

I blinked. Of all the answers I’d been expecting, that…wasn’t. EmeraldKeychain: And you say I’m the one who uses language oddly? Who uses the word concatenate in casual conversation?

peppersghostinthemachine: i do. obviously. do you miss living in japan?

I had to laugh at that. Pepper and Raincloud both, it seemed, had a fondness for asking me hard questions, and it took me a long moment to phrase my answer to that one. EmeraldKeychain: Yes and no. I miss things about it. People I miss talking to, experiences I haven’t had since I left. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find decent Japanese food here. But I wouldn’t go back. I don’t miss the person I was back then.

There was a noticeable delay before the response this time. peppersghostinthemachine: i supoise i can understand that. not re;ally prone to nostalgia myself os i can somewhat rel;ate i think.

EmeraldKeychain: Frankly, it doesn’t sound like you have much to be nostalgic about. I don’t think you’ve shared a single story about your life that I can imagine wanting to go back to. Alright, mine: Why haven’t you mentioned the dyskinesia before?

Another delay, this one longer. It was long enough I was a little worried that I’d gone too far with that question. She did eventually respond, though.

peppersghostinthemachine: i don’t talik about it much onoline. peopl;e treat me diffe;rent when they know. some get weirdly hostiole towareds the crack baby, some jump to pitying thye criplle, don’t kjnow which is worse. need somewhere tthat peopl edon’t look at me like that and i can’ treally hide it irl. obviously not a concern with you, we can be crippled by neurologicail disord;ers together it’s great. ji ust have a habit of not mentioning the topic, so i hadn’t.

I sighed, soft and slow, and scritched at Raincloud’s ears. Yeah, I could understand that. My broken parts were in other places, but I knew the looks Pepper was talking about. You go into convulsions and then start talking about seeing things that aren’t there, people assume overdose. You tell them that you struggle with basic tasks because of an incurable medical issue, and suddenly they treat you with pity and exaggerated care, less a person than a fragile object. I knew that pity all too well, and it wasn’t too hard to extend it from the areas I was familiar with to the problems Pepper was describing.

EmeraldKeychain: Yeah, I get that. Retroactively welcome to the club, I guess. I shall endeavor to respect your wishes by continuing to mock you relentlessly for the typos. You know, like I would any other person.

peppersghostinthemachine: go fuck yourself sideways. also i have to go soon, work wants me there early today.

EmeraldKeychain: Wait, seriously? The hell do they need you early for? It’s a bakery, how much business can they even *have* on Christmas day?

peppersghostinthemachine: seriously key, life will be easier i;if you stpo looking for rastionoal descision making where it doesn’t exist. humans gonna human. anyway got otime for one more so. why have oyou nmever mentioned your family before this?

EmeraldKeychain: Mostly because there’s not that much to mention. My father isn’t great, but nowhere near the spectacular dysfunction that is your relatives. He’s just a corporate salaryman more or less. He thought my synesthesia was a psychiatric problem and had me hospitalized a couple times, things like that, but no particularly impressive stories. Haven’t talked to him in years, and my mother’s been dead for most of my life, which incidentally as a freebie that’d be why you don’t want to bring up my birthday.

peppersghostinthemachine: how so? also that sounds dysfunctional enough to at least get an honorable’ mention at the fucked up awards ceremony.

I laughed. EmeraldKeychain: That’s uh. Well, to paraphrase again: No, that was only mildly fucked up. The part that was *really* fucked up was the details of her death. Violent death of a parent on your birthday when you’re a kid is a great way to give someone a head start on neuroticism. If you were curious.

peppersghostinthemachine: i was not but thank you for lettin gme know. i will keep this in mind in case i ever need to produce a neurotic oprhan. also wow yeah that’s taking gold in at least one category of fucked up so you may want to pwork on your accepatance speech. okay, i have to go before i overdose on sincerity. pets for cloud, bite foxface for me, etc.

EmeraldKeychain: Will do. Luck with work. I stared at the screen for a few more moments, lost in thought, and then closed the laptop and set it aside in favor of petting Raincloud.

“You care deeply about your friends.” Capinera’s voice was soft.

“Conversation was that obvious, huh?”

“You are more expressive than you realize, I think. And I’ve observed the same concern in you before. Such as a few nights ago, directed towards myself.”

“Heh, fair enough.” I sighed. “I suppose I do. Maybe I worry more than I should, but I’m not sure. My friends are…not usually people who have had great lives.”

“Few people have, in my experience. The world is rarely a kind place.” Capinera shrugged. “I think that care speaks well of you. Many of the people I meet are…very shallow in how they invest themselves in others.”

I smiled, and continued to pet Raincloud, who was mostly asleep at the moment but awake enough to make satisfied noises. “Thank you. That…means a lot to me, actually. I used to be pretty shallow myself. I like to think I’ve made some progress since then.”

“You have,” Capinera told me. Her voice was unusually firm as she asserted this, which made me laugh. For someone who wasn’t sure it was possible for her to change her own nature, she sure seemed confident I could change mine—far more so than I was, really.

Though when I thought about it, maybe that made sense. I’d observed before that it was hard for me to believe Capinera had done the things she had, when I had only interacted with the person she was now. Similarly, she hadn’t been there for that period of my life. She didn’t have personal experience to confirm I could be that shallow, petty bitch with a tendency to lash out impulsively at whoever happened to be nearby.

Pepper had mentioned people looking at her differently once they knew she had, effectively, a debilitating congenital movement disorder. I found that extremely easy to believe. I was well aware that some things, when someone knew them about you, tended to warp how that person saw you. It hadn’t previously occurred to me, though, that maybe the same applied when you looked in a mirror. Food for thought, perhaps.

“Thanks,” I repeated. “I should probably try to get some rest.”

Capinera smiled, needle-sharp and soft as snow. “Please do,” she said. “I think I’ll read a while longer, myself. Sleep well.”

She stood and went out to the main room of the theatre, presumably so that she could read without the light keeping me awake. I watched the half-redcap woman go, and wondered whether it was possible for her to dye that cap black, to write over blood with ink and have it stay the shade she wanted. I wondered whether, if she did, I should celebrate her triumph or mourn her loss.

And then I turned out the light, and curled up in the dark with someone who looked a lot like a dog if you only saw the surface. Sleep found me quickly, and nightmares just a little bit quicker.

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