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“Kyle!” shouts Elias as he’s dragged off, wide-eyed.
At once, the room twists, as if seen through a kaleidoscope, turning double, triple, rotating. Kyle staggers forward, but Elias and George are already gone. He feels his stomach turn along with the room, disoriented, sick.
The next instant, everything’s right again, but the room has changed shape, or else traded for a new room entirely, having grown ten times in size. Kyle gapes as he peers around. He now stands in the center of what appears to be an arena theater, no windows or doors. Only one light remains, the same chandelier, which is now white and harsh, pouring its hot light over Kyle.
“What … What is this place …?” asks Kyle, astounded and petrified. “Elias!” he shouts to no reply.
Markadian and his desk remain. But now there are many desks of different shapes, sizes, and styles, all of them enclosing Kyle in a wide circle. Fifteen or twenty of them, at a glance. A black metal desk with a black stuffed bear on top, its eyes poked out, and a pale, gaunt woman seated behind it with dull, deep-sunken eyes and long black hair. A slate grey desk with a glass top and what appears to be a boy of no more than twelve years, irritably typing away on a cell phone. Another desk, this one pink and sparkly, but with scratches and stains along the side, looking as if it came from a little girl’s room after surviving a tornado, its occupant, a man with tanned ochre skin and white-blond hair, messy yet straight as straw, in a very tight pink suit.
At almost all the desks, a different person, only three or so unoccupied. Kyle can’t stop spinning, looking at each one in turn, heart pounding. Who are these people? Where did they come from?
“Hurry up,” gripes the young boy, his prepubescent voice startling and unexpected. “I’ve near a dozen things to do before sunrise, and I’m a good two hours ahead of you, Markadian.”
“Same,” grunts a grey-bearded man at the next desk over, his eyes bearing the deepest bags and darkest shadows Kyle has ever seen, the man irritably scribbling away in a notebook.
“Care to enlighten us on the purpose of this court?” asks another one of them, a curvy, sweet-faced woman with soft rosy skin and freckles, a finger twirling in her stylish mane of bright auburn curls. When she sees Kyle, her finger freezes, brow lifts, and lips pucker with interest. “Ooh, I see, you’ve brought us a cute one. Mm-mm, hi, honey-poo.”
“Can someone hand Cindy a towel?” drones the dull-eyed pale woman with long black hair, rolling her eyes. “She seems to have sprung a leak.”
“Oh, Zara, I’m just lonely, buried in paperwork, and have a personal assistant position open immediately as of now,” coos Cindy right back, eyeing Kyle with adoration—or thirst.
Kyle stumbles backwards. “I … uh …”
“Is this about that idiot who threw our community into a shit fit?” asks a woman at a teal desk, mid-forties in appearance. Heavy-hooded eyes that sit behind a pair of stylish teal glasses. High cheekbones. Tawny complexion. Face framed by straight brown hair to her chin, the tips teal-colored. She peers at him over her glasses. “Expected someone taller.”
“Let’s get on with it,” states Markadian, slapping onto his desk a manila folder, which he flips open. “I sent the email the moment it happened, two nights ago, or was it three?”
“Two,” answers the pink-suited man crisply. In a tiny voice he adds, “I actually read my emails.”
“Very well, two,” Markadian carries on, tired, long-faced, everything tedious. “Here stands Kyle Bentley Amos, the man in question, who openly revealed his nature via a digital video that was, that same night, uploaded to the net.”
“Respectfully, no one calls it ‘the net’ anymore,” murmurs Cindy, eyes still drinking in Kyle like a tall glass of sweet tea. “I’m Cindy, by the way, director of the Dallasade domain. Ever been?” she asks Kyle. “Some say it’s similar to the human city of Dallas. Even located in the same place,” she adds, a coy joke. At once, her eyes turn dark and demonic, pulsing with energy. “I think you’d love it here. I’d make damned sure you did.”
“Cindy, seriously,” groans the dull-eyed woman Zara.
With a blink, Cindy’s eyes return to normal. “Truthfully, your fifteen minutes of fame did cause a pain in my ass.”
“The video was eight minutes and forty-four seconds, not fifteen,” states the boy, still busily typing away on his phone.
The woman in teal-glasses nearby squints at him. “I believe Director Cindy was being figurative. Perhaps you ought to refrain from inserting yourself unnecessarily into anything else before your balls have dropped.”
The boy eyes her over his phone. “Your domain isn’t so far from mine, Director Tsuki. I would be happy to pay you a visit and cut you in half.”
