|-JOHN DOE-|
"Is this cave on your map?"
"Nope. Yours?"
"Why would I have a map? You're the one who wanted to go traipsing around the scrublands."
"You're the responsible one, Jack. Obviously."
"Yes, which is why I have GPS, a compass, and plenty of water. Not that the first one is doing us any good so far from service."
"If you already don't have service you definitely won't mind going in."
"Kat. This is a terrible idea. This is rattlesnake territory and there's no way an ambulance can come for us so far down in the gorge."
"You're afraid of snakes? Since when?"
"Since my new bride dragged me into a musty cave for a honeymoon?"
"You're still coming with me, right?"
"Of course. Let's get the 'till death do us part' out of the way right here."
Something had shifted in the town of Idle. It was not something which John Doe could immediately specify, but something about the essential nature of the place had changed. The air was both drier and clearer. The sun was starting to descend, but it was a wilder, harsher sun that sank its fingers into John Doe's eyes and skin with wild abandon. There was a lightness that no one could anticipate, and John Doe had no reasonable explanation for it, save the desire to walk east, the light at his back and an uncertain attraction tugging him forward.
Church Street divided the town from north to south, settling sun from the rising, East from West. For many years John Doe had not set foot on the east side of town. It was a necessary concession to the upstart in the east, of that he was certain. Some fights were not worth the risk, particularly when one had a young daughter. John Doe was a man of his word, and he honored his promises to his daughter (despite her youth) and the upstart (despite everything about it.) He was not the sort of man who would upend a functional arrangement without reason.
The light of the descending sun picked out John Doe's shadow against the cracked pavement. John Doe was generally unimpressed with the quality of the roads in Idle, but he had been secretly glad for quite a while that no one had repaved this street. There was only so much that one could replace the substance of a thing before its form started to wear away, and a boundary as definite as Church Street was of critical importance. Weeds might spring up in every crack of the light of the sun and immediately wither. An earthquake might shiver the ground and send deadly fractures like the spiderwebs of the arachnids who only lived far from the harsh glare of the light. None of it would matter as long as Church Street remained Church Street, and the gritty carbon of the boundary lingered long and black in the ferocious glare.
John Doe took a step forward onto it, then another. The heat of the asphalt seared into the bottom of his feet. He followed it up with another step. It would be inaccurate to say he ran. John Doe was not the sort of man who runs.
It would be accurate, however, to say that he arrived in front of the only book shop in Idle a handful of minutes later.
GThe building was a mere shell of itself. It did not bristle with malice, with form only moments away from intruding painfully upon innocent matter. The people of the East side hardly seemed to notice it at all, lengthening their strides as they passed as though desperate to avoid even the reminder of oblivion.
Fable was not the sort of being who dies. And yet, here John Doe was, standing before the only sort of corpse it could leave. Stories might end, but the end of life was a far cry from oblivion. Even the amateur little women who crudely imitated John Doe knew that much.
