Mom, I'm Bulletproof

Chapter 4.4: Rat in a Maze

"One was going to watch the other bleed," Critique said, again turning to face Proscenium. "How joyous is it that you came along. A real audience. Someone who can take in the red of the blood at face value, without ascribing any symbolism or, ugh, meaning to it."

"Why these two?" Proscenium said.

"No reason."

"There is a reason."

For the first time this evening, Critique stopped smiling. "I never have a reason."

"Why not kill some bums, them?" Proscenium said. "Or break into someone's house? Why hide out in Santa's village where everything smells like peppermint, and where mall security will eventually find this crime scene?"

"Shut up."

"Why would you use special, one-of-a-kind katana paintbrushes as your murder weapon on your last three killings?"

"I said, shut up."

"You knew those brushes would be traced to you somehow, along with the peppermint smell."

"There's no reason for what I do," Critique said. "Nothing has any meaning."

"And now I am trapped, unable to move," Proscenium said. "How did you learn to do this?"

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"

Proscenium waited for a few seconds, then he dropped the bomb. "You're working for someone else."

"That's enough out of you and your empty rhetoric."

"Someone must have instructed you to wait outside these actresses' theater to snatch them," Proscenium said. "Someone gave you access to the mall and Santa's village. Someone told you to use those brushes."

"Be quiet!" Critique said, slapping his bare foot against the floor. "Don't you want to see the blood?"

"Someone instructed you to take these two specific victims from their theater tonight," Proscenium said. "Someone had a reason for doing all this. Therefore, won't these women's deaths mean something?"

"Not in my eyes," Critique said. "In my eyes, their lives are as meaningless as mine and yours."

"But in someone else's eyes, the events of this evening have meaning," Proscenium said. "You know, deep in your heart, that you're acting out a purpose, that your art will, indeed, mean something."

Critique glared at Krissi and Trissi, and then up at Proscenium. His usual smile faded into a frown. He dropped the knife, letting it fall to the floor with a loud clang.

"The money," he said. "The money was just too good."

He ran out of the room. Proscenium fell forward, as whatever hold Critique had on him faded.

Krissi and Trissi turned to Proscenium, making the familiar "Mph! Mph!" noise of mouths covered with duct tape.

He quickly undid the cuffs binding the two women and disappeared into the shadows by becoming a cloud.

Hovering into the back areas of the attraction, Proscenium followed Critique's path through the fake snow into the employees-only area. Proscenium then traced the faint peppermint-wax smell into an employee bathroom, where part of the floor had been previously torn open and dug through into the sewer system below.

Proscenium floated through the hole down into a cramped sewer pipe, fed directly by the toilets of the entire mall. He found Critique's cardboard clothes and tinfoil hat down there. This meant that somewhere in Theater City's sewer system, a naked, pale, skinny man was swimming through the waste of an entire city.

Proscenium decided to end the chase for now.

* * * *

When Proscenium returned to his theater, Curtain couldn't wait to hear about the night's events. First, he quizzed Curtain on her studies that evening, and the young woman showed how much she understood what she had read. Despite Curtain's attitude, she was a good student. Proscenium then told her about Dr. Critique.

"I should've been there," Curtain said. "I could've watched your back."

"He would have killed you."

"Doubt it. And I can't believe he abducted two chicks who act here. What are the odds?"

"Even," Proscenium said. "Critique did not engineer this by himself. He's working for someone. Someone knows."

"About what?"

"About me."

Curtain let that sink in. "Oh."

"Perhaps someone has seen me come and go from this building," Proscenium said. "Or, perhaps, someone knows more."

"How?"

"I don't know. The paintbrush murders were designed specifically to draw me out. Clues only I could detect, and unseen tech designed specifically to incapacitate me. I have become a rat in someone's maze."

Curtain folded her arms. "That's scary."

"Concentrate on your studying," Proscenium said. "Let me worry about this."

Curtain studied for a few more hours until Proscenium played just right few notes at the antique organ, turning Curtain's body into purple smoke, which flowed into the organ for a day's sleep.

Proscenium should have joined Curtain. Instead, he switched to his cloudform and flowed up through the theater, reforming into a solid on thebuilding's roof. He watched the sunrise and listened to the first stirrings oftraffic the other early-morning signs of life in the city. 

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END OF CHAPTER 4 

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Next: History lesson.