City of Souls

He’d spent most of his night, and most of dawn, with Wolf.0 and the rest of the oddities. The two that stuck out like sore thumbs of all the night owls of Miningville were Cult Webber and Pawk Abbott. Those two were lunatics, and they’re dreams of souls and ghosts weren’t much better.

Anastasia was quite unhappy with Porter when he returned at ten o’clock in the morning, but there was no chastisement. When Porter walked into the door that morning and kicked his boots off by the door, Anastasia was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a plate of quiche. “Porter,” she said softly, her eyebrows pulled together. “What did I tell you about venturing off?”

Porter shrugged his shoulders and sat down across from her. “I needed air,” he said. “It was too stuffy in the house.”

“It took you over twelve hours to find air, Porter? All you had to do was open your window—”

“—and fall out of it,” he finished for her. “It’s not even a big deal. I haven’t run away. I always come back home. I’d just like to be familiar with the town that I’ll be living in for the rest of my life.” Anastasia didn’t protest. She simply went back to eating her quiche.

Porter opened the refrigerator and reached a bottle of apple juice. He’d given his mother enough grief as is, so he decided to just get a glass to pour the liquid in rather than drink out of the bottle. “Did you meet anyone while you were away?” she asked, forking food into her mouth. “You need more friends.”

“Yeah, I met some people,” Porter replied, putting the bottle of apple juice back into the refrigerator. “They came from Miningville to help rebuild and remodel the burnt-to-ashes houses.” He left out the part that most of the occupants of Miningville found those few people that he’d met to crazy and he left out the dreams that they—and he—had been experiencing lately.

His mother smiled, her thin lips stretching across her face. “I used to live in Miningville when I was younger,” she said. “My dad had a job there and he’d figured that it would be more efficient for us to live there rather than him traveling sixty miles just to get to work every day.”

“Are you talking about Tim?”

Anastasia nodded and stood up to place her empty plate into the sink. “Yes, I’m talking about Tim. He wanted to be a psychologist and the only place he could was the Miningville House of Psychology,” she elaborated. “And so, he had us pack our bags and run off to Miningville.”

“Why didn’t you stay?”

She pressed her lips together in a taut line, considering before she spoke. “Miningville isn’t me. It isn’t us. We shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Of course, the job brought in good money, but we shouldn’t have been there. I knew it. He knew it. We knew it. Even the people of Miningville knew it.” Anastasia paused, regained her steady composure. “You want me to say more?” Porter nodded his head, drank a bit of the apple juice in his glass. “Your father is of Miningville. He’s just like the rest of them, Porter. The Miningville occupants are like us, yes, but they’re all a bit preposterous and ‘round the bend.”

Porter shrugged and so did Anastasia. Porter walked toward the couch where he sat down, got comfortable, and changed the channel to something sports-related. If one asked Porter why he did so, he wouldn’t be able to construct a valid answer. He’d lie about it maybe, because sports were the last thing on his list of favorites. He saw it as repetitive and redundant and useless waste of his kinetic energy. His mother joined him on the couch, her fingers wrapped around a mug of what looked like hot tea.

“Have you got anything planned for the day?” his mother asked. To this, her son shrugged his shoulders, as if he hadn’t done it enough for one day. “Well, if you’re going to stay here, you need to clean yourself up. Harold Oaks will be over again and he’s bringing a few of his friends. If not, I still want you to clean yourself up before you leave the house again.”

“Harold Oaks doesn’t seem like the kind of person to have a lot of friends. Most jovial don’t,” he commented.

“Porter,” she warned. “Make some plans for today, Porter. You don’t need to be around a bunch of grownups anyway.”

He handed her the remote gently, setting it down on her lap when she didn’t take it, and dragged himself up the staircase. Once in his bedroom, he closed the door and began rummaging through his drawers for something to wear for the day. “Nothing too jovial and nothing too disconsolate,” he mumbled to himself. It took Porter a few minutes, but he settled on a red cotton sweater and black straight-legs.

Porter undressed himself and dressed himself the way he did every morning; he switched his socks out first, his pants second, and his shirt last. He walked across the hall to the bathroom and turned the water faucets on, but not before sliding his money and house keys into his back pocket. Porter grabbed the “I promise to whiten your teeth!” toothpaste, twisting the small white cap off and squirting a line on the bristles of his toothbrush.

“Porter, if you’re not gone in thirty minutes, you’re not leaving!” Anastasia called up the stairs. Porter groaned and spat into the running water. He brushed his teeth two more times before rinsing with mouthwash. “Porter, I’m serio—”

He placed his toothbrush back into the holder, calling back, “I know, I know! I was cleaning myself up like you insisted!” Porter turned the bathroom light off and stepped out, trudging down the stairs, which, in his opinion, was a big inconvenience. “I could have easily just fallen out of the window,” he mumbled.

His mother was standing at the end of the staircase and he couldn’t help but noticed that she’d changed into a blue, pastel dress. “For once, Porter, you choose to take the front door when leaving the house. It’s about time that you made good decisions.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t really have much of a choice; I forgot my boots down here. I figured that it’d be too much of a hassle to go back upstairs. You should try the window sometimes, though. It’s so much more efficient.” Porter pulled his boots onto his feet and opened the front door, not caring to hear his mother’s reply.