Pit wasn’t sure what she had come to the roof to do, exactly. She had an inkling, of course, an ugly shadow of an idea that had been insinuating itself as a sophisticated solution for years now. But she wasn’t really here for that. She was just taking a walk. Wasn’t she?

She shifted her focus onto the what instead of the why. The fire escape had been jammed in the down position by squatters long after the apartment itself was legally abandoned, so it was a simple matter of walking up ten flights to the roof. Looking down over the edge, the ground exerted a kind of pull on her. Her hair suddenly falling down around her face frightened her, the sudden motion reinforcing the sensation of being pulled over, and she stepped back from the edge. Forcing herself to focus on the horizon, she crossed the roof to find the place where the old city became the new. Though the very far extreme of her view was cut off by the bend near Straus park, she knew that you could walk the length of the street and experience the full spectrum of the city – from high life to low life to no life at all. Out here, on 133rd, there was the latter. The last working streetlight was some thirty blocks away. She hadn’t realized she had walked that far. In the other direction, she could see the wide, clustered towers of the abandoned medical center jutting up above the apartment houses. The black breath of October picked up, chewing at her ears and playing with her hair, and she became aware of the total stillness of the evening. It was quiet inside her head, even in the place way in the back where the far away thing lived.

          She closed her eyes and slid nervous fingers of thought into the hollow of her consciousness, careful not to wake the thing. The investigation was frightening and irresistible, like licking the hole where a tooth once was. But it wasn’t a tooth, it was a foreign presence living in the back of her mind. And living was the word – it shifted around, it pulled at her, and when the inkling made a particularly persuasive argument, it kicked and screeched and begged. Not in words, not in sounds, not even quite in feelings, but it did. Sometimes, like in this moment, it was silent and distant, but some part of it was always there. Back when she could afford therapy, she would tiptoe around the far away thing in sessions because it seemed so – weird. It would be the thing, she just knew, that would get her locked up. She knew that wasn’t true, but the thought had looped and twisted through her head so many times that it became a kind of subtle, unacknowledged truth, like time or gravity. She wanted to call it crazy, but every time crazy passed through her head, the inkling pricked up its ears and she wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. The inkling waxed and waned over the years, its mantras dissected and stomped until they were cartoon catchphrases and then swelling up again into plainly logical arguments, but the far away thing was constant. It never seemed satisfied and never grew familiar. Sometimes she hoped it was some secret burden everyone dealt with, that everyone had a passenger that showed them things in foggy dreams and pushed them to seek out orchestrators, but she knew it wasn’t true. She had adopted a policy of aggressively ignoring the thing, mirroring her attitude towards certain other lines of thought, but she could feel it growing desperate. She didn’t know what that meant.

          She was very tired. She wasn’t sure how long she had been staring at the ground. She looked at the moon, trying to gauge how much time had passed by how far it had travelled, but she didn’t know where the moon was originally and didn’t know anything about astrology anyway. She wished she had a watch. She wanted to go home very badly, but the closest thing to a home in her life was better than the roof only in that it was slightly less drafty. Besides, she figured she ought to get used to not having it. She had been two months past due? Maybe three. She had pinned her last remaining hope on her landlord taking pity on her or just forgetting about her, and there it stayed until she came home that evening to find an eviction notice nailed to her door. It was laminated, so she couldn’t just pull it down. The path of her life seemed to be a steep descending path, arcing until it pointed straight down. Off a roof. She breathed out, looking at her hands, trying to understand how she could be a person in a body with a past and a future and can choose to do anything and who chose to do nothing. The specter of past indecisions settled in her stomach, further souring its emptiness. Pit rose, moving the edge of the roof to look out at the city beyond, and the inkling cut in, sensing an opportunity to begin its usual spiel. Frankly, suicide was not an inkling of an idea at all – in fact, Pit came to regard it as the most stable and well-explored avenue of thought she had. It was like mentally cohabitating with a used car salesman who really, really hated her. Like the far away thing, self-loathing had its own voice, its own agenda, its own irrepressible will. And unlike the far away thing, it was chatty.

          What would happen, it said, if you did happen to jump? No more rent. No more having to eat. No more having to get up in the morning. No more alien things in the back of your head. This was not exactly Pit’s first rodeo, and she could roughly pre-empt the thoughts, mouthing them as they came. You don’t even have to jump, it insisted. Maybe there was a high wind, and you just happened to fall. What a tragic accident. Your mom will get a check from whoever picks you up, maybe that corpsemonger in Columbus Square. Pilkington or whoever. That’s not so bad. Mom could use that money. Pit looked down at the low wall that ringed the roof. It was wide enough to stand on, though not so wide that it would feel safe. It might be interesting to see what it’s like, came a thought, to look death in the face like that. She wasn’t sure whether it was her thought or not.

          She put one foot on the edge, breathing out one long shuddering sigh. She could see what was happening here. Was this how these things happened? She had always pictured it more – desperate. She was very tired, exhausted from being exhausted, but she didn’t feel desperate. More like… Stuffed full of ash. She tried to breathe it out, but nothing changed. She took her foot down. She put it back up again. She twisted around on her one rooted foot, at first to look around, and then to hear the crunch the tiny pebbles made beneath her shoe. She picked up a slim handful, feeling them bite against each other like silk, and then let them drop over the edge. The wind would not affect her as much as it did them, she imagined. She wondered if she could maneuver herself to be headfirst in midair, or if it would even matter ten stories up. She lifted herself onto the ledge. The far away thing leapt to life.

          “You aren’t helping,” she said to the thing. Some concepts floated through her head – her childhood, times when she was happy, but it was hard to tell if that was the thing responding or just her. She tried to think of something poignant to say, just in case.

          “I’m tired,” she said, and it was the truest thing that had ever come out of her mouth. She felt one last pebble fall away from her hand, closed her eyes, and felt the wind around her. All kinds of evolutionary safeguards had kicked on, and she found herself fighting the urge to raise her arms to balance while the inkling cheered her on and the far away thing desperately sifted through her memories for something it could use. She wished it were quieter. There was some kind of stomping-jangling sound behind her, which she felt kind of marred the atmosphere, and as she turned to look she felt one foot slip off the edge. The rest of her began to follow and she shrieked, as much in fright at the suddenness of her fall as in frustration at not getting to make the choice.

But she had chosen. She chose to get up on the ledge, and now she was falling, so she must have decided at some point. She tried to figure out when, but decided it didn’t matter. She had decided to die, and now the consequences were rushing up to meet her. Weren’t they? She hung in the air for an awful second, amazed at how quickly she could think. Ironically, she had never felt more alive. Her adrenaline was impossibly high, which kind of irritated her. Of course, after all these years of feeling like one big sack of shit, her body was kicking it into high gear once it was already too late. She tried to be thankful for the extra time was getting, now that she was past being impressed, but mainly she was growing bored.  She tried to remember her fourth grade teacher’s name. She tried to remember herself in fourth grade. Funny, she thought within this apparently endless second, that she was a baby once, a laughing little kid, and soon she would be dead. Funny how things work out like that. She figured that she was falling in earnest now, really going at it, just, just hurtling towards the ground, thought about the physics involved, thought about how she should have maybe left her mom a message before taking the plunge. She tried to think of anything else she had forgotten to do. She didn’t leave the stove on, which was all she could think of. She never had the energy to cook and her apartment didn’t have a stove besides, so. She wondered if that was a thing people did, anyway. She wondered what would even happen. She wondered if she would even care.

And then she was no longer falling. Fingertips brushed the back of her neck, and then her hoodie bit into her stomach and neck and arms, the whole of her weight being brought to heel by three straining seams. Her jaw slammed shut as the collar of her jacket hit it, her shoulders snapped up, and the progress she had made towards the ground was instantly reversed. Her vision panned up past the horizon until it was only stars, then receded in her awareness as it was replaced by a nameless shape of silvery agony where the back of her head hit the roof. The silhouette stumbled slightly after her, off balance after hauling her over the side. Her adrenaline was still running her mind faster than her body, so she spent a moment vaguely flailing and wheezing at the shadow before realizing that the wind was knocked out of her. Pit lay back, tapping the sore spot on the back of her head onto the gravel, which hurt. She drew herself up into the fetal position and looked at nothing, which hurt in a different way. She was very, very tired. The man – some analytical part of her brain that was very dedicated to its job insisted that it was a man – was clutching his side and breathing hard, clearly trying very hard to play down his exhaustion. As her eyes adjusted, She watched him straighten up, push away the need to catch his breath, take a step towards her, go to speak, and then collapse into a coughing fit. Through a hacking and waving of hands Pit understood that he had decided to take a moment after all.

She didn’t know how this was going to go, exactly. What do you say to a stranger who keeps you from jumping? She tried to think back to all the movies she had seen where somebody talks somebody down from a rooftop. Lethal Weapon was the only one she could think of, and that did very little to reassure her. Nobody had called the cops yet, at least, and even if they had, she really doubted they would show up in this half of the city.

There was something familiar about the man, about all of this, about the angle she was looking at him from and the reverse, as if she was experiencing déjà vu from his perspective and her own. It felt – weird. He was a young man, perhaps a year or two younger than Pit, but taut and weathered-looking in some way that made her think of smoked sausage. A mental image of him as a little sausage doll held together with toothpicks leapt into her mind and was immediately swept away by the realization that there was a hilt sticking out from his pack. He was practically a caricature of a Casterite, decked with crucifixes and prayer beads like a particularly severe parade float, but the sword was almost too hackneyed to be true. And yet, there it was.

He wasn’t very threatening now, bent fully at the waist and almost gagging with the force of his cough, but this was a man who built his identity around his blind zealousness and she was all alone. If she died tonight in a slightly more interesting way than she originally set out to, well, so be it. She didn’t feel endangered, though, now that she thought about it. In fact, she felt kind of… protected? Whatever she felt, it was reasonably certain it was not what a girl like her was supposed to feel after having her suicide attempt thwarted by an armed man in a lawless part of the city. As she looked at him, images bloomed in her mind like a burst of confetti, long forgotten things from dreams and nightmares and even from that one time she was pretty sure she had hallucinated. The man felt it too: one last cough died in his throat as he turned to her, his eyes widening as his face flooded with awe. The far away thing danced with nervous excitement, kneading the back of her mind as it dripped the details of her destiny into her mind. She pushed it away, because she didn’t care. She didn’t give a fuuuuuuck.

“Hail,” whispered the man.

“What?” She almost wasn’t listening, figuring she could guess at how awkward the conversation to come would be. Some kind of lesson on what happens to suicides in The Inferno, probably, then he might extract some promise not to do it again. And then she would be free to go out and live the rest of her life. She wondered how the Inferno stacked up against waking up and eating breakfast tomorrow morning. No winners there. At the very least, there was no way a Hispanic Casterite would bring cops into this. That was lucky. She was just thinking about how she should consider getting some serious help when he dropped to his knees, hit a rock, and stifled a grunt as he shifted off it.

“Hail to thee,” he said, now on just the non-sore knee, head bent before her, somewhere between cowering and overjoyed, “She who bears the King of Kings.”

“What?” He had her attention now.

“Said, hail to the blessed, great wonder in heaven thou. Said, behold!”

“…What?” She hated to repeat herself, but she found that there was little else to say. He risked a glance up at her, confused by her confusion.

“I know not what I do, O Lord – Lady.” She looked around generally, growing suspicious that she was on some particularly grim reality show. Her mental workings had a flighty and unfaithful relationship with Occam’s Razor, but considering all the facts, this was as close as she could get to a reasonable explanation.

“Is this a joke?”

“Not a joking man.”

“Who are you?” He fumbled for his sword without looking up, found it, and offered it to her. It was more like an elongated machete than an Excalibur-type deal, but it looked heavy and fearsome and sharp above all else. She eyed it, feeling her stomach crawl up into her throat like a slow-motion pinball. She was suddenly very aware that he was between her and the fire escape.

“A sharp twoedged sword, plucked from your mouth. Am an extension of your will and the means to bring about your dominion. I am your hand and your fist. I am God’s demon.” She would have laughed if she weren’t so lost. She tried to remember when she fell asleep last. Was she having some kind of fever dream? There were tears in his eyes now, but his voice was full and clear. He must have rehearsed this, she decided. His-Will-Be-Done shook the sword a little, trying to get her to take it. She did, if only to have a weapon. The hilt was wrapped in tattered gauze, gone almost yellow with wear, and she could just make out the Lord’s Prayer written on the gauze in Sharpie some years back. It was heavier than she expected.

“Okay,” She said, trying to remain casual while holding the sword out from her like an ugly baby, “What is your name?”

“His-Will-Be-Done,” Said His-Will-Be-Done.

“Is that your name or were you –“

“My name, yes.”

“Cool, Mister Be-Done,” she said, beginning to strafe her way to the fire escape, “I think you have me mistaken for someone else.” As she tried to move away, the far away thing pulled sharply at her, ensuring her that he was not, in fact, mistaken. Gone was the sleepy, insinuating thing she had come to regard as part of her mental furniture – it had grown in his presence, pulsing stronger and warmer than it ever had, snaking between her thoughts with a renewed vigor. It scared her.

“Your divinity is plain as gospel.”

“Uh.”

“Never imagined so low an instrument meeting His vessel on Earth, and am humbled further still by your radiance, O Lady of Mercy.”

“Look, I just want to go home, okay?” She wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or the big psychic leech rooting through her head, but she was frustrated with both of them, so it worked either way. His-Will-Be-Done cocked his head like a dog. That was what he reminded her of, a stray dog. She couldn’t put her finger on it before. She tried to focus on all the things she reminded him of and not the catch in her throat and the wobble in her knees.

“I don’t know who you are or what you want, and clearly you’re trying to be friendly, so, I feel bad yelling at you like this, sorry, butgod I really don’t want to be here and I’m messed up and scared and alone and frankly I think it’s fucking strange that you haven’t even mentioned the fact that you interrupted my suicide attempt, like, that’s a big thing that we aren’t talking about, wow, but, um, what I’m trying to say is I have a lot of personal shit I need to work out and I really need to go now because if you say one more thing about how I’m the Virgin Mary or whatever the fuck you’re trying to get across, I’m, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but we’ll both regret it, probably, okay? I just want to go home.” She was still brandishing the sword, she realized, and she set it down apologetically. She also said “Sorry,” very quietly to the sword, just in case she hadn’t put it down apologetically enough. The Inferno sounded real good right about then. The fire in his eyes flickered like a trick candle, wavering but unquenchable. The air between them changed as His-Will-Be-Done collected his blade and stood. Their eyes met, hard, and she had to look away.

“You want to go home?”

“Yes.” She tried to work herself up to anger, determination, anything she could anchor herself with. Everything escaped her grasp.

“For what?”

“To… To live my life.”

“To live your life?”

“Yeah,” she said, now trying to build a train of thought and jump on it at the same time, wishing desperately to leave, “This… whole thing… has been so surreal, and uncomfortable, I’m realizing how good I had it.” He shook his head with finality.

“That life is over. You slew that person. You wanted to. You were tired of her, you made a choice to strike her down. And now you choose to bring her back?”

“Maybe I should go see an orchestrator, then,” Pit quipped. She wandered over to the edge of the roof, felt the wind blow through her hair. The inkling was silent now, and the edge had no pull. This was really not how she thought tonight would go.

“Make a body move. Not give it life,” His-Will-Be-Done stated, very matter-of-fact, stepping over to her side.

“What do you want me to do?” Pit asked him, or herself, or God. The far away thing leapt at the chance to trot out the same old dream-pictures it always had: a four-armed woman, a pulsing machine, a man she now knew. There was a sense of direction, this time. She could feel it pulling her towards the city lights on the far horizon. If she focused, she could tell exactly where it wanted her to be. She saw the streets she might take to get there. She saw an apartment building, a nice one, near the edge of Central Park, and at the very top… She shook the image out of her head. She knew His-Will-Be-Done had a similar experience – without skipping a beat, he took a few steps towards the fire escape, then turned to see if she was following. The city noise seemed closer than before, more immediate, filling the silence in a way it hadn’t before. A car backfiring in the far distance, or maybe a gunshot.

“Is this thing really God?” Pit whispered to him, as if that would somehow prevent it from hearing her doubt. She watched some gears turn in his head.

“To me,” he conceded. He looked uncomfortable, and turned to leave.

“I’m not a religious person.” He stopped, and turned back to her.

“Yes.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter when it’s living in your head.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to see her?”

“We are.”

“Oh! Oh,” she paused, “Can I call you Will?”

Next Chapter: IV-Dahlia