Missing Persons

I tossed back another shot of scotch then set the empty glass down and stared once more at my laptop.

The cursor was blinking at the top of an empty document. I'd been sitting there for the past... Half bottle I suppose, trying to figure out what to type.

Should I start with the impossible shop and its non-existent address? Or maybe I should lead in with Gloria fucking Mills and her outrageous story. I picked up the bottle and with shaking hands I poured another measure of scotch into the glass.

Just thinking about that sent me spiralling through too many painful emotions. That fucking woman and her story.

The yarn she spun this afternoon damn near broke me. It fucked me up worse than trying to get my head around the two stores overlapping.

According to her, she was born John Mills. She was a guy. She wasn't a big tough girl in grade-school, she was a guy who used to pick on me. Then in middle school when I started growing and she couldn't pick on me anymore we became buddies. By high-school we were best friends. When we were both seventeen I told her, or him according to her story, about how I felt like I'd be happier if I'd been born a girl. How I wished there was something I could do to become a girl. She laughed at me, said some awful things to me, called me some terrible things. I remembered that part but in my memories she was my girlfriend, not some guy named John.

According to her story, the reason she reacted like that was because she had the same feelings and it scared her too much to talk about it. She attacked me to shut me up about it, rather than admit she felt the same way.

We stopped talking to each other and eighteen months later I moved away while she stayed here. And while I suppressed and ignored all those feelings and thoughts for another decade, she wound up confronting them. It took me till I was twenty-seven to realize I was trans, she figured it out when she was nineteen.

Then when she was twenty she happened to wander into that fucking occult shop. She'd got caught out during a thunder storm and ducked inside to get out of the rain. Next thing she knew she was talking with the proprietor Selene.

Gloria wound up buying some magic from Selene, and next full moon she cast the spell. John became Gloria. She didn't just transition, reality was actually rewritten so she was born as Gloria to begin with.

Which meant my memories of her were as a girl since in this new reality she'd always been one. Pretty much everything else stayed the same though, which is why I remembered her bullying me when we were little, then becoming friends in middle-school. In high-school instead of being best friends, this new reality saw us become close enough to go on a few dates.

With an angry sigh I tossed back the next mouthful of scotch and muttered at the laptop, "God damn it!"

I didn't believe a word of it but holy fuck it hurt. When I worked up the courage to tell her my deepest secret she threw it back in my face and shit all over me. Now three decades later she was trying to co-opt that and claim she was trans too. She was trying to excuse her behaviour back then by telling me she was just scared because she felt the same way.

I honestly couldn't believe the gall that woman had. Here she was married, with a daughter, living her happy perfect life while she tried to tell me it was all thanks to magic. And indirectly thanks to me, for helping her trans egg to hatch thirty years ago.

Maybe the worst part was if her story was actually true, then her shitting all over me thirty years ago led to her getting that perfect happy life while I spent the past three decades a depressed alcoholic, wasting my life at a shit job because I thought manning-up and following in my dad's footsteps was the only way to deal with those feelings.

My next drink came directly from the bottle. I was too upset to waste time with the glass anymore.

The rest of the evening was lost to overwhelming emotions and the blurriness of self-medication.

• • • • •

It was about noon on Friday. It was the first of October, and I finally felt vaguely alive again. It took three cups of coffee and six ibuprofen to get me there, but I was functional. More or less.

Sat behind the wheel of my pick-up truck in that cursed parking lot yet again, I stared at the occult store.

I couldn't remember the last time I ate, but the thought of food turned my stomach. I had no idea what was going to happen next, and I almost didn't care anymore. I figured I'd go in there and demand answers, and maybe that would be the end of me. Maybe I'd be number twenty-four.

The thought almost made me laugh. I was born in this town, I should have known coming back here would kill me. Maybe it already did. Part of me certainly died that night thirty years ago under Gloria's hateful words, and it felt like she nearly finished the job yesterday afternoon.

Then again, maybe I'd actually get somewhere. Maybe Selene would stop playing games if I demanded the truth.

Either way I was through screwing around. One way or another I was going to get answers. Or maybe die trying.

I steeled myself, then emerged from my pick-up. I didn't bother locking the doors, if it was going to wind up in Rick's impound lot I didn't want to make it any tougher for the guy. Then I walked across the parking lot and up to the door of the occult shop.

Once again there was an overpowering aroma of incense when I entered. I didn't recognize the scent but for some reason I thought of frankincense. I wasn't sure I even knew what that smelled like, but something told me it smelled like what was clouding the air in the shop today.

"Hello again Detective Collier."

Selene was standing behind the counter, in the same black dress she wore on Tuesday. She had a friendly smile on her face, and seemed not the least bit worried by my uptight expression. That little black cat was sitting on the counter again too, on a purple cushion just like the other day.

"I'm done screwing around," I stated as I moved to stand across from her. "I want some answers, and I want the truth."

The blonde replied, "Very well detective. Ask your questions and I will answer as best I can. Please do try and be civil about it though. I would rather not have you raise your voice to me or threaten me or my staff."

I stared at her for a few seconds, then asked "Do you know what happened to Phil Duncan?"

"Yes," she replied calmly. "I do."

"Well?" I demanded. "What happened to him?"

Selene sighed, "He asked me to sell him the means with which to do something horrific to Mayor Ross. When I declined he became belligerent. I asked him to leave my shop and he refused. He produced a firearm and threatened my and Skye's life. So I removed him."

I frowned, "Removed him how? You killed him?"

She shook her head and replied in a quiet voice, "I won't kill, detective. I don't extinguish life, it's too precious. But when I am pressed like that, I can take drastic action. I removed him from reality and changed him into something much less prone to violence."

My frown became a scowl as I demanded, "What the fuck does that mean?"

"I'd rather not go into details," she replied softly. "I'm not proud of my actions when I lose my temper, but I won't reverse my decision. He threatened my Skye, and that is an unforgivable sin as far as I'm concerned."

I sighed and shook my head, "I suppose you're going to say it's magic? How about you tell me how your shop fits into this building? I've looked at the floor plan, I've measured it out myself. We should be standing in the back of the tattoo parlour, next to the cabinet where they keep the needles."

The blonde remained calm as she replied, "I'm not entirely comfortable with the term myself, but it's the easiest way to explain it to you. So yes, magic. As for my shop, it's a bridge between your reality and the one where Skye and I live. The shop is superimposed onto your reality so the front and back doors overlap with the existing structure, but it exists separately and apart from your world."

She added with a wry smile, "I don't mind saying, I had to jump through some pretty complicated hoops with physics to make sure your mobile phones still worked in here. And you don't want to know how tricky it was getting my point-of-sale system to connect with your electronic banking network."

"This is impossible," I stated. "It's nonsense."

Selene looked like she was about to say something when Skye spoke up.

"Let me take care of her?" she asked the blonde. "Please? I promise I'll be good."

The brunette was standing immediately to my right, on my side of the counter. I had no idea how she got there or where she came from, I hadn't heard the front door open and I'd have seen her if she came from the back door. And she wasn't in the shop when I came in.

As I stared at the teen, I noticed the purple cushion was no longer occupied.

"Very well," Selene told the girl. "Call me if you need help, and do be gentle."

"What the fuck is going on now?" I demanded. "Where'd you come from?"

Skye gestured to the cushion and replied calmly, "I was here the whole time. Let's go for a walk ok? I know somewhere we can talk that's private."

I felt like I was losing my grip on the situation, and maybe my grip on reality itself. I made no move to leave the spot where I was standing though, and I stated "Councilman Duncan was just one missing person. I know there's more than twenty others. Did you get rid of them all? Remove them from reality as you put it?"

Selene replied quietly, "Some of them, yes. If they came in here and threatened violence, if they refused to leave when I asked, then I removed them myself."

"What about the kid and his parents?" I demanded. "You removed them too? He was only sixteen, and you've still got his baseball cap in your back room."

Skye sighed, "That's different. Selene didn't remove them, and they're not missing. They're just gone."

I looked at her and demanded, "What the fuck does that mean?"

Her eyes locked on mine and the shop and everything else seemed to go dark. It was just me and that petite sixteen year old brunette girl standing alone.

I felt a wave of dizziness as I realized the ground under my feet was no longer smooth vinyl flooring. Instead it was rugged and rocky, with a distinct yellowish tinge.

In fact we seemed to be in the middle of a rugged rocky landscape where everything was tinted yellow. It was night-time here, the sky overhead was pitch black and filled with more stars than I'd ever seen before. And the horizon seemed much too close.

In the distance over Skye's shoulder I saw a plume of something, also tinted yellow, shooting impossibly high up into the dark sky.

I slowly turned to see if the view was any different behind me, and fell to my knees in shock.

Half the sky was blocked out by what looked for all the world like the planet Jupiter. Less than a quarter of the globe was visible, yet it filled up so much of the sky it felt I could almost touch it if I reached out. The colourful bands of cloud were unmistakable, like pictures you'd see on science shows but impossibly large and impossibly close.

My heart was racing as I remained on my knees, and it took me several minutes before I could speak again. And even longer before I could form sentences.

"How...? Where...?"

Skye remained perfectly calm as she replied, "We're on Io. It's one of the Galilean moons, the one closest to Jupiter. I kind of like it here, it's rugged but pretty. I come here sometimes when I want to be alone, or if I need to think about difficult or upsetting things. And it's private, obviously. The nearest humans are almost six hundred million kilometres away."

I shook my head, "It can't be real. We'd be dead."

The girl shrugged, "I've created a pocket of Earth-like conditions to keep you alive. That means breathable air, comfortable temperature, familiar gravity, and I'm shielding this area from Jupiter's radiation and magnetic field. If I stopped doing any of those things you'd die pretty fast."

My eyes slowly moved from the massive world in the sky to the petite teen girl. "I'd die? What about you?"

She shrugged again, "I honestly don't know if I can. It's not something I'm eager to test just yet though. I know Selene can't die, and I'm like her so I suspect I can't either."

"What are you?" I whispered as I stared at her. Somehow this annoying teen had become more interesting and more awe-inspiring than the largest planet in the solar system hanging in the sky behind me.

"I don't really know," she sighed. "Neither does Selene. She may have known once but if she did, she's long since forgotten."

Before I could respond to that Skye gestured at the ground, "Since you're here, grab a rock or something. First human on Io, you may as well take home a souvenir."