Monochrome by H.M. Jones Page A

first word.”
    Abigail gasped, not able to fathom giving such a memory of her Ruby away. “Oh, no.”
    “Yeah. He was really beat up. I advised him to go to bed and try to recover, and he agreed.” He shook his head. “He went down to the Hotel bar after I was asleep. I’d seen Eric at the bar earlier, but I wasn’t worried. He seemed to have his sights set on a lonely older woman who was sloshed.” Abigail nodded, thinking she sounded just like his type of target.
    Ishmael stopped fidgeting with his lighter and stared at his hands, a blank emptiness filling his eyes. “When I woke in the morning and knocked on his door, he didn’t answer. I headed down to the bar, figuring he decided against sleep, but he wasn’t there either. I thought maybe…maybe he couldn’t take it anymore, but he chose a worse fate, one all of us who have remained in Monochrome have chosen—to stay.”
    He paused, listening to the forest. But, just like the smell of Monochrome, there was a lack there, too. No bird songs, no chatter of squirrels, no wind rustling the trees. Ishmael must not have heard what he was listening for in the unnatural silence. He dropped his head and continued in a dull whisper.
    “I noticed the old woman from the previous night was still seated at the bar, so I sat down beside her and asked if she’d seen a black-haired, blue-eyed man. Geoff had baby blue eyes, the kind women love…”
    He smiled bitterly. “The woman told me he came down shortly after I went to my room, and drank for a while by himself. She told me Eric gave up on her when she insisted she wasn’t interested in his ‘sleazy’ line of work.”
    Abigail crossed her arms. “Good for her.”
    Ishmael rolled his eyes at her but continued. “She noticed my Lead at the end of the bar, head in his hands. She thought he was crying.”
    He paused to rub his face tiredly. “She said it didn’t take long for Eric to leave with Geoff. Geoff came to Monochrome having given up on life, more so than most people. He didn’t want to know how to leave or care if he returned to Reality. He only went as far as he did out of guilt over leaving his daughter with a woman he described as manipulative and unhinged. He didn’t have many good memories to start with, so when he let go of the few he had…”
    He shook his head, weary. “It was an easy sell for Eric. He promised Geoff good memories—not a return of his own, but since he didn’t have many to start off with, I guess that didn’t matter to him.”
    Ishmael rubbed his hands together as if trying to warm them, but the air was neither cold nor warm. Maybe he was trying to cleanse himself of the bad memory. “Snakes promise a secondary happiness. It’s tempting here, in a place that sucks the good out of you. Plus, like I said, being a Snake pays well, probably because it’s a job very few people are tempted into.”
    Abigail crossed her arms. “I couldn’t live with myself.”
    He didn’t say anything for a while. He might’ve been carved from ice; his body language was so cold. Again, she found herself confused by his mood swings. It’s not like she was chastising him or his choice of profession, which, given the alternative, seemed like a reputable decision.
    She shifted away from his glare, changing the subject. “Okay, why are they following us? I mean, I get their job is to get me to stay in Monochrome, but why follow us now? I just got here. I’m not even close to the point where I’d give up.”
    Ishmael glowered. “It’s me they’re following. Geoff wants me to fail you, to fail generally. He’s done this before, with other people I’ve led. He’s never succeeded in taking them from me, but, in the end, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, I guess.”
    He took off his hat and ran his hand through his long hair. “Eric has pitted him against me somehow. I don’t know what he told him, but probably not much of it was true. It doesn’t matter. Geoff was suspicious