Before I moved to New Toulouse that October five years ago, my name wasn’t RMarie Beedit. In fact, it wasn’t anything at all yet. You see, I only grabbed this moniker hastily so I could procure a train ticket.
My first stop was in an empty city. The city was full of steel and asphalt and underground tunnels, and it was named Manhattan Island. The only two beings I encountered there were inside of a small house. They were reptilian creatures sitting together on a couch in front of a glowing box, chatting in a mysterious language. They never said anything to me. I lurked hopefully in front of that house on a patch of pavement with a fetid pool next to it. There was a mattress on the ground there, where I slept a few nights before catching another train.
For a while I bounced from city to city. The Imperial City, Old New York, Athens, Rivendell. During this time my dreams felt like a pitch-dark cave where a distant drip echoes. “Where is the drip? Should I try to find it?”
In every city at that time, I noticed one commonality other than the occasional drive-bys by hucksters and oafs: Halloween decorations. It was as though all the cities had held a formal confab in the sky and agreed that Halloween is a universal cause for celebration and vividness. I was always greeted by herky-jerky ghosts and skeletons, fat orange glowing pumpkins, fall leaves, and hooting owls, all placed with such care or even zeal—but never by people. Little bats flitted out and surprised this lone explorer in a rush of warm, mad company. Someone was indeed here, and someone will be here again, but nobody is here now. And it’s going to be Halloween. Where are you going?
Finally my shoes wore out. I decided to gel my identity a bit more by looking for some long-lasting duds. Perhaps a hat as well, to ward against those wayward drips. I landed at the Curious Seamstress in New Toulouse. At that moment, it was an empty city too. But the original green Tarantula Arms with its rows of tiny, stuffy striped rooms was a comfort. I imagined a lonely working girl or fellow in each of them—Americana, a touch of squalor, an urban box; it was nearly like a real home I sometimes knew.
One fine morning in New Toulouse as I practiced walking down the street in my Daughter of Shanghai getup. I noticed someone quickly scurrying out of a building: a dapper fellow with round glasses. “Hello!” he called, rushing toward me.
“Good morning,” I said back.
He shuffled along, tipping his hat, and asked, “Would you like to have coffee?”
It was the first time in two weeks, since getting on that first train, that I encountered somebody sentient and without apparent diabolical intentions. We had coffee, we rode an airship, and I was home.
Here’s to our kind mayor, who greeted this wayward soul five years ago. And to a happy Halloween!
RMarie Beedit is the proprietor of Argonaut Travel on Shotgun Row in New Toulouse, and of Weeds, across the street.