Day Twenty-Five

     Bad dreams tonight. Casper’s back in the workhouse. Old scars ache and bleed fresh as the day he got them. The foreman has Myr’s face. Casper wakes up screaming with another kick to the ribs.

     Myr isn’t standing over him. He’s nowhere to be found in fact. Neither’s the foreman. Just a bad dream, the kind that comes from bad memories. Casper sits up, gets his bearings while he’s shaking off the nightmare. He’d rolled over onto his bruised ribs sometime during the night; the pain woke him up, not Myr. He’s fine. He isn’t bleeding. He’s safe. Just a dream.

Day Twenty-Four - Evening

     Before they head off, Smith tells Rodney the druggie to go look in the backroom to see if there’s a nice vintage lying around. They might have a nice sherry or red on the shelf above the pickled eyeballs, but Casper doubts it. Rodney salutes cheerily and comes back with a surprising selection. Smith squints at the labels, turns the bottles this way and that, examining them in the light before finally picking one. “The trick to dealing with Myr is to never do it when he’s sober,” he confides to Casper. “Other than that, you gotta know how to talk to him; there’s where I come in.”

     Casper blinks between him, the bottle, and the post office, wondering what they don’t have in there.

     Rodney waves them off, Smith with bottle in hand, Casper slinking unhappily behind. Everyone turns and stares at them going off, plainly together, in the direction of the hill. They’re not even pretending they’re not gawping. The damage is done. They knew already, no point in keeping up pretences.

Day Twenty-Four - Midday and Midday

     Casper wanders the streets of Glenholm more or less aimlessly, turning one corner and the next, no real direction in mind, the only purpose being to waste time. Doesn’t feel right to sit down, to stay still for a single minute. He can’t settle, as unsettled as he is. Being in one place, much less out in the open, for too long makes him exposed. He knows it isn’t rational, he knows he isn’t making sense, but he can’t help the way he feels. The curious glances he’s getting from behind curtains isn’t doing him any favours. He winds up avoiding the larger roads almost entirely, simply because there are more windows facing out along them. The center of his corkscrewing route, however, always remains the same: the post office.

     Obsessively, compulsively, inevitably, he’ll circle back around from wherever his meanderings have taken him and find himself somewhere within the vicinity the post. If that delivery comes today, he can’t afford to miss it. And if it doesn’t, if it’s delayed again, or it’s come and gone already, or it isn’t coming at all, well…

     There’s another one of those things he doesn’t want to think about.

Day Twenty-Four - Morning

     The sun is shining. The birds are singing. Casper and Balor go through their morning ritual of tending to their gardens behind the house and Casper tries not to think of anything at all. There’s no need to water anything outside today, so they finish off quickly. Casper wouldn’t have minded having a little more to do if it meant keeping his hands busy, keeping his mind occupied.

     Balor rinses his hands off in last of the water in the well pail, the remainder of what’s leftover from watering the glasshouse plants. The espinac is coming out in full force, beta too, lagging a mere step behind. The old man has quite the green thumb. The glasshouse alone has been sufficient to provide Casper with regular breakfasts. When the stuff they’ve planted outside is fully grown, there’ll be enough to give him three square meals a day, pub fare or no. Except Casper won’t be there.

     If he has his way, he’ll be leaving today.

     He still hasn’t told Balor.