2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Pearl
“ M a’am? Excuse me? Ma’am? Can you tell me where I am?”
I wave my hand in front of the gal’s face, but she continues to stare blankly at me. There must be something wrong with her.
I raise my voice in case she can’t hear me. “Are you alright? Do you need help?”
Her mouth opens and closes as if she intends to reply, but she still says nothing. How frustrating. Maybe there is something wrong.
She’s a strange-looking woman. She’s got stripes in her hair like that Bride of Frankenstein film. Tattoos poke out from under those men’s gym clothes she’s wearing. Goodness, she even has metal rings through her lip and nose! She must be some sort of performer with those looks, certainly.
“Ma’am are you with the circus? A traveling show of some kind?” I ask hopefully. Surely someone could help me from an entire carnival full of people.
She only looks more confused. Sighing, I look around the room for answers instead.
Oh boy. There are lights flickering and images glowing from machines all over the room.
I’m not sure what’s going on, but I don’t think I like it.
I know there’s been a visitor or two to Ghostlight Falls from beyond the stars, but they’ve sworn not to take us away unwillingly.
I’m going to be so very upset if I’m on some other planet.
Something on a table next to me shakes, then lights up, revealing a glowing photograph of a men’s baseball team in full color. It continues to vibrate, the words “Mom Calling” across the top. None of this makes any kind of sense. Why would an alien have baseball? Or their words be in English?
“I don’t like this. Just tell me where I am.” I can hear the shakiness of distress in my voice.
Normally I prefer to be the knight in shining armor, but I suppose this time I’m the damsel. Well, I guess my show of emotion gives the tattooed lady a kick in the behind, because she finally answers me.
“You’re in my room. In, uh, Ghostlight Falls. Do you—you do realize that you’re—” She claps her hands flat together like she’s praying, looking at me as if that’s supposed to mean something.
“Well, first off, thank you for finally answering me. Who may I ask are you? And if I’m in your room, why am I here? Also, I must say I don’t know what you’re trying to say with that clap.” I mimic her gesture and am surprised to find that I make no sound.
I look down at my hands and freeze. Something is very, very wrong here.
“Do you see what I mean?” the woman asks.
“I see something. Don’t know what,” I say with some difficulty.
“Paper,” she says, as if that makes any kind of sense.
I look at her and wait for a saner response .
“You’re made of paper. I think. At least, you were made of paper a couple of minutes ago.”
That really isn’t any saner.
“What are you talking about? I feel normal.”
I hold my hands in front of my face and— well, shit. I look down at my legs and any other part of me I can see. Everything’s flat.
It’s true, I’m all paper.
“I don’t understand. My brain’s working, my heart’s beating. I’m moving around, and I really do feel just fine. How can this be real?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll tell you what I do know.” She gestures to a chair with a bunch of clothes on it, which she swiftly moves to the floor. “My name’s Delia, by the way.”
I sit on the chair, nodding in her direction as I do. “Pleasure meeting you. I’m Pearl.”
“Well, Pearl, let me tell you what I know about how you got here.”
A few minutes later I’m just about as stumped as I was before. I didn’t know Valentina well, but she was a nice woman. Always willing to help a girl in need.
Brigley was nice before the war. He inherited the gum factory and used the money to buy the men’s baseball team, the Wonder Balls. When he went to war, and most of the men in town did too, the Wonder Belles took over for the Balls.
After Brigley got back something changed in him.
He was real mean. At first, people thought he maybe had some kind of shell shock or something.
That happened to some guys, they got irritable when they returned.
Battle fatigue did all kinds of awful things to our boys, but this was different.
Darker. Saying not to trust Brigley is the least surprising thing about all of this.
“And you don’t remember how you got in your current…condition at all?” Delia asks.
“I really don’t. I remember our team captain, Cheryl, phoning me for an emergency meeting. And that’s the last thing I recall.” I try again to think of anything after I hung up the phone that evening, but there’s just nothing else. “How long has it been, by the way? You didn’t say.”
“Oh. I don’t know how long it’s been since you were—whatever happened to you, but it’s twenty-twenty-five now.”
“I must be misunderstanding. You don’t mean the year twenty-twenty-five?”
“Yeah. It’s been almost eighty years since you were on that card.” Delia nervously bites the metal ring on her lip.
“The last year I remember is 1946. I missed all that time. Did anyone look for me?”
She slowly shakes her head. “There wasn’t anything about this town even having a women’s team on record. If there was, I would have found it.”
“Someone must have erased us. But why? And now I’m here all alone where I don’t belong.” I look down at my hands. They’re freakish. “Am I even me?”
“I’m so sorry, Pearl.”
“Meow! Pbft!”
My eyes dart to the window where a fluffy, gray face stares at me. The fluffy little beast opens its mouth wide and pats the screen with one white-booted paw. “ Meow! ”
“Mavis! There you are!” Delia crawls across her bed to the window to let the cat inside.
It struts into the room, fluffy tail held high, rubbing on her owner and meowing loudly over and over.
“She escaped out the window this morning and I couldn’t find her.
I knew she’d come back though. She always does. ”
Delia rubs her nose against the cat’s nose, making happy cooing noises. Mavis sneezes directly into Delia’s open eye.
“Eew, thanks Mavis,” Delia groans as she sits up, wiping her face on the end of her t-shirt.
Briefly, I see her stomach. She even has a tattoo there, too!
I look away too quickly to make out what it is, but I can’t help but be curious.
Strangely, I must admit the secret tattoo on her flat stomach, in those masculine pants, gives me feelings I don’t really need to be having right now.
Maybe I’m all confused in the head from the strange events of the day.
I certainly shouldn’t be thinking about sex at a time like this.
The cat jumps off the bed and walks over to me. I do love animals, and this one is particularly adorable. Its ears are long and hanging low like a bunny’s, which I’ve never seen on a cat before.
“You know, the Wonder Belles had a cat named Tubbs. Well, he lived outside, but we called him ours. He sat on the porch of the house where a group of us single gals lived every morning, and we’d scratch his little white head before every game for luck.
” I scratch the top of Mavis’s head. “Are you lucky, Mavis?”
“ Pbft ,” she replies, a very strange sound for a cat.
“Oh, she’s not a cat. She’s a cant . I got her at Ruff ‘N Tumble. They sell exotic pets. I got her because she’s awesome at fetch.”
The cant starts to knead my shoe as if she’s making biscuits, but since the shoe is made of paper, it just sort of crinkles noisily. Mavis jumps back, confused. Her pupils grow wide, and her long ears flip backward.
“Oh. She doesn’t look exotic. Cute, just not exotic.” I tilt my head and watch the grey fluff ball watching my shoe.
To my amazement, an additional, long, skinny, almost spider-like leg, with sharp claws on the end, shoots out of each side of Mavis’s body. Before I can even figure out whether to scream or piddle myself, she springs forward and slashes her claws right through my shoe.
“Mavis!” Delia shrieks as she launches off of the bed.
She grabs the cant and slides her into the hallway, slamming the door behind her.
She kneels before me, inspecting my shoe. “Oh shit, are you okay?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t hurt but it doesn’t look good.”
My paper has several tears where Mavis’s claws shredded it. Everything below my left ankle is tattered ribbons, dangling in the still air. Thinking about it is making me nauseous.
“What if we tape you back together?” Delia asks, eyes wide with hope.
“Tape? As in Scotch tape? Oh boy, do I feel silly.”
“Just let me try, okay?” Delia scurries over to one of the desks where the disturbingly glowing machines sit.
She pulls out a roll of clear tape, returns, then begins to very carefully put me back as I was .
“What are those things on the desk? The glowing things?” I ask. Might as well find out in case I’m in danger.
“Oh, uh, there are a few different things. The big, flat one with the movie playing on mute right now, that’s the television. And—”
“That can’t be a television. I was an actress, did you know that?
Sometimes I’d get offers from people who wanted me to return to the screen.
Once a gentleman in television invited me to his home to show me the latest devices.
They looked nothing like that.” I laugh at the thought.
If we had to do our hair and makeup to be in pictures like that , then some of the gals I worked with would quit.
You can see the pores in their skin! They already grumbled enough about Technicolor.
“You forget that it’s been eighty years, Pearl. Technology has changed. Makeup technology too.”
“Oh, right.” I laugh to try to cover up my embarrassment. “Well, what about that other thing. The smaller one?”
“That’s my computer. I mostly play games on it, but it can do a lot of stuff. Honestly, I don’t even know where to start. I’d have to explain the Internet first, I think.” Delia closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Wow, where to begin?”