WOW

“Do you not know me yet, Fern? I am the one you’re trying to forget.”

Fern wakes up, remembers everything.

—–

“Yellow Jack is where Philip Strevor turned back into Trevor Philips and resumed his Id role in the Grand Theft Auto game V,” explained Fern to Lichen later as the sun rose over her shoulder again. “Miss Janet was the key, and refusing to provide him service and saying he was still banned from the joint. He remembered his drug company, recalled his home in Sandy Shores. He was reassimilated, Lichen. Frank Lynn became the lead man after that, although we didn’t know it at the time. Frank Lynn, through Morro Bay, points to Nightsity. Did I explain the Morro Bay link yet?”

“I — I don’t think so, Fern.” Straw still not twirling. Still.

“But I have a new theory, Lichen my dearest,” she said, avoiding the temptation to spoon another pepper snake and mint ladder into her mouth swimming in what little was left of the now discolored milk in the bowl before her because of all the dissolved flavoring, the last of their kind. She wanted to speak as clear as a bell so that Lichen knew what was going down. “Aliens — now I believe it all points to the hippy egg camp outside of Sandy Shores and not Sandy Shores or Trevor or his trailer or business directly. A man named Night made it all — can’t be coincidence. But not with a K; with an N: the K person would not approve of equating his precious lord and savior Jesus with heretical aliens, you see.”

“I — see?”

“No, you don’t see, Lichen. But you will.”