“What’re you checking out bud?” a concerned Bendy asked his best friend Fisher who was looking at his hands.
“I think I cut myself on that old ferris wheel car in my dream last night. Is that possible?”
“Anything’s possible in a Wonderland, I suppose,” responded the robot. “Was this the spaceship again? Dr. Ice Cream?”
Fisher considered the question. “I guess it *could* have been. A captain was there. And a captain always has a ship by default. Right?”
“I reckon. Want another morning brandy? You can also pour some on that cut — if it is a cut — for disinfectant. But it just looks like a regular ol’ hand line from my perspective. Let me see.” Bendy examines his hand. “Yeah, definitely just a deep, reddish hand line. Heart, or perhaps head. Have you ever had your palms read? And this time I don’t mean by blood, ha ha.”
Fisher thought back. “Maybe when I was drunk once in Bennington North. Lots of palm readers there, going along with all the (tree) palms.”
“Lindens?” Bendy asked about the trees.
“No. Just regular mesh products. Like what’s on the original Fisher’s Island. The tiny one we erupted up to in our pink car from Second Lyfe’s vast underground. Or was it blue?”
“We better figure out such things before advancing the book further. This is 10. Often times 10 is a construction sign on a path one can progress no further upon. Like in The Swamp. You know, with The Cube.”
“I *don’t* know that, Bendy. How could I, as a character in such a book, know about The Swamp and The Cube? But of course I guess there’s always The Dreams.”
“It’s where photography will be reborn. 10 is the limit, Fisher. We’ll have to live inside The Cube after that. In The Swamp.”
He started studying his hands again, seeing something in the patterns. “Can’t wait.”
—–
“Oh I almost forgot to mention. I’ve been seeing *robots* around lately.”
“Mirrors?” Fisher joked.
“No. Actual real flesh and blood, er, nuts and bolts robots. A little one who motored up to me and introduced himself about a week back. Walldo he called himself, obviously after the town’s famous wall. But why? Then — I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this — I saw another one from more of a distance. And she looked like… Nah, it isn’t possible I know. But, get this, she looked like *Tronesisia*.”
“Get out of here. We know Tronesisia perished in the New Island catastrophe. Actually she perished before that, being frozen in the Artist Point Interactive display, apparently by this powerful witch named Hazel or Mid Hazel or something.”
“She’s old,” inserted Bendy. “But anyway, I called toward her — she was walking on the beach near that mound with the dead Russian Greys.”
“I know the place,” Fisher said, nodding his head.
“But then she just walked behind the mound from my perspective and never came out the opposite side. I hastened over to the beach — nothing inside. Just the Greys there, sprawled on the ground at the entrance, like usual. No Tronesisia. Maybe I imagined it?”
“Let’s go look at the scene of the crime — help take my mind off these crazy dreams.”
“Yeah, they’re getting crazier,” said Bendy. “Curiouser and curiouser, even.”
—–
“Do you remember *this*, Bendy?”
“*No.*”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 