On the horizon arose a humble brisk town. Out of the individual Cardinal directions laid strong but aged roads. And trekking atop that road was a jeep that contained Alex and Emme. "Uh, I don’t think we’re going to make it to that town," the latter noted with modest regard in his voice. The former took a brief glance at the dashboard and responded with, "Then just pull over to the side of the road, and we can just walk there." "Sounds like a good idea,"
Alex cautiously walked to the town whilst Emme strode. On the road and on the boys’ clothes, little patches of white began to develop. "Let’s hurry up, this snow's falling pretty fast," Emme mentioned. "I was just about to say the same thing," Alex acknowledged.
"It’s just annoying, you know?"
"Yep, like this one time, me and this group were hunting. So it’s snowy and all and we were going to take our haul back. But then we find out that our loader is stuck in the snow. So we have to spend the next, like, hour trying to get it loose. And why did it get stuck? Because the dumb bingo went with the same time that it would have been if we hadn't been in snow"
"Huh, what the heck is a ‘dumb bingo’?"
"I don’t really know, my dad and one of his friends used to say it. I just kinda picked it up I guess."
"Hm, I wonder if I have anything like that."
The environment in front of Emme and Alex was something extraordinary to them. Yes, they had arrived at the town, and nothing seemed peculiar initially. But the residents that dwelt there were off kilter. They donned cloaks and masks that resembled mice. One of the individuals gasped and ran toward the anomalous travelers. "Hello hello, welcome to Rodentown, travelers. What brings you to our town?," the greeter buzzed. Emme opened his mouth to speak when Alex shot out words, "We’re here because we need to get a place to sleep."
"I could show you somewhere."
"That would be great," Alex and the greeter began strolling throughout the town, Emme followed suit.
While walking, the group passed by the center of the town. Several workers were placing pipes and other mechanisms. "Here you go, I hope you get to have a great night's sleep even though you're away from home," the greeter directed them toward a motel. Alex nodded to the greeter, and he and Emme walked inside one of the rooms.
The room was furnished with two beds, a nightstand, and a table. And atop that table was a wheel of cheese, a knife, a candle, and a lighter. "Why aren’t we going to go get gasoline?," Emme queried as he stepped about the room. Alex looked over the wheel of cheese when he mumbled, "To give us some time to think, to not look weird, and I think we should relax a bit."
"Oh, good. Ya know, to be honest, I don't know what I’m doing. Getting some stuff worked out is probably one of the best things we can do right now."
"Is that why we ran out of gas?"
"I don’t know, the jeep could have been low on gas when we left… What is that?," Emme directed as he motioned at the wheel. Alex peered over, "That is food. I don’t know why they would give it to us, but we should just take it, anyway," he strode over to the sole window and closed its curtains. "Get out the map," Alex commanded. Emme pulled it out and spread it out over the table. "Where exactly are you planning to get back to?," Emme pointed to a black dot near the middle of the map. Alex in turn started to trace his finger around the illustrated roads. Occasionally he would grumble things like, "No that wouldn’t work," or "That’s to risky". "I’m going to go look for some gasoline," Emme piped up.
"Go ahead, I’ll be working on this."
As Emme meandered outside of the motel, he echoed a question to himself, "Where to get gasoline?," But when he was just a few yards away from the motel, the same greeter rushed up and asked how he was. Emme refocused on them and affirmed, "Uh… I’m good."
"That is great, do you need anything?"
"Yeah I need a, no I mean some, gasoline."
"I don’t know what that-, oh I remember, yes. You can get some of that…,” the greeter put their hand on their mask’s chin. "OK you will want to go forward for something like three intersections and then you go left and up a bit. Then on the right there will be a sort of weird looking building. That is the place you want to go for gasoline."
"Thanks, you know, you’ve been really helpful with us."
"You too."
"What?"
"Nothing, I messed up talking," The greeter let out a slight chuckle and watched as Emme jogged away.
The "weird building" as it was detailed, was less of a building and more of a gigantic wooden box. And nearring the top of it were evenly placed vents. The solitary entrance into the box was an grey door near it’s right side. Emme attempted to open the door, but it had to be pushed hard to merely open it a crack. The interior of the box was lit only by light let in through the vents. The walls and ceiling occured to be metal. The most extensive area of the structure was a basin in the ground. In the basin was a murky ashen liquid that couldn’t have rose above a foot. Lining the walls were hefty plastic containers that looked like they were either to the brim with the same liquid or were unfilled. As Emme advanced forward, just past the door, he was snatched by his collar. "What is it, Jay?," the raised question came from someone that stood in the basin with one of those same containers in their hand. Emme struggled to shift his body to look at his ambusher. Of what he could see, he saw the same type of cloak he’d already seen. And, just like the others, they wore mask of a rodent. "It’s some kid, Drew," they answered then shifted Emme so they could confront him directly. "So, how did you find out about this place," the guard asked. As Emme tried to find his words, he nervously stared into the eye holes and saw the wall of a person’s stern eyes. "Th-the greeter that bro-brought me to the m-motel told me to I could get some gasoline from this place," Emme sputtered with the quickness of a cockroach.
"Wait… oh yeah you're one of those train kids, right?"
"... Yeah sure yes," and with those words acting like a password, Emme was let down.
"Sorry about that, it's just not… wait it's getting to that time ain’t it."
"Y-yep so um I just need to get some some gasoline."
"Oh sure you're going to get it sooner or later. So did the old beast run out early when it was coming round?"
"I-I don’t know. It’s just I don’t know what I’m saying, I mean, I’m new to this-"
"I see, so don’t worry about anything. Just come back tomorrow and I can get you some grey matter, that’s the common term by the way"
"... Thanks," Emme only concluded only after thinking through what to say. Drew climbed out, scanned around the room, and shouted across the building, "I’ll give you some fuel tomorrow, just come over and you’ll be doin’ fine," Emme frequently nodded during this whole exchange. He then stumbled toward the door but was stopped by Jay. "You’re gonna bring the sample for the dinner, right?," he proposed. A stiff and shaky thumb was Emme’s only response. As he wobbled away from the building, he brought his hands to his face, only able to see the world through his twitching fingers.
The motel door opened as if it was pushed by the wind. The room was silent. Emme sluggishly fell onto the one of the beds. Alex’s calm face stared at him with complete ignorance. He thought for a second, got up, and pushed Alex awake. "What do you want?," the tired boy blasted. Emme rubbed his face and spewed words, "I-I messed up so bad."
"What did you do.”
"OK, so I went to this building and they, like, interrogated me and they said I was someone. So then I kinda went along with it, I guess, and they said they would give me gasoline tomorrow!"
"That’s good… Oh wait-"
"But then they talked about a sample for a dinner and I said I would bring it!"
"Don’t worry about it Emme, we’ll do fine"
"Like, I don’t have any sample, I have no idea what this ‘sample’ is!"
"Emme we’ll be fine, I-"
"Are you sure? Because what if I go over and they want the sample right then and there!"
"Emme," Alex stood up and rest a hand on Emme’s cheek. He reeled back that hand and slammed his fist into Emme’s shoulder. "Did you just feel that?"
"Ahh, yes, why?"
"To get you to slow down and get your mind off of that. We’ll do fine and we can get out of it by the end of tomorrow night, I swear. Also, I made the route for the map."
"How are we going to be fine, what are we going to do."
"You think of what to do and in the morning we can talk about what you came up with."
"You sure this is a good idea?"
"Yeah, just think about the stuff you could do. Also do something repetitive, it could help you concentrate."
"Uh… OK."
"Anyway I gotta go get something out of the car."
"Wait… Here," Emme wiped out the key to the jeep and tossed it toward Alex. He caught the key, gave a thumb up, and left. Emme gazed around the room until his eyes set upon the cheese wheel. "I guess I could do something with this," Emme decided. He then sat down, grabbed the knife and stuck it into the wheel. It barely stuck into it, only making a tiny sliver. Emme considered for a second, and then put it together. He lit the candle, heated up the knife, then sliced through the cheese with ease. The wheel was then transformed into bricks.
By the time Emme was done with chopping up the wheel, Alex hadn't returned. But Emme went to bed not thinking about it. The only thing in his mind was a single thought.
But Emme was awoken in the night. Of what he could see out of his fuzzy vision, he saw Alex grasping a black brick with a stick erected on the top side. Emme heard a specific thing, a familiar voice, one belonging to a person described as a, "stone hand".
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