Od and Ed

1

Perfects

We can do weird things, said Odlyn Perfect.

It was daytime, but all the lights were off. Strange things could happen in a house with all the lights off, when long-loved colors were thrown into gray, and stray spears of sunlight stabbed forgotten pieces of molding and carpet. Sound and thought would bend in crooked ways and whatever lingering blitheness you had inside would fold up and stick in your sides. It was a different place.

Od chewed the inside of her cheek. Ed can make things move… her eyes darted out to meet her brother’s and then returned to Bernie, …with his mind.

They all sat together, tailor-style, on Od’s bed. The comforter was thrown loosely over the rumples in a lumpy pink mass, hiding all the pillows, dolls, and plush figures that lived there. Od’s floor-clothes and toy debris were crammed against the wall, creating a narrow path of shag carpet that almost made the room appear cleaner than it actually was.

It’s not with my mind really… Edwyn Perfect was being contrary as he was prone to do. He flicked his head to the side, cracking his neck just like their father. It’s hard to explain.

Ed reached toward Melvin, Od’s stuffed white monkey. Ed twitched as if a familiar pain crept into him that he had to constantly shove away. Bernie looked at the Monkey.

Did it move?

Bernie frowned and squinted against the dim of the room, pushing his head out toward the chair to confirm what he had just seen. Ed squinted along with him, head cocked to the side, hand still out, reaching for Melvin’s stitched mouth, long arms, and Velcro palms. His nylon fur, once smooth and straight, was matted from a former trip to the dryer.

The monkey raised its arm.

A noise leapt into the room from the back of Bernie’s throat, somewhere between a gasp and a squeal. Something inexplicable exploded within him and ran along his limbs. It coursed up his neck, giving him goosebumps, and making him feel light and scared. As the explosion melted away, it left him feeling strong.

Don’t tell, Edwyn commanded and the monkey’s arm dropped back down. We would have never told you except for, well, we think you might be able to do stuff like this. Move things. Tether things. More, maybe. I’m not sure how it works. It’s as if our imagination is bleeding into reality.

Stop trying to figure it out, said Od. It isn’t going to work anymore if you do that.

Ed frowned at his sister. That doesn’t make any sense, he said. Why wouldn’t it work if I figured it out?

I think the power is connected to the mystery of it, she said.

Kind of like how the Roadrunner doesn’t fall because he doesn’t look down? Ed made a half smile that only he could make, and winked at Bernie.

"The Roadrunner’s a girl," said Od and Ed rolled his eyes.

Bernie thought of his cat, Bigfoot. He was forced to give her to his brother after what had happened. Maybe I could give Bigfoot back her eye with this magic. Maybe Hell didn’t await him for what he had done.

"It’s not magic, Od said. It’s just learning how to make things happen."

Did she hear him think the word magic in his head or was that a coincidence? He sure hoped it was a coincidence. Sometimes he had thoughts about her in there. And she was his own cousin. He felt his face go hot. I want to do it, Bernie said. The uh, not-magic.

Edwyn looked at Bernie. Open the drawer.

Bernie started to get up.

"No, open it."

Bernie looked from one pair of Perfect eyes to the other.

He reached out like Edwyn did and shook in a forced twitch. Ed had done that. It’s not with my mind really… Bernie imagined a ghost-arm sliding out of his own pudgy hand and across the gray room, grabbing the knob, it was shiny and cool, pulling at it…it moved…cracked…opened… Oh shit! Odlyn’s underwear drawer! He lost his concentration. None of them were falling out or anything, but he knew they were in there. He knew that there was one less pair too. Pink, green, and white, striped ones. Did I open the drawer because of that? No, Ed had meant that one, he had pointed to that drawer. The drawer stopped moving.

Wow, Edwyn said. Od didn’t even do it that quick.

Bernie did it. He did the not-magic. The heat from the realization of what drawer he was opening was still in his face, but the rest of the world changed. It had expanded, and at the same time it narrowed down to a pinprick. Things were going to be different now. He was somebody.

Something snapped in the room.

It was a deep snap that sucked part of the air out and replaced it with something else. It snapped again. In the closet. The ceiling. Below. Above. A snap that enveloped everything; that came from behind everywhere. A sickening snap that ran through his guts and into his bones.

Odlyn stood up. You have to go.

What? Bernie said.

Odlyn looked into his eyes. Edwyn was holding his head. "You need to leave. Don’t tell anyone about this. Not your brother, not Carrie, not our parents, or yours, or anyone’s parents. Nobody. Got it? There was a soft rumble and Od’s eyes went to the closet. It’s mad."

Bernie ran.

2

Od

Od stopped herself from tugging at the waist of her jeans. She wasn’t a Perfect––not by blood, at least. Her hair was pale, her eyes dirt gray, so un-Perfect. What’s it so mad at?

I don’t know, Ed said as he climbed into the closet, sat down, and closed his eyes.

Od picked up a ukulele. Dust motes danced around the strings as she picked through them with her fingers. The sound was boxy and bright––not a song though, mostly just notes scraping against each other along a minor scale.

Od’s ears popped and she could hear better. The immediacy in the air evaporated and some normalcy dripped in. The uncertainty that hung when the house thinned or thickened made it feel like everything could cave-in on itself, like the fabric of everything could rip and things could tumble through and get you. But for now, the house calmed.

Ed was the one who did it. He had a way with it. He could click himself off, plug in, and calm it. The ukulele sometimes helped Ed click off and plug in. It was something to drift to, he said. Od thought that it might not help him at all, that maybe it was just something Ed told her so that she felt like she was helping.

Ed came back on. His eyes opened and stared at nothing. He twitched again, this movement more natural than the one earlier. Od quickly plugged her ears, pinning the bits of cartilage against her earholes with her fingers, and Ed screamed until he ran out of breath. She had to cover his face with a pillow once when their parents were home and they had to calm the house. She felt weird doing it, especially since Ed never remembered the scream, but she didn’t know what else to do.

They weren’t sure exactly why the house would get mad. They had guesses for specific times when it occurred. Too many lights on. People it didn’t like were visiting. Too many fires or candles going. But this time, Od couldn’t guess why.

Ughhhh. Ed rubbed his eyes with his knuckles as he climbed out of the closet. You wanna get some pizza?

Uh, doi.

Od always wanted to get some pizza.

Seeing as though neither of them was even near old enough to drive legally, nor have a car at their disposal, they biked into town. The ride was about forty minutes; down the long twisted road they lived on, left on Crest, past the gray houses, past the church and the cemetery, across the bridge over the freeway, past the hospital and Timber Hills Elementary, then right, then left, and finally into the main shopping center where The Pizza Parlor was.

They leaned their bikes against the wall just outside. Was that mean? Od said.

Huh?

What we did to Bernie?

Nah, just bad timing, Ed said. I mean, wouldn’t you think it was cool if we did it to you? It was a great idea, rigging the room with fishing line. While it was Ed’s idea, he had wanted to tell Bernie it was a ghost. It was Od’s idea to convince him that the Perfects had magical powers.

Yeah, but we didn’t tell him that it was fake, Od said.

That’s because the house got mad, Ed said. We’ll tell him later. He’ll get pissed for a couple seconds and then think it was awesome and say we should do it to his brother. It was kind of weird, pretending to do magic in a house that was wrong. There was something funny about it, although that wasn’t quite the right word. Nobody knew that there were… things that infested the house except for Od and Ed, and that those things could potentially fall out.

The sounds of the arcade melted into a cold pixelated soup, which Od drank in and separated in her mind. There were the electric chimes and coin splashes from Dragon’s Lair; a steady voice permeating throughout, a high-pitched metamorphosis scream from Altered Beast, gravelly punches and kicks from Double Dragon, and somebody was hitting the brakes way too much on OutRun. Synthesized and lo-bit themes battled each other. The deep clacks and robotic scales from the pinballs bouncing around the innards, of both PIN·BOT and High Speed, kept a chaotic beat. And Every Little Counts by New Order was playing on the jukebox.

The Pizza Parlor had the biggest arcade in town. Which wasn’t saying much, since the town of Timber Hills only had a fall-total of 3,212 people. But it also had the best pizza in the county, which was saying a bit more. The competition was a bit fierce pizza-wise in Chinook County. However, there were only two other true contenders for the crown as far as Od and most playground epicures were concerned. One was Stanley’s Pizza Factory in Strawberry Valley, about thirty miles away. The other was Good Knight Pizza in Dunsmore, the next town over. Neither held a crumb to The Pizza Parlor.

What if we could rig the whole house up with fishing line and stuff and have somebody come in and go through it? Make like a story or something they had to figure out, said Ed.

Od didn’t look up from the cabinet, but she smiled. Would we tell them it was fake? She had gone for two levels now without losing a life.

I think we would have to, Ed admitted.

She could see Ed peripherally, but focused on the screen. Maybe he was teasing her, or even testing her video-gaming skills with the distraction. Od let her mind fill with puzzles and stories that could be seeded into the house. She wondered if the house would bend the game they made inside it somehow, twist it in some way to fit its desires. Or would the game just make it mad? The only way to find out though would be to create it.

It would start with the front door. There would be a note tucked into the worn brass handle-set hinting on how you were supposed to knock to unlock the door. So Ed would have to be on one side of the door and Od the other when somebody came to experience the House Game. She should be the one inside, behind the scenes, and working behind the puzzles. When they figured out that first puzzle with the door knock she would unlock the door and move, unnoticed, to the––

––GOBLIN!

––She tapped the jump button, but may have done it a little too lightly, because her avatar did not jump. The low computerized drip-drop sounded and her avatar fell off the screen. One life down. She definitely didn’t hit the button late. I pressed the button! Come on! She shook her head and tucked her hair behind her ears. This game cheats. She had totally pressed the button.

Take two, said Ed.

The game restarted her in a section where she had almost no choice but to die immediately. So she died and then laughed.

"OK, that time it cheated," Ed said.

Edwyn. Pizza for Edwyn. Their compromise-pizza was ready and Ed left without saying anything to go get it. If he had his druthers he would have had one of the nastiest pizzas known to the world: shrimp and onion. If Od had it her way, she would get extra cheese and pineapple. As always, mushroom and olive was the middle ground. Ed said that they could do half shrimp and onion and half cheese and pineapple, but when those grody little shrimps were baked into the cheese it ruined the whole pizza.

Od started again and hopped the goblin with a forceful slap of the jump button. She paused. Jumped and threw some axes. She was on the last bridge of the level when spikes rained down upon her. The castle stones melted into spectres and engulfed her. Drip-drop. Game over. She pulled the queued quarter off the glass and put it back in her pocket. That game cheated. She just knew it.

Ed had found a spot in the back next to the dragon mural where he was already inhaling a slice. Od sat down, filled a plastic tumbler with Coke, took a swig, and scraped a sheet of cheese and toppings off a slice. She tossed the rest of it back onto the metal pan it had been served on.

Ed picked up Od’s discarded triangle of crust and fit it neatly under a fresh slice, creating a sort of double-crust pizza. That move had saved Od from getting in trouble more than a few times. Got any good what-ifs? Ed smiled.

Hmmm… she said and bit the inside of her cheek. She and Ed had a tradition of coming up with elaborate what-if scenarios for the other to answer. It was one of her favorite things to do with Ed, but it took some work to do it right. She had a few half-formed what-ifs floating in her head, but nothing complete. She sighed. I can’t think of one right now. Maybe on our ride back. She crunched on mouthful of Coke-flavored ice pellets. Why any restaurant chose ice cubes over ice pellets was one of life’s great mysteries.

Alright, better be a good one.

Od grabbed another slice.

OK, if you could have one wish, what would it be? Ed asked.

Infinity wishes.

Ed looked at his sister as he chewed a big mouthful of cheese, sauce, and mushrooms. Ass, he said.

Od smiled. What? Tell me a wish that's better. She knew he couldn’t, but she wasn’t really playing fair.

Fine, he said and took another bite. "If you could have any power, like magic power, what would it be?"

The power to generate an infinite number of wishes. Od held a laugh in and picked at some cheese.

Ed shook his head. Ass.

Od scraped the rest of the cheese and toppings from her second slice and abandoned another crust plate to the tray. One power... to be able to fly, I guess.

Fine, Ed said. "But you have to run really fast and flap your arms really hard to do it. And you can normally only get a few feet off the ground. Sometimes you can get higher, but not consistently. Would you still pick flying?"

Od laughed. No.

So, what then? Now Ed wasn’t playing fair.

"What would you pick, then?" Od said.

There was this supervillain named The Creeper. Ed wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then, when he saw the back of his hand, he wiped it with a napkin. He could strike fear into his foes or make them go crazy or go into a coma. He took a big bite and with his mouth full added, With his laugh.

Od rolled her eyes. That's so stupid.

"If you can control fear, you can make people do anything."

But what if you go see a stand-up comedian and start laughing? He'd get all scared and not be able to finish his jokes. Or if you were at school and somebody did something you thought was funny, everybody would be dropping into comas and going crazy.

Ed started laughing and Od spasmed on cue. She crossed her eyes and let her head fall with a thunk to the table. She closed her eyes and lay still for a couple seconds. Then she opened one eye to see Ed’s reaction. He didn't even acknowledge it. I think I’d have control over the laugh. Like it would be a special laugh. Not my regular, haha-that’s-funny laugh, he said.

It would be a much cooler power if your laugh just made you float to the ceiling.

Very funny. That meant he didn’t think it was funny.

Od started picking off another slice of pizza. If you could have the power of being invisible... She looked up at him. Good power, right?

He reluctantly agreed. Yeah.

If you could be invisible whenever you wanted, but all of the food you ever ate would taste like broccoli to you... Would you do it?

All the time, or just when I was invisible? Ed was thorough.

All the time. Of course. Ed frowned and started to think.

Oh... drinks too? he asked.

You can choose two drinks that can taste normal. Everything else tastes like broccoli water. Would you do it? Od said.

No way, Ed said. Then he thought for a moment. Well…

I would, Od said.

How ’bout this, Ed said. You can have the ability to tell when anyone is lying. By the smell. When they lie, it’s the worst smell ever. Like the Bog of Eternal Stench caliber stink. You smell that any time someone lies.

Od thought a second. I couldn't go anywhere, she said. Everywhere would smell horrible. She eyed the dragon mural behind Ed. What about movies?

What do you mean?

"Like if people in movies