So Night Follows Day

By T. MaskedWriter with Special Guest Author Susan Bailey

*****

"At the tender age of three, I was hooked to a machine,

just to keep my mouth from spouting junk. Ha!

Musta took me for a fool, cause they chucked me out of school,

cause the teacher knew I had the funk.

But tonight, I'm on the edge, better shut me in the fridge,

cause I'm burning up! YOW! I'm burning up.

With the vision in my brain, and the music in my veins,

and the dirty rhythm in my blood!"

-Thomas Dolby, "

Hyperactive

"

Ciao, Il mio nome è Susan.

Sorry, let me try that again.

Hi, my name's Susan. There, that's better. Helen was confused about that a moment ago; everyone was. Now I guess I understand why. Apparently, I speak Italian now.

I'd been learning the language since we got back from San Finzione. Since I'm a citizen, I figure I'll be going back and forth once in a while. We've committed to going back twice in the next couple months, so I figured I'd get started after we recovered from the first trip.

My first Italian lesson had involved learning whether a pair of shoes was mine or not, whether they were red or not, how much they cost, and if they were on sale. After a week, I felt confident that If any questions about the ownership and/or price of a pair of red shoes ever came up, I would know exactly what to do!

Now, after the thing that Suzy-Q did, I can tell you that those shoes are cheap knockoffs of last year's model, that I can get the real thing for only five Euros more than his piece-of-shit hack counterfeiting job with the red paint that's already started to peel; at a store on the other side of the marketplace, and that it's not my fault that he was a bastard and that his mother was too busy gangbanging the local

Calcio

Team to teach him how to pull off a decent fucking penny-ante scam like this one!

Sorry. Did I mention that Helen's who I learned Italian from? Well, not really learned. It's complicated, and everyone, including me, just found out about it. We'd all been silent for what felt like a week since Troy pointed it out. I broke the silence.

"Ok." I said, trying to make a conscious effort to speak English for the first time I could remember. "Please tell me that I'm speaking English now, and my brain's Default didn't just switch to Italian."

"Yes, you are." Julie said as she came running down the stairs to me. She held up my head and looked into my eyes, then lifted my arms up and released them. "Say something else, please, but..." She turned to Troy. "Go get Dr. Tenente Maisson, Master." Troy nodded. Julie turned back. "Ok, hon, say a long sentence, please."

"Julie Equals is checking me for signs of Face drooping, Arm weakness, and Speech difficulties; the FAST test, which leads me to the conclusion that she is worried that I might be having a stroke; however, given that if there were any cause for concern, I would be able to read it on My Girlfriend's face by now, we need not worry about the Time aspect."

Julie smiled and stopped trying to examine me.

"Ok, good. Just, you know, there's stories about people having strokes or going into comas and waking up speaking languages they didn't know before."

"This wasn't like that Julie." I told her. "Helen's the one who's been unconscious both times this has happened, not me. At least I get it now; when she said Rita's show is 'Only funny if you know Italian,' she was telling us the name of the show: '

It's Only Funny If You Know Italian

!'"

"Yeah," Helen chimed in. "It's something that we all need to talk about together. Speaking of which, Julie, I know you and Troy respect the military and ranks and so on, however, they're gonna be your neighbors for the week. Maisson's name is Paul. He's all right. First names will be a step toward undercover practice for them, and fuck do they need that. Like, I'm adding a whole day to the course about not using their native forms of address when posing as fucking Americans."

"And give them some accent training, Helena." Julie added. "With everything you know about languages, that just reflects poorly on you."

I'd been too distracted by everything else before this point to notice the smoke smell when I came in and just then registered that Helen was smoking in the house. It was probably because I wasn't used to seeing her without a cigarette in general that made me think of it. I must've gotten some look on my face about it, because Julie spoke up next.

"Troy said she could smoke in here. It's just a week, we'll air the place out. Better than everyone going to the back porch every time she needs to think."

I shook my head.

"Ok, yeah. Bigger problems, more important stuff. Helen, when's your meeting with the Elders?"

Helen looked out the window and noticed that the sun had gone down outside. She boggled at it, then checked the time on her phone.

"Three hours. Damn, it gets dark quick here."

"Susan," Julie said, turning back to her. "Honey, I couldn't make out all the words everyone was saying back there, but I heard a name you don't use in front of people, and from what else I got, this was the second time today that Helen's asked if you're... well, really you. You know we'd never..."

I put my hands on Julie's shoulders and didn't make her finish saying it.

"I know you wouldn't, Julie. Helen knows about them. As for how she knows, that's the part everyone's trying to figure out. But it goes back to when she got stabbed, and all four of us should be here for this." I heard the front door open. Behind her, Troy walked in, followed by Maisson with his doctor's bag. "And, well, having a medical opinion in the conversation might not be a bad idea, either."

* * *

Helen and I sat on one of the couches, Troy, Julie, and Paul sat on another. Mander rejoined us when Helen didn't come back to the Green house after a while and leaned against the wall. I figured he might as well be in on it, too. Helen agreed, pointing out that it might affect his job.

We told them the story from both sides as best we could. That Helen was having some kind of strange near-death experience that was about to turn ugly when Suzy-Q showed up out of nowhere.

"She doesn't know how it happened yet, either." I told them. "One moment, she was with us on the plane, the next, she was there. Her idea is that it has to do with having been needed badly enough."

"I can see that." Helen commented. "I mean, when I got ready to fight those things, there was a look in their eyes, like they'd been hoping all along that I'd get sick of it and throw the first punch. And then this last time..."

I could tell she didn't want to talk about the Springheel part; we'd skipped the sex stuff earlier, too. That was something we needed to discuss alone. I picked it up from there.

"This last time, I needed her, too. I mean, I figured out myself that she must have some kind of secret exit, but I'd checked the painting already and missed the nameplate thing. As for how I suddenly know Italian," I turned to Helen. "You said that while Suzy-Q was in your head, she had 'some kind of guest-level access to your thoughts.' Well, since the first time, I've been wanting to learn Italian. Maybe Suzy-Q found it in there,' and brought it back."

"If you are able to obtain information from La Contessa's mind without her awareness," Maisson interjected. "Then this means that you are a threat to San Finzione's national security."

"Oh, yeah?" Helen asked. She turned back to me and waved her hands, wiggling her fingers at me. "Wibbly-wobbly-woo, I grant you Top Secret Clearance. This, I do decree as Contessa, yadd-yadda, so let it be written, so let it be done; Franco goes in where the others have been." She turned back to Maisson. "We good now?" He nodded. She turned back to me. "There's actually a little more to it; they'll print out a form across the street, I'll go over and sign it, but that'll do for now."

Helen turned back to Troy before continuing.

"And Susan had been watching the scene in the hallway on the security monitor, so Suzy-Q told me what was going on." Helen turned to Troy. "That's how I knew to hit the stairwells, Troy. And how they were 1able to make the rest of the Triads flee without any losses on our side."

"You let them go?" Troy asked her.

"Yes." Helen lit a cigarette. It still bugged me, but a little less now. "And now Word on the Street is 'Don't try it, she brought her whole fucking army with her.' So, by the time anyone works up the balls to take another shot at me, the Elders' order will have definitely reached the locals."

Troy nodded.

"We didn't look into psychic stuff, Master." Julie stepped in. "We wanted to know how mind control worked, we found what we were looking for, so we stopped. A lot of the books we read talked about stuff besides mind control, too."

"We did have a lot of lines to read between to find it, Mistress. I tried to keep us from going off on tangents. But there were lots of references to the Collective Subconscious, astral projection, and so on. Helen's been unconscious both times this has happened, and some have said that Dreams may be a dimension or spirit realm, existing alongside our own, that we can only access through sleep. Lovecraft, and his inspiration, Lord Dunsany, come to mind immediately."

"And, of course," Maisson cut in. "I'm certain that because of this thing that you are all able to do, your brains function differently than the norm. Oh, this 'we only use ten percent' crap the movies tell you is bullshit, we would all be dead if it were true. However, I have no doubt that a CAT scan or a few hours of monitoring La Contessa's, or indeed, any of your neural activity, would prove of interest to science."

I looked over at him and tapped the side of my head.

"Well, if you're going to specialize in Neurology, I'm your Nobel Prize right here, Paul. Multiple personalities, mind control, whatever this thing between me and Helen is."

"Yeah." Troy said, turning to him. "We kind of work to avoid going to labs, taking tests, telling lots of people; that sort of thing."

Maisson nodded, sensing that no one was going to volunteer for experiments, and turned back to me.

"I am not trained in Psychiatry, Mademoiselle Bailey, however, from what I've read of Multiple Personality Disorder, you do not exhibit many signs. For one, you are aware of the other women in your head. You converse with them, yes? And you do not have memory gaps or lost time when one of the other personalities takes over? You remember all that she does?"

"It's not quite like that." I tried to explain. "More like, I'm still me, but I'm sitting back and letting my friend handle something that's too stressful for me to deal with. When I came up and pounded on the Greens' door, and demanded they tell me what was going on with Helen, I FELT like Sue, and she was in control; but I knew I could have taken over again at any time, and Sue wouldn't have stopped me. She gave it back when she was done yelling at them."

"And you say that their advice tends to be helpful, or at least in your best interests. Cases of Dissociative Identity or Multiple Personality Disorder tend to exhibit self-hatred, or seek out self-harm. You have no history of self-injury, or excessive use of drugs or alcohol. In fact, as a medical professional, but not a psychiatric one; the loss of your parents and your history of abuse are all that would suggest mental trauma to me. You do not speak of yourself in the third-person?"

"Not anymore, no." I told him. "When I first met Troy & Julie, I did sometimes."

"But once free of this brute, that, too, went away. So, perhaps these other women, they are not personalities, but how he saw you and made you see yourself."

Julie took that in and turned to me.

"The only three ways a guy like Chad perceives women."

"Bitch, whore, and slave." Helen finished for her. "I regret not meeting him even more now."

The thought came to me that if we'd been having this discussion as recently as six months before, I probably would have run crying from the room by now. Some of the things we'd discussed had come up in therapy; however, I didn't talk about the other Mes to many people outside the doctor's office. Troy & Julie knew, so did Claire and Rachel. Now that I was remembering Helen and Suzy-Q's conversation, I understood why she hadn't said anything until now. If I'd found out she knew any other way, I would have assumed she'd either done The Thing and made my therapist tell her everything or had her spies steal my file from him.

It was also the largest group that I'd ever spoken with at length about the other women. It helped that I'd seen more than half the room naked. (Wait, I didn't see Helen naked, Suzy-Q did. Suzy-Q's the one who knows how amazing she is in bed, how she tastes, the noises she makes... Yeah, Suzy-Q's the one who knows all that stuff.)

"I'd be offended if that wasn't so accurate." I said. "Suzy-Q no longer fulfils the slave role, though. She's sort of a 'free agent' in here." I turned to Troy. "I remember the morning after the three of us and Claire were together for the first time, our talk in the park. I'd started out trying to compartmentalize my life, like you said. Chad made me depend on it, until the women I retreated into became real. With the hypnosis stuff I've done with you and Julie, and the progress I've made in therapy, we all get along in there now. I've accepted that they're part of me, and they've shown me that they're not out to hurt anyone, and do have my best interests at heart. Well, Sue wants to kick some ass sometimes, but even that's in the course of, like, asserting ourselves."

"Oui." Maisson said. "You say 'asserting ourselves.' They are part of you, and they are separate from you. I would not so much call them 'other personalities,' then. Closer to 'imaginary friends who have taken on lives of their own.' You were an orphan, oui? A Ward of the State. I would think that real friendships were difficult to come by and did not last long?"

"No, they didn't." I agreed. "The ones I'd kept contact with through all the group homes and foster families; Chad eventually drove away. I wasn't allowed to make friends. Any man I tried to be friends with was someone I was 'fucking behind his back,' and any woman was 'poisoning me against him.'"

Maisson nodded.

"With your permission, I should be interested in consulting with your therapist some time. As for my own personal observations; it seems to me that you created your friends to deal with the most difficult aspects of your life. I know that the thing the four of you can do is real, so I am willing to accept that there may be other things that I do not understand. I did not mean to condescend when I used the word 'imaginary.' You are, without a doubt, an imaginative person, Madamoiselle Bailey. You are well-known amongst La Squadra de Ultimados for your assistance with La Policia's investigation and your quick thinking today at the hotel today was being talked about when I left. You are, as is said of you often, 'here to help.' These friends of yours, I think, they are here to help you. Whatever they might be, I do not think it is a bad thing."

Everyone agreed with that. Helen spoke next.

"I'm glad we all agree that Susan's not insane or possessed." She said with a smile, patting my hand. Couldn't help smiling back at that. "Now, where are we on the 'is Susan psychic' question?" Helen frowned for a second. "Sorry if that came out rude. Just that after this, Mander and I need to go try to prevent my country from breaking out into a mob war. And we woke up at four this morning to begin the caravan trip up from Portland." Helen had another thought. "Damn, it just now hit me that we can get Rita on a flight home from Portland. Paul, when we're done, can you tell Gregorio to find out who our best driver is and put her in the fastest car to Portland?"

Troy stood up and looked at her, then to Maisson.

"Maybe, instead of the fastest car, use the safest, most inconspicuous one. And maybe take one or two more Ultimados on the trip. I think I saw a station wagon out there. Another good 'nobody'll look for Helen in that' car." He turned back to Helen. "And it sounds like coffee time here. Back in a bit."

When Troy left, Mander came over to the couches and spoke to Helen.

"Might not be a bad idea havin' someone round who looks like Your Countessness. We don't know what other shenanigans Whyte's got planned."

Helen turned to him.

"Whyte's seen Rita's show, he knows who she is. I already blew my 'being in two places at once' thing this afternoon, and Rita signed up for parties: champagne, caviar, the occasional quick one with Justin Trudeau on Malcolm Turnbull's bed; not risking her life in some convoluted quintuple-bluff scheme to lure Whyte into the open." She leaned over to me. "Oh yeah, Justin can tell us apart, too." She turned back to Mander. "Still, good call on waiting until the guy who would've absolutely said no left the room to mention it."

Troy returned.

"Coffee's going. I miss anything?" He asked.

"Only why Canada and San Finzione have so many mutually-favorable trade deals." I told him. I turned to Mander. "There's something I can do to help with the tiredness, if you trust me."

Mander looked at Helen.

"Do you trust her?"

Helen looked at me.

"Yes." She said.

"Then I'm being paid enough to trust ya, too." He answered. Troy went back across the room to sit with Julie as I stood and offered Mander my spot. He took the seat, and I looked him in the eyes.

"When I tell you," I commanded him. "You're going to take a five-second nap, then wake up feeling like you've had a full-night's rest. Now!"

He was still wearing the sunglasses, but I saw his eyes close behind them. A few seconds later, they opened, and he looked at his watch.

"Fuckin' amazing, that is!"

"Yeah, it is." I told him. "But you should have that coffee anyway, and still be careful. I can give your mind a quick rest like that, but your body's still going on whatever it's got since you last slept. It's not something to keep doing, and if you push it, there'll be a hard, sudden crash when physical exhaustion catches up with you."

"Yeah, we found that one out the hard way." Julie said, smiling and patting Troy's knee.

"That's... REALLY good, Susan!" Helen said, sounding sincere with the impressed-ness. "The special training that I give the Ultimados requires conditioning and reinforcement, but that's a pretty good start."

Mander stood up and offered my seat back. I sat down.

"Thanks. And I have to say, Mander, you seem to be taking all of this very well. I know you've got to keep the 'always on duty, ma'am' thing going, but you were there today. You've got a voice in this, too."

"Well," Mander said as Troy offered him another chair, where he could see Helen and the doors. "It would not be the first time that knowing 'Er Countessness has caused me to question everythin' I believe. I know that there's four people in the world who can control minds; one of whom hears voices that have names and personalities; but she's not crazy and might, in fact, have some psychic connection to 'Er Countessness. Luckily, all of 'em seem to be decent people. Or, they could be complete prats who're just makin' me think they're geezers, but if they were doin' that, I'm sure I wouldn't even consider it."

We all had a laugh at that, because he had a point. Not a big one, though, because, you know, he had a point.

"I should see how they're doing up there." Troy said, looking up the stairs, at the hall to the library and Julie's studio. "I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be like the movies, and they'd instantly produce some 'DamningEvidence.proof' file, but I really have no idea how long hacking takes."