Around three minutes have passed.

  Sherman Chex notices the blue grass from the ground is trying to grow on him now that he’s missing a shoe. Unfortunately, the dirt he’s from isn’t suited for it.

  “I’m sorry, grass...”

  After waiting a few more minutes, Suzanne finally walks out of the building. Chex has noticed nobody’s left their homes in quite a while.

  “Why’s everybody staying inside?”

  Suzanne’s startled that he’s just sat there the entire time.

  “Oh, everyone’s worried about the storm from earlier!”

  “The storm?”

  “Whenever Gerome does literally anything, it causes a storm in the surrounding area.”

  “That sounds inconvenient.”

  Suzanne nods.

  “I’ve got all the information, we can go to the next place!”

  “Wait, but it’s only been a few hours...”

  Suzanne stares at him. He looks quite disappointed that he doesn’t get to look around the city. She looks at the sky. The sun isn’t there, but this is normal.

  “It’s important you get to the Red Hills.”

  Suzanne walks back towards the peculiar bus and train vehicle, and Sherman Chex follows.

  They’re in the vehicle.

  As the vehicle begins to move, the ground begins to rumble. Suzanne is mumbling.

  “Beware my deadly purple light, he said. He’s the angel of death and he couldn't even handle finding out who killed him.”

  Sherman Chex tries to listen in, but he doesn’t end up hearing anything. Suzanne notices.

  “Employee! Do you want to know why the city’s blue now?”

  Sherman Chex’s eyes appear to brighten. Once again, they don’t, they just appear to. He nods quickly.

  “Well, it’s because of Gerome!”

  “Huh?”

  “Him being anywhere makes it blue. Well, not to me, I see it as it should be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I show you a picture of what it used to look like, you’ll see it too, watch.”

  She pulls a picture out of her pocket and hands it to him.

  It burns.

  “Right.”

  She pulls the picture out of her pocket again and holds it in front of him.

  He looks at it, and then looks back outside the window.

  “What”

  What he sees is no longer blue, but rather dark gray, as if everything is covered in soot. All the buildings are on fire, though it doesn’t seem to actually be burning anything. The building the Mooringways were in seems to actually just be the skull of a giant skeleton which is mildly buried underground.

  He blinks, and it’s all back to normal.

  “What was that?”

  “It’s what the city should be like, though Gerome being there has reshaped the space into something more reasonable.”

  “Some of those land features don’t add up, the skull isn’t as large as the building...”

  “It doesn’t really matter.”

  “What?”

  She lets go of the picture so it burns again. Once Chex blinks, the city’s blue again. There’s no fire,

  “What?”

  “None of it lines up because it doesn’t have to.”

  “What?”

  “So long as Gerome’s Hell in Red makes them think the city’s that way, it’s that way. It’s a funny system, really!”

  “Hell in Red?”

  “I know it’s blue, but that’s just what they’re called.”

  Suzanne slumps over, like she’s dead. She’s not, she’s just busy.

  “What?”

  A mannequin walks down the aisle and gives Chex a drink and a book. The book burns away, like every other book he’s gotten.

  Sherman Chex mumbles to himself.

  “I didn’t see much of the city... I just got dragged around.”

  He sighs and leans back in his seat.

  “I don’t know anything about this place, and it doesn’t seem like that’s changing any time soon.”

  Several hours pass, the rumbles have stopped by now.

  Sherman Chex has fallen asleep. This is weird.

  A man in a blue shirt and black pants is sitting in a chair. He’s quite unremarkable. It’d be very difficult to pick him out of a crowd.

  He’s in front of a computer, reading an email from a distribution company.

  “Ricky used to do this paperwork nonsense. Then Rich had to go and tick him off.”

  He’s talking to somebody, but it’s not clear who. There isn’t anyone in the room, and he doesn’t have anything like a microphone. The telephone is still on the wall as well.

  “I’m not going there to check.”

  He starts typing a response email.

  [ No, we cannot send you the oranges for free. ]

  He presses the send button.

  “I don’t know.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He clicks onto the next email.

  “He’s in the Red Hills.”

  This email’s from a school who wants to do a field trip to the Orange.

  [ No, we cannot let 300 children run around in the Orange. ]

  He presses the send button.

  “His Hell in Red hasn’t affected the area yet. It’s just the place where he’s sleeping.”

  There are no more emails.

  The phone on the wall begins to ding.

  1 ding.

  “Shut up, Verona. I’m getting a call.”

  2 dings.

  He picks up the phone.

  “Suzanne, stop using this method to talk to me.”

  The space around him turns into glass and breaks apart.

  Suzanne is seated a third around the table from him, in a seat from the train-bus, while he’s seated in the chair he was just in. In the middle is a circular table.

  There’s space for a third chair, and one appears there. It’s a red plastic lawn chair. Seated on it is a very old lady. There’s no way someone could possibly be that old. She’s wearing a hat with two black eyes on it. The eyes are dehydrated, so they are very red. Her shirt is red, featuring the same two eyes on the shoulders. The black pants have the eyes on the belt, and the shoes have them on the heel.

  Suzanne laughs.

  “Wasn’t me! It was her! I was busy explaining why the Burning Spine is blue to the new employee!”

  Virgil is unhappy.

  “Verona isn’t the type to call us over like this.”

  Verona groans. Her voice sounds like rubbing glass.

  “One of you has to go down to Verona [1].”

  Both Suzanne and Virgil start laughing. Suzanne speaks first.

  “You know, you’re not quite in the place to make demands.”

  Virgil has something to say as well.

  “Why would we ever go down there?”

  Verona scowls, somehow.

  “There’s too many dead people who haven’t been catalogued.”

  Suzanne points at her.

  “That’s Your problem, isn’t it?”

  Virgil nods in agreement.

  Verona gets up from her chair. Suzanne does too.

  Virgil is no longer here. Suzanne’s eyes narrow.

  “If you want to talk 100% to 100%, we can.”

  Verona sits back down.

  Suzanne does as well. Virgil is back. Verona groans.

  “You’ll see why it’s Your problem, soon. Petulant fools.”

  The space they’re in vanishes, and Virgil is back in his seat.

  He puts the phone back onto the wall. He is scowling more than he usually is.

  After a few more minutes, he responded to all the emails. The computer’s clock on the bottom right reads several hours later than before the call.

  Virgil lifts his arm up, a layer of glass covers him, and he’s gone.

  Suzanne wakes up just as the vehicle has stopped moving. Sherman Chex is still asleep.

  There are many drinks stacked on top of each other on his table.

  “Why do they do that?”

  Sherman Chex is having an actual dream.

  There’s a dog. The dog’s appearance is constantly changing. They’re a golden retriever, they’re blue, they’re a dachshund, they’re a rottweiler, they’re always different, from each second to the next.

  The dog has no home, they’re a stray living on a piece of wet cardboard in an alley. They whimper as it begins to rain, and fear they will die. They stay there for several hours, as they have nowhere else to go.

  Two people are heard arguing from a mild distance.

  “ Get me a new show dog or you’re FIRED! ” The first says

  “Yes sir...” The second, more sheepish person, says.

  A person walks into the alley with the dog. The person’s appearance is also constantly changing. They see the dog.

  “Oh, there’s one.”

  They walk over to the dog and move to cover them from the rain.

  “Let’s go home, little buddy.”

  The dog’s tail wags in excitement.

  Time passes as the trainer teaches the dog several tricks. They receive a call from their boss.

  “ Have you found a new dog!? ”

  “Yes sir, I’ve found a most wonderful dog!” The person exclaims.

  “Good. I’ve already booked you for tomorrow at the White Venue.”

  “The White Venue? But they hated me last time!”

  “GO!” Their boss yells.

  The boss hangs up.

  “Alright buddy, let’s train hard and do well tomorrow!”

  Tomorrow comes.

  Once they’re at the building, there’s one thing different about them.

  They’ve stopped changing appearances.

  They’re both orange.

  As they walk in and onto the stage, there is one person, wearing white clothes and a blue hat.

  As the dog and trainer begin to perform, the audience member is unamused.

  The dog does a spin. Nothing.

  The dog jumps through flaming hoops. Nothing.

  The dog attempts to do a flip, but hits its head and dies. The audience member starts to cheer.

  The audience member shouts!

  “Do it again!”

  The trainer is mortified.

  “What?”

  The audience member begins to clap.

  “Again!”

  The trainer is distraught.

  “But the dog is dead, how could I do it again?”

  The audience member quiets down.

  “Come back next week! I’ll call over my associate!”

  The trainer attempts to pick up the dog’s body. The audience member frowns.

  “No, leave them here.”

  “What? But they’re dead, I have to bury them!”

  “Leave them here.”

  The trainer is in shock.

  “Oh goodness, what am I going to do?”

  While not paying attention, the trainer mindlessly returns to the alley where they first found the dog.

  The dog is there. The trainer sees them, and is quite confused.

  “You’re here?”

  The dog’s tail begins to wag.

  The trainer thinks this is weird, and takes this new dog back home.

  The next week, at the White Venue, the dog and trainer do the same tricks yet again. Neither of the now two members of the audience care.

  The audience members are silent.

  A flip, a jump through hoops, nothing.

  A failed flip, and the audience is in uproar.

  “Woo! Come back next week!”

  “We’ll call our third associate!”

  The trainer returns to the alley, finds the dog, and comes back the next week.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  The trainer eventually becomes less and less apprehensive, as they know the dog will just come back every time.

  The dog is not happy, though. The home they always wanted is no longer a home, it’s just a road to their death.

  After many weeks of doing the same thing in front of the same three people, the dog is tired. The dog breaks out of the home of the trainer, runs off to the White Venue, and sprays gasoline all around. They’re a very smart dog, they learned this from watching television with the trainer. Once it was all done, they lit a spark and watched it all burn, dying once again in the process. They learned this from television as well.

  The trainer is terrified. Their dog is gone, their venue is gone, their only source of money is gone. They attempt to run the same show at other venues. No other venue is excited to see a dog die, in fact they’re all terribly concerned and horrified.

  They’re fired. They lose their home. They die of starvation, and the dog walks away. The dog isn’t happy, really. The dog is just there.

  Sherman Chex wakes up.

  “That was a weird dream…”

  He’s unamused at the number of drinks that have been placed onto his table. He can barely move without worrying about them falling over.

  The vehicle has stopped moving. He looks outside the window and sees a very green landscape. It looks very nice.

  There’s a large neon sign planted on one of the buildings.

  [ NEVERGREEN CELL ]

  [1] Verona (the “old lady”) is talking about Verona (place).