Chapter 3: The Afternoon Reprieve
The living room air was still, thick with late afternoon sun motes. Travis lay sprawled on the worn leather couch, one arm flung over his eyes. The drive home had been quiet, the scare at the market now a dull, humming bruise in his chest. He could still feel the phantom point of that child’s finger, a cold needle between his shoulder blades.
A gentle weight settled on his sternum. He didn’t need to look. The specific, delicate pressure was as familiar as his own heartbeat.
“You’re brooding,” Mavis stated. His voice was soft, devoid of its usual teasing lilt.
“Am not.”
“You are. I can feel it. Your ribs are vibrating at a melancholy frequency.”
Travis lowered his arm. Mavis was curled in a neat circle on the soft cotton of his t-shirt, his silky fur the colour of dark coffee in the shadow Travis’s body cast. His large, dark eyes were serious.
“I just… keep seeing it,” Travis admitted, the words quiet in the sun-dappled room. “That moment. What if she’d been louder? What if her mother had believed her?”
Mavis’s tail twitched, just the tip. “But she didn’t. You were quick. You got us out.” He stretched a tiny hand, placing it flat over Travis’s heart. The beat was steady, strong. “This is what matters. This room. This silence. No one pointing here.”
Travis covered the small form with his own hand, not squeezing, just enclosing him in warmth. “I hate that it happened. I hate that you had to be afraid in my pocket.”
A chittering laugh escaped Mavis. “Please. I’ve been afraid in far more interesting places. The inside of a vacuum cleaner bag, for instance. This was merely a tactical retreat.” He pushed against Travis’s hand until it lifted, then sat up. “The energy in here is terrible. All this guilt and dread. It’s stale.”
“What do you propose?”
“A game.” Mavis’s eyes glinted, mischief seeping back into them. “Tiny hide and seek. Confined to this room. You lie there with your eyes closed. I hide. You try to find me.”
Travis couldn’t help but smile. “That’s hardly fair. You could be anywhere.”
“Precisely. It will distract your overly-large, anxiety-prone brain. Fifty counts. And no cheating by listening for my magnificent tail. It is a shadow. A whisper.”
“Fine. Fine.” Travis resettled, closing his eyes against the golden light. “Counting.”
“One,” Mavis declared, and Travis heard the soft pad-pad of tiny feet moving away across the leather, then the silent drop to the rug.
Travis counted slowly, forcing his mind to focus on the numbers, not the scare. At fifty, he opened his eyes. The room was immense, a landscape of potential hiding spots. The low coffee table was a cliff face of stacked books and mug rings. The shelves were cavernous. The folds of the sheer curtains were endless, rippling plains.
“Okay,” he said, his voice loud in the quiet. “I’m coming.”
He began a slow patrol, starting at the couch. He checked between the cushions, finding only dust and a forgotten pencil. He got on his knees, peering under the furniture. The world from this angle was a forest of dust bunnies and lost guitar picks. No Mavis.
He studied the bookshelf, scanning each shelf for a splash of brown fur among the colourful spines. Nothing. He moved to the window, carefully parting the layers of sheer curtain. Only sunlight.
A prickle of something else—not anxiety, but playful worry—threaded through him. “Marco,” he called out, feeling silly.
No response.
He checked the pot of the unlit candle, the little balcony of wax around the wick. Empty. He was starting to feel genuinely bested. His eyes swept the room again, landing on the old, heavy-knit throw blanket draped over the back of the armchair. One corner was folded over itself.
He approached quietly. With a swift motion, he flicked the fold open.
Nothing.
He sighed, half in frustration, half in admiration. Then a movement caught his eye. On the seat of the armchair, where the blanket had been laying, was a single, perfect, silver-dollar sized pancake. The one from breakfast. It was dry now, slightly curled at the edges. It had not been there before.
A laugh bubbled up in Travis’s chest. He reached for it.
As his fingers closed around the pancake, a sudden, sharp tickle erupted in his armpit. He jerked, yelping, and a chittering laugh exploded from the folds of his own flannel shirt, still tied around his waist.
“You bastard!” Travis gasped, scrambling to untie the shirt. Mavis tumbled out onto the rug, rolling in a gleeful ball. “You were on me the whole time!”
“Of course I was!” Mavis squeaked, catching his breath. “You said the room. I never left the room. You are, technically, in the room. The best hiding spot is always on the seeker. Basic misdirection.”
Travis slumped onto the rug beside him, laughter shaking his shoulders, the last of the cold dread dissolving in the warm sunshine. Mavis climbed onto his knee, still shaking with his own silent giggles.
“You used the pancake as a decoy,” Travis wheezed.
“A hallmark of a master strategist. You were so concerned with the blanket, you forgot the most obvious place.”
They lay there on the worn Persian rug, the incident at the market finally feeling distant, trivial in the face of this shared, silly joy. The sun slid lower, painting the walls orange.
Mavis crawled up to Travis’s collarbone, nestling in. “See? No monsters here. Just dust, and poor hiding skills, and me.”
Travis let his head thump back on the rug. “I’m never playing hide and seek with you again.”
“Liar. You love it.” Mavis sighed, a contented little sound. “The new table is perfect, by the way. I’ve already drafted plans for a shelving unit.”
“Of course you have.”
The quiet enveloped them, comfortable and deep. Then, from the other side of the house, the landline in Travis’s office began to ring. The sound was an ancient, jarring trill that sliced through the peace.
Both of them went still.
Travis never got calls on that line. It was for the business, for clients who dug up his outdated website. It was always, without fail, a hassle.
Mavis patted his neck. “Duty calls.”
“Ignore it,” Travis murmured.
It rang again. And again. A sixth ring. They never went to voicemail until the eighth.
On the seventh ring, Travis grunted and heaved himself up. Mavis clung to his shirt as he walked down the hall and into the cool, dim office. The caller ID read UNKNOWN.
He snatched the receiver on the eleventh ring. “Travis Keen.”
The voice on the other end was smooth, female, professional. “Mr. Keen. My name is Anya Vance. I’m the operations manager for The Vanguard Group. We’re launching a rebrand and your name came up from several sources. Your work with soundwave-to-logo synthesis is… intriguing.”
Travis’s professional reflex kicked in, a mask sliding into place. “I see. Thank you. I’m currently quite booked, Ms. Vance.”
Mavis, curled in his pocket, went very still, listening.
“We’re prepared to move quickly. And pay a significant premium for exclusivity and discretion. This is a sensitive launch. We’d need you to come to our corporate offices for a face-to-face briefing. A sign of mutual commitment.”
A face-to-face. Miles away. In a sterile office tower. For days, maybe.
Travis felt a familiar, cold wash of social dread. But beneath it, a hotter, sharper pulse of fear. He looked down at the curve of Mavis’s ear just visible over his pocket seam. Leaving. For who knew how long.
“I work exclusively from my own studio,” Travis said, his voice tighter than he intended. “I can assure you complete discretion from here.”
“I’m afraid that’s non-negotiable, Mr. Keen. This is a vault-level project. We need you in the ecosystem. Think about it. The offer is substantial.” She named a figure. It was more than he made in six months.
The silence stretched. Travis could hear Mavis’s quiet, measured breathing.
“I’ll need to consult my calendar,” Travis finally said, the words ash in his mouth.
“Of course. I’ll email the formal proposal. We’ll need an answer by Thursday.”
She hung up. The dial tone buzzed in the silent office.
Travis slowly replaced the receiver. The room felt different. The comforting chaos of his desk, the soundproofed walls, the home he’d built—it all felt suddenly fragile, conditional.
Mavis climbed out of the pocket, up to his shoulder. He didn’t speak.
“That… was a lot of money,” Travis said quietly.
“It was.” Mavis’s voice was neutral, careful.
“I don’t want to go.”
“I know.”
Travis turned from the desk, walking back into the warm, sunset glow of the living room. It didn’t feel like a sanctuary anymore. It felt like a cage, or a life raft—he couldn’t tell which. The game of hide and seek was over. A new, much larger game had just been proposed, with rules he didn’t understand and stakes he was only beginning to comprehend. Mavis’s tail curled softly around his neck, a silent, anxious anchor.
Mavis’s tail curled softly around his neck, a silent, anxious anchor.
The named figure, a具体, staggering sum, seemed to hang in the air between them like a neon sign, buzzing with a promise that felt violently like a threat. Travis stood there in the living room, the sunset now painting everything in urgent, bloody streaks. He felt unmoored. The scare at the market had been a sudden spark; this was a slow, cold flood rising around his ankles.
“We should move,” Mavis whispered, his voice unusually small.
Travis just nodded, unable to form words. He walked, each step heavy, down the hall to his bedroom. The familiar space—the worn linoleum, the faded curtains, the waiting indentation in the wall—felt like a tableau from a past life. He stopped at the foot of the bed, his fingers fumbling with the buttons of his flannel shirt.
He shed it, let it drop to the floor. The t-shirt followed. His jeans, his socks. The evening air was cool on his skin. He didn’t get under the covers. He just climbed onto the mattress, onto his side, and curled his lanky body into a tight, protective ball.
He opened his hand, palm up on the sheet.
Mavis didn’t hesitate. He scrambled from Travis’s shoulder, down his arm, and into the cage of those trembling fingers. Travis brought his hands together, enveloping the small, warm body completely. He pulled his fists into his chest, bowing his head over them, creating a dark, breathing cavern of skin and silence.
He was shaking. It was a fine, deep vibration, the kind that comes from a foundational stress, a fear for your entire world.
For a long time, there was only the sound of his own ragged breath echoing back at him. Then, a gentle pressure. Mavis was pushing, shifting within his hands. Travis loosened his grip, just a fraction.
Mavis worked his way up, squirming until he was cradled in the hollow between Travis’s collarbones. He lay flat, his whole body pressed against the human’s sternum. He could feel the frantic drumbeat beneath.
“Listen,” Mavis whispered.
He didn’t say anything else. He just held still. Travis focused on the point of contact, on the insistent, living warmth no bigger than a plum. Slowly, deliberately, Mavis began to knead his tiny hands against Travis’s skin, a minute, rhythmic pressure. It wasn’t a tease. It was an anchor. A deliberate, physical calibration of Travis’s breathing to his own slower, deliberate pace.
“They can’t make you go,” Mavis finally said, his words vibrating into the bone.
“The money,” Travis breathed, the sentence a broken thing.
“Is just noise. We have silence here. We have the table.” Mavis rubbed his cheek against the skin. “We have this.”
Travis uncurled, just slightly, one arm sliding under his head. The other came up to hover over Mavis, not enclosing, just shielding. The tremors subsided, leaving a hollowed-out exhaustion. The monstrous figure of the offer began to shrink from a world-ending event to a terrible, manageable problem.
“What if I have to?” Travis asked the darkening room.
“Then I go in the bag. The good one, with the headphones and the book compartment. Not the pocket. Too risky.” Mavis stated it as simple fact, a tactical adjustment. “I’ll be a stowaway. I’ve drafted plans for portable sanitation. It’s less ideal, but feasible.”
A choked sound escaped Travis, something between a sob and a laugh. “You’ve already planned it.”
“Of course. While you were brooding on the rug, I was running scenarios.” He tapped a tiny finger against Travis’s chest. “This is our house. Our wall. That ridiculous, perfect drafting table is mine. A voice on a phone doesn’t get to rewrite that. It just doesn’t.”
The absolute conviction in that small voice seeped into Travis, a antidote to the corporate poison. He felt the truth of it sink in. This was his. Theirs. The chaotic, beautiful, secret architecture of his life was his own to defend.
He took a deep, full breath, the first since the phone rang. The scent of his own skin, of Mavis’s almond oil, of their shared bed, filled his lungs. It was the smell of home.
“I’m not going,” Travis said, the words solidifying as he spoke them.
“Good.”
“I’ll email her tomorrow. A polite ‘go to hell’.”
“Make it creative. You’re a graphic designer. Use hostile fonts.”
Travis laughed, a real one this time, his chest bouncing Mavis gently. The tension broke, leaving a weary, profound calm in its wake. Outside, the last of the sun vanished. The room was pitch black, the world beyond the curtains irrelevant.
He shifted onto his back, settling Mavis on the flat plane of his belly. The small being sprawled there, a starfish of contentment, tail flicking idly.
“We should sleep,” Travis murmured.
“Obviously.”
But neither moved. The digital clock on the nightstand cast a faint red glow, painting everything in miniature relief. Travis’s hand found its way to the wall, his fingers slipping into the smooth, silicone-lined hole. It was just a touch, a connection to the other side.
He thought of the tiny room beyond, the world Mavis had built there. He thought of the new drafting table waiting on the nightstand. A whole, complete universe existed here, in these four walls, between their two bodies.
The call had been a quake. But the bedrock, it seemed, was deeper than he’d feared. He closed his eyes, his breathing finally matching the slow, steady rise and fall of the creature on his stomach. For now, in the deep, familiar dark, everything was already enough