Where the Veil Is Thin

by Alana Joli Abbott

Go to H.

  — M —

  “Being Rita,” you begin, slowly turning in circles to address the fey, “has been kind of a bummer so far. On the other hand, becoming a force of the universe, without awareness or desire, sounds like Nirvana. I’m gonna do that.”

  “So be it,” says the Queen of the Fey, through you.

  In an instant, La Ogrificadora makes you bigger than the mushroom circle, bigger than Fairyland, bigger than the planet, the solar system, the galaxy. You stop being able to know how long all this is taking, as space and time combine within you and you become both at once: spacetime. You exceed the size of your supercluster, several of them, all of them, you fill the universe, you can’t tell the difference between you and the universe. Matter dark and light, all energy known and unknown, all of everything combined takes up less room than you.

  But then, you stop taking up room. You stop being an object of your own and start to act as a medium for other objects. You stop rubbing up against things and instead move through them. You bind, or break the bonds, of subatomic particles. New combinations of matter emerge through you. You excrete new physical laws into being. Thanks to you, quantum physics grows slightly stranger—¡and it was already demasiado extraño!

  Someday, perhaps, some genius will figure out the laws of you, the exact, weird role you play in the order of things. But that won’t happen for a long, long time, if ever. For now, enjoy the silent, subtle power over all matter that you now mindlessly exert.

  THE END

  TO START A NEW STORY, go to ¡.

  — N —

  ¡RECORD THE LETTER N!

  “Beloved husband-wife,” says Jesús, your half-wineskin, half-fireworks show spouse (aka “the old battleax”), “since we are married, we have the option of joining our bodies together.”

  “¿Like conjoined twins?” you ask.

  “Very much like conjoined twins, yes. But with a difference: the half you choose to bond with will double in size.”

  “¿What do you mean?”

  Jesús takes a deep breath, the prelude to the drunken soliloquy that follows: “You can, husband-wife, partake of either my wineskin half or my eternal-fireworks half, and it will become a whole thing, which is what happens mathematically when two halves are combined. ¡Double the booze! ¡Or double the fireworks! That’s whole will be where we connect, the seat of our union. We’ll still keep one half of ourselves distinct from the other, however—the object of a union isn’t destruction of the self, after all, but enhancement. So if being double the wine or double the fireworks than any one fey can be sounds appealing to you, well, I would welcome such a connection with you.”

  “It’s tempting,” you say.

  To decide whether to combine bodies with Jesús, go to !.

  — Ñ —

  ¡RECORD THE LETTER Ñ!

  “I give you my sword,” you say to the Queen, unsheathing Quitanombre and laying the blade on your palm as you clutch the hilt. You kneel and bow your head, even as your name disappears from your mind, and hold out the sword as far as your arms can stretch.

  “Cool,” says the Queen. “Now, since We are a microscopic being and don’t really have a use for the sword, We are going to make you Our Keeper of the Sword, Our Exciser of Appellations, Our Name-Slayer: Rita who Wields the Magical Sword Quitanombre.”

  Ah. Yes. Rita. That’s your name.

  The Queen of the Fey pauses thoughtfully before continuing. “But now that the sword is mine, now that you must wield Quitanombre instead of being one-half Quitanombre, you’re back to being a fully-mortal Rita. You’ll need two separate halves calamitously jammed together to be immortal. ¿What two shapes shall you take?”

  “¿What are my choices?”

  Your big smile comes from the Queen of the Fey’s desire to smile. “Your choices are your opportunities. Here are the shapes that are available to you.”

  To take on your final fey form, go to !.

  — O —

  You close your eyes and brace for impact. Thanks to Bibliocapa, you know what it feels like to die from a sword to the gut.

  But at least you’ll be able to speak as you die. You quickly begin to compose your final soliloquy.

  You feel your pretty dress wrestling you. It has launched itself at your head; when you open your eyes, you can’t see much, since the dress covers your face. It wriggles itself down your torso and straightens itself onto your body. The sword’s sheath has belted itself around your waist. Once you untuck your cloak from the back of your dress, it’s as if you’d never removed anything from your person.

  “Oh, great,” say the fey, metaphorically and, where physically possible, throwing up their hands. “¡Now we have to start all over again!”

  Go to I.

  — P —

  “Survival for you, Rita,” the Queen of the Fey begins, using your own mouth to speak ever-so gently to you, “has required you to abscond from your life. You fled not only your parents—and great gibbering gibbons, ¡¿who wouldn’t run those awful people?!—but your own self. To feel less pain, you set your mind free of your body and let others’ lives supersede your own in your mind. The reason you are lost is because you had to lose yourself in books, just to survive.”

  “It’s all true,” you agree. “¿But now you’re saying that I don’t need books anymore?”

  “Yes. You may choose to enjoy books now as often as you’d like to, but they aren’t a requirement for your continued existence.”

  “So I could take off the cloak, and—” but oh. Big mistake. As you begin to unfasten the cloak’s clasp, you faint for 2.3 seconds. You wake on the ground, with a halo of fey-heads looking down at you.

  “Bibliocapa,” says the Queen of the Fey, “has become, literally, half of who you are. Removing the cloak will require a little bodily violence, which may kill you. Imagine a turtle trying to rip off its own shell.”

  Sitting up, you ask, “¿Why would I even try, then?”

  “If you live, you can choose two new halves with which to form your final, immortal fey being.”

  “¿What will happen to me if I keep Bibliocapa on?”

  The Queen rolls your eyes heavenward, pondering. “You will be trapped forever by your cloak. It will be as if you are confined within the most complete and most constantly-updated library in the world, forever. Which, when you think about it, would be some people’s idea of heaven. ¿Is it yours?”

  If you want to be trapped in the folds of Bibliocapa forever, go to K.

  If you want to risk taking off Bibliocapa and try to get a new fey body, go to V.

  — Q —

  ¡RECORD THE LETTER Q!

  You love your pretty dress and your cloak (La Ogrificadora and Bibliocapa, respectively). Their magical powers have saved your life more than once. But when it comes to handling the unknown, nothing’s better than a magic sword that makes you forget who you are.

  IF YOU RECORDED THE LETTER F, READ THE BONUS TEXT IN THE BOX!

  After all, Quitanombre saved you from getting eaten by the fey by erasing your name at just the right moment.

  You unclasp the fastening of your cloak; it crumples at your heels. It’s harder to get your pretty dress off: you unbelt the sheathed sword, reach behind you and, with difficulty, unzip the dress, and then, pulling your arms free of the straps, let it pool around your feet. You step out of it and, because you came to Fairyland unshod (as is tradition) and because underwear is for losers, you are now naked: except of course for the sword and sheath that you belt back onto your hip.

  There’s no baggage about being naked here. It’s nice. The wind is a most solicitous dance partner, even as you stand still. You feel better.

  “¿What now?” you ask.

  “¡A new fey is born!” proclaim the fey.

  And a new fey is born: right at your feet. The pretty dress and cloak assemble themselves into a half floating-pretty-dress, half floating-cloak fairy.

  “¡Hey Rita!” says the newborn fey. “¡Love
you, girl! You’ve always been good to us.”

  “¡Hello!” you say, a little breathless. “¿What’s your name?”

  “I get to choose one. I was thinking of,” and it spreads its “hands”—it has no hands, but it feels like it spread its hands—like a Hollywood producer sharing his vision, “‘Rita.’”

  “¿Rita? My name’s Rita.”

  “¡Yeah! We’ll be like sisters, except we’ll have the same name, which is actually very unusual for sisters. ¿What do you think?”

  If you say, “¡Sure! ¡We can both be Ritas!” go to LL.

  If you say, “¿Won’t it be confusing if we’re both named Rita?” go to U.

  — R —

  ¡RECORD THE LETTER R!

  “Yes,” you say out loud. “Yes. We are the Queen of the Fey. And thou art my handmaid.”

  “Excellent, my liege,” says the fey formerly known at the Queen of the Fey. “¿What is your Most Excellency’s bidding?”

  “Half of my fey self is Quitanombre, the sword in our mouth. But I require an immortal second half.”

  “Of course, my liege. Your choices are your opportunities. Here are all the fey halves from which you may choose your immortal shape.

  To choose your final fey form, go to !.

  — S —

  ¡RECORD THE LETTER S!

  As the biologists among you know, a superfluity of eyes that a creature uses as a means of transportation benefits from producing copious amounts of slime. Paseculo’s slime, lumpy as overstewed stew, pours into your open mouth before Paseculo itself does, and continues to fall down your throat as Paseculo squeezes its whole diorama-body into your head.

  It’s a good six minutes of incremental progress until Paseculo has passed all the way inside you. And it’s another 30 minutes before it exits. As per its name, it doesn’t exit the way it came in. Let’s pull the veil on its egress and just be glad you decided to wear your pretty red-with-white-polkadot dress today since, all things considered, it has allowed for some preservation of modesty.

  “¡Wait till you see!” says Paseculo brightly to all the fey and lastly, with keen eyes and many, to you.

  Its diorama has changed. It’s no longer an operating theater. It’s your life.

  Well, as much as can fit in a shoebox. The diorama depicts the moment just before you came to Fairyland. You’re standing in a circle of mushrooms in a state park in New Jersey, a sword belted to your back. You’re with your parents. You are much larger than they are; you’re dangling them over your tremendously open mouth. Your papi’s glasses, through a clever use of fishing line, are already halfway down your open mouth. Your mami may have already died of fear before you’ve eaten her, judging by the x’s that are her eyes.

  “By the way, your papi says hello,” Pasculo tells you. “He says he understands now why you ate him and your mami. They’re sorry they’re so closed-minded and intolerant. They said you can be whoever you want to be. No more fights, no more threats. So, he’s wondering if you will por favor shit him out now.”

  “Nope,” you answer.

  “That’s what he said you say. He said, ‘If I were Rita, I wouldn’t shit me out either. I’d burn me in stomach acid for all eternity, too.’”

  “Rita,” say all of the fey folk, their voices united in admiration.

  “So,” you ask, “¿are you going to eat me now?”

  “¿Estas loca? We only eat people who don’t eat people. ¡You’re practically one of us now!”

  Go to I.

  — T —

  ¡RECORD THE LETTER T!

  “Since you are not married,” says the Queen of the Fey, “you have the option to become the Queen of the Fey. ¿Would you like to be the Queen of the Fey?”

  You frown with thought. “¿What are the benefits?”

  “Well,” says the Queen of the Fey, “Everybody has to do what you say. And you get to be half plague or disease or pathogen or whatever, if you choose. It’s pretty fun.”

  “¿But what will happen to you?”

  “Oh,” says the Queen of the Fey, putting your hands behind your back and making you stroll contemplatively, all the fey watching closely. “We’ll become just another fey, yours to command.” The Queen of the Fey tries to put a brae face on your face, but fails and instead uses your face to weep.

  “So maybe I shouldn’t be queen, then,” you say. “If it means that much to you.”

  “¡Don’t toy with my emotions!” emotes the Queen of the Fey. “¡Of course you’re going to be Queen! ¿Who wouldn’t?”

  “Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t. I haven’t decided yet.”

  To decide, go to !.

  — U —

  ¡RECORD THE LETTER U!

  “I am trying to figure out who I am,” you say to the newborn fey whom you will not allow to share your name. “It’s hard enough if I’m the only Rita. If you’re named Rita, too, I’ll only get more confused. You understand, ¿don’t you?”

  “All too well,” says the newborn fey. And then it dies.

  Specifically, it falls to two separate pieces. It used to be half pretty-dress and half cloak, but now a pretty dress and a cloak lay on the ground, each unto itself, each unalive. Even the magic which with they were once imbued is gone.

  “¡No!” you yell. “¡I didn’t want that!”

  “You made it forget its name,” say all the fey.

  “¡I did not! It asked me if ‘Rita’ should be its name. It hadn’t actually chosen its name yet.”

  Insofar as their various bodies allow, the fey tsk-tsk you. “Don’t insult our intelligence, please. In the asking was the choosing. You know that. And then you took that choice away. You’re a lot like your parents, you know.”

  “¡No, I don’t know that! I am here to find out what I am like. I have no idea who I am like and who I am not like.”

  Disappointed, the fey say, “We should have eaten you when we had the chance. Oh well. Let’s go see the Queen of the Fey. If anybody can help you find yourself, she can.”

  Then they sneeze on you.

  All of them. All at once. Even the fey who don’t have noses, or the fey who only have half noses, spontaneously generate complete noses, so that they can sneeze on you. A scintillating mucosal cloud envelopes you.

  Trying not to vomit, you yell, “¡Disgusting! ¿Why did you do that?”

  “Because,” they respond, “the Queen of the Fey is half ragweed pollen and half rhinovirus. And now you’ve caught her. ¡All hail the Queen!”

  Go to H.

  — V —

  ¡RECORD THE LETTER V!

  Removing Bibliocapa from your person is exactly like flaying off the skin of your back and buttocks and the back of your legs down to the calves, where the hem of the cloak reaches.

  You scream. That scream, and the pain that causes it, is the entirety of what remains of your mind.

  “¡Quickly!” says the Queen of the Fey. “¡Before you die, flay off the front of you, too!”

  Somehow you are able to hear these words, and somehow you know them to be true. You grab two fistfuls of your skin, and rend.

  Not only does your skin comes off, however. You come off. Literally you flay your entire body off your body, and, as your flesh and bones and nervous and lymphatic systems vanish in the air like the perfume cast from an atomizer, all your pain vanishes.

  All that is left of you is your coloratura soprano’s voice improvising a song called “Rita.”

  “¡Keep singing!” says the Queen of the Fey. Her voice, however, isn’t coming from you anymore, but from all of her fey subjects, all at once. “And while you sing, choose the halves that will make you an immortal fairy. Remember, your choices are your opportunities.”

  To take your final fey form, go to !.

  — W —

  ¡RECORD THE LETTER W!

  Your sword, Quitanombre, is the best eraser ever. ¿How many times have you disintegrated the impediments in your life simply by unnaming them? Your cloak, Bibliocapa,
is the sword’s opposite: within that fabric’s folds is every book in every library, every utterance ever penned or chiseled or typed, the entire history of words that someone somewhere thought to preserve. Each treasure is immeasurably valuable, both objectively and to you personally.

  And yet you choose to keep, above all other things, your red-with-white-polkadot dress. Why?

  Because a body is merely the body you inherit: the result of your mutation-riddled genes mixed with the misfortunes of your life, recorded in scars and bone calluses and body parts gone missing. A dress, however, is that part of the body you choose. You choose red. You choose polka dots. To give those up would be to flay yourself.

  Plus, let’s not forget the dress is magic. It has the power to let you grow to four times your size. It is called La Ogrificadora, and whenever anyone has tried to diminish you, it has made you a giantess. And in this world, large things smash small things. Large things, like ogrified daughters, eat small things, like small parents.

  Fairies, contrary to popular belief, aren’t always smaller than humans. Some of them surrounding you are quite immense, like the half-isthmus, half-tropical-depression fairy; or the half enough-kudzu-to-cover-the-American-South, half every-spider-ever-rolled-into-a-ball-of-spiders fairy. Better than the might of the sword, better than the wisdom of the ages, is to remove your foes’ ability to harm you, to remove the scope of harm from their purview. So you unfasten the cloak’s fastening and you unbelt your sword from your hip. And then you grow huge.

  Huger than usual. You don’t stop growing huge. Hugeness becomes you, and you become hugeness. Wider and lengthier and taller and denser you grow, extending, soon, past the confines of the sky. Everything on Fairyland and Earth becomes as imperceptible as amoebas to the naked eye. If the fairies fled from your sudden immensity, or if they stayed to watch you exceed their field of vision, gawking and dumbstruck, you can’t tell. Your head has pierced the exosphere. Don’t worry about suffocating; your dress is breathing for the two of you. You’re free to look around and enjoy the tumbling ballet of all the Earth’s space junk swirling past you.

  Until you sneeze.