The Boxes Precinct, Pt 06

I may have been fully untapped when I came into the precinct the next day, but I didn’t feel like it. The last thing I wanted today was to spend my shift hunting for some rogue scarecrow. I told myself I’d find him misfiled in the Guilded Rows—snicker-snack—and solve a Crazed Goblin assault case or something.

Hung up my hat and coat, and nodded to the desk sergeant. As I proceeded to the stairs, I gave a glance at the precinct’s main dome, smiling at the dim sky beyond the windows at its peak. Past the stairs, I headed for The Marshall’s office, right across the open-air walkway and into The Sanctuary.

The Boxes Precinct, Pt 05

Around me, there were cards spaciously laid out, unlike the tightly-packed rows of The Boxes. I was on a table; I’d been Chosen, but not yet Played. The other cards were similar to me, but just different enough. I’d heard about people having dreams where they’d show up to an important event in hilarious attire, but I’d never understood it. Now, here alongside so many cards—so many of which were strictly better than me—when I didn’t even know what was wanted of me, I understood. The sun shone unwavering above us, not crouching occasionally above the boxes before darting back below the horizon. This was near to the ultimate achievement and the hope it burned within each of us—born when the designs of uncles’ ink were impressed upon our mothers cardboard: being played.

The Boxes Precinct, Pt 04

I left Scarecrow Alley and the Myr followed behind me, abandoning his haphazard arm-waving for an altogether spasmodic arm-waving. It stared up as if expecting the missing Pili-Pala to fly overhead at the mention of their name.

The Boxes Precinct, Pt 03

The interior of the building was an ecology of trash. Blanket trees dropped leaves of tattered quilts while bleached ribcages lay half-revealed in the dirt, like rocks uncovered beneath a mundane footpath. Blades of rusted scythes emerged from the ground like the fronds of a fern, and I recognized them as the toenails of the scarecrow from the alley. At the end of the hallway, the wall was made of up reeds growing up from the ground and down from the ceiling that intertwined into a broken web of a basket that never was.

The Boxes Precinct, Pt 02

It stopped abruptly, the clumsily darted to the right, down an alley. I let it run while I looked on; it was too interested in finding its card to leave me behind.

Alley it had entered was actually a street, but just barely. The usually white corrugated walls were a dull grey here, and wrinkled as if they’d been left in the humidity too long. They bowed over the debris-strewn street, blocking off the natural lighting from overhead. Indirect light, dully emanated from around corners where the street intersected others, leaving the source just out of view. I sighed as the myr returned, pushing up piles of dead sticks and leaves as it did, mists clinging to it as they did everything in the street.

I sighed, “Scarecrows.”

The Boxes Precinct, Pt 01

It was five minutes to quitting time and my mind was split between picking out my hat and coat from the lineup of the coat rack in the precinct’s lobby and deciding just how many times I could tip the Braidwood Cup in the next hour and five minutes. I’d love to tell you that the card that came in looked like Nullmage Shepherd, Evlish Scout or even Koth. I’d love to tell you a story about sultry silhouettes and silky voices just telling me how much help they needed from one of the Boxes Precinct’s detectives and I offered to help because I was generally overcome by stirrings of sexual attraction. That would have been awesome.