Ep. 25- The Missing Knock
int. apartment hallway night- flashback
A dark, dingy hallway of an aging apartment building. A lone light flickers from the ceiling at the end of the hall. Peeling white plaster gives way to an ancient, scratched up door of deep, dark stained wood and a scuffed copper doorknob.
Light flickers on, off, on. A shadow at the door. Flickered movement. A dark gloved hand reaches for the doorknob.
There is no knock. A knock creates fear. But the knock people should fear most is the knock they never hear.
The door opens with a soundless swing. Flicking white light illuminates the space.
Used mid-century furniture- unfinished.
Laundry baskets full of unwashed clothes.
Chipped white enamel coffee mugs covering every conceivable surface.
An 18 inch flatscreen tv with a dimly lit idle message- SLEEP MODE IMMINENT- PRESS ANY BUTTON TO ABORT.
Opened bags of chips badly folded closed. Empty, stinking Tupperware. A trash can that is several inches too full.
Stuffed plushies keeping a silent vigil- guards with neither ears nor mouths.
A couch- ugly, hard edged, gray, angular. An old quilt- ragged, hand-made, faded.
A hand- thin, veiny, otherworldy. It tugs the quilt up, the draft of the new air billowing in from the hallway causing an involuntary response.
A stir. A rise. Sharp, exposed shoulder blades poking through the skin of a stretched back, vulture wings threatening to sprout.
Straw hair, dirtied with sweat and oil.
A pop- an old-style bottle of beer rolls off the couch and bursts on the hardwood floor.
ALICE
(blearily)
Fuck.
Gray-red eyes cloudily open and adjust to the darkness, purpling pupils dilating to swallow the flickering hallway light.
A shadow blots out the fair kiss freckles and deep black under-eye pockets.
ALICE
Who are you supposed to be.
int. hovel night
Return to current time. Alice sitting within the hovel, the party- the Knight of Cups, the Queen of Swords, the Devil, the Pale Horse, the Hanged Woman and the Hermit all here as before. Alice’s eyes, glassy, swirl with the purply color of remembrance, the sounds of the verbal skirmish pulling her back into the real.
KNIGHT OF CUPS
Fallen Card is an unkind term.
QUEEN OF SWORDS
But Alice is not wrong. We each quit our position for our own reason.
DEVIL
Hey. It’s ALMOST like we are-
PALE HORSE
Do not say it.
DEVIL
CONNECTED!
QUEEN OF SWORDS
So that makes the Alice the Fool.
The cards all look to the Hermit for confirmation. He smiles and nods to the Pale Horse.
PALE HORSE
The Moon already completed her reading at the meadow. I saw it myself. There’s no doubt.
DEVIL
(uncharacteristically serious)
So the Fool has returned once again. That must be the House of Wands’ angle. Did they summon her?
QUEEN OF SWORDS
Don’t be daft. A minor arcana can’t summon the Fool back. Even for a major arcana-
KNIGHT OF CUPS
It would be nearly im-p-p-possible. The requisite p-p-power alone would…
HERMIT
(an exaggerated innocence)
Don’t look at me, I had nothing to do with it. I merely observe and facilitate the game, I don’t move the pieces.
ALICE
(blurting)
The Moon brought me.
She is met with silence.
ALICE
Didn’t she…?
PALE HORSE
(will not meet her gaze)
We don’t know that for sure. But…we were pulled into the Moon’s meadow. I can only presume the Moon’s interference saved us from the wrath of the Tower. Possibly at the behest of the King and Queen of Wands, though I can’t imagine why or how they came to know about our journey.
QUEEN OF SWORDS
So the Moon has finally made her move against the Sun’s tyranny. About time.
Perhaps this is a good moment to pause and speak bit on the order of things in Arcana. You don’t mind a bit of lore here, do you? Of course not! If you don’t care, you can always skip ahead. I know when I was a young lad I liked to skip the boring descriptive stuff and get straight to the talking, but as we get older, we start to ask more questions- where am I? Where are we going? How did this happen?
At any rate, Arcana is in a bit of a quiet war. I say quiet because there’s been little in the way of noise lately- hardly any battles and a whole lotta surrenders.
On the one side is the Sun. You’ll meet him soon. In Arcana the Sun is a fearsome tyrant with a large army and powerful retainers, some of whom you’ve already met- the Knights of Swords and Pentacles being two such servants. The Sun has conquered half of Arcana by simple virtue of being visibly strong. Both the houses of Swords and Pentacles surrendered to his empire without so much as a fight and now fill the ranks of his army. A number of Major Arcana also abandoned the Tower to follow the Sun.
Opposite of the Sun of course is the Moon. Try as the Sun might, he cannot overcome the Moon, as there are some laws that are simply immutable. One such law- the Sun will always be the Moon’s equal- no more and no less. Only the ruler of the Tower can change such a rule- and thus the Sun’s ambition becomes clear. The Sun would take the Tower by force and obliterate the Moon and her allies- becoming the supreme force in all of Arcana.
As for the Moon, she has many allies. The house of Wands is her more vocal ally, but she has other Major Arcana, such as the Hermit, who support her cause in a quieter manner.
And then there are the neutral parties, who you will meet later on, such as the King of Dreams, the Empress of the Undead Star and the fallen House of Cups, whose tragedy will be further discussed as we learn more of the poor old Knight of Cups.
But that’s enough of serious lore for now. Because before we get much further into history, we have a more important question that our dear Devil is about to ask on our behalf.
DEVIL
Now wait a minute. Her? The Alice? I get that. A Fool gets yanked into our world from time to time and shakes things up. Fine. But you- Pale Horse- what were YOU doing on the Lost Highway- and why did you take her straight to the Tower? What were you planning?
A fine question indeed…and one we’ll wait until next week to discuss further…
