All I could remember, the instant the blue door slammed, was how desperate Muse looked before she entered the Auditor’s room. A sliver of guilt took hold of me, grew large, turned honest, and my own reckoning commenced. Had I taken Muse for granted?
I agonizingly recalled the times we bickered, those shameful interludes where the mundane overpowered the extraordinary. And there was certainly enough of the extraordinary for both of us. It was never supposed to be easy, this thing we had, and my sin was to hold onto something so worthwhile without expending the effort.
Minutes passed. The door remained shut, and the lack of a window only sharpened my helplessness. I strained to hear something, anything. Nothing. I paced, hoping my footsteps would hasten this trip to an end. I went straight for the door, but the Minder hissed. Finally, one interminable hour later, the Minder heard someone at the front door, so she shuffled down the hall. This was my chance.
I seized the doorknob and gave it a rough turn, only to discover it spun freely, defiant in its uselessness. I gave the door a hard push. It wouldn’t budge. Now that I was nearer to the door, however, I could hear a muffled argument. I pressed my ear against the blue.
“I am logical, reasonable, and merciful,” said the Auditor in cold monotone. “I suggest you accept this now.”
“But you cannot claim them for your own!” shouted Muse in a voice I had never heard. “Your duty, your calling is to help the silent, not mute them.”
“You came to judge me, then?” asked the Auditor imperiously.
“Yes. You are not the arbiter of words,” Muse replied firmly, “and if you cannot accept this, I will explain justice to you, down to the last meaning. Every. Single. Definition.”
“I am the Auditor, the Arbiter, and the Adjudicator of words. And I have found you lacking.”
There was an angry roar, struggle, a sharp cry of pain, and then quiet. I had taken her for granted. It was time to act and make good on my remorse.
An acute ringing settled in my ears as I stepped through the doorway, vaguely aware of my missing shoe and the imbalance it caused. I clopped awkwardly into the building with Muse. We found ourselves in a long, white hall framed in garish fluorescent light, antiseptic down to the last perfectly cut tile. Wasn’t this place supposed to be old? Why did the Auditor keep it so clean? How was it poss–
The door clicked shut.
A woman, or at least it resembled a woman, stood with her hand on the knob, patiently waiting for us to acknowledge her. She was tall and wore a crisp uniform that culminated in a nurse’s hat, which somehow covered her face entirely. Did she even have a face? I looked at her from different angles and, in a ghastly moment, realized I would only ever see her hat. The ringing in my ears grew louder.
“I am the Minder,” she introduced herself mechanically. “The Auditor is my charge. He welcomes you both.”
She motioned to the hallway gracefully, hypnotically, and we were compelled to follow. Our feet rapped loudly against the cold floor, composing the only harmony to an overwhelming silence, when the Minder suddenly gestured to the bare walls.
“Here we have our newest acquisition, a beautifully restored work from Lamehr’s darker period. Now if you will–” she said dreamily before stopping abruptly and turning to us.
I grabbed Muse’s hand.
“I am sorry,” declared the Minder in jarring staccato. “I thought I was a curator again. Before he took me. I will be punished for this.”
I later learned the Minder was one of the Blotted or, more accurately, a Halfblot, another poor soul whom the Auditor cursed but also liked well enough to spare a few extra words. I didn’t know this at the time, however, and each shred of ignorance only amplified my unease.
We came to a heavy steel door at the end of the hall. It opened to a small, bare room with naught but a chair and a blue door, presumably the entrance to the Auditor’s chambers. The Minder closed the metal door in one smooth motion, and then she lurched toward Muse and grabbed her by the jaw. She ignored Muse’s cry of surprise and continued to examine her as if she were livestock.
“I have seen you before,” the Minder said in her clipped way. “He will be pleased.”
She released Muse, who shot me a troubled yet resigned look. We exchanged a few hushed words, a quick embrace, and then the blue door opened. Her meeting began.
I suspect the photos I snapped of our trip to the City would’ve astounded you, entertained you to no end, but the fact of the matter is I left them on the train. The entire roll of film, along with the camera housing it, chose one of two destinies: either it found a new owner, or it removed itself from history altogether by digging deeper into the seat cushions.
Why had I brought a camera in the first place? Was I going to play the Cheery Chuck, keep a journal, maybe construct a scrapbook? Absolutely not. The photos were unnecessary, much like my presence, and Muse’s final warning before we disembarked replayed itself in a perpetual echo.
“You broke my heart when you stepped on the train,” she said quickly. “If you step off the train, I might break yours. So don’t. Go back. The Block– It’s not for you.”
Stubborn chivalry vetoed all my other senses, however, and I hopped off the train moments before it sped to the next borough. It was late afternoon. Transitorio Station, the fittingly ramshackle introduction to Writer’s Block, looked even more rundown in the waning daylight. Shadows lengthened eerily, lazily, with a cold assurance.
“I should’ve came here alone and left you at home,” I declared with a little swagger and a lot of stupidity.
“Now that,” Muse replied, shaking her head, “is a terrible idea. Look.”
She pointed to the huddled forms of the Blotted. Tucked away in the dark corners of the station were piles of cloth, or so I thought until my eyes focused. They were people. I turned to Muse.
“Wha–” I started, but she gave me a look that froze my blood and steeled my resolve.
She grabbed my arm and we made our way to the station exit, briskly at first, then at full sprint.
“You-you-you-you-you,” a nearby pile uttered with an otherworldly resonance.
We were a few feet shy of the double doors when a gnarled arm shot out and grabbed me by the shoe. I cried out in horror.
“Lose it. Go, go!” shouted Muse.
“Help-help-help-help,” implored this wretched pile.
I shook myself free, sacrificing a shoe in the process. We tore through the doors.
“What the hell just happened?” I demanded.
The Blotted, she proceeded to explain, are people who visited the Block without their muses. They thought they could handle the Auditor by themselves, so they waltzed proudly into town, only to reemerge hours later blinded and damned. In their final accounting, they were judged to be lacking, and the Auditor took everything except for a single word. Usually the word was nonsensical, but once in a while the Auditor would let his good spirits prevail and dispense a relevant word, which was all the fellow in the train station possessed in addition to my shoe.
Right when Muse was about to explain how the Blotted could actually harm a person, she stopped. I followed her gaze, slowly and unwillingly, to discover the Auditor’s building in front of us. The door was wooden and plain, yet the things behind it lent a very real terror. My camera? This door would’ve consumed it.