4338.206 · July 25, 2018 AD
Addressed to Clivilius
Gladys can't talk to Jamie. He's in another world—literally—and words have a way of failing her anyway. So she writes. Folds the letter. Refolds it. Tucks it into a box with dog beds and chew toys, and watches it disappear into colours she doesn't understand. The Portal swallows everything she offers. But when Luke returns with a plan that requires her hands on boxes from a crime scene, she realises: some things, once sent, can never be taken back.
The Portal opens on the living room wall, and for a moment Gladys forgets the body in the driveway. Colours bloom like something alive—greens and golds and impossible blues swirling together in patterns that make her chest ache. Beatrix throws a cushion through just to watch it vanish. Gladys takes another sip of shiraz and pulls out the envelope.
Can you give this to Jamie for me?
She'd written the letter that morning, words she couldn't say aloud, folded small enough to hide in a box of dog toys. Luke doesn't open it. He just tucks it away and steps through the shimmer, and Gladys watches him disappear into another world carrying her heart in paper form.
But wonder doesn't last. Luke returns with logistics: truck swap, box transfer, evidence shuffling. Gladys insists on helping—she won't be left on the sidelines again. Each box she carries feels heavier than the last. Not from weight. From meaning.
We're tampering with evidence.
The wine can't dull that realisation. Neither can the letter, already delivered, already beyond reach.
Some lines, once crossed, don't have return paths.
