Fragments from the Vault #018: The Long Con

"Our stories used to be so simple. They had a beginning, a middle, and an end."

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Game: The Wolf Among Us

Location: The Tenements, Fabletown

More information: Fabletown | The Wolf Among Us Wiki | Fandom

A cab in Fabletown. Screen capture & edit: FetchQuester

FADE IN

EXT/INT. THE TENEMENTS, FABLETOWN - 8:00 PM

CAB DRIVER (V.O.)

Nightfall. The mood in the air lurches like a salt-teared rift down at the Trip Trap, rancid steam comin' off the asphalt and plenty a gig for grindin' if the hustlers are up to it; the payout'll see 'em through the ache of next week if they're lucky. The crackjoys spillin' into the cab don't catch your eye for chit-chat 'cause they're intoxicated with the fallacy of a world that ain't going to hell every five minutes and I haven't the heart to tell 'em I see through 'em, that it's a stitch that'll come undone when mornin' hits 'em with a half-dozen hangovers and a side of haggard truths. That it's all smoke and mirrors until then.

[The cab rears up onto the corner of Main and Bullfinch; the silhouette of a woman climbs in, shrinking beneath a nicotine shroud in the backseat, listless, coveting her silence.]

CAB DRIVER (V.O.)

Evenings like this hang by a thread of mutability: When fate plays trickster, you just never know who's gonna step through that door.

The Trip Trap Bar. Screen capture & edit: FetchQuester

"So... where we headed?"

She doesn't answer. I wait, politely, tucking in one last drag of my cigarette before rolling up the window. The rain's been peltin' down, gutterin' up the backstreets and turnin' out kaleidoscopes on cracked glass panes like a fever dream - the kind that brings out that rare authenticity in a soul. I think to myself, at least she ain't the talkin' type, the kind who relish the chance to snag you with their cocksure odes on nostalgia as they "lash their ropes" to the fairy-tale that we ain't cesspits full of failures and false-starts after all. 

Poor shits. Nah. She ain't them. She ain't anythin'.

You can always suss 'em out, the quiet ones. The broken ones, the ones who are the sums of pieces scrounged up from some wretched corner where no one ain't ever gonna see 'em, who don't wanna be seen, the sad little caterpillar who never made it to the final stage of mortal sufferin' where we get to be ourselves in all our magnificently flawed beauty, to mean somethin' and nothin' in a frail modicum of one forgettable, miraculous lifetime. Those are the ones who get to me, bustin' open the fissures of this stone-clad heart without even tryin', makin' me wish I'd never left that derelict shack with its yellow stains and heavin' floorboards sinking lower than an ex-sailor's morale to come work this soulless city... and there's nothin' I can do 'bout it but find a way to keep 'em safe... for a price.

I lean back; the cab light casts a jagged outline of her neck where I can just make out a small, purple ribbon pressed against her throat.

PASSENGER 
I'd like to go home.

CAB DRIVER (V.O.)

Home doesn't exist. Only hell.

FADE OUT

New York City, home to Fabletown. Screen capture & edit: FetchQuester

- Lucy A.

***

Sources: 

The Wolf Among Us (Telltale Games); fandom.com [note the first quotation is directly attributed to The Wolf Among Us]

*Dedicated to the cynics.