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There really should have been more victory fanfare over figuring out how to get past that wall. There had been a little of it, they grinned briefly over their success and good-naturedly shook hands over their job well done before stepping on through into the corridor -- but, really, all they'd accomplished was move from one baffling prison to another, larger one, and the feeling of What Was Even The Point soon threatened to settle back in.

They were still lost. Dr. Westerman was still clueless. He was still entertaining the very high possibility that he was dead and this was some sort of hell or purgatory, or perhaps Western culture had been foolish to assume they could describe the afterlife in terms of reward and pun...ishment. There was a bear trap shoved up against the wall, rusted open and to near uselessness, shaped recognizably like a bear skull. The place really did love a good pun. Perry was not amused. The overtones of whimsy in this situation were really kind of mockingly aggravating, and made him wary: if a brick wall could come to life in this place, who knew what else could?

The realm of possibility was seemingly twisted here, it made him wonder again about the possibility of escape.

While 'John' was freeing a candle from the wall, Perry was surveying the array of doors that stretched down the hallway. There were a lot of them, in many styles and colors -- a few of them were just painted directly on the wall, with knockers and knobs nailed to them seemingly for kicks -- and parts of the wall were also decorated with paintings, innocent enough at first until you really took a look at them. He didn't know what it was that could make a still-life of a bowl of fruit so unnerving, but there you go.

"You ever been in one of those hedge mazes, John?" Perry asked, smoothing his hair down the back of his head. He still had the banjo he'd found, slung around on his back on its strap, and was dressed in what was assumably what he wore Back In The Day as a field biologist: cargo pants, a simple polo shirt, a fishing hat hanging at the base of his neck by a leather cord. "They say that you'll find your way out eventually if you just keep turning right or left the whole time. On the flip side, though, hedge mazes don't got doors and s**t you might overlook the first go-around, so let's go with your idea."

In all honesty, had Perry known of Wiseman's identity as Ray Gordon, the suspicions would have been mutual, or it would have at the very least raised a multitude of questions about the nature of the afterlife. Namely: why was he seemingly spending the rest of eternity alone with Ray Gordon of all people, and all the wonderings and implications surrounding it. However, he only saw his companion as a strange man in a cloak, so the questions of the day were who the hell is this guy? and why am I stuck with this guy? Maybe people were just stuck with afterlife companions at random. Who knew.

"Nope," he answered, reaching out to experimentally jiggle a nearby doorknob -- the door refused to budge, just like all the rest so far. "I'm sorta the odd guy out in my family, just about everyone else is in music or theater or something; I got a cousin who's just nuts with acrobatic stunts. He works at his parents' restaurant sometimes just so he can show off and spin plates."

He checked another door. This time the knob fell off, and the door and frame with it too to reveal solid wall behind it.

"But me, turned out I'm a science guy, you know what I'm saying? Did field research around the Andes for a while, zoology." He idly kicked at a dog toy that was sitting in the middle of the floor in front of them, which squeaked against his boot and the wall and then against the ground again. "Nowadays I just teach high school kids."

"Yeah, I like it okay," replied Perry -- though, in spite of himself, and the fact that he did genuinely enjoy the teaching node of the scientific community, the 'nascent Ph.D' comment stung, just a bit. "I coulda gotten a gig at a college or something, but I didn't want to mess with huge goddamn lecture hall; too many people, you never learn anyone's names, too much Bulletpoint and not enough discussion."

It was true, one could get to know a chatty stranger in a single meeting better than they would an acquaintance or friend they saw every day. Ray was already learning over the course of a few minutes more about his coworker's life and motivations than he had heard about over the near half a year in which he'd known him. Normally he just told interesting, campfire-worthy stories about the various adventures and misadventures he'd been on before showing up at Destiny City, stuff that was entertaining but ultimately superficial most of the time.

Upon being asked about his name, Perry gave the stranger a narrow, sidelong glance. "That depends, guy," he slowly answered, "you found yours anywhere in all this junk?"

A host of tiny, transparent spiders swarmed out of the box and over Wiseman's hand to bite him with little painless teeth. Each miniscule droplet of his blood shone inside them like rubies, but then they all stopped dead as though their clockwork had worn down: suddenly they exploded, showering his bandaged fingers with blood dots like red pinheads.

Wiseman stood up after scooping up the chairleg again, a fine spray of blood bright on his white bandages. Finding his cloak a trifle warm now, he shrugged it off and slung it over his arm. It was peculiar that the spiders had drawn blood without leaving marks, like a series of tiny hypodermic needles. It was peculiar that the strongest word he could find for this situation was 'peculiar.'

Well. He wasn't raised weak, were he now. Either time.

"Ceciiiii-lio, you're breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence, baby," he was unable to resist the compulsion to add. "My, my, you couldn't be accusing me of being crazy, now could you? No, you wouldn't do a thing like that, not a nice Chicago boy like you." With his arms and neck bare the place seemed a little less claustrophobic; he wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. "You're the one asking whether mortal souls can bleed. I figure a better question is: what possibilities have we got that don't involve our untimely demise, Cici?"

Though he was entertaining a fair number of theories on their present situation, 'alien abduction' and 'secret government project' didn't really enter the picture. Well, Wiseman supposed it depended how you defined 'alien.' Technically he was an alien. Really, a lot of people were aliens. This whole alien hysteria was a bit much.

He was walking fast, he realized, as he intended to cover as much ground as possible before the candle burned down: of course, there were plenty to replace it on the walls, but who knew when that would stop? Still, he was tense, walking on the balls of his feet, relying on muscles he no longer had -- pretty soon he was going to get tense and cricked-up and sore like this. He needed to take a deep breath and get his bearings. He needed to think about all of this realistically. He needed to stop looking for things that went bump in the night. He needed to --

Something stuck in the sole of his boot and he hopped automatically before it jammed all the way through, dropping the chairleg with a thunk so he had a free hand to inspect his shoe. A syringe, a needle for drawing blood, hooked up to an empty blood bag. Wiseman grimaced and pulled it out of his shoe, scooped up the chair leg again and kept walking.

Curiouser and curiouser.

"I've ruled out lucid dreaming," he said. He didn't mention how he'd ruled it out: in a lucid dream or the Matrix, where anything could be so if you willed it hard enough, his honest-to-God automatic belief that his telekinesis would work would've done the trick. "Our thoughts aren't affecting our environments so directly, else my attempts to wish us both to Cancun with a pair of mojitos and a bunch of dolphins splashing around would've worked a little better. You can thank me later. But is any part of you wondering," he worded it carefully, "if you're seeing a couple too many familiar things?"

They were soon faced with a fork in the road, or rather the hallway: the hall they came from met at a T-intersection, with a floor-length mirror in the center, to two narrower hallways, lined with paintings. Or rather, one hallway that went in two directions, but it was impossible to see where either end lay. They went on in darkness. It appeared to be a good time to have a candle.

Wiseman set down his current candle on a nearby end-table and picked up a new one from a holder on the wall here, and assessed his options. For a moment he considered suggesting they split up and abandoning Perry Westerman to his own devices. If he was Perry Westerman at all. That was his main temptation -- if this wasn't Perry but was, instead, some figment of his imagination or strange shapeshifter creature, he'd prefer to find out now, or not have to find out at all.

Even if not, what were the chances Perry would be useful here? Sure, they were both mortal people with two hands, two feet, and a little under six feet of height, and in that case four hands were better than two -- four hands that could hold weapons, carry things, open doors, four eyes that could spot dangers and read things. But Ray Gordon knew they lived in a world of magic; Ray Gordon knew what had brought them here; it was Ray Gordon who lived by his wits, and it was Ray Gordon whose secret identity could be compromised by this goddamn sympathetic environment at any moment anyway.

And what did he care for his coworker he carpooled with, anyway. He once murdered a man he used to live next to for cutting him off in traffic. Who the hell was Perry Westerman to him?

Still.

He caught his own eyes in the mirror. They stood there reflected for a moment or two: his eyes were Cherenkov blue like always, but they weren't glowing. He supposed that was for the better. Briefly, his reflection shifted to be himself in glasses and jeans and a T-shirt that read NEW ORLEANS SAINTS. He stared and held his ground, though, and Perry didn't seem to react. Just an illusion. Just your mind playing tricks on you, Ray Gordon.

"Going left and working your way right is easier to conceptualize on a mental map than going right and working your way left," he said and walked around the left corner into the dark hall of paintings. "Fun fact. It means we get to keep turning right, and we like turning right. Turning right is fun for the whole family. You ever done any martial arts, Perry?"