​ 
There is no music in a revolution.
The air is full of sound, but it’s the hum of errant chatter and the stampede of shoes traversing asphalt; it’s the roar of engines and the pings of shattering glass; it’s the chorusing of lone cries into a symphony of voices. I hear the crack as polycarbonate fractures bones, the buzz of blaring sirens, the whistle of gas canisters, the pops and rat-tat-tat of gunfire, the BOOM of explosives. Sometimes I even hear singing, but there is no music in a revolution.
At dawn, I step into the cool, crisp fall wind and start east until I come across an old steel framed cabin with cracked wooden walls. The cabin rests on the street opposite the university campus, and features windows boarded with wrought iron bars. On the south facing wall’s interior, there’s a colorless poster of Martin Luther King, Jr. standing in front of an American flag, behind a podium, frozen mid-sentence, brow pressed down against his steely eyes. His right arm is extended forward as if reaching out to greet your palm. Beneath him a quote reads All Labor Has Dignity. Something to boost morale, I guess.
The cabin is the hub for custodial operations. For as long as I’ve been a student here, I’ve held a position with the maintenance staff. It’s a work-study job, something stable, and the only one that fits my schedule. Up until I started working here, I had been living off scholarships and loans, and when those started to run out, well, I needed the cash. The pay is abysmal, and, in addition to my collegiate responsibilities, I’m required to clock in at least twenty hours each week.
Still, the bi-weekly check I received delivers a momentary exultation on the first and third Friday of every month, every time. I taste the sweet semblance of emancipation borne by a thin, quartered sheet of paper with my name printed on it. It’s not much, but it’s something. If I keep this up, by the start of the next semester I’d pay for Dostoyevsky and Rousseau and Tocqueville out of pocket, no loans. Hell, with all the extra hours I work, I might buy myself the time to write my own treatise.
For now, anyway, I work.
This cabin only has enough space for a single office, so our equipment is stored in a rusted shipping container adjoining the north wall. I check the assignment sheet, unlock the cargo doors, retrieve a broom and dustpan, and start towards the university grounds.
Every now and then I daydream about walking out of that cabin for the last time, throwing my broom to the floor, shredding my nametag, burning my uniform, and never looking back. But it’s just a dream. I never act on it. Instead, I escape into an existence of fragments and purity, a space detached from the whole mess and pain and truth of the world. I burrow further and further into a hidden, hollow pit veiled by a frail daze of contentment.
It’s all the same to me really, now. Sometimes, I launder and fold gym towels with deep yellow-gray sweat stains marred across the white cotton surface. At other times, I scrub the top of steel cafeteria tables with an opaque, soapy concoction that reeks of white vinegar and lemon juice. Occasionally, I mop the resin floor of the chemistry labs during the inactive hours of ten p.m. to midnight before trekking home accompanied only by the dim glow of a distant moon and the pungent stench of remnant cleaning material carried in my clothes.
At dusk, I step into that other world to confront the mess of progress. It’s in that other world where I see the sights of new beginnings and listen to the concerto of struggle. That world which reveals a snapshot of what’s to come behind the smudge of today’s woes. That world rings a melody but falls shorts of something like music.
The sights in this world are alluring. Tonight, a fire brings the city to its knees. The flame is sensational; white at its core, engulfed in a pronounced orange glow, crusted by thick black smoke lifting into the night sky. The blaze reaches up some forty feet above the ground and radiates through the chill of this autumn night, piercing my skin with harsh heat.
I’m terrified; but I’m not alone.
There are at least two hundred of us, maybe three. We occupy the street in front of City Hall and the two blocks east of it. Most are young, angry, hostile, and dressed in long black clothes with bandanas covering their faces. Some are wearing thick, dark vests with backpacks and gloves; others have gas masks fitted firmly around their heads. I came with a friend, but I lost him hours ago.
A segment of the group has pushed ahead to rattle a fence separating us from the steps. Every few minutes a firework is shot through the barrier, flaring out bright flashes of red, blue, yellow, orange, and green. I’m behind the front line. It’s loud and tense and the heat is incredible. I’m standing shoulder to shoulder with a woman to my left whose hair is twisted in two braids underneath a tactical helmet and she’s shouting behind a mask; sweat is pouring down her temple. To my right, a man’s veins are bulging from his neck and spit is flying from his mouth as he yells. He’s wearing protective eye gear and a helmet. I’m yelling too, but I’m underdressed.
At curfew, a thick white haze envelops the group at the fence, and they scatter back from the steps. By the time the haze reaches the rest of us, we’ve begun to break our formation. We’re corralled back to an intersection, shoved by long black shields and prodded by thick batons.
The woman who had been standing to my left is thrown to the ground before kicking and thrashing, trying to release the grips on her wrists and ankles. Some ten feet in front of her, a tall, heavy set man is struck repeatedly with a club to the beat of an unheard drum. I spin around and at another ten feet, someone is shot by a close-range rubber bullet; thick streaks of blood begin pouring down his cheek.  
I hear a long hiss behind me and panic. I feel as though a thousand needles are coursing down my throat and my limbs tense up, straining to reach my face. I start to choke and cough incessantly and my eyes are stinging, struggling to open. Around me, others are bent over their knees spitting and hacking. Gradually, a white mist expands the entire block. Those out of range flee to refuge. Quickly, a small unit in gas masks charge into the mist, pick up the canisters and throw them across the intersection.
I hold my breath long enough to stumble behind a brick building around the corner. My heart is racing and I’m nauseous. There are still at least a hundred of us running and shouting in the intersection. Sudden sporadic bursts fill the air and almost all hundred or so bodies duck down, placing their hands behind their head for cover. Others disperse.
A helicopter lowers beneath the treetops. It’s blades cut swiftly through the air, stirring up dust and pebbles in a thunderous gust of wind. It’s shining a blinding light onto the pavement and echoing commands to leave.
I join the evacuees and dart through the street, mapping my escape home. The flame is still casting a dazzling glow over the shadow of the night.
When I return to my apartment, I find an envelope in my mailbox. It’s return address belongs to a woman I had written to weeks ago. Her name is Sandra Brown. Last winter the woman’s grandson was killed in front of her home.
Her grandson, Nate, was seventeen years old and weighed no more than a hundred and thirty pounds. It made no sense, then, when the police officer who killed him explained that Nate had put up a real fight. The officer stands just above six feet and weights at least double what Nate does. There’s no way a boy like that could so much as have shaken this officer, but that was his story.
The officer was responding to a call about “a suspicious dark man sort of lurking in the neighborhood.” Within minutes of his arrival, the arresting officer had Nate in hand cuffs, pinned to the ground, and one of his large, muscular arms wrapped firmly around the boys neck. After a minute, the boy was unresponsive; after three, lifeless, there, on his family’s estate, where his body laid for some time before an ambulance could arrive to treat him.
The trial was a joke. Within two days, the city’s police department presented the facts of the case to a jury and, in three and a half hours, the officer was cleared of all charges.
A mother had lost a son. A father had lost a son. A grandmother lived in a home stained by the blood of her child’s son. And nobody could explain why. It’s true that inexplicability has a way of producing anger, and the public outrage here was palpable. A community was lost.
The boy’s death was a spark that lit a fuse; a fuse wound around an incendiary injustice, that undermines any postulation of judicious integrity.
We began to ask ourselves; how could we coexist with a body that’s payroll hinges on an incentive to seize ours?
We could not, was the answer. We could not live as prey. We took to the streets because the rules governing our lives were not written into any constitution or municipal statutes. No, the four-word edict commanding our existence was enshrined in the laws of nature: survival of the fittest.
I bring the piece of mail up to my apartment, I retrieve a knife, slice through the adhesive between the paper, and take out a letter. The message inside reads: Please come by 828 East Washington Ave. on Saturday at 8 a.m. It’s the little brown house with the white fence in front. Thank you.
I fall asleep consoled by the letter and the thought of the woman’s gesture, the expression of a warm spirit, a comforting spirit.
On Saturday, I get on the bus and go south. I stay on it for six stops until I reach downtown. The address from the letter leads me to a neighborhood two blocks from the stop, the same district that housed the city’s former precinct, a building now reduced to ash and ruble. The neighborhood is full of run-down homes surrounded by chain link fences. Angry, stout dogs roam the sidewalk; a trademark of the wilderness of a ghetto.
I arrive at the address and see a tawny home with an attic and a four-foot white fence stretching across the yard. I open the latch on the gate, ascend a short flight of stairs and knock on the door. The home is a relic of another century; the stairs squeak and crack with every step and the porch bows inward as if wilted by time. It’s an old home, certainly, but the most well-kept on the block. 
Moments later, the door opens, revealing an elderly woman, no taller than five feet, with short curly hair and small wrinkled hands.  She raises her head, and her face is full of life. I stare into her eyes which are like stones. I toil with the image of this woman.
“You’re late,” she says.
“Yes. Hello. Sorry. Are you Mrs. Brown?”
“Ms. Sandra Brown. You the one who wrote me?”
“Yes, Ms. Brown.”
“Well, you’re late.”
I apologize again. She steps aside and gestures for me to enter her home. It smells like mint and carpet cleaner. The living room is furnished with deep magenta curtains that match a long couch. She has a walnut coffee table positioned in front of a vintage television set. She offers me a glass of water, which I accept.
The east facing wall has a shelf adorned with portraits of her family, various African figurines, and a map of the continent. Ms. Brown must catch me looking at them because she asks, “You ever been?”
“No, ma’am.”
“How old did you say you are?” she hands me the glass.
“I didn’t. But I’m twenty-one.”
“Oh, you’re so young. You must visit someday.”
I tell her I would like to. There is an awkward silence that fills the air. The woman is old and leans forward slightly when she walks. It looks like she might fall over with every step. She paces in front of a second shelf on the opposite wall, a shelf lined with hundreds of books.
“What is it you study in school, young man?” she asks.
“Politics.”
She looks at me funny, “Is that right?”
She looks back to the shelf before handing me a copy of W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk. “This was my absolute favorite. I used to spend hours talkin’ to my kids about just this one book. Here, take it and tell me what you think about it.”
“Looks interesting,” I respond.
“See, I was a teacher,” she explains, “many years ago. I used to love talking about great black writers. And this man here, he was the best.”
She sits down on a cushioned chair in front of the coffee table and gestures for me to sit on the couch.
“You know, you almost look like him, too,” she says.
“Who?”
“My grandbaby.”
There’s a photo of her grandson hanging against the wall behind her. I think she was just making conversation because there’s hardly a resemblance. We have the same nose, but my lips are far too thin, his cheekbones sit lower than mine, and his eyes are much brighter and a different color than my own.
“Is there a particular reason you asked me to come here today, Ms. Brown?”
“Oh, yes. See, my grandbaby—he used to help out around here, but that was before he was killed. Now, I’ve got nobody helping me to keep the yard, fetch my groceries, or fix my television when it’s broke, see. It’s just been so hard,” she says behind tired, tearful eyes. “And, I figure, since you wrote me, I might have you step in from time to time. If you can.”
I open my mouth to speak, but she interrupts me.
“Only if it’s no trouble to you of course.”
“Well–”
“And I will pay you.”
“I would love to help.”
“Oh, I am just delighted to hear you say that.”
Before I leave, she shows me a couple of very old images of her family. One is of a field. In it, a group of slaves are hacking through thick sugar cane under a brilliant summer sun. They’re young and they have tough, dark skin. The men are wearing loose linen shirts, woolen trousers, and brown leather shoes; the women, woolen waistcoats with full skirts worn above the ankle and the same leather shoes.
Another is a painting of a second group of slaves is sitting around a fire behind a shack beneath the stars scattered across the night sky. Some are laughing, some are dancing, others look like they’re crying; they all look tired. One man is standing, speaking to a small group of children with a book in his hand. I wonder what he’s reading.
She tells me how about how hard these people worked and that her grandson was just like on of the men in the field who she points to with her long finger. The images remind me of my job, my uniform and of these deep, dark spots I come across on the on the hallway floors. The thing about them is, no matter how hard I scrub, they don’t go away. My hands can be clenched in fists around the handle of my mop, knuckles white and bulging, but it won’t do any good. Whatever they are, they won’t go away. I can keep wiping and wiping, I can soak and wring the mop and push and pull the handle and press the bundle of thick loose strings across the floor, back and forth. I can move the mop, but some things just don’t change.
The next Saturday, I get on the bus and I stay on for six stops. I walk through the neighborhood until I come to the white fence. Ms. Brown is seated on the porch with a broom leaning against the wall behind her. She has a big grin on her face and yells from across the lawn.
“What’d you think of the book?” she asks.
“Haven’t read it yet,” I say.
“It’s a real masterpiece. Make sure and take your time with it.”
“Will do, Ms. Brown.”
She rises from her chair, descends the steps, and looks up at her home. “I thought we might start with the roof.” She hands me the broom and a pair of full-length gloves. I climb to the top of her roof and, for some time, sweep the leaves that have fallen from tall trees this autumn, then I scrape out debris collected in the gutter. The sun, fully awake, strikes against my dark skin and my clothes cling to the sweat on my body as if stuck by glue.
When I finish, I climb down from the roof and Ms. Brown asks me to replace that old television in her home. I don’t know much about electronics, but I agree to help. Some time passes with me tampering with wires of every color, screwing and unscrewing bolts and nails, plugging and unplugging cords until, I call the company that made the set. The representative is incredibly helpful, and we get the thing working no time. When I turn on the power, it’s set to a local news channel. They’re covering the recent protests.
The anchor says, “The unity at these demonstrations is truly remarkable. This is something we have never seen before. Black, white, brown, everybody is coming together for this cause.”
“That’s right,” the co-anchor affirms, “Folks on the ground are saying now is the time for change, that this young man was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We are watching history.”
I turn to Ms. Brown who is standing behind me staring at the screen. She says nothing. Her face twists into a deep frown. Her lips begin to quiver, and I think she’s about to speak, but she grabs the remote from my hand and turns the television off.
“You know, Ms. Brown, I’ve been out there some nights. It does feel different. I think we are bringing about real change.”
“You’re foolish!” she snaps, “My baby didn’t die for some cause. There ain’t none of that. Just death, senseless, meaningless killin’.”
I struggle to find the words, “I just mean, we’re finally being heard. My generation is more outspoken on these issues than any before us.”
“And my baby’s still dead,” she says sharply, “Marching and shouting and burning ain’t gonna to do nothing but wear you out. This’s been going on since Emmett Till and my baby’s still dead. He died ‘cause he didn’t have no choice. This country been tellin’ folks like us the same thing since before I was born, young man, you hear me? It’s the same story you’d have heard marchin’ on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma or boycottin’ the city bus in Montgomery or shirkin’ your crop yield in Virginia. We’ve always been the burden. And that’s all my baby was to them: a burden.”
            On my way out the door, she cups her frail hands around mine which are cold, and in a soft, quiet voice, says, “I already lost one baby. I ain’t losing any more.”
In the evening, I return to my apartment and find the copy of The Souls of Black Folks. I open it to the first chapter, and I read. I fall into the sea of Arthur Symon’s poetry. I drown under the mass of his words, longing for black tears to cease. I drift along his rhythmic muse and find myself caught between a space of ease with the flow of time and resistance to the tides of anguish. I want to cry myself; I want to cry all night. Like the poet, I cannot understand the voice of my heart and I cling, desperately, to Ms. Brown’s words, searching for something familiar, something familial.
Maybe she’s right, I conclude. Maybe some things don’t change.
In the morning, I rise to a clear, dark sky. I lift open a window to let in a soft breeze ruffling the leaves adorning a grove of pine within view. I listen. It’s the only sound at this hour. It’s dawn and I start to prepare something to eat. I cup my hands under the cold water flowing from the kitchenette faucet, watching it cascade down the bright, ruby skin of my apple before collecting in the sink and clearing. The sweet, smoky aroma of warm roasting coffee penetrates my nostrils and I look over to the clock. I have time. I step outside; the sun is still rising out beyond the landscape and, a few hundred yards out, I can see some two dozen students sauntering through campus.
Before work, I cut through the university’s courtyard, a pristine piazza with monochromatic wildflowers, thick oak trees, and an imposing clocktower. In the winter, most of the leaves have left their posts, gathering along the pavement leaving a trail of burnt scarlet leaves scattered along the walkway.
Finally, I arrive at a large, exposed brick building with chipped beige paint. The building’s interior is populated with portraits of former deans, chancellors, and alumni; and where there aren’t images, there are busts of renowned painters and writers and poets. One of the busts is of Mr. Du Bois. I notice he has the same stony eyes as Ms. Brown.
I look at the sculpture of the man, a descendant of slaves, and I think, she’s wrong. A change will come, and she’ll be here to see it.
 
 

“Don’t say he never gets you anything,” said the homunculus beneath her father’s lab coat.
Chela opened her eyes, one natural, one bionic, and took in the buggy gleaming in the searchlight from the tallest tower of the castle.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me?” she said.
The Father scratched the skin of his stomach where the homunculus had been grafted. It smelled like decaying milk.
“You’ve been an obedient girl lately,’ he said, ‘worked hard to develop your skill set and refrained from unnecessary violent behaviour with the local children.”
“The local kids are scum who hate mutants. Screw ‘em.”
The Father raised an eyebrow.
“The puritans would burn this castle down if they were not so afraid of what lurks inside,’ said the homunculus, ‘don’t antagonise them so that their hatred overrides their fear.”
She rubbed her fingernail between her teeth, spat on the floor, nodded then jumped into the driver’s seat.
“Right then,’ she said, ‘let’s get this thing on the fucking move.”
The homunculus pointed to the device in The Father’s hands.
“All in good time,’ said The Father, ‘Ms Trounce has advised me that your school trip will be no longer than 72 hours, so that leaves you ample time to return here within your usual seven-day limit.”
“Yes, Father,” said Chela.
“Exceed the limit and you know what happens.”
“Yes, Father,” said Chela.
“For my records, how is the metal plate in your head?”
Chela rubbed her eyes and temples.
“Getting migraines,” she said.
“It could be your regenerative abilities constantly trying to expunge it, could be something else. We’ll investigate when you return.”
The Father clicked a button on the controller, opening the gates to the castle. He clicked another button and nodded at Chela. She grinned and started the buggy.
“Now, don’t drive fast or dangerously unless necessary,” said The Father.
The buggy burst down the winding mountain path before her father had finished his sentence.
Chela drove her buggy with the pink ribbon still tied around it towards the location of her friends. She put a cassette into the tape player causing noise to erupt into the black sky. Her nose screwed in a grimace and she switched it off, settling into the engine growl of her new machine instead. With her oversized scorpion claw she held the steering wheel steady as she popped open a small bottle of beer from the top pocket of her dungarees, spat out the window then downed a mouthful of the harsh liquid as she roared past the insular village of Sorrowsong towards the Desert of Twisted Limbs.
 
Babs Tabasco sat outside the wooden hut in the mountains overlooking the sludge sea on one side and the Desert of Twisted Limbs on the other. She pulled an oversized black and red jumper over her faded dungarees and purple hoodie. Behind her identical twins were lacing the boots of the other and a lithe olive-skinned girl was in the Downward Facing Dog stretch. Beside a small campfire a thin girl in a large green parka shivered into a mug of soup whilst an overweight girl undressed.
“Dunno, why you wear all that baggy shit when you have tits like that,” said Sindy ‘Sickie’ Malone stirring the cup of soup.
Babs snorted.
“Shit, you’d still have to wear this shit even if you did have massive tits, because you always catch cold, or are cold, or trying to prevent a cold,” said Babs tying her red hair into bunches.
“Mine look like someone sucked the juice out with a vacuum,” said Sickie.
“Your whole body looks like that,” said Puffy squeezing into a red latex dress.
Sickie rolled her eyes.
“Puffy, you look like someone forgot to inflate you completely, all those ripples,” said Babs.
“Pockets, baby, pockets,’ said Puffy adjusting the dress like lava flowing over a sierra, ‘loads of chaps are ready to dive into this.”
“Bet most fucking drown,” said Babs under her breath.
“What?” said Puffy.
“Said, I think Chela’s on her way, can see dust down there,” said Babs.
Sickie put a telescope to her sunken eye. A buggy churned its way along the narrow path towards them.
“You’re right,’ said Sickie, ‘it is her I think, driving a bit fast if you ask me.”
Babs laughed.
“That girl is straight up mental,” she said.
Two girls with long purple hair joined them.
“Not her,” said Tiffany Terror, the one on the left.
“She’s so boring,’ said Rain Terror, the one on the right.
Sickie and Babs exchanged an eye roll. Puffy scratched between her legs then shook herself out.
“Didn’t fully drip dry,’ she said, ‘anyway girls, you’re just jealous because she has the life force of both of you in her tiny frame.”
“Mutant life force,” said the two girls simultaneously.
Puffy, Sickie and Babs shared an eyeroll at the expense of the Terror Twins.
Chela hopped the buggy towards the hut and pulled a skid churning grey dust at the row of girls watching her. She laughed and leapt out of the seat.
“You guys up for a field trip or what?” she said rubbing her hand and pincer together.
The girls crowded around Chela and her new buggy.
“I’m surprised your dad got you that,” said Babs.
Chela held one finger over a nostril and blew a snot missile to the dirt.
“He lets me out for ‘wholesome, group survival activities’, plus I believe he and Trounce have some other deals going on. Don’t think he’d be so quick to let me out in the buggy if I was meeting a boy.”
A bullish woman in her 50s appeared in the doorway of the wooden shed, dressed in a khaki top and shorts with a scout hat. She hooked her thumbs into her waistband and lifted her stomach and coughed. The girls immediately stopped talking and formed a line.
“Ahoy girls,” she said.
“Ahoy Scoutmaster Trounce,” said the line of girls.
Trounce positioned herself in front of the row of latex, dungarees, badly dyed hair and attitude.
“Hope you girls are ready for our PAWGS field trip?” she said.
The girls cheered. Trounce raised a baton settling them down. She waited a few moments.
“The plan is to set out in the Twerk Machine and survive the desert and whatever it throws at you for the next 72 hours, utilising the various skills and badges you have earned, so campfire building, cooking, hunting, tracking and so forth will see you in good stead.”
The girls all grinned.
“Of course, it should be stated that in a world recovering from the effects of a multiple apocalyptic orgasm that all manner of predator - animal, mutant or human, should be prepared for and expected. That’s where you can employ the various self-defence badges, knot tying, advanced weaponry, evasive tactics and so on.”
The girls all winked and raised their eyebrows at each other.
“You girls will set out on your own and return here in 72 hours.”
Babs raised her hand.
“Babs?”
“You mean you ain’t coming, miss?”
Trounce shook her head. The line of girls lost themselves in positive proclamations, fist pumping and hand slapping.
“If I hadn’t been your age once, I would take that reaction as an insult,’ said Trounce, ‘however, I was your age and I managed out there alone. It is crucial in your development as PAWGS to brave the harsh world alone. So please ensure those of you who have parents or guardians have your permission slips ready.”
Trounce walked to the front of the line to face the first girl who was short dark skinned with long black hair in a tight plait.
“Licorice Katana, reporting for duty,” said Licorice handing her permission slip.
“This should be an opportunity to utilise your excellent tracking and scouting skills,” said Trounce nodding at her and moving to the next girl.
“Sindy Malone, reporting.”
“Surprised to see you here Sickie,’ said Trounce, ‘but well done.”
Trounce looked Puffy up and down.
“Puffy Luscious, here,” said Puffy fidgeting with her skirt.
Trounce tutted and moved on.
“Where’s Marcy Tallapalenka?” said Puffy.
“She’s having her stomach stapled again,” said Trounce.
Puffy shook her head.
“She should embrace her large size, like me,” said Puffy.
Chela elbowed Babs.
“Yeah right, if we meet cannibals we know who they will catch and eat first,” she said.
“Yeah we’d be part of the tribe by the time they finished her,” said Babs.
The two girls laughed.
Trounce stared at Babs who quelled.
“Babs Tabasco, miss, reporting for duty.”
“You impress on this trip, then we will see about getting you those attack dogs you wanted,” said Trounce.
Babs smiled and straightened herself. Trounce flicked her eyes to Chela.
“Chela, reporting for duty,” said Chela yawning and looking to the sky.
“Not sure what this trip is going to do to develop you, personally Chela, maybe it will help you interact with others and force you to keep that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in check, who knows? But remember I have a direct line to The Father.”
Chela flicked her nose.
Trounce turned to the Terror twins who were making faces at Chela.
“Girls?”
The girls turned to Trounce with wide welcoming smiles.
“Rain and Tiffany Terror reporting for duty, miss. You are looking well today,” they said.
“Now, girls try not to assert control over the rest of the girls on this trip, this is a democratic group activity,’ said Trounce clasping her hands together, ‘Chela you will drive the Twerk Machine, your buggy will be safe and sound here, I will monitor you via radio.”
The girls picked up their backpacks and poured into the Twerk Machine which was a restored 1977 Chevy Blazer Chalet camper sourced and restored by Fat Al’s Junk Yard, painted in pink, black and yellow like a piece of confectionary.
“Just one thing, girls,” said Trounce.
The girls all looked at her, ready to leave.
“Tops! Make sure your scout shirts are on. I’ll let you off the shorts, but tops must be worn.”
The girls groaned as they searched their packs for their uniform and half-heartedly threw on and buttoned their PAWGS shirts then stared at Trounce. Once Puffy had finally put her shirt on, Trounce tapped the roof and the vehicle blew down the mountain road.
 
On a battered road within the Desert of Twisted Limbs an overturned camper smouldered. Two girls lay in the road, their battered and bruised bodies already attracting vultures and insects.
“Damn shame those girls died on impact,’ said Grand GG PhaseFucker twirling the ends of his moustache with oily fingers, ‘I could have done with dipping my wick.”
“We still could boss,” said Shitslinger rubbing his stubbled head tattooed with a crude skull and crossbones design.
“I draw the line at any necro stuff,’ said PhaseFucker munching on a cooked leg, ‘it would be a step too far.”
The bikers sat around a campfire not far from the vehicle they had raided. They wore leather jackets with the ‘The Ruffians’ scrawled on the back in white above the stencil of a rat riding a motorcycle. Stacked beside them were two male bodies with a third legless and turning on a spit above the fire. PhaseFucker passed the leg to the thin man with a pencil moustache and pupil-less eyes next to him.
“With all due respect boss, I reckon it should be up for debate, I mean, once you’ve eaten someone, there really shouldn’t be any more boundaries left,’ said Shitslinger, ‘what you think Rev?”
The thin man took a small bite from the leg.
“I’m chewing it over,” said The Reverend Orke Danneals with a voice that sounded like a parasite.
The gang laughed.
“Well I’m not sticking either of my dicks in any dead girl,” said Larry rubbing his hands over his hair to ensure the integrity of his quiff.
“What’s it like having two dicks Larry?” said Anvil, the largest member of the gang.
Larry stared seriously in Anvil’s craggily carved face.
“Double the pleasure, double the pain. Luckily, I’m ambidextrous,” he said clicking his fingers and pointing two hands at the group.
The gang filled the air with greasy giggles.
“Still,’ said Larry Two Dicks, ‘shame you were so quick to kill that last bloke, that twink could have been femmed up and would have done me.”
Grand GG PhaseFucker stood up.
“Okay, clarification on the law of The Ruffians, dead chicks are off limits. If you are still so worked up you are considering it, I recommend popping one off in the bushes. That said, we will get some chicks for the back of our bikes soon.”
“Amen,’ said Reverend Orke raising his hip flask then downing a shot, ‘take a swig boys then pass it on.”
The guys cheered and chugged alcohol as they enjoyed their hearty meal.
 
“I feel sick,’ said Sickie, ‘can you slow down?”
Chela pushed her tongue against her teeth, Babs rested her head against the vibrating glass. Licorice sat between the Terror Twins her eyes closed as they chomped chewing gum and blew pink bubbles. Puffy gazed into a compact mirror whilst carefully applying eye makeup despite the frantic bouncing of the vehicle. Sickie was breathing heavily and a gentle shade of green.
“Crack open a window,” said Chela.
“But then I’m cold,” said Sickie.
Babs gritted her teeth in the rear-view mirror.
“Man, you’re giving me a fucking headache. Can you please just stop whining?” she said.
Chela slowed the Twerk Machine to a gentler speed.
“There you go, it’s not as fun when someone’s constantly whining. Besides we’re far enough away now. Licorice, you got the stuff?” said Chela.
Licorice opened her eyes, smiled and nodded.
“What you got?” said Puffy leaning forward knocking Sickie up against the window.
The Terror twins’ eyes widened as Babs grinned and met their gaze. They took their gum out and stuck it behind their ears.
Licorice pulled up her seat and took out a cooler from a secret compartment. The girls started to whoop when Licorice opened the lid and threw a bottle of clear liquid to each girl.
“This is 98% proof guys, so go easy on it,” she said.
She pulled a bottle of dark liquid and plonked it in Sickie’s lap.
“Get a mouthful of that, hun,’ she said, ‘it’ll settle your stomach.”
“What else you got?” said Puffy.
Licorice took out a bag of purple powder, a bag of cannabis and a sheet of paper with images of radiation symbols.
“Now that is what I’m talking about,’ said Puffy, ‘all the supplies for a proper trip.”
“Let’s do ‘em now,” said Babs.
“Yeah alright,” said Sickie.
The girls cackled.
“You’ve perked up, ain’t you?” said Babs tearing the sheet and handing out tabs to everyone.
“Keep it under the tongue then swallow,” said Licorice.
“Good advice for many acts,” said Puffy.
Chela parked the Twerk Machine in a clearing, the girls poured out of the camper immediately setting up a camp, with Babs starting the fire, Chela and Licorice setting up warning signals, Puffy setting up the chairs, and Sickie and the twins setting out the supplies and rolling joints.
Music churned from the Twerk Machine’s amplifiers to the campfire scene its headlights illuminated. Chela, Babs and Puffy were dancing together, Licorice sat cross-legged travelling the roads of her own imagination as Rain and Tiffany lay back gazing at the mess of stars in the rainbow-kissed sky. Sickie huddled close to the campfire lost in the flames.
“Wonder what Trounce would have to say about this?” said Sickie.
The girls who were dancing joined her around the fire.
“Trounce seems like a goer to me,” said Babs.
“Definitely,’ said Puffy slugging vodka down her throat, ‘reckon she’s chugged on loads of cock.”
Chela giggled spraying vodka over the Tiffany and Rain. They tutted and wiped each other down.
“We’ve shared a few guys before,’ said Tiffany, ‘but they can’t handle us both.”
“What about you Sickie?’ said Babs, ‘or are you allergic?”
Sickie barely able to lift her wasted eyes shook her head.
“I believe in love, saving myself for the right one.”
The girls all looked at each other, lost in the silent aftermath of honesty. Music from the radio drifted over them.
“That’s beautiful, Sickie, good for you,” said Puffy.
The twins flashed a sly glance at each other.
“What about you Chela? You popped your cherry yet?” they said.
“Nah, but wanna know how many people I’ve killed? ‘Cos I’ve definitely popped that cherry.”
The girls looked at the mutant girl illuminated by the fire, staring at them with a real eye and a bionic eye, scratching an oversized pincer where her arm should be. They lowered their gaze.
“I popped a different type of cherry recently,” said Babs.
When all the girls looked at her she turned around and pulled up her shirt. ‘P.A.W.G’ was tattooed on her lower back.
“Hardcore!” said Licorice.
“You have a nice ass, Babs,’ said Puffy, ‘like a ripe peach. I’m happy with my body, but if I could change one thing it would be having an ass like that, mine’s a little droopy.”
“Me too!” said Chela.
“What you have a droppy ass?”
“Chela’s ass is tight!” said Sickie.
“Nah, I mean, I got a tattoo recently.”
The girls flicked their gaze as she turned and pulled off her top to reveal a full back tattoo of butterfly wings in ultraviolet ink.
“Beast!” said Sickie.
“Now that is cool,” said Puffy.
“Cheers, If I was to change my body, I’d have Babs’ tits,’ said Chela, ‘those things are weapons of mass destruction.”
 Babs marched around the campfire thrusting out her breasts and shouting, ‘take that!’ whilst the rest of the girls whooped and cheered and then chanted.
“PAWG Power!”
“PAWG Power!”
“PAWG Power!”
 
Chela stirred in the twilight, the lightest this part of the world got without being bombarded by solar flares. Laid out across two camp chairs she watched a scorpion cross the dirt beneath her. Sickie was curled next to the campfire which had burned out, the Terror twins snored in the front seats of the camper, Babs and Puffy were asleep on the vehicle’s roof. She couldn’t locate Licorice.
Chela took a snort of the purple powder in a small pile on her chest and lit the spliff that had been tucked behind her ear, inhaling deeply she searched her memory for hints at the events of the night before. She exhaled filling the air with a jet of black smoke along with any desire to worry about the previous night. She strolled to kickstart the campfire, pulled the blanket over Sickie and took a swig from the whiskey bottle cradled in her arms.
The camper was remarkably inviting in the blue light, so she staggered towards it and stared at her image in the glass, sniffed and rubbed her eyes caught in a combination of the post-high cosiness and the chill of the new day. The furry seat had a lovely warmth that she purred into, closing the back door gently not to alert any of the girls to her newly claimed resting place fearing having to share. She smoked the spliff, flicking the ash onto the camper floor until she drifted back to sleep.
 
“It’s your fault,’ said Babs, ‘both of yours.”
“Is it fuck,” said the Terror twins.
Chela yawned deeply. Puffy groaned still half asleep on the camper roof. Chela wondered whether Puffy was directly above her and imagined what would happen if she fell through.
“Come on guys,’ said Sickie, ‘it’s no one’s fault.”
“And what are you doing building the campfire that high, it’s practically a bonfire, any freak will be able to see that,” said Babs.
“I’m cold,” said Sickie.
“Pretty sure there’s a garage a way down the road, I can be discrete, see what I can get, what you reckon?” said Licorice.
Sickie looked at Babs. Babs raised her head in pronounced thought.
“Yep, you do that Licorice, but make sure you have water and supplies,” she said.
“Already done,” said Licorice, who turned on her heel and ran into the darkness towards the road.
“Who made you chief anyway? Barking orders at everyone,” said Tiffany.
Chela got into the front seat and searched the compartments until she found a bottle of vodka, which she took a deep gulp from. In front of the camper she could see Babs and the twins face to face ready to go at it. She pushed the horn. She took another swig and upon seeing that the girls still hadn’t settled she pushed the horn again. Squinting at the girls she realised that not only were the girls difficult to see, the horn had not made any sound.
“Battery flat?” she said.
“Oh, here’s the genius,” said Rain.
Babs pushed her hard. Tiffany retaliated by grabbing the bunches of Babs’ hair and headbutting her. The girls fell to the floor in a scramble, rolling about as a threesome, scramming, pulling and biting at each other.
“Fuck’s sake,” said Chela rubbing her head unsure if she had a hangover or if the metal plate in her head was playing up.
She walked over to the tangle of girls and separated them.
“Come on girls you’re better than this,” she said.
The Twins bowed their heads and Babs looked away.
“You know two against one isn’t fair,” said Chela.
“You’re right,’ said the twins, ‘sorry Babs.”
Babs nodded sternly accepting their apology.
“Okay, we’ll tag team,’ said Rain, ‘I’ll go first.”
Babs grinned rubbing her hands together. Rain pulled Tiffany to her feet and then stepped out of the makeshift ring the rest of the girls had quickly cobbled together with the camp chairs.
With all the distraction the girls were oblivious to the sounds of motorbike engines in the distance.
 
“Alright boys let’s move out,” said Grand GG PhaseFucker combing his moustache in the handlebar mirror.
“Bit early, ain’t it?’ said Shitslinger scratching in his pants, ‘I’m still knackered after that meal.”
Anvil was busy doing push ups whilst Larry urinated two streams of dark piss into the dirt.
“You ever tried to write your name twice?” said Reverend Orke Danneals, his slimy laugh filling the sky.
The two streams of urine converged and trickled beneath Anvil.
“Fuck’s sake Larry, got your piss on me,” said Anvil wiping his face and spitting.
“Best to get moving whilst the twilight’s on, save battery power,’ said Larry buttoning his jeans and shaking his hands, ‘better riding in the blue light after a snort though.”
Grand GG ceased combing his beard and pursed his lips until a smile formed in the corner of his mouth.
“Alright, form a queue,” he said.
The gang of Ruffians formed a line as PhaseFucker pulled out a bag of purple dust placing a bump on his fist. Each man devoured the mound with a hefty snort. They danced and punched the air as the kick hit them and then rode the wave across the Desert of Twisted Limbs on their bikes until PhaseFucker pointed out the campfire in the distance.
“A fire might mean cooking and cooking might mean girls,” he said revving the accelerator.
The Ruffians cheered increasing their speed.
 
Babs’ breasts swung like pendulums as she pounded her fists into Tiffany’s bloodied face.
“Stretch out,” said Rain reaching out with her hand.
Tiffany stretched enough to brush fingers with her sister. Rain leaped from the chair and crashed into Babs with a flying clothesline manoeuvre. Babs scattered backwards skidding across the desert floor with a look of bewilderment across her face.
“Get out the ring,” said the spectators to Tiffany, who responded by rolling out.
Rain gave herself a run up and came down with an elbow drop on Babs, who clutched her stomach and rolled about winded. The impact had knocked some of the enthusiasm out of Rain, who struggled to get back to her feet. Chela looked at the fighters, all three were banged up and had more than preserved their honour. Puffy and Sickie were cheering whilst sharing a bottle of vodka. Chela stepped into the ring between Rain and Babs.
“Ding Ding!” she said shaking her claw.
Babs, Rain and Tiffany shared sighs of relief. Tiffany helped Rain to her feet, and in turn both helped Babs to hers. They shook hands.
“Sounds like we missed a fucking good show,” said PhaseFucker appearing from behind the camper.
“Yeah, a nice bit of girl on girl,” said Reverend Orke Danneals.
The figures of Larry Two Dicks, Anvil and Shitslinger followed.
Chela eyed up the bikers, she inhaled to calm her pulse, which was racing more out of annoyance at being surprised than fear.
“Where’s your bikes?” she said.
PhaseFucker turned to Orke nodding his head with an impressed smile.
“She’s pretty quick this one,” he said.
“Yeah, a mutant too by the looks of it, love me a mutant girl,” said Orke.
Sickie moved behind Puffy, who was busy tidying her hair and shortening her dress. Tiffany, Rain and Babs stood side by side ready to fight as a threesome.
“No need for edginess girls,’ said PhaseFucker, ‘the boys and me are here on good terms, we didn’t want to roll up engines blasting and give you the wrong impression of us.”
Chela laughed.
“You mean, you wanted to surprise whoever was at the campfire,” she said.
PhaseFucker applauded.
“Told you she was quick, didn’t I?”
“You sure did,” said Orke eyeing Chela like a leathery tongue licking an ice cream.
“True,’ said PhaseFucker holding up his palms, ‘that said, if we meant you girls bad intentions, I wouldn’t have introduced myself. You look like you are having a party, and well, we’re always up to party, ain’t we boys?”
The bikers laughed.
“Introductions are in order, my name is Grandmaster GG PhaseFucker and I’m head of our little Chapter called The Ruffians, you might’ve heard of us?”
“Nope,” said Chela.
“Well, we can’t be all that bad, can we?” he said.
“He’s got a point, Chela,” said Puffy walking forward.
Chela flashed a gritted frown at her.
Puffy offered the back of her hand to PhaseFucker like a dainty fairy.
“My you’re one playful looking sausage roll,” said Reverend Orke taking her hand and licking it.
“This is Reverend Orke Daniels,’ said PhaseFucker, ‘excuse his lack of pupils, some sort of genetic thing. The slobbering skinhead behind me is Shitslinger, and the carved statue towering behind him is Anvil.”
“Who’s the quiff?” said the Terror twins.
“Well, that is Larry Two Dicks,” said PhaseFucker.
The girls raised their eyebrows.
“No misnomer,” said PhaseFucker smiling.
The Terror twins stood up and walked towards Larry each taking a hand and leading him to sit by the fire.
“There that’s nice and friendly,” said PhaseFucker sitting down and patting the chair next to him whilst looking at Chela.
Anvil stomped over towards Sickie and offered his coat.
“You shivering, like coat to keep warm?” he said in a voice that sounded like friendly stone.
Sickie smiled and nodded like a mouse agreeing to eat out of a person’s hand. She took the coat and wrapped herself in it.
“May sit?” said Anvil.
Sickie nodded and Anvil sat beside her.
“Large fire, but right size for me,” he said.
Shitslinger rubbed his eyebrows and walked towards Babs offering her a hand. She did a backwards roll and then sat on the other side of the campfire. Shitslinger gritted his teeth and shook his eyes bemused. Chela noted the vein bulging in his temple.
“No worries there Shitslinger, not every gal is looking for a dance partner, come join me and my new friend,” said PhaseFucker.
Chela sat down next to PhaseFucker and Shitslinger took the seat next to her. She winked at Babs, who smiled back. PhaseFucker lit a joint and inhaled deeply.
“I must say I am intrigued,’ he said slapping his thigh and exhaling, ‘what is a pack of fine beauties doing out unprotected in this harsh land, surely your fathers must be worried?”
The bikers laughed like an oily engine through a gear change. Puffy and the twins laughed too.
“We’re PAWGS, baby,” said Puffy jiggling her tits.
“Yeah, we don’t need no protection out here,” said Tiffany rubbing Larry’s left thigh.
Chela pushed her tongue into her cheek and shook her head.
“PAWGS eh?’ said Orke, ‘sounds naughty girl, and what exactly is a PAWG?”
“Powerful Artillery Wielding Girl Scouts,’ said Rain rubbing Larry’s right thigh.
Orke chuckled.
“Well you sure don’t seem to have many big weapons on you,” he said.
“What about these?” said Puffy shaking her tits again.
Orke threw his head back with a wild grin and then brought his head down into Puffy’s cleavage. She squealed and squeezed her tits against his face.
“That’s the thing about names’ said PhaseFucker, ‘they are funny things, designed to inspire fear, like when I started this gang, some of the guys wanted a scarier name than The Ruffians, but to me it is actions not names that matter.”
Shitslinger placed his hand on Chela’s knee and began to rub her leg in waves, each time closer to her groin. She leaned into him, leaving herself open to PhaseFucker at her left. Shitslinger grinned as the curly haired girl moved in responding to his moves. She winked at him as her grin became a shrug. His eyes became quizzical then bulbous with shock as the claw around his neck tightened.
“Afraid I have to say no,” said Chela.
He lifted his hand off her thigh and she responded by relinquishing her grip on his throat.
“Well that’s not very hospitable is it?’ said PhaseFucker,’I thought you mutant girls were right goers, could at least throw a fuck our way, seeing as your friends are taking care of our compadres.”
Chela stood up unzipped her pants and pulled them down to reveal a mechanical contraption encasing her crotch.
“Sorry boys, daddy says no,” she said pulling her trousers back up.
“What was that?” said Orke winking at Puffy and nodding towards his crotch.
“Chastity belt, won’t come off, trust me I’ve tried,” she said sniggering.
PhaseFucker stood up, shrugging his shoulders and puffing out his chest.
“Well your mouth works don’t it?” he said unzipping his fly.
Chela smiled.
“Not in the way you’d like,” she said biting her teeth together.
PhaseFucker pulled out his gun. Chela was ready to pounce but a cough behind her disarmed her. Chela turned to see Orke’s revolver pointed at the top of Puffy’s head as she nuzzled her mouth into Orke’s lap. The splashing sounds and grunts of Puffy seemed absurd to Chela in the circumstances. She turned back to the two men as PhaseFucker clocked her in the side of the head with his revolver. She fell flat into the dirt.
“That’s okay, wouldn’t want to fuck a scorpion anyway,” he said.
Puffy looked up as the two men kicked Chela in the chest and stomach. Sickie shivered inside Anvil’s large leather jacket and arms oblivious to her surroundings and the Terror Twins were riding Larry Two Dicks as they watched the beating. As the boots pounded into Chela’s body, Puffy’s voice floated into her ears.
“Hey guys, no need for that, there’s plenty of me to go around, leave her and join me and your friend here,” she said.
“Well I need to blast my load first,” said PhaseFucker taking out his revolver and aiming at Chela’s face.
Babs bolted into the darkness as PhaseFucker pulled the trigger.
The gunshot cried into the desert sky.
The last thing Chela thought before the blackness took her was that Puffy was a true friend and she would have to limit the number of fat jokes at her expense in the future.
 
Chela woke with a fierce inhaling of air. She shot to her feet ready to fight, saw that she was alone next to the dying campfire and fell back to the ground.
“Shit,” she said clutching her body.
Her body raged with pain. She would regenerate the damage soon enough, but for the meantime she would feel the effects of the beating. The pain indicated that she had been out less than 24 hours, probably only a few hours in total. She touched her face and pulled out the bullet lodged in the metal plate in her forehead.
“Psst,” said a voice from the darkness.
“Who the fuck is that?” said Chela.
“It’s Babs, you okay?” said Babs.
Chela nodded, then grimaced, then grunted.
“Get over here and help me up then,” said Chela.
Babs crept from the cover of darkness. She rested Chela’s head on her knees and held a bottle of vodka to her lips. Chela sipped the liquid, then gulped it devouring half the bottle. Babs held out a bump of purple powder on her fist, which Chela snorted.
“That should help you on your way to forgetting about the pain,’ said Babs, ‘sorry I didn’t do more to help.”
Chela dismissed Babs’ apologies with a wave of her claw.
“Look girl, we were caught without our weapons, I should have just cut the guy’s head off and took on their leader, but I couldn’t read the situation, the other girls didn’t seem to be on the same page. What happened to them?”
“The Ruffians took them,’ said Babs downing a slug of vodka,’ they took Sickie and the twins.”
“Predators always go after the weak and the lame,’ said Chela smirking, ‘what about Puffy?”
Babs nodded her head.
“Well I owe her one, she took one for the team last night.”
Chela scanned the campsite, shrugged, then performed a variety of stretches.
“I can’t believe I left my hammer in my buggy,’ said Chela shaking her head, ‘so dumb.”
Babs rubbed her eyes.
“We didn’t even bother getting the guns from the Twerk Machine, amateur hour, or what?”
The two girls walked to their dead vehicle, left untouched by The Ruffians. They pulled up the floor in the back revealing a small arsenal of weaponry.
“Shame Marcie Two Bellies isn’t here, she’s a whizz with the M60,’ said Babs ‘speaking of which, you take the shotgun.”
Chela grinned caressing the double-barrelled shotgun against her face, she stuffed her pockets with shells.
“Reckon I should take the bazooka?” said Babs twirling a bunch of her hair.
“Really need permission?”
Babs winked and swung the strap over her shoulder, she picked a case of rockets up.
“Shame the vehicle is shagged, walking is gonna be a bitch,” she said.
“Speaking of walking, you seen Licorice?”
Babs shook her head.
The girls gathered supplies of water, ammunition and drugs and were about to start their journey when they saw a jeep bounding over the landscape with a person parasailing off the back of it. The driver waved at them in the lowlight and slowed the jeep allowing his partner to land behind him. He drove towards the campfire.
“Hey, hope you don’t mind us interrupting, this is as good as any other place to take a break,” he said.
Chela looked at Babs and raised her eyes at the jeep. Babs returned a nod unable to hide a smile, which fortuitously the boys in the jeep assumed was flirtatious. They watched as the driver untied his friend from the parachute.
“Would either of you like a go?” he said.
The girls shook their heads.
“I’m Wired by the way, the guy behind me is Jaxxon Sativa,’ he said smiling at Chela and offering his hand, ‘it’s the lightest it’s been for ages these last few days, thought we’d catch it while we could. You guys had similar thoughts?”
“What you mean?” said Babs.
Chela touched Babs on the small of her back to calm her nerves.
“The campervan,’ said Wired, ‘you out here enjoying the light too.”
“Yes,’ said Chela, eyeing the young man’s smile and offering her claw, ‘something like that.”
Wired held Chela’s claw and gently shook it as he stared into her eyes.
“It’s good to meet you,’ he said, ‘you mind if we sit by your fire, warm up?”
“Sure,” said Chela.
Jaxxon wound the parasailing equipment up and put it away in the jeep.
“Hey girls, fancy a smoke? Really makes you crave the green stuff when you’re up there risking your neck all day.”
Jaxxon eyed Chela’s claw and switched his smile to Babs as he joined Wired at the campfire.
Babs made a brief gesture with her hand as though rolling an invisible pair of dice. Chela smirked. She looked at Wired’s back. He turned and smiled waving her over. She walked towards him and sat beside him. He held a vaporiser in a large gloved hand.
“What’s up with your hand?” she said.
“Oh nothing, I’m a technomancer, it’s a contraption I’ve been working on, I call it the PowerGauntlet, so far I’ve managed to tweak it so that it can generate 100 volts of electricity in the palm.”
“Sweet,” said Chela genuinely impressed.
“I’m not the strongest guy, and out here you need to make use of every advantage to level the playing field. Don’t you think?”
She smiled holding out her claw.
“That’s my advantage, or disadvantage,” she said.
“Flaws are just a matter of perception,” said Wired placing the vaporiser in her claw.
Chela took a hit of the vanilla flavoured weed contemplating the words of the young technomancer, whilst in her bionic vision she enjoyed the way he looked at her when he thought he was unchecked. She passed the vaporiser to Babs who took a hit and passed it to Jaxxon beside her. Upon taking his hit Jaxxon bolted up and flipped into a handstand and walked around on his hands.
“You cut your head?’ said Wired pointing at his own forehead, ‘You okay?”
“Yeah I’m fine, it’s just a bullet hole.”
Wired laughed.
“You from round here?” said Wired.
Chela nodded.
“Up near Sorrowsong.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I know, don’t worry, I’m no Purist,” she said.
“Well I got that from the claw,’ he said, ‘pretty sure they’d want to kill you on sight for that.”
She laughed.
“What about you?”
Wired was about to respond when Jaxxon’s voice cut across them.
“There’s a water pool down there, who’s up for a swim?” he said.
Wired jumped up and ran to look.
“Typical ain’t it?’ Chela said scratching her chin, ‘I’d actually like to join them.”
Babs clicked her tongue and shrugged.
“Yeah we will be there now, just getting our costumes from the camper, meet you there,” said Babs.
Chela and Babs threw their weapons into the back seat of the jeep and climbed into the front. Chela was about to hotwire the engine when she realised Wired had left his keys in the ignition, normally she would laugh at his naivety, but for some reason she sympathised.
“Start the car then,” said Babs tapping her thigh.
Chela shaken out of her reverie started the engine.
Babs grabbed Chela’s shotgun and pointed it at the boys who stopped instinctively raising their hands.
“Sorry boys, under normal circumstances, we would genuinely love to hook up with you, but we need to go kill some guys and rescue some girls,” said Babs.
Chela watched the boys disappear in a haze of dust in the rear-view mirror.
 
“Why do you keep slowing down?” said PhaseFucker.
Orke thumbed at Puffy sat behind him, he loosened her arms around his chest and sighed. PhaseFucker revved towards Larry, the twins behind him. The lines on his face formed the impression of a worn horseshoe, his eyes sagging beneath his dishevelled hair. He looked over at Anvil’s blissful stone face like a statue of a smile, Sickie behind him shivering in his leather jacket. PhaseFucker rubbed his crotch, the blowjob he’d received the night before had been unsatisfactory; a combination of teeth and reluctance to use the tongue or mouth itself. The girls had wanted to stop too often for his liking too, toilet breaks, sight-seeing, rest stops along with the contingent having to match Orke’s slow speed. He saw the service station in the distance and his moustache raised revealing a blackened toothy smile.
“Rest ahead, fellas,” he said powering the bike ahead of the pack.
The service station seemed to be made of rust with a side-line as a museum; old engines and shells of vehicles littered the forecourt. The shop itself housed inside a large grey cube of reinforced concrete and bulletproof glass, outside of which a few wooden benches and tables were scattered. The bikers entered in single file led by PhaseFucker who parked close to the dirt road.
“Right then girls,’ said PhaseFucker wiping his brow and holding out credits, ‘you go and get us some drinks and some treats for yourselves.”
Orke’s bike chugged in behind them.
The twins leapt off the bike and grabbed the credits from PhaseFucker.
“Come on Puffy, we’re getting some refreshments,” they said.
“Ace, that seat sure has caused me discomfort and I’ve had at least two sets of man batter slaloming down my legs the entire way.”
The girls cackled as Orke’s face twisted in disgust.
“Uh, boss,” said Anvil.
“What is it?’ said PhaseFucker watching the girls walk away, ‘go on Sickie, join your friends.”
Sickie shivered and hugged into Anvil.
“Boss,’ said Anvil bolstered by the love of his life’s arms around him, ‘I’m leaving the gang, going to live with Sindy.”
“Are you fucking crackers?” said PhaseFucker.
The four bikers watched open mouthed as their strongest member turned his bike around and rode off in the direction they had just come from. Puffy and the twins ran towards them.
“Where’s Sickie going?” said Puffy.
“Can’t believe Anvil pussied out,” said PhaseFucker eyes still fixed on Anvil’s bike.
“First taste of pussy and he leaves the life to settle down,” said Orke shaking his head.
“Maybe it’s true love,” said Puffy.
Anvil and Orke both spat on the floor.
“Pah,” said PhaseFucker.
“Larry,’ said the twins, ‘we need you to carry our things for us whilst we shop. Also, need you to shampoo our hair later.”
“Yes, be there now,” he said.
PhaseFucker and Orke turned incredulous at Larry, who was draped over his bike like a sack of rotting vegetables.
The twins and Puffy walked back to the service station.
PhaseFucker took out a telescope from his waistcoat pocket and watched Anvil riding away on the long road. Dust spat up on the tip of the horizon, he focused on it until into view he saw a jeep driven by the mutant girl he’d shot in the face.
“Right guys,’ said PhaseFucker rolling his shoulders and fingering his moustache, ‘emergency meeting.”
The four bikers huddled together.
“These chicks ain’t worth the hassle,’ said PhaseFucker, ‘besides I’ve just seen that mutant chick and the other girl with the huge tits driving towards us.”
“Time to leave,’ said Orke, ‘that chick is screwing my rear suspension and slowing me down, we have to ditch her.”
Larry nodded.
“Man, these are first girls we’ve encountered that have wanted to go with us,’ said Shitslinger, ‘last night was the first time I put my dick in a woman for ages.”
“You have her on your bike then,” said Orke.
Shitslinger looked at Puffy then shook his head.
“Too much aggro. Let’s ditch these ass pains,” said PhaseFucker.
The Ruffians nodded their heads, started their bikes and rode away from the service station. The twins ran to the road followed by Puffy, screaming insults and throwing their snacks against the floor.
“We’re coming for you Larry!” said the twins.
The bikers whooped and punched the air.
“Boss, I reckon they will come after us, that mutant’s gonna be pissed and the twins are mental,” said Larry.
“Affirmative to that,” said Orke.
“Well, let’s have a surprise for them then,” said Grand GG PhaseFucker.
 
Chela and Babs brought the jeep to a stop at the tangled mass of flesh and blood.
“What is it?’ said Babs, ‘roadkill?”
Chela hopped out of her seat and walked across the bonnet and jumped into the road. She crouched at the mangled corpse.
“It’s roadkill alright, just not the good stuff,” she said.
Babs wrinkled her nose.
“What you mean?”
“It’s Licorice,” said Chela.
Babs jumped out of her seat and leapt off the bonnet to join Chela.
“What the fuck? How can you tell?”
Chela held up a long braid of black hair.
“Gross,” said Babs.
Chela scanned the road.
“The Ruffians stampeded her,’ said Chela walking towards the scrub at the side of the road, ‘may not have been intentional.”
“Really?”
“Nah, probably intentional,” she said.
Chela pulled a black object from the scrub and held it up for Babs to see.
“She found a battery then?” said Babs removing Licorice’s scout shirt, folding it neatly and shoving it into her pocket.
“Yeah, she was a competent scout.”
Chela put the battery pack in the jeep and in a determined silence the pair drove after The Ruffians desperate to enact vengeance.
The road stretched out in uneventful blandness until a biker emerged from the hazy twilight. Chela focused the zoom option of her bionic eye.
“It’s the giant one, with Sickie,” said Chela.
“Exercise caution, he may be bringing her back,” said Babs.
Chela stopped the jeep in the road. She racked the double-barrelled shotgun using the door as cover. Babs did the same with the bazooka. The biker approached them slowly with Sickie waving a scarf.
“Stop there,” said Chela.
Anvil stopped the bike and held up his hands. Sickie got off the bike and ran in front of him.
“Don’t shoot,” she said.
“Why not?” said Chela.
Sickie took Anvil’s hand.
“He left the gang, we’re going back to mine, Anvil wants to work on my garden. We’re in love.”
“True love,” said Anvil.
Chela and Babs exchanged glances.
“Fair enough,’ said Chela, ride past slowly on my side.”
Chela closed the door of the jeep and took cover on the other side of the car with Babs.
“Slowly,” said Chela.
Anvil complied nodding at the girls as he passed the jeep.
“See you later,” said Sickie.
Babs and Chela trailed them with their weapons.
“Congratulations,” said Chela.
“Yeah congrats,” said Babs.
Sickie smiled and squeezed into Anvil as he raised a hand to wave. Then they picked up speed and continued their ride home. Chela and Babs waited until the bike was out of sight then thundered after the remaining gang members.
The service station soon came into view along with their browbeaten friends, slumped over wooden benches on the forecourt. They pulled the jeep into the garage.
 “It’s Chela and Babs,” said Puffy throwing her hands up in cheer and climbing into the back seat.
“We’re hunting bikers, you coming girls?” said Babs.
The twins grimaced at the girls, tutted then slumped towards the jeep and squeezed in the back seat with Puffy.
 “Larry Two Dicks is ours,” they said, their faces full of petulant thunder and chewing gum.
“We got dumped,” said Puffy.
Chela stifled a laugh with the rev of the accelerator. Babs explained their acquisition of the jeep and their discovery of Licorice as Chela focused on following the bikers’ tracks in between thoughts of the blonde-haired boy she’d wanted to go skinny dipping with. Then Babs took great delight in regaling the girls in the back seat about Sickie and Anvil finding true love which Puffy found delightful and the twins distasteful.
The jeep followed the road on the edge of a ravine on Chela’s side. She maintained a healthy speed when something disturbed her. Ahead of her she could not make out any more trails as though the bikers had disappeared. She saw a thin flash across the road at eye level that connected to a mast at the top of the ravine.
“Duck!” she said.
The jeep smashed through a thin line of razor wire tied across the road which tore through the windscreen, whipped above Chela and Babs’ heads as they threw themselves beneath the dashboard. Tiffany and Rain managed to do the same but Puffy only said ‘what?’ before the wire tore through her neck decapitating her. The jeep swerved and Puffy’s head landed next to Chela’s where their eyes met. Tiffany, Rain and Babs threw themselves from the jeep landing heavily onto the road. The jeep flipped over and plummeted towards the bottom of the ravine. Chela looked up and saw the ground below coming towards her with the full weight of the jeep above her. She threw herself out of the jeep towards the mountain side and tumbled, crashing through the branches of decaying trees and into the grey sand. The air from her chest escaped and as she fought for oxygen the pain in her back tore through her body. She made out the figures of the bikers at the top of the ravine looking down at her. Her final thoughts before the shadow took her was on how she had been a total rookie for most of this field trip.
 
On the road the bikers cheered.
“Told you it would work,” said Orke.
“Man, gotta say that is some evil shit,’ said PhaseFucker adjusting his crotch and peering down into the wreckage at the bottom of the gorge, ‘that’s one dead mutant. Shame really ‘cos she was a stunner.”
“Apart from the claw,” said Shitslinger.
The tangled bodies of the Terror twins lay in the road, their eyes fixed on Larry who gazed down at them adjusting his quiff. Babs, spattered with her own blood, breathed shallowly as her body spasmed.
“Right gather them up,’ said PhaseFucker, ‘we’ll take them back to the HQ, chain them up as our personal sex dolls. Don’t worry girls, we’ll let you heal first, we’re not animals.”
 
Chela awoke from 12 hours of blackness to find a scorpion crawling over her chest. She tried to flick it off, but her hand wouldn’t lift. Pain swelled in her lower back. Her toes twitched in response to signals from her brain which gave her some comfort. The bonus of being experimented on as a foetus by an insane scientist father figure to engineer a genetically modified killer was the various benefits she had over the regular girls growing up; heightened reflexes, enhanced IQ, strength, durability, a body adaptable to weather extremes, and the benefits of rapid healing. Her physical body only required 24 hours to recover from injuries if she wasn’t killed outright.
She spent the first eight hours immobile running through various self-defence manoeuvres in her mind, detailing then disassembling, cleaning and reassembling of various weapons, she even visualised herself completing her vigorous workout routine, push up by push up, pull up by pull up. Then she concocted various tortures on the men responsible for her current predicament and then she relived her first meeting with Wired, his smile and his touch upon her claw. She breathed out and her hand moved towards her crotch. Her eyes widened and she laughed. The scorpion upon her chest began to move. She picked it up by the tail.
“Mama, mama,” she said before placing it in the pocket of her dungarees.    
Her skin was covered in blood belonging to her and her friends, she ran her hands over her body checking for bleeds, but the blood had dried and there were no wounds to deal with. The bullet hole in her forehead had completely healed, but aside from the broken back that had repaired itself most of the damage she had sustained was superficial that although susceptible to further damage while repairing was not inconvenient. Staggering to the jeep she tore a large strip from the parasail to create a bag, which she filled with scorpions collected from the grey sand then tied to her belt. She tied the battery Licorice had found over her shoulder, located her shotgun and a few scattered shells, fruitlessly searched for her friend’s head, then set about climbing the steep ravine towards the road.
Her eyes scanned the ravine assessing the best mode of ascent, she blew snot from her nostrils and spat on the floor. The climb was slow and wearing on her damaged frame, but her anger fuelled her legs like pistons forcing her crawl up the vertical rise with the methodical compulsion of an insect. At times she would punch into the dirt with her claw to secure herself to rest, where she would look down at the jeep below. As her climb progressed, she was taken by a fit of the giggles, lost in a wave of surprise at her own abilities, strength and endurance at surviving such a massive fall.
She grasped a rock with her human hand which relinquished its connection with the earth, and she slid, she plunged her hands into the dirt to slow her descent but her body hit a ledge which flipped her body and she tumbled back towards the gully. She lashed out with hand and claw to save herself and crashed into a stunted tree stump shoulder first dislocating it, causing her claw arm to hang flat at her side.
“Woopdifuckingdo!” she said clutching the roots with her bleeding hand.
Ignoring the throbbing pain in her shoulder, she gritted her teeth and steadying herself with her feet, pushed up and clutched the earth. Chela repeated this motion until she emerged at the lip of the ravine and heaved herself onto the road.
Puffy’s body was plonked in the road in an island of her blood. Chela tore her latex skirt down revealing knickers with teddy bears cuddling on them. Her bubblegum perfume still fresh and amply applied.
“You poor thing,” she said cutting Puffy’s skirt in half.
Chela dropped the battery to the floor and stood straight to regulate her breathing. She pulled her claw arm straight forward and then back, repeating this motion deliberately and patiently until her shoulder popped back into place. The relief of it caused her to crash to the floor panting, her body caked in a sweaty mix of blood, oil and dirt. She set about manipulating the red latex dress into a sling pulling it into a tight knot with her teeth. A brief search of the road led to the discovery of a metre of razor wire and the tracks of the three girls converging to one long drag pattern and then the trails of the bikes. She removed Puffy’s PAWGS shirt, folding it as neatly as she could and tucked it away in her pocket.
Chela snickered, checked the shotgun and placed the spare shells inside her sling.
“My turn to get some killing done,” she said following the gang’s tracks to their hideout.
The hideout was 5 hours walk in the rain, by the time she arrived her claw arm had a range of motion, despite discomfort. The Ruffians’ hideout was pathetic, consisting of an outside toilet across the yard from a small bunkhouse with an open garage housing a row of motorbikes and a flagpole with a hand painted gang sign on it. It stank like oil, shit and dirty-minded men. She scouted the area, finding the toilet unoccupied and the only light coming from inside the cabin. Inside the men were playing cards and grinning, on the table sat a bucket catching drips from the ceiling. The twins were chained to a rusted washing machine in the kitchen area, their bruised faces grimacing at the back of Larry Two Dicks. Babs was chained to a radiator against the opposite wall. Shitslinger leapt to his feet and started dancing, PhaseFucker dressed in stained long johns poured the drinks as Larry looked to the sky in defeat. The white-eyed Orke threw his cards at Shitslinger and downed his drink. He grabbed a folded magazine and lantern and left the cabin as the other men started another round of cards. Chela stalked the figure of Orke jogging across the sodden ground towards the toilet. He opened the door and hung the lantern from a hook on the wall, unbuckled his pants and let them drop. He jumped round in a ridiculous motion, plonked himself on the toilet and grabbed a rope attached to the door and pulled it shut. Chela did not hear him lock it. She pocketed the shotgun shells she was keeping in her sling and stuffed the shotgun in her pants and crept towards the door placing her ear against it.
There was a grunt followed by a slopping sound and she took the advantage pulling open the door and shoving her claw around Orke’s throat. His white eyes surprised as he looked up from the faded porn magazine still trying to register the attack.
He moved his hands but Chela squeezed just enough to make him raise them.
“Interlock your fingers behind your head,” she said.
Orke complied.
“Open your mouth,’ said Chela, ‘but make a noise and I snip, I’m just here for your boss.”
Orke nodded and opened his mouth, it reeked like a cancer-ridden fish.
Chela stuffed Puffy’s red latex dress into Orke’s gob and then squeezed her claw severing his head from his body, blood coated her claw whilst she held Orke’s head by the hair in the other hand. She placed his head on the toilet roll holder and searched his trousers finding a lighter and a switchblade.
Chela used the salvaged metre of razor wire to create a trip wire outside the bunkhouse door, sticking the blade handle into the ground a meter and a half from the trap so that the knife end stood proud in the air jutting from the ground like an erection. She pulled the gang flagpole from the ground and tore the flag from it and pushed Orke’s head onto it in its place, then plunged it into the ground a few meters directly outside the bunkhouse door.
With gentle precision Chela climbed onto the bunkhouse roof and located the source of the leak. Through the hole she emptied the bag of scorpions she had collected and moved to position outside the door.
The men screamed.
“What the fuck?” said PhaseFucker running out the bunkhouse.
He saw the severed head of Orke as he tripped on the razor wire and smacked into the ground taking the blade trap fully into the groin. Shitslinger stalled in the doorway. His eyes flicked from the head of Orke, to the writhing body of his boss to the figure of Chela emerging from the darkness as she pulled the trigger of her shotgun.
Chela fired both barrels into Shitslinger’s stomach and he crashed onto the poker table his guts splattering the walls of the bunkhouse. Chela reloaded and stamped over the whimpering body of PhaseFucker into the cabin. Larry saw her and covered his eyes before Tiffany and Rain dragged him to the floor and pounded blows into him. Chela saw a ring of keys on the table and used them to unlock the girls. Tiffany and Rain immediately used the chains to enslave Larry as Chela helped Babs to her feet.
“Thought you were dead,” Babs said.
“At least twice so far,” said Chela smiling.
Chela took PhaseFucker’s pistol and shot a hole in the base of his bike’s petrol tank. Petrol began to leak over the bike and into the dirt.
“I thought that would explode,” said Babs.
“Nah,” said Chela.
Chela kicked PhaseFucker who rolled over and pulled the blade from his crotch, squealing into the air, gobs of spit tangled into his moustache.
“Okay boy, if you get on your bike, you’re free to go,” she said holding a finger to her lips when Babs looked at her.
PhaseFucker groaned as he crawled towards the bike Chela held for him. She even put the key in the ignition. He draped himself on the bike, blood filling his trousers, his lips quivering. He started the engine and rode away, a trail of petrol following him like the blood of a wounded animal.
Chela sparked Orke’s lighter and dropped it onto the trail of petrol igniting it. PhaseFucker sobbed oblivious to the fire roaring behind him until he caught its glow in his rear-view mirror. He yelped as the flame engulfed him and dived for the dirt frantically rolling to extinguish himself. He stifled the flames and lay on his back whimpering, steam emanating from his trembling body.
Chela stood over him.
“Typically in a situation such as this, I would respond like for like, seeing as you shot me in the face, I could shoot you, I have your weapon after all,’ she said twisting his revolver on her forefinger, ‘but this one is for Licorice, so I’m going to kill you with this battery, which she was bringing to us when you left her like roadkill. And I’m going to bash your head in for Puffy.”
PhaseFucker begged for his life but Chela didn’t even register the words.
“Either way,’ she said holding up the battery, ‘you’re getting fucked by a scorpion.”
She smashed the battery into his head with just enough force to not kill him, watched his body spasm for a few moments before finishing him with the second hit.
 
The PAWGS stripped the hideout and bodies of weapons, credits and anything else that could be traded or sold.
“Anyone want a leather jacket with a defunct motorbike gang on it?” said Babs dumping the leather jackets into a heap.
 “Yeah, sort of an ironic fashion statement,” said Chela.
Wearing their new leather jackets they mounted the remaining bikes. Tiffany rode Larry’s bike, with Rain behind her and Larry behind her holding a chain attached to a dog collar around his neck. Babs tied the severed heads of Orke, Shitslinger and what remained of PhaseFucker’s to her seat and dragged them behind her satisfied by the sounds of the skulls smashing and battering the road. The girls shared a bottle of whiskey taken from the gang’s poker table as they rode back to the Twerk Machine saluting the corpses of their fallen friends along the way.
Chela had hoped Wired would still be there waiting at their campsite but wasn’t surprised to see that the boys had cleared out. Chela wiped the battery with the tattered flag of the Ruffians and then fitted it whilst Larry gathered their belongings and loaded them into the camper.
“Right, let’s load the bikes too,” said Chela discarding the flag in the dirt.
Tiffany and Rain exchanged glances and inaudible mouth movements. Chela had always assumed they were psychic.
“We’re not coming back yet,’ said Rain, ‘tell Trounce to expect us later.”
“Where you going?” said Babs.
“Where going on a double date with Larry, bit of quality time, fully break him in. Isn’t that right Larry?” said Tiffany tugging the chain.
Larry nodded obsequiously and stood by his bike like a servant. Chela wondered if Larry’s fate was worse than the rest of The Ruffians. She spat on the floor.
The girls strutted to the bike, Tiffany got on the bike first, followed by Rain, followed by Larry. Babs and Chela waved them off then got in the Twerk Machine. They sat in silence all the way back to the PAWGS HQ.
Chela parked the camper and opened the door.
“You think you learned anything on this field trip?” said Babs touching Chela’s claw.
Chela closed the door and considered the question. She wrinkled then rubbed her nose.
“Yeah, attack when it is good for me to do so and let everyone on my side catch up. If I’d done that, Puffy and Licorice might still be alive. Not that I feel guilty, because that is just how things go out here. I learned I can survive alone, that I can die more than once. That I’m a genetically modified killer and that it is a pretty fucking beautiful thing.”
Babs breathed Chela’s thoughts in.
“What about you?”
“To not run, to react quicker, to never be without a weapon, ever. Other things I’m still computing.”
 
After listening to the girls detail their experiences Trounce unfolded the shirts of Licorice and Puffy and gazed at them.
“Real shame, both good girls, they will hang on the wall with our other fallen members. It is good they were avenged.”
Trounce took a cheroot from a wooden box on her desk and lit it, she dismissed Babs with the order to get immediate rest in her bunk. Chela and Babs shared a smile as Babs left the room.
“Right Chela,’ said Trounce, ‘I think it is time for you to leave the PAWGS, tell your father you graduated.”
“Miss?”
“You’re too extreme for these girls and it is time for you to work solo, the intention of you joining us, was always for situational training and experience to develop and prepare you to be utilised by your father. You have more than demonstrated that you are ready for that role. You will be using your new buggy for such tasks, which is why you received it I imagine.”
Chela shrugged.
“Okay, I’ll be off then, but I’m keeping my shirt as a memento,’ she said, ‘and the shotgun.”
 
The journey home was a quiet hell after the mass of life events poured into the last few days, driving to become a practical slave for her father who would send her out into the burnt world particularly gnawed at her. At least she would get to kill stuff. She caressed the shotgun in her lap when she saw a familiar figure walking along the side of the road. She pulled up beside it.
“Dangerous walking these roads,” she said.
“Tell me about it,” said Wired resting his hands on the buggy.
“Is that what the shotgun is for?”
Chela smiled.
“Just my weapon of choice, I call her Butterfly,” she said.
He grinned and stared at her lips.
“Where’s your friend?” she said.
“Jaxxon? He buggered off when you swiped his jeep, blamed me for leaving the keys in.”
“Sorry about that, next time you see him, tell him I’d have hotwired it in seconds anyway.”
She bit her lip in the warmth of his gaze.
“I waited around for you to return, had the feeling you only wanted to borrow it,” he said brushing his long blonde hair back.
Chela imagined his hair caressing her chest.
“It was true what Babs said to you,’ she said not looking at him, ‘we would have loved to have stayed with you, but we had things to do.”
She waited for him to say something, anything, but he remained silent until she flashed a glance at him.
“You gonna let me in now?” he said.
 
 
 
END

Finland, January 1940
Moves like a cat, silent and slow, creeps in the shadows, body hung low.
In the dark hall, having crossed a huge and ancient threadbare rug, she arrives at the grand staircase. Lying on her belly, listening to the old house creak, she looks up at the sweeping steps, half-hidden in the gloom.
Gripping the banister rails and pushing with her feet, she slowly hoists herself up the staircase. The sound of a door opening above stops her ascent. Hooking her feet between rails to stop a slide back down to the hall, she stretches out and invisibly waits. Dressed in black, she merges with the shadows.
Soft steps slide across the wooden landing. Moments later, she hears the sound of pee falling into porcelain. The steps return back to the opened door. It clicks shut again.
Slightly out of breath, she arrives at the top of the long wide staircase. Standing, she takes a step, squeezing herself into an empty alcove. With breath calmed, she moves out of the alcove, her back silently sliding along the landing wall.  She stops outside the closed door.
In the pitch black, she listens to the sounds coming from the room. Gently tracing the outlines of the door, her finger finds the hole.  Squatting, she looks through the large keyhole. Inside, a candle flickers, illuminating the room just enough for her to see.
Hunched over, her twin sister and Niko move with desperate urge, until their two bodies shudder, slumping on the bed. It’s over for now and her sister turns and looks towards the keyhole before blowing the candle out.
The voyeur stands upright, quietly slipping away, down the stairs across the dark hall into the kitchen at the far end of the house. A wood stove burns bright. The clock above tells her: it’s time.
From a peg by the back door, she unhooks a woollen coat. From its pockets she takes a pair of gloves and a woollen hat. Outside it’s snowing, the breeze immediately chilling her to the bone. She’ll have to be quick to survive a night like this intact.
Even in the freezing cold her excited heart beats hard. Stopping by a gnarly tree, she leans against a horizontal low hung branch, her feet half-frozen, buried in the snow.
The familiar shuffling scrape of skis approaches. He soon stands before her, a shadow in the night, a large dog by his side. Same time, same tree, it’s almost a routine. Pulling herself up onto the low branch, she pulls down her slacks and opens up her coat. With her back against the trunk, the shadow comes towards her. Intense cold burns her skin: the bark crusted thick with ice. He stays on his skis. The dog looks on. Freezing and numbing fast, she pulls him to her, crying out, beside herself; agony and ecstasy. Once finished, he quickly leaves. Pulling up her clothes, she stumbles back to the house, just making it to the kitchen before her legs give way. Collapsing in front the stove, she uncontrollably shakes with cold, and burns with the remains of intense pleasure. A little later, when she’s warm and able to function, she feeds the fire and strips off her wet cold clothes.
Kate wakes to the sound of her sister’s voice.
‘You’ll get frostbite down there.’ She indicates to the pile of discarded clothing.  In Kate’s slacks are pieces of lichen, bark and small crystals of melting ice showing traces of blood.
‘I know you played your game last night, sensed you looking through the keyhole. If that’s your thing, what it takes to get you going, fine by me, but at least ask him in, don’t do it out there in the freezing night. Do you even know his name?’
Kate shakes her head.
‘Have you ever had a proper conversation?’
Kate shakes her head again.
‘The Red Army will be here in a few days, we need to get away. They’ll shoot every Finn they see, that’s after we’ve all been raped. Get packed, Niko’s picking us up tomorrow night, need to ski down to the village, he’ll meet us there.’
‘Niko, your favourite dog.’
‘And you a howling wolf at night. We hear you. Maybe you should go further out.’
‘I’d never make it back alive, Sofia.’
The twins laugh together.
‘So who is he, might never see him again?
‘A stranger in the woods I met one very dark cold night,’ Kate shrugs.
Sofia screws up her face and holds her nose.
‘Have a wash, I’ll make breakfast.’
In the late afternoon, the sisters dress in the grand hall, studying their reflections in an ornate, full-length mirror. It’s strategically placed as the only light comes from stained glass windows that cover half the wall. Both petite and deathly pale, Sofia twists her long red hair into a plait, letting it dangle over her bare left shoulder before dressing in light coloured heavy winter clothes. Kate wears black to match her hair, which she hides under a dark brown sheep-skin hat.  Sharing lipstick, they turn their lips bright red. Satisfied, they stare into the mirror, green eyes glinting with the setting sun. They talk to their reflections.
‘We may never see this house again.’
‘Or our brothers and our Papa, fighting on the front, we haven’t heard from them in weeks. Anyway, I’m staying ‘til morning, then I’ll meet you in the village.’
‘Without my keyhole and a frozen tree in the dead of night, he’s just an apparition. Don’t be a fool, the Russians are coming.’
‘I can’t, I need to know.’
‘I sometimes wonder if he’s even real, Kate.’
‘Real! I’ve never felt so alive in all my life.’
In the winter twilight, Kate watches Sofia ski down the track towards the village, pack on her back, pulling a sledge loaded with her precious things. It will take more than an hour to get to Niko’s house; by then, it will be completely dark. As Sofia disappears among the trees, Kate returns to the kitchen. The clock reads three. She feeds the stove: it’s going to be a long cold night, minus forty six, Niko said. The winter war killing droves by frost, many more than combat does.
Under the last of the light, Kate pulls her jam-packed sledge a few hundred metres across new snow to the recess of an open barn. She drops her backpack and leaves her skis and poles on the frozen ground. As the barn is near the track and sheltered from the driving snow, it’s the perfect spot to launch her getaway, if it comes to that.
Sinking into deep soft snow, she’s out of breath by the time she gets back to the house. Before opening the kitchen door, she looks up at the evening sky, clear and full of stars. Niko’s right: a terrible freeze is on the way, and she pushes the door to feel warmth coming from the stove.  
Recalling what Sofia said, that this may be the last time they would ever see their home, she wonders if she can find a feeling hidden in the house: something to take with her when she skis to the village in the morning light.
Taking time, she explores, walking from room to room, examining small details under candle light, hot wax dribbling on her finger tips. In the attics, full of discarded toys and things unknown from times gone by, she doesn’t discover anything that tugs her sensibilities. Even through the keyhole, there’s only silent black. Finding nothing, just the familiar company of shadows, she eventually stands on the landing looking down into darkness: their great hall, where last summer she and Sofia had had a ball; hilariously drunk, they danced the night away with farcical suitors. It had been their eighteenth birthday party. A week later, Sofia met Niko. Kate had to wait for the frosts of winter war for her first love. Realising it’s not the house she’s going to miss but something else, she hurries down the stairs to the kitchen. The clock tells her: it’s that time again.
Outside the kitchen window, fallen snow blows wildly in the wind. On any other night she wouldn’t dare to venture in such conditions, but tonight she needs to know: is he too, prepared to take the risk? She’ll perish if she removes her clothes on the icy low hung branch, so she dresses up in double wool, thick fur boots, an oil skin wrapped around her coat. For ease and speed, she wishes for her skis, but they are in the barn; besides, she never takes them to the tree: it’s a struggle without them on and probably impossible with them hanging off her feet.
An arctic wind whistles through the trees. Kate shivers, grimacing as she takes her first sinking step towards the tree. It’s not so far: within earshot, as Sofia pointed out. It’s not every night she comes to rendezvous at the frozen tree. When she does, often he’s not there. But his footprints are, showing Kate he’s tried to seek her out. Once a week their shadows meet, she’s not sure she could take it more than that.
The irresistible lure of shadows moving in the dark had been near impossible to explain. She’d come across deranged. But Sofia soon accepted Kate’s divergence, even helping to invent the keyhole game.
The tree is sheeted thick with ice. Freezing fast, Kate knows she can’t stay long. Before returning to the house, she touches the gnarly frosted bark, remembering the first time she saw the low hung branch. The war had just begun, the winter not yet harsh. Searching for a pair of noisy owls that had hooted near the house, she jumped up on the snowy branch. Sitting quietly, hoping an owl would fly between the trees, her attention was soon taken by silhouettes of man and dog moving slowly on the moonlit path. Strange feelings came to her. Her heart beat fast. The dog sensed her first. Barking loudly once, it startled the two owls which swooped before her, landing on a nearby branch. She caught a glint of yellow in their gazing eyes.
Memories of that first time have become a blur. They briefly spoke, but what about she no longer knows. She does remember pain: the rough bark like ice against her skin and soft flesh open like a wound. With both hands she’d grabbed his coat, pulling him to her and pushing him away. This seesaw motion ripped a button off.  Back in the kitchen, horrified and somewhat disbelieving, Sofia listened to Kate’s strange tale. Kate opened her clenched fist, the button falling to the floor.
She had found her shadow in the woods.
To escape the dreadful winter chill, Kate traces her footsteps back to the house. She’s travelled less than fifty metres from the tree, and now badly shivers from the cold. As the nearest house is in the village, an hour away, wherever he lives, on a night like this, he would never make it to the tree. He’d freeze and perish on the path. What had she been thinking? She doesn’t want him dead.
Forlorn and cold, she eats directly from a pot sitting on the stove. With her free hand she plays with the button, hanging round her neck.
Kate wakes in the chair by the stove. The room is black and freezing cold. Reaching out to touch the stove, she realises the fire’s nearly out. Not being able to read the clock, she looks through the window at the sky. It’s still night, and she stands to fetch a log from a box nearby. Before she moves, she hears a noise: a loud thud followed by a crack. They’re here, breaking down the door. 
The front door gives way, crashing to the floor. Foreign voices echo through the hall. She’s quick, outside and heading to the barn. With luck, they’ll think the house abandoned. Inside the barn, she turns around and sees a flashlight shining out the open kitchen door. She hadn’t closed it, and a figure soon steps out. Horrified, she sees the silhouette of an armed soldier start following her footsteps.
Kate panics. There’s only one way out, and he’ll soon be blocking that. Desperately scrabbling around the barn, she tries to remember where her Papa keeps the gun.
Smelling smoke, she stops her search and stares out across snow. Behind the soldier, her home’s in flames; unbearable to her.
Distracted by the sudden glare, the soldier loses Kate’s tracks and is forced to make his own footsteps in the snow. She sees him clearly: struggling, sinking deep with every gruelling step. Letting out a painful cry, he stops, the rifle falling from his bare and frozen hands. Slumped across the snow, he scowls at her before shouting for his friends.  But his yells for help are lost among the din of roaring flames.
No longer needing Papa’s gun, Kate fits her skis, connects the sledge and lifts the pack onto her back. Passing the soldier, she hears him gasp for breath. Unable to stand or use his hands, he lies face down, trying to worm his way to the barn. If his friends don’t find him soon, he’ll be gone, frozen through.
The snow’s lit up in front of her; behind, the dreadful noise of the house collapse.  Don’t look back, she tells herself, get to cover, the shadow of the wood.
As she disappears among the trees, the way’s confusing, the path unclear. Intense cold, and the fear of being caught, forces her on. Keep moving, she repeats, don’t despair, die of cold or get captured by a Russian bear.
The loaded sledge saps her energy. Exhausted, she stops and stares ahead. The shadow’s unmistakable. There’s no dog, and the barrel of a gun points up behind his back. He’s come for her, she’s sure of that. No words, just a clumsy ski embrace. She guides his hand to feel the button hanging around her neck.
They shudder, as an icy wind blows its hiss between the trees. Taking her sledge, he guides them through the pines and birch.  Following behind, Kate focuses on snow collecting on his coat. Her feet are numb, her knees are tight, the feeling in her fingers gone.
The trees thin out as twilight shows his long grey coat, rifle hung across his back. Her brain is fog, her vision blurred but she recognises a large white field, beyond which the village starts. At the far end of the field, outside the first hut, a fire burns. They push towards its heat.
Feeling warmth on her face, Kate crumples in the snow. Hands release her boots and pack and drag her to the hut. Propped up against the outside wall, she stares across the flames. Fierce blue eyes meet her gaze, her shadow in the day. 
‘Kate!’
Sofia shakes her and passes her a steaming metal cup. With difficulty, Kate takes it, feeling the heat penetrate her gloves.
Still staring through the haze of heat, she listens to her sister speak.
‘He’s Niko’s friend. Had no idea he’s your shadow in the woods at night. What happened? Kate!’
Kate turns from the fire and looks up at Sofia, Niko standing by her side.
‘They burnt the house down, to the ground. Miracle I got away.’
All three look across the flames.
‘He’s joining the fight, we can’t stay here. Niko’s car’s not so far.’
Kate wobbles as she rises. Walking around the fire, she stops in front of him and turns, shouting over the cracking flames.
‘What’s Mama’s address?’
Sofia yells it out.
Looking in his eyes, Kate says it one more time. Before their last embrace, she rips a button from her coat and plants it in his palm.
Back with her skis and sledge, about to leave, Kate turns. He’s still looking. After a moment, he finally speaks.
‘Are there trees?’
‘A frozen forest full.’
 
 
 

 
Here we are again, you and me. Different in form, and almost everything really. Except for the core, which is in itself everything. It surrounds us, it envelops us in a light that moves within and without, through our every cell in turn and all at once. So how different are we after all?
I am happy to be here again, you and me. It feels like a long forgotten state of mind and spirit we should have remembered, but never did. We got lost, you and me. And from the chaos of getting lost in the appearances of the world, a new us was born. A new form laying on the foundation of the eternal, allowing us to feel and hear and just be. Be each other, and every one of the forms we think we see beyond the borders of our own body. Embodying the entire Universe, in all its beauty and complexity. The grain of sand, the drop of ocean returning to the pool of life as it knows it, the shooting star and the lonely planet, standing somewhere at the edge of a crowd of planets surrounding a white dwarf, once an enormous star, now only the dust left behind by angered greatness. For greatness gives birth to anger, and anger turns greatness into dust.
It IS us, this universe that appears unreachable. It breathes form through our inhale/exhale sequences, it loves through all our hearts, it becomes through our becoming and moves with each step we take, knowingly or not, conscious of our choices or… not. We carry its greatness and its anger on our shoulders, by creating it and letting it overwhelm us. So how can we say it is not all a game? A game of contraries, approaching and moving further away from each other, in a dance of life, beneath which is the very core of it all. The stillness, a silence of energy and an abundance of spirit, that which is sought and rarely found, that which brings peace of mind to a tired cluster of atoms.
And yet we, as humans, seem to get lost in form. Thoughts, emotions, even what we call love. It’s all form, because we don’t really take the time to go beneath, within and underneath ourselves. But what if we did?
*
 The Now
And by loving every person you meet, you come to the realization that all this time you were learning how to love pieces of yourself deemed not worthy of love. You were taught how to love your Self.
IT came flooding, the liberation from strings, the cutting of chords that were keeping her tied to people in which she saw parts of herself. Parts that she didn’t know how to love within herself, so she found them outside and loved the soul out of them. And out of her. For by loving so, her soul resurfaced and was now shining through. And then, in waves, came the freedom from all the external manifestations of herself. She saw them all inside of her, integrated them and then integrated the love which has been pouring like rain on everything around her. And thus the love grew and grew until there was nothing else left. She had the whole Universe inside of her.
It was a different kind of love, unlike Plato described it in his Banquet. No, love wasn’t of something lacking. He had gotten it wrong. You don’t love what’s lacking. You fall in love with that which is already inside of you, hidden, waiting to be revealed, to be cherished and valued. And the more complex your inner universe, the more you love on the outside. Until you come to love every atom surrounding you, thus coming to the knowledge that you contain inside everything. As above so below…
So now, everytime she fell in love with something or someone, she made it a point to look inside herself for that particular piece of soul, dust it off and hold it like you hold a baby, nurturing it to grow into something she can recognize and give back to the world.
 
Eric
I’ve learned to trust the hand holding the pencil
Fast. Faster. The asphalt was obeyingly silent under the wheels spinning hundreds of times per beat. The beating of a huge heart, which from infinite had become a dot on the canvas of a cruel painter.
It seemed that the wheels, angered but tired, were not moving at all; the right foot was striving to push the gas pedal further on down, but it was already as far down as it could go. His soul was urging him to run, to escape from that God-forsaken place where he had lost his love. In the linear time, he didn’t yet understand that love would always be a part of his being, his own choices deciding whether it would flow freely or be claustrated inside a body aching on its own.
The Full Flower Moon was throwing light on the freshly painted markings on the road by the quiet river. Not a single living soul troubling the ghostly painting, where the chimeras of his past where flying along, still attached to him, grabbing him by the hands and by the soul in a suffocating grip tormenting him uselessly. Use-less-ly… How could one believe that in a complex dimension driven by perfect order, only human life was subject to hazard? Still, so it seemed to him now, when everything he wanted was for the burden of past years to be lifted off of his shoulders, so that he could straighten up and walk again, not barely crawl…
*
Leah
Fast-forward through time, a few months – or lives- later. Another soul is running, in a nonsensical attempt to free itself from the same burden, a weight that’s crushing her fragile shoulders, a weight that’s not hers, and still belongs to her, for Eric belongs to her, together with every moment and every life he experienced. She loves him with all her heart, with all the love in the Universe, the love she picked up and gathered in her heart just like her grandma used to pick up nettles – with care, patience and a bit of compassion. That’s why, I guess, she could still feel so intensely his pain from back then, though faded and buried in time and space. That’s why, maybe, pain, just like love, is a thing for two. And somehow, it feels right. You are healed now, my love…
*
Soft, slightly shaking hands were trying to grasp onto something. There was nothing there to grasp at, but still she was trying, eyes closed, fear running through her bones. It was a girl there, a young beautiful girl, with a shadow following her everywhere. When the shadow was not there, the girl was normal, walking around the city, falling in love… but when it appeared, she would always get the urge to drown herself. She would pull and toss and try to get to the river passing beneath and beyond the big cathedral. She was doing so now, a beautiful sunset laying at her feet, while I was holding her hand, trying to keep her from drowning. You were there too, my love. And when I woke up, here, in this room, the TV on just as it is now, you knew what I was dreaming about. You were having the same dream, trying to save the same girl. Was that girl me? Will we save her? I hope we will, cause I love you and for the first time, you make it worth saving me…
Light outside by Wakey! Wakey! was playing in the background when she woke up. But where did it come from? Oh, her own mind. It had a tendency to do that, to play songs that could answer her every struggle…
*
Beginnings
It all started, as it usually does, with a warm sunny day, except that now it was winter and the warmth and light from the Sun were falling gently on last-night’s snow, revealing an earthy light, brighter than normal, for when earth and sky merge into light, that which is born from the two becomes blinding.
Standing in the doorway of the terrace, long grey skirt, burgundy heels and a grey sweater, auburn hair flowing with the crisp wind, cigarette in one hand and the cup of coffee in the other hand, eyes lost somewhere above the tall buildings of the city, the stillness born from pain was now hers. How will i ever forget him from my heart? Leah was trying to remember the idea of her last e-mail to him. It was all a blank. Except for two words. Empty shells.
Although it was more than a month since they saw each other, physical presence was never really necessary with them. It was that kind of connection, where the souls had found different ways to be with each other, given the physical impossibility.
Oh but i don’t want to go back, i won’t revisit everything. It is too painful for now... Empty shells still hurt, God!
As she was mumbling that to herself, familiar footsteps were approaching from the stairs. It was hard for her to turn around and greet the person approaching, as if she was a painting, standing there, as if her movements were the decision of someone else, artistic, yet not hers. His voice broke the chains keeping her on someone else’s canvas.
`Morning!`
`Hey there!`, and with a crooked smile, that encompassed all the suffering of the world, Leah had his attention. Funny, she had been seeing him for a while now, but she didn’t know his name.
The boy lit a cigarette and stood by her side, staring seemingly into the same abyss she was feeling.
`Cold morning, huh?` he said with a confidence she knew she was lacking.
`Yeah, a bit`. She was lying. For her, it wasn’t cold. To feel the cold, one must be warm. And warmth was but a memory to her body...
`Leah`, she said, cold hand held out towards him.   
`Eric`, a smile and a warm heart made her acquiantance.
`Oh, Eric, i so want to build a snowman!` Oh come on, Leah, do you have to be so weird from the beginning? Well, at least he’ll know who he’s dealing with. Her heart smiled, unknowingly.
`I already built one. I live in a house, with a small backyard`, he said, not knowing yet if he was lying about the snowman or maybe something else.
`Wow! That’s awesome! I’ve always dreamt of having a back yard`, and she meant that.
`It’s a rental, not mine! I’m not rich`.
He was so honest in his walking the earth... intimidating almost. Yet again, to her, most people were intimidating. That’s why she fell in love with them. At first.
*
A few days, or maybe weeks, had passed. The eyes and hearts grew fonder. Who would have thought that by taking up a hideous habit like smoking, one could get to fall in love? Well, Leah didn’t know it yet. But she was about to find out.
`’Morning!’
`Hey there! Morning!` she said trying hard to pull her mind out of itself and into the world again.
`Alone? How come?` Eric’s boss asked amused. The thing is he had seen Eric follow Leah everytime she would come up for a cigarette. It was funny really, especially after everything Eric had been through, and all the company knowing it.
`I don’t know. The girls are not around, I guess.` She played dumb. Or maybe she was oblivious in this particular case. It is a fact, that empaths are sometimes hard to recognize things when they happen to them personally.
`By the way, where is Eric? It’s the first day i don’t see him around here.` What happened, girl? Why ask about the guy? What’s he to you? Oh God, he’s smiling now. Lucky i don’t blush, or else...
`Hehe, he’s out with work. I sent him to fix something.`
`Oh, okay. I’m gonna take off now. Bye!`
Awkwaaard... Well, whatever.
Back in the office, Naty was doing her thing. Working, painting her nails at the same time, the usual. Her curly new friend sensed something was different.
`Hey, gurly gurl! How you doin’?` Joey style. Leah didn’t get the joke. `You have got to watch Friends, honey! Or else you’ll miss half of my jokes!`
`Hehe, yeah, i don’t know. I’m fine, i guess... i was on the terrace, you know.`
`Yeah, your annoying disgusting new habit, i know. What else is going on with you?`
`Nothing really. I met a guy. Eric, you know him? From the IT department.`
`Yup, i know him. He was long time boyfriend of that slut that’s dating my ex younger boyfriend.`
`Oh, i didn’t know that. Wow! Small world..`
`Yup. Be careful there. I heard they spent last summer’s vacation together, even though they were broken up...`
`Yeah, there’s nothing to be careful about. All good. Don’t worry, my curly precious creature! I’m not falling in love for a while now...`
`Oh yeah, i get that!`
Lost on you was playing on the radio. Again, all those feelings coming back up to the surface. Oh, come on! I didn’t even burry you completely yet!
`What’s wrong, woman? Talk to me!`
`Well, this was kind of our song. I mean, the song that reminded us how miserable it was to love each other so much and not get to be together. Just turn it off, okay? Please.`
Instead of doing that, Naty decided something different. She turned the volume up and started dancing towards Leah.
`Oh, i’m so not in the mood, Naty!`
`Come on, girl! It’s over now. You can dance through that pain you keep holding onto for dear life.`
*
Just another 10th of February
Another Friday, another morning to greet, all disheveled bangs and tangled eyelashes. Leah woke up late, again. I used to be so punctual! What happened to me? Maybe mom was right, I am turning into a full disaster.
The bangs she had cut herself a month ago, right after New Year’s, the night when she understood she could not keep loving someone who, on paper, belonged to someone else. But he promised...
Indeed, he said he was gonna visit her on New Year’s Eve. So she stayed at home. Put on a slightly revealing black dress, short enough to not let much to the imagination, put make up on, shampagne on the table and some food, just in case. Long story short, she ended up spending New Year’s with her black cat Luna, singing and dancing with her when the clock struck twelve. And drinking shampagne and smoking. Good thing he taught me how to smoke. It’s really nice to be able to harm myself by choice, not like love does, out of the fucking blue.  
`I cannot be there. I am sorry. But we’ll see each other soon, love. I promise.`
Six months had passed since they fell in love, and this time was worth more pain and happiness than the rest of her life as a whole. Things do balance each other out after all.
Good, book in bag, 10 minutes late, but looking good. To the subway! Bye, dearest Luna! Kiss!
First cigarette, first coffee, first glimpse of Eric in that day.
`’Morning, Leah! You look fancy today`
`Thanks!` It’s just a dress, but okay, i’ll take it. `Oh, it seems Margie is joining us.` The girl was barely visible to Leah, but not to Eric. They were always making fun of each other, teasing and exchanging glances. It was annoying to Leah, for some reason. What could that reason be?
`I’ll be leaving for four months, you know` Leah thought this might make him squirm, but didn’t quite expect his reaction.
`What? Where?`
`Well, i’ll be in another department, experience exchange, getting out of confort zones, you know`.
`Well then, you should buy me a beer before that, you know, so that i’ll miss you more`. Eric was smiling in a cunning way.
Ok, i’ll play your game, mister.
`Fine, i will, but after we get paid. You know how it is before payday`. They were smiling not knowing what some words thrown in the wind on a terrace were creating.
*
Friday. A weirdly sunny but snowy day, Leah and Eric meet again, and just before she takes off, he asks innocently: `So, about that beer, are we set for Tuesday?`
`Yeah, sure! You’ll have my number on Monday!` A smile and crooked woobly legs were walking, almost running, down the stairs. If i don’t stumble now, i never will again! And she had such a passion for stumbling...
*
Friday Afternoon
Oh my, what happened to me? It feels like being in love, but it’s like the first time i’m feeling this. IT feels good, warm and tingly on the inside of my lungs. How can it be? I’ve been in love before, right? I thought i was in love this morning, but with someone else. Now i don’t feel that pain. It’s faded, almost gone. This Eric boy is invading my heart. And it’s not until Monday that i’ll see him again. I miss him. What’s wrong with me? I should have given him my phone number... or maybe not. Maybe it’s better this way. IF the feeling is still here on Monday, then i’ll know it’s not just another one of those beautiful sirens called illusions.

 
She was struggling. Leah was never the steady one, her heart would always kind of fly away without a notice. It must have been hard on those guys from before really... Because somehow she stayed through the worse, she was there, she struggled, she loved and cried and laughed and tried to make them see and experience her love, and when they did, when the pain inflicted on her got smaller and weaker, she would just go. First in spirit, then her body would follow. A real INFJ, for that matter, with the door slam. Once gone, there was nothing that could bring that heart back. She understood that later than anyone else... but once she did, she also perceived why. Why a weary heart never looks back – because it lacks the strength. Because people would take and hurt and be lousy when they are not judged. When there is enough space created for their hearts to grow, the ego would almost always take over. And when they would understand the wound inflicted, it would be too late. For her. Because she was sure the next girl would appreciate the man left behind.
And now, was this another one of those experiences? Maybe she was ready for more than that. Maybe this time she was ready to stay and replenish her heart from the well of an enormous amount of love, bestowed upon them by a Universe much too kind and appreciative of two hearts that only know selfless love and deserve to live and die as one. 
*
Date night
`You do realise today is the 14th of February, right?` He was smiling his beautiful side-tooth-missing heart-warming smile.
`Yeah, well, it doesn’t make much of a difference. I don’t celebrate that. Love is something people should celebrate every single day. It’s what keeps us alive. It’s life itself. So yeah, it seems to me that to have only one day in 365 days dedicated to love is a serious mistake. A trap i don’t want to step into.` Okay, stop now, Leah. She would always talk loud and in detail about the things she believed in. There were only a few people who understood and liked that...
`Yes, you might be right.` He wasn’t much the philosopher, but his spirit had a way of giving off his very old age in the circle of lives he lived before. He struck her as a very evolved spirit. He understood by default the things that she had to learn from different spiritual practices over the past years. He knew them inherently, without having to ever study them. To Leah this was astounding. She got even more curious about Eric.
So they talked that cold night of February. They talked just like old friends do, and they ate pizza and drank Coke. She, of course, with the vegetarian pizza. She never claimed to be a vegetarian, but hadn’t eaten meat in two years. It was good for her, her body liked it, the animals that didn’t have to die for her, liked it. She told Eric that, and he smiled. He probably thinks i’m a lunatic. Well, maybe i am after all. She smiled back.
`Okay, let’s get out of here. I’m really craving a cigarette.` She meant that. Although her disgusting habit was born only a couple months before, it was already making decisions for her.
`Okay, let’s go. You’re paying, right?`
`As promised.` With a grin and winged-eyeliner on, she had him. The look in his eyes told her so.
`Come on, you don’t think i’d let you pay.` He was trying to be chivalrous, so she saved the feminist talk for another night. For Leah it was now clear there were many to come.
They got in the car, had a cigarette, and for those few minutes, there was only silence. Words seemed overrated for the two hearts connecting. So they would just smile and look at each other and wonder how they got there, when only a few weekes back...
*
Katy
`Hear me out, okay?` Eric was trying to catch his breath and make still his heart.
`Ok.`
`I just wanted to tell you that I miss you. I have been missing you ever since you left. I feel like talking to you and i don’t know if i can anymore. I thought that last summer, us going away together, as we have all those years, would do something. It did nothing, though. Now you have grown apart from me again. Weeks pass and we don’t even talk to each other. I don’t know if i should keep waiting for you.` It’s been over a year now and my soul is growing weary from looking through our photo album and wishing things were different. Well, he couldn’t say that, but she most definitely got the idea.
`So what do you want? I miss you too, but what can i do? I cannot change the past.` Regret and nostalgia caught up with her. She felt sorry for him, maybe. Who am I to know that?
`Spend New Year’s with me! Just the two of us.` Eric couldn’t help show hope. She was his first love; that romanticized version of love, for him it had been reality for over seven years. They did everything together, his firsts were all with and about her. How could he let go?
`Ok. We’ll do that and see what comes of it. I’ll see you in a week, then.`
Of course she didn’t show. She let him know two days before New Year’s that she had something else planned with some friends he knew nothing about. How could she have made new friends? All her friends were my friends... Well, not anymore. His friends, they were still there, and they cared for him, so much that on New Year’s they took him almost by force to spend the evening with them. Of course he got drunk. Of course he wasn’t his optimistic cheerful self. His first love had just died in his heart.
*
Nick
The contradiction – a distant future
An e-mail in the Trash folder, just as it was meant to be, an image and three words. Two matches on fire, in the shape of a man and woman, and a question: Do you remember?
I do remember. I remember coward love disguised as forbidden love. I remember lies and shame and guilt. I remember illusions and dead hopes of higher love. Hopes of truth and heads held high. So much I remember and so little you knew of what I remember, it’s funny really. I remember my story, you remember yours. The two never really met. So what remembrance are you talking about? Mine? Or yours?
And why remember anything at all, when it wasn’t worth it enough when it was `now`? Now it’s `then`, so less the worth. None the worth, really. It’s gone, poof, never existed, once it is no longer. What’s real is always now. The rest, mere nothingness disguised as somethingness.
29 and a day. And none the wiser. Still talking with ghosts and dreams and pictures I see when I close my eyes. Go figure… and never come back. I am nothing to you. And that never changed.
Leah thought about it, overthinking as she used to with most things. It wasn’t his fault. There was no fault to be placed. For the first time in four years, she felt a deeper sense of forgiveness for the one who placed in her heart a fire that would never die. It was human conditioning, meant to remind them of the flaws and imperfections that come with being just that. Human. Maybe now, after more than four years, she would finally be free of resentment. And thus, free up a part of her soul which had long been occupied by darkness. Her shadow, acknowledged, turned into acceptance and understanding. Maybe that’s what healing feels like. Maybe it was, after all. The Phoenix in her rose higher and stronger with every healed bit of her soul. 
*
Te maldigo para que no puedas llorar, Que tu corazon se vuelva una piedra, Que tu alma pierda su alegria. The Spanish quitar in the song weighed heavy on Leah’s soul, which, for all she knew, had lived many lives before in warm Spain. For it had shown, from a very young age, a strange fondness for the language and spirit and music related to this culture.
The song he sent, she felt in her whole being. Maybe he had cursed her. Or maybe their love, banished and hurt, cursed them both. Como pude imaginarme que tenia algo que darte? Y yo en mi madurez y tu En tu plena juventud Los anos no perdonan. It was what he had told her all those years before. Why would love come to such a troubled soul? Why would it draw into that darkness the light in Leah’s soul? Why do light and darkness attract like that?
I never did understand those who talk about the past. It’s done with. So what’s the point? You take what you will out of it, accept and then integrate it. And move on.
There is no other way. I cannot see why we should keep talking about what was. I for one had used up every word i needed to say before I closed the door behind you. I gave my best, wasn’t enough. Yes, it was a dark moment in my life, it changed me. It dragged me through dispair like an animal draggs its prey, recently killed, eyes wide open. I escaped, i got up, i struggled to heal my wounds, sew my soul back into place. I felt every sting of the needle piercing through the battered skin of my soul. I still did it. What could i possibly say to you now about back then? And above all, why?
*
Three and a half years before, a different feeling, same person…
One last letter, if there is such a thing
I remember having used this particular word before. Excruciating… But your absence, love, gives it a whole new dimension. I’m not running away from it. I’m trying to sit with the pain, thus hoping it will fade. And it does at times. But then it comes back even stronger. And my body aches. And all I want is to stop it. To stop the pain from being excruciating. To forget this word. To render it meaningless to my heart.
You were afraid you’d destroy me, love… But it’s not you who’s destroying me. It’s this God you love so much. This God who’s deaf and blind. He brought us together. He created this love. Everything we feel was specially designed by Him, as is everything else. But why? I feel I’m dying, love… It’s so bad. You have no idea…
You conjured me not to hope. But if there’s no hope, to me there’s no life. And i’m starting to feel it... the lack of hope, of life… My bones are straining under the weight of your love. A love that’s so Heaven-like, and yet not enough.
You know, at times  it would feel like everything you did, the way you tried to run away from me, only to tell me that you can’t do it… I used to feel it was you trying to find the path towards me. But you would always get lost inside your mind, intoxicated by your own thoughts. And now i know, love, that it was only you trying to escape your feelings, so as to remain as you are. And i get it. And i respect it. I will never judge you. After all, I can only imagine what it’s like to be in your shoes. But, God, it hurts so much… so much that at night i would sometimes walk the streets in circles and hope that something bad would happen to me, because i don’t want this pain anymore. And i’m too much of a coward to do anything about it.
But don’t worry. Nothing bad can happen. The worse has already happened, my love. My soul, poor encaged thing, was set free by your love. And, naturally, it went straight to you. And now i’m left an empty shell. Trust me, there is nothing worse than this.
And nothing better. Because now I am not afraid of anything anymore. I feel I could jump from an airplane or ride a dragon, or do all the things i wanted to do before but i was afraid. I feel invincible. Because there’s nothing there to break anymore. All that’s left is an aching body.
But please, never think it was your fault. Never think so highly of yourself. If God wanted it like this, He must have had a reason. If He created this love, knowing you would never have the courage to live up to it, oh well…
And yes, at some point i’ll find someone who loves me. Someone i could be with… And you’ll feel relieved. And all will be well. On the surface of the empty shells that we’ll be.
This world, love, is full of empty shells walking around… their heads chopped off :) Never finding the courage to truly live. It pains me to be one of them.
 
In another dimension, same city but parallel Universe, Leah was writing another e-mail to the one who, six months before Eric, had turned her world upside down, leaving her like the Hanged man from the tarot deck. Once a week they would meet, in between their love materialized only in passionate angry loving and more often sad hundreds of e-mails. The idea was the same, he was telling her he loved her more than the world, but he was old and knew that their love wouldn’t last. She would try to tell him that love doesn’t know of age and that the multitude of things they had in common was more than most normal couples have, so she would never grow bored, as he thought she would. It was all in vain in the end, and the end of December was when she knew. Her biggest so far, most passionate love, was ending due to unforeseeable fear and weakness in the object of her love. And with it, scattered pieces of her soul would be carried away to places unknown to her. Part of her died that lonely New Year’s Eve.
It had to, so that life could continue. It had to for her, as it did for Eric. As it does for so many Phoenixes in this dimension. But it is all all right in the end. For underneath the duality of the good and the bad, there is a stillness of heart one can only find by diving through those cracks pain inflicts on one’s soul. And that stillness is unconditional love and gratefulness. Once you get there, life changes, reality changes, and all the outside circumstances change for the perceiver creates reality by the way it chooses to see it.
*
`Ok, Leah, shall we go now?`
`Yeah, sure! Would you like to come over? I could introduce you to my cat, Luna. She’s amazing, really!` Leah was being flirtatious, but it seemed to her that Eric was holding back for some reason.
`Why not?` Eric was trying to move the car. `Umm, Leah, i think the car is stuck in the snow.` Leah was amused.
`Okay, i’ll go push! I’m good at that!` Plus, we’ll have something funny to tell our grandchildren, about our first date. Leah was smiling and freezing in her long grey winter dress. She liked him a lot.
So much so that she was really excited to show him her little microverse of an apartment. It was quiet and peaceful, so he stayed more than planned. He told her about his past and she – about hers. IT felt like they knew each other for ages, and maybe they did... It was getting late, so...
`Okay, i’ll go now, Leah. Thank you for the tea! You have a really nice place here!`
`Well, maybe you’ll come over again.` She smiled. And waited for a kiss.
Instead, Eric turned and left, a bit in a hurry. Leah was confused. She sat there for 5 minutes wondering what just happened. The night, as it unfolded, should have ended with a kiss. Well, those movies don’t really show you alternatives, do they, Leah? She smiled and decided to let it go.
The phone rang. It was Eric.
`Yep!` She tried to keep it cheerfully-casual.
`Hey, Leah! I’m sorry! I’ve been a dick!`
`What? Why should you say that?` She knew something was going on with him...
`Well, there is a girl staying at my place. I wanted to kiss you, but thought it wouldn’t be fair to either of us. I am sorry.` He was talking fast, trying to spit all the words out at once. There, you said it. Now what?
`Oh, I see. Are you with her?`
`Well, not anymore. But she has some exam this week and asked that i let her stay there and move afterwards. She’s nothing to me now.` It’s you i’m falling for.
`Ok, then. I believe you. We’ll see each other again, i hope.`
`We will. Goodnight, Leah!`
`Goodnight, Eric!`
*
It’s a simple thing, falling in love, one would think. For Leah, falling in love this time was much more complex in its simplicity than she could have imagined. It was stardust and ocean drops all combined and combusting in this immense split of a second that caught her completely off guard, as she never expected this kind of love to come to her in the form of someone so normal. Of course, she didn’t rationally know it at first, that he was anything but the Thesaurus definition of normal. Her heart knew it, though. And led by their hearts, there was nowhere they couldn’t go, as long as they went together, hand in hand, souls in one. For the first time in forever, it felt right. More so than illusions ever did before.  
*
From Tuesday until Satuday, the feeling in Leah’s heart grew stronger, she couldn’t wait to see Eric in the evening. But her parents decided to give her a surprise visit and a hard time with that.
`So, Leah, how are you, my girl? You’re not still seeing that old man, are you? I really hope you are smarter than that now.`
`No, mom! I told you, that mistake is over.` I just wish you didn’t make me feel even more disgusted about myself than i already am, mom. She couldn’t admit to that. She knew she had overstayed her welcome with loving that man. It was long overdue, the end of them. But she scratched and clawed and crawled even after she realized there was nothing left for them in this reality. And her mom felt all these things, as she always did. She was worried, and expressed her worry in the mean way that made Leah’s inner strength grow ever since she was a little girl.
`In fact, mom, i have a date tonight!` Leah’s eyes sparkled.
Her mom knew it was different this time. Still, she decided to make Leah a bit stronger. `Yeah right, you are just doing this as a cover, i know it. You want me to stop questioning you and stop telling you how stupid you were to get involved with that man. Don’t lie to me, Leah! You know i can always tell when you’re lying!`
`But, mom, i really am not lying!` Strangely enough, but saying that her new love was a lie, it felt like her own mom was making Leah doubt it, question it, believe less in it even.
`Okay, i’ll just go outside and wait for Eric there! I cannot stand staying here anymore. Bye!`
So she took her purse, her coat and her aching confused heart and in a minute she was outside the apartment building. It was a bit too warm for February, but it felt nice. What if i look desperate when Eric comes and sees me waiting outside? I should go back up. But i cannot do that, it’ll ruin my make-up. I’ll just go inside the building then. Lucky for Leah, she didn’t have to wait too long. Eric called and said he’d arrive in a few minutes. When she went outside, he was there, leaning on the front door of a strange car. It seemed small, but when she went inside, it seemed big. She knew about cars but hadn’t seen this type before. Well, she had other things on her mind.
`How are you, beautiful?` Eric was charming. Too bad she was too upset to see it.
`I am so angry with my parents. We had a fight just now and i’m really not feeling ok.`
`Do you want to postpone?`He hoped not.
`No, of course not! I don’t want to go back there!`
`Ok, Leah. Where do you want to go, kiddo?`
`Is your place an option? I really don’t wanna see other people or crowded places.` She meant that. It would always be like that, when she was most upset, all she wanted to do was hide from the world. And that healed her.
`Yes, of course. I just want you to know that there are still some clothes left behind by that girl. She moved out, but she’ll come for the rest of her stuff tomorrow.`
`Ok, no problem.` It was a bit of a problem, but nothing like she had experienced before. It just felt right to be with him. Everything else meant nothing to her now.
*
The house was in a gipsy neighbourhood, but very close to the city centre. Leah didn’t really like the feeling of the area, but was too smitten with Eric to realize it. The roaring engine stopped, they got out of the car, and it was only then that Leah realized the car was red. Why would a man have a red car? It’s such a girly colour. Leah kept her thoughts to herself. She could barely hear them anyway through the pink coloured glasses of infatuation, so maybe that meant they weren’t important. She would continue to do this for way too long over the years...
The entrance was dark, they climbed some very narrow stairs and got to a white door. Eric unlocked and turned on the lights. So many orchids. Why do i have the feeling these are not his? Again, she said nothing. But at the same time she felt like a scrunchy being squeezed dry. The energy there was so bad, it was almost too hard to breathe. Maybe it’s from this girl he was using as a band-aid. Nasty, but understandable. Still, how badly could they have argued for the place to be smothered in ghost pain? It was really bad, and maybe Eric really needed her. So she stayed, ignoring everything else.
He made her a tea, a present from his first long-time girlfriend. Still, Leah couldn’t see anything else but him. He hugged her and in that moment she felt how all of the misplaced pieces of herself gathered back together and made her whole. It was a physical experience, she literally felt herself whole, so this sign was to her proof that Eric was to be hers.
Later that night, her mom’s worried message was met with a sentence: `Mom, I found the man i’m gonna marry.` And then the phone went silent.
Eric and Leah didn’t really sleep that night, or the nights that followed. They were in love, it appeared, and with each other! What a miracle in this world where she could never really feel mutual love before, not the impossible type, that is... At 5 a.m. they decided that, since sleep was not an option, they should go to the seaside. Leah took a pair of jeans and a sweater from Eric’s closet, put them on and went to show him. `Look, We’re the same size!` They laughed and then they went.
It was like floating on something lighter than air. All the worldly things were far from them. They were above reality while driving through it. Those feelings she would never regret, she knew that. It really was the most amazing love she could have felt, and knew that God wouldn’t have gifted it to them if He didn’t have plans for them. With faith on her side, and a foggy late-february morning, the sea appeared undecided though. Why was there no sun? Why all the fog? Maybe we will get married, but it feels like there will be a long and foggy road there.
*
A few days later they got to her place together. The door was unlocked.
`Leah, did you forget to lock the door?`
`Well, no... I am forgetful, but this i always remember to do.` Leah was scared. What if her apartment was robbed? There weren’t many things to steal there... maybe her collection of teas. She chuckled, a bit scared still.
Coming in, they could hear some music. I surely didn’t leave music on. And then, the mess! There were big white sheets of paper with words that were hard to look at. Words accusing her of cheating, and then telling her he loved her, and then judging and aggresively scolding her for giving up on him. They never belonged to each other in reality, only in the depths of their souls. So she couldn’t understant now why he would scold her for something he had been doing all along – being with someone else.
The music playing was from a cd he had made especially for the occasion, while the pile of stuff she had given him together with a huge chunk of her heart, were laying on the floor, forgotten in space and time. She remembered she had given him a key to feed her cat, Luna, but she never imagined he had made a copy.
Eric was baffled. He was too quiet, trying to make sense of everything without judging Leah. It was difficult for him, as he had to decide whether to close off again or not. He had indeed been to Hell and back before, so this shouldn’t have hurt like it did. Then again, if something foolish hurt him, then he must have been really in love. So he stayed. Then they got to talk. They told each other everything, like old friends do after they go years without talking. They had found each other, it appeared. It felt good, but how could she have known if good was real?
*
This same lack of trust and faith followed them for years to come. At every turn, every misplaced word or gesture, every questionable glance, every silence got to be analyzed and interpreted, as do people who have been through misery and pain, more than young hearts should have to bear. Still, they stuck together. They belonged, no matter how hard they would regularly question it, they were made to be together, as corny as it sounds. Corny does exist, once we get past the cynicism inflicted on us by people meant to be lessons, people whom, in our longing for love, we mistake for that which is supposed to last.
That’s the thing with these times, we get to learn more lessons than did people before, we get to grow more and thus, pay a bigger price. The heartbreaking thing is, the price is payed by the one who stays, as all the hurt harnessed inside gets to heal, it sometimes shoots mean sparks that go straight to the heart of the other.
Like this instance.
Two weeks had passed since love, that blessed nomad, came to be their guest. They spent every second of free time together and couldn’t imagine it differently. Sometimes at her apartment, other times at his place. But there were still so many things to be discovered. Looking back, Leah understood that, had she known them all from the beginning, she would’ve lacked the courage to be with Eric.
But two weeks in, things were still heavenly, no worrying, only love. That evening, they were at his place. Leah had just taken a bath, washing her hair in another bathroom for the first time in a long while.
`Eric, do you have a blow drier?` Eric was searching a movie to see together.
`Yeah, sure, look in one of the nightstands.`
`What hair do you blow-dry with it?` Leah was amused, making fun of Eric. They would make fun of each other out of fondness of heart, and it always felt nice. Except for now.
Looking for the blow-drier, Leah’s hand felt something behind it. It was a photo album it appeared. She took it out almost without thinking and opened it. Photos of them together, laughing, playing, kissing, with love messages written on every picture. The album wasn’t even dusty, which means it had been opened recently. Suddenly, a flash of pain in her chest and a sting in her wet head send cold shivers down her spine. That was the moment she understood how empty his heart was, by seeing what he had lost.
 
Blank. Regroup and start over. No, you don’t get to give up. Not on him. Not now. Not ever.
It hurts, i know. It hurts like Hell and you don’t even get why. Maybe it’s her smile, her way of making him happy, her love for him. Which you like to consider a lie. Because she cheated. She couldn’t have loved and cheated. You know that. You felt that. You were in her shoes. So how do you do it? How do you forgive and forget? Yourself, her, them… It’s too much. For someone like you, who thinks it over and over again, it really is too much. And you love him. You love him cause he brings up in you those wounds. Those things you might never heal, burried so deep beneath your skin that you can’t even see them clearly. At times an ordeal, at times bliss. How do you live with such extremes in your mind, your soul, your body? How do you heal, child? Why can’t you be more like them, like those people in the shallow waters. Those people who can be so detached, so… simple. Why did God choose to make you like this? Why… You know the answer. You know it. And it’s time you started doing what He sent you here to do. It’s your only path to sanity. Your only way to be close to Him, to be helped by Him, by helping yourself. He’s helping, you know He is. He always has. He never let you down. So don’t let Him down. And please, don’t ever let Eric down. He needs you. And he loves you. And he deserves your best. The best. Be the best. Be good. And loving, and kind, and generous. It’s your nature. It’s who you are. Who you were with all those people who were not for you. He is for you. He is worth it. Live up to your dream. He was always your dream. A man, a manifestation of your deepest desires, an angel, a precious soul. Love him with all you got. And love yourself. Stop comparing to them. They no longer exist. The present is yours with him. Make it count. Make every second count. Be tough. Be strong for him. He NEEDS you. And you need yourself. Take your power back. Feel it in your hands, in your feet, in your gut, in your eyes. That power is there for a reason. Don’t lay it to waste. That power is what brought you here, what kept you going, what put you through every circle of Hell you passed on your way to him. This is the hardest one. I know. But this is also the very reason for all those trials. This is your final test. Dry your eyes, take that smile back and keep going, For him, for yourself, for life and love, for hope and everything people have forgot, everything they cannot see. Keep going. Straighten your back, keep your head up and love him unconditionally. It’s the only way to really love someone.
 
She began to hyperventilate, tears rolling in huge chunks down her cheeks. Eric heard her and came rushing in the bedroom.
`God, Leah, what happened?` He saw the album open on the bed. `Oh, this...`
`What is this, Eric? Why do you keep it near the bed? Do you still cry at nights looking at it? What am i doing here then?` Leah was in a sort of shock, realising she was loving someone unavailable. Again.
`No, i just forgot it there. It means nothing. I’m with you now.` He managed to get close to Leah and hugged her really tight. She stopped hyperventilating and was sobbing quietly.
`I’ve been here before, Eric. I’m afraid.`
`There’s nothing you should be afraid of. I’m here. It’s all okay.`
He managed to quiet her down, they watched the movie, but later that night sleep was nowhere to be found for Leah. Eric felt it.
`What’s wrong?`
`I cannot sleep. With that thing in the nightstand i feel like i’m sleeping with ghosts.`
Visibly irritated, Eric turned on the light, took the thing and with heavy footsteps, went to the closet and threw it there.
`There! You happy now? Crazy woman.`
She smiled, having heard that word before so many times. She was happy. This meant there was hope for the both of them.
`Thank you. I love you.`
`You too. Now sleep.` And with a kiss, the world was new again.
 
Or this one.
This song on repeat for hours, about the wolves coming to get the sheep and the words calling for the shepherd to save them... It sounds so much like people praying to their God to help them in difficult times. It must be a reason why i keep wanting to hear it, a message maybe. Leah was `home` alone. It wasn’t her home. It was theirs. Eric’s and his former lesson. Leah moved in with Eric as they never really slept one night apart after their trip to the foggy sea. She knew it would feel horrendous to feel like filling in for someone else, but the infatuation was too strong to let that keep her away. She also knew that it wouldn’t last for long, that living situation. Almost 4 months in and she started to pressure Eric into moving out, looking for a place of their own. Of course he would always find a better argument for staying: it was cheaper, it was close to work etc. IT was familiar to him. Seeing that she couldn’t budge him, Leah started to clean up. Satchets of spices from the year she left, the glasses and plates she bought, the dirt from the kitchen cabinets that didn’t seem to have been used for a long time. She threw much of it away, without telling him, cleaned it all, weeping sometimes, knowing that it would take the world to heal his broken heart.
And then there were these 3D puzzles they had made together, of buildings from all around the world. They were everywhere, at least 30 of them, spread in the house. So, being alone that day, Leah decided it was too much. She took them all, and started ripping them apart with an anger known only by those trying to fill up a heart left barren by someone else. She did that, while saying a prayer, an incantation almost `May all that was physically gone begone from the mind and soul as well`, repeating it frantically until it was all done. Eric cared for those things, she knew that, but she also knew that, if he cared more about remnants of his past than her, she would have to go.
Next morning came slower than anticipated, and with it, Eric got home.
`Hey, baby! I missed you!`
Eric was tired after his 24h shift, but still smiled when he saw Leah. `Missed you too!`
Leah was nervous, of course, but also sick with anticipation. She didn’t want to tell him what she had done, partly because she wanted to see how long it will take for him to see it. Less than 5 minutes, it appeared.
`Leah`, he called from the other room in a slightly angered, slightly tired voice, `where are the things, the puzzles?`
`I threw them away!` God, it felt good to say that. `I saw no need for them anymore. They were just gathering dust and i cleaned the place yesterday.`
`You did what?` His anger was incresing in volume. `How could you do that? They didn’t belong to you!`
`Yeah, they belonged to you. I know. That’s part of the reason i did it. I’m sick of living with ghosts. And you know that. You knew it all along and you still made me do it. You say you love me, but how can you love and hurt knowingly? I get it, you love with what’s left of your heart, but i deserve more. So i showed myself some respect by doing what i did.`
Eric was looking for something. `Where are they? Come on, i know they are here somewhere.`
Leah had tears in her eyes seeing the desperation in his.
`I am sorry, love. I really did throw them away. Not before i tore them to pieces. There is nothing there to save.`
`Do you even think?`
Eric looked at her with a sort of hatred, as if Leah was the one who cheated on him all those years ago, and the one who left him, laying his heart to waste.
`I’m not the one who hurt you. You have to remember this. I’m just trying to put the pieces back because i fell in love with you. But if you want me to go, i will. Just say the word.` It was funny, how she knew in her soul that only an honest yes was enough for her to give up. After everything she had been through before, this seemed easy to do...
But he couldn’t say it. He didn’t want that. He just wanted a bit of both worlds, his memories and Leah. But he understood now that there was no way that could happen. Not with Leah.
`Okay, we’ll be okay. Just give me a few minutes alone, please. In fact, i’ll go to sleep.`
And with this, he was gone in the other room, leaving Leah alone again among her orchids and nicely arranged potpourri. It was a small victory for Leah, though. So her heart was quiet. In pain still, but somehow at peace with it.
*
With time and refusing to move out, Eric’s attitude grew in anger. His words became sharp, cutting deep. The reasons were always related to the lost pieces of his heart, while never admitting to it, denying any connection to it, and always blaming Leah for her overthinking and imagining things. And reading too much into them.
`Okay, Leah, i called the vet’s and they said we can go now with Lucky for his vaccine. Could you help me find his health book?`
`Yeah, sure.`
Lucky was Leah’s soulmate pet. From the first day they met, that little fluff loved her and was drawn like a magnet wherever she was. It didn’t matter that it was a gift to Eric’s former from the daughter of his parents’ friends, a blonde girl, also named Leah (henceforth called Lee), whom they all cared for and treated like a sort of precious thing. That jealousy was bound to appear in Leah’s soul a bit later. For now, she was looking for the dog’s healthbook. And, like everything she ever searched, Leah found it. Opened it. And there it was, the full name of its former owner. She... While Eric was in the other room, Leah took white paste, erased the name and put in Eric’s name.
`Found iiit!`
`Awesome! Let’s see when was Lucky’s last vaccine!`
Eric took it, opened it, and his face turned green.
`What’s this? Why did you change the name?`
`Well, she’s not its owner anymore. You are.`
`But what does it matter?` Eric started shouting. `What is it to you what’s written in this notebook? Why do you always have to pick on the little things, Leah?`
`Because the little things make up the big things. And i won’t have little things stand in the way of us.`
`Again with the crazy talk. You know what? Whatever. I’ll go alone.`
Leah was left in tears again, gasping for air, wondering if she was supposed to go. But go where? They had decided to rent her apartment, as she was never there and her cat Luna was given for adoption. (Long story short, Eric didn’t like cats and neither did Lucky, so Leah decided her love for Eric was more important than a cat. Three years later she would regret that choice.) There was nowhere for her to go now so she just stood there. We will have to move this place.
Something’s missing in me, i felt it deep within me, as lovers left me to bleed alone. ...
How do you do it? How do you stay with someone who doesn’t love you, who never really did? Why do you do it and how can you change it when everybody expects you not to. Love wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be for me. Is it like that? Was it always a question of destiny? Too much love inside so that there was no need for the Universe to make way for incoming love. It never could, maybe.
And yet I did always feel fully alive... With all the pain and the darkness, my heart beat faster and with more meaning, as if this was really why I was born. Hammer fall on all the pieces... cause this is what it felt like. She’s glad for one day of comfort only because she had suffered. 
Fully alive, more than most, ready to smile and love life. But oh, so alone…[1]
*
So, you see, their love, as with all loves that last, was never perfect. It was never flawless. And maybe this was what made it special, that despite the life of it, it stayed strong and ever-bearing.
And then, as with all stories, the weeks became months. Time progressed and their love moved between fixed points of peacefulness and apathy and enraged anger at what had been, mirrored in their present. And then the months became years, only one and a half actually. And then this happened.
The teary choice
Mid-august. They were driving through the mountains, long beautiful forests and rocky mountains were hovering along the road. Leah was smoking quietly and thinking at not thinking for a while. It was a sort of meditation, to watch the green and the grey and the blue dance together on the car’s music, to its taste and following the rotations of its wheels. It felt nice. And then Eric’s phone ranged.
`Yes. Hello, boss! I see. … Ok, I guess. Talk later, I’m driving now.`
`What? What happened?` Leah was, as usual, curious. She liked it like that, never really intended to change that about her.
`My boss. Remember, I had told you in January that there was a possibility of me going away to South America for a few weeks? Apparently, it came up now and I’m being sent there.`
`Can’t you say no?` Leah panicked. It was more than the fact that she was going to miss him. It was that they were living in a neighborhood which she feared to walk into alone. They would always take the car together and of course Eric never let her drive. He had tried in the beginning to take her driving, since she had just gotten her driver’s licence. But he decided, after only a couple of failed parking maneuvers, that she wouldn’t drive with him in the car. This scared Leah, so she never really got around to driving again. This being said, the dependency was almost unbearable, but she accepted it. Now, however, it would have been too much. `How am I supposed to handle things for three weeks by myself?`
`What? So I’m supposed to give this up because you don’t know shit about driving? It’s maybe a once in a lifetime chance, to get there. You want me to give that up?`
`Well… I don’t know. But I do believe you should think about me too.` Leah was scared, there were two opposing beliefs running through her head just then. She hated confusing thoughts; couldn’t control them.
A heated argument and some cigarettes later, Eric picked up the phone to try and cancel his leaving, despite Leah’s asking him to wait and think about it a little longer.
`It’s done. It’s canceled. Now can we have a peaceful time and enjoy the mountains?`
Leah said nothing.
An hour later, on top of the highest mountains, Eric proposed.
Leah was wearing Eric’s warm pants on top of her long pants, which were on top of her shorts. It was cold, almost too cold for mid-August. But then again, they were in the mountains. Eric took out the picnic set, and they went to place it some 100 meters from the car. Once they were set, Eric remembered he had to take something from the car. Once he reached the car, he yelled: `Leah, could you see where I’ve put the keys to the car? In the backpack? Maybe in the side pocket?`
Leah took the back pack, reached in the pocket looking for the keys, but there was nothing else there but a little box. `They’re not here!` she shouted and then gasped. She took out the box and opened it. A frantic burst of tears surprised her. She forgot where she was, she just stood there, crying. Like in a dream, Eric asked her `Do you want to be my wife?` All she could do was nod. He placed the ring on her finger and hugged her quiet.
For the next few months it seemed like time has stood still. In November she started wondering why they weren’t making wedding plans. She started asking Eric and he started to give in. It seemed like he was waiting for something. Something that never came. So they got married next September.
*
 And don’t you know, kid, that making promises is nothing more really than wishing upon stars? And sometimes some wishes don’t come true, and some promises get broken. Despite knowing that, oh, how I wish for you to be my lucky star, and I want for our wish to come true and our promise of love to be fulfilled. Because sometimes promises are nothing less than premonitions about the future. Only sometimes, though...
*
Leah, although different in many aspects from people she had known, was indeed quite similar when it came to marriage. She had dreamed of it since she was little, since her grandmother, now long gone, had given her a doll dressed like a bride holding an umbrella, spinning in circles as if she was so happy in her wedding dress that the toy manufacturers had to give her this spinning feature so that she could express her joy and happiness. `What I wouldn’t give to live to see you at your wedding.` her grandmother would say to her. And Leah would remember and pray that her grandmother, really her mother at heart, be there at her wedding.
It wasn’t meant to be though. Her grandmother had died a couple of months before Leah met Eric. Leah couldn’t cry when she heard the painful news. She didn’t cry at the funeral either. She saw a sort of smile on her grandmother’s cold face and knew that she was at peace. She knew that a struggling life she had had was over with a smile and this gave Leah hope for the afterlife. Six kids, abused and bruised by her former husband, her grandmom got a divorce in a time when the term `divorce` was barely heard of. She then had to move to the city, get a job and try to help her children, some of them grown up by then. Leah’s mother, being the youngest, had to live in an orphanage for two years before things settled and she could be provided for.
Scars passed down on the women line of her ancestors got to Leah. She felt them as if she had lived them and then tried to heal them. It wasn’t clear whether she succeeded or not. But she sure cried when she realized her grandmom wouldn’t be at her wedding. At least not in person, for in spirit she was by Leah’s side every time she would think of her.
After coming from her honeymoon Leah went to her grandma’s grave. It was then that she cried. And they talked. And she felt hugged by a presence so palpable that she could almost touch it.
People you love never die. They live in and around you, they change with you and the seasons. They become both a distinct and an intrinsic part of your core, so that at some point missing them becomes pointless and redundant. They are there no matter what you do. They have touched your soul and by doing that, added themselves to you. Separation becomes once again an illusion of the limited mind. There is a sort of kind warmth to acknowledging that.
*
Not even a full year of marriage had gone by, and they were going to bed upset. Things Leah had sworn never to do with her marriage, she was doing, not knowing how to change them, how not to become the only version of wife she ever knew. Eric started to care less and less, and now, knowing that, Leah was wondering what she could have done differently. After analyzing most of her choices and miscalculations, she had come to the conclusion that, no matter their decisions, being the characters that they were, it would have been impossible for them to end up somewhere other than here. The right question was what to do from there, or better yet, what exactly was this here?...
*
Checkpoint
I went. Too far I went and too deep a steep I undertook. It took me way to far from myself and thus way too far from truth. I sing songs with words that do not belong to me, nor I to them. It pains my very insides to see my soul, my mind and even my flesh become this… this. This thing I can barely stand to look at in the mirror. Bullied, put down, humiliated and treated in ways way other than deserved or asked for. Why do I stay? What do I need? What do I see that makes me blind? How do I take the veil off, and then what do I do with it? With myself. With them and everything else around me. With… him. Eric. No. There is no him. I wish there wasn’t. I wish I could say that. I wish I stopped wishing for everything, for anything. Be still… Just be still. That is all I wish for. Be still in mind and peaceful in spirit, be me and just that. Keep myself, not let go of myself the way I have been doing for a while now. Be appreciated. Be loved. Like, for real. I wish I listened when I had ears to listen and walked when I had feet to walk. Blue touches blue touches gray touches brown… I look down at my feet, they’ve been with me for years. I am drunk. With pain and sadness. With all things cruel and monstrous. I am alone in pain. I am alone. There is no love around anymore, only inside. How can that be? Didn’t they say that love comes from within and then pours without? What is this, then? Where do I find the answers… I need. I need to be stronger.
I want to go back. Cause sometimes going back is nothing more, really, than going forward.
And I’m clinging again. To a hope of something that doesn’t exist. To a non-reality. To nothingness. I don’t and will never have the answers. I just have myself. And within, everything I need to know.
*
Fast forward, a couple of lives later, or maybe just days… Leah was at work. Some new temporary colleagues she had never met were in her e-mails. `Andrew, I surely didn’t see this one.` She dismissed the thought before it even appeared. It didn’t matter.
A few more days had passed – or was it weeks? And then - a knock on the door. `Come in!` She said, still reading something important on her desktop. A deep voice woke her up and naturally her eyes, curious to see what the ears had heard, went straight to his eyes. And were stuck. `Damn!` Leah’s mind went blank. There was nothing there, nada, meditation-blank. It was surreal. `Did this ever happen to me before? Like, from the very first second I saw, not even saw – but hear – a voice? Life is bitchy, after all…` A smile returned Leah her voice. He was fixing her still. Without taking his eyes off of hers, the broad-shouldered, otherwise slim figure standing in front of her, started talking. He was Andrew, and he wanted to ask her opinion on something unimportant. Everything else seemed unimportant just then. But Leah had to think – and then talk. That was important. Or not. Who could have known just then?  The thoughts were beginning to get scrambled again. `Just start talking and you’ll figure it out.`
She tried to appear smart about it, and then, shifting the conversation, Leah tried to quench her thirst of knowing more about this new kind of soulmate she had hoped existed but never really believed it to be real. So they talked, and discovered that he was 9 days younger than Leah, had a cat and a dog – just like her – and had studied abroad. His voice was so soothing, while strong and deep. His eyes, a strange mix of haze, grey and blue, his hair – screaming for deep caresses, he was made of passion and would most certainly drive one too many girls crazy for love. But Leah was not in love. It was something else.
It was magnetic, the way he would catch her eyes and not let go. It felt like the souls were embracing through that dance of glances; it should’ve felt weird, but instead, it felt natural. `Oh, dearest Leah, what do you know about natural? Remember how many times it felt natural? And how many many times that natural was not for you? You got what’s for you. Right?`
Why did God invented question marks? Why did He have to give that to us? Why not let us die not knowing, than live questioning our boundaries?
Is this like the four years I’ve cried for someone not meant for me, who would never love me back. But make it look like he really liked me, while knowing I was in a committed relationship and seeing the effect he had on me? Or is it like the month I’ve fallen for someone I could not be with because of work reasons, despite of him falling for me too? Well, let’s analyse, Leah. We’re good at it. As useless as it might be, given the futility of comparing experiences. At least you’ll look busy and Eric won’t be scolding you for some reason or another.
*
Illusion
How do you deal with love when it’s not welcome into reality? How do you deal with falling in love after you’ve made a vow never to fall in love again? What’s moral, immoral or amoral about love? Does love fall victim to the principles of morality? If so, why? And how could it ever? How can you keep a force so big confined into borders so strict? How do you set the boundaries and how do you make them strong? Is this what’s needed?
It hurts. But what does? What is there inside of me that hurts and needed this materialization in order to come to the surface and be healed? Maybe… my dream of a perfect tailor-made-for-me human? An idea I came to think was an illusion, only to find it here again? SO maybe, on some level, I never did let go of it completely, I never really dismissed it as an illusion, but kept a piece of it to myself. And now it revisits me to show me where I still have work to do. We’ll see… But still, what do you do when you feel a connection that’s not meant to be there?
*
And what do you do when you don’t even know if it is mutual? Does it have to be mutual in order to be a connection? Love is still love even if it is one-sided. It stems from the same abyss of the soul and reaches the same heights and lows of bliss and agony whether the feelings are shared or not – when it is not meant to be there, that is. When another contract has been signed and reality doesn’t allow for anything else anymore.
Love doesn’t have to be mutual. Leah, for example, loved more than a few people, and the one she loved the most, was forever out of her reach. So, there you have it. There are no rules in love. If only it was like that with life, too.
Cause you see, now, as Leah and Eric were celebrating their one year anniversary from the day of their wedding, and as they were driving back from the sea she missed for what seemed so long, car shooting on the highway, Leah was anywhere but with Eric. She was, most of her at least, in a dream she had a few nights before, a dream that seemed so real and felt so intense that it woke her up, spikes of pleasure shooting through her whole body and beyond. And all from dreaming of a kiss. Only one kiss. The tragic part of her story was repeating itself again. Secret, impossible, unrequited love was here to stay. But why? What was the lesson it was trying to convey to Leah? Why couldn’t it be more explicit? Why did it have to leave her in the bittersweet agony of feeling that which she shouldn’t have… Maybe the answer was to come soon. So she hoped. Until then, all she could do was revel in the feeling. That she knew how to do.   
*
In case I won’t see you again… Thank you! For being a breath of fresh air in a stifled world. You walk so quietly through the world while leaving such a deep mark on it. Destined for greatness, but you knew that already. It’s been an honor, honestly!
An enormous sadness was enveloping her whole being while Leah was pouring the words from her overflowing heart. She felt like she was missing him already. Such a misplaced feeling, her office would forever now remind her of a connection she wanted more of but couldn’t even let the hope in. It was not allowed. What kind of effed up world was this, that love was not welcome? It was surreal, the confusion and intensity of feeling Leah was going through. The institution of marriage is the supreme form of prison, and for the first time in almost 29 years, she believed that.
A knock on the door, and his eyes were on her. She felt chills up her spine every time he would look straight into her eyes. She wanted and needed to understand his existence in her life so badly… What sort of karmic play was this and what was the lesson she had to draw from it? Could it be that they could learn it without going through the pain? Does it even work like that?
`Hey!` Andrew seemed nervous. `I’m done with that thing, now I’m taking a break.` He was looking at a colleague, but talking to Leah. Then he sat down and looked at her: `Could you show me that thing? About the numbers?`
For the last week of his being there, Leah and Andrew grew closer. They started talking about all the things they couldn’t talk with normal people. It felt like home. Now, it was about synchronicities. Like when they both saw 11:11, or when she told him `You had to come and turn my life upside down`, after he showed her some button on her computer. Or when they were talking about `Dr Strange` and she told him `Time will tell how much I love you. I liked that quote.` It came natural. Inappropriate in the real world. But natural to them. Indeed, time would tell…
So it was only normal for Leah to pass the note to Andrew. Quietly. He took it and after he got in his office, an IM appeared on her screen: `Thank you! I feel the same way. >:D< (this is a hug from the old Yahoo Messenger)` and she replied: `I know. Hug back!` And that was it.
At the end of the work day, she went to his office to wish him all the best. It felt like running away, and maybe it would’ve been better. But her legs brought her to him.
`Hey! I just wanted to wish you goodluck and all the best!`
`Thank you! We’ll see each other again, I hope, in other circumstances maybe.` It felt like Andrew was trying to make her feel better, as if knowing the pain she felt coursing through her chest. But what did he mean? Will she ever know? Or will he forever be that one for whom her heart would turn into stone? Never to fall in love again, as promised in church.
Everything fades away, my love, I’m sorry, for your pain, don’t worry…
*
You had the blue note sapphire eyes to back up all those gazes, to pierce my guard and to take my soul up to faraway places. Told me I’ll never be alone, cause you’re right there. We took a gamble with this love…
I kept the love you gave me alive and now I carry it with me. I know it’s just a teardrop of mother earth, but in it I can hear a dolphin sing, telling me I’ll never be alone. I know you’re right there. …Do I even dare to speak up your name for fear it sounds like… like a lover.[2]
*
The feathers of a humming bird in flight, breaking up into a million specs of light, the shadow of an angel in the night…
There were times when she feared for humanity, for what it would bring upon itself lest it learned and integrated its essence. And then she would remember fear is not real. It is but a construct of the mind, a leftover from savage times, which didn’t, couldn’t be kept on in the collective unconscious, as it no longer served any purpose. It had to be transformed by the sheer power of alchemical realization of spirit, and this could only be made possible by the acknowledgement and seeing of fear for what it really was. At first glance, this appeared a maze, an entanglement of processes like a complicated algorithm at the end of which you could finally see. Maybe it was, after all, and maybe it didn’t have to be. It was for us to know and find out.
But for now, there was fear. She couldn’t deny it, or push it aside – she knew it meant to teach her something. SO she sat with it, asking questions and seeking to grasp answers from the sensations in her body. From the shivers she got when an answer appeared in the form of a thought already formed in her heart, as if carried lightly on a feather and placed directly in her heart. Or from her voice she felt rising every time there was something there, in her words. And she wanted to share it with the world, and maybe did, for there were many times when thoughts she had thought would appear as messages from someone else, or even as fragments in books. The collective unconscious made its presence felt and known to her in this way. It was all so magical and she wept for humankind, for the potential getting lost in violence and hatred, in striving to survive and not realizing that the body surviving didn’t bring with it the survival of the spirit. And that survival was the vital one for the entire humanity to fulfill its purpose, to draw closer and closer to Spirit.
That was Leah at times when peace of mind was not needed, but instead action was called for. Eric found that dangerous about her. Books are dangerous, he would think out loud. They make you fight your own ideas and become mad with trying to choose a side.
No, my dearest, she would say in the softest of voices so as not to scare him even more. Books are life, they give humans the experience of the ages, so that us, mortals, can live thousands of lives in one physical life. In one book, a person will live the lives and experiences of all the characters, they will feel every emotion and entertain every thought revealed by means of all mighty words. And they will grow in compassion and empathy, in the power of their thoughts and actions, in the very core that binds us all together. For when you can feel the feelings of a character in a book, it becomes natural to feel and understand the souls-mirros you walk among every day.
Leah would always hope her words could someday strike a chord in Eric, so she kept talking to him and telling him about the world through her eyes. She knew his spirit would hear hers, and from then on it would be easier for Eric to hear her too. If he was meant to, life would find a way.
*
It wasn’t until she began to show small fractions of kindness towards herself, that she understood how unkind she had been to herself for almost her entire life. It was, as are all conditionings, a learned behavior. Psychologists were right, that amazing writer who brought Women who run with the wolves to humanity was right. Some conditionings are inherited – subconscious to subconscious on the maternal line – and the work it takes to unearth and shed light on them is no easy chore. There were, she was sure, many of them, but the fact the she herself was able to uncover, integrate and heal just one, brought her immense joy and relief. It meant that it was possible to heal, to leave behind parts of us we no longer need, bits and pieces that won’t find their place in the new world. It meant that we as a species contained in our egregor an immense power to become that which we were always meant to be. It was relieving, this feeling, this sensation inside, that there was hope for the light in us to envelop the darkness and turn it into beauty of heart.
*
The equalizing factor
A thought, a concept arrived in the steps of Leah’s soul to remind her in detail how she perceived the World in its entirety. Endless conversations, arguments, fire, passion and sparks in her eyes whenever she talked about how the life of Earth, spread in billions and billions of forms and shapes, could not, would not ever sum up to something other than equality. The leaf and the caterpillar, as moved by causality as they might be, they are of the same beauty. Love makes both the lion and the zebra come along as equals, as the love of the zebra for the lion is so big, that it gives its own life for the lion to survive. It’s love, not anything else, that decides the fates and turns them so that in the end it becomes clear how everything is a drop that both makes and is made of the same ocean.
So, after Andrew was gone, causality was suspended in a void. Leah’s life became linear. Her soul lost its sparkle and fell asleep for a while, just a while, until I’m better. Leah could hear her soul and decided to give time and love for it to come alive again, someday. So, for a week almost, Leah slept too.
For a few months now, a sort of virus was spreading through the world. It was like a cold, only that some people would have no symptoms, while others would die. A strange respiratory disease which changed the world, bit by bit, until it became unrecognizable. Due to that virus, Leah was spending much more time alone at home, being forced to sit with her shadows, to nurture them and be consumed by them. To sleep, when forgetting was required. And awake when sleep started to resemble death.
Like a Phoenix, after a month of silently, secretly grieving, Leah was being born again. She learned to accept life for what it was, her outside circumstances for what they were, and her feelings for nothing more than emotions. She was growing colder, but stronger, so maybe it was a good thing. Maybe everything was good, and nothing was good. Maybe good and bad were limitations that stifled life. So she stopped thinking about them.
Instead, she decided to get a tattoo. For a few years now she had contemplated the idea, never really gathering up the courage to do it. Now she did. It would be a rose behind her right ear, to symbolize love in all its forms. Love that will stay with her…
*
`How would you even consider doing that to your body? What are you? In prison or something? Tattoos are a sign of lowlife, of people who don’t know good from bad. Please, just, reconsider. At least wait a while.`
`Eric, I know you believe that, but for a few years before I even met you, I had wanted to get a tattoo, just to see what it feels like, to have something that permanent done to yourself. It’s like there is this thing that is not up to fate in a life that seems completely out of control. I just wanted to see what it feels like…`
`Is it worth it? Having a permanent scar on your skin, just so you can satisfy a curiosity? It sounds childish to me.`
`Yes, maybe. But scars, I have plenty of those, I even have the one on my face. At least the tattoo would be a scar I get to choose.`
`Okay, but at least wait until this sick pandemic is over.`
`I will consider it, I promise.`
How funny it seemed to her that now, being married, her body was no longer her own. And her soul no longer subject to a single decision maker. Getting a tattoo was, of course, riskier with the pandemic. So she decided to wait. Not out of fear of the virus, but out of respect for Eric. He felt so strong about tattoos, Leah never really understood why. But she cared about him, more than she could comprehend.
*
Her birthday came and passed, a month later Christmas and New Year’s too. With weeks in a row spent at home, in isolation, life shared with Eric was getting lighter. Their hearts, no longer heavy as they used to be in the first year. Something was changing, and Leah was not so sure she wanted to know what was. All that she knew was that now, all it would take for her to feel empty was Eric being gone for a couple of hours. She cared about him more and more, and couldn’t quite understand how only four months before she thought herself in love with someone else. I must have been crazy, I could never be happy without Eric. She knew the thought was what she needed to say to herself, but still, to some degree, it was true. There were days when Leah and Eric were really a couple, connecting and loving each other. Those days would make her anxiety come back, what if I lose him? Maybe that’s what she always needed distractions. A crush, yoga, dancing, reading, or anything really. To fill up herself so that the thought of losing the one she loved would not be so overwhelming.
How do you make peace with the fact that you might, one day, lose a creature you love? How do you stay sane and in love, knowing that this love can destroy you once it leaves? At least for a while. Maybe that’s why The Power of Now was such a huge success. It helped you escape in the Now so that you don’t have to deal with the distorted Past memory remnants or the projections of the Future. It is, indeed, much easier, to be present and not think of anything else, beyond the boundaries of this moment. But to Leah, that had started to feel out of balance. Without the keys from the Past, how could one understand the Present? And without projecting futures, how could humans be creative enough to make up a life, with all its wishing upon stars and crying in hope of something more?
The balance was embracing all of them, the lies of the Past, the ecstasy of the Present and the fantasies of the Future. And, maybe when love became too scary, to get lost in the Present.
*
A new fear had started to occupy quite a vast space in Leah’s heart. There had always been the possibility that Andrew would come back and work with her. She would dismiss the thought as highly unlikely, but as the moment of the decision approached, she couldn’t help but wonder. Would she be strong enough to ignore any feelings he inspired in her and act like a mature person? That was the intention but the fear was, indeed, reasonable. A few more weeks and we’ll find out whether you really grew up, dearest Leah. Have some faith, will you!
*
Meanwhile, a series of e-mails from Leah’s past had shown up again in her Trash folder. The married man that had claimed to love her beyond life itself, and then left her hoping that his words were true, was now deciding that he missed her and wanted to see her again. After almost five years, Leah could finally see the disgusting human nature in him. Back then, to her, he was all that was good, he was art and love and curly black hair and green eyes. The way he looked at her every time they met, the intense gaze into her soul, had made her fall in love. And she wouldn’t have allowed herself to do that if he didn’t say he was in the process of separating from his wife. Of course, down the path of those few months, he realized he could not do it. He remembered he had a daughter and that daughter should be forced to live in a family without love. Only that he could be close to her. By the end, Leah had tried to break it off a few times, she had realized the truth from the lies and wanted to free herself. Only that he would always come to her, tears rolling down his face, begging, kneeling and condemning his God. Not realizing that not God, but he was the one that should have done something.
It is easy, having the idea of God in our lives. It makes it so much easier to give up responsibility when it suits us. But at some point it becomes so obvious that it works  not in our favor… Instead of making decisions and sticking to them as long as it feels right, instead of creating our own lives, we let ourselves be carried by whatever religion says we should do. By what society thinks that God wants from us. By everything that is not us. Some of us never see the truth. They live a life that is not theirs. They never truly live, but get by. They never truly love, every time a real feeling catches them by surprise, they dismiss it saying that the Devil sent it their way. We, as religious humans, are a disgrace to life itself.
Mind you, I’m not saying that there is no God. Oh, but there is! It lives in everything the air touches, It lives in the void of the Universe too. In and around humans, It connects us to everything that is. If we let It. Only if we allow It to touch us, can we truly experience connection to this realm, understanding of the intricate laws It governs, and love.
No, you do not have a God. It tried to reach you but you wouldn’t let Him manifest. You keep it locked inside, forgotten, lonely and sad. You disempowered your God for the sake of the rules humans had created about Him. It is absurd. But I cannot help you.
With this realization, Leah was completely free of this man’s influence. He was gone, forever to be forgotten from her soul. Their karma consumed, Leah’s heart felt like a feather. Flying again, as it was meant to.
Thank you, God, for always being here. Thank you for the love you pour into my soul every time I think of you. I can feel you in everything that is. And I am grateful for your light.
*
And then, the thing she feared the most happened. Andrew came back. She knew in her heart she would see him again, but hoped that she didn’t. As well as she knew herself, Leah was well aware that his presence will torment her and wake her from the numbness she had fallen into. She found out about it a month before, so that now, coming full circle from the month she mourned his leaving, she had a month to prepare for his coming back. She was not prepared when they saw each other again.
The gods are cruel. Don't you forget that, little girl. Whatever they get you hoping, they. Will. Definitely. Take it back. One way or another. They feast on your emotions, they grow your feelings until your heart feels like it will explode. And then. And then they twist it, so that you don't get it. Ooor. Or you get it when you no longer want it. When you forget it even existed. When it doesn't matter anymore and after they had you devoid of every ounce of that enormouseness you were carrying inside your whole being, filled and contained by it all at once.
Everything happens for a reason??? Well, that proved to be the funniest and saddest joke of them all. Illusions, smoke and mirrors, a nothingness of words disguised into somethingness. Everything happens because it does. The chaos that is all of it will never amount for anything real. Anything that's real gets crushed. Under the weight of our own frailty of spirit.
I do love you. I am so completely in love with you. And it really doesn't matter. It never will.
I am sorry.  
*
So much love in one heart, this cannot be right. Is it because people have stopped knowing how to love? And maybe that whole amount of love destined for Earth had now less recipients? And naturally, more love was assigned to those who could feel it? Yes, that must have been the case, since Leah knew now that love would never leave her soul. And that every single one of her feelings and loves was meant to bring her closer to that source, from where all good and bad and amazing and awful things came.
She was in love with life. And she knew she didn’t have to do anything about it. Now she knew that love could just exist, without us trying to control it and mold into pieces that could suit us. It was the case with Andrew. She gave up control and then the most liberating feeling came to visit her heart. IT was as if by letting her love flow freely, she was honoring it and letting it take any and every form it wanted to. Leah gave her love freedom, and in return, that love made Leah soar to the skies and it gave her wings again, so that she could fly to the farthest reaches of her soul, of the Universe’s soul. And all was well with the world.
*
You know, it would’ve been so much easier if you were not hetero. Leah smiled, thinking that thought. It would, indeed, have been amazing. If he was gay, they could have been friends, and she could have met with him and talk and just be in his presence, for that was all that she really wanted – to be close to him. To hear him talk and look into his eyes. To feel that gaze caress her face and body, nothing sexual in it. Or maybe everything sensual. That was yet unclear. All she knew for now was that he was hers to keep. Forever and a day? No, just… forever. It was clear that they had met in another life. It was clear to Leah that feeling like that for a person could not be just human in nature. It was celestial. It was something that words could only try to describe. So she did, for she knew that if she could find the words to paint a picture of that connection, the world would be ever so beautiful.
A gift. This love was a gift for Leah’s soul. Even though reality was not friendly with it, Leah’s inner reality was enriched by it. This love brought with it a piece of God, like every love does. And for that, Leah would forever be grateful to Andrew’s soul. A soul brought to this world to inspire good in those he touched. To melt hearts and make them rearrange their insides to fit that big a feeling. He was a gift to the world. And Leah was happy to have been born almost at the same time with him. And to have met him. Unconditionally love him and taking in his presence.
Thank you, Andrew. You know, for just being here.
"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.”[3]
*
Leah was curious.
For a while now she had been feeling like human life doesn’t really make a difference in the Universe. It does destroy the planet, but out there, it is but a speck of dust in an infinite dust pan. As much as she had wanted to believe there was a purpose for us here, she could not see it. There were theories, but none all that plausibile. And theories she never could believe until she felt the truth in her heart.
A few months had passed since Leah took an interest in angels and archangels. She got some sets of cards, to try to communicate with them, but it didn’t seem to work. Meanwhile, more and more messages from angels would appear in the most unusual of places. On her Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and all the other electronic places she visited. She thought it was all the marketing strategy from Google. But was it?
One morning, as Eric was shutting the front door, Leah thought she was still sleeping. A speck of light appeared in front of her eyes and then a series of ideas were materializing in her train of thought. I know you have been looking for something. We all know as we had heard your calling. You have been through every phase of consciousness, you now know to listen to your intuition, you know truth from lies. And you know this is real.
A shiver went up her spine. Leah was awake, but just like in a deep meditation, the borders were not all that solid. The alpha state of mind was different from what one might be used to.
But if she was awake, then the speck of light… She tried to close her eyes again and call it back. But the enthusiasm was too ego-related to allow any real connection to that form of energy. She knew she had to wait it out.
*
And sometimes, when people wait for something, there is another gift that appears. The secret is to keep the soul open to possibilities, not smother it with expectations and thoughts of what should be there. Instead, take whatever life lays on your golden embellished plate and make it into something amazing. Keep the heart grateful and seek the beauty in all that is yours, all that comes naturally. There is, really, no other way to live.
There is a ghost on this Earth. Not yet dead, not yet alive either. It goes back and forth, peeking secretly to the past, while looking, still fearful of hoping, to the future. There is a stillness in its eyes and a spark in its cold heart. A blue feather in its left wing, and a white feather in its right wing. They serve as reminders of moments and feelings too powerful for a heart to withstand, yet too real for it to deny. The blue feather speaks of silences and mourning and wailing when crying is no longer enough. The white feather sings of joys and love and tears when smiles and laughter fail to express the happiness inside. Both feathers are extensions of the heart, undeniably eternal, trapped in time, like a moment of the purest love. The ghost cares for them, knowing that in them life is born and dies, again and again, until it serves its purpose. 
There is a ghost on this Earth. And that ghost is me.
*
Empathy
…and its wonders. How it made Leah feel life through someone else’s eyes. She knew people, so when she showed something to someone, she would perceive that thing exactly as that person perceived it. She realized soon enough that in order to hear or see or feel something for herself, she should have to do it alone. With people around, it always felt different, as she first felt their feelings. IT was a gift, really, to be able to understand people like that, though sometimes a heavy gift, she carried it with love in her heart and that made it lighter. It is nice to be me, she would think and immediately rejoice at the thought while remembering how much she had expected this feeling when she was but a young girl seeking approval from others and rarely getting it as expected…
*
You feel the love and you let it fly through you and back into the flow of energy that makes us, knowing that what is meant for us is bound to us. And that there’s nothing you need that doesn’t meet you at exactly the perfect time for your soul. The flow teaches you to put back into it, thousand fold, what comes at you. Love is born every second inside our souls, because it’s there all along. It guides us and makes us see the world differently every day, with every piece of love you take in, grow, and then give back. Thank our guides, give thanks to those light-beings that take us by the hand and show us life for what it is, outside of the illusion of lack and impossibility.
*
In the now
A concept, hard to even grasp sometimes, but so sweet once you integrate and feel it deep within your core. The stillness of presence, the love of life that comes with gratefulness for simply being. The wonder that blood running through your veins can feel like. Is it blood though? It feels more like energy and life and peace. At times, physical biology stuff feel so distant, while those intangible abstract concepts that make up the foundation of existence are coming alive through every fiber of soul that resides in this dimension, thus making way for simultaneously being in other dimensions too. It used to be, for Leah, a distant mental prospect what now felt like her whole reality. The belonging and the this feeling right here were more than she could have hoped to meet in one existence.
She had discovered that being married didn’t mean leaving behind everything you are deep inside, and that life continues even after marriage, thus healing a mental construct her family of origin had instilled into her. So far off the beaten path her longings and intuition had taken her. Leah knew there were few people who could understand the magic of a yoni egg, or that energy healing really does exist, or that yoga is a way of life, and not just some postures and that life is so much more than what we see with our conditioned minds. She hoped that people, her beloved brothers and sisters would search and wonder and seek, for she had felt deep within how seeking brings humans the understanding and calm that needs to happen for lives mysteries to be revealed.
It was somewhat unusual to be both like them and like herself and her tribe of weird ones. For Leah, now almost 30 years old, could understand both the rational and the irrational, could see the truth in both manifestations of the Divine energy and love them both, for they were both Her own. This didn’t, of course, mean that she wasn’t hurting when bombs exploded killing so many, or when people in power would use that same power meant to do good, to destroy and manipulate, but somehow, through the hurting, she found a way out of sadness. By understanding that hurt is also a part of human experience she came to accept it, to make peace with it. It was clear that one person could not heal the world. And maybe the world didn’t even need that healing. It was perfect, with both good and bad, dualities befitted Her, bringing life into everything dead and death into all life. It was a journey through a reality not meant to be modified by its own children, but a reality that would permanently evolve through and by itself, taking with it everything inside.    
*
Endings
Putting together every little piece of love made up a life hard to understand even by its owner, but oh, so amazingly beautiful! To have so much love of people in one’s heart, to have so much feeling, so much emotion running through her veins, through her bones, igniting and bursting out into laughter through rivers of tears on scarred cheeks. But the scars! Oh, the scars, they made such a breathtaking canvas, a piece of art visible only to those who were born bearing the same gift, that of love and joy and sacred emotion.
A part of a bigger tapestry, an infinite one, she was and she felt it, that thing she was, the spirit, the atom, the energy, it was the same energy running through everything else around her. And she swirled in spirit, enveloped in this energy of love and sometimes she could almost feel God in the swirling… and she kept on swirling through lives of love and pain and joy and everything that brings life to empty bones.
Cause you’re fearless in your love, devoted to compassion… the way you wear your heart, the way you hold my heart, my fierce friend. She felt every word in the center of her chest and in the drops of tears tumbling down to meet her chapped lips, that knew the most incredible of kisses. And she knew she loved the very essence of life, she loved and loved and loved and it seemed now that she was made of love. And indeed, she was, as are we all…
*
I will close my eyes to see your face again… it’s amazing how the days decided who the song was about. As such, it weren’t really the lyrics, but the days that spoke of persons she used to worship, thus worshipping herself, her spirit, maybe God Himself.
And you might think she wasn’t loyal, but what is loyalty when one cannot hold it first to its own heart? So by acknowledging and feeling everything she was feeling, she was the very image of loyalty to Spirit, that which had put all the love and emotion inside of her. For she knew it was put there with a reason, a reason not yet disclosed, but bound to be revealed once it will all have been lived through till the end. She got glimpses of it, though, at times, and it brought her to life, again and again… as Spirit does when it finds a way through to one’s heart.
*
It was at the age of 30, and this story was vital for her understanding, that she realised and integrated the reason why she always felt so out of place. Why the world appeared to her soul like both a parallel and innate universe she was bound to dwell in and out of while going through life. Both alone and accompanied by other souls, she had never lost that innocence of heart that comes with being a child. Through all the adversity that comes with being a bit off, with having ideas that are unusual or simply hard to understand, she managed to keep that part of her alive. She realised now that she had been holding and caring for her inner weirdness more than anything else, hidden as it might have been, it was hers to keep. Her world, kept alive in the aloneness and quiet places she needed to herself, would come to the surface in specs when she would meet another whose eyes told her they hid a similar weirdness. Most often, with everybody else, it was in their world that she would meet them, thus learning empathy and understanding for different conditionings. Meanwhile, keeping her own light alive and nourished.
And the reward, oh how beautiful, was that she got to feel the deep sense of `thank you, life!`, the grace given off by the knowing and seeing and feeling the deep gratefulness that comes with walking the Earth another second. Yet another one, and another, making up paths as she went, creating and ending lives within a life while living and loving all of them at once, knowing and not knowing what would come next.
It was a beautiful, both peaceful and eager realisation, to understand a part of you that remained untouched for so long, for even though you didn’t completely get it, you protected it with your life, knowing deep down that one day it was going to make sense. So do that, if you may. Care for the parts of you that remain untouched by reason, by mental understanding. Keep them safe in a chest of hidden treasures, in your chest, for that’s where your heart is, that’s your center and that’s the most valuable posession you’ll ever own. I love you. And I know you. For we are all One.
May this be the end to the beginning of something incredible for you, amazing, God-inspired, thus universal in its truth.
~
Life is not simple or straightforward for those of us who must fight to express the many truths of who we are in a world that says ‘Just pick something and do it`. And you will do it, but not before you have realized you are a diamond of many facets. You have the energy to shine in multiple ways and that shining eventually becomes a unified, sparkling expression of yourself. (J. Nordby)
I grew up out of that strange, dreamy childhood of mine and went into the world of reality. I met with experiences that bruised my spirit – but they never harmed my ideal world. That was always mine to retreat into at will. I learned that that world and the real world clashed hopelessly and irreconcilably; and I learned to keep them apart so that the former might remain for me unspoiled. I learned to meet other people on their own ground since there seemed to be no meeting place on mine. I learned to hide the thoughts and dreams and fancies that had no place in the strife and clash of the market place… So I piped and danced to other people’s piping – and held fast to my own soul as best as I could. (L.M. Montgomery)
 
 
 


[1] Fragment containing lyrics from Flyleaf, the band

[2] Lyrics from Cradled in love by Poets of the Fall

[3] John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

The smell is what sticks with me, not the mustard coloured walls or old men absorbed by arm chairs in the lobby of the YMCA. The old men’s eyes are trained on a black and white television secured to a metal platform that hangs from a wall. There are young men as well. Like me they have come to this place not by choice but by circumstance. Like me they want to believe it is only a temporary shelter. They want to believe this but their eyes settle on the old men whose eyes are trained on the black and white television and they fear that they, we, will one day be sitting in arm chairs with the platform too high to permit us to switch channels.
But like I said, the fetid odour of cigarettes, fried food, and perspiration permeates the air like the promise of failure. It is not a rare smell. It hangs as a poisonous cloud over every street corner in North America. No matter how hard you try to wash it away, mask it with cologne or bury it under success it sticks with you.
*
I hitched a ride at the Oklahoma border with a card carrying John Bircher. Did my part and listened to him rant for three hours about how these here United States was going down the shit-tube because of peaceniks, draft dodgers, druggies, hippies, queers, pinkos and intellectual do-nothings. I didn’t tell him that I qualified for three of the miscreants on his list. He dropped me off at the Dallas YMCA. Constructed in 1943 the fourteen-story building looked like it had been lifted off the streets of Chicago and deposited on the corner of a cowtown comprised of cold war inspired federal buildings and warehouses. Mr. Love-it-or-Leave-it America lectured me on how my generation needed to straighten up its act. Somehow the fall of the Roman empire came up. It either had to do with willy-nilly orgies or lead wine goblets. Outside the Y an old black guy asked me if I needed help carrying my belongings. I said, "No sir."
My ride leaned over to the passenger side and rolled down the window. "You gotta be careful who you call sir. Some people might take you for a mark. Only say sir to those people who deserve respect."
 I didn’t thank him, and did not say sir.
The desk clerk barely looked up from his crossword puzzle. He must have been at it some time; the paper was dated from the Sunday three weeks before. The headline read George Wallace Survives But Paralysed. When I coughed he rose from his stool and leaned over the counter top. He counted out loud the number of bags at my feet. It wasn’t a prodigious feat considering all I had was a backpack and a seabag I toted all the way from San Diego where I had been expelled from the Navy and throughout Europe.
The clerk tucked his thumb under his collar and pulled it away from his neck. The shirt, likely white, had taken on the greyish tint of several laundromat washings.
“I need a room for two months, maybe more.”
“Let me see ya I-Dee.”
“What kind of identification?”
“The kind that tells me if you are you and how old you are.”
I stooped over and fished my passport from my backpack.
“What the heck, ain’t you got a drivers license or library card or something?” He flipped open my passport and held it up comparing my face with the photo. “How old you gotta be to get one of these?” His lips moved as he read my name.
“At least old enough to register for the draft.”
“With or without a bathroom? The rooms with a john and shower runs three dollars a week more. That’s eighteen instead of fourteen bucks,” he said.
Tempted to correct his math I calculated how much cash I had to hold me until I got a job.  A hand the size of a catcher’s mitt came down on the desk bell, muffling its ring. The hand belonged to a man two heads taller than me. His polyester beige suit reeked of body odour and Aqua Velva. His head resembled a jack-o-lantern. Black pupils pushed the whites to the corners of his eyes. His upper lip curled above his incisors when he spoke.
“405”, he said in a voice taxed from disuse and shoved a V.A. hospital card at the clerk.
“Don’t need an I-Dee Harland. I know who you are.”
“405,” the man repeated.
“Can’t you see I’m busy?” The clerk turned around, snatched a key from a pegboard and slapped it on the counter.
“Breakfast comes with the room but dinner will cost you an extra ten dollars a week, mind you we don’t serve on Saturdays.”
Harland curled his lip. “Not worth it. There are passable eats nearby.”
“We got services every Sunday at 10 a.m. and like to see our guests there.”
“I don’t go in for religion,” I said.
“Maybe you don’t understand. We like to see our guests at chapel.”
“I understand. I just don’t care.”
“Praise the Lord we finally got us a true disbeliever in this piss pot of salvation.” 
“Ain’t you late for something Harland?”
“No Elroy, I always make time for you.”
“I’ll take the fifteen dollar room.”
The clerk removed key 406, from the board. “Looks like you and Harland are gonna be neighbors. We got a few rules here. You know the normal kind of things; no drinking, no women, no smoking in the rooms, no doing nothing that is against nature.”
“Jesus Christ, he means to say is no Hoovering down below or prospecting from behind.”
“No swearing or obscenities either, Harland.”
“No shit,” the man said and walked toward a caged elevator dragging his left leg behind him.
Harland held the cage open and waited for me to join him. He flattened himself against the wall of the lift and squeezed his eyes shut when it rose with a groan. At each floor Harland exhaled then inhaled deeply. “Damn it why don’t it just get it the hell over with?”
When the Otis opened at the fourth floor Harland announced, “Could have, should have died a thousand times over but I’m being saved for something special, some auspicious ending.” He rushed into his room and slammed the door.
I jiggled the key in my lock then withdrew it and saw the teeth were too worn to be of much use except to clean the grime under my fingernails. I was about to head back to the lobby and ask for another key when a kid who looked like teenage girl’s heart-throb stopped beside me. He was dressed in flame red pants and a yellow shirt so bright that it screamed remember me.
“I got the same problem. No use complaining to the cabron downstairs. That fat ass will just tell you to book a suite at the Plaza.” He took my key and placed one hand on the door jam, inserted the key and he pulled the door toward him. It sprung open like a jack-in-the box.
I extended my hand to shake. “Looks like you’ve had practice.”
His touch was feathery. His hand floated out of mine before I could give it a proper squeeze. He stood in front of me a moment waiting for something then threw his arms over his head. “Least you can give me is your name seeing as how I helped you out.“
“Blake, Blake Moore.”
“Good that’ll help.”
“Help with what?’
“Let’s say I see some certified pervert sneaking up behind you in the showers. I can scream Blake, Blake Moore turn around. Just as you can warn me if the cops show up. You can yell Trejos, Trey, haul ass.”
“Why would the cops hassle you?”
Before he could answer Harland appeared in the hallway. His massive shoulders blocked what little light the spent fluorescent fixtures provided. “Knock knock,” he barked.
I swept my arm into my room. “Come on in guys. Sorry I don’t have any refreshments but I didn’t expect a visit from the YMCA Welcome Wagon.”
“Funny.” Harland grunted. He jabbed a finger under Trey’s nose. “The cops hassle him because that’s what they do, hassle the hustlers.”
I backed away and rested my hand on a porcelain sink hanging on a wall more by luck than intention. Trey hip bumped Harland to the side. He waved his finger at me. “Don’t make no judgements. I’m not infectious.”
Harland coughed out the words, “Not-dangerous-either. That’s-my-speciality, my-burden “
“Harland’s not my chulo. He’s my friend. Maybe my only one.”
I slung my seabag onto the bed. The mattress buckled in the middle. “I don’t care what either you guys are up to as long as it doesn’t involve me.”
Harland took two steps into the room and pressed me against the sink. “I’m not his way.”
The air in the room was getting too close, too humid. “Harland, Trey, it’s a real pleasure to meet you. Know it’s rude, but I gotta get some sleep, heading out early to find a job”
“No jobs around here unless you want to deal dope or sell your ass-ets,” Harland said.
“Maybe I’ll tend bar in some local dive or work at a garden center.”
“Be a trip to see this güero filling sacks of shit with my brothers.”
“I’ve bagged more than shit before.”
The room was tight but more spacious than the brigs and jails I’d checked into. No reservation necessary. Just smile and tell Uncle Sam to do a full gainer onto a flagpole for refusing to go to war, pledge the allegiance to a rag, or fail to salute an asshole who looks he has just wandered in from The Pirate’s of Penzance. Doesn’t take courage or conviction, just the inability to engage the brain before the mouth. Can attest to that having told a Turkish custom official to sit on his Fez. That quip earned me two months in a cell without a view of Istanbul or a Bosporus beach tan. On the plus side there was zero chance of me contracting trichinosis from under cooked pork.
 I inspected the pillow to find the least stained surface. Didn’t bother to undress and flopped down to snatch a few hours of sleep. The neon cross of a street mission across the street flashed an invitation of salvation and soup. I got up to fill a Dixie cup with warm tap water but reconsidered drinking. The communal bathroom was too far away. I figured I could hold off until my eyeballs floated to the top of my skull. I’d slept in worse digs. In Amsterdam I crashed at the base of a statue where someone stole my shoes and left in their place a pack of Gitanes and a cube of hash.
When morning arrived I did not open my eyes, having never closed them. From my seabag I took out clean underwear, a plaid shirt and pair of jeans along with a bar of soap and razor and rolled them up in a towel. My bare feet squished in the damp hallway carpet. Strips of wallpaper hung like dead eels down the corridor. When I entered the communal washroom Trey was pinned against a stall by two guys wearing green windbreakers with SMU SECURITY stencilled on their backs. Trey’s bloody nose did not indicate a friendly encounter. The head of the bigger of the guy was shaved completely. The thinner one drooled black crud from his wad of Redman every time Trey squirmed.
The bald guy jerked Trey back by his hair and slapped his face. “If I see you hanging around campus again they gonna find you floating face down in the Trinity.”
His buddy caught sight of me and spat a black glob at my feet. “Hey Mick, look another one of them.”
“Grady, he ain’t no twinkie just a sorry ass hippie.”
“Probably right but sure be fun to work him over a little to keep in shape.”
“Better rethink that,’ Harland’s raspy voice preceded him into the washroom. “You boys moonlighting? I know you don’t live here.”
 ”Fuck you Harland, Elroy put us on to keep things orderly,” Mick said and pushed his way past me.
Harland dug his fingers into Grady’s shoulder muscle so hard he sank to his knees. “Mick, tell Elroy I’m going to talk to him about his hiring practices.” He pulled Grady to his feet and pointed at the arched opening of the washroom. “Don’t let me catch either one of you candy asses on this floor again.” Harland turned his back on Trey and me and headed to the showers.
“What just went down?” I asked Trey.
“Not us, thanks to him.”
*
 
After pounding the pavement for three days I landed a job at Oasis Garden and Feed miles away from the Y. The boss at first didn’t want to take me on. He didn’t have a high opinion of wannabe proletariats who desired to chum around the working class.
    “You ever done any hard labour?” He asked. “No don’t answer that, I can see the hardest thing you ever held is your own puny dick.”
“Least I know where to find it. Sure isn’t hidden like yours, trapped between two slabs of thigh blubber.”
“I outta stomp a mud-hole in you. Instead I’m going to put you to work. Bet you don’t last out the day. Be a gas to see how long it takes for one of my men to kick your ass for slowing them down.“
“Anything else boss?”
“Just two things. My name’s Virgil and this here isn’t fucking San Francisco. You sure the hell ain’t going to be wearing no godamn flowers in your hair. Either find a barber or wear a hat.”
By days end Virgil pulled me aside and said. “Well Ringo the guys say you take to this work alright. Let’s see if you last the week.”
“If I do I get a nickel raise, boss?”
“No, you keep this job and I throw in a pair of coveralls and work gloves.”
And that was it. If I worked it right I could save enough money to be out of the Y in four months. For the first few weeks I specialized in shovelling sheep and cow manure into 50 pound bags. Then I graduated to unloading sacks of fertilizer and paving stones from flatbed trailers. Eventually I learned how to identify a perennial from an annual. I discovered enough about herbicides, insecticides and generally killing unwanted things to  be given an apron. Virgil told me to sell myself as an expert to people longing to transform their burnt North Texas plots into botanical wonders. I even convinced myself of my astounding horticultural expertise.
*
 
At the end of a day I smelled worse than the shit I loaded into truck beds. Elroy would toss my room key across the lobby when I returned from work. “You stink so bad the cockroaches are moving out.”
There was no quick comeback. I could hardly drag myself to the shower to attempt to scrub off the layers of dirt on skin. 
One day Elroy stood at the entrance of the Y. “Moore, people are complaining about the stuff you’re tracking in. They say you reek worse than roadkill.” He handed me a urinal puck dangling from a string. “You can wear it round your neck like a peace symbol.”
 I tossed the puck from hand to hand, mustering all my self control. “No thanks Elroy.” I slipped it into his shirt pocket. “You keep it. Use it as a breath mint in case the goat you’re fucking takes offence.”
Harland and Trey were seated in the lobby. Harland helped Trey to his feet. With each step Trey winced. A purple bruise covered the left side of his face. The big man shoved Elroy aside and opened the door for his friend. “Blake, you coming?” He growled.
 “No, I’m beat, gonna shower and crash.”
“You need chow more than soap.”
I followed them out of the Y and onto a sidewalk vacant of the suits and skirts who worked in the business core of Dallas. When the sun went down the streets of Big D were given over to derelicts, drug addicts, hustlers of both persuasions and the occasional cop who seldom announced his presence prior to clocking you for daring to contaminate their turf. Two weeks earlier I had decided to hitchhike back from the Oasis. It did not turn out well. A cop wearing an old west revolver and Stetson picked me up and drove me ten miles outside the city limits and warned me to start walking. I got off easy. I could have ended up three months on a road crew charged with vagrancy or in a ditch with my face turned into salsa.
It was a short walk to Jack’s Shack, a double-wide converted into a dimly lit diner. Harland called it right. My grubby clothes and body odour went unnoticed at the lunch counter. Garbage, rancid bacon fat and incinerated toast smothered the cabbage soup stench of the patrons.
We sat on stools at the end of the counter. Harland waved over a waitress. “Where’s Jack?’
From a distance the waitress benefited from the low lights that concealed a creased face the colour of an overripe banana.  “I’m his slop server not his secretary.”
Harland’s lips stretched in an expression approximating a smile. “Nora, you do a righteous job of it.
”Don’t do that Harland it looks like it hurts.”
A baby blue Camaro pulled up outside the diner. Four young men outfitted in pearl button shirts embroidered with roses and cacti and wearing bootcut Levis got out. They peered through the window. One guy pointed a finger at Trey. He grabbed his crotch then stuck his thumb in his mouth and moved it in and out. His three friends joined in. They jumped back in the car and drove off. Trey sunk his chin into his neck and wrapped his arms around himself.
“They the ones?, Harland asked.
Trey nodded.
“Just them?”
Trey shook his head and held up two fingers.
“Mick and Grady?’
“Don’t know. Didn’t see who was in the van.”
“Hells bells Trey, what did you think was going to happen when they spotted you plying on the corner? Don’t you know Texas has three pastimes, football, hunting, and queer bashing? Oh yeah, I left out racism and lovin’ Jesus.”
Trey slumped over the counter. “I need the money to get to New York. The one who picked me up looked nice, his friends showed up at the park out of nowhere.”
The big man cupped the top of Trey’s head in his hand. “It’s okay to have a goal so long as it doesn’t get you killed.”
Nora appeared holding a tray loaded with three bowls of chilli, a basket of  crackers and a tub of onions and cheese. She slid each bowl off of the platter. Harland dumped a mound of onions and cheese on the red beans and beef. He crushed several packs of crackers and mixed them in his bowl. He shovelled a mound of chilli into his mouth. “I learned early if you’re gonna spend your days hopping from Y to Y it’s best to know how to stretch a meal of beans.”
*
 
My room shook when something slung against a wall woke me in the middle of the night. Even with a pillow wrapped around my head it was impossible to muffle the curses and howls. I opened my door and bumped into Trey.
“Blake, he’s really gone over the hill this time.”
Harland’s door stood ajar. Trey poked his head inside the room. “Oh god I think he’s dead.”
Harland’s bed was flipped upside down. He lay on the floor. An open bottle of Jim Beam next his ear. A brown halo of bourbon pooled around his head. “Yeah he’s dead, dead drunk.”
 A Marine blue dress tunic hung over a chair. On the sleeve were three chevrons and three rockers. Official looking papers covered the floor. An ammo box lay open under a hole in the wall, its contents strewn across the room. I picked up two purple hearts, a bronze star, and a Navy Cross. On Harland’s right side I saw a 45 military colt and a full clip within arm’s reach. Clutched in his fist a clipping from The Dayton Daily News read, Local Korea-Vietnam War Hero Fails to Show For Key to City.
Trey stripped off the vomit soaked sheet covering Harland. Two columns of tattoos were inked from his shoulders to his navel on opposite sides of his chest. 
            Korea 1951-1953                            Vietnam 1965-1968      
              Inchon 1950                                   La Drang 1965
              Bloody Ridge 1951                         Xcam 1966
              Pork Chop Hill 1953                       Khe Sahn 1968
 
Trey and I righted the bed. It took all our strength to lift Harland and move him onto the mattress. Harland bolted up staring into nothingness and yelled,“Enough, enough,” then collapsed again. With his face pressed against the mattress he struggled to breathe. We rolled him over. A mural covered his entire back, the image of a naked girl screaming,”Nong gua, Nong gua,” as she fled her burning village.
“Did you see all those medals? He never let on he was a hero,” Trey said.
“Maybe because he doesn’t believe it himself.”
“All that ink, it must mean something.”
I started to explain, but held back. It wasn’t my place, let someone else give him a history lesson. Every token of heroism on the floor, pistol and the full ammo clip spoke of a dark story not far enough in the past to be mercifully forgotten. Each tattoo, service commendation and news paper clipping hinted at a future lacking absolution.
Harland’s eyes shifted around the room without us seeing what he was seeing. He hung his head over the edge of the bed and spewed out his guts. “It burns it burns. Nong gua, Nong gua!”
Trey retreated to the door, his face squeezed as tight as a prune to block the smell of fresh puke. “Leave him alone, Blake. He needs sleep.”
’Get your ass over here. If we don’t prop him up he’s going to drown in his own vomit.”
Harland fought us but we managed to place a folded pillow and blanket under his neck. “Go on, I’ll stay here just in case,” I told Trey.
“In case of what?’
“In case he comes to and hunts for his 45.”
In the worst case scenario Harland might blow his brains out or do a Charles Whitman and start bagging pedestrians from the roof of the YMCA. Trey covered Harland with the filthy top sheet before he left the room.
When Harland started breathing normally I policed the clutter and packed it in the ammo box decorated with stickers and business cards of YMCAs from Boston to Anchorage. Stuck to its bottom was a bus ticket to Pensacola.
I sat down in the only chair in the room and kept watch. Harland didn’t move until sunlight trickled through the half open blind. He rose from his bed and glided past me without acknowledging my presence. He made his way for the dresser where I had placed the ammo box along side 8 ounces of Jim Beam.
“Rough night?” I held up the 45 and magazine. “This what you’re looking for?”
“Yeah, a royal head up my ass rough night.” He scratched his chest then realized he was shirtless and wrapped himself in the foul sheet. “For Christ sake, what are you staring at?”
“Never seen ink like yours before.”
“These aren’t tattoos. They’re a journal of places I’ve been and things I’ve seen.”
“Been easier and less painful to take snapshots.”
“Naw, pictures you put away in a shoebox and forget they exist.”
My muscles were wrapped like barbed wire around my calves, my ass numb from guarding Harland from Harland. “You recover pretty well from a ballistic binge.”
“Practice, practice makes perfect.” Harland pointed the bottle of bourbon at the 45. “You planning on keeping that?”
I handed it over butt first. He opened the top dresser drawer and put the pistol and clip inside. “On your way out don’t slam the door.”
“Wouldn’t think of doing that to a war hero.”
He pounded both fists on the dresser and spun around. “How long were you in for?” he demanded.
“What makes you think I served?”
“Didn’t say you served. That seabag you dragged in told me you did time somewhere. Treasure Island , Miramar, Portsmouth?”
I let it ride. It didn’t matter where I spent four months awaiting my sentence like a contestant on Let’s Make a Deal. Behind door 1- A Dishonourable Discharge, Door 2- A six year stretch at Leavenworth, or Door 3- A General Discharge Under Honourable Conditions. Luck was on my side I got Door 3.
Sure I liked to think that I sacrificed myself as an act of protest. But that’s bullshit. Sure I was opposed to the fucking war. What 18 year old kid who knew every lyric of The Eve of Destruction didn’t? My old man did thirty years, my two brothers another eight so I enlisted to carry on the patriotic carnival. To avoid killing I joined the Navy and trained as a corpsman. It didn’t take long for me to wake up to what my role would be; slosh through rice paddies and jungles to patch up guys who had their testicles blown off by pressure mines or stuff their remains into Giant Glad Bags; torso first, then legs, then arms, then head.
I joined a parade of sailors marching against the war. My adherence to the creed of non-violence vanished when local yokel cops and MPs cut a path through us like a combine harvesting wheat. Civilian protesters told us, “Don’t engage, don’t resist, don’t fight back. Go slack.”
When an MP’s baton came down on a WAVE’s clavicle so hard it snapped in half I lost it. I split his head with a lead pipe. Batons rained down of me from all sides. After three days in sickbay I was transferred to a genuine military prison.
“Blake we’re alike. We both want the same thing out of life. A promise, not a promise of something better, just a promise of a painless way out of it.” Harland’s voice brought me back to the present. “As one screwed up guy to another, Semper Fidelis, or more like Mori semper.” He lifted the bottle to his lips and drained the 8 ounces. “Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified. Wonder if Sherwood skipped his parade?”
I slammed the door behind me. It was Sunday, a day of rest. I intended to sleep through supper time.
 
 
 
*
 
 Virgil had a good September hawking faux Italian fountains. The concrete monstrosities more often than not featured a naked nymph pouring water from a jug into a giant birdbath. He sold so many that he could not keep up with the requests to install them. If I wanted to earn a little cash on the side he’d show me how to install the pigeon pools and recommend me to clients.
“The folks we sell this crap to are so lame-brained that it takes two of them to make a halfwit. I’d ask Reggie or Miguel but the Texas Belles would pass out if some black or Mexican drank from their garden hose or asked to use their bathroom.”
“Boss, they should read more. Most serial killers are pasty white boys.”
I didn’t see much of Harland or Trey. Coming in from work I sometimes crossed paths them. Harland barely gave me a nod. Trey always smiled and asked how I was doing on his way to his corner. Countless times on his return he limped into the lobby. His face more often than not brusied and his clothes torn and bloody. If Harland was around he’d shake his head and guide Trey to the elevator and ask the same question. “Kid, when you gonna learn?”
“Only need a little more time and I’m outta of here.”
By the end of September I received a dollar raise and a name tag to attach to my Oasis Consultant Vest. Soon I would have enough money for an apartment and maybe take night courses at a local junior college. If I pulled it off I’d make a point of calling my old man to let him know that his fuckup son didn’t need him or anyone else to put him right.
 
*
 
The tepid breezes of a North Texas autumn were a blessing compared to the summer blast  furnance that melted asphalt. When gardening season ended I became a varmint assassin. Virgil let go of most of the crew but kept a few of us on to exterminate anything that hissed, crawled or stank for squeamish clients. Virgil outfitted me with a tank filled with pesticides. He gave me a pair of rubber gloves and a bandana to cover my nose and mouth. He scoffed at the need for more protection. “I ain’t met nobody that died from this stuff, least wise anyone who came back and told me.” 
During the down season Virgil converted the Oasis into a store catering to the upcoming holidays. Witches, ghosts, tombstones, glow in the dark skeletons and pumpkins filled the lot the entire month of October followed by more pumpkins and plastic turkeys. Truckloads of real and fake trees, inflatable Santas, and reindeers, illuminated candy canes and life size nativity figures started arriving the day after Thanksgiving.
I spent my days off  hunting for a decent apartment and hanging out at El Centro Junior College. There I convinced professors to allow me to audit their courses until I enrolled in the winter semester.
Virgil told me if I took a landscaping certificate and a bookkeeping course he’d pay half the tuition. “You surprised me, thought you wouldn’t last a day. Go get a haircut and clean up good and I’ll make you an inside manager.”
One day when I returned from apartment scouting I found Trey outside my door. He took hold of my hand. “I want you to see something. Need your opinion.” He nudged me into his room. 8x10 glossy photographs of Trey adorned every wall. In one shot, no doubt doctored, he was frozen in a midair Nureyev leap. In several photos he gazed at the ceiling in an expression of artistic pathos or trapped flatulence. He handed me a large mailing envelope. Inside were duplicates of the photos on his walls.
“Okay, I give up. What do you want?”
“Take them back to your room and tell me honestly which pictures I should use.”
“Use for what?”
“The kit for the talent agent I signed with.”
“You mean a portfolio?”
“Yeah that’s it. He says every actor, dancer needs one to show people in New York. They’re begging for new faces.”
I didn’t need a crystal ball to see what kind of agent gaffed Trey. Some con-artist who placed an ad in the local rag promising fame and fortune to every aspiring performer.
For Only Two Hundred Dollars Your Dreams Will Come True.
“Blake, do you think you can get me on where you’re at for a few weeks? I don’t want to take a chance getting messed up again.”
“Not much going on now, gardening season’s over. My boss laid off most of the guys.”
“I can do a lot of stuff, load cars, start seedlings even set up displays. I really need the cash. My agent wants $300 for a January audition he’s arranged for me in Houston. If the talent scouts from New York like me I’m on my way.”
Instead of telling him to wake up I said, “How much money do you have stashed from your night-hawking?”
Two grand but I need that to live when I get to New York. Mr. Vander says I have a chance of landing a spot in a new production of Cabaret.”
It would have been cruel but merciful to set him straight. Tell him when he got off  the Greyhound in Houston there would be no angels from Broadway. But dream crusher did not exist in my job description. A guy without dreams has no right to extinguish someone else’s fantasy. “Sure, I’ll talk to my boss. Maybe he has something for you,” I lied.
“You’re a real friend.” Trey spread his arms out and sang, “ Life is a cabaret old chum.” He stopped before he could go full blown Liza Minnelli.
As usual Harland’s voice preceded him into the room. “No it’s not a cabaret, young chum. It’s not a bed of roses or a beach. It’s a bitch and then you die.”
*
Everyday after work I peeked inside the lobby to see if Trey was waiting for me before entering. I’m not sure why I never brought his name up to Virgil. No, that’s bullshit. I know exactly why. Guilt by association figured prominently in this betrayal by omission. Trey was gay. Vouching for him might lead to the same conclusion about me. Ridiculous considering my rap sheet. Trey had never done drugs. I had not only partaken I peddled them at one time. Trey never hurt anyone that I knew of. It’s unlikely I could claim the same.
Lacking an option on how to fulfill his pipe-dream Trey headed to his corner or ventured to the park. Although I didn’t see him the rest of the month sometimes I heard him late a night. His cries penetrated the wall between our rooms. A week before Thanksgiving a fist crashed against my door almost taking it off its hinges. Harland flung the door open. His right hand snaked behind my neck. He pulled me into the hallway. “Nora left a message. Trey’s in the alley behind Jack’s Shack.” The black grip of the 45 stuck out of Harland’s waistband.
“I’m not going anywhere with you if you bring that.”
Harland went to his room. When he returned he lifted his shirt and turned around to show me he’d left the gun behind.
The downward cast of the streetlight splashed Nora’s shadow on the sidewalk highlighting her curved back. Her hand shook when she struck a match and lit a cigarette. “Could have been worse if I hadn’t come out to the dumpster.”
In the alley we found Trey sitting on an empty 20 gallon can of Crisco. A pink streamer of blood and tears flowed down his cheeks. He flipped a butterfly knife open and closed with one hand. His other hand lay on his lap. Its index finger was bent so badly that the knuckle aligned with his thumb. He spoke through chipped teeth.“You should see the other guys. Not a mark on them.”
“Same ones as before?” Harland asked.
“They all look alike.” He held up the butterfly knife. “Asked me if I ever saw a eunuch. Told me if I didn’t have five-hundred bucks for them by next month they’d show me. They took off when Nora came out to dump the trash and dropped this.”
Harland kicked a trash can. A black cloud of flies rose from the spilled garbage. “For Christ sake, give it up.”
“Can’t, need to make enough to get to New York.”
“What you got is a fairy tale. Go back to Eagle Pass. You’ll live longer. Pick grapefruits, work at a taqueria. Become a priest.”
“I’m a dancer Harland. I’m going to New York.”
“You think you’ll rise to the top there? You won’t. After three weeks you’ll be getting your ass drilled behind a tree in Central Park.”
“I’m a dancer.”
“Trey, I got a leg full of shrapnel and an ankle and knee held together by nuts and bolts. With all this I have more of a chance of becoming a Rockette than you do of being a dancing chicken in front of a KFC.”
Trey clenched his fist and punched the sky. “I should go back to Eagle Pass? You think I got it bad here? Will have it worse in New York?”
“Just saying you might be safer.”
“Let me tell you something. I’m a joto back home. Do you know what that means? It means I’m nothing. I’m a disgrace to my family. My brothers, my father, my uncles beat the shit out of me because I’m a joto.”
Harland avoided Trey’s eyes as he pressed his palm against his chest. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. There’s no future for you out East.”
“In my community there is no future period. The only way out for most is to box or play baseball. Not me, I discovered another way, with my feet. I worked as a bag boy, picked watermelons, hooked at the bus station to afford lessons at Arthur Murray. Learned to jitterbug, waltz, tap. You name it I mastered them all. I won a dance contest in El Paso. I won a ballroom competition in San Antonio. My partner knew I’m gay but she didn’t care because she wanted to dance with the best.”
*
Every guy has a reason for billeting at the Y. Just temporary until I get a job. Waiting for a spot in the dorms at college. It’s cheaper than a hotel. It’s a good Christian place to stay until I get the call to spread the gospel. Almost rings true. The overriding reason is that there is no other place to go. No other place will have us.
Trey sincerely believed the Y was a carousel. If he rode the unicorn long enough he’d snatch the brass ring and be on his way to Broadway.
Harland checked in and out of Ys across America because every room looked the same. When the time came to off himself it didn’t matter if it took place in Pittsburg or Bismarck. The decor never varied. Didn’t matter. In the end he’d be planted in a potter’s field, his medals dumped in a trash bin.
Me — I came for both a belated and prospective funeral. My mother died three months earlier while I sat in jail in Omaha for something I no doubt deserved but don’t remember. Ma took my father’s mental abuse like a Sister of The Divine Order of I am Nothing. Cause that’s what she heard over her 40 years of marriage. My sister told me mom had pleaded while coughing up blood to be cremated, her ashes scattered in the Gulf of Mexico. The old man interred her in his soggy family crypt in Baton Rouge despite there being plenty of dry holes in Irving where she lived out her final days. If I ever find the time and cash I intend to exhume and incinerate her, stand on the shoreline of Galveston and pitch her as far as I can on a windless day.
As for my father, I’d learned from my sister that he had cancer devouring every organ of his body except his heart. It had calcified years ago. She prodded me to make amends so he could feel forgiven and justified. I told her if I passed through Texas I’d think about it.
Harland sat in an armchair in the Y’s lobby. He looked up from a book propped on his knees. I noticed the author’s name and opened the conversation with, “Turgenev. What’s he write sci-fi, horror, mysteries?”
Harland stood up and thrust the book under my chin. “Just because my body resides in this dump doesn’t mean my brain does. Bet you’d be surprised to learn that I not only read books, important books, but that I also brush my teeth and wipe my ass when necessary.”
I slapped the book away. “Christ, how am I supposed to know about some Polish author?”
Harland smiled. “Russian, not Polish. Are you going to stand around all day or tell me what’s bothering you.”
The absurdity of spilling my guts to the only person more screwed up than me failed to register. I charged ahead and told Harland that my sister wanted me to see my father before he died.
“I don’t buy it. I think you want to kneel over him so you he can hear him gasp I love you son. Those words are never going to be spoken and even if they were, neither one of you would believe them. Put your bus fare toward toward buying a new shirt for the Thanksgiving dinner the benefactors of this noble establishment throw for its inhabitants.”
I took Harland’s advice and bought an Oxford dress shirt and pair of tan slacks at J.C. Penny. At least I’d dress the part of a student when I enrolled at  El Centro Jr. College.
*
The days of November trickled by with as much energy as spilt molasses. Posters announcing the approaching Thanksgiving dinner hung throughout the Y along with notices of the religious services. Elroy passed out Pilgrim hats and head bands with a feather at the cafeteria entrance. The inmates of the Y marched in single file.  
Every table featured a carboard turkey centrepiece. At each place setting were plastic cutlery and a mini-cup of mixed nuts sitting in the middle of durable paper plates. Compulsory speeches of gratitude for the benefactors of the feast followed by a subdued prayer and listless rendition of Jesus Loves Us launched the festivities.
Servers plopped mashed potatoes ladled with gravy the color of motor oil next to desiccated turkey breast topped with cranberry jelly and sweet potatoes shrouded under melted marshmallows.
I saved a seat for Trey but he never showed. Three weeks past without his returning to the Y. Harland spent everyday searching for him. One morning when I opened my door Harland walked past my room with Trey stumbling beside him. Trey’s thick black hair had been buzz cut. He licked his lips and jerked his arms and legs.
“Don’t talk to him,” Harland said. “They gave him so much crap to swallow that it’ll take a while for him to get normal. I kept sticking my tongue in and out of mouth and walking like a marionette for a solid month when I was locked up at the VA loony-bin.”
Trey had got the bright idea he could earn more money by moving his act to the swanky hotel district. He started hanging around the Hilton and the Statler to attract a better clientele. Didn’t work out. The concierge reported him to house security who in turn called the cops. He spent Thanksgiving week locked in the city jail with serious bad guys. Despite his screams not a single guard checked to see if he needed saving. On the Monday after the holiday the guards, tired of his crying, shipped him to the mental ward of a bedbug infested charity hospital. Harland tracked him down and bribed an orderly to spring Trey.
Only four months had passed since I met Trey. It might as well been ten years. The hundred watt luminance in his eyes had been extinguished. His smile replaced with a slash of desperation. Undeterred he pushed on, classifying his latest descent into a maelstrom as a temporary set back. Once his hair grew out a little he would be on the path to his version of Nirvana.
“A few more tricks and I’ll be flush enough to pay for the auditions in Houston.”
Harland and I ceased trying to dissuade Trey. We racked our brains for distractions to keep him off the streets. I took him to a meeting supporting Cesar Chavez’s United Farms Workers where I signed a petition to ban non-union grapes. Trey put his hand behind his back when I passed him the clipboard.
“I’ve picked truckloads of grapes and strawberries. I don’t need to write my name next to a bunch of white do-gooders who can afford not to eat something we didn’t have enough money to eat.”
Harland had better luck. He scored theatre tickets to Hair. Being a production mounted in the buckle of the Bible belt, minus the nude scene. Trey loved it. During The Age of Aquarius he danced in the aisle. An usher intercepted him as he moved toward the stage. He threatened to eject him. The usher retreated when other members of the audience joined Trey.
After the show he related his experience in the mental ward. “Think this is theatre? You should have seen the circus on the loony floor.”
The custodians of the hospital regarded homosexuality as something to be cured. An evangelical Christian charity funded the unit. They were determined to rid Trey of the unnatural urges that infested him. A Baptist minister visited him three times a day to persuade him to repent and be born again. “Vanquish those abominable impulses,” he commanded.
“Like I have anymore control of that than I did of being born brown on the north side of the Rio Grande,” Trey said. “But I played along. If you raise eyes to the guy hanging from a telephone pole and say forgive me Padre you get time off for good behaviour. The preacher wanted to hold me under water until I said I believe. I would have drowned before I gave in.”
 
 
*
The Oasis received a truck-bed of Colorado blue spruces. I swallowed my fear of guilt by association and told Virgil that I knew a whiz kid to to set up Christmas displays.
Virgil marvelled at how Trey transformed the dingy garden centre into a holiday wonderland. He promised to keep him on after Christmas to upgrade the lot, make it a go- to-place catering to Dallas millionaires.
Trey rode the bus with me but got off several stops before me on our way back to the Y. He chose his locations carefully, avoiding the same corner or park twice in a row. He started carrying the butterfly knife on his night outings.
A rare frosting of snow covered the Oasis grounds on the 24th of December. Trey convinced Virgil that there was no need to sell the remaning trees at a discount. He assembled a tree decoration package that sold at a huge markup. At the end of the day the lot was picked clean. Only a broken baby Jesus remained. Virgil brought us into his office for the season send off.
“You boys did real good,” he said and handed us tumblers of rum and coke. “We start up again in February. I had my worries about you Trey.”
“Because of what you think I am?”
“You and me got a lot more in common than you know. I saw you coming out of a club I sometimes frequent and head for the park. Think I’ve also seen you a few nights hanging around the Hilton. Be careful. There are people out there who don’t take to us.”
Boarding the bus Trey glanced over his shoulder at a white panel truck parked across the street. On the side of the truck was a red decal of a mustang with SMU written in bold letters above it.
“What did Virgil mean by us?” I asked.
“It might shock you but we come in all sizes, colours and levels of visibility.” Trey looked out the window. The panel truck did a U-turn and drove behind the bus. “He’s right. Better be careful. Think I’ll take the night off.”
Harland met us in the lobby. “The Y is no place to spend Christmas Eve.” He held up three tickets for Handel’s Messiah. Twenty minutes later we were sitting in the nose bleed section of the concert hall. Harland leaned to the side and whispered, “Tried to get tickets to the Nutcracker but they were sold out.”
“It’s beautiful. Almost makes you believe in God,” Trey said.
Harland jerked his hand away when Trey squeezed it. “I believe in God. But I’m damn certain God doesn’t believe in us.”
When we left the concert hall the same panel truck I’d seen across the street from the Oasis revved its engine. Harland walked toward the van. It sped away before he reached it.
On Christmas Day I tripped over a basket outside my door. Harland stood in the hallway holding a similar package. The baskets contained a summer sausage, pecan crusted cheese ball, bag of peppermints and an orange. The small card read, “To my best friends.”
Trey popped his head out of his room. “To my only friends.”
*
The days following Christmas were as dull as the empty streets of Dallas. Harland often sat in the lobby along with other residents resembling faded Polaroid photos. They stared fish eyed at the suspended TV with its volume turned down. Harland’s gaze seldom moved from whatever quiz show or football game on the muted Zenith. Whenever Mick and Grady finished their shift he rose and followed them to a parking lot.
On New Year’s Eve Trey knocked on my door and said, “This is no place to celebrate.”
I stepped into the corridor and saw Harland. Instead of the drab suits he habitually wore he had on a white silk shirt decorated with blue parrots. His shirt-tail was pulled out of his turquoise pants. He peeled off three twenties from a wad of bills. “You guys go on ahead of me. I’ll join you later.”
Trey pocketed the cash.  “Make sure you get there before the ball drops.”
We caught a cab to small a pub on the corner of Knox and Travis street. Inside we were immersed in laughter, music and discussions on everything from football and politics to poetry. Businessmen, hippies, blacks, hispanics, bikers, straights and gays not only sat next to one another they communicated and embraced. This was not supposed to be happening. This was fucking Texas. Any moment I expected Dallas stormtroopers to smash the plate glass window. When Rainy Day Women spun on the jukebox and Dylan croaked out -Everybody Must Get Stoned- everyone raised their drinks and sang along with him.
The bartender placed a pitcher of Sangria in front of us and two wine glasses. I shook my head and he returned with a mug of beer.  A young black woman who towered over most of the patrons palmed my wine glass. She motioned the barman to fill it to the top. “You don’t mind do you blondie?” She placed her lips next to Trey’s ear. “Sam, told me you’re headed for Houston and then onto the footlights of New York.”
“If things work out that’s my next stop, Laurice.”
“It’s a good dream sweetie.” She floated away to join another table. 
Above a mirror covering the back-wall of the bar were strings of Christmas lights, ornaments and garlands. “Guess you’ll be taking those down soon,” I said when the bartender brought me another beer.
“Not a chance. Every night here is the night before Christmas. I hung those things Christmas Eve 1968. My wife left me the next day.”
A waitress raised the volume of a tv. The bar grew quiet. Dick Clark broadcasted from Times Square. Customers anticipating the descent of the silver ball stopped talking. Trey turned on his stool on each time the door opened. People counted down the final seconds. They yelled Happy New Year so loudly that the glasses and wine bottles rattled. The lights of the pub dimmed. People kissed in the dark. When the lights came on my face and Trey’s were pressed into the ample cleavage of a woman rappelling the other side of sixty.
“It only comes once a year and I’d be crazy not to make the best of it,” she said. Laurice took her by the elbow and guided her to their table. Take Five played on the juke box. Customers began filtering out of the pub.
 “Guess Harland had better things to do than be with us,” Trey said.
We joined the other celebrants on the sidewalk. I tried hailing a cab with no luck. The buses had stopped running at midnight. We walked without talking, our arms crossed over our chests to stave off the chill of a North Texas winter. The brights of a van flashed us. It rolled slowly keeping two car lengths behind us. It turned off its headlights and waited for us to continue before following us again.
“That van’s been dogging us since we left the pub,” I said
At a traffic signal we hauled ass across a four lane boulevard before it turned red. The van burned the light leaving a slick of rubber on the pavement. We dashed across the parking lot of a Target and and hopped a fence. The white van idled on the corner when we came to another intersection.
The passenger side window cranked down. Mick stuck his head. “They’re all yours boys.” The rear door of the panel truck slid open. The four guys who had pasted their faces on the window outside Jack’s Shack jumped out. They wore SMU letter jackets and frat pins. Mick and Grady leaned against the van. They obviously intended to be the cheerleaders of the beating they’d engineered. The first jock advanced too quickly. I nailed the bridge of his nose with my elbow and a kneed him in the balls. He dropped to the ground squeaking like a mouse caught in a trap. His friends knelt next to him. Trey and I took off. We burst into a 24 hour Dunkin Donuts and took a booth. The van pulled in front of the shop. Mick entered and smiled when he walked past us. He ordered 6 coffees and a mixed baker’s dozen. “You twinkies can’t roost here all night.”
“Back off or I’ll call the cops,” I said.
Mick pointed at a phone booth on the corner. “Go ahead. You might even have enough time to hear a dial tone before my boys kick your ass.”
He was right. There was only so long we could spend nursing our coffees before the manager ordered us to hit the road. We were on our third cup when I saw the van pull away. No way were they calling it quits. Behind the display wall of donuts I spotted a door leading out the back. We charged through the kitchen. The manager shouted,”Hey that’s off limits.” Trey tossed him a twenty. The guy snatched the bill as it floated to the floor. “Take a few apple fritters and eclairs on our way out.”
Avoiding the main streets we walked through a series of alleys that ran several blocks. We weren’t more than a mile away from the Y and should be safe if we kept on this path.
A lamp post curved like a Bishop’s crosier spilled a circle of light on the pavement outside the last alley. The van rolled up and blocked our way blinding us with its high beams. Mick sat on the hood of the van. “Really, you thought you could slither by us? Your kind is like hunting squirrels. Let them run around long enough searching for their nuts and eventually they come right to you.”
Grady slid open the rear door. He flicked a lit cigarette at us. “Would have been easier on you if you just took your lumps back there.”
Three of the college kids sprung out of the van. The fourth one slowly exited. His nose bled despite the chunks of tissue stuffed up it. He covered his groin with one hand. In his other hand he wielded a short baseball bat. “Fucking faggots. We’re going to plant you tonight.”
I hoisted a rusty rebar from the ground. The look on his frat brothers’ faces betrayed their reluctance to go the distance. Mick hopped off the hood and held one hand up in a gesture of peace. “Trey, go to your nest and return with say a thousand bucks for selling your ass near these upstanding Christians’ campus and we’ll call it quits.”
Grady took the bat from the college kid and aimed it at me. “We’ll keep your friend here with us as insurance.”
I rushed Grady and brought the rebar down on the hand grasping the bat. Trey reached into his pocket. He sliced the air with the butterfly knife. The frat rats blitzed us driving us back to the wall. Trey leapt onto a green dumpster. Mick drove a knee into my back. I spun around but buckled when he caught me full force with a blow to the kidney.
As I raised my head Mick handed the bat to Grady. Trey sailed off the dumpster and blocked Grady’s swing. The bat struck his thigh and broke in half. Mick bent over and picked up the butterfly knife. He unsuccessfully tried to flip it open then tossed it to one of the college kids.
Trey was curled up like an amadillio. He had no protection from the frat rats kicks and blows. Mick and Grady pinned me to the ground with their boot heels. I struggled to break free. “Don’t be in so much of a hurry to join the party,” Mick said. “Your turn’s next.”
“That’s enough.” The boys stopped pummelling Trey. Harland stood spread legged at the entrance of the alley.
“Get out of here old man unless you want to play too,” one of the punks threatened.
“Really Mick, you rely on these chuckleheads to do your number? How much did you promise them?”
Mick smirked, “They’re doing it as a public service. We got enough lily white cocksuckers and hippies invading Dallas without adding his kind to the mix.”
“Mick, I knew if I followed you long enough I’d see who had their hand up these Phi Betta shit kickers asses.”
The frat rat with the tissue up his nose said, “You don’t hear so well. Get out of here or you’re next in line.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said that’s enough.” Harland slipped his arm behind his back. Everyone exhaled when he whipped out a pocketbook and not a gun. Harland held the book close to his face and read aloud, “While a man is living he is not conscious of his own life; it becomes audible to him like sound, after a lapse of time.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?” Mick asked.
“Probably not to them. They’re too young,” he answered and pulled the 45 from under his shirt. The barely audible noise of the slide pulling back was deafening. “Face the the wall, ” he ordered.
“Put the gun away, Harland. You fire that thing and the cops will be here in fifteen minutes,” Mick’s voice was calm.
“Yeah, tuck it next to your shrivelled dick,” Grady said. 
Harland fired one shot at Grady. His kneecap exploded. When blood and bone confetti showered the the frat boys they screamed. Harland pointed the pistol at Mick. “Fifteen minutes you say? Take a bet with all the partying going on they won’t show for at least thirty. Let’s time it.”
“Hey man, we were just messing around. We’re sorry,” the kid with the tissue stuffed up his nose said.
“Of course you were just messing around. Did some of that messing myself a few times on tour. Only difference is the guys we messed with outnumbered us and could fight back.” Harland stepped over Grady. “Mick, see how is he twitching? Not even crying anymore? He’s in shock. Probably going to need medical attention soon.”
Trey raised his arms as if beseeching Christ to come down off his cross and intercede. “Harland let it go. He needs help.”
Harland turned his head from side to side. “Medic, medic, man down,” he bellowed. His gun hand jerked at one of the frat boys as the kid inched his way along the wall. “Where do you think you’re going? Thought you would have the same motto as the corps, no man left behind. Mick, hold Grady’s hand. He needs some cheering.”
Harland scratched his temple with the barrel of the pistol. “Looks like no medic is coming. Too busy bagging and tagging bodies in another country we decided to bring freedom and democracy to against their will.”
Harland helped Trey to his feet and embraced him. “In my room there’s an envelope taped to the back of the dresser. Maybe it’ll help you get to New York.” He motioned me over with the gun, pulled me into his chest and kissed my forehead. “That wasn’t so bad was it?”
Mick removed his belt and cinched it above Grady’s shattered knee. He held up his bloody palms. Harland lowered the pistol. “That’s not going to do any good. Loosen it or he’ll lose that leg.”
“Harland, it’s gone too far,” I pleaded.
 “You and Trey run along. Mick and Grady will keep me company. These frat rats can leave too.” He fired several rounds into the air. “I wonder if Turgenev was right. Go on get out of here.” Harland pulled back the slide of the 45. “One in the chamber two in the clip. That oughta do it. Blake! I told you when I met you, I’m being saved for something auspicious.”
Trey and I staggered out of the alley. The street lamp hanging above us dribbled into nothingness as the morning sun climbed above Dealey Plaza’s grassy knoll. We made it a few blocks then froze. Three pistol reports disturbed the stillness of dawn. The banshee wails of police sirens filled the concrete and glass mirrored canyons of Dallas. A barrage of shots that could be mistaken for a string of firecrackers announced the failed promise of a New Year and the end of another superfluous man.
 
 
 

 
     Lance reeked of tobacco, some of the embers burnt holes in his shirt of rainbows and buttons. He could still feel the cancer stick between his teeth and the more the clock ticked the more his cravings felt like needs gnawing on his patience leaving him with a scowl.
 
     Trapped in a metal box with his goody two shoes advisor. Yolanda had stayed quiet the last few minutes, refusing to even look at him, her back straight and stiff as a steel rod and her lips pressed at an angle of control. Her disdain was warranted, Lance was not good. However you defined goodness, he felt he could not check any boxes on that list.
 
     The longer he went without it, the more his thoughts tried to wander. Wander places thoughts should never go.
 
     Not at eight a.m.
 
     Not at all.
 
     Crushed memories of touches toxic, more toxic than a deep inhale that blocked these thoughts with a rush and a high. Chemical reactions bury these thoughts. He fidgets, cursing bastard tears that he hadn’t even shed. And yet they pushed at the backs of his eyes taunting his strength. Showing and telling of weakness he wished to bury on his own but lacked the strength.
 
     I just need a smoke…
 
     Lance rolled his eyes, his nails bitten down dug into the skin of his palms as his limbs pulled tight begging for nicotine. He could tell she hated being trapped in there almost as much as he did, except maybe because of the nicotine withdrawals he suffered in silence. His stained fingers even ached with the tugs deep inside him.
 
      Should he be ashamed that his vice would kill him one day? Should he try to kick it and let the poison on the other side flood in? Should he suffer alone without his best friend even if that best friend wished him dead?
 
     Yolanda looked at her watch for the hundredth time and inhaled sharply through her nostrils, grating on his thin skin. Crinkled like paper and paste. He gritted his teeth before groaning.
 
     “Every single time you check your watch time seems to slow more, they said thirty minutes so we have twenty minutes left. Take the pole out of your butt and relax,” Lance’s voice was malice and ice, his crystal eyes piercing her cool calm shell. Her shoulders sharpened like blades as she spun on her heel, bringing fire with her teeth. Control slips even for those than can hold on with an iron grip.
 
     “And every time you breathe I smell cancer and death. You reek of incomplete cravings, you jitter and rock moving this metal coffin. Every day I have to ride up it with you to the office and now I’m trapped with it. Every. Day. I watch you from the corner of my eye, lackadaisical.” She grits her teeth as her lips curl. Every moment magnified her dislike of his presence, like running graters down her spine. Another bound bag to add behind his wall. The cracks he could feel in the dam would be sealed nice and tight soon. He had to believe that…
 
     Lance wore smug even if pain filled his irises. How many times can a man die before he finally stops living? “So you want me to stop breathing, and I want you to stop moving. Maybe we’re better off dead the both of us.” His tone was dry and rasped from the smoke.
 
     Silence eked soon after, both staring at the other with sour intent and barely veiled rage. He could smell her rosemary perfume, he could notice her crease less skirt was beige and her skin like an espresso. Even her hair that wished to be wild restrained in bands atop her head. He could see these things now, for a brief moment as neither spoke. Contrast to him, nicotine stains on his fingers, wrinkles on his button down and slacks. He wore black without apology. He heard once that you dressed to show your insides. So he did.
 
     Then she opened ruby lips.
 
 
     Before Yolanda could reply, the metal box swung and swayed. It heaved, pushing the both into the far wall. And then it dove, flying down the sixty floors they had traveled. Yolanda screamed till her heart met her lips with the beats it pounded. Lance gripped her to his chest and covered her body with his flat on the ground, remembering some program that talked about this situation before. Mindless her had thought then.
 
     He shouts over the cries of metal and sparks of fire. “I smoke to forget! Secrets I’ve told no on! Shame that cuts deep! I was touched! Don’t tell me you have no vices! I plan to die honest if I must die now!”
 
     Yolanda looked back at him, her eyes engulfed with a pain she hid before. “I drink to forget! I’ve been craving Jim Beam since I got to work!” That was when he noticed under the scents of conjoined sweat and her rosemary perfume, the smell of whiskey on her breath, seeping through her pores.
 
      Tears fell, the both of them ready for the end. They held hands, desperate to be human. Then the elevator grinds to a halt and everything that moved went still. In the minutes that passed, they wear pulled up and examined. A few bandaids for them and the elevator they evacuated, and they were to go their separate ways again.  
 
      “I’m taking the stairs up, you?” Yolanda asks. Her eyes now opened would always look open to him. But adrenaline has faded and they were still alone. This wasn’t a fairytale, painted black like his insides, he knew then her place and his place would always be different.
 
I just— I just need a smoke…
 
     “My vice wont allow it. Take my chances with the elevator.” He turns then and goes in alone. Watching Yolanda watch him as the metal doors close. Neither reaches for the other. Yolanda swallows words and turns to head up the stairs. Everything was different but nothing had changed.

​TALKING TO THE WALL
THE VOICE
Harrison Little was not the first child to discover the Wall, and by no means was he the last. His discovery of its power came on a Tuesday, just like any other, around three-forty-seven in the afternoon. He was on his way home from school.
It was raining on this Tuesday, heavier than Harrison had ever seen before. Not in real life, anyway. It reminded him of the gangster movies he sometimes caught glimpses of when his parents were watching one after his bedtime. The rain would be falling in relentless waves on a pair of grubby gangsters, battling it out with their bare knuckles in an alley way. Their suits and fedoras would be soaked through, and the way the concrete became riddled with a million bursting droplets in those scenes was exactly what Harrison could see through his classroom window now. He never intended to go down and sneak a look at those scenes from the dark hallway, but when he heard the brooding violins and the animalistic throwing of punches from his bedroom, he could never resist. That was the curious cat in Harrison. When he saw something that he didn’t quite recognise or understand – whether it was a couple of American-Italian mobsters beating each other half to death, or simply a magnificent demonstration of how much rain can possibly fall in just one afternoon – he wanted to investigate. Not from a sense of mischief, but honest, innocent wonder. He was a boy, after all.
Harrison rarely cowered from the worst of the weather, but on this day in early April, he deemed his usual route home an impossible option, lest he let the inexorable showers soak him through and ruin his uniform. It fell like bullets from the murky heavens outside, accumulating in every depression in the ground and running along the grooves of every curb in rivers. It was the kind of storm he would have loved to run through when he was a bit younger, had his father let him, that was. Even then, the only rule had been to not let his clothes get muddy and force another spin of the washing machine, but that didn’t stop Harrison from dreaming. What it did do, however, was instil a sense of restraint in the boy which, despite clashing with his innate desire to discover, made him reconsider how he was going to get home when rain like this came along. It wouldn’t take long for the lashing downpour to pierce every stitch of his trousers, so the less time Harrison spent in it the better.
When the school bell rang and released him from his less-than-captivating lesson, Harrison chose to walk through Peter’s Wood. Its canopy of dense foliage offered a haven of dryness compared to the openness of his usual route through the centre of town, and Harrison knew the ten minutes it added to his journey would be worth it to avoid the devastating power of the storm. This was the worst rain he had ever seen, remember, and he was very grateful that his mum had packed his big coat for him. The last thing he wanted was to upset his dad, so the choice – if you wish to be so cruel – was clear.
Harrison was both relieved and disappointed as he slipped under the roof of the woodland. The time he spent hurrying from the school to Peter’s Wood was like being forced under a cold shower, but the relief of finally arriving was not as great as he anticipated. The brusque weight of the storm was lessened, but heavy blades of water still snuck through the vegetative defences, giving the impression that this was just a normal bout of rain and Harrison was underneath no such roof at all. It was strange, but he didn’t mind. He could deal with normal levels of rain. In fact, the temperate shower reminded him of walking with his mum, so it was actually quite a pleasant detour. If it had been a Sunday, rather than a monotonous, run of the mill Tuesday, Harrison thought it would be a perfect route for them to take, holding hands and chatting about what they could see.
When he closed his eyes and did his best to picture the scene, he saw it in beautiful clarity. The forest would be the same, but his mother would be there with her large square glasses poking out from her ruby red raincoat. Whenever he tried to imagine his mother being somewhere, Harrison always painted her glasses first. For some reason, it was always the foundation that got his brain working and allowed him to sculpt her and place her into the moment. Her ‘specs’, as they called them, were what anchored her in his brain, and Harrison loved them. He loved her. He skipped a little as he dreamed of telling his mum about where he thought they should walk next weekend.
Although it wasn’t as ideal as the one that danced before his playful imagination, Harrison still made the most of his walk home. And why not? For the most part, it was a nice path, and nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Harrison was a boy walking in the rain, and the wandering he practiced was nothing more than innocent play. He splashed in puddles, kicked the settled droplets from sprouting leaves, and naturally became intrigued when he heard the sound of gushing water. It was similar to the pattering rain above, yet separate, and it touched an inquisitive note. Harrison pursued the noise down a thin trail that divided the untouched bush and down a gentle slope. It looked like no one had ever come this way before, but that was not the case. Harrison knew this because of the slight trail that existed; someone must have made it. I can confirm he is correct. I have witnessed every contributing step to that trail.  
The trail seemed to go on forever, and the beaten pathway home felt like a distant land before long. Harrison was a spaceship, jumping lightyears at a time through galaxies of oak and nettle. Items of shrubbery passed one after the other in a never-ending block of autumnal colours until, finally, a clearing appeared. The gallery of trees blew away and a pocket of space expanded out before Harrison. But it didn’t look natural, even to such a young pair of eyes. To portray Harrison’s reaction to this area of Peter’s Wood in a single word would be impossible, as never had he felt such an intoxicating concoction of wonder and confusion. It wasn’t so much a mystical scene, like the fairy-tales he remembered being told when he was a little bit younger, but a simply new one. It just looked peculiar.
     He broke out from the bush and hopped down onto a small patch of oddly short grass. It was like a lawn, trimmed evenly and perfectly square, and the threshold between its border and the surrounding forest was as sharp as a cliff edge, with the erratic, voluminous foliage beginning the millimetre the fine, ordered grass ceased.
At the centre of the lawn was a pool of bumbling murky water, perfectly circular. Despite the artificiality of its neighbouring land, it did not look like a man-made pool. Moss, sticks, and rocks cluttered the dirty water, and the waterfall above it looked equally natural. It flooded from the top of a tall, blunt rockface and thumped into the water below, giving it a convincing energy. The thunderous noise of the water smashing into the pool electrified the air, making the relatively delicate raindrops seem like a forgotten joke. The tumbling water was wide, stretching across the rock like a tie.
As he stared, Harrison noticed that the water did not overflow from the pool at his feet. It fell and fell and fell, but the collection of liquid never seemed to rise. I know it seems absurd, and that was not the only baffling thing that Harrison noticed.
The waterfall did not make sense, it was that simple. Where did the water flow from? Harrison had never seen a river in Peter’s wood before, let alone one large enough to have this much water. Not only that, but how had he or any of his friends never noticed this huge waterfall before? He could not count the number of times he had come here to escape the hot summer sun or make snowmen amongst the wintery oaks. How had he never heard this obtuse crashing of water before? How had no one else ever mentioned it?
As time wore on, and Harrison began to digest more and more of his surroundings, the questions began to compile into a heaving mound. Why in the world was the grass cut here? Who would do that? How would they get a lawnmower down here? He took another look at the pool itself, as natural as it appeared, and inspected its bed and border. There was no outlet stream or pipe, and the water entering it was by no means a small amount. Where did it all go? How did it make sense?
Of course, the only certainty lies with me. Every question Harrison fathomed had been asked more than once before, and not one had ever been answered. The Wall was not a place where questions were answered.
Rather, it was one where they were asked.
“Hello, little boy,” a voice whispered. Harrison screamed. He didn’t mean to do it, but it rang like a shrill squawk into the forest. His body froze from the moment it left his lips as if it was trying to blend into the forest and pretend to be just another tree. Harrison’s eyes watered as they scanned the surrounding bushes for the speaker, but to his disbelief, no one was there. He figured his best odds lay with remaining as still as he possibly could, but he soon learned that there was no hiding. He could have stood frozen for the next twenty-four hours if he wanted to, but the Wall would still find him. It would always find him.
Again, the voice spoke. “I’m here.”
With all of his muscles contracted in the clutch of fear, Harrison scanned the scene around him. No one was there, but this time the voice did not pause for so long. As his eyes locked onto the gushing wall and tall rockface, it came again.
“That’s it. You’ve found me.” Harrison felt sick.
Nothing moved, and yet the voice seemed so sure. It sounded friendly, belonging to what he thought was an older gentleman, but its high pitch and slow pace was unsettling. Harrison had had teachers that spoke in a similar way to seem more nurturing, but most failed to do it properly, sounding more menacing and predatory. They often reminded him of his father, but Harrison always worked to quickly shake off such associations. This voice, however, was weirdly succeeding at both impressions, and Harrison didn’t know whether to run or sit down. It was very, very strange, but one thing was clear. It didn’t sound anything like his father.
“H-hello?” Harrison said. No one appeared from behind the water, nor did anyone shout out from the bush, signalling him over with a wave of their hand. Instead, the voice gently spoke again.
“What is your name, friend?”
Harrison swallowed and tried his best to shake off the paralyzing sense of shock. He stared at the constant stream of falling water like it was a single slit eye. “H-H-Harrison Little.” He let out a trembling breath.
Harrison stood completely still, his body static in anticipation as the dulled rain continued to poke the outside of his coat. He felt like he was being watched, as though a set of eyes were staring right at him through the plummeting stream, waiting for him to move. It didn’t feel real, any of it, and yet he didn’t dare run away. A spell had been cast to lock him into place.
“Hello, Harrison,” the voice said, politely. It had a distant quality about it that both bewildered and lulled the boy, yet a vivid proximity that deepened the shroud of fantasy that dominated the scene. The voice, as unrooted in sense and logic as it was, oddly relaxed him, making Harrison feel like he was talking to a friendly receptionist or parent of a friend. An adult who had been expecting him. It was like when he went to the barbers. The nice lady was always there with a welcoming smile, and every time he walked in, she welcomed him over like they were about to play a fun little game. It was always a warm occasion – the friendly chat and the relaxing buzz in his ears, his mother’s reassuring reflection in the corner of his eye – and this voice had the same peculiar effect. It sounded like it just wanted to chat.
“What’s yours?” The flash of confidence came from nowhere, and Harrison immediately regretted asking it. But the voice answered pleasantly.
“Well, Harrison, I’ve been called many things. I would probably say I am best known as the Wall, but, as a friend, you can call me whatever you like. We are friends, aren’t we?”
Again, Harrison could not help but allow his guard to slip a little more. He thought of the lady barber and his mother smiling at him in the mirror. “Yes, I suppose so. Can I…can I call you Wally? You know, instead of the Wall?”
“Why, of course, Harrison. That would be fine.”
Several minutes of silence passed. It felt more and more like a dream with every passing second. To his continued surprise, Harrison felt the tension in his muscles and the panic in his mind gradually slip away. His heartrate calmed and his breathing slowed.
“Wally?” he asked.
“Yes,” the voice replied.
“Are you a person?”
A moment passed, then the Wall replied in as neutral a tone as any innocent being would. “Why don’t you look and find out?”
The tranquillity cracked. The impossibility of what was happening rose and crested, and Harrison could not help but seize up again in anticipation of the wave’s bellowing crash. He was speaking to a waterfall. It wasn’t natural or normal or possible. But the Wall knew what was happening. It had been in this situation before. “Don’t be frightened, Harrison. You are safe here.”
Wally’s reassurance chinked the boy’s nerve just enough for him to move. Harrison approached the waterfall, minding his footing around the pool, and inspected it. It felt like he was in school again, examining the bacteria of a petri dish and trying to make sense of the odd little shapes and colours, without entirely being sure of what he was looking for. The rock was just as thick as it was tall, and there was no way that someone could be standing behind it. Its back face was somewhere off in the bush, and there was no way a voice could sound so close from way back there. Upon getting closer to the water itself, Harrison decided to also take a look at the space behind it and saw that there was none. The flowing liquid appeared to slide as close to the rock as skin is to bone. There was no gap behind its gushing, and so no one could possibly be speaking from behind the watery vale. At last, he stepped away from the wall and returned to where he had been standing, puzzled.
“So…are you magic?” Harrison asked. The anxiety of the scene had crystallised into a solid confusion.
“I am many things, Harrison. How could I be magic?” The voice was playful, almost seductive, but Harrison did not notice.
“I don’t know. If you’re actually a talking waterfall then you must be magic.” The boy paused, thought about what he was going to say next, then spoke again. His nerve had dissolved completely now. He felt like he was playing a game. “If you’re magic, you must have powers.”
“Well, I have been known to do…some things.”
“Really? What? What can you do?”
“Well, I have been known to grant people things. Wishes, you may refer to them as.”
“Wishes? Like a genie?” Harrison’s eyes glistened as though he were speaking with the real Father Christmas. Oh, how all of them think of that man.
            “Well, not exactly,” the Wall said. “A genie is one who gifts wishes. I am one who…rewards with them.” The emphasised word hung in the air like a foul stench. The push-and-pull of the encounter was so stressful yet alluring for Harrison that he could not help but be intrigued in spite of what he was hearing. The voice swayed so freely between being terrifying and entertaining that he could do nothing but give in to its motion. It was like being on a rollercoaster. He just had to hold on.
“Reward? Reward for doing what?” Harrison asked.
“That depends, Harrison, on what it is that you want.” Silence followed. Suddenly, Harrison’s mind was ablaze with ideas that he had never considered before. Fame, money, talent: everything passed through his whizzing mind. It was like high-speed traffic was blurring past. Everything went by and yet nothing was properly seen. There was too much potential. But then, after thinking about the craziest things possible, Harrison considered the simplest. He thought about home, about his family, about his father.
“Could you make my dad less mean to me?” Harrison asked at last, sounding embarrassed.
Nothing came from the waterfall but the natural splashing of the water hitting the pool at the boy’s feet. After a few seconds, Harrison thought he had imagined the whole thing, as if the voice had never existed at all. He considered running home right there and then and forgetting the whole thing, but then the voice came back. It had been considering the request.
“How does your father treat you, my friend?”. Harrison immediately felt defensive, as though he had never said anything. His father wasn’t that bad. He would ask for something else, something better. But then the voice spoke again. “Does he hurt you?”
A tear crept from the boy’s eye. “No! No, he just—”
“Harrison,” the voice was firm, “do not lie to me.”
The boy hastily wiped his cheek clean. “Well…he…he is a bit rough sometimes.” He sounded scared. His voice was weak and timid, but the Wall pressed on.
“How rough?”
“Erm…well…” No specific instant or memory came to mind for Harrison. Instead, it was an influx of blended images and feelings, fuzzy and unclear, yet innumerable. He saw his father getting home from work, and himself approaching to pester him about helping with homework or wanting to play a game. The cold response in his father’s face was like a wicked carving in a dark cave wall, and it flickered menacingly in his flickering memory. The Wall’s silence bore on Harrison like a dark cloud, and he felt the increasing pressure to answer. Despite the chilly weather and continuous dripping of the rain from above, he felt hot and sticky.
“He has beat me up before. Cut me and given me bruises, but it’s because I don’t give him space. I need to leave him be after working all day.”
It was strange how the voice never seemed to breathe nor sigh nor cough. When Harrison was speaking, he heard nothing at all to suggest something alive and organic was out there listening. But when he finished, the voice came back. It had heard every word. “Would you like your father to stop hurting you, Harrison? Because I can help you with that.”
“No, no, it’s okay, Wally. I don’t want to get into any trouble. My mum says that if we call the police about it then—”
“Police, Harrison? Who spoke of the police? Do you think I grant rewards through calling the police?”
Harrison felt silly. “No.”
“No, for that would be the way of a man. I am more than a man, Harrison. I can help you with your situation and stop your father from hurting you without calling the police or getting you into trouble. All you have to do is collect some items for me. Can you do that?”
“What items?”
“Well, I would consider them to be pieces more than items. If you can collect three pieces for me, bringing them each in turn, then I can assemble a machine. A machine which, with my guidance, you can use to free yourself from your current predicament. Without, I assure you, getting into trouble.”
“How would the device work?”
“It is hard to describe the ways in which I work, my friend. How would you describe the wind to someone if they had never felt its gust? I’m afraid you are going to have to trust me. All will be shown to you in time. Do you trust me, Harrison?”
“Yes, of course. What do I need to find?” How malleable and warm the heart of a child is. Fear is nothing in the wake of a promise, and the Wall is second to nothing when it comes to making pledges to those who find it. Harrison had wandered into its path, told it his secret, and was now willing to do anything to receive its reward. It seemed impossible to attain, but then again, it was all impossible. He was talking to a waterfall. And it had made him a promise.
“First, I need you to collect some string.”
“String?” Harrison almost giggled. “Why string?”
            “If it so funny, Harrison, then I imagine that you are capable of performing your wish by yourself?” The tone shift was menacing in its speed.
            “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. How much string?” the boy asked.
            “Enough to wrap around your wrist twice, my friend. But it mustn’t be damaged or dirty. Ensure that it is in good quality and whole, and it will work for the purpose I intend.”
Harrison didn’t say anything for a moment. He was thinking. Where did he know that sold string? More importantly, how was he going to pay for it? They were important questions for a boy to consider, as he did not control his own pocket money and he had never had to purchase string before. He decided to ask Wally, given his seemingly divine knowledge, but he didn’t receive a clear answer.
“Harrison, anything is attainable for one who is willing to reach out. If you cannot attain it by conventional means, then I suggest you think differently. I need that string. You must get it for me.”
And then the voice was gone. Harrison called out, asking a few more clarifying questions, but nothing came back. He was alone, standing in the rain, with nothing answering him but the sounds of tumbling water and the subdued wind. He had no idea where he was going to get string, but that worry quickly faded. With Wally gone, he immediately felt the nip of the cold and the workings of time returning to his considerations. How long had he been standing there? His mother might be home by now, and what would she think if she came home and he wasn’t back yet? Would she call his father?
That thought was enough to get him moving. With a quick final glance of the waterfall, Harrison bolted back up the thin trail, re-joined the path home, and began running out of Peter’s Wood. Somehow, someway he was going to get some string and give it to Wally.   
Wally, his new friend.
 
The String
The journey home was a wet and hurried one for Harrison. His body advanced towards home at break-neck speed, largely on autopilot while his mind revised what had just happened to him.
Wally – he already thought of the voice by its nickname – was an impossibility, and yet it had all actually happened. The voice had risen from the tranquil, unassuming nature and exchanged words with the boy, as easily as Harrison would share a funny anecdote with a fellow boy on the school yard. But Wally had done much more than share a joke. He had given Harrison a mission.
That’s what it felt like to him, anyway; a mystical quest to gather valuable and useful resources. But as Harrison blundered through the rain, keeping his head down and moving as fast as he possibly could, the darker underbelly of what he had been asked to do rumbled and made itself heard.
It was a serious promise that the voice had made, and with every step closer to home, Harrison felt the gravity of what he had agreed to drag him down with more and more force. Would his father be in a bad mood tonight? The very chance of it enraged Harrison’s engine and made his thoughtless sprinting turn reckless and erratic. He had to get home. Puddles were not avoided, pedestrians were bluntly overtaken, and roads were hastily checked and crossed. If a truck driver had decided to run a late yellow light, he may have been hit. Harrison developed a stitch in his side he ran so quickly, but it was all in vain. As he blundered through his front door and slammed it shut behind him, the first thing he saw was the tall, skinny figure of his mother and her wide specs. She had been worried.
“Where the bloody hell have you been, Harri?” she cried, her eyes bulging from behind her thick, square spectacles. She stood in the middle of the hallway, having jumped from the kitchen in anticipation of her son’s delayed return. It must have been a rapid movement as her shoulder-length curls were still swaying across her cheeks. From her attire – work shoes, a light green shirt, and blazer – Harrison guessed she had only just got home herself.
“Is dad home?” Harrison responded, kicking off his shoes and unzipping his coat.
Sylvia Little paused, cleared her throat, and ignored the question. “Harrison. Tell me where you have been. It’s almost teatime and you should have been home ages ago. Now tell me the truth.”
That, the boy knew, was impossible. It crosses the mind of each new friend of the Wall to speak the truth and let an adult pair of ears hear the mystical voice for themselves, but all refrain. It could threaten the deliverance of the promise, and that was not worth jeopardising. Harrison reluctantly had to lie.
            “I’m sorry, Mum,” he started. “It was raining so I… stayed in the library for a little bit to see if it would stop. I thought it would pass but it didn’t, so I ran home. I’m sorry.”
It felt strange for Harrison to be dishonest, but it was a solid excuse despite his hesitation which seemed to slip by undetected. It held the perfect blend of believability and innocence that Sylvia couldn’t help but drop her guard. Her boy was a good kid, and he didn’t have a history of lying. None of them ever do.
“Well, alright,” Sylvia said, her tone hesitant yet nurturing. “Get upstairs and get those wet clothes off. Your father will be home soon, and we wouldn’t want him thinking you’ve been doing something you shouldn’t have.” There was no malice in her voice, but Harrison couldn’t help but think of his reward at the mention of his father. The aroma of punishment was faint, but to pretend as though he had not been late home from school showed that it was certainly in the air. Harrison didn’t like it. He needed some string.
Just before he ran upstairs and got changed into something more comfortable, Harrison stopped at the foot of the staircase and spun back towards his mum. She was shaking the raindrops from his coat and hadn’t noticed him stop. “Mum, do we have any string?”
Sylvia looked up at her son with a curious glare. A few specks of water had rested on her glasses. “String?”
Harrison’s heart skipped, and he tried to sound casually confident. “Yes, string. Do we have any?” A bead of sweat formed at his temple, but he hoped his mum would just think it another drop of rain. On the outside he seemed calm, but Harrison’s nerve was sizzling like a firecracker.
“I think we should have some somewhere. It’s not like you to ask for something like that, Harri. What do you want it for?”
This question was always the first test. While he was to have no awareness of it, Harrison Little was now in the same situation as all of the Wall’s companions that came before him. All – both tall and small, wide and thin, smart and slow – found themselves needing something that they could not honestly justify. And each time, as Harrison was milliseconds from realising for himself, the only choice was to avert the truth, to bend the reasoning for their newfound desire of that particular object, and lie. It was the only way.
“Erm…well…” he began, but his brain staggered and stopped. His mind was working overtime – one half trying to think of another masterful fib, the other debating whether he should even try at all – and it burned out almost immediately. What would she believe? What would she say if she found out he was lying? Cognitive cylinders spun and clicked, but nothing concrete came out. Harrison felt like he was clasping for something to stop him from drowning, but nothing was within his young, short reach. He scrambled and scrambled for something to say, terrified at the very thought of being dishonest to his mother as he did so.
She had always been his moral anchor, showing him how to be a good person and displaying the fundamentals for being a helpful and loyal friend. It wasn’t a deliberate choice. There was no point where Sylvia looked at her boy and decided to raise him by any particular code or set of commandments. It just happened, and honesty naturally sprouted and bloomed as one of the top priorities in the Little household. Being his mum’s biggest fan (as any son is), Harrison rarely strayed from this model of behaviour, but whenever he was tempted with dishonest intentions, a particular memory flashed and quelled the impulse. It was of when he was seven, not much taller than the kitchen table, and had accompanied his mother to shop. It was a Saturday, and the trip was just a small one in order to stock up on some tea bags and milk. While Sylvia was collecting the milk and trying to choose which brand of tea she wanted to drink for the next few months, Harrison had wandered over to the sweet aisle, looking to browse the sugary treats and, in doing so, force his mum to come over to that side of the shop. When she came looking for him, he would then ask if she would buy some for him, but on that occasion, the plan failed.
“No, Harrison, we’ve got plenty of sweets at home,” she had said bluntly. To say the tiny Harrison was disappointed would have been an understatement – I have rarely seen such unwarranted upset, even from someone so young – and the blend of anger and surprise caused him to do something he had never considered before. Without thought, Harrison snatched a lollipop from the small, transparent tray and quickly whisked it into his pocket, but not fast enough. He hadn’t taken a single step before he noticed the piercing glare of his mother. Her eyes shone like suns in the small store, emitting a dangerous radiation that Harrison knew would kill him if he was exposed to too much of it. Those wide frames magnified their power, and there nothing else he could do but chuck the lollipop back into its place and apologise.
Nothing but a river of relentless regret flowed from his mouth for the rest of the day, and although his mother had forgiven him and laughed it off, the power of the stare had remained like an unbreakable relic in Harrison’s mind. Those quadrilateral frames were like portals, offering a small glimpse into an alternate dimension where rules were abandoned and trust was broken, and he hadn’t liked it. Part of that response was fear – every child knows the dread of disobedience – but there was also shame, bubbling away as the secret ingredient of the concoction of guilt. Behind those lenses, he saw that his mother was hurt by his actions, and that was more than enough to keep him on the straight and narrow path from that point onwards. Until he met the Wall, that was.
Years later, wet from the rain and amazed by what had just happened to him, Harrison was faced once again with those lenses, and he knew he was on the brink of spitting in the face of everything his mother had worked to instil in him. But what else could he do? Tell the truth and reveal himself to be a crazy little boy? His mother would never let him out again if he spoke of strange voices in the woods and wish-granting waterfalls. It would sound ludicrous. It was ludicrous!
Debating the issue all day would only provide the same hazy sense of necessity and pain, and it quickly dawned on Harrison – standing on the bottom step, looking at his mother’s waiting face – that there was no other choice. He came out with the simplest lie he could tell, and he did it quickly. It was one that he thought wouldn’t be all that bad, but it hurt all the same. Pulling out a splinter was always rough, no matter how small.
“Me and a few friends are building catapults after school tomorrow, and I need some string for it.”
Sylvia said nothing. Instead of replying, she just took off her glasses to clean them. Now unobscured by the cluttered lenses, Harrison saw that her eyes were looking up at the ceiling as she thought about where there might be some leftover string. It was a relieving sight, but his heart did not rise much. Rather than simply telling him that his lie had passed by the detectors without setting off the alarm, her expression actually triggered one in him. The glasses truly were instruments of magnification, because without them his mother’s eyes were but a fraction of the size – round and innocent. Unlike the blazing suns that he remembered, they were like twinkling stars, minuscule in the distance of space, but just as bright and beautiful. Their light and colour were a gorgeous spectacle of the human form, and what were they doing? Looking around for inspiration to aid their son in his fictional motivation to acquire string.
Harrison felt sick, and he could feel his heart beating to an uncomfortable rhythm in his chest as his mum considered his complete and utter lie. Those eyes were the night sky, an abyss into which Harrison could so easily fall, but something else rose in him then, shining out in that darkness. It was Wally. Like the Moon - gentle, guiding, present, the thought of the soothing voice of the waterfall stayed his wild desire to spit out the truth and end his mother’s thinking, and Harrison felt his shaking innards relax under the influence of Wally’s words. This was all for a greater purpose. All he had to do was shut up and bear it. And that he did.
“I think I might have some in my bedroom, darling,” Sylvia said, eventually. “I will look later on this evening and cut off a piece ready for the morning. How long does it need to be?”
The Wall’s echoed in Harrison’s mind. “Enough to wrap around your wrist twice,” he said.
With her glasses now back on her face, Sylvia smiled up at her son. “Okay. Leave it with me and I’ll sort it. Now go get ready for tea!”
And with that, Harrison sprinted up the stairs and into his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him. He ripped off his school uniform, pulled out some fresh clothes, and got dressed. It was hurried and panicked, but he needed to get the toxic energy out of his system. He was hyper, not with joy, but with the dirty exhilaration of getting away with his crime. The shame clung to him like a dark, viscous sap, and he wanted to get it off as soon as possible.
When he was dressed, he picked up his uniform and threw it violently into his washbag. The wet clump of fabric thundered into the cloth sack like a cannonball, but still he felt restless. Lying was so unnatural to him that he felt like something alien was still attached to him, something foul and cunning that spoke for him. It was too much to bear.
He had to tell the truth. No matter how insignificant, it was wrong to lie to his mum, and Harrison couldn’t let some magical waterfall turn him against her. She needed to know why he really needed it, no matter how bonkers it made him sound. It was like she always said, honesty was always the best policy, and he knew there were no exceptions.
The boy closed his eyes, and within an instant he was back in that shop, seven years old and dying for some sweets. His hormones analysed that day and replicated every feeling his younger self had experienced, and it was hardly any different to how he was feeling now. The lollipop was in his hand – the lie was out there in the world, ringing around his Mother’s mind as she considered whether to cut the string before or after tea – and a pair of omniscient eyes were waiting. They knew what he had done, both then and now, and all they had had to do was wait. Suns, stars, it didn’t matter what they looked like. They were his mother’s, and those beautifully round and magnified beacons deserved the truth. He had to oblige.
Harrison relaxed a little bit at the idea of coming clean. The world wasn’t ending, and by no means was he breaking the foundation of trust between him and his mum. All he had to do was go downstairs and say what the string was really for. It would sound crazy, but so be it. Lying would only make it worse, Harrison knew that.
Just as Harrison was about to return downstairs and tell his mum the truth, he heard the front door slam shut. Dad was home. The bass of his voice diffused through the walls and floors, and a bolt of wariness flew up Harrison’s spine. No conscious thought turned his body to the clump of wet clothes he had casually tossed into the washbag, but he had done it all the same.
The only rule was to not force another spin of the washing machine. Dad had always been very clear on that.
As quickly as he had thrust it to the ground, Harrison picked up the garments of his uniform and hung them on the radiator. He then dressed – not hearing the sudden quickness of his breathe - and creaked open his bedroom door as quietly as he could. His father’s words boomed up the staircase in startling clarity.
“What? So where has he been?” Harrison’s body froze and he could no longer imagine going downstairs. His mother’s voice, muffled and quieter than her husband’s, explained why, and thankfully Rodney Little’s tone simmered. “Alright, well it had best not happen again. Who knows what could happen to him out there.”
The irony of the statement was lost on young Harrison, but he was smart enough to know what fate his mother had saved him from. Puzzlingly, it birthed two sensations in him, each contradicting the other. Gratitude and caution fused together like different soft drinks and sat heavily in his stomach just the same, making him feel like he was seconds away from spewing all over his bedroom floor. His mother’s words had settled his father’s temper and altered what would have been a very frightening, violent course, and this made him want to tell her the truth even more. In her honour. But his father had been so angry, and over what? His son being a bit late from school? The confrontation also reassured Harrison that, as bad as it hurt him, he was justified in his actions. The reason for lying, the value of the string, the promise of the Wall – it all came flooding back in pristine simplicity.
     He closed the door.
 
Thanks to Sylvia, the rest of the evening took a rather tame and underwhelming course. Food was served and consumed, television was watched, comics were read in the haven of Harrison’s room. On the surface, it was like any other, but of course, that wasn’t the case. Flashes of guilt rose and knocked at the boy’s mind as he tried to focus on the adventures of Spider-Man, and they continued long into the night. The Wall, the string, the lie: it was like a swarm of bees in his brain, and Harrison had just kicked the hive.
The harassing thoughts did subside eventually, and Harrison woke up the next morning to find a thin piece of string sitting on his bedside table. It was fairly long, and it looked good. There was no notable wear at all. The Wall would be impressed.
That day was a long and nervous one for Harrison. He could not focus on his work throughout his lessons nor enjoy the company of his friends. Ball games were about as interesting as passing motorway signs on a road trip, and Harrison’s lack of attention in his classes reached a frightening level. At one point, a teacher asked him who was the son of God – religious studies was boring enough on a normal day for him – and Harrison had answered without even having heard the question.
“Henry the Eighth!” he blurted out. The class erupted in laughter, as any assemblance of bored tweens would, but Harrison hadn’t meant to be funny. His distracted mind had genuinely forgotten that he had left history class half an hour before, but he didn’t care enough to listen to the correct answer. He thought only of his naughty deed and what was to come after school, and when the teaching continued, he mentally exited once again. He hoped that the Wall would accept the string and not ask him to attain anything so difficult again. There was no way he could lie to get something from his mum a second time, so hopefully it would request some paper or pens or cello tape; things he could easily get without being dishonest or cruel.
After what seemed like a millennium, the final bell rang out throughout the school and Harrison packed up his stuff. He sprinted from the educatory halls and into the beaming light of the early afternoon, his steps rapid. It was sunnier than the previous day and unmistakably drier, so he knew he would not be able to pull off the façade of being late due to the rain again. This encounter with the Wall would need to be quick, and he prayed to God that it would be.
As the sun pierced through the slight cracks in the dense forest roof, Harrison ran under its cover and hastily made his way to the sound of the running water. Peter’s Wood was alive with the orchestra of chirping birds and the soft grazing of wind on the leaves above the boy’s head, but it was all just background music that day. Vibrant green plumage and dazzling beams of falling light surrounded, but Harrison cared only for the frail piece of string in his pocket. He ran clasping it, refusing to risk it falling onto the dirt path and getting lost. The beauty around him was merely a passing blur, nothing to stop and waste time with.
When Harrison approached the place where he had first heard the divine aquatic whispers of the waterfall its cool song was just as loud as it had been the day before. He carefully descended the thin trail between the bushes and, with a thud, blundered out of the shrubbery and landed on the finely trimmed lawn. It too was just as luscious and kept as Harrison recalled. Everything was the same – the grass, the sounds, the water gushing over the rock edge and falling into the little pool. Now he hoped the voice would still be here too.
“Wally,” he called, feeling slightly silly. He had wondered the day before if it had all been a mirage, but now that concern had more gravity. What if he had been delusional throughout the entire previous afternoon? Had the canteen served anything to make him go loopy? They were valid concerns, and they grew exponentially as the silent seconds ticked by. Harrison recalled once that a girl had been off for two weeks after picking the wrong slice of pizza from the heated shelf in the school canteen. They said it was just a bad batch, but what if it wasn’t? Had she had odd hallucinations or heard strange voices?
She hadn’t, I can tell you, but Harrison had nothing else to work with. From the woods, all that came back in response was the splashing of the falling water and the occasional croak of a bird in the distance, and everything soon began falling to pieces in Harrison’s mind. He had lied for no reason. It was all for nothing. Anger filled him.
But then, just as the boy was about to toss the piece of string into the vegetation, the voice came with untainted ambivalence, as though it didn’t recognise Harrison at all.
“Who goes there?”
The Wall sounded exactly the same; Harrison knew he wasn’t crazy! ‘Hello, Wally. It’s me, Harrison!”
There was no reply for a few seconds, but then the Wall came back with perfect calmness. “Ah, Harrison, my friend. Have you done as I instructed?”
The boy pulled out the string from his pocket and held it up. “Yes. I have the string.”
“Good. Very good.”
“What should I do with it?” Harrison asked.
“All you need do is place it into my pool. There, I shall do with it what I must.”
Harrison hesitated. “But won’t it get wet?”
“Yes, but I am beyond such simple states as wet and dry.” The voice’s expression soured, but then returned to its softer pitch. “Have faith in me, my friend. You need not worry.”
A sensation of euphoria lay across Harrison’s shoulders. He imagined that this was what religion felt like to some people. The voice had that effect: it was quite the motivator. As gently as he could, he lowered the string into water. It sank slowly and manoeuvred through the layered liquid like a slithering eel, graceful but slow. He hastened its descent and pushed it to the bottom, the cold touch of the water igniting the pores of his hand. Eventually it lightly came to rest on the stone bed.
Wafting the freezing droplets from his hand, Harrison stood back and looked down at the water. The string seemed so alien, so unwanted in such a little body of water, but what did he know? He was not the Wall.
“I’ve done it,” he said. Relief poured from Harrison’s nostrils as he exhaled, and he looked upon the seemingly worthless string at the bottom of the pool like it was a bag full of cash. It certainly didn’t look like that impressive of a haul, but it certainly felt like it. It had cost him a great deal to acquire.
“Excellent, Harrison. You have done very well. Now you must collect a second item. A small bar of wood.”
Harrison’s head shot up, his face perplexed. He had only just retrieved the string, and now he was being sent for something else? It was very fast, too fast, and he didn’t know how he was going to get something so particular and peculiar. As he thought on it, Harrison realised that he didn’t even know what it was. A small bar of wood? His mother wouldn’t have one of those lying around the house, and where in the world was he supposed to start looking? He was confused but he didn’t want to question the Wall’s wisdom. Wally knew what was needed for the machine better than some boy. But then again, he didn’t have time to stand around bamboozled. He had to get home. His father wouldn’t want him late home again.
“Wally, how am I supposed to get a bar of wood? I don’t mean to question you, but…I struggled to get the string and…and I had to do something I didn’t like to get it. Is there…erm…is there anything easier I could get? Would anything else work?” Harrison cringed all over.
“No, Harrison. Nothing else will work.” It was suddenly like he was being told off by a teacher. A big, terrifying teacher. “In order to create the machine, I need a small bar of wood, large enough to hold in your palm but no bigger. It much be two inches thick, and no more. Any type of wood is fine, but it must be sturdy. Am I understood?”
Harrison gulped. “Y-yes. Yes, I understand.” He felt like crying – the panic of not knowing where to even begin his search – but then the voice came again. The powerful quality was gone, and it now rang with prudence and care. Like a father.
“What did you have to do that was so difficult, my friend?”
“I…I…erm.” It was so hard to admit. Harrison’s mother’s glasses returned again, daring him to admit to what he had done. “I l-lied to my mum. I told her the string was for a catapult. I couldn’t tell her the truth but…I shouldn’t have done it. I lied to her.”
The Wall was silent, as though it were preparing to offer the boy a hug. Of course, it couldn’t do that, so it used its greatest tool of both calming the boat and cooking up a storm. A tool which it had mastered with so much practice.
“Harrison, my friend, in order for things to be accomplished, people often have to make sacrifices. They are compelled to change, alter, and sometimes abandon the structures to which they have grown accustom. For you, lying to your mother was a difficult task, but it was necessary. For the sake of the creation of the machine that will stop your father from hurting you, it was necessary. Now, I could tell you that you will not have to do something like that again, but I cannot. The road ahead is equally, if not more trying. The work you and I are attempting is not easy, but we must both persevere and make sure it is done. You must collect, and I must build. It is what is needed for the salvation I promise. Do you understand?”
Despite not knowing what some of the words he had just heard even meant, Harrison did. “I’m sorry, Wally. I know.”
But the Wall was not done. It heard something, as it always does, in its visitor’s voice that it could not leave unaddressed. It was doubt, the ever so slight ember of scepticism in the powers at play. Harrison still clung to the notion that what he had done was wrong. That was a barrier that could spark and set fire to everything. It needed to change.
“Harrison, do you not realise that your mother will also benefit from my machine?”
The boy’s attention sparked. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I am crafting an instrument which shall prevent your father from hurting you anymore. Do you believe such protection will not also be bestowed upon her?”
It is often the way of the cunning to work with the covert arts. The assassin, the blade; the saboteur, the whisper; the Wall, the riddle.
“Oh…erm. I hadn’t…why would it protect her?” Harrison was completely lost.
“Harrison, my boy. If he hurts you, what makes you think he doesn’t hurt her as well?”
So finely directed, the question hit its mark like a bullet. Harrison had never considered the idea of his father doing what he did to him to his mum, nor had he ever seen any evidence of it. His mum never seemed bruised nor pained, but then again, neither had he. He always did his utmost to conceal the marks from his father’s tight grips and quick backhands, so could his mum also do the same? He felt sick at the thought, but it was possible. How had he never thought of it? Not only was there a putrid uneasiness in his stomach, but now a tsunamic shame bombarded his mind. Wally was right.
And the Wall knew it too.
“Go, my friend,” it said. “Collect what I need and bring it back to me. Then, once we have the final piece, we can stop your father and protect your mother from ever being hurt again.”
Upon the Wall’s last word, Harrison turned and sprinted back up the thin trail. He jumped out of the bush, planted both of his school shoes onto the dusty path, and looked up to the green ceiling. The sunlight was breaking through the battalion of vegetation, and patches of brightness blotched the foliage like a hundred searching spotlights. In this weather, Harrison should have been home ages, possibly sat in the garden or playing videogames in his bedroom with the window open. If he was lucky, he could make it back just before his mum did, open all the windows, and pretend that he had been home for a while. It was doable, but he had to be quick.
Energised by the afternoon’s warmth, Harrison bolted out of the wood and headed straight for home. The sky was a dazzling, clear blue, but the gorgeous purity of the world’s spring colour failed to soothe him. Harrison’s brain was closed for business. Images of his father beating his mum filled his head and fuelled his body to run as fast as it could. Far from blue and green, the world around him took on a noir palette, just like that gangster movies he remembered.
Harrison was a man on the run, and the passing cackles of bike-riding kids were the stuttered firings of machines guns. Home was the safe house which he had to reach before the cops showed up, and time was running out. It was almost fun to think of it like that, but Harrison knew too well that, in those types of movies, there was always one character who ruined things for everyone and made life a living hell. That character was the Don, and the one in Harrison’s life had tasked him doing a job he wasn’t sure he could carry out.
He didn’t know where he was going to find a small bar of wood, but it didn’t matter. Like a lot of hustler guys, he knew he needed to get it, and that was exactly what he was going to do. For Wally, for him, and for his mother.  
 
The Wood
Wednesday night was pasta night in the Little household, and that meant Harrison and his parents would be sat around the table together. On other nights, each could eat wherever they chose – in front of the television, in their bedrooms, or even out in the garden during the summer – but there were rules when it came to the midweek spaghetti or tortellini. It was family time, a small portion of the week for conversation, laughter, and sharing. That’s always what Sylvia hoped for, anyway. In reality, it was a tame little meal where each member of the family checked in and let the others know what was happening in their lives. But, while it was never a completely relaxed occasion for Harrison to sit opposite his father and answer questions about school, friends, and sports, this particularly Wednesday was going to be significantly cruel. This week he had a secret.
The clock struck six and plates of hot food were placed onto the dining room table. Steam rose from the garlic bread and meatballs, dancing before the ravenous nostrils of Rodney Little who was already sat and waiting. He was still dressed in his work clothes – a neat baby blue shirt and green tie – and was happily perched at the head of the table, his hands clasped within one another, his eyes staring into space. The next person to sit down was Sylvia. She came in holding a drink in each hand, placing each at the designated seats of her son and husband, and then popped herself down beside her spouse. She smiled at him, and he sniggered back playfully, pointing out her steamy glasses.
About five minutes after the table was set, Harrison joined his family. He entered the room quietly and took his place opposite his mother without speaking a word. Luckily for him, both of his parents were too hungry to address the impoliteness of their son’s arrival, and as soon as he sat down, they began feasting. The garlic bread was divided, the silverware was taken up and plunged into each dish of food, and all was quite well until the initial commencement of eating began. Rodney had eaten away his ignorance and was now curious to learn what his family had been up to that day.
It was what usually happened on Wednesdays, but Harrison did not dread it as much as he often did. His capacity for fear was already at peak performance, scrounging his brain for an idea as to where he could get a small bar of wood. It was a blurry and chaotic thought process, and it blocked out much of the outside world with its activity, similar to the sensation of being underwater. Everything was continuing as normal above the surface, but beneath, it was all muted. But such things were not so obvious from the other side of the table.
“So, Harrison, what have you been up to today?” Rodney asked. He did not lift his eyes from his plate as he spoke, and so his son did not notice he was being spoken to. After a few seconds, he asked again, his tone ever so slightly less keen. “Harrison,” he looked at his son directly, “what have you done today?”
This time, the boy took notice. “I…well not much. School, mostly.”
“And what did you do in school?”
Harrison looked as though he was thinking, but that was not the case. He was disinterested in what his father had asked, but still he answered. “Science, P.E, Maths.”
“Ah, yes. Maths. You had that test today, didn’t you? How did it go?”
“Fine.” A wrong move.
Undenounced to his mentally idle son, Rodney was now losing his patience and staring with a look of composed frustration. His fists gripped his utensils with a stern rage, and it would only take a few more accounts of rudeness for Rodney to put his foot down. Thankfully, Sylvia stepped in.
“Harrison,” she said, pulling him from his daze with a slight tilt of her head. “Your father is speaking to you. He asked how your maths test went.” This worked well enough to simmer Rodney, but his temper remained active beneath the surface. It bubbled and swirled over his son’s lack of respect.
“Oh, sorry! I’m sorry, Dad, I...” Harrison began. He shook his head faintly in an attempt to sever himself from his foggy mindset. Maths, maths…what maths test? His brain couldn’t shift gears quickly enough and his entire cognitive function stalled. He couldn’t think of when he had had his maths test or how he felt about it. ‘Ums’ and ‘Ahs’ fell from his mouth, but no answer to his father’s question. The intolerable seconds ticked on, and eventually Sylvia’s gentle prods could do nothing more to stop Rodney from speaking.
“Harrison, must you be so rude?” he barked. It was common for a volatile response like this to come from such a mild inconvenience. Rodney’s own father would strike a stick against the calves of his children if they returned late from school or were anything less than respectful to their elders. Of course, Rodney himself was not beyond the use of such overtly violent means of discipline, but he always built to it, for he was not his father. The day that the bridge of outright violence was crossed for Rodney and his son was a dark and pungent in both their memories, but we will get to that, I assure you. But Rodney was not as quick as his father to clench his fists. He always shouted first. “All I want to know is how your day has been, and you are ignoring me!”
Harrison could stutter no longer. The whites of his father’s eyes were visible, and Harrison also noted the veins on his father’s hands, pulsing from the ever-tightening grip around his knife and fork. The thunderous voice was daunting, but it was only the warning of the storm. Harrison saw nothing of his father’s memory, of the torment and violence he had experienced as a child. He only saw the martinet before him, always ready to administer whichever measures reaped the right response. He had to say something.
“I’m sorry, Dad. The maths test went fine, I think I nailed the second half at least.” He still couldn’t remember having taken the test at all, but that didn’t matter. He had done enough.
“Okay, thank you,” Rodney said. “That’s all I wanted to know.” Rodney Little returned his attention to his meal, and Harrison pretended to do the same, his heart racing. As he always did, he fought every impulse to cry. He raged against the thumping of his blood to stay calm, to sit still, to seem unfazed. But then, on a random spur of impulse, he looked up at his mother.
It was the way of the Wall to change its visitors in small ways. Whether it be the way they think about their friends, the way they walk around their town, or the way they interact with their families. It always changed people. For Harrison, the Wall injected into him a flicker of suspicion. Just a flicker. And that, as was always the case, was enough to spark a reaction.
Harrisons eyes shot up from his meal and latched onto the first thing he noticed about his mother’s face. The shape of her glasses was the same; her hair sprouted, curved, and ended at the same points as the day before; and her eyes were just as observant and quaint as he always remembered them. The only aspect of her image that struck him as alien was nothing to do with her features at all, but something that had decided to join them.
A droplet of sweat glistened just below the left arm of Sylvia’s glasses, its tiny bubble body illuminated by the light of the lamp behind her. Harrison’s eyes then fell to hers, and they too had changed, as if the detection of the droplet had been a switch that turned the world upside down. They were fixed on her husband, unblinking and strained, with none of their prior calm.
Finally, his pupils ticked down to her hands, which were no longer holding her knife and fork. Had he looked at them before noticing the droplet? One was holding her glass – the warm fingers planting round prints on the screen of condensation – the other was flat on the table surface, tapping. Her index finger moved relentlessly as though she was testing a faulty piano key, touching the table every other second. It filled Harrison’s ears like a clock counting down to something, but somehow his father didn’t hear it. Had she been doing it this whole time? Had she always done it? The Wall’s words came like the inevitable tide: What makes you think he doesn’t hurt her as well?
Suddenly, Harrison’s entire demeanour changed. His heart slowed and his mind refocussed – he had something to find.
“I also had Design today, Dad,” he said, “and I was wondering if you could help me with something.”
Both of Harrison’s parents looked at him with unsheltered surprise. Rodney was intrigued, Sylvia’s feelings were clouded. Harrison didn’t notice, but there was a glint of fear in her eyes. I recognised it immediately. She knew that this could go extremely badly. But still, she remained silent.
“With what, son?” Rodney replied.
            Harrison felt a cool excitement flowing through his veins. The thrill of treading on new ground was exhilarating, and it tickled his entire body, making him feel light and nimble. He felt invincible. “Well, we’re building something next week and I was wondering if you could help me find somewhere that sells one of the parts. I really don’t know where to get one.”
“Well, what’s the part?” his father asked. This was tremendous. Crossing the threshold of lying had been arduous with his mum, but now he was let loose from his pen and able to roam the land at liberty. The untruths fell from his lips as easily as fruit from a summer tree, and it felt fantastic to be doing it right in his father’s face. Harrison’s mind gathered the pieces of his story as playfully as a child selects sweets.
“Well, it’s like a…wooden bar, kind of. We need it to work as a handle for a machine. It’s got to be thick enough for a tiny bit of metal to go into it, you know. And it’s got to fit nicely in my hand. Because it’s a handle, you see.”
Rodney ate this up like warm custard. “Hm, interesting. And you don’t know where to find one?”
Harrison quickly glanced at his mum – who was still visibly nervous – and continued his lie. “Yeah, do you have any ideas, Dad?”
            Rodney scratched at his chin and twiddled his fork idly around his remaining food. “Well, you could try Mr Potter’s Workshop in town. It has loads of bits and bobs, and I’m sure he’d have something in the back that you could use. I can’t count how many times he’s got me something I didn’t even know existed.”
            “Okay, thanks, Dad.” He didn’t show it, but Harrison was utterly bewildered at what he had just pulled off. He felt like he had successfully robbed a bank.
“Hey,” Rodney said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his wallet. Both Harrison and Sylvia watched in awe as he opened it, pulled out a five-pound note from one of its pockets, and handed it across the table. “Take this. I hope you find it.”
Dumbstruck, Harrison thanked his father and placed the note into his front pocket. The rest of the meal then passed in complete silence as Rodney devoured the remainder of his food and his family nibbled away quietly. Nobody spoke, nobody shouted. All that could be heard was the slurping and gulping of pasta. Harrison gleamed inside.
    
For the mind that is focused, days tend to blend and mix together. It’s as if the Moon and the Sun are figments of one’s imagination, present only when the individual has time to think of them, to notice them. I know that the world moves independently of the individual, of course, but isn’t it interesting to see things like that? To think that this is all just a dream we choose to believe in?
What am I saying? This is not important.
After discovering where to find the bar of wood, and pocketing his father’s cash, Harrison slept, awoke, went to school, and waited. It was a dull eight hours, characterised by the same disengagement with the world around him as the day before, and the boy only thought of one thing throughout it all. Science mattered not, nor did the literature of the Romantic period. It all passed him by like a fickle breeze. All he thought of was the bar of wood and the five-pound note in his pocket. He placed his hand on over its outline in his trousers every ten minutes or so to check it was still there, and he was grateful every time he could still feel it. That note was his ticket to being one step closer to his reward. It was everything that day.
In fear of boring you, I must just say once more that this is how it goes for every child who discovers the Wall. The cycle numbs each and every one of their lives, strangling and eroding every other motivation they possess until they are as passive as litter in the wind. It rains upwards, gravity releases them, and the sun turns cold as the world loses all sense of sentiment and order. The reward – that glorious and aloof machine - becomes Heaven and Earth, and everything remaining in the physical realm is not worth caring about. It is like clockwork. I shall not remind you again.
The final bell rang. Harrison burst from the school, bumping shoulders with his peers as the school’s population tumbled into the grey Thursday afternoon, and began his journey to town. Knowing that he didn’t need to rush home that day was like a numbing drug. His parents knew he was going to Mr Potter’s, and so the pressure was off.
The Thursday afternoon shopping crowd was a sparse one. A few pensioners roamed the wide single high street, walking slowly from one fruit and vegetable store to the next, but the town centre was largely empty.
Harrison imagined the open street like a runway. A pair of withered signs offering 2 for 1 on flowers and half price on coffee marked his take off point, and the heart of the town up ahead was his wide-open sky. He was a jet plane, speeding up and preparing to fly across to his destination. He ran with tremendous speed, pelting the cobbled street with his feet so quickly that his legs felt electrified. He imagined that he had taken off, passing derelict video rental places, empty greeting cards stalls, and busy little charity shops like they were stagnant clouds. As older shoppers rinsed the charity shop of all of its cheap goodies, Harrison approached and surpassed the sound barrier, zooming faster and faster towards his target. He glided for a few minutes then noticed a familiar sight coming up on his left. It was time to buckle up and tell the passengers that the descent would soon begin. They had arrived at their destination.
As he approached Mr Potter’s Workshop., Harrison remembered joining his father on many trips there when he was younger, always in search of some component or tool needed for the family car. It would usually be on a weekend, the perfect time for his dad to have a tinker with the engine, and the high street would be a bit livelier than it was now. Harrison and his father would walk, hand in hand, past all of the other shops and stores in an excited rush to return to whatever they were doing to the car. Harrison used to like watching his dad at work. It gave him an odd sense of grounding, like the car’s servicing was simultaneously tweaking and correcting his own sense of being alive. Heading to Mr Potter’s was an exciting extension of this sensation, carrying with it an odd blend of joy and anxiety. Going inside to get an essential tool or piece was like heading into the jungle to find treasure, but they were also against the clock. Would it be open? Would they make it back before dark? They worked outside on the drive on those Saturday afternoons, and so natural sunlight made the whole thing possible. Oddly – I think so, anyway – there was no sense of fear surrounding his father in those memories for Harrison. There was admiration and joy, but no fear. Very odd indeed.  
            The shop itself was located inside an old bank which had a battered but colourful banner spread across its brick face. In large orange block capitals, it read ‘Mr Potter’s! Find anything here in my workshop!” and had a small cartoon of the young Mr Potter himself beneath it, smiling with his thumb up. It made Harrison smile as he passed under it. He was ready to see the real guy.
An all too familiar aroma greeted Harrison as the door closed behind him. It was a peculiar but warming blend of oil and general uncleanliness. Not the kind that attaches itself to a public toilet, but a sort of deliberate dirty, like it’s all part of the plan. The smell filled Harrison’s nostrils and he felt like a toddler again, half expecting to feel his father’s hand in his own as though it were a Saturday of old and they were here for some scrap piece of engine or wing mirror. Of course, he was alone, but the inside of the store still felt like a preserved chunk of the past, shoved inside and frozen to avoid it spoiling in the heat of the everchanging outside world. As Harrison stepped forward and into the large room, he recognised everything. It was like he had only just been there, having stepped outside for a quick break.
Mr Potter’s workshop was not the most aesthetically pleasing store, but it more than made up for that in stock and variety. Upon entering, the desperate mechanic or car enthusiast was greeted by the dull sight of rickety shelving stretching from the near side of the room all the way to the back in seven tall, grey rows. The metal structures housed boxes and trays of varying products, from nails and wrenches to window stickers and car batteries, with nothing but a scruffily written label on each of them to market their cargo. They would barely be intelligible in broad daylight, and in the low, limited lighting of the workshop, it was impossible to tell what lay inside each container without physically squitning. It was unappealing to look at, but Harrison remembered his father saying that nobody goes into Mr Potter’s just to browse. If you needed something, you went and asked the man himself, and then he would find it for you. It was the way it was, the way it had always been, and Harrison had no intent on straying from that custom now.
Having had his fill of the nostalgia, Harrison walked down the aisle closest to the entrance – which ended with a half-hearted arrangement of car jacks, lawnmowers and wheel arches – turned right, and looked straight ahead to where Mr Potter’s desk sat, exactly where it had always been. It was a dingey corner of the room, only slightly brighter than the rest of the room thanks to a small lamp, but it was what all who entered the workshop were looking for. Mr Potter wasn’t in sight, but he never was as far as Harrison could recall. He always tended to show up upon the ringing of a small bell that sat on the desk.
With a light tap, Harrison sounded that ringing, and the entire room ignited with its piercing echo. The boy half expected bats to start flying down from the ceiling in panic, but none did. All that came was the sound of a man hobbling out of the backroom, his feet scraping against the wooden floorboards as he did so.
Mr Potter was older than Harrison remembered. Neatly combed silver hair clung to his small, wrinkled head, and his hunched body creaked and cracked as it wiggled across the floor. A full, yellow smile beamed out through the darkness beneath a set bright, baby blue eyes. Harrison smiled up at Mr Potter, who no longer looked anything like the cartoon version of himself on the banner outside, but the old man didn’t notice. He just continued to make his way towards the service desk.
When he eventually arrived, Mr Potter looked own on the boy with a hearty grin. He was like a wizard from a fantasy story, eager to assist the weary traveller with a spell or potion to aid them on their quest. In the stories he had read at school, none of these reliable sorcerers had ever failed to help their hero, so Harrison was confident.
“Hello there, young man,” Mr Potter said. “What can I help you with today?” His warm voice was so wonderful that Harrison did not feel nervous at all.
“Hi, Mr Potter. I’m looking for something for school and was wondering if you could help me?” Now, this was what being an adult felt like. Harrison explained what it was that he needed, how big it needed to be and what it ought to look like, and Mr Potter took it all in. With a quick nod, he contemplated what the boy was looking for and took his time with an answer. Harrison watched as the old storekeeper itched his neck and looked to the dark ceiling, as though reviewing the store’s inventory written in the blackness, and then he suddenly came back with an answer.
“Bear with me, lad! I’ll be right back.” Mr Potter waddled out of his corner with the swiftness of a walrus and disappeared into the maze of shelves. Harrison waited patiently for his return, his mind not really worrying too much, his hands reaching into his pocket for the five pound note his father gave him. He was thankful it was still there, despite having made sure of that fact so frequently throughout the day. He pulled it out and examined it in the dim light of the store. The Queen looked back at him in plain splendour, and the edges around her were free of rips or tears that might threaten her eligibility. Harrison examined the note so intently that he didn’t even notice Mr Potter’s return.
“Here,” the old man said, plonking a piece of wood onto the desk and making Harrison jump. It was exactly as the boy imagined: small, smooth all over, and just the right size for his hand. “Is this what you were after?”
“Yes, yes! Thank you, Mr Potter!” Harrison gleamed.
The elderly man laughed. “I’m glad, son, I’m glad. So, it’s for school you say?”
“Yes, for a project.” Harrison appreciated the interest, and Mr Potter truly was a lovely man, but he didn’t want to wander into specifics. “What do I owe you?”
            Mr Potter hesitated a moment – the gentle wheezing of his chest the loudest thing in earshot – then looked down. From underneath the desk he pulled out a notebook and began idly flicking through its contents. After a few moments, he stopped on a particular page, analysed the wooden block once more, checked the page again, then closed the notebook. “That’ll be eight pounds please, my lad.”
The geyser of panic erupted immediately. Wicked fright zoomed around Harrison’s body and obliterated the sense of comfort and ease that Mr Potter’s soothing voice had done so well to create. With the five-pound note crumpled in his now trembling hand, Harrison felt stupid.
“Oh, erm. Mr Potter, I only have five.” It sounded utterly pathetic, and Harrison could feel the sweat on his back touching his shirt.
“Oh,” the old man muttered. “Well, I’m afraid it’s eight.”
            “Would,” Harrison felt desperate, “would you take five?”
            “No, I…I’m afraid I can’t, son.” Mr Potter frowned. “I don’t get too many people coming in here nowadays so I can’t afford to be giving out discounts. This place needs the cash.”
It was a fair enough reason, but logic was not currently legal tender in Harrison’s mind. It was a locked box, and nothing in the world could possibly loosen it open except that bar of wood.
“Do you have a mum or dad that we could call to bring you the extra few quid?” Mr Potter kindly offered. Sweet gestures of help were contraband to such a complicated situation. If one of his parents came to the workshop, Harrison knew that he couldn’t then run over to Wally and give him the bar. They would expect him to go straight home and then to school the next day, and come back with some kind of progress report on his project. That wouldn’t work, that wouldn’t work at all. The only thing that would help was getting it to Wally that evening and getting one step closer to finishing the machine. That way, everything would work itself out. The machine would sort everything. But it was not built yet.
“M-Mr…P…” He couldn’t think of anything. Begging wasn’t going to get him anywhere, and Harrison definitely couldn’t afford anybody else getting involved. Sweat began pouring from his face and arms, and he felt increasingly uncomfortable in the dark store. The heat melted the pleasant memories until they were an unrecognisable gunk. The walls began to close in as if they were suspicious of why this intruder was behaving so strangely. The dark ceiling where Mr Potter had looked for inspiration was now a sea, full of invisible sharks.
The old man watched him patiently, and Harrison wondered whether he noticed the anxiety of his young customer at all. Could he see very well? He seemed to easily read his notebook and navigate his way around the store, but how was he not reacting to the drenched bundle of worry before him? The train of thought seemed utterly pointless at first, but then Harrison considered something.
He looked at the wood, he looked at Mr Potter. He looked at the wood, he looked at Mr Potter. He needed to act. He needed to think of something. He needed the wooden bar. There was no time for a moral assessment.
Harrison snatched the bar of wood from the table and ran towards the door. Everything around him melted into a black goo, and all Harrison could hear was the thumping percussion of his heartbeat in his ears. His body was screaming at him to stop, but he didn’t listen. He pelted his way back down the aisle, past all of the different boxes and trays, and towards the exit. A distant call came from somewhere, most likely Mr Potter, but it was coming from a thousand miles away.
Within a matter of seconds, Harrison was back out in the blistering sunlight and on the other side of the world from that cry. As if by instinct, instead of retreating back into the centre of the town, he found the quickest route out where he was less likely to be stopped. After a few minutes of manic sprinting, he came onto a main road that would eventually bring him back round to the right sight of town where he could then get to Peter’s Wood.
Harrison took a breath then began running again along this way, slipping the bar of wood into his pocket beneath the five-pound note, like a child slipping under bed covers. By the time he neared the path to Peter’s Wood, he was crippled by a ripping stitch in the side of his stomach. It cut deep, ripping him from his hysteria and bringing him rapidly back into the light of logic. The reality of what he had just done shined through and burned.
He replayed what he had done over and over again in order to put it to rest, but it wouldn’t settle in his mind. One second, Harrison was stood in Mr Potter’s Workshop, sweating and on the brink of tears, and the next he was out of the door, fleeing the scene like a true criminal. He had run so fast that he hadn’t even heard what was being shouted at him. Had Mr Potter screamed? Or was it a witness outside? The idea of having done something illegal made him feel sick to the stomach, but all he could think to do was start running again to beat back the lapping thoughts.
He imagined the police knocking on his door. What would his parents say when they knew he had stolen something from an innocent old shop owner? What would his father do when he found out that he had wronged such a reliable friend? Maybe it was the growing exhaustion messing with his vision, but Harrison thought he could see the black and blue bruises already. He forced himself to run faster.
 
The weather had altered by the time Harrison finally arrived at Peter’s Wood. As he forced himself to jog against the crying pain in his side, he could hear the light tapping of a brewing rain above him. It was not a good week for weather.
The rapid bouncing of droplets on the leaves blended seamlessly with the thudding of Harrison’s feet on the muddy track. For a moment his body felt so numb that it was like he were not moving at all. He and the world were motions of the same brush, and all that stirred was the falling heavens and the brittle greenery trying to catch it all. As Harrison slid down the thin trail and landed before the Wall and its pool, a great big droplet landed right in his eye. It was one irritation too many, and the boy was violently pulled to reality. He squealed like a captured pig.
“Wally! Wally! I have the wooden bar, but you need to help me!”
            A brief crinkling noise came from somewhere beyond the waterfall, as if Wally were about to emerge from the shrubbery like a drowsy bear, but then the voice came as normal. “Harrison? What has happened?” The Wall sounded suspicious.
“I have it! I have the wooden bar, but I stole it! I took it and ran because I couldn’t afford it!”
“Were you followed?”
“I don’t…I don’t think so, I—”
            “Harrison did you see anyone following you? Did anyone see where you were going?”
            “I don’t know! I don’t remember seeing anyone!”
            “Go!” the voice commanded with startling power. “Go and make sure that no one is approaching!” Harrison went to speak, flustered by the sudden strictness, but he was not granted permission. “Now!”
            The boy ran back up the thin trail and peaked out of the cluttered bush to see if anyone was around. The patter on the green roof was now a consistent block of sound, and Harrison strained to try and hear if anyone was walking up the path from either direction. He saw no one and heard nothing but the rain. That had to be enough.
            He dropped back down to Wally. “There’s no one. No one followed me.” But Harrison felt bad. Wally would probably be experimented on and tortured if he was ever discovered, as that was what happened to all of the mysterious creatures and monsters in the films Harrison watched. They were tranquilised, caged, and forced into laboratories against their will. How they would capture Wally was a hard thing to imagine, but Harrison couldn’t run the risk. Plus, it would cost the creation of the machine if Wally was discovered, and that was too high a price. He had risked it all to get the necessary piece, he shouldn’t be so reckless.
“I’m sorry, Wally.”
             The voice regained some of its composure. “It is alright, my friend. Did you obtain the piece successfully?”
            Harrison held it up. “Yes, but—”
            “Place it in the pool, and then tell me your story.”
He stepped forward and lowered himself to his knees but was amazed to find that the pool was empty. The string from the previous day had disappeared, and there was no sign of it ever having been there. Wally really was magic. This was really going to work! The bar fell from the boy’s hand like lead to the bottom, and no assistance from Harrison’s hand was required this time around. It clunked onto the stony bed, and it reminded him of a sunken battleship.
            “It’s in,” Harrison said, and he took the ensuing silence as a platform to tell his tale. He spoke quickly. “I got it from Mr Potter’s Workshop in town, I don’t know if you know of it. My dad told me to try there, and he gave me some money but when I got there, Mr Potter told me it cost more than I had. I asked him if I could have it for less and he said no, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do. He’s a lovely old man but he wouldn’t listen, and I could hardly explain. So, I just grabbed it. I grabbed it and ran, and he shouted after me but I didn’t stop. I ran and ran, and I left town and came straight here. I don’t if anyone saw me but…what if they did? What if I get arrested? They won’t believe me if I tell them about you, and they’ll send me to prison! What if they send me to prison?! What am I going to do?!”
            As the breath heaved in and out of the boy’s body like a needle sewing together his dread, the Wall remained silent. It was faceless and absent, all while his trusted friend descended into a pit. As a boy, Harrison’s understanding of prison was limited and stereotypical, but it was enough to send him. Spending years in a lonely cell and eating mushy food seemed worse than death, and the idea of taking that option did spring to mind. It’s awful when a child considers taking their own life, but I often scoff at everyone’s dramatic surprise to such a thing occurring. If a child is able to develop a relationship with an inanimate water feature, shouldn’t that tell you something about what their imagination can conceive?
I would laugh, but then I suppose you’d think me twisted. The reality is, Harrison considered everything in those quiet moments, and the scene remained stagnant for a few minutes. The Wall’s connection was always of emotional promise rather than emotional presence, and when it finally spoke, it was as though there had been no pause at all.
            “Harrison, my friend, we must act with haste. I don’t know what is going to happen, but if you fear for your freedom, only my machine can guarantee its security. We must complete it tonight, do you understand?”
            Hooked like a defenceless fish, the boy had no route but forward. “Will it stop the police from getting me? The machine?”
            “Of course, my friend. If you have stolen something from the town centre, it is likely that someone would have seen you, and so only my completed machine can protect you from the dangers that may soon befall you. You spoke before of your father helping you with the acquisition of the wooden bar. Are you and him allies now? If so, I don’t know if I can—”
            “No! No, I still want the machine! He only helped me because I lied. I still need it. Please, Wally, what do I need to get?” Harrison could no longer feel the erratic motion of his heart. It was like he was on fire.
            “The final piece of the machine, Harrison, is a piece of glass. A long and sharp piece of glass, thin enough at one end to slip into a keyhole.”
            “Why?” Harrison asked, abruptly. It wasn’t the latest stage that a child had first asked the Wall why a particular item needed retrieving, but it was a contender. Most of them query the first piece from a sense of natural curiosity and suspicion, but Harrison’s intrigue was delayed, and it grew. The first two things were mystical and beyond comprehension regarding their usefulness together, but glass was different. Glass was dangerous, and it somehow stuck out as strange to him. Strange enough, it seemed, to make him forget who he was talking to.
            “Harrison, why must you question me again? We have no time to be wondering about why the piece must be collected. What use is telling you when you have no way of ever comprehending my craftsmanship or the essence of what it is that I am making? You are a boy, Harrison. A boy that I am trying to help, but you must cooperate. You must collect the glass or this isn’t going to work, and you will be left to the mercy of the police and your father. Do you think he will respond calmly when he discovers that you have stolen? Do you think your mother will be able to take the wrath that will soon unfold as a result of your actions? You need my machine before that happens, and that is only possible if you listen to me and do as I say. Do you—”
     “Yes! Yes! I will get the glass,” Harrison blurted. “Where, though? Where do I get glass?!”
“Anywhere, Harrison! Anywhere you can! But I must have it by tonight. Find it as quick as you can and return to me before the sun sets.”
Harrison had no idea what time it was, but the sun would only be up for another few hours at the very most. He needed to act fast.
“Okay!” he shouted, but before he charged into the shrubbery and into the upside-down world, something else fell out from his mouth. As he spoke, he stared straight into what he imagined to be the soul of the waterfall, imagining there to be an all-seeing eye just beyond its aquatic veil. “Will it save me? Wally, will your machine actually save me?”
The splashing of the waterfall’s constant collision with the pool below seemed to be all that would answer at first, but then Wally spoke to his friend with sincerity and poise. It was as honest as he had ever been to Harrison. He told him the truth.
“Tomorrow, my friend, this will all be over.”
 
The Glass
To his terror, Harrison had been right about the impending speed of sundown. As he tumbled from the cover of Peter’s Wood and desperately tried to think of where he was going to get a piece of long, thin glass, the sky had already turned a luscious violet. Darkness was on its way.
Without much expertise to fall back on, being so young, Harrison scrambled for a place to begin his search. I forget sometimes how young these people are, the children that stumble across the Wall and engage with it. They are barely capable of walking into a shop and counting out the right amount of change to buy something, and yet it is as though the Wall’s words age them, making them its equal. It is fascinating, even for me after all this time. And yet, they are not its equal. To be equal, the Wall and its visitors would need to share a sense of compromise, to alternate between victor and loser, but this is never the case.
Harrison’s first thought was to return to the town centre, but the obvious negatives of that quickly kicked in. The shopfronts were all likely closed (not that any of them sold glass, anyway), and all of their owners would be on the lookout for the notorious workshop thief prowling the night streets. Harrison imagined how fast the truth might have spread over the past hour or so. Would his parents know yet? Not likely, but they soon would, and then only the Wall would be able to save him. He needed to clasp every second available in order to get the machine completed and ready for use – whatever that meant, anyway – but where could he go?
He thought hard, harder than he had ever considered anything before. It felt impossible with so little time and so few options. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack when you don’t even know if there is definitely one in there. He could look but he wouldn’t necessarily find. He felt doomed.
But as he wandered the suburban streets surrounding Peter’s Wood, edging ever closer to the outskirts of the town under the blind pilot of his occupied brain, a memory came. It was faint and unfamiliar, but it was a memory all the same, and something about it stuck out from the rest with a helping arm extended. Like a book left slightly out of line on a bookshelf, it was noticeable and enticing. It told Harrison that it could help, and he tried to focus on it.
He was only two years younger in the memory, yet it felt like an eternity ago. The reason why it stuck out in his mind was clear as soon as Harrison let the events replay, but he chose not to dwell.
In the memory, he was beside his father, holding his hand pleasantly enough, and standing in a queue for something. Looking back, he knew it was for a grilled sandwich from Dingbat Baguettes – a small, lone-standing store on the very edge of a suburban field – but at the time Harrison was oblivious, caring only for the delightful view of the surrounding scenery. There weren’t many families around on that summer eve, many of them having already gone home after a warm afternoon of sunbathing and games, and so the wide stretches of green were open for the young boy’s eyes to enjoy. Harrison looked back and away from the small little outhouse where the food was served, moving only when he felt the anchoring tug of his father’s hand pulling him closer to it. Those larger hands had not yet administered physical punishment, but on the backend of that one summer afternoon, waiting for a cold can and pepperoni pizza roll, all of that would change. And it was all because of that luxurious field.
 
“Come on, Harrison. Stop pulling me,” Rodney said as they neared the front of the queue. Only one other customer stood between him and the window. Sitting around in the sun was one thing all by itself, but having to entertain his son in the blistering heat had taken it out of him. Sylvia was at home, overcome by the humidity of the day, so Rodney had been a solo act that afternoon. All he wanted now was a beer for himself and some food to occupy his son when they got home. That was all, but it was dragging on.
“But Daddy, the grass is so nice,” Harrison replied, pulling his father’s hand gently. “I want to run around in it.” The heat had done nothing to diminish the boy’s energy, and even as the sun began to make its way to the other side of the world, he still felt like a fully-fuelled jet ski, ready to rip around the gentle waves and go as far out into the green sea as possible.
But Rodney was stern. “I think you’ve ran around quite enough today, don’t you think? Come on, the faster we get this grub, the sooner we can go home.” The temperature had waned a little bit from its mid-afternoon peak, but there was still no escaping the incessant clinginess of the air. Britain might be miserable all year round, but when it got hot, it found all new ways to get under your skin. God save the Queen, Rodney thought.
The thought of going home was not as appealing as what lay before the young boy. “But Daddy, I want to run around!”
            “No,” Rodney said again. He tightened his grip and pulled his son forward once more, this time with enough force to turn his small body. The motion parted the rancid film of sweat that had developed under Rodney’s armpit, and the new coolness of his skin made him feel disgusting and in desperate need of a shower. Didn’t he used to spend afternoon like this working on the car? The sun’s hesitation to leave had been a blessing those days, and the irritating body pulling him back towards the field had been a pleasant extra pair of hands. Upgrading to an electric car had seemed like such a good idea when Sylvia had suggested it, but now Rodney was starting to think it was the worst thing he had ever agreed to. He was getting more annoyed now at the relentless tugging of his hand, but the thought of the cool sofa and the sweet metallic kiss of a beer can went a long way in keeping a lid on his pot. It also made him forget about the car. He wouldn’t need to be here much longer. All he needed to do was--
Harrison jolted towards the field and pulled again, catching his father off guard. It almost knocked Rodney off balance, yanking him a few inches further away from the small sandwich shop, and it proved too much for his temper to tolerate. In a jerk reaction, he squeezed the boy’s hand harder than he had done before and hauled him back into position, but this time he did not have complete control over his son’s weight. His small frame flew forward and barged into the man ahead of them in the queue, slamming him into the wall of Dingbat Baguettes. The man dropped to the floor in a loud crash, and Rodney heard the faint whispered jingle of glass under the man’s groan. The sliding window beside the startled employee’s face was smashed.
The man’s head – who Rodney now saw belonged to a large, frightening bearded fellow – had crunched against it. Glass shards fell like snowflakes from the pane, and blood dripped from the man’s forehead, as if they were both falling from the same cloud. Rodney did not notice the symmetry. All he saw was an angry man regaining his awareness and rising to an immense height before him. Bulging muscles covered his long arms and there were cuts on his knuckles. The Terminator doppelganger stood up straight, inhaled deeply through his nostril, and bore his gaze down onto the unlucky son of a bitch that had pushed him. The breath of the towering colossus stunk like the Friday night pub.
            “I am so sorry, mate. Really, I am. My son was pulling me, and I just tried to get him to stop and I—”
            The man’s right fist felt like a bullet train as flung across Rodney’s face. He fell to the floor and collapsed onto the grass, unable to hold his composure under such a heavy hit. The world spun but he had no time to find his feet as his stumbling attacker instantly came forth with more fury.
“I’ll fucking have you if you want, mate!” He hadn’t seemed so drunk from behind. “Fucking…twat…”
The man grabbed Rodney by the shoulders and hoisted him up as though he weighed nothing at all. Then, with mindless effort but incredible strength, he shoved his feeble victim to the wall and sent a barrage of kicks and punches to his gut. Rodney could do nothing but shimmy and tense his stomach, helplessly suspended by his attacker’s iron arms. After a few minutes of relentless pummelling, the drunken man ceased his onslaught and threw Rodney into the window, except this time it caused more than just a trickle of glass. His head flew through the pane as though it were not even there, and its entire glass body came flying out of the frame. Harrison jumped back; the employee inside of the shop screamed.
With Rodney on the ground, the man walked away, ignoring Harrison. He stumbled straight into the wide-open field and towards the suburban homes where he presumably resided. He seemed to have forgotten that he was hungry. Meanwhile, Rodney did his best to pick himself back up. The ripping pain in his face and body was insurmountable, and all he could do for a few minutes was lie still and breathe in his bed of glass. Lines of red ran like streams across his face, but they didn’t seem to flow in vast amounts. The glass cuts were numerous but shallow, and Rodney eventually got to his feet without paying them any mind. He was only concerned about one thing.
Throughout the fight, Harrison had done nothing but watch. Entranced by the confusing conflict, he had stood still and tried to comprehend what was happening to his father. What he did not understand was that it was his fault that it had happened. That fact was quickly addressed.
            Rodney smacked Harrison in the face and grabbed him by the neck like he was an infant pup. He didn’t care if anyone was watching or if the employee was still peering nosily out of the serving window. His brain was no longer a complex, multi-faceted machine considering multiple things at once. It was now a red block, utterly rigid and cemented in rage. His son squealed and asked to be let go, but Rodney refused to pay even a shred of notice. He stared straight ahead towards the housing estate and dragged his son’s body by whatever piece of skin his fingers could keep a hold of. His neck, his ear, his hair. The boy’s screams were muffled and benign. All that Harrison could understand as he was being pulled away from the sandwich shop was what he could see. He no longer looked out to the field of green. All his father’s careless hold would allow his head to see was the shop window and the ocean of glass below it. The sun caught the shards and crystals, and the blood flooding to the boy’s head made it all seem like water; the longer pieces jutting up like rising waves amid a raging tempest. That was all he could see as he struggled to get free, and it lingered so prominently in his mind because that was the last thing he saw before his father stopped walking.
About halfway through the field, Rodney spun around, leaned forward, and screamed into the watered-down colour of his son’s eyes. The world changed in that moment.
“You will never misbehave like that again! You will listen to me in future and do things as and when you are told! Do you understand me, Harrison?!” He slapped his son again. “Do you?! I could have died, you idiotic boy! I could have been killed because of your fucking silliness!”
A few more quick hits landed on Harrison’s cheeks, and he could do nothing but cry. To get his boy up, Rodney kicked at his legs. Light and snappy, they were like electric shocks. The dragging then resumed and the illusion of the glass ocean was replaced by the smudge of real water. There they remained, the shards, behind the veil of tears.
 
Rodney Little had never hurt his son in the same way as he did on that diminishing summer day, but it did not matter. Each metre of grass covered as he hauled his son by the earlobe was imprinted into Harrison’s mind. Every slap to the face was another comma in a long list of shame. Merely remembering that day pulled him from the streets around him and forced him into a dark and dingey crevice of his mind. Every time he thought about it, he wanted to crawl into the darkest cave in the world and wait to die.
But Harrison fought against that urge this time. He hadn’t gone back to wallow or cry or bathe in the remnants of the worst day of his life. He had done it for a purpose, an all-important reason.
He pictured the glass. The glass that had always been nothing but a reminder of suffering, dancing playfully upon the stage of his dreams. But it represented something else now. It marked the finish line.
 
It took a while for Harrison to get to the particular field he remembered. The streets were dark and indiscernible from one another with only the light of the sparse lampposts to work with. Eventually, however, he managed to sift through the cul-de-sacs and alleys, aided largely by the very memories that he always considered a scar, and arrived at the shore of the field.
The green he remembered was drearily tinged by the lowering sun, and now looked a measly grey. The temperate green sea was now a boggy swamp, dull and dangerous. This was saddening but ultimately terrifying – changing shades meant that time was running out. Out in that darkening space was the outline of Dingbat Baguettes, lying in the centre of the field like a beached whale waiting to die. The sun looked like it was fleeing rather than setting, desperate to get away from this place.
An apocalyptic dye was spilt, and it set almost immediately over the world. Colours became cruel, and the whale in the distance was seconds from crumbling into a haggard, useless skeleton of black. Harrison sprinted towards that block of darker space like it was an oasis in the Sahara. He had to get there before he couldn’t see anything.
            The ground below him was hard and flickers of fatigue were creeping into his legs, but Harrison ran anyway. There was nothing on this planet worth stopping for. Above him – Harrison looked up to distract his mind from the heavying sensation of tiredness – the sky was dulling evermore. There was only so much juice left in the day, but by the end of it everything would be okay. Harrison almost felt happy, thinking about where he was and where he would soon be. This field, this area of grass, this minute expanse of the Earth, it was where his life had tectonically shifted. But by the time the sun had retreated beyond the horizon and the moon had clocked in for its watch, the world would be anew. Harrison’s entire life would click back into place, and everything would be fine. Wally and his machine would fix everything.
I sometimes wonder whether I should have intervened at this point. Events are still unravelling I know, but may I take a moment? I’m just considering how many times I have to watch the same thing happen before I think I ought to step in and do something about it. Don’t misunderstand me, I am no moral being, nor do I aspire to live within such frameworks of dirt and mud. I merely ask myself from time to time whether I should step in at this part of the tale and show my hand. Play the game, so to say, rather than being the observant dealer. Every child reaches this peak of wonder and power, and they all fall, each in their way, so I suppose that is worth watching.
But could I prod the situation, divert just a single child’s path, and send them to a different fate? It is a conundrum for me. You may think me deranged in a way, unwilling to derail the course of things when I know the exacts of their conclusion, but that isn’t true. Patterns are not laws. Cycles can stop; but then, am I the thing required to stop them? I am unsure.
Harrison is a child, like Michael, Courtney, Alicia, James, Ronald, and Jessica were all children. To this point, he has followed an almost identical path to his predecessors, excusing the details, of course, but they are merely colours filling in the same lines and borders. When it is not the abusive father, it is the antagonising sister, the untrusting mother, the thieving friend. They all have their motivations, and each follow them like donkey chasing carrots; but I assure you, it is not I that wields the stick. They meet the Wall, as it insists on being called, and it promises things to them all. They follow its guidance, ‘collecting’ or ‘performing’ whatever it is that it ‘requires’. Then again, maybe that is my fault. Each child goes forth doing the Wall’s bidding, and they all climb the very same summit, staring up into the sky or thinking beyond the present, certain of victory. They look me in the eye as I remain quiet, and I ponder whether to play the game or simply keep watching. You may plead to my conscience, but what am I to do? The chips are always stacked against me, and to interfere is to risk toppling the stack and making a mess.
Anyway, we are going off track, and I have told you this too many times before. Does that make me a pattern? I keep telling the same story to the same people, reminding them of the same facts and having the same debates. I suppose that does put in good stead to be considered a cycle myself, but alas. It’s certainly one to ponder.
Anyway, I shall continue.
Harrison approached the beginning of his decline almost seconds after he had graced his peak. It’s horribly funny that way. The heavenly ceiling was met and passed, and then the features of the sandwich outhouse’s opaque silhouette began to manifest before him. Its shape was the same as he recalled, as well as its overall structure. It was a block in the middle of the field with a serving window on its front. A large wooden board sat at the top where the Dingbat Baguettes sign had hung wide and proud.
But as Harrison drew closer, the mirage of the past fell away as though nothing but a thin cloth, and the present that lay beneath was disturbingly different. Where the face of the beloved shop had been, bearing its bright font and recognisable name, there was nothing but a bare skeleton. A plain wooden board sat exposed, selling nothing and attracting no one. The menu that Harrison recalled beside the serving desk was gone too, revealing the crude and tasteless brick that sat behind it. Holes where the nails had pinned it up were still visible, remnants of the treasure that had once been here. The most horrifying sight was the serving window which, despite the seemingly decrepit state of the rest of the small building, had been repaired. A fresh set of panes were fitted within the static and sliding frames, and the glass pile that had been there for so long was gone. The ocean had dried up at long last.
How was this possible? Harrison was a young boy, barely familiar with John Steinbeck and covalent bonding, but even he could see the inconsistency here. The building was abandoned, lacking any form of character or future enterprise, yet the window was fixed. Why? Granted, he hadn’t been there for a few months – having only passed it in the case of visiting a friend from this area or using the neighbouring grassland for football – but how had it been addressed and fixed so recently? It seemed uncanny. Unbelievable, even. But as much as he despised the curve ball, it had happened, and Harrison had to do something. The sky was blackening, and the wind was getting colder and colder with every breathe of the approaching night. The hunting moon would find him soon, so he had to think.
Then the worst happened.
“Harrison? Harrison, are you here?”
The boy froze. A woman was shouting from the streets behind him but, as he turned in the near darkness, there was no one in sight. The island of light beneath the distant lamppost was empty, revealing nothing but the pavement and curb beneath it.
Harrison thought he recognised the voice, but he was too alarmed to consider who it could be. It was so distant, and he had to hurry. His head shot to the glass. The batting waves of panic harassed him, but he put all of his conscious effort into repelling their pull and thinking rationally. What could he do? What could he try? Then he was interrupted again by the woman’s calling, this time joined by a deeper and louder set of vocals.
“Harrison!” his mother and father called together. It was an unmistakeable harmony. Before long, he could see their small bodies rising out of the sea of black and stepping into the lamppost light. There was no stopping the panic now.
How did they know he was here? There was no way this could be happening. Harrison squinted his eyes as they drew closer under the dome of yellow light, and it became ever clearer that the tiny figures were his parents. The taller figure trudged mercilessly closer from the street, unfazed by the world of black before it. Behind, a pair of huge, square glasses glistened beneath the streetlight.
Mum.
            Harrison rapidly assessed what lay around him. A stick, scattered litter, a rock. He grabbed the rock and did the only thing he could think of that would help him in getting some glass. Without any further consideration, he threw the rock as hard as he possibly could at the window, causing it to shatter and split into a thousand pieces. Between the calls of his name, like small marks of punctuation, he could hear the twinkling sound of falling glass.
            Although he couldn’t see very well in the swelling darkness, Harrison thought about where the pool of glass had gathered before and approached. He closed his eyes (although there was little point in such blackness) and he saw the blazing brightness of that summer day, the tall drunk ahead of him in the queue, the window.
Startled muttering slithered through the night, and Harrison quickly knelt down to where he thought the pile would be and began assessing the individual fragments he had created. Most of it was useless grains of the former pane, but his blind hands knew something more significant sat amongst the rubble. It was like he was feeling a variety of rocks from another planet, each a different size and composition, trying to figure out what alien characteristics they possessed.
The sound of feet hitting the hard grass rose behind him and the incessant repetition of Harrison’s name began to feel like it was coming from the world’s most annoying alarm clock. He wanted to smash it to pieces, but instead his hands moved faster to feel out his prize.
Ouch! Damn! Ow!
The material fought back like a miniature army, scratching and pricking Harrison’s smooth fingertips, but he couldn’t stop. He might have been bleeding, he had no way of telling, but he needed that glass. The approaching footsteps and retreating sun demanded he quicken his pace.
At long last he found a piece. He held it carefully in his stinging hands, trying to judge what it looked like without cutting one of his fingers off. It was long enough, as best as he could tell, and there was no denying it was sharp. There was no way of knowing whether there were any compromising cracks or whether the shape was adequate for its unknown purpose. That would have been impossible to deduce even if it wasn’t dark, so Harrison quit trying.
Gently trying to avoid snapping it in his grasp, he stood up, but couldn’t run away. Before he could even entertain an escape, his father was grabbing his shoulders and spinning him around to face him. The glass tumbled to the ground and clattered a few yards into the dull evening light, lost.
“No!” Harrison screamed.
“Harrison! Harrison, stop! What is going on?!”
Sylvia caught up to her husband and cried out in heavy, gasping breathes. “Harri! Oh my god, thank the Lord you are okay! Why are you out here? We’ve been worried sick!”
But Harrison didn’t hear a word. He shook off his father’s grip and plunged into the dark. He scanned the ground with his feeling hands, praying that a sharp point or edge met him, but nothing did. Instead, he felt the arm of his father wrap around his stomach and rip him from the ground.
            “Be careful, Rod,” Sylvia whimpered. “Oh, Harrison, thank God you’re okay!” She was delirious with relief, but I can assure you, God was not listening.
“Easy, Harrison. Easy!” Rodney tried his best to walk back towards the light of the street but his son’s manic kicking was proving too much to handle. It was like trying to control a lit firework in a bottle, and it quickly got out of hand. “Harrison! Please will you—”
            The heel of the boy’s right foot met Rodney’s teeth with immense power, and he let out a blunt cry of pain. The strike caught him off guard, largely thanks to the low light, and he stumbled to a stop.
Not even realising (or caring about) what he had done, Harrison quickly looked to take advantage. He began rapidly kicking again and shaking his entire body like a terrified fish. Rodney dropped him, and Harrison sprinted back to where he thought the glass was as soon as his feet hit the grass. As he searched, his father regained his balance and began drawing nearer again.
“For God sake, Harrison! What the hell was that?!”
            “Rodney, please!”
“He’s just kicked me in the face, Sylvia! What am I supposed to do? This has gone on long enough!” The hurt bled from his words and complicated his rage. His steps were now multipurposed, no longer taken with mere irritation at his son’s careless galivanting, but with a blend of that and fiery revenge. Harrison’s belligerence would go on no longer.
Rodney stomped towards his son’s silhouette but soon lost him in the confusing shadows. The whispers of the grass gave him a loose indication as to where to look, but his aging eyes were struggling to determine the boy’s body from the rest of the colourless world. He thought he found him again but stepped into empty space. He was the bull, the taunting darkness his infuriating matador.
“Harrison! Come here now!”
He got no reply.
            A few metres away from his growling father, Harrison felt like he was getting close. Rather than a harrowing pedal on the pressure, he used the shouting and screaming as a twisted incentive which electrified his body and quickened his hands. The old man could keep hollering and crying like a little girl all he wanted. Once Harrison found this piece of glass, he was going to be free of his aggressive and hurtful brute of a dad and the pain would finally be over. This glass would be the key to a tranquil life, free from the bruises, cuts and grazes of that animal.
Under the powerful percussion of his father’s booming voice was the gentle weeping of his mother, but that also added to Harrison’s thrill. Fear not, mum. This glass was going to save everyone, and these tears will be your last. Wait and you’ll see! Once this glass is found, then you’ll see!
Harrison’s hand hit a spiked blade and instantly knew what he had found. He picked up the glass and tucked it gently between his body and arm as to not cut himself. There was no time to delicately assess its body this time, and Harrison knew there was nothing to do but run. As he set off, he heard his father speak from a few feet in front of him. By now, the field was almost pitch black.
“Harrison, are you there? Harrison, please stop this. Your mother, she’s…this isn’t right, son.”
The boy paused before his father’s words. He had been lectured by his father more times than he could remember in his short but troubled life. They were angry, demeaning speeches, often accompanied by a firm hand on his small shoulder or a set of blazing eyes positioned directly in front of his own tearful pair. The display was also often followed by an encore of quick hurt, depending on the scale of his father’s displease. It could range from a sharp smack on the bottom to a push into a wall or chair if he was truly furious, just like on that horrible day on the field.
But the words Harrison heard now were different. They did not fire from the cannon of his father’s mouth and fly at dangerous speed, nor was their content vulgar and cripplingly patronising. It was like someone had swapped the pistol for the crop hose, and now Rodney’s speech was gliding over and setting into his son’s head, planting seeds. It held a confusing tone, but Harrison resisted as best he could.
“Listen, son,” Rodney said. “I don’t know what this is about, but me and your mother just want you to come home. We…we can talk about whatever it is that’s the matter. I promise.”
Harrison’s nerve swayed. Never (and I can confirm this one) had his father offered to talk like this. It was a trick, a vicious enticement to get him back into his clutches, but then Harrison felt his grip of the glass shard loosen. The words were slipping into his ears and manoeuvring their way south, unlocking his body’s aches and tensions like a warm, paternal key. His dad was finally offering the hand he had always been denied, and somewhere in the darkness it was being extended physically. Muscles relaxed, and the flower of Harrison’s palm threatened to blossom.
If the world was frozen at this point in time, the relationship between Harrison and his father may have found the material to rebuild, to grow. The seed could have taken to the soil of the boy’s mind, and upon the next rise of the sun it could have been nurtured to health. A bond might have sprung, reaching higher and rooting deeper with every passing day of conversation and quality time. They may have discovered that they both missed the car and the spiritual gravity of those weekend afternoons. Maybe they would have bought a new car – not electric, of course – and got to work, sharing the labour this time around. A new master and apprentice; teaching and learning long into Harrison’s teen years, rolling so far from their troubled past that it was no longer visible in the rear-view mirror. Working on his own car – an adult by then, his father grey but as enthusiastic as ever – Harrison might have even told him all about the Wall and its promise, and they might have laughed together, embraced, and shared a tear over their regrets. Whether it was right or just a fantasy, the runway to salvation was ready and waiting for them.
But alas, as you and I both know, time waits for no one.
The next second changed everything.
            Sylvia shouted from somewhere in the near distance, “Harrison, we love you, come back! Please, Harri, come on. Come back, please, come back!”
            “Shut the fuck up, Sylvia!” Rodney screamed. “I am handling this!”
            “Don’t shout at her!” Harrison screamed in return. He charged at his father and punched him in the only place he knew would generate enough pain to cripple his movement. His fist flew straight into his father’s groin, and he heard the violent exhalation of air as the large body keeled over. But Harrison didn’t stop running after that. Tumbling faster and faster into the black, he ignored his mother’s screaming and thought of nothing but the feeling of the glass in his hand and the lamppost in the distance.
Harrison ran as fast as he could, and he didn’t look back when he eventually came to the lamppost and its island. The Wall was a vast and trying voyage away, and Harrison was already late. Very, very late.
 
The Machine
The green of the shrubbery drained into ubiquitous black as evening slipped into night. It had not been a dry week by any means when Harrison had discovered the Wall, but that did not stop the evening of their final encounter from unleashing a downpour that even the roof of Peter’s Wood could not fight against. None of the mortals below could see the clustering clouds as they formed into shadowy blocks in the sky, but it did not take long for them to hear their snarls. The thunder began to crack as Harrison navigated the main roads, and by the time he arrived at Peter’s Wood, the artillery had begun its viscous barrage.
The floor beneath the usually solid canopy of the forest was damp and muddy as the boy trudged along the path, and the dark leaves around him danced under the machine gun fire of rain droplets. Puddles were wide and countless, and the whipping wind slithered through the trees in an unrelenting surge. Still, Harrison fought on to run and jump over the obstacles before him. Water was everywhere, delaying from below and battering from above, but he eventually arrived at the right area of shrubbery and wasted no time in diving between its bushes. The sound of the waterfall was muted by the falling heavens, but Harrison was now confident in its whereabouts. At this stage, all of them were.
            The hop down onto the neatly trimmed lawn was calculated and slow. The glass still hugged Harrison’s side and, despite how late he was, he didn’t want to end up puncturing an organ with its sharp edge. He got one foot steadily placed before he leapt down, and when he had both securely set, he pulled the glass out.
Unlike the previous times he had visited Wally, Harrison could barely see anything. The only source of light was a single sword of moonlight that cut through the green ceiling and illuminated the very base of the waterfall. Harrison hadn’t noticed the hole above him until now but, then again, why would he? He had never been here at night. It was like someone had cut it just for this occasion, and it worked a treat.
The dull line twinkled on the still pool at the foot of the tumbling water and brightened the edges of its cascading flow. It was enough for Harrison to get his bearings, and it somehow made it all feel even more surreal than usual. The world outside was pitch black and consumed with the storm, but here, even though the rain still forced its way through, at least he could see it. He existed in a protected pocket of the world, constituting its own universe of time and space. #
Harrison was grateful, for this was probably exactly what the Wall could do. With its power, it could change the world around it and create whatever it deemed necessary. He felt excited as he looked down at the glass in his hand, which now shone under the low light. He could not quite see his reflection, but that was ultimately a good thing. Children at this point should never see themselves. It would destroy them. Harrison’s eyes were bloodshot and raw around the edges, and the rest of his body was a murky affair. Dirt covered his school trousers, and muddy handprints decorated the points where his father had tried to seize him. On his hands, dry brown had fused with the hellish red of his own blood, sourced from the cuts he endured as he had searched for the glass. They were dead man hands, and like I say, if he had seen them himself, Harrison would have thought they belonged to a corpse.
“Wally!” he shouted. His voice croaked and fell flat in the busy air. The rain riddled the ground and leaves, and it was like the entire forest was chanting. The choir rose and rose in volume, but the boy fought to make himself heard. “Wally! Wally!”
A pair of birds snapped from a nearby branch. The distant thud of thunder broke from above the canopy like a giant knocking on the forest roof, demanding to be let in. Harrison thought of his father. Would his parents have tried to follow him, or would they now be at home, reporting their missing son to the police? Either way, someone must be coming.
The excitement in Harrison’s bones became contaminated with the familiar zing of fear. He screamed again, forcing all of his breathe into a long, stretching bellow, but still nothing responded. He recalled the difficulty of getting the Wall to respond on the other visits, but he was now in no mood for theatrics. Every wasted second was a cluster of steps taken towards him by those out looking for him. His mum, his dad, the police maybe.
But what if it wasn’t a game? He had been expected by sundown, so what if Wally had left, transported himself to another part of the world and given up on him? This really got him worried, and Harrison quickly started making his way towards the waterfall, begging for some recognition. His free palm slapped the stone face as his voice punched its way through the relentless downpour. He pleaded with the Wall, with anything that was out there, to help him. He needed the Wall. He was running out of time.
“It’s me, Harrison!” the boy screamed. That was his final throw of the dice. A sharp rustling of leaves came from behind him, but he shrugged it off as the pushing and shoving of the storm. The previously still ceiling was now beginning to sway, and the shrubbery to his sides was cracking and crunching with the heavy raindrops. Thunder boomed far away once more, and a small animal of some kind scurried along the ground.
When the voice finally came, Harrison thought he might cry.
            “Harrison?” the Wall said. The boy placed his hand on the rock.
“Yes! Yes, Wally! It’s me!” He spat the rain from his lips, and drops began rolling down his forehead. It was really breaking through the treeline now. “I have the glass! It’s what you asked for, but I’m really going to need the machine now! I hit my dad, and I’m going to be in a lot of trouble when I go home! Wally! Wally, what do I do? Do you need it in the water? Wally! Wally!”
The voice spoke as calmly as it could whilst still managing to break through the competing noise. “Yes! Yes! Place it in my pool, Harrison!”
The boy quickly turned and bent down, slipping the glass into the water. Tiny geysers of water cluttered the pool’s surface as the rain droplets plonked into it, but the glass sliced amongst them as if it were not even solid. Once underneath, it sat and blended into invisibility, and Harrison quickly lost sight of it in the dark liquid.
“It’s in! It’s in!”
The voice boomed, and Wally sounded different. More alive. “Can you feel it, Harrison? My friend, can you sense what is happening?” Lightning flashed beyond the small hole in the leaves, and Harrison felt his spirit rise. This was magic. Actual, real-life magic. He cheered and the voice spoke again. “Harrison, my friend. I must ask you to leave me for a moment. I must now craft the machine!”
“Leave?” The uplift ceased. “Why do I need to leave?”
“Do you not see, my friend? I must craft the machine! I cannot do it before you, for I do not wish for any harm to come to you. Trust me on this, Harrison. It will take just a few moments. That’s all.”
The boy acquiesced. “Alright, well…where am I supposed to go?”
            “Just step away a moment. To the path, perhaps. I will call you when it is finished, and then the world shall be yours!”
Harrison did as he was told and trudged up the slippery trail, cautiously popping out onto the path. No one was in sight, although he couldn’t see much at all now in the darkness. He leant up against a nearby tree and waited, as though at a bus stop waiting for the morning commute. He trained his eyes to look forward and away from the Wall’s construction, busying his mind with keeping watch. If someone were to come strolling up the path, either searching for him or completely unaware, he would need to hide. It was pitch black and the air was getting colder, so if someone found a young boy just lingering in the woods out in the rain, they might have some questions.
With his eyes switching between all the possible sight lines, Harrison felt proud of himself. It was a clever consideration in such an immense moment, and as he scanned the black for any anomalous outlines, he felt like a grown up. The world was gloomy and wet, and yet here he was, standing alone, looking after himself. No silent angel or watchful guardian looked over him. All that surrounded was the pantheon of oaks, stoically minding their own business. Their branched hands waved in the brisk waves of the wind as though batting away evil spirits, but that was all in the boy’s head. When the storm passed and the winds simmered into uninteresting breezes, the gentle motion would stop, yet the evil would remain.
“Harrison!”
He sprung to his feet and darted down the trail. As he dropped onto the lawn for the final time, Harrison looked around and assessed what had changed in his absence, and he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. There was no majestic chariot waiting to take him away or glowing sword sticking out of the ground. His analysis deemed the neat lawn and the falling water to be perfectly identical to its former state.
“Wally, wh-where is the machine?” The tumbling water roared as the rain above eased. It was still thumping all around him, but its wild strength had diminished, and it had a strange effect on the scene at play. The tamed downpour lured Harrison’s attention to the cold which had snook its way into the world. He could now see the clouds breathe gliding into the night from his agape mouth, and the hairs on his arms now resembled the army of trees around him.
“The machine,” the Wall said, “is right in front of you. Look into my pool and you shall see it.” The voice was serene in its composure, casting that familiar bubble of protection around its young visitor, though its film was a little thinner this time. It was as though the Wall were unaware of the rain, the wind, the cold, the pressure of the moment, the significance of Harrison’s situation. Either it did not care, or it was nestled comfortably within its own confidence in the machine’s efficiency, and so felt no need to consider such irrelevant variables. I know which one it was, but I shall leave that for you to discover. It will not be long now.
Harrison approached the pool, squinting to decipher what the object was that lay beneath the surface. The pale moonlight strip met the twinkling ripples but dove no deeper, and the boy quickly realised that he would have to put his hand in to grab it. Invisible frost clutched his quivering fingers as he lowered them towards the pool. It felt like an electric shock as the tips graced the surface. It instantly became clear to him that speed was the best option, so he quickly thrust his hand downwards.
He felt the handle of the machine immediately. It was oddly familiar, like Harrison had somehow held it before. Without focussing on its texture and shape for too long, he ripped the machine out from the water and held it out before him as the freezing water dripping from his shaking hand. Sharp, drastic breathes rushed in and out of Harrison’s mouth, but he soon found it impossible to stand still. The machine was relegated to an afterthought as he frantically wafted the water from his arm and tucked it into his body in an attempt to dry it. But once he had finished, a feeling of disdain clogged his mind. What he held made no sense to his erratic, shaking body.
The reason for the handle’s recognisable texture was obvious from the second the thin strip of moonlight struck its wet surface. It was the wooden bar. Harrison couldn’t believe his eyes at first, but it was definitely the same piece of wood that he had supplied to the Wall. It was the same shape and felt just as heavy, but there was one thing different. Around the top half of its body, a thin piece of string was wrapped and tied tight. Was this the same string that he had asked his mum for? He wasn’t one hundred percent sure, as he couldn’t deduce its length in the poor light, but it would make sense. Same wood, same string, same…
“Wally, I don’t…” Harrison’s voice fell away. He didn’t understand. The string was wound so tightly around the top of the wooden bar that it secured within it a long, sharp material. Some of this mysterious component lay beneath the string as to secure it, but the rest stuck out, fixed in place.
The boy wanted to punch and scream at his inability to see what he held in his hand. He focused and stared, but to no avail. In a frustrated and thoughtless bid to find out, Harrison placed his hand onto the material and slid it gently down its spine, and that proved to be enough. A flash of pain sizzled his skin and he instantly pulled away. It was the glass!
“Wally, it’s—”
            “Yes, Harrison!” the voice bellowed. “I have used your bravely collected pieces to assemble a device that will answer all of your sorrowful woes and desires! Your quest has been arduous and strained, and yet here we stand. You have your reward, and you shall soon have your prize. Can you feel its power? Do you sense what you are to do with it?”
            “No, I…” The segments of the device were like old friends, strangely alien despite their identifiable appearance. Harrison felt stupid. “Wally, I don’t understand!”
The voice’s words surged with emphatic volume, and all competition with the storm was obliterated. Now the voice and Mother Nature joined forces and unleashed a coalition of bombarding noise and vibration that rose to the forest roof and thundered back down again. The wind flew and the voice’s words rode it like a berserk warrior into battle, unstoppable and engulfed in red mist.
“Harrison, you fool! Do you not wish for your father to cease his demonic reign of violence and selfishness!”
The wind picked up and Harrison felt like he was going to be whisked up and suddenly flung into the waterfall.
“Do you not want to save your mother from the inevitable, reoccurring bruise of your father’s hand!”
A thud of thunder smacked the black sky above.
“You say you don’t understand, but Harrison…I think you do!”
            The boy looked down at what lay in his hands, the offensive wind advancing in long, aggressive strides against his face. The rain flooded down as if dropped from a divine bucket.
            “Harrison, you need to take this machine and plunge it into your father’s heart! Kill him! Kill him, Harrison, and rid your life of vile, vile ways! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”
            The plug was pulled, and the world began to swirl. Harrison stepped back, disorientated and lost. It was collapsing, all of it, and the lightless depth of the sky was suddenly around him, hugging his shoulders and legs, smothering him. A cloud passed over the moon, and the beam of light was snapped.
“Wally, I…I can’t do that!” The muscles in Harrison’s face contracted and his eyes threatened tears.
“But you must!” the Wall bellowed. “It is the only way; it is what we have been working towards!”
            The flimsy assemblance of scrap material felt pathetic in Harrison’s small hand, yet unforgivingly heavy at the same time.
“But I can’t kill him! I…Wally, I thought this was magic! Real magic! I…”
The tears came now, and the boy’s lips began to shudder in the wailing storm. The rolling droplets left lines of ice down his cheeks. “You said this was magic!”
“Oh, but it is, Harrison! Can’t you see? Puncturing the heart of that rancid devil of a man and watching the blood trickle from the wound will do things that no wand or genie ever could. Plunge it and twist it, right above the solar plexus, and see the life drain from his body with passing second. Push it further, sending him to the floor. Yank it out and thrust it into his body again, counting how many times you can make him scream before his final breathe secretes from his pathetic lungs! Lacerate the skin until its nothing but a suit of torn muscle and out-sticking bone. Do it, Harrison! It is my machine, it is our machine, and you must now use it! Use it! Kill him! Kill him!”
“No!”
Harrison thrust the blade onto the ground. Blood soared around his body, thumping now more in rage than upset. Rather than plunging into a belly of dirt, the fickle machine thumped against the solid surface and fell apart. The glass popped from its hold; the string snapped under the pressure of the blade and unwound from its host; the wooden block bounced and gave out a deep knock as it met the ground. In the pitch black, Harrison could make out the various pieces of the pathetic contraption, and hysteric anger erupted from within him. The fact that he was not standing on real grass, and instead cheap AstroTurf, meant nothing. He didn’t even notice. If he had, maybe he would have had a chance to run away and alert someone as to what had happened to him. Maybe he could have stopped the cycle – doing what I really ought to, I suppose – and saved countless others. But he didn’t. It was dark, wet, and he was a child. Just like the rest.
            “So, all this time I’ve just been making a knife?!” the boy roared. Never in his short life had he experienced such untainted fury. Hatred bubbled, sizzled, and popped within his every limb, and he had no idea how to process or manage any of it. But it wasn’t just the wrath of being deceived that fuelled his words. He had hit his father, lied to his mother, stolen from Mr Potter. The boy he was had been abandoned, and the mask of a servant had been obscuring his face for nothing. When his parents eventually came to search Peter’s Wood, likely accompanied by a search party, and found their boy, what would they see? A dirty criminal who had completely lost their respect and love, hiding away in the wild like the animal he was, and they certainly wouldn’t hear the voice coming to his defence. He would leave, sit silently like a startled rat, and leave Harrison all alone. He hated Wally in that moment, more than he had ever experienced towards his father.  
“Wally, why?! Why have you let me do this?! This isn’t magic! What in the world am I going to do?!”
The Wall did not answer.
             “Answer me, Wally!” Harrison screamed.
The storm stood no chance of muffling him.
“Wally, I need you to fix this! Make a better machine, please! Make me something that can get me out of this! I need you to! Wally! Wally! Wally!”
            Harrison did not accept the silence. He dropped and ripped the pieces up from the machine from the ground, launching them at the rock face. The glass shattered under the force; the wooden bar clanged and flew into the vegetation, disturbing the dense leaves. The string did nothing, as you would expect, and this lack of satisfaction compelled Harrison to step forward and approach the waterfall. He let out a barbaric shriek and punched the flat wall of stone. The bones of his knuckles clicked, sending his entire hand numb from the blunt impact, but he didn’t care. He opted for a change in tactic and began kicking at the base of the waterfall over and over again like a shot horse, ignoring the freezing touch of the tumbling water. He demanded at the top of his voice for a response.
“Answer me!
“Answer me!
“Answer me!”
            Blood spilt from the cuts on his knuckles. He slapped and smacked the rock, he banged and boomed, he tried to beat the words out of the inanimate formation. There is a popular phrase about trying to get blood out of a stone, and I had never understood it until that night. Frustration built with horrific speed, and it took only seconds for the tears and the screams to merge into an ear-blistering whine of panic and hysteria. The boy was collapsing, his sense of awareness diving deeper and deeper below the surface. If he were watching himself from, say, the position I am, he would not even recognise himself. Red covered his hands and dried into the pores of his skin, and his feet were numb from the relentless kicking. Raindrops and tears camouflaged one another, and his face was a rageful rouge.
“Wally!
“Wally”
“Please!”
Harrison thrust a blind fist into the waterfall itself, and then the mirage began to shatter. As his knuckles smashed through the curtain of water, he was struck by the fact that his hand had not met the blunt denial of the rock face on the other side. Instead, it had slipped into a gap behind the water, a small crevice of some kind hiding behind the screen of liquid.
 Was this where Wally’s heart was? Where his brain was? The neurons in Harrison’s brain fired out every imaginable explanation as his freezing hands felt around with revitalised energy. He had no idea what he was looking for, but that didn’t matter. Something soon found him.
At first, Harrison thought he had touched some kind of animal, and he pulled his hand from the hole and shook it wildly. After realising that there was nothing there, he reached in again, and this time felt what he had initially thought to be a body with a bit more care. The adrenaline racing around his body was still lightning fast, but his mind was channelling it into focus. The peculiar item behind the waterfall had a smooth, flat surface like the bonnet of a car. It was a box, he could tell that much, but there were no features to decipher what exactly it was supposed to do or why it was placed there.
Was this Wally? Harrison didn’t think so, but as his fingers slipped down to its face, his conviction dried. Cylinders and switches littered the front of the item, sticking out in varying directions like the features of a robotic face. Unwilling to imagine any longer, he gripped and tore the item from the hole.
The mysterious item came easily from its perch, but it did not come alone. Harrison ducked as something came flying down from above, and the forest came alive in a symphony of chaos as heavy objects fell and smashed onto the grass behind him. It was like an aeroplane was breaking through the canopy above, but the boy was not crushed or killed. When Harrison opened his eyes, all he saw were two large, rectangular speakers, lying cracked and chipped on the tidy lawn. Glancing up above the waterfall, he saw from the flattened grass that they had fallen from above him when he pulled the strange item from the hole.
            Long, thin wires poked out from the backs of the speakers, extending from their bodies like black, rubber snakes. The wire of each speaker was long and gangly, but they came together in what seemed to be a small device lying on the ground between them. From what he knew from his design classes at school, Harrison could tell that it was a receiver of some kind, designed for sending radio signals and messages. But why would there be radio equipment in Peter’s Wood? Who would want to send a message out here?
            “Wally?”
The night was not listening. Harrison stepped forward in the empty world. Nothing existed except himself, the objects, and the rain. Descending to one knee, he attempted to twist one of the large speakers, but it was incredibly heavy for his small, tired body to haul. He settled for moving around it instead, and when he did, he saw its large, gaping face staring back at him. His father had enormous speakers just like this in his study room, mostly used for blasting the radio on Sunday mornings when he was working on the computer. His father’s had varnished wooden sides, but these speakers were jet black.
The circular diaphragm looked back at the boy like an enormous eye, unblinking behind its netting cover. The raindrops made the inanimate object look as though it was crying. Harrison felt like joining it. This couldn’t be Wally. It wasn’t possible. He had promised so much.
            He shuffled along the damp grass to the small box he had dropped amidst the panic. It was upside down, surrounded by its bigger brethren, and Harrison feared he had broken it. He had yanked it through the waterfall, soaking it in the process, and the rain was now relentlessly pelting its metal body. There was no one around to tell him off or express any anger at its potentially damaged state, but he was anxious all the same. It’s a thing with children. Fear is just in their nature.
The boy’s frozen hands lifted it from the ground and just about managed to turn it the right way around. His fingers were sending so little information to his brain that Harrison could no longer feel the rain thumping onto his bare skin. He examined what he could about the receiver, hoping it still worked. For what purpose, he didn’t know. The buttons meant nothing to him, nor did the small white letters accompanying them. AM. FM. Had he seen those letters in the car before? He searched his mind, wishing something from that stupid design class would come back to him now, but nothing arrived except for the banging cry to go home and go to sleep in his warm, dry bed. Droplets exploded upon the receiver’s roof, thumping the metal like a rapid, ominous drumroll.
            A small black dial stuck out from the centre of the box and Harrison directed his stiff fingers towards it, hoping he could learn more about the device that way. They were like chopsticks in how senseless and rigid they were, and he could neither experience the texture of the dial nor move it in the exact way he intended. The best he could manage was connecting the tip of his index finger to the coarse outer layer of the dial and poking it until it spun around. On his first attempt the dial spun, and as it moved, a sound erupted from the speakers like a car tail-spinning on a dry summer road. The screech was intense, but then came a voice.
            “…and that’s what I’m saying, Jessica. If the government refuse to address the question that the Labour Party – and let’s be honest the rest of the country are asking – then the public have every right to wonder why the Transport Minister was allowed to…”
            Harrison threw his head to the thin trail; certain a group of adults had found him. The voice was so close and so clear that the speaker could be no more than a few metres from him. The man continued, explaining something the boy couldn’t understand, but nobody approached. The forest was as still as it had been before, and then Harrison realised that the voice was not even coming from the real world at all, but from the large speakers beside him. Embarrassment rose but was swiftly beaten down by an overpowering force of curiosity.
            He moved the dial again.
            “…that was a good one, wasn’t it? Always been one of my favourites, anyway. Stay right here, folks, because we’ll be playing more tunes like that all night long, only on—”
            And then again.
            “…and he has to start scoring! He cost the club sixty-four million, Terry, am I the only one that expects more from him?”
            And once more.
            “…I…get what you’re saying, Anna, I do, but the figures! Your team couldn’t sell as much as the other team and their profits were almost triple of what your team generated. I’m sorry but, for that reason, you’re—"
            Harrison moved the dial a final time but only static came through. Empty noise filled the space, but the voices still rang in his head. Clear, loud, realistic. They had sounded like they were right next to him, speaking to him as though just from the other side of the pool. They sounded just as clear as Wally had.
            “Wally? Are you actually here?”
            The forest answered.
            A bush, somewhat off in the distance behind where Harrison was kneeling, parted down the middle. The boy turned at the noise and trembled at what he saw. What had he hoped for? Wally, shining in the moonlight, gliding through the air with a halo and wings? Possibly. His school did fill his head with such images, but no angel had come for him. Instead, it was something more down to earth. Gut-wrenchingly real.
            A man stood in the hazy distance. Alone. His tall, grey silhouette broke out like a blooming tree from the general foliage beneath and just stood there, completely still in the falling rain and rising mist. Harrison stood up. The body was nude, male in anatomy, and shrouded in the dark of the night. A wide chest floated in fog, a stem of rigid abdominals beneath. It looked like a statue, and yet perfectly human except for the fact there was no face atop its shoulders. Where Harrison expected to see a nose, chin, and skull indents to signify the presence of eyes behind the veil of darkness, a set of semi-circle beacons glowed out into the darkness. Yellow in colour, modest in brightness. They neither succumbed to the blackness nor brought the world into visible colour. They just hovered there. Shining enough to see, shining enough to be seen.
            It was like a pair of hands were over Harrison’s ears, the static from the speaker numbing the world around him. Lightning cracked across the sky, flashing down to the world below, but no thunder followed. The universe hung in suspension. Timeless, motionless. All movement belonged to the lightning as it flashed the scene into the theatre of existence. The wind held its breath. The man did not move, and neither did Harrison.
            The spell lifted, and an eruption of thunder threatened to crack the pane of the world. Harrison winced and went to cover his ears, but his eyes stopped him. Just as the first had, and with startling similarity in its movement, another figure sprouted from a bush. It assumed the exact same posture and stillness as its predecessor. It was naked, just the same, and shared a similarly impressive physique. Again, there was no face, and its stillness was harrowing. Two more amber eyes glistened.
Harrison didn’t know whether it was just a trick of the light, but both of the figures seemed incredibly pale. He suddenly questioned whether he was in a dream. Dread cemented his body to the spot, and he didn’t think he could scream even if he wanted to. His throat was dry and stale, and if he screamed, he knew nothing would come out but a dusty croak. The bone-coloured bodies continued to linger, unmoving and seemingly unmotivated to. They were part of the forest, another set of trunks like all the rest. But those eyes; they were not from this forest, and Harrison knew that they did not belong. They were opaque, pupil-less eyes: they did not belong to a living being. Character, instinct, reaction – they looked devoid of them all. They were hollow.
            Whether there was a difference between the first body and the second, Harrison could not tell. It was as though the same muscular form had been copied and pasted, and there was nothing of the face within view to examine. They were both just out of reach for a decent visual analysis, and even if they were, Harrison’s eyes may not have been capable of conducting one. He was tired, betrayed, confused. All he could focus on was the four yellow eyes now staring at him, and his own pair were beginning to dry in their stationary glare. His brain was slipping from its chair too. Fear, as sharp an emotion as it is, was losing its venom. Fatigue was beginning to grease the sides and help it slip from its perch. But then terror found its footing once again.
            Another body appeared. Then another. And then another. Harrison gasped and almost choked on his own breath. A galaxy of amber now levitated before him, resting upon a series of organic scaffolding, nude in the chilly night air. But there was no sun in this universe. No sun, no planets, no God. There was nothing but the cold, the rain, and the eyes. Harrison thought he couldn’t scream, but that idea was quickly dispelled. I can tell you for a fact, that boy could scream. I heard it myself.
            The bodies ran towards him.
 
The Story
            Hello, and welcome to the regional news at 10. I’m Tom Davidson.
Our top story tonight: local police have pledged to double their efforts tonight after yet another child has been discovered dead in Peter’s Wood. Harrison Little is the thirteenth child to go missing and the sixth to be found dead by police in the last twelve months. He was found in the early hours of this morning, naked and with several stab wounds.
Police Chief Michael Jacobson, also father of Courtney Jacobson who disappeared earlier this year, says he will not rest until the killer is found.
            “I have said it before, and I will keep saying it until the individual or individuals responsible are brought to justice: these are the most disgusting and perverted acts of evil I have ever encountered, and my colleagues and I will not stop our investigation until the families affected are given the answers that they deserve. My wife and I have never healed from Courtney’s disappearance and…and we can’t…I’m sorry. And we can’t imagine how the parents of Harrison Little must feel. I send them my thoughts and prayers, as well as my complete and unwavering determination to apprehend and punish those responsible.”
            Harrison’s father, Rodney Little, says that he and his wife, Sylvia, are devastated. Some viewers may find the following clip distressing.
            “Sylvia and I are…crushed, obviously. I…I…I can’t believe it. Harrison was our b-boy. He was such a good kid, and he was only just finding himself in this world. We just can’t take it in yet. It doesn’t feel real. I just wish I could tell him that I love him.”
            “Harrison was my little baby! Rod and I wanted the best for him and…and we just want him to know that we will always love him. We struggled as parents but…but we’re going to keep praying for him and telling him that we love him. We…oh it’s just so much to take on. We just love and miss him so much.”
            Very moving words there from Sylvia Little. Of course, we will keep you updated with how the story develops, and everyone here at Local News will certainly be praying for little Harrison.
            Now, are you struggling to get the most out of your supermarket loyalty card? Well, it seems that many people in our area are finding it hard to know what their loyalty cards even do, so local grocer Kathy Jenkins has started an online help service to lend support when it comes to getting more bang for your buck.
            Our reporter Phil Gilmore has the story.
The End
 

 
The harried young woman looms over her ten-year-old son, saying, firmly, “You have until the end of this flight to do your homework. And don't talk to me like that. I won't stand for it.”
Since I was scrambling to stuff my luggage anywhere I could, I hadn’t heard the “talking to her” that had gone on. I had to secure one of those all-too-scarce overhead bins for my carry-on luggage. Most bins appeared to be full.  People entering took the first bin they saw, never caring it wasn’t for their seat.
“I don’t know why you get so upset.” He’s pouting now. Head down, he looks like a child who may not grow up to be a very pleasant adult. She’s continuing her diatribe and this poor boy must sit and listen. I’ll bet she’s a stepmother and he’s wondering why someone doesn’t save him from her. Still, he makes no response to her railing.
“Don’t talk to me like that. Just get to doing your homework.”
The din dies down as the flight attendant goes through the cabin, closing the overhead compartments with a resolute slam that tells all they’re full.
“Is that a bag there?” Sweat appears on the flight attendant’s face. A twist of the head and pursing of the lips indicated the true intention of the question. “Are these your things? You can hold onto your coats. Let’s see what we can do here.” Sounds like an auction coming up.
The elderly woman clings to her coat as though it were a child of hers. I could almost hear her whispering to herself, “Maybe they'll let me keep it or I might never see it again.” Satisfied, the flight attendant disappears with her bags and began looking for a place to stuff them. The woman watched anxiously as the man with her, a Jose Ferrer look-alike, contented himself with fiddling with his pen, looking at it as though he had never seen one before. A new Mont Blanc with its shiny cap, the pen held his complete and undivided attention.
“Is that another bag?” The flight attendant, back again for another inspection, is a bit firmer this time, believing they have somehow tried to hide a bag from him. The elderly couple reacts as though the flight attendant is about to mug them and take their carry-on luggage. The concern is written all over their faces. If you're not booked in First Class, it’s part of the trauma of traveling with carry-ons.
I’d been on too many flights this year, but none of them had prepared me for Mr. Baby and the characters on this flight. True, they were mainly the same types of business personnel carrying their suit bags, their rolling carry-ons and their computer cases. Pretty much the same, but there was a sprinkling of others. This flight, to LA, had to be different. Of course, it did. Who would call a child by something other than his name, if not an LA mother?
Ok, I’m being unfair to LA mothers, but too many of them care more about looking good than caring for their kids. Bash me, if you wish, I’m used to it. Thirty years in the field of psychology and I’ve been called a lot of things. I’ve been burned by lit cigarettes when I tried to intercept a call to Alaska on the house phone of a mental health center. Once I was warned that the woman I was with could “kill you fifty ways” as we sat in a hospital kitchen area. I didn’t doubt her creativity because I knew she’d already killed one man and almost did away with her psychiatrist. Well, gossip was that he did try to sexually molest her. Did he deserve death? Not my call, please.
Free from the menacing world of institutional mental health, I was headed to California for a much-needed vacation among those with low humility. At least they wouldn’t threaten to kill me fifty different ways; they’d only think it as they dawdled over their dirty martinis or whatever the drink of the moment was. Smiling faces can hide so much, it’s amazing.  When acting is your business or you’ve inhaled so much of the entertainment industry, it’s quite natural to smile and not mean it. Did any of them know about the Duchenne smile? Probably not.
All I knew was I was off and it would be a world away from the gray, poorly lit small spaces where people lingered in pharmacologic stupors. It would be a great escape for sure, no motorcycle involved.
No, I would not be bringing anything more than jeans, shorts, tees and personal care products, so I’d be traveling light. After all, this was a vacation, not an audition. Yes, I have gone to auditions, and they are horrid experiences where frightened people sit around and try to look confident even when they know they’ll probably not get the gig.
In this plane’s First Class, partially seen through the hanging curtain dividing “them” from “us,” I see an overstuffed young man leaning back in his leather seat. He takes the glass of orange juice the flight attendant offers and drinks it down in one gulp. The seats are arranged two to a row, and the young man fills his seat completely. His ample belly hangs down over his waistband. The Turnbull & Asher shirt struggles to maintain the cascade of flesh beneath it while the Tiffany silver buckle on the belt struggles to do its share in the battle.
Meanwhile, in Economy, or whatever class they are calling it these days, the cabin crew attempts to maintain order with passengers who are already grumbling.
Flight attendants scratch their heads, have you noticed? They also blow their noses while serving food. Why does this remind me of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence? What makes that line stand out, the one about not using anything other than a silver knife for cutting cucumbers? I don’t know.
“Mr. Baby’s tired, isn’t he?” The voice of the young mother sounded sympathetic, but I felt that Mr. Baby must surely be a toy. Perhaps he's some dream of a toy manufacturer's fantasy. This toy, the perfect baby, would cry, wet, and, possibly, vomit on command. But, please, not all over the Donna Karan suit mommy is wearing.
The cry sounded real. Was I out of touch with the world of toys and the genius of Mattel? It had to be a baby. But who would call an infant, "Mr. Baby?" Have we become that removed, that refined, that cultured, that even a baby, little Marys and Roberts, and Charlies and Harrys, are now Mr. and Ms. Baby? Oh, well—this plane was headed for the West Coast, and she was a California mother.
The flight seemed uneventful except for Mr. Baby, who was crying uncontrollably and kicking. I accepted the headset the flight attendant offered to me, even though I had no interest in the film, but perhaps it would muffle Mr. Baby and his incessant screams. California mommy looks at the headset as though it had cooties. But, on this plane, it was free, so she took it with two fingers, whipped it with a disinfectant towelette from her purse, and sat back.
I was bored, and I began to give my imagination free rein. What are those insistent “pings” that ring on airplanes? Have you ever wondered? Is the captain telling the crew that they will have to abandon ship or that he has to go to the powder room or wants the flight attendant to prepare for landing? Is he telling the crew he wants more coffee or he forgot where he’s supposed to be landing today?
Do they have a series of “secret” codes that would let us in on all manner of stupid things, if we only had the knowledge? I was tired of all this secret communication, of Mr. Baby and his crying, the dinky little snacks and the people moving their capacious hips into my space in these things they call seats.
Who is that “average passenger” they use to decide the width of these seats? Is it that “average woman” for whom they make all those size 8s or 10s, 12s and 14s? I never fit into any of them, seats included. Then, of course, there is that store that makes size 2–3s. I told the saleswoman I must have stopped in the wrong store. “No, dear, believe me, you are a size 3.” Well, I’m not, but who’s arguing when they drop your blouse size by 10?
I wanted to fling off my seat belt, in apparent violation of the lighted sign, run up into First Class, and demand to use their restroom. Have you ever noticed how they guard that restroom? Even when no one is using it and the conveniences in the Economy section are full, they still won't let you use it.
So, for something like $2,000, I could buy the right to a WC reserved expressly for the anointed. One wonders about the elegant tushes that linger there. Was there something special about that restroom, too?
Oh, I was in fine form. I would refuse to take my seat in Economy, I would demand decent meals, and put my seat into the fully reclined, not upright, position. Who cares if I would be lying almost face up in the lap of the passenger behind me?
I wanted freedom on this flight, but, of course, the voice of Sister Irenita Marie called out loud and clear: “Stop being a bold, fresh piece.” I stopped my fantasy dead in its tracks. Sister was right; I would behave.
Mr. Baby continued to cry fitfully until he exhausted himself or was filled to the epiglottis with all that milk his mother was dutifully pressing on him. A loud roar was reduced to sobs and then to soft little moans and then, finally, silence.
Was Mr. Baby asleep in a milk-induced stupor, or had his mother drugged him? Who knew? He was quiet for the rest of the flight, and I stopped allowing the beast inside my head to run rampant with my senses.
I quieted down, too. I busied myself with scrutinizing the elaborate flight patterns on the back of the safety instructions, which I had pulled from the seat pocket. In the in-flight merchandise magazine, I looked dutifully at all the "wonderful" things I could squander my every cent on.
I wondered if these items were indeed only for "in-flight purchase," or could anyone who hadn’t had their sanity taxed by Mr. Baby buy them while on the ground? Was this an actual reward for what I’d just suffered through? No, anyone could buy them. No exclusivity here.
Hopes dashed, I listened to the captain drone on about what we could see if there weren’t so many clouds in our way, and how we could expect to be landing “shortly.”
I know that most of us would think of “shortly” as meaning that something would happen within a specific length of time. In airline lingo, however, it means whatever it means.
Airline lingo is similar to how we think about IQ tests. When someone asks what an IQ test measures, we dutifully answer, "An IQ test measures whatever an IQ test measures," and hope that they won't take us away in a clean white jacket complete with lovely buckles down the back.
Yes, I'm a psychologist. Still, even psychologists have their limits and, no, we don’t sit passively while patients call us all sorts of names.
Inside, those of us who have blood coursing through our veins may even fantasize about seizing the opportunity to let our patients find someone else or suggesting that they might like a referral to someone else.
Of course, that means less income. Still, I've always thought that my mental health is important, too, and income cannot compensate me for tolerating the boorish behavior of people who think I’m a paid whipping girl.
The plane landed, and I learned that "shortly" actually meant twenty minutes on this flight. I grabbed my bag from the overhead, trotted off the plan, and left Mr. Baby and all my fellow passengers to their own devices. It was pleasant to feel the sting of the Los Angeles air in my eyes.
One thing I knew: I'd be back, and who knew what adventures awaited me on that return flight? I could only hope that Mr. Baby was home to stay in LA.
 
 

 

 
     They were sitting in the back row, all eight of them. As "Midnight Cowboy" unspooled on the
screen of the first-run movie house in downtown Manhattan, Bill Hawson and seven people who shared his townhouse in Greenwich Village watched the saga of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo. Bill (affectionately known as 'Big Bill' to his many friends, due to his slight potbelly) was thirty-eight, and the owner of a health foods store on Bleeker Street. His long hair (usually kept in a ponytail), casual dress, and easygoing manner belied his material success (which is why the townhouse was fully paid for).
     About twenty minutes into the movie, Bill reached into his pocket. His wife Susan smiled as
she saw him pull out a big fat marijuana joint. Susan was a pretty woman, four years younger
than Bill, with frizzy strawberry-blonde hair. Bill crouched down in his seat as he surreptitiously lit up the joint with his portable lighter. He took a nice long drag, then passed it to Susan. "Thanks, hon," she whispered as she took the joint from her mate.
     Susan took a few puffs of the joint, then gave it to her brother-in-law, Greg. His steady
girlfriend Linda was clinging to his arm. The pair of them passed the pot back and forth a few
times, quietly taking in in that high-quality hemp. Alan, the newest member of Bill's household,
took the joint from Linda. By this time, it was halfway gone.Alan inhaled the weed cigarette,
allowing the flavor to nestle in his system. After taking a few drags, he gave it to Carl, the
resident artist of 209 West Fourth Street.
     "Thanks, Alan!" Carl said under his breath. Carl cradled the joint in his hand while watching
Dustin Hoffman lead Jon Voight to his dumpy abode, up on the silver screen. He was so caught up in the storyline, he only bothered to take two puffs before handing it to Danny, Alan's cousin.
Danny, who worked at Bill's store (and was responsible for bringing Alan into Bill's extended
family), took a few hits of the joint, and passed it along to Millie, the twenty-year-old transplant
from Ontario. Millie finished off the joint, during the scene in which Jon and Dustin have a testy
conversation in Dustin's room. As Millie stamped out the butt on the floor beneath her, she
made an "OK" signin Bill's direction.
     "That is really good stuff!" she mouthed slowly, making sure Bill could read her lips.
     "Glad you like it!" he whispered back to her, then resumed watching the flick. The smell of
marijuana lingered in the air above the back row, as the eight of them quietly watched the rest of the movie. None of the other patrons, if they even noticed their pot-smoking, seemed to be
particularly bothered by it. In the summer of 1969, in the biggest and most happening city in the country, such things were understood to simply be part of the culture.
     It was a nice balmy June evening, as Bill and his seven friends walked home. They
discussed the film they had just watched, as they strolled along the winding, irregular streets of Greenwich Village.
     "I really liked that picture," said Alan, sipping the last few ounces of a cup of soda that he
had bought in the cinema.
     "I did, too!" said Susan.
     "It was way better than '2001'!" said Linda, as they passed a diner specializing in Mexican
food. "2001: A Space Odyssey" was a film that the group (minus Alan, who hadn't moved in
with them yet) had taken in a few months ago.
     "But '2001' is Kubrick's masterpiece, Linda!" Carl told her emphatically.
     "Not to me it isn't. What's so great about it? It started out with a bunch of monkeys going
crazy over a big black thing in the middle of nowhere, and it ends with a big baby in outer space.
Can you say 'pretentious', anyone?"
     "I have to agree with Linda on that, Carl. I liked this movie more than '2001'!" Greg said
emphatically, as he moved his body to avoid running into a white-haired man in a knit wool cap
pushing a shopping cart filled with deposit bottles and cans.
     "Oh, and why might that be, Greg?" replied Carl. "Because this movie had sex and pot, and
'2001' didn't?"
     "Well, come to think of it... yeah! I mean, what's more important that good sex and good pot
and good parties? 'Midnight Cowboy' is one movie that has it's priorities straight!"
     "Yeah, you're right, man!"
     "So true!"
     "He has a point there, Carl!"
     Carl sulked a bit. "Fine, fine, take your precious 'Midnight Cowboy'! But John Schlesinger has a ways to go to prove himself to be another Kubrick. Let me go on record as saying that."
     "I liked this flick," said Millie. "But the ending was kind of sad, though. When Ratso died on
the bus, I mean." The rest of them agreed on that point.  The gang reached the corner of Houston Street and Sixth Avenue. A Coup de Ville automobile pulled up to the curb, just a few feet away from them, and waited at the red light. Greg playfully tapped the hood of it, and yelled "I'm walking here, I'm walking here!" Everyone else laughed at his near-perfect imitation of Ratso Rizzo. Even the driver of the car, who seemed startled at first, saw the humor in it. He chuckled as Greg and the others walked past the car, to cross the street.
     The antique clock over the kitchen counter showed the time to be exactly 10:30, when Bill and the rest arrived home. Susan put out some bread and fruit, for anyone who wanted a late-night snack. Alice, the ninth member of the household, got up from the living room to greet them. "Hi, guys!" she said softly. "Tyler's asleep now, so you don't want to make too much noise." (Tyler was Bill and Susan's two-year-old son.)
     "Was he a good boy, while we were away?" asked Susan.
     "Well, he was a bit cranky when I put him to bed, but I read to him and the little tyke was
asleep before I hit page four."
     Bill went up the staircase to the second floor. He did a quick check on Tyler, to make sure he was all right. He came back down to the kitchen, and gently patted Alice's shoulder. "Thanks for looking after him, while we were out, Alice!"
     "Hey, it was my pleasure, Bill!  Besides, it gave me the chance to work on some new songs."
She pointed to her open notebook, which contained Alice's handwritten notes and bars, with
some lyrics written underneath.
     "Great! Maybe you can try 'em out for us soon!" said Danny, as he put a well-worn teakettle
under the sink faucet, and filled it up.
     "It's a shame that you couldn't come with us tonight, Alice," Alan told her. What he didn't add was that he had wanted to sit next to her in the theatre. He had a mild crush on Alice, ever since he moved into the Hawson House (the residents' informal, but oft-used name for it) a month ago.
She smiled at him sweetly.
     "How nice of you to say so, Alan. But I told you, I've already seen "Midnight Cowboy". But I
would love to come along, the next time we go out to the movies!" she told him, with a smile.
     "It seems like we're running low on milk!" said Susan, checking the refrigerator. She added
'milk' to the grocery list that hung on the wall, next to a big poster that spelled out 'L-O-V-E' in
bright red letters. His cousin Danny placed the water-filled kettle on the stove, with a soft 'clang!'.
Five minutes later, the nine adult members of the Hawson House shared some herbal tea in
the living room. They lounged on the sofas and on the floor, while making small talk about
various things. They watched the local news, when it came on at 11:00. One of the stories was
about an anti-war protest. Everyone empathized with the people shown marching with signs at
Columbus Circle. They also paid close attention to a piece about Allen Ginsberg speaking at a
local university.
     "That Allen is one cool guy!" said Greg, during the commercial break.
     "Yeah, he's such a great thinker..." murmured Linda, who was sitting next to him on the living room floor.
     "He's such a beautiful person. I would love to meet him one day," said Carl, as he drew on his sketch pad. He was copying the poster for "Midnight Cowboy", from memory. After the news was over, Carl and the others turned off the set and went to bed. The sleeping arrangements at 209 West Fourth Street were fairly simple. Bill and Susan had the master bedroom on the third floor. Their son's room was adjacent to theirs. Greg and Linda slept in the second-largest bedroom, on the other side of Bill and Susan's. A large sleeping area for Alice and Millie was on the same level as the living room and kitchen. A large blanket with intricate brown and blue art patterns was slung on a clothesline through the middle of the room, to give each woman a bit of privacy. Alan, Danny, and Carl each had a small bedroom one flight below. A bathroom with a sink, toilet and shower was used by the three young men communally.
     Alan crept into his small room. His bed, stereo, and book-case took up virtually all of the
space. A few posters - a day-glo psychedlic design, a large photo of Jimi Hendrix playing guitar, a green peace sign, a black-and-white photo of Charlie Chaplin in his 'Tramp' outfit, and one of JFK - decorated the light blue walls. Alan wanted to hear some music, before he went to sleep.
He flipped through his record collection, and settled on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. He put
Side One on his turntable, and turned up the headphones loud. He loved the not-quite-subtle
drug references in "Rainy Day Women", but he also appreciated Dylan's sheer artistry, evident
on every track on the album.
     As the plaintive "I Want You" played over his headphones, Alan couldn't help but picture Alice in his mind. She was sleeping soundly, just one flight above him. It was an exquisite agony for Alan, knowing that the person he desired most was so close and yet so far from him.
When "I Want You" finished, Alan turned up the volume a notch. He softly sang along and
tapped his feet to the next track, the epic "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again".
When the song was over, the needle went to the very end of the disc. Alan put the album away, and went to brush his teeth in the bathroom.
     Once his teeth were clean, Alan tiptoed back to his room. He slipped out of his clothes, and
got into bed. He grabbed his paperback copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road from the small side table. He had gotten this book at a twenty percent employee's discount at Macdougal Street Books, the small independent bookshop where he worked as a cashier. Alan had gotten the job just a few days after he arrived in New York. He was checking out the neighborhood when he saw a "Help Wanted" sign in a window decorated with book jackets. He spoke to the manager, an Englishman named Peter. Alan impressed Peter with his dual knowledge of cash registers and literature. His seven-hour shifts at the bookstore allowed him enough income to chip in for expenses at Hawson House, and to have some money left over for his own use.
     Alan read a couple of chapters, becoming involved in the narrative of Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise, those two hipsters from the 1950s. He could identify with the pair of them, to a degree.
He understood the heady mixture of fear of the unknown and desire for adventure that
accompanied them in their travels across the country. Alan had felt it himself, that Friday night
back in May when he had packed up his wordly belongings into his grey Volvo car and driven to Manhattan all the way from Sayerville (a town in Ohio with a population of nearly six thousand).
His cousin Danny's written invitation to come live with him and the rest of Bill Hawson's
extended family in Greenwich Village was tantalizing to Alan. He had long grown weary of the
dullness of his small-town existence, as Assistant Manager at a music store. He was making
OK money, and had a handful of friends, but there was something missing in his life. Moving to
New York made him feel more complete. Just walking the streets here gave him a sense of
exciting optimism.
     Bill and Susan Hawson were a friendly and easygoing couple, but they were selective about who they let into their home. Danny Riggs had earned their trust and friendship, through his three years plus of devoted service as an employee of their health foods store. That was why they allowed Danny to invite his cousin Alan to move in with them. When Alan arrived, Danny took him aside and gently explained the few house rules to him: no drug deals, no sexual activity outside of the bedroom, and no doing anything too politically subversive. Otherwise, he would be free to do as he pleased, under the roof of "Big Bill's" house.
     Alan was constantly discovering new facets of human existence. He watched Buddhist monks chanting for peace on the sidewalks, and listened to poets and acoustic guitar players spin their creative webs in coffee houses. He shared good pot with the rest of the Hawson tribe in the living room, and went to nightclubs to dance the night away under bright strobe lights with plenty of other hip young folks. Life was busting out all over, in every direction at once, in this city. And there was nowhere else Alan would rather be.
     The spectre of the Vietnam War was the only thing spoiling this summer of 1969. Everyone in the Hawson House fervently hoped President Nixon would make good on his promise to curtail American involvement in that conflict. Alan had used his family connections to grant himself 4-F status a couple of years back (his father had ties to the office of the Mayor of Sayerville), so he was excused from military service. The other young men who lived at 204 West Fourth Street had simply burned their draft cards, in protest. The peace signs and anti-war graffitti evident everywhere in this city made it clear that they were in the majority, in their dim view of the American policy in regards to Vietnam.
     After finishing a couple of chapters of "On the Road", Alan turned out the light, and got a
good night's sleep. He got up at 9:30 the next day, which was a Saturday. He had a glass of
orange juice in the kitchen, and made small talk with Bill and Danny. He left the house early,
so he could spend some quality time in Washington Square Park.
     There was always lots of interesting things happening in the park, on the weekends. It was
a beautiful sunny day, just perfect for lazing around for an hour or so before starting his shift at
Macdougal Street Books.
     A nattily-dressed young man was seeking buyers for his "good weed" near the big stone arch at the entrance. Alan paid him no attention, and strolled into the large open area. He passed a young black couple, both in berets and sunglasses, soliciting donations for the Black Panther Party. A half-dozen young adults (including one latino and one black) were huddled under around a small wooden table. They were all wearing t-shirts with "NYUFSC" emblazoned on the fronts.
     "July 10th is 'Don't Give a Damn Day', people!" said the group's leader, a bearded man in a
baseball cap and sunglasses. He was passing out flyers promoting this so-called event. Alan
took one, and scanned it as he strolled through the park. It was just a standard screed against
Vietnam, industrial pollution, Wall Street greed, and 'The Establishment'. It encouraged people
to attend the "Don't Give a Damn Day" rally in that same park on July 10th. It turned out that
NYUSC, the group responsible for printing these flyers, stood for "New Yorkers United for Social Change". Alan thought that he might want to check it out, so he folded the flyer and stuffed it into his pocket.
     As Alan was about halfway through the park, he noticed a sizeable crowd around a clean-cut young blonde man in sandals and blue jeans, playing the acoustic guitar. He sang "House of the Rising Sun", deftly using his fingers to play the complicated chords to this well-known folk song.
He had an open guitar case in front of him, which had plenty of coins and dollar bills laying inside it - tributes to his talent other people in the park had offered him. He got a rousing bit of applause, when he finished.
     "Thank you, thank you, good people!" the musician said, smiling and waving to the twenty
new fans. Alan noticed a pretty girl next to him, clapping along with him. She was five feet tall,
with chestnut-brown hair that went past her shoulders. Her yellow bell-bottom pants fit snugly
around her shapely legs and behind. Her loose, bright-red t-shirt was tied into a knot, about an
inch above her navel. She was slim, with a healthy complexion. Alan found her quite intriguing.
He cleared his throat and began to chat casually with her.
     "This guy is really good, don't you think?"
     "Yes, he has a beautiful voice. He can really play that guitar. And he's handsome." She
turned to look at Alan. "You know what, man? I think you're handsome too!"
     Alan felt a lump forming in his throat, as he gazed into her eyes. He had a feeling that, even
though they had only just met, that they were going to be on very close terms, very soon.
"My name is Alan. Alan Kerrill." He offered his hand to her. She gently took it in hers.
     "I'm Genevieve. But you can call me Jen. All my friends do."
     "Well, I hope I can be your friend too, Jen!" He smiled at her.
     Jen was taken in by his smile. It went well with Alan's deep blue eyes, strong chin, and
wavy blonde hair.  "I think I would like that, man!"
     Alan and Jen listened to the musician's next number, a very solid rendition of "For What It's
Worth", the hit number by the Buffalo Springfield. The crowd applauded him again, and a few
people threw money into his guitar case. Alan knew he would have to make his move soon.
"Say, Jen..." he said softly. "Would you like to go get a muffin or something? It'll be on me!"
     "Why, that sounds just great, Alan!" The two of them walked along the outer edges of the park, until they found a breakfast cart, manned by a stout fellow with a mustache. Alan bought two muffins - one with blueberries, for Jen, and one plain, for him. They talked casually as they
chewed their late-morning treats.
     Alan told her about his old life back in Ohio, and how much happier he was here in New York.
Jen, in contrast, was a lifelong New Yorker. Her parents lived on the West Side. She admitted
that she still lived with them, but that she hoped to strike out on her own. "I just need to get
enough bread, or get a good-paying job. Or maybe it's just a matter of making the right
connections, you know what I mean?" she smiled at him, as she took another bite of her muffin.
     "Yes, I think I do," Alan replied.
     "So how old are you, man? If you don't mind my asking?"
     "Twenty-four."
     "Hmmm... twenty-four. That's a good age to be," she mused, as a man with a big dog walked past them.
     "You're right, Jen. It sure is! And how young a woman might you be?"
     Jen finished swallowing a mouthful of blueberry muffin before volunteering that she had "just turned eighteen". Alan knew that girls her age tended to like older men. He realized that he had a fairly good shot at winning her over. He wanted to play it cool, though, so as not to spoil his chances. He made a show of looking at his watch.
     "Oh, look at the time! I have to get to work soon. But why don't we meet here again, at
quarter after seven. Can you do that?"
     "Sure, Alan. Where exactly should we meet? Right here on this same spot?"
     "Why don't we make it... right by the arch?"
Jen agreed to his plan. They shook hands goodbye, and Alan headed off towards Macdougal
Street. He finished the rest of his muffin as he walked, and used a napkin to wipe his mouth
clean.
     The seven hours he spent ringing up purchases at the bookstore that Saturday afternoon went agonizingly slowly. He had a recurring fantasy that Jen herself would show up in the bookstore, and forcibly drag him away. "Alan, I can't wait until seven o'clock to see you again!" she would tell him, as she led him away by the crook of his elbow. "I must have you now!" Then they would melt into each other's arms, as he put a "Closed" sign up on the store's front door. But his fantasy lost potency as the afternoon wore on, and Jen didn't show.
     Alan finished his shift, and helped Peter close up. He stopped at a drugstore to buy a
package of three prophylactics, just in case they proved necessary, and slipped them into his
back pocket.
     When he reached the marble arch at Washington Square Park, Jen was waiting for him by the arch, sipping a bottle of apple juice. She seemed happy to see him. Alan treated her to dinner at a local diner, then took her home. He whisked her up to his room, and closed the door behind them. She looked around Alan's room, and commented on the decor.  "Wow, nice posters!" 
     "Thanks, Jen," Alan replied, as he sat down on the bed. He hoped that she would follow his
lead, and sit down next to him. Instead, she leaned forward, placing her hands on the knees of
her bell-bottoms.
     "Alan, would I be out of line if I asked if you had any reefer we could smoke together?" she
said in a soft voice, punctuating her request with a smile. Alan really had the hots for Jen, and
was more than willing to fetch an ounce of the house stash from the cupboard in the kitchen.
Within the next five minutes, the two of them were smoking pot on Alan's bed, while listening
to a top-ten radio station. He lit up some incense, to add to the sensual experience. Alan was
enthralled by Jen. He offered no resistance at all, as she ran her fingers through his hair, and
across his cheekbones. "You really are such a fascinating creature, man..." she whispered to
him. "I want you to take me, Alan!" she suddenly demanded, her ithe girlish fingers grasping at
his arms. "Take me here in this bed! Let me experience you to the limit!" She ressed her soft
pink lips against his, allowing him a sneak preview of the carnal delights in store for them both.
The melodic strains of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", the epic-length number that took up
an entire side of Blonde on Blonde, accompanied the highly-charged lovemaking of Alan and Jen.
It was her idea to have this tune playing on the stereo, as they indulged their mutual appetite for the flesh. Lying naked on his soft yellow bedsheets, the pair kissed, and rubbed and touched each other's bodies.
     Before long, Jen straddled Alan, scratching her long fingernails across Alan's curly brown
chest hairs. "Aaahh baby!" she cried, with his throbbing organ (encased in a latex condom,
thanks to Alan's presence of mind) buried deep inside her. Alan tried to keep his grunting and
heavy breathing under control as they mated, but Jen let loose vocally with a ferocity that startled him. She shrieked and howled as she climaxed, momentarily drowning out the pre-recorded voice of Bob Dylan emitting from Alan's speakers. Alan was embarrassed by her loud screams, but at the same time proud that he had induced them. "Sad-Eyed Lady" finished at roughly the same time that Alan and Jen did, with only a half-minute or so difference between them.
     Alan was hoping Jen would stay overnight. But after they showered together, Jen dressed and told him she had to leave. "Curfew, man - it's a real bitch, but if I get home after midnight, I'm gonna catch hell from my folks!" She scribbled her phone number on a piece of paper, and gave it to him. "Call me sometime, Alan. And I gotta thank you for tonight. You are one fantastic lay, man!"
     He led her out to the street. She pressed her nubile body against his, as she kissed him
goodbye on the mouth. Alan watched silently as she turned and walked down the street, her
back to him. He sighed - a mixture of satisfaction and longing - and went back upstairs to his
room. The sex that he had shared with Jen was the best he had in the past year, at least.
Once he was back in his room, Alan listened to a record by Eric Burdon and the Animals on
headphones, while he read another chapter of On the Road. He wondered if he and Genevieve were falling in love. Who knew? Maybe this was the woman he was meant to be with, for the rest of his life!
     Alan was the target of some good-natured ribbing, at Sunday night's gathering in the living
room, after they had finished dinner and Bill and Susan put their son to bed. "It sounds like you
and your friend had a good time last night, Alan," said his cousin Danny.
     "Yeah - a very good time!" Carl blurted out.
     "You mean... it was that loud?" Alan asked sheepishly. He was afraid to hear the answer.
Everyone else nodded their heads affirmatively.
     "Gosh, I'm sorry! I tried to get her to keep it down, honest I did!" This wasn't exactly the truth, but it just seemed like the right thing to say, at the moment.
     "Aw, you don't have to apologize, Alan old boy!" Bill reassured him. "We're glad you finally
got some action since you moved here!" His belly jiggled, as he let out a jovial laugh.
     "OK, people, let's not embarass Alan! Besides, some of us are trying to finish our tea here!"
said Alice, as she sipped her cup of the stuff. The subject was dropped, out of deference to
Alice's appetite. Alan liked to think that jealousy may have been behind her remarks. If it was,
then maybe she did have some feelings for him, lurking below her cool exterior?
     Next Tuesday night, everyone showed up at a coffeehouse to hear a half-hour musical set by Alice. She had to share the bill with two other acoustic guitar players, but Alice was OK with that.
Alan made sure to smile at her from his table, every time she happened to glance his way. Even though he was confident that he would sleep with Jen again, he still wanted to keep his romantic options open.
     The following day - June the 28th - turned out to be very significant. History was being made, within a few blocks of 209 West 4th Street. Bill and his clan watched the local news in rapt attention, as the newscaster told them of riots at a place called The Stonewall Inn. Dozens of homosexuals were fighting cops, by it's entrance. The images being broadcast over the TV set were stark, and very dramatic. Everyone watching voiced their sympathy for the patrons of Stonewall. "They really shouldn't have to put up with police harassment," said Susan.
     "People should have the right to go anywhere they want, as long as they're not hurting
anyone," added Alan.
     The next day, Carl set out to the Village neighborhood where the riots were taking place.
From a safe distance, he sketched pictures of the gays - some of them flamboyant drag queens - standing up to the officers in blue.
     Millie celebrated a birthday - her twenty-first - two night later. All of her housemates were
there, to help her celebrate this milestone. Millie was grateful for their emotional support; she
had recently broken up with a long-term boyfriend, and their presence was very reassuring to her.
"Gee, thanks, everyone! I love you guys so much!" she gushed.
     They all dined on carrot cake ("better for you than chocolate!" said Susan, the house cook),
and toasted Millie with cider and red wine. After the birthday dinner, they all lounged in the
living room. Alice led the group in a round of singing. They all got so caught up in their
celebration, they didn't even bother to turn on the TV to watch the evening news. As the night
wore on, Millie found herself getting rather cozy with Danny.
     Later that night, after everyone else called it a night, Millie boldly slipped downstairs to spend the night with Danny, in his room. They made enough noise so that both Carl and Alan knew of the middle and ending phases of Danny and Millie's lovemaking session.
     The next morning, Alan and Millie bumped into each other, on the way to the bathroom. Millie was topless, her small but firm bosom bare to the hallway air. A pair of cotton underwear covered her groin. This was the very first time that Alan had seen one of the women of the house in this state. "Oh... excuse me!" he said, turning his head downwards.
     "After you, Alan!" she said, pointing to the bathroom door. He thanked her, and went into
the bathroom. She didn't seem very self-conscious about being seen partly naked. Alan was
relieved by this. He called Genevieve later that morning, before leaving for work.
     Alan and Jen went to a nightclub called The Spinning Top, after he finished his shift at the
bookstore. They stepped onto the crowded dance floor, and did the Frug and the Funky Chicken with dozens of other young couples. Alan and Jen worked up a good sweat, to the loud rock'n'roll music and colorful flashing lights. They cooled off with a couple of sodas at the bar. After they left the club, they walked to the Bleeker Street subway station arm in arm. It was getting close to Jen's curfew, so they had to part ways.
     "Next time we meet, I definitely want to take you back to my place!" Alan told her, as they
embraced on the sidewalk.
     "Yes, that would be just great, man!" She kissed him goodnight, and disappeared into the
subway tunnel. Alan walked over to West 4th Street, stopping in an ice cream parlor along the
way. He got a vanilla cone, double-dipped in chocolate sprinkles, for thirty-five cents. A young
couple who had just bought two strawberry ice cream cones commented about one of the flyers posted on the side wall if the parlor.
     "Hey, look Chester! 'Don't Give a Damn Day' is coming up soon!" said the woman. Her
companion, a bearded man with a blue jean jacket, closely inspected the xeroxed sheet of paper promoting this social protest.
     "Yes, but who gives a damn, Shirley?" he said, leading her out the front door. She give him
a soft slap on his side, either admonishing him for his seeming indifference or rewarding him for his clever wit (or perhaps both). Alan looked at the flyer, which bore the logo of the NYUSC.
He wondered how many people would show up at this demonstration.
     Next Monday was a national holiday - Independence Day. The Hawson House residents
celebrated by taking in the fireworks display by the East River - an annual tradition for New
Yorkers. Bill dutifully passed around a communal joint, to enhance the experience. The bright
reds, oranges, greens, blues, and whites of the fireworks provided by Macy's elicited mass
'oohs' and 'aahs' from the many thousands of folks watching. All too soon, it was over, and the
spectators all trudged home. A few politically-minded people let out spontaneous cries of
"Peace now!" and "US out of Vietnam!" as they walked along the streets. There were some
policemen milling about, helping to keep order. Not surprisingly, a few pedestrians let out shouts of "Down with cops!" as soon as they were safely out of earshot of the men in blue.
     Danny and Millie whispered in each other's ears, trading private little jokes between them as they walked home with the rest of the bunch. Alan felt a sudden pang for Genevieve. He knew that he had to take steps to make sure their budding love affair would be a permanent thing, rather than a short-term romance. He made up his mind to figure out a way to make Jen his, not just for now, but for a long time to come.
     Next Saturday night, Jen stopped by to see Alan. She had two items with her. One was a
record album by The Jefferson Airplane. It was called Surrealistic Pillow. Jen insisted that the
two of them listen to it, while they enjoyed the pot that she had bought with her. Alan liked the
music well enough - it had some interesting melodies, and decent singing and playing. Jen's
pot was very good, very pure. Alan took his time finishing his joint, as he sat next to her.
     "This is really good pot, honey. Where did you get it?"
     She finished a drag on her joint, before answering. "From my uncle Harry. He lives in San
Francisco. He sent it to me. Have you ever been out there, man?" Alan shook his head no.
"Neither have I. But Harry says it's really nice out there. Like, good weather all year round.
They've got the bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge, and Fisherman's Wharf, and all sorts of cool
stuff going on!"
     "Yes. I've heard lots of good things about 'frisco." Alan remembered something, as "White
Rabbit" began to play on his stereo.
     "Say, Jen..."
     "Yeah, Alan?"
     "Aren't the Jefferson Airplane from San Francisco?"
     "Yep, they sure are!"
     "So what is all this about 'frisco? Is this 'National Appreciate San Francisco Day' or
something?" said Alan, with a chuckle.
     Jen slid her hand along Alan's thigh, which was covered with blue denim. "Sweetie, I might
have the chance to move out there." Alan's heart sank. He was crushed at the news, but he
tried to put on a brave front.
     "You do? Well, er... Hey, that's great... I guess." He swallowed hard. Jen studied his
reaction carefully.
     "Well, you don't seem to be very happy about this. I guess you really like New York, eh?
You wouldn't even consider heading out west?"
     It took a few moments for Alan to get her point.  "You mean, you want me to go with you,
Jen?" He was more relieved that words could say.
     "Yeah, man! My uncle Harry owns this day care center out there. He is offering me a job with him! He says he can use his connections to help find me a good pad near the day care center, if I am willing to help take care of those little kids. So I was thinking maybe you could come join me? Live with me, Alan! We would have a nice place all to ourselves!" She linked her arm with his. She felt so excited about this plan, and she so badly wanted him to share her enthusiasm.
     "Well, when would you move out there, Jen?"
     "Any time I wanted. Uncle Harry is even willing to pay for my plane ticket!"
     The Jefferson Airplane record finished, but Alan didn't bother to flip it over; he just let the
needle remain locked in the final groove of side one, while he and Jen discussed this new
opportunity. Alan was very fond of Jen - he thought he might even be in love with her - but was
unsure if he was willing to leave New York so soon after arriving here.
     "Listen, Alan, I know that there are no guarantees about the future," Jen told him, clasping
her hand in his. "There are no guarantees about anything, really, when you come right down to
it. But sometimes you have to take a chance, and that chance just might make life better for
you." Alan realized that was the very philosophy that had bought him to New York, to begin
with. Maybe New York was just a middle stop for him, and going somewhere else with
Genevieve would be the next step of his journey through life.
     The two of them shared a half hour of intense discussion.  Alan proclaimed his devotion
to Jen half a dozen times, and she did the same no fewer than eight times. Finally, Alan
agreed to move out to San Francisco with her.  "I'll do it for our sake," he told her.
Jen was so happy when he said this, she threw her arms around Alan's neck and kissed him.
They celebrated their new plan with a long lovemaking session. Alan got her to lessen her
screams of delight by sliding his fingers into her mouth, at the climactic moment.
     The rest of the Hawson House was sorry to see Alan go, but understood that he was a grown man who was simply doing what he thought was best for him. Alan gave his two weeks notice at Macdougal Street Books, and used his last paycheck to buy two plane tickets to 'frisco. Before he left 209 West Fourth Street for good, though, Alan just had to find out one thing.
     "Alice, do you think that if I stayed here long enough... that anything could happen between
the two of us?" Alan posed this question to her privately, in the kitchen, the day before he was
scheduled to leave the city with Genevieve. Alice thought the matter over, and smiled softly.
     "Well, I do think you are an attractive man, Alan. And I admire your intelligence, and your
strength. I just might want to get to know you better if you continued living here, maybe even in
a physical way." She took a deep breath. "But what would hold me back is something a psychic told me, last year. She told me that I was destined to be with an older man who works as a teacher. She says that this relationship I will have is meant to last forever, that I will marry and have three children with him." There was an awkward silence, which Alice broke by clearing her throat. Alan went to get some fresh milk from the fridge. He drank a glass of it as he finished his chat with Alice.
     "In a way I'm relieved to hear that, Alice. I mean, if you're holding out for 'Mister Right', and I can't be him as I'm not a teacher... That sorta frees me to be with Jen. I don't have to spend my days with her wondering if I made the right decision. That is, choosing her... over you." Alan went to the sink, and ran a bit of water into the empty glass.
     "We will all miss you around here, Alan. Including me. I hope you know that."
     "I will miss you all, too. And let me just say that this guy - this teacher you end up marrying
and starting a family with... will be one helluva lucky guy." Alan was just as surprised as she
was to hear such a strong sentiment coming from him. Alice told him that she appreciated his
honesty, and wanted only the best for him. They embraced, then went off to their separate rooms.
     Alan's last night in New York was a bittersweet affair, celebrated by everyone in the Hawson House. (Jen was a welcome if late arrival; she was a bit tired from the farewell party her parents had thrown for her earlier, at their place.) Susan baked pumpkin pie (Alan's favorite dessert), and served vanilla ice cream as well. Carl hand-made a "Good luck Alan!" banner on a big white strip of cloth, on which everyone drew silly cartoons and wrote sentimental farewells slogans, not unlike the signings in a school yearbook.
     Twenty-four hours later, Alan Kerrill and Genevieve Colt were moving their combined
belongings into a one-bedroom apartment in a lovely residential area of San Francisco. It was a beautifully sunny day outside, the pleasant weather matching the happy demeanor of the two young lovers who had just claimed this city as their own.
 
 
                         *****************       EPILOGUE     **************************
 
 
May 8, 1972
Dear Bill and Susan:
     This letter finds me and my wife Jen in good health. San Francisco is one happening place!
It's warm and sunny here just about every day. Jen is still looking after the little moppets of The Growing Flowers Day Care Center. My independent bookstore ' Alan's Treasures ' is steadily making a profit, month after month. We should be able to finish paying off our bank loan within the next five years or so. I love being my own boss! :-)
     Thank you for including the latest snapshot of you and the rest of the gang at Hawson House.
That little boy Tyler is growing up so fast! We have enclosed a picture of our baby daughter,
Johanna Marie. She just turned six weeks old, last Sunday. We named her after two Dylan
songs - Jen and I were listening to Blonde on Blonde when she was concieved. It's a good thing we weren't listening to Iron Butterfly, that night. We would hate to have to name our kid
"In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"! :-)
     We sent a present to my cousin Danny and his pretty wife Marie, to celebrate their second
wedding anniversary. Danny hinted in his last letter to me that two of them are trying to start a
family, too. They have our very best wishes, as I'm sure you can guess. The sooner Johanna
Marie gets a little cousin, the happier we will be! :-)
     It's great news about Alice getting a recording contract. Maybe she will meet her dream guy
soon, too! As for Carl, Jen and I aren't quite sure what to make of the news that he is shacking
up with that restaurant manager. I had kind of suspected that Carl might be gay, when I was
living with you guys. Without knowing this man that he is so taken with, it's hard to say for sure
if he is making the right decision or not. But Carl is a grown-up, he has to decide what is best
for himself.
     From what you are telling us about your brother Greg, he doesn't sound very grown-up at all.
It's a shame he had to get involved with drugs. Gen and I really feel for Linda, she must be torn up inside about his problem. If you ask me, acid is one bad scene, man. I never did it myself.
These days, I am pretty much clean. I gave up smoking grass when my doctor told me that it
might hurt my sperm count. I suppose I could have started up again, after our baby came
along. But I realized that I didn't actually miss pot all that much. My head is much clearer
without it. Jen followed my lead, and she gave up pot at the same time that I did. Jen and I
are so in love with each other, and our beautiful baby girl, we really don't need to chase these
artificial highs for the rest of our lives. At least, that is how she and I see it.
     Listen, if you or any of the gang are ever out by the Bay area, be sure to stop by. We've got
a futon couch that you could use. We could even put a couple of sleeping bags on the floor, in
a pinch. We can stay up all night and talk about old times, drink some herbal tea, dish Nixon,
or whatever we feel like. It would be a blast!
 
          Much love,
          Alan
 
     Alan folded the handwritten letter neatly into thirds, and put it in an envelope. He wrote down Bill's address on the envelope, and put a stamp on it. He left the letter on the kitchen table, so he would remember to mail it to the Hawson House. It was only about eight o'clock at night, but he was tired from a full day of work and family responsibilities. He sat down in the big upholstered chair in the living room. Jen silently crept out of the baby's room, and made her way towards her husband of two years.
     "She just fell asleep!" she whispered, as she sat down on Alan's lap. Her long blonde hair fell onto his shoulders. "I put her down in the crib, and she was out like a light!" Alan was relieved that putting their daughter down to sleep wasn't too much of a hassle, tonight. There were a few nights over the past few weeks that Johanna Marie had some crying spells, before finally nodding off. But tonight was different. Alan patted his wife's forearm, his fingertips softly brushing against the very fine hairs lining it.
     "You are such a good mother, Jen," he told her. Jen was touched by his compliment. She
ran her fingers across his chest.
     "I wouldn't be a mother at all, if not for you, my love!" she melted in Alan's strong arms, and
kissed him until her lips ached.
     "I love you, Jen... I love you so much, baby!" he cooed in her ear.
     "You are my man, Alan - I want us to be together forever!" she told him, looking into his eyes.
     As Alan kissed and embraced his lovely wife, he reflected inwardly how his journey in life was now largely complete. Just like Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, he had traveled all the way across the country, in search of an elusive happiness and purpose in life. He had fond memories of life back at West Fourth Street, even felt the occasional pang of longing to be back at Hawson House, smoking a joint and laughing over a shared joke with his cousin Danny and the rest of the gang. But this was where he truly belonged - with his wife and child, in a nice cozy love nest for just the three of them. Bill and Susan and the rest of them would surely understand. So would Dylan. So, for that matter, would Kerouac and Ginsberg and Burroughs and all the rest of those brilliant, ahead-of-their-time Beats, some of whose immortal literature was stocked in Alan's bookstore. In his own unique way, Alan was one of them; he was one of them, too.