"Come on," James said. A few were even standing now, looking in our direction. They moaned for us, wishing strength to fingers, fortitude to bones. We taunted with youth. We discarded their memory. It wasn’t what we’d come to do, but we were tomb raiders stumbled accidentally onto forgetfulness. When they reached for us, we pulled away, and when they called to us, we pretended not to hear.
This was an easy place to lose yourself, drowning in silent voices. I led Markus across a boundless plane of water, shimmering like aquiline glass. Our steps made ripples, but we didn’t fall. Way up high, the sky was a shadow caught in blackness, with little specks showing through. We had a long way to go.
"Don’t fall," I said. "Just make sure you don’t fall. Because then you’ll be falling, and it’s a long way down." Into whatever secret the darkness keeps, at the very bottom, pressurized coldness, hidden in the water. I didn’t know why we were herecouldn’t know- why I’d come, why I’d been given a sense of self and the horizon. But I led. I led because (sometimes) I could be something like a leader.
Markus stumbled.
"Jesus," he said.
And a minute later: "I don’t know how much further I can go."
"Just keep going," I said, and took a step, leaving my own tracks in the dampness. "And don’t fall. Please, whatever you do, just don’t fall."
::::::::::::::::::::
"What did you do?" I asked.
James took a breath. He was sweating still, heavily. Together we were a tired, aching duplex of sweat, of pain. His karma was coming for us. His karma was a one eyed monster, two of them. It moved slow, but it would get us in the end. Karma was phallic, and it jabbed profusely. Karma smelled like lemon juice and rotten eggs, like slime and unshaven armpits. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop breathing.
"You were there," James said.
"I was?"
"When I crossed the line."
"Shit." I massaged a hurting thigh. "I told you not to. No one ever takes my
advice." James laughed. He was still sweating. "They’re going to get you," I said, "you know. We can run, but karma doesn’t sleep like a person, it doesn’t hurt or eat." And as an afterthought: "They can go through walls."
"Yeah," he said. "I know."
"Then why’d you want me to come with you?"
"Because you’ll remember," he said. "Is your camera on?"
"Yeah," I said. "It’s always on, you know that."
"Then you’ll remember," he said, "because you’re good with memory." James was wrong, of course.
I’ve never trusted memory. That’s why I had the camera in the first place.
::::::::::::::::::::
I looked into the mirror, in tiredness. It was strange. I fogged myself over, the color of skin, hair and eyes and whiteness. Maybe I’d been sleeping wrong, if I slept, eyes, together, falling out of synchrony, falling, that doubling up in the picture, that splitting vision. I rubbed my eyes, if I had them. It did nothing for tiredness. There I was, the ghost of an image, extravaganza of voices, built (carefully) out of pure lies, a great fucking temple of lies, bound together, and tearing.
If vision blurred, it did so on its own, no part of me, inside, my sense of self, my world of being. Colors had long since fled from the world. I had taken them into myself, to recreate, to persevere. No, but where the instantaneous existed in duplication, where I went the image split. I went on a journey over
a cold ocean, and
the darkness fed me
stars.
::::::::::::::::::::
We spun around by a gas station, still running. Fat bearded men stood pumping fuel. Two lamps shone, though it hadn’t gotten dark yet. There were cars, trucks, and hermaphroditic, androgynous hybrids of the two, end over end, palpating replenishment. The woman behind the counter looked very bored, and made her boredom clear, scanning stamps, smoking. James ran into more than a few people. I didn’t remember ever being so tired, so challenged by breathing.
James opened a door.
"Get in," he said. "Jesus, hurry up."
"Dude no," though I thought of going, I really did. "We are not going to steal a
car." Speaking hurt. "That’s what got us here in the first place. Sort of."
He beckoned, still sweating. Disappointment etched him, sadness and fear. "Are you sure?" he asked. I said I was. "We’re making a horrible mistake."
"I don’t care," I said, though I didn’t understand what I was saying.
He shut the door, bitterly. "I can’t believe you."
"We have to go," I said. "They’re still coming."
"Yeah," he said. "Let’s go."
And they were coming:
stirring up dust and knocking aside cars, all brutal and ugly, with their raging, unnatural faces, their phallic gazing. Loose skin hung over thick bones. It swung as they ran, garroted on mongoloid torsos, the hideous thickness of thighs and spine. They growled loudly, and deeply, but without breathing. No words left them, no sounds of company. They saw nothing, felt nothing. Roaring, long and loud, deeply.
They came.
We ran for the inside of the store. Hopefully there was a door. It wouldn’t do to hide in bathrooms because they could pass through walls. And there I go again, repeating myself. The woman gave us bored looks, scanning stamps, smoking. We knocked over customers, afraid. We were not good for business. The shelves almost fell for of us, and we were frantic spillers of coffee.
In our wake, we brought demons. They knocked over the shelves we hadn’t gotten to, and spilled even larger amounts of coffee, breaking records, burning. They had two eyes together, unblinking. Slushies were unfit for them, as were candy, chips, cola. They feasted on fear, but they ran slowly.
Luckily for us, there was a back door.
::::::::::::::::::::
James hurt himself. And we were moving, so he hurt himself painfully. He tripped, and he was rolling, and he almost sprained his ankles. One knee bled. His lips and gums bled too. I helped him up. We looked back for a moment. Way in the distance, they were still coming. With the rumble of buildings, making cracks in the sidewalk.
"Can you keep going?"
"Yeah," he said, "but this would be so much easier if we’d just stolen that car." James committed his crimes on a grand scale. I knew I’d be fine, because no one
notices artists, even when you paint pictures on walls, but James was a focal point of the regular, a fanatic visage of the now. The derelict face of the city, he was steel and concrete, deep, deep corridors, paved over memory. Karma had two eyes for him, and vengeance.
And I had a vision of possibility.
He drove,
but he couldn’t go far because he couldn’t leave the city. There was no place for
him in this world, but he could fade away, making desperate grasps at departure. Neither of us had control of position, or any hand to maneuver context, just we were opposite ends, context and character, realization and being. He was a part of this place, its soul and body, messenger of the streets. The city was no-person. He in return. It didn’t care if he wanted to leave. He was the place, in definition, in act and execution. With all my heart, I pitied him. If not, I wouldn’t have run for him. When he was gone, he would leave a hole.