CW// sexual violence
30Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKgSdpdN5vP
I find Andi standing in the circle around the fire. Her long blonde curls hang down to the middle of her back, partially obscuring the words Cross Country on the back of her shirt. When I tap her, she whirls around spilling some of the jungle juice in her red cup on herself. “Oops,” she says looking down at the wet spot on her chest, then her hazel eyes go wide, “Lil, you’re bleeding.”
I hold up Colt’s first aid kit. “Ah,” Andi says, following me away from the group. “Want some?” I ask offering Andi the broken champagne bottle. “Oh, that’s where you’ve been,” Andi says eyeing the bottle, “doing your stupid, broken bottle routine with Colt.”
“Yes, yes, yes, come on,” I say leaving the clearing and walking a little way down the road. I sit on a rock and hand the first-aid kit to her. “Is this Colt’s? I’m going to go get mine. There’s probably been dog pee or something on this one in recent history,” she says, turning to go back to her car. “Nope. Can’t go back. You gotta use this one.”
“Okaaay. Are we hiding, then?” she asks, but I don’t answer. I feel depleted and a little woozy all of a sudden. She squats and opens the first aid kit, rips open and antiseptic wipe then dabs at the cut with it. I breathe in sharply at the way it makes the damaged skin burn. “Oh,” she says, “it’s not that bad. It looked a lot worse.”
“Mhmm,” is all I say. Her eyes dart back and forth from my eyes to the task at hand as she applies the butterfly to the corner of my mouth. “I don’t know if this is going to work Lil,” she says, “There, but I don’t; know if it’ll stay.” She presses the ends once more then sits back on her heals, balancing on the balls of her feet. “You won’t really be able to talk now, but I doubt many people will be upset by that.” She shrugs and makes a, what can you do? gesture. She looks at me good for the first time since leaving the party and her eyebrows knit. “What happened? Are they getting married now or something?”
“No,” I mumble through the butterfly, “Actually, they broke up.”
“Damn, she’s going to be a night-mare tonight.”
“Probably,” I say as Andi sits down next to me.
“That’s what you wanted isn’t it?”
“He kissed me.”
“Dude moves on fast.”
“Dude moves like a fucking glacier. It’s taken three years for him to kiss me.”
“I’m kind of surprised he did it at all. He’s weirdly prude with you.”
“It’s kind of a story, but I told him that I was never just friends with him, and then he kissed me, is the gist of it.”
“You initiated it. I knew it. So, now what?”
“Now we… pretend like we won’t have a ten-hour drive between us and a bunch of other options in three months,” I say.
“One week,” she corrects.
“Don’t remind me.”
“Quit acting all detached and logical.”
“I’m not acting like that. It’s just the facts.”
“Facts, schmacts. You’re stoked. You’ve been waiting for this for forever. Would you consider staying here for the summer? To have more time together before you move? It’ll be fine either way. People do long distance all the time.”
“Yeah. Stupid people.”
“Being in love isn’t stupid, Lil.”
“Then why does it feel like it?” I ask.
“Because you’re scared.”
“Oh, that…” I say, already beginning to pick at the corner of the band-aid. Andi swats my hand away, “qui…” she stops mid-word and we both freeze. A far too short way off we can hear footsteps coming in our direction. Marcy’s voice is gravely-angry, almost drowning out Colt’s low explanatory tone entirely.
Jesus. Why hadn’t we he and I planned this? You go this way, I’ll go that way. Stupid, fucking, idiots. I cover my mouth to hold the laughter in when I see how huge Andi’s eyes have become. Just then Marcy’s voice cuts through the night. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she says when her eyes fall on Andi and I, stuck halfway between sitting and standing like there’s a gun laser on our chests. My hand is still on my mouth to hold back laughter despite how unfunny I find the situation. “Oh, it’s funny, is it?” Marcy asks. I rise out of my stunted stand. “Marcy…” I start, but then I realize that there is nothing I can say to unfuck this, so I turn and run away as fast as I can. Andi catches up with me, laughing so hard I am impressed she can keep pace. I look over at her and burst out laughing as well. “You can run, but you can’t hide, bitch,” Marcy yells. I turn to jog backward for a beat and see Colt holding Marcy back as Andi and I both very nearly die of laughter.
We stop running after a few minutes and Andi chokes out, “you can run but you can’t hide-BITCH.” I toss the champagne bottle that I’m still holding for some reason and wrap my arms around her as we fall to the ground howling. We disentangle ourselves and roll onto our backs in the middle of the road, arms spread wide. “You’re my favorite,” I say. “I know,” she says, and I smack her arm. “I’m going to miss you. You’re leaving metoo, you know,” she says.
“Why didn’t you tell me to stay?” I ask.
“Have you ever tried to talk you out of something?”
“Never. I always think my ideas are good. The best, even.”
“Exactly,” she says. I grab her hand and squeeze. Andi looks at me and smiles. When I try to stand up it is harder than it should be, like a head rush times a thousand. Andi looks at me with amusement. “Arrre you drunk?”
“Who, me? No. Fit as a fiddle, my dear.”
“Liar,” is all she says and I follow her into the brush to begin the shin-destroying mission of covertly returning to camp. When we reach the trees, I take a minute to lean on one, feeling even more out of it. My arm is sticky against my shirt, and I can’t remember why. “Why am I sticky,” I ask. “Because you just sprinted with a broken champagne bottle. How are you slurring already?” She responds.
“Dunno,” I say. All I want to do is lay down. Why do I feel so heavy? I focus so hard on Andi’s feet ahead of me, trying to keep going straight, but I can’t. By the time Andi turns to check on me I’m fifty meters back. She trots back to me and puts her hand on my back.
“I don’t feel good, Andi,” I say in a shaky voice. “I think I’m going to…” and then I am vomiting and the ground in front of me blooms orange. Jesus. How many Cheetos did I eat today?
“It’s ok, just get it out. How much did you drink?” she asks, rubbing my back as I retch.
“A lot, I guess,” I say in between bouts. “And I took a teeny tiny hit...” I say showing how teeny tiny with my thumb and index finger.
“Ok, well we just gotta keep going, can you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I say as I try to pull myself up to sit on a stump.
“My guess is no,” she says, squatting down to help situate me against the stump as sitting on seems to be out of the question. “Just stay here, ok? I’m going to get help. I’ll be right back. You good?” She asks. “Mmm,” I say. Things are starting to get fuzzy and spotty like a camera flash. “Jesus,” I hear Andi’s receding voice say and then, nothing.
My body feels like it’s moving through something thick, being rolled forward, then the broad pressure of the earth below me fades. I hear slow heavy steps like drum beats, and I can tell each one requires effort. Then I realize the footsteps are below me and maybe they’re so effortful because I’m being carried. They stop and I feel my body being shifted around and then I’m on the ground again. “Fuck,” I hear as a dark shadow descends on me. “Colt?” I ask, forcing my eyes open. The deep blue felt of a letterman jacket chafes the skin of my cheek as I try to make sense of things. Looking up I can see where neck transitions to head as the prickle of a buzz cut consumes the skin. The muscle of the jaw works inside its skin and teeth grind inside the head. The rest of the face is where things fall apart. It’s harsh and angular transitions cast shadows that push the features from one another, making it hard to identify as human much less any one in particular. Nothing is staying together the way it should. This is what they’d call a bad trip I think, and I can feel my body shudder, in laughter or fear I cannot tell, but I make no sound doing it. I open my eyes again. When did I close them? The face has come together now and I whisper “Jay..? No… put me down.” I don’t know if he hears me, if I even actually say it, but the way he looks down at me and smiles scares me.
When I wake next, I hear the synthetic crinkle of a camp tent and someone moving around in it carefully. Uneven clumps of earth and rock press into my back through the tarp-like floor of the tent. The soreness of those places tell me I’ve been here for a time. From where I lay on the ground, the top of the tent seems far away and grandiose, like the ceiling of a cathedral. I conclude that reality must be hiding at a similar elevation, because it’s not down here. That idea hooks me, and I am convinced that if I can just stand up, get to the top everything will be alright. I try to move my arms, only to find that they seem to have become not just unresponsive, but separate from me. The space between me and them feels like the field between repellant magnets. Something brushes against my legs as the crinkle sound of the tent floor continues.
It reminds me of something. Something I should be doing. I fight to piece it all together into something significant. Something real. It was right there. Right there. Just… I feel hot hands bracing against the insides of my bare knees as they’re forced apart. The movement has the effect of very suddenly and violently rooting me. I strain against the fact of the matter, trying to, “no, no, no,” it away, but it stays. This is what is.
I groan and the movement stops for a moment but continues when I am unable to make any other shows of consciousness. Rough hands search for the button of my shorts and graze my stomach as they undo it. The movements occur to me as gentle in their lightness but that’s not quite right. Quiet. Secret. That’s what they are. Hidden, not careful. When the button is undone, I feel the zipper descending; the departure of each tooth from the next making itself known as a final warning of what is to come. My legs come alive with goosebumps as my shorts are shimmied down them. I remember shaving them in the shower this morning and putting lotion on; letting it soak in and then putting on more.
Seconds pass. Maybe minutes. Rivulets of cold tears fall down my cheeks to pool in my ears. And then there’s weight on me, pressure against my thighs, rapid movement and flesh bumping against my stomach and my eyes are closed so tight. There’s a sound in my ears that’s also pressure. It goes wah, wah, wah like the heartbeat of wind. Heat and taught skin and probing hands nudge at my labia. I feel slick, a slipping. “Oh, you’re wet,” I hear a familiar voice say and I think it’s almost over, now. Then time itself seems to stop when the movement does. A gagging noise and a twinge of pain in my groin as hands shove me away. “You’re disgusting,” says the voice. My eyes fall open, then. Jay is staring at his hands, his knuckles
The constraints fall away, then, not just of whatever he’s dosed me with, but of being whatever it is he thinks I am and I laugh. I laugh so hard. Harder than I ever have before. Harder than I thought I could. Because it’s funny. It’s really, funny. That he thought he could get away with it. That he thought that his hands could break, could bury. In the intensity of my laughter something shoots out of me leaving a spray of red speckles across J’s face. For a moment I am confused but then I know what happened like it’s the only thing that could have. As natural as breathing. As natural as bleeding.
He looks homicidal with his wide eyes and my menstrual blood freckling his face. And then things really start to sort themselves, coming into focus the same way I had laughed, bigger and richer and sharper than ever before; a lucidity and presence of mind developing inside me of a sort I can’t make sense of, only feel. I feel each contraction of my heart in my chest and the pressure of the blood it propels through my arteries. I feel the disturbance in the air of a mouse bounding around the party feasting on scraps. I feel the sound of fire crackling, over and under and through the din of the celebration. Jay stares at me wildly as he reaches his hand up to touch his blood-spattered face.
The physical boundary of my body, my self, no longer feels significant and falls into irrelevance in a moment. In the next I feel like I’m taking up the whole tent but not like growing. Like space; constantly expanding into nothing, immeasurably. It occurs to me that everything is me. The tent. This mountain. The world. Even Jay. He’s a part, too. His a-part-ness doesn’t forgive him, though, just like a zit being on my face doesn’t exempt it from being popped. And it occurs to me that I could get rid of Jay as easily. Just, pop.
The beginning of a scream escapes his lips, but as soon as it does, his mouth is seared shut with the flick of my finger. An angry red scar is left in its wake. I look into his eyes. The pupils have expanded consuming the iris and eating into the whites. They’re thick and black like hot tar. My face is less reflected in them than floating on their surface, too much to be absorbed by his human faculties. Even for me, it is hard to understand. I see something of myself and much of this thing I have become. It is without bounds and the reason for the darkness that’s filled his eye. I can see myself, despite the absence of any human features, but something about my reflection makes it hard for my eyes to focus. They feel thirsty and even in the tiny pool of Jay’s eyes there’s always more to see. I am vast, I am deep, I am.
Jay’s eyes dart around looking for an escape, but that doesn’t exist anymore. There is no escape. There is no other option. He is a plunderer, seeking to take that which is not his and this is the punishment for that particular crime. It is what is demanded. It is the only way and so… The fire starts at his feet leaving them charred and gnarled as it moves up his body. A cavernous scream echoes behind his sealed lips and the way he strains I think his scarred mouth might rip right open. I hold his eyes until the flames reach his sternum and his eyelids fall shut.
I hear a voice outside the tent, saying, “Is there fire in J’s tent? Jesus where’s the fucking zipper?” A moment later the tent zipper is being jerked open. Too late, though. Jay is all gone, and so am I.
30Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvSdcEk9cgu
Chapter V
I hurtle through a prism of light. It is a kaleidoscope of color of which I am but a part. Wave and particle at once and so much more besides. I can feel time expanding around me as space shrinks. A millennia in the space of a minute. The passage feels endless. It always does. Then, just as I am sure that this time is different, and it will go on like this forever I pass through the pocket that signals the end of my transportation. It is the best and worst part at once, a dichotomy as transition to singularity; an access for the confusion of humanity to reenter, and relegate to matter that which would otherwise be free. I resist and welcome it, awaiting my landing as much as I dread it.
When I land, I feel time find me, oscillating for a moment in its calibration like the hand of an analog bathroom scale, before it settles. I don’t open my eyes right away, already overwhelmed with sensation. I can feel the parameters of my body returning and hardening like the surface of a crème brulee under a torch. It’s felt this way every time since that night after I’d burned J. That night, I had vanished from the tent I’d burned Jay in and found myself at the arch, the last place I had felt safe. I’ found myself back in my human body, filled with all the things a human body would be after an experience like the one I’d just had, shuddering, sweating and ready to throw up. Before I could even solidify, I could hear the scream coming from whoever had found Jay’s charred remains.
Now, I hear nothing but the faint chirp of crickets floating in a cracked window on a quiet night in Aspen, but my body still quakes. It’s happened this way over and over and though I’d like to never do it again, to this day I have no other way of achieving this relocation phenomenon other than to relive the trauma that had delivered it in the first place. It’s my secret. At once the reason I only work alone and the only reason I can.
I swallow the lump in my throat and wipe away the tear before it falls. When I open my eyes, I am looking out the wall of windows in the back of the room. There I find a full moon on a clear night set to the background of a sky too full of stars. I turn to my right to enter the current password for the security system on the wall behind me.
I look back at the moon for a moment and the trees that it illuminates. They remind me of the last time I was in Aspen; their bark white and frosted on either side of the path, my own breath loud in my ears, puddles soaking through my race flats and the suction of the mud pulling against my every stride. The chilly air of a fall morning stung against my bare legs and arms, but I did’t feel the least bit cold with the adrenaline of competition coursing through me.
I shake my head free of the memory and breathe deeply of the fresh air floating in through the window. When I look at my watch I see that it is 2am, stunned again and always that the seemingly endless journey of relocation takes but a second. The breeze carries the scent of the jacket hung next to the window, over to me and everything else disappears. I cross the room to reach it, savoring each note that greets me along the way deepening and expanding the aroma. It doesn’t smell like Colt the way I’d imagined it would, but of leather and pine and details of its wearer that should not be available through scent alone. He takes shape in my mind, the outline of a person no less real for his haziness. At my back the rest of the room is as reassuring, and tempting me to make myself at home in it. I want to light a fire in the belly of the black steel fireplace and snuggle down in the plush white down of the bed’s comforter. Smelling the jacket is indulgence enough, though, so I pass it all without a second glance on my way to the closet.
In the closet I put on the latex gloves before I scoot the clothes around, tapping to find where it is hollow and more importantly, where it is not. When I hear a tap that doesn’t echo, I know that I’ve found my mark. I take the hammer from my bag and start breaking the drywall. I see the corner of the safe first and the corners of my mouth quirk up involuntarily. As the drywall falls away and more of the safe is revealed a physical sense of urgency replaces the self satisfaction. It’s more than anxiety, though. I feel driven toward it by something building toward madness.
I exchange the hammer for the code breaker and place the code breaker on the safe’s locking mechanism. It whirs for a moment and then pops open. My hand reaches for the small, red jewelry box within the safe as if magnetized. It opens so easily I can’t tell if I opened it or summoned it to do so. Inside, a thick band of seamlessly melded brass and iron rests in the box, gleaming. It exerts something like a gravitational pull on me, and against my better judgement, I lift it from its pillow and slide it onto my finger. The feeling of it is mutually reassuring, like a child wrapping it’s arms around a parent’s leg. One feels needed, the other, held. I can’t tell if I’m doing the needing or holding, knowing only that whatever is happening between the ring and myself is symbiotic.
Within its comfort I feel my body loosing itself and expanding. It feels the same and different than it did that night in the tent with Jay. Still big, still everything, but different in its intent. I don’t feel myself expanding as a shield, but as a realization of possibility. My edges diminish as a matter of course as my self unfolds, and intertwines with the space around me taking on a deepness without weight. The ecstasy is so complete that I don’t know anyone is there until I hear a voice whisper across time, “Now, you know that’s not yours.” The voice is teasing, and familiar in a way I can’t name with the increasing distance between whatever I am becoming and my humanness. My transformation halts with the words, leaving me somewhere between the complete expansion and dissolution of self that occurred in the tent, and the human being I was moments ago.
Next thing I know I’m struck from behind. My face smashes into the wall ahead of me, breaking the drywall. I expect pain, but none comes. In its place is a thrill that I’ve only felt one other time. It is the promise of inflicting pain. Of righting a wrong. “Ooooh, it’s going to be that kind of party?” I ask, whipping around and ready to fight, but what I find renders my intention of defense, comical. I cannot defend against this. It’s like the inverse of looking into the sun. The presence there so dark, so dense that I am blinded. This is what I must have looked like to Jay the night I killed him; unfathomable and fully metamorphized. Even with my partial transformation, the presence vibrates at such a different frequency from my own that I can’t make sense of it. Then, to my surprise, it recalibrates so that we are on a level.
Where there had been the incomprehensible vastness of ever-expanding space, there is now a more finite existence akin to a contained black hole. The comparison is not only apt as a representation of the change in scale of the form but, literally. Everything in its presence is distorted like items within the gravitational pull of a black hole would be. Time seems to stretch out before and behind me, and in between, losing all relevance. With only the meager amount of moonlight that comes in through the door of the closet to light the space to begin with, it all becomes concentrated around the form leaving the rest of the small space completely dark.
At first the form seems to be glowing in the way that Jesus Christ, or the Virgin Mary do in some stylized Christian art, their transcendence represented by lines of light surrounding and extending out of their heads. Upon further inspection, I can see that quite the opposite thing is happening, here, though. Rather than extending out from the form as of a holy glow, light becomes distorted around it, elongating as it nears and is consumed by the form’s mass. The surface of it shimmers as the acquired light skims its surface at a high speed, creating friction and glimmering like the accretion disk of a black hole would.
It takes a moment to realize all these things must be true of me, too. I look down at myself and dip my finger into the liquid light churning about my surface. It divides for a second like lava flowing around a stone. At the loss of my attention, I feel the form’s gravity tugging at me. My eyes return to it with the pure curiosity of a newborn. Inside of this, I can see the form for more than the sum of its parts. The light surging over it rises and falls on the hills and valleys of a muscular form that is unquestionably male. The ability to categorize him as a man speaks to my humanity, but that is only half of what I am, now. Where there had been I there is we. To the new, exultant half, gender is irrelevant, and base. It tries to show the me that I have known myself to be, what really matters, or at least what means matters to it, but it can’t quite get through.
To the new half the frequency of the form comes from every direction, the culmination of which is a data-set millennia old, and yet to occur, splitting off in possibility and growing perpetually. It is this limitlessness that my new-found half perceives, in itself and the form, the alignment of which is narcotic. Even with the enormity of this, something gets lost in translation between one part to another. To my human half the experience of the other is both over- and underwhelming; visceral and tingling, even as the specifics glide over my humanity without absorbing. All of my life I have been either unaware of, at odds with or exploiting this new part, comfortable and even relying on the distinction between the two, but now I have the compulsion to destroy this separation. To destroy the we that should be I; the us that should be me.
The form senses this struggle and we, both my halves, feel their concern. When the human part of me tries to speak, its other-worldly counter-part stops it, guiding it to reach out to the form in a way that seems to have been available all along but that had gone unnoticed. When we make contact, it is like a stream meeting a river. It is as quiet and seamless and inconsequential as it is crucial. Where there was once space between them and us, there is now a branch. Within the form, I find the same two parts I have identified in myself and but no wall between them. They don’t seem to notice the divide in us, though, or at least not that alone. Whatever they do see in us seems to be overwhelming them. They seem stunned.
They slide over us, liquid and rich and familiar in a way that exceeds consciousness. “How did you get to me?” Their question vibrates through me, and I can’t tell if it was a verbalization or something else. “I just, did,” I respond. I am not being coy but offering comprehensive explanation, like someone asking, “how’d you get in here?” and the answer being, “I had a key.” It’s a surprising response from a stranger, but no less complete for it. The answer is sufficient to resolve whatever reservations they still harbored. I can feel the resulting reorganization within them as some of their parts recede and others make themselves known. The shift is slight, but fundamental, like the single step that carries one across the threshold between the outside world and home at the end of a long day.
The serpentine unwinding of a long-forgotten part of them brushes against me as it comes to the fore. It flicks its tongue at me, discerning and ancient. I let it wrap itself around me without resistance. It feels so good to be held by it. I share the feeling with them, but I’m not sure that it’s necessary. We are that close.
The transference begins as a trickle. Their memories are wispy and not entirely sensical at first. I can’t understand it until I realize that they are dreams. A child’s dream. It reminds me of how vast the world felt as a kid, in good and bad ways. To a child’s mind anything can happen, but also anything can happen. The fears are as big and shapeless as the happiness, although the latter is hard to come by when it comes to the narratives woven by their subconscious. This is a reflection of their waking life, as dreams are. The difference between the two is that he is not alone here. It is the only happiness to be found, but it is ample. A presence accompanies him, bouying him in a way that is untouchable by any circumstance. Anything can be happening, big, small, good or bad, and he still feels it there with him. It is everything; everything found, everything discovered, everything promised.
As he ages the dreams become more finite, and rather than existing as an elusive presence, the comfort of his dreams takes the form of a tangible playmate. She looks so much like me it sends chills through me. She shows him the games that she knows and asks why he doesn’t know any. He says he doesn’t want to say. He doesn’t want to bring it here. The girl says ok. So, he learns her games and when they grow tired of them, they invent new ones. They are always in a stone courtyard. It takes on different forms without being a different place as locales in dreams do, but there are always dark halls attached to it. He won’t let her go into them. Not even to play hide and seek.
Over time I can see the playmate turning into me. In hindsight my own young wildness is plain in her as is my essence in the everything that accompanied him earlier. I can’t say that I have ever experienced myself as everything before now. That is not what it has felt like to be me, but for him I was. All the ways we intertwined and mingled to make it so become clear, too. I did not provide everything but with him we could bring it forth in each other. It takes me breath away.
And we go on like this moving, changing day by day from through the spaciousness of childhood, becoming playmates then friends until one day we are something else entirely. The dreams no longer an escape, but the realization of something feel so right, as to have been planned. Everything feels warm, and not only because my skin is pressed to his the entire time, but because the sun seems not to concern itself with anything else. It shines not on us but for us and the world turns at our bidding. It quickens its rotation with our increased heart rates and slows in the languid lulls that follow. It feels like a memory and a promise at once. It is perfect. It is right. It’s so right it’s hard to remember anything was ever wrong.
Again, though, a shift reaches critical mass before we know it has begun and our time together, loses something, and then something else and on and on night after night. It is never less beautiful or joyful, only their ability to hold on to it is, until their hands are only ever empty. Months go by just staring at them, a tension that makes everything ache, the only companion. They are waiting. At first, afraid the waiting will kill them but then wishing it would. The waiting seems to carry over in dream from where it left off in waking and to which it will return. It is eternal. After all, they were never dreams. They were premonitions; a map. The dreams showed them how it could be until it felt like the way it should be until anything else felt like the way it shouldn’tand that’s where they left them.
We can feel the constraints of a window, that once closed will be locked. When it does, everything is different. It changes all at once and I am left feeling like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. A critical rupture has taken place. No longer are we one, but distinct entities, and they can feel within themselves all the places I am not. Where I had been a dream, I become flesh and bone. Where there had been imaginings of what could be, is what is. It’s my real life and he’s watching it. A part of me that had been a passenger on this voyage jolts into action with the shift. It is not déjà vu to have your life played out in front of you through the eyes of another. It is an identity crisis. I can both see and feel myself in the dreams. See how I felt experiencing them and how they did, witnessing them. The overwhelm is like nothing I have felt before. Together we had felt like synchronicity embodied. Apart we are chaos.
They dreamed of me and Colt laying on the grass looking up at the stars. Of my mom explaining the goings on of the organized crime in her virtual city. Of me crying alone in an alley in Las Vegas and of course, of Jay. I can feel all they felt as they bore witness. Their blind hatred of Colt. Their awe at the intricacies of a city so believable and so false. Their helplessness in the face of my despair.
I can see for the first time a line of demarcation that must have been there all along. He’s showing it to me. Asking me why. “Why didn’t you come? Why couldn’t I get to you? I should have been able to get to you,” and then, “I think it’s what I’m here for.” I have no answer. I didn’t know he was waiting. I didn’t know that he existed. How could I have found something like that?
His dreams and my memories continue to collide, and I feel myself shattering beneath them. The channel between us that had felt like a joint now feels like a battering ram. It is too much. I cut him off. The separation feels like falling. Me, the sky, everything, tumble down.
The sound of gasping brings me back to myself. The vertigo of falling blankets me and my thoughts feel heavy and slow. The disorientation is complete. I look down to see the ring still glowing on my finger, but the rest of me relegated to a humanity that doesn’t seem to fit the way it used to. “It’s you,” a voice rasps. I look up and find no consuming darkness, no black hole but another human being staring back at me. I’d know those eyes anywhere. “Ash?” I choke out. He nods, extending his hand to me, but the scared part of me has been tugging at me ever since it woke up, and when his hand reaches me, I am no longer there.
30Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTx4zyFWZFS
I come to with a gasp staring up at another sky full of stars. I can’t breath. Oh god, I can’t breath. The ski mask feels like a vice around my head, and I rip it off. Static-y hair clings to my face and I paw at it like something wild, nearly dropping the ring and its case, each still in my hands somehow. “Shit, fuck,” I say fighting the tremor in my hands to replace the ring in its slot. I search for the protective sleeve in the bag at my hip. When I find it, I have to force my fingers to release the box into it. I scramble to my feet. I’m on a steep incline, in a field of rocks.
“This fucking place?” I think, as I scramble up, having to fight to keep my balance. The four, gigantic and familiar faces of The Mount Rushmore four stare blankly into the distance at my back. My body still feels like I have to consciously hold it together to keep it human, to keep it here. I can’t risk relocating again. I might end up back at the house in Aspen or someplace even further from home than South fucking Dakota.
I look at my watch expecting to see that hours had passed in the time I spent connected to that man, that thing, but only ten minutes have elapsed since I arrived in the Aspen House, but it’s only been fifteen. How? It had felt like such a long time and within it my life had been flipped n its head. The man’s face pulses in my mind foreign and familiar at once. It was Ash Nadeem. How? I push the thought from my mind, focusing on not breaking my face on my way down the rocks to the Presidential trail. I look behind me every now and then, half hoping, half fearing I’ll see him there, but I don’t.
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