beyond the pale

dirt clumps in the webs of his fingers, itchy from the rabid rapid burial of all those fun summoning ritual reqs: cat bones, turned gravel, a stamp-sized cut out of his own mug. the kind of shit that makes him squeamish on principle, not texture, for a recipe straight off the pages of magick in theory and practice.

( .. any relation? it's not important. )

if there's a next time, he'll try his luck with a chicken wing for ethical kicks. show hell how he really feels before they're stuck with him for all eternity or whatever. only a quarter into this twelve month sentence, and he's not letting the remix of a suit, not a skirt, throw him off plan b.

keep this strictly business.

❛ for you, slugger, i can do anything. ❜ a weighted pause. ❛ is what i would say. ❜ his eyes drop to dean’s boots before they crawl upward. dark and shiny as abacus beads under the moonlight, peering into some place deep within dean. ❛ sadly, your lemon’s already been squeezed. ❜ his face scrunches. ❛ all rind, no juice. ❜

Firm: "Stay."

Not an assurance, a fact: "I will not exorcise you.” Imperfect combustion produces smoke. All fire incandescently, incessantly practices this deficiency. When Johnson’s gaze intersects the alkanes disjoining in the kerosene lamp, the smoke vanishes and the fire growth-spurts. Between them, demon and angel, the threat—exact, permanent obliteration—lingers much the same.

With a minute tick of Johnson's head—sharp nose pointed like a fisted knuckle—the door shuts. It bumps Crowley’s backside and sweeps him across the threshold; a slithering sliver of golden hour sunshine squeezes through the door-to-floor gap like an amber amphibian.

Johnson, stiff-legged, moves beside a lamp to more closely supervise it. Thus, pure flame: grey dead-ends snipped away. The harsh light jack-o-lanterns his face; warmth purrs at the triangle tarp of Johnson's cheek skin; his body (a larger, colder insulator) accepts the natural dispense, and he abets that marginal indulgence by remaining. “Are you aware demonic exorcisms leave a smell?” His attention gusts to Crowley; smoke escapes again.

Johnson lifts his chin, tone illuminating: “Like fermented afterbirth.” His own rumination.

He articulates words with equal care, smooth and walnut-jaded. “Your departure is difficult to relish. It… irritates the nose. It evaporates the mucus membrane. Dorsal to that sense, the eyes, soon begin to suffer. Inflammation. Itchiness. Temporary blindness. To neutralize the effect, your human host, if alive, will involuntarily lactate milk from their tear ducts. Men and women alike. And you—" Johnson wisps his hand through the impalpable, stillborn air "unto the veil—are too far gone to experience the fragrant fallout." His eyes glower below the concave meniscus of his brow: "Let alone apologize for it." He looks to the lamp. Its presence humanly savored. He looks to the lamp long enough its bright physics burn white stigmatas into his central vision. Until the seared afterimage will last—must last—longer than his fleeing hedonism.

forced to take an involuntary step forward, he turns it into a slow saunter, arcing across the room to a large plaster bust sat off-center on a wooden table, collecting shadows in the deep cuts that form its blind and angular face. in doing so, he remains always at an equal remove from johnson, though it hardly matters when they could both condense such a space in less time than it would take a bug to draw breath.

dialogue prompts from inland empire (2006).

i don't have the key.

i'm going to find out one day.

when will you tell it?

who could have known?

i do not think it will be much longer now.

are you looking for something?

i live just down the street.

what a lovely home you have.

would you like a coffee?

i think it is important to know one's neighbors, to say hello to them.

i'll be just close by if you need me.

you have a new role to play, i hear?

it isn't something you remember.

forgetfulness: it happens to us all.

that's not part of the story.

i don't like this kind of talk.

i can't seem to remember if it's today, two days from now, or yesterday.

you have everything you need to soar back to the top and stay perched there.

are you hiding a smile?

is your devilish mind scheming?

if you're looking for shock value, why don't you try looking in the mirror?

i could tell you stories that'll curl your hair.

'terrible' is an inadequate description of it.

i didn't think you'd be here.

the things you said weren't the truth?

are you sorry about last night?

information is indispensable.

i think you understand more than you let on.

i didn't know you before. i didn't ever have this feeling.

all i see from this is blue tomorrows.

i've got a lot of nerve, i know.

seems like only yesterday i was carrying my own weight.

i'm listening to you, but i can't hear you.

sometimes people don't say exactly what they mean.

oh, poor small infant child.

don't ruin this.

i won't fall in love with you.

it's a story that happened yesterday, but i know it's tomorrow.

look at me, you fucker!

who the hell are you?

strange what love does.

when you open your eyes, someone familiar will be there.

do you want to see?

in time, people reveal who they truly are.

it's an old story.

when i get mad, i really get mad.

i really thought you would last, you two.

i don't take this kind of behavior.

look at me and tell me if you've known me before.

i almost didn't recognize you.

can you fuckin' believe that?

something's wrong. bad wrong. can you feel it?

i come about an unpaid bill that needs payin'.

this isn't the way it was.

somebody's trying to kill me.

i'm trying to tell you so you'll understand how it went.

the thing is, i don't know what was before or after.

i don't know what happened first. it's kind of laid a mind fuck on me.

i'm not who you think i am.

i figured one day i'd just wake up and figure out what the hell yesterday was all about.

i'm not too keen on thinking about tomorrow, and today's slipping by.

it was like i was watching everything go on around me while i was standing in the middle.

hey, watch this move.

just like a movie star.

why you tell us that shit?

it's okay. you dying, is all.

he speaks and breaks her concentration. the only noise otherwise is the looping ceiling fan overhead. it's rare that the place is so quiet. somewhere, there's a rowdy thirteen year-old threatening to blow something to pieces out of angry, teenage impudence, but sevika's not ready to deal with that headache. not yet.

needle and thread, pulled tight: she's got one heavy, false hand on his arm while she stitches him up. it's been a rough morning. they'd been ambushed in the lanes, on the way to collect a scheduled payment. she'd told him not to come. he hadn't listened. some idiot with a rifle and a dream had come close, nicked his forearm, a long, thin, nasty gash. she'd turned that man's brain to mush, but now they're here, back below, the opening hours for the last drop edge closer and closer, and she's doing this. she wants a drink. or shimmer. both.

@seivka is at the periphery where the lamp-light melts into itself until it is water-soft and strange. if he turned his head, he could see her fully, mark her progress by more than just the lines of fire crawling up his arm. he chooses not to. a demonstration of trust and control in equal measure: trust in her, control over himself, over the dead man’s fear that still has occasion to seize him with the river's sudden fury after heavy rain.

VOLITION [failure] — oh no.

love smells like someone running their hands over your hair. the static electricity buzzing under the oils. love is a bathtub. all skin and blisters.

VOLITION — but let's not think about that, champ.

Crowley grasps Lee's arm. Sultry. Lee shivers—abscission-y. Touch itself, from another, is a tropical topical of the present; pleasurable and potent and humiliating (as salacious as soliciting someone to sunscreen between your shoulder blades). Lee never asks; starvestruck, he basks. Lee exists here—now—profoundly. Wherever 'here' is.

That is new.

Knowing, definitively, 'when' he is but not 'where'.

Wide, grassy plains repeat and repeat exactly how (and why) noise, here, does not. The clap never returns. Echoless. As if the land ascribes to the same monkly vow of now.

"You have—" it is objectively pleasanter in this field (just so) and that disrupts Lee's oversized and in effect ill-fitting grouchiness he wears because he thinks he should; still, his eyes flick to Crowley's, their hazel hue shimmering like wish-tossed pennies oxidized-green. But Lee cannot outperform the elements: even marooned to snowless lands, his cold, grave stare is not so cold nor dark: his eyebags (sunken maroon dunes) are far darker. He huffs and abandons the charade. In this present state, remembering the time he was counting down to until Kaye's birth lags, foggily delayed (like the weather-late bus); his brow riffle-shuffle-bends. Then. Politer, eyebrows raised rather than his voice: "You have until seven forty-nine."

crowley waves the question away. ❛ not important. and, ❜ a finger points at lee. ❛ i’m not the one with somewhere to be, mate. so, why don’t you help me help you? ❜ sinking his hands back down into his coat, he steps around lee, taking care to keep his shoes from the mud.

❛ first we have ourselves a little heart to heart about what you’ve seen vis-à-vis end of the world, all that. ❜ un-bodied, his voice encircles lee’s shoulders from behind. ❛ and then i, ❜ coming back into view he completes his circumnavigation, ❛ deliver you to this baby you’re so keen on. smiles, happy families. ❜ the hands come out again, open palms offering the world. ❛ winners all around. ❜

Candid: “I enjoy your sense of humor, Crowley.” And he means it. Without ulterior purpose. He isn't appraising for purity. This is pure praise.

he touches lee’s upper arm. his palm is hot even through the layers of lee’s clothes. there's a light pressure to it, as though he were preparing to shake lee awake. then it falls away.

they’re in a field of coarse, withered grass, grooves of mud cut across it. the air is cold and saturated, though there's no snow, not even on the peaks of the distant mountains that border the field. above them, the sun has slid lower in the sky, pulling long shadows from underneath their feet.

nah. she's not naive enough for that. neither of them are. ruby is watching klaasje's hand, the way it curls around the rope. she's got pale, thin fingers. she gives ruby a real answer. this is what makes her look up.

a bit of wind shivers the reeds and the thin-legged birds that have run out onto the mudflats to pick at worms. it rushes toward the martinaise waterfront, a crumble of buildings in the distance. shunts over the slab concrete balcony, her rooftop prison, and strums the red string she tied from the window to the radio antenna.

tracing the shot that came from somewhere out here. the flat exposure of the coastline crawls up her back, her pulse at the base of her throat.

dialogue prompts from north american lake monsters: stories by nathan ballingrud.

no one is judging you. i just want to help.

i’ll bet you see all kinds of people come through here.

i’ve just got a lot on my mind today, i guess.

maybe i can help distract you.

you’ve known me for what, five minutes?

what can i say? i’m impulsive. caution to the wind.

i’m on the run. i stole a car.

why are you telling me this? i don’t want to know this.

so, this is it? this is how it happens?

i don’t hate anybody. i wish i had it in me.

do you think it’s possible for something beautiful to come out of an awful thing?

do you think a good life can redeem a horrible act?

if i don’t get to hit somebody soon, i’m gonna snap.

you can’t turn into a shut-in. you have to get out.

sometimes people really are what they say they are.

i can only imagine how you must feel.

what’s up, gorgeous?

can you see me in a church?

i’m still here. of course i’m still here.

does it matter how i want it?

you’d be surprised how much more there is to my life.

you passive little shit.

sometimes you’ve just gotta make do with what’s available.

why did you leave me? you were everything i had.

want me to read you a story?

will you cuddle with me?

are you scared of anything?

it’s okay to be afraid.

i thought you might be in trouble.

i think i’m haunted.

you can’t go down that road by yourself.

a ghost is something that fills a hole inside you.

you need to think carefully when you decide what you can live without.

you must think i’m crazy.

this is my home. it’s everything i know.

something’s wrong with me. something’s really wrong.

what’s happening to you? are you okay?