easy money

It was exactly what she didn’t want, and Ivory barely bit back a curse when she heard his voice. Anyone even barely associated with the casino was someone she didn’t want to interact with outside of work hours. They only served as a reminder of the shackles that bound her to this damned city, and the sooner she was rid of them the better.

“ I don’t know what made you think that I had any money. If I did you wouldn’t be seeing me on the dealer’s side, would you? Those with money to spare would be on the other side of the table, and those with money and sense would be far far away. ”

This was not completely true. There were plenty who came to the casino night after night in hopes of doubling or tripling their meagre funds, betting on their supposed future earnings, but it was the job of people like her to continue the illusion, lull them into a false sense of hope all the while draining what they were willing to lose in the name of earning.

She can tell he doesn’t mean to leave her alone any time soon, and shoves one of her bags at him. “ If you’re going to keep sticking around, at least make yourself useful. What are you doing around here, anyway? ”

Ivory has never been one to keep tabs on the lives of others, much less someone she was barely acquaintances with, and hadn’t seen him since his … departure. Looking at him now, it didn’t seem as if he’d had much luck after the temper tantrum at the casino he had caused.

Laughter, a sharp-edged thing, “You think I’m gonna carry that for you?” You shove your free hand into your pocket, avoiding the bag that Ivory pushes at you. You hold up the beers in your other hand, shaking them for her to see, “I’ve also got my own things to carry as you can see. Here to pick up some things of my own.”

How completely like her. She had held her nose up at the Heart’s Palace as well, not one to succumb to a little simple flattery, silver-adorned words broken against her resolve like waves against a rocky coast. You’d swap those niceties out for a passing jab here and there, happy enough with toying as your eyes had been been set on a different type of prize.

“Hm, it’s more your general attitude if you ask me. It’s probably why you didn’t get along too well with the others back then? It only makes sense. From their perspective, you act like all those families that live out in Queensland or those tourists that come pouring into the casino each night but I’ll cut you some slack: I know we’re not all that different.” Upon your mouth, a sly smile dawns like a curved crescent moon that hardly fits with the nonchalant shrug of your shoulders as she starts down the street, tracking with her.

It’s all fun and games to you who’s been able to escape with the skin on your back. She is hardly as lucky, still a willing prisoner of the blindingly bright cage of the Heart’s Palace.

you are not something to be touched and i am something in dire need of a tethering  —  tell me, what does that make us? there is no right way for the two of us to exist without some kind of heartbreak but i’ll curl my hands around hemlines and pretend you won’t lead me down rabbit holes that you’ll bury me alone in. 

“what’s a forever place, then?” the question falls from lips in raindrop tumblings, pattering against the other, clinging to skin. “i know Time wouldn’t allow for that kinda thing to exist, but if it could, where would ya put a Forever?” 

he thinks he would keep it in the soft spot just behind the ear, someplace warm enough for a Forever to nest. someplace where it can open its eyes and press its lips to the conch of ears and whisper that it exists, that it is here. you can sleep easy now. 

“used to hide from doctors ‘nd nurses. sometimes from my own shadow when it was actin’ funny, y’know? does it less nowadays, but way back when it never followed me right. a little rude ‘f it, if ya ask me.” a twitch of noses, expressions huffy for a moment before the thought is forgotten, turning back to arthur again. “does yours do that too? ‘ve been askin’ ‘round but ‘m startin’ to think maybe my shadow just doesn’t like me very much. everyone else’s seems to follow ‘em just fine.” 

he follows his friend easily, drifting down the hallways of the not-homes like ghosts with footfalls too heavy. he thinks he’d like to make a burrow out of a room or two one day; likes how the motel feels like Noplace. it could just be his companion of choice for the night, some kind of conductor for white noise and missing spaces, but theo likes it all the same. 

“i like it.” he says simply, smiles too genuine. “why’d ya leave here? ‘s not the worst place to stay ‘round the city, y’know. could almost be cozy enough, if ya ask me.” 

There are no forevers—you knew this then, you have fought it for as long as you’ve lived until you too are consumed by it. Time moves by you in waves until you are neck-deep, struggling to breathe, the world you can see getting darker and darker.

It is an easy enough question when he asks no matter how it lays bitter on your tongue, a lie that serves you more than it serves him. “Of course forever doesn’t exist. Let’s keep it that way.” Luckily for you, mankind has failed to halt time all together and instead settled for keeping track of it with the slow ticking of the seconds across clock faces, the body doing the same, smooth pulsing muscle, a heart contracts, beating in time.

There’s nothing more to say about it—no point in letting Theo water the dream of a place where they can exist, bound. “So it goes without saying, it was time for me to leave,” what had happened then? A situation much less glamorous—you were short on cash, simple as that. Instead, you had found someone to live off of, trading sweet words and nights out for a warm bed, for a play at tenderness, “I leave when I want to and I come when I want to.”

You move easily throw the walkways back towards the lot, not completely closed to the wind outside—a ghost in your own right. Listen to what he says, the rambling of his voice as the mind reaches back, you follow along, piecing it together—Rutledge. Hardly a shock is it with the way he talks, the shifting light behind his eyes. Who are you to judge—a man who has never seen god.

A hum low in your throat, the idea tickles you, “Hm, mine is pretty normal. What’s funny for a shadow? Just sounds like you’ve got a lot of ideas of what it should and shouldn’t be doing.”

is he your favourite scar, your worst thought? there must be a kind of courage to being an open wound, to an admittance of hurt in a world so eager to stitch itself up again in a pretence of being whole. as if we aren’t all just innards waiting to be spilled, hearts bleeding with every beat. 

you are a kind of world he is afraid to live in, did you know? all closed store signs, all locked from the inside. he’s got his foot in the crack of a door you want to slam shut and he’s hoping you’ll let him squeeze in. 

stupid, i know, to hope in a place like this. but you are still here with him, so it is not for nothing. so it means something. it has to.

“‘m always tryin’. might be a waste ‘f Time, but who says Time mattered ‘nyways?” he shrugs, loose smiles beginning to curl lips again. makes him almost look like the rabbit-boy he was supposed to be instead of the blurred memory this night has made of him. 

“well, i think i’ll be the judge ‘f whether or not you’re a good host or not, mister arthur.” he sticks his tongue out at him, hands quick to clutch onto the hem of his companion’s shirt as soon as the other brushes his hands away from him. a latching, a clinging. don’t let go of me. 

bright eyes follow you easily, watching how the ice melts on your tongue, makes your lips a brighter pink. curious boys mimic the action, snapping open the box and choosing instead to grab a fistful of ice, holding it in fists and watching knuckles turn white. it starts to sting, the drippings of water following the stream of veins. 

“i used to hide in closest ‘nd cabinets ‘round this big. when i was even smaller, i used to even fit in the cupboards. sometimes ‘d get stuck for a whole day ‘nd no one would find me. not sure if anyone even bothered lookin’. can’t remember if i always wanted to be found.” a story for a story makes us even. it does not have to be true, just spoken. 

“what’re ya hidin’ in there, if not yourself? what else is worth hidin’?” 

He is a shadow thing, latching on to your shirt hem with the desperate fervor of a boy half-drowned. As if you are a solid plank of driftwood in the ocean to which he can cling and rest upon—though perhaps you are yourself no more than a resting place for others though you do well not to admit it.

This is the story instead: you are not something to be touched. Fancy yourself an elusive thing, mythic and shifting in the fading light. Altogether unseen. You have long spent your life looking for this and have all but start become the phantom figure of your own endless chasing. Ragged, worn, and lean.

(It’s all lies, or at least, it’s mostly that.)

“Things I’ve stolen, shit other people are looking for. It’s not a forever place. Just a place in case someone comes knocking on the door.” It’s vague enough.

The water drips from Theo’s closed palms, a shadow that twists around you, a shape that doesn’t exactly match. You pause, looking back at him who is both so big and so small all at once—made completely of in-betweens. “Kids do that—hiding in and under shit you’d never expect them to. What’d you hide from then,”

(and did it find you?)

—a lop-sided grin at the idea of childhood monsters. They are not bound to the young, continuing to prowl the streets of Wonderland, twisted and grown like overripe fruit, nearly rotten. Is that what hides in him? He barely flinches as the cold seeps into him, water dripping from his hands. 

For however long he had known Arthur, he knew the man in jail was stalling. Miserably so. There was part of him that wanted shake his head and walk out — he could’ve been asleep, could’ve been anywhere except at the precinct in the dead hours of the early morning. Or maybe the private investigator just needed another coffee ( everyone had vices, his were simply laced with caffeine and nicotine ). 

“You used your one phone call to chat with me?” He didn’t meant to come off as judgmental, but it was hard to be anything but skeptical around Arthur. Gus shook his head, finding the request for privacy to be valid ( yet ridiculous ). This was a jail — which meant privacy was tossed out the door by wavering cops who were paid far too much for their incompetence. 

“Quit stalling,” Gus replied, leaning against the opposite wall. Observing the ghost-like person in front of him, not entirely amused. “Get to the point, Arthur.” Since there had to be a good reason to drag him down here. 

“Fine—I’ll cut to the chase. Clearly caught you in a bad mood, I get it.” You shrug, nonchalantly—this isn’t your first night in and probably wouldn’t be your last though it’s not preferable by many means. While the apartment waiting for you was in poor repair, a flickering light over the kitchenette and peeling wallpaper, it beat sleeping sitting up. Leaning in, your hands grip the bars, bringing your face closer, “I need a favor.”

Mock-privacy—clearly the best you would be granted here at this late hour,  Gus was being particularly unfriendly, selfish with his freedom. Not that you would be different in his case—you can understand that, in the end, it was your own skin.

“But first, have this,” almost like a trick of light, a cigarette appears between your fingers, which you hold out like an olive branch, followed by a quick light, hidden in your palms. “Managed to slip a few in since who knows how long this night will be for me.”

Stepping back from the bars, you straighten out, standing to full height. One hand still holding fast to the bars.

DATE & TIME: september 14th, 2.40pm  LOCATION: a supermarket STATUS: closed for @knxve

It’s almost routine for Ivory at this point, alerts that pop up on her phone for grocery sales, which days are the best for getting fresh produce at better prices, which brands are the most value for money. It’s what must be done if she wants to get out of here as soon as possible, and if everything went well there would only be a year and a half left before she could completely leave this city behind.

If everything went well, that is, and she has long learned that nothing ever went well around here. But that small hope is still too strong to give up, and it doesn’t take too much effort from her to be able to calculate her numbers.

It’s a little time for her to relax for herself, listen to a podcast while going about her errands, especially after seeing a building literally collapse inn front of her … she could swear that the smell of smoke still lingers somehow.

It isn’t until she’s paid for her items that she sees a familiar face near the exit, but as she gathers her things she turns the volume up on her phone slightly, having absolutely no intention to stop and chat as she tries to walk straight past.

You had waited, of course, idling near the exit, smoking, the six-pack sweating as it hangs from your fingers by its plastic yoke. You are liable to sate your curiosity, its hunger, which surfaces when you had noticed a familiar face in an unfamiliar scene—unaware, going about her everyday life, unadorned by the glittering, noisy scene of the Heart’s Palace.

Remember passing by her at her table, cards tilted between her fingers; friendly, meaningless chatter your disguise those months ago. She had a reputation amongst the other runners: an unlucky table for the crowd even though they were unlikely to notice before it was too late; like a fly in a trap.

You have your own reputation—more similar than different.  

“Wouldn’t imagine I’d see miss high-roller shopping here of all places. You’re not lost are you?” You begin to wave with a bit of smirk before spreading your arms, gesturing obliquely at the surrounding area. “This is more a place for penny-pinchers like the rest of us.”

perhaps it was a bad idea to ask arthur, they think, bottom of teeth worrying lower lips. there’s that tone, that possibility of being a bother, space fitting around them strangely instead of them existing in it. 

feet are firmly placed on top of the break, hesitant to lift their heel even with arthur’s instruction. 

“i  —  i’m sorry, i hope  —  well, i hope you won’t regret this. i’m sorry if i’m being a bother.” they cast a quick look to him, furtive, before eyes slide back to the unfamiliar setup of controls and meters and knobs before them. “i can get you some meals, i’ll buy it myself and everything for you. it might be a little cold after my shift but it’ll still be good so long as you don’t mind it too much. if you do then… well, i’ll figure something out to repay you.” 

words are quick, as if afraid of being heard, afraid of leaving lips in fear of falling the wrong way. almost immediately mouths are sealed shut again, pursed slightly in concentration as they try to follow arthur’s instructions. 

“is this  —  is this okay? i’m not going to crash it, am i? i… you made it look so easy, i thought… thought i could do it too.” eyebrows furrow, mouths a slanted line. “alright, okay, i think i got it  —  what next?”

The quivering thing beside you—stuttering like the sound of train tracks, rooted with their feet planted firmly on the floor of the car, one foot heavy on the brake.

Stuck all their life, barely a beam of sunshine on their skin, movement is made unnatural where for you this is no more than breathing, the easy rhythm of the road, the soft lullaby of engines and rushing wind. You sigh, spitting smoke out the window and looking at the buildings in the distance, still, unmoving. Within you, a twinge of pity—“c’mon, stop apologizing already. Let’s just call it a dinner, yeah? I’ll just swing by after your shift or something.”

“The car is already running, so just shift into first gear like I showed you.” You turn back to face them, pointing at the clutch and its numbered faced. The numbers have begun to fade—you had bought it secondhand but it was yours anyways. You could feel it under your palm, proving itself to you. “Your left foot—the one on the clutch—lift it up while moving your right foot from the brake to the gas. It is easy, you just need to get used to the feeling like riding a bike.”

FOR: @knxve​ DATE/TIME: 09/17 PM 8:30 LOCATION: the Mangled Mermaid

Thursday night after quitting time and it’s a slow turn, just the usual regulars straggling in and out the doors to cluster around shaded tables in disgruntled chatter. Most are dock workers, some come off the carriers that find their way into port, and others are local residents looking for easy liquor and the sometimes-pleasant company of strangers they’ll probably never meet again in daylight.

He‘s wiping down a few glasses up front when his supplier pops in, nodding towards the back before disappearing around the corner again. It’s slow enough he decides to let the servers handle the floor while he retreats down the hallway, pausing when he passes the break room—a glance at his phone tells him it’s definitely pass time for certain someone’s shift to start.

The figure sprawled inelegantly across the break room couch is, unfortunately, exactly what he expects to find when he steps inside. Typical…not in the mood to entertain the whims of the younger man, he picks up a book somebody else has left behind and drops it unceremoniously onto Arthur’s face.

“These crates aren’t gonna unload themselves,” is all he says as explanation, already heading out the door again with an impatient gesture. “Let’s go, up! You know what’ll happen if you make me drag your ass out.”

You were dreaming about the yard. The sun was peeking through the clouds—illuminating where you had buried it. Your tiny hands dig through the dirt, it probably is still there—you never had the chance to dig it back up.

(In this way, it’s still yours, a treasure only you know of.)

You reach forward as you’re rudely awoken—your legs splaying out, boot landing with a clap on the ground as you nearly tumble off the couch which sticks to your arms. “You couldn’t give me five minutes before telling me haul these crates in,” despite the grumbling you are on your feet, heading down the hallway out back. “A good morning would be nice,” you shout with a cheeky sneer, no more than a tiny nip, at the shadow of the man already back to his post.

Huffing, you head out to truck out back—holding the crate close to your chest as you head back in, letting it down with a little jostle near the back of the bar. You do this a few more times while working up a sweat, wiping it with the back of your arm before heading to the sink for a glass of water.

“You know, your guy could be nicer,” walking up towards the bar, you gulp quickly like a fish out of water, before placing the empty glass on the bar, hip leaning against the wood, “a little surly today is all. I mean he’s not the one carrying all these boxes.” You look around, a few familiar faces floating up, though they all have a similar quality, “Seems like a lot of surly faces tonight including yours.”

i am made of regret, mother. meaning, you look at me and remember all that you wish you forgot; meaning, i am a trinket of repine for others, hanging in the peripheral of their life like an air freshener by your car’s rearview mirror. i exist to make others wish a part of them didn’t; an in/action, a mistake. 

mother, am i only a satellite because the earth grew too tired of me? 

“are we both really Here, though? maybe not all of you is. i think i know not all of me is. ‘ve left too many little breadcrumb trails ‘f me all over the place to be whole ‘nd right here at the same time.” he should mind it more than he does, probably. rabbit-boys are split into fractured fragments, burying pieces in the dirt and waiting for them to regrow into better versions of him after the right amount of rain. 

“we’re not.” a confirmation, quietly made. “i keep wantin’ to be connected to people but they all keep bringin’ scissors ‘nd snippin’ me away. maybe it’s okay ‘nd maybe it isn’t  —  i haven’t figured it out yet.” 

theo watches as the cigarette fizzles out in the water before sinking to the bottom of the pool. something in him feels the same, missing how he used to be before the neon painted him in shades too dim. 

but there it is  —  hope. or at least a distraction. ears practically perk up at arthur’s offer, immediately taking quick steps towards him, shoulders lightly bumping. too hard and perhaps the waters will be their home for the night, but theo doesn’t mind. 

 “no such thing as knowin’ ‘xactly, but i’d like to see you do your best.” slight smiles, forcing hands to worm fingers around arthur’s, dragging. the pool fades into dark corridors, a long line of doors awaiting. 

“what stories are yours here? promise ‘ll keep ‘em safe. at worst, ‘ll maybe forget ‘em or keep ‘em forever. i can tell ya some ‘f mine, but none of ‘em will be true ‘less ya want ‘em to be.” a tilt of heads, a shadow of a grin. “think we could do it? make somethin’ Real? or is that askin’ too much of two things like us?”  

A twinge of regret—a shot in the dark. He is your thoughts, hurtling down a dark road; there are things you leave in the rearview, in fact there are many. A dim streetlamp suffocated by the fog catching your eye for but a moment. Instead, you chase the thin yellow lines toward a horizon that never comes—that is your peace.

(What use is it to think of where you are or where you have been? No matter: a body remembers.)

You look down into the pool and into the split-second reflections of the two of you standing at the edge before you step back, never truly seeing, “Well you’ll figure it out or at least you’ll try, right?”

(Just not me.)

It’s not a real question—it hangs, ambivalent, floating.

(You think: if you don’t, someone else might as well—a proxy life.)

Theo is quick to begin pulling you away from the water that he’s nudged you towards, grabbing for your hands. A guide without a destination. A small smirk plays across your lips thinking about it—the irony of the gesture, you shrug, “Don’t be a brat about it—I’m hosting here and I’m a stellar one at that. Only the real, raw stories from me. Remember them or forget them, I don’t care, it’s all in the past.”

Wresting your hand back from the clutching hands, you push them into your pockets, stepping ahead of him. You walk past the corridor with the ice machine and chuckle, letting yourself be held up. “See this ice box, here? It’s bigger than it looks—I’ve hidden lots of shit in here, you can’t leave things too long but no one’s going to go sticking their hands into a machine full of ice or wait for it to drain,” you flip open the bin, pulling free an ice cube before letting it melt on your tongue, the lid slapping shut with a quick efficiency. “Once, a buddy jumped in even though he wasn’t hiding from anyone, just being a bit of an ass.”

Half-truths—these are easiest to swallow. Once you did see someone try to drunkenly fit into that ice box. You laughed and drank everything neat that night worried they’d piss it in too.

It’d been a long night — and little did Gus know now, but the night would stretch into the early hours of the morning, with the flames of a church fire replacing the morning sunrise. Until then, the private eye found himself stepping into the precinct, the police officers all nodding at him in greeting ( probably assuming he was helping on a case ). If they actually did their jobs, they would be asking him about which case, and requesting to see his identification. 

Instead, the investigator navigated to the lock up — to where someone used their one phone call to reach out to him ( and whether or not that was a  foolish mistake would be determined ). Gus opened the door, finding his caller abruptly stand up, as if he hadn’t been rotting here prior. 

“Arthur,” Gus greeted. “You know I’m not a lawyer.”  If this related to bailing him out somehow, there much the investigator could do ( and investing his own money in this was a poor choice ).  

The bars between you—it makes sense, doesn’t it? It functions no more than a sign that you would never quite see eye to eye. Not that you would try to do as much. Your meetings were and have been tangential—or perhaps correlated, criminal and investigator—but the man in front of you was hardly as straight-laced as he seemed from first glance—this much you knew.

Though, fool me once—  

“Well,” you crack your shoulders, stretching out, coming alive, before relaxing into an easy posture, hardly in a rush anywhere it would seem to the untrained eye, “I was hoping I didn’t have to get to the needing a lawyer part.”

They say the straight route is fastest but you have to disagree. It hasn’t ever gotten you anywhere; you, a wanderer of many roads, all circuitous, none ever so direct. “How have you been, though? My situation is pretty explanatory, as you can see, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to call up an old friend or sorts. Must be a busy month for you with everything going on, a little chat could hardly hurt you.”

a secret: boy has never learned how to swim, tiptoes alongside his own drowning with a grin. knows well that one day these lungs of his will be full, be it with saltwater, smoke, or dirt  —  he is not picky. he’s held his head underwater in overflowing bathtubs before, considers it practice. spills his pills into the waters, watching them float into open mouths, watching them disintegrate. 

when he looks to the water now, he thinks if he was to fall in, perhaps he would just diffuse the same way; fingertip-first until there is nothing but a half-beating heart or the bauble of his eyes sinking to the bottom, waiting to be fished out by a curious Cat again. 

“dunno, really. spent a lot’f time ‘round people tellin’ me my life wasn’t gonna be nothin’ ‘till i get better but then never told me what better means. guess they just meant ‘not me’, maybe.” he shrugs, heels dangerously close off the ledge. there’s a long pause, an open and close of mouths, words unsure of how to take shape in the back of throats, turning into some ugly thing that spews past lips. 

“maybe i don’t wanna be better. maybe i just wanna be good, but i don’t think i’m that, either.” 

sadness is a stranger’s jacket on him, ill-fitting and moth-bitten. flicks of water from the small kicks of his steps are no longer playful, too heavy now for a thing who considered himself some star, some satellite thing. 

he always forgets the toll gravity has on him. 

“isn’t home just another place for existin’, just with a nicer name? ‘s whatever you want it to be  —  ‘s nothin’ special, at the end ‘f it. ‘s just a place.” he accepts the cigarette from arthur and for a moment, they are some renaissance painting, reaching  —  the same kind of outstretched hands, a different kind of aching. 

“do you think My world and Yours spins in the same direction?” he takes a drag, breathes out and keeps the cigarette perched between his teeth. “i wanna think they do, but i think ‘m probably jus’ over-dreamin’ again.” 

What is a life on the edge? Always teetering between one place and the next, hanging on mere moments just before and just after. You create a tension that can only exist in a life spent stuck in a vacuum—near bursting but never close enough. The most delicious of feelings, the holiest of all holies for those who keep to the road as you do.

Standing on the edge of the pool, water lapping against the filters stuck with leaves, you can almost feel it—whatever it may be you decide to leave it nameless—unacknowledged. Call it what it is: you don’t belong anywhere or to anyone and you like it that way—it is a condition that plagues the body next to you and one you take for granted.

Theo struggles with the words, forming them as if out of the thick, wet clay, shaping them around the sensations of his life. These are things you rather not weigh you down—you step around them, staying silent save for a small hum of acknowledgement, of presence, keeping your momentum.

(In fact, you don’t know what to say. You do not know goodness, what it means or who decides. You cannot tell him what you don’t know, cannot lead him down a path that isn’t yours. It doesn’t cross your mind to think about your life in these binaries anyways—it is, as it’s always been, a losing game.)

Instead, you pull back the cigarette—fingers brushing against his haphazardly before you take back what is yours with a long, final pull. “This is just a place and we’re both here, aren’t we? Isn’t that enough?” The ash burns close to your fingers, head tilting back to exhale into the sky, not directed at anything in particular. “It’s not like we’re connected at the hip or anything.”

You nearly regret bringing him along—allowing something to come into your orbit that reflects a version of you that you don’t wish to see.

With a flick of your wrist, you toss the remains of the cigarette—mostly ash, a choked out ember—into the pool. It fizzles, lackluster, as it floats for few moments before sinking.

(Does he notice the way your lip twists, tight-lipped, into an off-center frown? Uncomfortable, embarrassed by the display which is nothing but honest, earnest, delivered unconditionally to you. You can hardly call it something earned.)

“Maybe they were praying to the wrong God.” 

There’s a weight to her words that is almost ancient, some primal urge warning her that the structure of her nightmares wasn’t made for a forgiving God. She finds herself straddling the line between awe and quivering despair, closed-mouth agony that closes the human mind in on itself. 

She tries to qualify her words with a shrug, shoulders vibrating with a strange fluid role that almost devolves into a shudder. Her words are spat out like broken glass, her teeth digging into her lip until blood coats the end of her cigarette, the dirtied end accusing her like the lipstick stains of a mistress.

“Better to not damn yourself with One if you can pray to another, y’know?”

Only two things seem to exist; an ocean of flames and his hand on hers, warm, dangerous things for a woman who can’t remember a time where she wasn’t cold. She wonders which will claim her first, which she wants to be claimed by. 

She wonders if she would have time to scream before her lungs turned to ashes. She wonders if there’s an afterlife and if her brother is there. Wonders if she wants to see him, if the guilt wouldn’t lick under her skin like flames and each breath wouldn’t draw more smoke into lungs choked with disease.

Her hand catches his in the space between them, an anchor to a world that has already revealed its horrors. Almost-believers from opposite ends of the earth holding each other in a place that looked a lot like Hell. 

She turns her attention to him for a moment, half-expecting to see a twinkle of malice in his eyes, but finds nothing but earnestness. In this moment she is Eve, naked, exposed, and looked upon by God and Adam with lust and pity in equal measure. 

“I tend to keep my personal and professional life separate.” A hollow excuse for her discomfort, leaning into him but trying to ignore his presence, his pulse, his warmth, eyes focused on the blaze once more, unblinking. A twisted tug-of-war between a woman who burns easily and one who has been freezing since birth. She musters a laugh, corrupted by smoke that devolves into a cough. “Guess it didn’t last long.” 

A pause, breath hitching slightly, letting his hand drop out of her grasp as if she is made of porcelain and the weight of his flesh threatens to shatter her. 

“You can go, if you want.”

What is there to say? “Don’t think it matters to who or what,” worship, devotion, all lost on a man like you who cannot plant his knees to the earth, to feel it tremble in the wake of its maker.

Admiration is all you can muster. Adjacent feelings swim inside you instead: desire, envy, hunger.

There is no shelter here for her and so she takes to leaning into you, the next best thing. It’s not much, you are as empty as the structure in front of you—made of bones and shadows, empty enough for something to fester until it grows too big to hold inside you.

You easily let her fall into these dark places, you swallow one thing to fill the hole of another—another prize, another moment of respite. When one thing disappears, another must fill its place. These are the rules you live by.

You are so near to holding her, chasing away the feeling that had you running here in the first place—  

Suddenly, she withdraws her hands from you, your body a trap that had just nearly sprung, now simply sitting on edge. You turn to look at her as she pulls away, searching through the cigarette smoke for something that gives her away.

(You do not know that she hardly thinks of you; rather him.)

Laugh with her, laugh at this poor excuse for scene; a backwards thing that starts with them at the church and ends god knows where. If there were one, it would laugh too.

“I’ve got no where to be,” said matter-of-factly, it’s the truth. You reach for her sunglasses, a last barrier, palm skimming the curve of her jaw,  “I didn’t come here in the dead of night because I was in a rush.” 

(A series of locks and closed doors. The thrill of learning its nooks and crannies—you wait for the sound of a click.)

On a typical night, there are many more long faces behind the bars at the back of the precinct. Stuck in the space after capture and before judgement—limbo, a watered down purgatory in your opinion, turning the thoughts over before you begin to play through the night in your head as you sit there, arms crossed, eyes closed. 

All you have to say is that the entire series of events was unexpected, as if slipping at the sound of the starting gun, each step after the onset had grown increasingly precarious until you find yourself here—behind bars—for the first time in many months. 

(It is a simple thing, really. It goes like this: you can’t help yourself or maybe you can but don’t know that yet. A nighttime wanting, it fills itself with jewels that shimmer unseen in your pockets until they are turned out. It uses your arms and hands, though from a third perspective, you lend yourself to it—accomplice and victim the line between them grows until you can no longer belong to both.) 

Suddenly, the sound of a door opening and closing. A sound you know well—  

Open your eyes, one such as you must be alert. 

“Tell me I’m not going to regret helping you out with this.”

The only answer you look for is a no. Though there is a part of you that already is uneasy, buckled up in the passenger seat, a twinge of regret settling in your stomach looking at the slight thing next to you. Hands tell all and theirs are hesitant around the wheel, as if it were a live thing.

“And remind me again: what am I getting out of this?” You sigh, lighting up and rolling the window down as the car sits, idling, at the edge of an empty lot towards the edge of the slums. “I better at least get some meals—you’re still bussing at Poivre, right?” 

(Make it a point that you are compensated, that this is not given for free.) 

For once you are not at the wheel. It is an odd feeling, to sit in the passenger seat of your own car, waiting for the engine to turn in someone else’s hand. You can’t remember a time you had not been behind the wheel, you feel as if this has always been a part of you but you know that can’t be true. You remember the backyard, the empty driveway, the tattered screen door.

you are what you forget  —  your mother’s smile, your half-empty prescription bottles, your reason for taking a form when you decided you wanted to be someone worth existing. the audacity. 

boy is made of emptied burrows, just as his companion is an unused-road being; two shadows fooling themselves into believing they are the person and not the silhouette skimming pavement. 

“‘m still tryin’ to figure out how to do the whole livin’ bit down  —  if there’s a Way for it, then i don’t know it. ‘m almost certain ‘ve gotten it all wrong, y’know? least that’s what everyone tells me, anyways.” he doesn’t look at arthur when the words leaves his lips, something almost-sad, some almost-laugh. “what’s it matter, after all? the city’s gonna eat us for breakfast and in Time it’ll be like we were never even here. i mean, i can never remember what i had for breakfast, so why would wonderland?” 

he is a quiet ghost for once, changes his game from matching arthur’s steps to being his opposite, too focused on lefts and Rights to care much for the woman at the front, for the strange noises down the corridor, for the flickering bulbs that paint them as boys existing only in the in-betweens of light. looks up only at the mention of pool, head snapping like a dog’s. wide smiles are genuine when he sees the fluorescent blue waters before them, shimmering under the harsh lights. 

how it makes him look more like himself again, shadows trying to become corporeal again. a fumbling, but a trying, still. it is more than what he has had all night. 

he follows arthur with a charming clumsiness, nearly toppling into the waters as he tries to jump the fence, a small yelp cutting through the air as he catches himself on the edge of plunging headfirst in. when he turns to his friend, the lights reflected in his eyes could almost resemble the once-spark they used to hold. 

“‘ve never. had a lot’f halfway homes, but not here, not yet.” he dips the tips of shoes into the water experimentally, flicking some water in arthur’s direction. “maybe after tonight, ‘ll add it to my list. another place to say i existed in, y’know? just in case one forgets, there’s always another. you can never be too sure  —  homes ‘ve got a nasty habit of still bein’ homes without you.” 

How many nights have you sat here, the quivering glow of the submerged lights before you? It is but one in many—a single moment in a story that knows no end. A single moment that repeats over and over. You see yourself, your back hunched as you had let the water lap gently against your legs, chlorine skinned, the smell keeping with you, the motel sheets just the same. Then you had been very much the boy in front of you; listless, constantly looking for a moment to rest, near-drowning. 

Now, you sit on a poolside bed that creaks beneath you as you plant your feet squarely in front of you, spread. Flicking your middle finger in his direction with a quick snap of a grin as you feel the water on your neck, the familiar chlorine smell, “What’s with all your preconceived notions of how to live or what to be and what are you talking about the city eating us for breakfast?” 

“Who in your life is telling you all that?” Humor, incredulity— 

You do not hear what he does, listen as you might. Instead, you look on; depending on something that already begins to falter. From your pocket, you flick open your lighter, closing it tightly in your palm, thinking, traveling,

“I stayed here for a while a few years ago, not a nice place for a long time so I wouldn’t recommend it. Existing here, sure, but it isn’t really the same as a home.” 

What do you know of homes? A mother you don’t remember, a mother you don’t understand, a father who told you to leave, a brother who does it on his own. The house is still there but you don’t know that yet, you don’t drive down that road anymore. 

They live in a world where God and silence are the same. 

The inferno cuts through the city like a disemboweling knife, spilling what was once thought sacred onto the concrete. And yet here they stand, searching for something, women in habits choking on prayers around mouthfuls of broken teeth, passerby’s thumbing rosaries that hang like limp nooses at their sides. 

Perhaps belief is the ultimate sedative, and it has kept Wonderland oblivious to the fact it was already dead.

She performs her own communion, surrendering for a moment to the rush of chemicals in her brain, seeing heaven in the back of her eyelids; all white motes in a sea of black. She is no better than the city, desperately clinging to her mortal existence in some foolish attempt to prolong the inevitable. Dying in parts and fighting to keep the living pieces whole for a little longer. 

No matter how many parts of herself she bleeds, he never dies. Maybe part of her doesn’t want him to. Maybe as she staggers through the rubble she saw skeletons of children’s drawings with a boy and a girl with eyes like vultures and hair like oil spills, remembers the way they looked like mirror images when they laughed. Maybe he is what’s killing her, ravaging her insides until one day there is nothing but him.

Maybe she is inevitably dead, but tonight, she is alive, and she feels it. More than she has in a while, caught in a ceaseless explosion of pain that should have ended the world; but in her wordless howls, there is no one to hear and no one to care. 

She is one of God’s silenced disciples tonight, emerging from the ruins with eyes murky as oil-spills, fingers reaching for anything of this world to anchor herself to. Fingers catch flesh and she hardly registers the man in front of her, resting her palm against his arm as an apology of flesh, sunglasses pushed up to conceal tears on cheeks thick and tinted pink, spark of a cigarette between her lips to conceal the way she trembled under her own mortal weight. 

“D’you think all those prayers are doing any good?”

She is as you’ve never seen her, which is mostly through the filter of a TV screen, a thin, pixelated presence, an existence carried through cables to your peripherals; then again, a glint in her eyes, a hungry thing you barely catch a glimpse of the first time, though it calls to the depth inside you, a recognition you hardly understand. 

Tonight, in the darkness, it is another side; a prism that shifts as it turns. A side unseen, a curious gem that catches your eye. Hardly there, she is a wisp that touches you with the weight of something alive, clutching to it as it flees. The feeling pulls you from your thoughts, catching you by the arm before your better senses kick in.

(That is always how it happens, isn’t it? No urgency, a sleeping dog lies until it wakes, ravenous.) 

Can a person like you be solid ground for another? You have never been anything like this—always moving, a storm of locusts, devouring as you pass through.

“Look at it now—decades of prayer and it still ended up like this,” you don’t even gesture, nothing before you. You other hand closes around hers as it rests on your arm. You hadn’t expected anything coming here; all that you thought would welcome you was the darkness, the cool wind against your cheeks, an absence that wears you thin, “I’ve done it a lot over the years and no dice but maybe mine aren’t worth much in the grand scheme of things.” 

What is it to like to stand there in the presence of another, together despite the wreckage? Whole while everything around you is damaged, completely gutted? In truth, the difference is negligible, a hollowness rings through you both, a beautiful empty sound. 

For a few moments, you continue to look at the remains before you look at her, tears slip down her cheek and you contemplate reaching for them, taking what doesn’t belong to you, “long time no see.” Hands quicker than your mind pulls you back, you are already halfway there.