a story inside of a story.

IT IS HARD, BEING A PRISM IN A BURNING CITY. this is the only way i know how to tell someone what i want, to describe the infinitely unfolded accordion of my heart. to love with a rage gone blind from the knowledge of the stolen lands, dirty wars, honor killings, false idols, forced soldiers, and buried throats haunting every sentence. too many truths setting my retinas ablaze, and me, mad, mad, mad at the end of it all.

the kid from monkey man (2024). deeply private & selective. written by k. this blog is not spoiler free. it's somehow even more plotting dependent here than the other guys i write.

no sleep. just one long scream unfurling its way inside his head, a note that hums at a particular pitch every single day of his life. ravi knows: he'll die hearing that tone. he could end up a hundred lives from now, a different person, on the verge of stripping away every single thing binding him to this plane, and the sound would still be there.

so in that context, maybe not being able to sleep makes sense. what other option is there?

it's that impulse that makes him wander the edges of the settlement at night. he knows better than to leave it. out in the mojave are a thousand things that could kill you without blinking twice. deathclaw territory isn't close, but it isn't precisely far, either, and he's more comfortable dealing with the kind of threats made by raiders and rich men who think that nothing can touch them. those are understandable. so he walks instead, pacing sometimes the length of the tiny space he vaguely calls his own, and sometimes further, when that cage is too small.

he's seen mari do the same thing too, this pacing, the inability to rest. but when he sees this, he keeps to himself. he knows exactly where he stands in a place like this.

after all, he does what he does. he digs ditches. he builds structures out of corrugated metal and scrap. he works hard because it's what he's done for his whole life, and because his hands don't feel the impacts in the same ways they used to. layers of scarring will do that.

where he stands is here, opposite her, watching the way that she moves through the world and waiting until it turns into the blade of a knife cutting through. above them, a thousand stars peer down at them like bugs crawling across the bomb-scorched southwest, and every god that might have intervened directly is long gone. there's only what people make of themselves, and what he makes of mari is—unknown.

she's not like shakti. not like singh. but that doesn't mean he trusts her. she doesn't let go of anything. she hovers. she watches. and she doesn't seem to particularly like him, not that he's aiming for her to like him. other people are who he's more worried about. how they talk about her. how they elevate her. what that might mean.

because all things topple. this, if nothing else, he knows well.

he's lowered himself towards the ground in this back alley, crouched, gaze fixed on a single long crack in the sidewalk. it's one of the few ways he knows how to center himself, counting out the places each crack spirals into a dozen different roots like an ever-expanding banyan tree. the suit jacket lies there in a messy pile next to him on the ground, the tie haphazardly pulled off to hang around him like a noose that he's getting ready to pull tight all over again once he's settled.

usually he does this kind of re-centering alone. no one pays attention to a server who disappears for a few minutes, as long as they're back in time with a fresh tray of canapes or glasses of champagne. the woman running all of this might shout at him later, but it's not any worse than it was with queenie. it's something he can handle.

he didn't expect the woman to follow him outside, though. he's seen her over and over again, lingering in the corners, talking to powerful people. ravi's noted her in the same way he notes everyone. who catches his attention. who doesn't.

one or two times, he almost thought he caught her looking back, but he shook it off. who would notice him, in a place like this? there's still something, though—the prickle under his skin, the thought that he should know her face for some unknown purpose.

it's always better to trust your instincts. he should have known that. he does know that.

so he rises back up to his feet. dress shoes stay still, steady, mostly, even as his right hand taps a frantic, quick rhythm against the side of his thigh. the energy has to go somewhere. the tap-tap-tap against his body. you have to hold in violence. he's good at sewing it under his skin, waiting and waiting until the right moment to let it explode. but now isn't the time. the fuse has to burn more slowly, but that means putting the fire, the energy, out into the world in one way or another.

ravi smiles slightly over at her, a grim thing, no real humor in it. "just taking a break," he says, quiet, even.

this isn't him snapping. not yet. this is him building up towards it, letting the rage build up and up.

he looks back at her, steady. "do you need something, ma'am?"

he laughs, running his fingers through his hair. there's no cruelty to the sound. just a kind of wryness, as he stares up towards the sky. at this part of the city, you can see a few stars. the smog and pollution of night city rises upwards, obliterating it most of the time.but they keep the air over north oak a little cleaner than the rest of the city. if you pay as much as you do for a piece of property, you don't want it to be suffused with dirt and grime in the air.

sleep. ravi tries, every night, the same as anyone does. he lays there on the ground among a tangle of other bodies. most of them fall asleep instantly. it's a symptom of how hard everyone works, just enough hours to work, eat, and then sleep the bare minimum. not him, though. he sleeps in fits and starts. if he closes his eyes for too long the scream unfolds, and he jolts awake again. if he's lucky it isn't violent. if he's unlucky, it is.

so maybe that's why it's funny, to talk to him about sleep. he's lived like this for years. one time he had an old boss, a woman who liked to lay around during the day smoking and watching the staff run around her home, tell him that he should talk to someone. funny to think that he could afford that.

he's found himself sitting on the ground out here. outside's easier. inside, in the enormous ceilings of kerry's villa, made something itch in the back of his head. nothing he could put a name or a word to. there are places you belong and places you don't, and he's mostly used to not belonging in places that look like this, even with an invitation.

that's not something he can voice. it's something ground into the bleach burns, a thing he can't scrub away from himself.

in some ways, you didn't know how you'd feel about the water after the last time you drowned in it.

it was heavy then. you fell, and the impact felt like hitting concrete. you sank. flailed. the water rushed over you, pulling you under, further. you couldn't have been reborn in clean water, you think. the city was unclean, and you were of that city. it was a blessing in the same dirt you'd been raised in, full of the same industrial dust and waste that filled the rest of your life.

out here, in california, the ocean isn't anything like that. it has places where it's cleaner, where the water is clearer, but it's nothing like the river you knew back home.

together the two of you had found a quiet beach a short drive from where you'd been staying, halfway up the west coast. mari said something about wanting to go swimming, and there was no reason you could say no. she'd dragged you out there, practically pulling you along a little before dawn. the world was still mostly dark, struck through with bits of purple and orange thrown across the sky. mari's already gone. you can just pick up on the sound of her feet against the sand, even as you reach down, gentle, and touch where the waves wash up against the sand and pull back out. wet under your fingers.

you could make a mark here. then, in only a few moments, that mark would be washed away.

you glance back up in time to see mari splashing her way into the shallows. one direction. determined. like she often is, but this feels like something different. up to her ankles. then, with how small she is, up to her knees. it's then that you start following after her, trailing after footprints that just as quickly are washed away. all evidence of your passing will be gone when you leave. it's a thought that's both comforting and terrifying.

it's freezing cold. different than the water back home. water runs colder, but there it was always sweltering, boiling over. out here it bites. your breath catches in your throat for a moment and you pause.

the push. the pull. the whole world, trying to drag you into the depths.

you wade out further, until the point where you have to launch into motion. mari's already a long way out, a dot you can only dimly make out by the way her motions disturb the surface of the water. by the time you catch up enough to make out more of the details, she's floating. her head's tilted up towards the sky as you swim over to her. there was a midpoint where the waves weren't quite pulling you, but out here, you can feel how strong the currents are.

your motions slow as you get closer. it feels like the ripples of your approach would somehow disturb her.

it's not often you see mari like this—still, calm.

you could say something. anything. why this, why here? but instead, you tilt yourself back and let yourself float for a moment, looking up towards the sky. there are still a few stars visible this early. it feels endless above you and below you all at once, suspended in between.

this is the real edge of the world. closer to heaven, you think, than maybe you've ever been in your life.

you reach over, slow, careful, until your fingers brush against mari's. your fingers intertwine with hers.

the gentle, rhythmic drip-drip-drip of blood is the only other sound in the room besides ravi's breathing. one's staccato, the other longer, a whistle in his chest that's slowing down the more he calms himself, centers, is present and here. the knife he's still clutching in his hand is a small thing, barely larger than a pocketknife. the weight is comfortable in his hand. ravi glances aside at this other man, tall, the same well-tailored suit but a different kind of demeanor. all he's doing is trying to put it all together. to put a name to the face.

but it comes up blank. they don't know each other. this man looks as out of place in the city as ravi might have once looked in kings. like they might belong there, but there's something that isn't quite right.

around ravi, sprawled in awkward positions only occupied by the suddenly dead, are the bodies of around six cops as corrupt as any in the city. then there were the two other men, dressed sharply in suits. they fought differently—faster, cleaner. like people who were aiming to kill rather than fumbling with weapons and whatever they could hold. ravi's seen both. the bodyguards in kings fought a little similarly, even if it wasn't quite the same. the difference is what has his attention more than anything. it's a new element, not what he's used to in this city.

for a moment, he just keeps looking. then he wipes at some of the blood smeared on his face, which just collects more of it along the back of his hand, and breathes out again, slower, his breaths measured enough to be reasonable.

because this other man isn't looking at him like he's about to

"'this time'?" ravi repeats back, almost a little incredulous. that makes it sound normal.

maybe he shouldn't sound that incredulous. it is halfway normal for him at this point.

"it's not that bad," he tries, but it sounds sort of fake, even as ravi says it aloud. the blood's stopped running from his nose, but there's still the black eye blossoming into an ugly bruise, the blood on his knuckles, the way he's leaning weight towards his left leg rather than his right. the evidence is everywhere to the contrary, but he says it anyway on instinct. the sentence is almost subconscious.

on some level, it's true. things aren't that bad. bad is a stab wound right through his lower lung, puncturing through so deep that pulling it out makes him wheeze. bad is falling into a river full of waste that should have probably killed him. if he really sat down to think about it, it might say enough that that's his definition of bad. but in the day to day, it makes a lot of other things easier. he's not limping. he can move relatively well, even if it hurts to do so. he felt it on the way back here—he can turn, shift, do everything that he needs to as long as he's willing to feel each and every movement in every piece of his body.

so be it. that's the price.

mostly, he feels bad about getting blood on laura's things. it's a small thing to be worried about, but it feels crass somehow. blood looked right on the floor of kings because it was already a place soaked in blood. it made the physical world reflect the interior, once and for all. he didn't feel bad about any of that. red sprayed across the faces of the maharaja under the british. blood soaking into his hands, sticking there, dripping from them as he stood too still in the elevator, staring at his own reflection in the shining metal doors.

sometimes it feels good to make a mess of someone that deserves it.

twin peaks is a town full of people who quietly, covertly deserve it. it's different here. small town america, all its secrets buttoned up close to the chest. but ravi still knows the ugliness when he sees it. it's the same everywhere, even if it dressed and walked and talked differently back home.

he runs his hand under his nose again. blood, now half-dried, flakes away onto the back of his hand.