#just june

“Could I see your ID please, sir?” “I’m sorry, I don’t have any ID. I was dead until about two hours ago, I’ll have to ask my necromancer who I’m supposed to be.” “Usually you people do that before coming through customs.” “Yes, I’m sorry. It’s my fault, my necromancer is young.” “I can’t authorize your release from this facility with ID, can you call your necromancer here?” “Do you have a scrying circle I could use?” *sigh* “Yes, right over there, call him up.”

“My necromancer’s is a ‘her’, but I’ll get on that right away.” “You’ll have to take another number once you get the information you need.” “Lucky me it’s not busy!”

Later

“C47. Now calling C47. Oh, it’s you.”

“Yes, I got in contact with my necromancer.”

“ID please.”

“Here you are!”

“Mr. Kabotkin. Welcome back to the land of the living. Purpose for your resurrection?”

“Ummmm...”

“Unsettled debts? Grieving loved ones? Necromancy practice? Something to impart to the world?”

“Ummmmm”

“Look, this part doesn’t matter much. Let’s put down something to impart to the world, huh? What can you impart to the world?”

“Well, I barely remember who I’m supposed to be at all--still feeling a little stiff. Umm, how about we say my sunny disposition?”

“Fair enough, I’ve seen people resurrected for less. Let  me stamp your card--there. Welcome back, please enjoy your second life.”

“Third, I’m told.”

Snow whipped against Summer’s face as she crested the hill. The arctic winter burned her skin wherever it became exposed around her eyes and between the cuffs of her mittens and jacket. The snow was like tiny flakes of glass, racing back and forth over the ground like a snowglobe being shaken.

Faintly, in the distance, she could see it: a thin blue circle hanging in the air.

“’Turn as I please, my step is to the south,’“ Summer quoted as she trudged forth again, repeating the same poem she’d been saying to herself the whole hike. By the time she came upon the portal, she was standing against the wind, tipped forward to keep from blowing over.

She stared into the aperture, but the other side was as desolate a waste as the one she stood in. She dreamed sometimes she would see a mammoth, or a primitive human through the portal. She wondered if some things ever slipped past the sensors and through the portal into our time. The snow could ruin the readouts. She supposed they were too far north for anything living to encounter the nexus, and by extension, the portal.

“‘...in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land / I reached my North and it had meaning.”

But she wasn’t here to daydream. Summer found the control panel and began to power down the great machine buried under the ice that generated the portal. The thin blue circle flickered, then disappeared. The wind died down almost immediately as the gateway shut for another year.

She wore her hair up in a tight bun that sat almost at the crown of her head, held in place by an orange band. Her loose-fitting striped shirt in black and white seemed to billow as she walked briskly across the quad. Her shoes were scuffed something awful on the heel--but you couldn’t tell that just from looking at her. The jeans she wore were tight and flipped at the cuff to show her ankles. She walked with her hands in her pockets, small as the pockets were.

It was the orange band that always made me smile. Caroline’s wardrobe was mostly black and white. Though we were the same size, I knew she’d never be caught dead wearing anything of mine--everything she wore had that ‘bought from the next big city over’ look to it. Caroline had fashion. But the orange hairband was something she picked up at the drug store when we went or more snacks. In fact, she bought a whole pack of neon hairbands.

She walked so fast, made her decisions so quickly. She was deliberate, and that meant more to me than anything, because when I reached to let her hair down, she stopped, and she let me. I’d wear the hairband around my wrist, and it was the last bit of her fashion she put on in the morning, pulling it off my wrist while I complained for her to come back to bed.

The tobacco poured into the little paper Andreas held between thumb and forefinger. He licked one end and rolled the cigarette with a practiced ease, with his sticky fingers, he raised the volume on the song playing through his headphones. Overhead, the trees above the little cafe patio scratched together in a dry breeze, casting leopard spots of sun dappling over his book on the table.

He liked this song because it made him feel in love, same as this book. Andreas had occasion to feel in love, lately. He raised the cigarette to his lips and lit it with a lighter from his breast pocket. If John were here, there’d be no way he would accept one of Andreas’ cigarettes, no matter how romantic the notion was to Andreas of passing one cigarette from his lips to John’s.

He imagined himself writing lyrics sometimes to songs like the ones he listened to when he needed to feel in love. In those songs, John would share his cigarette, and they would sit together on the patio and not notice anything but each other. Except, when remembering back on the day as he drifted off to sleep, Andreas would be able to picture the way the shadows and sun played across John’s face. But his life wasn’t like his favorite songs or his favorite stories.

The ambulance roared to life and took off down the street, siren blaring. It took Hank’s body away from him, still standing beside the wreckage of his hatchback. He watched the firemen and paramedics pull him out of the mess--his body didn’t look at all well: he was as twisted as the wreckage. That was probably more blood than he’d ever seen before.

The whole scene had confused him, too busy looking in horror at the debris littering the intersection that he didn’t even think to inform the paramedics not to take his body, make himself known to somebody around. But it was too late, the ambulance sped off with his body inside.

There was a squeal of tires in the intersection and a green cab pulled up beside Hank--seeming to jet around the cars in its way or phasing right through them.

“Yo, you Hank?” the driver of the cab leaned to yell to Hank out the passenger side window.

“Yes,” Hank answered, not sure exactly what was happening.

“I beat the other guy, huh? Well good. Anyway, jump in--”

There was another screech as a blue cab slammed to a halt on the other side of Hank. It was practically parked up on the curb. The driver of the blue cab rolled down his window.

“Hank! Hello. Sorry to leave you hanging. Jump in.”

“No way,” the driver of the green cab interjected, wrenching his car into park. “Jump in Hank, we’ll catch up to your body and get you resituated.”

“No,” said the blue cab’s driver. “Get in, we’ll go to the Next World.”

“Time’s running out, Hank. I’m a pretty fast driver, but they’re gonna pronounce you dead any second now. Hop in.“ He leaned over further and pushed the passenger door open.

“You don’t want that, Hank,” the blue cab driver laughed. “Take one last good look and then come get in. Next World is waiting.”

Isabel fell in love next to a waterfall. Her name was Rebecca and she sang in the community choir and taught music to the local middle schoolers. Rebecca, shy of her own voice, would only sing to teach her children, or with the support of a choir. Isabel brought her to the waterfall to provide her with a choir. She said ‘Teach me, I want to learn.’ Rebecca knew she didn’t want to learn, and did it anyway.

And so Rebecca sang against the rush of the waterfall, and her eyes were bright like the spectrum the sun shot through the mist. Isabel couldn’t hear the words but was certain she knew them.

Carlos’ wrist watch pinged and he started up from the desk. He’d fallen asleep at his desk, face had creased his comic book. He imagined it probably left some of its ink on his cheek. He was blurry-eyed, but cognizant enough to at least see that his watch read 9:30pm—two minutes before he was needed.

He pushed the chair back and turned down the TV blaring in the corner, the Monday night football game. At the first vault door, he yawned and shushed the pinging of his wrist watch. At the second vault door he started trying to fiddle with it, seeing if there was any way to turn it off as the huge door slowly slid open. Of course, there wasn’t a way to remove it. The company insisted he wear it, monitoring him.

He’d been hired to work four ten-hour shifts, able to do whatever he wanted as long as he didn’t leave the premises, and as long as he pushed the button on the Great Machine whenever the watch pinged him. $24 an hour and full benefits.

The Great Machine was behind the third vault door. The Green Light was still illuminated, but just as soon as 9:32 fell, the Red Light lit and the Green Light went out. It made Carlos nervous each time for about the first eight months before he got used to it. Now, he just pushed the button.

The Great Machine throbbed, there was a shudder as if something was being driven deep into the earth, and the Green Light came back on.

There was also a Blue Light, bigger than the other two. He was supposed to wait three minutes after pushing the button to see if the Blue Light illuminated.

“If the Blue Light is illuminated, it is very bad. Push the button until it is extinguished, if possible.” It said on page 97 of his employee manual. The whole thing had been such formal language, detailing his benefits and contract and exactly how to perform his routine function in excruciating detail without ever revealing what was being accomplished. But on the subject of the Blue Light there was only the one line.