My Daddy's Cars

My daddy had at least four cars.
The Camaro was my favorite, a beautiful glossy candy apple red with soft tan leather interior. Sitting in the back of that car, my little legs dangling from the backseat, I felt like I was riding in a limo. Luxury. That was what riding in the Camaro was all about.
My second favorite was the Ranchero. My Daddy would laugh when I told him I liked that car. I would say that I wanted to drive a Ranchero when I grew up and he’d laugh and say:
“You like that one huh?”.
It was white and looked like his pick up except it seemed to have been squished. It was as if God had placed his hand on the boxy shape of the pick up and flattened it out a little, making it look sleeker, like a shark. It had an interior that was the color of denim with some darker lines patterning it. I would sit on that bench seat and run my fingers over the textured fabric, tracing out the patterns while I waited for my Daddy to finish talking to people or load something into the truck bed.
The pick up truck was my least favorite. It was simple, boring compared to the other cars. It was the work horse of the lot. It had a leather bench with an interesting pattern embossed all over its surface. I’d run my fingers all over those patterns while we drove. It was no wonder I never looked out the windows. My daddy asked me once why I didn’t. He told me:
“Your missing all kinds of shit. I used to love looking out the windows when I was a kid. I saw everything.”
But he had to ride in the same car everyday. With four cars, I never needed to look out the window to see something that interested me, I was taken up with the variance of texture and shape within each ride. There were worlds in them for my fingers and imagination to explore.
The firebird was white. I liked the image of the bird painted on the hood in pale blue, its angular wings spread, head turned to one side. It was black leather inside. The back seats curved like shallow bowls. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it smelled good. Sitting in the sun on a hot summer day that car soaked up all the heat so that when you opened the car door the smell enveloped you. The black leather burned the bare flesh of legs and thighs and hands. I liked that. Like a lizard, I soaked it up, napping in the heat.

Those were the cars my Daddy drove, the cars that were parked along the edges of our long drive way and in one side of our enormous garage. There were two more cars out back, an old maroon Cadillac with fins and a white Volvo that my grandparents had driven all over Europe in the late 50’s.
Once my daddy drove my sister and me to visit the La Brea tar pits. I left some neon hued crayons we got at the museum in the back window and they melted in the hot sun. My father was furious.
My sister and the neighbor girl and I would play in the Volvo, taking turns at the wheel, enjoying road trips of our own, planning the real road trips that we would take in this car when we grew up. The interior was in pristine condition, untouched by the decades.

The thunderbird’s engine blew on I15 on a sweltering summer day. I was in the car with my sister and mother when it happened. That was its death.
My Daddy was livid. He blamed my Mother for not maintaining it. She blamed him. I was sad to see my friend die.
Each car had a distinct spirit, a personality as real to me as those of my stuffed toys. Even as a child I perceived that the death of a thunderbird was a bad, bad omen.

It wasn’t long after the thunderbird died that my Daddy had to go away to drive a truck across country.
He was gone for a long time. A year. Nearly two.
For my birthday he mailed me a stuffed ram. I remember feeling exquisite relief as the small package from my father was placed in my hands. It was wrapped in yellow paper. He hadn’t forgotten me. He’d gone away, but he remembered me.
When he came back, the cars were gone. I don’t remember where or how or exactly when the others went, but the Camaro and the Ranchero had gone away when my daddy went away. The pick up truck remained.
After he came home he shaved off his mustache. When he emerged from the bathroom with a clean shaven face, I was terrified. I couldn’t believe it was him. I wouldn’t hug him. I ran away and eyed the stranger suspiciously.

The Thunderbird had been registered to a Tom Smith. My father would explain this to me 25 years later as we neared the bend where it died. Not far from Cajalco pass, near Horse Thief canyon, we sped through the darkness towards home and he reminisced.
“I raced a guy in the thunderbird right around this bend. That car could really go.”
“I liked that car.” I told him, “I liked all those cars.”
“Yeah. I didn’t want anybody to notice any patterns. That’s why I drove different cars all the time.”
For a moment I sat in the darkness quietly trying to fathom what paranoid scheme this statement fit in with. And then it clicked.

I knew by now that my Daddy hadn’t left to drive a truck across country. He’d gone to jail because he was a drug runner.
My mother told me when I was 18. She was angry at the time for some trivial matter and tired of keeping his secret.
It made it easier when my father tried to confess to me 10 years later. His face had been full of shame.
“You remember when I was gone? I never told you, I was in prison.”
“I know.”
With two words uttered in a flippant tone of voice I had lifted a burden from his shoulders. He didn’t need to explain. He didn’t need to say anything else.

On I15 it clicked.
“Because you were moving drugs?”
“Right. None of those cars were actually registered in my name. That Camaro was a nice car.”
He laughed.
“One time a little further back a cop pulled me over for speeding. I told him it was my friend’s car, right, and he asks ’does your friend know that you borrowed it?’ I told him, ’Oh yeah.’ you know, and apologized for speeding. I told him I wasn’t used to such a smooth ride, I hadn’t realized how fast I was going. We got to talking about what a nice car it was and how it handled and the cop let me go.”
“What names were they registered to?” I wondered.
“Just names I made up. Common stuff like Tom Smith, or Bill Jones.”
I laughed.

My Daddy had at least four cars, none of them registered in his name. My Daddy didn’t have any cars at all. The Camaro was my favorite of all the cars my Daddy didn‘t have; a beautiful glossy candy apple red with soft tan leather interior. Everybody liked the Camaro.

The Spheres of Galia Part 2

In his weekly sermon, Philip the Old expounded upon what he believed was the original intent of the Ancestors on voting rights in the Kingdom. The manuscripts had been debated by half a dozen scholars in recent times, though none were as politically powerful as Philip, who had mountains of gold and fully equipped armies at his disposal. Because of his stature and riches, his words resonated with a harsher impact, turning other interpretations of the Ancestors to shadows that no one could remember. Standing upon the lucite scaffolding in the town center after the customary vaporization of condemned criminals, the smell still lingering in the stone covered plaza, Phillip huffed and spoke with such furious conviction that the great mound of his belly swathed in arbrit, a shimmering synthetic known for its superior wicking, jounced up and down, wiggling as his words tumbled out like dominoes.

The crowd was a little subdued, reflecting on the fragility of life and their own mortality, a feeling which hit them with whirls of hurt and confusion in the center of their chest, when Philip began to speak. A little chilled by the wintery air and morbid reflection, they were slow to comprehend the true content and underlying motives of Philip’s righteous monologue. Their consciousness flowed along on the pitch and cadence of his voice, not grabbing on to particular words or concepts, but floating with each rise and fall of vocal vibration like boats traveling along a brisk stream. His self righteousness and their easy and somewhat distracted acceptance of it imbued them with a sense of righteousness too, it was the perfect antidote for the poison of reflection.

Today, however, unlike his many other sermons, Philip failed to mention the massacre of Orzab and the hated hosts of Vitnu being hunted on the third Sphere by the brave Soldiers of the fine Old Kingdom. Instead he sought to interpret the desires of the Ancestors as stated in the old manuscript. He stated, once again, loudly and with absolute belief in his conviction, that their original intent in holding elections was to allow property owners the power to vote, nothing more.

"It makes a lot of sense," he said, belly heaving, "in a modern setting. If you're a property owner, you actually have a vested interest in the community, others do not." Further, he advocated the dismissal of a prominent council member for being a follower of the old ways of Annis, which was as close to a death sentence as he was prepared to make that morning.

There were rumblings in the crowd as Philip spoke, a murmur that rose as the torpor of the executions wore away. Of the billions of inhabitants of the Old Kingdom of the First Sphere, only a few could claim to be property owners. The King himself for certain, his Lords and their Ladies by marriage, the public conglomerates formed of coalitions of noble people, a handful of the great magicians, and a few private conglomerates and personages.
A sense of slow dread and alarm grew to a buzz of whispers and anxious glances in the cold winter-drenched chill, but nobody spoke up to question Philip’s interpretation of the Ancestor’s manuscript. Not one could raise his voice towards the man with armies and chests of gold. His power silenced even the most skeptical gathered in the square. Most assumed that the majority of those present were in agreement with him, or they forced themselves to believe that so the obligation for objection could be lifted from their shoulders, for there was no sense in creating disharmony when agreement abounded. And so Philip was allowed to continue with his carefully planned diatribe.

At the edge of the thick crowd Maia stood holding the hand of her small son Olslo. He had grown just as fast as his brother, which he had a vague sense of, though he lacked the words to describe it in any detail.

“What does it mean?” she asked her sister Alcyone, who stood on the other side of the tiny boy. Maia’s face hid her concern, but it swam within her, hidden by a lifetime of magickal practice.

“How can we know? We don't yet know how far they will go. We would still be in possession of Taurus, in any case.” There was a brief moment of silence, then Alcyone heard the voice of her younger sister standing so close behind she could feel the warmth of her cinnamon-scented breath.

“This is not the world I would wish for our son to inhabit,” Asterope said, her long fair face looking even longer with the glimmer of dismay. Beside her was Celeano with a smaller, muscular body and a moon-shaped face. “Sister, you forget. Our son was not made to inhabit the world. He was made to re-make it.”

Mountain Gods

We watch him again, alone in his room, the stifling heat from a closed window makes my ears sweat. It is like watching a tower of isolation collapsing from within. He argues with himself, seeing his own shadows wandering over the white walls. Which one is real? The flakes? The fakes? The snowflakes. The shadows don’t respond, but he screams as always into the whiteness, into a flurry of pure ice.

Those mountain gods sure can be nasty kings! Down with them !!! Just a bunch of fakes anyway ... A bunch of flakes anyway, snowflakes, swirling round the peaks.

Once they were rivers winding through low valleys, then they were vapors like ghosts rising from lakes taking the forms of clouds, then once more shifting into a solid form, delicate and complex, many individuals drifting anonymously together, as alone as only snowflakes can be. Silent voyagers, taking many shapes, undergoing various transformations before at last becoming king and crown of the lofty peaks.

Down. Down you drift to take your place again at the primal beginning, always a subject of the thaw. Always returning to the river, but never the same river.

He imagines he can hear the pale one, the dark one, the one without eyes. The ones with twenty arms. They all say something different. The shadows lash out, sending persimmons to the ground, pomegranates burst open and send their ripe seeds across the sky, creating other worlds with red, glowing stars.

It's hard to bring down a mountain. Falling down, coming down. Hard to fall off a mountain, hard to bring it down, down, down. There is a timeless energy and spirit that lives in the trees, that holds the rocks like glue. Beings that suck from the pollen of pines.

The mountain can drive mortals away with wind and cold, it’s height that peaks only before the clouds. Life comes out of its wet top, the sprout covered in a forest of trees, they come from the soil, they go and remain timeless.

Shiva had his consort mounted on rocks and ragged cliff sides. Shiva had his consort buried deep in pine cones and floating like snowflakes on drifting clouds. Wise mountain gods know how to come down on their own.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The whole of the law. The whole of the law. The hole in the thaw. The thaw, dripping breaking, dissolving from solid to liquid, from rigid to free and flowing. The will like DNA, a silent pilot guiding it’s ship, up, up, up into the mountain, down, down, down into the valley below.

Neo Pan

The Salon was an abandoned dimly lit throw back to the beauty schools of earth circa 1979. With a floor whose speckled gold and tan and black and flecked surface resembled a sheet of polished vomit and a row of rectangular mirrors facing barber chairs, I couldn’t think of a better place to improve my self esteem. Beauty shops were virtually non-existent in Neopan, at least places bearing that name and functioning as such were as extinct as old earth. What you could find were places like The Salon, where orphaned earthlings could find each other and exchange underground currency for black market items. I knew very little about what went on in such places. I knew very little about anything.
Like so many other Earth descendant humans I suffer from an undiagnosed neurological disorder. It might have been caused by the stresses imposed on it by the interdimensional transit that allowed the human race to survive their planetary mother, or it might have been a mutation caused by something in the habitats of Neopan itself. There were no explanations offered. Most humans of Earth origin experienced an at least minimal amount of confusion or memory loss or just plain dim wittedness. Maybe it was shock. In my case however, it was more severe. I had almost no long term memory and battled continually with a fog that had swallowed my past, muted the present and made the future seem subject to complete randomness.
I wandered into The Salon that day because I didn’t know where I had been or where I was going. I saw the neon sign out front and some genetic memory was dislodged from the murk. I decided I must have been on my way here, for a hair cut, and went inside.
A slender but curvy Latina with long soft black curls wore a white coat with the name “Estelle” embroidered over the left breast pocket. She chewed gum and looked me up and down as I approached the counter just beyond the front entrance.
“You have an appointment?” she asked
“Um.” I thought it over, “Maybe. I don’t know. If not I could make one, or maybe you could squeeze me in?” I asked hopefully.
“What did you want?” she asked me with narrowed eyes.
“Just a trim.” I told her.
“A trim?” she repeated and her jaw dropped just a tad lower during the course of her chewing.
I nodded clutching my knitted handbag.
“Okay.” She said after some silent deliberation, “Come on over.” And she led me to one of the chairs.
I sat down. She used her foot to pump up the height of the chair and then she covered my body with a black nylon cape. A smile stole its way over my face, triggered by a warm feeling that washed over my bones like…like something warm that we don’t have anymore on Neopan. Even Estelle seemed to be enjoying herself a little as she examined my hair and then wetted it with a spray bottle and rummaged through a drawer and produced some scissors and a comb. She started clipping and soon she was smiling back at me through the mirror, chewing her gum at a relaxed pace.
“I haven’t cut somebody’s hair in forever.” She said a little dreamily. I watched wet chunks of mine slip down the front of the nylon cape.
To my right in the back of the building there was a little office. Estelle turned my chair a little and I caught a glimpse of two men moving around a desk through the cracked door. She turned the chair again and I watched my own transforming reflection.
“My mom taught me how to cut hair in her shop in L.A. when I was six. Where were you from?”
“I don’t know.” I told her. She looked at me in the mirror and I looked back at her. “I forget everything.” I explained, “I only remember pieces sometimes, objects, or a place like this seems familiar.”
She went back to work on my hair without any further attempts at conversation. It felt good having another human being touching my hair, grooming me. When she was done I examined myself and nodded appreciatively. She whipped the nylon cape off and shook the hair to the floor. Then she retrieved a broom and a dustpan and swept all the cast off bits of me up and disposed of them. I stretched and admired her work.
“What do I owe you?” I asked. She leaned on her broom and shrugged.
“What have you got?” I opened the pink and purple hand bag and took out my wallet and opened that. She gawked, “You have credits?”
“I don’t know how many. Can you process them?”
“Yeah.” She said and took the little card from me. Setting the broom against the wall she headed for the office.
After a moment she came back out with one of the men. He wore a well manicured beard of an almost red and sandy hue. He smiled in a natural friendly way,
Estelle gave my arm a friendly parting squeeze,
“You’ve got plenty of credits. Dale’s gonna take care of it,” she told me. I went into the office with him. He closed the door and showed me to a chair after shaking my hand.
“I’m Dale.” He told me.
“Nice to meet you.” I responded, “I’m Izz.”
“Nice to meet you.” He smiled and I smiled back. “Well,” he said, “You have 2,895 credits. If you gave us forty that would be more than generous.” He sighed, “But I’d like to ask you for a tremendous favor instead. Keith?” he called and the other man I had glimpsed earlier poked his head in from another door.
“Come in here Keith. This is Izz, Izz, Keith.” He introduced us. “What I would like for you to do is transfer 2,800 credits to Keith. Then I will transfer 2,800 of my own credits back to you. That’s all.” He explained. “Keith needs it, and I want to give it to him but it’s better if Neopan officials can’t link the two of us directly. Will you do it?”
They didn’t need to twist my arm. I trusted Dale instinctively. The fact that he was wanting to hide something from the authorities only strengthened that trust. Some rational part of my mind ran the whole thing over again and noted the possibility that this might be a con and I decided to go with the impulse to trust rather than act out of suspicion. The decision was made in the blink of an eye. I nodded.
“Okay. That sounds fine.” I told him. Dale smiled again and proceeded to make the transfers. In a matter of minutes he was showing me the computer screen, and the verification of transfer from his account to mine.
Keith himself thanked me and I noticed for the first time that his eyes were a very pretty blue. I speculated that he might be my age or a couple of years older. Then he asked me if I would mind giving him a ride home. Why not? I couldn’t remember anywhere else I should be, although I had a vague nagging feeling that there was someone out there who would be missing me. I could almost picture that someone’s face. But I had no idea where to find that person and at the moment, Keith was my newest friend in a string of three brand new friends. I agreed and we set off waving goodbye to Dale, then Estelle on our way out of The Salon.

* * *

Keith took me to a dirt lot across the street. The sky was black as coal and all we had to see by were the yellow street lamps and the neon signs flickering in the occasional shop window. There are no stars in the human populated habitats of Neopan. That’s because we live underground. I wouldn’t have known if you could see stars from the surface, or whether even there was such a thing as a surface. This was how the new world was.
Most of the store fronts were empty. Windows were smashed and walls were covered in graffiti and even some of what would qualify as street art. “Fuck the Lizzies!” was scrawled across the wall of the building adjacent to the lot. That was the same as saying, “Fuck the Police” or “Fuck our helpful big brothers, the Neopan authorities.”
I kept looking at Keith’s face as he unlocked the door of an ancient maroon Buick. His flesh seemed a little flushed and small beads of perspiration were forming beneath his hairline. Stubble looked like sand scattered over his cheeks and chin. It was frightening and exciting to be so close to a complete stranger. Taking in the otherness of his face was like inhaling glue fumes. It made me dizzy. He handed the keys to me and got in the drivers side door, scooting across the bucket seat to make room for me.
“You know how to drive, right?” he asked casually.
“I think I used to.” I told him.
“Well, it’s automatic, and nobody knows how to fucking drive anymore anyway.” There weren’t any other cars to contend with. The street was silent. I nodded, started the engine, then buckled my seat belt.
“You want to go that way.” Keith pointed the direction out and I put the transmission in drive.
We didn’t talk much after that. He only said things like turn left here, keep going straight or turn right. I obeyed. For a while the commercial wasteland continued. Without warning we turned onto a street crowded with people. They were clustered around burning garbage cans and antique boom boxes. Packs of them were huddled on the sidewalk playing dice while others fought in the middle of the road. Some were passed out in the gutters under piles of filthy rags that might have been their clothes.
I crawled to a stop as they mobbed around us, pounding on the windows, shouting, talking, coaxing, demanding. They were trying to open the doors. Someone came towards us with a crow bar raised over their heads…and I gunned it, pressed my foot down on the peddle and accelerated into the mass of bodies. I hadn’t known that I’d do something like that until I was doing it. Somebody bounced off of the wind shield. Someone else went crunch under the wheels. The others all hauled their asses out of the way.
“Oh shit!” Keith was shouting, his hands pressed against the roof of the car.
I screeched down the street.
“Which way?” I demanded as we approached the intersection.
“Left.” He answered.
In a matter of minutes we were back on empty streets.
“I’m sorry.” I said. He was much calmer now, though very sweaty.
“It’s alright.” He was much calmer now, though very sweaty and twice as red in the face, “You probably did the right thing. It’s my fault. I misdirected you. Right here.”
We were on a dark residential street. The places looked big and like they had been built in the 1980’s on old earth. These were spacious custom homes, I realized. They would have been considered tiny hovels by the time 2010 had rolled around. It seemed weird that I should have such specific memories of architecture and yet be clueless about the details of my own personal life.
Keith directed me into a driveway and the garage door rolled open for us. I parked it and we sat there for a moment, not moving or talking. Then Keith scooted closer to me and reached an arm around my shoulder. My heart was thumping rapidly. His lips were about to touch mine when I leaned back and out of reach.
“I really want to kiss you right now, but I have a feeling that there’s a reason I shouldn’t. Someone I’m forgetting.”
He looked only a little hurt, like he had to consider that I was just saying it to let him down easy.
“Come on,” he said motioning with his head and we both got out of the car. He pushed a button on the wall and the garage door rolled noisily back down. He opened a door that led into the house and yellow light spilled out into the empty garage. It was inviting. Keith motioned for me to follow him inside.

* * *

The carpet was a dark brown and there was lots of dark wood trim along the walls of white stucco. We passed through a sparsely furnished living room and into a kitchen, where the light originated. There was a tile bar, and standing in the middle of the room was…Keith, or a man that looked just like him, except this version of him wasn’t flushed, or sweaty. This Keith looked particularly cool and calm standing in front of the fridge, watching us come in.
The original Keith nodded to the new Keith who was also distinguishable from the original because of his clothes. He wore blue nylon sweat pants with a white stripe up the sides and a matching sweat shirt that was open and revealed a white undershirt. His face was also cleanly shaved.
“Hey.” The new Keith greeted us both, returning the nod.
“This is my brother Richard.” Keith introduced us, “Richard this is Izz.”
Richard put out a hand and repeated my name with raised brows,
“Izz?”
“Short for Isabel.” I told him shaking his hand. I found that while Keith excited me by feeling slightly repellent and jagged around the edges, Richard calmed me and drew me in like a magnet of opposite polarity.
“Nice to meet you,” He said.
“You too.” I smiled.
“You want to go swimming?” Keith asked me.
“You have a pool?”
He nodded.
“Sure.” I said, “I love to swim.”
“Let’s go then.” He said, “You coming?” he asked his brother.
“Maybe in a little bit.” Richard answered. His gaze was very steady, as absorbent as a sponge, unlike Keith, whose eyes shifted from one center of focus to the next abruptly.
I followed Keith into what appeared to be the master bedroom. Sliding glass doors opened to the yard and the pool was visible, lit from within. The bathroom sinks stood under an archway at a 90 degree angle from the glass doors.
“There it is.” Keith said and started to strip out of his dirty blue jeans and bright tropical shirt. I followed suit.
There we were, both completely nude. I was standing by the sink having just dropped my shorts around my ankles and he was standing across the room looking at me. His skin looked even redder, his eyes wide and wild. I gazed back at him feeling the entire surface of my body become electrified under his eyes. Then he closed the gap between us pressing his body against mine. I was backed up against the sink. He rubbed himself against the wetness between my legs and I gasped. Then we worked together so that I sat on the edge of the counter and he slipped inside of me. That nagging feeling that I was betraying someone lingered, but I pressed my body against his, grinding.
“Tell me when you’re going to cum.” I requested breathlessly. It seemed like he was about to and I worked myself eagerly against him. Then just when I thought one or both of us would, he started to shout about a dog and stepped back, pulling out of me abruptly. He tripped in my shorts and fell to the ground and thrashed a little, protecting his face, screaming for someone to get the dog off of him, except there was no dog.
I watched him, confounded. Richard strolled in carrying a steaming mug and took the whole scene in. I didn’t know if I was embarrassed or frightened or none of the above. If I had been alone with Keith, or if it had been someone other than Richard, I might have been both, but something in his demeanor, in his calm no nonsense acceptance of the scene put me at ease. That and the fact that he looked just like Keith with whom I had just briefly become so intimately acquainted.
“This happens to him sometimes.” Richard explained. I crossed the room to join him watching Keith’s spasms. The shouting was turning to murmuring and all in all he was calming down, though still obviously completely removed from our reality for the moment. Richard looked at me and handed me the mug. It was coffee with milk. I had the feeling it was something I hadn’t tasted for a very long time. A whole new ecstatic sensation to rival the one I’d been experiencing just moments ago gripped me as I sipped the hot elixir.
“So he’ll be okay?” I finally managed to ask.
“Yeah.” Richard answered. “Just give him time and he’ll come out of it on his own. I presume he asked you to drive him home?”
I nodded. Richard nodded too.
“He probably felt it coming on. You can imagine what would happen if he was driving when this happened to him. How did you meet?”
“At a salon.” I answered.
“Oh.” He said stonily, “So you’re a guerrilla too?”
“Huh?”
“Not a resistance fighter? Then what were you doing at the salon? Looking for drugs? Coffee?” He nodded to the mug.
“Um.” I shuffled my feet feeling like a very little fly caught in an enormous web. “I was getting a hair cut.”

* * *

Richard slipped a pillow under his brother’s head and took me out to the yard. There he fired up the Jacuzzi and left me sitting at the edge with my feet warming in the water, sipping the coffee. He returned in a little while and sat beside me Indian style, keeping his clothes dry. When the water was warm enough I slipped in and he started the bubbles going. The weird scene from the bedroom was starting to melt away.
“So,” he said after a while, “If you’re not a guerrilla how do you know Dale? Why run around with Keith?”
“I met them both today. I really was just getting a hair cut.”
“I just find it a little strange,” Richard said, “that you would go to the Salon for a hair cut.”
“I just … well, you know, since the transition I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember my life on old Earth, I don’t remember who I was with yesterday, sometimes, like earlier today, I don’t even remember where I was five minutes ago, and I was standing in front of that place and I had the idea that maybe I’d come there for a haircut, so I went in.”
Just then my face felt really hot and the tears welled up in my eyes. Embarrassed. Most of the time I just dealt with my condition, made no bones about it. But now I felt ashamed and realized that it was because I wanted Richard to like me, rather silly considering that I probably wouldn’t remember him by tomorrow. I turned my face away to hide my tears and bit my lip.
“I get it.” Richard said simply and set his coffee cup down on the pocked concrete. “It’s like Keith. He started having the seizures after transition. A lot of people are messed up.”
“You?” I asked.
He shook his head,
“No. So far I’m okay, like everybody, my recollection of the days leading up to it and the actual transition is foggy, distorted, but otherwise I’m fine.”
“So are you a… uh…guerrilla?” I asked.
“No.” Richard said.
“But Keith is?”
“Yeah.”
“And Dale?”
Richard snorted,
“He’s like the leader of the Rebellion. He thinks that they’re feeding on us, keeping us like live stock. He believes that all of the neurological disorders are being … induced in us intentionally, to keep us docile, manageable.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
He shrugged. Then he looked at me dead on and when I held his gaze he said,
“I think he’s part right. I think the disturbances are induced, but not to keep us docile. Think about it. I don’t notice people turning up missing. You’d think they would if they were being consumed by the Lizzies. I think they feed on our emotions, on our confusion, our fear, our anger. I think the disorders help to generate a lot more of that than would be usual, even for a population of alien refugees. That’s why I’m not a guerrilla. I think that they’re basically doing something that the Lizzies approve of, getting riled up, setting off bombs… How would you know if you had killed a Lizzie anyway? I mean, those aren’t their own real bodies. They generate them in tanks, or at least so they say, and inhabit them to make us feel comfortable in their presence. So when you blow up the body, whose to say that would hurt the actual Lizzie that was using it? It’s like the old wives tale that you would die in reality if you died in a dream, it’s bullshit. I died in the dream and I’m still here.”
We were quiet for a while.
“I wish I’d be able to remember that tomorrow.” I said softly.
“Where will you be tomorrow?” he asked me.
“ I don’t know.” I said and the bubbles shut themselves off.
“You’ll be here.” He said suddenly, swiftly. “With us. And you might remember.”
I smiled feeling the sweetness of the offer fill me up.

* * *

The public pool was nestled in a cavern cut of black stone. Because it was a community structure it was policed by Lizzies wearing long black jackets and tall glossy boots. The look was completed by a hat with a visor, making the uniform evocative of that of an old earth motorcycle cop or a member of the ancient horror known as the Gestapo. Their presence in the suggestive uniforms was usually enough to send thugs elsewhere in search of quarry, to the abandoned commercial centers or heavily peopled apartment buildings. The area was lit with red and orange halogens and steam from the large Jacuzzi rose and circulated through the cavern keeping the atmosphere warm and moist.
I sat at the edge of the pool watching a school of Asian girls giggle and blow bubbles like sleek exotic fish. I could not remember what we were doing here, but I did at least recognize the man I was with. At least I almost did. It was either Richard or Keith, but because they were twins and I couldn’t remember how we got here, I couldn’t be sure which it was. He reached an arm around my waist and the calm coolness of the contact made me believe it was Richard. Hazily I recalled that we were here to meet someone. Keith?
I recognized the woman sitting on the other side of Richard too. Her long black curls lay over her shoulders like a lions mane. She wore a purple bikini. I couldn’t remember her name just then, but I knew she was my friend. Buffing her nails with a little file, she retold the plot of an old earth movie. Now and then I caught sight of the chewing gum being gnashed by her white teeth as she spoke.
My attention was drawn back to the Asian girls, giggling uncontrollably, blowing bubbles with their noses in the water. Suddenly a Lizzie was there to investigate their erratic behavior. He made an attempt to question the girls who could do little more than giggle louder. He dipped a finger into the water and brought it to his tongue for a taste. Instinctively I pulled my feet out and drew them close to my body.
“Cane.” He said to another Lizzie officer that stood by the main entrance. “They put cane in the water to get high, the whole pool’s contaminated.” Richard and I stood up backing away from the pool, doing our best to distance ourselves from the offenders. I wanted to leave but the other officer was bolting the door shut.
“Nobody leaves.” he announced to the crowd inside. No one was near the pool now except the quartet of young women. They were too out of their minds to notice that they were the center of attention. All exits were blocked and a third Lizzie rolled in a barred metal crate. He brought it to the edge of the pool and slid one end open, tilting the crate towards the water.
Something the size of two rottweilers splashed down into the pool. A Cleaner. It looked for all the world like a prehistoric ankylosaurus, but took to the water like a turtle. I knew they were used to clean the pools after hours. They filtered the water, deriving sustenance from the filth that was left behind, the dead skin, the hair, the microscopic bacteria … everything went in one end and came out the other as clean water. Now I watched the thing swimming eagerly towards the four girls. Horrified I realized what was about to happen. They were equipped to survive on slim picking’s but could handle much larger prey with the ferocity of a tiger shark. I rushed toward the door and pleaded with an impassive Lizzie to be let out.
“Nobody leaves.” Is all he said. Within moments the girls in the pool were shrieking in confusion and terror and pain as the water churned and turned red with blood. One girl had enough sense scared into her that she tried to clamber out of the pool. The Lizzie that had tasted the water booted her back in and she was the last to be devoured.
I hid my face in Richard’s naked chest. No one else made a sound. When I looked up again the pool looked sparklingly clean and the creature was crawling along the bottom attending no doubt to invisible morsels like the residual cane. The doors were opened and we were told,
“The pool will be closed for another 30 min. You may use the other facilities in the meantime.”
“Lets go.” I whispered to Richard
“We have to wait for Keith.” He told me, giving my hair a consoling stroke.
The Latina was sidling up to us, eyeing the Lizzies. Estelle. I remembered her name. We walked away from the pool, around the corner to the only window in Neopan. It was one of the few places people could go to catch a glimpse of the world beyond the catacombs we called home. The view wasn’t exactly pretty.
A glass window looked out over an immense raging gray sea. Lightening flashed like the licks of a whip striking the turbulent surface. Occasionally a leviathan would surface partially. I don’t know if a human has ever seen a whole leviathan. They were massive and were seen only in partial glimpses breaching, or fighting or possibly mating.
It was like the story about the blind men, each touching a different part of the elephant and describing it according to the fraction they had perceived. Everyone had a different vision of the leviathans. I thought they might be something like gargantuan bat rays based on what I could see now, but there was no way to get a full picture. Standing in front of the window I saw one fin rise out of the sea and felt the glass tremble from the terrific moan that rose from the water.
We watched the chaotic silver waves and the occasional slither of leviathan and the flash of the lightning.
“Has anyone ever been out there?” I asked.
“I heard there are ways down to the water, even though the Lizzies forbid it.” Estelle answered, “It’s for our safety. Those things out there would kill us.”
“Protecting us from Leviathans, just like they protect us from the cane.” I said absently. But suddenly the realization was dawning on me. If they didn’t want us taking cane or swimming in that maelstrom out there, there was a reason, but it had nothing to do with our safety.
“They’re for traveling. “ I said breathlessly. “That’s what they don’t want. They want to keep us here, they don’t want us transitioning again without them, away from them.”
Estelle and Richard stared at me and I stared out the window as some monstrous flash of steely flesh parted the frothing sea.
“I need to get outside. Close to a leviathan.”

* * *

Dale led the way down the dark winding passage, illuminating our path with a small oil burning lantern. I followed and Keith and Richard and Estelle were close behind. Nobody said a word, but I could feel the doubt passing between us all like an air born disease. The sound of surf found its way to our ears and soon we rounded a bend and were blinded by the glow of a sleet colored sky and white crested waves pounding a narrow rocky shore.
We gathered at the mouth of the tunnel, shivering in the salty air, feeling suddenly alive and refreshed. In a line we stood there, eyes adjusting, butterflies fluttering in our stomachs. I tip toed towards the water and Richard reached out and grabbed my arm to stop me. I looked at him and he swallowed hard. Then, slowly he released me and we all waded into the choppy swell.
The sea alone should have killed us, the way it tossed us around like little black ants in our wet suits. I swallowed briny water, felt it stinging my nose and throat. The hand of the sea pushed me down below the surface into its wet bosom. My friends were torn away from me, scattered in the watery maelstrom. The Leviathans came, two of them, aggravating the icy waters and birthing chaos in their wake.
Estelle was brilliant. I watched her manage to get up on a leviathan’s back and stand for a while like a surfer. A beautiful wind blown Venus risen from the sea. Then she fell and the Leviathan opened its enormous mouth, wide and round as an eclipsed sun, and she disappeared into the darkness, carried on a silver wave’s crest like Pinocchio into the Maestro.
Shock rippled through me. I had imagined somehow, that they would be gentle, like blue whales. The enemy of my enemy must be my friend. Like the contraband coffee that cleared the cobwebs from my mind. Like the cane that made people feather light and fancy free. They must be the final key.
A monster was bearing down on me though I paddled toward the white cliffs. I cried panic stricken, sobbing, swallowing the sea, picturing Estelle disappearing into the Leviathan’s maw. Why hadn’t it worked? Why couldn’t Estelle master the beast and set us all free?
Estelle, the star, the center. I had to be the star, the center of gravity, the point of convergence. I was the only one who could do it. I couldn’t expect any one else to obtain my liberation for me. I was the one. Stopping my furious dog paddling I turned to face the thing that was coming, its mouth wide open, a black hole, a collapsing solar entity drawing me in. Death. The womb. My ancient mother, the abyss, unchanging, eternal.
As I was swallowed once again I knew we had never left old earth. We had perished in a blinding flash, and yet we still were. I could not now die in the belly of this beast. Darkness would devour me. I would still be. I might forget what had happened to me, where I had been, who I had been with. I might forget them all, just as I had forgotten the family I had sat down to dinner with on old earth before the light engulfed me and my body burned away. Still I would exist.
“I died in the dream and I am still here.”
No one could ride the Leviathan in my place. If I wanted liberation, illumination, then I would have to be my own star born from darkness. Tumbling, laughing, turning inside out in the belly of the Maestro, my own self, I need not seek the protection of any big brother, the familiarity of a new shade of Earth, a further derivative of Neopan. I need not fall to the next point of convergence, the next easy dream in a desperate measure to escape the unending void that holds me in its suffocating embrace. I am becoming. Swallowing myself. My own center of gravity. A new heart of darkness expanding in every direction.

Toni And The Police

I awoke in a haze of sleep, my dreams evaporating instantly. The room was still dark, nearly pitch black to my half closed eyes. I pulled the thick covers away mechanically and stepped onto the carpet. Holding my hands in front like a blind man, I sought the hard realness of the desk against the wall and the glass doorknob I would find to the left of it. Holding the knob, I slipped my feet into the slippers I had thoughtfully left by the door. There was a sea of cold tiles that stretched from my bedroom to the bathroom, and I tried to avoid the frigid shock. I pulled the French-style door open, and a cool air hit my face. Without central heating- a cold darkness lay just beyond the bedroom walls.
It took me a second to realize it, while my brain computed and bumped along, but there was an unmistakable flashing red light coming from the garage. My door was open just a crack, and I pulled on the knob. The garage pulsed with flashing red and blue lights, like an empty nightclub. I urged my feet forward, carefully stepping over the guitar and microphone cords that criss-crossed the floor. The light source came from outside, just beyond the wood panels and high frosted glass windows that made our garage door. I stood on my toes and looked through the diamond shaped window, an architectural necessity for any house constructed in the 50s.
Two police cars were double parked in the street, one just in front of our house, the other in front of the first car, almost out of sight. Both had their lights on- blinking red and blue that seemed to scream silently in the night. There were the cars and the houses on the other side of the street, illuminated in the blazing lights. I immediately thought of our next door neighbors, the ones who had just moved in and brought with them loud voices and almost a dozen children. I listened hard for voices, but heard none. No sobbing women, no shrieking children. I pulled a green and cracked vinyl chair towards me and quietly stepped up, looking through the diamond window once again.
Partially shadowed by the night, then brightened by the lights, was Toni, our neighbor, with her hands behind her back, surrounded by four large police officers. Three of the men were white and large, one of them wearing a black beanie on his seemingly bald head. The fourth officer was a stocky Asian man. Toni looked so small and thin next to them, her chocolate skin illuminated and somehow looking pale.
“They don’t take care of my mom, I do!” she shouted. The men mumbled their responses.
They walked together towards the car closest to our house. One cop in front with the black beanie leading, one next to Toni, the two others following. The man in front was shaking his head, and from where I stood, he seemed to be looking right at me. I wondered if he was. Was it a warning? I felt myself grow cautious, wondering if they could see my curious white face through the small window. I felt a fear creep inside. The men felt dangerous. Men armed and willing, ready to take a life. They closed the backseat door behind Toni, then huddled by the trunk, looking at something the one with the beanie held. Toni shouted from inside the car, but her words were muffled, just the anger escaped through the closed metal door.
“Shut UP!” yelled the man wearing the hat. He turned instantly to the Asian man on his left, smiling. His smile filled me with fear. Bullies from high school, men with a license to shout and abuse, kill if need be. He thought it was funny. He did not have the insight to see that his actions altered the course of lives. What was a job, a routine night perhaps, something he would write a report about and then forget as he put the pen down, it was different on the other end, between the metal cuffs, waiting in the backseat of a car. A river flowing one way was instantly diverted with his presence. Arrest wasn’t a minor thing, though he might have gotten used to being the figure with power. And when he laughed, like he didn’t care, like she was just another piece of trash he had to deal with before his next coffee break, it etched a dread in me I had not felt in a long time.
The men conferred behind the car, looking at something. The Asian man broke away and walked to the police car. He opened the driver’s door and spoke through the metal grate to Toni.
“What’s your name?” he said quietly, but distinctly. I thought I heard her say Jessica, but I probably misheard.
I thought of Toni confessing months ago that she used to do crack, that her grown children were still mad at her for how she had been when she was raising them. What had she done tonight? I imagined her in a yellow lit house, wandering from room to room. Which one of her family members had called the police? Who would take care of her mother with dementia? I thought of the old woman who sat in the easy chair in front of the window, what would happen to her? What would they do with Toni? I imagined her heart shattered, crumbling in on itself as she thought about the helpless mother she was being dragged away from. What had she done?
I left the window and walked back quietly through the garage, careful to step over all the cords. I used the bathroom, never turning on a single light. I stood by the doorway to the garage, wondering if I should go back to bed. But then I heard my friend’s voice, asking me questions. I thought about Toni and thought someone should keep witness. Moving gently to the window again, I stood on my tiptoes. I looked into the windows of the other houses across the street, looking for other faces. If they were there, they were hidden. And if it was just me, watching as Toni was taken by the four men. Then I should watch it through to the end, whatever would be the end at this hour.
As I stood, the word boredom crossed my mind, and I felt guilty that the events had lost my interest. The scene was a bit more quiet, Toni had stopped cursing. Two cops now stood by the hood of the police car closest to me. The steps leading to Toni’s front door was illuminated by the porch light. I could see the purple exterior paint and the metal gate at the landing that was slightly ajar. I watched the quiet scene for a little while, then the light above her garage door came on. I wondered if it was a motion sensor, maybe a cat had walked by. Maybe someone had turned it on. A few minutes passed, then the sound of jingling, perhaps keys, though it sounded more like glass.
One cop came down the front steps, taking each step quickly, with a sort of bounce. His large black Maglight was beaming and down-turned. At the sidewalk by the steps, he began to search the driveway, carefully looking around the red car that was parked there. Toni started cursing again and another cop turned on his flashlight, joining the search. They didn’t find anything and within a few minutes two cops walked towards the car parked just beyond our house. I heard the ignition start.
The cop with the black beanie walked to the other car and took his place behind the wheel, his partner sat beside him. He turned on the engine and then turned his face to the left, in my direction. The shadow of the car’s roof hid his eyes, but I felt like he was watching me, perhaps daring me to do something. A deeper sense of fear moved through me, the man was dangerous, more ugly than many I had met. He stayed like that for several seconds and neither of us moved. Then he looked straight ahead and drove away.
I stood in the garage for several minutes, the space now black again without the police car lights. I moved back towards my room, but lingered in the doorway to the garage, wondering if I should lock my door. The space seemed less safe, not because of whatever Toni had done, but because of those men. The police and what they stood for.
Men without any hero’s code of honor, but simply men that had passed a few tests, a few obstacle courses…men that had been given a gun and the power to enforce laws, the power to hurt, the power to change destinies. They were nothing special, but they were backed by cells and judges and an entire system of repression that would bite down on the prettiest of flowers without a thought.
I was cold. I got under the blankets again and stared at the blackness of my wall until the sky turned blue.

Wild Cats

Those lil’ kitties creep out from under the fence and bite- one, two, three! Gobbling mouthfuls of kibble gone soggy in the rain. Then they glance furtively up at me with bright blue eyes and dash back under the fence. One is littler, more delicate of build, and I think she must be the female and the other is getting a bit bigger, a tad huskier about the chest and can no longer fit under the same gaps that his sister does, so he must dart a little further to a bigger hole. There is a at least one more from their litter of orange crème-cicle kitties and this third is more weary than the other two, always rushing into the shadows long before I am near enough to get a good look.
There are other cats with them much of the time. Some big and fat and clearly domestic and others who may or may not be cared for by one who would call themselves their master. I have seen a striped cat and a black cat with them from time to time. I hear them at night either fighting or mating or both, yowling eerily like tortured babies in the ally between apartments.
They live under an industrial trash bin in the lot next to my building. In front of that gated lot, people from the surrounding neighborhood dump their rubbish, old mattresses, broken chairs, lamp shades, shoes toys and music boxes. My children have often speculated that the kittens are living beneath all of that rubbish, but now it is clear, even to them, that theses kittens turned cats live under the trash bin in the yard, because the debris comes and goes from week to week but the cats remain.
When they were small, I first noticed them running out of the garage at night when I came down to do laundry. The sight of them pleased me so that I brought them a saucer of milk. I don’t know whether they drank it or not, but the mounds of soggy cat food in front of the fence indicated that I was not their only admirer. No doubt they are viewed as both adorable and a scourge by the neighborhood as a whole.
Some will, like me, wish them well and hope that they have nice enough lives out there, and others will curse them when they find the dumpsters in the garage spilled upon the ground.
I like cats and because I do, most cats like me when we meet. I speak to them in cat tongue and this usually pleases them very well, because even if I have got the pronunciation all wrong, at least I have tried, whereas most people won’t.
The little alley cats, however, ignore my cat talk. They don’t care if I like them, they don’t like anyone that walks on two legs. They are wild cats with no desire to speak to stupid people like me. Their eyes are cold and unyielding, heartily disinterested as they wait behind the fence for me to pass out of their way, not caring what I say in English or in Cat. That is how I can tell that some of their companions do live or at least have lived with people, because when I pass by, some of these cats get together and say hello. The little wild cats care not at all, but the others look into my eye as if they understand me. Actually they look at me rather like children who are embarrassed that their old mother has come to speak to them while they are among their friends. They don’t want to be unkind or impolite but nor do they want to show the wild cats how domestic they are. So they look embarrassed and urge me to be on my way so that they can play with the wild kids.
It has started raining again and is very cold out, so now the alley cats must be huddled under the great industrial bin together, the three orange and white siblings all filled up on their wet food, and I am cold but dry while thinking of them, whereas they are not thinking of me at all, but rather visiting whatever plane it is that cats visit when they dream. I wish them happy hunting there, just as I wish it upon them here.