Qrelling

I move through the train cars at a good clip, slowing between cars only because these junctures always make me nervous. There is hardly a soul on this train, but it’s enough to warrant my presence here. I can feel that things are progressing too slowly, I have missed my target somehow and now I am moving away from him. Disaster is eminent.
“Still no visual.” I say scanning the car. My voice, transmitted by the nano mics implanted in my hair follicles, reaches Zenith back at mission control as though we were standing shoulder to shoulder.
“Copy that.” Zenith’s voice sounds in my ear. “We’re reaching critical here.”
“I know.” I tell him. And I do, I can feel it in my rising pulse, the dizzying sensation that fills my head. “The third car, the third car.” I mutter under my breath and finally a little louder I announce, “I’m going back to the third car. He should have been there. He must still be there.” I turn on my heel and retrace my steps, jogging as I go, barreling through those doors between cars. Things are really hot when I reach my destination, my head is swimming.
“Ava, you’re running out of time.” Zenith’s voice is anxious. I scan the car. An old woman taking a nap, two small girls playing a clapping game besides a mother reading a magazine, a young man bobbing his head placidly to music only he can hear.
I push into the passage between the second and third car, standing right in that in between space that terrifies me. There is a whistling sound and I notice a maintenance flap that opens to the outside of the train.
“God.” I gasp, though I don’t believe particularly in any God, “He’s outside, he’s somewhere on the outside of the third car.”
I slip through the flap, holding tight to the hand grips mounted to the side of the train. The wind hits me with an icy blast and I find myself clinging to the side of the train, bathed in the pale light of the tunnel. There he is, holding onto the outside of the car just a foot away from me, red faced, perspiring, waves of anguish and fear radiating from his body.
He has a small black beard, closely trimmed. There’s only a brief moment in which he looks over his right shoulder and stares with surprise at the woman clinging to the train beside him. Then I started Qrelling.
All that I need is that moment of eye contact. In that instant I establish a connection, I begin to speak with them in a language beyond languages, I begin to unravel time and reality as though they were strands of yarn in a multicolored scarf. There are many possible moments, this moment is only one possibility, one possible choice.
For this man, for instance, this is a moment in a string of moments that may lead to him detonating a bomb that will wreck the train ending his life and the lives of most of the other passengers. One of the little girls in the third car may miraculously survive. But like pearls I lay the moments out for him, showing him possibilities that lead him away from anguish, away from suffering, away from death and destruction.
Some Qrellers could help this man to get off of this train, but maybe a week, or a year later he hangs himself or takes a rifle into an elementary school. Maybe another Qreller is there to stop him, or maybe not.
I have a talent and it is this: I can lead this man into a possibility where he never harms himself or any other being ever again. It is a matter of being able to see far enough, of holding the attention long enough, and most of all , of being able to maintain the contact with the target in order to take him with me on this journey.
I am showing him the possibilities, leading him through a labyrinthine web of moments, offering him a way that he could not find on his own, not just saving him in this life, but in many possible lives.
Finally we find it, that way, a translucent stream flowing through a perfect array of pearly existence, Ariadne’s thread. I extend my hand and he clamps onto it, tears streaming from his eyes. We are still there when the train arrives at the next station and the rest of the team helps us onto the platform. He grabs hold of my hand again before we part, his eyes are the wide eyes of a man who has seen for the first time to the center of his own being; the heart of the labyrinth of existence.
“Thank you, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I say. There are tears in both of our eyes as we part.

Back at HQ Zenith shakes his head heavy with thick dreads and grips my shoulder grinning wide, white teeth gleaming in his dark face.
“You did it again. That’s a perfect record. 23 Ava, with no loses. No one in this division has ever come close.”
“It was a close one though.” I sigh, realizing finally that it’s over, my work for the moment is done. “You want to stop at the tea garden after operations are tied up here? I could use a warm cup of anything.”
Zenith grins wider and rubs my shoulder soothingly. There is a strange moment in which he doesn’t answer me. He only looks at me from behind that frozen grin. Then he says:
“Ava, there are some people here from Lancre.” We stare at each other.
“What do they want?”
His smile softens and he gives my shoulder another squeeze.

What is this emotion that we are feeling together? Elation. Lancre employs the most elite team of Qrellers in the world. They have access to the best and most innovative technologies and are contracted by the major global players, those whose infra structures reaches from Primus to Bedrock in their territories; the UN, the Tri-American Federation, and The Peoples Republic of Asia.
Sorrow. I’ll be leaving our little project funded by the local government and the team that trained me, the team I’ve grown with. I take a look around at our basement with white tarp functioning as dividers, Zenith’s folding table littered with electronics that look like something raided from an antique store specializing in 20th century home entertainment devices. I look back into Zenith’s familiar dark face finding his eyes again.
“23 Ava....23. With what they have at Lancre, imagine what you can do.”

Lancre is all steel and glass rising through two terra regions and breaking the surface of Primus. Hardly anyone can afford access to Primus anymore with its authentic blue skies. All of that glass takes advantage of the opportunity to flaunt such a rare view.
I am seeing true sky for the first time in this possibility. It is strangely unsettling, like looking at a prosthetic hand, except this is the real thing and what I am accustomed to is a prosthesis.
My guides through the halls of Lancre are a man and a woman in crisp black suits. Her hair is pinned in an immaculate French twist and her skirt is tight, very feminine. She does all the talking, he is silent with broad shoulders and a close haircut. He looks bored.

They have given me a brief tour of the facilities, introducing me to some of the technological advances being employed here, letting me shake hands with some of the legendary names; Felix Kaffa, Nora Al Gi. Now we are in an office of stainless steel fixtures seated at a long table.
Her name is Mia and she has already shown me the figure that will be my yearly salary, a number too large for me to comprehend the impact it will have on my life realistically. A number that simply means I shall not want for anything, ever again.
She has shown me the brochure of the living quarters offered to all Lancre Qrellers. We are free to obtain residence elsewhere if we wish, but the Lancre penthouses are equipped with state of the art equipment and facilities to help Qrellers relax and recharge. They are also above Primus where I will have access to fresh air and sunshine, and one is mine for the rest of my life, once I sign the contracts and become an agent of Lancre.

Mia is laying the contracts in front of me.
“The wonderful thing, Ava, is that you will take no more than six assignments a year, we have enough agents to rotate. You will never be overworked or overtired. And you won’t have to worry how things will get along without you because every agent at Lancre is as qualified as you are.” She tells me, handing me the thin stainless steel pen. “All I need is your signature. Then we’ll go over and select your penthouse or I can take you to meet a property manager I know who can help you find something else suitable. Tomorrow we can introduce you to your team and you can begin conditioning.”
I start to read the contract. And then I see it, the strangest thing.
“Excuse me, what does this mean?” I ask Mia
“Oh, it just means that when you are Qrelling you can’t arrange things too far. You can heal no more than three probable instances of violence.”
“What? A lot of people can’t Qrell beyond three instances. Why would you stop someone who can do more?”
Mia smiles
“Well, Lancre is a private firm. Someone pays us to avert the first three. Someone else will pay us to avert the next three."
I stare at the contract. A cold sensation washes over me. The temptation is not too strong. I feel only a slight sense of loss as I set the pen down. What is being gained is limitless, immeasurable.
“I’m sorry.” I tell her. “I am happily employed by the City States of California.”
Mia laughs a little as if she thinks I am joking. She falls silent as I stand.
“Thank you for the tour. I think you should show me out now.”
Show me back underground where I am needed, where they are wandering blind through the darkened passages of a coiled maze. I can show them the way, a way beyond skies of any color or comfort, or currency. Show me out now. I will show myself out. I will show us all out as I have always done, as I will always do, as I am doing now. Extending a hand, uncoiling a line, traveling to the center and back out again. I think you should show me the way out now, but if you won’t, then I will.

The Studio

Isa sat on the old tan carpet, her back pressed against the worn and sagging double mattress. The bed took up nearly the entire studio, which was only about 200 square feet, smaller than some of the bedrooms she had lived in. There was one single wide window by the front door with a view of the grassy courtyard in front, which was green but still managed to exude an aura of abandonment with its yellow dandelions and overgrown patches.
Opposite the window was a small kitchenette just barely visible behind a wall of boxes. There were stacks and stacks of things in the crowded studio, a lifetime of stuff crammed between four walls. On top of the boxes were loose papers and dirty laundry, dust and dog hair, the smell of things left sitting too long. Below the thin glass window was a faded striped couch whose back was covered with an old gray blanket that looked coarse to the touch.
A narrow walkway had been created between all the boxes and trash bags filled with clothes, it wove around the bed and between the boxes and stacks of papers and cut back to the bathroom and kitchenette. The carpet, only visible because of the cleared path, was tan and covered in a thick layer of beige dog hair. The studio was one in a dozen of single-story Indian red cottages just off the intersection of Broadway and San Lorenzo, which ran parallel to the river. The cottages were easily accessible by a single flight of stairs (just ten steps) that led from the intersection down to Barson St, which marked the beginning of the beach flats, a neighborhood of immigrants, small-time prostitutes, street dealers and a handful of students.
Isa sat on the ground, her back pressed against the mattress and dirty box spring. Ray sat in front of her on the couch, his knees shaking, his jaw clenching over and over like he was chewing gum, his entire body a picture of anxiety. Mick was supposed to be back any minute with the score. Until the moment he came back, opening the door with a squeak, Ray would sit there uncomfortably, his eyes darting nervously without seeing anything.
Debbie was laying on the bed sipping on a large glass of water, the golden retriever curled up by her feet.
“When did you say he left Deb?” Ray asked.
“He left about thirty minutes ago, but you know how slow he walks, nothin’ he can really do to go faster- those legs-”
“Yeah-” Ray answered nervously.
Isa pictured Mick walking, a thin man with thinner twisted legs and a colostomy bag hanging by his hip. He looked like an old Bob Dylan, if Bob Dylan had been hit by a car and then left in a hole for ten years. His face was sunken and pock-marked and pale, his dirty curly hair was just a few inches long but looked withered and burnt. Debbie was over forty, had thick limbs and a torso covered in fat. She was in her pajamas sprawled out on the faded blue sheets, looking slightly less anxious than Ray, but she was waiting too, anxious to shoot up.
“He left like- thirty minutes ago Deb?”
“Yeah.”
“Man, I’d have given him a ride if I knew it was gonna be this long. I’m phenin,’ you know?”
“I know. We’re all hurtin’”
Isa was quiet sitting on the old tan carpet, her back pressed against the worn and sagging double mattress. She looked at Ray, her beautiful boyfriend who had turned into something she just couldn’t bare to admit, not now. Now she just wanted the drugs. Wanted him to find a vein, get some dope for tomorrow and then they could go home. Maybe he’d eat her out when he felt better, maybe they’d watch a movie, lay in bed. Then she could pretend things were ok.

Dermit

Dermit has a skin problem. There is a name for his condition, but those who are blessedly free of it are oblivious to that name. They simply see Dermit’s splotchy red skin and put an extra foot of space between him and their own unblemished surfaces.
Dermit lives on the third floor. He rides the antique elevator up and down twice a day; once on his way to the post office where he works and once again on his way home. Occasionally he sees Tabitha from number 5 riding in the elevator to or from the second floor. When Dermit sees Tabitha his palms grow sweaty and the red patches of his skin feel particularly itchy.

Tabitha wears a goldenrod beret and matching crocheted scarf. Her pea coat is navy blue, her ballet flats are red and she wears a hue of lipstick that matches the color of the shoes. Her hair reminds Dermit of a dark polished wood like mahogany and maintains a stylish bit of waviness that he is certain comes naturally to her. Her eyes are remarkably blue. Dermit thinks that women with dark hair and pale eyes are a rare treasure.

Dermit wears his post office uniform. He covers his arms with a navy blue cardigan. He hides his legs in the dark blue trousers and avoids the shorts that some of his colleagues wear in the fair months. Despite this, the condition shows itself on the backs of his hands and sometimes flares up along his neck and behind his ears. He spends too much time in front of the mirror adjusting his wire rimmed spectacles and buttoning and unbuttoning the cardigan, helpless against the unwanted patches of irritated flesh.

Tabitha has noticed Dermit in the elevator, fussing with his sweater buttons and staring zombie like at anything but her. She has taken the extra steps to put space between herself and the guy with the rash.

One day, after work, Dermit boards the elevator.
“Hold the elevator please!” someone calls from the building entrance.
Dermit waits listening to the hurried scuffle of shoes on marble and Tabitha appears. Her eyes widen when she sees who it is she is boarding with. Dermit closes the accordion style gate and presses the number three button.
“You’re on two right?” he asks her.
Tabitha forces a smidgen of a smile and nods curtly. Dermit presses the button marked two. He begins to turn to stare into space as is customary, but suddenly looks directly at Tabitha and blurts:
“My name’s Dermit, I live in number 8.”
He extends his hand and Tabitha merely stares at it, at the red splotch that has swallowed it. After a moment Dermit retracts the hand.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s... it’s not contagious.”
Tabitha swallows. Dermit tries again.
“I’ve just... seen you a lot and wanted to introduce myself. Maybe we could get a cup of tea around the corner sometime. It’s nice to know your neighbors.”
The elevator stops at the second floor.
“I’m really busy, a lot of the time,” Tabitha says as she opens the accordion style gate, steps out and closes it again behind her. She is already out of sight when the elevator resumes its ascent.

Alone in his apartment Dermit adds this year's special edition valentine stamp to his collection before feeding his cat, Archimedes. He vows to take the stairs for the rest of the month and looks for a new dermatologist in the phonebook.

One night after work, Dermit stops at the corner drugstore to pick up the cream his new dermatologist has prescribed. There is a woman in line ahead of him and it takes Dermit a while to recognize her as his unfriendly neighbor from the second floor. He abstains from greeting her.

At the register, Tabitha swipes her debit card to pay for the tampons and Advil she has brought to the counter. An uncomfortable minute lapses and the cashier says,
“I’m sorry. It says there are insufficient funds.”
Tabitha fumbles as she pulls out another credit card and takes the debit card back. She swipes it and is once again denied after an anxious wait. She tries again with the first card, her shoulders creeping towards her ears, her cheeks reddening. She can feel the eyes of those in the growing line behind her. As she takes the card back from the irritated clerk a fourth time, a man steps up beside her at the counter and hands the clerk his own debit card.
“Here, try this one.” Dermit says as the hot silent tears start slipping out of Tabitha’s eyes. “And I’m here to pick up a prescription for McLaughlin."
“Thank you.” Tabitha sniffs as the clerk turns to fetch Dermit’s cream. She is unable to look at the stranger beside her and instead stares down at the counter trying to stop the tears.
“It’s all right.” Dermit tells her.

When the transaction is complete Dermit hands the paper bag full of Tampons and Advil to Tabitha and she looks at him for the first time. She starts to cry silently again, walking with Dermit towards the exit. After a few sniffs they step out into the cool night and Tabitha says,
“Thank you again, uh, Dermit. I’ll pay you back. You said before that you’re in number 7 right?”
“Eight.” Dermit tells her, “But don’t worry about it.”
“No, I will.” They start walking towards their building together. In silence they pass through the lobby and board the elevator. Dermit presses the buttons for both floors. The elevator stops at the second floor and Dermit opens the accordion style gate for Tabitha.
She steps into the hall and presses her lips together. Her cheeks are still burning crimson.
“My name’s Tabitha.” she tells him. “I live in number 5.”
Then she vanishes down the hall, her ballet flats thudding softly on the carpet.

The Lecture

Fall was touching the ‘city on the hill’, interspersed between the mountain’s thick evergreen and redwood forests were yellow and red trees shedding their thin leaves. In the air was the ever-present smell of fireplaces alight and the crisp bite of the air required a thick cozy sweater and, just for pure tactile pleasure, a warm cup of hot coffee.
The sun was just beginning to fade as the doors of the lecture hall were closing for the 6pm class. It was an amphitheater-shaped building where two hundred students could comfortably fit. Pale gray metal chairs with dark gray cushioned seats and backs were arranged in a semi-circle that rose above the narrower main floor, which is where Professor Habiman stood at the wooden podium with his lecture notes. Isa chose a seat in the far back right corner, just four rows back from the wall in an aisle seat where she had a perfect view of the professor.
As the class began, his scrawny teaching assistants handed out the multiple-page syllabus which was stapled in the left hand corner. Isa flipped through the list of required reading and assignments as Professor Habiman outlined the material and course work for Drugs and Society as well as what they would be expected to learn.
Twenty minutes in, Mr. Habiman began the lecture with an overview about the roots of addiction; being a sociology class, he mentioned societal factors including poverty, class, gender, and education. It was then that Isa had something to say. Without thinking, wondering, or waiting, she raised her hand.
Professor Habiman called on her, though it was not the custom (unbeknownst to her) for lectures to be interrupted with questions or comments, which were either asked at specific times designated by the instructor or after the bulk of the lecture. As he raised his eyebrows and waited for her to speak, the full attention of every student in the amphitheater turned towards her. Projecting her voice so everyone could hear, she said:
“Also, I’ve found that Pisces tend to have addictive personalities.”
The class was silent. Mr. Habiman, a man in his mid-50s, with a slight paunch protruding from his button-up white shirt, a neatly trimmed 3-inch white beard and combed back gray hair, stood quiet for a second, seemingly stunned, as though he was still processing what he had heard. Then he found his words.
He looked around the class, gathering the confused attention like a good stand-up comedian, his eyes sparkled and drew the audience into the folds of his emerging joke. Through a faint smile tinged with anger, he replied:
“Astrology? That’s not science. In this class, within the discipline of sociology, we study science.”
He shook his head slightly, shaking off the pitiful comment like unwelcome rain. Isa heard chuckles reverberating around the room as though in stereo sound, echoing without end.
“As I was saying,” he continued, “there are various roots of addiction…”
She sat there, her cheeks burning with embarrassment and anger, her body suddenly more aware of the creaking folding metal seat cradling her form, her feet acutely aware of the cold cement floor. She shrunk slightly and stared straight ahead, hearing nothing but bass tones, seeing nothing but yellow light and muted colors on the periphery of vision. Her cheeks were beyond blush, she was red, sweating and covered in the odor of failure.
Isa sat there for five minutes, for what seemed like hours pushing back stinging tears. The laughter, the quick rebuttal to her theory, the anger in his voice, it swirled through her like a tempest of hurt, gathering speed and fury as she thought about it more, as she fed it with her rage.
As the tears were just about to break the surface walls, she gathered her purse and scarf from the empty chair beside her and quickly climbed the few remaining stairs to the back of the amphitheater. With the raw, aggressive force of her burning body she pushed into the long metal bar (which was the ‘knob’) and heard the quick blunt sound of metal hitting metal.
Beyond the door was a cement stairwell that led to the ground and the night air, now completely black and dotted with stars. She felt a sting as her hot cheeks met the cool air like a slap and she screamed ‘FUCK!’ as she quickly descended the twenty-five stairs. On the last few steps she heard the door close behind her and the yellowish light from inside the lecture hall disappeared.

* * *

The following Wednesday night, Isa went back. Without meaning to, but following a mechanical tendency, she sat in the same place, towards the back right, not too far away from the exit door, in the aisle seat with a clear view of the professor.
The class quieted as Mr. Habiman began:
“Before we get into the material, I wanted to ask, is the young woman here who made the comment about astrology on Monday?”
A girl with short dark hair sitting just one row in front of Isa turned towards her. Isa met her eyes quickly and then looked straight ahead, saying nothing while everyone in the room turned in the general direction of the back right corner and waited. When there was no raised hand they looked around the rest of the amphitheater blankly, searching for a recognizable face. Isa stared straight ahead in silence and was thankful the girl in front said nothing, playing along with Isa’s mute example.
“Well,” he continued, “if anyone knows or sees her, please give her my apology. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

The House That Jack Built

People who could be frightened, people who were insecure, people who admired us; these were our prey. We brought them to her house and invited them to play a game with us, a game they had never heard of. It was a game they could not win, a game they could not loose, a game they could not stop. It was The House That Jack Built.

It began sometime in 1990. I had only just become aware of the passage of time, that there were numbers assigned to years. I had found a newspaper in the garage and read a headline about the gulf war. A strange electrical sensation coursed through my body. War. I had heard of war. I changed schools that year and entered into the fifth grade in a program for gifted children. That was when I received my first phone call. That’s when it began.

Other children had called in the past to arrange play dates or invite me to birthday parties. But no one had ever called just to talk to me before. I sat on the dark steps leading into the rumpus room with the black rotary phone between my feet. Brow furrowed, I believe I asked her:
“What do you want?”
“Just to talk.”
“I should go now.” I said, wishing to return to my own inner world, to the sanctity of home and hood.
“Why?” she asked.
“My friend Sarah is coming over.” I told her.

Sarah lived across the street. Sarah and my sister and I had eaten and bathed and played and slept together since I was three years old. There was very little separation between myself and Sarah, myself and my sister, myself and my parents. Just as meals appeared three times a day and bath water ran once after dark, Sarah would appear before noon and we would all play dolls or house or ride bikes up and down the streets or run through the fields playing freeze tag or dance to a Paula Abdul cassette. Other children from the neighborhood might participate or not, but Sarah would be there like sunshine, or spring, or inhalation. It was pre-ordained, habitual, mechanical, natural. I had almost no sense of self. I was the accumulation of these many daily rituals, the appearance and disappearance of these other characters, the texture and variety of landscape, of house and hood.
“Sarah who?” she asked.
“Butler.” I told her.
“The earwig. Tell the little earwig I said hi.” And hearing that sentence uttered in that particular tone, nuanced as it was, changed everything. That phone call was the beginning, although at the time I didn’t know it. That was the beginning of my fall, my descent into the outer world.
Suddenly someone from outside had just created a conspiratorial connection with me. With that utterance, she plucked me from unity and bliss. Sarah was no longer a part of my self. Sarah was an earwig, and she and I could have a laugh at Sarah’s expense. Sarah’s presence in my life diminished. My interest in her as something other than an object of ridicule waned. When her mother remarried and they vanished from the neighborhood a year later, I stood in front of her house feeling the loss, realizing she had been gone for a long time, I had banished her, and now she could never be retrieved.

By 1993 my experience of self had become inverted. My family had moved. There was a new house, a new hood, new kids, a suburban landscape, all alien to me. My parents were strangers as well. Even my own body was unfamiliar. By then I was in middle school and she and I were no longer in the same class. Nonetheless I still received the phone calls, now via a cordless phone that I could carry to my room.
She came to my house to “hang out” or I visited hers. We invented a language composed of two words, “Giba” and “dumbass.” We would converse as if we understood one another perfectly, making observations about those around us, including my sister, most of which were concluded with the word “dumbass”. If my sister attempted to join the conversation and play along, we looked confounded, as though we could not understand her, but we could still communicate with one another, and we would discuss this creature making its attempts to establish contact with us, but we would never speak back to it.

The houses in the new neighborhood were identical. I would marvel over the fact that the boy three doors down was living in a structure of precisely the same shape. As I moved through my own house I was moving phantom-like through his. I would imagine going into his house, which corners I could duck into to go unnoticed as he passed, how I could give him a push down the stairs, his stairs which were identical to my stairs. Or how I might enter his room, identical to my own, while he slept and simply be there, uninvited.

1995. We were high school freshmen. We had some classes together. Sleepovers abounded. She was given the basement floor of her house as a bedroom. It had an exit into the backyard. Our fusion reached its peak. I was now distinctly “I”, a separate, confused, and lonely entity, but together there was a “we”, just “she” and “I” together, and we were ready to unleash our games upon the inferior masses.

We would invite them to her house and pull out a deck of cards.
“Have you ever played the house that Jack built?” we would ask. Invariably they answered “no” or “what’s that?”
Now came the fun. We would invite them to play with us, would shuffle the deck and deal out cards. Then we would play. The only rules in The House That Jack Built were that there were no rules other than those that she and I invented as we went along. Naturally, only she and I knew this, and we would confirm the validity of one another’s plays and confuse and shock those we were playing with.

Gradually, our playmates might begin to suspect that they were the butt of some joke, but we would continue to play with such passion and sincerity that they would doubt their own perceptions. If, smiling, they accused us of making things up, we would assure them that we weren’t, that they’d get the hang of it soon enough, it was really quite simple…
Frequently a card play would be accompanied by a loud pronouncement:
“And this is the house that Jack built!” or “Gone fishing!”
At that point we would collect all the cards that had been “played” in the center, or take away the hand of the other player, or some equivocal gesture of triumph that would leave our victim with the sense of impending defeat. The game would go on endlessly, however, and we’d take pains to steer it away from any form of completion.

Eventually our victim would beg to end the game, insist that they had to stop and we would inform them that there could be no stopping until the game was finished. We would lean in on them, glare menacingly, grin sardonically. Something in the air would change. They could not win, they could not loose, and they could not stop. Desperately some would insist that they had just lost the game, trying to join us in the rule defining, referring back to some similar situation earlier in the game for which we would always have an exception,
“Yes, but you only give up your cards if you have no clubs in hand.” or “No, all the cards must be reshuffled and re-dealt when the eight of spades precedes the queen of hearts.”
Afternoon would turn to evening. Our victim would sweat, grow quarrelsome, or cry.

There were no adults left to monitor either of us at this point in our history. We would decide as school let out to take the bus to her house. On the bus we would select who we would or would not invite for our games.
One night as we walked home from the bus stop we asked a bony acne scarred girl from her neighborhood to come over. Nicole was the kind of innocent who hadn’t learned yet to conceal her emotions. Nicole told us in her high nasal voice, that she would go home and do her homework first, then tell her mother and finally come by around 4:00. She arrived at 3:45. That was the kind of girl Nicole was.

In the basement we sat atop the washer and dryer with Nicole between us taking turns playing with a small hunting knife I‘d coerced from a boy in my Math class. I would pass it to her and she would pass it to me, but we would never pass it to Nicole who watched the blade while talking in short nervous bursts and fingering the hem of her skirt.
Suddenly She grabbed Nicole by the hair and ran the dull edge of the blade along her throat. Nicole gave out a small startled cry. As she was released, Nicole touched her throat, finding it intact, and started to sob. We smiled mockingly. Without a word Nicole grabbed her sweater and pounded away up the stairs and out the front door.

People who could be frightened, people who were insecure, people who admired us; these were our prey. We brought them to her house and invited them to play a game with us, a game they had never heard of. It was a game they could not win, a game they could not loose, a game they could not stop. It was The House That Jack Built and it wore them down, made them loose their hopeful grins, their sycophantic giggles, their pathetic displays of wit or humor.
In the end, they usually begged, especially when we lay the dull edge of the knife against their throats. Most of them believed we would do it by then, after the hours of suspicion turned to self doubt returned again to suspicion. After we had whittled away their trust in us and any tidbits of faith that they had in themselves, they would see the knife, then feel steel sliding against their flesh, and they would believe for a moment that their throat had just been slit. They would sit there wide eyed, waiting for their lives to bleed out.
For some of them, this was the moment when they lost unity, bliss. For others it was just one more crippling blow. And for just a few, it was the first time in a long while that they had lost themselves, completely and utterly vanishing in the moment, only to re-emerge into singularity a moment later, blinking and breathing and staring into our houses, identical to their own.

Curiosity

It is a noisy, dirty corner in the heart of a large city. (Names don't matter here. Maybe they never do.) The two streets that meet at this particular corner are both wide and full of heavy traffic, there are recurrent small waves of pedestrians walking back and forth from one sidewalk to the other. The entire scene is covered in a semi transparent layer of dark smoke that hurts the nose and throat if you stay too long in its vicinity. (Eventually you might not notice it at all. Maybe by then you will have stayed too long, you will be part of the smoke, of the noise, of the pain.)
A large truck is double parked on the southeastern side, in front of a boarded up shop covered in graffiti. (Various gangs have marked this place as their territory, invisible warriors that came in the night and planted their flag upon forgotten surfaces of concrete and metal and wood.) Three men sit on the edge of the truck bed and a large mechanical dolly sits on the sidewalk, unused. Two other men walk from east to west, drinking from glass bottles covered in paper bags, loudly discussing the events of the day without really listening to each other. (Sentences fly like missiles without direction.)
An older woman, wearing a large blond wig and a tight mini skirt, smokes by the donut shop on the north western corner. The skin of her arms hangs loosely from her wrists, pockmarked by needle scars. A neon sign of a nude woman blinks in and out from the covered front window of a massage parlor that stands next to a freshly painted liquor store on the northeastern corner. A little boy grabs onto his mother’s hand, dragging a plastic bag behind him, gently sobbing away the remains of a heartfelt tantrum.
I exchange a few words with the lean young man with short dark hair. (I met him a few moments ago. He just came up and talked to me.) I am flirting a little, maybe even a lot. Sometimes it's hard to tell as quantities and measurements change from day to day and I was never too keen on measurements to begin with. (I know I want something, something different, something unusual, something scary. Fear sometimes makes me feel alive.)
He tells me that he investigates animal mutilations. I say that I sometimes make videos about that very subject. I don't think he understands me. Maybe he just can't process what I've said, maybe he just assumed that the only possible reaction on my part was surprise so he heard the reaction he anticipated instead of the one I actually gave him. (In that case, I am talking to a ghost. But at this point I don't mind talking to ghosts. It's so much better than being alone.)
Two shirtless teenage boys are standing nearby looking at us, listening to what the young man has to say. Both boys are covered in tattoos that blend the sacred with the profane, the violent with the loving, the peaceful with a deep unrelenting sorrow. I get the impression that they know him, maybe they have heard him talk like this many times before, maybe they can recite the long sequences of words that pour out of his mouth from memory, a kind of hopeless poem mired in mold and rust.
They lean against the window of an old battered hotel. I hear a loud drunken voice coming from inside, behind the dirty facade that still holds traces of a past lifetime of small luxuries. From animal mutilations, the young man moves on to a flow of words that I can only barely keep up with, a sequence of ideas that seem only barely interconnected.
"Fattened as they are with the sloth of caged animals, you know what I mean by their sloth? Darkened by their cheerless existence beneath our marvelous white wings, they know no joy. Nothing like it, nothing."
(I don't know what he's talking about but my curiosity is evoked like an invisible flower emerging from the depths of my chest, something tangible that travels up and down my body leaving traces at various hidden nodes.)
On the south western corner there is a one story complex. A small adult shop is embraced on both sides by a single dilapidated house that wraps around it like a concrete parasite. The house has two facades, each one leading to a different street, each one with a little forgotten porch covered in trash and a solid steel gate.
The adult shop has only four faded porno tapes in its window, the lost glories of never quite beautiful women that have long lost their battle for men’s attention and are now forgotten symbols of wasteful dispersal that fail in their weak attempt at temptation.
The young man starts to walk and I follow him. I can't say that I like him, I can't say that I don't. I just know that I want to hear more, I want to experience more of what he can bring to me, what this corner can offer, what this moment can invoke. I am unrelenting in my curiosity. It often gets me in trouble. But it's beyond my power to change it so I might as well give in completely. Follow it to the end, wherever the end may be.
The young man walks into the adult shop and I follow him. He is still talking. I look around while listening to his long nearly incomprehensible rant.
This is not my first time in one of these places, but it's still a strange space for my eyes to explore. Somehow his words fit into the things I'm seeing, words curling around objects like snakes, adjectives flashing over photos like transparent labels made of flesh.
"They watch, you know? They are always watching. They watch the images of childhood from our flickering screens, see the green of grass and blue of sky without the knowledge of the wealth of feelings that such images evoke in the spirit of one whose bare feet have trod on grass and leaped towards the sky."
One who leaped towards the sky, I hear him say it and I see a woman jumping. She is nude, grotesquely large breasts hang from her chest, rising from the sheer momentum of her jump. She is smiling but it doesn't really seem like a smile, more like a painted mask that refuses to come off. There's a hint of sky behind her and a man is smiling next to her, content with what he sees. She leaped towards the sky but she didn't make it. She landed inside this place. Much like I have.
Behind the counter, there is an older bearded man wearing a baseball cap and reading the newspaper. He looks up at us for barely a second before his eyes return to the wrinkled pages that he holds in his rough hands. (I would expect him to be surprised to see me here. How often does a young girl walk into a place like this? Maybe more often than I realize. His eyes don't register any surprise at all. Maybe he is completely beyond surprises. Maybe a long time ago he accepted the world as a place of unrelenting predictability. I am just another element in this long chain of constant repetition. This could almost be said to be a kind of enlightenment. But it feels heavy, old, tired, used.)
A TV screen behind him shows intense intercourse happening between a large muscular black man and a thin blond girl who seems like she's about to break under the black man's weight, under his unleashed physical strength. The volume on the TV is turned down while the radio blares out right wing talk intermixed with old rock and roll songs. I can't help but blush slightly when I see the young girl being taken in such a rough manner. I try my best to act nonchalant but I can't help myself. Something about the music and the condemnations of liberal ideology mixes in with the interracial coupling, something clicks inside of me but I can't decipher it. There's too much input all at once, too much information. The image intermingles with the words, as if they're saying the same thing, as if they're pulling towards a common center from different directions. The older man with the baseball cap groans and turns the page.
Two Latin men stare at a glossy magazine and make whispered comments. Maybe they're talking about me. They're both wearing checkered shirts and thick well worn blue jeans. (I imagine they came here straight from work, both eager for a moment of pure pleasure uninterrupted by the harsh touch of reality.)
An older man in a black overcoat carefully runs through the many video sections, scanning every title carefully, making silent calculations with his eyes. Every so often he grabs a box and puts it under his arm. He already holds several there, at least six. (I wonder what he's looking for. I wonder if it's even possible to find it. Could anything at all satisfy the hunger that hides behind his down turned eyes?)
A sweaty brown skinned man stands by the dark door that leads to the private booths, anxiously staring at each of the men that walk in and out of the store. His head is shaved bald and his hands press against his hips with a sense of repressed urgency. His eyes have the distinct shape of barely controlled need, of desperate hope slowly turning bitter and painful. (How long will he wait until he decides the wait has been long enough? Maybe the wait is never too long. Maybe there's always a prize at the end.)
I see another door, dusty and forgotten between rows of video tapes and plastic dildos of all sizes. I immediately realize that it must lead to the larger house that embraces the store like a snake made of brick and glass.
The young man walks through the store without looking at those around him. He slows his pace just a little and turns to make sure I'm still there. I follow him closely and listen to his ongoing rant while I look around. I expect someone to stop us from going any further but nobody does.
Each of these strange men have a role to play within this game and we don't feature in the rules. (When were these rules written? How long can they stay in place before they start to decompose into fragments of memory, touches of old songs, glimpses of wasted youth.)
The young man continues:
"The sky shall not have them. The grass shall never touch them. We keep them safe, we will always keep them safe, you know? Like pearly little maggots hidden away in a dark dumpster, suffocating them with cellophane wrappers and video games, and mp3 players, and cellular phones."
We keep them safe inside these houses, these stores, between four walls, while a man penetrates a much smaller girl on a flat screen and another man reads a newspaper, too bored to even look up. Safe from what is out there, safe inside. (We seek safety. We yearn for danger. After all, this is why I am here. I have to admit it, even if only when I speak silently to myself.)
The young man opens the old door in the back of the store without a key. He walks straight into the open space on the other side. Nobody makes any move to stop him or ask him where he is going. I follow while trying to keep track of what he is saying. I have forgotten why it was that I started listening to him, but now it has become absolutely crucial that I should listen, absolutely crucial that I should understand. (How do things like these become important? What happens when the importance goes away? These things just happen and I am more onlooker than participant in their shifting games of musical chairs.)
"They may speak to one another, reach for one another through these devices, but harsh words will have to win their battles, smooth talk will suffice for exchanges of affection. We will not let the bloody fisted brawls have them, nor the hand holding, tickling, chasing, and swinging. They are only for us."
With a quick hand gesture, the young man lets me know that I should close the door behind me. I close it, trying to be as quiet as possible even though nobody is listening.
I see a series of black and white photos on the wall next to me. A young girl rising from the ocean, covered in foaming salt water, wearing a pair of jeans cutoff shorts and a white t-shirt, all soaked in the ocean water. The same young girl walks towards a cave on the side of a rock wall rising from the gray sand of the beach. The young girl strips off her clothes as she walks into the cave where I can barely see stone steps leading up into absolute darkness. The last photo is the girl from behind, completely naked, fading into the darkness as she walks up the stone steps.
I turn to look into a doorway and I catch a glimpse of a young girl sleeping. The only clothes on her body are a small white t-shirt and thin white panties which slide into the gap between her buttocks, revealing the gentle curves of her flesh. Her face is turned away from me but I believe it is the same girl from the black and white photos, the same girl that walks into the cave. I can see her chest moving up and down slowly, softly. For a moment she seems a perfect picture of innocence. But who can live here and still retain any semblance of innocence? (This must be the place where innocence comes to die, where it surrenders itself for one final sacrifice. Is this why I have come here? Is this why I have followed this stranger into an unknown house? Have I brought my own sacrifice to this temple of shadows?)
I place my attention back on the young man who has never stopped talking. He hardly ever turns to see if I am still there, as if he assumes that I couldn't possibly go anywhere else.
"We strip away their immortal souls and make machines of them, we take away what is free and light in them and leave dead robots behind, fat little high fructose corn syrup powered robots to cherish the ideals we hammered into the hole we tore in their hearts. They will hate terror and terrorists. They will love America and God. They will hate what we tell them to hate. They will love what we tell them to love. Their ears and belly buttons will be washed and their homework will be done. And they will grow to be like us."
The house we have entered is shaped like a thick L, with each end crowned by an elegant wooden door that leads to the outside. Inside, the light is low and shaded in red and green. At the corner of the "L" there is a long table, covered in a ripped and stained tablecloth. Two women and two men sit on small metal chairs at the table. When I first see them, I am afraid that they will be alarmed by my presence. But soon I realize that they couldn't care less who I am or why I am there. (How many strangers must come through here at all hours of the day or night? There is a kind of comfort in the thought, a space where everyone is equally welcome, everyone is equally foreign.)
One woman prepares a crack pipe with the careful tenderness usually reserved for babies or works of art. She is wearing only a slip over a pair of tight white shorts. One of the men, a skinny older Caucasian wearing thick glasses and a sleeveless undershirt, anxiously stares and waits for his turn. The other two angrily discuss their current situation, always precarious, always on the brink of a complete catastrophe that has already started but never quite comes to an end. The second man is a middle aged Latino, wearing jeans and a buttoned up shirt. The woman is older and hints of sadness and deep resignation recurrently wash over her wrinkled face. She wears a black T-shirt and a ripped red skirt.
The young man keeps on moving and I keep on following. He walks by the quartet without saying hello. I follow his example. I hear one of them whispering as we pass them by. (Maybe they do notice me briefly, maybe they have seen many girls like me before, maybe they know what happens at the end of this adventure. In this way they are blessed for they know much more than I do. My ignorance is frightful, my ignorance is appealing, my ignorance is warm like a blanket, my ignorance is heavy like a dark cloud.)
Behind the table, there is a broken door that leads to a long bathroom. I follow the young man into the bathroom. None of it makes sense to me, but it hasn't made sense since the beginning, so there's no use in starting to ask questions now. (Or rather, I will continue to ask questions but I won't worry too much about trying to get answers. I can't ask the mutilated cow what happened in the middle of the night, and yet I can see it, I can touch it, I can keep it in my mind and make it gyrate to try to get it to somehow surrender its mysteries, its invisible chains of causes and consequences. Can I ask more of my present than I can ask from a dead mutilated cow?)
Inside, behind a ripped plastic curtain, there is a stretched out shower stall with three different shower heads, designed so that three or more bodies can bathe simultaneously. The tiled floor is covered in grime, it smells of urine and sperm and vomit.
The young man opens a drawer and takes out a long red tube with two silver metal prongs at the end. He shows me the device and explains that it is used to administer strong electric shocks. He asks if I will try it with him. I ask him if it hurts. He says it does. My eyes are wide open and a cold wave of fear is pulsing up my back. But it's too late to say no to anything, it's too late to play hard to get when I have already surrendered. In this game I am the playing field and he is the only contestant.
I say I'll try and ask him to start slow since I didn't know what to expect. He nods absentmindedly. (In the scheme of ordinary thought there are only two poles for experience: normal or evil. What I am about to experience is definitely not normal.)
Just then I notice a young boy sitting on the floor, in the shadows. He is playing with several little plastic toy cars and tiny plastic soldiers. He makes soft explosive sounds with his mouth each time one of the little figures gets shot. He looks up at me and smiles. I smile back at him and just then I feel a surge of electricity against my arm. I jump up in shock. The little boy laughs and points up at me. The young man laughs as well. Then he begins talking again.
"We will make them want us, want us for the toys, the shoes, the clothes, the sweets we can buy. That is how we buy their affection, that is how seduce their desire. They will wail for these things, the fruits of our Empire, never knowing the taste of earth and air and sun and water. We will give them corn to eat in all of the colors of the rainbow forged in the shapes of cartoon characters and steroids to make their lungs pump even when there is no oxygen left to breathe and technology to cast its light over their pallor and more fucking liquid corn to leave them thirsty for more and more and more…They belong to us and to no other, certainly not to themselves. Whatever they are, whatever they were or might have been, it will be smothered like the unwholesome flame that it is."
The only light that seeps into the bathroom comes from a high little window that also brings with it the constant wave of screams, curses and laughter that washes in from the alleyway outside.
The young man is standing next to me, smiling lasciviously. He strikes me again with the electrical prod. I jump up and manage to half muffle a scream. Two tears slip from my eyes and slowly make their way down my cheeks. The young boy again laughs and points at me with wide eyes. (I feel the urge to stop what is happening. I feel the urge to run away and forget. But I can't stop listening. I can't stop the raging need to see what waits at the end of the tour, to feel, to sense, to remember.)
"Death shall not have them, for we will never let them live. They will die before they can be born, to satisfy our hunger, to stave off the orgy of fear that is existence. They will never be here, will never know now, will always be spirited away by our incessant diversions, left as ghosts slumped on sofas with crumbs in their creases."
He prods me again and this time the electrical shock is too intense. For an instant I try to grab hold of myself, but I find myself falling. He holds me by the shoulders and gently slides me down to the floor. I feel the dirty wet floor underneath me. Somehow I don't care, in a way it feels comforting to be laying down here with the dirt and the urine and the sperm. The little boy is still pointing at me, his mouth wide open. There is a black gap between his front teeth.
"And the few who suspect that they have been denied the most precious gift we could give will be punished for their intelligence, for their pure heartedness and courage. The brave and the curious and the noble of our brood will suffer the worst tortures so that we may enjoy our cannibal feast, unperturbed by remorse or anxiety."
The young man is taking out other gadgets. He tells me to strip and I do as he says without thinking. I am looking up at the ceiling which seems to be an orgy of constant fractal movement, bright colors moving in all directions, shapes shifting so often that I can't try to guess at what they are. (I wonder if he has given me some kind of drug without my knowledge, but maybe I have made the drug myself, out of my own need for new horizons, out of the frayed edges of my hungry eyes.)
The young man hooks some wires to my mid drift. More electricity surges through my body. It is not as shocking as before, it feels oddly stimulating, like a general soft tickling that is never strong enough to be uncomfortable and yet won't let me rest. I tell him I like the way it feels. I moan lustfully and I urge him to turn it up. He smiles down at me and I smile back. I feel sweat forming on my forehead, on my chest. My knees open without any conscious decision on my part.
The skinny older man wearing thick glasses steps into the bathroom and looks at me nodding. Then he turns towards the toilet and urinates right in front of me. I giggle and the little boy laughs loudly, his laugh echoing in the confined space. I slowly lose consciousness while I stare at the old man's penis and the yellow arch of his urine which emerges from the circumcised head.

I wake up in a small very dark room. The windows are covered with two layers of curtains and a thick old blanket taped to the window. I am laying on the floor, wearing only a white t-shirt and underwear. A young Latin girl lies sleeping on a ripped up mattress next to me. She is covered in cold sweat and wears only a thin summer dress. Her breathing is shallow and labored, her face squeezes painfully every few minutes and her dried tears have left a spider web of discolored makeup all over her cheekbones. Hanging on the wall close to her head there is a little wooden crucifix; taped up underneath it, the photograph of an older smiling woman with gray hair.
(No matter where we are, we must eventually believe in something. The forms will change, the urge will remain the same. Belief is a door too easy to shut.)
I hear the voice of the young man coming from a room next door.
"We will never need to atone if we nip truth in the bud, snuff out the first smoldering spark before a wild fire can grow and spread its crimson fingers over the hearts of our children, taking them forever from us . Never will the passion to live flower within and eat them alive and transform them from worms into butterflies. They are ours alone to devour."
I turn to look at the doorway. I see two Latin men staring at the two of us. They both wear checkered shirts and well worn thick blue jeans. I open my mouth to say something but I can't figure out what to say. (Am I the intruder here or are they? Or is everyone here a passing shadow in an old haunted house with no true inhabitants?)
I hear the young man's voice fading. He is walking away. Our little encounter has ended.
After some time of laying there staring up at them, the two men turn to leave. I slowly stand up. I find my clothes laying on a corner, mixed in with other clothes that I don't recognize. Everything is soaked with sweat. I get dressed quickly, then I slowly find my way out.
In one of the hallways that leads to the street, two shirtless teenage boys smoke marijuana and trade jokes and conspiracies amongst themselves. One of them has a large scar across his chest and a fresh bruise around his right eye. The other one has two fingers missing from his left hand, he uses the stumps to scratch his running nose.
Using the joints as pointers, they discuss places and possibilities, people and betrayals, histories and legends. In their words, a trail of bubbling life pierces through the scratched up walls and the pungent smell of vomit that seeps in through the outer gates, along with loud horns, angry threats and a crackling radio playing an ancient song of harvest.
I hear the trail of their words as I walk by:
"Fattened as they are with the sloth of caged animals..."
I step outside and bright sunlight hurts my eyes. I close the door behind me and walk away.

Singing With Babies

Pale sunlight streamed in through the glass windows on either side of the narrow room. It was almost 7pm and soon she would have to put the babies to bed. She would somehow convince their little bodies that it was time for sleep even though it was still light outside. But before she tucked them away for dream time she sat each one on the padded dinning room chairs that surrounded the oversized antique wooden table and turned on her black laptop. Jonas sat closest to her and Noah on the chair beside him. She pushed the computer to a center point on the table between them.
Noah started to clap his chubby hands as he saw the LCD screen come to life. Jonas, looking so small in the straight-backed chair, waited patiently, watching curiously and quietly as the Windows sound and screen prompts popped up one by one. Noah let out a small excited wail as she plugged in the computer’s mouse and then found the right folder and file and pressed play.
“Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow!” It was part of her daily vocal training and she sang the syllables loudly going up the musical scale. The wooden floor and furnishings bounced her voice right back and the sound was crisp and resonant.
Jonas seemed stunned and looked at her excitedly with a big bright toothless smile that puffed out his fatty cheeks, a smile that showed he was not quite sure what he was hearing, but he liked it. For him, it was all new. His experience was fresh and his eyes widened when she sang. He laughed too, with every meow meow phrase he erupted into tiny giggles of delight.
“Meow meow meow meow meow meaow meow meow meow!”
She sang along with the prompts of the recording. Jonas looked back and forth from the psychedelic screen saver that accompanied the music to her, mesmerized by the combination of what he saw and heard. She wondered if music and those transforming colors of never ending possibilities would always be linked in his mind, she hoped so.
Jonas started clapping his tiny hands, bobbing his head up and down rhythmically to his own beat. Noah sang a little under his breath, a sound that seemed sort of like speech, but was flavored by melody. She looked at them as she sang, opening her eyes wide, raising her eyebrows, sending her energy towards them in pure unabashed delight.