《[garbage]》


 Chapter 1

    He doesn¡¯t speak until the fifth day. The first day he builds and rebuilds a lean-to against the chipped white concrete wall with his plastic mattress and a thin worn sheet. Then he sits inside, clutching at the welcome literature, scrawling letters that only sometimes make up words into the margins of the pages whose cold black text tries to gently read ¡°Welcome to Mercy Providence Hospital.¡±


    Since his mute passivity is consistent the nurses and orderlies simply wait for the meds to kick in and leave him be. When they come with ugly brown molded plastic trays of overcooked food, plastic utensils, and cartons of milk featuring cartoon cows and facts about dairy, he takes them with no question or thanks and brings them with him into his meager little tent, apparently reading over the haphazard miniscule lines of partial english he wrote with the quickly dulling golf pencils he has collected in a stack by his side.


    A single nurse is always seated in the door frame. He sometimes watches them from across the room. First it¡¯s a heavy olive-skinned woman with jangling gold and purple bracelets, her two hoop earrings wiggling and catching the light whenever she swings her head to look back at him. She turns away shortly each time to continue reading her pristine paperback with its crisp pink cover. The second day it¡¯s a smiling deep brown skinned man who takes longer to abandon trying to communicate with his ward.


    ¡°You won¡¯t be here too long,¡± he says. ¡°It¡¯s a good time for you to make some changes.¡± He¡¯s sitting with his foot resting on one knee and smiling. His eye contact falls short. ¡°When you get back to your life you will have new tools to use.¡± He doesn¡¯t seem to mind his patient¡¯s silence. Since the hunched man under the blanket teepee never answers, he finds other ways to occupy himself.


    When they come with his meds, he crawls out with reserved but strong motions and swallows them silently, then crawls back in. He has a few days'' growth of beard which, combined with his layered scrubs and greasy mop of hair, makes him look wild. He¡¯s white, though not pale, and does seem to understand English, from the way his dirty sweat-lined face shows an interest in some key phrases. ¡°Dinner soon.¡± ¡°Lights out.¡± ¡°Here¡¯s another blanket.¡±


    He doesn¡¯t speak until the fifth day.


    Once in a while, during breaks from his writing, he catches the edges of another patient from the open door to his spartan quarters.


    Sometimes it¡¯s a man of impressive size, dressed in two overlapping hospital gowns, complaining in honey smooth, booming tones about his need for a second towel or double portions of food.


    Sometimes it¡¯s a birdlike woman, short and sharp, with a pinched face and a clipped, soft voice. He can¡¯t hear what she says but her expression is mildly panicked. Her wringing hands press into her stomach.


    Whoever it is he sees, and whoever sits in the doorframe through which he sees them, the answer they receive is always the same: either ¡°Ask your doctor when they come to see you,¡± or far more often, ¡°That¡¯s a question for Madeline, go find her.¡± By the fifth day, Madeline¡¯s name is prominent in the new patient¡¯s notes, accompanied still by nonwords and strings of English that don¡¯t quite make up thoughts.


    ¡°Madeline.¡± he says on Friday afternoon . It¡¯s the warm and smiling African man who¡¯s there to hear it.


    ¡°It¡¯s nice to hear your voice finally.¡± he says. His smile suggests he means it. ¡°I can see if she¡¯s available for you.¡±


    The patient remains curled against the marked up wall, pencil poised over his scribbled-dark page while he watches the nurse wave down a passing orderly. The two of them speak in tones too soft for him to hear.


    ¡°Madeline will be here soon, my friend. Do you want any water? Maybe some new paper?¡± He gestures at the mass of loose leaves surrounding the sheltered patient. Each page is covered to a glistening metallic gray, the days of writing he did. Writing over writing. The patient nods back to him.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be happy to see what I can find while you and Madeline talk,¡± the nurse says.


    Madeline proves to be a short white woman with an incredible mess of bushy brown hair kept passably tame by a series of horn-patterned clips. She has a serious but empathetic demeanor and carries a robust clipboard of a model which can be opened to store further pages inside. She makes her entrance and drags the chair from the doorframe with her to the foot of the bare wooden block bed in the center of the room. A lanyard dangles from her neck as she walks. Swinging at the end of it is a stack of badges and IDs, the frontmost of which includes an old photo of her. She beams wide in the snapshot, her face smooth and free of the scattering of wrinkles it now sports.


    She waits a moment, and, observing something, makes a note with a shining metal pen.


    ¡°I¡¯m glad to see you¡¯re feeling a little better,¡± she says. ¡°My name¡¯s Madeline, which I guess you know already.¡± The man watches her. Waiting.


    ¡°I¡¯m a social worker here. It looks like you didn¡¯t have any ID with you when the police picked you up. Can I ask your name? If you don¡¯t mind?¡± Her earnestness seems a comfort to him. His body relaxes minutely.


    ¡°My name is [garbage],¡± he answers. His voice is rough. He half-contains a ragged cough.


    ¡°[garbage],¡± she echoes. The metal pen flashes. ¡°Can you tell me anything about what brings you here [garbage]?¡±


    Still hunched against a wall, underneath his tent, [garbage] seems to contemplate the question for a long moment.


    ¡°Last thing I can remember for sure is that damn house.¡±


    Then the waters begin to surge, as if the memory, or the vocalization of it, is a chink in a past-due abandoned dam.


    ¡°I was just going in to fucking find him, and to see what all the goddamn beautiful rapture it had to be, to hole up and mainline that shit. Sorry, Gus, I mean. My boyfriend. Anyway, I don¡¯t have a clue what happened after that, but if you want my guess I''d say I decided to take some too.¡±


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    Madeline diligently writes across her pad as he talks.


    ¡°You mean the (_____),¡± she says.


    [garbage] laughs, a derisive mirthless sound. ¡°Yeah, I guess you saw it in my blood. Serves me right though, huh? That¡¯s what all the ads on the bus stops say, right? ¡®Not even once¡¯, and I go and try it anyway. Now look,¡± He waves his hands in a flutter, taking in the makeshift tent, the bare white walls, Madeline herself. She leans forward slightly, making a point of stowing the pen away.


    ¡°Can you tell me more about your boyfriend Gus?¡± she asks. Her hands are folded over the paper now. [garbage] shifts his weight and casts his eyes out as if looking for help. A dance of emotion flits across his face. Finally his gaze lands on her again and he expels a short gust of air.


    ¡°Alright fine yeah,¡± he says. ¡°But I don¡¯t know how to talk about Gus without running at the mouth a bit, so, hope you¡¯ve got a few minutes.¡±


    Madeline puts her clipboard down on the bed where it clacks to rest. ¡°Take as much time as you need.¡±


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    I was just starting at PCC and only 18 years old when I met Gus. This was right out of the Home where I grew up. Not that kind of home, with a mommy and daddy and brother and half a sister, more of a place like this, but just kids there, and all of us were ¡®troubled¡¯. Anyway I was glad to get out of there. I had a little money saved up, and I was getting loans fed into my account from good old sallie mae. I tried to get a scholarship to make it easier but I¡¯m not smart enough, whatever.


    The class I was starting with was film studies. I had a whole schedule of shit to try out, just random stuff mostly. I still didn¡¯t know what I wanted out of life back then. I don¡¯t now either but at the time it seemed a lot more important. I was nervous going in, kinda kept to the back you know, tried to act like college was just another high school class. I was pretty right about that actually. Gus sat down right next to me and shot his hand out to introduce himself.


    ¡°Hi there, haven¡¯t seen you before,¡± he said.


    I took his hand. I remember it was warm and big, and even then, just seeing him out of nowhere like that, the words were stuck to him all over. Warm and big. The guy was six six, long legs and arms but still a kind of muscular that drew the eye. Drew my eye anyway, and everything about him radiated warmth. The smile, the lazy way he turned his chair toward me.


    ¡°No, I¡¯m new,¡± I managed. ¡°[garbage].¡±


    ¡°Gus.¡± He propped his head up on his hand, elbow resting on the desk next to him. ¡°So [garbage], what brings you to film one oh one? Are you an aspiring director? Maybe a writer?¡± He seemed actually interested, too. In a warm way.


    ¡°No, I¡¯m not sure, maybe.¡±


    One thing I remember like it was last week is the way he made my mind just drain away. I never could find the right words, which is weird for me. That silence I¡¯ve been stuck in for, well for however many days I¡¯ve been in this ridiculous tent, yeah that¡¯s not my usual modus operandi. I like talking, and I tend to just find the words as I go. Not so around Gus, at least not in the beginning. For one thing he had this great laugh that always disarmed me. Wiped all the words right out. At first I just heard the music of it. His deep voice was a weird contrast to the song of that laugh. Later on I came to love it. I called it his tidal force. As I grew close to him that laugh could wash over me and smooth away all my whatever, my hesitation, all the anxiety of the moment. Maybe it should¡¯ve been a warning that the guy could have such a grip on me. Even in that first conversation it was him in control and me trailing behind him like an eager puppy.


    ¡°I totally get what you mean,¡± he said. ¡°I can¡¯t decide myself what to focus on, you know?¡±


    I smiled back at him, thinking just ¡®thank fuck he doesn¡¯t know I¡¯m an idiot yet.¡¯ He might¡¯ve, maybe he¡¯s just good with idiots.


    ¡°I work at a bookshop downtown, Douglass Books,¡± I said. I was trying to keep my hands still to be honest. It¡¯s fucked but literally that¡¯s how shook I was. Like I was meeting a celebrity.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been there since I was like fifteen. All I¡¯m sure of now is that I love stories. Movies, books, plays, whatever.¡±


    Gus¡¯s eyes could sparkle in a near concerning way. They could¡¯ve been any damn color at all and I would¡¯ve called it the best color eye¡¯s came in. And damn the boy¡¯s freakish luck they were bright blue, like an actual viking. Blue eyes get all the poetic attention.


    ¡°I¡¯m in love with movies,¡± He said. His bass lilt dropped to a genial hush, like he was telling some embarrassing secret. Damn those eyes. You can obviously tell at this point I was smitten. Pulled toward him might be the best way to put it. Drawn in. Whatever it was, I was pretty decided about how to handle it. I¡¯d put it safely in my pocket, and fucking leave it there. I was too stupid to be stupid about love, and I knew it.


    Despite my resolve to keep my feelings in my pants, we became friends pretty quick. I¡¯ll spare you the gory details. Well, I¡¯m probably sparing myself having to say them out loud really. But yeah, a few months into the class, we were close enough to go to movies and plays and all that friend shit. We started a book at the same time and talked about it, that kind of thing. I wouldn¡¯t call any of that dating though, and of course it was Gus who broke down that wall. Shattered it.


    ¡°How bout we go together?¡± He asked one day at the end of class. He had dropped a little pamphlet on the table in front of me, subtle like an exotic bird. It was a rally by the capitol building. March for gay rights. I might¡¯ve turned red enough to wedge right into the little rainbow flag printed on the front of it.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± But I did, and that was the problem. I¡¯d wanted to pounce on Gus since that first warm handshake, but something was holding me back.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    Madeline patiently waits for [garbage] to explain. When it becomes clear that he¡¯s not simply searching for the right words she gently prompts him.


    ¡°What was it that held you back?¡± she asks, and lets the question sit.


    [garbage]¡¯s eyes are fixed on the corner behind her, where the wall meets the ceiling. His jaw is slack and his brow furrowed. A slight, slow movement draws his gaze there, where it falls on something impossible. A line, like a water stain, seems to be inching out across the wall, oozing slowly down. He places the familiar shape of its edges with a snap: frost. The crystalline structure is clear, the glittering specks of white that wink and flash. He remains silent, eyeing the encroaching frozen wave as it reaches its spiny feelers forward. He can even hear, so faintly, the metallic squeaking groans, like ice shifting, like snow underfoot.


    ¡°Garbage.¡± He says, his eyes still on the wall behind Madeline. She tilts her head.


    ¡°What does ¡®Garbage¡¯ mean to you?¡±


    The ice has reached the floor. [garbage] begins to scoot back against the wall, his eyes widening.


    ¡°Garbage is. Well I don¡¯t want to tell you, honestly. You¡¯ll probably just keep me locked up longer for it.¡±


    He presses against the concrete. The ice is speeding, the air has grown sharp with cold. He can see his breath in clouds, panting out as they quicken. Little trees of white frost are sprouting along the bare bed, making their way toward Madeline. [garbage] lets out a small strangled sound. He rises up and reaches his hand out toward her, whether to pull her to safety or push her away is unclear, but she sidesteps him and backs toward the door. He can see her mouth moving, can see the concern on her face, but the sound of the frost has grown thunderous, he can¡¯t make out what she says. The cold is overwhelming, a spasm wracks his frame.


    Then it reaches him.


    The floor below him becomes slick and reflective. The freezing air seizes his lungs and he coughs a dry clapping rejection of the biting cold. He tries to step again toward Madeline, toward the door, but he slips backward and lands hard on his elbow and tailbone. He hears and feels below him the ominous gun-sharp sound of the ice cracking. Before he can skitter away, a web of lines extends outward. Pieces of the floor begin to fall away, into darkness.


    He sees, as he falls, a worried Madeline, leading his nurse into the room. But before she reaches him, he¡¯s gone. He watches their faces fly upward. He spins in the dark and the cold.

 Chapter 2

    I hit the ground - the soft ground. I don¡¯t know if I lose consciousness. Spinning around in the pitch dark, falling through impossibly cold air, that might as well be losing consciousness. But not only is the ground soft when I land, not only do I land lightly, as if I¡¯d been falling through water rather than the rushing winds, but it¡¯s bright too, like noonday bright. The black of the fall and the dimness of my room are lost, somewhere above me I guess. It¡¯s cloudless skies and beach vacation bright. And warm too. I still have scaly goosebumps from the cold. My ass hurts, my elbow too. I whip my head around, trying to make sense of what happened.


    ¡°I¡¯m still fucking tripping.¡± I say out loud. The sound of my own voice takes me one small step down from the panic attack that threatens to buckle me.


    ¡°Still in that god damn house I bet. Not even once.¡± I gasp out a kind of safety net laugh and continue trying to orient myself.


    ¡°Okay, fine, I¡¯m high as birds, I¡¯m dreaming of a-¡± Lush dark green grass surrounds me. I seem to be at the edge of a forest, but it looks more like a lawn than a meadow.


    ¡°Somebody definitely cuts this grass,¡± I say, feeling its robust blades between my fingers.


    ¡°Some kind of park.¡±


    [park: parks are made to be enjoyed.]


    ¡°Garbage came to the party.¡± I drily reply. ¡°Joy.¡±


    He¡¯s right though. For all I know some adorable couple will come around soon, walking their excitable golden retriever, gazing into each other''s eyes and talking about normal people shit. What¡¯s for dinner. Did you fill up the chevy? What the fuck is that homeless looking dirty man in two pairs of scrubs doing staring at us?


    I check my six quickly but don¡¯t find any suspicious lovers. I decide to heed my better¡¯s advice anyway. Never know. I stand up. My ass hurts so it takes me a second. Then, cradling my elbow, I limp toward the forest. Skinny light-colored trees grow up in slants and twists somewhat sparsely. They¡¯re punctuated by occasional big cedars, tall birches, and brambly bushes with dark purple berries. I make my way through some distance to be sure I can¡¯t be seen from beyond the woods. I feel the squishy leafy earth give way each step and know that I¡¯m trailing obvious footsteps.


    [steps: steps always lead somewhere.]


    ¡°Yeah,if anyone¡¯s around,¡± I counter.


    I rest, back against a towering pine. I¡¯m talking to him again. Something I haven¡¯t done much since the Home. But hell, all bets are off now, this is just a grand hallucination anyway. I sit down, lay my head against the tree, and try to think rationally.


    ¡°I just have to wait it out, sober up, find Gus, and get out of this house. That¡¯s all. I¡¯m probably just lying in a pile of people, zuted to shit and dreaming of. This.¡±


    The forest is beautiful meanwhile. It¡¯s green and brown all around, smells like earth and water. Like a stream or a cave.


    ¡°Just wait it out.¡±


    [out: you¡¯re out of your mind.]


    I take a deep breath in and let it out like I¡¯m dropping a stone in a pool, my pulse gradually begins to slow. As the silence extends and my muscles unclench I simply observe the woods around me. Steadily it seems to wake up, as it deems me nonthreatening. Birds perch closer to me. A skunk ambles by, just in sight. I probably woke the thing up with my crashing. Sorry skunk. The birds are quite brave in fact. Braver by the second. A little fluff ball ground tit takes a sideways hop toward me, pointing its eye directly into mine. Its beady little eye.


    ¡°Name.¡± It chirps.


    I feel my blood quicken again for a moment, but I reign myself back in, watching the bird closely.


    ¡°Just a weird fucking trip.¡± I whisper.


    ¡°Trip.¡± The bird answers. ¡°Trip Trip.¡±


    Another one flutters down from a nearby branch, landing half on top of its contemporary. It takes up the chant. Now both of them hop back and forth, eyeing me as they go.


    ¡°Trip. Tritrip.¡± Maybe they¡¯re just chirping now.


    ¡°Y-yeah..¡± I say slowly. I look away but am startled by a carpet of birds strewn across the leafy forest floor behind me. They all, with eager energy, copy the first one in piping little voices, eerily human. Then at once, they go still. At this point I¡¯m halfway to standing, ready to take my bad trip to a less trippy part of the woods. But in looking around as I rise to my feet, I see something that catches me there, half crouched. Frozen, like prey.


    A fox stands a few paces off. It¡¯s statuesque, thin and dirty. Watching me watch.


    [watch: watch out.]


    It eventually saunters away, vanishing behind a thicket of purple berries. When I stand again fully I see that the welcoming committee has halted their incessant hopping and ¡®trip¡¯ing. They stand in a clear formation, now with two smaller denser crowds facing into an aisle. I feel within me, deeply, the compulsion to step forward. It feels natural, like a walk sign has lit up at the other end of an intersection, like a queue is moving forward.


    [forward: can¡¯t turn back.]


    Just a dream. Just a long fucked up dream on a dirty couch in a stupid house.


    I walk. Each step I take I fall farther forward. In four steps I fall onto my front paws, and by the time I reach the end of the aisle I no longer tower over the crowd of ground birds. I barely have a half foot on them. My muzzle protrudes from my face, my paws feel the soft earth. I can smell, I kid you not, I can smell every feather of each of the birds around me. I scamper to my left and back, testing out my legs. I¡¯m powerful, small, fast, and I always have been.


    I dash forward, through the crowd of birds, smelling my way toward where I saw the other. He¡¯s powerful, I realize, when I catch his scent. But I¡¯m fast. He¡¯s in my territory. I weave through trees and over rocks, stopping on a dime to continually sample his direction. Leaves move beneath me, I try to keep quiet.


    [quiet: quiet the fox. you are taken.]


    The voice gives me pause. I gaze around dimly, trying to see if another is near. Finding none, I continue, scurrying forward, coursing toward the threat. His scent is stronger, I must be nearing him. Just to my right, I have only a moment¡¯s notice and he¡¯s on me. His teeth flash and a low snarl wraps him and weaves through my own warnings. It¡¯s a close thing. His surprise almost ends me, but I am fast. I roll to my feet. My back leg is bleeding, I smell it strong in the air.


    Slowly we circle one another, hackles raised and fangs bare. I snarl my threats. He answers.


    [answer: answer me, please! you are taken! Taken!]


    He dives again, jumping at my hesitation, and rips another wound in my side. He barely misses my neck. I¡¯m weakened. Everything in me screams to get out, get out and live to fight another day. But I know this forest. This is my home. I know the stream to the west of here. I know the tall tree that stands on its bank, whose tangled web of roots forms a hollow. My kits, too young to see or eat without me.


    Then a long high sound perks us both. Coming from the east. The clearing. Our fight stops for a beat while we watch for the noise. It¡¯s a keening sonorous sound. Another. I don¡¯t let it take me from the task at hand for long. I spring to my fight, snarling, snapping. I finish it. The other is gone. I lick my wounds and watch the trees.


    [trees: the forest has you. Us.]


    The sound again, the new other, closer. I know it. I know that sound. I remember, and when I do, I see it. Dog. The panic electrifies my limbs. I try to bolt west, to the stream and safety, but my wounds pull me down. Before I manage to get more than a few bounds away I feel a force slam my chest. The arrow shaft drives into me. I¡¯m knocked to my side. I try flailing upright again, letting squeals of terror escape my jaws, snarls of panic. The dog bounds up to me, approaching to fetch me away, and beyond him, a man. He¡¯s dressed in a silk cloak and carries a longbow. I see his face. I have seen it before. In a different life, in a different time.


    Darkness without pitch. Emptiness with no apprehension.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    [garbage] started awake, memory of muzzle and paw fading away. The feel of the arrow through his side dissolved into realization of where he was. He felt his arms beneath the blanket and shoes heavy on his feet, tangled with the throw he lay under, wedged as he was into the couch a few feet too short for him. He opened his eyes and let reality wash away the panic. Gus sat on a reclining chair opposite their small coffee table. He looked distracted. [garbage] rolled his head around and slowly rose up.


    ¡°Nice nap?¡± A voice next to him asked. He looked to see the source. The figure on the chair next to him sparked a further rush of memory. A large asian man, with a soft sleepy expression.


    ¡°Yeah, yeah, weird dream.¡± [garbage] answered. Don smiled vaguely back at him.


    ¡°All dreams are weird, aren¡¯t they.¡± He said.


    There was a thin pale woman next to him with eager green eyes and long matte pink hair, the color of her name. Coral pouted her lips and blew air through her nose.


    ¡°Not my dreams.¡± She said to Don. ¡°You guys are lucky, you know. All my dreams are about walking in the woods, and that¡¯s it. I don¡¯t even get any company. Every night I wander through the trees and nothing happens. I¡¯d kill for weird.¡±


    Something bright and painful splashed across [garbage]¡¯s mind and dripped away before he could catch it. Don snorted mildly.


    ¡°I¡¯d kill for yours. I don¡¯t have the wherewithal for the ridiculous things my brain decides to show me.¡±


    ¡°How bout a trade?¡± Coral asked. From her expectant look it was hard to tell whether she really believed it was possible. Don dismissed her suggestion with a wave of his thick hand.


    ¡°So [garbage], the vote is two-one now, either Hug Point, which is illegal I might remind you,¡± He stressed the word like all the weight of the gods sat behind it. ¡°Or the much prettier forests of Ecola Park, which are lush and green and well within the law.¡±


    The three of them looked at [garbage], waiting for his answer. Gus was biting his lip. His eyes were far away.


    ¡°Tie goes to the driver.¡± He said lazily.


    ¡°You can¡¯t make up rules like that!¡± Said Don. Coral had laid back against the ratty plaid couch  and was giggling softly to herself. ¡°Fine,¡± Don said, when it was clear Gus wasn''t going to compromise. ¡°Why did we even have a vote if it was just going to be Gus¡¯s decision anyway?¡±


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    ¡°Donny don¡¯t be sour,¡± Coral said back. She put her thin, long fingered hand onto Don¡¯s shoulder, but he wasn¡¯t taking consolation. He fumed while Gus pulled out his phone and swiped silently at it, then flipped it around to show us the route.


    ¡°Bout an hour and a half there,¡± he said. With a ding, a message flag flashed at the top of the map. Gus hastily withdrew his phone and pocketed it.


    ¡°I think we should take two cars.¡± Don said. He was sitting with his arms crossed. His jaw was set. Gus shook his head.


    ¡°For what?¡± He asked, incredulous. But Don wouldn¡¯t budge.


    ¡°I like mine.¡± He answered. Coral gave his shoulder a little shake. It was like trying to loosen up a wax statue.


    ¡°You can drive whatever you want.¡± Said Gus. ¡°Alright. So we have food, ice, tents, everything¡¯s ready to go.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll go with you Donny, we can sing show tunes on the way.¡± Said Coral. Gus¡¯s phone dinged again from his pocket. He didn¡¯t move.


    ¡°[garbage] can go with Gus and give him road head.¡± She wiggled her eyebrows. That earned a reluctant chuckle from Don. [garbage] laughed his full throated laugh and leaned to slap Gus on the back. When Gus merely smiled, [garbage] withdrew, wearing a concerned frown.


    ¡°Alright then let¡¯s get packing.¡± Coral sprang from the couch and headed into the kitchen.


    ¡°You¡¯ll love Hug Point,¡± [garbage] said to Don. ¡°Illegal or not, there¡¯s an incredible spot, you can see the ocean right out there but you¡¯re still in the thick of the forest. Anyway who the fuck cares if a few dumbasses pitch a tent or two? It¡¯s not like the cops are about to climb around the cavern to put us in irons for it.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not the point.¡± Don said. He looked sulky. [garbage] rose and followed Coral into the kitchen, patting Don¡¯s shoulder on the way out.


    ¡°You¡¯ll love it,¡± he repeated.


    Coral and [garbage] worked together to compile their supplies on the dirty carpet by the door. Cooler loaded with food and beer, marshmallows and chocolate, all the wilderness staples. Each of them had prepared a duffle and they were already stacked in a pile. Coral¡¯s stood out, a vibrant and hand crocheted rainbow bag. The tents were packed in their sleeves and leaning against the door. While they gathered the rest of the food and double checked their bags, Don and Gus sat across from each other, glaring, until a third ding sounded from Gus¡¯s pocket. He took his phone out again, breaking their little staring contest, so Don stood up to help [garbage] cram everything into the second cooler.


    [garbage] looked warily back toward his boyfriend.


    ¡°Gus what¡¯s up?¡± He asked from the kitchen. He could see Gus still hammering his thumbs away, an intent expression fixed on his fair face. After a moment he looked quickly up from his phone, then down, not meeting [garbage]¡¯s eye.


    ¡°There¡¯s a draping that was torn.¡± He tucked his phone away. ¡°For the show tomorrow.¡± He was watching his hands. ¡°Birdie wants me to remake it, but it will only take a few hours.¡±


    [garbage] pushed the lid of the cooler closed and sat down on top of it.


    ¡°Some kind of magic draping?¡± His voice had a bit of venom in it, but his eyes were still worried. ¡°One of those drapings only the master Gus can replicate?¡± Gus¡¯s eyes stayed down. He was playing with a thread from the hole in his jeans.


    ¡°It¡¯s a hard one. It would take them too long alone. Plus I¡¯d have to explain how I did it. Better if I just remake it myself.¡±


    [garbage] didn¡¯t have an answer. He knew it was pointless to call Gus out on a lie. Flat denial or outright anger wouldn¡¯t get him anywhere.


    ¡°We can wait for you here,¡± Coral said.


    ¡°I could go with you to hang out?¡± [garbage] threw out his last line. But Gus waved them down.


    ¡°No you guys go on without me, I can catch up later. Besides,¡± He flashed them his winning smile. ¡°That way I don¡¯t have to set up my tent.¡± He rose up and made his way to the door, brushing past [garbage], still without looking at him squarely ¡°I¡¯ll see you out there,¡± he said, and shut the door behind him.


    A peculiar silence hung in his absence. [garbage] shook his head. He could feel his throat tightening and tears threatened to fall. Coral walked to him slowly and wrapped her arm around his shoulders in a warm side hug.


    ¡°He¡¯ll make it either way.¡± She said softly. ¡°He wouldn¡¯t just blow us off.¡±


    Don hefted a cooler and squeezed through the door quickly, leaving them alone.


    ¡°He would.¡± [garbage] said.¡± His words were calmer than he felt. ¡°You never knew him before. He blew me off all the time.¡±


    Coral rubbed his back a bit but didn¡¯t say anything more. She bent to grab her colorful bag and slung it over her back, then headed down to the car after Don. [garbage] took a moment to collect himself. As he stood there, for that moment, he gazed off into the shabby painted wall of the two bedroom he shared with Gus.


    ¡°Because I don¡¯t fucking feel like it.¡± He spat into the empty air. Then, jaw set, he collected his duffel and joined the others in loading up.


    The trip to hug point would have been made in a seething silence if it hadn¡¯t been for coral. She made good on her promise to sing show tunes, and if it didn¡¯t bring [garbage] and Don around to the cheerful mood she always seemed to be in, it at least served to prevent them from stewing, and from growing so sour they might just turn around and throw their camping plan away in favor of another weekend at home. It was hard to stew when an off-key rendition of ¡®spoonful of medicine¡¯ was being unforgivingly sung around a mouthful of skittles.


    In the blessed unmusical moments between songs, usually when Coral was checking her phone, [garbage] sent a short series of texts to Gus. They progressed from the first angry ¡°Thought you said honesty was important?¡± through the backtracking ¡°I know it¡¯s not easy but you don¡¯t have to make it harder.¡± and finally came to rest at ¡°I¡¯ll be really sad if you don¡¯t come. I love you.¡± Finally, finding nothing else to send, and just growing more upset by the idea that Gus wouldn¡¯t see the messages anyway, he stowed the phone and decided to try siphoning some of Coral¡¯s energy.


    One full sing-through of the wizard of oz later, they pulled into the small parking lot just north of Cannon Beach. It was an unmarked little square lot with an old wooden outhouse and a stairway that led down to the beach. The group, laden with their tents, bags, and rolling coolers, made their way down to the beautiful Oregon coast. The place was peaceful. It was a lesser known spot, not advertised or sold as prime tourist real estate. As they made their way north along the shore, they only saw one other person, standing back against the mouth of the spiral rock cavern with a bulky camera to his eye, beard blowing in the crisp breeze. They carried a reverent silence with their tents and bags. They felt the salty wind from the water, heard the rushing rhythm of waves against the beach, and felt the hard rock crusted over with barnacles, uneven beneath their feet.


    The ¡®hug¡¯ of hug point was a rocky outcropping with a small footpath extending around it which was only exposed during low tide. Cold water occasionally sloshed over the path as they traversed it. The tide was rising. Their planned site would soon be inaccessible except through the thick forest to the east. When they rounded the far edge of the hug, even Don took a moment of stillness to drink in the sight of their campground. A short cliff faced the ocean, about fifty feet back from the waves. It was the same course stone that made up the cavern, but all along its center ran a colorful sheet of water, falling from the top, made to appear red orange and green from the algaes and moss beneath it. The stream was from a spring up in the forest, emptying its cool mineral rich water over the rock before it spread out below as an estuary that branched into the pacific.


    Still silent, [garbage] led the way in climbing around to the top of the cliff. It was a well worn pathway up, not steep enough to be a challenge. When they reached the top they once again took a holy moment to let themselves fall into place in the little nook above the beach. Long lush grass surrounded the noisy little stream and just a few paces off the edge of a dense forest , the site was rich with color and heavy with the scent of earth and water.


    Coral had taken her shoes off and was slowly making her way up the stream, bent double to search for fish and frogs. She held her waist length pink hair up with one hand while the other turned stones and splashed in the fresh mountain water. Don set himself the task of laying out the tarps and pitching tents. [garbage] sat at the edge of the cliff, watching the mist shrouded rocks in the distant ocean. Waves crashed against them, spraying white hands of foam upward, reaching for the clouds before being sucked back to rejoin the flow. He sat hugging his knees, contemplating the beauty of the scene. Trying to let himself be just another part of the coast. Just an animal in the world.


    That night, when the three of them sat sharing a smokey fire under the reddening sky that cast their shadows back toward the forest, [garbage] started telling a story to the group. He wasn¡¯t sure why he felt compelled to tell it, it just seemed to him that it was time somebody else heard it. Somebody who was more likely to stick around after. His voice fell into a rhythmic intonation. Coral watched him, astute. Don stared unwavering into the flames, occasionally shifting the logs or adding a branch.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    The first time I came here was with a big group of us kids from the Home. We took this cushy van. I guess it probably wasn¡¯t as amazing as I remember it. The van I mean, Hug point itself has always been just as good as ever. One of the few things that keeps its magic I think. Anyway yeah the van was like an adventure in itself. Back then I was really tight with two other boys. I must have been eight or nine when we all finally got to go on the beach trip. That was a big deal to us. We had watched the older kids go every summer growing up, so it was kind of a rite of passage thing. A trip to Hug Point meant you were really a big kid, you know? So these two that I was close with, Matty and Paul, we called ourselves the three brothers. We were a few weeks into a kind of club I guess. I mean the main purpose of the club was just for us to not let other people join it, so not much of an organization, but we all considered it like the most important thing at the time.


    So on our way there, in this fancy van, we were talking about what kind of ¡®brother test¡¯ we could make this other kid Carl perform. We were all sitting on a kind of secluded back seat, pitching test ideas while the van bumped along the highway blasting AC and some inane children¡¯s song we all hated on the grounds that it was for children.


    ¡°We should make him pee in the sand.¡± I said, with all the gravity of a banker pitching a new acquisition.


    ¡°No, he has to eat some!¡± Piped Matty.


    ¡°He has to pee in the sand and then eat it.¡± Paul said, which had us chorusing out our ¡®ew¡¯s, grinning like prepubescent alligators.


    ¡°I bet I can swim farthest out in the water,¡± I said confidently. Paul¡¯s expression grew dark.


    ¡°You¡¯ll get eaten by a shark. He confided.


    ¡°I¡¯m not afraid of a big damn fish.¡± Our group grew silent for a moment to relish my use of a swear word, then we moved on.


    The rest of the trip west was just like that. We were high energy little shits enjoying being somewhere new and talking about how we might exclude and torture Carl. When we arrived it was like I was visiting another planet. I ran up and down the coastline, racing Matty and Paul. We poked at the helpless creatures of the tide pools, daring each other to pick up one of the stinging anemones or leechlike starfish draped over and stuck fast to the rocks. Our chaperones were two young men, much younger than I¡¯d realized at the time. Everybody over sixteen was essentially elderly to us back then. I guess they must have been interns or students, roped into watching a handful of eight year olds at the beach. They had a hard enough time keeping us under control back at the Home. On the coast it was as futile as trying to keep a candle lit in the wind. So they allowed some leeway, their only hard rule was that nobody could go farther out than the point at which the water reached their knees.


    The little enclosed semicircle of the wall around the point and the entrance to the spiral cave allowed them to set up their camp chairs, each facing outward, toward the ocean, and simply let us run wild, with the natural rock boundary on one side and the long empty beach on the other. It didn¡¯t take us too long to start messing with Carl. Kids are seriously little assholes you know? I¡¯d say we didn¡¯t know any better but we all liked being mean. And we knew it was mean too. Otherwise we wouldn¡¯t have liked it. Maybe we were just too stupid for empathy. Whatever.


    We had that kid drinking sips from the tide pool, pressing his hands onto the tendrily anemones, sticking his head in the water, all while dangling the carrot in front of him, telling him he could join the brothers. Of course we never intended to welcome him into the fold. Every test ended with our derisive laughter and the ponderous claim that there were ¡®only a few tests left¡¯. To his credit, Carl wasn¡¯t a fool. He seemed to genuinely enjoy proving himself to us for its own sake. He was proud of every test passed. But eventually we grew bored of tormenting him.


    ¡°We need to have a club meeting to talk about it.¡± Matty said after Carl had successfully wrapped his head with the stinking purple seaweed that littered the sand. We left him to his unwrapping and went as a trio to the gem of the point: the spiral cavern.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    [garbage] paused for a long moment, watching the fire the three of them were huddled around. Don looked up at him, then back down. Coral opened another beer, shifting in her seat. [garbage] was eyeing something in the flames. Something that was growing out from the white orange wavering coals. He was holding his hands to the warmth. Night had fallen. They were there in the isolated flickering bubble of ancient origin. The safe space that had ensured their ancestors¡¯ survival. It was in their bones to feel that safety. To feel free around the crackles and brightness, free to be vulnerable with one another. Humanity¡¯s first therapist¡¯s couch was a circle of logs. [garbage] took a deep breath, but didn¡¯t go on. He squinted down to the fire. In its center there seemed to be a white light that wasn¡¯t flickering like the rest of the flames. It was a diffuse cold light. A little circle among the cheery glow that was eerily still. Eventually he did take the story up again. But his eyes stayed on the aberration in the fire.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    On our way over to the cave I was walking along the stripe of beach where the rocks and shells had collected, keeping an eye out for any cool looking stuff. Shiny shells, sand dollars. I¡¯d been collecting a little hoard that I kept in my swim shorts¡¯ pockets. In my hurry to pick up a clump of barnacles attached to a rock, I stepped down, running, on a piece of a broken bottle. When I sat down to examine the cut on my foot, Matty and Paul gathered around me to look.


    ¡°Damn glass,¡± I said, fighting tears. The offending shard was passed among us. It was green glass, probably from a beer bottle, but to us at the time, it was a mystical shard from the unknown.


    ¡°Someone in England probably threw it in the ocean a hundred years ago.¡± Said Paul reverently, passing it back to me. We stared at it for a while in a hush while I held my foot. When I pulled back my hand there was a spot of blood in my palm.


    ¡°Come on guys let¡¯s go into the cave.¡± I said. I ran on my hands and feet a few paces before lifting up and sprinting over. When we arrived at the entrance we stood yelling into it for a while, swear words and insults mostly. I didn¡¯t want to admit it but the darkness of the space in front of us scared me. It was Matty who took the first steps in. He shouted ¡°Echo!¡± and looked back grinning, then dashed in and around the corner, disappearing. The alien nature of the entire beach experience made the separate cold stillness and pressing dark that much more unusual to me. It was like I had discovered a room in the Home that wasn¡¯t there before, and which had strange lights and furniture, then further found, in its corner, an inexplicable closet with stairs leading upward. Paul gave me a little shove.


    ¡°Go.¡± He demanded.


    ¡°You go.¡± I said back. Then Matty¡¯s voice came drifting out from the cave, lifted to a sonorous commanding quality by its reverberations.


    ¡°You¡¯re Gay!¡± It echoed, ¡®gay, gay, ay..¡¯ His repeating peals of laughter followed.


    I was encouraged by the claim, and took the plunge. At first it was pitch dark and I had to feel my way along the left hand wall. I felt Matty¡¯s hand stop me, planted in my chest.


    ¡°Hey watch it.¡± He said. His voice played off the walls. After a while of shouting, playing with my own voice in the unique little space, I felt my boldness return. My eyes had adjusted to the dimness enough to see the other boys dimly. It was the perfect place for what I had in mind. I took the sharp green glass from the sea and explained my plan to the other members of ¡®the brothers¡¯. A way we could cement our bond. Prove that we would always have each others¡¯ backs.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    [garbage] has his eyes locked on the white circle in the fire. It¡¯s growing. It¡¯s surpassed the size of a quarter and begins to approach CD width. The beer is twisting in his head, making the scene around him judder. He¡¯s strangely compelled to continue his story. A sense of dread, itching at the corners of him, says that whatever he does, he has to continue relating the tale he¡¯s telling the others. He knows that some ensnarement, a hazy confinement beyond words, awaits him the moment he takes longer than a breath of pause. But instead of continuing, he stares, transfixed, at the white circle. It¡¯s expanded to nearly the size of the fire itself now, and shows no sign of it slowing. It¡¯s almost comically out of place. He wants to look up at the others, ask them if they see it too, but he fears that the moment he does, he¡¯ll realize something. Something dreadful that he doesn¡¯t want to see. Despite feeling the comfortable camp chair below him, he simultaneously knows that he¡¯s seated on a cold hard floor, against a concrete wall. He dimly smells an artificial citrus cleaning product. The remnants of overcooked cafeteria food. Don speaks, but speaks with the voice of a woman. A patient, caring voice.


    ¡°I¡¯d like to hear more about Gus.¡± He says. ¡°We can continue talking about your upbringing later if you want. Last session you said you were looking for your boyfriend when the police found you. Can you tell me more about that?¡±


    [garbage] falters. He presses himself back against the chipped paint wall. Madeline looks from him back to the door, shaking her head minutely at the nurse in its frame. [garbage]¡¯s tense arms and gripped fists relax a bit. Just Madeline. Just Mercy Providence. He tries to place his memory of the fire in the cold sterile hospital room. It¡¯s falling away from him. Coral, Don, falling away, and the reality of his situation crystallizing. The fine sand of the firelight story falls through his fingers and the wind catches it up. Just Madeline. Did he fall asleep? What did he dream about? The last drops finally elude him. He¡¯s in the hospital. He overdosed on (_____). Madeline needs his story so he can go home and find Gus.


    ¡°Where was I?¡± He asks. His eyes are still wide, his voice small and meek.


    ¡°You said Garbage was holding you back.¡± Madeline replied. She flips to a page in the sheaf of paper she holds and runs her finger down it. ¡°You said that you had always wanted to be with Gus, but ¡®Garbage¡¯ was holding you back.¡± She looks up, her face still passive, professionally curious. ¡°What did you mean by ¡®Garbage?¡±


    ¡°Garbage is a voice I hear sometimes.¡± He replies. His voice has a bit more strength. His eyes are less shocked now, but more distant. Madeline leans forward and drops her tone to one of caring commiseration.


    ¡°We aren¡¯t going to keep you here longer.¡± She says. ¡°Hearing voices isn¡¯t something to be ashamed of. People all over the world hear them, for many reasons. It can be managed, especially when you have help. So. Garbage was keeping you back from asking Gus out¡­¡±

 Chapter 3

    Yeah, Garbage was keeping me back, but when Gus invited me out to that gay rights rally, he pulled me right away, right out of Garbage¡¯s hands. The energy of that demonstration, a whole crowd of us, all outraged by how we¡¯d been shunted off in the name of the tradition of shunting people off. It¡¯s a kind of family I guess. When you can look at anybody there and think to yourself ¡®that girl has known what I¡¯ve known. That guy has felt what I¡¯ve felt.¡¯ That¡¯s how it was for me anyway. It was that family reunion energy, combined with our mutual frustration about the unfair establishment. It shot me up with honeyed courage, enough to really move into Gus.


    Our first kiss, on our first date, was my first experience with anything I¡¯d call romance. We were there in the crowd, in that mix of backpacks, flyers, wild shouts, weed smoke, air that gusted cold then hot from bodies all around. A speaker chanted pithy phrases we all echoed back. Between the shouts of indignation and the talk all around us of a better future, I brought myself and Gus back to the present. That day Garbage wasn¡¯t around much. I don¡¯t know if he was sulking about me getting what I wanted, or maybe giving me space out of respect. He¡¯s fickle like that sometimes. Either way I felt I had a stronger voice right then. Like I really could speak with the mouths of every member of the crowd.


    I wrapped my arm around the man I¡¯d come to love and pressed my lips to his. We were both sweaty, hoarse from shouting, our muscles were tense and minds electric. But the kiss itself, though it started as this firm concentration of gusto and courage, melted me away, like a creme brulee broken through to sweet saccharine warmth. When I felt his hands on my waist, well... it¡¯s indescribable I think. It felt like he knew me. Not like he was a close friend that knew all about me, but like he knew me from within me. A place where I¡¯d only known Garbage. Shit, sorry, I¡¯m just getting caught up in it, man I did warn you, it was a good date, it was good. And the whole rest of freshman year was good too. Gus and I went steady after that. My first and only boyfriend.


    I was dumb and romantic. Gus was strong and practical. He always liked to talk about our future. He seriously could go on for hours, speculating, spinning out these grand fantastic scenes of us in five years, us in decades, us with kids or if we didn¡¯t want them, off to travel. Europe, South America, Australia, wherever. I was more caught up in the present. Where we¡¯d be next week or right then. But I loved to hear him talk about us. All those plans would make me feel like what we had was so immense and solid, bedrock for a line of moments stretched out into the future. When it really got serious, and we ironed out some early relationship wrinkles, I started picking up the classes he was taking, including a theater design class. I followed him in but it was just to be around him more. He loved it. He put everything that wasn¡¯t focused on me right into that class.


    The theater kids that year were putting on a show called ¡®Into the Woods¡¯ and the props we were making were all these kinds of fantasy world things, beanstalks, magic staffs, that kind of stuff. The set was overdone on purpose, giant magic trees, tall towers, a gloomy forest backdrop. Designing all that was a weird blend of living in a technical world of measurements and methods, and a fragmented fairytale that lay in pieces and scraps on our workshop¡¯s tables. One of the many days Gus and I spent staying late to work on the perfect costume or a broken prop, I was sitting in a papasan chair in the corner with a mound of homework from my creative writing class, watching him work. He had a big foam board laid out on the worktable that he was painting to look like old wood.


    ¡°Gus we¡¯ve been dating for half a year now right?¡± I was looking at him over the laptop I held. He turned from his work for a moment, just enough to catch my eye then back.


    ¡°Seven months.¡± He confirmed. He made a long smooth stroke with his brush.


    ¡°And you always say we¡¯ll be together forever, like when we¡¯re old and fucked up looking we¡¯ll still be in love and all that?¡± Gus dipped his brush back into his paint and prodded it around a bit, smiling.


    ¡°Yeah and I believe it too.¡±


    I let the hum of the air conditioner punctuate my premise. The comforting smell of paint and sanded foam mingled with the aroma of chai tea from the steaming mug next to Gus¡¯s work. He looked up at me. I was squinting curiously at him and biting my lip. He plopped his brush into the water dish with the others and walked around the broad table to where I sat.


    ¡°What¡¯s on your mind [garbage]? Got cold feet?¡± He came to rest at my side and raised his hand to play lightly with my hair. I closed my eyes and felt his work-warm fingers tracing little lines across my head. My fingers found his other hand.


    ¡°You know that I don¡¯t.¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m just thinking about how things are, you know?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Not unless you tell me. Can¡¯t read minds.¡± He tapped the top of my head lightly. It took me a good solid ounce of courage I didn¡¯t have to say what I was planning to say. Garbage was hauling at my coattails, really shouting it up about risk and safety. But I pushed forward. Ever since Gus and I had gotten together it had grown easier to do that. Act against Garbage¡¯s advice I mean.


    ¡°I think we should be more together now. Like, live together. If you want.¡± Now was Gus¡¯s turn to speak with silence. His hand stopped its stroking and dropped down from my hair, where it joined his other to wrap mine in a hot blanket, and a little squeeze.


    ¡°I would love that.¡± He said.


    Suddenly the paint smell was intoxicating. The papasan chair was a gold throne. I pulled my hands out from his and wrapped my arms around his hips, pulling him off balance and into me. He laughed that tidal laugh, washing my inner beach smooth, then leaned down to kiss me softly. The planes of his lips gathered mine up and I felt his rough stubble against my chin. I think that might have been the safest I¡¯d felt in my life up to that moment. It was just as if we had built ourselves a house right there in the art room, and not just that we¡¯d be sharing one together in the near future.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    [garbage] is still sitting against the wall, but he¡¯s stuffed the plastic mattress that had served as a lean-to behind his back. Madeline clears her throat and uncrosses her legs. The heel of her shoe clacks against the floor, a counterpoint to the sound of her clicking the metal pen closed. [garbage], who was watching the back corner of the wall during most of his story, is now gazing at his dirty hands which rest on his lap, palms up and empty.


    ¡°Well,¡± Madeline says. Her voice sounds oddly loud to [garbage] ¡°I think it¡¯s best for us to take a break now, while we¡¯re ahead. I don¡¯t want to overwhelm you like last time. She stands up and [garbage] watches her adjust her shirt and flip the pages back over to the front of her clipboard. ¡°I¡¯m glad you¡¯re feeling safe enough to share with me like you are though. It¡¯s good progress.¡± She moves industriously but looks down at garbage with a sympathetic frown. [garbage] straightens from his rumination and begins to rise up himself, encouraged by the type of professional courtesy that accompanies the end of a meeting.


    ¡°Yeah, sure.¡± He says softly. ¡°So uh, how long am I going to be here do you think?¡± Madeline¡¯s answering smile is consoling.


    ¡°That¡¯s a question for your doctor I¡¯m afraid. He¡¯ll be the one to authorize your discharge.¡± It''s more of an intonation than a statement. A line read by rote, ragged at its edges from overuse.


    ¡°Right.¡± answers [garbage]. ¡°Well I¡¯ll see you then.¡±


    Madeline leaves him to his room. When she¡¯s gone, he spreads the crumpled mattress in the corner back onto his wooden bed. The sheet, which is a spiralled up rope stretched across the floor, he untwines and spreads out on top, tucking it under the edges. Then he flips off the light switch by the door and lays himself down, head firmly resting at the foot of the bed, where he can keep an eye on the corner, where the wall meets the ceiling. He watches it for a while, breaths coming long and deep, eyes slowly drifting closed. Before he falls completely asleep, he whispers something, sharp like a parent¡¯s accosting. Like the cracking of ice.


    ¡°Because I will find him.¡± He says. The muffled sound of a crying girl a few rooms away is his only answer.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    [I wake in darkness, wrapped in a double wide sleeping bag. It¡¯s confining, so I push it down to free myself. The whole pup tent is confining. I rise quietly and undo the flap. The night is cold and the air is wet. I put his shoes on and walk out to where they had their fire last night. The chairs are still circled around the dead ash, their aluminum frames stark against the moonlit coast. His phone informs me that Gus has still not made contact. I don¡¯t think he will. We¡¯ll have to find him ourselves. Again.


    I walk to the little stream nearby. My breath is just visible in the faint light. I know where I need to go. Where Gus will probably already be. I crouch over the surface of the clear water and reach out to dip my fingers just under it, feeling the icy water rush around them. Then I hold myself still. Just feeling the tension in my muscles, the effort of my position. To help me focus, I close my eyes. I think about who I am, about who [garbage] is, and every part of the line between us. Each frustration, each concession. I know the link we have, in my meditation I see that link as a cold long crystal. The water that surrounds my finger begins to grow colder. The link is bright. The way I see him fail, the way he wants me to pull away. The constant need for some semblance of closeness that each of us has. His rush toward it, my shrinking back.


    I feel the crystals form around my still fingers. The ache of frozen water numbs me. I pour more thought into my visualization. My frustration with confinement. His hatred of my agency. I hear the sound of ice. The groans of its growth. My hand is stuck firmly in the frozen stream. I take the final step in fleshing out my contemplation, shading and coloring the link. My helpless need for him to lead me out of my prison of fear. His dependence on my hesitation for guidance.


    It¡¯s done. I open my eyes. Before me in the stream there is a glittering circle of thick ice, with my hand frozen into the middle. Water rushes under and around it. I pull my arm up sharply, out from the disk, shattering a hole in its center. A bright light pours out from this opening, shining up and illuminating the little campsite. In its white gold rays the cloud of cold air billows out over the stream like early morning fog. I work my cold hand in my other, rubbing warmth and feeling back into it. Then, with a wary look back at the tents, I step over the bank, across a patch of grass crunchy with frost, and into the light.


    I feel the brisk chill of the bore against my skin, then the hard stones of the castle under my feet. It¡¯s morning. The rose gold light slants through windows set high in the grand walls. Zachariah is standing at his orrery, setting and resetting the many colored glass beads within its intricate brass rod structure. If he¡¯s seen me arrive, he doesn¡¯t acknowledge me. I walk toward him, across the bare smooth floors, taking in again the scents of his haven, the sage and rose, the cold bright alcohol of the white cup.


    ¡°Your highness.¡± I say when I arrive at the table.


    ¡°Not yours.¡± He doesn¡¯t look up.


    ¡°I¡¯m looking for Gus.¡± I continue.


    ¡°You¡¯re always looking for Gus.¡± He takes up the white goblet at his side and sips from it carefully. ¡°Garbage.¡± He says, and replaces the vessel among a spray of red and black beads. ¡°My friend¡­ The network is strong. It¡¯s better now than before. And for that I am grateful to you. But I can¡¯t help you now. If he¡¯s come through, I haven''t solved for it yet. Maybe you¡¯ll check again. Maybe then.¡± He takes a white bead and fixes it into one of the clamps at the end of a rod in the structure, then rotates it smoothly around until it clicks into place next to a black one.


    The orrery is a massive thing. An impenetrable web of spheres and rods, every part flexible, every link meticulous. Zachariah idly clicks two of its beads in his hand, watching it with an intense burning focus. He swings another rod, places another bead. The king is a striking man. If indeed he is human. He is naturally beautiful, with pale skin that seems somehow to absorb light rather than reflect it, despite its brightness, and a graceful wave of dark black hair. His eyes, always half closed and forever bored, only light up when he is watching and working with his metal contraption, the beast of his own devising which consumes him every waking hour. He is draped in fine silk, a long coat and flowing pants, both the deep red of overripe apples. He looks up from his project, appraising me with his empty golden eyes, just as one would look at a wall, long enough to see it, then away.


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    ¡°I¡¯ll write you into a book.¡± He says. ¡°If he comes into the work.¡± Then silence. Back into the thrall of his metal model. Placing a bead here, removing one there. Swinging a brass rod around, screwing another into place.


    ¡°I¡¯ll keep an eye out.¡± I say. The king waves a hand dismissively, eyes still locked on his beads, face still blank. The sharp echoes of my footsteps down the length of the room again intermingle with the occasional clicks from Zachariah¡¯s work. Before I reach my bore I hear the clicks stop.


    ¡°Oh Garbage.¡± He says, his voice raised and reverberating in the cavernous room. I turn to him again. ¡°If you¡¯d care for a drink.¡± He raises the pristine glass cup from his station.


    ¡°Not this time.¡± I answer. He replaces it silently, neither pleased nor disappointed.]


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    The moment [garbage] woke up he dug his phone out from his pocket, praying to the Universe that Gus had checked in. He let his hands and the phone fall and hissed a reprimand for his unanswered petition. The warm sleeping bag was overlarge, meant for two. His tent felt empty. He could hear Coral and Don outside talking, could smell woodsmoke and bacon. He rolled out from the ensnaring reminder of his boyfriend¡¯s absence and undid the tent flap to join the two of them.


    ¡°Any word?¡± Coral asked when he emerged. [garbage] shook his head. ¡°Oh no..¡± she said. She was seated in one of the camp chairs by the fire, a paper plate balanced on her legs. ¡°I hope nothing happened to him.¡±


    Don was crouching by the fire, on which he had placed a cast iron pan. It sizzled with burbling eggs and bacon.


    ¡°He might have fallen asleep at the workshop.¡± He suggested. ¡°Or else his car broke down and his phone died.¡±


    [garbage] lowered himself to the chair opposite Coral. He felt exhausted already.


    ¡°Simplest explanation that fits the facts.¡± He said, placing his face in his hands. His leg jumped with anxiety. ¡°I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s even worth checking the shop you know? He¡¯s probably high back at our place. Or at Zach¡¯s.¡±


    Don stood up from his cooking and fixed a plate for [garbage] before sitting himself.


    ¡°Well wherever you check, I¡¯m staying here.¡±


    ¡°Donny!¡± Coral shot him an exasperated look over her food.


    ¡°Somebody has to,¡± he answered calmly. ¡°In case he decides to show up. Besides I¡¯m getting used to the quiet here.¡±


    Coral softened back into her chair.


    ¡°I told you you¡¯d like it.¡± Said [garbage]. ¡°It¡¯s the most beautiful place.¡± There was a blessed moment of silence. Birds in the trees wove their songs through his thoughts. ¡°Alright.¡± [garbage] said at length. ¡°I have to go back. Coral would you come with me? Is that okay?¡± he looked frayed. Desperate


    ¡°Of course I will. I don¡¯t want you doing this alone.¡± She said.


    [garbage] felt a pang of warmth even among all the cold anger and worry.


    ¡°Thanks Coral. Then we¡¯ll both head out as soon as you¡¯re ready. We¡¯ll try the workshop first since that¡¯s where he said he¡¯d be, then home. And if he¡¯s not there-¡± The fire danced bright between them, fizzing from the bacon grease Don was pouring into it. ¡°We¡¯ll have to check Zach¡¯s house.¡± His heart felt heavy. His hands were shaking but his eyes itched with exhaustion. ¡°I¡¯m sorry guys.¡± he said quietly. ¡°This was supposed to be a fun weekend off together, not another chase.¡±


    Don spoke up between oily bites of his breakfast, his lips and fingers shining: ¡°Yeah.¡±


    Coral groaned at him.


    ¡°It¡¯s not your fault [garbage], obviously. This is more important than whatever, you know? I¡¯d rather be helping you out than anything else.


    ¡°Sure.¡± [garbage] said. ¡°Well thanks anyway, again. I¡¯d probably go crazy without you two.¡±


    ¡°[garbage] you¡¯re already crazy.¡± Don pointed out. [garbage] laughed despite himself.


    ¡°More crazy then. Full crazy.¡± He said.


    They finished their breakfast in silence.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    ¡°Am I crazy?¡± [garbage] asks. His voice is soft but it carries a weight, top heavy with worry and doubt. A doctor is sitting across from him, at the other side of a chipped wooden table, watching him over a laptop. The doctor has a neatly trimmed mustache and gold wire frame glasses that look tastefully expensive. His mouth is small and stressed. He¡¯s breaking out of middle age, his tan face is wrinkled and frowning.


    ¡°Crazy is a very general term without much use in the world of mental health.¡± He says. His voice is reedy and thin.


    ¡°That sounds like something you¡¯d say to a crazy person.¡± [garbage] says. The doctor smiles and leans back a bit.


    ¡°Because you¡¯ve been struggling with psychotic episodes, I¡¯m going to prescribe you a medication called (_____). Now with this medication you might notice some lethargy, some increase in appetite. I¡¯ll print up a full list of the more uncommon side effects as well. You can read it and write down any questions you think of, for when I see you tomorrow.¡± He speaks with his hands. A gold ring flashes in the sterile fluorescent light. ¡°I¡¯m here every weekday so we¡¯ll be talking a lot.¡± [garbage] bounces his leg as he listens, staring down at his own still dirty fingers. He¡¯s playing with a worn down fat-tipped little stump of a pencil. The ample square chair below him rocks slightly on uneven legs.


    ¡°How long am I going to be in here?¡± He asks. The doctor leans forward and expels a gust of stale air from his nose.


    ¡°That¡¯s a good question [garbage]. Right now you¡¯re here on a hold, which I set yesterday when you regained cognition enough to speak with Madeline. I¡¯d like to see how you respond to the medication, so I¡¯ll tell you what, for now why don¡¯t you focus on finding some hygiene habits; if you feel like it you can join your fellow patients in the day room for lunch, and we hold groups every day that you can attend. Those are the kind of things I look for when I¡¯m assessing when to discharge.¡± The doctor pushes back his chair and he begins to shuffle the papers laid out on his desk. He closes his laptop gently. ¡°Do you have any other questions for me?¡± [garbage] mutely shakes his head.


    As soon as he¡¯s ushered from the room he makes a beeline to the nearest nurse.


    ¡°Hi, how do I take a shower?¡± He asks. The nurse is a half familiar face, a broad shouldered man with deep black skin and a ready smile.


    ¡°Hello [garbage], how are you doing today?¡± His musical voice is roundly accented. It sounds like sugar syrup on warm bread. [garbage] glances down to the name badge at his chest.


    ¡°I¡¯m not about to complain I guess. Daniel? You were set to guard me yesterday weren¡¯t you?¡± Daniel¡¯s smile broadens.


    ¡°We did hang out together for a while, yes.¡± He says. ¡°How is your writing going?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve definitely written better.¡± [garbage] replies. He makes a faintly pained face. Daniel¡¯s laugh is a burbling soft sound. Like a languorous stream. He stands and ushers for [garbage] to follow, then opens a closet using a key from the ring at his belt. Once [garbage] is equipped with two small towels and an all purpose soap bottle, he¡¯s sent again on his way with an encouraging smile.


    The shower has a button which produces a sputtering stream of tepid water for about ten seconds per press. It sheets off of [garbage] and runs dark into the drain. He performs a dance of button presses, scrubbing, and occasional dodging back when the temperature changes suddenly, in quick sure motions. Once or twice, from out of a stream of foam pouring over his face, or when he¡¯s scrubbing between his toes and keeping a hand up on the silver button, he hisses out a word or two between his teeth. An argument with the moist air. Insults hurled into the spray.


    Finally, scrubbed raw, red and glowing, he dries off and redresses in a fresh pair of scrubs. He stands at the foot of his bed drying his hair and gazing down at the crisp sheets below. There are two folded sheets of paper in the middle of the blue white linen. The first is a guide to his medication, printed in a soothing blue to match his bedding. There¡¯s a monochromatic image of a woman in its background, gazing serenely at him past the bold font (_____) logo. Below that is a list of perilous afflictions, which the heading assures him are all ¡®very rare¡¯. Several varieties of death are included.


    He¡¯s about to put it down when he sees a line of smaller text, in a different font, squeezed between ¡®severe rash¡¯ and ¡®coma¡¯. It¡¯s printed in an archaic looking calligraphic typeset and reads only ¡®find a book¡¯.


    ¡°Find a book.¡± [garbage] says to himself. He peers at the words for a moment.


    The other sheet is a schedule, with groups listed out for every hour. The next hour, eleven AM, reads ¡°coping skills¡±. He folds the schedule and tucks it into his pocket, then scans the first paper again for the strange words he saw between the lines. They aren¡¯t where he saw them. Only ¡®rash¡¯ and ¡®coma¡¯. He flips it over and back. No sign of anything out of place. Only the soothing pale blue of legally required information.


    ¡°Find a book.¡± He mutters again.


    The coping skills group is essentially a presentation. [garbage] lounges in another of the ubiquitous heavy wooden chairs and watches while a middle aged white man reads with surprising energy from a stapled packet. As he listens he watches the people around him. His ¡®fellow patients¡¯, as the doctor put it. One asian man with a stern look seems rapt and attentive, sitting with hands folded at a wooden table, watching the presenter without so much as a blink. He has a notebook laid open in front of him. Every half minute or so he turns to look at [garbage], which isn¡¯t too remarkable except he doesn¡¯t seem to keep tabs on anyone else.


    [garbage] tries not to make eye contact. Instead he watches a willowy gaunt faced girl next to him, sitting cross-legged with a sketchbook in her lap. She¡¯s leaning in close to it, shading a colorful bouquet of wildflowers with a fine tipped marker. She stands out from the rest, and not just because of her incredible waist length soft pink hair. When she looks up to scan the room she watches the other patients with a half concealed wonder. Exactly as if she¡¯s watching a group of deer graze by a stream. A quiet privileged observance.


    When the speaker wraps up his lecture and departs, the room comes to life. Some leave, some stay and start talking amongst themselves. The stern man at the table begins writing in his book. A cluster of three women laugh by a plastic drink cart near the door. One woman is seated primly on an office chair in the back of the room. She has a feathery mane of blonde hair wrangled away from her face with large plastic clips. A messy pack of ID cards hangs on a lanyard around her neck, [garbage] pegs her as a staff member. She busily chews her gum and notes something down on a clipboard.


    ¡°Hi I¡¯m coral.¡± [garbage] hears from next to him. The girl with the flower drawing is looking up at him, her marker now tucked behind her ear. She¡¯s extending her thin long fingers to him with a dreamy smile.


    ¡°[garbage],¡± he says back, taking up her hand. It¡¯s cold, and feels even thinner than it looks.


    ¡°I¡¯m trans.¡± She says conversationally. ¡°And an aquarius, thank god.¡± [garbage] is relieved to find he can still laugh.


    ¡°I¡¯m gay.¡± He answers. ¡°And a cancer. A cancer to everyone I meet.¡± Coral lazily tips her head back, smiling and eyes half closed.


    ¡°Well welcome to the party [garbage]. We have all the decaf you can drink, and no hope for escape. Plus balloons.¡± She closes her sketchbook and stretches her arms out. ¡°Only we¡¯re all out of balloons. I keep meaning to ask about that.¡± Her hands drop down with a thump over the book. ¡°What brings you here to the sunny side of psychiatric care?¡±


    ¡°They tell me I was trying to live in a walmart. I guess I pitched a tent in the middle of sporting goods and everything. Anyway I don¡¯t remember it but that¡¯s what they say. How bout you?¡±


    Coral is as genial and chipper as if they were talking about lovely weather, or dog breeds:


    ¡°I got really drunk and told my sister I was going to kill myself. Hey I don¡¯t remember mine either, maybe we met up and planned the whole thing together.¡±


    A deep curt voice cuts into their conversation:


    ¡°[garbage]? I overheard you talking, is that your name?¡± The stern looking man from the table stands over them, his face serious.


    ¡°Yeah that¡¯s my name.¡± [garbage] says. ¡°You¡¯re kind of interrupting a bit you know.¡± The man¡¯s expression doesn¡¯t flicker.


    ¡°I¡¯m Don. Sorry to butt in. I just thought you might want this.¡± In his extended hand is a small book. [garbage] takes it without thinking. To his surprise the little black volume is noticeably cold to the touch. It feels as though it was just removed from a snowbank, or left in a car through a winter¡¯s night. He flips through the pages. All blank.


    ¡°It¡¯s a journal.¡± Don says. ¡°They¡¯re good to have.¡±


    Something about the slow way Don speaks, and his brooding dark face, communicates an ephemeral gravity [garbage] isn¡¯t quite sure is meant to be there. He tucks the journal under his arm and thanks Don, who makes his exit silently. The book remains cold even against the warmth of his chest and arm.


    ¡°Weird.¡± [garbage] mutters when Don is gone.


    ¡°That was very nice of him,¡± Coral says happily. ¡°I use this sketchbook my sister gave me. I¡¯m more of a drawer than a writer. Not enough words I think.¡±


    Despite the cold question tucked under his arm, [garbage] is very soon taken up in the colorful whirlwind that is conversation with Coral. She speaks with the same mystical reverence and joy about everything from the food in the ward, ¡°I¡¯m on a special diet. Vegetarian, I have to say they do a really good job on the beans here. Much better than jail.¡± The other patients, ¡°Becca is my best friend here I think, except for you of course. Oh and Rose.¡± To things [garbage] is sure have no relation to either the topics that come before or after, ¡°It¡¯s taken me five years going to the same spot in those woods but it¡¯ll eat right out of my hand now. I hope it doesn¡¯t go hungry while I¡¯m here. I named it clover.¡±


    [garbage], for his part, found it easy to be open with her in return, which wasn¡¯t his usual experience with a new face. He soon chats with her as familiarly as with a sister. They stick together through lunch and the rest of the groups of the day. After the last group, Coral lends him her sketchbook ¡®for journaling inspiration¡¯. He takes it to his room and looks through it, sitting at the foot of his bed. It¡¯s filled with impressionist marker drawings of mostly nature. But in between the colorful flowers, gnarled trees, and waving fields, there is the occasional dark drawing, always of the same subject: a spider¡¯s web, suspended in the black void of space, with a curling gray worm woven through its strands. Folded and splayed human figures dot the web.


    [garbage] closes the book. He picks up Don¡¯s journal again and flips through its pages. They¡¯re yellowed around their edges. When they flutter he feels a cool wind issuing from them.


    ¡°Find a book.¡± He says again to himself. A black mark flutters by, in the center of a page, and is gone before he can stop flipping. His stomach twists. When he turns back through the journal it¡¯s as blank as ever. He lays it down on the bed.


    ¡°I found a book.¡± He says, to no one.


    He hears it before he sees it on the glowing white-yellow pages. The unmistakable tiny sound of squeaks and ticks. The sound of ice forming.


    Then the page blooms out with frost. It reaches its spidery fingers, painting snowflakes and webbed patterns across the page, then beyond it.


    [garbage] jumps back from the bed, his heart racing. At just the moment when the vaporous crystals reach the outer edges of his bed, when [garbage] is about to decide to abandon the room altogether, Coral walks in through the door behind him. She¡¯s still looking out into the hall for a moment.


    ¡°[garbage] I¡¯m not supposed to go in your room but-¡±


    She sees the bed.


    ¡°What-¡± She begins.


    ¡°Fuck, I don¡¯t know!¡± [garbage] answers. ¡°The book Don gave me..¡± They both watch the frost crawl its way out from the bed. It seems to be reaching for them.


    ¡°Beautiful.¡± Coral says softly. She walks to the bed and leans over it, stepping right onto the new sparkling ice carpet that¡¯s branching its way out across the floor. The crystals crunch under her feet. She reaches out and drags one long finger across the book¡¯s page, then turns to [garbage], smiling.


    ¡°It¡¯s like-¡±


    The floor beneath her shatters and she falls through, into a jagged hole. [garbage] yells out to her, steps closer, but she¡¯s gone. He hears her shriek of surprise cut off, as if she¡¯s hung up a phone. The sharp hole in the floor remains. Warm light issues up from it, flickering slightly. The frost continues to make its way toward him. For a moment of silence and shock he watches its approach, then he walks forward. More chunks of floor break away and spin into darkness. [garbage] braces himself, trying to peer over the edge. He sees Coral below, lying on a stone floor, but moving.


    ¡°Coral?¡± [garbage] tries to call down to her. She rises to a seat. He can see her face, looking up at him. Her eyes are wide but she wears a small smile too. Her lips move but she¡¯s silent. More of the floor breaks away and he watches it dissolve in the air like snow dropped into a stream. Then he loses his footing and falls backward. He lands hard on his hip and reaches to find a hold in the slippery frozen floor, but his grasping hands slip against it, his fingers curling uselessly.


    He slides through.

 Chapter 4

    I land on my ass next to Coral. She¡¯s still smiling that weird smile, looking around us at this huge stone room. I look up, half hoping we can just climb out again, but the vaulted ceiling above has no hole, and is far out of reach besides.


    ¡°What the fuck?¡± I ask nobody in particular.


    ¡°Wonderland.¡± Coral answers. Her serenity doesn¡¯t come as much of a surprise, honestly. If anyone is going to take this shit well it¡¯s the girl who spent half an hour telling me that animals know how to talk but they just don¡¯t want to. I stand and offer her a hand up, which she takes, then curtsies with extravagant grace. I would roll my eyes but I¡¯m too busy staring.


    At the far end of the room from us there¡¯s a fountain. It is massive, jetting water high into the air from a circular fixture in a circular pool. Around it there¡¯s a small crowd of people, seated in ornate dark wood divans and wide stone chairs, outfitted with copious resplendent cushions and draped with colorful silks. The people are draped in silk as well, those who are draped at all. Some are half clothed, with impeccable sculpted bodies boasting muscular dark skinned arms and abs or shapely pale thighs and breasts. They all watch us with a mild curiosity. Some whisper to others and a few stand up. In several hands are long odd looking stone pipes with wooden stems. Bright white smoke curls up from them.


    One of the women who stood at our arrival makes her way across the many layers of rich velvet carpets toward us. She walks with the undulations of a dancer, hypnotic, her shimmering dark purple skirts flow around her like poured cream. Her dark straight hair drapes over her shoulders and bare breasts like shining tendrils, curling at the ends.


    ¡°Hello newcomers,¡± she says. I take a step back.


    ¡°Where are we?¡± I ask nervously. Meanwhile, Coral reaches her hand forward.


    ¡°Hi, you¡¯re beautiful, I¡¯m Coral. What¡¯s your name?¡± Coral is bubbly, like she¡¯s meeting a celebrity. ¡°Oh, this is [garbage].¡± She adds. At the mention of my name the woman¡¯s eyes flash darkly. She accepts Coral¡¯s hand but she¡¯s watching me.


    ¡°This is King Null¡¯s castle.¡± She says, answering my question first. ¡°My name is Lotus,¡± she continues to Coral, ¡°I¡¯m the king¡¯s mother.¡± She turns back to me. ¡°I think he will want to speak with you.¡±


    Coral looks at me, still beaming.


    ¡°A king.¡± She says reverently.


    I¡¯m not convinced.


    ¡°Look I¡¯m sure he has some sacred mission, some lost princess, whatever. I¡¯m not interested. I have my own life,¡± I gesture up toward the ceiling. ¡°I have my own mission.¡± Lotus smiles.


    ¡°Finding someone?¡± She asks mildly. I blanch, but I should¡¯ve expected it really. Magic castle. Magic king.


    ¡°Not so much finding. I mean I know where he is.¡± I say.


    ¡°Do you?¡± She¡¯s watching me like she has all the cards. Like she wrote the game. Meanwhile Coral outright abandons us. She wanders toward the crowd on the couches while Lotus continues staring me down. Searching me thoroughly with her confident gaze. Her dark thin eyebrows are arched, expectant. I cave.


    ¡°Fine,¡± I say. ¡°Take me to your leader.¡± I wave my hand dismissively.


    ¡°Not leader, not really.¡± She says. But she motions for me to follow her.


    She takes me through a labyrinth of hallways, all smooth stone and illustrious hangings. Gold candelabras placed irregularly along their lengths create bubbles of dancing light, but they¡¯re sparse enough that we¡¯re occasionally walking in near total darkness. It feels very strange to be in such a majestic place wearing socks with little rubber grips and hospital scrubs that hang off my shoulders like a plank. Lotus remains silent for the entirety of our walk, which suits me just fine. The chip on my shoulder only grows as we proceed. What has me ruffled is that this is exactly the kind of thing Gus would shit himself to see. I know he¡¯d be right next to Coral, chatting up the decadent bunch we left behind. Being here wasn¡¯t just taking me farther away from him, it was holding him up right in front of me bound and gagged, behind iron bars.


    Finally we arrive at an inconsequential dark wood door. Lotus stops at it and turns to look me dead in the eye.


    ¡°The king is busy.¡± She says.


    I feel like stomping my foot. Like a child.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± I demand. ¡°You walked me through miles of creepy hallway-¡±


    She raises a hand to silence me. Thin gold bands jangle on her wrist.


    ¡°He¡¯s always busy. Always working. He wants to see you, but fair warning: he won¡¯t give you his full attention.¡± Her eyes briefly shine with unreachable sadness, but are back to their lofty proprietary gleam before I¡¯m sure of what I see. She opens the door.


    The room is a wide one, like the one we left with the fountain, but it¡¯s sparsely furnished and has the addition of tall narrow windows paned with thick glass. Beyond them is a forest at the bottom of a shallow grassy hill, lit by the noon day sun. Before I see anything else, that forest moves me. I can feel Garbage recoiling within me. Flashes of memory. Fleet racing, snarls and pain. It¡¯s a dream I¡¯m remembering remembering, accompanied by a clear warning:


    [Do not wander. Or be taken again.]


    Then it¡¯s over. I see the king, standing over his incredible brass model, holding a gleaming white cup. I recognize him immediately.


    ¡°Zach.¡± I say.


    My voice carries, bold across the stone. My fists are clenched and my vision swimming. He turns to me, uncaring.


    ¡°Zachariah.¡± He says. His voice, though faint, seems to fill the space, like smoke in a valley. It¡¯s all he has to say. Lotus steps out from behind me.


    ¡°My liege.¡± She says. Her voice is lofty and detached. ¡°This is [garbage]. I understand he is of interest to your work.¡±


    At the mention of my name, Zach looks at me in an entirely different way. He is at once searching, intent, and somehow doubtful. He waves me forward. But I remain rooted to the spot, sure that if I move I won¡¯t be able to stop the violent bile surging in my limbs.


    ¡°I know you, asshole.¡± I manage, still quivering.


    ¡°And I know you too,¡± he gestures up at his incomprehensible orrery vaguely. His absolute apathy is too much for me. I feel the heat of anger wash up my throat. I take a fevered step toward him, wanting nothing less than to feel his slack face cave beneath my hands. To crush a look of panic out of him. Darkness clouds me like soot thrown into water, oily and thick. I hear Garbage usher me back into the waking sleep.


    [let me speak.] He orders, calm as the king.


    It isn¡¯t hard to let go.


    He always handles these things better.


    ____________________________________________________________________________


    When Coral and [garbage] had said their goodbyes to Don and climbed into the car to make their way east, Coral took [garbage]¡¯s hand across the console between them. His legs were still bouncing wildly. He watched the road in front of them, gleaming gray from the ubiquitous drizzle of the pacific northwest.


    ¡°We¡¯ll find him.¡± She said softly. ¡°He¡¯ll be okay.¡±


    [garbage] watched the trees, the occasional cliffs, both foreboding and grim as they blurred past him.


    ¡°I¡¯d like to hear more about your friends and stuff. If you want.¡±


    He felt Coral¡¯s cold hand squeeze his.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay if you don¡¯t. I just thought it might be something to distract you.¡±


    ¡°Sure. I mean I pretty much finished the story about the beach. We were dumb kids, the end, you know? But I can tell you more about the home.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    The house itself was a pretty normal place. It was a five bedroom continental brick of a building, with a couple satellite offices we¡¯d sometimes see the inside of, if we were in trouble. I saw the offices regularly. And that¡¯s the main reason I was in the system til I was eighteen. Back then I didn¡¯t have any kind of filter. The doctors talked about all kinds of disorders, but what it amounted to in my mind was two factors: anger, and rage. I saw my share of ativan before I was out of diapers. Black outs would hit me every week, like clockwork. It got a little better as I got older. But obviously not better enough.


    Anyway those two kids, Matty and Paul, stuck with me despite my outbursts. Maybe because of them. I was top of the totem pole there, nobody could touch me. Usually, if I liked someone, I¡¯d protect them with the same ferocity I used to protect myself. Matty once told me another kid stole his shirt, some glow in the dark space thing, he loved it. I tore through the place. I felt like I could rip apart the walls. Before the staff got to me and stuck me up with the tranq, I¡¯d gone wild on two of the five bedrooms, screaming at kids, throwing all their clothes around and shit. I didn¡¯t find it, but I¡¯ll always remember looking. I felt like lightning. Matty said my face was bright red.


    It¡¯s one of the few rages I did remember. More often I would just black it out. That was before Garbage, so my blackouts actually did some damage. But yeah us three were tight like a trampoline. We spent every movie night together, every meal and every field trip. We even snuck into each other¡¯s rooms after lights out, just to whisper about dumb bullshit and feel cool for being awake. Paul was kind of like our bodyguard, or that¡¯s how we thought of him then. He was a big kid. Too tall and wide to be pushed around, and he stood watch or just stood between us and the others. It wasn''t like we had a racket going, you know, we were probably playing with someone else''s CDs or squeezing toothpaste on the floor, but together it was like a heist, every other day. We were blood brothers. I kept that green glass shard up on a shelf with my legos and books. We never did the ritual again, like we said. But I looked at it with pride every day. Like it proved something.


    It was the Christmas season when Matty got adopted. He said he would send letters, call us, all that fake shit that falls apart in your hands. With just Paul and me, the mood had soured. When I looked at the shard, it just looked like a dumb piece of glass. And my anger doubled down. The first week wasn¡¯t so bad. I think the fact of losing a friend hadn''t settled. But when it did lock in, I started taking it out on Paul. I said you couldn¡¯t push him around, and that was true, but I sure tried. We got in a lot of fights for the first six months after my tenth birthday. I got us in a lot of fights I mean. He had a growth spurt in the midst of all that, turning out even bigger and stronger than before. Won myself a lot of black eyes and bitter tears. Then he got adopted too, and I was fully lost.


    I didn¡¯t even try to make new friends. I¡¯d seen so many kids leave around me, and I was always stuck there. The way I saw it, anyone I made friends with would be gone before I could even finish a game of hide and seek. So I spent my time in the woods. It was just a few trees in the backyard really, but that¡¯s where I lived, every moment I could get away from the others. I played the same games I used to play with Matty and Paul, but I assigned roles to imaginary players, just told myself stories really, played out roles. One sided conversations. My rage was getting completely unreasonable by that point. Almost every conversation with another person would result in a blackout. They were talking about a high security facility for me. A hospital, like where we met. That terrified me. I wouldn''t be allowed in the forest, the only place I felt like I belonged.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I guess that was the threat I needed to find Garbage. I didn¡¯t call him that back then. He was just a character I would play in the woods. I called him Captain. He was always the guy in charge. The head pirate. The king. First he was in charge of how I played, of what battles to wage, what ships to attack. Then he was in charge of when we played, and what games. Finally he started talking without me even asking, telling me when to bite my tongue, when to walk away. I never got shipped to the high risk place, and I know I have him to thank. But being who I was, I started to hate him pretty quick. I stopped doing what he said, he was just another voice in my life telling me I couldn¡¯t, or else. I called him Garbage then, because I thought of his little demands as garbage.


    But he was strong enough by that time that it didn¡¯t matter what I thought. Instead of blacking out and kicking through walls and screaming at people, I started blacking out and apologizing and acting like a civilized little human being, then waking up to Garbage filling me in on the details in the back of my mind. Letting me know how he had fixed everything. I hated him for it, but I knew he was the only reason I got to go outside, and even though I still called him Garbage and told him to fuck off with every other breath, I didn¡¯t tell any of the staff what was happening either. I was afraid they would take him away, and without him, I would be taken way too.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    The soft drizzle had become a steady sheeting rain. When [garbage] stopped his story the sound of water against the car roof combined with the whoosh of driving along a wet road. It filled the space with an embracing white noise. The rhythm of the wipers meted out the moments. The reality of their mission to find Gus hung patiently over [garbage]¡¯s anxious head. He had propped his feet up on the dirty dashboard and reclined his seat. Coral let the wet pacific punctuate his story before she quietly offered her perspective.


    ¡°I¡¯ve always loved the woods too.¡± She said. ¡°Since I was a little kid. Mom was sick a lot, so it was hard and sad to be around her. And the woods was the only place I could go to be a little girl.¡± [garbage] watched her from half lidded eyes while she spoke. She frowned down at the road, and at the streaks of water dancing across the windshield. ¡°I took my sister¡¯s clothes with me and changed when I was alone, then I got to be me. I played pretend like you did, but mostly I just colored or read books. All the stuff I would do at home you know?¡±


    The wipers continued to churn their metronomic cycle while the two of them, lost in thought, stared along the winding highway, dim in the wet, gray and twinkling green. [garbage] worried at his lips a bit, then reached back over to retake Coral¡¯s cold hand into his.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    ¡°I haven¡¯t heard him. Well, no, I have, but not as loud. Not ¡®loud¡¯, but like, not as strong. I don¡¯t know.¡±


    [garbage]¡¯s doctor watches patiently from behind his laptop. His hands, dusted with hair along the knuckles, faintly spotted with age, are pointedly folded and resting under his chin. [garbage] articulates with his own hands as he speaks.


    ¡°It¡¯s like he¡¯s still there but I can ignore him easier. He¡¯s not distracting anymore. It¡¯s kind of nice actually.¡±


    The doctor types something. [garbage] notes that his typing is halted and wandering. His eyelids feel a little heavy.


    ¡°Okay [garbage],¡± the doctor begins. ¡°From what you¡¯re telling me, I feel very positive about the effects of the (_____). I also see that you¡¯ve been attending groups, going to lunch, and keeping up on your hygiene.¡± [garbage] nods along.


    ¡°So do you think I can leave soon then?¡± He tries not to seem too rushed, too desperate.


    ¡°I¡¯d like to continue monitoring, since the circumstances of your admission were so severe. Let¡¯s say, just tentatively, that we can look at discharge on Monday. Now you¡¯ll have to arrange for somebody to pick you up. Do you have a relative or a friend who can come get you?¡± The doctor tilts his head a bit, his hands still poised over the keyboard.


    ¡°No. I told you my situation with Gus. I need to pick him up, why can¡¯t you just let me go? I can walk to my apartment from here for christ¡¯s sake.¡± [garbage] pushes back from the desk. The doctor raises his thick eyebrows and closes his laptop gently.


    ¡°There isn¡¯t any need to get upset, [garbage].¡± He says softly. ¡°You can arrange for a taxi, an uber, as long as there¡¯s a person we can release you to, it doesn¡¯t have to be a friend or relative specifically.¡±


    But something in [garbage]¡¯s face, now twisted up into a contemptuous mask, refuses to let go. His hands are shaking, his breathing is shallow and quick.


    ¡°I would have someone!¡± He shouts. I would have Gus!¡± He stands up, his eyes are white and stark. He kicks out behind him, knocking the heavy square seat over and back against the wall of the small square office. The doctor lifts the receiver of the black phone console on the corner of the desk and presses a button. A ding over the PA system, then his voice:


    ¡°Code Gray, conference room three. Code Gray-¡±


    [garbage] sweeps the desk of phone, papers, and laptop. The doctor stands, hands raised, and opens his mouth to speak, but [garbage] is already yelling.


    ¡°It¡¯s fucking stupid to keep me here at all! You already know I¡¯m doing better, you said so your fucking self!¡± He pounds on the chipped enamel desk with every word. His face is bright and tears leak from his eyes. The doctor nods along, actively listening to the tirade.


    ¡°You have been doing well, there isn¡¯t an issue there. The way you are acting now, however, doesn¡¯t look like a healthy patient.¡±


    The chair is lifted up, [garbage]¡¯s eyes wide to bulging, he spits as he yells.


    ¡°Then fucking just let me leave you cunt, just let me leave!¡±


    And it¡¯s dashed against the wall, adding another scuff to the mosaic of crises crossing it.


    The door opens and admits two tall men. One has a needle prepared. In the grapple that follows, [garbage] is laid down, groaning, against the cold floor.


    ¡°Fuck you!¡± He shouts, directionless.


    Consciousness melts away. He can taste bitter metal in his mouth.


    He wakes up slowly, feeling serene, pillowy. He¡¯s in a small room on a plastic mattress, laying on a bed built into the wall. He remembers, slowly, first who he is, then where. Then, with an ice cold crumbling sensation in his stomach, like a glacier breaking off into the sea, he remembers why he¡¯s there.


    The tail end of a substantial injection of (_____) still casts a rosy glow over his perception, but he¡¯s had enough experience being tranquilized to realize that the false sense of security will be washed out of him in a few short hours. He sits up on the bed. It¡¯s bare, as is the room, as are the walls. He doesn¡¯t bother making his way over to the window. His home growing up had a similar room, in which he spent regular time, hours, sometimes bleeding into days. Out of instinct, he reaches out in his mind, a wordless question, but the presence he feels there, and the dim word [you] are nothing more than well defined ideas, and not the protective charge he needs now.


    He swings his head back once, sharply, against the worn wall behind him. The blossom of pain focuses his awareness to the reality of what he¡¯s done. Tears liberally stream from his eyes. He feels the droplets tapping against the scrubs shirt below. He tastes the salt of them, then scrubs his bare forearm across his face. As he does this, a black object catches his eye. Against the back wall of the room, sitting upright as if it was placed there carefully, is the leather notebook.


    He crawls over to it from the bed, his head spinning. It¡¯s cold in his hands. He lays there on the shiny lacquered floor, propped up against the wall, fervently flipping through its icy pages. Just as before the yellowed book is blank and frosty. He feels the now familiar cool breeze against his face as the pages flutter. The pale confinement around him presses in. Garbage is meek in his mind, the faint roll of his presence is only barely detectable. It¡¯s as if [garbage] knows there is a word perfect for use in this case, but can¡¯t remember it. That adjacent space where unremembered words are kept serves as a miniature confinement to match the bare room in which he¡¯s crammed against the walls, searching an empty book for some proof of the odd-angled castle filled with hedonists, and with Zach.


    But when his haste becomes meticulous, when each page in its individual length and breadth is surveyed, held a hand¡¯s span away from his nose, when his spine has grown stiff from the crumpled posture, his eyes blurred after scanning each page, he is left, after all, empty handed. He considers tearing pages from the notebook, or dashing it against the wall. What he does instead is carries it reverently and places it at the head of his bed. He lays down, allowing himself to feel the kinks and pain of his study, and rests his head on the cool leather surface of the book. He stares out at the web of chips and stains mottling the wall. Inane messages scrawled in pencil, scratches and scuffs that form a vague byway, crossing roads and cul de sacs along the surface which grow disparate higher up, a broad ribbon of inarticulate stories at reachable height.


    There is an electric hiss to the lights above. A sterile, quick staccato. His cheek feels freshened by the cool book cover. In the endless twilight of unnerving fluorescence, he modifies his strategy for discharge. It is clear to him that he cannot find his way without the help he overlooked so easily in the past. He tucks his knees neatly up into his arms, closes his eyes, and ventures into the space where Garbage, mute and lethargic, waits. It is like he is reaching through space with his arms tied and trawled back. Like his dreams of a fight whose each punch demands exponential effort.


    No words emerge or strength. No cold insufferable hesitance. Yet, withdrawing from it, [garbage] has, in primitive messy molded form, a sense of what the maze ahead demands. He sleeps, and sleeping dreams of much the same - the muddled raw clay compulsions that promise to lead him back to Garbage, then forward to Gus.


    When he wakes from those dreams it is to a nurse bringing him his breakfast and his medication. He pops the yellow pills wordlessly and the nurse leaves him with his brown plastic tray of food. He picks up his plastic utensils, stirs his limp scrambled eggs, then spits, as surreptitiously as he can, the offending now slimy circular pills in amongst them, and covers them up quickly. The rest of his food he picks at, and finally returns to the cold book, to searching for new words among its small stubbornly blank pages. Every time a staff member enters, whether to remove his food scraps, to check his vitals, or to ask him in scripted survey about the events that led him to the room itself, he hastily tucks the journal under his pillow.


    Finally, at what time he has no way of determining, Madaline comes in dragging an office chair with her. She has no interest in the outburst that confined him, and says as much in her first breath, and would prefer instead that he continue the story of what led him to the ward at large.


    ¡°Last we had a chance to meet, you were telling me about your relationship to your boyfriend, Gus.¡± She has the clipboard on her lap again, her finger guiding her eyes, and she looks up from it. ¡°You were about to move in together?¡± She prompts.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    The day we moved in I was fit to jump right out of my skin with excitement. We pulled our truck up, which we had filled half with his stuff, the rest with mine, like an oil and water desk toy, about to be shaken. The apartment complex was very close to PCC, where we were both still attending school. Gus was full time but I had cut back and continued my work at the bookshop. It was a pretty nice place. Gus and I both had incomes so we could afford something a little fancier than absolute poor boy shit. Somewhere with maintained hedges, a little pool we¡¯d never swim in, weight room with cardio machines, equally ignored, that kind of thing.


    When we parked the truck out front, it literally looked like too much. Like I remember gawking up through the bird shit on the windshield, thinking I couldn¡¯t possibly deserve it.


    ¡°Home sweet home,¡± Gus said. He was watching me watch it.


    ¡°Say something more cliche,¡± I responded. But I kissed his cheek before hauling the door open and starting the labor of love that constitutes a move-in. We wanted to arrange as we unloaded, so it was a day long project.


    We ordered pizza, had a six pack prepared, and did the whole job alone. When it was done, the beads of oil that were gus were suspended in the water of me. But we really made our mark on that place over the next few years, and, slowly, his stuff became my stuff, mine became his. We spent a lot of time and effort capturing our blend of tastes, creating a space that spoke to both of us. Gus was a true designer at heart. Still is, when he¡¯s got his head straight. He was the one who painted all our furniture either rich purple or dark green, sometimes swirls of both. And after a few months of spatial experiments I let him take over when it came to feng shui of it all, too. He was practical where I was eclectic, subtle where I was, well, disastrous. Honestly I lost my foothold , looking back. I guess I didn¡¯t notice my slipping grip of the say-so, but my eyes were fixed right on Gus.


    That describes the entirety of our relationship, really. I was too preoccupied with the naked fact of being loved, I guess. I slowly lost myself. He was losing himself too, but not to me.


    When the dust of moving settled, when we had the curtains up and the books all in a line, alphabetical by author, we fell neatly into our rhythms. I worked, I read, I wrote. He poured himself wholly into his career. Even back in college he was single minded. I¡¯d have said workaholic then if I''d known how deep it went. He spent every moment on projects, side projects, making connections at cast parties, putting his name out there, all the stuff an artisan like him had to do. And it¡¯s funny now, remembering it, laying it out like this for you, because I couldn¡¯t tell you fuck all about what I was doing, but I could describe exactly which show he was on at any time, exactly what extra tech classes he took on the weekends to get that edge, to add to his growing list of skills.


    I know it sounds bad, but this whole bit in the beginning was the idyllic picture I only wish I could return to. If shit had stayed like that I wouldn¡¯t be here now, talking to you about it. Id be, sure, a little lost still, taken in, but jesus I¡¯d give anything for some clean easy codependency to be my only issue again. Anyway that apartment tells a better story than I can. Like I said it didn¡¯t take me long to drop the stick on that front. Gus knew all the secrets for creating space and making objects talk, and he designed a straight up palatial fantasy suite for us.


    The walls were covered with dark textures, mirrors and cloth, velvet and perfectly placed pieces, the whole home was like walking into a set that spoke to its audience of comfort, love, care, relief. The purple gnarled-foot tall backed chairs, the gradient muted rainbow tapestry over the kitchen wall, in front of which brass pots hung like the fruits of domesticity. And so, so many set pieces. All of his favorites, even whole walls, put up in panels, painted to look like glimmering wet stones from a dark audience seating area. I loved it, much as it was beyond me as far as style goes, but I loved it, because I loved Gus. Love Gus. Still do, it¡¯s just harder now.


    Right, and that¡¯s why the apartment is better at telling the story than I am. Because a broken mirror gone unrepaired in a designer¡¯s home is a loud thing. An argument, screams or no screams, can¡¯t say what a hole in a set wall can. A wall painted lovingly, too lovingly I¡¯d thought, right when my arm protruded from its sleek portrayal of a classical japanese paper door. I can sit here and talk about how the sex got stale and forced, about the silence and the anger. Or I could talk about the advent of a second bedroom, bitterly unburdened by the rich exquisite hangings, furnished only by a single twin sized mattress and a writing desk I purposefully kept as white as the bare wall.. As empty as that place, really.


    It wasn¡¯t all wedges and distance though. I mean we were still in love, in our way. We just fucked it up. Each in our own style, just like the house started out. I was an idiot about my own life, I mean about everything that didn¡¯t involve Gus directly. I didn¡¯t make friends, none at all really, except the old owner of the bookstore I worked at. And we only spoke in a private language whose vocabulary was made up of plot and character, prose and poem. Gus had plenty of friends, but all that talk of growing close, growing up, getting married once it was legal, all fell away. His friends were his work, and if I wanted to speak with him, that was his vocabulary. Forget love language, work was his only language. If I wanted to talk food it better have a reference to a production in it , or else a procedural description of how to make it look real in the bright yellow light that the script of life was calling for. I sound bitter, I know I sound bitter, but the bitterness hasn¡¯t even begun, because all this bullshit, all the petty distance, my dependency nonsense and his workaholism, all that is just to explain the circumstances of Gus¡¯s encounter with (_____). Of course that¡¯s when the real fireworks started.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    Madaline nods along, encouraging [garbage], even, or especially, when his tone becomes clipped, when his eyes begin to rim red from sweeps of his arm across his face. As he speaks however, his other hand, which he has crammed below his pillow, resting firmly on the book, feels the temperature of its cover reliably drop. The more emotional he is, the colder the leather binding gets. Until finally, when he mentions (_____), he feels a numb pain.


    ¡°I don¡¯t really feel like talking any more.¡±


    It isn¡¯t a lie. He¡¯s desparate to scan the pages again, true enough, but the bitterness of recollection is burdensome. Madaline clears her throat.


    ¡°That¡¯s just fine, [garbage], I¡¯ll be happy to put this to rest for the moment.¡±


    She clicks the pen away, and leaves.


    The book has already started to reach its frost fingers out onto the bed. This time, however, [garbage] picks it up before it¡¯s unreachable, and opens it to a random page. It¡¯s like trying to hold a deeply frozen brick of meat, fresh out of a solid state freezer. His hands are numbed and begin to ache quickly. But the pages open to him finally contain some text. He leans in, greedy for confirmation of his previous experience.


    A layer of frost covers the words, which are printed in the same swooping calligraphic font as before. He tries to brush the dusting of wet white away, and is just able to make out some names before they¡¯re covered once again. Just names, nothing else. And none he recognizes.


    He drops the book to the bed and rubs his hands together for warmth. Names, drawn up in an indecipherable web. Garbage turns within him. Stronger now for his refusal of the little yellow pills, but still too weak to form cohesive words. [garbage] can feel the earnest longing to communicate... something. There is a vague connection just outside of comprehensible, pushed weakly into him by Garbage. Like remembering that he couldn¡¯t remember something. Before he gets his fingers under the thing at all, he realizes that the frost is on him again, flat over his bed and inching up his thighs and hips. He utters a startled sound and pushes to lift himself away, but he¡¯s waited too long. A muted crack and crumbling opens his bed down, into another hole.


    Twisting in the air again, the cold wind biting at his face and arms.

 Chapter 5

    I land this time among a nest of tents and cookfires. It¡¯s weirdly painless, just like last time. I stand to take stock, still shivering a bit from the memory of cold. It¡¯s a warm and still evening. The sky is clear and bright with stars. The moon is almost full, yellow against the void of night. The camp itself seems to sprawl out quite a bit. They aren¡¯t modern tents, with ties coming down to stakes and zipper doors and tarps, rather they seem to be made of some brown canvas material, and held up from a pole, or sometimes two within their center. I fell and rose just short of hitting one of them, which is a small blessing considering the wary looks I¡¯m getting from a few men and women just a couple meters off, who are looking up at me over meat on spits held dripping over the fire. Some are still eating, but watching me, guarded.


    ¡°Hi.¡± I don¡¯t know what else to say. One man with a beard covered in grease and long hair pulled up into a topknot raises a spread hand in salutation. From next to him a woman beams at me. ¡°Coral?¡± I approach the group.


    ¡°Hi [garbage], haven¡¯t seen you in a few days.¡± The other men in the group make room for me to sit of a fresh log pulled up to the flames.


    ¡°How did you get back-¡± I begin. But words fail me for a moment. ¡°Wherever this place is?¡± I finish.


    ¡°Oh Don helped me,¡± She answers. ¡°After I died and woke back up in the hospital I cornered him to ask what the fuck happened.¡±


    I notice she¡¯s wearing the same uniform as the other men in the camp. A white double breasted shirt with a stiff minimalist collar over straight white pants. Many of the clothes of those eating around the fire are stained from the grease of their food and have the look of old much washed items, worn and patched with dirt from years of use. Some pants have holes in the knees.


    Coral continues:


    ¡°He told me about the Through, that¡¯s where we are, and gave me a book like yours.¡± She flicks her gaze across the camp, the fire, the starry sky. ¡°It¡¯s pretty cool here don''t you think? It makes a lot of sense. That a place like this was hiding away. I think so anyway.¡± She smooths her well worn uniform lovingly. A wistful look clouds her face for a moment. ¡°Anyway I think he wants to talk to you. He¡¯s a general here. I guess they don¡¯t call it that.¡±


    ¡°An influencer,¡± One wiry boy supplies around a mouthful of what [garbage] realizes is rabbit.


    ¡°Like insta,¡± Coral says. ¡°His tent is that big one.¡± And she indicates with a gesture toward a wide three poled canvas tent which rises above all the rest. Coral turns to the wiry boy and begins engaging him with questions about the will of the forests. I can see that I won¡¯t get too much more information from either her or the rest of the group, so I make my way to the tent. A sleepy looking woman is sitting outside of its entrance cleaning her nails with a cord-wrapped dagger. Her hair is also pulled into a top knot. She looks up when I approach, then scans me from my socks to my well washed hair, and all the scrubs in between.


    ¡°What.¡± She says flatly.


    ¡°Coral told me Don wants to talk. I¡¯m [garbage].¡± I say. With no change in her bored expression, she waves me into the tent. I lift the flap, which is surprisingly heavy, and bend down slightly as I enter the room beyond. It¡¯s lit with candles placed in wide bottomed holders on square wood tables throughout the space Entering, I find myself immediately in a kind of boardroom. A low slab of wood is placed in its center, with large round cushions on all its sides. On the far end of the tent there is a small row of beds, stacked with simple blankets, wool pillows of the same type as the cushions around the table, and bulging hiking packs, which look of a contrastingly modern design, including plastic clips and brand names sewn in patches to the outside pocket.


    ¡°Come in [garbage], I¡¯m very pleased you made it to the camp. I hear from Coral that your first bore dropped you right into king Null¡¯s inner chambers. Sorry. That was not my intent. I have something important to give you. Something you will need to find Gus I think. Here, have a seat.¡± I don¡¯t sit, but I do walk around the table. I can feel the heat rising again, the blood quickening.


    ¡°How do you know I¡¯m looking for him?¡± I start, but quickly move forward from there. ¡°That bastard Zach, in the castle, he¡¯s the same little shit I saw at the house Gus gets his (_____) from. Are you working for him?¡±


    ¡°Easy. We like the king as much as it sounds like you do. Have a seat. We should talk.¡± He¡¯s holding his arms up, over the table, motioning for me to back down, to sit. The table itself is strewn with documents and maps. I can make out on one of them what I assume is the castle of Zach¡¯s It¡¯s laid out like a block next to the edge of a sprawling first which has above it an ominous steer¡¯s head, accompanied by text in the same calligraphy of the journal, reading simply ¡®animalia¡¯ in foreboding red ink. I sink down into one of the voluptuous cushions.


    ¡°Alright, you have a lot of questions, anybody would.¡± Don smiles to himself. ¡°I have answers. First, yes: the king you met, king Null, is the very same man you ran into on the surface. Zach, or Zachariah in full. He¡¯s a dual occupier, meaning he exists both here and on the surface simultaneously. There aren¡¯t many who can do it, and even fewer who know how to learn. Null stumbled onto the skill in his studies. The trap house that he runs in Portland, it¡¯s kind of a dual occupier too. Probably only because Null¡¯s will is suffused throughout it. He¡¯s a very willful individual. You¡¯re angry with him. That¡¯s understandable. I¡¯ll warn you though that Null didn¡¯t take Gus away. The (_____) he provides his denizens isn¡¯t a lure or a trap or anything short of a drug. In Portland, he runs a business. Gus came to buy (_____), bought (_____), and that would¡¯ve been the end of it, except that for some, perhaps yourself included [garbage], using (_____) can be a strong catalyst for inadvertently falling into the Through.¡±


    I¡¯m nodding along to Don, though what I¡¯m hearing is legitimately insane. That¡¯s where I am now though, I guess. In an insane world below the world, on an insane mission to find my insane boyfriend.


    ¡°Where¡¯s Gus now?¡± I ask, circling my hand in the air to move things along. Don continues:


    ¡°Where he is exactly is hard to say. Null probably knows, but getting it out of him might be impossible. The only thing the king cares about at all is the Through itself. He¡¯s devoted to mapping it. Though his method is different to the Network.¡±


    ¡°The network?¡±


    ¡°That is us,¡± Don sweeps his arm to take in the table, its maps and charts, letters and scraps. ¡°Which brings us to why I brought you here. The network is the oldest Through based community there is. From the origins of this sacred space, there has been a kind of extended family motivated by its unique qualities. Not least of which you¡¯ve experienced twice yourself already. That death here is not death on the surface, but more like waking up. Not exactly the same, but close. And that boring a hole from there to here, or vice versa, can lead you to entirely different locations each time, depending on will and circumstance. You can understand why these two alone would be enough to call for extended research, not to mention the utmost secrecy. It is unfortunate that Coral slipped in, but she has proven to me at least to be of little threat, if only due to her lack of credibility.¡± Don must see my growing impatience, my bouncing knee and continual raking back of my hair, for he speeds his speech a touch.


    ¡°My own purpose in the network is to survey the surface, in search of remarkable subjects to the Through. After you broke across, with no use of boring at all, from king Null¡¯s surface house to his castle, well he tried to keep you there, from what our catfish reported, but anyway, that obviously didn¡¯t work. But along with your presence, a malevolent force appeared. It doesn¡¯t so much live here, nor does it fully live on the surface. But it makes its home between the two, within the social ties that give the Through its form.¡±


    Don makes less sense to me the more I listen. From outside of the tents, I hear muffled shouts, incomprehensible but decidedly angry. Don jerks his head and freezes, listening intently, looking like a dog trying to catch a scent.


    ¡°I can¡¯t explain everything now, I¡¯m sorry. I have to give you something, and I can tell you where to start looking for Gus.¡± He goes hurriedly from the low table to a dark wood chest sitting near one of the cots against the back of the tent. From it he withdraws a thin silver object. He brings it to me, his face grave. It¡¯s a short sword within a black and silver scabbard. It¡¯s hilt is inlaid with a single quarter sized emerald, dazzling even in the low candle light.


    ¡°This is a weapon brought here to the Through by your boyfriend, before he went rogue he entrusted it to me. It was meant to be the sword he¡¯d use to slay the worm, but I don¡¯t know whether he¡¯s abandoned that cause or whether he¡¯s been stolen away from it. Either way I think you¡¯ll find it useful. Most of all because it has been designed by the master artisan Gus and the modelmaker Zachariah. It has many useful properties, please take it.¡±


    I do take it. It¡¯s heavy. Something about it seems familiar. I¡¯m sure I haven¡¯t seen it before. I haven¡¯t seen any real swords before, but I know it still. From somewhere.


    The voices have grown louder outside, and closer. Don sets himself to the task of gathering papers from the table, which he runs to the chest the sword came from and stuffs into is unceremoniously. As he does this he continues instructing me in a harried frantic tone.


    ¡°Gus and Null thought they could find the worm through the Magnate, Madam Par, may she die a cruel death.¡± Don adds the last bit like an incantation, emotionless and flat. ¡°Sadly she doesn¡¯t have a permanent location in the Through. She knows the structure of this place more¡­¡± Don crams the lid of the chest shut and locks it with an iron key he produces from the pocket of his bright white trousers ¡°...intimately than anyone else. Practically speaking. Null has a better grasp of the theoretical truths behind it, but she¡­ Well she uses it more than either of us. No doubt she¡¯s the only one who can find the worm in a meaningful, physical way, though Im sure Null knows exactly what relationships it will feed on next.¡±


    The voices are right on top of us now, and the clear sound of fighting sprouts up outside of the entrance to the tent. Don has calmed somewhat, now that the papers are safely locked away. He looks at me again, stern and wary, just as he had back in the ward. I suddenly feel the weight of the sword I awkwardly hold in my arms.


    ¡°They¡¯ll kill us soon.¡± Don says. I balk. The cold hilt of the sword feels foreign in my hand but I move to draw it. The blade glints in the guttering candlelight. It¡¯s half bared when Don rests his hand on mine, staying it. ¡°I¡¯ve given it to you, so you won¡¯t lose it. Even after. A little pitying smile half lifts his lips. ¡°When you come back, find the Magnate. Madame Par. You shouldn¡¯t have much trouble, her scouts are everywhere. But she can¡¯t know you¡¯ve seen me. Sorry [garbage], trust me, when it¡¯s over, the memory will be just like that of a dream.¡±


    I open my mouth to ask Don what he means, but he already has the glass stopper removed from a via, drawn from his other pocket. He dashes the liquid in my face and I¡¯m blinded immediately, a searing pain slashes across me, every inch of the skin the liquid hits feels as though its been raked across hot coals. I hear myself scream and the sword slips from my hands. Then Don shouts something, I hear more voices, the unmistakable sound of steel on steel, of agony around me. I try to wipe the foul acid from my face and find that I¡¯ve swollen out, the liquid only coats my hands and I feel them burn and begin to bloat as well. I''m thrown to the ground and kicked and stepped on, then, finally, a great bloom of thunderous pain from my chest, a force that crunches through me then yanks away.


    I feel a lake of hot blood pool beneath my body and a high shrieking whine like a tortured animal. I die quickly. And, as Don said, when I wake, it is as from a dream, and the pain only a memory.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    [garbage] woke up groggily, feeling at his face and chest. The dregs of a panicked dream evaporated from his mind. The seatbelt was confining and he reached to undo himself. He looked to the driver seat and saw Coral watching him.


    ¡°Good morning sleepy.¡± She said softly. He stretched his legs as best he could.


    ¡°Mm, we here?¡± He asked.


    ¡°Just for a few minutes now, yeah. I figured I¡¯d let you sleep though. Figured you had a rough night.¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡± The memories flooded back like an unpleasant brick of angry stone in his mind. His apartment building loomed over him, the cedars that surrounded it swaying in the still rainy breeze. ¡°We better see if he just crashed at home.¡± His mouth felt dry. He coughed and hauled the door open roughly. Coral followed suit and the pair of them navigated the rain to the black iron railings and outdoor carpeting leading up to the second floor. [garbage] tried to temper the hope that bubbled up through his sickening fear and anger, and fed his key neatly into the door handle. The cool air of the apartment met them with its stillness.


    ¡°Uh oh,¡± Coral whispered. On the couch, slouched over the arm, was Gus. [garbage] rushed in. His breath was lightly clouding from his mouth. On the coffee table there was Gus¡¯ phone, his wallet, a leather notebook, and a small amber glass bottle with a glass dropper set next to it. Gus was breathing shallowly when [garbage] knelt down to him to check. His lips were dry and slightly blue. [garbage] shook him, calling out his name in a high panicked voice.


    ¡°Coral, call 911,¡± He said, growing more strangled. He stood and dashed to the bathroom, where he tore open the medicine cabinet and snatched out the conspicuous inhaler within. Coral was speaking into the phone when he re-entered, her own voice very calm, even polite.


    ¡°We¡¯ve had an overdose. 1307 Cedar way. (_____), yes. His lips are blue. Yes but it seems hard.¡±


    [garbage], wide-eyed, jammed the plastic inhaler up to Gus¡¯s nose and depressed the plunger. Immediately Gus¡¯s eyes opened wide and he began coughing and laboring for breath. He sat up and [garbage] fed him a stream of questions, while his head lolled and sweat began to bead on his face. His hands shook and tears flowed fast.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry [garbage], I just wanted to kill it, I didn¡¯t want to lose you.¡± He sobbed ¡°We¡¯re finally getting along, I just wanted it gone for good I¡¯m so sorry.¡±


    His voice was hoarse and labored and he took little gasps of air every few words.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about that love. Don¡¯t worry about anything okay? I¡¯m not angry, I¡¯m not.¡± And it was true, [garbages]¡¯s anger had all evaperated away, his wide worried eyes wore nothing more than pure concern. His hands were shaking, trembling as he stroked Gus¡¯s hair, his shoulders, his slimy cheeks. Gus¡¯s apologies were quickly drown in full by the sobs and in breaths taken straight through clenched and bared teeth. He sounded like an injured soldier soon to have his leg sawn off.


    ¡°Who is he?¡± Asked  a cool and female voice above. ¡°How did you know he¡¯d be here?¡±


    [garbage] was distracted, focused fully on his love in pain, but pulled his eyes away from Gus to search the woman¡¯s eyes in frantic stunned confusion.


    ¡°What are you saying?¡± He asked, but Coral seemed as stunned as he was.


    ¡°Who is this guy?¡± she asked again. A cold sinking feeling swept through [garbage]. He turned away from her.


    ¡°How close to it were you?¡± He demanded from Gus, who was watching Coral with some deep horror. His sobbing had stopped.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°Am I supposed to know her [garbage]?¡± He asked softly.


    ¡°Yes, you know her. Fuck. How close?¡± Gus mashed his flannel sleeve against his face and wiped away the mucus poorly. But he didn¡¯t get a chance to answer. Instead, when his eyes were clear, he fixed them on the far wall. His pupils constricted and his mouth fell open. [garbage] wheeled around to see what horror had transfixed him.


    Along the stucco wall and beneath a framed silver showcase of fabrics laid in little strips, there was a great circle of linen scraps, all black and ragged, which had not been there before. It was covered with threads and dangling yarns, which made the thing appear to drip, as with thread snottites and cloth rivulets. Two red wooden eyes cut out of some flat board and painted with white circles were stapled on marking either side.


    As they watched it, the hairy dripping thing protruded further from the wall. The joints where the beastly form met the wall were steaming forth and billowing white blue clouds of cold away from it. It grew and jutted out. They watched, like rapt and unbelieving children, as it opened up its red felt mouth. The yarns and threads within it gave the unmistakable impression that its glass toothed mouth was filled with rank saliva.


    [garbage] stumbled up from the couch, his arm hairs were standing on end and his stomach was one great knot of fear and trepidation. But he staggered from the room and into the dining area, up to a glass jeweled black painted metal bucket they had repurposed as an umbrella stand. He held the edge of their purple and green swirled dining table, rummaged through the umbrellas and the devil sticks and pulled out from among them a short thin wooden sword, which had been painted with silver spray paint. It¡¯s hilt was set with a bulky green glass jewel, made larger than life so as to be seen from deep in an auditorium. A carefully painted dark gray channel, as for blood, ran along its length. [garbage] hefted it in his shaking hand and took a steadying breath, then reimmersed himself within the billowing cloud of cold that the living room had become.


    When he entered, the cloth-wire form of the worm had fully emerged from the wall and was slithering in halting sickly motions, just as if it were being pulled by long invisible threads. Coral had backed herself against the front door, hand on the handle behind her back. Her phone had fallen to the floor, where, from its speaker, could be heard the first responder asking the empty air ¡°Hello?¡± and ¡°Did he respond to the inhaler?¡± The man in question was standing up on the overstuffed dark green couch and feeling shaking hands along the wall, such a look of venom in his eyes and a snarl fixed on his lips.


    The worm was tugging itself toward him, muppet mouth agape and glass teeth glistening. [garbage] swung the wooden prop at the nearest part of the beast that he could reach, and where the sanded glittering wood made contact a tear appeared across the fabric body. Bright red polyester cloth shone in the rent across its worried felt and cotton strip tail and little red ribbons streamed from the wound, collecting on the floor between them. [garbage] already had the wooden sword held high to make another swing toward it, but it pulled its head around to see what thing had hurt it, moving quickly but in that staccato fashion, like a puppet beast.


    Its painted eyes were splashed with yellow. It reared itself up, swinging slightly as if it were suspended from a rope. It yawned its felt jaw open, letting loose a predatory peal of anguished roaring, the sound of a shovel dragged across a rusted sheet of tin. [garbage] swung again and another split appeared across its shaggy wire frame body. Ribbons squirmed out onto the floor to join the others strewn about the room. The beast buckled and thrashed across the floor, but just when [garbage] hefted back the weapon once again it pressed its face into the tasteful carpeting and bored right through.


    It was over. The thing had slithered jerkily into the carpet, past it, and away. Only the red ribbons remained. [garbage] looked up with wild eyes to coral.


    ¡°Who is he?¡± he demanded, pointing a quivering finger an Gus. Coral balked.


    ¡°Gus, it¡¯s Gus. Your boyfriend.¡±


    [garbage] dropped his stage sword and let out a gasp of breath.


    ¡°Did it bite you at all Gus?¡±


    Gus, still standing up on the couch, shook his stark white head.


    ¡°Alright. Fuck.¡±


    In the distance the wails of a siren were growing closer. Coral picked up her phone and shakily continued her conversation. Yes, she was still there. Yes the inhaler had worked. Yes, she could see the ambulance, there through the window below.


    ¡°You should tell Don we found him.¡± She said when she¡¯d put her phone away.


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll text him.¡± [garbage] answered.


    The EMTs loaded Gus up in the ambulance. [garbage] let him answer their questions himself. He elected to take his own car rather rhan ride along with them, and after handing them the bottle of (_____) from the table, he and Coral climbed back into his geo.


    ¡°I¡¯m glad we got here in time.¡± She said as they pulled out of the parking lot.


    ¡°Yeah.¡± [garbage] answered. ¡°One time we won¡¯t though, you know? One time he¡¯ll just fucking die. At least it¡¯ll be over then.¡±


    Coral turned out into the main street. The sound of the rain of the windshield, the tick tick of the blinker, and the whoosh of the rain on the street all wove together into a soothing backdrop as they made their way toward the hospital. Coral¡¯s cold hand, still shaking, found its way back into his. Almost without thinking, maybe out of habit from the trip to the coast, maybe to distract himself again with something real and something easy, [garbage] resumed his story, and Coral listened, her eyes a little sad, her smile small but wistful.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    With Garbage around to pull me back, I made friends again. Well I made one friend. Alright, Garbage made a friend. But I was the one who was actually friends with him. Joseph Jordan, everyone called him Jojo. He was around my age, thirteen or fourteen I think. It must have been thirteen because I was fourteen when I ran away. You¡¯ve heard a little about that already. Anyway Jojo was what you would call a bad influence. Not that I was a saint of course, but he was a kid that was just determined to be bad. The reason for his enrollment at our fine school for the unreasonable youths was a little bit of a legend, in that we never really pinned down exactly what it was, and Jojo himself took great pleasure in muddying the waters as much as he could.


    The story would grow another head each time it was whispered behind homework books or over government breakfasts, so that right in the beginning we had him down as a bit of a fire starter, which we¡¯d seen the likes of before in a kid named Blake, an older teen who ended up in juvenile detention after the home. But by the end of it, not only had he ran through the local mall stark naked with a can of gas streaming behind him, but he had stolen all the games out of the gamestop, beaten up the security guard, and set the blaze off with a cluster of hand grenades on a belt, like Indiana Jones.


    Jojo didn¡¯t so much encourage the ridiculous stories as shiftily change the subject whenever it was brought up, always with a furtive glance over his shoulder as if some private detective was listening in and taking notes. That as good as confirmed it. The details and embellishments started stacking up like so many layers of a decadent criminal fondant cake. When it was just him and me, however, climbing trees behind the home or playing N64 in one of our rooms, he divulged a version of the truth that was far more bare and, while less gusto fueled and cinematic, perhaps all the more deviant for its likelihood to be the real story, or near enough.


    ¡°I do love fire,¡± he said to me as we fought our way through a stage in Starfox, both laid against my bed, eyes glued to the bulbous CRT. ¡°I love to watch it grow. Thats why mom and dad sent me here. I stole a lighter out my dad¡¯s work bag. He smokes. And then from my friend sam¡¯s mom¡¯s purse. My dad¡¯s was a zippo though. That¡¯s the metal kind. They¡¯re easier to light. And once right out of the store. They always have them right there by the register you know.


    ¡°Anyway the first time I didn¡¯t mean to make the whole place burn down. I was just fucking around with a lot of  fireworks my friend Sam got from his brother. We probably should¡¯ve just gone outside., but it was raining and I really wanted to see them go off. So Sam said his friend Rob had a barn we could use, with a big space where it could go up and bang by the ceiling. The first couple of ones were great and they just came back down and we stomped on them to put them out. Shit!¡±


    His ship in Starfox had crashed, he stuffed a couple cheesy curls into his mouth and we loaded the level up again.


    ¡°I had this great idea where we could tie the rest together and light them all off at once. I saw some eagle scouts do it at a camping trip one time. It was way cooler than just one at a time. So when we did it, it would go off bang bang bang, like a machine gun. Anyway it was really cool in the barn because I think it was even louder, since we were inside. But a lot of them landed all over the top part, where they kept all this dry grass, and  we just figured it would go out like the ones outside if you left them. Cheater!¡± Once again Jojo¡¯s ship had crashed and he punched my shoulder before stuffing his face again and reloading.


    ¡°Ow Jojo,¡± I said, punching him back. But he only laughed at that,  this mocking laugh like my punch had been too weak to hurt him.


    ¡°So we were halfway back to Rob¡¯s house when we smelled the smoke. I thought the rain would put it out but it didn¡¯t. The flames just kept getting bigger until it was all on fire. It was so bright and hot. Rob and Sam ran back to the house to tell Rob¡¯s mom what happened, but I went back to the barn, as close as I could get to the fire. It made a noise like if you wave a stick on fire but a hundred times louder. I like that sound.


    We got in huge trouble though. His mom was swearing at him and stuff, and they called the firemen to put it out. But after that, I just wanted to see it again, a fire that big. Fuck You Dipshit!¡± I¡¯d won again, this time shooting him down point blank, and he threw his controller down and kicked me in the leg. I was half angry, half pleased. I kicked him back but it only made him laugh at me again.


    ¡°What are you laughing at, asswipe?¡± I insisted. He grinned at me and his face took on a weird dark expression.


    ¡°You can¡¯t hurt me,¡± he told me.


    ¡°Bet I can,¡± I disagreed, and rolled over onto him, started punching him real hard in his arms and chest. But his grin stayed fixed on his face and he just giggled like he was getting tickled. His weird reaction combined with an embarrassing erection that was stirring, maybe just from the physical contact or from something bubbling up of my awkward young sexuality, caused me to roll off and to cover myself up, face flushing, with the bag of chips over my lap.


    ¡°See?¡± he said proudly. ¡°Nobody can hurt me, I know how to stop feelings.¡± He snatched the bag of chips away,  but just to stuff a handful in his mouth, much to my relief.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± I was struck by his claim. Feeling pain had become a constant part of my life, be it from pounding my scarred fists into the wall, or from getting pounded on a bit myself. Jojo grinned wickedly and pulled his pants right down so that his white underpants showed over thin pale thighs. I was really thrown then, and thought things had taken a sharp turn back toward the half-formed thoughts I¡¯d pushed away. But what he showed me, twisting his leg so it shone in the light, was completely alien to me.


    In many various stages of healing, webbed across his narrow thigh, rough cuts, all superficial but as numerous as blades of grass were torn into his skin. I watched them as he turned his leg and saw that some were recent enough to still be glistening a bit. I didn¡¯t know what to say and after a few stunned silent seconds he pulled his pants back up.


    ¡°I did them myself.¡± his voice was braggadocious. He punched me really hard in my shoulder then. I was confused by the whole thing but it hurt enough to get my blood hot, The familiar rising anger began to turn Garbage¡¯s attention calmly out toward the scene. But Jojo held up a hand like a crossing guard, his devilish grin still fixed in place.


    ¡°What does it feel like?¡± he asked.


    ¡°It hurts you fucking moron!¡± Garbage was coiled in the shadows of my mind, ready to step in, to pull me back.


    ¡°Of course it ¡®hurts¡¯¡± said Jojo. ¡°What exactly does pain feel like though? Just think about it. Why does it hurt?¡± I was taken aback once again, and felt the venom of my anger subside a bit while I focused on the sensation of the pain.


    ¡°It¡¯s like. It¡¯s like it¡¯s growing out of me, like theres something pressing out from inside my arm.¡± This got a strange laugh out of Jojo. Then he did something that made very little sense to me. He took his balled up fist and slammed it into his own arm. Not just once, but over and over. He had the same grim smile and wondrous determination on his face as he did. When he was done there was a small gray bruise all pink around its edges where he¡¯d hit himself.


    ¡°Nobody really knows why it hurts,¡± He said, with the same glee that could be expected from having found a cash stuffed wallet lying on the sidewalk. ¡°There¡¯s no reason pain should be bad.¡± He concluded, and returned again to the bag of chips abandoned on the floor. ¡°Come on, I¡¯ll beat you this time.¡± He loaded the level up again and, finding nothing else to say, I grabbed my controller.


    That night I sat up in my bed after lights out with a plastic knife I had smuggled in my cargo pocket from dinner. I had my pants down and my leg turned in. I was staring at my thigh, right where I¡¯d seen all the lines of Jojo¡¯s leg, the white serrated piece of cutlery poised over it like a flyswatter ready to flatten a waiting insect. That first time it was barely more than a ragged impression on my skin. But when I sat there feeling the sensation bloom out from me, focusing on why I thought it should be bad instead of good, I caught the edges of what Jojo was describing. And I felt this secret pride, like I had been initiated into a new kind of brotherhood. I looked up to the shard of green glass that was still perched on the shelf above my bed.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    [garbage] sits in silence for a moment, then looks up with a short shudder, with a feeling like he¡¯s hit his elbow right in the funny bone, a splash of ragged nerves that courses over his whole body and pops into this colorful awareness in his head. Madeline looks back at him. She has a clipboard ready. He recalls, dimly, having watched her enter, having greeted her when she came in, watching her sit and ask him something. He looks to the little desk in the corner, which is plastered with pages of printer paper, each covered top to bottom. He remembers having written something important down on them. A lot of important things. The leather journal is propped next to them against the wall. He looks back to Madeline


    ¡°What?¡± He asks. Her face is patient. Her pen poised over paper.


    ¡°Last we spoke,¡± she said, her words slow and clear. ¡°You said that Gus was getting into (_____). Can you tell me more about that?¡± [garbage] let her words fall into place within his mind and shape into a comprehensible idea.


    ¡°Yeah. Gus.¡± He lets his right hand, which is clutching at his thigh, relax. ¡°Well I¡¯ll start by saying that things did get better before they got worse. Tempers calmed and all that. We started sleeping in the same bed again. I can¡¯t say that was so much of a big deal to Gus, but it was huge for me. I felt this grand release that day, when we decided living in separate rooms wasn¡¯t what we wanted. What brought it on was a friend of ours, Rochelle. A friend of Gus¡¯s, to start, as all my friends in those days were. I mean, are, really, that much hasn¡¯t changed.


    She was over playing a game with us, this fiercely complicated board game having all these little colorful wooden pieces, some of glass and all sprawled across a board between our beers and popcorn. We had it set up on our ragged dining room table that was painted all in swirls of purple, with the sanded light wood showing in its own negative contrasting swirls that Gus was planning to fill in with green, when he had the time. Rochelle was a stage manager friend of Gus¡¯s that I was actually meeting for the first time that day. I¡¯m friendly with strangers, or at least talkative, so it was going well, we were having a good time. But at one point Gus got up


    ¡°Anyone need another drink? Rochelle?¡± She shook her head and the cascade of auburn curls swayed. Her pinched mouth was pricked askew in thought about her next move in the game. Her rosebud lips twisted out with a wry thoughtful expression. But when Gus was in the kitchen, she looked up, flashing me a half ironic, long suffering frown. In a hushed voice she leaned over the table a bit and asked me something that surprised me.


    ¡°What¡¯s got you fighting?¡± she whispered.


    ¡°Gus told you?¡± I asked back. She shook, her hair catching the light and bouncing bronze and red.


    ¡°I can tell just the way you two talk. It¡¯s a gift.¡± I eyed her doubtfully. Gus was coming back and Rochelle leaned away.


    ¡°Where were we?¡± He asked, examining the board.


    ¡°Rochelle thinks we¡¯re fighting." I let the nugget of revelation clack across the table. In the quavering silence that ballooned, Rochelle shot me an exasperated look, but Gus actually smiled. Not a happy smile, just this wry little smirk like some impending conclusion he was well aware of had finally arrived. He sat down and fixed Rochelle with a curious look.


    ¡°She knows things like that.¡± He said simply. Rochelle by this point was a little pink, and tried to backpedal.


    ¡°It¡¯s not my place, so sorry, I just thought I saw some tension and I thought maybe I¡¯d see if I could help, maybe one of you at I time, I thought.¡± She swung her head around at me but I just raised my eyebrows.


    ¡°I¡¯m not one for that kind of dancing around,¡± I said.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you do a reading?¡± Gus suggested. ¡°After the game.¡± Rochelle brightened at that.


    ¡° Oh, sure!¡± She said, and we played on. The game resolved after another hour. It was one of those games. When it did, Rochelle took us both into the living room, where we sat on the rich high piled carpet and she pulled from her silver buckled bag a deck of quite pretty black and ornate-backed tarot cards. At the start of the reading she offered some mild disclaimers.


    ¡°Tarot can¡¯t tell the future,¡± she started. ¡°Nothing can. It hasn¡¯t happened yet so it¡¯s not tellable, like the past and present can be. What this is,¡± she raised the deck and in the low and moody lighting of the room it flashed dimly, reflecting the sconces¡¯ orange light from its veneered surface, ¡°is a tool for conversation. Each card is loaded up with symbols, meaning, all these separate bits of what it means to be a human, and its up to us, together, to find out how they correspond to you two. More specifically, to your two¡¯s love life. So,¡±


    She flipped a card over and laid it out, then two, then more, all coming one after another without comment and forming a cross shape in the carpet. Their bright and colorful designs depicted people, animals, cups, swords, stars, and moons. That reading was a trip. Right from the beginning, I don¡¯t care what she said about it being a tool for conversation, there was something deeper happening there than just a therapy session, no offense.


    ¡°[garbage] do you feel like you have to make an effort to be noticed by Gus? And Gus do you feel like you have to walk on eggshells around [garbage]?¡±


    These two questions would¡¯ve been embarrassing and difficult to discuss with a stranger normally, but they were somehow made more palatable by their expression through a reading of cards. They would¡¯ve been enough, alone, to fill hours of our time with processing, hashing out the whys and the blame. They were instead answered by a reluctant nod from me and a curt ¡°I do¡± from Gus. I watched his face but it was as unreadable as a smooth stone tablet. The reading only got deeper from there.


    With every new question, every yes or no from us, with every poke and prod into the mire of our tension-locked relationship, I felt a kind of release. I watched Gus¡¯s face melt away from its tablety reticent block. And he started to watch me back, too. Inch by inch, we approached one another, both emotionally and physically. By the end we were right next to each other once again, hand in hand.


    Gus was monitoring me like he used to, before the whole miniature separation cleaved us within our own house. He was holding me like he used to, in that protective firm way. Touching my hair, squeezing my hand. For my part, I felt more secure in him, more confident that I could trust he¡¯d be there.


    ¡°You¡¯re amazing,¡± I told Rochelle. She was packing her cards away and dipped her head a bit.


    ¡°Nah, you guys are the amazing ones. You had it in you, I just loosened things up a bit. Broke some ice.¡± She had another drink with us and then took her leave. Gus and I stood there when she¡¯d gone, still hand in hand. He was regarding me with newly melted eyes.


    ¡°Will you move in with me?¡± He asked.


    The room I had been sleeping in was converted over the next few months into a dual purpose library and studio for both of us. Gus brought his sure hand to the wall decor, the throw rugs and the hangings, and it was once again an expression of our combined tastes. A sewing machine, an easel, a writing desk, and a kind of bliss, a second wind for us. But the wind turned out to be a gust. A brief refreshing spring waft of sweet annual flowers that quickly gave way to oppressive summer heat.


    By this time Gus was in full tilt with his career. He had shown that he could bring unique ingenious craftsmanship to any production¡¯s tables, and he was welcomed into the theater artisan¡¯s guild. It was wonderful news for him and we had a grand party to celebrate. We invited all our friends, all the people I wouldn¡¯t have known without him. But it was hard for me. I feel selfish even remembering it out loud, and maybe it was selfish, to expect that anything on that day would be about me, since it was after all Gus¡¯s party. But there was a kind of distance there that I wasn¡¯t familiar with. A gap between myself and him that seemed like more than just his usual standoffish pragmatic laser focus.


    I couldn¡¯t catch his eye, you know? I couldn¡¯t close the gap, and after the party that night it only seemed to widen. The next few months were terrifying, frankly. Gus wasn¡¯t acting like himself. He wasn¡¯t talking to me. All that magic glue from the tarot reading had dissolved. He and I spent sometimes days without much more regard than ¡°how was work?¡±, ¡°What do you want to order?¡± and ¡°Goodnight.¡±


    He started to stay out with his friends from the guild late into the night, sometimes I¡¯d be asleep already when he finally got back. If he came back at all. He started losing weight. He grew nasty circles under his eyes. In hindsight all this shit seems pretty straightforward. All kinds of inevitable. Back then though, it was haunting me. I swear I thought he had cancer or something. He was cagey as fuck all the time, if I asked whether something was wrong or how I could help or just for any indication that he was even aware how off he was.


    I found him passed out one morning, draped over his sewing machine with one hand bleeding dark red into the satin cloth bunched up beneath the needle. But he still wouldn''t admit that anything weird was going on. He looked up at me, blank eyes drooping, and said he must have just been tired. I didn¡¯t know what else to do, so one night when he said he was headed to a planning sit-in, I followed him out. He was getting a ride with what looked like a few other people. I ran down the stairs to get in my own car and follow him, half hoping I was just being a jealous boyfriend, and that I¡¯d just turn back around when we got to the guild clubhouse.


    Instead they pulled into the driveway of this huge house, one of the types that¡¯s too big for its own lot so there¡¯s no room for a yard. I parked across the street and watched them all file in. They looked like corpses lining up to fill a grave.

 Chapter 6

    [garbage] was shaken from his cloud of contemplation when the geo hit a pothole, he felt his spine jarred and his teeth clicked shut. Coral¡¯s cold hand was still in his, she was watching as the hospital complex loomed in their windshield, tall and domineering. Filled now with enough painful memories for a dozen lifetimes.


    ¡°Home sweet home.¡± She said. [garbage] answered with a nervous chuckle and swiped his hand out of hers to rub at his face. He had a dull insistent headache.


    ¡°I¡¯m so tired.¡± He said.


    ¡°Yeah you drifted off a bit there. They¡¯ll have coffee.¡± She found a parking spot not too far from the front entrance and they made their way inside. The bright glare of fluorescent light didn¡¯t help [garbage]¡¯s headache. He and Coral approached the front desk and explained their reason for being there. The prim receptionist directed them to wait. [garbage] slumped against the back of the faux leather couch near the front desk. Coral drifted past him and fluttered into a seat of her own.


    ¡°He said he was trying to kill it.¡± She said. [garbage] picked up a magazine from the table between them, opened it, and stared at the floor. The plastic faces and bubble font of gossip watched him from his hands. At length he closed the rag again and looked at Coral.


    ¡°If he wanted to kill it he could¡¯ve asked Don for a bore. And he could¡¯ve asked me for help.¡± The slap of the magazine against the table was loud enough to bring a sharp and slightly disapproving look from the woman behind the counter. [garbage] rubbed at his face again, pressing his closed eyes with his fingertips and grinding his teeth. ¡°Or he could¡¯ve just left it alone. It¡¯s been months since it¡¯s bothered us, now it has our scents again, now someone does have to kill it. And I¡¯ll bet you it isn¡¯t him that does it. He couldn¡¯t the first time, why would he think anything¡¯s changed?¡±


    Coral watched him like he was a pet bird in a cage, ruffling about angrily, speaking a language it didn¡¯t understand. She was leaned forward, trying to hook [garbage]¡¯s eye, but he stubbornly fixed a black spot on the hard carpet floor with his red rimmed eyes.


    ¡°He wants a safe future for you two.¡± She said.


    ¡°Well I just want to be with him now. We should be camping with Don. If that thing wanted to sneak up on us, years down the line, we could deal with it then. Why does everything have to be perfect as far into the future as we can see? Why does our present have to be offered up like a sacrifice to some invisible tomorrow?¡± He was still staring at the carpet, where a smattering of tears had made several more dark spots around the one he watched. Coral sat back, abandoning any hope that she¡¯d make a connection.


    ¡°He shouldn¡¯t have done it.¡± She agreed. ¡°But I don¡¯t think he¡¯s lying either.¡± [garbage] uttered a choked derisive sound. ¡°Then you don¡¯t know him like I do. Lying is as easy as crafting to him. He lies like he lies with his props. Made to look more real than reality. Made to be bought because to do anything else would be stubborn denial. Even his truths are freshened up, painted and cut to size. He probably doesn¡¯t even realize he¡¯s lying when he is.¡±


    Coral took up a lock of her matte pink curtain and set herself to twirling it in her fingers. [garbage] wiped his eyes on the back of his hand. The air in the waiting room was sterile and conditioned. It smelled like citrus and antiseptic. Periodically, the door hushed open, admitting a couple, a group, a few stragglers. The murmur of emergent discourse wrapped a shell around them as they engaged themselves with waiting for the bowels of bureaucracy to gurgle along and admit them through one of the many locked sphincters of the expansive hospital building. Coral¡¯s phone dinged and she bent forward again, sweeping her hair behind her shoulder as she did.


    ¡°Don¡¯s on his way.¡± She said.


    ¡°He should just stay on the coast.¡± [garbage] replied. But Coral just sat back again, nestling into the silence. The familiar boredom and bright lights, high ceilings and hushed agency, stretched along and carried them half an hour more before a man in teal scrubs and an ID lanyard poked his head through the magnet-locked double-wide doors calling ¡°[garbage]? Coral?¡± [garbage] looked up at last from the gunshots of wet on the floor and he and Coral allowed the gentleman who called them to lead them at last along shining tiled floors in wide hallways, past groans and murmurs with no names to a sectioned off area divided by curtains scattered with dark blue dots that formed a gradient into solid color where it limply suspended above floors that were cleaner than the plates [garbage] ate off at home.


    The man, who looked like he was eight hours into a second twelve hour shift, or asleep and unaware he was even working at all, parted the curtain with a flash of hollow plastic on tracks sounding sterile, revealing a bed that looked like a recreational vehicle, upon which Gus sat up against a pile of pillows and the rear half of the V-shape the bed had bent up into, wearing a foreboding expression and crossing his arms. An IV bag of clear liquid was suspended above him on a metal hook. His sallow countenance brightened when they entered.


    ¡°Just ring for us if you need anything Gus.¡± Said their guide, who then pushed the massive shower curtain closed and disappeared. Coral stopped by the bed to give a brisk gentle hug before joining [garbage] in a too-familiar heavy square chair along the wall. [garbage] was working a fist like he held a mass of modeling clay and watching the wall. From beyond the curtain a constant susurrus of sneakers on tile, cheery phones ringing, and clicking keyboards filtered in. The room was dimmer than the outside, but still bright, as every room there was, even, somehow, the dark ones.


    ¡°I¡¯ll probably just be here for a few hours.¡± Gus said. The stale silence that followed was heavy and hard. [garbage] was tracing a web of cracks near the ceiling with his gaze.


    ¡°That¡¯s good, you don¡¯t have to stay overnight?¡± Coral asked, trying to squeeze some brightness into the moment through tone of voice alone. But even her genuine contralto sounded strained and put on.


    ¡°No, they¡¯ve seen too many OD¡¯s to admit every one. One I get some saline through me I¡¯ll be free to go.¡± Gus implored [garbage] silently from the bed, his red eyes seeking redder. His taught line of a mouth was pressed white. [garbage] studied the cracks, jaw tense, fingers rolling and gripping at nothing.


    ¡°[garbage], I¡¯m sorry.¡± Gus said. His normally strong voice was weary, his eyes widened and his arms still stiffly crossed. One long tube dangled from the back of his hand. It was like watching a ripple tear across a sheet. [garbage] stiffened from the center out, sitting straighter, arms extending, he turned to finally regard his boyfriend in the bed across from him. A wicked grimace pulled down the corners of his mouth, his chin trembled even as his thick eyebrows knitted to form a V.


    His every muscle seemed to jump at hearing Gus¡¯s soft apology. Tense and frayed, [garbage] opened his mouth wide, as though to wail or shriek. Strands of saliva stretched from his top to bottom jaw, then, just as abruptly, but with a jarring clam control, he closed it again.All his muscles were relaxed. His pupils were slightly dilated and his fists released. He calmly watched the pair of people sharing his space.


    ¡°Garbage.¡± Gus breathed out. ¡°I really fucked this up.¡±


    ¡°Hello.¡± Said Garbage. ¡°Yes, you did.¡±


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    [I stand, as sitting feels too vulnerable. I want to greet Gus and Coral, it¡¯s been a while since I¡¯ve seen them. But time really is of the essence here.


    ¡°Gus, I spoke with Zachariah last night,¡± I say. From his widened eyes I can tell he doesn¡¯t want to hear from me at all, whoever I spoke with, whatever I have to say. He¡¯s swept the blankets from his legs, as if he¡¯s planning to jump up from the bed and bolt, howevet tied he is to the IV creaking up above him.


    ¡°Hi Garbage,¡± Coral offers.


    ¡°Coral, do you have a book on you?¡± I ask her. She busies herself sorting through her expansive crocheted rainbow bag. Gus is scooting to the side of his bed. ¡°Gus, calm down, will you? I¡¯m not here to beat you up.¡± He eyes me warily. ¡°You didn¡¯t go to the through, did you? Null said none of his work showed you boring in or out. Where were you?¡± Gus settles down a bit but his eyes still show white all around the iris. He keeps his hand planted next to him on the bed, shoulder tense, ready to make an escape.


    ¡°I was in the worm¡¯s tunnels, where else wouldI go to kill it?¡± he spits.


    ¡°Where else indeed. And you know that means it¡¯s on you now? And, subsequently, on us? You know that¡¯s put everybody you know at risk? What kind of fool plan is it to jump into that creature¡¯s cave alone and naked, knowing you can¡¯t best it?¡± With this I wake the prideful Gus. The Gus I need for the fight to come. His eyes narrow and his teeth set, I prod him one touch more, just to make sure: ¡°You should have at least asked us for help if you were so set on this idiotic plan.¡± That does it. Gus emerges.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t want to risk your lives!¡± He yells. ¡°I wanted to be done with it, and I wasn¡¯t naked, I was armed with a book!¡± As if on cue, Coral finds her book with chirped ¡°aha!¡± and hands it up to me.


    ¡°That might not even work and you know it,¡± I counter Gus. ¡°To bore inside a bore is an untested method, even Null has no idea what it does. You may have erased yourself as well as the beast.¡± Gus frowns back at me, undeterred. ¡°We know it can be killed and we know how, you should have come to us.¡± Gus opens his mouth to argue but I shake my head minutely and he snaps it shut again. ¡°I¡¯m going to talk to Madam Par. We need to corner this thing. Together. And we need her to find the corners. You two wait here and watch the book. If it freezes, come in after, but only then. Otherwise, watch for words. I¡¯ll sort this out. And if it comes here, just run. There¡¯s no point getting killed before we have to.¡±


    I drop the book, open, to the floor, and focus in on my relationship to [garbage]. Gus is fuming but I know he¡¯ll do as I asked.


    ¡°Good to see you Coral.¡± I add. Then I step down on the frosting book and break through to the manor.]


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    ¡°I can¡¯t hear him at all,¡± [garbage] says.


    [Tell him you can, but only very faintly.]


    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡°Well, sometimes I catch a word, or just a sound. That might be him. But otherwise nothing.¡±


    The doctor sits opposite [garbage] at a metal table built into the floor. He looks serene and mildly vacant. His balding head shines in the artificial light. [garbage] can vaguely make out the reflected shape of the long tube fluorescents in his greasy brow. His dark thick eyebrows knit together. He folds his hairy hands on the empty desk. Next to him on either side are two tall nurses, both male and both pushed back from the desk, looking ready to launch themselves around it at the drop of a hat.


    ¡°That¡¯s good. Can you tell me about your outburst, the day before yesterday? What brought it on, from your perspective?¡±


    [garbage] lifts one leg up and levers it over his other knee. He¡¯s leaning back against the chair, tapping fingers almost urgently, an uncracked morse distress call all in gibberish. The code equivalent of a whining dog behind a door.


    ¡°I don¡¯t remember it.¡± He says. The doctor nods as though [garbage] is a banal book whose character took a turn predicted chapters back. The stale warmth of the meeting room, and its close quarters, act as a swaddle, pressing in its sweat aroma intermingled with a citrus antiseptic memory of that morning¡¯s cleaning.


    ¡°That¡¯s very serious.¡± His doctor says, half to himself. He seems to start reaching for something, his hand minutely twitching forward, then returning to its twin in folded still repose. A nurse¡¯s stomach whines a bit, a sound that¡¯s muted, muffled ty the fat and skin containing it, a mild petition heard by all for all the room¡¯s stale silence. [garbage] feels as though he can detect the heat enclosing each of the three men across from him individually, like warm blooded auras, stifling him.


    ¡°I¡¯d like to keep you on the third floor for now, [garbage], see how you continue to respond to the (_____). And we can see about bringing you back up to the fourth floor in about a week. I¡¯d highly recommend you go to the group on anger management in the meantime. It¡¯s held every Tuesday and Thursday. You might find it helpful. I¡¯m also going to start you on (_____). Now this is commonly prescribed for depression, it is an antidepressant drug. But it¡¯s also used for anger, as it has a calming effect of most patients. I think it¡¯s best to address your anger psychotropically, that is, with medication. Blackout rage is not to be taken lightly.¡±


    [garbage] assents non-verbally. He seems to only half hear his doctor however. When they conclude their meeting, he¡¯s directed to a new bedroom, a little down the hall from where he¡¯s spent the last two days. He gathers all his papers, scribbled thick with words and names, and his black leather journal, blank and heavier than its form, cold still to the touch. His new room has no desk, but it does have one more bed, with each bed bordered by a stack of simple shelves on their outsides and roughly five feet of floor between them.


    [garbage] shoves his papers unceremoniously into a pigeonhole, but takes the book with him when he scrunches at the head oof the bed. He wedges the journal in the space between his knees and face, spread open to a pristine, if yellow, middle. His roommate isn¡¯t there. The other bed is cluttered with clothes and twisted sheets. A pillow lays on the floor between the beds. Gently, [garbage] rocks, his searching eyes just inches from the book. The sunlight angles in from filthy windows, double paned and bolted securly, seamless against the cracked concred surrounding them, which looks as though its polished-smooth but flaking paint was rolled across it ten years back.


    In one hand, which rests below the page he studies fruitlessly, a marker is gripped. A plastic ridged capped elementary utensil advertising oatmeal tan but which, he¡¯s found, produces instead the color that a wetted brush would make when pulled along a page. He asked for another pencil, such as he had back on floor four, but was informed that the rules are different here, and the ink scarce dry-nibbed little tube of ghostly color is all that he¡¯s allowed. He pulls the cap off and optimistically shakes it, quick qhip motions that he knows are more a hopeful ritual than helpful preparation, then, he carefully writes a single word around the center of the paper laid before him.


    Madam Par.


    Just as it did the hundreds of other times he wrote the same, and even before he lifts the meek utensil from the book, the lines he writes to form the letters start to vanish, leaving that discouraging silent pale expanse behind. They seem to disappear as water would, evaperating in a shrinking line that follows th speed he¡¯s written them. The color of the words, like wetness on the page, encourages this evaporative action¡¯s quality, so that he feels as if he¡¯s writing lines on a mirror or a glass window pane on a cold day, watching condensation briefly spell his singular request. The dry air quickly snatching it away.


    His rocking speeds. The wall behind him catches him and pushes forward every stroke. He flips the pages, fanning the cold book air up into his face again, eyes twitching left and right across it, searching but falling on nothing. Then, as suddenly as the words were lifted from the page, he smoothly lifts the book and uttering once, not loudly but with great conviction ¡°Fuck!¡± He whips it hard across the room. It flutters, snapping in the air like a burst of startled birds, then slaps against the wall and falls to rest, inanimate, at the joint of wall and floor.


    [garbage] spends a moment from his bed inspecting it, glowering as he rocks, but the page it opens to is blank like all the rest as far as he can see. He¡¯s spent the last two days in urgent occupation with the empty frozen tome, trying everything he can think of to resuscitate its mystical properties, and everything he does only furher compounds his growing suspicions that he¡¯s nothing more than a delusional mental patient entertaining himself while he slips ever deeper into the hole of insanity. He misses Gus. He wonders what¡¯s become of his love, who, last he saw, was propped up, gaunt and glassy eyed, at the edge of a threadbare old gray couch, next to a skull-faced naked woman, amber bottle loosely grasped in thin and dirty fingers, lost to the world. He misses Coral and Don, too, who are one floor above him, if they aren¡¯t in that fucked up world they all met up in, if in fact they did, if they exist at all.


    He wrote the name that Gus gave him on every page of the book, even on its covers, its spine, he wrote his own name, he wrote Gus and Don and Coral, wrote hello, wrote fuck this book. He tore its pages, only to feel them melt away right in his hand and regrow from their ragged stumps like snowflakes branching out and filling up a page-shaped mold. He soaked it in water from his sink, until the whole damn thing was molting away into pulp and filling the basin, until all he had was a stiff leather clamshell with little beginnings of ice sprouting out along it. The muck in the sink began to thin and soon the pulp became a powder, the water just cloudy, then clear, and the book reassembled in his hand.


    When he wasn¡¯t folding pages that then uncreased, or cracking a spine that knit itself together, he was searching, ceaselessly flipping around and scanning every inch. It wasn¡¯t entirely fruitless, which was why he was constantly doing it. On occasion, at infrequent and irregular interval, he caught a word, a phrase, or a name. These he carefully noted on the printer paper pages he was given, until he had a sort of second, loose-leaf book of mostly names, which offered him absolutely no insight, but felt important.


    The book sits unassuming against the wall. [garbage] rocks there on his bed, watching it, until the light begins to fade. The red sun dips down below the concrete building. He remains there, for how long he¡¯s unsure, just gripping at loose folds around his legs and pushing off and back against the wall. He feels a bruise begin to form along his spine. The room begins to darken and enfold the shapes within it gently into muddied obscurity. The light from the hallway angles artificially in, revealing the vague form of the bed in front of him, his bookshelf, and the cold anonymous lump of the offending book.


    Then, in the space of his eyes flitting to and back from the door, a new shape, brazen and dark, appears. He stops his rocking motion. He squeezes his eyes shut and reopens, sure it¡¯s only an after-image, the carbon copy of the door he glanced at. But it remains: a square against the wall above the book. He lets his legs fall straight. The buzzing sensation of sitting still after rocking for all those hours cradles him loosely. It is the unmistakable shape of a firmly closed door.


    He swings his legs around the bed and stands up, body slightly trembling, his heart in his throat. Before he can begin to approach the thing to see it closer, to gauge its physicality and test his sanity, it starts to open. He remains frozen there, watching as a line of orange light, wavering and dancing, broadens to an entryway. A woman stands in it, silhouetted by the firelight beyond. She¡¯s tall, her head almost high enough to brush the jamb above, and she¡¯s wearing an exquisite evening gown, which looks sleek and seems to cascade from her hips in intricate turns and gathers.


    ¡°[garbage]?¡± Her voice is honey on a blade. All firm authority and measured affirmation. [garbage] watches her, her slim waist and bountiful curly night-black hair. She takes a step into the room, away from the healthy flickering glow behind her, and when she does it seems as if she walks through a plane. The parts of her that break the plane, framed by the black and turning door, are transformed into something else. Her breasts and legs are first. They don¡¯t change shape but what they¡¯re clothed by does change. A pencil skirt appears and quickly ripples back across her when she enters [garbage]¡¯s room. A tidy blouse, all white and trimmed with blue spreads over her, across her arms.


    ¡°I know it¡¯s you.¡± She says. Her voice is a dare to argue. [garbage] sees her face in the light from the hall. Behind the door frame it glowed with radiant health. When it passed through she became merely human, not the angel he glimpsed.


    ¡°How do you use the books?¡± [garbage] says. He feels around his back to tenderly massage the bruise on his spine, then stretches rigidly.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± She states ¡°They aren¡¯t my method. Talk to Null, if you want to learn. But we have other business. Come.¡± She stands aside a touch, a mere indication that she expects his willing accompaniment beyond the door. She is devoid of hospitality and warmth, but not malicious. She brooks no argument.


    He pads toward the door. When he reaches her, he bends to pick up the book. She may not be able to use it but he feels almost naked without it by this point. As he passes her, setting his shoulders for the crossing, he smells the heady aroma of a fine perfume, carried by cinnamon and smoke. She walks through at his side, her gown and glow washing back over her, and the scent shifts as well, from the complex liquid amber to one of rose, singular and muted. The door is pulled to when they cross.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    It has to be her. Maybe she got my message. She said she couldn¡¯t use the book but she had to find out I was looking for her somehow. Whatever. It has to be her. When I walk through the door I¡¯m surprised to find it doesn¡¯t chill me. But I guess it¡¯s not a frozen hole I¡¯m falling ass over heels into. We enter what looks like a hallway, one that curves ahead of us gradually. The moment I step through I feel a sudden weight at my hips. I stumble a bit because it feels like I¡¯ve been grabbed around my waist by whatever nefarious creatures might exist in the Through. But when I look down to check what has me, I find instead that a belt has materialized, much like the changing gown that Madam Par is sporting. It¡¯s a black and silver band cinched tightly. Real silver by the look of it. All shiny and dancing with the red orange light that bathes us from the sconces along the wall. Attached to it and swinging loosely from its loop, I¡¯m pleased to find the sword that Don gave me last time I visited here. The emerald swims with light. I place my hand protectively on the hilt. At least I¡¯m not following a preternaturally knowledgeable woman into a dark fantasy hallway unarmed. Though I don¡¯t know a damn thing about swordplay so there¡¯s that.


    Madam Par sets off down the hallway without looking back, and I follow her along. If Don was right, she can help me find where Gus is, and I¡¯m willing to take any chance for that information


    ¡°Don has already told you who I am, and how I can help you,¡± she says, echoing my thoughts. She turns her head only slightly when she speaks, so I speed my walk until I¡¯m next to her.


    ¡°You¡¯re madam Par¡± I say.


    ¡°Yes. Lucy is fine though, you aren¡¯t a client. I¡¯m also sometimes called the Magnate.¡± Pride swells in her voice at that, and a wry smile twists her generous lips. As we walk, the corridor continues to curl to the left. The walls are of blue gray stone. I wonder to myself if I¡¯m in king Null¡¯s castle hallways again. But I toss that notion quickly to the side. I somehow doubt the two share quarters. The stone floor feels unnervingly warm beneath my sock feet, as if it¡¯s heated from below, or alive and warm with blood. The sound of Lucy¡¯s short heeled shoes against the floor taps out our passage. The echoes issuing out are also unnerving, but in a way I can¡¯t quite comprehend. It¡¯s as if they aren¡¯t quite in synch with the sound they follow, like they¡¯re reverberating through a different space.


    I realize with a grim and familiar astonishment that they have the selfsame echo I remember from the coast. The hug point spiral cave reverberated in the same way. With that memory now in mind, I can¡¯t help but find that the curling passageway smells faintly of the sea, and its walls are not so smooth, as I¡¯d once imagined. Why had I imagined that? In fact, the sand beneath my feet is just the same as hug point as well.


    ¡°[garbage].¡± Lucy says. I look up at her face. She stares back at me. ¡°Don¡¯t get distracted. We have business.¡± The gentle scent of roses ambushes my nostalgic view. The floor below is bare. The walls are glassy smooth around us. I realize I¡¯m standing still. How long has it been since I stopped walking? ¡°Focus on me.¡± She says, and sets off again. I follow, keeping her industrious pacing frame in my vision. We do have business, and that''s finding Gus. Let the nature of this place be a mystery, I only need Gus.


    ¡°So you know what I want.¡± I say. The sconces drift past us like flickering ships on a river of stone.


    ¡°You¡¯re looking for someone,¡± She says. I¡¯m careful to keep my face half turned toward her. Her eyes look brooding in that light, but at a sway of shadow as we pass a flame, they shift, her eyes becoming studious, measured.


    ¡°My boyfriend, Gus.¡± I say.


    ¡°Your boyfriend Gus,¡± She tests the words. I feel a demure consternation wash over me and my cheeks redden slightly, but I can¡¯t place why her lightly derisive repetition of my words should warrant it. I try to shake it off.


    ¡°Don said you¡¯d know where he was, and you could tell me how to get him out.¡± I say. Her wry smile flashes back, with an added passing aura of contempt.


    ¡°I know,¡± She says. ¡°I bet it cut him deep, admitting I know more than him..¡± I remember Don¡¯s ritualistic condemnation of Madam Par. Abruptly, she stops so that I pass her, my eyes slipping off her face and falling to rest on a patch of wall that looks, I notice with crawling horror, a lot like Jojo¡¯s scar webbed leg, the lines just so, the pocks stained through with shocked curiosity, even its color. I can¡¯t believe I thought it was gray. It¡¯s pale pink-cream with angry glittering red diagonal lines. I feel a firm hot hand envelop my shoulder and turn to see if a staff member has come into my room to tell us to stop playing Starfox.


    Instead my eyes relock with Lucy¡¯s Again the soft aroma of rose overcomes me. My face reddens a bit again, a flush that crawls up over me, heats me like the embarrassment of younger years.


    ¡°You are precocious aren¡¯t you?¡± Lucy looks amused, derision glosses across her polite smirk. ¡°Well we¡¯re here now, so it doesn¡¯t matter.¡± She indicates the door she stands before. It is its sister¡¯s equal, black and tall. Lucy opens it to reveal the room beyond, and stands aside again, inclining her head sardonically. The room beyond is a spacious office, severe and modern. It¡¯s decorated with a palette of carefully muted blues and grays, reminiscent of the stone walls in the corridor. But the wall length windows along its rear reveal a different world from the castles and encampments of the Through. A broad and sprawling cityscape, from thirty stories up at least. It¡¯s unmistakably downtown Portland.


    The office is sparsely furnished with a shining dark wood desk, a sensible mesh back swivel chair, and a row of bookshelves filled with alternating books and abstract phallic and yonic sculpture, gleaming onyx black. In the corner, a large doberman sleeps on a circular velvet bed, its long nose resting across its brown paws. Lucy holds one arm up away from the door, as if to usher me in. I step through, and into her office.

 Chapter 7

    [garbage] takes the seat that Lucy offers, against the wall, bordered by the pristine books and genital sculptures. He watches her carefully as she comes to rest behind her desk, her thin hands folding and her eyes now eagerly predatory.


    ¡°We both know what you want: to find where Gus is now.¡± She turns to a sleek computer at the far corner of her desk. [garbage] idley flips the cool pages of the book sat on his lap. A few clicks later, Lucy turns back. ¡°I have the information. And, conveniently, you have something I want. So a simple trade is in order.¡±


    ¡°What do I have?¡± [garbage] asks. His hands fall still and he glances at the mythical book contained within them. It hasn¡¯t been kind to him, but up til now he hasn¡¯t considered its value either. Currently, it represents the only firm connection he has to Gus. He covers it protectively. Lucy arches an eyebrow and utters a faint chirruping laugh.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want your book, [garbage], I¡¯ve already said they¡¯re of no use to me.¡± [garbage] relaxes and lets his hand slip from its leather cover. ¡°No, you have something I can use, and that¡¯s your anonymity. I¡¯m unfortunately very well known in my circles. But you.¡± She presses a key with a flourish and a laser printer hums below her desk. ¡°You are a nobody here. And a nobody can see and hear the somebodies, and report back to me.¡± She flips a sheet of paper off the printer and holds it out. [garbage] takes it and reviews it quickly. In part it is a list of names, and in part a map of a large house, including a floor plan of each floor which are labelled with titles like ¡®ballroom¡¯ and ¡®banquet hall.¡¯


    He flips it around but finds its other side blank. The rooms are large, but not so large that he¡¯d call them ballrooms and halls. He puts the sheet down.


    ¡°That house, and the names above it, are all the information I have on Zachariah¡¯s earthbound head of operations. I found, through extensive trial and error, that he has an insidious flair for turning the spies I send. I can¡¯t go myself, as I already mentioned, and every person I¡¯ve sent so far has stayed there, or ghosted me completely. If you can get in, and find me any name at all not on that list, I¡¯ll give you Gus¡¯s location.¡± She leans over her desk, her eyes again a dare to go against her, flashing with a look like she¡¯s mated him in a game of chess.


    ¡°Fine¡± [garbage] says. ¡°How do I get there?¡± Lucy leans back fully, her thick lips curled into a smile that makes [garbage]¡¯s toes curl for its greed and animal lust. Before she answers his question, she briefly scurries her fingers across the keyboard. A clunk issues from behind the door.


    ¡°Just take the door and walk until you find another. It will open out of the house next to his. Then knock and play at being an addict. You¡®ll need street clothes and cash.¡± She waves her hand at the wardrobe to her right. ¡°Feel free to peruse.¡± Then she stands and pulls from the drawer of her desk a thick stack of bills, which [garbage] is not too surprised to see are hundreds. She flips one out and places it onto her desk, then waits. [garbage] stands and hefts the book again, watching her suspiciously. ¡°Don¡¯t go into the orrery room,¡± She says. ¡°If Zachariah sees you he will recognize you. But he stays put there. I¡¯ve only known him to leave it once, and that was to kill you.¡±


    [garbage] finds blue jeans and a black pink floyd tee shirt in the wardrobe. He changes into them, then opens the black door, to what looks like the same hallway he came from.


    ¡°[garbage],¡± Lucy calls from her desk. [garbage] turns back to see her eyeing him from the computer. ¡°Let''s try not to get distracted by ourselves, shall we?¡± She says with a wicked smile.


    [garbage] turns again to the doorway, and steps across its threshold.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    I¡¯m comforted by the tug of the sword in its sheath looped at my waist. If I¡¯m catching on to how this works I probably won¡¯t have it when I go through the door at the end of this hallway, but it¡¯s always nice to be armed, even temporarily. I speed along the warm stone hall, keeping my eyes fixed on the crest of its turn ahead, trying not to be taken in by the self injured flesh spots and the flickering sand beneath my feet. I watch blazing sconces as they appear on the far wall and pass me by. Each one is a red orange glowing hearth stuck up on the stone. The flames within are high and bright and I see their plasma forms dance above the oblong cut glass windows. It¡¯s a mesmerizing shape. My walking slows. I can hear the roar of fire and feel the cold damp air.


    I stop.


    The grass between my toes is wet. The sliver moon is half obscured by clouds that scud  across the starry sky. My face is sweating slightly from the heat of the fire. Its sound is one of power, and one of fear. From next to me I hear a loud high laughter. Jojo is dancing on the spot. I can¡¯t share in his joy though. I can¡¯t return his eager grin. The fear that¡¯s welling up from in my chest won¡¯t allow anything but the gripping portent of jai, or execution.


    ¡°Fucking amazing!¡± Jojo squeaks. But in the flames I only find a cold fixed future of pain and shame. ¡°C¡¯mon [garbage] look what we did! Look what we can do with just some matches and some gas!¡± He shakes my shoulders firmly, cackling still. I can¡¯t think of anything but police, and firemen, and how they punish sixteen year olds for arson. Will I be tried as an adult? Maybe I can get off with just two years in juvy. ¡°[garbage] what¡¯s with you? Look!¡± Jojo is pointing one red finger up at the flames, as if I¡¯ve only missed that they¡¯re there, and if I look I¡¯ll be as gleeful as he is.


    I look instead at him. I watch his demonic grin and wide eyes. In each of their glassy surfaces I see a miniscule dancing flame and I¡¯m at once gripped with the horrifying conviction that he¡¯s some demon boy, who¡¯s task all along has been tempting me down there, baiting me to commit this heinous crime. But I didn¡¯t pour the gas, I reasoned, I didn¡¯t swipe the match and toss it down to the abandoned house¡¯s floor. I only watched. I only let it happen. I¡¯m an accessory at worst. For the first time, I search myself for Garbage. Cold and reasoning, without my usual rage to hand him over to me, and to hand my body to him, I call out deep within my mind for him insead. I don¡¯t want to be here. I don¡¯t want to watch my friend the demon dance and gloat before an ugly crime.


    Garbage handles shit like this much better than I can . I raise my hands up to my head and press and screw my eyes shut, willing my captain, my playmate, protector, and guide to come forward. I feel myself fade, and my better steps in, but the grass between my toes remains, the fire before me is shrinking, the stone walls flickering around it.


    I open my eyes again and remember. Jojo set that fire seven years ago. I¡¯m not a teenager anymore. Garbage presses against my consciousness, a curiosity and concern in his presence


    [Where are you?] He repeats. His frame is halfway into the door to my body. I feel my hand burning and start, the book drops from it, onto the floor. It¡¯s crusted with ice. I work my frostbitten fingers to knead them back to life. Before I can realize what¡¯s happening, the floor opens up beneath me, cracking and shattering below my feet.


    I step back from the void, dancing away. The ragged hole grows larger as pieces fall into its dark recess. I fall backward and scrabble toward the wall, but even as I press my back against the stone I feel the cold spreading under me, branching up the wall I¡¯m plastered to. I press against that wall with a desperate need. It crumbles away behind me. I fall flat to a cold earth floor. The ragged hole leading back to Lucy¡¯s hallway is still there in front of me, within reach.


    The packed dirt below me branches out with feathers of frost from the hole in the stone floor ahead, but the ice stops short of where I¡¯m laying on my bruised ass and back. I look behind me. A tunnel snakes away to the left. I can see about fifty feet into it. It¡¯s lit throughout with a gently pulsing red glow that seems to come from nowhere. It¡¯s seven feet in diameter and it''s lined with ridges running along its walls, as if something has scraped along it, passing through.


    I turn back to where the T of Lucy¡¯s hall branches, where the frost ridged hole yawns and threatens to pull me from my mission. I take a cursory inventory of myself. My hands and legs are smeared with mud. I still have my sword, I¡¯m pleased to find. But the book is lost, as is the way to Zachariah¡¯s house. It¡¯s clear that if I tried to hop across the gaping hole, I¡¯d likely fall into it. I feel a rumble in the walls. An ominous miniature quake that sets my teeth at edge. I don¡¯t see any way forward but one, so I set off down the rough earth tunnel.


    As I walk, the cold from the book fades quickly to a damp warmth that has my clothes clinging to me. The curve of the floor trips me up occasionally as I bear forward. I walk for a short time before I come to a junction with another tunnel, running at a sharp diagonal to the one I¡¯m in. Both directions merely lead to more eerie red-lit tunnels. By virtue of it bringing my sharply back toward Lucy¡¯s hallway, and my mission, I take the tube that turns left, and walk along it for a while.


    Again I feel a distant rumble, stronger this time, and it rumbles in my memory as well. I feel a familiarity tied up with a ghastly dread. Garbage moves against my mind, a question in his turning presence.


    [I can walk] He states, but I dismiss him.


    ¡°You can wait,¡± I order the empty air.


    For a while I simply wander, every few minutes the walls and floors of the tunnel rumble faintly, sometimes earth, in clods and sprinkles, showers down from the ceiling and walls. I keep careful track of which turns I take and in which direction. Left Right Right Left Left. I keep a string of options in my mind that will lead me back. But I¡¯m beginning to feel a ragged anxiety lay over me. My traveling seems fruitless. Every turn and branch is much like the one before. Just as despair is settling over me in thick sifling layers, another rumble shakes the tunnel around me.


    Suddenly, I place the ridges in the walls. I realize just what made this network. The worm that Don spoke of, in the tent. A beast I might meet, around any one of the corners that I turn.


    A rain of earth descends in front of me, pebbles, dirt, and mud fall like a landslide from above. I press myself against the wall to feel smaller, no safe place to hide and no resolve in my legs. I fully expect the worm to burst down from the ceiling, but it doesn¡¯t. Instead, the very last thing I expect falls through a hole crushed into the ceiling, which I now see is crusted with frost and ragged edges.


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    Through this hole, landing on his feet and bathed in sterile fluorescent light, which pours down liberally from the space above, is me. He lands competently on his feet and surveys the tunnel around him. It is unmistakably me. The same face I see in a mirror, but reversed. He has my heavy brows, my rounded eyes, my chin that¡¯s just a touch too small. He has my dark thick hair and my red lips and my one tooth pushing out to the side a bit. I reach up to feel my own face, suddenly concerned that I may actually be someone else.


    The steaming icy hole above him seems to lead to a hospital room. I see a bed with an IV stand propped up right next to it. A few chairs along the side of the room. One of them is occupied by someone I can¡¯t quite see, but the edges of a curtain of matte pink hair remind me of Coral. I take a hesitant step toward myself, trying to get a better angle to see who it is, but the man before me, by all indications myself, holds up a hand.


    ¡°You must give me the sword,¡± He says. His voice is familiar to me, and not just for the clear fact that it is my own. I''m sure I''ve heard the quality and power of his command before as well. I feel the awareness within me twist as Garbage turns his keen eye out to inspect a clone of his own, as surely as the stranger¡¯s body is a clone of me.


    ¡°Garbage?¡± I ask. I place my hand protectively down onto the pommel of my blade.


    ¡°Yes.¡± He answers. ¡°And I need that blade. I don¡¯t have time to explain everything, but look: by boring in a bore with that book you brought through Lucy¡¯s door, you bored through time. I know this because I watched you do it from within your head, about a year ago. I need the sword you have, the sword that Gus designed to slay the worm.¡±


    His hand remains extended, waiting for me to offer it up. For a moment, I feel a petulant reluctance. Though the sword had never done me any good, it had been a talisman to me. But with Garbage encouraging me from within, and with no better option, I unbuckle the blade from around my hips and hand it over to myself.


    Briefly, our fingers touch. I feel a nauseous ripple wash over me, the hair on my arms and neck stands straight. By instinct, I turn to regard the voice within my mind, but I find with reeling vertigo that Garbage is missing. I briefly rummage for the will and personality that had been standing firmly autonomous in my mind a moment before, but discover only a slipshod cardboard cutout in my mind, like the standee self I had erected as a child to play my games with when I was my only friend. The me from the ceiling straps the blade onto his body and regards me, calm and firm.


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what happens with you next,¡± He says. ¡°I assume you had good reason to keep it from me.¡± The rumble of the walls breaks his gaze. ¡°Good luck.¡± He says, and strides away from me, heading vaguely toward the distant rumbling sound. The bright bore in the ceiling above still shimmers, open and leading to a hospital room in what I guess is my own future, or else a past that I¡¯ve forgotten. Either way, past or future, as soon as my other self is out of earshot, the hole begins to shrink.


    ¡°Coral!¡± I shout, my hands cupped around my mouth. But she doesn''t hear. Before I can even consider trying to jump and grab for the edge, I¡¯m once again alone in a warm dirt tunnel, only this time I¡¯m unarmed. I consider the hole I left back at Lucy¡¯s hallway, wondering whether it too has knit itself closed. The directions I memorized to lead me back are the only comfort I have, they were the only thing besides the sword that kept the suffocative hallways from feeling like an early grave around me.


    Again I try to writhe within my mind and catch a comforting admonishment or command from my childhood ghost companion, but again I come to nothing but a ransacked framework of a character, like a puppet with abandoned strings. The walls vibrate, sending yet more crumbs of earth tumbling down. The beat is closer yet. I hope my other self can best it. I turn from the place I met him and set back to begin the twists and turns I¡¯ve memorized.


    It seems that every step I take I feel a rumbling now. I weave myself around dirt corners, Left Left Right. There are no breaks now in the tumbling earth, only one continuous vibration. Right Left. It¡¯s growing stronger as I desperately plod my way forward, then: Then, nothing. I¡¯ve reached the bore. I see the cold ragged hole again before me. I check furtively behind me, and I see it. Glistening and pulsating, a thousand teeth in its wretched mouth. Its eyes are glowing yellow and its reptile nostrils flare. It¡¯s approaching me, fast as a train. The whole earth cavern shakes and rains dirt with its movement. The hole ahead of me is just as I left it, the stone hall branches off in a T with a frozen hole on the floor beneath it.


    I can feel the hot rank breath of the beast behind me and feel the flecks of saliva spattering my arms as I run. The junction fast approaches. I have no option but to jump and try to clear the hole, to make it back into Lucy¡¯s hall and the relative safety of my espionage mission. I leap. For a moment it seems I¡¯ve stuck my landing. I¡¯m teetering on the edge, the cold of the bore is billowing up around me. But there¡¯s nothing to grab to keep my footing firm. I frantically try to lean forward, but the earth is cracking beneath me, falling away into the black. Just as the monster reaches the bore, I fall backward, into the hole, into the dark and cold.


    I stare above as I tumble down. The black worm is there in the ragged steaming hole. It stares down for a moment. Its eyes flash yellow, its jaw hangs half open. It dives down after me. When I land, I find I¡¯m still in a red earth tunnel. I¡¯ve landed back in the domain of the worm. It¡¯s rushing toward me with all the speed of gravity. I roll awkwardly to the side before it slams with mighty force into the earth, shaking the walls of the cavern. From the looks of the thing, it¡¯s somewhat injured, but as its massing serpentine body coils around it in the earth of this new tunnel, it rolls its face away from the mud below and fixes me again with its yellow white eyes.


    A few of its sharp fangs are broken off, some hang from a grisly nerve. Immediately it¡¯s apon me once more. I hold out my hands, trying to protect myself feebly. I feel the beast¡¯s jaws, slimy non-lips and rotten breath across my face. I grip with all the force I can to the beat¡¯s upper and lover teeth, but all the force I have isn¡¯t enough to match it. I¡¯m sandwiched between the packed dirt and the aien teeth and rack skin of the beast. I can¡¯t breath for all the slimy tongue, hot and powerful, filling my face and pressing me deep into the mud of the wall.


    I try to let go of the teeth and find some purchase elsewhere, but it is as if my hands have been melted into the jaws they hold. I cannot lift them any more than I can lift my head. I feel the panic of suffocation grip my chest. The seal of the worm¡¯s tongue against my mouth and nose is complete. I retch. Bile fills my throat. The feeling in my hands is lost, but I feel a new sensation, where hands once were. I feel my face extend, as if it were swelling outward. I¡¯m able to take a gasp of breath, but I can¡¯t comprehend how, with my face still firmly stuck to the writhing tongue.


    With a distant, cold realization, I retch again, the bile and acid hot in my closed off throat. One of my throats. I take another ripping breath and confirm my numb suspicion. I¡¯m breathing not with my own lungs and mouth, but with those of the beast. And further, the beast¡¯s broken teeth ache in my one head. I¡¯m becoming the worm. My own body is melting into its gaping mouth and tongue. But even as I reach this conclusion I realize it¡¯s wrong. The pressure of the worm¡¯s body against mine is beginning to life. It¡¯s tongue and teeth, now my face and hands, are shrinking. The worm is becoming me.


    With another rancid breath taken through the beasts own mouth, I begin again to push back against it. This time I find some purchase. With all my strength and leverage, attached as I am to the bloodied jaws, I stagger forward. I realize the beast has shrunk drastically. I slip forward and fall onto my face, onto my hands, onto the worm. It¡¯s no larger than an anaconda now. I can feel it writhe beneath me. It continues to shrivel.


    With a grotesque slurping sound, it detaches from my face. Its tooth falls away from my hand. I choke out the bile that still fills my throat onto the packed dirt below me, where it splashes to join the rank beast¡¯s blood already pooled there. The worm has quickly reduced to nothing more than a ragged slimy black tendril, still locked on place to my left palm. I feel it whip and coil in the air and realize it¡¯s burrowing now into my arm. The skin up past my hand is bulging out as it slithers itself into my body. Panic grips me. Garbage screams within my mind to grab it before it¡¯s all the way in. I seize it and wrap its powerful body in a coil around my writs for leverage, ther wring it as hard as I can.


    I feel it jerking back against my arm. With a grisly crunching sensation, it finally goes limp. The moment it does, two things take place almost simultaneously. First, the victorious shout I hear from Garbage in my mind leaps forward to my teeth and tongue. Second, the edges of the personality that I call Garbage burst. It¡¯s like a balloon that¡¯s filled with water and immersed in a pool being pricked with a pin. The barrier simply ceases to be. The water that was Garbage now intermingles with the water that is me.


    An influx of memories comes to light. For instance, I suddenly remember a group of people, and the adventures we¡¯ve had together. Hundreds of memories pour in all at once. But the memories recovered include things I cant possible know. A year into the future, I can see the camping trip we take, and Gus¡¯s relapse. I can see myself breaking through the book on the hospital floor, with Coral waiting on the side and Gus sullen and afraid in his bed. I see this just as clearly as I see myself walking away from Jojo, when I was just fifteen years old.


    I have little time to absorb the memories, to explore a side of me I¡¯ve kept separate for all these years, because another change has occurred with the death of the worm, now fallen limp from my arm like a fleshy thread. It has suddenly become very cold. Fog rises tremulously from the floor and a web of frost creaks outward from below me. Before I have time to roll aside, a sharp edged hole is broken through the dirt. I tumble once again through the darkness and cold. The floor rushes up to meet me. The bright fluorescent light batters my eyes. I¡¯m laying on pristine cream tiles. Gus lays on a bed above me, watching me with wide eyes. Coral has stood up, and covers her mouth with one hand


    ¡°That was fast¡± Gus says.


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    [When I break through the hospital floor, I¡¯m pleased to find again that my aim has served me well. I land on the packed and ominously glowing dirt of the beast¡¯s tunnels. A rumbling which I know must be the worm itself is fading in the distance. I turn to regard the tunnel¡¯s length. [garbage] stands before me, gawking. Of course. I hadn¡¯t realized it would come so soon. In my memory and through his senses I had seemed so much older. I always presumed the time for our meeting was some far off day. But no, I begin to recall more clearly, here is the place, there is the sword, and now is my need.


    ¡°You must give me the sword.¡± I say. The memory of just the same thing occurring through his eyes reverberates in the weather of my mind.


    ¡°Garbage?¡± My past self asks. He places one hand over the pommel of the sword


    ¡°Yes, and I need that blade. I don¡¯t have time to explain everything.¡± But I see in his eyes, or do I remember from his head, that he needs more. ¡°But look: by boring in a bore with that book you brought through Lucy¡¯s door, you bored through time.¡± His doubt is still complete. Patiently, I sort through what I remember of the event. What did I say to me, back then? ¡°I know this because I watched you do it from within your head, about a year ago.¡± He still seems unconvinced. I try impressing him with the need of my quest here and now. ¡°I need the sword you have, the sword that Gus designed to slay the worm.¡± For a moment I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s enough either. But I keep my hand out, waiting nonetheless.


    At last he gives the weapon over, and I buckle it to myself with an eye kept fixed to him. If memory serves, this is the point at which my recall dead ends completely. The point after which, though I¡¯ve pressed and questioned, nothing comes to mind. I fight the urge to follow him away, to see what took place between now and what I remember next, which was reawakening in the hospital psych ward. But I can¡¯t. I have a purpose here today, and that¡¯s to find the worm and slay it. To kill it completely this time, which the self I now watch failed to do back then. As is often the case, it all falls to me.


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what happens with you next.¡± I say. I try, half successfully, to keep the burn of curiosity from my voice. ¡°I assume you had good reason to keep it from me." The worm''s vibrations start up again, down the tunnel and away from [garbage]. ¡°Good luck.¡± I tell him, though I know he¡¯ll fail his task.


    The dank tubes of earth around me are much as I remember seeing them through [garbage]¡¯s eyes, though relieved from his lack of fear that his chattering anxiety painted through it. I find it non too complicated to feel the disparate vibrations and triangulate the evil thing¡¯s general location. I simply stand at crossroads, waiting for the beast to move, and subsequently follow whichever tunnel rains more earth, then repeat.


    In short order, its quakes are powerful enough to warrant the drawing of my blade. The sword¡¯s emerald gleams a sickly color there in the red light of the beast¡¯s domain. But I know that Gus has designed it with purpose, with the will imbued into it as Zachariah taught. I left it in my hand to impress its weight on my muscles¡¯ memory, and press forward.


    At a T shaped junction in the tunnels, I finally find the ugly thing. It careens past me and a sickly black wall glistens, filling the tunnel. I dive forward immediately, driving the point of my blade as deeply as I can. By virtue of its movement it slices itself on one gaping gash along its length. I press the sword as firmly in as my strength allows until the worm¡¯s breadth tapers and I stumble forward, colliding with its passing narrow tail.


    My instinct is to chase after its receding form and down the tunnel to my right, but I know I¡¯m slower than the thing, and reason dictates it will burrow back around to seek what caused it such pain. I resolve to wait, sword brandished, for its return. As I thought, a rumbling, stronger than all the rest, begins to grow. It''s powerful enough to set my stance askew, and I kneel down to be sure I¡¯m facing it with a bare blade when it arrives.


    An explosion to my left throws me against the wall. The damned thing snuck around me. I feel its jaws tear through my flesh but I¡¯m able to rip myself away from it and crawl toward the tunnel stretching out before me. The wound it tore into my thigh pulses with agonizing pain. I feel the blood begin to pool beneath me even as I pull myself along the dirt floor. I grip my sword and bend myself back up into a seat, then reach out as the beast¡¯s length runs along the hallway spattered with my blood. I drive the blade again into its side, but the awkward angle of my grip is such that the force of the worm¡¯s body wrenches the weapon from my hand. I dive to retrieve it, issuing a beastly bellow while I do, half in pain, half in desperate effort, but a second explosion rends the tunnel¡¯s wall, the worm has burst through, its rank and vomitous jaws spread wide. I feel the sharp fangs closing firmly around my shoulder and skull, then the crunch of its snapping grasp and once again the black of death.

 Chapter 8

    [garbage] wakes feeling groggy. He takes stock of his room, his aching muscles, and the trickles of dream evacuating from his mind, too fast to grasp at. He was looking for someone, for a long time, looking and never finding. He had failed. He whips the blanket from his thinning form and, like a firework bursting in his mind -raining bright trails of memory- he recalls the book that he put through hell to wring out answers, finding none. He wonders why he thought a book would answer him at all. The dim misshapen memory of a doorway catches his attention, until it, too, evaporates away.


    Just more fucking side effects of (_____), he thinks, and ruminates not for the first time on how impossible it seems for anyone to keep hold of themselves on the stuff long enough to even ask for a second dose, let alone develop a full addiction. He rises from his bed and stumbles to the bathroom. As he¡¯s urinating he remembers the book again. There was a reason he wanted answers from it. There was something. He finishes and makes his way out to the day room, where a smattering of other patients are already eating their breakfast.


    Before he joins them a nurse is bothering him for vitals, so he lands in a chair and protrudes his skinny wrist and arm, to which a nurse attaches a red vinyl blood pressure cuff. The book was going to help him find Gus. It was going to lead him somehow. The pressure of the cuff squeezes his arm in a way that feels somehow friendly and also suffocating. A flash of pain lances through his neural web and carries with it dark and rank recollections of a massive slimy tongue pressing to his face, sealing away his air.


    But as the cuff hisses mildly and deflates to a stretched long turtleneck, the memory, or vision, or whatever, deflates as well. He chalks it up to the dream he had last night and follows the nurse¡¯s intoned directive to line up at the medication window. During the time that he spends in walking to the window, waiting in the rag tag line to get his pills, and tucking them deftly into the crease between his top lip and front teeth, to display to the distributing nurse the lie that he had swallowed them, during this time he was systematically going back over the last few days, trying to pick out what he had been doing, what hed been so important.


    [swallow the meds.]


    The command came so suddenly from such a camouflaged part of his mind, that it startled him into freezing, halfway from the med counter to the day room. He swallowed, dry, the two already partially dissolved pills and reached back into the fold of his mind from where the voice had come. His protector. He carried there a question, made of images and emotion, wordless but no less pointed for it. The book, the path to Gus, the dreams. Garbage squirmed in a way he never had before. It was hard to read his mood. He seemed almost sullen.


    [It doesn¡¯t matter]


    [garbage] picked at his breakfast morosely. He came back stronger, demanding answers. The book! Gus! And Garbage rippled with frustration. In bursts of heat and pain, which seemed to issue forth from Garbage¡¯s miniscule domain, he remembered clearly breaking through the ice, remembered the pain of death in the Through, then nothing more. Garbage turned his back.


    [¡°Take your meds.] he said. [So we can just go home.]


    And he was left alone, staring at the plate of too-round pancakes and the plastic cup of orange juice set above them, with its crinkled pulled-back foil lid. The half remembered haze of a fantasy world swirled in the cup of his mind, but Garbage usually knew better, at times like this. So he did as he was told.


    Over the next several days, he took his meds and watched again as Garbage receded to the outskirts of his mind, still shut behind a wall and eventually so faint that he wasn¡¯t much more than a secretive apparition, as good as imaginary, silent and still. He went to groups, where he witnessed no fewer than three outbursts from his fellow patients. Chairs thrown, screams hurtled across the paper checked tables from where text looked up and cheerily announced ¡°Self Care¡± with outlined hearts meant to be filled in with bone dry safety markers and photocopied into post nuclear fallout degredation.


    He took the chaos in stride, himself half muddled and comfortable to watch in contemplation until the staff directed him to wait in his room. He had meetings with his doctor every day, until, at last, he was told he¡¯d be moved to the floor above. Where he might find some answers, since he couldn¡¯t find any more from Garbage.


    When he moved back up, to a different room from before this time, he merely dumped what passed for his belongings on the bed and made a bee line for the day room. He was hoping that he would find Coral there, who he vaguely remembered as being the one he preferred of the two people joining him in his fevered journeys through the ice.


    Instead, he finds Don. He approaches him quickly, no preamble.


    ¡°Don,¡± He says. He hears a desperation in his voice and checks himself, taking a breath. ¡°Don what happened? With the book, and with all that shit? And ice?¡± He feels his face redden, suddenly aware that he looks a fine occupant in that shabby sterile hospital rec room. Don waits for him to finish simply listing disparate elements, his face a picture of mild appraisal, lids half lidded, mouth slack and smooth.


    ¡°I should be asking you that, [garbage]. From what I hear, you threw off the beast entirely. It isn¡¯t dead, but you must have injured it pretty severely for it to just abandon its hunt like that.¡±


    ¡°So it was real? The forest, the tents, the castle¡­¡± [garbage] rattles off a few more the fragments of memory he can scrounge from what Garbage had left him.


    ¡°Real is relative. Anyway, you¡¯ll be happy to hear that Gus is safe. I think he was told who fought off the worm, too. So you¡¯ve got someone to pick you up now. Mission accomplished, brother.¡± Don pats his shoulder with a heavy hand. ¡°And here, take my number, in case you ever want to meet up, outside of here,¡± Don hands him a slip of paper, torn from one of the many worksheets constantly strewn about the ward. A phone number is scrawled across it in a vaguely calligraphic script, with a line of text truncated along its bottom reading ¡°...ortant to alway be aware of your mood.¡±


    [garbage] stashes it away in his pocket silently.


    ¡°I did it?¡± He asks. Don chuckles lightly, still watching [garbage] with a curious, studying gaze. ¡°You or your friend there,¡± He replies, tapping his own temple with a wide forefinger. [garbage] reels. Somehow his protector had succeeded where he couldn¡¯t, once again. With a glow of gratitude and a regret for having doubted Garbage, he settled in a chair for the beginning of a group, the topic of which he didn¡¯t even bother learning. He merely bounced his legs with an eagerness and anticipation which belied the sedative effect of his medication.


    Before the group finished, he looked up with surprise to find the Coral was sitting next to him once again. He wasn¡¯t sure how he missed her iconic pink hair and dreamy smile. She was coloring in the edges of a soft tree on the sketchbook in her lap. [garbage] thought of the paper Don had given him, which was resting now, half crumpled, in his pocket.


    ¡°Good to see you again, Coral.¡± He said. She kept her eyes on her tree.


    ¡°Lovely to see you too, [garbage]. You¡¯re kind of a celebrity now you know, in wonderland. ¡°She glanced up at him wryly. ¡°The hero that saved his maiden.¡± [garbage] had to laugh at that, a choked giggle.


    ¡°Gus is about as much a maiden as I am a hero.¡± He said. Coral tilted her head at that, like she was watching a raindrop slide down a windowpane. ¡°Anyway I thought it might be nice if we hung out, you know, out there,¡± [garbage] vaguely indicated toward the windows, which opened out to a sloped lawn and a walkway behind the hospital. ¡°I could give you my number if you want. Maybe we could go camping or something sometime.¡± Coral smiled, her face a glowing lava lamp, all color and smooth lines.


    ¡°That would be great.¡± She said. ¡°I do love the forest.¡±


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    ¡°When I saw that something was going on, whatever it was, I had to find out the nature of Gus¡¯s lies. I really just wanted everything to go back to normal, you know? For once things were working out in our relationship¡¯s favor, and I wanted that back. When I had watched the straggling line of zombies enter the house, I decided to abandon decorum. I know, big surprise there. I turned the key back and let my engine die. I guess that¡¯s my, what, my decision point, right?¡±


    Madeline nods a prim agreement with the phrase [garbage] had pulled from one of the many worksheets.


    ¡°Yeah, maybe I could¡¯ve made a better one at that point, but I did what I did. I pocketed my key and stepped out into the street. The house was one of those that seems really nice until you get right up to it. Like it was a big place, with all the fancy shutters, a nice cast iron railing leading to a huge double front door and a sprawl of bushes, a curved front drive as though expecting, like, valets to drop master off and park in a rear garage. But up close it was just peeling apart at the seams, everywhere you looked, paint flaking away, bushes overgrown, all that.


    ¡°Anyway I didn¡¯t know what to expect in truth, even when every part of my subconscious, including a very surly Garbage, was growling ¡°traphouse¡± into my inner ear. I guess I must¡¯ve chosen willful ignorance over the ugly truth. But I was about to be met with the ugly truth whether I liked it or not. The doorbell was trashed. Like, just wires hanging out of the wall, so I lifted the gargoyle on a bend of metal and rapped it against the chewed-looking dark veneered wood door a couple of times. I never understood those knockers. They sound like a kind of tinny rapping, I always thought knuckles could do a better job. Maybe rich people knuckles are too fragile. It always seems like having something else do your work for you is an obsession of the rich, even if it¡¯s an ugly little goblin whacking his ass against the door. Whatever.


    ¡°As you can imagine it took a bit of waiting before anyone figured out I was out there. Waiting and goblin ass-whacking. Finally a woman came to the door and cracked it open. She wasn¡¯t the picture of good health that a wealthy homeowner might be expected to be. She had lank dandruffy gray hair that looked like it used to be curly but gave up all that work in favor of a more relaxed and split apart life. And her face looked exactly same. She might have been in her seventies, but from her teeth alone that could be moved up or down a couple decades, depending on whether they were dentures or peculiarly young for her age.


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    ¡°¡±How much.¡± she half croaked, through cracked lips and behind a blank suspicious gaze. She kept her body behind the door, but from her bare spotty shoulder it seemed she was at least shirtless, if not fully in the nude. I took a moment to consider privately whether it was just me or if ¡°how much¡± really was a less than usual way to answer a door knock, and I decided she must think I was delivering something. I didn¡¯t rule out that she may not have seen me and my conspicuous lack of bags of chinese food or pizza since, by all accounts and by her rheumy eyes, she may well be entirely blind. Especially since she seemed to gaze past me and down her drive instead of at me directly, or at me at all.


    ¡°¡±I¡¯m here for Gus.¡± I said, concluding my reflections with the decision that I should simply be direct. She grunted in a way that couldn¡¯t possibly be thought of as communicative, but as she withdrew she let the shabby door swing inward in a universal gesture of welcoming. What she revealed was exactly what Garbage and my mind had warned me of. It was a trash heap of a trap house. The carpets were the color of stain, there was a blue choking haze of cigarette smoke and the acrid smell of burning plastic woven through.


    ¡°I took a halting step in and the old woman spared no time in slamming the door shut behind me. She took a bolstering in-breath and yell-croaked Gus¡¯s name into the rundown space of the front hall, which was piled high with shoes and coats of all sizes and paneled with lush carved stone tiles from floor to ceiling, themselves plastered with a criss cross mash of spray paint lines, some dripping black or red or silver from their menacing designs.


    ¡°I noted with dwindling surprise that my welcome party was indeed naked, save for a threadbare pair of panties doing less covering than simply squishing her steel wool bush of pubic hair against its nearly translucent fabric. Nobody ran to heed her call, so the woman grunted again, a vaguely acquiescent animal sound, and turned to regard me with her apparently still operational milky eyes. ¡°You¡¯re not a networker?¡± She asked, but waved a dismissing skeletal hand before I could answer. ¡°Zach would¡¯ve seen you,¡± She concluded. She started down a hallway on her left instead, issuing a grunt that possibly meant I should follow, or possibly wait there. She didn¡¯t turn back to confirm either way. I decided I¡¯d venture onward, and popped my shoes off by the door, since it seemed like the thing to do.


    ¡°The woman lead me down a much defiled corridor only half lit by those sconce lights that look all medieval, except for the ones that flickered ominously or hung from a thick white cord from the wall. Her walk was very slow, which gave me time to ruminate on the dangers that most probably waited wherever it was we were going. I made a plan of action, if you can call it that, and resolved to run at the first sight of hats dropping or guns being pulled from the backs of pants. This plan was more of a thought exercise than anything else, however, since it truth most signs of violence would just bring Garbage out, who could handle himself just fine and would probably talk down a shooter and make me a new best friend, if it did come to that.


    ¡°Anyway I really didn¡¯t need to worry at all. When we arrived at the tall defaced oak door and she pushed it open with a saggy arm, realigning its room, I realized at once that I wouldn¡¯t have trouble with violent offenders. The room was too big for its occupants and furniture, with everybody there sore of huddled together, up against a corner. A flat screen bigger than I thought they made them dominated the space, and loomed down over a mostly unconscious half dozen occupants, in various stages of repose on various pieces of furniture that looked to have aspirations at being called modern, but were so splashed with grime and torn apart that the only word suitable to describe them now was ¡°trash¡±.


    ¡°Among the litter of glass eyed patrons strewn around the hulking low, wide table that sported an inlaid atlas of meticulous design, was Gus, himself engaged in the favorite activity among the party, the only activity really. He held a glass stopper filled with honey colored liquid over his mouth and seemed industriously occupied with meting some carefully prescribed amount of the stuff under his tongue in drops. He hadn¡¯t noticed me, so I made an effort of announcing myself, half embarrassed for some reason, but a healthy half frustrated as well. I decided on a sardonic, cheerful ¡°Hi there, Gus.¡± to bring him around. He kind of vaguely glanced in my direction but the boiling embarrassment I¡¯d been hoping for never came. He placed the amber glass bottle down and sat back against the disgusting chair. ¡°Hello [garbage],¡± He said.


    ¡°His tone was the same he¡¯d use if I¡¯d come into the kitchen of our own apartment while he was frying an egg in the morning. I felt a rage wipe over me like a coat of paint, and Garbage very nearly stepped in right there. But I wanted to deal with it myself, I didn¡¯t care that I¡¯d probably fuck it up. I should¡¯ve let him handle it, looking back. I might never have ended up in this hospital. But I held my ground and funneled my anger into something else instead. I walked right up to him, took his bottle, and waved it in his slack face, as calmly as the adrenaline allowed. The people around us, those that were conscious anyway, all seemed as blissfully uncaring as Gus. One or two even smiling vaguely, like I was a rerun of a sitcom on their gargantuan TV. ¡°Why¡¯d you have to like about it Gus?¡± I asked. He wasn¡¯t answering, which was fine, since it was a purely rhetorical anyway. ¡°Why couldn¡¯t you just admit you¡¯re a human, like the rest of us?¡±


    ¡°My hands were trembling and the open glass bottle spilled a drop onto the carpet. That woke them up. Gus sat up a little, and held a cautioning hand out, a semblance of human expression flickering over his face. ¡°Oh the fucking drugs are worth your time,¡± I tilted the bottle, a threat to wake him up. ¡°I¡¯m not fuck all, but the bottle is so important, huh?¡± Gus seemed to be working out what lie would put me at ease, but the thing is, I didn¡¯t want to hear a thing from him, not sorry, not fuck you, not anything. In fact, I wanted to hear silence out of him. The same silence I had to give him when his lies cornered me into watching him fuck himself over. I wanted him to worry.


    ¡°I guess that¡¯s why I did it. I wanted to shit on him the same way he¡¯d been shitting on me for months. After that I don¡¯t remember much, like I said. I got to see Gus¡¯s eyes grow big and scared and then, when the (_____) kicked in, it all goes black. You said the cops found me in a walmart, acting stupid and stealing food. I don¡¯t remember that. Just drinking that whole fucking bottle back, and Gus¡¯s face, when he saw it. The first emotion I saw in his eyes for months.¡±


    Madaline waited for a while in silence. When it was clear that [garbage] had nothing more, she clicked her pen and attached it to the plastic box of a clipboard.


    ¡°Alright [garbage] thank you for being honesty. It sounds like you¡¯ve been through a lot these past few weeks. But in my opinion, I can agree with your doctor¡¯s assessment that this was an isolated incident. I can recommend your discharge as soon as tomorrow, if you have a number we can call to arrange your transportation home. Remember, a taxi, an uber, anybody who can drive you home will do just fine.¡± She had a passifying expression and one hand outstretched, as if in some magic spell to still the waters before her. [garbage] was picking at his thumbnail, his eyes tight. He sighted.


    ¡°Yeah I can give you Gus¡¯s number. He should be able to do it.¡±


    ______________________________________________________________________________


    As the hole above him closed off, and he stared up at his friends, standing gawking down at him, he couldn''t help but let loose a strained laugh. Coral smiled with him and even issued her own little airy giggle. The relief of the beast being finally dead, of an expanding horizon stretching out into his and Gus¡¯s future, overtook him. Don lost interest quickly and folded his leg over the other knee, sitting back to confer with his phone while the episode swept over his prone friend on the hospital floor. Soon the waves of relief and anticipation swept up together with the emotions he hadn¡¯t even been aware of.


    The personality that he had considered so different from his own, he now felt alive in him, unhindered. Tears flowed liberally from his eyes and down across his temples to fall to the hard shiny tiles of the floor. Gus stood from his bed and, dragging the tubes and cords restraining him, went to crouch by his hysterical love and take his hand up to stroke it, soothing and slow.


    ¡°Evan, did everything go ok? What happened to Garbage?¡± That name, Evan, reverberated with dripping sunlit afternoons spent petting cats and laughing, sharing dog-eared copies of favorite books, eating simple meals on the lawn of their favorite park and feeling Gus¡¯s long square hand against his back. That name, he¡¯d heard a thousand times, shaped lovingly or angrily or plainly by those Roman statue lips, which drew the name into themselves and wore it down until it was a shape, familiar and intimate, just for him. So thoroughly stolen from him by himself, at once the most natural and the most alien thing he could ever expect to hear. His name. In Gus''s voice.


    ¡°Garbage is dead. The worm is dead.¡± He said. Gus¡¯s eyes widened a fraction, a bold dare to hope for the impossible within them. He squeezed Evan¡¯s hand, that warmth and loving blanket back again.


    ¡°Good,¡± He whispered. Evan watched him and perceived a deep relief, much like the one he felt within. Coral was watching too, watching Gus as Evan did, a kind of curiosity slowly flickering within her, but when was there not, with Coral. Evan folded up from his flat posture, into a seat, with one hand still in Gus¡¯s, one arm wrapped around his knee. The sudden abrasive hollow scratch of the plastic curtain being whisked away announced the same tired nurse, his eyes dark and alert, who had led them to Gus''s partitioned bed.


    ¡°Everything alright in here?¡± He strode into the room and Gus quickly stood and made his way back to the bed. Evan hauled his aching frame away from the floor and joined Coral and Don in the chairs against the wall.


    ¡°Just fine,¡± Said Gus. The nurse spared Evan a fleeting glance that spoke at once of idle curiosity and professional discretion, then started in on Gus¡¯s various ties and monitors, pulling them apart with brisk efficiency and speaking as he did.


    ¡°Well Gus, it looks like the doc has cleared you for discharge. Everything is stable and looking good. I assume this is your ride home?¡± He gestured with a wave that took in the friends lined up against the wall.


    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Said Gus, but simultaneously cast a worried expression in Evan¡¯s direction, who himself was still riding the crest of his cathartic relief. Evan nodded to his medically extricated lover and wiped the cold tears from across his face.


    ¡°Okay then! You are good to go. Just. Stay off the junk man.¡± The nurse was finishing winding the tubes and cords and offered a significant look to all of the rooms four occupants.


    ¡°I will,¡± Said Gus. He hopped from the bed and together the friends and lovers exited that space, for what Evan fervently prayed was the last time.


    When the door hissed open to admit their departure, Gus took Evan¡¯s hand back up again, enclosing it in his comforting warm artisan¡¯s grip.


    ¡°I really am sorry, Evan,¡± His voice was faded at the edges, like a well worn map, all soft with wrinkles and hard to read. ¡°Garbage was right, you know? I should¡¯ve just asked you in the first place.¡± Evan avoided his eyes for a moment, not sure what to say. For a brief, confused moment, he reached out for the mentioned presence, a question in his thoughts, a deference, ready to receive and consider an outside trusted opinion. But a jutter skimmed his thoughts as he realized he was asking himself, and he knew the answer.


    ¡°You did what you did.¡± He said. ¡°And I get why, Gus. Just don¡¯t do it again.¡± And with that, it was dropped. ¡°I¡¯d like to go back.¡± He changed the topic. ¡°To hug point. Like we planned. If that¡¯s cool with you guys? We have one more night, maybe we can get some R and R after all, right?¡± Coral clapped her hands and skipped a pace forward into the sea of stationary vehicles surrounding them.


    ¡°Perfect!¡± She shouted out across the hot pavement. ¡°If we stop for some food though, God I¡¯m hungry.¡± Don clicked his car¡¯s fob and a honk issued out to the left.


    ¡°Great. I just took the tents down you know.¡± He said. Coral hung on his shoulder dramatically, eyes like a puppy¡¯s mooning up to his decidedly averted glare.


    ¡°Oh Donny, you¡¯ll love it, you know it was the best place east of the ocean. I¡¯ll come with you, a little fast food will make the whole thing look better.¡± They wandered off toward Don¡¯s car, Coral shouting over her shoulder that they¡¯d see them on the coast.


    The geo that Evan and Gus climbed into was oppressively hot from the sun. When they started it up they spent a silent moment with the doors open and the air running to empty the baking bubble into the summer day. Finally, the doors closed. They were alone. The tick tick of the half  broken air meting out the pregnant moments. Their first moment since everything that could truly be said to be private.


    ¡°So he¡¯s really gone?¡± Gus pricked the bubble. That decadent relief flooded briefly through Evan¡¯s arms and legs. ¡°Gone Gone?¡± He clarified. He was craning his head to search Evan¡¯s eyes, as if some fleck of his iris or shadow in his pupil might dash his fragile hope and prove the relief Evan felt to be temporary. Evan smiled, half sardonic, and watched Gus right back. He leaned forward, almost in a rush to connect his lips to Gus''s. Gus didn¡¯t hesitate to respond. Closing his eyes, he quickly embraced his lover, cradling his jaw with his warm wide hand, spreading his fingers across the back of his neck. It was like a familiar shirt, pulled on after a long sleep. All the folds fit easily around his contours, stretched to the memory of his body. All the parts of him that needed to be touched, cradled and held by all the right hands and lips. Evan felt, gradually, the tension and the worry of Gus¡¯s body dissolve from him, until, when they broke apart, when they faced one another in the now cold blast of the geo¡¯s air conditioning, he saw that his smile found a match.


    ¡°He¡¯s Gone Gone,¡± Said Evan. ¡°When I met you, Gus, I was not together. I mean in more ways than one, you know? Like, I¡¯m a shit show half the time, maybe a little better than before. Maybe a big step into better now, maybe. But like, when I went into that classroom I was fucking traumatized by life at the home, by my friends from before, and by life, just like you were. You fucked up today, that¡¯s a fact. But we were both broken people when we got together, and I don¡¯t think we¡¯re ever just suddenly going to be fixed. So yeah, Garbage is gone. But I¡¯m pretty sure new garbage is on its way in. For me, for you, for everybody ever. If I threw away our relationship everytime some dumb garbage got in the way, I¡¯d never have time to pick it up again. Life is garbage. But I want to live my garbage life with you okay?¡± Evan squeezed Gus¡¯s hand and Gus squeezed his right back, a word-free affirmation of his commitment.


    ¡°Alright, lets go to the god damn beach.¡± Gus said. Evan cackled at him, his broad smile growing broader. He kicked back against his seat and propped his legs up on the dash, then belted out the first line of the Wizard of Oz.