A Story – JEFF WOODS THE KILLER

Story and music by original author unknown.

<a href="https://nifdhaa.bandcamp.com/album/gp">gp by nif</a>

“Nobody broke your heart; you broke your own because you can’t finish what you start.” I remember. I remember the way the wine-dark waves lapped at the balcony, trying to swallow it, and the way I would often stare down into them and see rubble deep down in them, statues tossed over and into that realm down there, all suffocating, dreadful, hopeless, still, pictures without motion. I remember the way that it all smelled—an air of sulphur? the general malaise? a gunfight—brutal fucking murder it was, at least in my mind, but Hell, when’s my mind ever been clear—and yet there was no body here, and there was no blood to speak of, no gunman nor his weapon of choice, no pigs, no ringing sounds snarling their ways into my ear canals. But it always smelled like that. Perhaps every night after my leaving there would be a shooting. I never minded the idea of getting mowed down, relinquished to the vicissitude of a necessary cleaning operation. Just mop it up and be done with it. Some days I’d come by and there’d be specks of crimson staining Stygian hanging about, neglected, just like everyone in that little shack.

The shack itself was chaotic—and that was putting it eloquently—as the people in it, the things that took place, the shack itself… all inevitably pure chaos. Nothing ever really made sense; everyone within the shack came and went as they pleased, and barely any returned after their first visit. But there was a set of constants among us. Well… if we’re being quite honest, I think I’m getting ahead of myself here.

A day in the life: I remember that I’d stalk in, my feet planted wide and my head tilted back, and into the central room I would stumble from that short, bending hallway, everyone screaming and clambering for worth. But I remember I was always louder and I could always move with much more force, and their heads would always pan toward me, a look of minute terror etched into some of their faces. Some wore their respect on their shoulder. But I’d sit down at the table and then we would play poker, and the saltwater under the floorboards would slosh around, the constant reminder. A poem would often come to mind, but more specifically those words that ache true:

“‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look upon my works ye Mighty, and despair!’

No thing beside remains, Round the decay

Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

And every time I thought these words, a solemn look came over me.

And nobody ever noticed.

Nobody ever knew who had built the shack. Even in the public records (which I scoured years later), there seemed to be no mention of its inhabitants, the architect, the year it was built. Even the way the shack was shaped both internally and externally was impossible to pin down, other than how it was clearly of the late modernist variety. A structural expressionist wonder compacted into a tight 20 * 20 * 6 square feet, left to simply rot after its construction. Its interior design made as little sense as the hangers-on. A futuristic Art Nouveau. It brought to mind images of Alex DeLarge singing in the rain. It made me laugh hysterically. That made others laugh. Lord, I remember. I remember, I remember, I remember, I remember. The way I’d reach inside my mouth and scrape my teeth to get out the gunk, as if it could replace brushing and flossing them. And the way that the more I’d do it, the more I’d see other people do it. One of them had gingivitis. Terrible breath.

I remember when I first passed the place. I was strolling by; I had just been in the slums in town and the next thing I knew, I was standing next to those rows and columns. They were all different to some degree, had some differing qualities to them, some being more distinct from others. I remember the way it all seemed to swim with inaccuracy, imprecision that itself made no sense; it was like floating in sensory deprivation, above the bed in which I might otherwise sleep.

The waters were elegant, serene, even contemptuous in size, some mountain impossible to scale in my mind’s eye. I saw some people enter the building, but I was reluctant to join the quickly gathering crowd. Every day I would pass and there would be someone new I’d see going in or out. Clearly, in our scene, it was the talk of the town. It got so bad I struggled to even go through the harbour on many days, pushing through that marketplace. Every day the horizon seemed to get lower and lower, I realised eventually, and I thought of possibilities as for the explanation as to why. I imagined that the sky was simply becoming cloudier, thicker, lower, falling, more oppressive, and there was a solemnity implied in that. Others, I could hear among them, also discussed it. Why were we being stifled?

It was all suffocating until one day it was not, and the lands were comparatively barren. Later, I learned the source of the emptiness was that, inside of there at some God forsaken hour of the day where the place was empty save for these three, a pair of people brought their friend in and shot them in the chest with a .950 JDJ, killing them instantly. They were caught on CCTV outside in balaclavas.

They were never seen exiting the building; only the remains of the deceased found.

When I first heard, I remember that I instantly envisioned nuclear annihilation. All of them being wiped away from the face of the Earth, all traces of them erased in some time elapsed invisibly. Jesus Christ.

“Fucking depraved bastards,” the man sitting beside me at the table spoke to me as I read Foucault’s Madness & Civilization. “They— God, can you believe that? They didn’t even have the courage to just show their faces! Who are they? Who were they?”

And for a couple of weeks, that was all that anyone ever talked about. Wild theories as to why it had happened, conspiracies of a greater power at play. It was true, there was a bit of an undercurrent of those here who believed something greater to be at work that brought us all here. Frankly, I remember that when I first arrived, I fell in with them a little. It was a few months before the incident that shook us all, and despite me being a stickler, I had never heard about the matter until some time after it had occurred, although everyone around me was talking about it. It was all incoherent, jumbled screaming: what did you expect me to do? listen to it?

But no matter. I didn’t humour them until I saw it on the news. After that, that group of… conspiracy theorists? They were so highly disregarded afterwards that they became kind of a punchline among some of us. Well, that’s to say I had friends there, but I didn’t. Not yet. And what would be the use of them?

After that it had gone mostly quiet, and the place became barren. I scarcely saw anyone there anymore. I always thought I could hear distant murmurs abound in this place, some quiet echoes of spectres, hauntological, heavy. Ha! Stratified to make each of them some sort of special, unforeseeable force. I’d call back to every one I heard as if trying to overpower them with words could even vaguely protect me. But toward the distant noises or calls I would walk anyways.

Deeper inside, the place seemed to be more run-down, less maintained. It looked like my grandparents’ house: objects strewn all about, dust collecting anywhere and everywhere it could thrive, thick on the air. I felt like if I stood around there for too long I’d end up choking to death. As the whole place dried up, I remained, some fragment of the jar that had long been shattered and cleaned up left behind. And it was quiet. And it was beautiful. It was somewhat reminiscent of the NoEnd House, although for what purpose that it did is unbeknownst to me. I plundered every depth, every crevice of the place, eventually, and yet still with every new day there would be more things to be found, some metamorphosis of the present times, moving away from the stills of each frame in our films we’d play back to ourselves. I imagined reels of film lighting themselves up, nitrocellulose erasing invisible and intertwined histories.

Eventually, I felt as if it were a home away from home. I remember that I brought more and more valuables there just to sit with them, and I was too tired to take them home. I slept on the cold floor. But every night it would get colder.

This was not the first time I had been here. There were other places on the harbour, some bigger. Some smaller. When I first walked in the sky was higher up, more of the horizon to be seen. But now it seemed like the building had shrunken, or, now that I realised it, that the world had. There were some more of these places around, very little distance between them, and they were huge. Mansions. Victorian, gothic. A population the size of a party and then some, 24/7. When I was younger I felt much more kinetically drawn to these places, as if they were made for me, as ridiculous as it sounds. But then again, all of this is ridiculous. I went outside and looked around and, indeed, they were still bustling, acting like nothing had happened here. At least, nothing that really concerned them that much. Which may have been true, but it still hurt to see it all panning out like this. I wondered to myself: what can I do? what can I do to make them know how real this is?

But there would be no answer, no respite.

I stepped back inside of the building and looked around and found a new door in the wall to the west. I imagined behind it a huge, sprawling world, something new again, not just the emptiness of these months I’d spent for so long just wasting away. Becoming as much of a ghost as everyone else had. But the more I thought about it the more aversive I became. For what lay behind the door? and what powers that be could bestow this place with the ability to grow new functions, new objects?

Were they right in that idea that we were here for a reason, not by our own admission, guided by that which is unseen? the unseen in us? and who were we to know the answer?

There would be none.

I remember how immaculately uncomfortable I felt as I opened the door to a vast blackness, but deep down I feel like I can more distantly recall some sentiment of comfort, solace in it. It’s absurd, surreal in hindsight. It sounds like a dream. But I stepped in, my hands outstretched to my sides to ensure the boundaries of this new space. I’d stumbled into a universe of hidden interiors, and how truly brilliant that was! or at least so my very loose conceptions of the future held true to me, themselves these ghosts that hanged over from some excellent time that was relatively far out of our entire shared realm of conceptions.

It was quiet here; it was dull, even. But it was right, and it was cold. And I stayed here for a time. I remember hearing things from not so far off. It made me feel at home. But eventually, every time, I’d have to come back from that place, and go to sleep. Because where else was there to go?

Every day I would venture deeper and deeper yet, the floor more caked with filth down this way, and there was another door present there. Nonetheless, I was hesitant to enter as I could feel the weight of the threat looming there, and I turned away from that feeling even back then. I wonder if I knew at this time just how things were going to pan out deep down, or if I really did have no idea of what I was stumbling into. I had never known it, but deep inside of every single one of these places were hidden these entrances. Every single one, I found as I stumbled deeper and deeper into it. And that’s not to say it was necessarily bad. Overall, I’d say that, in coming away from it all, it was not good or bad. Fuck, it’s hard to pin down, and it always has been. But everything here always seems to swim until you look close enough, and it brings you to the truth of some matter, or as close to the truth as you could hope to get… well, again, getting ahead of myself.

I don’t know how long it took to open that second door. It was rusted, felt even to be superglued shut. I had to grasp a crowbar and stick it in what very little opening there was and pry the thing open. It took what felt like an hour, I would like to say, although in hindsight that seems rather unrealistic. But eventually before me there stood a new compartment of the building. It was only then that I realised how this place was physically impossible, and that this entire harbour was not right in some esoteric way. I remember that I fell back on the floor screaming against a gate fallen onto the floor, and afterwards I clambered back and off of it, my arms raised to my face in defence. I remember thinking I saw wisps of light forging themselves into humanoid forms, only for them to disappear as I put my arms down to my sides and they hung there like weights. I almost slumped over onto the floor, and it was only at this point that I knew I had only just scratched the surface. My ideas were to go and find more of these, catalogue them, document how they all worked, their dimensions, some sort of science to explain it. But it is beyond explaining, I realise now, and I should have then. To put this magick into words would be to undermine its capacity to thrill us. When I stepped in there was someone standing there, and although it did not dawn on me immediately, I was becoming aware of the overwhelming beautiful truth: for in community, alone in the universe, you are never truly alone. They looked up at me and had a cold smile I fell into. The white light continued to pour in through the open windows, relinquished of their blinds to be drawn or their curtains. It was everywhere, overabundant, exhausting, freeing, loveless, so as to speak “close my eyes and feel me now”. My mouth was agape, I found, and I had to shut my jaw and clench it against the top teeth with my hand, and even then it was a struggle to keep it in the right place.

I looked around to see what little I could in all of this blinding light. There were many doors here, a small scooter propped up against the wall, a motorbike. My eyes were wide, my pupils shrunken, I’m certain. I must’ve looked mad.

I asked the man who stood there the most simple question, because I really, really did struggle to think of anything else to ask: “What is this place?”

He took a moment to reply. “It’s a place for you,” he said, chuckling a little. This was warm, engaging. This exterior of steel, as I suspected, was not firm and resolute throughout his body. Wondrous and wandrous I approached, in the light of the perplexed answer to the nothing of the eternity spent before, and I embraced him, and he embraced me like a father would. And it felt right against my skin, that pressure.

When I came to, I was in the original room, my possessions still present, the dimensions of the house unfaltering. I stepped out and into the wider world and there were all of the same buildings. “I’m dreaming,” I whispered to myself, but the ethereality was with both of us.

And when I woke from that dream, I remember I was back in the original room, the door back and present, open, inviting. I pinched myself and blood came, and I was engorged with the pain, smothered in it like a cigarette between a lady’s lips. My tongue pressed up against the wound in my arm, licking the pain, drinking it, holding it tightly within me. There was no end in sight the next time I came down the way: there was simply another door present, but in this iteration it elucidated nothing more than normality. The term “natural aversion” entered my mind, although I could not say for what purpose and what it meant exactly, how it applied. But everything had been disjointed, every single thing. Even the presence of the shack itself among all the rest confounding at first when I first saw it years ago.

And I remember I was always pensive, restrained. I didn’t go through the doors in that hidden room when I came to this realisation of how it had become normalised. I looked at old photographs of it from the sea, fell down a paper trail, sets of interviews come to pass with older men, no exact mention of any name attached to the architect of the place, no fate, no beginning, no end.

It was not long before I discovered that the place had grown. Metal pipes and sharp aluminium compounding on top of itself infinitely, interlocking and twisting and tangling like strands of hair into a place of filth and rot. The first image of it, in its rawest form, was from roughly three decades prior, I found. Some Polaroid I unearthed lying around in a drawer with no specific date attached, but the context clues of everything surrounding it alerted me. I tried to remember what it looked like when I first saw it. Had it changed? In this image, the roof was flat. But now it looked like the top of a circus tent. And I remember, and I remembered that when I first walked this path, the roof was a truncated square pyramid. What was the first year that I saw it?

I looked out the window, and it was dusk. Uncontrollably, even, I pressed my hand up against the window and I could feel my shape and my size. “If you could do it all again… a little fairy dust. A thousand tiny birds singing. If you must, you must.”

I looked down at my hands. There was blood caked under the nails. I brought my nails to my eyes and stared down the path between the skin, the convergence of the matrix and the keratin. I saw into it. The visions were disorienting, I recall. But in this moment I looked to them for guidance, despite already knowing the path ahead.

A bust of Heraclitus.

Dreamlike grasps of wars bathed in red smoke and white phosphorus, centuries old, stills, no distinct faces, gunpowder without muskets. Malice without means.

The Abrahamic divine.

Unread books on local hauntings.

The makings of distant sittings and dancings.

A maze in blue and black.

Falling from a rooftop.

False awakenings.

Father.

Reclusion.

Chernobyl.

A smug, sovereign grin that bred terror within me in a time before.

Things of metal clashing, enmeshing.

Their war cry.

YTMND.

Something Awful.

Yet more distant grips of something lurking.

Osmosis.

Filthy animations.

Unreal Tournament, pissed off.

Microsoft fantasies.

Violence for violence’s sake.

Violence for laughter’s sake.

Skateboarding, despite physical incapabilities.

Hours spent translating every night.

Diving into heaps of garbage.

Green, lush fields with length.

The beautiful, non-Euclidean castle, lonely and inviting, surreal and homely.

Cats moving about awkwardly, led by strings.

Solipsism.

Text-to-speech voices.

Vicious cycles.

Notebooks upon notebooks upon notebooks, and where do they all slink away to.

Fleeing the sinking ship that night.

The man with the stutter, cryptic and alien.

The layout of my primary school.

The land through the wardrobe and the doors that opened.

Children saving the world from an unknowable evil.

Late nights desensitising myself to the evil.

Memetics.

Remix culture.

Aristocracy.

Fascism.

Reverse engineering.

Theoretical physics in passing.

Drowning in the pool.

Cheap thrills.

The rise and fall of a drug empire.

In a club in the wee hours, standing alone on a hollow dance floor. Christoph de Babalon.

Scepticism of that divine’s popular conception.

Ungodly, brutal psychological warfare. Brainwashing.

Where does honour metamorphosise into glorification.

Kids whining at their stupid fucking video games.

Beams of light swirling and spiralling through and down into the sky, witches scattered through it.

Vague faces against dark backdrops, compressed in blocky colours.

Roentgens and sieverts.

Conservatism.

Alchemy.

“Mephistopheles is just beneath, and he’s reaching up to grab me.”

The esoteric dark spins.

Illness every three months.

Pseudointellectualism.

Elitism.

You’re gonna carry that weight.

Desiring to be the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.

Coming of age.

Reckoning with the anima.

Friedrich Nietzsche.

Phenomenology.

Bitterness.

Relishing in the gore.

All-encompassing beauty.

Flabbergagger.

Then I stand there.
The convergence of the matrix and the keratin is once more real. I turn and I know the true path through. I enter the hallway. I make nine paces forward and then left. There is a laugh that reverberates through the hall distantly: it permits no understanding of itself, only what it can hand off. I have no conception of the past or the future. There is only the now.

…Shit, I get caught up.

In that cold crevasse I stood staring at the doors ahead. The doorknobs were ancient, rustic, shaped like ovals, the frames for keys caked with something ungodly. Peeking through the hole of one, I could see it led outside, back to the harbour. I chose the other door instead.

When I entered, it was comfortable. The room was encased in leather, large fans quietly working their way behind many people sitting at the table. None of them looked my way. I turned my head to face over my shoulder. The man stood there, smiling, like an encouraging father does to his offspring. As I stepped in and turned to shut the door he reached up to his chin, and I paused to watch him start peeling the skin from his face at his chin. It was very quick. I stopped looking when he had uncovered his more neutral mouth. Everyone prayed, and I joined the table in prayer. I was family. Unquestioned.

It’s absurd, even difficult to put into words the amount of power that these little moments have. You never know how these moments can reign over your life until, bam, you’re in the middle of having lost it, and you know how important it all was. And you remember all that you had. And you clasp your fingers into your palms, searching for something that isn’t there. And the waters continue to flow. And you keep breathing. But it’s not the same. It’s never the same and you can’t keep pretending. And there is nothing to gain from this pursuance. And yet you keep trying to go down this path anyways.

I was sitting there and it was quiet suddenly, but not because of me, nor in spite of me: it was simply an occurrence, something that had no coherent explanation. I was incoherent. Everyone was. We all laughed at dizzying, analogue images spitting themselves onto the walls and trying to maintain some sort of godlike status. We saw Patrick Bateman toss a chainsaw down flights of stairs. We saw a man in brown professing something, thin, tied up in a chair and laughed and gawked at by some unseen man, his accent alien and oblique.

To put it bluntly, we had been taking from other places. We took these things and indulged in them. And it was alright—there was never a problem with that cultural diffusion—but as I looked around, I saw it on some shirts. Some had emigrated here. They were like me. I was like them. And finally I had some sort of place in the world, I thought. All those years spent drifting through and away I’d found a very general place but with a slight focus. I could live. I could breathe. I know this. I knew it then.

“Shit,” was the word that came out of my mouth, and I didn’t even think about it. I looked over at one guy. He looked really effeminate. Not that that’s a bad thing, I’m just saying it.

“What?” came the sort of voice you would expect.

“Nothing. It’s just… I… hm.” I closed my eyes and the whole table waited expectantly, patiently. They were willing to extend their graces.

“What?” he eventually repeated.

“Out there, it was just people who had only ever been here. They never talked about this.”

“Yeah.”

“What is this place?”

“Well, uh… it’s our special place. It’s our home.” He smiled, and let out a relenting, awkward laugh. I wanted to fall into it, like a daydream or a fever. “See, not all of us celebrate it, but at least it’s accepted. Right, guys?”

“Right,” came a lot of them.

“Mm,” came from his mouth after that. “Right. Like the Friends. The Quakers.”

I smiled back at him and then we laughed, because that sounded absolutely ridiculous and, to be honest, I had no idea what he was talking about. “Right.”

Then we played poker.

While we were going about it, my eyes were caught on this couple that was at the far end of the room. I don’t remember what the guy looked like. Probably pale. Vampiric. But ultimately upstanding. The lady he was with really drew my eyes, though. She looked over at me briefly every now and then. Her look was refined, sophisticated, if still ultimately part of the same style as what a lot of other people here were pursuing. Scene. Emo. Whatever you want to call it. But I could tell there was something more to it than that. I knew that everyone in here had a story, but whenever I looked over at her it seemed like everything else fell away, I remember. Not because I was in love. But I knew I had to get to know her. Get to talk to her. Have a friend. Dammit, I was lonely and it wasn’t going to be an issue.

There were a lot of us playing, but I ended up winning.

The next day, I went back after clocking out, and I ended up sitting a little closer to her this time. She had earphones in. I was too afraid to speak to her, but I did catch more of what she was talking about. She sat beside her other friend. Some lady named Sabrina. I felt like I was in Vertigo, eavesdropping on something that I wasn’t supposed to. But I did try and do a fair share of everyone in here. A bunch of people coming and going. Names I don’t remember, because none of them really struck me the same way, other than that other guy I was talking about and his two friends. But this isn’t about them, even if they were nice. When we sat closer to one another we talked a little more frequently and shared in the deep of what we had in common. Clearly we all did in being here, but there was something else. Something new and unforeseen. Perhaps those are the right words.

I won this game too.

The next day I sat a little closer to her even more, but not quite close enough for me to even say anything important like you might think.

I won again.

And the next day I won too.

And the day after that. But that day was special. We all got up to leave, like we always did, and I went after the lady. I hadn’t caught her name, even in spite of all of the time that she had shared with the others that I had seen coming in and out around her, although to be fair it was a somewhat small circle. I paced around a little bit in the room because of the build-up of so much kinetic energy in me, and yet still nobody seemed to bother. When the lady was going to walk out the door I came up behind her. “Hey,” I called out.

She didn’t respond and I realised she had those earphones in. I pursed my lips and looked down and then I ran up and tapped her on the shoulder. “Huh?” she went, and her head turned to face me. God, she was stunning. We looked at one another for some time, a confusion awash with both of us.

“Hey,” I repeated.

“Uhm. Hey,” she said back.

“I saw on your shirt that you’re, uh… yeah. You remember the day I came in, right?”

“Yeah. It’s cool to meet you and all,” she said, smiling warmly. “I love all that stuff. You know, I honestly… I wonder if it’s real. Those things.”

“Me too,” I said. “I mean, I-I, uh, I don’t know if they are for sure, but…”

“Oh, yeah, well, that’s just the nature of it. Nobody can really figure it out for sure.”

“Mhm.”

“Well, I’m gonna have to get going… need to take care of my grand—”

“Hey, wait. What’s your name?”

“Na— oh. It’s embarrassing,” she conceded, her eyes averting from mine.

I looked at her inquisitively. “Well, it’s not Nevaeh is it?”

She smirked, trying not to burst into laughter.

“Or, uh… Spingler?” I was just shooting the shit. Being ridiculous.

She couldn’t help it. “No! What?”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“Lana. It’s nice to meet you.”

I smiled back at her. “Yeah.”

“Nice to meet you,” she repeated.

“Yeah, you too. Mind if I walk with you?”

“No, not at all,” she replied.

And so we walked along the path, to her house.

“So what makes you take special interest in me, exactly?” she asked.

“Well, I guess I’m just lonely. Looking for someone to bond with.”

“Really,” said staunchly. “To be honest, you strike me as… hm. You strike me as being more interesting than you let on for people.”

I looked over at her. “That’s an oddly specific way of wording things.”

“You seemed like you needed a pick-me-up. I know I need a lot. I get down a lot.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, nervous.

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“Sorry I’m sorry.”

She chuckled. “Nothing to be sorry about.”

“Sorry I was sorry I was sorry.”

A laugh. I laughed too. “You know, you’re a funny guy.”

“I know I am.” I bent my knees, went into a squat, and did a weird dance that only lasted a second and she burst into laughter again. “Glad I could entertain you if anything,” I said in between laughs myself.

“Yeah, you’re silly. But, uh, not much going on in my life that’s very… laughable…”

“Sorry about that,” I repeated. It’s not that I wanted to steer the topic of conversation away from being dark. I just wanted to keep the laughs coming. Keep her feeling better than she was.

“I’m glad you’re at least here to keep me occupied,” she said, validating it.

“Again. Glad I can be of assistance.” In the dark it was harder to make out her features. The street lamps were glowing green and it cast her in odd lights, but I didn’t mind it whatsoever. I felt like I was at home here, even if I didn’t really realise it. And the sky seemed higher up. And the air was cleaner. It was raining lightly. We kicked puddles at one another. But what was there to realise? I was alive; I was in the moment; and nothing could deprecate that high exactly. I had to ask now. “So why were you there at all? Like, what, uh, what brought you there?”

“Well, I guess I was just… predisposed. I’ve had a lot of scary things happen in my life. So obviously I’m going to have some inclinations toward the—”

“Yeah. Sorry for interrupting, I just—”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t want to lose my train of thought. But I understand everything you’re saying, go on.”

“Mhm. So I’m… not really in a great place. Uh, mom’s really harsh on me… you know how it goes.”

I thought back to all of the other people I had met there having said the same thing. To a certain degree I doubted all the rest of them, but there was something more believable here. She didn’t use it as an excuse to get away with certain things that were wrong. She wasn’t entitled. “Yeah,” I said back, my eyes full of wonder.

Hers were too.

“Yeah. I’m, uh… I guess I’ve been in a similar position too.” I sniffled. It was a little cold. I rubbed my chin, feeling the whiskers. “I was never really very connected to my family. Always been very independent.”

“Huh. Well I’m sorry about that.”

“No, it’s alright, it’s fine. We just never had anything in common. It wasn’t that there was anything, uh… bad. No. It wasn’t like that. I’m sorry for you, of course. But it’s more a problem of me than a problem of them.”

She looked at me understandingly. “Yeah, I get it. Then again a lot of people in there have… issues.”

“They do?” I asked. I was sure that everyone I was surrounded with had some sort of problem. Not that I judged any of them, but… well, actually, looking back, I know it’s hindsight bias, but can you really blame me as I was in this moment?

“Yeah.”

“I guess I kinda got that impression. To be honest before I got to where we met, I was starting to feel like people just use it as an excuse to… say whatever they want and be whoever they want to be. But I know that’s not the case now. Because of people like you.”

“Aww. Thanks.” She was warm. “You know, uh, I like your hair.”

“Thanks?”

She reached out and put her hand in my hair and pulled her hand away from it. It was a little knotted, but not too bad. I didn’t complain about the pain. Too little.

I looked at her for a second before I burst into laughter again, as did she.

“Why did you do that?” I asked in tears. “That was… weird!”

“Because I wanted to,” she said, a smug smirk on her knowing face. Then we continued to laugh.

Eventually we took a detour. At this point it was about 23:00. Fortunately I didn’t have work the next day, and as far as I could tell she was unemployed but effectively ready for independence. We sat on a teeter-tot and went back and forth on it and I told a story about how in fourth grade I won a statewide writing competition by accidental plagiarism, but then while we discussed it she told me that it wasn’t plagiarism because I was forced to submit it and I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, and it really made me think, and I remember that as we were walking back to her old, decrepit house and I watched her walk through the doorway that she was right.

When I came in the next day, I sat down directly next to her and we both smiled. The other guy she was with when I first saw her never came back and I never asked about him. I won the game again. That night we walked again. When we got to the playground it was almost equally as desolate as it was the night before, but when we were leaving I saw this old, tall guy standing there on the street corner, smoking. He didn’t look at us.

“How long has that guy been standing there?” I asked her as we walked away, back to her house. I kept looking over my shoulder. But I looked back at her.

“Mmn-mm,” she vocalised with her mouth closed, shrugging.

I looked over at her and paused and looked down, and we slowly came to a halt in the middle of the street.

“What?”

I felt oddly unnerved, like I had seen something I was not meant to see. “Nothing. It’s nothing,” I said.

“Oooookaaaaay…”

“What? It’s— it was weird.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” she replied. I think it was only then when I realised how close we were to one another and there was an awkward silence for a few minutes, but we quickly filled the air with more chatter as we got closer to her house, our feet slowing down to another halt so we could keep talking. But eventually she had to go in. I walked her up to the door and asked her if I could stay the night. It was a bit late. I didn’t feel like walking home.

“Sorry,” she exclaimed. “My mom.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, sorry, I, uh—”

“No, it’s alright. You already said, about her, uh—”

“Yeah.”

I tilted my head back and breathed in the air. “I’m glad I met you.”

I won the game every single day, and every day that I was available we would go for a walk. Even during the games sometimes I’d keep walking with her, more interested in her life than in whatever was happening with them. I cared, which was an odd feeling. I belonged. This, it was, it—it—it was right. It was right. But eventually I preoccupied her so much that she completely stopped showing up to our little club and, unfortunately, I had never taken note of what her address was.

So one day when I walked in and the place remained vacant for the entire day, I spent the day in silence.

The next day it was the same. Someone I didn’t recognise came by and I tried to strike up casual conversation to no avail. Not that it was very important anyways. I spent the week like this. I remember walking out that night and my brow was furrowed. The sky pressing down again. Oh, Lana. I couldn’t bear it. I kept coming back every day, my hopes high only to be repeatedly let down. I was alone. I could only see her face. Feel her sit next to me. Clenching my jaw. Full of absurd high hopes.

I saw Sabrina there, too. I saw them talk. I played the scene back in my head. I was a spectre then. But in her light I was real, physical. I could feel myself slipping again as I sat here, unknown and without the courtesy bestowed upon me. I was unseen. I clung to the memory, even if it was not even a month ago. I can see it. I can be there, standing over them, sitting beside them, smiling and laughing along with them.

“Lana, who are these people?” she asked. I’m looking at them, insatiable curiosity coursing through me, every single vein and capillary.

“Shit. Sorry, Sabrina, I, uh… this isn’t mine.” In the background played The Blair Witch Project.

“It’s okay. Not sure why it’d be an issue,” she said. I was perplexed. I was in Inland Empire. The dance of eternity still looming there. Always quiet and blooming, stepping forward with the vivace of thousands.

There they were graceful. Holding their weapons, as if to incite some combat, they interpolated the language of Sappho into the present. And I was mesmerised. What of any of this was real? if any of it at all? was I just seeing things? Brian stepped into the room and they stopped and she looked over and said she was sick and tired of waiting for him all the time but they got over it instantly and I was standing there and I wanted to say something but I didn’t know what to say because I never have the right words, and I wanted to stop time and just be held in her arms, and I wanted to be back there and alone, and I wondered if it was real, if I could take her out of time and place her in the hall of fame, where she needed to be, where I would stand and watch her continue to dance on her pedestal above the rest of us commoners. They kept dancing anyways. The other one, Alex also I’d learn his name was, standing there with a quiet look of knowing on his face. I wanted to walk through the streets with them all. I wanted to be told their names even if I didn’t know them. I wanted to be there. I wanted it all. Every piece of pie even with all of the regrettable shit that it would carry. Eventually I knew this would come to pass. But all I could see was her face. The way her mouth looked when she would pucker her lips and try to make us laugh. The glasses. The way her eyes were more often than not bathed in shadow. Her upturned, short nose. Her brown hair as it would blow in and out of her face in the grand wind. I wanted to say something. I wanted to do anything. I feel it. The burning. The embers of that old time. It’s within all of us. Unspoken. The screeching strings pulling us through time and back into some unknown comfort. I want to fall back and away. I want it to beckon me. Spiral. Spiral. Spiral. Dear fucking God. She was so beautiful. When I came to from my daydream I had tears running down my face. She was my best friend. I needed to find her. But where could she be found?

I retraced my steps. I fell down the paths and I could feel the repression of the skies beginning to clear up somewhat as I walked back. Le sacre du printemps playing for me as if I was about to view something not meant for human eyes, and, indeed, I felt as if I were privy to something nocturnal and unwarranted. I had to blow myself out of the water every day, construct a better identity for this. I stumbled onto that old house and it looked as young as it had ever looked as I stepped up to the door and knocked. The door swung open almost instantly, as if she had been waiting for me. She smiled.

“Hey. It’s been a while,” she said, and through her teeth and tongue and throat, through the keratin and the comfort of velvet red, I could sense some yearning.

“Yeah. I, uh… I’m sorry. I didn’t know where you were.”

“That’s okay!” she put her hands behind her back, her eyes closed and her mouth following suit, remaining chipper as ever. “You didn’t take very good notes, did you?”

“No.”

“That’s okay!”

I chuckled. “Yeah, well now I know better. That place where we met, the whole place, it’s… empty. I was hoping you would show up. But I guess I should have known better.”

“Yeah, I, uhh… hmm. I don’t know. I feel like I’ve outgrown all of it. Maybe?” She shrugged. “No. That’s not the right— yeah, no. It’s more like I didn’t fit in there.”

“What are you talking about? We all really liked you being there. I know I did, at least.”

“Aw. Well, thanks! No use looking back on it now though, if it is empty.”

“Ehhh… who knows. It might come back around.”

“Right. You never know.”

“So what’s been going on with you?” I asked, leaning on the doorframe. We were both short but she was a little shorter.

“Well, my mom’s… bedridden. Have had to take care of her.”

I leaned my head back in understanding. “Why’s that?”

“She’s sick, she says. I’ve been trying to… take care.”

I smiled at her. “You know, for all you say she puts you through, you really do still care.”

She looked a little awkward after I said this.

“What?”

“Nothing, really. Would you like to come in? You’re looking really pale.”

“Wh— really? I can come in?”

“She’s not going to get up to stop you, at least.”

“What do you mean, I’m pale?”

“You just are.”

“I’m anaemic.”

“Oh… sorry.”

My lips parted and I looked down, considering if this was the right course of action, but eventually I just went fuck it and relented. We walked in and I went to her room and we sat there and kept talking. Pissing the time away, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. We played Majora’s Mask at her own insistence. Listened to Sung Tongs, Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady at mine and we both relished in the grand moment. Cards Against Humanity, or in this context it was Pretend You’re Xyzzy. Reading badly written creepypasta together. Talking about theology. I slept on the couch in the living room. When I woke up, I was late for work. Clocked in. Clocked out. I was a machinist. Hated it. But I’d come back and we’d keep talking for hours and hours and hours and we’d work our way through alternate reality game puzzles, theorise about what we were going to do a few years from now. The first time it snowed that year the sky was pure white. As if it had gone up and vanished. We went out and blared music from a boombox. Went in and we took turns playing the piano (she was excellent as a pianist and I was just alright; I’d often wonder where she picked up her skills from). I never asked where her mom was or what was even really going on with her mom again. All I could think about was the moment we were in constantly, every single moment something granted more beauty and importance than it would get on any normal day. More information coming to us. Falling into the story of Final Fantasy VIII. Sonic the Hedgehog 2. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (which she didn’t like very much because it tested our fucking patience, but I was really into it). Watching Fight Club over and over again and talking about how the whole relationship between Marla and Jack, if that was even really his name, was really nice and very relaxing just in general, and I was a little happier each time we talked about it even though I didn’t really understand why I felt that way, or why the world was suddenly so much brighter every time I looked out the window like we were living in a world full of infinite bloom and even the inside of the house was bathed with absurd brightness, white paint thrown and dispersed through the air, a fog that has transcended any understanding, at least on my own part. I didn’t know. Where was her dad? Her grandparents? The bills to pay? No answers to be had. Nothing much to be held. I was within the hold. I lived here but we did not kiss. We did not sleep in the same bed. We were not partners. We were like siblings. Like I had met some estranged member of my family. But the more I thought about it the less it made sense. I was never very connected to them. I wasn’t even really now in hindsight. Nothing to hold.

More games, films, music, comics. Every day. And then in the middle of those moments we’d sit around in boredom and just excel at cheering one another up. But more often than not it was me cheering her up and I didn’t mind it because it made me feel like I had a place. I don’t remember any specific conversations. Just slight, subtle arguments that weren’t even that bad. Raunchy jokes out of my mouth that made her tell me to shut up. But she forgave me. Every time. And I was grateful.

When I went back there to that place in the harbour it was once again populated, although not nearly to the same extent it had been previously. I was grateful for it nonetheless. Everything was right, I thought. I looked at the guy there, or one of them. Another new face. But there was a look of obstinate determination about him. I sat down next to him.

“Hey there,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied, looking like he was going to do something soon.

I pursed my lips, unsure of what I was supposed to do or say. If ever there was a time for Le sacre du printemps now would be it. Because he was mysterious. But so was I. I saw Lana’s face in my mind again. Flashing like a blade rotating against a light.

“What brings you around here? This place has been empty for a bit.”

“Probably the same as yourself, buddy. Just looking for a place to worship.” He lifted his hand up and took a drag of a cigarette. His head was shaved and he looked fucking exhausted. Had a black leather jacket on, wrapped really tight around him. I felt like we might be able to get on, if I didn’t fuck it up.

“Yeahhh… well, personally, I’m not here for that. I just appreciate the craft.”

He looked over at me. I could tell he was sizing me up. But then he looked away and shrugged. “So?”

“…Just trying to pass the time.”

“Just trying to pass the time. Alright. Look. Let me be.”

I didn’t say anything else and we just sat there away from one another. Or at least all of this is how he saw it. I was the one sat there. Obstinate. Bitchy. When I think back on it all I can see is myself standing apart from my physical corporeal self. And that’s how it was every single time I walked in there from then on. It was right, but I have to ask if it was rationally. Because just feeling like something’s right doesn’t mean that it is, I’ve realised since then. When you’re in your twenties and you feel like you know it all, you’re often predisposed to this sort of treatment of life that’s reckless, and you don’t think about what you’re doing as much and just act like you can do whatever you want. But I realise now as I’m looking back that I was just the same. I thought I had broken out of the prison, but truly I was in the prison of my own design. Can you even win? You’re always fighting for, for some sort of freedom, but no matter what you do you’re alienated. You can’t win. You can only remember and you can fight against the tide of the past but it is unchanging. You can scream in its face until your throat’s raw, until it all goes, until you can’t speak anymore, until you’re vanishing into eternity, but it’s not going to change. The past will grow. The future recede. And you are stuck on the journey until you aren’t. But none of what I’m saying is new. I will remember, I think. I will continue to remember. I will remember more. But I’m losing myself in the memory. Can’t win.

Jane Doe by Converge blaring in my ears until my eardrums could burst. I had told Lana she could come back because things were starting to heat up again, but we shared a predisposition of disgust. Eventually we softened up to these fucks coming around. We were an aristocracy. And this was it. This was the peak of it all. We were respected amongst one another, no longer a bunch of kids just fucking around. This was it. This was real. We played poker again, every day, and I wondered if I was the one who had started the new wave, and I reasoned that it was true without any question. And there has never been any question. When we left for the day I’d look up at the sky but I couldn’t tell if there was one or not. I wasn’t alienated, at least not like I was before. I lived with Lana. She brought on her boyfriend and we would all hang out, drink some beer, talk about our pastimes with one another. The new guy was really cheeky, but neither of us minded, probably because I was the same, and we’d have play fights and continue to play our games, swapping the controller with each death. A darker fog was rolling in outside, a cloud on the ground. A tornado. But it passed us. I never heard her mother up there even if she was there. Not that it makes much difference, but whatever, you know. We were alive and we were free from all of those different fucking shackles and it was beautiful and bountiful. We were at the top. But a dark fog would always be rolling through the streets outside. And the waters were a bit more red every single day. I would think of that bust of Heraclitus. I would think about what he had to say even if I had never actually read his work myself. I could not think of anything when I thought of his face. I was building myself up but I didn’t know where I was going. I don’t think any of us knew where we were going. More and more people would come along, pile onto us, from other sections of the shack. I’d stumble into them every now and then just to see if I jived with the culture but overall none of them fit like I did in my first. The more I thought about it the more it was truly my first. And then one day when I walked in it was the first room that I saw, it was no longer hidden behind a door. And even in dreams it was true that I was actually here, physical. But the fog would get thicker. It was so thick you couldn’t see six feet in front of you. And we all got on fairly well. Lana stopped coming again after a while, I remember, but I didn’t mind because I could always go and visit her at her house.

Until it was foreclosed upon one day after months of our godhood and she had gone without any trace.

It was around that time that I stopped showing up to the shack and had returned home. It was abrupt. I didn’t know what to make of it, where she had gone, why she had gone. But I knew that it was not her choice. That is one thing I was most certain of. We had it all. Why would she have gone? Was she unsatisfied? had we not given her enough? we were all kings and queens—I could not imagine that, for any reason, she could have been without happiness. It was in pondering this that I realised how truly unhappy my life was. I have skimmed the details because, frankly, it’s embarrassing. But we chewed up and spit out everyone who came in who we didn’t like. I always won the game. Every single day. I was their emperor and I couldn’t reckon with falling from the top of the food chain, even if nothing had actually happened. I wanted to breathe. I wanted to let go of this feeling of superiority. Because it simply wasn’t true that I was somehow inherently better. We weren’t. I realised we weren’t the only ones. Every single one of us had their own family, even the ones who we disparaged so strongly. Every day I’d listen to Giles Corey. Sort of a reckoning. I didn’t actually relate to the lyrics very much because I was comfortable with not being at the top. The only thing that was wrong was that I didn’t have Lana. Didn’t even know if she was alive out there. I had to turn and face the strange.

I spent every day home.

I quit my job, couldn’t even wait out the two weeks. Started smoking. I couldn’t bring myself to go back. What was there to be recognised for, if anything?

Soundtracks for the Blind complimenting every other day. I was left alone but shafts of light would still occasionally grace the corners of my room. It was becoming real. I’d return to Giles Corey afterwards and I’d look at myself in the mirror and I’d see my head covered in patchworks of cloth. I could blink, slap myself. It would not go. I was not going to go. I had to get out. I had to go back and see them.

It was the first time I ever lost and I was completely laughed out. I bought a bust of Heraclitus. Just a reproduction, of course. I bought several after a while, my life savings disappearing out from under me. I hung them on every wall. All of them staring at me. I Love You This Much by Swans playing every hour of the day and every night and I’d lay awake at night and be visited by her spectre and I’d see her face and I’d reach out and grasp it and teeth would begin falling out of every orifice and I’d wake in a cold sweat and do it all over again. I was a veteran. I got no letters of congratulation for my work in there. They had forgotten about me. I wanted to take my car keys and jam them through my eyes. I was screaming at every hour, in tears. Hot flashes and cold bumps in the night, hands crawling onto my bed, stretching out of my walls, I was melting. Until I wasn’t. One day I read it in the paper, coming out of yet another go of 5-MeO-DMT, probing into myself for meaning and coming up from the sea empty-handed. Her body found in a landfill nearby. I vomited. I went back to her house. It was gone. I went home. There was no paper. I went to the shack. It was gone. I can’t say goodbye to yesterday my friend. I’ll keep holding on to the end. Out of the darkness, there is no other way than light leading to yesterday. It’s there that I’ll find inner peace not warmth and dreams that I let slip away, I’ll find the joyfulness I’m looking for way back in yesterday. I dived into the water run red. Why can’t each of us in the world ever see the best things in life are free? Little sounds of laughter resounding. At the moment of submerging I made time to refuse to fly. Face it forever, here I stand come what may, in the old in the new yesterday. Where was I? And where was there to go?

I stood outside of the playground and watched a couple young folks stumble out and back into the wider world from their solace. They looked over their shoulder at me. I walked away. Into the park. I hit the ground, entered the dirt. Every time I closed my eyes I could see her body. I opened them. It was there. I vomited into the paper. This is wisdom. This is the wisdom that the old fucks couldn’t have and yet I had it and yet still I was no better than all the rest of them and my head exploded with dark forebodings too, I saw in another dream. When I wrote it in my journal it elucidated something unlike before. When the blade hangs over, suspended by a thread, threatening to fall through and to the earth, god entropy smiling down, I shout and shouted when nobody seemed to hear, and her body was in pieces, smaller chunks, molecules, atoms, nuclear explosions, impossible measurements, rows of houses all bearing down on me.

There was no distraction to be found in the mass media, low culture; nor in academia, in rationale. And I knew that she was half crazy but that’s why I wanted to be there. And I was too. And we all were. And we took turns stabbing each other. And what part of that card game really benefitted us?

Lana, wherever she was out there, hung around my neck like a noose. And it was right. And my head threatened to go through the sky. I was in the clouds. I got in my car, drove, fasted to lose weight, passed through towns and cities and villages, any municipality. Blending into one another like all the clouds. I would seize every time I settled down and entered a motel covered in cum stains, every wall covered in coats of the paint, every surface. I thought about how clean it was back at home. I remembered I set my house on fire. I took every picture of her house that could be taken. I needed to reconstruct it somewhere else. I needed to see her mother. I needed to live there. I needed to meet the man who built that shack. I travelled. I dreamed. I thought of Aidan and Dustin traversing the woods. I could only see us, Sabrina lagging close behind. “Don’t lose your nerve.” Whispered to me. I looked around. Nobody to speak it. My hands were not my own. Breathe, keep breathing I can’t do this alone. The songs all intertwined with my life. I lived in them. I wanted to write so I wrote into the garbage disposal and I fell into open manholes and I was right there and I’d climb out and I was right there and I’d stand in the streets tarred and feathered and I was right there and my wisdom choked me because she is my noose and I was right there. And I was standing on a pedestal and I was dancing with her wrapped around my neck and I was going to kick the floor away and hear all of those fishermen laugh at me as I writhed. And I did it and the rope broke. I can feel death, can feel its beady eyes.

And I would keep speeding down the freeway to find her. I knew her name. I could seek her out. I could find her out there. And one of those pigs stopped me so I pulled over because I didn’t want to bother with running away. It was late at night. A house on a hill glowing with yellow light surrounded by trees and grass. Quasi-distant radio tower. I remembered reading Code Junkie by Jeff Koval and I thought of the place that Kevin went to at the end and I wondered if I was about to go there. He stepped up to me, spoke, and I wondered where all the time had gone, and if I was being rushed down the pipeline and out into the world at large. I closed my eyes and opened them and I sat at home again and she was there, squatting over me, looking terribly concerned. She was yelling for me to wake up, tears in her eyes. I felt myself being shaken. I was at my house. When did she get here?

“Lana,” I surged with that life, asphyxiating on my own saliva. My arms were covered in hesitation marks. I could feel it. When did I sleep? I was close to the frozen borderline. The fog was in my house. Trapped in my body. I woke up and she was still there and I held her close in an embrace. I could never let go. She hugged me back. There we lay crying. I’m not sure how long we spent there just wailing in each other’s arms. I couldn’t feel her with my fingers. I imagined my skin crumbling away, turned to porcelain. Touch my beloved’s thought while her world’s affluence crumbles at my feet. Strange Strings by Sun Ra, Ballistic Bloodspray, the Peter Brötzmann Octet, Kaoru Abe, Anthony Braxton’s Saxophone Improvisations Series F, covering all the windows in aluminium foil in order to ensure that the world can be locked out. Sometimes I’d see her in my house. “There is a typhoon in Japan.” Printing out House of Leaves and reading it over and over and locking myself into my bed every night, strapping myself down to keep my body from moving. At least she helped sometimes. Late at night I’d lie awake and we’d discuss when she’d be coming back permanently. I left letters laying around on desks and tables, wrote them every day for hours in the midst of panic attacks and delusory psychedelia and screaming outside and banging at the door. Some would get answers but altogether it was very rare. I was enlightened. My hair was falling out in clumps, my teeth chipping. I tore the cloth away every so often to get back to my real face. It was dreadful. They were all singing. Infinite Jest, The Metamorphosis, Catch-22, Beyond Good and Evil, David Lynches primed and at the ready to go when she would get back. I had scissors to cut myself open. Reality was fleeting. I could feel it. I had to get out. I tore the door open and off its hinges and stumbled through the shack and then I was on the harbour. I got in my car and sped off and into the distance, my tires ripping into the astroturf. I wanted to be free. I wanted to be there with her in everyday life. But first I had to find some sort of stability, anything to hold onto and say it’s for certain. And in a life like this it’s nearly impossible to find. I would monologue for ages in there. Eat there, sleep there, keep going in circles but in repetition there’s at least some sort of breakthrough that can be found if you try hard enough. And only if you do that. It’s maddening, but it brings insights. Insights into you and the world at large. I may have begun to form the philosophy here, it might have been earlier, but it was at this time that I began to actually start reading the words that were written for me to pick up. Plato, Aristotle, Philipp Mäinlander, Søren Kierkegaard, Max Stirner, keep digging deeper yet. And what was I going to find?

One day I woke up and found a collection of firearms in my trunk. I didn’t remember buying them, and I certainly didn’t remember stealing them. But I thought this would be best to hold now. I saw Hunter S. Thompson in my mind’s eye. Then I saw her again. I picked up a pump-action shotgun and took it into my passenger seat and then sat on the hood of this piece of shit Oldsmobile and just stared off into space. I looked down at myself. Pudgy. At least here I could see the sky if I wanted to see it. That’s already leagues ahead of anywhere else. Then I started on one of those rambling tangents again. I remember I looked down.

“Well, it’s that time again, isn’t it? Just the greatest thing anyone’s ever wasted their time doing,” I said. “Another one of these meaningless, trite monologues. At least nobody’s listening. I’ll probably admonish myself for this in a little while. But dear God, I miss you. And I can’t help it. Who does it hurt if I talk to myself about it just for a little while? Really. Can, can you name anyone who would actually, really mind it? Or is it just going to be— God, I am fucking crazy. That place drove me out of my own head. You get so caught up in what you’re doing and you forget about what you’re doing, what you’re servicing. And now I’ve got to come to terms with it. I’ve spent enough time drowning my sorrows in drugs and trying to repress it all. And seeing things where they’re not present. I have to… get real. I’ve got to get to the point. I— Jesus Christ. I can’t keep myself lucid!” And a pause and then a mumble of “I’m trying to find my way home and I’m sorry and I miss you” as if some pretentious quoting of that beautiful thing can ever match up to the raw power of just hearing someone yell it out loud. Flabbergagger. Stop, this isn’t a joke, this is really happening. “And, just, shit! Shit, man, I can’t take it! I don’t even know how long we’ve been doing this! A year? Two years? When the fuck did I even walk in there? And why did it have to turn out the way it did? And why is any of this actually happening? And why am I doing this still?”

And there was no answer to be had, but I kept talking anyways.

“Why?” I kept yelling in desperation, as overdramatic as it was. “Just why? I had so much. People liked me, people respected me, and I fucking squandered it! I threw it all away! Why?! Why?! Why am I… sick?!”

I was spiralling out of control. I wanted… no, needed to do it. I took the knife in the glove compartment. I stared at it for what felt like an eternity. I held it up to my stomach. I felt like I was going to vomit again, and I was tempted to lance myself. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just ended up… uh, I just ended up staring at it. And I swallowed thickly. And I heard the clacking of a million mechanical keyboards and it got to the point where I began screaming, and I dragged the knife clean across me to deal with all the noise in the world beckoning me to finish it. I could not take it. I could not. I watched the shallow wound. I watched myself bleed. I felt like I might bleed out. Not that I was afraid of a little blood, but I had never done this before. I put the knife back to my arm. I had to keep going. I had to cut myself open. I had to see what was at the core. I had to go deep within. The next thing I remember is just driving with a gaping wound. I was not afraid of it. It didn’t even hurt anymore—I realise this is the source of my nerve damage, looking back—but the more I looked at the subcutaneous fat the more I was drawn in, the more I felt like I would fall into my own body, this vessel which carries my weights, every recognition of the fact that it will all draw to a close inevitably. I could not stop driving. I drove everywhere, all across the state, through and down every street, entering every library. The streets were all barren in the last stop. It was as if they were waiting for me. I remember walking in and speaking to the librarian, an older woman with short, white hair. She was trying so desperately to cling onto her youth.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for a Lana.”

“Lana who?”

I told her Lana’s last name.

“Hmm… well, let’s come take a look, young man,” she said to me. It was abundantly clear that she was at the very least weirded out by the way I looked, but I refrained from commenting for a little while. We came back to a set of books in the far reaches of the place. She directed me to a set of books to start looking through and then pointed it out to me before I could do anything. “You know, I am curious.”

“About what?”

“Your appearance.”

I scoffed and leaned back in the chair. “So what if I look a little bohemian?”

“It’s not that,” she replied. “You’re covered in bandages.”

I furrowed my brow and looked down. Indeed, I was. I pressed my hands down on my thighs. A vague pain came over. “…Huh.” We did not speak again after that.

These collections of records, too, were empty.

She was gone.

I left the building and kept driving for a bit. I stopped in at the nearest store and took a bottle of Everclear I found and just left. No need in paying. I knew what was going to happen to me soon anyways, and there was no need in trying to ward it off. I remember that as I was driving along the way, my fingers and hands enflamed, I thought about her face. I thought about the way that her hair waved. I thought about the impresent, unphysical shared thoughts. I thought about the house. Her boyfriend. Sabrina. The shack. The waters. My dreams. It all made sense. I was not to start drinking yet, though. I knew what I was made for after this. I had to start fulfilling that purpose. I recalled writing into the garbage disposal day in and day out at one point, my documents shredded, cut-up and placed back together inevitably. Why was it like this? And why was I suffering from this unknowable affliction? Unable to even understand the manner in which I was suffering. I knew the root and what I had to do, but not the why. And I knew I would never know, because much of the time, there is no why. Things simply are. And when they are, they are inescapable. And therefore I saw in that time that I would never escape this. And I knew that the reckoning for my mistreatment of those from that place were to be my death knoll. And I knew how to atone for my sins. And I knew that I was to blame. I stopped in at a floral shop. I took some flowers back to my hometown. Cast them out at the shack, which had been vacant for months (I went back every now and then just to feel like I wasn’t dead) and at where her house had been. Repossessed. Some other family living there. I turned around and stood there. I had no idea what year it was. I looked around and about endlessly. Everything spinning. I could not see the sky. Couldn’t see anything. I walked. I could do nothing but walk. Two zero four eight six three. When I woke up I was back there at the playground. The old man looked at me and I stood there and my eyes were heavy and I felt like I could fall over. Then I did. I used the wall as a support.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him.

He took a draft of his cigarette and blew it back in my face. “What for?”

“I don’t know, Theophanes.”

“I have no God damn clue who that is.”

“You’re my huckleberry.” I coughed and sputtered.

“Ah.” He tilted his head back. “And to what end?”

“She’s gone. You saw me before. When we were here.”

“I did.”

“Yes.”

“She is gone?”

“Yes. And… shit… and I… I need to paint it. I need to paint it out of me. To get it out of me.”

“Okay.”

“Is it going to be okay?”

“That’s entirely up to you,” he said, exasperated. “You’re the only one who controls your life.”

“I don’t feel like I’m in control.”

“Nobody does.”

“I tried.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Clearly you came to me for a reason,” his voice came, steady.

I looked up at him and sneezed.

He chuckled a little bit and then went back to smoking.

The next thing I knew I was in my car again, driving around, typing on a laptop. Ideas. History. Culture. My story. How everything around me built itself and crumbled and how it would never rebuild. But the truth was that I didn’t know anything for certain. No determinism. Even if I say something about myself, does the pure virtue of saying it make it true necessarily?

I think so. When you say you’re going to do something, you will go through with it. If you promise you’ll drink the Kool-Aid and you know what you’re getting into, you do it, even if you realise you don’t want to. Nothing has actually changed.

I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote myself into a corner just to break the corner, keep working past it, out of the bounds of the game. There was no part of the excursion that was alien to me. I knew everything to know. And I kept driving. I kept trying to find a new place to stay. I kept trying to find her. I had to do it. If she vanished truly, I would be dead right now. For she rewrote me. For she made me.

I was speeding, once, and a pig came up and pulled me over. I did not know what to do. I did not know what would happen to me. I didn’t know him. I didn’t trust him. Nothing to be trusted under that veneer of human skin. You sound like a fucking idiot, I said to myself under my breath. He came up and knocked on my window. But I just stared ahead at the road and pretended like I didn’t hear it. He knocked on the window again, a bit louder this time. For some reason he couldn’t see it. But I looked back up at him.

“Roll the window down,” he said then.

Though I tried in despair to remain pious in silence, there could be no break in the chains of violence. I took the gun at that little impasse and shot him in the chest and his blood squirted from his arteries into my face and then my foot hit the gas pedal like a cinder block and I was flying and I was free.