EPISODE TWO: THE HIJACK

Mad World

BEFORE I head back to my motel, I decide to wander through the Galatia, which is packed with both hardcore and first-time gamers alike. The place smells and looks like any other arcade: the savory yet sweet waft of processed food hovering in the air like an unseen mist; the brilliant glow of spastic machines, each casting a pale and flickering light over the goggled faces of both old and young beachgoers. A collection of tradition redemption games line one side of the wall: skee ball, claw ma-chines, Whac-A-Mole. Nostalgia overload. Lounging areas line the other side. Most of the action, however, remains at the hub where the video games are located. The Galatia has a decent spread. Jimmy and I used to frequent arcades like this one around the time we were discovering our first pubes. I think I really enjoyed hanging out at the arcade, and I think Jimmy enjoyed it too. We didn’t have to belong. We did our own thing, played our game, and escaped to whatever world awaited inside the game that we were playing. It was a special place to get lost in other worlds except our own.

I use the rest of Chemo’s money and spend the better end of the afternoon playing video games.

Once the money runs out, I grab spare change from a pear-shaped brat with a Velcro wallet. Velcro is a much harder item to pick, mainly from that grating noise it makes when you peel it open or the flexible hooks get-ting snagged on your clothing like buttons and frayed material.

I take the brat’s wallet to the restroom where I hear giggles coming from the last stalls.

I kneel down to the floor and find four legs: two with a pair of creased jeans around his ankles in the last stall and the other two bent like a catcher in the neighboring stall. One of them is making these wet noises, like he’s sipping from a drink or something. The closer I listen I realize that the kid’s not sipping from a drink.

I flip on the faucet to drown out the sound and take what I need from the brat’s wallet. He has several twenties—three, I count—which doesn’t surprise me. When I first arrived, I saw a Gucci-wearing, plastic-faced woman dropping the brat off.

Since I’m in a good mood, I take two twenties from the brat’s wallet and leave him enough money to finish playing an hour’s worth of games.

I carefully slip the wallet back into his back pocket while he’s going to town on NBA JAM. I hit up Mortal Combat for about an hour or two, but I exhaust most of my time on Space Invaders. I used to play the game when I was younger, I think.

I’m a zombie after spending the past two-plus hours killing alien warships. I check my eyes in the rear view mirror, and they’re as red as the devil—that’s devil with a d.

I make it back to my room without passing out—after all, it’s only a five-minute drive and I’ve driven in worst conditions.

The room has been quiet so far. I haven’t had too many interruptions. Occasionally, I’ll hear someone scurrying past my room, screaming in gibberish without any consideration of the other guests. I guess it’s not a motel room without its daily visitors. Mostly water bugs on a valorous quest to find water. With the drought and all. The mattress is as stiff as a brick and the comforter has an invisible film that’s oily to the touch and I can only imagine if I were to shine a black light on the pillows what parasitic creatures I’d probably find. The toilet is crap too; and every time I flush it, it sounds like a particle detector picking up lethal amounts of radiation. The other day, I asked this handy man who looked like an overweight version of Kevin Costner to fix it because it wouldn’t flush. I think he only made it worse. But, I guess, it’s either deal with the noise or let the shit pile up; and I’m not about to sleep in a place where I can’t flush my own shit.

I close the curtains and lock the door behind me.

I stash my bookbag in the closet for the time being.

Close the door.

At that very moment, when I lock the door behind me, my stomach suddenly knots and the blood floods my head. I find myself getting roused from the anticipation.

(I read somewhere in Finding Fit that people read a book or watch TV or go for a jog or run or quick exercise or shoot a gun or even have a really stiff drink whenever they feel as if they’re about to turn inside out)

I want to fight it. I want to read the pages I’ve dog-eared in my book, but I know I’m not going to be able to focus. I want to watch a TV show or movie—I swear I haven’t seen a decent one since Red Pines—but I only get a dozen or so channels in here and I know there’s nothing on that’ll pique my interest because daytime TV is for either toddlers or old people who are about to kick the bucket and it’s fair to say that I don’t fall under either of those two categories—although, sometimes I feel like I seesaw moving from one side to another whenever things don’t go my way.
Only one thing on my mind.

I know it’ll come and go, as any other thought or feeling. I pace around the room and think about all of the other things to do around Topside but I come up short. I’ve already closed the curtains. I’ve already locked the door. I’ve already hid Jimmy. I’m already committed. I’m practically already there.

I go back to the closet. Pull out a September issue of Busties from the bookbag. I take the magazine into the bathroom. I flip through pages, the good ones; and while I work through the kinks, I can’t help but think about the black but not really black girl from the board-walk.

III

Each day I’m going backwards. Even so, I find myself closer to the truth yet so far from it. Miles and miles of designated lanes left untraveled. I’m overwhelmed by the sense that one day I’ll vanish without a trace, like all the others before me. The truth either left for someone else to uncover or, worse, left to disintegrate in the pendulums of time. When I’m no longer a part of this existence, I wonder what people will think about me, what I’ve done, what I was doing. The fact: I won’t even be a glint in the minds of the ones I love. The only mark I’ll leave behind in this cruel world is a sloppy inscription on the rickety door of a bathroom stall: was here. Was. Now, dust. Gone. At times, I try to put myself in an-other person’s shoes and picture what I would look like through his or her eyes. The feeling I get is like the same feeling I get after I stub my toe on a piece of furniture, not the part where the initial pain sets in but the feeling afterwards, that radiating sensation coursing throughout my body. I can’t escape it, the feeling. It forces me to think about my life, where I’ve been. I think about how I acted at East Providence, how “in control” I was. I feel like that was when I peaked, during those free and easy days where all of my troubles or worries about the future disappeared at the bottom of a drink. Nothing ever got to me back then. Now, my life is starting to feel like one very long prologue of the sequel to an autobiography about a youthful yet misguided kid who blew out his brains in the last sentence of a book. Now, here I am, stuck in this stagnant, repulsive cesspool. This is what my life has been reduced to: an introduction to not only the harsh repercussions of madness, but also the onset of madness. A life without any climaxes or resolutions. A life of jerking off. A life of driving down dark roads running through a forever night. A life of searching but not finding. Always one step ahead of me, the monster is; and each night, it pulls farther away from me, as that one feeling I once knew all too well.

If I don’t find the monster soon, will I be lost in the darkness?

Cloaked by my own creation?

But is that the sacrifice?

Is it?

If you let yourself inside the monster’s head, do you ultimately let the monster inside yours?

As of lately, I’ve been having the same dream about the night of the shooting. The dream ends with the same: with the shooter pulling the trigger, a flash of lightning streaking across the black sky; then, I’m slowly sinking into the abyss. However, this time I don’t wake after the shooting.

I’m standing on the same bridge in Old Town. It’s raining. I’m shivering. I’m confused. My ears are ringing. I feel a trail of blood trickling from the gaping hole in my forehead. I turn to my left. The same strange men are standing with me, and I feel as if I’m like a child compared to them, as if they have lived ten lives and I haven’t even lived half of a life. They’re wearing jackets. Good leather. Expensive. Their hair is slicked back and black and glittery as wet asphalt. Their faces hold many secrets and shadows, many lives, many lies. One of them pulls out an eightball of cocaine and slips it into my pocket. I look down at my legs and yet, I can’t see my legs for they’re dissolving into the asphalt. My legs are there, though. I know. Even though I can’t feel them. I wonder if me not feeling my legs has anything to do with why these men are holding me upright. The rain falls faster now. Piston-fast. It takes every single muscle in my body to lift my head. In front of me stands another man. A man taller than average. Slicked back hair with streaks of silver on the sides. The kind of haircut you’d see in the mafia movies. He’s wearing a jacket as well, but it’s not leather. I focus on the smoking pistol as he lowers it to his side. I know the gun. That exact one. A Glock 19. So many tiny lights along the handle of the Glock, festively dancing in the night darkness. Pellets of rain hit my face like splinters digging into my flesh. I blink my eyes like windshields wiping away rain. I trace my glassy eyes along the engraving on the side of the barrel: Gen4, AUSTRIA, 9×19. Dad’s Glock…

I turn to my right and see a face in the darkness of the street. The face is narrow like a model’s. The eyes are like the eyes of a cat.
All of sudden, I swim from the dream. Bolt upright from the bed. I look around the empty room, wondering what I’m doing here. How did I even get here? Is this even real?

I unpeel the collar of my shirt and breathe a sigh of relief.

I turn toward the windows, and it’s darker outside.

As I breathe a sigh of relief, I hear the sound of thunder and it sounds as if the storm is directly overhead.

The rumble shakes the entire room and sends me into a state of high alert.

I listen closer. More rumbles of thunder above, much closer together.

I roll out of bed, walk to the window, open the curtains, and find the same overcast sky.

I stand there for about a minute, inspecting a wash of gray cloaking the jagged skyline of Topside; and not once do I see any flickers of lightning. No streaks. No bolts. Yet, the thunder still remains.

Weird.

I listen closely. A distant screech of an animal. Loud claps of thunder take a more distinct shape and form.

Feet, I suddenly realize, at least six of them pounding against the ceiling above me. And this chaos goes on for about a half-hour. I try to block out the noise by turning on the TV. If I turn up the volume loud enough, it will dampen the noise. I flip to a channel playing movie trailers. I take a load off and turn up the volume to the max level. The pounding is still there. Now, I’m grinding my teeth—an old habit that I gave up before Red Pines. I try to stop, but each thud causes my teeth to run like a saw. My jaw flexes. I rush to the bathroom and blast water in the tub. It helps loosen my jaw, but the pounding is still there. Now, it’s in my head—a subwoofer of blood pounding inside my head.

I grab the switchblade from my bookbag and exit my room.

As I arrive at the room directly above me, I get a strange feeling that I’m making a horrible mistake. My gut is telling me to turn back. Go back to your room, it tells me, or hit up the Galatia for about an hour; then, after you’re done blasting away alien warships, head back to the motel and by then, it’ll be time to get ready for the night.

And if that’s not enough to release the tension, I’ve still got enough weed left to roll a joint.

My gut tells me all the right things.

The things I want to hear.

Yet, my bad heart tells me something drastically different.

I knock on the door and check my hands, and they’re both as steady as a professional poker player’s.

The door opens.

At the doorway stands a petite Indian man with a smile on his face. The upper part of his forehead is dotted with sweat.

“May I help you, sir,” the Indian man says politely as he waits for a response.

I open the switchblade behind my back, making sure to keep it out of sight.

He cracks the door farther open and behind him, an entire family is lounging inside. Way more than six feet. Five adults are sitting at the table, as if they’ve been sit-ting there for quite a while. Two of them are as old as mummies. Three children are seated like monks on the floor, watching Looney Tunes with the typical youthful eagerness. All fingers point at the source of the sound, the heelwalker standing dutifully before me, Chief of the Thunderfoot Clan.

How can such a small person make so much noise?

I tumble my way into a numbing daydream which I had once wallowed in ever since I rented my first apartment. Bottom floor. Worst mistake ever. Above me lived some ditzy college girl who made it her mission in life to push my buttons. She was the type who had no consideration or respect, despite how many times I told her as benevolently as I could to turn the music down. She wasn’t a heelwalker, like Chief here. More or less, a spunky thing that operated on batteries for days on end. I used to work in the hardware department at the Depot (that’s right, I used to have a job—hard to believe, huh?); made enough money to afford a place of my own; and it was pretty nice, having my independence and all…but only for a while.

Throughout the day, I dealt with customers who were on a next-level of grouchiness (most of the men’s wives had dragged them in by their ears like disobedient children or the men were sent by their ungrateful wives after they had been railed about “fixing that broken hinge on the door” or “making a spare key for the neighbor” or “hanging up that new picture on the wall” for the past month and they all came to me—husband and wife alike—in dire need of assistance and I was glad to help); then, after work, trying to melt away the complaints of the day, I came home to this little bitch blasting music above me, treating me as if I was an insect, as if she was waiting all day for me to come home so she could stomp all over me with her feet. She’d be up there without a care in the world, dancing to some Top 40 bullshit, the ceiling sounding as if it was about to cave in on top of me at any moment. Every time I went up there—I mean, every time—I fantasized about what I really wanted to do to her. My weapon of choice would be a bronze statue of an ape (Susannah bought me this statute of an ape with glasses reading a book as a apartment-warming gift). Little did she know that she could’ve been supplying her son with a possible murder weapon. First, it started out with the ditz swinging open the door, like the stereotypical ones do in the movies, chewing gum in the corner of her mouth, twiddling a loose strand of hair between her two fingers, rolling her eyes—You again! What do you want? I wouldn’t tell her what I wanted anymore. I’d show her: first, I’d hit the bitch over her head with the statue; and once she fell to the floor, her legs still twitching even when I was straddled on top of her like a cowboy, bashing in her head, I’d toss aside the bloody ape and wrap my two hands around her throat and choke the life out of her until she started to smoke and sputter like a faulty piece of equipment. Then, I would assemble the ma-chine back together, piece-by-piece, wind her up again like a clock, then continue to hammer away at her with my fists—

“Is everything all right, sir?”

I snap from my violent haze and turn my eyes to the Indian man. I turn to his children. The pounding stops.

Years from now, what would they think when the thought of their father popped in their heads? An image like that would never go away, an image constantly replaying in their heads.

I discreetly slip the blade into my back pocket.

“Ra—wrong room,” I stutter. “Sorry to disturb you.”

“No problem,” he says kindly. “Have a good night.”

“You too,” I say and he closes the door as I leave.

I shamefully walk back to my room, wondering what in the hell has gotten into me.

William was right.

I am crazy.

The Salamander and The Serpent

WHEN I was as old as the number of fingers on my hands—that particular age where you don’t know shit except for your own—I guess I was considered to be a firebug. I liked to play with fire. I liked to watch things burn—toys, insects, anything I could get my hands on. My parents thought it was an issue that stemmed way beyond pre-adolescent angst. When you’re that age certain behavioral patterns spark much needed answers.

I had no answers for my parents.

And I think that’s what frustrated them the most.

When I suffered from insomnia, I was watching my-self burn. Slowly. Each flame like a tongue licking everything it touched until nothing was left but this charred nothingness. Each night wrapped in a blanket of flames. Every thought igniting over a carpet drenched with gasoline. The constant tossing and turning back and forth like a metronome. Waking to a dumb clock. Disappointed. Betrayed. Angry. The longing to fall asleep and wake up with the sun pressed against my face. If only for a moment, I felt as if I could turn into a delicate flake of ash, only to crumble away into a great oblivion. I remember what it was like to long. That was all it was, really, a distant feeling which bore the same significance as its meaning. The farther I reached for the feeling, the farther it pulled itself away from me. Times I’ve longed to fall asleep, only to never wake again. Eventually, the insomnia was treated with a little bit of tweaking. I was sleeping again. Then, after the shooting, the insomnia happened all over again, as if I had triggered it somehow; however, the insomnia didn’t happen all of a sudden. This time, it felt as if I was building it, like the burning—slowly—during a crucial time in my life when I just wanted to live inside my dreams forever before they turned into nightmares.

I take a seat on the edge of the bed. Practice William’s advice by closing my eyes, taking a deep breath through my nose, holding it inside my lungs, and then exhaling through my mouth.

Slowly.

This is the kind of spiritual meditation shit they teach you in yoga class.

It helps, though, according to my shrink.

I open my eyes, only to find a streak of red in the lower corner of my eye.

I look down at my hand and my wrist is smeared with blood. I turn over my hand—palm side up. I have a laceration running across the center of my palm. It doesn’t appear life threatening, but it’s deep. I may need stitches. I stare at the blood pooling inside my palm. I find myself drifting again. Into the blackness. A strange face comes forth. I realize, after steady concentration, the face is my face, and it’s caked with blood. Blood is frothing from the corners of my mouth, like the edge of a red tide washing over my feet, staining my skin in dark red. I keep the face close to me and move my eyes from my bloodstained lips to my glazed eyes.

Before the face can take hold, I rush to the sink and wash the blood from my hand. I grab two Band-Aids from the First Aid Kit and place the Band-Aids in an X-pattern over my palm before the cut starts to bleed again. I splash cold water on my face with my other hand and look into the mirror.

For a moment, I don’t even recognize the reflection of the person looking back at me.

For a moment, I see nothing.

I look down at my hands and can’t stop staring at the calluses on my palms. Maybe the car wash attendant was right.

The attendant saw something that I didn’t.

He saw right through me.

I exit the bathroom, trying to keep calm. I see a light in the corner of my eye. I turn toward the door and find that it’s been opened. My heart suddenly anchors into my stomach, the blood fleeing from my now ghostly face.

I follow the grayish light onto the dark wingtips of a stranger. My eyes trail up his legs, his hands.

She’s going to be a distraction—a voice rises from an aged wall of dust and the voice seems like miles away; yet, the voice inches across the desolate shores of what was once a sea.

You need to get rid of her, the voice feels as soft as a breeze, yet the words carry as far as a cave echo.

The stranger partially reveals its face in the dim light, crossing one leg over the other. He runs one of his hands over the coarse stubby hair along his cheeks.

Moses. He skips through the foreplay and greets me with a hello and follows with a name, but I block out the name. He looks at me with a kind of predatory smirk on his face as he patiently waits for my response, his face no darker than a shadow.

Have you already forgotten why you came back here—

—What are you doing here?

You can’t get rid of me that easily, Moses says.

The light shines over his suit, which matches the color of the sky, then the bottom half of his chin, the five o’clock shadow on his face. He dresses like a man who seems important. He looks good enough to eat—that is, if I was into that kind of stuff.

I thought we agreed to go our separate ways—

—You don’t remember, he interrupts.

Remember what?

Our conversation last night, he says strangely. I didn’t think you had the stomach to go through with it. Clearly, I underestimated you.
I don’t know what Moses is talking about. Surely, he doesn’t mean what happened to Anthony Foster.

What do you want?

Moses sighs.

I thought I told you.

You didn’t tell me a goddamn thing.

Let me refresh your memory—

—What do you want?

I need to ask a favor, he says.

You came all of this way to ask a favor?

Moses nods.

I nod back, this time at the suit.

During the time we spent at Red Pines, Moses always talked about wearing a suit—a really nice one, like some-thing a movie star would wear on the red carpet, the type who could pick up a dame with the magnetic lasso of his gaze. That, and what he’d do when he finally broke out, for instance, like catching up on lost time, seeing if the machinery still worked—machinery, as in, well, I don’t have to explain. I’m not sure how he came up with the money to buy a suit. More than likely he stole it. I would.

Before I can put any further thought into how he acquired such a nice suit, I close my eyes.

I can hear William’s words.

Take a breath, says William.

I do as he tells me and open my eyes.

Moses is still there even though I know he is not there.

Soon enough, I know, he will pass, as most thoughts tend to do.

I return by asking Moses the first thing that comes to mind.

It wasn’t that hard to find you, Moses replies. All I had to do was follow the breadcrumbs. And if I can find you, then he can find you—
Ruby’s not a threat to me.

Don’t underestimate a cop.

Once a cop, always a cop. The man who’s been on my tail ever since I left Red Pines: Detective John Ruby, like Thomas, is a decent man; and like me, he’s persistent as hell. He’s a man who started out with humble beginnings; and like Thomas, he’s a man who came from nothing. After six years of being on the force as a police officer, Ruby became a detective for the St. Joanna’s Po-lice Department. He worked homicide before he decided to ride solo as a private investigator. Work started to lag. He mostly handled cases of infidelity: cheating spouse, an overprotective wife here and there, curious husband, the mysterious Jane Doe. Ruby did that for a couple of years before he focused his attention on missing cases. He’s exceptionally good at what he does, too. He’s never been married. Doesn’t have any kids. Whatever’s missing from Ruby’s life, I’m certain that he’s about to find it.

Not bad for a—

I already know the rest of what he’s going to say be-fore he even finishes his sentence.

—How’d you get in?

Moses points at the door.

You left the door open, he says. You should be more careful.

Once more, he intertwines his hands and then tilts his head downward.

Eyes like blades.

Breath cold enough to turn water into ice.

I look down at my hands and they’re shaking.

You can’t afford to make any more mistakes—What the fuck do you want from me?

A favor, he says casually, that’s all.

I know it’s not just a favor.

My thoughts turn to something pleasant, something lighter, a face.

Come back to me, he says carefully. Come back to the land of the living.

That’s it.

Moses fiddles around with a pen on the table, mostly twirling it in fascination. A distraction.

I understand that you’re having doubts, but you must remain vigilant. Is that clear?

The world goes shaky. My hands start to tremble.

Shut up.

I don’t think you’re in a position to be telling others what to do.

He says my name again.

I block it out.

Shut up, I tell him as I find myself pacing around the room.

He says Jimmy’s name, and the anger swells over me and I can’t control it anymore.

I do the only thing I was trained to do.

I react.

I grab the ice bucket on the dresser, feeling Moses’ presence much closer to me now, his icy breath tickling the hairs on the backside of my neck.

Shut up!

I toss the bucket at Moses.

The bucket strikes the corner of the window with a piercing bang!

Moses is no longer sitting at the table.

He’s gone, yet it feels as if he’s still here.

Then again, he was never sitting there to begin with.

I pull my eyes upward from the sink below.

Before me, the mirror is shattered but still intact.

III

I step out of the room for a breath of fresh air.

While I’m out, I grab some booze at Spirits—that’s one thing I like about Topside, how they keep things simple.

The clerk asks to see my I.D., so I pull out the Philadelphia driver’s license and give it a once-over before handing it to him.

I show the I.D. to the clerk, who, in return, studies it longer than I expect.

Henry Frick, says the name on the driver’s license, is thirty-six years old—and in some countries, he could probably pass as my father. Henry’s an organ donor—was an organ donor. From what I’ve gathered through-out my investigation into the shooting, he was a man who unfortunately shared the same fate as Jimmy. Worked as an insurance adjuster who handled property damage.

About a month before his disappearance, he was as-signed to “CAT” duty—short for catastrophe, meaning floods, hurricanes, even fires. Henry was one of the many participants helping out with the deadly wild fires that had ripped through nearly the entire eastern half of Los Dementes, destroying thousands of homes, displacing families. Some were fortunate enough to make it out alive. Others, you get the idea. Several weeks later after Henry was done with CAT duty, he made another trip back to Los Dementes. It wasn’t to help out with the wild fires. I had doubts about using Henry’s I.D. I wondered if the name would draw any suspicion. Not too long ago, the name made its way into headlines around the country. Then again, how many people actually watch the news or read newspapers anymore? Exactly. You can thank social media. Anyway, despite our different views, Moses was absolutely certain that I was dealing with the type of characters who had short attention spans (It’ll work, he couldn’t stress enough, in fact, it’s quite poetic, using the same name as the man who was murdered by the monster who shot Jimmy and then, like Jimmy, dumped in the Crux River as if he was a piece of garbage).

The clerk smirks as if he’s impressed, hands me a brown bag containing my poison of choice and then the rest of my change.

In his Haitian accent, he says calmly, “Take care, my friend.”

I want to tell him that I will, but I know I won’t.

After I leave the liquor store, I use the free sub card and grab a turkey sub at Sub Shop.

I take the booze and food back to the motel where I eat in my room.

The booze helps.

It always does.

Always.

The last glimpse of sunlight shines through the parting clouds as the sun sets in the West.

I head back inside my motel room where I pull out the contents from my bookbag and line them across the dresser.

First, I start by digging through the side pockets and tossing away used candy wrappers. I don’t realize how much candy I’ve been eating lately until I pull out handfuls of sticky, week-old wrappers.

After I somewhat clean out my bookbag, I grab Jimmy and gently place the urn on the chest. I place a crinkled paperback of The Hate Train next to the urn. I set my revolver next to the urn, then my switchblade, then the two packs of matches—one of them once belonging to Chemo and the other once belonging to the prawn grub—then the keychain holding a purple rabbit’s foot that Susannah gave me during her last visit at Red Pines, as well as the key to my trunk, as in a large box, a glass jar containing a male stag beetle, a plate with the Volkswagen Beetle’s VIN number, and then, a worn case holding my syringe, spoon, and band.

After all of the contents are laid out in front of me, I reach for the other side pocket and just as I’m about to grab the folder containing newspaper articles, as well as the photos of the Circle—the players involved in the shooting—I retract my hand and decide that it’s best I find a more suitable place to settle before I start putting everything together. A nicer place would suffice. Nicer place means more money, which means more pockets to pick. I have my work cut out for me.

Next, I remove the nylon bag holding my Canon Rebel XTi with telephoto zoom lens that I recently picked up at the pawnshop. I once owned a camera similar to this one, only less high-end. Susannah bought me one the same year Jimmy left for college. She said it’d give me something to do while Jimmy was at college. I used to take long walks through the woods and take photos of birds and things [northern cardinals, blue jays, finches, and even brown pelicans (there was a lake not too far from where we lived, Lake Beattie, and this one pelican used to hang out in the same spot everyday, hanging with the turtles on a protruding log in the cove)] and for a while, that was my thing until I later sold the camera for drug money.

Then, I pull out Jimmy’s gold necklace with a pendant of a gold wing and place it next to the Cannon.

Lastly, I pull out the bullet fragment that I found in the urn from my breast pocket.

I grab a small pouch containing single-serving toiletries from the bathroom, empty it, and place the fragment inside.

I leave the magazines, as well as the smut material, inside my bookbag.

Where I’m going I don’t need these things.

I make the bathroom as comfortable as possible by lighting an incense candle, which helps me relax. By relaxing, it becomes easier for me to make sense of things, like Moses, the favor he asked me, why he came all the way out here to Topside. There is still one thing, how-ever, I cannot make sense of. Even if I try.

I was with Patria the night before Jimmy died. When I try to think of a word to describe Patria, the only one that comes to mind is pfft—if that’s even considered a real word. Patria wasn’t my girlfriend. I wouldn’t even call her a friend, really. There were some benefits to our relationship, but they were mostly one-sided. She was a girl whom I met during a night out in city of Elizabeth. I reached the point where I lost track of how many drinks I had consumed. Somehow, after several hours of hop-ping around uptown, Patria and I ended up back at her townhouse that she shared with a girl whose parents were filthy rich. I believe she was from Latvia or some-where cold like that. I remember the first time Patria and I had sex. It was like trying to thread a needle with a rubberband. Not only that, she was as dry as the Mojave Desert, which didn’t help either. Eventually, she came well before me—so she said. Before I passed out, I was wilting inside her like a dead plant. Patria happened to be the lucky one after I went through a long drought without having sex. I remember the sex was sloppy. I was a drunken mess. Out of rhythm, like a band rehearsal after years of hiatus. My dick out of tune. That night shouldn’t have warranted another night with Patria. I actually deleted Patria’s number—twice, I remember—as well as rid any artifact that was attached to her: a paperback by Italo Calvino that she gave me the morning after our one night stand; a crumbled receipt from a night of drinking; a bronze earring of a leaf that she had dropped in my car while we were making out before we stumbled into her townhouse, me half-cocked and ready to jump her bones, Patria, on the other hand, more hun-gry than horny. Three days later, she texted me: What are you doing? I had nothing to do that night. So, I re-sponded to her text. One thing led to another. The second time around was better. Found my rhythm. The third time even better. I mastered my rhythm. The fourth time, like a volley of orgasms. Whenever we did it, her Spanish tongue would make an appearance, and I swear, at times, she sounded as if her mouth was made out of silk. It was like a hymn to my ears. We benefited from the sex so much that we both started to use each other. The extent of our relationship was strictly based around sex, lies, and manipulation. The only time we went out in public was to grab a drink or a coffee. Of course, the relationship ran its course like the flu. That was how long these “flings” usually lasted—if that’s what you call them. Eventually, after a few weeks, we stopped calling one another. I didn’t care much for Patria as an individual. She was on another level of crazy. Extremely bossy. When I was with her, I never felt as if I could be a better person. She was the type who made my bad heart seem decent. Maybe even good. She had this tattoo of Christopher Columbus’s ship, La Santa María, on her thigh. When I asked her about the tattoo, she told me that her grandfather knew the whereabouts of the ship’s remains. She talked about the treasures buried in the ocean floor, as if they were hers for the taking. I asked her how she knew about this and she told me that her father talked to ghosts. She said she acquired the ability, which was one of the many red flags that were raised during our brief time together. She was an artist, so in-credibly pretentious and self-centered. I bought one of her paintings after she pulled out the sympathy card; then, after we stopped talking, I tossed the piece of shit painting in the trash. Brutal, I know, but it had to be done. She painted these strange beings with facial features that were out of proportion. I guess the only thing I liked about her was her body. And that warm October night, I was all over it. We were having lazy, drunken sex, the kind where you’re too wasted to come and yet too tired to finish and the next morning, you wake up ready to explode all over the person sleeping next to you. I remember I was hitting all of her right notes when all of a sudden she rolled over on top of me. I was pecking away at her neck. Then, I suddenly felt something cold pressed against my throat—a bird’s beak knife that she had kept underneath her pillow like a freshly plucked tooth for the tooth fairy. I didn’t know what came over Patria. It started with me giving Patria a hickey, then my jaw might’ve clamped down. Heat of the moment, I guess. Patria’s eyes turned as black as a raven’s eyes, I remember, swollen and primitive, something sinister in-side them, something otherworldly. The left side of her face was lit with the soft pinkish light from the marquee outside the window. Her eyes, black. Face, evil. That night, she slept as if she hadn’t slept in years. I, on the other hand, didn’t sleep at all that night. Not a wink. What kind of woman sleeps with a knife under her fucking pillow? I could’ve died, I realize. It wasn’t until the next morning after my worse nightmare came true that I realized the face was the same one I witnessed in the grease fire the night before Jimmy was shot and left for dead—Was it the Devil’s face? Or, was it something else? I didn’t know if it was God warning me or if it was the Devil sparing my life. I’m positive Patria was neither God nor the Devil, but she wasn’t herself that night. I believe someone or something was pulling her strings.

I shake away the thoughts from that one night and lower my head underneath the water.

As I’m peering at the ceiling, a silhouette of a body arches over the lip of the body!

My eyes flick open!

Not like open, as in I’m having a seizure or I’m fighting off unconsciousness, as if I have this annoying little eyelash caught in the pulpy flesh underneath my eyelid, the eyelash like a crab in a fisherman’s net and I’m doing all I can to work it out by rapidly blinking my eyes, or like the same way an old fluorescent light bulb turns on after years of neglect, or open, as in a wobbly door with corroded hinges slowly opening, but open, like one of those creepy dolls opening her creepy demon-possessed eyes.

Once my world was as black as blood after oxygen gets to it and now, life.

Patria’s face hovers over the water like a four-legged animal, her hand flat against my chest, smothering me. I can’t help but wonder if Patria is really there or if I’m caught in a nightmare that I cannot wake up from.

I bolt upright along the bathtub, water splashing everywhere.

Gasping for air, I reach forward and unplug the stopper.

Once more, I look around the empty bathroom and realize it’s exactly that, empty.

A Way In/Night Training

I use a dime to unscrew the panel to the AC.

I hide my bookbag inside and close the panel.

Then, I go to the closet and dress. First, I slip into a pair of gray slacks; next, a black v-neck sweater—sleeves rolled halfway up my forearms—then black wingtips. I place Jimmy’s rubberband on my right wrist. On the other: the Rolex watch Thomas received after he stepped down from his tenure in Kuykendall, a microcosm of a town outside Elizabeth, which also happens to be the hometown of the author, Ellis Kross, who—according to an interview—said Elizabeth was one of his key inspirations for his novel, The Hate Train.

I make sure to dress the part, watch and all, the clubber, with two scoops worth of hair gel in my hair. Slicked back. Ready.

After I finish dressing, I switch on a red heating lamp above and during that brief amount of time—one minute to be exact—I holster the switchblade on my leather belt, then the revolver around my ankle.

With red all around me, I stand in front of the shattered mirror, which looks like a spider web from where my fist connected with the glass, route my hand behind my back, and practice withdrawing the blade from my belt, and then opening the blade, and then holding it precisely where I think he’s jugular will be until the motion from hand to blade to neck is quick and smooth, innate.

He’ll never see it coming.

Once I find my stroke, the timer lets out a ding and the red light fades into the soft white light.

A staticky sensation suddenly rushes through my veins, my eyes flickering with confusion, trying to find something to hold onto, like an image or an object scattered around the bathroom.

I panic first, and then I hear his voice from behind.

Looks like it’s going to be a hot night tonight.

Black attracts heat.

I focus on my warped reflection in the mirror before me, the blurry apparition coming forth over my shoulder.

Moses stands with his hands in his pockets, leaning against the towel holder as if he’s posing for a magazine. He’s wearing a different suit, I notice, a darker one.

I told you, I tell Moses. I can do this on my own.

I never said you couldn’t. I know—

—What do you want from me, huh?

Just a favor, he says.

You know, I tell him. Fuck your favor.

One after another, I down three shots of Jose Cuervo; then, I roll a tight joint and smoke it until the voices finally fade away.

I mentally train myself to concentrate on the task at hand until the time slips past eight.

The alcohol helps me focus.

The weed helps me relax.

The other thing helps, too.

I piddle around for another fifteen minutes until I gather the nerve to leave.

I make a quick stop at Cyber Jaxx’s where I check Flip’s online status.

CLUBHOPPER69*_* sends Flip a naughty message, just to let him know that she hasn’t forgotten about him; then Flip replies immediately after, saying that he’s been thinking about her and he wishes that she could come to T-Side and hang out. And he spells the word come cum.

I leave the Internet café amused from Flip’s ignorance and decide to kill a couple of minutes by practicing my shot at the Town’s Orchard, which is located not too far from where Flip wants to meet. I use empty soda cans that I found in a trashcan and set them on the tree stumps of Asian pears.

I’ve lost my shot.

I can’t hit a damn thing.

I’m not prepared.

After I leave the orchard, I drive past West Harleton. I drive around the campus for a few minutes.

After I leave the university, I polish off the pint of tequila during the drive to the Chevron and toss the flask out the window when nobody’s looking. I’m fifteen minutes early, and Flip hasn’t showed, but I got tequila pumping through my veins, and I’m feeling good (Be-sides, I expect Flip to be running late. He strikes me as the type who likes to make an entrance).

I just chill and smoke a Marlboro while I wait for Flip. I finish the Marlboro and light up another one with the lighter that I picked from a wino hanging outside Spirits. Flip pulls into the parking lot with his speakers blasting 2Pac’s Do For Love for the entire world to hear. Most of the low end comes from a subwoofer that has no unearthly business being inside the P.O.S. hatchback that he’s driving. The trunk and windows rattle like a maraca. The bumper wobbles and looks as if it’s about to fall off the rear of the car.

Flip cranks up the song even louder, which brings more unnecessary attention to us. He bobs his head to the song as if he has a compulsive disorder while he mimes along with 2Pac until the song reaches the chorus; then, he turns down the volume to a more tolerable level.

He drags from a Newport, pops up his head.

“What’s good, Philly,” he says over the stereo.

“Sup,” I reply and return with a nod of my own. “Thought you couldn’t drive.”

Flip waves his hand. I notice that he’s dressed the part too, like a clubber.

“I’m straight,” he tells me. “I ain’t gonna be drivin’ all night anyway. I’ll probably leave my car parked at my boy’s house.”

He’s talking about his friend, DRU2SCRU. His name in real life is Drew, as in Drew spelled with an e and a w. Last name McKee. Like the other burnouts Flip hangs out with, he’s nobody. Flip sent him a tweet not too long ago, asking him if he was ready to tear up the dance floor tonight at the CP. Drew followed with a tweet, asking Flip if he was going to crash at his place tonight. Flip tweeted back: Fo sho.

His words.

Not mine.

“So, you ready to party, Philly Cheese Steak?”

I don’t know what Flip’s on, possibly an addy, as in adderall, but he acts more hyper than he did when we smoked the blunt earlier today.
“Yeah, man,” I say, catching a buzz from the cigarette. “So, what’s the plan?”

“We gonna meet up with my hookup at the Palace in about an hour,” he tells me. “He should be straight by then, but if not, it ain’t gonna be hard finding sum shit there. Before we roll, though, I thought I get my get my drink on at this dude’s house. He don’t live too far from here.”

He hawks and then spits a blue loogie out the passenger side window.

Just as I suspected.

“Is he straight?”

“Hell yeah, he straight, man,” Flip says, his voice stretched out. “It’s all good in the hood, Philly.”

“A’ight then,” I say.

Flip tosses his cigarette out the window and asks me, “You drivin’?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m driving.”

“Word,” he says. “Just follow me.”

“A’ight.”

Flip drives away, and I follow him.

III

The more I drink, the quicker the night shrinks.

Two drinks later, I nearly put a crack in the shot glass as I slam it against Drew’s countertop.

Like a domino effect, Flip follows suit, then Drew, grimacing from a rather smooth aftertaste.

If it wasn’t for the turkey sub I ate earlier, then the shot of Lord® Vodka would more than likely be making a hasty climb up Mount Everest right now; and I reckon Drew’s granite countertop would’ve looked like a graphic crime scene with CAUTION tape wrapped around all of the undigested mess.

I move my thoughts away from throwing up to a stark image of Mel Gibson dressed the part as the fearless warrior, the great Sir William Wallace, in the movie, Brave-heart, Mel decked out in a raggedy Scottish kilt, war paint smeared across his face, a spear at his feet, anticipating an oncoming army of Englishmen as he yells out to his fellow Scots, “Hold!”

In a way, I feel like I’m the leader of my own resistance, urging my food to hold.

In a strange way, it works.

Then, my thoughts turn to the sea, each tide rolling into the shore, then, the tide freezes as it’s about to crash onto the shore. I look forward to going back to the sea. The thought alone of the sea is like the icing on the cake and any notion of making a scene in front of my new friend is long gone. I’m much calmer, as well. My hands steady when I know they shouldn’t be. We take four more shots, Drew passing on a couple of shots.
On the fifth shot, the base of my belly suddenly stirs with a ripple of nausea—Hold!

As before, I concentrate on the sea and any notion of vomiting immediately vanishes as I blurt out the words one more shot.

By the sixth shot, my words become sticky around each syllable, a precursor to what I like to call my drunken garble.

Before I enter the “blackout stage,” we step outside and chill on this giant white ashtray of a porch and smoke cigarettes. Flip leans over a flimsy balcony, which leans slightly with his weight. I picture the balcony coming loose and Flip falling below. That would be a sight: Flip dropping two stories and landing on his face, his feet touching the back of his neck like a scorpion. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that to happen, but I need Flip for one last thing. He asks me if I want to “match him” on a blunt and before I can respond—my mind mostly playing out different scenarios on how Flip will kill himself—Flip pulls out his share of weed leftover from earlier; and I match him just as much as he stuffs it into the blunt. He guts open the Vega. Then dumps the dried tobacco leaves over the balcony. The blunt is in-credibly loose and messy; and when we finally smoke it, it hits three times harder than the tight one Chemo rolled earlier in the car. I’m already ripped and I don’t think I can get anymore higher so I take a couple of baby-like hits, never holding the smoke inside my lungs like Flip or Drew, both of them taking massive hits and then holding their breaths, as if they’re playing a game of “Who can hold their breath longer under water?”

After we smoke, Flip is itching to hit the club. Drew, not so much. He doesn’t talk much either, not as much as he does online. On the Internet, DRU2SCRU’s a social butterfly who frequently starts arguments on the comment boards of news articles and random forums. On the Internet, DRU2SCRU is an important person who has a voice—at least, that’s what he thinks.

As I’m about to finish my cigarette, Flip smacks Drew on the arm and hollers out, “Yeah, man! You hear what happened to that muthafucka this afternoon?”

“You mean at Main Pier?”

“Yeah, man,” Flip says with a girlish giggle. “I can’t believe that shit!”

“Crazy shit, man,” Drew says as he squints his red eyes.

“So, what happened at the pier?” I ask Flip.

Again, I’m the idiot.

Remember?

“Oh,” he says abruptly, “you didn’t hear about that shit?”

“What? You mean the accident?”

“If that’s what you want to call it,” Flip slurs. “Some muthafucka fell off the pier last night and busted his fucking head on a reef or some shit like that. They didn’t find his body till earlier today. Crazy, crazy shit, man.”

“Is he okay?”

“Nah, man,” Flip replies with a weasel of a laugh. “That fool dead…”

I can’t help but think about Anthony’s face, all slack and all, as if gravity is pulling his jaw to the ground—then, a spray of blood bursting from the open carotid artery in his neck, then the thick strings of blood trailing from the corners of his mouth right before his world goes black—

“—That’s sucks,” I say to Flip.

“Tell me about it!” he says loudly. “The muthafucka must’ve been drunk off his ass!”

Not drunk, Sebastian.

Just unfortunate.

I follow Drew to Crystal Palace.

We arrive at the club a little after ten. The place is unusually crowded for a weeknight. The parking lot is mostly full, except for a few spots near the front. I take note of the cruiser parked in the back of the parking lot, which, from my first assumptions, can only mean two things, really: either Conrad has gotten himself involved with people far more dangerous or Conrad has the cops in his pocket, like with Officer Daniel Ayker, the same cop who arrested Cedric Gaines, for surveillance or protection, mischief or mayhem.

Last I’ve heard Conrad was still hanging around Crystal Palace despite him handing the keys over to Bishop. He struck me as the type who didn’t like to let go of things, even when they no longer belonged to him. A creature of habit, if you will. I can only assume that he’s just as much a part of the scene as his son, Nico. Why? I don’t know yet. I guess you can call it a hunch. Thomas used to be an officer of the law. Used to be. He knew all about hunches; and whenever Susannah was catching a nap before she worked the graveyard shift at Mecklenburg County Hospital, he’d pull Jimmy and I into the living room and tell us all about the hunch—a feeling, he’d say, like the kind you get when you feel a cold coming on in the winter—knowing when to spot a threat, and then after finding yourself face to face with the threat, learning how to stay calm. “Danger doesn’t take smoke breaks,” he once told us, “or it doesn’t hold your hand while you’re crossing the street or wait around to catch the bus.” Once you spot the threat, the only person who decides whether you live or you die is your head (I can see Tho-mas now, standing barefoot on the front lawn during a Saturday morning with a perspired Coors in one hand, his other hand tapping on the side of his temple). I once heard about how if you don’t use your dick, it’ll fall off. “If you don’t use it, you lose.” I found myself wondering if that was the same with your brain. Thomas taught us to use our brains first. The fist was our last option, if it came down to that. I remember nights when he’d come home with a fresh shiner on his face. He’d go straight to the freezer and grab a bag of frozen veggies. We never asked how he got the bruise. And even if we asked, I don’t think he would’ve told us. He never brought his job home with him, especially during the weeknights. That was the rule: the troubles of the day got wiped away on the doormat. Not once did he ever talk about all of the ugly in the world. Not once did he ever talk about the criminals, what they were capable of doing, or the brutality he saw day in and day out. As soon as he stepped into the house, he quit being a cop. He wasn’t the type who talked about his job while we were eating dinner or watching the game either. In a way, home was his escape. He’d rather talk about the Yankees or ask about what we did at school that day. Thomas was an advocate for education and he’d always push us when it came to learning. He’d even give me five dollars to read a book and then, later, during dinnertime, he’d ask me what I learned from the book. He never paid us for doing chores. If you did chores, you were family. And he certainly didn’t want to pay us for being a part of the family. And no matter what, he’d emphasize, treat your elders with respect. Even cops. Don’t talk back to them. If you treat them with respect, they’ll treat you the same way. It was the code of a cop, I guess. All of them had it. Do as they ask, obey them, he’d tell us, and get on with your life. I remember there were two times when I got in trouble with the law. The first time, I was at this senior’s party, cops came, like they always did after word got out, busted it up, most of Jimmy’s friends had already scattered like Canadian geese; I was snagged by this one cop, thrown in the back of cruiser like a criminal. I remember sitting in the cramped backseat—I don’t exactly know why they make the backseat so damn cramped, but maybe that’s the point. I was sailor-drunk, and I was carrying a bubbler in my pants—Sherlock was its name—and it looked as if I had a ragging boner. The cop—some young guy—called Thomas; Thomas showed up minutes later, disappointed. The cop let me go. Thomas didn’t say a word to me on the way home; instead, he just sat behind the wheel as calm as a sensei; then, the other time, Jimmy and I were out way past curfew, and a cruiser was patrolling the area and he shined a spotlight on us, then we hightailed it through the woods. Two cops chased us for a while, then they gave up on us about two miles in. Till this day I don’t know why we ran. But we did, as if our lives depended on not getting caught. We weren’t really doing anything illegal or whatever, except smoking cigarettes and sipping from Kahlúa that one of Jimmy’s regular friends stole from his parents. I guess, at the time, we thought we were breaking the law even when we really weren’t.

Now that I think about it more, I know Thomas told us these things because he knew how some cops were, how some of them abused their power. What can I say? Thomas was a decent man but a lousy cop.

Drew finds a space behind the building. He pulls his golden Accord next to a fleet of sports cars parked in angles, like the car dealers park them in a showroom. Each one looks like something you’d see at an auto show, very upscale, tacky colors. I wonder if these cars belong to Conrad or Nico, or Nico’s friends.

I park next to Drew and before I get out, I squeeze two drops of Visine into my eyes and then place my revolver in the glove box.

I tag along with Flip, who’s instantly greeted by a clique of New Town pricks lingering around a sapphire blue Lambo: a Countach 5000 QV. I haven’t seen one in person, only on TV. There’s nothing special about it. It’s just a car. It has a steering wheel and four wheels like any other car. Flip’s friends gawk at it as if it’s more than a car. I hang back for a second while Flip conducts his elaborate introduction. Drew hangs back as well, and acts as if he doesn’t want to be here. I don’t blame him.

As I always do, I look for my exits. I have many options to choose from. I spot a couple of back entrance-ways: a medium-sized man dressed in a black suit escorting an entourage of girls in dresses that appear painted on their bodies through an unmarked door; then, I find another door with a sign which reads, “EMPLOYEES ONLY;” and then, of course, the front door.

I hear Flip’s voice calling out from behind, “Philly…”

I stroll over to Flip and the New Town pricks. It doesn’t take me long to figure out they’re not actually Flip’s friends from the way they’re talking down to him, treating him as if he’s somewhere between the level of a dog and an ant. I feel bad for Flip. Almost. They’re older than Flip, too—at least ten years. Flip’s older brother is standing among the group as well. Gelled hair. Reeks of Old Spice. That’s Shane, but I already know all about him before he even speaks his name. I decide to play along as if I don’t know that Shane is a good friend of Nico’s—not a close friend, but a friend, nonetheless. Shane’s posted many younger pics of him-self and Nico on Instagram, pics of himself living the high-life, playing the part of a sheep (#ThrowbackThursday). I wouldn’t go as far as to call him an essential part of Nico’s inner circle, not the Circle. Shane’s not a threat. I assume he’s here for two things: the booze and the babes.

I greet the others by shaking their hands. Only one doesn’t shake my hand. Yet, the guy stands there, glaring at me. I take note. I haven’t seen his face before. His name is Chris.

Shane asks me how I know Flip and I tell him that I met him on the Strip. I tell him that he hooked me up with the chronic.
Shane replies, “That’s my lil’ bro for you. He’s always hooking people up.”

Shane’s friend, the one with an eye problem, Chris, butts in by putting Flip on the spot. The comment is more of an indirect insult toward me since I showed up with Flip and now I’m considered to be tight with him.

“Hey, Sebastian,” Shane’s friend says, “why don’t you make yourself useful for once and go to my car and grab my smokes for me.”

Flip’s cheeks turn cherry-red.

“Get your own fucking cigarettes,” he says, gangster-like.

Chris slithers closer to Flip and wraps his slimy hand around Flip’s shoulder.

I hear someone say the punk’s name from behind.

“Damn, Chris,” one of them says. “You gonna let him talk to you like that.”

Chris squeezes his hand tighter around Flip’s shoulder. Flip quietly turns away, struggling to look Chris in the eyes. All of a sudden Chris bursts out in a fraternity-like guffaw. Then, gives Flip a golf-like clap on the cheek.

He says, “I’m just fucking with you, Flipper.”

Flip is shaking his head. He taps me on the arm. Nods toward the club.

As I follow Flip and Drew toward the main entrance, I turn my shoulder and notice the Chris guy eyeballing me. I remind myself that he’s not a threat. He’s just some guy picking on a kid much younger than him.

Maybe he has a bad heart too.

Then, again, worms technically don’t have hearts.

We make it to the front entrance where two men with arms as round as my thighs are standing like the Queen’s Guard. Each one is wearing Secret Service-like earplugs in their ears and occasionally, one of the bouncers will touch the plug for a closer listen and follow with a nod, as if the person on the other end of the speaker is standing right in front of him.

Why the heavy security, especially for a nightclub?

Flip shakes one of the bouncer’s hands and then the bouncer flicks his eyes toward me.

“You know the rules, Flip,” I overhear. The bouncer’s voice is deep like James Earl Jones. “Only one guest.”

“Come on, Zeek,” he says as he arches his head closer to the bouncer’s ear. I can’t hear what Flip’s whispering to this guy, Zeek, but when Flip whispers in the bouncer’s ear, the bouncer moves his beady brown eyes toward me and keeps them on me until Flip gives him a pat on the shoulder.
Zeek nods his head in agreement and then he opens the door for Flip and Drew.

Another bouncer pats down my pockets, as well as my ankles, and says, “Enjoy yourself.”

Lightning storms of strobe lights dance throughout the dimly lit club as speakers secretly stashed away in each crevasse of the walls blast like a barrage of gunfire. Bass from the track sends shockwaves along the floor, inaudibly vibrating like the wings of a hummingbird. Droves of gorgeous women, all shapes and all sizes, nines, even tens, linger around an ice sculpture of a fountain, as if they’re part of a buffet, while above a spread of glaciers shaped like Egyptian pyramids plays VHS tapes of avant-garde style clips with chicly dressed women dancing in grainy video monitors. The women lingering around the fountain look professional, I’d say. I try to keep my mind from the gutter. I look but don’t touch.
Drew acknowledges an old friend standing at the other end of the club and tells Flip that he’ll catch up with him later.
I rub my damp fingers together after running my hand over one of the ice sculptures.

“That’s the real thing,” Flip says closely as he glances at the long smear left behind from my finger.

We shoulder our way through the crowds. Most of the people—except for Flip and few others—aren’t from Topside or the Point. They have that New Town waft of arrogance. And it’s starting to feel a little stuffy in here. We break away from the crowds and prowl down a narrow hallway covered in red light. I can feel myself getting closer. The stroke of a hunch. The red light brings it out, that primitive side. The hunger. So does the music. I suddenly feel a twinge inside my stomach, butterflies ready to hatch.

We make it to the dance floor, which tiers downward into a massive amphitheatre-type room.

The redness dissipates, revealing a wall of soft blue light over a sea of flesh.

I direct my eyes above at a second level and see more people dancing. One side of the room consists of a lounging area, which is overcast with a cloud of dense smoke. All of the furniture is top of the line stuff and probably just as expensive as the Lambo parked outside. Women are everywhere. I haven’t seen so many women. Flocks of women. All races. All shapes. All sizes. Take your pick.

Flip leans closer and says into my ear, “What the fuck did I tell you, son?”

“Damn,” I say.

That’s all I got.

I don’t realize where the source of music is coming from until we walk down a small flight of stairs and stroll onto the dance floor where the carbon copy of a mask-faced DJ is playing IDM songs from a laptop. There’s even what looks like to be a VIP section located outside the lounge; however, the area is mostly concealed with these flowing purple curtains suspended from the high ceilings.

I catch a glimpse inside the VIP where—to my surprise—two greasy individuals are doing lines of coke off a woman’s stomach while she lays naked on top of a table. Most of the VIP is a sausage party, except for the women spread out on the table. The men are well dressed too, lots of jewelry; and there are more of them circled like a sex cult around the table. Watching. I crane my head above Flip and get a closer look inside the VIP, only to find two women playing with themselves. Each flicker from the strobe light brings out the orgy. I can’t help but wonder if all of the women here are professionals; and, strangely, I find myself getting somewhat aroused when I know I shouldn’t. I remind myself of the task at hand: find Nico; and when I find Nico, I’ll find Conrad.

I lean closer to Flip and ask him over the deafening music, “Is your ‘boy’ here?”

Flip checks his phone and then shakes his head.

“Nah,” he says. “Not yet. He said he’s on the way.”

I nod to the bar.

“I’m gonna grab a drink,” I tell Flip.

“A’ight,” he says and approaches a group of women dancing on the dance floor.

As I head to the bar, I scope out the rest of the place. Two areas warrant the most attention, both heavily guarded with men dressed in black suits. One is a red door with the sign EMPLOYEES ONLY, and the other, a darkly lit staircase to the right of the main stage, the stairs leading up to a secluded section; however, the only people I’ve seen accessing that area are mostly women. Professionals. Same women entering through the back earlier. Same escort. And the guards who let them through mean business. Definitely packing heat.

Why in the hell would they be strapped inside a fancy nightclub?

Only two reasons come to mind.

One of them has to do with the drugs.

Flip.

His boy, Cue.

Other stuff here, “harder” stuff.

I remind myself that I’m not going to do any blow. I don’t like blow, especially when mixing it with booze. I had an experience after Jimmy’s death (this was after I kicked the dope). I did a few bumps of blow. I nearly killed a guy. I came home the very next morning covered in another man’s blood. The incident forced Thomas and Susannah to take action. I guess they had enough of my behavior. I don’t blame them.

I grab a drink from the bartender and calm down once I see a group of girls around my age sipping from neon-colored martinis and nervously swaying to the music. They skittishly move pass me, and one of them smells vaginal. They move cautiously as well, as if they’re inching through some kind of wake, paying their respects to the modern day disc jockey. Even when they giggle, it comes off as fake as a three dollar bill. Maybe they’re here to dance. Maybe they’re here for blow. Maybe they’re here to watch. Maybe they’re waiting in line to ride the train. Maybe I need to stop worrying so damn much.

As I take a sip from my drink, a draft of potent cologne suddenly comes over me. A rather handsome man in an expensive gray suit with a black dress shirt and black tie approaches the bar beside me. The man doesn’t even have to ask for his drink. The bartender already has it prepared for him—a Tom Collins. He faces me, the gin drink nursed in hand. Then, he nods.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” he says smoothly.

The voice sounds familiar and yet the face appears extremely vague.

My bad heart becomes a thoroughbred, kicking away the restraints from its cage of bone and muscle. The muscles tighten throughout my body. I feel that fist tightening in my chest as well, and I want to snap. Everything about my body becomes tight. Like I have the jaws of a vise gripped around each joint, and I just want to pop each joint in my body, loosen them up for the sake of hearing things crack.

He waits for my response.

I muscle out the words, “First time…”

“Is that so?” the man says softly and raises his glass in a toast. “Then, we’re glad you came out.”

“Yeah,” I tell him and then look around at all of the pretty faces coming in and out of the flashing lights. “Nice place.”

“Thanks,” he says.

He sips from his drink and reaches out his hand.

“Name’s Nicholas West, but my friends call me Nico.”

He’s not Nico. He can’t be Nico. I know that he’s lying because I’ve seen pics of Nico on the Internet and he looks nothing like the man standing before me. Even if he’s Conrad’s son, he’s changed dramatically. He’s much thinner; his cheeks are sunken in like a fish; yet, he has the eyes of a shark right before it’s about to tear its prey into shreds.

The left side of his face forms into a smile and all the skin on the left side wrinkles and shows his age.

I peer closer and see the old Nico, in his smile, in his eyes.

I keep my cool and shake his hand.

“Pleasure to meet you, Nico,” I tell him as I cautiously ease my other hand around my back.

Then, the pale blue lights suddenly go red all around me.

And that’s all I see before the madness begins, red all around me.

Already Gone

IT’S happening again.

The loss of control.
The apathy.

The blackness.

That’s how it first starts out: I’m baptized under a moonless night. I lose my handle. I slip into a void of blackness and free-fall through the hollow barrel of a gun until I finally ease into a bed covered in a thousand thorns as long as javelins.

I stop falling, eventually, when the feeling comes back to me; and I’m released from the thorny mess, my body perforated like the lid of a cardboard box housing a mouse or hamster, something rodent-like, then I plunge with a thunderous roar into this pool of ice water, torpedoing my way to oblivion.

I surface, eventually, clawing my way through the gutters of blackness, through all of the muck and noise.

I find myself staring at a glint of light lost in the blackness. Softly twinkling like a star above me. A dwarf of a star. A mysterious, celestial thing curious of my existence.

Somehow, the light knows that I’m trapped and it acts as if it’s making an effort to pull me from all of the blackness. I can’t move, though. I’m locked inside a room covered in glossy black walls. Some strange liquid on the walls moving like warm molasses. No doors. No exits. Not one.
Then, suddenly, something is born from the blackness: first, fingers emerging from the wall, then a gnarly hand reaching toward me, as it remains lifeless. This arm appears as knobby as a tree branch, and a jolt of life runs through the arm, causing it to teeter closer and closer, shaking, convulsing.

The arm doesn’t completely break the wall, though; yet, the wall stretches outward as if it’s made of rubber. Both the wall and the hand inch closer. Another sense comes back to me, and now I can hear the wall violently screeching as it expands to the point of tearing.

I struggle to fight my way upright—doing everything I can to keep the black hand from touching me—but my body remains in a paralyzed state.
Then, the floor beneath me liquefies into this rich and heavy sludge.

I muster whatever strength I have left inside me and pull my arm from the sludge as it starts to consume my toes, my feet, my legs, each one of my limbs. My eyes move from the shaky hand to my own hand; and I realize the hand is my own hand. Lost in blackness. Sinking farther into the sludge below me.

Now, the sludge moves its way up my shoulder and neck and slides like wet mud across my chest.

I panic.

As sludge creeps into the sides of my mouth, the blackness washes over with red.

I taste the salt in the air. I feel warmth blanket my body as I crack open my eyelids, only to find the tide running toward the shore before me.

A screech of a flying creature cuts across a pale blue sky!

My eyes trace what looks like a seagull. I raise my head from the sand and witness three silhouettes standing in the beams of sunlight. They’re looking down at me, as if I’m an attraction, a zoo animal, a freak.

I turn back toward the sea and wonder how I ended up on a beach.

For a moment, I don’t recognize the beach, the ocean before me.

For a moment, I don’t recognize myself, my hands, both of them powdered with grains of sand.

For a moment, I feel as if I’m actually dead, as if the flesh has been removed from my spirit, the bone and every single fibrous material attached to it, and all of the people gliding along the beach are either dead as well or alive, and they’re oblivious to this imperceptible world.
Suddenly, a stabbing sensation splinters through the back of my eyes and burrows like a mole of pain into my head.

The silhouettes drift away as soon as I sit upright and wipe the sand and drool from the side of my cheek.

I watch the three materialize as they stroll farther down the beach. A man, I see, and two young boys—his sons?

I focus on my body. Study every inch. Down to the cuticle. I’m dressed in the same clothes as last night: black sweater, gray pants—the club attire, I vaguely remember.

I pat down my waist and then my pockets, as a cop would do. My switchblade is nowhere to be found.

I search through the hot sand, but all I find are foot-prints—much smaller than mine—leading back to a sun-beaten walkway behind me.

I pat myself down once more and touch a lump in my pocket. I pull out a wadded tissue stained with some kind of brown substance—blood, I realize, old blood. I open the tissue and cringe, but not in repulsion.

Before me: a smelly, pinkish condom balled up like a piece of fresh gum. I believe it belongs to me, as well as the DNA inside, but how I wound up on the beach re-mains a complete mystery.

As I search for saliva in my mouth, I taste a woman stained on the tip of my tongue. Not Yolanda, the girl who was hanging around Nico’s infinity pool, but her friend, Nico’s friend, Jamie. She neither had conversational skills nor a depth in vocabulary. She lacked personality, as well. At times, it was like talking to a slot machine and every word that came from her mouth was the same, only shuffled around in a different order; and her breath tasted like cheddar, I remember, really old, sharp cheddar—old, as in primal. The flash of an image comes to mind: circles, three of them; fleshy pink in color; blown up in size; and each one of them hung on the walls like paintings. One of the canvases was a close-up of a woman’s lips, scarlet red and glittery and plump like the decal for The Rolling Stones. The other, similar lips, only vertical—a beautiful shaved clit, I remember, tight but extremely lippy, like packed deli meat. The third one, I can’t remember, but I think it had to do with a woman’s orifice.

And Nico, he was there—after all, I believe it was his house. Flip was there, too, but he never spent the night.

I retrace the events from last night: Flip and Drew following Nico and a group of people back to his beach house; a jockish man was driving my car. He could pass as a football player. He had shoulders as square as a fridge, no neck. I believe his name was Yoda or some-thing like that.
When we arrived at Nico’s, I remember being surrounded by more beautiful women than I’ll probably ever see in a lifetime. Nico hinted that they were not professionals, just “close friends of his,” despite half of them strutting around with their perfectly cone-shaped tits on display once the party turned brothel-loose. The lights dimmed to near black and out came these glow sticks, but they weren’t exactly glow sticks. They were some-thing else. I can’t remember. I remember running into a group of strippers I saw earlier at Crystal Palace—I’m not talking about those from Old Town or the plastic-looking ones from Los Dementes. These chicks took extra spe-cial care of their merchandise. And that’s what they were, really. They were no different than what we were at Red Pines. Products. Constantly being updated or taken apart for the sake of being updated or taken apart, being put back together again. Refurbished. Constantly serviced for a material world. Nico could sugarcoat the bullshit all he wanted, saying that they were his friends and all, but at the end of the day, somebody was getting paid. If not the women, somebody. I handed Jamie the two mollies Apple Ripper gave me, and she popped them like nuts, then we hooked up after the party was running as thin as a Motley Crew concert. Partygoers had already crashed, disappeared, or melted into the night. But Jamie stayed, I remember. And, so did I. I swear Jamie looked like a young Kate Moss. Face like a ten. Body like an eleven.

But what about Nico?

I remember Jamie, the both of us having sex in several spots. It all started while I was grabbing a drink from a wet bar next to the pool, her hand grazing mine. She asked me if I wanted to dance. So we did. I made a fool of myself, but Jamie was really into it. Guys were throwing me high fives as they shot glances at Jamie, as if they were congratulating me or something, like they knew something that I didn’t. Jamie said that she heard I was holding mollies—could’ve been why she was so damn interested in me? I think she was talking to Flip for a while at the club. I gave her mollies. We made out in Nico’s living room. She was wearing clothes too, and she wasn’t with Nico.

But where was Nico?

Jamie’s award-winning body straddled over my pelvis as if it was a saddle. Her hair, her lips, her scent, was all over me, like all of it had been infused with my body. We took our sexcapade to the pool. I’ve never had sex in a pool before. Last night was a night filled with many firsts. We continued our hump fest on the beach—this beach—the moonlight soaking our naked bodies in sickly paleness.

I lift up the waistband along my pants and find these serpentine-like red streaks running along the sides of my groin, as well as down my thighs from the sand rubbing against the flesh.

A dreadful emptiness suddenly washes over me like the tide before me.

I didn’t pay her, though.

Or did I?

I spent my money on the Cuervo. Had a couple of drinks at Crystal Palace. I never spent any money on blow, either. That, I remember.
I quit thinking about last night. I fasten my belt buckle and gather the rest of my things from the beach.

A silver earring in the shape of a miniature hula-hoop digs into my left side—must belong to Jamie. Thomas’s Rolex buried underneath my left butt cheek. Then, I find my smokes close by. Thank God for my smokes. I check the flattened pack, only to find one cigarette.

I pull out the loner, craving to smoke it in one single breath, but the squashed cigarette breaks in half.

My eyes graze a fresh bruise underneath my rolled up sleeve. I roll up my sleeve farther along my arm and fol-low the bruise toward my knuckles, red but not bloody. I stretch out my hand and then curl it into a fist and grim-ace from the soreness. The face, I see, neither Anthony’s nor Nico’s…

The face: narrow, well-groomed, blue eyes, hair the color of cheap Zinfandel. The face belonged to a friend of Flip’s older brother, Shane. I forget his name.

Another faded image: Shane’s boyfriend intentionally bumping into me while I was smoking from a glass sculpture of some kind. I accidentally broke the bowl, pipe, or whatever it was on the floor. The asshole spilled beer on my hand and shirt.

I take a whiff of my hand and then my fingers where the odor is the strongest, but I don’t smell beer. I smell Jamie. Every inch of Jamie. I can’t escape Jamie’s scent. It’s everywhere. On my hands. My lips. My body.

I concentrate on my knuckles and how they ended up so red and swollen…

The asshole aggressively came at me with four white knuckles—Chris! That’s the asshole’s name—No! Wait a minute! It wasn’t Chris. It was Drew, Flip’s friend.

I check the purplish bruise on my forearm and witness these nightclub-flashes of horror all around me. Each bright flicker of light throughout the darkness brings forth a face, then a still of action, then violence.

Red all around me as Drew swung at me. I dodged Drew’s drunken punch, then countered with one of my own. I grabbed Drew’s wrist and straightened out his arm across my body; and I didn’t break, but obliterated his arm with a furious karate chop to the butt of his elbow. The bone pierced through his skin. An audience of cheers rang out behind me. Ews and Ahs. Music to my ears. To my surprise, the son of a bitch came at me again. I made sure it would be his last. I knocked him out with a hammering blow to his face. My fist curled tight, like the head of a hammer. Most of the pressure pushed to the meat of my hand. The bridge of his nose erupted, blood showering over my audience.

The flashes stop.

Flip and Shane and his other friends dragged Drew from the house while an argument was taking place. Then, Jamie. The infinity pool. Both of us like two horny mermaids.

Sand splashes over my shirt. I turn around and see a Frisbee stuck in the sand.

“Sorry, bro,” a shirtless twenty-something says as he runs toward me.

I dust off my shirt and grab the pink Frisbee.

As soon as I stand to my feet, I immediately sway like a buoy from the smack of a dizzy spell. My ears close up shop and any noise coming inside them is thin and hollow. My vision starts to shrink into the circumference of a peephole. I can feel my own blood pounding through my veins. I feel each beat of my heart. I feel as if I’m about to faint.

Then, I hear a voice calling out beside me.

Hey, bro…

The sound of the voice brings me back, comforts me.

“Long night, huh?” he says as he approaches me.

I shake away the spell and hand the guy his Frisbee.

He looks me over and studies my condition.

“Thanks, bro.”

“Yeah,” I say with a wounded nod. “No problem.”

He walks away and tosses the Frisbee to his friend.

The sight of the two friends playing Frisbee comforts me.

Everything feels normal again.

I’m somewhat relieved.

I toss the used condom in a trashcan and leave the beach.

I find my bearings once I make it to the road.

To my left, I spot a familiar house at least a quarter of a mile down the beach—Nico’s house. Only three houses reside on the street. All three of them are separated by mostly overgrowth of the sea. Two are ocean view, celebrity-style. I don’t see much of any activity at Nico’s. The place looks dead. As far as I know, Nico’s dead too.

I breathe a sigh of relief as soon as I locate my car parked in the same exact spot where the Yoda guy parked it on the street earlier this morning. Still looking as ugly as ever. Only two or three cars remain on the street; however, they’re parked closer to the house.

I grab the keys from my pocket and as I’m about to open the door, I step on a red plastic cup next to the back left wheel. Jamie was drinking beer out of a red cup. So was I? I think.

I open the door and immediately, I’m greeted by the smell of chlorine. I walk back outside and go directly to the trunk.

I open the trunk. Empty. For some reason, though, I know the trunk is not really empty.

III

Two cruisers are parked in front of the manager’s office of Seaside Heights.

I do a speedy U-turn around the median and park across the street and hang back for a minute until I can make sense of the current situation.
The manager, a hobbit of a man who walks with a limp, exits the main lobby and guides the two cops to my room, Room 102.

They stop in front of my room, which rests in early morning shadows.

With a flashlight, one of the cops inspects the exterior of the room: the windows, the panels, and lastly, the door. Then, the manager opens the door without even knocking, which makes me believe the little turd’s already been inside my room. Has he gone through my things? Who is he? Is he working for Conrad as well?

Has my cover been blown?

The cops follow Frodo inside.

After about two minutes inside, the cops exit and stand outside and talk. The manager uses his hands a lot when he’s talking to the cops; and strangely, I know what he’s talking about even though I can’t hear him. I think of my next plan of action.

It finally dawns on me what I need to do once I settle down at bit.

I go to the trunk and shuffle through the tags like a deck of cards. I find one for California. I remove the Arizona tag. Replace the tag with the California tag that I pulled from an abandoned Impala.

Next, I find the nearest payphone outside the parking garage and dial 9-1-1.

An operator answers first, asking me to state my emergency.

“I’d like to report an emergency,” I tell the operator with labored breath, sounding as if it’s dire, as if my life’s in danger, as if, at any minute, I can die. I say it quickly too, all in a single breath. She remains extremely placid on the other end, robotic. She’s trained properly. “There’s a crazy man yelling and waving around a gun outside the Square,” I say louder, more urgency in my voice, more everything. “He’s threatening to shoot people! Help us! Hurry!”

I hang up the phone before she has a chance to respond.

I walk back to my car and watch the two cops from a safe distance. One of them excuses himself from the manager and listens to his radio. He nods at his partner, who steps aside. The cops stroll back to their cruisers as the manager holds out both of his arms with the common where-are-you-going expression; then, after the cops peel away, the manager callously waves his hand in utter disgust.

I sneak around the motel and peek inside the manager’s office. He’s chatting on the telephone. More cops? Don’t know. Don’t care.

I crawl under the window and keep out of sight; and when I make it to my room, I go straight to the AC. I grab my bookbag from the inside after I remove the panel. I check the contents inside, which remain the same way they did when I left them. I close the AC and wash up, as if, at any moment, the hobbit-man will re-turn. I’m in desperate need of sleep; however, I can’t stay here anymore.

Before I dip, I go to the bathroom and change shirts.

As I slip into a fresh tee, I find scratch marks on my back. I closely inspect the scratches. It looks as if Freddy Krueger went to town on me last night. The thought of the beach comes back to me. The feel of each grain of sand rubbing against my thighs. Jamie’s nails digging into my back. Her lips. Her scent.

I run my hand across the side of my face and my skin feels coarse to the touch.

Did I really pay her?

I leave my motel with a sense of relief, even though my hangover is one for the records.

A few miles outside Topside I pull over along the side of the road and vomit. I don’t throw up any food—at least none that I can see on the road, mainly just stomach bile—and for about a minute, my stomach feels as if it’s leaping through my chest to kiss my uvula with each strenuous retch. By far, it’s one of the worst feelings ever. I get back inside the car and check the rear view mirror, my milky white face coated with layers of sweat. I feel ashamed that I let myself get this wasted last night.

I drive to the Point and stop at a rundown convenient store, which appears to be closed. I make sure the place doesn’t have any surveillance cameras before I decide to make a move toward the refrigerators in the back of the store. I grab a can of ginger ale, as well as a bottle of water.

Without the clerk noticing, I slip the drinks inside my back pockets and cover them with my shirt.

I stop at the checkout counter. The clerk is two generations older than me and possibly senile; and he’s watching FOX NEWS on a boxed television perched next to a slushie machine when all of a sudden a news report scrolls past the TV screen.

On the TV a crane is hoisting a newspaper gray car from the heavily trafficked San Potosí Canal. A swarm of cruisers, as well as unmarked cars, are scattered around the junkyard, the crane pulling the vehicle above the round head of a blonde reporter who shares the characteristics of a Barbie Doll. I can’t exactly hear what she’s saying or mouthing. I don’t need to listen to the news. I already know the news because I am the news.

The cameraman zooms in from a wide angle and gets a close-up of the waterlogged car, which happens to be my old Beetle.

The clerk turns to me and tells me that I look like I’ve seen a ghost.

I ignore him and ask if they carry “Pepsi,” as if it’s the only soft drink I drink. I already know they don’t carry Pepsi, only some off-brand, but I ask him anyway in order to keep him distracted. He says no and then I ask him if there’s a restroom I can use.
As he reaches for what looks like an ancient-looking spanking paddle attached to a key, I pocket a couple of snacks in front of the counter. He hands me the rest-room key, unaware.

I ask him a couple of trivial questions while strolling toward the entrance (Do you know how far Los Dementes is from here? or Know any good places to eat around here?), mainly to keep his attention away from my pockets. He gives me a few places, which don’t sound appealing to me. Local dives. Places like the Cove.

I open the door and say goodbye.

As I step foot outside, I hear the clerk say over the cowbell, “Seems like you need to find a new hobby, young man.”

I turn my shoulder and look him over.

“What I mean to say is that maybe you should try something else like getting a job,” he says, as he removes his glasses and folds the newspaper over his lap.

I stutter for a moment.

“Go on, you hear,” he says dourly, “but next time, it will cost you.”

I exit in a hurry, more pissed-off than anything. I skid away from the parking lot and then toss the ridiculous-looking restroom key out the window.

I drive roughly a mile until the very notion of the clerk calling the cops enters my mind; in fact, the old fuck’s probably on the phone right now telling them about the make and model of my car. I’m sure he didn’t get my tag number. I left in a hurry. I switch out the California tag anyway and replace it with a new one or better yet, an older one.

The ginger ale not only helps get rid of the bitter taste of stomach bile in my mouth, but it also settles my stomach.

I drive south, stop in the small town of Los Alamosa, and rent a room from a shady-looking man at Lucky’s, a shady-looking motel a couple of miles off the main high-way. The room’s about as cheap as talent; and I only have enough money to my name for one night’s stay, which is fine by me, although sleeping in my car would probably be more sanitary. The room at Lucky’s is worse than bad. Somehow, I can hear Thomas’s words in the back of my mind: You get what you pay for.

Despite having the same salary as a teacher, I wouldn’t call Thomas a cheapskate by any means. He was what I liked to call a “saver.” Never missed a day of work. Worked holidays. I tip my hat off to the man. He was a provider, through and through, the definition of a provider. Most of the money Thomas made as a cop went directly into savings. Whenever he did spend his money, say, for instance, on a washer—I remember it’d take him like weeks to pick one out—he’d buy the best of the best. He’d check out competitors or which one lasted the longest or which one would be the most efficient.

Whatever product he invested his money in he expected it to last forever.

VII

So many faces. So many stories behind the faces.

That’s how the dream starts out before it makes its ultimate decent into blackness: faces, many faces, all kinds of faces from human to animal to something unimaginable, all riddled by the frightening stories which consume them. Each one is made up of wax or some-thing similar. Each one melts into another. This goes on for what feels like hours. So many faces. So many stories. I can’t escape them.

The faces are crushed by a red darkness swelling be-hind my eyelids. Then, they’re at it again, the faces, each one starting to morph into the next.

Finally—eventually—the detail of each face is brought forth in a better light and then sinks into the red darkness and then a new face surfaces with extraordinary detail, then the face sinks back into the red darkness. The cycle repeats over again. Each time these haunting faces morph into one another, detail magnifies: each mole, each freckle, each blemish, each wrinkle.

The faces.

I have seen them before. In person. Somewhere. Another time. Another world. I don’t know when. Maybe another time. The past. Maybe another life, an-other realm. Each one is like ink stain on my mind. Snapshots lost in time.

Nico’s face surfaces among the spiraling ball of faces. Then, Yolanda’s face. Yogi’s—that was his name, not Yoda—Yolanda’s little brother. There was nothing little about him, though. His face was clean-shaven; however, he had this patch of hair underneath his chin, as if he forgot to shave the rest of his beard. Could be possibly setting a new look for men’s facial hair. Not a goatee or handlebar, but the Yogi patch. Yogi was the one who drove my car from the nightclub to Nico’s.

I visualize Jamie’s face as well, then back to Yolanda’s face. Her face morphs into Anthony’s face. So many faces. So many stories. They grow more intense, meaner. Insect-like. One face drifts back into the red darkness. Nico’s face…

I crack open my heavy eyelids. The room is bathed in redness. Neither night nor day, but somewhere in be-tween. I look around in confusion, first unsure of where I am. I roll out of bed. Peel back the curtain. One half of the sky is lit with a lurid red.

(I read somewhere in a book called Book of Phrases: “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”)

Maybe it’s Jimmy’s way of telling me to take the night off. I take the sky as—more or less—a sign of things to come.

So, I take the night off. I tell myself that it’s for the very best.

Episode Two

READ EPISODE THREE