castirongoldfish

She stepped outside onto the wide, manicured boardwalk into one of those rare afternoons when objects are empty of meaning, when the crowded, distorting haze of memory sinks away and leaves the physical world free of content. Edges are sharper, the light off windows is blindingly bright, the air is colder, sounds carry further. The distant buildings of the city across the water have the look of being uninhabited. Sailboats in the harbor seem brittle and weightless.

Later, as the sun sets, memory will return like the buzzing of insects. But for now, the strangeness of objects is glaring in this stillness. They stand apart from each other as if superimposed, without the haze of memory to draw them together and blend sharp edges. Later, when shadows begin to dull boundaries, some of what was here before can be seen, ghostly, on the edges of vision - in the remains of demolition and the unfinished sidewalks of this place. In the broken concrete and asphalt under the docks and the boards washed white by salt. Then she can almost make out the shapes of dark, echoing warehouses, smelling of mildew and rust, every window broken, concrete floors stained, heavy steel doors swinging open.

This is when her mind will drift again, loose focus, distracted by the things it can no longer see clearly in the fading light. Songs, words spoken, scenes from movies, things forgotten, disjointed facts will come to the surface one after another, They will inhabit the buildings and fill the spaces between the atoms of the sailboats, taking on the shape of objects and replacing their structure like the forming of petrified wood.

But tonight is yet to come. For now, in this deliberate sobriety, the world slowly descended as she stepped short narrow steps through the shades of the every day. With the darkness comes that caul of banality. Guardian ignorance shorn, hungry eyes harvest the expanse about, digging into the shadows of doorjamb, unfiltered. She walks alone through the crowds, in the silence of her head, filling the absences. It's on one of countless forsaken corners, abandoning the sun under a latticework of upper story porches and hanging banners that the shadows begin to reveal themselves in echoing familiarity. Penned in by smog stained shafts of light, it, for simple denial of each and any other pronoun, watches in absolute fear with only it's pitiful cardboard box, held together with grease, loose change, and asphalt water, between. High noon approaches with long, sure summer strides, catching this one unaware. This it looks out, with eyes gouging deep into its cheeks looking out from its patched black merchant marine cap and painfully, small sweater, woven coarse and stained nicotine by age, frayed from many nights of service as bed linen.

She barely peruses the rest of it, not the jaw that hangs open to its tumorous knees, not malformed and overjointed fingers, nor even it's booted feet, straining in elephantine dimensions against cracked army leather. She sees the eyes, wide and desperate, trying to look past the light for deliverance. She sees the gold.

She sees the gold and remembers. Remembers deep, the whisperings, caught gossamer, creeping on the peripherals of dreams. In the darkness of her, one by one, sentinel stars open to reveal themselves. A reason exists for the scar behind her left thigh, now bound in steel does reason latch. Once, she tells herself, of a chase down an accidental streambed, though whether for frolic or fear remains untold. There is a door that opens to nowhere.

Memories begin to weigh, to forsake all pieties of politeness, and turn from trickle to avalanche in but a moment.

For a moment she remembers.

Until, in the darkness of her, one by one, heavy lidden stars forsake the hope of the moment and close, once more securing their charges in the endless chill.

There, staring at her leather pumps, that she sees the shadow shifted, marking the passing. The ascent to that moment of apogee is done, and the retreat has begun. Looking to the beast, there’s now a disparate of society in its place, seen frame by frame between passing cars and the throng now rising back to their place as a empty tide of the pedestrian.

Reaching up, she wipes a tear from her eye, and wonders what it's doing there. Lunch. Lou and his crew are waiting, and she's already late. Picking up a jog, she quickly grabs a Diet Coke from a nearby kiosk, sucking it down to clear out her cobwebs.

Lunch. Valerie finds herself halfway through a flavorless salad, vaguely aware that she's been smiling, nodding, rolling her eyes, supplying all the expected content-free responses of the dialect spoken here - a private language heavy on sarcasm and self references. Examining the croutons piled like rubble in the corner of her plate, she feels the weight of gravity, as if slowly surfacing from someplace very deep.

What just happened? She glances around quickly from face to face. Nobody's staring... good. She retraces her thoughts though the many overlapping conversations of the past 20 minutes of lunch, probing carefully for the point where she had become unanchored, sinking.

She finds the thread.

Shortly after the food arrived, the conversation had, predictably, turned to complaining about work. Kevin the techno-geek supplied his latest conspiracy theory, this one involving spam. "Haven't you noticed? Not only is there more of it every day, but it's getting weirder. It's not just sales pitches and bogus internet links anymore. I think there's a hidden message..." The last spoken in a dramatic stage whisper.

Andy, in need of a haircut again, ever willing to bullshit, agreed though a mouthful of burger. "Hey, I know whatchya mean! Especially the porn stuff... there's always a bunch of words that don't make any sense. Subliminal messages, right?" Catherine, the wife, began shifting in her seat, clearing her throat.

Seeing Andy veering toward the edge of this marital cliff, Lou broke in with mock seriousness - "Or so you've heard, from your degenerate, single friends... right Andrew?" Who stuttered comically, pretending to fish around for a response that would save his ass, while Catherine next to him shot him a look with those expensive eyebrows before raising her hands to her face and shaking her head in dismay, cueing laughter from the whole table. She's always showing off her hands nowadays, Val noted, as if she's proud that ring cost Andy as much as a new car, damn ugly too. The early afternoon light caught the ring and it burned gold, suddenly the brightest thing in the room, and Val was unable to look away.

Gold. Remembering now, she stands, muttering apologies, leaving a twenty by the limp remains of her lunch, hearing the voices behind her resume their normal volume after a polite pause. They're used to her by now.

Outside again, she breathes, expecting a weight to lift, but it doesn't. The air is heavy, clouds coming in, streets and buildings still hot and sunlit, sky becoming the color of steel. It's going to be the worst type of summer storm - slow, lingering, malicious in its laziness. She wades back through the lunchtime crowd, crossing streets, feeling as if she's out of sync with the flow of traffic, fighting upstream, meeting elbows and briefcases.

And reaches the corner again, somehow knowing the creature and its cardboard shell will be gone, having to see it anyway. What remains to save her sanity is an unbearable stench, staining the landscape, causing those who pass by to hold their breaths and quicken their strides. Nothing else, not a single piece of the organic structure - the rusted coins, pieces of string, scraps of newspaper, aluminum cans, broken pens - gone, swept away.

Valerie steps inside a nearby doorway, out of the crowd, out of the first fat drops of rain, and stares blankly. "What's a matter, miss?" A flower vendor, packed up for the day in anticipation of the storm, has stopped his covered card in front of her, parting the sea of foot traffic. She manages a weak smile, which seems to worry him more. "Here, for free." She realizes he is handing her a single red rose, long-stemmed, barely open, wrapped in plastic. And he is gone, humming tunelessly, through the crowd.

A block, maybe three, later she’s tucked the rose away in her purse, and it is now, with novice professionalism, impeding her attempt to reach an almost forgotten pack of cigarettes, mocking her from behind the green hermetic seal of a plastic baggie. Ripping it out from under layers of the weekly priorities, Valerie’s success was short lived.

Hit hard and quick, some faceless body and successive invective comes from the unceasing onrush and the packet goes flying. As Valerie turns, scanning between footfalls for her fix, she’s bumped again, loosing what little footing her obnoxious pumps can provide and collapses. Only accidentally Samaritan hands keep her from the cement as a few of the herd pause out of rubbernecking curiosity, drawn by imagined scents of blood.

She looked, crowded by heads backlit faceless by arcing lightning, and felt the seething race all around her. A heartbeat, the cadence of the footstep, the unified breath of something massive smacked at her across that instant, she felt it to her bones. Twisting, cutting supports with flailing arms, she was caught roughly by the cement, and forced herself through the gathering crowd, which parted in confusion. Desperately, painfully, she ran, though she knew not how far until she found a small alleyway to collapse in.

Fuck it. With that the last of her defiance washes out. It wasn’t like she even had a lighter. The brick here was cool, uncomforting but reassuring none the less in its resolute solidity. She slides, uncaring that the rust colored puddle she lands in could probably do more than just ruin the skirt that had served as last week’s great accomplishment, on sale at just $80. Bright red pumps sneak glances at her over her knees, and bundled there, under an umbrella of collapsed hair fanning down past her shoulders, she stares back at them.

She takes some time to look up and out of the canyon alleyway she’s wandered into. Prerequisite dumpster roots and reaching fire escape trunk define the borders of the hollow center between the two self-important buildings. Unusually, cascading down its side, the entire far wall had fallen victim to some parasitic ivy, which guided the hammering deluge into a breathing, heaving waterfall of green.

Warm as it is, the wet is infiltrating, digging cold deep in with insidious speed, but thoughts of getting a cab, while offered up by that quiet rational voice in the back of her head, sounding too much like a grade school know-it-all, were promptly ignored. Here she felt safe, just her, the roiling clouds above, the assemblage of precipitation, the resolute stone, the expansive ivy, and even the occasional peal of thunder. She surveyed her little kingdom, and saw that, in fact, she was not alone.

At the entrance to the alley, opposite the chainlink-razorwire which guarded it’s other end, stood a form little larger than herself. Striking red hair cascaded in tight curls, unaffected by the pounding rain, and circled shades and sharp features. Walking forward, her boots, jeans, and leather jacket cut a primevally unsettling air, giving her stature beyond her size.

“You are a hard girl to find,” the intruder spoke, with humor edging the words from a joke only she understood. “You know that, right?”

“Look,” Val looked around, but it appeared, save some silly ascent into the fire escapes, the only real way out was the way she came. “I don’t know what you want, but it’s been a long day, I was just about to be on my way.” She quickly thought about telling some lie about being expected by some mythical boyfriend, but doubted she could sell it as anything more than a pathetic little lie, considering her present condition.

“But I told you I was coming, even made arrangements,” the newcomer spoke, and Valerie felt uncomfortable under the intensity of her scrutiny, even with her sunglasses offering some small respite. And then yet another memory came up for air in the butterfly stroke of this day, and she looked down at her purse still on the ground.

“Rose. Your name is Rose, isn’t it?” She didn’t know why she knew, but she knew at least this much, and that was the first thought all day she could remember feeling confident about.

Her interloper nodded, with sadness twingeing the edges of her smile, if only for an instant. “At least you’re not all gone. Look. We need to talk. There’s a Pogrom on, and we’ve not much time.”

With no further formalities, Rose turned on one sharp heel and, to Val's numb surprise, headed for the back of the alley, winding gracefully deeper into shadow, between piles of trash in every colorful stage of decay. Filled suddenly with far more undefined dread at being alone in the alley than at following this woman, Val wrenched herself to her feet, scooped up her soggy bag, and hurried clumsily after.

The twisted, rusting chain link fence at the back of the alley, far from solid on closer inspection, turned out to have a jagged, dripping, ivy-covered gap only visible from one angle. Rose ducked, slipping quickly and effortlessly through, jacket and hair remaining unsnagged and dry, leaving the suggestion "careful" behind over her shoulder as she disappeared.

If Val had thought she couldn't get wetter she would have been wrong. Emerging painfully on the other side of the fence with a scrape across her ankle, hair drenched, a tear in the left the arm of her raincoat, she paused, blinking in the dim.

The ivy formed a canopy overhead, arching between the two neighboring buildings. The sky was not visible, and Val's eyes slowly adjusted to this green filtered light. She had the sensation of being underwater. The air at ground level was cool and moist, the rain only reaching the earth as mist. Lichen bloomed gently on piles of crumbling brick and cinder-block underfoot. Pools of water green with algae and teeming with life filled erosion hollows in overturned foundation stones. The ivy had developed, over decades, a symbiotic rather than parasitic relationship with the walls themselves, roots slowly finding their way into masonry gaps and replacing mortar, forming a soft, fibrous support structure in its place.

Val took all this in and the word "balance" came unbidden to her lips. She sensed that this was a living, breathing space and realized she had been holding her own breath, trying to make herself small and light, dreading what a thoughtless intrusion could do here. The pressure of green life and stone above was as palpable on her skin as the humidity.

But Rose, seeming to move through the place without effort or fear, stepped between piles of rock as easily as she had navigated the rotting garbage of the outer alley. She made her way to a part of the wall on the right, about ten feet from the fence, which was all but invisible beneath the green. Val saw that what she had thought was a trick of light was actually a depression in the wall here, tall and narrow. A door. Rose pulled what appeared to be an old skeleton key from a jacket pocket, and a moment later was pushing the door soundlessly inward and stepping in, and down.

***

Rose, pausing inside the doorway for half a breath, had a moment of doubt that this girl would follow. Was this too much, too soon? No time to baby her.

Rose was impatient. She had spent February in Seareach, sitting by the window in the only waterfront bar left open for the "locals". The Water's Edge Tavern, known affectionately as The Edge, stayed open in the off-season as a form of community service, catering to fits of manic depression, tourism withdrawal and seasonal financial hardship with cheap beer and a few run-down arcade games to get these grey half-people through the winter. They spent their days at the bar, resolutely not looking out the window, eyes fixed on any one of three televisions, waiting out the cold until that spring day when all the lights would come back on, the taffy machine would receive its yearly maintenance and crank to a start, the rides would be oiled and polished, the stuffed animals, plastic toys and cheap metal watches dusted.

Rose had resigned herself to seeing the winter out here, and had even been looking forward to the day when these people would fill with light again, stand up straighter as if re-inflated, begin speaking to one another again, joking, laughing, made whole again by the prospect of another chance at summer. At her seat in the nearly-empty bar, she had gotten into the routine of spending her afternoons with a gin-and-tonic and a stack of newspapers, methodically going through every crossword section. She would pause for a moment after each paper to note the changing tide as it slowly advanced to eat last night's fragile snowfall, then receded to leave a line of cold, damp sand where hunched sea birds optimistically pecked.

She had even gotten to enjoy the songs the pinball machine sang to itself, on a short loop, with a five-second pause between tunes that was somehow relaxing in its monotony. She had developed an understanding with the lone bartender, Mike, a young college dropout who meant well and who had been woken up by nightmares he could never describe after attempting to hit on her for the third time. The next day, pale from lack of sleep, he had treated her with almost old-fashioned respect and seemed relieved enough to cry when she gave him a genuine smile. After that, he would find her new out-of-town papers every few mornings, bringing them like offerings with her drinks.

It was one of these papers brought by Mike, a weekend edition Times, that cut her stay at Seareach short. She could remember vividly even now, months and miles later, how the words had slowly emerged out of disorder, forming the meaning she had been looking for but had admitted to herself she was hoping never to find. Putting her pen down, she had finished her drink slowly, watching the waves. An hour later, she was on a plane.

Even then, there was more waiting. Rose spent the spring and the first weeks of summer sitting at the windows of every Blue Moon Coffee Roasters in the City, knowing there was one on nearly every corner, each identical except for the accident of position. Over the first weeks of April, well described as the cruelest month, she began taking her coffee black, first out of convenience, then slowly out of some harsh internal principle she couldn't quite explain. She filled five and a half cheap stationary-store notebooks with tiny, dense handwriting while watching delivery trucks and taxis drive by with obscure or catchy slogans. "Big Ed's Masonry - done right the first time." "Chang's Kosher Chinese Food and Pizza." "Repent!!! Jesus Loves You!" "Victory Cab". "Harmony Cleaning Service – let us make your house sing!"

It was late August 8th when Rose found what she was looking for. The next morning, as caffeine withdrawal tightened the skin on her scalp and throbbed at the corners of her vision in fuzzy dark shapes, she carefully set things in motion. Now, despite the nagging of this coffee ache, which she could still feel in her eyeballs, she was fairly proud of her planning. Behind her, she could hear Val stepping into the corridor and gently closing the door behind her. Time to get to work.

Val didn’t even notice that she was closing the door until she was half way completed. Pavlovian urges coasted her through the process until some neuron, way in the back, dared to raise it’s hand. She just came through a gap in the fence, and there it was, ivy covered walls, trash strewn along the corners, placid in its normalcy through the portal, deceptively far away.

“Shit girl. Shit or get off the pot.” Rose’s yell careened off the wooden library corridor, finding Val from all sides. “You can come with or you can go back, but you can’t just stand there gawkin’.”

>>>>

And so they went. Bookshelf inlayed walls surrendered to basement drywall with a quick dash through a door on the right, and then to an balcony promenade. Through the bushes it was a manhole, dropping into a sea of cloth. Stumbling, caught on the swaths in all directions, Val forces herself free in the direction she thought she watched Rose escape, she saw instead rose running perpendicular to her exit, sprinting through a dance club oddly naked in the fluorescent light of its off hour maintenance, stripped of all it’s shadow glory. She chased the beacon of the red hair under the main dance stage, behind the curtained edging, and into what she expected to be some storage crawlspace of cobwebs and dust.

She collapsed on the tarpaper roof, falling out of a broken vent some seven floors up on a fraying tenement. Beyond the lip of pot marked teeth of brick, the city rose, drained colorless, a crown in a rainbow of gray. Val stared, entranced by this perverse vision, hoping it to be some snapshot backdrop, some fallacy to rise and laugh in some shared joke. But there it was her city, and even now, as she stared, open-mouthed, she saw, in each building from shack to skyscraper, the dancing particles of TV snow, violently playing underneath their forms in cardiac throws.

Behind them, the sky rushed out, drunkenly vivid and rude. No blue eked through, instead a psychedelic scream rose out from the horizon. Purples clashed with oranges, with thick, Van Gogh clouds cut into the sky, ignorant of the color poor graveyard below them.

Rose had not continued her escape, instead she perched, one foot mounting the edge, sunglasses in hand, and let the rushing wind lift her hair into a massive knot of clashing locks. Walking forward, wary, as ever of the edge, she came just short of even with the stark redhead. Below her she noticed the caged trees with their, now gray, iron collars, verdant and richly green, almost luminescent in the street.

Valerie took the moment and, while Rose absorbed whatever it was she absorbed with each digging breath, absorbed Rose. Closer than ever previously, she examined the features, broad, full and deep, framing, not unexpectedly, two eyes of deep burnished gold, where hints of the sprinting clouds reflected. Occasional leaps of hair showed ears long and narrowing to a point further than anything natural. The features themselves though showed profound peace, simple, uncomplicated joy.

“Where are we?” To Val, it could have been the Back Bay coast, couched, as it was, with water to the east. But that was four, five miles from where she started and that little dash had been, maybe, a half minute. If that.

“Somewhere safe. Well, at least for a little bit” Rose didn’t look at Val as she spoke, still caught on the horizon. She sighed: “hell, we can’t stay here all day, not for wanting. Best we’re off.”

Suddenly she lurched forward, jogging ordinarily down a electric wire connecting this building with the adjacent. As Valerie watched with wide open eyes, she stopped halfway, turning, as she stood causally there as the wind whipped her hair about.

“Alright, guess it was too much to hope…”
>>>
Valerie landed, starting to enjoy the rush, having even snuck peeks the distant ground in her last span. Here now, two blocks from where they began, Rose had stopped, looking at her intently. She was examining her, top to bottom, bottom to top, where Valerie, flush with her aerial journey, met her stare challenging. Rose nodded.

Before Valerie could react, Rose had struck her, hard enough in the sternum to send her floorwards. She landed on her hands, and before a word escaped her, she felt it, nothingness. Where flesh met the sandpaper surface, she felt the intrusion, stealing the nuances of sensation from her, first the wrist, then elbow and shoulder before she knew what was happening. There wasn’t enough strength left in her arms to try to escape it as it rushed up, boiling nil passing her neck and washed over her head in tidal certainty.

Struggling, both her small hands refusing to let go of the cold knob, she tried again to twist, hoping that, maybe this time it would be the time. She failed again. Again. Dropping, sobbing, she reached up, pulling at her short, natty hair that smelled of kerosene, fingers sliding through the tufts.

Through the darkness and crying which had given up on tears, on noise, on comfort, she stumbled back to the stained blanket. She swatted at an already retreating spider, and wrapped herself tightly, trying to conserve what warmth she had left. Though she didn’t see her breath, it had been so cold, so long, that she couldn’t remember warmth. No, that was a lie, she could remember it, probably better than it was, sitting down here in the basement. Occasional cracks, under the door and in where the ceiling met the walls poorly, let in the light. It wasn’t much, the darkest she’d seen when she got there, but she’d learned. She’d learned much, and again she looked at the empty glass and plate long ago licked clean. Daddy would come down soon, she’d learned her lesson, she knew better now.

Please Daddy.

Rocking, head covered by the blanket, it was almost too late before she heard the sound. They were back, low and sleek, blooming out of the darkness at her. She ran from them, these rats now bold from their common hunger. Recent cuts on her arms and legs would have been scars of victory.

The first one that lands on her she grabs and throws into moldering boxes in the corner, and a second that bounces off the ceiling in rage spiced strength. But she is weak, from hunger, from lack of sleep, from the dreams, and they are legion. She runs. They bite. Her arm explodes in pain. There’s on her neck. Blood flows. She bats desperately at it as yet another rat scales her leg and bites the back of her thigh, and the heat engulfs her, searing along her body, slowly, lovingly.

The pain is exquisite. Valerie feels herself licking her lips at sensation. From her shoulder to her knees she felt the flesh hot and abused, transient, unfortunately. The burnt incense and fats couldn’t hide the smell of her flesh for long, but it had ceased bothering her long before.

There would be a pattern. Caller always left a pattern. Sure, she would have to wait, but it would be there, Caller’s signature on her body. At least until it healed, but that might be decades. She could hope.

The agony was removed. She looked back, an action which resulted in her head fishtailing. As Valerie struggled to focus she realized she, this she, must be stoned, but what remained to delineate the two quickly faded.

She looked over her shoulder, a naked shoulder, over a naked back scarred and still smoking in spots, to the man behind her. He was standing nearby throwing the last of the irons into a iron kettle of water, eliciting pops and hisses of steam.

She reached over and scratched his arm with her foot, playfully. He looked back, with wild hair encompassing unkempt features, and eyes that refused to reveal themselves. It was a face of shadows, and showed the little hints of smile he left in response to her advances. He, unlike her, was dressed, jeans and a black shirt, now spotted with the tell-tale maroon of blood.

“That’s it, we’re done.” He dropped the words, sadly.

“You sure Caller?” her voice was filled with euphoria, it had been a long morning. She stretched her body on the fur, trying to look coy at the same time she realized it would probably only make him angry. “Remember, this isn’t just so you can collect my smiles”.

Caller stepped back, severe now, against the earthen walls of the room. Oily smokes billowed in his passing and now defended him in a wall of translucence. “Do you think I enjoy this?” There was quiet disappointment in his voice.

“If not you should, why should I be the only one enjoying this. Hell, when was the last time you enjoyed anything.” The anything died on her lips as she saw him harden to cast iron features. Shaking her head, she hopped off, bare feet on the irregular stones, hair touching her tailbone, and walked outside.

Outside the barrow, rising out of the earth, the snow’s still falling. Bushes are laden with albino fruits in the junctions of branches. The wind, domesticated by the flanking hills, still managed to nudge the trees to sway, leaving a quiet chorus of groaning to escort her walk.

The goat is where they left it this morning, its stuffing still spread across the stump where the left it, it’s body hanging from the tree growing out of the barrow mound. The creature had long since ensanguinated, and once she had wiped the snow off the top, a thin layer of ice separated her from the blood beneath. Her reflection came clearly, Valerie’s own face, but harder, colder. She stared, brushing away the errant snowflakes that descended upon her meditation.

So caught up was she, she didn’t notice Caller until he placed the blood ruined fur over her shoulders. She looked back at him, and on to the blood spatter and footprint track she had left behind her.

“Still not going to tell me what the goat said?” asked Valerie.

“There are rules to these things.” Caller looked as frustrated as Caller could allow himself. “Is there any chance I could talk you out of this fool venture?”

“What do you think?”

“Didn’t think so.”

“Caller,” she wanted him to be happy for her, but she knew better, “how can I refuse a challenge like this?”

“I will miss you then.” With this he nodded, and walked back to the barrow. Valerie watch him until he closed the door behind him, then turned toward the south. South, where past the farms plots abandoned back to the trees, past the three building towns, past it all, someone waited for her.

“What the hell was that?” Valerie tried to keep it steady, but she knew the words were sobbing out of her, heaving through the hands that were trying to pull the tangled curtain of hair from over her face and wipe away the asphalt crumbs. She didn’t know how long she had stood there, but Rose sat, there on the edge of the roof, a pipe in her mouth, absentmindedly streaming smoke which caught in her curls.

“A horror. A dreamer died here.” Rose’s

“No…The…” Valerie, looking for the words saw only Rose, her severity split as her lips opened into a smile, revealing a row of perfect, pointed razor teeth.

Valerie’s tears stopped, replaced by fear.

“Oh. Did someone remember something? I had hoped you were smart enough to sew some memories into you.”

“I… I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this at all. Who… no, what the hell are you, anyway?” Val tried raising her chin, stressing the “hell” with what she fancied might almost be a defiant tone. It came out as defensive, with a tremor she failed to steady. Damnit!

“You do understand, honey,” Rose smirked, then softened with a hint of sympathy. “You just don’t want to yet. You will, when you’re ready.” She turned away, adding under her breath, “I just sure as hell hope that’s soon…”

Val looked back out over the city and realized with a start that at some point the late summer sunset had come and gone. The sky was filled with the dull purplish haze that never really went away, even in deepest night, a glow absorbed from streetlamps and the gaping windows of skyscrapers. So hard to find a true darkness here, as if the city always had at least one eye open.

She looked around to see Rose striding over to a rusted trapdoor in the flat roof surface, boots crunching on the loose gravel. She hauled the door open with a grunt. Val winced at the sound of shrieking metal. “Time to go.”

Valerie tried a little laugh. “What, we’re taking the stairs?” But Rose was already gone.

***

Val tried counting the number of flights they descended, but soon gave up, dizzy. The darkness was punctuated by tiny landings, most but not all of them dimly lit by the cold, abandoned blue of a mercury vapor lamp. Val concentrated grimly on keeping the flash of Rose’s hair in sight whenever possible, and keeping the hollow sound of her boot heels close. She didn’t notice passing any exit doors.

Almost lulled into a trance by the pattern of ten steps down, three steps flat with a turn to the right, ten steps down, Val collided with Rose when she finally stopped, eliciting a mild curse. She was amazed to find Rose warm to the touch, radiating heat through the stiff leather. “Hang tight,” the woman advised dryly. “Here’s where it gets a little tricky.”

With that she slid aside a narrow door into an explosion of light and sound. Val’s cry was lost in the roar and screech as she jumped backward, almost falling. Then it was gone just as suddenly, and they looked out into the empty subway tunnel, lit by small maintenance lights recessed in the walls.

“You’ve got to be joking!” Val managed to choke out.

“Nope. Sorry, kid. Just watch where you step.” And Rose hopped out onto the concrete between the two sets of tracks. Swearing under her breath, Val followed, heart pounding, trying frantically to remember which part was electrified.

With Rose leading, they jogged through the tunnel, northbound according to the small metal markers they passed every minute or so. Without them, Val would not have even hazarded a guess which direction they were moving, or even which part of the city they were under. Other markers, green, showed a series of letter and number coordinates. Green line? Not much help. She thought she could hear the creatures moving out of their way just ahead of her field of vision. Mice. Rats. Heaven knew what else. Val shivered.

Suddenly she was aware of a low hum in the distance. “Rose! Is it a train? Goddamnit! Rose!”

“Almost there” was the only reply. But a moment later Rose slowed, then stopped. “Ah, here we go. Almost missed it…” She hopped gracefully over the southbound track and onto a small iron ladder fixed to the side of the tunnel, up five steps, and onto the narrow access platform.

The hum was getting louder, more insistent. She found the door, slid it aside, and motioned to Val. “Don’t just stand there, girl.” Val held her breath and jumped, not for the first time of the night cursing her slim-cut skirt. She caught the ladder and was up.

Not a moment too soon. The metal hum had risen to a cry, and the sucking wind ripped at their hair and clothes. Val turned to look just as the train went by on the opposite side of the tracks.

Car after car, almost quick enough to be subliminal, she caught the faces of the travelers. The late commuters on their way home from the office, worn, weary, some standing gripping the rungs with eyes closed. The early partiers on their way out to the bars, laughing, joking, teasing. The homeless, hollow-eyed, resigned.

Each face was unique, but what was captured in the instant was something inexpressible, massive, uniform. Mindless. Or, not quite mindless. Primitive. It was what she had felt earlier the same day, in the anonymous crowd on the street, in broad daylight. The recognition smacked her.

She turned to Rose and saw that she felt it too. For the briefest instant the bravado had fallen and her face showed simple fear. Their eyes met, and without a further word Rose stepped through the door with Val close behind.

***

They passed through countless more flights of stairs up, winding featureless corridors, flights of stairs down, doorways to other corridors. Val was fairly sure they had gone down more steps than up, and thought she noticed a slight drop in temperature. The walls, where she could see or feel them, seemed damp at times and had decayed from smooth concrete to flaking plaster, then to brick. She had long since lost any hope of finding her way out alone, and felt like a small child as she hurried after Rose, helpless.

When they came through one last doorway and stepped into a normally lit room, Val blinked as if staring into full sun. As her eyes adjusted, she took the place in. They were in what seemed to be an old elementary school classroom. Wooden desks, the kind with the chair built in, were pushed against the far wall. Small institutional chairs were stacked high, nesting, or scattered throughout the room. The wood floorboards were dark and stained with age. Blackboards, filled with tiny writing, smudged with messy erasures, took up most of the front wall. To one side was a heavy oak desk. Every square inch was covered with newspapers, pencils, notepads, empty Styrofoam cups, computer components she couldn’t identify, and three old-style computer monitors.

Perched, elbows resting on knees, on the back of one of the chairs behind the desk, was a grey man. He had pale skin, steel grey hair, dark grey goatee, and his black shirt, pants and boots seemed to be covered with a thin film of dust. He had been staring at one of the monitors as they walked in and didn’t look up. The weight of time was heavy in the room, as if he had been seated there for eons. A steaming cup of coffee sat on the desk just to his left.

“Zeke, be polite for once! Say hello,” Rose teased.

“Hello, Valerie.” The grey wings at his back swayed slightly with his soft greeting and Val twitched. She had mistaken them for drapes or an overcoat. A wave of nausea struck her and she sat heavily in the nearest chair.

“Zeke! See, now, you’ve given our guest a fright. She’s still finding her way back to herself. Why don’t you take a little break and tell us a story or two.” Rose grabbed a chair, swinging it around backwards to straddle, elbows resting on the back in an expectant posture.

Zeke sighed gently with one last glance at the screen before him, unfolded himself from his perch and stood to pace the front of the room. He was nearly seven feet tall and swung his joints carefully, as if out of practice. The great wings were folded neatly as a hawk’s, close to his back. Val could see now that they were made of an impossible number of the tiniest of feathers, ranging a full spectrum from dirty white to dirty grey. His eyes, like Rose’s, were a deep gold. He began his first story.

***

Long ago, when the Earth was new and fresh, God sent down some of his angels to watch over the sons and daughters of man. They were meant only to watch, never to involve themselves. But they may have been unprepared. In Heaven all was bright, clean and orderly. Unchanging. They had always thought of this as the ultimate beauty.

The Earth seemed dark, decaying, composed of soil and flesh. The angels did not understand their Father’s creation, but being supremely wise, neither did they recoil in distaste. Instead, some of the sent ones felt they should involve themselves in the doings of man, for how could they truly watch what they did not understand?

Time passed. The sent ones began to see beauty in what changes, dies, is reborn. They began to understand, began even (if it were possible) to enjoy the weaknesses and illogic of those they watched. As a certain affection blossomed, some of the watchers found the strangest thing to be true. They found that they lusted after the daughters of man.

Unsurprisingly, the daughters of man were not difficult to seduce. The watchers lay with them, and God was angry. But how could he punish them? The Lord being perfect in all things, he naturally found the perfect punishment. The fallen would live with their choice, forever. What was new and enticing would, over the ages, reveal itself for what it truly was. The fallen would have an eternity to realize their mistake in choosing Earth over Heaven. As part of their punishment, their wings were ripped from their backs, leaving ugly scars that never healed to serve as a reminder of what they had lost.

***
As he finished, Zeke directed a pointed look toward Rose, who glanced around behind her with a mock “who, me?”. Val looked from Rose to Zeke and back, realization slowly dawning. “But… you’re a woman…” Then flushed bright red at Rose’s exaggerated wink.

“Oh, don’t worry, honey. You’re safe. I’m taking a break from all that for a little while. Too much else going on nowadays.” Zeke rolled his eyes and began his next story.

***

Ages ago, when snow covered the lands to the north and thaw was not yet a known word, a race of pure beings lived in peace. The fair folk spoke to the land, understood its signs. They had little need for shelter or clothing, dwelling in warm hollows in the living Earth. They were graced with wings of snowy white which they used to reach the treetops and look out on the vastness of the continent.

Centuries passed in quiet. But gradually, the winged beings saw change. The snows were shrinking and their beloved trees were changing. The snow rabbit and the white wolf were moving further north in their eternal dance. To the south, they could see smoke from settlements rising above the gradually thinning blanket of the evergreens.

The fair ones wondered what kind of creatures could be living down there. For a long time they considered but did nothing, being thoughtful folk. But as the decades passed and the smoke of cooking fires gave way to something darker and more troublesome they decided a few must venture down.

Those who returned from the expedition came back terrified, speaking of an ugly, wingless race that lived above the ground and could not hear the language of the Earth. A suspicious, jealous, greedy people, these humans spent their time mindlessly reproducing, burning the land, creating poisons, squabbling amongst themselves.

The humans were a brutal, powerful people, and the winged ones were afraid for the land. But a few of the youngest had hope, and they volunteered to sacrifice their peaceful lives and live among these humans, sure they could teach them to listen to the Earth and to one another.

Because the humans were such a suspicious folk, the volunteers had to do the unthinkable – give up their wings, their most obvious mark of being different. They chose to keep their scars as a reminder of what they were leaving behind.

In the many years ahead, the brave volunteers who had begun with so much hope and love slowly changed as they lived among the humans. They began to despair, began to hate the humans, and possibly worst of all, they began to understand them. Eventually, they gave up trying to change the humans and concentrated on simply getting by. They never returned to the lands to the north.

***

Finished, Zeke turned back toward the desk, stopping at Rose’s insistent throat clearing. “Oh, alright,” he sighed. “Just one more.”

***

In the ancient era, a race of winged folk lived among the wingless in relative peace. It had always been the case in the brief and dim memory of the people, and no one thought to question. It was an age of survival, and the winged had certain skills they were more than willing to share.

This time of hardship continued for generations. But gradually, the winged and the wingless built a life they could rely on. Winters slowly became less of a race between resources, strength and the cold as they learned together how to prepare, store food, build homes in the hillsides. Spring was always a joy of celebration as the days lengthened and life returned to the plains.

But one April, just as the people were drawing in deep breaths of the first hint of warmth, a terror came to the sky. A shadowy hand approached the life-giving sun. Cold and darkness seeped over the land. The people panicked, watching helplessly as the sun was entirely swallowed. And in that final moment, as darkness fell, the most astounding sign appeared in the sky. It was a great bird, feathery wings of flame reaching out on either side of the blackened sun as if holding it prisoner with great talons.

(Here Zeke paused by a blackboard, erased a swath, and sketched an illustration.)

In the unnatural darkness the wingless ones turned as one on the winged, driven mad with fear. The winged who survived fled far into the hills. Naturally, the great sky bird released the sun and fled as well. The survivors traveled, nomadic, from continent to continent, staying among the wingless people of each land until the coming of the next sign.

Sometimes the winged would be hailed as gods at the coming of the great sky bird, but most often they would be persecuted. They studied the sky and learned to predict the coming of the terror, disappearing quietly just ahead of it. But some grew tired of this restlessness and wished to stay among the wingless people. They did the unthinkable to go unnoticed, removing their wings at the shoulder. Some say this physical change, amplified and carried out over the generations to come, eventually became mirrored by a soul-change, an atrophy of a less visible kind.

***

Val felt groggy, as if coming out of a dream. She had no idea how long she’d been listening to Zeke’s gentle voice.

“So… which story’s true?” She asked hesitantly. Parts of each story had rustled deep memories in her, or memories of memories. Thankfully, none had been as shocking as what she’d felt on the roof earlier that day.

Rose grinned, shaking her head. “All of ‘em. Or none of ‘em. Take your pick, darlin’.”