Dangerous Spiders

1.

The first thing I notice as Amy Quills leads me to her giant house is the benevolence, like welcoming me to another world, here in this galaxy of crystal mirror windows, glass lamps of stars, splendid sculptures, and plutocratic architecture. She shies away from me, "Oh it's not that big a deal!" Oh, but it is, Amy. It's like nothing I have come to expect. A modern castle—some sort of secret cult, I know, is lurking past those iron-wrought gates, past the hedges of thick and untrustworthy greenery. The forest feels like it is closing in, but she just leads me on. Up the marble stairs, the command of the doorbell. A radiant chime, lasting longer than usual. "I should have worn a suit," I say. She gives me a sharp look, rolling her eyes.

It's funny the places you find yourself in sometimes. It's almost like waking up from a dream and forgetting where you are. Like a new vision wraps itself upon your casket of eyes, remembering the more ephemeral things that are still alive. Remember, this is where you are at this exact moment. And I don't have to describe this to you, the plethora of elegant door frames, the succulent paintings of high walls, the grand piano, and lion skins. You'd expect all of that. There's really not much that we have not been exposed to. We've already been to places like this, these strange, dreamlike places.

Formalities pass: Amy's parents come and go. I think her mom said something about being late for a golf expedition. I think her dad grunted a few words, then turned back to his cell phone, something about extract factors. Language of the rich.

As I said, I don't need to explain all of this. But look! I am here, given a rare treasure, indeed. I'm in their secret life. I'm in her world now. "Let's go up to my room. I'll show you around later, once my parents leave." An absence of parents, up to my room, oh, I am engaged in a storm of butterflies! In a catechize of lucid white, resplendent blindness, yes, just lead the way for I have lost my sense of vision all of the sudden. The white walls, rising to domes, pass the chandeliers above like a painted star-heaven. Angels must be misting up high; we might pass them on the way up, feeling their presence in omnipotent velocity, rushingly. I discover that there are three flights of fucking stairs. Amy's room is on the third floor. We twist and turn and I swear to you if she would have left me alone, I would not have been able to find my way back, this place is that ridiculously big. I feel like I am in an espionage movie—the luminous mesh, through secret corners. How did I ever land this part?

Amy's room isn't as big as I would have thought.

All the things you would expect in a girl's room: the lacey curtains and flowery scents and pink pillows and porcelain dolls. "They were my grandmother's," she explains sensitively. The carpet is white and tall as the fluff of a sheep; I sink in a little, feeling like free-falling all of the sudden, but she stops me, holding on to my arm. "Don't be silly," she says. She had an impressive collection of books, but upon closer inspection, they are the typical books girls like her would read: fantasy, vampires, and young love mystery novels. Oh, you know all about this you (you've probably read the same novels).

I am laying on her bed as she feels me small sugary pastries, and we talk about simple things to fill in the space of time because we are waiting for her friends to arrive. Are maps distributed electronically beforehand? Are there pamphlets out front? A pillow gets tossed in my face.

I call my friends too, see if they are on their way.

"Yeah, dude, we got held up at the Seven-Eleven. Problem with Smither's card."

"So use yours," I say.

"Na, can't. Didn't bring."

"We'll find something else. I'm betting we can find a cellar down here, with dates leading back to the time of the Great Gatsby."

"Hey! We're not allowed to drink any of my dad's spirits!" Amy hisses.

I wave her away.

"As I said, we'll figure something out. Oh, no, that was Amy. Yeah, no, it's just me and her right now."

I hear my friends joust and clap over the phone.

"What are they saying?" her eyes narrow suspiciously like dangerous cat-like daggers.

I look around her closets and drawers and cabinets. I am so close to all of her secrets, close to all the intimate costumes and chemicals that make her up. I look closely into her eyes like I've entered a valley of the skin, surrounded by her forest of pink. The flames are steady in me, but I cannot tell her any of this yet.

"They said they'll be here soon," I tell her. She rolls her eyes, smiling clumsily, wandering around the room, raising her arms and pirouetting in lascivious twirls, shirt inching higher now, abdominal skin awakens, bare feet, thighs thick and playful.

"Come here," she says.

"What do you want to do?" I am close to her now. She takes my hand in hers: soft and warm.

"We don't have a lot of time, but I can show you some of the rooms. And maybe my dad's miniature ship collection."

We are a world within a world right now. We are giants among the currents. Yes, show me the unexplored realms of your translucent heart. I'll ride this wave to the sinking end. These walls hold everything that I want to know about you. How much can we possibly accomplish? I don't tell her any of this.

It's not long before Amy's friends Mary Taylor and Kat arrive. Like clockwork, so do my friends Adam and Smither follow behind, duck-like. And begins the real voyage of our carnival want.

2.

A slug of introductions, even though we all know one another, whether passing through school halls, shy peeks across the classroom, or platonic rumors glistening inner eardrums. But here we are—spread apart evenly in Amy's living room (a monolithic cathedral-esque expanse). Even at our distances, we still have to speak softly, for our cadence of echoes can carry our messages across the luxurious tundra. Smither is staring mesmerizingly at one of Amy's giant paintings of a pastel sea. Adam is eyeing everything suspiciously like he fears all will wash over him—his atomical chemistry propels negative energy through the arcanum of this house. "House," by the way, is how Amy wants us to call it because technically, we are just in a house. A very large house, so the existence is extreme, fast, and vivid. Mary Taylor and Kat sit on opposite sides of the same couch, texting languidly on their cell phones, giggling from time to time. A whisper of a name, causing the ripple effect once again. Amy stands in the middle of our ambiguity, her hands clasp tightly together. She scans the room, looking at all of us, taking in her beautiful collection of moth-girls and us dinosaur-boys.

"So!" she cries excitedly with a wicked cool gleam in her rich eyes, in noblesse oblige.

3.

Oh, and let me tell you how we all met: it was quite a series of unexplainable events, toppled over one another with the blitz of time, the ersatz electric from satellites bouncing into our mobile devices. It was a phenomenon within itself, expelling our muddy aspirations and desires. It was our hedonistic craving that had brought us all together.

Amy Quills and I knew each other since we were little. At an early age, her parents had become very successful entrepreneurs, lifting her away to a better life. Her parents still wanted her to go to public school to be properly "socializable," so Amy and I remained friends, seeing each other throughout the melancholy days of essays and geometry, of pop quizzes and fifth-period study groups. She never thought that she was better than us (being rich and all). She would always wear simple clothing, maybe a wooly sweater and jeans, a weightless necklace, all of which portrayed infinitesimal envy in our eyes. She was always welcoming and very warm towards us ordinary shells. This was how she had met my friends, Adam and Smither. We all had the same study group together during fifth-period. We would share notes and ideas, laugh at stupid jokes, draw shitty doodles of baboons and stick figures in the most unfortunate scenarios. We walked down sidewalks after long and stressful days, drained, but excited at the future possibilities of the night. Our days expired in warm blurs. We were living in a combustible machine, and there was nothing to look back on.

"Let's go shoot some pool," Adam would engine off.

"Na, let's go over to Steven McCath's house and watch those psychedelic autobiographies!" Smither would interject.

It wasn't until much later that we met Amy's friends, Mary Taylor and Catherine (or Kat, as she would always remind us whiskery with a cat-like essence).

Throughout the semester, we would radiate off one another's flamboyant personalities, even mixing the more languid expressions with sprightly convergences, and somehow, this would all work out, in oddly tangible acceptance.

But we were never all together at the same time. Adam might be working one night; Mary Taylor would have a recital at school; Smither would be Smither and lock himself in his room, reading existential voyages of wizards and mongrels.

This was the first time we were all together at Amy Quill's "house."

4.

Here we are, that perplexing blend, thrown into this stellar ride! In the white expanse of dreams, some kind of another dimension, shaken and poured into the expensive Mongolian carpets. Together, with the pastel sea painted above us, with the castle-like columns, the golden spires.

"Drinks!" Amy squeaks, trying to get us circulating again.

"Let's start small, Amy. Bring us some of that bubbly water. Let us stir for a minute," Adam is the first to say. Then, "Oh yeah, about that, so we couldn't pick up anything on the way over."

"I've got some weed! from my dad. Had to sneak it out of his briefcase, lol," Mary Taylor announces.

"Mary!" Amy hisses incredulously. Mary Taylor is the only one in the group who has taken to marijuana as a nuclear part of her disobedient condition.

"What? My parents do it, so it can't be all that bad!" she tries to explain.

"Everything our parents do is bad, to an extent," Kat thinks out loud to no one in particular.

"Not Amy's parents. You guys seem pretty well off," Adam says, looking high into the ethereal plaster above.

Amy gives him a dirty look, rolling her eyes, "I'm just saying, they can make bad, uh, choices that can reflect on us."

"Just the bad choices she's trying to say," Kat says in a weak and exhausted tone. Kat is very soft-spoken, so whenever she speaks, we would always have to lean in and use extra concentration on her delicate cacophonies, humming into us like a hummingbird.

"Let's just get this out now: THERE WILL BE NO SMOKING WEED IN HERE," Amy declares.

"Hhmmph!" Mary Taylor sinks back into the couch, crossing her arms, and pouts. Shortly after, her phone chimes and she's back to her giddy self.

Kat plays with her hair nervously, her eyes resting on the mysteries that surround us.

5.

Will this even reach our limits? Lost and bound like a rocket in space. There are deeper connections somewhere at the bottom of all this. We can collect ourselves again, a repeating cycle, an openness. Lazy now, we hunt. Our eyes interlock to the negative matter of our reliance. Accordingly, Amy's parents will be out of town for the weekend. So thus begins our galactic momentum, building our energy.

Mary Taylor and Kat have disappeared somewhere.

"Where did they go!?" Amy cries, but we are already heading the other way, onto a new endeavor.

"Wait!" she shrieks.

Adam, Smither, and I advance down one of the halls, a parallel stretch, sort of like a wormhole—each doorway can probably suck us into another dimension.

"Guys, you have to see these miniature ships. They're—"

"Fuck the ship, man. We have other things to commence," Adam says, almost lost in dizzy fangs, snapping me back in the wake. Adam has an arsenal of epitomes that he wants to complete before we leave by the end of the week. He shows us the list:

1. CUT HOLE THROUGH GARDEN MAZE

2. HOOK UP W/ MARY TAYLOR AND/OR KAT

3. STEAL A GOLDEN ASHTRAY

4. RAVAGE KITCHEN

5. DISCOVER SECRET CULT IN BASEMENT AND/OR ATTIC

6. SKINNY DIP IN POOL WITH/OR WITHOUT A CHICK (PREFERABLY WITH)

Smither studies the list in a shaking whirl, extracting codes.

"Yeah, well I too have things I want to accomplish. We may have to break apart at some point," I say.

"With Amy Quills!" Adam says hungrily.

"Yeah, sure, whatever," I mutter.

"No, no, this is good. This is really good actually. Let me and ol' boy Smither here help you out."

Smither is active again, a rare gleam in his eyes.

"And can I ask to the extent of what exactly?"

But he waves his hands like a magician, erasing worries and nervous bones, "Just chill. Let's ride out right now. Tonight will be here soon enough," Adam says, and he's right.

Before long, the night shines down upon us, opening the vivid starry sky into a million sparks of fire. Silent lights, but we can feel its pressure on our skin; we can feel a slight gravitational grip from the lunar sphere like our bodies is reacting, pressing on melancholy cells. But inside Amy's leviathan, the artificial lights burn just as bright, for everything gets cast in a warm orange brilliance—almost festive and ancient.

We gather in another room that acts as a secondary living room, with all the same affluent features. We've talked Amy into letting us go down to the cellars for a bottle of wine (She reassures us that the Gatsby-era bottles are safely locked away in a subterranean crypt). She had relented because I guess she didn't realize the extensiveness of her dad's wine collection.

"Oh, alright. But just one!"

"Or two," Adam peppers.

We laugh.

"Or three! Or four!" Mary Taylor and Kat sing.

"Guys!" Amy cries.

6.

Floating, landing on the clouds, drifting, drifting, since it's easier in outer space. Diving into an ocean of gems, holding our breaths, reaching out endlessly, soaked in the ethereal toxins, transpiring with us, acting like an intoxicating slumber.

"All these things! All these things!" Kat purrs, more animated, but with that same hidden cadence.

Mary Taylor pokes at a large metallic artifact of a Mayan god statue. "Woooow!" she stretches with dumb fascination. Ting-Ting. "It's hollow!"

"Mary," Amy says warningly.

Next, Smither is caught in his steps, staring at another massive painting of a shark in the ocean.

Amy bumps next to him, "One of my dad's favorite paintings, from the Kano collection. He had gotten it in Spain way before I was even born." Amy acts as a somnolent guide, and it's kinda cute, following her around like we're in a fucking museum.

Shortly late, we lose the girls again (but accidentally this time because we were all supposed to go out back and scope out the pool).

"How did this happen?" Adam asks stupidly.

Smither is in a hyenic laughing spree, circling us.

"So were you guys serious about helping me? You know, with Amy?" I ask.

Adam snakes an arm around my neck, swaying to a wet thought, "Of course, man! Trust us on this. We're playing close to the book here."

"What book?"

"I know exactly what he's talking about, I read it," Smither says in a robotic wheeze. Smither knows about every book ever written, but I doubt he knows about the kind Adam is talking about. Then again, it was turning a corner (we had just made our way out of the kitchen) when Smither is the first to find the girls because he bumps into Kat. She was holding a drink and it spills all over her and Smither.

"Aw shit, man!" Kat says.

"Uhuhuhuh," Smither blunders.

Mary Taylor is practically on the floor, dying laughing. Adam joins in the drolling chorus. Gee, maybe Smither had read the book.

7.

Conversations at night (imagine the possibilities!). Candle fires on totem poles, the eerie sway of the designer blades—tall and limb-like. Fireflies signal in and out, fiery orbs of the insect world, waltzing under the invisible layers of darkness. Adam and Kat are smoking cigarettes by the pool, lost in the indifferent smoke. Mary Taylor looks bored and platonic, flirting with the screen of her cell phone. Smither is in the dark glow, messing with another bottle of wine. Amy and I are sitting at the edge of the pool, our legs circling in the cool warm water, becoming silhouettes against the luminous seafloor.

"Will you just listen."

"Alright, but afterward, I want silence. I want to just fill ourselves with not talking."

"You're into something unapproachable."

"How do you mean?"

"Like your mind is elsewhere." Oh, Amy, but how can I just let you know that the mind has such complexities, opening up with unique responses, with whatever attitude at the surface? My mind is of you; it is not quiet.

"You want to play some games?"

"I guess this bottle is helping. A little."

"I'm starting to feel it."

"With the taste, you'd never really expect it." She is playful. Her arm ricochets off my arm clumsily. Her bare legs splash in the water. All great smiles. All invigorating stares.

Then, a collision! A great big splash!

Adam is in the water. Shrieks from the girls. The shock scares Amy into a hug. Ah, but it was Mary Taylor! She stands amid the violence—her eyes bright and teary, achingly alive.

"Mary!" Amy cries in disbelief.

Kat is giggling.

Adam bobbles in the ripples, accomplished and apocalyptic. "Check if off, Smither! Check it off!" he triumphs. He had just landed a daring kiss upon the lips of Mary Taylor. Smither pops the cork—it sails into the galaxy above.

"Torch!" he spots mathematically.

8.

Haunted gaslights burn on each leaf, making dark shadows, but with teeth-like modules. The hedges loom higher than we had expected, almost into the milky night.

"We can't use the stars to help us even if we wanted to," Smither says, staring into the mouth of the garden maze.

"Relax, look what I have," Adam pulls out a little compass that is attached to his belt loop. Smither widens his Cheshire smile, with that same loony hallucination.

We edge into the maze. Dizzy turns, frantic and excited at first. More lefts than rights. Breathing increases (almost visible in the cold chimera). Hours burn up.

"Shit. Backtrack. Backtrack a little," Adam says.

"We've got to be near the center," I wonder.

"A little more."

Everything fucking looks the same—the green walls seem to be alive and watching us. Breathing. Its curious little branches try to reach out to us. Smither actually jumps from his skin at one point.

"I'm feeling weird vibes. I don't like this," he shakes.

"Remember that one movie where all those vines killed all those tourists?" I say to Smither with a wicked grin.

"Dude, not helping."

"Shut up. Just hand me the clippers," Adam says.

After cutting a huge-ass fucking hole, Smither feels a little bit better. He steps gleefully through the hole only to be welcomed by a million more dark leaves under the canopy of riches. Our torches light the way out.

9.

"No, forget it. I love the stakes, but it's a no-go," Adam says with skulls in his presence.

"Whyyy?" Mary Taylor sings, her eyelashes acting like lascivious butterflies. The girls want to play spin-the-bottle.

"What are we, in middle school?"

"High school, actually," Smither says.

"See, Smither is in!" Mary Taylor leans into him with a little too much exaggeration, but Smither accepts this—as her hair brushes all over his face. Counterfeit, lucid eyes. Her smile is as inviting as ever.

"What about you?" All eyes on me. A pause in the persuasive battle, the colloquy that will define this moment.

"Spin the fucker," I say, the same torrid tone as a captain at high seas.

"Wait, let me get rid of the last of it," and the last drops disappear into wet lips.

The interpolation of our fresh lips, weird little eels. Redness in cheeks. Haunting laughter. I forgot how much this will affect me: my favorite friends in new positions, with new outcomes. I forgot about the blur in my eyes. The fruity alcoholic hiccups. Things only speed up now. We spin the fucker. Smither ends up kissing Kat and Adam (Oh, the hilarity of Adam's turmoil!). Mary Taylor ends up kissing me (a quick peek, nothing to write about). Redness everywhere. I never get my starting moment with Amy. Adam even tries to jinx the damn bottle to my advantage or switch up dares. He shows me his folded hands as if to say: we'll try at it again tomorrow. And he's right. We've already accomplished enough for today.

We drunkenly make our way to the guest room. Don't worry, there are plenty of empty beds for us, but the beds are missing that beautiful heat from that special somebody. I guess our fantasy of ghosts can fill in the emptiness now.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and Amy is going to take us out to the cabin, a mile up into the mountains. Into whatever vacuity amongst the trees. I got heavy shoulders; can I carry the weight of your lumbering heart, a love that's too enlarge?

10.

I can mention the sun now—the blaze, the illumination. What better time than now? What are we really apart from now? The heat is alive and welcoming. The grass is thick, spreading out in all directions, green finger blade near a grasp of photosynthesis. The path is worn and tired, full of bloom and sporadic butterflies and other creatures with the fortunate appearance of wings. There are enough trees to start us out, so we become drenched in shadows; the occasional beam of sunlight through the branches, through the leaves. Neon blotches. We are moving with the glow in our heads, moving to the groove in our pumping chambers.

I follow close to Amy. The gang is spread out unevenly, with Smither at the very back. Mary Taylor and Kat have on little backpacks for the trip even though Amy had reassured us that we weren't venturing too deep into nature's chassis. She said that there were snacks and drinks at the cabin. Electricity and plumbing. Us guys are roughing it, thundering on.

After last night, we decide to take it easy, for our stomachs are still weak and can react to sudden jerks most disastrously. Our equilibrium, a hazy calamity. We think back to the golden chandeliers, the great moments we had found ourselves in, storing away our prizes.

Adam looks confident though, marching along with too much rhythm, occasionally stealing peeks at Mary Taylor or Kat. Smither swats at imaginary flies. Amy's hand is close to my hand; I can actually feel our electricity, pulling us close. Our fingers sway like pendulums in the free air. She catches my eye. She smiles.

"Rough night?" she coos, unfazed by the hazing of drinks.

"Me?" I scoff. "Not at all."

She comes in close to whisper something meaningful, but we are caught off guard by a loud vomiting spill. We all look back. Smither is in a bush, pouring himself out. Guts and all.

"Ewwww!" Kat cringes, looking away.

"That should be you," Mary Taylor narrows her eyes at Adam.

"What do you mean!?" Adam is caught off guard by a loud ringing rejection.

"Last night. At the pool. Or did you forget?"

But Adam just excuses himself and says, "I don't have to apologize for my actions."

"Why the hell not?"

But Adam just marches on, in that same fervid rhythm.

"Better. It's okay guys," Smither waves weakly at us. Kat, still turned away, offers Smither some water.

"Ah, lovely." After taking a tumultuous swallow, he tries to hand back the water bottle.

"Yeah, you can keep that," Kat says with a false smile.

Amy forgets to mention that her idea of a cabin does not consist of regular, indolent things you would expect a cabin to have. Her "cabin" looks like a smaller version of her house. It has two stories, magician-like glass mirrors, sleek modern paint in futuristic colors of white and blue-grey. There's also a lake with a small dock in the back with canoes bobbling steadily in the placid water. It feels like we are in a painting. A naturalistic post-card emporium.

"Still bigger than my house," Adam whispers to me, transfixed by the benevolent architecture.

"Well!" Amy claps her bird hands, "Let's get something to eat. Then we can go in the water." We follow like a troop of ducks.

Jug of ice water. Mmmmm. Wool cushions, we melt again in a comfortable stupor. Air-conditioned lavender resplendence. Through the giant windows, we see a herd of clouds tumbling by. The sunshine is still curious, in and out. Mountains are capped with snow, a silent behemoth, crusty and sad.

Adam finds his way to the bathroom. He runs into Kat, who's waiting for him behind a wall by the stairs. She blocks his way with tight lips, arms at her sides.

"Oh, yeah?" Adam decides to say with accurate fullness.

"Can we talk?" she asks.

"Uh, yeah?" Adam says with a questioning cut. Kat pulls him into another room: a large, spacious observatory that overlooks the sharp peaks of the mountains. Large bookshelves align the walls.

"It's about Mary," she says. Her eyes are jewels—bright and sharp. Expensive.

"What about Mary?"

"Why do you say it like that? Anyway, she just wanted to know... um, she wanted me to ask you..." Kat stumbles with juicy lips. Adam patiently awaits her reply, but Kat does not finish because Mary Taylor comes crashing in, red with fury; her eyes nuclear and dangerous.

"Mary!" Kat squeaks, "I was just going to tell him..."

"Get out! Just leave!" Mary Taylor hisses. Kat shrinks, dissolving through the door, leaving behind a stale trail of ignominy. Mary Taylor is upon Adam now, but he's out of her reach, looking through books with nonchalant disclosure, arms behind him, speculatively.

"Ehem," she coughs.

"What's up?" Adam goes, back still turned to her. A large gather of seasonal birds soar through the winds outside, silhouetted kites cutting in the stratosphere.

"Look, just ignore Kat. She's like jealous or something," Mary Taylor says, playing with a strand of her hair.

"Jealous? Of what?" he finally turns to her. They now stand just wavelengths apart, balancing on some kind of invisible phantom of gears that move the body. Their minds tick.

"The way she sees us together."

"When are we together?"

"You remember! Like that game we played."

"Ah, the bottle spun like a genius fucking circus act. Bizarre performances, really."

"And at the pool."

"The water was fucking freezing, thank you."

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I think it was all that wine we drank."

"I drank willingly, to my benefit. Planning on doing the same tonight," he says with a crevice of want behind his microscopes of eyes.

"Look, anyway, what I guess I'm trying to say is: she might have feelings for you."

"Feelings?" he tries the weigh the word, its substance in his head, in his heart. Does it spark anything deeper than the normalcy of breathing, in fervid longing?

"You know what I mean. She likes you..."

Adam studies this new information gallantly. How much can churn in one's own heart?

"And what about... you?" he asks.

"Me!? What about me?"

"You and me."

Mary Taylor shrugs her shoulders, orbiting, rotating subconsciously close to Adam's universe. Two distant suns colliding: it starts with the fire in their lips, now interlocked, intertwined. Their arms are mixed in the transcendence. Something in the void of their stimulus, switching to the moment of now. A power, a sudden jerk.

We watch as Kat runs by us, crying, out the door, disappearing beyond the trees. No one moves. We look at each other dimly.

"I better go check on her," Amy says.

Without Adam, Smither and I go out back to scope out the dock. I mentioned the wildlife emporium. Add dragonflies, silver reflections, omniscient forestry.

"Surreal, the landscape, the place," Smither reflects.

"Yeah. We definitely ain't in Kansas anymore," I say.

We watch the silent world work in its own belt of devotion. Take it all in because like a movie, this will all vanish before our eyes, eventually, leaving nothing but a fading memory. Just thinking about the vivaciousness, spaced apart as wild as the decaying molecules in our minds.

Even with the sun, the water still finds its way into the deeper parts of our bones. The ripples we created grow large, colliding endlessly. Weaker leaves fall into the lake. Smither and I swim in meaningless strides. A few splashes, submersions, floating. We can hear something in the world tick underwater with its subterranean gears of such strange workings. We are like echoes.

"So what do you think you might do?" Smither spits out a mouthful of water.

"What, with Amy?" My buoyancy keeping me afloat—the spaces of air in my body, a life-saving preserve.

"Mostly so. You see how Adam has basically swept all the other girls aside. Clear path."

"Yes, I guess you're right, Smither. You think I should wait until tonight?" But Smither disappears into the water, bubbles distending to the surface. He emerges on the other side of me, further away.

"The dark always opens up the best for possibilities," he says.

A roar, stretched in fervor somewhere above us: "Aaaaaggghhhh!" Adam atomizes into the water, a torsion of flairs, laughter, extinguishing the fury of whatever he has started. Splash down.

"Boy, that feels good!" Adam cries, combing back his hair with excited fingers. Smither is doing some sort of callisthenic routine, yipping to the pains in his arms and legs.

"Where are the girls?" I ask Adam.

"Getting dressed," he says with giant butterfly wings of a smile. I give him a suspicious look.

"Oh nah, yeah I wish," he rolls his eyes. "They're putting on their swimsuits."

"Ah."

The sun hides behind a herd of grey clouds. A deep wind comes from the higher mountain tops, shedding a crystal-snow gust.

"Shit, it got cold," Adam shivers, sinking lower in the water. "They might not want to get in, seeing as the sun is gone."

"Do you think fate is just something we've invented to make up for all the things that happen in this world? Are all phenomena just the creation of our tongues, our definitions? Have we just created existence all on our own?" Smither asks uncommonly. We look at him with queer rejection. Adam splashes an erase of water on him. We laugh.

"It'll come back," I say of the sun even though they can hear the uncertainty in my voice.

11.

Something is pounding behind my ears, a ringing. Miniature drills or dreams, pulsating, pushing against the walls of my mind. The air around my skin grows enormously, engraved, captured by my camera stare. Inverted, I am heated and something feeds on my chest. A deep pressure. A hand. She lies a hand on my chest, a systematic act of beginnings, fuzing with the galaxy that is her essence. We move in parallel apertures. She giggles, deciding to play around, and we dance with fists. She hits me hard, knocking me to the floor. I see the world move in cutting directions, a velocity of obscured angles. Her chasm of eyes, some sort of geological phenomenon behind those lustful infernos. She becomes dangerous. I cannot reach her anymore because she moves so fast. We chase each other down the long corridors. I spot Adam or Smither in a room with either Kat or Mary Taylor. I hear their laughter, sounding now like wild creatures (weird things with galling voices). Maze-like, again we twirl. We spiral. I catch her around a bend, grabbing her arm. We fall breathlessly, alert and radiant, now slower, slowly looking into each other's eyes. What wonders I can imagine! Something is pounding in me, a daggering paroxysm. Monstrous, pulling, stretching. There's nothing else to decide. We embrace. Nebulas have nothing on us. Such blackness in the love of our void...

12.

"Wake up! Wake up silly!" Disturbing my dreams, I rediscover myself. I guess I had fallen asleep after we had gotten back from the cabin. Mary Taylor and Kat are sitting on the bed with me. I have a pillow between us, so I bury my viciousness beneath. I try to think of morbid things. I see that the girls have their carnivorous eyes on me in a state of curiosity and hilarity.

"What?" I gasp.

Adam is in a corner rolling up one of Mary Taylor's weed cigarettes while Smither entertains himself with a glass of wine and a trophy of bibliographies on dead heroes and unsung masters.

"Where's Amy?" I manage to ask.

"Fixing us something to eat," Kat says with the same chime of a small canary.

"And before she gets back..." Mary Taylor sings, nodding towards the little stick in Adam's hand.

"We can't smoke that! Amy said—"

"Amy. Amy. Amy. When are you just going to let her know how you feel, man? Shit, stop dreaming about her. It's not like we all don't know," Mary Taylor says. Everyone else nods approvingly. I look to Adam with an ignominious stare. He just shrugs which interprets as: I had to call in reinforcements. So the girls end up pinning me down, torturing me for a confession. Mary Taylor tries to tickle me with her aggressive fingers. Where is that damn pillow?

"Come now, let him alone. He'll figure it out, if he hasn't already," Adam stands and fires the joint as he walks out to the balcony. The girls follow dreamingly, leave me to stir in my own dismay.

"You coming?" Smither asks me.

"I think I'm good. I think I'll wait for Amy."

"Oh yeah, good idea," Mary Taylor pops up again, a stream of smoke filtering from her lips. "Go find her and distract her for a minute in case she comes." Then, a vicious finger points at me, "and tell her for Christ's sake. Tell her what's really on your mind." They disappear into the miasma of the night, where echoes are always more welcomed in the conflagration of bodies and minds—the infectious transformation through the lungs, the melting curve, the whirl, the spell.

And now, the agony with the complex gears, warm, and waiting to leap from the depths of me, hanging on to the tense reactions that I long to perform. I keep playing back the scenes I have created, a microfilm with my million neurons acting for the best of me, blessing me with such clear visions! Oh, and the trace is sometimes distorted when I come back to this strange glow of—

"Oh, there you are!" Amy flutters, wobbling unsteadily towards me with plates of chicken poppers.

"Let me help you," I offer congenially, my cataracts friendly, playful, holding many secrets behind my eyes.

"Thanks. Where is everyone?"

"Who?"

"Everybody!"

"Oh, yeah, listen, there's something I've been meaning to, uh, tell you," all this with fresh chicken poppers between us. She tilts her head to the side in acute fascination. Those eyes: still burning with crystal vivacity. "There's this thing that's been on my mind lately. Well, not lately, but constantly, for a while now actually," I stumble stupidly.

"What is that? That fucking smell!?"

Adam runs up between us, a second too late in the realization of interfering with something more significant than his stoney appetite. Then, in rushes Mary Taylor and a floaty Kat, clumsy and giddy.

"What is so funny?" asks a now suspicious Amy. But before anyone can answer, the chicken poppers disappear from my and Amy's hands. As they enter a stupor of weed hunger, Amy and I stand awkward and quiet, not quite sure what to say. As I begin again, she turns abruptly, in no mood to listen to my anguish.

13.

I feel an entity, lost in some sort of realm similar to this. An end describes nothing. We are the hauntings we create. These dizzy thoughts, and yes, our memories are heavy, almost sharp as knives. This is an expression, as we light ourselves up.

Amy is not angry anymore. She sits quietly on her bed, occasionally letting me hold her hand. Nothing is settled between Adam and his conundrum of affection for either Mary Taylor or Kat. They are blobs now, indifferent, with their color-coded shorts and tight tank-tops, revealing soft porcelain skin, with dangerous parts barely holding on, and I can see that Adam is taking all this into account as he juggles in his head the most efficient declarations to sustain his complex needs. He gives nothing away of course; his movements are simple, thought out, to the point. The girls cave in. Adam knows what he wants. He controls most of the rest of this. Watch and see. Smither comes and goes, sneaking another bottle into the room, filling our glasses like an equation that involves our bodies, our effects. Swift laughter and we are still warm all over.

"So tell me then. What were you going to tell me earlier?" Amy unexpectantly asks me. I am caught off guard, looking everywhere for some sort of answer, and I even look to Adam, but his eyes just grow large with an invisible push. The girls are silent with stupid smirks, acting like they are playing with their phones.

"Well?" she presses with a slight gleam of excitement, of readiness, like the weight of my words—formed from the underworld of my actual spirit—can act as some sort of caption to my appetency.

And I will say it.

I fucking said it.

She takes this all in, somnolently, machine-like. Remember, we are just electricity. We are just built to compute. And finally, fuck it, I close in, and in front of everyone, I kiss Amy Quills. A carousel of applauds from my friends. Everything just spins, blending beautifully into a smear of ordinary colors, but we are not ordinary, Amy and I. We are the ride, the excitement. We are the fireworks. Finally.

14.

Later that night, we play hide-and-seek. I'm hiding somewhere in the attic, but this is not a typical attic you would come to expect. This is more like a loft, where the roof folds to a pointed apex, low, but still quite comfortable. Anyways, I am here, crouched behind a vine-etched couch. I hear footsteps. They are getting close, so I push myself as low as I can get. My hand is on the floor and it sort of falls under the couch. I instantly feel a sharp pinch, a heavy burning pain, like electric mixed with poison. I look under for the source of the bite. Footsteps are right in front of me, searching erringly. I don't know if I end up making a sound or not, but just as Amy finds me, I look down and see a small black spider walking across the floor. That well-known hourglass, lucid and red. Her hands clasp down on my shoulders. "Gotcha!" she says.