Space Between The Ears

I always drove and she sat there, lost in her thoughts or the passage of vague shapes and scattered lights. We left the beach in the dark, headed inland across the forested sections of the highway, headlights scattered across the redwoods in an erratic illumination of giants.

She read for an hour, her chin pressed deep into her chest, book perched delicately on her knees. Something thick and Russian.

She read until she couldn’t, her voice weak when she asked me if I could pull over “just for a second”.

In the dark she puked across the road. Once, twice. I thought about getting out myself. Maybe I was supposed to comfort her. She would like that. But I didn’t.

It made me think of those first nights together, after she got out, when we were younger. A shared bottle of whiskey and the inexperience that had us drink too fast and too much. Puke stained porcelain.

Adults now and how much and really changed? I drove the same car, took the same drugs, fucked the same girls until we left, just weeks before. Something new, I told her, a new beginning. Or maybe it was just a stop along the way. Either way, it was better to leave, at least for now. She needed it, I think. She needed me.

I had the AC cranked, despite the night. The car grew hit with overuse and we’d been driving it hard for a few days. She wore a thick wool sweater draped over her thin body, small remnants of her breakfast hardened onto the strands of fabric. Egg bagel, the cheap gas station knock off. We were survivors, her and I. We could make this last.

We drove through the night and at some point she fell asleep again, head rested on the window, her black hair splayed out across her face, forehead bouncing softly against the glass, a rhythm to the drumbeat of rubber on concrete.

I took a bump sometime between two and three, the coke just enough to drag me out of the valley that I found myself falling into, the spot of road beginning to bob and bounce against the weight of consciousness.

My brain went into overdrive, the black sky a tad more adventurous, potential surfaced in the ink rather than that deep realm of uncertainty that had followed us across the border.

I stared into the black and saw a light, a guide that gave us something to shoot for.

What’s south of us?

Focus on the image and the sharp light became a yellow glow that stretched upwards, a beacon of sorts, the glow of a civilization that rose from the desert with dystopian severity. I saw the days leading up to it, the steps that would lead us there, eventually. We could make it in a day. But we wouldn’t. We didn’t have to. We had the coke and the cash to last us a few weeks, at least. We could afford to take our time.

In the silence and the isolation, I formed a plan. It all led to Vegas.

I pulled over somewhere near the ocean again. The turn off was worn but passable, my eyelids too heavy to continue, the coke waning from my system with haste, a penetrating exhaustion left in its place. I could hit it again, continue on. But what’s the point? Where’s the rush? I followed the gravel and it ended in a parking lot, silent and empty aside from the sound of that great mass of water nearby.

The landscape had changed, opened up in front of us, found us somewhere in the rolling hills of Catalina wine country. Apparently.

Des had woken up and mentioned it, her voice still thick with sleep, that damn book still clutched in her lap. She slept with it the entire time, like a teddy bear held by a child. She looked younger by the day, as if time moved backwards and the child I knew could obscure the woman she’d become. I liked the child better.

It’s been a couple years. A text from nowhere and perfectly timed. I’d left the company, without notice. One day I just stepped down off the roof and continued walking, got in my car and realized I wasn’t coming back. The cash was there and the car still worked. And I had a vision, something I could call purpose. And then she texted and it was so simple. We fell back together like we’d never left each other. She was different though, for now.

I could see what she did as soon I went to pick her up. I could sense it. The way she carried herself and the thin quality of her skin. A woman that lived in the night. Expensive clothes to make up for lost ideals.

But the money. So much more than I made. So much cash to take with us. We left that night and just drove. Our compass had one direction. Head south and figure it out from there.

Since we left, the road began to wear at her edges, grind her down into a level of innocence I was beginning to grow comfortable with. For some, fragility was a hindrance. But for me, it just made sense.

It was dark still, an ounce of dawn beginning to emerge through the sky but no more than was necessary. Only vague shapes could be seen, colour absent from the grey light that worked its way outwards. Dark bulges of the hills to the left, a darker, invisible ocean to the right, its sound stretched to meet us across an unseen chasm.

From the day before, I knew that the fall had come to the hills. It was orange in that warm all year sort of way, the leaves comfortable with their continued existence, despite the approach of winter.

The beach would be empty and rugged, a rocky hostility to that stretch of land between us and the water. The sandy paradise existed somewhere to the south.

We were in the middle of nowhere, a lone car on this stretch of road. The last town had been more than an hour behind us, a tiny, limited piece of habitation that was really just a gas station. Maybe houses somewhere nearby. Maybe not. We were still pretty far north but the waves were there and they dragged me from the car, bringing me out into the dark. I brought out the headlamp, used it as a beacon and she followed me silently down a trail, the dirt slick with moisture. We traced our way through the bush and the rocks, a circle of visibility brought about by the light. It was just enough to navigate the trail.

She knew the routine, had watched me every morning since we crossed into California.

I was stripped by the time I hit the sand, clothes laid to rest in scattered piles that marked my path to the water. The stretch was empty, abandoned. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. It was only skin.

Joy. A surge of energy as I sprinted towards the water, a massive dark presence that showed itself in bursts, a scattered reflection of moonlight across the tips of waves. A smile was plastered across my face and a need to shout and scream and laugh as I plunged headfirst into the first break. The waves were massive here, each wall of water forcing me backwards until I plunged underneath the froth and let the quiet wash over me. Down here it was even darker. Cold and silent, the underside of the waves passed over my feet and grasped at my skin, a tiny force that gave little indication to the entity that moved across the surface.

The next wave took me higher, at my knees, and dragged me backwards. I let it, went limp to its pull and felt the wind spin and control my movement. You couldn’t fight these things. Sometimes I tried, just to taste that power because as soon as you tried to force it, the water would tear you apart, rip you along the bottom and spin you into the sand in a violence that could break your spine, if given the chance.

It was chaos and the only way through it was to allow it to take you, bend you to its will and set you floating again on the other side of it, somewhere in the calm.

I broke through the surface and glanced back towards Des, her body small and dark from here. A huddled shape hunkered down beneath her sweater, face covered from the wind and the ocean spray that wafted through the air. She looked miserable. That was just her.

The book provided her an outlet. That and the sex. The rest of her life seemed to carry with it a weight that carved her face into a hard scowl, a bid for survival against the elements. It was a hard life to be surrounded by people who couldn’t understand. They pretended they did, I was sure. But they really couldn’t. Not entirely. That’s why she needed me.

We would get her through this.

Emerging from the ocean and I watched her shape for some recognition, a glance, maybe, just a little one. Something borne of appreciation. Closer to her and I could see that her eyes remained focused on the sand in front of her, the tips of her shoes buried in it. The book lay in her lap, the headlamp set on top of it.

I clenched a fist against my leg and pounded the muscle, strode past her without a glance and made my way back to the car.

I loved her. But it wore on me, sometimes, this self righteous aura of indifference she dragged along with her, stone faced and sour.

Things were supposed to be different. And eventually they would be.

The motels put us back. So today it was the car I laid back in, the back seat void of anything but a thick comforter, a makeshift bed to rack out on when there was nothing else. I saw no point in carrying forward from here, not until a few hours at least and I left Des on the beach, a book and a light, a sheltered piece of real estate to lose herself in once again.

So, I slept.

As I slept, I saw death. But it wasn’t like the death I’d seen before. This wasn’t an anonymous loss of life.

It was Des.

Her body lay in a hole, freshly dug. Not a neatly dug grave but a hasty, irrational circle of struck dirt that fell away and opened up the ground just enough to shove her crumpled body inside. Somehow, as you do in dreams, I knew I had dug it. I knew that I had shoved her inside and left her there, uncovered and exposed to the degradation of her flesh and bones. From above, I could see her face pressed into the wall of the hole, invisible to me as it faced away, her hair grey with filth but black enough that it obscured her upper body with its weight. I sensed something else and my mind’s eye rose upwards, a camera frame that took in the edge of the hole and the woods beyond it. Somewhere back there I could see a shadow moving back and forth, a vague shape that I saw as feminine, witchlike. It passed between the tree trunks, a fleeting, wispy existence, solid here and then hollow and invisible over there. I watched it and a dread began to rise somewhere in my body, the unconscious image strong enough that I felt them beyond the dreamworld, somewhere out there on the physical plane. I watched the shape and willed myself out of my head, attempting something of control.

But I was frozen in time and the shape continued to move steadily through the trees, closer and closer to Des and her body and my omniscient observation.

As it got closer, I could see a stronger outline, track its movements with increasing severity. That's when I realized, it was dancing

When I woke again it was bright and the sun was low in the sky again. The fear of the dream wasn’t fear at all. It was purpose. Destiny maybe. My role was solidified.

I had never been to San Francisco, never been anywhere in California before this. I was indoctrinated by the palm trees and the beaches and the glitz of what I’d seen in movies. I assumed it was like Vancouver, but warmer, brighter, more diverse. Some danger, maybe. A dichotomy.

The highway wove its way through the hills, the traffic light, each set of headlights broken up by clumps of darkness that lasted ten minutes, fifteen, even. The dark added comfort to our approach, each step of the way flagged by the random flash of signage. A countdown to the bridge.

Des was quiet, lost in the music and her reflection in the window, face turned away from me to peer into the glass and the invisible landscape beyond it. We took intermittent bumps, rationed but effective, each one serving to get us that much further down the road, a slight rise in conversation each time that shit hit the nerve centre beneath our skull.

She looked at me, a rare moment passed between us where we saw each other, made eye contact and I felt as if we were here, together. Or maybe that was the powder. It seemed to forge a connection in its wake. For once she started talking.

She cleared her throat, reached for the bag and took a fingernail of it, snorted it hard into her nose. Practiced, precise.

She offered it to me and I dug up my own piece of inspiration. I took it off my fingernail the same way she did.

Funny, I had been told once, by some dealer, that the grown out pinky nail was a sign of wealth. A sign of power that went back to Chinese nobility. They got others to do their labour, their hands-on work. They could afford to grow the nail out and it became symbolic of the power to direct others. But mine grew out naturally, as a matter of ease. A constant companion. My biological spoon to bump on the go, make the hits efficient and frequent. It provided a means to the end. Let the coke heads call it what they want.

Somehow I found a link in my thoughts and it made me think of business women. The “professional woman”. Dress to impress. High heels and a short pencil skirt to make an impression. It was an impression, alright.

These were items of culture that justified itself through the expression of power.

In reality, they began and ended with vice. Bump a line to fill the void of privilege. Look fuckable, it’ll bring you up to speed with the rest of the shallow pieces of ass that rose through the ranks of corporate disintegration. Either way, it all ended the same way. Sex and drugs. Stimulation. I would argue that it all came down to half of that.

Sex.

The drugs were a means to the ultimate end in itself. The tangent formed itself and the words came from nowhere in particular.

“Everything is about sex. Except for sex. Sex is all about power.”

At some point I had stopped listening to Des. Lost myself in my own thoughts and broke her speech in two with the quote that came to mind.

“Don’t know where I heard that. It’s a quote from somewhere. But I think it makes a lot of sense. Everything is about power.” I gazed off into the dark just beyond the headlights, laughed to myself, just a bit. “Pretty ironic. You don’t get power from simplicity. We complicate things. It's a simple concept, power. But to get it we have so many hoops to jump through. You know what though?”

I stopped for a moment, glanced at her. Her face was off into the window again.

“We’re wired for it. Our brains are meant to achieve power in some way. Thats fucking evolution. It's why we’re here, in the first place. Conquer and spread our seed. Reproduction, sure. We’re born to fuck. But you can’t fuck without power.” I slapped the steering wheel, hard enough that I felt her jump beside me, slightly. “That’s why, right now, I feel so goddamn good. Because there is no power like the power of complete and utter freedom.”

I laughed again, the coke rushed through my system and it all hit so hard, punched my thoughts into overdrive and formed that sense of purpose that brought everything into perspective. Every nook and cranny, now aligned. As if the chaos of the universe had suddenly become synchronized. That’s the beauty of this stuff. Your throat burns with the bitter chemicals that drip down the back of your throat and your nose clogs and hurts and its all synthetic. But suffer in silence because the end result is worth it. And goddamn does it feel good. A brain on coke kindles with a passion that’s undeniable. And thats why it makes so much sense. That’s an invaluable trade off.

I smashed the wheel, harder this time. No response from her and drove me forward, a show of aggression.

“I’ve found god, man.” I laughed loudly now. Louder than was comfortable. “I found god and guess what?” Her facelost in the glass.

Fuck it. Sometimes she didn’t mean as much.

“I am god. We all are. It’s all about how much we choose to let others guide us. How much we choose.” Quieter now. My hand throbbed where I smashed the wheel. Outside the light was beginning to break, its approach invisible to me until now. The dull grey light had begun to form shadows, the outlines of shape that stood out from the black.

I waited. Silence from her. Perplexed. Intimidated. Unsure. She was okay. She just had some learning to do.

Then a small voice.

“Oscar Wilde.”

I glanced at her, back to the road. “What?” The name sounded familiar, unable to place it.

“It was from Oscar Wilde, that quote.” She spoke against the window, her voice muffled by the way she buried herself in it. “But I looked into it once, and they can’t place its source. Oscar Wilde died in 1900. The noun “sex” wasn’t used until 1929, apparently. So what’s that tell you?”

Quiet, again.

Then a rush of words that filled the void between us and hung there, exposed.

“That quote has been used multiple times since then, a few times substituting the word “power” for “aggression”.” She repeated the word and it no longer sounded like it came from beneath glass. Her face had turned to meet mine and the quiet voice was dipped in something else. Something I could barely place, but recognized in time.

“Quotes are quotes. It’s a snapshot somebody had at one point in their life. Nothing more. It falls apart in that one word actually. Life. It’s ever changing.”

I swallowed, slightly. I recognized ridicule.

“Is that what life’s about Damian? Aggression? It all boils down to that, eh?” I glanced her way and was suddenly close enough to touch her, an interjection on her part. I could see the grey of her irises, pale borders of smoke that were all but swallowed up by the ink of her pupils, the coke doing its best to form two black oceans within her face. I turned away and focussed on the road.

“Oscar Wilde died in 1900.” She repeated the fact, voice still close enough to feel her breath on my neck. The wheel sent vibrations through my palms.

Then her voice was back, sheltered by the glass and my hands relaxed slightly.

“I wonder what he would have said about that now?”

And we continued on, my neck warm with the void of her breath and the slight sense of anger that wallowed in my stomach.

A spoiled child sometimes. That’s all she was.

By the time we hit the outer limits of the city, the grey outweighed the black and a slight mist settled over the road and obscured the world beyond a certain point. I watched the red struts rise from the grey as we approached the island, the iconic red cables a staple in my mind, but only from the perspective of pixels across a screen.

“Surreal.” I mumbled this to myself, Des was resigned to her book once again as the light hit the pages and allowed her to see.

We parted the mist and broke onto the bridge itself, the struts massive from directly underneath, the cables stretched away into a heaven that existed beyond us, too far above to make out.

The hour was too early for morning traffic and we made our way through exposed concrete rather than the bumper to bumper metal that would come later. I ran on instinct, leaving the concrete and the glass of corporate culture and continuing on into the steep hills of the older districts. I drove the slant of these streets and marvelled at the incline. It was a wonder the car maintained traction, a sideways glance out the window betraying how steep we climbed. Des kept her nose buried, a glance outside once or twice, nothing more.

Finally, we hit an area that appeared cheap, less a tourist spot, more of a red light district. Neon signs etched their services into the streets and I saw the reassurance of female silhouettes, dancers outlined in the red and pink lights, cocktails advertised as an afterthought. At the appearance of the strip clubs, Des raised her head and watched it all pass by.

I caught a glimpse of the word hotel, pulled into the curb just beyond it, my car rolling backwards immediately, anchored by the front tire as it settled against the step.

The entrance was a weathered glass door built into the relentless stream of clapboard store fronts, each one a proprietor of filth. Pizza, bar food, girls. Each of the storedronts were locked up tight, a metal grate dragged across the doorways.

It was just us out here, and the homeless. I guess it was just the homeless.

We almost missed the door, walked past it once, got turned around at the corner, a petite black man dressed in thick wool sweaters and dirty jeans, his hunched frame formed a backstop that we bounced off and headed back the way we came.

We sidestepped a sprawled out young woman, her eyes vacant and her tank top too pink for the grey skin and scabbed arms that hung out from beneath it. Des watched her as we passed, her own face taut and concrete compared to the slack and empty skin of the woman.

We stepped into the hotel and it was a cramped bit of space, a collapsed stairwell that ran straight forward, the clerk’s desk up near the end of it.

The clerk was Indian, the brown type, silence used as a greeting as he slid the check-in paperwork over to us. The staircase continued, behind our backs and up towards the roof, to the rooms somewhere above. A kid came bounding down the staircase now, an oversized red track suit that dwarfed his already thin frame, a voice that was too loud for the morning, too energetic for our own exhaustion. He spoke on the phone, a bold glance at Des accompanied with “PO wants it” as if he was king shit for being on probation. He stopped in the small space behind us, voice doing its best to add substance to his presence. It weighed on my nerves. I gripped the pen tighter as I filled out the paperwork with bullshit info, slid the cash across to the clerk and turned back towards the kid.

He was still staring at Des who stood there with the book clenched between her hands. It’s weight formed a shield to the space between her legs, as if she could feel his eyes on her from behind her skull. The kid had taken advantage of the space to sidle up right behind her. He stared at the back of her head and licked his lips slightly. A black dude stuck in a skinny white kid's body, elements of the street mixed with a closet suburban nerd.

He spotted me across her shoulder, held my gaze, eyes lit with youthful rebellion. Superficial, it could only go so far. I stared back at him, one elbow propped against the corner of the desk, hand buried deep in my pocket. I wouldn’t use it, not here, but my fingers still danced across the hilt of the blade. A reassurance and a reminder that translated into resolve that reflected itself in the way I watched the kid. There was no imitation here. And he could sense it.

I watched the surface crack and that stare morph into a cower of sorts. The kid feigned indifference and glanced at the wall, the row of pamphlets that sat there. They gathered dust, those bits of coloured paper. Advertisements for the activity of tourists, not these people.

I took the keys from the clerk and we headed upstairs, the wood soft and loud underneath our steps.

The place would have been cozy, even comfortable, if it weren’t for the humanity that existed here. We passed a crackhead, reformed or current, his jeans caked in paint and his hands shielded by rubber gloves as he dragged multiple garbage bags down the stairway past us.

In the hallway, a massive man, six foot seven at least, his white hair greasy and long, his shoulders hunched and his face filled with a hollow look that I’d seen just moments before, draped in pink instead of black. A retard, it seemed, his voice low and slow, mumbled words meant only for himself as he lumbered past us.

The room itself was small, a simple mattress that laid in an ancient wooden bed frame, the whole contraption loud and treacherous.

Across from the door I slid open a window caked in paint chips, a rush of cool air that added a breath of life to the stale death that sat between the walls. Des sniffed slightly, took in the smell, kicked her shoes off and collapsed into the bed. I stared outside for a while, my view blocked by the rise of the building next to us, the brick of it close enough to touch. The drop was straight down into garbage. Below us I found the the thin man again as he dumped his load. I saw the bald spot that had grown to envelope his skull, and then he paused and glanced upwards, caught sight of my disembodied head as it stared down from above.

He glanced away quickly, back to the pavement, shuffled back out the alley the way he came.

Village of the damned.

I fell into bed beside her, raucous added to the silence. Eyes on the ceiling, I traced a network of cracks that formed a black web above us. I could feel her body next to mine, saw the rise of her chest out the corner of my eye as it disrupted the air between us.

We lay there, quietly.

In time, I could hear that her breath had deepened.

Sometimes I marveled at her comfort around me. She could sleep deep in places like this, surrounded by uncertainty. She was protected.

I turned to look at her face, her eyes closed against my gaze, her breath coming in steady waves of unconsciousness.

So I followed her.

I dreamt again. It was rare before but these dreams came more and more, each bit of sleep accompanied by at least a small glimpse into an alternate reality. The dream meant very little. Just a scattered collage of images, half of them gone by morning and forgotten by the time the light forced me awake again. I was on my side, facing away from Des. I reached for my phone, saw that we had been asleep for hours, the city loud and frantic with the approach of late afternoon. I listened to it for a moment, the din that crept across the window sill. Cars and people and the occasional gust of wind that wound its way through the brick and concrete and passed by our little square of inhabitation. Gone again.

I remembered a tree, a dark, scraggly tree that’s branches were bare and ancient, blackened with fire or a sort of rugged coastal existence. An empty beach. Images that passed back and forth but failed to form completely. And then it all rushed back to me as I remembered the face and the sensation of a mouth between my legs, my dick forced down a throat. An anonymous, beautiful throat that formed the tip of a human being that crouched between my legs. I could see her body in the dream, as if I watched from the third person, just legs and ass, a back that knelt in front of me. In the dream I gripped her head and skull fucked her, slow and deep. In the dream I felt it all in such an intensity that it was as if I could have come, but then I wa awake. I still felt the remnants of that now, in reality, my dick rock hard beneath the sheets. I rolled over to Des, found her still asleep, turned towards me, just her face visible from beneath the sheets as they wrapped around her head like a shroud. One arm had snaked out from beneath it and lay there, in reach of something. In reach of me.

So I woke her. I woke her with my tongue and the way it danced across her neck and ear lobe, my hand slipped in between her legs at the same time, surprised but thrilled to find her wet and waiting.

She woke slowly with a groan and then we fell into it, an act that formed a bridge between our dreams and the real world, each sensation heightened by the edge of sleep and the foreplay of the subconscious.

At a certain point I was standing on the bed, her head between my legs, my hands wrapped and fastened into her hair in fistfuls. As the sensation grew too strong, I found the window and from here I could see outside, distract myself with it.

Through the open window I realized that the alley was a courtyard of sorts, the hotel built in a square around it. It wasn’t an alley between two buildings, as I had previously thought. I stared through the glass, watched the windows of other guests, most of them cut off and curtained. Here and there though, the rooms lay open and exposed. I watched silhouettes pass back and forth, watched their movements with a distracted eye, desperate to hold onto the moment and ride the lightning of her face.

And then I saw him watching, face pressed against the glass of his own room, red track suit obvious against the dark background of the shadow. The kid watched me as I watched him, both of us transfixed. I held her deep in my crotch, forced her as deep as I could and held her there, kept my eye on the kid, a slight flex to my body as she strained against the hold.

As he watched I heard her choke hard, gag and then I came, eyes open that unblinking.

Motherfucker.

His expression went from awestruck to fear, the realization that I was watching him as he watched me, voyeurism exposed for both of us. Difference was, he watched out of desperation. Subordination. He watched out of the lust for my role, my position in the universe.

I watched out of conquest.

I filled her mouth and he turned away, back into the darkness of his room.

An hour later and we were on the street. The landscape had changed completely. The homeless had been forced out with the arrival of the hustle, hordes of people that took up space across the pavement. A seedy part of town, in a sense. But not really. More of an attraction. Filth for the sake of it rather than a lack of choice. We walked past strip clubs and liquor stores, but also book stores, Italian restaurants with red and white awnings.

The pizza we ate was greasy, dripped with it and stained the white paper plates it sat on. Des shovelled it into her mouth, a rare show of appetite, brought on by the sex or maybe the coke, the bump or two we took before setting out.

I felt good. I likened it to the waves, the rush of diving headfirst into something that I could barely understand. There was life to this city. A depth. It felt like we were on the surface of an alien ecosystem. A deep, winding valley of existence. Each building seemed to hold secrets, a maze of its own.

We stopped in a coffee shop run by a Bosnian woman, the walls filled with quotes about an apparent genocide. I sipped at a massive cup of black coffee, read the walls as Des used the washroom.

“In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction: there's no word describing that.- Alexsandar Hemon.”

The meaning was lost on me. I studied the woman behind the counter, her eyes friendly and inviting. A smile as I turned to her but then Des was at my side, her own eyes wild and excited. She had taken another line in there and the rush gave her a light, infectious enthusiasm.

“Check out the washroom in here. it’s something else.”

So I slid in behind the counter through the closet door that served as a washroom, a toilet built into the floor. It was tiny and cumbersome to dish a line out onto the sink behind me. I hit it and only then, as I let my head fall backwards for a second and let gravity do its work, did I realize that the ceiling was not so much a ceiling as a collapsed staircase, like an attic door, the crack of its opening enough to prod me forward and open it some more. Up the stairs and it led to a miniature loft space, an office of sorts that sat overlooking the rest of the shop, invisible to all but those who were looking for it.

We found something similar in the bookstore up the street, my search for the washroom uncovering a labyrinth of sorts, a basement that dug deeper than expected, a small staircase that dropped further down from a back corner stacked with weathered paperbacks. It led to a hallway that ended in a second staircase, this one headed upwards, somehow. At the top of this staircase there was a door painted red. A toilet beyond this. The end of the rainbow and my pot of gold was pure white. Down here, it felt like I could be lost forever, disorientated beyond the capacity for time and space.

The bookstore possessed Des. She scoured the shelves for something, anything, her hands sifting through bargain books, hardcover classics, whichever. Once in a while she would stop to read the back of one, open an inside cover. Put it back.

I grew bored quickly in these places. I wandered the shelves but with only superficial interest. After the red door I rejoined the fold of the living and looked for Des. I found her down at the end of a bookshelf, crouched down, almost sitting, a large book splayed out across her lap. I saw her and then I saw the man watching her.

He was impossible to miss. A tall, well dressed dude that towered over top of her, close enough to her that she noticed, far enough away that he could pretend he didn’t. He wore a suit that reeked of wealth, silk and multi coloured, thick dark hair slicked straight back, a goatee that was waxed and sharp. A hipster of sorts but it seemed that everyone was in this city.

I stood at the opposite end of the shelf from him and watched the way he watched her. He took her in out of the corner of his eye. Hesitant.

I watched him pick out a book, look at it, sigh loudly, let loose with a great exhalation of air designed to get her attention. She either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore this, nose buried between the pages of her own book. He drew closer and I saw her glance at his shoes, back towards the book, glance back at the shoes again and then stare upwards. Something passed across her face. A shadow that passed from her mouth to her eyes. A tremor. It was the way she traced his legs upward, found his belt buckle and paused there for a moment. Then she stood and he turned to face her, a smile across his face that melted the severity of the mustache. She smiled back and my hand felt for steel inside my pocket.

She saw me then, met my eyes and stepped past him, smile cemented across her face. She slid across his belt buckle with her hip and whispered “excuse me” with that soft naïveté about her that I’d long ago recognized as predatory, when she wanted it to be. Not with me though. She manipulated other parts of the world, for both of us.

She was past me now, without a glance, the sound of her footsteps distant and then gone altogether.

He turned as if he meant to follow her, that sneer of teeth, expectant. Then he stopped. That’s when he saw me, propped up against the shelf.

The smile dropped from his face. I watched him, one hand deep in my pocket, fist loaded with that violent lifeline. The coke coursed through my system, one thought after another, a gauge that rose with my heartbeat, a drumbeat to my existence.

He cleared his throat, glanced back towards the bookshelf. His hand grasped at air, ran across the titles that meant nothing to him.

Resolve trumped wealth. Every time.

I found her outside, one foot braced against the brick of the bookstore wall, the dusk fallen across her face in shadow. Arms crossed over her chest, she watched the sea, a frantic clump of suits and skirts and weathered tourists, some with kids in tow. The locals and the outsiders, all swept up into one.

Part of me wanted to ignore her, pass on by as she did to me. Give her a reason to follow. Another part of me was high on the way he crumpled, collapsed beneath my presence. See, that’s why she did it. She gave me opportunity.

Fuck it.

I took her arm and dragged her off the wall, out into the foot traffic, down the hill and away from our hotel, headed towards the centre of this place. The night was on its way and I felt the energy build as the darkness settled. We had the city tonight, nothing else.

The neighbourhoods changed as we descended the hill. From the red lights and neon we moved into dirty, trash filled alleyways that lay between storefronts scrawled with foreign characters. These were indecipherable businesses, meant for others. Chinese expansion, a hollowed out piece of their own and it impressed me, how much they possessed inside urban america. It was blocks of this, street after street of a separate country. And then we stepped beneath the freeway above and blotted out the culture with curved concrete, a darkened tunnel that passed through to the other side. Cars on the right of us, engines echoed off the curved surface in waves of disruption.

We passed out into the other side and the landscape had shifted, a higher class and an assortment of expensive storefronts built into corporate towers of glass and concrete. The centre of this whole thing, it seemed, a massive square of pavement open in front of us, the advertisements stretched towards the stars above. We walked through the square, Des close beside me, closer still and then her hand was on mine as she stared upwards, up towards the statue that watched us from a massive pillar in the middle of the square.

“Nike.” She said it slowly, in that quiet, hesitant voice of hers. The voice that I was used to.

I looked at her, looked for the telltale swoosh in the advertisements. “What?”

She pointed at the statue. “Greek goddess of Victory.”

I shrugged, annoyed. Her little tidbit of information. I needed more coke, a drink maybe. The edge was close, I could feel it in the way the high had dwindled, almost erased itself.

I walked ahead of her and broke the contact of skin on skin, took it upon myself to carry forward.

We stepped through a doorway, somewhere past the square, a block further into cocktail territory. The old world. Here you could see the influence of jazz and blues. It was the ragged edge of a prohibition era that existed in movies. In stories. It was a step backwards into a time neither of us knew, but felt nostalgic for nonetheless. And, as usual, a darkened doorway and the stairs led downward, into the belly, the reassurance of music just beyond the bottom.

We ducked beneath a low ceiling down near the end, stepped down into a room of one bar and many dark corners, the floor broken up into small, two person tables. I led the way around the bar, stopped for a moment and leaned towards the bartender, a thick man with a large dark beard, suspenders and a black dress shirt. He nodded and his voice was low, raspy.

“How you doing, man?”

This close to him I could smell the liquor on his breath. I had a hunch and glanced at his pupils, saw that tell-tale black sea, the green beach thin and irrelevant. I grinned at him, ordered our drinks and doubled each, Des already past me to find the darkest table she could.

The crowd was small here, scattered and isolated, the evening not yet begun. I passed an Asian girl dressed in black, her legs crossed, the dress riding up her thighs and her head bowed to her lap, blue screen obvious in the dim light. She glanced up as I passed her. We met eyes for a second and I held her stare, invaded her as she became aware of me, until she glanced away again, dropped her eyes once more.

I slid into the spot across from Des, my back to the wall, the rest of the cavern laid out in front of me. It had been a long time since smoking was legal in these places but something about the dark and the concrete felt vaporous. I scanned the room and realized it was the candles, some lit on the tables that held two. An older white couple there, dressed in silk, the man bald and the woman blonde. Two tables over, a young black woman in jeans, black turtleneck, her companion a thin white guy that slicked his hair straight black, made it look wet.

As I watched, the Asian found her mate, his entrance slow and deliberate, a tall, well shaped black guy, shirt tight and undone at the top, his shoulders prominent through the purple fabric. The glitter of expensive taste hung off his wrist, and he took the friendly, excited greeting of the girl with a cool sense of self assurance. They would fuck later. The girl was too giggly, the guy too confident. A second or third date. Or first, nowadays.

The drinks came and I downed mine faster than I should have, Des was just as desperate, and it helped. I relaxed and enjoy the intimacy now. Our own little world.

A hand raised to order another for us, the bartender nodding from afar, my eyes gone and drawn to an older woman that sat near the wall, just opposite of us. She was dressed well, an expensive skirt and red bottomed high heels, a glitter on her wrist, down around her neck. Alone at the table and she had lit the candle regardless, the orange flame reflected in shadows that danced across her face. She stared at the floor, spaced out, her legs crossed, a massive glass of white wine balanced on her thigh. On the table a miniature pizza lay half-eaten, the fork discarded on the plate, a piece still stuck to it. I watched her as her eyes watched the floor. She was swallowed by her thoughts, eyes wider than they should have been, crow feet stretched to capacity.

She wasn’t here to meet someone. She would leave here alone. Return to an empty apartment somewhere near the square, an expensive shell, nothing more. I pictured her alone in the living room, the stress of outward distinction stripped and discarded. Sweatpants and a t-shirt, maybe, images of escape played on the screen in front of her. A tragic scene.

Fuck that.

I watched her and I watched the Asian, unconscious eventually, both of them. Each night ending the same way but so different between now and then.

Choices, man.

An impulse. I shook two fingers in the air, pointed at the candle and the server came by to light it. Romantic. The flame danced across the table and I watched Des for approval. She made a point of looking away, took everything else in with feigned interest. As if the room held so much more than the space between us. She adjusted herself, a slight rise in her hips. Discomfort.

What’s with this bitch?

So I moved on.

I reached into my pocket, took the baggie out and laid it on my thigh, balanced it there while I plunged my nail down into the white. I glanced at the bartender, the rest of the bar, at Des. She found it in herself to watch me now. I stared back at her eyes hooded in the dark, her long lashes a veil to those grey orbs, the pupils almost back to normal. She was an audience shrouded in black. Black hair, black pupils, black stripper soul. Like a widow. But she wasn’t a widow. Because she had me.

I took the powder hard and deep. Took one more heap.

Resolve, there it was.

And then I passed the plastic to her beneath the table and she followed suit. Two massive bumps for both of us. A drink onboard, here comes another. And there it was, the ability to breathe again.

At some point, we stumbled back onto the street, like cave creatures, evolved in the face of darkness, pupils that stretched wide and searched for light. Out on the street though, the light had all but disappeared, pinpricks of white and the gaze of the moon all that was left in a cloudless sky. Now there was life out here, groups of it, the sounds of laughter rattled off in bursts.

Des held my arm, drew in closer to me and we took off into this alien landscape.

Explorers.

I was high as fuck now, enough coke onboard that it outweighed the drink and kept me lucid. Energetic. Alive.

For blocks we walked and laughed like the rest, our words meaningless but essential, the topics of life and death and simple, everyday concepts enough to draw her into me, rest her head on my shoulder once in a while, reach for me as she laughed at a joke, grew silly with lack of inhibition.

At some point she chose the path, brought us through a doorway that lacked the proclamation of “cocktails” or “music”. It didn’t have to advertise. Bass hit us in waves from the doorway and the line that formed outside was enticing enough. If the city was steeped in nostalgia, this was the future, full on metal and glass, space travel and all that shit.

The crowd outside reminded me of those clubs in Vancouver, on Broadway. The groups of tattooed Asian girls with that token white girl, the sketchy black dudes and the gear monkeys with slicked back hair. All of it steeped in an overt need for attention.

Des passed it all and sidled up beside the bouncer, one big motherfucker dressed in a black jacket, long black beard that reached to his chest. She whispered something in his ear, his head bent to listen and then a nod, her hand ushering me forward.

He nodded at me as I passed, held the door for both of us.

Coke man, it opens doors. Literally and figuratively. Somehow, the ability to manipulate your consciousness through this synthetic dust gave rise to a world you could truly call your own. The world was yours. Scarface wasn’t theoretical.

Into the jungle.

Music hit me hard, waves and waves of it, energy heightened to a tribal level. Instinctual and without the weight of repression. Bodies upon bodies that moved in time to it, bobbed and nodded to it.

Des took my arm and we wound our way through the crowds. Short skirts and long hair, tattoos and testosterone. This is something I could understand.

At the back we found the washrooms, slid our way past the crowds outside each door, men’s or women’s, no need for distinction, the inside of each filled with both. Girls pissing in the urinals, stalls filled with two or three, some guys past the point of concealment, coke out and splayed across the sinks, the towel dispenser. We stepped around a bearded fuckboy with a backwards hat, head cocked like a crackhead, rolling hard and unable to hold himself upright, sliding up and down the wall as his fingers jutted out in all directions, outside his control.

A stall emptied and she gripped it, slid in and locked the door. Good call, Des. No fucking way I’m showing our hand in here. I was on this train to get faded. Not to stab a juiced up coke head looking to rob us. We hit two lines each, hit the floor and the music took over, her ass on my cock, the lights and bass a countdown to the next trip where we said fuck it and threw the bag on the counter, divvied up three lines, offered one up, some Hispanic guy who cleaned the counter with his face.

Back in the crowd and I was aware of how crazed we became, a circle widening around us, space forming where there was none, respect to the way we moved and kept time to the music, a spectacle of sorts.

In the back of my mind I felt the coke dwindle, the bag growing lighter. I slipped a hand in my pocket multiple times, the plastic slick with sweat, less dense than before. At some point we’d need more. It was still early.

For now we danced and the drinks held off the time between trips to the washroom, only slightly. I left to piss, took a bump that formed from nowhere, found the crowd again but lost Des. I circled the club, found myself in several conversations, strange brown guys that spoke in accents and ugly dark haired girls that were too excited for how little they would accomplish tonight. I broke these off, became a bit desperate.

Finally I found her, collapsed against the wall near the back, her body all but obscured beneath a red dress shirt, thick black arms beneath that, a bald nigger with a diamond earring. He was up her shirt with one hand, the other hand going for the zipper of her jeans.

The coke drove my instincts, calculated all the right variables and I made the decision before I reached him, fist connected perfectly with the side of his skull. I didn’t feel it, as if my hand was disembodied, mind separate from the limb. A hook I threw everything into, rode the follow through down onto the ground on top of him. I stood quickly, turned to face the repercussions, found none. Just another circle that widened to give me space, girls raising their hands to shield the scene, awkward, high heeled jog away from me as guys turned back to the club, pretended not to see or smiled with appreciation.

I looked down at the guy, a distant look in his eyes, a hand up against his head as he tried to process the impact. I rose a foot and drove my heel into his face, once, twice. Looked at Des.

She smiled, laughed a little, shrugged and we were out of there.

Back on the street and the rush of adrenaline only served to send me further down the rabbit hole, the last of the coke taken by both of us beneath a street light, ancient metal beneath my hand as I snorted straight from the bag, took as much as I could before Des had a chance. Then we were off again.

We crossed several streets before I realized the change.

Homeless bodies shrouded in dirt caked clothing, wandering the streets with backpacks and a companion, maybe two. Dogs. So many dogs. Pit bulls on the end of chains, their barks loud and frenzied. We stood at a corner, watched a tall man thin and with the scrawl of tattoos that rose up his neck, a car stopped too close to him as he crossed the street, strut accompanied by a massive black pit. The dog went nuts, barked hard and strained at the chain, strained to jump forward at the car. The man yelled something indiscernible and smashed his fist down on the hood of the car. Inside, another man drove and a woman, older. The driver stared forward, pretended he was somewhere else as he waited for the light to change.

I stuffed my hand in my pocket and watched the tall man pass by us, a step forward to put myself between Des and the dog.

He passed us by, mumbled and yelled in shards of sound that rained down around us. I listened to the dog as it barked it’s way down the block.

We continued on through this hell, moved further from the centre and found the crowd grow thicker and thicker, pressed closer to us until the streets were filled and the traffic was all but absent.

We both knew what we wanted, without voicing it. Our chemistry was in sync, veins filled with the same destiny.

And we found it.

Obvious once we saw it. We passed a girl, small and thin, her body buried within a red hoodie, 49’ers scrawled across the front. She drew me in with the fragility of her body and that brought me to the black and green discolouration around her face, spread around her eye and onto her jaw. A delicate, almond shape faced that was offset by the violence of the bruise, the severity of her existence, so darkened under the contrast of her blonde hair.

I watched her stand on the sidewalk, passed by her as she stared forward, at nothing.

I turned to watch her as we passed. Stopped, came to a rest against the brick, Des sliding up beside me.

The girl continued to stand there. Still. In wait.

And then a man approached her from the shadows, an alleyway somewhere down the street. He was thin and desperate, a wide eyed look of vulnerability beneath the greasy horde of grey hair that fell to his shoulders. He walked up to the girl and there was the exchange. A flash of paper and the girl was off.

I watched her as she scuttled across the street, found a slit in the building you could call a doorway, metal and rusted. She knocked and the door collapsed inward, allowed her entry. She stepped forward and disappeared into the dark. The door closed behind her and sealed itself against the street.

I pictured her climbing a set of steps, a darkened, dilapidated climb into an even darker apartment that was filled with coke, fuck knows what else. Niggers. Guns. A mini traphouse that lay inside the labyrinth. Treasure within the decay, corners and dead ends that would lead to stacks of cash, bricks of white powder, faceless black silhouettes that sat on weathered couches, Glocks and AK’s.

Was it fear she felt? Or numb indifference at this point? She would hand over cash and was given a product. Back to the street.

And here she was, back out the door, the thin man there, waiting. Another exchange and he was gone.

Our turn. I walked up to the girl, approached her from behind and touched her hoodie, slightly disgusted, a chemical scent but mixed with human decay. Metallic shit. Weed smoke on top of that.

She turned and her eyes looked through me but understood.

It made me wonder at my own appearance. The way she recognized one of her own in my presence. An ally or a client. Immediately. Nothing more.

I slipped her the cash. And she was off. For a moment, the high gave me confidence. A reckless thought. I thought of following her. Stepping through that doorway with her, the apartment stacked with wealth just beyond it. Shit we could take.

But I stopped, because there was a bigger score than this. There had to be. Somewhere. This was the bottom.

She returned soon after, walked up to me and handed the baggie out to me. For a second I stared at her wrist, the hoodie rode up from her hand and exposed the scars across her arm. Scars of self abuse, but something else as well. A bruise there, thin and inflamed that wrapped around her wrist. Ligature marks. It brought me somewhere else for a moment, somewhere long ago. Something that rose from my memory and was impossible to place, but existed there regardless. I could see the image of this girl that took its place, naked, tied up somewhere inside the maze, a damsel in distress. Permanently.

She stared at me now, saw me with focused eyes. I took the coke, quickly. Pocketed it and she turned away. Left me standing there in the light of the street lamp, Des pacing back and forth somewhere behind me.

Some time later the blur dropped away and suddenly I was close to sober. Not completely, but enough that I could see again. The past few hours had passed on the verge of blackout, a collage of strangely friendly faces, a taxi filled to the brim, the music cranked, a step onto pavement and then the glitter of a gay club, cross dressers and lights that came in waves of colour, a live singer and a conversation that passed between us, about “their turf” and an act of washroom molestation.

Like a leaf, we settled down amongst the rest, the after hours crowd, the scattered remnants of a lost society. The flood of neon was dark enough to keep us anonymous, the stripper pole that rose above us took centre stage and was the only ounce of industry that was left to us for the night.

We sat in perv’s row, a shot or two deep in this place, another larger glass of mixed drinks halfway done. The clarity came as we sat there and suddenly I was aware of her sitting beside me, close enough to touch. It was the coke that brought us back. The last line disrupted the balance and pulled us closer to the powder than the liquid. It gave me clarity, allowed me to become conscious of Des. She stared up at the pole, shiny and empty. Waiting. The last dancer had been a shell, her movements robotic and her stare vacant, sightless eyes with the buzz of something. Heroin, maybe.

Des slid closer to me on her chair and I instinctively dropped an arm around her shoulders, took a long drink from the whiskey or whatever the fuck this was.

“You ever wonder how we ended up here?” Her voice was small.

“We took a cab, didn’t we?” A pause. “Fuck.” I was really messed up, coked out and it was as if I could feel the weight of that shit dragging me down, the opposite effect of earlier on in the night. A detriment now. A downer.

She was talking again. “No, I mean how we ended up here. Right here.” She threw her arm out, to the pole and the stage and the rest of it behind us. “You and I. Like, how does that happen. How does that work that we ended up here, together. How long has it been? Yet here we are, in this crazy ass city, sitting together and it just happened.” She stared for a moment, watched the approach of the dancer, her steps slow and elongated, the movement of a spectre. A ghost that floated from out behind the curtain. White girl, brown hair, a dark, atmospheric melody that drummed out the soundtrack to her hips as she approached.

Des’s voice from far away. “It just happened.”

She wore a thin green g-string, bare chested, small, tasteful tits. The neon swept across the stage in slow sweeps of light. Lazy purple moonbeams that fit with the music, tracked it as she did, her pussy pressed into the pole as she rode it slowly, up and down. The classic move slutty by intention, trashy by design. Yet, as I watched her grind against the metal, I saw distinction. I saw class, as if she fit the label of dancer, her body choreographed by expression rather than laid out and exposed through exploitation. It was the way she moved with intent, a refined version of the girls I’d seen before. Discipline attached to the display of her body. I could see each individual note of the music in her movement, her legs and the way she gripped the pole, all of it kept in time. She slid her legs up to the ceiling, an agonizing show of strength, paused there, upside down.

I watched her face, a hardened jawline, the tendons defined and clenched from beneath the skin, her eyes cold as the air that hardened her nipples. Calculated. Two bits of green glass that surveyed the club. Judged us.

That was the difference. Somehow, she made me feel small. She made me feel submissive. Instead of catering to us, she owned us.

Upside down, her face flipped and defiant, she held that expression as the music built to a peak, rose and then dropped as she did, straight to the floor, stopped just short of it, face inches from destruction, jaw still clenched, eyes still glass. Then she flipped off the pole, landed on her high heels, spun once again. A beautiful frenzy.

Des leaned in closer to me, mouth close to my ear, a slight sense of awe in her voice. The whisper that sent my skin into overdrive, reached for her mouth in a spread of raised bumps.

“I want her.”

She disappeared behind the curtain and we took her, forked over the last of our cash and followed her beyond the stage, Des’s hand in hers, my own footsteps close behind. It was wordless, the exchange. A nod from her and then we were laid out on the couches, our private booth bathed in dark blue light, her body grinding to the bass. Just for us.

She began with Des, my eyes fixated on both of them. She forced Des onto her back and mounted her, ass exposed and laid out in front me, an invitation.

I poured the blow onto her back, a flourescent stripe that ran across the crevice of her spine. I cleaned it with my face, tasted salty flesh and drove it hard into my brain. Her back arched at my touch and she turned to follow the line back towards me, ground her tits into my mouth as her weight forced me onto the cushions. The high mixed with her body and the result was trance. A loss of substance.

Des took her own the same way, nodded to the girl, her face still rigid but an element of impulse beginning to seep into the concrete, crack it open, just a bit. Then Des was shirtless, the coke dumped on her own stomach and the dancer took it harder than both of us, quick and with practiced precision.

We ended the night there, in the dark blue abyss, all three of us naked by the time our purchased songs had finished. After that, the dancer gave us no indication that we were to leave. So we went until the coke was gone, the cash was gone, the high waned to nothing and only then did we step out into the street again, myself and Des, the sun higher than expected. A glare that hurt.

We walked arm and arm, the street empty save the homeless, these zombified bits of flesh that passed across empty concrete. Back and forth, their destination known only to them.

Somehow we made it back, the filth encrusted doorway, the cramped stairwell. The climb upwards and then the bed, so wondrous now, the way it lay there and waited for us. A level of loyalty unsurpassed by anything we could stay awake for.

We collapsed onto the bedsprings, fully clothed but soon naked. And then we passed out, lost consciousness with the door wide open, her face turned to meet mine as I stared at the ceiling. I felt her grasp my hand, a limp, warm bridge that formed between us, anchored me in place as the cracked tiles drifted away and the black curtain formed in front of my vision.

Fuck.

I woke into pain. A coil of nausea, the throb of a swollen brain that pressed against the inside of my skull. I closed my eyes against the threat of sunlight that seeped in through the window. Des was beside me, her body stirred against my consciousness.

I had to piss and it pulled me into wakefulness. That and the desperate discomfort of the mattress that pressed into my stomach, my head, my body.

I made the journey through the still open door. Down the hall to the communal washroom, a dull unsteadiness that drummed through my system.

I puked onto the porcelain. Stained it brown as dehydration fell from my body in soupy chunks. I puked again and went for the purge. One finger shoved down my throat and I let it fly, again and again until the heave was dry and I felt a slight element of relief.

Back to the room, Des awake and blinking through her own pain, a desperate reintegration back into the world of the living. A perplexed rebirth.

Amazing we weren’t robbed here. With that door left open. I laughed out loud at that, a drunken need to hear my own voice. I made sure to lock it behind me, the chink of the lock a formality more than anything. We had nothing now. Nothing to take.

Not exactly true. Because Des had the forethought to jam some cash in that book of hers, tucked it beneath the mattress. And now she was reaching for her jeans, one hand that trembled slightly as she pulled something else from her pocket.

Another baggie and my heart leapt at the thought of more.

But no.

I could see brown scraps of root in the plastic. Bits of organic matter that had stems and bulbous tops.

She looked at me, eyes blurred red and sick, a night that added trauma to her features, as much as it did to mine.

Small voice once again. “The dancer gave me it.” Tiny show of teeth, stained yellow. How had I not noticed that before? “Our hangover cure.”

And for lack of anything else, I nodded along with her.

The cash was enough to fill up with gas, force back a hotdog, a necessity for hydration but the stomach only for ginger ale. Gatorade as well, for later. We drove until the city dropped away behind us, down the coast to the south, my stomach on the verge of sickness and the signs no longer of any meaning. Not for the next while. We just needed a space. A section of privacy.

We’d done this together, as kids. I wondered if she remembered but didn’t have the stomach to ask. I couldn’t handle the void of her memories. A place where I had existed and she hadn’t. There was enough betrayal now, with the sunlight and the crawl of my skin. It was uncomfortable, but it created something like a stress response. The hangover was a simplification, a retreat to basic needs. Survival, nothing more. Because of that the moment was amplified. A meditation of sorts.

We drove until she told me to stop. A thin bit of road that dropped away towards the beach, somewhere beyond a stretch of shrub and rocks.

We ditched the car in a patch of dirt. A makeshift parking lot. Several paths that led off in different directions. I was passive now, too fucked up. The sun made me squint and the steps we took through the brush felt heavy and desperate.

Somewhere near a large formation of rocks we stopped. Big dark shapes that were too large for the open space, islands of stone that formed a shelter from the wind. The rock formed shade to drape over us like the comfort of the darkened streets from last night. Anonymity.

We sat against the rocks, shoulder to shoulder, the relief of collapse.

Des withdrew the bag and took a cluster of stems, a bulb or two. Chewed and swallowed. Washed it down with ginger ale. And then I did it, easy.

They were dry. But they held a certain taste that I actually enjoyed. Like a sweet, chewy root that I had no problem swallowing. Odd.

I remembered it tasting sour, acidic almost. I expected a metallic, chemical taste. Something like the aftermath of coke.

But no, the taste was simple and then I swallowed them.

I looked back at Des. She was watching me, her grey eyes framed by the black shroud of hair that hung down across her face. She was beautiful. She really was. And now she smiled, and a bit of movement crept across my own face.

She stood up. Bounced up off her place on the ground. Energy renewed. The promise of something on the rise. She walked away from me, down the dirt towards the scent of the salt and the rush of the waves.

I followed the roll of her ass beneath those black jeans, her walk so much easier than the weight she carried with her from the hotel to the car. Beyond the rocks and the landscape opened up, a steep drop of rock and sand that dropped away in front of us. The ocean sat there, far below. We were on an exposed bit of rock that overlooked a garden of more debris and brush. Beyond that, the water.

We walked further, and I felt something. I felt a weight, a strain. As we walked, it hit me that this was taking way too long. I turned back towards the shelter of rocks, gauged the distance of their grey tops, three of them visible through the trees. Much closer than I would have thought.

Des stopped and turned back towards me, a strange smile on her face. “Do you feel that?”

I laughed slightly, a giggle that plastered a loopy sort of smile unintentionally across my face. I felt the urge to laugh with the slight realization that nothing was particularly funny. I nodded in response to her question.

We continued to walk, the trail wound its way through clustered bits of driftwood, massive trunks that blocked the path, a patch of thick brush. And a clearing inside of this. From the clearing there rose several two by fours of wood. Each one planted with purposes, by someone.

“Remember grandma?”

I felt a vibration around me, as if the air held a sort of resistance to it, but only slightly. It was then that I realized she was pointing at something, an overlapping of sticks that formed a cross at the base of the wood chunks. Random or placed there?

I pointed as well. “I remember her.”

“We spread her ashes in a place just like that. At the base of that tree on the cliff. Remember?” Des walked around the formation, moved towards the opposite side of it before moving back around and coming to stop right in front of the cross. She placed her hand on the top of the centre stick. Closed her eyes for a second. The vibrations between my ears grew louder, denser.

She looked at me and her eyes were wider than before. “We even put a cross up there, didn’t we?”

I stayed where I was, gave her a moment, felt the overwhelming urge to sit down. But I stayed upright. Fought it. A part of me realized that I was in one now. In something. Because as Des walked back towards me, I was suddenly aware of how heavy it all was. All of it. And then I saw the vibrations, traced their lines in the air around me, connected each tremor with the sky and the grass and the cross and the weight and the …

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” She was still smiling. “I know.”

So was I. Stumbled slightly. Detached feet.

“We need to move.” My words or hers. It didn’t matter so much right now.

We walked away from the cross, followed a destroyed fence line that snaked away from the trail and up along a dirt cliffside that rose away from the beach. Another trail formed an offshoot to this and led back in the general direction of the car.

We followed it and the weight grew heavier. I stared at my feet and felt the urge to watch my hands, watch the ghost of them as they waved in front of me, almost disembodied.

The walk continued and I felt the need to run. Why?

It didn’t matter because I was already trying, beginning to move my feet faster and faster. But then I stopped and the weight piled on top of me, more intense than before. Only a few meters but I bent over in surrender, short, panting breath. Exhausted. Laughing.

Des came up beside me. I felt her hand on my shoulder. It felt wrong, and I moved away from her. Moved off into the trees that traced the fence, a cluster of forest that pushed away from the water. I pushed the branches apart with my hands and dragged myself between the tree trunks before stopping.

“Are there snakes out here?” Fear. Something like dread.

The thought brought me back out of the woods, back onto the trail and the safety of the barbed wire. A sharp connection with civilisation. Laughter from Des. “Maybe rattlesnakes?”

“Shit.” I thought of poison and a long drive to the city. I thought of death in minutes and the increasing difficulty of even forming a sentence. Not the best thing to contract right now, a snake bite.

Further down the path and I felt like the trail would last forever. Down the trail and all I saw was barbed wire and trees, infinity stretched out in front of them. What if we got lost out here? Could we get lost out here? Doubtful.

I brought up the idea to Des and we lost ourselves for a moment, hysterical laughter at the absurdity of being lost on the trail. Back home, only a couple hundred meters away.

Home?

The trail continued forwards and suddenly we dipped down towards the water, close enough to take a tiny bound into the ocean. I saw the water and watched its shape bob and sink, lines of movement traced out across the surface. Tide pools formed by the dip of rock. The sound of the waves beyond that, invisible from down here.

I needed to get in the water. It felt safer than out here. The thought was strange but I followed it. Tore my shirt off before I doubted it.

Des giggled beside me. A child again, her voice so high and unhindered. Like when we were kids. “What the fuck are you doing?” Her voice sounded like it came from far away.

I didn’t answer, stripped down to my boxers before making an awkward movement past the barbed wire. I limped across the sharp rocks and finally felt the water beneath my feet. I should have felt its chill but all I felt was a sense of satisfaction. And then I walked further, felt the liquid rise all around me, descended into a tide pool until my toes no longer touched the bottom.

“Whoa!” I yelled out in enthusiasm rather than fear. “Get in here.”

She was laughing harder and harder now, stripped off her shirt and pants, down to her white bra and panties. On some level I realized the awkwardness of the situation, remembered it. But it didn’t matter now and then she was swimming beside me.

Swimming was an overstatement. She floated and so did I.

“So nice!” She yelled it and her voice echoed away towards the trees and sand. I found my footing and stood up, exposed my upper body. She watched me. “You look way too strong for this.”

I stared back up the shoreline and watched the shapes that floated between the trees. “Too strong for what?”

“For humanity!” Like why be that strong?” It was a ridiculous question but I made some sense of it. Felt it more than anything, in a way that stretched back beyond us. To a time way before her and I.

“I’m strong because I can’t live there anymore.” I motioned back towards the water and saw myself as bacteria, a single celled organism now composed of many. Where the thought came from, I have no idea, but the effect was a scene from the first shores of humankind. I stood there, risen from the water and the amoeba and the crustaceans, the last remnants of my liquid existence tumbling down my back. Beyond was evolution, and I worked my way towards it. I dragged myself forward, across the rocks until I was standing above the water, its presence linked around my ankles.

“Walk with me.” The sound of my voice betrayed necessity but not desperation. I knew she would and I understood this was all absurd. But important. She stumbled towards me and I dragged myself back to our clothes, an awkward attempt at man’s first steps. And then the clothes were in my hand and the weight was back and I needed to move. I dripped across the dirt of the trail, ducked beneath the barbed wire and began to run. She followed, laughter mixed with the pant of her breath as she tore after me. And then we were back at the wood. In the patch of dirt.

She moved off ahead of me, dropped her clothing down to the ground and moved past the cross towards more trees that stretched away from all we knew. She disappeared into thick brush that rose up on either side of her. I watched her stop, the brush dark enough to hide her face, her legs just visible beneath the branches.

“I think there’s more back here.” And then she disappeared into the dark and I had no choice but to follow. The trail snaked around the corner and the brush grew thicker all around us. I saw her disappear and then reappear, standing at the elbow of another bend, an old speed limit sign laying at her feet, propped against the brush. 60 m/h.

I was suddenly aware of how close the leaves were, each one drawing itself closer to my vision, the darkness beginning to swallow me. I forced myself forward and we broke out of the dark, the brush broken by a hole above us, the sunlight pouring in as the green leaves grew in intensity. I was falling forward, into the foliage, the vibrations so obvious and intact that I couldn’t help but sink further and further down into them.

“Jesus Christ.” I mumbled this and pulled myself out of it all. Back into the world I knew. Des was there beside me, close enough that our arms touched. So fucking heavy it all was.

We walked and I was aware of the outhouse at the end of the trail, and then we broke out beside it, back into the clearing, the tree directly ahead of us. I saw our clothing and grabbed for it, an element of desperation now.

“Hide yourself.” I wasn’t sure why but I pictured the arrival of others on this path. The insanity of our existence. A couple of exposed strangers wandering back and forth across the beach like members of some cult that wandered the hills.

We stumbled up towards the car. I saw it’s hood and then the windows, the reflection of light across its headlights. Another cross. Two sections of wood that lay across the ground just in front of the tires.

“Was that cross always there?”

Des ignored the question, down on her knees now, hands grasping at dirt and grass and rock.

“So heavy. What if just sunk into it all.”

“We need to move. Follow me.” I was directing now, dragged her out of the ground and towards the woods away from the car again. We wandered out into the brush and the trees and the dark. And then I stopped, wood at my feet. Building materials? Remnants of failed civilization? Or nothing. Why did I bring her out here? I stood there and the weight felt so heavy that I wanted to sit, lose myself in the ground.

“I’m distracting myself. I’m dragging you away.” I saw her and felt a reality that I could comprehend, only for a second. I saw her standing in the clearing, her back to me as her eyes raised upwards toward the sunlight that filtered through the gaps in the branches. At that moment, I had a realization. I had the complete understanding that she was empty. Not empty by choice or by incapability or shallow thought. No, she was empty by tragedy. She was empty out of circumstance. Trauma. I watched the back of her head and all I saw was darkness. An empty skull.

Or was it me that was empty. Because I saw something else. The way she stood there, I saw her as a child again, alone in the woods. It was a memory but it surfaced as if it was from the present. I saw her turned away and I watched my own approach. Beyond her I saw the treehouse. Our treehouse. Our sanctuary.

I tried to speak and the result was a stuttering silence. It was like I couldn’t keep my voice alive enough to articulate it all. She was speaking, or not speaking. It was as if she tried to talk to me in a way we would both understand. But nothing came. Was this real? Or simply the confusion of the drug. It was impossible to tell. All in one moment I spoke the truth but then lost it in the layers that fell away from my own personality.

“What the fuck is happening?” I asked it all rather than just her. I asked the trees and the ground and the clearing. And I stared upward and needed to move. “Come back”. I dragged her after me again and we were back in the clearing. I saw my personality clearer this time. Or was this humanity? A spyglass of sorts. All of it or none of it. It was impossible to tell. I saw myself and then all of us in one instant. Impossible to decipher between the two.

I was running. So I sat. I sat and felt the blades of grass grow up between grains of sand in an effort to reach me. I saw the sun above me, lifted my arms to meet its heat. “We need..” But why? Why do we need to move? Sit here. Was that her speaking or my own thoughts. I looked at her and was unable to see her face. I watched her settle into the ground, arms outstretched and I felt like we were melting. I wanted to move, walk, get out of here, fight it. But it continued and the heat grew and the weight dragged me further.

The sunlight was everywhere and it left us here on the ground, amongst the grass. Empty. But filled.

This was it. This was life without it. This was existence without the distraction and the movement.

Was it good? Was it right?

I tried to ask her. It didn’t come. The words fell somewhere beyond me. And she stuttered as well. Failed.

I fought and I fought and I fought and I fought….

My gaze grew so heavy that it all disappeared and I mumbled on word to myself. Or maybe it was out loud.

“Unconscious”.

And somehow, I understood.

It came back like a flood. I dragged myself back to the moment and stood upright against it. Moved. I helped her to her feet and she moved with me, out of the garden. Back to the stumbling and wandering and jumbled attempts to justify ourselves into movement.

Down a new trail, one I hadn’t noticed before. A single tree in the middle of the trail, an erratic trunk that passed back and forth, a zigzag pattern that ended in a canopy of orange leaves. Massive, imposing. Out of place in the barren shrubbery.

She grasped at the leaves, felt them between outstretched fingers.

“I’m running from everything.” Her words? Mine. The same meaning either way. “And I feel like I’m taking you with me.”

Now she made the decision to move, dragged me from the tree and up alongside the cabin. “We need to go back to grandma.”

“Do we?”

“I think so?” She was unsure.

We needed music. But we didn’t. We needed food. But we didn’t. Suddenly time was an issue but as quick as it was, it wasn’t. I felt nothing. But I wondered if she was right and I followed her. Back through the trees again, away from the car. I followed her back into the dark.

And then we were at the cross and she stood there in front of it. Silence.

“You knew what you were doing when we came out here right?” Her words cut across the air between us. I tried to answer. This time I could.

“It was supposed to be a new start.” I felt the truth of the statement, without the logic. Somehow I knew what she meant, in a way that was lost in the words we used to convey it. Somehow, like the wind that ran between the trees, I could understand the words we didn't say. The space between the lines.

But then I was speaking again. “What happened to you Des?” I saw the empty abyss between her ears. That darkness I saw before the grass. I saw it and held onto it, to understand it.

She turned towards me. In the dying light time stopped. She stared at me and I knew I was wrong. I’d fucked up. But how?

For a moment time stopped and I saw such a break in the severity of her features that it seemed as if she could fall apart, right there in front of me. Her mouth trembled, ever so slightly and her eyes seemed to plead, beg for something I couldn’t quite see. Such a sad, sad look that I began to walk towards her. And then the flash was gone, her face hardened in such a violent reversal that it stopped me, stockstill in the middle of the trail. She cocked an ear upwards. “Do you hear that?”

I didn’t.

I walked towards her. Closer, and there it was. A faint buzzing that rose and fell with the bursts of wind across the tree branches.

I glanced upwards, focussed on a cloud that appeared as if from nowhere. Dark specks that moved as one. Bugs.

And in the space between them I heard their screams.

We were still on a trip.

A singularity and as I let myself drift closer, I saw the connection between them. I saw the lines that formed between each, as if their flight pattern became one long net of specks and strands. The wind cut through them, and they flew upwards, broken but in sync, rode the wave and continued to float. She walked towards them, stood beneath the cloud until they lowered down around us, a strange mass of buzzing and noise and agony.

“Is that ash?”

Her voice was so small, exposed. Childish again.

“They’re bugs.” It was my logic speaking but I felt something deeper that made more sense. It made more sense that they were ash. Little specks of ash that hung in the air and screamed into the wind of obscurity.

We stood amongst them, a living metaphor. Adrift in a sea of symbology.

How long could it last?

At some point we returned to clarity. Or maybe we moved further away from it. It barely mattered now as the darkness settled across our shoulders and I found that the shapes were gone and the significance no longer hit me.We were on the beach and the waves were close, the sound of water and sand and the shifting border that jumped towards us in chunks.

I felt sick. Not hungover but sick to my core. Disgusted. I thought of a time long ago, when my fear of the dark drove me into her bed, a terrified little boy, a desperate need to hide from something. I hated those nights. I absolutely hated them. I hated that as I woke, the darkness gave way to light and my fear was immediately senseless. All that was left was a deep sense of shame. I felt exposed. Raped. Dominated by the dark and her warmth and the ability she had to protect me. My little sister. Humiliating.

She was close to me but not touching. In the dark I could see her head bent low to the sand, an exhaustion in her movements. I stared at the water and I realized that I wished she wasn’t here. In the aftermath of the trip I felt something of a gutter open up between us. It all felt wrong somehow. This whole thing. It was different, when we were kids. Back then, we were just so free. Like it all meant so little. I remember her in the backyard, that tiny little treehouse I could never have fit in now. I could see her as she climbed up the ladder, her dress high enough that I could see underneath it, if I positioned myself just right. The treehouse. Our little piece of the world that meant nothing to anyone else. But everything to us. We learned a lot in that shack of painted wood and rusted nails. About ourselves, our desires. We learned enough that when she told me no, I missed it. I craved it.

And when she left the house, older but not old enough, I missed her too.

I found her later and it all began again. She got out of the hospital and the streets made her into something even I didn’t recognize. She was a professional. Like the dancer. A shapeshifter. A goddess. So I took her again.

And it wasn’t hard. It meant enough to both of us, that treehouse. We loved it. And she loved it later on. She loved it now.

The clouds were thick tonight and I barely saw her stand. She walked away and I almost followed. But then she was back with the blanket from the car and she laid it out across the sand for both of us.

“Good idea.” I smiled at her through the dark and it was invisible to her, because she didn’t smile back. Instead she lay on her side, curled up and pitiful, a tiny ball of flesh and fabric that I couldn’t help but love. Through all her faults. Through all the chaos. She really was something and I had to protect her. It was my god-given right, really. And I continued to smile as I lay down beside her, one arm draped across her body as I sidled up close, the ball tight against my chest.

As the cool air ran across the sand and rose across our bodies, the desire to sleep proved too much and I drifted off to the sound of the surf and the pleasant sensation of her stomach bare.

I dreamt and it was Des. I saw her face and I saw the approach of shadow, a silhouette that reflected itself in the grey of her eyes. In the dream I saw her fear, a change in the pupils. The black grew as grey as the rest, a look of absence or invasion that passed across her features, a blank face that lacked the capacity for thought. In the dream I knew she was trying to fight it. The shadow approached and her eyes grew white, the skin of her face gone slack around them.

But then they shifted again and the grey returned, then black again. Defiance and a concrete stare. A resolve.

Back and forth, the shift of her face and I watched as the silhouette slowly obscured her face. Then darkness.

And I felt sad.

When I woke, the dawn was here, grey light again and the waves as destructive as ever. A moment of disorientation, a reach of my hand to find nothing but sand and space. I was wrapped in the blanket, the half that Des had fallen asleep on now empty and draped across me. Off to the car. So fragile, she was.

So I stood up and I gathered up the blanket in both arms.

Back up the trail and it looked so different. The dirt and the brush. I passed the wood, saw there was no longer a cross, removed or never there in the first place. Hard to tell. The trip had been so different from what I remembered. From when we were younger. Back then, we would party. The effect was light and fun and energetic.

Last night was….

I needed something and I thought of the trunk. A box of smokes back there, I think. It would do. Then off again, to the next city. The next score.

I wandered up the path and for a second I thought I’d fucked up. I thought I took a wrong turn and this was a different patch of dirt. A different lot. Because where I thought the car would be, the space was empty.

But no, right there, those two boards that formed the second cross. Except it was no longer a cross. They’d been torn part flung on either side of the tires that drove through them. Now I could see the tracks as the wound away from clearing, up and around the rocks and back toward the highway.

That fucking bitch.

Anger and then there was nothing. And I found myself laughing out loud to the ocean. Because sometime during the walk from the clearing back to the beach, I remembered my dream. I saw her eyes and the way the pupils became grey and white and then back to black. A struggle. I laughed because it was also so childish, the innocent way she carved out a piece for herself. She was a fighter, always would be. My little fighter.

I stripped and walked on into the ocean. As the joy took me and I dove beneath the surface, I floated in the darkness and waited for her to return.