by Cody Luff
***
“Oh happiest of catechisms, that which belongs to the dreams of the dying, that which will never bask in the light of day; sacred writ dreamed by the mind feverish from slick virus or man-made belief; oh most joyous of passages, those things which are born into truth and become secrets never again known in the space of a man’s last two breathes.”
The girl sees this, written in thick block lettering with rust-colored paint over the tower’s door, and she wonders if it’s the kind of thing used to mark a temple or a grave.
The tower does have a lock, a padlock notoriously big, like something out of bizarre legend; but it’s ok.
She has picks now.
1-0-1
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was agoraphobic on the freaking internet; I’d sign on to IRCs and mail clients as “invisible” so people wouldn’t be able to see me.
Part of the appeal of I-T: no one had to know who you really were, and I had maybe thirteen different accounts; when I was at my worst, before I said “well, addiction” and got over it right quick.
It was because I was afraid of people. Of all of them, at once, talking to me, spitting their words out over the screen in horrifying black hieroglyphs which would enrapture me, render me unable to process the world. Or play my game.
I was agoraphobic.
One thousand four hundred fifty one feet and a sniper rifle do wonders for agoraphobia, is what irony is.
***
The Box People burn the Man of Virtue and leave his ashes in a box, as is their way; and they will wait with the box until the Prayer-Bringer comes back with her bandoleer of hallowed songs, because they know she’ll want to say goodbye to the Man even if she doesn’t know it herself, just yet.
***
As she climbs: Calculation Theme, by Metric. On repeat. Because she feels like she has to. She sings the lyrics, now and then.
***
One Hundred and Ten stories with a sprained ankle and a monstrously bloody spike as a walking stick is why she has painkillers, she tells herself, and herself doesn’t argue back.
***
I watched someone, a freak maybe, drag the thief’s body into an alley. That doesn’t matter so much. Watching the Mopman lying there, dead beyond dead, that’s what mattered, yeah. That’s what I wanted to see. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad that I keep trying to appreciate the people I shoot at a distance. To try and imagine who they were before the Crash, what they were like before I decided, because I got to decide, me, on my own: time to be dead.
***
On the fiftieth story she finds plants, all kinds; a garden, twenty stories of gardens and even some people taking care of them They do not talk and when she waves to them they ask her “Are you one of the chosen?” and she gets it; someone is incorporating freaks into his world, rather than the other way around.
***
On the eighty-fifth story she is tired out totally and the ankle burns, so she finds a room which is not occupied; the papers in it old and covered in dust, the chair and the cabinets and the computer; all untouched for years. She lays herself on the floor and looks at the ceiling.
She would like to have given him the cough syrup, if only because she had no wine.
After a moment she thinks it’s not enough, and so she gets up and breaks all the windows, and she lays back down and wraps tight and shivers, and she is going to go back to her music but she hears the streets, then, dogs or coyotes wandering and howling, yipping, ownerless; and she listens instead to them.
***
She wakes up early and she holds herself at the knees, just to feel them, and the ankle is better, moderately; she packs quickly and begins to climb.
At the top the door is locked, but she picks it quicker than the last one, and she thinks she’s getting good at this. She opens the door and is looking at a rather well-kept man, bitter, with a pistol.
***
I ask her how long it took her to get inside, and she tells me she fiddled with the outside lock for some hours, she wasn’t counting how many.
Well, that’s perseverance right there, I tell her, and she nods and says it sure is. She says I should probably switch them, freaks don’t really pick locks and it’s easier to get in here than it is to get into the tower.
I lower the pistol finally and say yeah, yeah you’ve got a point.
Did you take anything from the garden I ask and she says she didn’t and I say well, it’s about time for an early lunch, if you’re hungry. She thinks for a good solid moment, the kind of moment you can really feel, and then she leans against that great awful spike and says sure, food would be good.
Seeing it up close, it’s just as monstrous as I thought, just as grisly, a mutant flower irregular but it kind of suits her, the way she leans, and I say I’ll get right on that.
***
So what’s your deal?
She says that she just wants to know what I’m doing up here, and while I pile clothes out of the main room and try to straighten the empty cans and opened computers I tell her I’m surviving, however I can, and that it’s a damn shame I need to say either of those things. We’re sitting at the island and the spike gets its own seat, next to my rifle, and I tell her I used to be a programmer, back before we lost the world. She asks what I programmed.
I tell her I worked on the games, because most people did. When she asks me which ones I just tell her it was most of them, whatever people hired me for; that I was interested in a lot.
She asks what I did during the Grand Crash, and I tell her well I tell her, I was up here counting down with a pair of binoculars, and then it wasn’t quite very much what I expected. It wasn’t very much worth it, watching the whole thing.
I ask about the handy little impaler and she tells me it’s from the Mopman, and I say that I know and I’m going to ask about it anyway but she says, too quick, I’m lucid, and I say yeah, me too, crying shame.
She says it’s not, it’s the best thing ever; and she wants to know if there’s anywhere she can charge her e-readers and music players. Two sandwiches; fried ham, smoked fish, some mayo and some pepper, and I snicker much impressed by her bracelet.
We eat first, because it’s always best when things come in twos, yes-no, on-off, one-zero, and I think maybe it’d be kind of a shame once she leaves.
So about that power, she says, and I point her towards the generator. She thanks me. Standing by it she asks me if it’s the only one I have and I go a little weak-kneed, the way her eyes are big. I say I had a backup. It was stolen.
You don’t use back-ups until you need them, and I say no not really, but it was still mine.
She asks me if I’d be happy if other people used it, to make their lives better, and I ask if she needs a place to stay but no, she says, she’d best get going on after she’s got juice.
***
Stay for dinner, I say, watching the bars on her players fill.
Well I don’t know, and I tell her there are caioats out there, and she asks me why I pronounce it like that, and I say I don’t know. I guess I always figured if the world was going to be mad I may as well have a style. A man needs a style.
She asks me about what’s written on the side of the tower, and I say I put it there when I put the place together.
To scare away freaks? She asks.
To scare away lucids, I say. Right now, talking to you, it doesn’t make much sense, does it?
No, she says.
Stay for dinner? It’s fish over greens.
What if I don’t like fish? she says, and I say then it’s anything else over greens.
You’re lonely, she says, and I say aren’t you?
Not really, anymore. She tells me she listens to the caioats at night.
***
I hand her a gun while she’s sitting on the balcony, watching the horizon. Dinner was fine; she was truly interested in the way things were up here, and how it all ran, and how programming used to work and what it means to “hack
” and to “infect.” I let her try out the goggles. She reels, and giggles, then stops herself. I offer to give her the Encyclopedia Britannica on file and she tells me just N and beyond would be great.
So I upload it while she’s sitting on the balcony and I hand her a gun, watching the sunset. She wants to know how often I watch the city, and I tell her pretty often.
She wants to know why I shot the man earlier today, and I tell her that hey, he was a freak, wasn’t he? I thought that was you, down there, I was just worried it was going to get rough. You know, get rough-and-tumble, like maybe those two were going to hurt you. You seemed pretty normal, really. No ornaments, just the bandoleer. I’d love something, like that.
She asks me why I shot both, and I just repeat my answer, and she says that she gets it she thinks and then asks me what the gun is for.
It’s protection. You should use it, if you find people you hate, or on the bad ones you meet.
She looks at it for a good long interminable half minute, and then she says she doesn’t really want to hate people, it’s not their fault they’re the way they are.
Some bad people, it really is their fault, you know?
Not anymore, she says, in this day and age and she puts the gun on the balcony edge. She walks away.
What if I shot you right now, in the back? I call this to her, and she stops and sags and looks back, saying: so you really are a bad person?
Well, I say, well I don’t mean to be, and she nods, and says that she really didn’t think I meant to be.
She leaves; and she was a nice girl, and wouldn’t you know it I always forget to ask the nice girls their names.
ICESS FERNANDEZ ROJAS
Of Love, Death, and Marriage:
The Fabled Reputation of Don Armando Mejia
Part I
AS THE RAIN CONTINUED to beat on the crumbling church roof, Don Armando Mejia de la Luz stood at the alter like a used up tissue, dressed in his bridegroom splendor three hours after his bride-to-be was scheduled to arrive.
He was dressed in a glowing, starched white shirt that was a perfect fit for his slender frame two wives and fifty years ago. The silver of his remaining hair bolted from the sides of his head as if in shock and his wood cane crackled with rot. His nose whistled when he took a breath and the stubborn hair that escaped from his now bald head transitioned to the area right above his eyes. Don Armando, who was known for the love and attention he bestowed on all his wives, also wore his fiancée’s favorite cologne. The scent of which was so heavy that the door men, sitting at the back of the church, would occasionally sneeze as the smell tickled their noses. Regardless of all these minor obstacles, he was sure the young Mayra Marquez Santos had fallen for him in a way a woman in love should fall -- passionately and unconditionally.
That’s why Don Armando was confused by her tardiness.
The church was arranged as the young bride had always dreamed it would be on her wedding day-- the pews were dressed in yellow and pink ribbons, bundles of gardenias and daisies dotted the alter in exclamation of her delicate decorating tastes, her bridesmaids, cousins she had only met once since there were many, wore alternating sunshine and salmon colored dresses designed to enhance the bride’s beauty. Everything was in place, except the bride.
Ironically, it was one of those cousins, young Teresita, only one year younger than her absent cousin, who broke the news to the elderly Don Armando.
"Perdón, Don Armando,” her voice like a five year old asking for spare change. “I’m sorry, but it seems my cousin is not coming."
"Nonsense,” he croaked. “A bride never misses her wedding day to her prince. She’s just behind on the preparations, that’s all.”
“No, Don Armando. Que pena pero...”
“But what?"
"Don Armando," she said touching his wrinkled hand. "She's not coming."
Surely, he thought, this was not true. He was, after all, Don Armando, the most sought after bachelor in Santo Cristobal. To roll his name off one’s tongue was like taking Holy Communion. He courted his previous two wives successfully and provided for them very comfortable lives. Any woman would be a fool to walk away from the opportunity to be the wealthiest woman in the town. Besides, he had always been a Casanova, handsome and strong and known for his chiseled good looks. Women would swoon at his wink, die for his touch.
She handed over a folded envelope that was addressed to Teresita in the unmistakable hand of his lovely bride-to-be. In the envelope was a small piece of paper with two words:
I can’t.
Still convinced that Mayra was only tardy, Don Armando threw the letter to the floor with a grunt and hobbled from the altar to the aisle, his old bones creaking with effort.
“We’ll see who can’t!” he yelled, easing his way out of the church door and toward Senorita Mayra’s house, a crowd of curious guests, anxious caterers, and a gossiping bridal party followed, waiting to see what Don Armando would do next.
Part II
When he saw dark-haired Mayra, he could see the lust in her eyes and how she yearned for him, even at 19. Yes, she was young enough to be his granddaughter, but that was of no consequence. In the December of his life, Don Armando felt he needed a prize, a young woman with fresh dewy skin and plump breasts to ease him into older age. And should he be called to heaven and face St. Peter, he would have died happy among the folds of perfumed breasts as he had always intended. Though he had his doubts of Mayra's virginity, it was of no consequence. Molding a virgin, his 50 year old mind told him, was over rated. He would enjoy her just the same because her youth could handle his reputation. He wanted someone young and firm and perhaps a little adventurous...curious... about the man who was rumored to drive women to the brink of insanity with a thrust of his hips. He deserved it for being a faithful husband to two women.
The first wife he married at twenty-two after the tragic accident of his parents. Nearly done with his university studies, Armando learned that both of his loving parents perished in a car accident on a desolate road outside of the town. Penniless and mourning, he returned to Santo Cristobal facing a desolate and uncertain future. At the same time, Doña Karina Juanita Gutierrez, thirty years his senior, had received some unsettling news of her own. After many tests, some which took exhaustive trips to the Capital city, death became more of a certainty and closer than she would have liked. That was when the regrets began to clutch at her heart like the dead gasping for life. She had never married and had never had children; she lived her life like a prized canary in a jeweled cage in Santo Cristobal and, except for the few trips to the Capital, hardly ever set a toe outside of its borders. Doña Karina was a beautiful maid in her youth, but decided to dedicate herself to adding to the family fortune and now, in the fading hours of her life, she was alone and too old to do what she had imagined. Her biggest regret was never falling in love.
At the church, Doña Karina prayed for a comfortable life and a swift passing when on the steps she met a young man weeping.
“Why so much despair? You are in the prime of your life!”
“My life is over,” cried the young man.
“That’s nonsense! A young, healthy man like you? Did your novia refuse you?”
“No, madam. I don’t have one and this is more serious than the trivialities of a broken heart. My parents are dead and I am alone in the world.”
Doña Karina invited Armando to her home for café con leche. This gentleman was much like a dot in the middle of a sentence. He was out of place in her lace and silk living room. He was dirty but not filthy, his frame swam in older styled clothes and his unshaven face was like the harsh bristles on a horse’s brush. His long and disheveled dark hair fell over his forehead and caged his eyes. Yet, despite being the equivalent of a fly in soup, she enjoyed the contrast and the visual disruption. This was something new.
“Where do you live?” she asked as she handed him a cup of coffee.
“Nowhere. I’ve been kicked out of my home by
creditors.”
“How awful! Were they brought up by savages?”
Armando took a sip of his coffee burning the tip of his tongue. He blew cold air in and hot air out in such a rush and that he whistled.
“Excuse me?” The offended Doña Karina was mortified.
“Oh, no. Perdóna me, señora! The coffee is very hot.”
Karina settled down on the blue and white chair opposite his, arched eyebrow ceiling high. She was a lady of the highest caliber, her name and reputation was as clean as if the Lord had scrubbed it Himself. There was never an ill word said about her character. That was how she was brought up--by God fearing, decent parents. However, being whistled at, even by accident, tickled something inside of the great damá as if a button had been pressed inside of her and left on.
“What is your name, young man?”
“Armando Mejia de la Luz .”
“Ah. The Mejia clan. I knew your extended family. Why not stay with them? Señora Mejia is quite nice.”
“With all due respect, I don’t feel comfortable asking them for help since I don’t know them.”
She nodded with approval at his pride. Pride is a positive attribute to have despite what Father Gomez and the Bible said. Both of which, Doña Karina believed, were desperate liars. Pride was the type of thing that could bring someone up from destitute to greatness, if channeled appropriately. In fact, it was her father’s pride that helped begin the family fortune, if Doña Karina remembered correctly, and she usually did. But that was a great many years ago before the illness robbed her of part of her memory as if the very moments of surrendered to forget were pre-selected by the devil himself. She watched Señor Mejia take another sip from the cup, this time more like a gentleman. He blew into his cup and then dipped his tongue into the coffee to test the temperature before a drink. He wasn’t as savage as she thought him to be. With the right clothes and a close shave, he would be an exciting prospect for any young woman to consider. He spoke well and was somewhat educated though there would have to be some investment there. Also, there were decent traits that could be further refined for more delicate visitors and events, but Karina was getting ahead of herself.
