by Rich Hayden
He could not bear to think of her as a Waste, but as Amil continued to dream of Ali, he was haunted by this nocturnal Nothing. For just the same as his earthly love, this specter had a pair of blue eyes that he could not forget. She had been placed so very far away from him, but it was as if she always crept quietly behind, unseen and untouchable. Unable to be attained or saved, she wallowed in betrayal, her lone acquaintance.
Amil was eventually placed into a new occupation, and took to the demands of a truck driver’s work. His able body and his familiarity with interstate highway systems, which had carried over from his days on earth, made him dually equipped for the job. The distribution of goods all across The Eternal City was crucial, and always in a demand near impossible to sate. The differing terrain of the city made this a challenging task, and the days were often long, but it awarded Amil an unexpected therapy. He thrived on being alone, as most interactions with others served to remind him of the cruelty of death and of all that he had been made to leave behind. The incomplete maps and roadways that he was asked to navigate offered to him a feat that distracted his mind from the ghosts that always hung heavy across his back.
Two months into the job, his nightmares, born from the torturous visions seen on his last day as a courier, began to recede. His mood lightened, and during the longest of trips, Amil again succeeded at justifying his abandonment of his sworn mission to save Ali. Thundering down a forgotten road that was bare of markers or a centerline, he tapped his foot to the tunes of the stereo as they screamed over the roar of the Freightliner. With sunglasses on to shield his eyes from one of man’s oddest creations, Amil set the cruise, and thought of going out later that evening. He hadn’t seen much of anyone lately, and, as the feeling of being alive bubbled up in him again, he gave a seconds’ entertainment to the memory of Jill.
Night fell, or, rather, it was set to come down, and Amil sauntered into that cozy bar on America Alley. Curtis was there, full of shrapnel wounds and beer, and all the pool tables in the back hosted spirited games. The counter was lined with moderately attractive singles, who, in their common deformity, searched for a spark as they partook in the dating game. Amil grabbed a seat next to his inebriated friend and ordered a drink. As he waited for his glass to arrive, he glanced down the row of faces and found the wide smile of Jill.
She was sporting a wig of neon pink that had been chopped into a punky style, and her pale face was decorated in a lively arrangement of makeup. The tall boots that she wore made her look even thinner, and with the intended effect, they made her skirt appear all the shorter. Her top exposed the cold cleavage of a chest once stilled by cancer, and, as she caught Amil’s eyes, Jill skipped over with the usual and comedic sight of cigarette smoke encircling her head like a charcoal halo.
During the course of the hours that followed, the pair flirted and gently pawed at each other, as is typical of a courtship born from anxiety and alcohol. Jill’s affections were loosely veiled, and her advances came all the stronger since Amil had made himself a scarce sight as of late. Although the attention flushed him with a tickle of fun rarely indulged, he at last bid goodnight to Jill, and made for the door much the same as he had arrived: alone.
He could see the disappointment on Jill’s face as he left. Her bewilderment was not lost on him, as Amil had previously taken other girls home, while leaving Jill and her charms to fade into the background. He only had sex a few times since entering into The Eternal City. The act had become too unsettling to bear. The first woman that he fucked in this vulgar un-life was a fairly attractive redhead that had fallen victim to meningitis. Her name was Marianne, and she was as uncomfortable about the whole process as he. They were equally turned off by the fact that an artificial lubricant was always necessary to keep things moving along, but it was a much more disturbing fact that cut short their affair. Here in Aphelianna’s house, the inside of the body is quite cold. Sex had become an act that lost all desirability, and it was not a sensation that Amil was ready to share with someone for whom he cared about. In his melancholy, he advanced mere paces down the sidewalk before Jill rushed up from behind and forced herself into his arms under the suspicious glare of a lamppost.
“Hey, what’s the deal?” she asked.
“This ain’t right, Jill. None of it is, anymore.”
“Quit being so goddamn tight. Let yourself have fun once in a while.”
“I doubt this would be any fun,” said Amil, flatly.
“Well find out then, fucker.”
The wooziness of her state only magnified her cute persona, and, with little coaxing required, Amil finally gave in to her allure, and kissed the drunken Jill. They scurried out from under the light and hid in the darkness of a nearby alley. The sloppy make-out session intensified, and soon Jill relieved herself of her shirt. He had a hand up the back of Jill’s skirt, and sucked on her breasts before returning his attention to her lips.
Under a voluntary blindness, the feel of Jill’s fingers as they undid his pants, and the touch of her painted lips, surged a myriad of sensations through Amil. He was poisoned on a cocktail of happiness and guilt, and swam among this insipid brew over another quick round of passes from Jill’s tongue, until he could bear no more of the conflicting emotions.
He pushed her away and felt his chest flutter. Amil stared deeply into her mildly sunken eyes and knew that a decision that would forever influence him looked back. He could momentarily brush aside his guilt, and add her to the list of late-night distractions, but Jill was somehow different. As he looked upon her face, all aglow with a distant yellow light, Amil knew that if he went home with Jill that night, he would never leave. The choice loomed heavy and abominable. He could open himself to her, a caring figure, salvation from ruin, or he could run into the arms of certain oblivion.
Jill’s lips trembled with dismay and her eyes begged for answers. They begged for compassion and common understanding. They speared into him with the promise of happiness. All that was required was for Amil to give in, to give up. The choice to be free hung on her breath, the way to emancipation from his wretched toil. In that moment, he felt Jill’s pure offering, the pull of love as it promises to sooth away all the scars of the past. But, like revenge for damage suffered long ago, the face of Ali stared back at him. Agony consumed his mind and pain shattered his soul. He turned and briskly stepped off. Jill shouted for him to come back, but as Amil heard the clack of her boots as she started after him, he took to a sprint, trying in vain to outrun the hurt that shadowed him.
He was in immediate need of a new distraction. A tonic to pummel down the horrors inside him, one that didn’t involve the influence of others and one that presented a hole that he might crawl inside to again hide from his shame. As he walked the avenues that carved their way through the neighborhood, Amil gazed upon little else besides his shoes as they scuffed over the cement. But in a flash of fluorescent light, his interest was stolen from the ground and set upon the marquee of a movie theater. It brightly offered the escape he sought, and so Amil left behind the condemning air of the evening and disappeared into the mouth of the film house.
He caught a light-hearted flick about alien invasion. Sci-fi was a favored topic among those who made their homes within the limits of The Eternal City. Predictably, gloomy movies which told of the end of the world fell out of fashion. The feature wasn’t terribly well put together, but the theater was barely populated and the air inside the darkened room was as clean and fresh as the breeze that blew outside. Comfortably reclined and temporarily lulled into numbness, Amil sipped the last of his soda and worked the candy out of his teeth as he watched the credits roll.
“Did you enjoy that little slice of mediocrity?” a voice questioned.
Amil didn’t have to turn around. He wasn’t even startled, as the unmistakable tone of the mischievous Duke Vinzenz blasted away the ambient music that accompanied the movie’s expiration. He sat silent and stared ahead. He didn’t know the reason for the Duke’s appearance, bu
t he was certain that is was not for love of the cinema.
“What do you want?” asked Amil, as he grew nervous.
“You seem to have adapted quite well to life here in The Eternal City,” Vinzenz exclaimed. “Congratulations, most people never even make it this far. Oh yes, you must be quite extraordinary indeed to have crafted a life here and forgotten all about what drove you to twist your little key over and over again in the first place.”
“I’ll never forget about Ali,” said Amil, through clenched teeth.
“Then why are you here, basking in the glow of the silver screen and cavorting with zombies at the local taverns? Oh what lecherous fun it must be, to drink ale and sing songs. Perhaps you could bed an easy girl, or purchase a new album for tomorrow’s travels. I hear the swine is quite good around here. Tell me, is the honey glaze served down on Resurrection Road really as delectable as everyone claims it to be?” asked Vinzenz, with no interest in the answer.
“What the fuck do you want from me?”
“How so very human of you. To suggest that I came here to deprive you of something dear. No, on the contrary to your suspicious beliefs, I wish to give you an item that you might find quite useful.”
“I’m not interested,” whispered Amil, as he stood up and sidestepped his way down the row.
“If you may indulge me, why did you quit? Why did you just give up?” shouted the Duke, his voice echoing through the empty theater.
“I know it’s bigger than me,” admitted Amil. “I would do anything to help Ali, but there’s nothing I can do.”
“Maybe this could be of some assistance,” replied Vinzenz, as he tossed a small round medallion over to Amil.
Much like the coins once used to free the former god, this charm held a high polish, and was absolutely littered with strange inscriptions. On the reverse, the ornate decorations were absent, and, in their vacancy, there was etched a number: 1373. In the center of this unearthly piece, there was an oval hole, but rather than nothingness, an enigmatic haze of violet restlessly swam.
“What is it?” asked Amil, terrified of the revelation.
“Just a simple tool. It comes with no ramifications or ill effects. Most unlike that little gift that our dearest Aphelianna gave to you. No, this wondrous device will simply show you the way. Hold it up to a door, who knows what may happen next,” said Vinzenz as he grinned widely and stroked the braid which crawled down his breast.
“I thought you never wanted me to find Isadora?” asked Amil, confused of the Duke’s intentions.
“Oh, make no mistake. That still remains true. And, Amil, I possess no faith in you. I just wanted to see what you might choose to do if presented with all that you’ve wanted while positioned snugly amongst all that you really need.”
With his eyes closed, Amil tightened his fingers around the glorified coin and turned away without a word. He had nearly marched to the exit when Vinzenz verbally halted his flight.
“Oh, one more thing,” he shouted. “I understand that you had the pleasure of meeting Arcanus Tyme. A lovely old man, I’m sure you would concur. However, did he speak to you of his daughters? Did he lament the torture of one while he spoke longingly of the other?”
“Daughters?”
“Oh, poor old Arcanus, he didn’t tell you. Aphelianna and Isadora are his blood. Can you imagine his suffering? One daughter ruined the world, and the other keeps it afloat like a corpse that bobs over the sea. Truly monstrous. Even I pity him.” Vinzenz grew quiet, as though he actually was telling the truth when he spoke of sympathy for Arcanus.
Amil was immobilized by the weight of what he had heard. Left with nothing else to do but stare at the God of Fortune, he silently cursed the whole of existence and its furiously morbid nature. The Duke stared back with a curious smile and checked his pocket watch. He looked around the theater and the dim light that it held, as though glancing at what the time to come might hold, and then bid adieu to Amil with a slow nod of his head.
“Good luck, Amil. The choice is yours,” Vinzenz maliciously uttered as he casually stepped away.
Alone in the theater, but immersed in a well of sadness within, Amil gripped his new possession. He thought of Jill, and how the burn pits seemed a proper storage space for Vinzenz’s present. He had sense enough to know that to cast this object away would definitively put an end to his quest to find Isadora. He then thought of Ali, and cursed the unrelenting design of memory. Feeling damned to unmake all he knew and all that existed outside his understanding, he slipped the charm into his pocket.
Much like the key that hung from Amil’s neck, his gift from Vinzenz accompanied his every step. But it was just a weight in his pocket, as Aphelianna’s charm was a shackle around his neck. They were chains that tethered him to the memories that he could never shed, but in these days that saw him reconcile all that he had forsaken, the tokens slept neglected, left to wallow among the company of their master’s afterthoughts.
Painfully, and arduously slow, but victim to the will of the almighty calendar, the months turned and died away. The seasons didn’t come behind this expiration of days, nor did the scenery yield to the suggestions of change. The sun shone every day, even when it mysteriously rained, and every night was of the blackest black, barring only the influence of manmade neon and artificial light. As it usually failed to fluctuate inside the main limits of The Eternal City, temperature was a near forgotten concept, and the repetition of all that would ever be continued on quite unimpeded.
It was by freak chance, an accident, and a conspiracy of faulty maps and a distracted mind, that set Amil before a decision which would forever change his version of the evermore. He was supposed to take Highway 91 past the Ice District. The land of this area lay crippled under the assault of freezing conditions, and was the least inhabited portion of the mammoth room that held The Eternal City. He had already traveled the thirty-odd miles that had been mapped, but he still failed to reach the next turn onto Separation Road. The curiously named avenue that he sought never appeared. Old 91 just flowed on in an ever-increasing state of ill repair and abandon. About the time that the asphalt under his wheels gave way to dirt and lumpy patches of congealed stone, Amil realized that he had missed his turn. It wasn’t with reasoning that he could deduce, but he elected to put his responsibilities on hold as he bore straight ahead into a colorless expanse.
Called by the dullest of Sirens, his pace was limited to a healthy crawl due to the poor conditions of the road. But the utter desolation that spilled out as Amil chugged along bore a fascination within him and deprived his mind of the faculty of independent will. It was as though the dissolving of any and all description spoke to him in a voice as empty as his own. After hours of staring into that icy plane of white and the pale blue horizon which rested upon it, the path under him suddenly vanished. It bled into a uniform gray with the rest of the land, and all the trees, markers, and even the smallest undulation of a hill was lost. The sky beyond began to lose it hue, until all the land had shed its affections for color. It was as if a plug at the bottom of the world had been pulled, and all the color in all things was left to drain out.
Amil allowed the Freightliner to sleep as he killed the engine, and relieved his tandem of mechanical beasts of the air pressure which hammered its way through their brake valves. He stepped out and set his feet upon the bloodless gray. Everything had grown so vapid that Amil could barely distinguish the sky from the ground under his step, but still, he walked. Even the air around him elicited no reaction from his body. It was no longer cold, nor was it warm, dry or humid. Perhaps it, too, had run off with the color. About 100 paces away, he turned to view his truck. Though caked under months of dust, and with a color that had been baked into a soft fade, the rig looked like a brilliant palace as it shimmers under a desert sun. The colors that it possessed appeared magnificent placed among the conquering gloom, and, though it honestly beckoned to him like a paradise of kaleidoscopic beauty, he ignored its pleas and continued a met
hodical plow into the vast absence.
Fully among the gray, and with so little to set his bearings by, Amil became disoriented. Were it not for the glances that he shot to the creases in his jeans and the sharp maroon of his button-down shirt, he would have tumbled to the ground below. This task was so dull and devoid of any stimuli whatsoever, that he came to view it as a punishment. It was his to endure for all the enjoyment that he allowed himself to share in while Ali still hung naked within that orchard of misery. At least this seemed plausible and remotely fair, but it was something else that drove him further on into the gray. Yes, it was a fool’s curiosity. It was the odd sensation of repeatedly passing beyond the touch of any and all creation that permitted him to place one foot before the next. And, in a strange way, Amil felt totally safe in this most godless of places, for it was as though he was beyond the reach of anything at all.
As he started to think about The Eternal City and the comforts of his apartment, and how in the hell he was going to find his way back to the truck, a small feature introduced itself to him. Placed a bit further on, was a door. It was as gray as everything else had become, and the frame that held it was no more impressive than the complete desolation of the world all around. Amil approached with caution, as though the door were an illusion, a mask that obscured a voracious monster solely responsible for the meticulous murder of all that was prismatic.