Wild & Steamy

by Carolyn Crane

  The EMTs reached the bottom. They transferred the boy into one of the ATVs down below and started it up. Robert’s attention was on the other side of the giant hill; she followed his gaze to the buckled sandwich of road. Out the corner of her eye, she watched him flatten his hand on the pillar, and the buckled road rotated minutely and tipped up a bit.

  Sophia’s mouth hung open. The way it tipped made it look…better. “Jesus, did you adjust that for visual balance?”

  Robert stilled, said nothing for a beat. Maybe he hadn’t realized she was watching. Then he chuckled. “Is that what it looked like to you?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It enhanced the gestalt.”

  “You’re imagining things, Sophia.”

  Over on the other side, the ATV was disappearing into the darkness.

  He hadn’t meant her to see it. She grabbed his arm. “Don’t screw with me. I know you. I know your work. You just adjusted a multi-ton section of buried highway for the purposes of visual balance. You vivified. Are you vivifying this whole thing?”

  “Don’t,” he said in a warning voice.

  “Something’s up with this place.”

  “It’s called traffic,” he said. “Copy the way I go down.”

  Robert started down the boulder mountain. Carefully, Sophia placed her feet just as he did. Something was up. She knew she was right. Things were too…of a mind.

  A rock suddenly gave way under her feet. Sophia scrambled, nearly losing her balance, grabbing something rusty to stop her slide, watching in horror as a boulder below her began to roll. She screamed. “Robbie!”

  With a kind of terrible clairvoyance, she saw its whole path, heading right at Robert, and she couldn’t stop it. “Robbie!”

  He twisted and dove, but not fast enough. The boulder crunched onto his leg

  And stopped.

  “Robbie!” She scrambled down. “Oh my god!”

  Robert craned up his neck to stare at the boulder pinning his leg, or at least the part below the knee, and then he lay back and looked upwards. Calmly, he said, “I think my shin is fucked. And my foot.”

  Shock. Robert was in shock.

  She knelt beside him, hand on his damp forehead. “You’re okay. You’ll be okay.” She tried to look calm, but her heart beat like crazy.

  He turned his trusting brown eyes to her. Said nothing.

  She eyed the boulder, the size of a small car. “I’m going to move this. Okay?”

  He watched her calmly.

  “I am.” Sophia put her hands to the thing. She would move it. There had to be a way. “One, two…” she heaved.

  It stayed.

  Fear surged through her.

  “Let’s call your guys back.” She pulled her cell phone from her pocket. No reception. She knelt and patted Robert’s pockets and found his phone. She bit her lip as she got no reception on his, either.

  “What the fuck! How can your phone not work in here? That kid’s phone worked!”

  “No, it didn’t. His friends called when they got out.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said. She needed to remain calm.

  He said, “Try punching a code for me - 6759 and a star.”

  Sophia punched in the code. A red light came on. “What is it?”

  “A beacon. Installed years ago. I don’t have high hopes…”

  “It’s okay, you have me.” Sophia set the phone next to him, tilted so that he could see the light. It probably wouldn’t work any better than the phone, but hope was important. She put her shoulder to the boulder and tried to get a foothold, thrusting herself against it, but it was like a wall. She tried again and again, then paused, leaning against it.

  Robert was sweating, alarmingly pale. “You can’t move it,” he observed.

  “Screw that.” Sophia tried again. She’d heard of mothers finding the strength to lift entire cars off their trapped infants. Could she not have that for the man she loved? She tried and tried again. He would be losing blood. He was saying something to her. She couldn’t hear anything but her grunts. She pulled her gun off her back and threw it down, and tried to push it with her back, using the power of her legs.

  Finally his voice broke through to her. “Sophia! Stop!”

  She stopped. She felt so insubstantial, so powerless.

  “You’ll have to take No for answer for once.”

  “What if I found a way to, I don’t know, get you connected to the structure. Could you make the wall bend to push it off?”

  “I’m halfway up a rock pile, Sophia. I can’t touch the floor. And you can’t bring the floor to me. Maybe if you had a cement mixer.”

  “I need something to lever this fucker.” She looked around for a board, a metal beam.

  A sharp intake of breath. “Sophia.”

  “What?”

  “Sophia, I need you to pick up the gun. Now.”

  She looked around to see three sleepwalkers climbing up—two men and a woman. You could always tell them by the plodding way they moved. And the fact that they wore only pajamas, and no coat, even though it was winter. She grabbed her gun. Sleepwalkers under the control of Stuart, the highcap dream invader, Midcity’s number one criminal.

  “You have to shoot one,” he whispered. “They need to see one of their own shot.”

  She cocked the rifle and crouched, balancing it on one knee, trying not to shake. Cold rocks ground into the other knee. “Jesus, they’re regular people.” But they were coming.

  To eat her and Robert.

  A man in a red union suit was closest. “Hell.” Sophia aimed at his leg and pulled the trigger. The shot sounded like a cannon blast in her ear. He tumbled back down and the other two backed up. More would come now. Longingly she eyed the ATV, just yards from the sleepwalkers. Had they noticed it? They tended to notice only living things, the sleepwalkers. “We have to get you out of here.”

  “Listen to me carefully,” Robert said. “Lift me up and pull my gun off my back and put it in my hands.”

  She touched his cheek, ears ringing. “I’m covering you,” she said.

  “Just do it! Lift me and slide out my gun.”

  Was it hurting him? Gently she lifted his back and pulled the gun out from under him.

  “Put it on my lap.”

  “I’m handling the shooting part.”

  “No, you are going to that ATV. The keys are in the ignition.”

  “No fucking way. I won’t leave you.”

  Again.

  “Sophia, I’m losing blood and I won’t be conscious much longer. We have a small window.”

  “Shut up.” She squatted and stroked his forehead, brushing his hair back in the pulsating dimness.

  “It’s right that I would die in here,” he said.

  “No! It isn’t right at all! It’s the most wrong thing possible. And you won’t. I won’t let you. I will not let you.”

  “Some things you can’t control, Sophia.” He closed his eyes.

  “Robert! No.” Softly she patted his cheek.

  “Stop hitting me, dude.”

  She gulped away a sob and knelt down, put her cheek to his, held him best she could. Moans down below. More sleepwalkers were approaching.

  “Goddammit!” She wiped away tears, lumbered back up, cocked the rifle, and shot. They backed off. She crouched back down, brushed his hair off his clammy forehead, kissed his cheek, his nose. “I’m staying. I should’ve never left.” A sheen of sweat covered his face.

  “It’s okay, Soph,” he whispered without opening his eyes.

  “It’s not okay. You have no idea.”

  He said nothing.

  “You need to know what I did, Robert. I have to tell you this—Grentano wanted you. He loved your stuff. They all did.”

  She took a breath and waited for that to sink in. Robert watched her, with a strange calm in his eyes. God, was he going into some sort of blood loss stupor?

  “I erased your memory of Grentano’s acceptance, Robert. I’m a memory re
visionist.”

  “I know,” he whispered.

  “What? You know? You knew?”

  He squeezed her hand in response.

  “You knew?”

  “At the end.”

  She watched him, bewildered, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I really did love you, Robbie. I loved you so much, but I was so frightened for my parents. I was such a coward—”

  Confusion now. “Your parents?”

  “They were going to kill them if the turnpike didn’t go through, and without you, it was a death sentence.” She rubbed his cold hand between her two warm ones. “I should’ve told you, trusted you. And then when I saw our beautiful stuff smashed…I couldn’t face you.”

  “You were trying to save your parents? That’s why you did it?”

  “I’m so ashamed.” She tipped her forehead to his chest. She felt like a boulder was inside her; crushing her. How long had it been there? “They loved your art and they wanted you, and I made you think they didn’t. I betrayed you and ran off.”

  “It’s okay,”

  “Like hell it is. But I’m ending it. You’re getting the fuck out of here and starting your rightful life, and I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m disgusted with how I am. I’m done with this.”

  The highways above them droned and droned. “The Monk,” he whispered. “That’s why.”

  “That’s right. He changes people’s whole deal.” She sat up and craned around for cannibals and saw none. “I need to be stopped.”

  Robert shook his head. “You don’t need that.”

  “I can’t stop revising. Falsifying.”

  “You loved true things when we were together.”

  She felt the hot tears flow. “I was happy and in love then.”

  He winced. Oh, god, he was in pain and here she was talking about her stupid self. “Sophia, you have to go while you can.”

  If she left him, he’d be eaten alive. She leaned over and kissed him. The kiss tasted like tears. “I’ll take my chances. They have to leave eventually. They have to return to their beds—”

  “I don’t have that long—” he breathed. “More sleepwalkers are going to be here. If I die or lose consciousness, I won’t be able to cover you on the way to the ATV. It’s okay,” he said. “It’s the culmination I’d always intended for this.”

  “The culmination?” With a shiver, she lifted her gaze to the fantastical forest of twisted metal and concrete. Its strange flow swept the eye, along gnarled progressions up to majestic visual offenses everything with a strange internal balance, like a grand atonal symphony. “Oh my god.” She gripped his hand. “It’s all yours. This whole damn thing is sculptuary.” She took it in, anew. “It’s a living, breathing…totally outrageous…” A massive sculpture fueled entirely by his despair. He was sunk into it—personally intertwined. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  His hand was so cold.

  “Fuck.” She wrestled her coat off and put it over him, tucked him in. “It’s beautiful, baby.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s the most beautiful thing ever.” She could barely see anything for the blur of tears. “You made even despair and hopelessness beautiful. I erase things. You reveal them.” He’d vivified his despair.

  He looked up at her. He had something to say.

  She waited.

  “You really loved me?” He asked.

  “I still do. I never stopped.” She lay down beside him.

  He touched her hair. “I never wanted you to go. Even after I knew what you did.” Silence. “But you have to go now.”

  “You’re in pain. Let me revise away the pain. Let me use my power for one good thing.”

  Weakly he shook his head. “There are some things a man wants to remember, no matter how much time he has left.”

  Moans from the other direction, above them. The sleepwalkers had circled around and climbed the other side of the boulder mountain.

  She clambered back up and shot, and they disappeared.

  She got back down by Robert. “I’ll die before I leave you.”

  *** *** ***

  He looked at her, so strong and bright. She wanted to stay with him! His heart swelled at the thought, not quite blotting out the excruciating pain in his leg—it was like the hottest hot, and the coldest cold, both at once.

  He had to find a way to make her leave, but the fact that she wanted to stay, that she would stay, it meant everything to him. Sophia, always so in control of everything, Sophia who hated the word No, now she wanted to jump into the abyss with him—to embrace the most finalistic No possible.

  She was stretched out beside him, head propped on one hand, watching his eyes. She seemed different, as though she was coming apart, somehow. In good way; like she was coming free of a hard, dark exoskeleton. And he saw the old truth in her eyes, or more, a new truth. She wasn’t hiding; she was with him—totally, completely and utterly with him. He wasn’t alone anymore.

  She tipped her head and pressed her soft lips to his. He grabbed onto her coat sleeves, fisting the fabric, pulling her to him and kissing her back, like the kiss was life itself.

  Something cracked inside him. A sensation he couldn’t quite place…a type of lightness…

  Hope.

  “No!” he whispered into her lips.

  Rumbles. A crash.

  Sophia jerked up her head. “What was that?”

  It was his despair fading. “No,” he said. His despair and hopelessness was what cemented the very atoms of the Tangle.

  “What?”

  “I’m feeling hope again,” he said.

  “But that’s good, baby.”

  “It’s not. The Tangle is fused with my despair. It won’t stay up.”

  As if in reply, a section of ceiling crashed down nearby.

  “You have to go!” he said.

  More moans sounded from above. Pebbles started coming loose and hurtling down as the big cannibal set his foot onto their side. Sophia moved to cover Robert with her body. He loosened his hold on her. He had to make her save herself. “Get out.”

  Three gun blasts echoed out. Sophia gasped and straightened.

  Robert could see one sleepwalker draped over the ridge, the others had disappeared. And a new head rose up. Gray hair in a prim little ponytail.

  Jordan the disillusionist therapist?

  Was he hallucinating? Robert had met her once. Of course she didn’t know he was the Monk.

  “Jordan!” Sophia screamed. “Help me! Help us!” Another figure rose up—another disillusionist Robert recognized. Shelby. Grimness, if he recalled. They were responding to the beacon he’d had Sophia punch in—he hadn’t imagined it would have any kind of reach beyond the Tangle. Then again, the direction from which they came…had they been in the interior of the Tangle?

  With a dark look Sophia averted her eyes from Shelby. Had Shelby done something to Sophia? Or had Sophia done something to Shelby?

  Jordan was already scrambling down. Shelby came after her.

  Sophia stood. “Please! He’s trapped. If we can just get this thing off him.”

  The three women shouldered the boulder, rocking it. The pain was unbelievable and he screamed as the enormous weight lifted off. More crashes around them. Parts of the Tangle.

  “Just get me down there,” he said. “I can still reinforce this place.”

  “He needs to touch the floor,” Sophia said. “Or this whole place comes down.” She wrapped one of his arms around her shoulder, and he put another around Shelby and they started down.

  Robert tried to help with his good leg; he couldn’t feel his other one, though he was dimly aware of it banging over the rocks.

  “You are structural interface,” Shelby said, not looking at Sophia. Thick accent. He’d forgotten she was Russian or something. They got him to the concrete gulley by the ATV, and he lay back, pressing his palms to the rough surface, sending force fields through the key planes and suppor
ts of the mammoth multi-turnpike. He needed to place the force fields before he lost consciousness. So many people in the Tanglelands. He couldn’t let them die.

  From the edge of his awareness he understood that Jordan was pulling things out of the ATV and that Shelby was yelling at Sophia about the phone. “Only disillusionists have phone with beacon. Not you.” She accused Sophia of stealing the phone from Carter, demanded to know the whereabouts of Carter…who was Carter again? It was all so confusing. There was so much bitterness between the two women. He wanted it to stop.

  “The phone’s mine,” Robert grated out.

  Silence. They were looking down at him.

  “You have no right either,” Shelby said. “Is disillusionist’s phone. You are not disillusionist.”

  “No?” Jordan set a stretcher next to him. “We haven’t met all of them have we?” She scrutinized his face. “The Monk, I presume.”

  Robert nodded.

  “The Monk,” Shelby whispered.

  He knew what they were thinking—that they’d finally met the dangerous Monk, the pointlessness and despair man. Except he was feeling hope again. His despair was useless as a weapon if he didn’t have an overwhelming amount of it.

  Sophia appeared at his side, eyes shining with tears. Was he losing consciousness? Jordan was berating them and barking orders. She wanted him on the stretcher. He felt fingers under his shoulders, his hips, fingers poking his flesh, lifting.

  *** *** ***

  He didn’t know how many days he was in and out of consciousness. He remembered doctors and beeps and tubes. Kind nurses. Being awake and so tired. Being awake and in pain. Staring at the ceiling, all alone in the night, thinking about her.

  But he was awake now. Alert even. The room came into focus and there she was, sitting by his side, absorbed in her sketching.

  Sophia.

  Silently he watched her, enjoying the sound of a colored pencil scratching on a sketchpad. He hadn’t heard it for such a long time, but he remembered it well, and he welcomed the familiarity and warmth it added to the hospital’s buzz of machinery. She seemed so bright, somehow—not just her bright red hair, or her silky shirt, but she seemed to him to glow with a kind raw strength.

  As if she felt his eyes on her, she lifted her head. “You’re awake.”