The Altonevers

by Frederic Merbe

  Rebecca sits silently, not even seeming to breath anymore, reliving her life as he tells it.

  “It was a silent spring day, breezeless. The lake in her yard rimmed by low branches reaching far over its surface, outlining the still reflection of a calm sky. Fresh green dewed grass under red and gold fall leaved trees. Right?”

  “Continue,” Rebecca sighs.

  “She floats in a row boat broken hearted, rowing to the middle of the water with sorrow soaked eyes. Crying and staining her white sun dress with tears. Giving up rowing, she lazily floats for awhile across the still reflection, staring to the sky. Unable to stop crying and trembling, she eventually stands, tying a rope to her leg and a cinder block to the rope. Lifting the cinder block with her left and with the other hand pointing a gun, belonging to her mother, to her head while leaning over the boat’s side. Expecting to shoot, blow the heartache and sink to the bottom of the lake and drown out of her misery. To disappear completely, becoming invisible to the world, as she feels invisible to the boy.” Cider pauses, “so young, and so naive. She doesn’t though, become invisible. Instead she shoots herself in the head, but doesn’t die right away or even fall in the water.

  After the pop, she falls flat on her back as dead weight to the bottom of the boat. Sadly still living, though paralyzed. What’re the odds of that? The cement block cracks the boat’s bottom. She stares blankly to the sky as blood gushes from the side of her nearly brain dead head. Reddening the fresh water slowly filling the row boat, and dying her dress to the color that it is today. It takes an hour, for the water, by then red as a rose, to rise to her open mouth. To spill slowly down her throat and fill her gurgling lungs. Drowning her, edema before the fresh red water even touches her top lip.”

  “Memories,” says Rebecca, drowning her tongue in vodka.

  “It is a nice dress, but how did you live if you've died?” Anna asks astonished.

  “You didn't even tell her that?” Rebecca says, “poor girl?”

  “Because Anna, she lives forever, forever longing for love. Just as any of the blood stained doves of her mother’s backyard.”

  “Down, the road huh? there was a delay on my way here,” The Raveness says.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, there was a service interruption. Do you know anything about it? I mean it would be rare,” Rebecca says to a spine chilling silence.

  “What would be 'rare' about that?” she asks.

  “Oh, nothing, he’s just not often seen with redheads, and so clever and bright you aren’t, usually takes to the dark haired girls. My, my, how his tastes have changed,” Rebecca says.

  Anna thinking she's referencing her own past with Cider, leers at her as though trying to pluck at her nerve’s. Cider looks to the dealer, waiting for the next hand to be dealt. Knowing that this shark eyed girl is a ravenous vixen. A captain of bartered souls, whose only real task is to bring their boss more of them, for her to then command. And commanding legions she does, almost everywhere an InterAlto train can stop. That she must think he saved Anna for himself, stealing her from another Alto because he couldn’t stand to see her die. He saved her. That if he's keeping her close and out of sight he must care. Then thinking how much of that string of thought was only his own thoughts. That he may care for her, but they, the Ravens do not, and he's sure they’ll try and use Anna as a chain , to shake his shackles and tighten their noose.

  “What did that feel like?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “Your head?”

  “Seeing a drop of water in that split second it touches a rose petal. Very nice to see you Cider, and I look forward to meeting you again Anna. It’s been utterly delightful,” Rebecca says, standing and leaning over the table.

  “See you around Rebecca.”

  “I like you Cider, so, I'll give you a hand on the way out,” The Raveness says. “Who here has rank?” she shouts as she strolls away from the table on her long slender legs.

  “Me, I'm the lieutenant,” a man yells “What’s the trouble?”

  “With a working girl on his lap. Get up,” Rebecca snaps.

  “What do you mean get up? who do think you are?” the burly voiced man says from behind a fog of smoke.

  “The Raven known as Cider!” Rebecca bellows wickedly and cackles before squeezing her finger several times. Slaying the sleazy Lieutenant and two of his gambling buddies with a few flashes of her silver muzzle, then practically prances away. Not one soul even looks her way as her cardinal dress vanishes through the haze of smoke and faux fireflies.

  Half the room is struck by fear, everyone else howls with laughter. A greedy drunk makes a grab for an extra card, triggering a brawl that quickly sprawls into a riot of frenzied degenerates feasting on the thrill of fighting. Flipping tables and fighting tooth and nail, to the death, for scattering piles of cheap plastic chips. A melee of broken bones, and stabbings and close range gunfights between people no further than six feet from the other with, bullets whizzing not ten feet from Anna’s head. Disorder, desperation and free fortunes are free to take, she swipes some chips to Cider's delight, she’s living in the disorder he adores. The two crouch and weave through the rumble like wading through a moving mangrove of scrambling bodies. A jolly rolls by, lifting everything in the room off the ground and dropping them a second, or two, later. She bruises her hip in the drop, then keeps pushing and crawling, following him through holes of swinging arms and legs as the rumble raging on.

  The two wash out of the cat house and the crowd, into the evening streets filled by grinding gridlock traffic. A black limousine pulls away and speeds unchecked down the uncongested sidewalks. The raven haired girl is sitting in the backseat, looking into a mirror fixing her lipstick as the car swings around the corner, and disappears. Anna looks to him, as he carelessly looks around, and she says as calmly as she could.

  “What the hell was all that about!?”

  “We really should be going,” he says.

  “Not until you tell me-” she’s interrupted by a tide of sirens and rising gunfire erupting from only a few blocks away. The two instinctively scramble around and over the gridlock, caving in the roofs of cabs and passenger cars while leaping and fleeing. Their feet carry them like wind for a few city blocks, then slowing and weaving between bumpers and headlights.

  “No, stay in the middle of the streets, low, crouch between the cars. They'll see you on the sidewalks,” he says.

  “Slow down,” she shouts. He stops, leaning against a box truck. Lighting a smoke in waiting the few seconds it takes for her to catch up. She’s hardly running, with heavy breaths and an unnerved expression on her face.

  “You’re a chain smoker. How are you not out of breath?”

  “I dunno, but I know we have to get out of here?” he says.

  “Here? this street, or this town?”

  “This Alto, and onto the next.”

  “I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve hardly seen anything yet, I didn’t even get a scarf.”

  “I, am a wanted man. Wanted by the InterAlto authorities and my boss. Particularly wanted here, now, right now.”

  “I didn’t shoot anyone, and neither did you, and what did that crazy succubus say about a helping hand? how is killing a criminal cop helping you?” She shouts flagrantly, in his face pointing with spittle flying.

  “Hey you!” a harsh voice yells, proceeding a sweeping flashlight followed by a burst of gunfire”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Wanted alive or not, Anna, now C'mon, follow me!” He says. She follows him unflinchingly, and they slip to the sidewalk and down a long alleyway.

  “Up,” he says.

  “Up where?”

  “Up there,” he points, leading her eye’s to the ladder of a fire escape.

  “I can't jump that high. I can touch it, but I don’t think I can grab it,” she says.

  “Stand here,” he says, pulling her under the fire escape ladder, whose toe is ten feet above her head.
/>   “On three, jump, okay,”

  “Okay,” she agrees starting to crouch to leap.

  “Okay now.”

  “What aah!” she yells, as he grabs she her around her thighs and throws her straight up into the air, and she grabs the ladder, dangling from it with on one hand.

  “Good, now up, up Anna. Quickly, quickly please,” he says trying to push up her flailing feet. She struggle and manages to get a knee on the ladder’s last step. He jumps and pulls himself up after her, they scale the side of the building in seconds. The two stand at the ledge, looking down to street level from the rooftop to the sirens and flashlights sweeping and passing by down below, clueless to the two high above the laundry lines.

  “Well that's that,” he says.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We gotta hang tight till the flood of flashlights and badges washes away,” he says as it starts raining, then pouring.

  “We're gonna stay on a rooftop in the rain?” She asks, with arms folded and a curious look. Lightning strikes a building on the other side of town, flashing the night rain with a burst of yellow light that lingers for seconds too long. Its brick and wood face erupts as a burst of cinders floating through the air.

  “Over there then,” Anna says, pointing to the corner of the roof. Already soaking wet, they scurry under a rickety wooden water tower barely out of the downpour. Laughing about it and settling in for the night, uncomfortably sitting across from each other on the water towers rotted support beams. Surrounded by the scene from the roof’s view, of the gleaming wet town’s lights glistening with the change in winds and jollies rolling through the rain.

  “We'll have to make for the station when this dies down. At most at daybreak,” he says.

  “At least it's not cold,” she says.

  “That's the humidity.”

  “Idiot,” she says, eyeing him coldly.

  “What?”

  “What? anything you care to explain? guy with gun.”

  “No, not really. You have one too.”

  “How about that psycho bitch with the hole in her head. The one who shot a crime boss without anyone lifting a finger or anything?”

  “A few people raised their glasses,” he says, though seeing his charm isn’t rubbing adds shrugging, “that kinda thing happens a lot.”

  “To a weather chaser, who’s on a wanted poster? She was a damn zombie.” Anna says, her excitement is more from fear for her life then anger at him.

  “She was just passing a friendly word. She's a Raven, they'll follow me, us, as long as you’re by my side. Wherever we go.”

  “And you, you’re a...Raven?” she asks as she scowls at him and his dishonesty. He replies with a look of being lost, and hangs his head. Hesitating, hardly breathing for nearly a minute and holding his gaze to the ground.

  “What exactly is a Raven?” she asks, wanting him to say who he is.

  “Exactly?”

  “Yeah,”

  “Ravens are a group of people, of all type of character, most are pawns, vermin, who work for a guy.”

  “Acting sort of like a criminal syndicate that controls territory in almost all the Alto’s we can possibly go? and you’re one of them and their after you?” She says.

  “Kinda, that’s a bit more accurate,” he says.

  “Kinda what? just spit it out,” she spits.

  “The Ravens are like a syndicate, one that strives to gain power by any means, usually deemed criminal, in whatever Alto they're sent to.

  “A criminal syndicate, for what?”

  “Well they have to be killers, and they all have to die, like I said before.”

  “So he is death, and the Ravens his reapers?”

  “Not exactly. It’s just his gig I guess, I mean he's not a bad guy. A bit unsettling to be around but not bad, just from a different Alto is all. There's one more thing.”

  She says nothing. Only staring at him intensely, thinking that her life is now intertwined with his in the eyes of a person who he says isn’t entirely unlike the entity she thinks of as death.

  “To be a Raven, as I am or Rebecca is, one with free will. You have to take your own life so you have your own soul to barter with.”

  “How does that work.”

  “I think it’s if it's not taken from you, you still possess it when you die, and since you've died you cannot live. You have something to want and something to barter with it to get it.”

  “For what?”

  “Life, to be alive,” he says.

  “Your soul, bartered to live in service of him,” she says.

  “Yes,” he nods “and he’s a silk tongued demon when it comes to the art of the barter. The price, the deal as we who have one call it, is unique to the individual. You may live your deepest desires, your dreams he promises, as long as your soul, your being is bound solely to him.

  “So, what's your...deal?” she asks. He knew she would inevitably ask, he dreads having to tell her. The thought of her being scared of him, ashamed of him, he's terrified she'll see him as a heartless monster.

  “And you? is it gambling?” She asks. The cautious tone creeping from her lips is stinging to him, he's thinking she’s already sees him as some sort of monster or demon, like everyone else sees him, as one of them, merely a Raven and nothing more. He only wants her to be near, to stay close and smile and laugh with him, though knowing the price could be that she will never smile and laugh again.

  “Not gambling, Carrots no. I was, am a vault knocker, a robber of all things really. So sort of in the same way a vampire needs blood, I need a piece of whatever’s not nailed down. The gambling, does somethin’ but it ain’t quite the feeling, I’m looking for.”

  “Why is that your dream to live?” she asks. The searchlights and sirens, foot pursuits and gunfights at street level simmer. The pitter patter of the rain rises as background static to the story of his life, his prior life.

  “I was born in Illinois, 1917, on a dusty farm far down a muddy back road. In something like your Alto Anna, maybe even the same, but who knows. That's why I went when I heard what would happen to it, I just had to see it, to feel it” he says. She says nothing, only nodding and staring in wait for more, “I came to be a young man during the depression.”

  “The great depression,” Anna asks.

  “Yeah I guess, and I got in with a clique of bank robbers, just like I seen in the newspapers back then. I was selling sacks of apples on the side of the road, half of them were rotten, but those were the ones I could eat. Hungry, stuck in a rut, and starving to feel alive. They were passing through and asked me to guide them through the back roads and around the fields. I squeezed in the front seat with another guy, the first time I’d ever been in a auto. Good guys, they even took me to the job with ‘em. Just gave me a handle, and told me I can ride with them as long as I earn my place to sleep.

  It went well, and was different than anything I've ever done before. Exciting in a way I can’t explain. A feeling I’ve spent my lifetime trying to get back to. We weren’t murderers, more like Robin hoods, but mostly to ourselves of course,” he laughs, “I was free for the first time in my life, from my life of dirt and bare feet, of the farm and the fields, of poverty and hunger. Just free, alive and flush with cash as millions were starving, and we helped them, we threw bags of money out windows as we fled. It was bliss, my own youthfully ignorant bliss. It became the only feeling I ever wanted to know,” he says.

  “What happened?” she asks.

  “It went sour, real bad. Things like that, Anna, living that way never stays good forever, but I didn’t know that then. It was two men, a woman, one of the guy's moll, and me, the kid. Apples they called me,”

  “You don't remember their names?” she asks.

  “I thought I’d never forget them, but since then I've been alive for I don't know how many days, maybe forever, however long you think that is,” he says, then sucking from his smoke. “We were on a roll for six years, untouchable. T
he feds and locals, the papers, everybody knew us, folk heroes to the poor and parasites to the robber Baron pariah. We got away every time but once, it only takes once. We were carrying the a celebration of the night before as we coasted into this little lumber town. Thinking in our arrogance that we'll be able to be in and out with the cash, and on our way. We didn’t prepare, we just hit the bank at seven in the morning, the yellow light hour we called it. The feds ambushed us as we rolled up to it. It turned into a war zone, we had Thompson's, but so did the pencil pusher's, and they couldn't handle them, spraying wildly, worse than any of the gangsters I knew. A guy was hit, the brash leader if you want, and his moll captured.

  Me and the old timer made for the timber at the edge of town. We ran all day and by nightfall we made it deep into the bog, where the brush was densest. We thought we were in the clear so we slowed our pace. We were making our way up a steep hill when we seen the torches marching toward us through the night blackened tree branches. The rabid barking of their hounds lead their gunfire to shred the bark from the trees around us. The old timer got hit in the leg, in falling he broke his ribs on a rock I tried to drag him the rest of the way up, but he pushed me away. He gave me his piece and his pocket change then told me to run. He said he was done for, that at least I could get away. I did, I left him to save myself, and I heard the wheeze of the dying breath leaving his lungs louder than the shot that actually killed him.”

  “But you lived?” she asks.

  “For awhile, running like a rabbit lost in the woods. Losing everything we've taken, everything we had in that one day. I was filthy, dirt covering my face and in my hair, sleeping curled up next to trees like any other animal in the woods. Slowly starving, trying to eat leaves, snails and insects, anything to stop the aching of my empty stomach. I came to a freshwater stream, a god's send. I knelt down gulping gallons from my dirty hands. Not knowing what else to do I followed the stream for days, and nights. My shoe's and suit tattered away, expensive stuff’s not really made for the wilderness. I was barefoot on the forest floor, my feet became blistered, splintered, sore with open wounds, every step was painful. A few days later I came to the waterfall that was feeding the stream.