The Altonevers

by Frederic Merbe

  They stomp, skip and jump through the flooding mellifluous ravines lined with dry sheltered faces fogging the front windows of stores, looking out as though bunches of bewildered eyes blinking unevenly from behind the bushes. On the verge of visibility is a veil of colorful light hazily churning as bursting flares battling to fill the ambient over the city streets with luminosity suspended in split second strobes of falling rain. Underfoot the undulating avenues are converging into a pattern of surface wave interference as the street widens into an expansive square in the shape of a triangle that's encircled by thousands of brilliantly lit blaring billboards and advertisements of all shapes and sizes. The smallest are as big as stickers and sign posts, the largest are swathes stretching from the ground up hundreds of stories into clouds

  The two are mesmerized by a luminous haze of hue’s spilling out from the imagery of the ambient illuminating advertisements ahead of them. That are acervately projecting illuminated illusions outward from the fluorescent mineral walls filling the expanse of dense, vertically standing wavering stripes of water vapor with an agglomeration of phantasmagoric figments and figures. With each approaching step gaining greater depth and detail until the two are fully immersed by oneiric illusions of the billboard's all enveloping lights endlessly refracting around the raindrops and reflecting through ambient. Emerging into three dimensional sculptures reaching through the apparitious rain as they transforming into abstract images and symbols appealing and reforming into tangible shapes again. The phantom like advertisements are accompanied by a strange sort of succulence to the subconscious of whoever is present to perceive them. Making her in this moment feel weightless, walking through the midst of the mirage of her own thoughts manifesting as brilliantly lit abstractions summoned through depths of her subconscious into the distorted phantasmagoric phantoms encircling their bodies in her own psyche.

  Immersed in the thought of herself being only a single drop caught in a current of an infinitely persisting, endlessly flowing energy. Envisioning the volume that she ponders as being an endless expanse of all existences, of all of eternities to ever be, as an ocean she's drifting through. Whose body is made up of the echoes of each thing, each being, each moment, each eventuality that has and will ever be, reverberating into a single eternally persisting protean body of all possibilities persisting at once. That even Central, the center of known eternities to an unknowable number of Altonevers and Altos, is itself barely a grain of moisture of this ocean’s expansive, beyond infinite tides.

  Then realizing it's a thought, a concept of the inconceivable, a construct of her own mind seeking place in the natural patterns of incalculable chaos, she conceives the ocean as being as small as a pond. Pondering what the ponds surface would be like, and herself swimming just below it. Seeing light shining through its softly ebbing waves as blissful glimpses of her soul shining through the distortions of her subconscious, and pouring into her conscious self. She hears no roaring rain, or thoughts in her head at all, only feeling afloat, as though she's been adrift in shapeless serenity forever. Her focus of the scene in her mind falters when trying to peek above the ponds surface, to where she perceives her soul is emanating from. As she loses her concentration the calm pond she's immersed in reassumes the form of a monstrous, chaotically churning ocean, whose violent surface waves scramble the light of her soul from her conscious mind’s sight.

  Losing her inner vision in the blink of an eye, and with a blink of her eye’s she’s back in roar of the apparitious deluge. Watching the glowing phantoms of the storm transmuting into whatever her mind manifests. For almost a minute she's surrounded by a multitude of multi-sized echoes of herself covering the ground and climbing the walls, appearing in every conceivable place at once. Realizing that what she perceives though her senses of the scene surrounding her, is the same as what she is seeing in her mind's eye. That she's submersed in her mind outside herself and believing that she can reign over her perception of reality by her thought, she begins thinking and actualizing a massive wave that spreads out from herself. Popping and fading the pink and yellow reverberating echoes of herself in a cascade of bubbles bursting away from where she stands. Creating a second wave that clears the undulating grounds of all the tons water, then levitating the five inches of rippling fluid flooding the square six feet above her head. She peeks up to see the city lights as phantasmagoria scattering through its surface.

  Anna's mind is lost in the sight of a sea of Central’s city lights shining through the sheet of clear water elevated six feet above her head, bathing her dazed face in the light like she’s watching a fireworks show at night. Her subconscious resurfaces, transforming the scattering light of the mercurial fluid above her into a malevolently smirking ebony skinned voodoo priestess. She's wearing a small silvery crown with a circle adorned by a U shape as its centerpiece. Smirking with black painted pointy lips, while laughing through hysterical eyes. Her flawless, fertile looking figure is barely clothed by long black and white feathers. She's gripping a gleaming metal scepter that’s melting in the palm of her raised left hand. Dripping a silvery fluid down her arm and bare breast that flows down her body and feathers to her feet. As it’s ornament is a pupil sized obsidian orb that’s steaming into a mist of glimmering silver dust sweeping over her shoulder. She's waving her free hand for Anna to join her, with arms open leading a lively jazz parade of blowing brass and persuasive drums playing to feel alive in cherishing the life of the dead, not the death of a life. A funeral procession in reverie around an obsidian casket stained with boiling blotches and hand prints of the same silvery fluid dripping from the priestess’ palm. She shakes her scepter with a smirk of satisfaction and blows a breath of silver smoke from her mouth toward the entranced Anna.

  “Anna! Anna!” he shouts in her ear, pulling her from the focus of her fantasy in front of her. The wavering body of mercurial fluid falls faster than Anna can catch it, dropping thousands of fluid tons with a sudden thunderous, ground quaking roar. Then erupting from the ground as a field of thousands of ten story back jets ejected from the center of crashing liquid craters casting forceful fluid crowns and chaotically colliding shock waves. She swipes instinctively trying to catch the liquid collisions before they calm and settle into a five inch mire of rippling ebullition riding the amplitude of the undulating streets.

  “Yeah?” she sighs.

  “Did you see that!?” he shouts flustered, looking icily into her eyes, and putting her on edge, unnerved by the thought of her being in the mercury stained obsidian casket, blue skinned and unliving in oblivion, away from him. Though she's vibrant, alive in the thought of her living a life worth celebrating in death.

  “You saw that too?” she asks excitedly.

  “Yeah, what was that?”

  “I dunno,” she shrugs, cupping her hands together to catch the falling rain, that in only seconds flows over her fingers. She stares, seeing her reflection rippling in its small water surface, then sipping and drinking it. Dropping the rest down to watch it splash and crown and settle over her feet. Taking another cupped handful and splashing her face with it, then his. The glowing figures of phantasmagoria fade to faint glimmers as though flashing through a drizzle instead of a deluge, and dissipating to an afterlight languishing far behind them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Into the thick, as thieves

  Carelessly the two carry on through the calming downpour, leaping from top to top over the bottoms of the now only three foot undulations. The rainfall's roar is lessening and the particle breeze's blowing is showing the winds currents ebbing. They pass a crosswalk with a lone man in a raincoat on the other side of the avenue. She can feel the man’s eye’s leering intensely without seeing them under the shadow of his officer’s hat. The two continue, and the unflinching man and his leer disappear around the corner. The street lights are gas lamps filled with liquid flame suspended a split second after exploding through the glass sphere of their containment. The burst is then pulled from its top, t
o the top of the next bursted bulb into a string of amber lit arches illuminating the undulating surface of the avenue twenty feet beneath them, and splashing under the leaping feet of the reveling two.

  They come to a broad smooth surfaced circle where five avenues meet, encircled by the amber gas lamps and arches. On the other side is a park, and stairs descending to the underground stations of Central. Looking down the two can see into a bottomless hole, suddenly struck by the vertigo of walking on the ledge of skyscraper they tip toe forward. A hollow lunar like globe whose blued reflection is an eighth of the roundabouts size, stains the center of the circle like light spots a pupil. The two are halfway across the breadth of the depthless black bottomed circle when he looks over his shoulder to see a pair of red and blue sirens far enough away to seem like shark fins swimming through the undulating waves of the streets toward them.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he feigns a laugh, and looks back to the sirens and sighs.

  “We have to keep going,” he mumbles.

  “Your friends are here, again. They’re always here,” she says.

  “No danger. Everywhere I go they are they're pursuing, ever present as though they’re part of me.”

  “You can never stop and settle, never get away.”

  “No, they're unrelenting as the rain. You’ll never be safe as long as you're with me,” he says.

  “It’s not raining as hard anymore.”

  “Yeah, but it still is, it always is,” he says putting his hand out to catch a drop.

  “Well I guess, you get what you pay for,” she says smiling.

  “Ha, that’s one way to put it,” he laughs. The two are clear of the sirens creeping up behind them when reaching the other side, to the rows of trees and overgrowth growing over a five foot granite wall. Their green leaves are dripping like candle wax into small spires sinking onto the sidewalk, and renewing to fall again. The two are ten feet from the green lit barrier that wraps around the station stairs, stepping reluctantly toward it, as though they're walking on tightropes whose threads are snapping on by one. A swell of weltering emotions rise with each step, each knowing they're that much closer to their end together, to the parting of their perspective paths. Each wanting to say something though only awkwardly trading short glances and shifting eyes.

  The hat’s of two badges standing at the second landing of the station stairs and looking up at them stop them in their tracks. He smiles for a second then pulls her arm, but she's already striding alongside him, down the sidewalk and through the entrance of a sprawling park of dripping trees. Fleeing into fields of green hills of melting wax cleaved by paths of pavement curving in many, if not most, directions. Thinking they’re out of the woods by running into them, they relax in leaving the city lights only showing through the park’s entrance shrinking far behind them. Feeling the rushing of water, but no heat on their heels, they stop to peel the last of the city light from the bark of the trees around them. The rain is draining into waterfalls falling through holes in the canopy high above them, and muting the roaring storm into a light pitter patter beating against wind ruffled leaves. She looks around, listening to the trickling sound of three inch streams flowing over the paved paths and their feet. The underside of the canopy is a shattered mirror of the green shapes of the melting leaves below reflected above.

  The park is empty but for the two and the occasional horse of water rising from the flooded paths, galloping along for a few seconds, then crashing back into the clear flowing fluid. The moisture is steaming from their clothes and skin as they continue through curving paths of pavement, over and under overpasses under the calm of the canopy. Each quietly reveling, not wanting to speak, neither wanting to disrupt the moment shared between them in strolling along, side by side at ease Until an inaudible shout breaks their static charged silence, from one of many Ribbits leading packs of barking and howling hounds hunting them by scent. The need to flee from death or lifetimes of imprisonment is again shattering their neverlasting peace.

  “Oh, shit the dogs!” he yelps.

  “Dogs!? hunted like dogs!” she shrieks.

  “That’s right bitch,” he laughs, as does she. The two dart off the pedestrian paths, away from the searchlights breaching the trees behind them. They struggle to keep pace in scaling a steep hill of cooling green wax that slow moving feet sink quickly into. Reaching the top and disappearing into a patch of twigs and branches scratching against her skin and snagging her damp clothes. Nearly stripping the gun wrapped in her tattered scarf from her pocket, given to her by him, that she has only the heart to use for her own protection and on occasion his. The two frantically scramble as mice through a ramble of narrow trails that twist and break like vines and branches. Weaving in and out of the mire of melting wax pooling in the barely beaten paths they're stumbling, and slowly sinking into. The dogs are nearing, already near enough for the two to hear the hungry growl’s and chomping jowls leading the searchlights shining through tangled branches, throwing grizzly shadows toward their desperately fleeing feet.

  Emerging from the mire looking miserable, covered smudges of wax, tattered and scratched, sweating, barely standing. Tripping and rolling onto a blue bricked circle encircling a seven foot tall white marble fountain overflowing from the dwindling downpour, overlooking a large pond at the base of a steep slope past an asphalt path. The fountain stands beneath a break in the canopy showing an open expanse of churning constellations resting high above. The ceiling of Central that's only visible to the naked eye when the particle sky is free of the city’s fluorescently lit intrusions of mineral structures whose effulgence overwhelms the senses of everything existing between them. It's tranquil, dead silent, without the growling hounds or grunts holding searchlights to be seen or heard anywhere around them. The two scoop from the fountain to rinse their sweat saturated faces and filthy hands. She bends to sip from the fountains still surface like a bird, and he pushes her into the pool of crystal clear freshly fallen rainwater. She stays under a second to long, long enough for him think she may have hit her head and be under. He leans over for a closer look at her curled up body just as she pounces from the fountain with arms up, roaring like a lion with water flying from her ferocious face. He jumps back actually scared for a second then laughs.

  “I think you like to scare me,” he says.

  “I like to see your face surprised,” she answers.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Yeah. It’s funny how your eyebrows almost touch your hair line.”

  “I like to see you smile.”

  “Oh yeah, then why’d you lie?”

  “About what?”

  “Knowing the way home.”

  “I knew the way, like I said I did. We’re here ain’t we, and look how close.”

  “Then how’d we get lost?” she asks.

  “I...ah.”

  “I..I ahhh, hahaha. Cool nerved mister vault knocker. Cat got your tongue?”

  “No, choking on a Carrot.” he says.

  “Like I didn’t know the whole time,” she says.

  “The whole time?” he scoffs.

  “Since the pigs head hotel at least, how many times we ran to the platforms dodging the droppings of the pan-time pigeons. Do you really think I believed you when you said you can’t read a map of the InterAlto rails? that you’d been traveling for how long now?” she says.

  “I just wanted you to be close enough to hear your heart beating,” he says coyly.

  “Yeah right.”

  “To wake up next to you,” he says.

  “Alright, I’ll take it,” she shrugs.

  “I'm sorry for being selfish.”

  “It’s okay, you are selfish. A vault knocker with a gluttons greed for pilfering and pleasure, but at least you're pleased with the feeling of having me close to you. It’s a beautiful sentiment to share,” she says, beaming at him with a warmth he can feel on his face. His face that’s failing at fighting a back
smile.

  “For being selfish enough to put you in harm's way. Misleading you into near death and possible eternal imprisonment, into this perpetual trap of an existence that is my own.”

  “Oh shut up you,” she says dismissively “you didn’t drag me anywhere. Thinking so much of yourself ha. That no one can think for themselves but you.”

  “Oh please. Remember how scared you were when you were on the train for the first time, you fainted, and it was funny. And staying holed up in the hotel rooms, at your window perch.”

  “Not always hotel rooms. Some real dives sometimes, mister male provider,” she says and he rolls his eyes, replying, “you mean living, seeing the different sides of life instead of staying in soul dulling comfort?”

  “Well I saved your life...twice,” she says, showing him two fingers.

  “And how many times have I saved yours.”

  “From the danger of being around you.”

  “You didn’t run away, from me at least.”

  “I didn’t,” she shrugs, “I ran with you.”

  “That’s right you didn’t,” he says reaching his arms out to her reaching out to him. Wanting her embrace in this moment, and wanting it to never end, though in sorrow of knowing it inevitably will. He yelps, instantly almost knocked off his feet feeling a sharp painful jolt in his left shoulder, by a bullet shot from the handgun of a Ribbit standing at the edge of the pond below. Who lets off three more shots that miss Cider as he takes the gun from his waist and clips the Ribbits face with his second squeeze of his finger.