by Rio Youers
“The others will be here soon,” the rooster said.
They arrived one at a time. Along with the rooster, there was the snake, goat, dog, rabbit, pig, ox, and tiger—eight of the twelve animals that represented the Chinese zodiac. They took their seats quietly, except for the tiger, who remained standing. The tiger was the most fascinating of the animals, and by far the most handsome. He was their leader.
“Excellent work, Valerie.”
“Thank you.”
The dog howled and slapped his palms against the table. The ox followed suit, and within moments the room was a cacophony of animal sounds and drumming fists. The table shook beneath the barrage, inching across the floorboards. Valerie looked at the softly glowing lantern and waited.
All too gradually … silence.
She looked at the pig. “Can I have it, please?”
The pig snorted, reached inside his tailored jacket, and produced an ornate silver box. He placed it on the table and pushed it almost the entire length toward Valerie. Her eyes sparked hungrily. She reached, but was denied; the tiger’s hand swooped and snatched it up.
“If you don’t mind,” he purred.
Valerie’s lip flared but she said nothing. The tiger opened the box, then angled it to show her the contents: a small pink pill on a velvet bed.
“Not the Skyway you’re looking for,” he said. “But it’s better than nothing.”
Valerie stared, her eyes still sparking. She wiped a sleeve across her mouth, then gripped the table to keep from lunging.
The tiger said, “Tell me, Valerie … what is pain?”
“This again? I know how it’s made.” Valerie slammed her own fist on the table. “Just give it to me, dammit. I earned it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a little refresher course. People are dying, for heaven’s sake. You need to appreciate the science at work here.” The tiger looked around the table and the other animals nodded in agreement. “So, once again: what is pain?”
“It’s a spotlight on the soul,” Valerie replied. “It shows us what we’re capable of, the depth of our spirits.”
“And?”
“It’s a gateway. The route to enlightenment is clearer in the absence of pleasure.”
“Very good.” The tiger stepped away from the table. He swiveled on his expensive Italian shoes and pretended to inspect a painting of a lotus blossom, as if he hadn’t seen it a thousand times. “It’s beautiful when you think about it. And with deeper pain comes a higher level of enlightenment. Take 9/11. All that death and grief … the horror on the ground—on every news station, in every household, and at every water cooler in the nation. Meanwhile, our sense of humanness, our emphasis on each other, as opposed to material items, was accelerated. We became spiritually enhanced, if only temporarily.”
A tear slipped from Valerie’s eye. She ached inside.
“Pain creates a displacement—an energetic shift.” The tiger took the pill from the box and looked at it lovingly. “Advancements in quantum physics have enabled us to replicate that displacement. This little pink pill perfectly mimics the end of pleasure.”
“Please…”
“Some call it Jesus. Others call it Bliss. We, of course, know it as Rhapsody.”
He stepped around the table. Valerie smelled his sweat as he approached, even above his cologne. She imagined it dripping off his cruel body. He crouched and whispered in her ear:
“There’s always a price to pay.”
“I paid it.”
“Yes, you did.” His mask pressed against her skin. “Open.”
She opened her mouth. He placed the pill on her tongue.
Her involvement with the Society began in the eighties. She’d left home (and her touchy-feely fuckwad of a daddy) to seek her fortune in New York City. And why not? She was intelligent, beautiful, and had a knack for persuasion. Unfortunately, the Big Apple in 1982 was no place for an eighteen-year-old girl on her own. It chewed her up, spat her out. Within weeks she was broke, hooked on coke, and faced with two choices: whore herself out, or go back to Michigan. She fell in with a pro named Raven K. Stick with me, kid, Raven K. said, or something like that, and Raven K. was dead within two weeks, OD’d on horse. She’d had a job lined up, though. A big job. With high rollers. Those filthy cunts’ll make it rain all night, she’d said, and had promised to take Valerie along, but with Raven K. toe-tagged, Valerie decided to go alone—to the White Lantern in Engine City, where the Society of Pain waited, masks on, rings glimmering.
Who are you?
Your new girl.
She’s too young.
She’s perfect.
They taught her the value of pain—a tough lesson for anyone to learn, let alone a kid who should have been finishing high school and watching Joanie Loves Chachi. They introduced her to Glam Moon. She saw the ivory trees for the first time, and the flowers—her flowers—with their coppery stems and soft polished petals. She journeyed the landscape and became stronger. She discovered her purpose.
For all the Society knew her, she knew little about them. They kept their masks on, even when their bodies were bare. Certainly, they were well-to-do, judging by their attire. They could be doctors, lawyers, politicians. Only one thing was certain: they were drawn to the pain and misfortune of others. It fueled them.
The tiger once told her how they would race to the scenes of car wrecks, gas explosions, and fires. They satisfied their perverted desires while emergency crews pulled corpses from burning buildings and ripped through car wrecks with their cutting equipment. They even staged several such “accidents,” deriving a deeper arousal as they witnessed the events unfold. Eventually, Valerie became their go-to girl, utilizing her manipulative prowess to engineer disaster. She proved incredibly effective at this, and her reward was always the same: a simulation of Glam Moon—that little drop of Jesus.
She held it on her tongue for a moment and then swallowed.
“So what’s next?” the goat asked. “How about a chemical attack in Times Square? I’m sure you can find some way to rig that. Or a train bomb. We haven’t had a train bomb for a long time.”
“I don’t know,” Valerie replied. “We have to be smart.” The Rhapsody was swift—usually kicked in within five minutes. Her eyelids fluttered and her heart slammed. Just knowing it was coming flooded her with good vibes. “Buffalo was big. Everybody is still on alert. One careless move and the FBI will be crawling all over the island.”
“Smart?” the tiger said, and she knew he was sneering beneath the mask. “Don’t oversell yourself. You’re just a hopeless fucking addict.”
“Maybe I’m…” She closed her eyes and swayed. “Maybe I’m using you. Did you ever consider that?”
The edges of the room softened. Valerie crawled onto the table, as if she were fifteen instead of fifty-four, then rolled onto her back and looked up at the lantern.
“You’ve always been close, Valerie. But you’ll never be close enough.” The tiger stepped into view and looked down on her. “Not anymore.”
She reached for him but he slapped her hand away. Pain flared all the way to her elbow. This was the last thing she would feel for quite some time.
The walls disappeared. The animal faces swam in and out of focus, then they disappeared, too. Soon only the lantern remained, a glowing oval, not unlike a moon, but more like a bud, which bloomed suddenly.
Flowers brushed against her skin.
My flowers. Oh, I missed you.
She was gone.
* * *
Valerie left the restaurant days later and wandered heartlessly for days more. The world appeared dim and noisy, with too many harsh angles.
She found no sign of the White Skyway, not even in the thinnest places.
Little by little, her sense of self returned. She discovered a ticket stub in her jeans pocket and remembered that she’d stowed a bag at a bus station in Rutherford. It had clean clothes and her wallet inside. After retrieving her bag, she checked into a mo
tel not far from the overpass she used to sleep beneath. She watched TV, ate pepperoni sticks until she vomited, and masturbated thinking about Glam Moon. A week or so later, she checked out of the motel, bought a Greyhound ticket, and emailed Nolan to let him know that she was coming home.
* * *
Nolan tossed the mooring line to Jake Door, then helped Valerie off the boat. She was shaky on her feet to begin with, but shook off Nolan’s hand and insisted on walking alone. By the time she made it up the six wooden steps leading from the dock to the pathway, her legs were steadier and her stoop not so pronounced.
The gulls cawed brightly, a sound she would fail to hear within moments. It would fade into the background along with the waves thumping the granite cliffs and those lake winds agitating the trees. Valerie paused to catch her breath, then continued. Here the pathway cut through staghorn sumac and yellow evening-primrose before darting into evergreen woodland that formed a natural screen from the mainland. After a minute or so she came across an islander—Simon Song—loading firewood into a wheelbarrow. When he noticed her, he dropped what he was carrying and lowered his eyes.
“Mother Moon,” he said.
Valerie stroked his cheek and smiled. She felt her strength returning.
Out of the woodland, through the orchard and past the storage barn. The pathway forked here: left toward well number one (forty-three feet deep; the water was cold, clear, and delicious), the chicken coops and livestock farms, and the recreation hall (where troublesome Angela Byrne held occasional “faith” sermons, although Valerie was quick to remind her there was no God, and the only heaven was Glam Moon). Beyond this was marshland fringed to the northwest by forest, the trees rising to the highest point on the island: a granite ridge that dropped seventy-five feet to the rocks and water below. The right-hand path led to everything else: the vegetable gardens, the clinic, the canteen, their small but cozy cabins. A power plant, comprised of a 10.1 kW off-grid solar kit, with eight diesel generators for backup, gave the island its juice. Well number two provided running water to the buildings and the winter weather kept it prosperous. A tributary path weaved through sedges and goldenrod to a sandy cove, sheltered on both sides by towering pines. Between the main paths was a field of luxurious grass known simply as the meadow. This was where the islanders played, where they danced and sang, and where Valerie often regaled them—looking deeply into their broken, believing faces—with stories of the Glam.
Halcyon. A time of great tranquility and happiness, Iris once told her. This was their home. Their community. The name on the deed—and which fell within the jurisdiction of Callow Township, New York—read Gray Peaks Island. Its former owners included John D. Rockefeller and Bernard Platt-Mellor. Valerie had lived there since 1991, alone at times, but also with lovers and ghosts.
She took the right-hand path, her step surer. The wind blew her hair. She pulled the rubber band out and let it flow.
“Mother Moon,” Ainsley Moore said, and fell to his knees. Ainsley’s boyfriend was killed when a backpack stuffed with C-4 had exploded on a Chicago city bus. Disillusioned, shattered throughout, he’d relocated to Halcyon. Done with America. Sick of the fear.
“Hello, Ainsley,” she said. “Those fiddleheads won’t pick themselves.”
Ainsley nodded, pounced to his feet, and resumed his work. Valerie smiled and continued on. Walking past the vegetable gardens, she noticed her shoulders were squarer and her limp improved. And here were more broken Americans: Gilda Wynne, whose elderly mother was killed for the eight dollars in her wallet; Alyssa Prince, whose husband was shot by a policeman for no reason whatsoever. Alyssa nodded and raised one hand. Gilda dropped her shovel and fell to her knees.
“Mother Moon.”
Fueled by their devotion, their brokenness, Valerie walked past the meadow where more islanders were gathered. Some stared, others waved, a few more bowed their heads or fell to their knees. She heard their voices on the wind. Beautiful whispers: “Mother Moon, Mother Moon, Mother…”
She strolled toward her cabin. Her eyes were full of life and light. Some would call their color green and others jade.
PART II
HALCYON
10
Glenn Burdock lost faith in his country—shit, in the universe—when the RG-31 his son was riding in hit a landmine on the outskirts of Jalalabad. The kid was twenty-four years old. He’d been Glenn’s life. His soul.
“Those RG-31s are designed to withstand IEDs,” Glenn had told Mother Moon, who’d been such a friend to him, such a confidante. “That didn’t help my boy, though.”
“Sweet baby.” Mother Moon kissed the tears from his cheeks.
“He should never have been there to begin with. US troops should’ve pulled out years ago. Instead they’ve been playing babysitter, training the Afghan military.” His fists had been so tightly clenched that not even Mother Moon could ease them open. “Fuck this government. Fuck this motherfucking country.”
He’d arrived on the island desperate and defeated, amazed at how one person’s life could hit the shitter so completely. And it wasn’t only that his son had been killed, but that he and Corey had been so damn close. Perhaps that came with being a young, single dad. Glenn was only twenty-one when Corey’s pointless drip of a mom pulled the old “going out for a pack of Camels” disappearing act (That’s a man’s asshole move, Glenn remembered thinking), leaving him with a six-week-old bundle of shit and chaos. But heck, Glenn could switch a diaper and mix formula, so figured everything would be okey-doke. And he was right. There were some tight years and no shortage of sleepless nights, but he managed. Corey grew up smart and strong, and with Glenn being a young dad, it meant they could do so much more together. They took crazy road trips and slept beneath the stars with coyotes howling nearby. They bought surfboards without knowing how to surf and spent three weeks in San Clemente learning. They got matching tattoos on Corey’s eighteenth birthday (BURDOCK BROS calligraphied on their shoulders). Glenn was—by his own admission—a cool fucking dad. He thought of Corey as his greatest achievement, perhaps his only achievement. He was a son, a brother, and a best friend all rolled into one. Glenn had at least 80 percent of his soul tied to the kid.
Nolan Thorne had discovered Glenn drinking his life away at some shit-scrub bar on the outskirts of Binghamton. “If I told you,” Nolan had said, “that there’s a better version of America, not far from here, would you believe me?” And Glenn had believed him, or wanted to. Either way, he sold up whatever shit he had left—which wasn’t much—and moved to the island.
He was right to believe; Halcyon was everything Nolan had promised it would be. And Mother Moon … oh, with her hypnotic presence, her near-musical voice and encouraging touch. Impossible not to be swept away.
The first thing she said to him: “My God, look at your eyes. I could get lost in them, I swear.” And she had beamed, tucked a loop of auburn hair behind her left ear. “You haven’t spoken a single word and I can tell you’ve got moxie. I guess this little slice of American Pie just got sweeter.”
Glenn embraced his new community, applying the same tenacity and purpose he’d shown as a single dad. He milked goats and reaped crops. He hand-felled trees and took his turn in the canteen. Before long, the strands tethering him to his former life first frayed, then snapped. The nation’s weaknesses no longer concerned him. He was a new man, an un-American, risen from the ashes like a motherfucking phoenix.
No regrets. No looking back. And then one winter’s night—with a fire crackling in the hearth and snow dusting the windows—Mother Moon kissed him for the first time, a deep kiss, full of warmth, wanting, and taste. She took off her clothes and stood naked in front of him. “Count every scar,” she said. “Know me.” And he did. There were seventy-four of them. “Wrong,” she said, and separated her lush hair to reveal eight more on her scalp, including a thick, curved zipper that ran from behind her right ear to the top of her head.
“What happened to you?”
; “I was beaten as a young woman. Ritually abused. Then I found Glam Moon. And then, honey … then I got strong.”
“You’re still beautiful.”
“I love this island. I love the people. But you’re the only one I trust.” She ran one hand across his jaw and smiled. “Take off your shirt.”
He took off his shirt. Then his pants. She fucked him in front of the fire, the hard, breathless sex of a woman rarely satisfied, and she didn’t stop until embers filled the grate and a thread of pink morning light touched the snow outside.
“I might need you to do something for me,” she said a short time later. They were still gasping, curled together in a nest of their own discarded clothing.
“Name it.”
But she didn’t. Not right away. She lay with her head on his chest, listening to the rapid thump of his heart, and he found from that point on that Mother Moon was with him even when she wasn’t with him, coupled with his mind in the same way she’d been with his body. He wondered, were he to slice his forehead open with a box cutter, if she would emerge, damp and beautiful, like a moth from a cocoon.
Her voice filled him.
Know this, baby: the Glam has a special place for martyrs.
Bravery is beautiful. And you, Glenn darling, are beautiful.
He felt her everywhere, day and night. He’d be raking leaves or chopping wood and swear that she was standing behind him, but when he turned there’d be nobody there. One time he woke up to find her sucking his dick and speaking at the same time—speaking in his mind. She told him that America was on fire but it was a slow burn, and sometimes you had to stoke the flames for people to take notice. Glenn agreed wholeheartedly, his hands clasping her dented skull, and said that he would do the stoking if that’s what she wanted. Shit, he’d do anything. She could snap her fingers and he’d walk off the cliffs at the northwest edge of the island, shatter on the rocks below.