by Micol Ostow
we burn.
13.
junior and leila hurry, stuff supplies into a single filthy sack, while shelly coats the planes and angles of her face with heavy greasepaint.
i have only just changed clothing, just begun to shroud myself in bleak, black cover when Henry appears behind me, touches my shoulder lightly, ushers me aside.
His gaze is a tunnel, a well, a portal to an underground hideaway. mud and ink and danger churn within His veins, swell and seep, leak from the scarred surfaces of His skin.
i swoon. i crumple. i collapse inward on myself.
i am a dying star.
“listen, mel,” He explains, “junior knows what to do. you just follow him, go along with whatever he says.”
i nod, thinking of heads tilted toward each other, of whispers, of weapons tucked away. of gleaming knife blades. of bright, swift pain. of the threat, of the dark-edged promise that arises, rouses, roils within my coconspirators.
thinking of the chaos behind their eyes, beneath the masks my sisters and my brother wear.
i know.
i know what helter-skelter means, what it is we’re meant to do for Him. for Henry.
the need, the now, the want:
it is that our message, our word, our love—
that it, that we, will set the world aflame.
that we will be the spark.
that we will remain, still, after,
when the tide rushes in again.
that we will be alone. together.
that we will be infinity.
that we will be family.
still.
after.
always.
Henry opens a palm; flat tablets wink back up at us.
four round, pressed promises of
fire, fuel,
of consciousness, of overdrive.
of chemical undertow, hunger, and need.
we swallow them down.
and as the pill
dissolves against my tongue,
mirror-mel—
her half-life,
her second thoughts
her silent doubts—
mirror-mel’s unspoken
protests
dry up.
they crack and crumble like
a forgotten riverbed.
everything—
all of the before,
ever—
crumbles,
carried off.
forgotten.
and my mind
unfolds.
fueled by Henry’s want.
His orbit.
for the moment—
in the moment—
my mind
my self
unfolds.
14.
leila is dressed in black:
black jeans, black boots, slim black turtleneck pulled over her taut, slender frame.
she is a spring-loaded coil, coated in ink. she is slick, she is thick, she is heavy with sinister expectation.
she is the execution of a plot, a plan.
a threat.
hollow need hangs from her.
want drips from her limbs, caresses her joints, pools within her crevasses, her cracks, her rivulets.
she brims, bursts,
overflows with now.
her half-life is sticky; it rains nuclear showers against all of our twisted, crooked,
creaking shoulders.
leila has claws. and fangs.
leila is something fierce.
she is darkness, from the tips of her eyelashes to the jagged, ragged edges of her pinky toenails.
she is a shadow. a cipher. she is the opposite of matter.
she is ready. to creep. and crawl. but for real.
leila is chaos.
she is purpose.
she is—
we are all—
deadly intent.
we are all driven by the
undertow.
15.
leila sits beside junior in the front seat of the car, her head, as ever, tilted toward him, their collective consciousness emitting
i realize:
even through the glitter of
Henry’s pills—
His unspoken promise—
their spark unsettles me
fills the back of my throat like glue,
like clay,
like shards of broken glass.
junior and leila
are live wires.
they spark.
from beside me,
shelly shines,
radiates
silently.
while i:
worry.
i fear.
i unravel.
i swallow down sticky rivers of
fright
of doubt,
the buzz
that wants to penetrate the hazy mask of
the undertow.
wants to rise above
the waterline.
but then,
again:
a wave.
again.
another hit,
a heady
heavy
rush
of chemistry
of infinity—
of
Henry’s potion:
it seeps,
it creeps through narrow passageways,
neurons,
the fragile tubes and tissue,
the road map of my insides.
it soaks,
sinks claws into my deepest parts,
stains my skin from underneath,
beneath.
it takes hold.
electrifies me.
like a tidal wave
the undertow
overtakes me.
again.
16.
on leila’s lap she holds a sack, once pristine white, now frayed and filthy.
full.
17.
shelly bounces beside me in the backseat, eyes round and wide, humming, thrumming, vibrating. she is tuned out, tuned in to leila and junior, to the crackling, crashing sounds that call to us from the front of the car.
she unfurls, unfolds. opens.
shelly welcomes the static, the interference, the rough, irregular edges of the horizon. she expands, overflows. she showers me with her sense of tense anticipation, her runny, formless awakening.
shelly is so much.
she. is.
so much.
too much.
and i am a vortex.
i am empty.
i am
the filmy
flimsy
threat
of slowly
unspooling
hesitation.
i am longing.
i am fear.
but still
even
yet
now:
underneath,
beneath,
i am guided by the riptide.
carried by the undertow.
adrift.
18.
clatters and clangs emerge from leila’s bag as our car barrels down the road, away from death valley, moving steadily along toward the canyons, the fissures, the
of the city of angels.
19.
the air inside our car is sour.
it stinks of living things that have set to spoil; of acrid anti-energy, of cloud covers, impenetrable and dank.
the air is fetid, and the surfaces around me are soaked,
seeping with noxious, toxic filth.
with waste.
i take shallow breaths. my heart hammers. my now is playing at the wrong speed.
i am doubt, afterthought. i am raw red nerve endings and cells misfiring, tissue and fluid and soft, yielding bone. pieces, pockets; parts that mesh, that mingle, that mix.
i am a membrane that has been stretched, been tugged inside out, shredded to little more than thin, flimsy strings of silk.
i have no boundaries.
i have no limit.
i have no horizon that i can see.
i am exposed. soft. yielding.
fluid.
i have been chosen.
handpicked.
and as our car is pulled,
guided by moonlight
and an unseen magnetic force,
the horizon slips
ever further
beyond my sight line.
beyond my ghostly grasp.
20.
we have:
an address.
a mission.
a message.
we have:
a purpose.
intent.
we have:
need
want
chaos.
we have:
our undertow.
we have:
now.
21.
there are gates.
where the
singer lives,
there are gates.
gates, and snarls of wires, flickering switchboards that bind, that form a boundary.
she is contained. secure. squirreled away. her half-life knows borders, knows the hard shell of safety.
but. our vortex? our want?
our need. has claws. and fangs.
and we have come to this night
prepared
to battle.
22.
junior cuts the telephone wire, steady, sure-handed.
leila clips the chains around the front gate, feather-weight, aflight.
shelly snips at cords, shorts the boxes, quiets the blinks and chirps that would otherwise sound our arrival. our arising.
she cackles, rubs at the streaks of greasepaint on her face, grinds it into the hollows beneath her cheekbones. her eyes peer out at me from the carved expanse of her face, diamonds sunk deep within a pool of mud.
i do not recognize my sister.
my sister is an outline of her former self.
23.
outside of the car, the air is stagnant. the night is still.
this house, this compound, lays tucked within the canyons of the pacific coast. the only sounds that drift our way are echoes, static transmitted from a distant plane, from a frequency far beyond our orbit.
leila nods to herself.
“perfect,” she says.
“this place is perfect.”
24.
i look away, glance down at my feet, marvel mindlessly at the contrast between the rubbed-out soles of my dull, worn shoes and the sudden, sharp angles of the lush, verdant lawn below.
the green grass is a cover, a casing. a boundary, a slick, slippery shell. i want to crouch down, to grasp each dew-soaked blade within my fault-lined palms, to twist the silky strands against my twitching fingertips.
i wonder.
about the things beneath, i mean.
about the underneath.
about what could potentially lurk, crawl, slither beneath the surface of this vast expanse.
i wonder about poison. about membranes stretched thin.
i wonder about fault lines.
i wonder.
and i worry.
about living things
set to
spoil.
25.
“it’s time,” junior explains.
“Henry says: it’s time.”
junior is: rudderless.
but.
junior is: driven.
and i am:
carried along.
upswept.
but still,
somehow
adrift.
26.
leila grins, beckons with a crooked finger. shines her want outward, beaming.
begins to make her way toward the house.
i follow her, tentative,
fall in line with my family down the winding drive, my eyes lowered, gaze trained tightly on the ground in front of me.
my skin feels tight, like steam trapped beneath a thin layer of cling-wrap.
i am sticky, smothered.
i am a rash,
a fever,
the faint echo of a distant pulse.
i am a hothouse flower,
browned edges wilted, crumbled to a fine powder,
to a dull layer of dust.
my body contracts, pressure builds against my lungs, along my bones.
mud settles, clots within my veins, weighting me, cuffing me in rusted shackles. caging me. cutting off my breath, my circulation, my being.
i am solid.
i am sturdy.
i am heavy as a smooth,
slate tombstone.
i am the opposite of antimatter.
i am now.
27.
leila looks over her shoulder at me, throws a glance at shelly.
shelly turns back to me, blinks.
she is thoughtful, brisk, filled with purpose.
“stay here, mel,” shelly says with decision. she shakes her head as though the notion has only just occurred to her.
“stay here.
we need someone to look out. to listen for sounds.”
28.
i pause, considering:
sounds.
i nod.
i will stay here.
i will look out.
i will listen.
29.
junior, shelly, and leila slink along, crawl closer. i watch their figures shrink as they move farther from my sight line, insects skittering, quivering sensors extended, crackling with energy. with purpose.
their footsteps cast no echo against the dry pavement of the pathway, but in the stark silence, in the vast vortex of the concave canyon, i can just make out a faint rustling, can just hear the muffled friction of vines, of winding stalks and bowing stems brushing up against limbs, then giving way again.
i tense, insides straining against the binding of my skin, my organs pulsing, my throat constricting. i gasp, swallow mouthfuls of water, press my tongue against fistfuls of sand, hard and wet and grainy as cement. setting.
i am drowning.
still.
again.
always.
30.
i hear:
dread traces cold fingers
against my throat.
i shudder.
then:
a click
the cock of a trigger
the cold, empty clang
of metal against
metal.
i hear
the click
of a trigger.
and
i
implode.
31.
my stone shield, my cement-set self, bursts open, shatters, disintegrates.
a wave rushes over me, thick and warm.
the air is charged, magnetic, streaked with fire, fear, loss.
and i am raw, skinned.
open.
32.
i leak.
i run.
i seep.
i feel myself stumble, stagger, tumble,
lose my center of gravity.
i feel the bottom—
the end of me, my core—
feel it melt,
evaporate,
give way.
f
eel myself fall.
feel infinity.
33.
i squeeze my eyes shut,
flatten my palms against my ears,
press with all of my strength.
i try:
to stop listening.
to shut out the sounds.
to quiet the fever.
but.
it is too late.
it is time.
it is:
now.
and we are:
the message,
the moral,
the spark.
we.
are:
afire.
aflame.
alight.
we
burn.
we are:
chaos.
and
we
are
here.
34.
i breathe:
in.
and out.
the world is back.
i am back.
i inhale, sharp and full,
and just like that—
the underneath has settled,
and i can see colors again.
dark colors,
the sorts of shades that
paint the corners of your consciousness.
the sorts of shades that
haunt you.
they surround me.
they are all
around me.
i breathe.
i awaken.
i arise.
i know why it is that shelly asked me to stay behind. something to do with rescue, with my sister knowing, even now, just what it is i need.
but.
i cannot leave my family. cannot be left behind. cannot avoid that which i have been chosen for.
i awaken.
i arise.
35.
junior, leila, shelly—they have made their way to the house, just walked right through the front door, sluiced through the atmosphere, passed through this earthly plane like spirits, whispers, wisps.
like suggestions, like shapeless phantasms.
36.
they have left the outer screen door ajar.
for me.
they are inviting, inciting. me.
beckoning me.
37.
i choke.
i sputter.
bile rises against
the back of my throat,
thick,
bitter,
cloying.
i am drowning.
still. again.
always.
38.
but.
i breathe.
39.
it doesn’t take.
the world is back.
i am back.
i clench my jaw, shake my head.
swallow the poison back down again.
40.
inside.
now.
beyond the flimsy screen door,
beyond the separation of world and womb.
i am inside, now,
standing in the center of the living room
of the singer’s house.
41.
the man on the sofa shakes his head, pushes himself up on one elbow. sleep crusts the corners of his eyes.
he blinks, shakes his free wrist, peers at his watch. his hair is flattened, pressed against his skull from where he dozed off on the sofa.