“Exactly how long have we known each other?”
The Rev shrugs. “I’ve been way too high and drunk to keep track of that, mate.”
My soul craves answers. It is never satisfied. “Was I a good friend?”
The Rev laughs at me, looking up from his book this time. “Absolutely not, but neither was I. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all.”
“I guess,” I say, disappointed.
“So are we gonna get the fuck out of here or what?” the Rev says.
Once Molly and Ezzy wake up a few minutes later, we gather our belongings, take care of our bathroom needs (he has buckets), and slip out of the storage unit. The sun lingers westward.
“This Jed, how far away does he live?” I ask, readjusting my grip on Ezzy, hugging her legs tight so she doesn’t fall off my shoulders. She’s having a hell of a time, playing with her purple teddy bear, Donut. We really suck at being incognito.
“Quite a ways,” the Rev says. “He likes to remain secluded. We’ll have to take the mono.”
Molly taps me on the back and says, “Uh, what are we going to do if one of the, uh, you know, bad guys, catches us walking out like this. I mean, we’re not exactly hiding. We’re kind of right out in the open.”
“There’s not exactly many other options, now is there, Mol?” the Rev says. “The man lives this way. So, we have to go this way. I mean, for Christ’s sake, what do you expect us to do, fly there?”
Molly shrugs, acting like the victim of an unannounced crime. “No, that isn’t what I mean, it just seems that there has to be a better way to go about this. Like, we should at least be wearing disguises or something.”
“You know,” I say, “she actually does have a point.”
The Rev sighs. “No one is gonna fuckin’ recognize us.”
“Hey, Rev!” a random guy on the street shouts. “How ya doin’, you ugly sumbitch?”
“Okay,” the Rev says. “No one except for him.”
“Rev!” he shouts again, nearing. He wears only a bathrobe. The smile across his face makes me doubt he’s much of a threat, but I stay on my guard nonetheless. “Where ya been, dude? Brown and me climbed the taco stand and dropped acid. It was beautiful.”
“I was fightin’ neck spiders and throwing babies into dumpsters, Carl,” the Rev says.
Carl nods. “Ah, well, that’s cool too. But hey, check it out. These lame as fuck dudes were around here earlier, askin’ about you. They seemed real fuckin’ pissed.”
We all stop walking. Carl gasps at the amount of attention suddenly directed toward him. “Whoa, you guys, your eyeballs are strange.”
“What dudes?” the Rev asks. “They were asking about me?”
Carl nods. “I don’t know, man. Like, dudes from the casino, ya know? All business and stiff, walkin’ like they got sticks of dynamite up their assholes.”
“Hey!” Molly says. “There’s a baby present.”
Carl notices Ezzy and gasps again. “Oh my God, I thought that was a ball of cotton candy.”
“Well, it’s not. It’s a baby,” Molly says.
“Assholes,” Ezzy says.
“Aww,” Carl says. “That’s adorable!”
“Ezzy!” Molly shouts.
Ezzy laughs.
“Wait,” the Rev says, holding his hand up. “What did they ask?”
Carl shrugs. “Just like, if I knew where you live, and if I saw anybody with you lately. Like a dude with rabbit slippers on, or a redhead with a...baby.” He looks at my feet and nods. “Yeah, like those.”
“They’re funny bunnies,” I tell him.
“They’re terrifying. Why are they looking at me like that? Why do they hate me?”
“Shut up about the goddamn slippers,” Molly says. “What did you tell these people?”
“Well, I’m not about to rat about my boy Rev,” Carl says. “So I told them y’all were shooting up down on Hemrock.”
The Rev smiles. “Good thinkin’, my man.”
“How far away is Hemrock?” I ask.
“I don’t know, about twenty minutes from here,” the Rev says.
“And how long ago did you talk to these people, Carl?”
“I no longer have any concept of numbers,” Carl says. “All I know are colors.”
“Uh, all right.”
“They were here, maybe, I dunno, yellowy orange, black turquoises ago.”
“Oh shit,” the Rev says. “They’ll be back soon then, even more pissed off.”
“We gotta move,” I say. “Let’s go.”
We leave Carl and begin walking again. Carl shouts after us, “Hey, wait! I still have some acid left. We could all drop it together and have an orgy. Come on, guys!”
“I’m okay with that if you are,” the Rev says, slowing down.
“Just keep moving,” I tell him, pushing him along.
The Rev scoffs. “Like we’ve never been in an orgy together before.”
Molly stops. “What the fuck?”
“Orgy!” Ezzy shouts, gleefully clapping her hands together and giggling.
chapter sixteen
The sun boils my eyeballs and I yearn for darkness to return. Ezzy sits on my shoulders as we walk through the traffic of vagrants shuffling down the street. With the moon absent and the sun taking its place, these people look even more pathetic. Drool drips from their dropped jaws and their pupils swirl in a misty white. They’re all high as fuck and maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.
Some of them stare at Ezzy on my shoulders like they want to steal her. Some stare at Molly like they want to throw her down in the middle of the street and rape her. Some stare at the Rev and immediately look away. We stand out from everybody else here. We’re clean. We’re sober. We’re dressed, for the most part.
Random spots on the sidewalks are barricaded by piles of people sleeping. Maybe these people walk forever, until they’re simply too tired to walk any farther, and just collapse down until they’ve built up enough energy to continue this marathon of the insane.
We pass an overturned car. Inside there’s a family of corpses. I stop and look at the driver’s decomposed arm hanging from the window. The majority of the flesh has been torn from the bone. How long have they been here? How many mouths did these corpses feed?
“Ezzy doesn’t need to see this,” Molly says, and pushes me along.
A man two blocks down holds a sign with one hand that reads “CONUNDRAE WILL RISE” and he stares at us, smiling while he jacks off with his other hand. I return the stare and try my hardest to initiate my telekinesis. I visualize him flinging from the sidewalk and smashing into the abandoned building behind him. But nothing happens. He continues standing there, jacking off, until the Rev punches him in the face and he crumbles.
I don’t understand these mind powers. I don’t understand anything. The more I think about it, the greater my headache. Even with the spider out of me, my brain throbs something fierce. What the fuck was the spider doing inside me, anyway? The same kind of spider I saw in those harvies, too. Shit, this isn’t good. None of this is good.
Molly and the Rev don’t know any more than I do. Those who can answer my questions want me dead. If I want to know anything, I’ll have to confront my own killers. I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this. I can risk my life to understand my past, or I can flee to save my future.
Which do I care about more?
Ezzy runs her tiny fingers through my hair, giggling. “Faster, Da-doo, faster!”
Her. Ezzy. Molly. They’re who I care about.
The past is only as important as I make it. Just let go. Forget about it. I already have. Just forget I’ve forgotten and move on.
We arrive at the monorail station about half a mile later. The tracks are empty but people surround the area on both sides, awaiting the mono’s arrival. They’re the same as those below on the streets, only these people seem more tired. They sit and stand in place, not looking at anybody or anything. Just resting. The world
has been too hard on them and now it is their time for a break.
I have no idea where the mono is going to take us, but it has to better than here.
We find an empty spot next to the railing to wait. I attempt to lean against the handrail but immediately draw back once I feel how loosely screwed in it is to the concrete. It’d only take the weight of someone as small as Ezzy to knock the entire structure down to the street below.
“Why are we like this?” I ask, gesturing at the crowd of motionless zombies around us. “What the hell is wrong with everybody?”
The Rev stares a me a moment, figuring my brain out. “This is just the way shit is, man. You’re acting like you’re a goddamn time travelin’ asshole instead of some dude who lost his noggin’.”
“None of this feels right, is all. We’re all so sad and miserable looking. There’s no structure to this city. It’s all ugly.”
Molly caresses my cheek. “We aren’t all ugly.”
“You’re right, though,” the Rev says. “Shit wasn’t always so bad. But drugs, man, they fuck you up. Indigo is a powerful motherfucker. Sometimes, power is all that matters. That fuckin’ cult, dude. It got out of hand. When we were kids, shit, it was only just starting. Look at it now.”
“Why can’t anybody stop him?” I ask. “All these junkies and dealers, they easily outnumber him.”
The Rev shrugs. “Maybe they don’t mind it. Hell, I’m okay with it most of the time. Beats havin’ coppers getting in your shit twenty-four-seven, ya know? We’re pretty much free. As long as we don’t piss off the big man, which you seem to have done.”
“I wonder what I did.”
“Probably fucked his girl or something.”
Molly turns and slaps my chest. “You better not have!”
I wince, rubbing my chest. “Jesus Christ, woman, you know I didn’t.”
“Do you know you didn’t?”
She has a good point.
“No,” I say, “but I can’t imagine myself ever doing something to screw up what we have together.”
Up ahead, the mono nears. The vagabonds rise as it slows to a stop at our station. Once the doors slide open, a wave of fresh, dirty faces pour from out of the box and drift down the station’s steps, merging with the crowds in the streets. We push our way through the people and manage to find some empty seats close together.
Ezzy sits on my knee, gripping Donut, eyes widening in awe at all the interesting characters passing us. I rub her back and take comfort in how much warmth such a little creature can provide. When I awoke at the river, I was on the verge of death. I was a cloud of chaos, an ocean of oblivion. I was extinction.
But now that I’ve found my family, the thought of death couldn’t be less welcoming. Every second further I’m alive is another second I get to spend with them, and I don’t intend on running out of seconds anytime soon.
So fuck Indigo. Fuck Lamb and his blown off face. Fuck this whole goddamn city. I have Molly. I have Ezzy. Hell, I even have the Rev. I don’t need anybody or anything else. Not all questions are meant to be answered.
The monorail takes off and we’re in motion. It moves slowly, like it’s uncertain of its own stability. We coast through the city and I hold Ezzy up against the window so she can see the passing buildings. She points and gasps, saying, “Ooh, Da-doo, look, look!”
And I tell her, “I’m looking, baby girl. I’m looking.”
As we gain distance from the station, the buildings look less and less depressing. The boarded-up windows cease to exist and a few of the buildings even appear to be fully functional businesses. Cars replace the vagabonds on the streets, although the majority of them look like they’re about to break down any moment. A part of me is relieved that the entire city isn’t full of drug addicts overdosing in the middle of the street, but another part of me knows the same shit is still happening—it’s just better hidden here.
The mono picks up speed and the buildings zip past faster. Ezzy waves against the window, saying, “’Bye-‘bye, ‘bye-‘bye.”
Soon we’ll be saying ‘bye-‘bye to the whole city.
“We get off at the next stop,” the Rev says.
I nod. “How much of a walk once we leave the station?”
“Maybe twenty, thirty minutes. Not too far.”
“And he’ll be able to help us?”
“If he can’t, then I don’t know who could. Jed makes people disappear. It’s what he does. He’s the bloke we need, trust me.”
“I don’t really understand that, though,” I see, looking at the people around us. “Why would anyone need his services? Seems like someone could walk up and kill everybody at this station, and nobody would give a shit.”
“Yeah, true, but there’s some people you simply don’t kill, though, and if you do, you do whatever it fuckin’ takes to make sure nobody finds out.”
“Like who?”
“Like people who work for Indigo.”
A few minutes later, the monorail slows to a stop and we get off. The station is nearly identical to the last one. The doors outside are surrounded by barely functioning sacks of flesh waiting to board once we leave. They push past us and glue themselves to empty seats. We stand at the station a moment, stretching our legs and preparing for the walk ahead of us.
A man wearing a diaper crafted out of soggy newspapers approaches us. He stops in front of Molly and grins, revealing black teeth. “Hey there, baby,” he says.
“Fuck off,” I tell him.
He shoots his head up and looks at me, still grinning. “Anybody lookin’ for some action?” He grabs his badly concealed crotch and gives it a tug for emphasis.
I move toward him and he leaps back, holding his hands up and laughing. “Hey there, hey there, I was just kiddin’. I’s sorry.”
I don’t say anything, just keep walking toward him, a look in my eyes that tells him I won’t hesitate to rip his head off. He gets the hint and runs away from us, screaming that we’re all a bunch of humorless assholes.
As he runs, I stare at him and try to fling him over the railing of the station using my mind powers. Nothing happens. Of course nothing happens.
Molly sighs. “I hate this city.”
I turn back around toward her. “We won’t be here much longer. I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she says.
I bend down and pick up Ezzy, then look at the Rev. “Well, where to?”
The Rev points at the darkening sky and shouts, “To the moon, Alice!”
Molly sighs again.
* * *
The forest we walk through to get to Jed’s hideout reminds me of the forest I ran through when I first awoke at the river. The mosquitos are bastards and every fourth step is a puddle of soggy soil. I remember how I’d ran through the forest, in pure darkness, not knowing what I was, where I was going, or even what my name had been. Now here I am again in a similar forest, only this time, I have my family by my side, and the world is a little less miserable.
“Ouch, Da-doo, ouch!” Ezzy shouts from atop my shoulders, and I realize a tree branch just smacked her in the face.
“Jesus Chris, Bobby,” Molly says, picking up Ezzy’s dropped Donut. “You almost decapitated our child.”
“Almost,” I tell her, “almost.”
“Shut up,” the Rev says. “We’re here.”
“Where?” I ask. All I see are trees and more trees. “There’s nothing here.”
“Dude,” the Rev says. “There’s a big ass cabin right in front of us.”
“What? No there isn’t.” Then I take a step to the left, and now that a huge tree isn’t obstructing my vision, a cabin comes into view. “Oh. Never mind.”
“Okay, now we have to be very careful,” the Rev says. “There’s like a fifty-fifty percent chance this guy will shoot us for trespassing.”
Molly stops walking. “What?”
The Rev shrugs. “It just depends on how drunk he is.”
“Why didn’t we call ahe
ad or something?” I ask.
“Dude doesn’t have a phone anymore. He shot it. For trespassing.”
chapter seventeen
“Sure, I once ate a human, and yeah, it didn’t taste too bad, if I don’t say so myself.” Jed finishes off his beer and asks if we want another. We all just sit in his kitchen, staring at him, wondering why he chose to randomly bring up cannibalism.
“Listen,” he says, “I’m not sayin’ eatin’ humans ain’t wrong, but when it’s you and some other guy and there ain’t no other food, it’s either eat or be eaten, and me, I’m gonna eat.”
Jed rubs his rather large stomach, smiling.
The Rev nods. “Sure, sure.”
Molly gives me a look telling me she desperately wants to flee this lunatic’s cabin, and I respond with a similar stare.
“So,” I say, clearing my throat, “do you think you can help us?”
Jed leans forward, a new beer in hand. “You really don’t remember ever meeting me before?”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember a whole lot of anything, to be honest. I don’t know what was done to me, but it seriously screwed me up.”
“I can take a guess.”
“I knew it,” the Rev says. “He’s swallowed so much sperm that his brain finally exploded.”
I elbow the Rev in the ribs and nod at Jed. “What do you think happened?”
The cabin is smaller than I expected, but comfortable. The floors are covered in bearskin rugs and the walls are decorated with the decapitated heads of deer. The heads stare at us, frozen mid-scream. The majority of the living room floor is littered with old, disintegrating paperbacks. Most of the book covers feature barely dressed women and men wearing big trench coats, much like the one I stole at the river. When we arrived and told him why we were here, he led us through the living room, down the short hallway, and into the kitchen. He explained that it was the only room in the house with enough seating for all of us, plus it was the closest spot to the beer. The kitchen is small and forgettable. A sink. A refrigerator. A cabinet and pantry. A dining table. I stare at it all and instantly fade it out.
Jed sips his beer. “Well, I mean, come on, just think about it for a moment. You wake up in the middle of nowhere, naked, head throbbing, no memory, a bunch of dead folks around you. You find out you did something wrong, you ‘screwed over the wrong people’, as that dickhead Lamb said. Can’t you piece it together?”
The Mind is a Razorblade Page 15