Silence: and then, something she hasn’t heard in years. Laughter. Loud mocking laughter as the men repeat her questions, jesus christ did we win is this still America, wiping tears from their eyes. As they bend over in hysterics, Kingston spies someone at the far end of the loading ramp, a small figure in rags peering down at her in the gloom. A girl. She fingers a large chain running between small breasts, attached to a thick collar at her neck. Kingston starts, and the girl does the same, eyes widening under shanks of greasy hair before slinking away from the ramp.
Two weapons, twenty-nine bullets—against ten men, all of them armed. She’s weak, she’s tired. But she’s angry. And she was always the best.
“Keep sleeping, Ensley,” she whispers, as she opens fire. “I won’t leave you alo—”
She doesn’t know how many she kills: the first bullet back gets her right in the gut, and two more clip her as she slams against the wall and crashes onto the ground. The weapons fall from her hands, spinning down the ramp.
And, so, that’s it. This is the end.
It’s so banal.
The men say nothing as they walk down the ramp, dragging their dead as they pass. Kingston lies with her legs pointing to the surface, and her head in the dark, neither outside in the world or within it. A herd of scuffed boots pushes past, and then three pairs of brown, delicate feet shuffle after the men. They’re heavily chained and scarred, stained with dried shit and blood.
Tears bead down her face. They’ll find Ensley. The things they’ll do to her, and she won’t understand. Or worse, she will, and she’ll never have the words for her pain.
For the first time in her life, Kingston truly weeps.
…
…sun beats down on her face, searing her pale skin. Noon. Kingston gasps, forces a swollen tongue over lips split and bleeding. The shots to her arms, they’re painful, but nothing compared to the one in her stomach. Slow death, those gut shots. Yeah, like she deserved better. Always quick to kill and walk away. It felt good. It was clean. But shouldn’t she have called her sister to say goodbye? Her name…. Kingston cries again, a feeble whine. She can’t remember her sister’s name….
…
…found her, they found her, and the men so large and rough, so desperate, and Ensley the angel of the underground, all soft black curls and pale skin. She’s screaming. Kingston tries to rise, and can’t. Her right hand presses against her stomach, as more blood and bile dribble out. Pages and papers, little notes roll up the ramp, float away. They’re trashing everything. Laughter, deep voices, footsteps, all fading. Ensley’s screams sink into the pitch black void, where Kingston cannot follow. Only her blood makes the effort, snaking in thin streams down the ramp, reaching out one last time before succumbing, before giving in….
…
…shadows flicker against the walls. The sun is setting. Kingston drifts, each dip into the dark a bit longer than before. Somewhere deep, wherever her daughter now lies, wind whistles through thin cracks, and the mournful song filters back through the tunnels. Kingston’s heart thumps painfully as little threads of electricity fire in her head before winking out forever: evergreens tossing in blue skies and high winds over a little yellow house, a woman in a flowered dress throwing a red plastic ball up up up, the scent of cut grass and daffodils. A summer scene from her childhood? Her mother? Or maybe a dream of what might have been, in a peaceful world. No matter. There will never be a summer like that again….
…
…and now there is only wind, the rattle of gravel down the ramp, the flapping edge of a photo as the currents dance it closer to her. Fear bolts through Kingston, and her body jerks. Blood spurts from her lips, and some hidden warhead of pain finally explodes as she grasps the scalloped edges. She sees, oh god she sees….
…it’s the image of a young man, a pale-faced rider astride a paler horse, lunging into a future yet unknown. Kingston sees that future now. It’s behind the photo, the gaping maw of darkness that creeps closer as the sun gallops across the sky. Galloping like the rider, galloping like the arrhythmic apocalypse traveling through her bones, throwing her body into painful curves, her mouth snarling open in a soundless cry. Her fingers spasm, and the photo flies up and away, the pale rider thunders into the dark….
…and she is the pale rider, grasping the neck of the lunging beast as they begin the final ride through eternal night.
And for one sliver of a moment, Kingston remembers a name that rends her soul. There is someone she must look for here in this wasteland, someone she must find. But the horse does not slow, and the night does not end, and her memories sink into the land with the western sun. There is no one else beside her, behind her or ahead. Five billion people, five billion pale thundering horses, all looking for lovers, daughters, sons. All of them, each of them, alone….
There is only Kingston.
There is only the pale rider, hurtling into the void.
There is only the void.
At the Edge of Ellensburg
Cordilleran
“Yes.”
Jeff lay before me on the back seat of his Chevy Duster, cock in hand. The trapped summer air, thick with breath and sweat, clung to our skin like matted fur. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, and felt water trickle down my breast.
“No. It’s too hot. I feel sick. Next time, I promise.”
“You say that every time.” Jeff moved his hand up and down, pushing the dark skin through the funnel of his fingers. I licked my lips.
“I don’t swallow for just any man.”
“You don’t swallow for any man.”
“It’s not about the swallowing. It’s about submitting. I don’t like submission. It means I’m defeated.”
“Or victorious.” Jeff smiled and leaned forward. His skin tore away from the seat with a slow crackle.
My white foot pressed against the hot glass of the car. Above me, Jeff grunted and bore down, pushing me deeper into the sticky leather as he thrust into me. Adjusting beneath his weight, my foot shifted and dropped to the metal handle, leaving behind the outline of my skin in a corona of fading sweat and steam. Beyond the ephemeral smears, the gold-brown hills of the land rose and fell away, baking in the summer sun. I watched my ghost-foot fade as Jeff shuddered and cried out, drops of his sweat splashing on my face before the rest of him crashed over me, spent in the heat.
Later, we sat on the edges of the back seat, doors open to the empty road, half-dressed and drinking lukewarm beer. We didn’t touch each other—after we came, there was no need. Besides, it was too hot.
“Radio?”
“Sure,” I said. Jeff leaned across the seat and fiddled with the dial, channeling faint guitar chords through the static. No wires or signals this far out of Ellensburg, far beyond the town and the orchards, the cattle farms and layers of earth carved by ancient glacial retreat. Here, with hills behind us, we stared out onto a flat expanse of low scrub and rock that ran straight to the horizon. The low sun puddled at its edges, and together they caught fire in a line of gold that stretched as far as I could see. The dirt road ran before us into that line, but we’d never gone further than the edges of the hills. It seemed safer with the land at our backs.
I leaned my head out the door, hoping for a stray breeze to lift the sticky shanks of hair off my neck. Jeff muttered something about finals—back in the real world, the end of the semester and all the fury of last-minute cramming awaited us. Neither of us were good students. We did the minimum and squeaked by with B’s, just like everyone else. Jeff’s finals were serious—his first in his new life as a psychology grad student. Mine? Well, let’s just say I could have graduated in the spring, but chose to polish my knowledge a few semesters more. Truth be told,
I didn’t want to leave the confines and culture of the dorms, the dusty classrooms and late-night strolls around campus, talking about nothing and staring at the sky. I didn’t want the oppression of the real world. I loved my lazy daydreaming life, and didn’t want to leave it.
“We better get back, it’s getting late.” Jeff stood up and stretched, his tan body reaching for the cloudless sky as he heaved his empty bottle in a high arc. It caught the light of the sun and sparkled furiously as it disappeared with the road into the earth’s molten edge.
“Why did you do that?”
Jeff shrugged and slipped into the front seat.
“You have to get that.”
“Why?”
“Hello, did you see the NO TRESPASSING sign back there? If someone finds out, we’ll never get back in.” It was true: kids from college had the reputation for breaking and entering all the surrounding farmlands and orchards. All those empty spaces were irresistible—but the remnants of our parties had made landowners crack down, and the results were barbed wire, shotguns, and dogs. This silent place had been accessible through an unlocked gate of rotting wood, and I wanted to keep it that way at least to the end of summer.
“No one’s gonna dust it for fingerprints. I’m not getting it, it’s too hot.”
“Fine, I’ll get it.” I grabbed my shirt.
“Knock yourself out.”
“Don’t leave without me,” I said. Jeff grabbed the steering wheel in a display of mock abandonment. I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. He was corn-fed handsome, all muscle and blond hair and soft blue eyes.
How a skinny, redheaded bitch like me ended up with him, I had no idea. Did I love him? No. But I wanted to keep him, same as the land. All for myself, at least to the end of summer. So I smiled.
“I’m not running,” I said as I loped down the road. Rocks and dirt crunched under my sandals, but I didn’t leave a wake of dust behind. Nothing rose in the oppressive heat except shimmers of light, rolling up into the air as we all baked together. The sun hitched, slipped lower, and above me deep purple stained the skies.
“It landed to the right of the road!” Jeff’s voice floated to me, barely cutting a path through the silence. No insects, no rustle of wind in the bushes, no creep of animal. Nothing but me, looking for a sliver of glass in the wilderness. I stepped off the road, just two parallel grooves of pressed earth, and wandered to the right, hoping the white paper label would catch my eye.
“Too fucking hot for this,” I mumbled to myself. I ran my fingers over my arms—by next morning, the white of my skin would glow bright red. It never took long for the poisonous heat to kiss its way into my cells and blossom. Everywhere I looked, there was nothing: just low shrubs and jagged rocks. “Where the fuck are you. Asshole.”
A faint crinkle of breaking glass caught my attention, and I turned back. The hills were a dirty smear against the horizon—had I really wandered that far away? Stunned, I shielded my eyes with my hands and squinted hard, looking for a sign of the Duster. Nothing. I turned back, looked directly into the sun.
A piece of it fell off.
I stood and stared in the press and roar of heat as it floated to the ground, flaring white in the liquid gold of the sky. It disappeared at the earth’s edge, then, after several seconds, from behind the low line of bushes a faint but steady glitter beckoned me.
It took another five minutes to reach the spot. My lips had long given up the fight, and my tongue continually ran its tip over their stiff cracks. Dirt mixed with sweat, and caked up between my toes and under my heels. I couldn’t see very well—everything blurred as my eyes teared up from a permanent squint. I was walking to the edge of the earth, it seemed, with only the occasional spark to guide me. At some point, I didn’t even remember if I was in Ellensburg anymore. My desire to see what had fallen had taken me over the limit, beyond the edge of the earth, and I traveled on the cusp of the sun.
“There.” The word fell out of me like a stone. Just yards away, a steady gleam in the dirt. I stumbled over a thick root, and half-danced, half-fell the rest of the way. It seemed appropriate, landing on my knees. I saw my hand, didn’t feel it, reach out. White fingers plucked at the spark, lifted it from the earth back into the air. A gold disk—as small as my fingernail, thin, smooth as glass, and shot through with an enchanting blue iridescence. A small hole had been bored into the top. I turned it over and the tips of my fingers prickled with pain.
“A scale.”
A low growl of a car engine drifted across the plain as the wind picked up, and even in the heat, I shivered. Something cold swept over my skin as I watched a thin line of dust kick up at the edge of the horizon, as if some great being had descended from that great space beyond, touched land, and was now racing toward me. Something relentless and all-devouring.
I turned and ran back toward the hills, forgetting about the bottle, ignoring the burn of thirst at my throat and the hammering of my heart. I didn’t stop running until I reached the Duster, falling into Jeff’s arms like a child and begging him to drive.
If I had only known, I would have kept running.
Invisible Sun
Eastern Washington is nothing but space. No matter where you are, you can find a hill, walk to the top, and turn around in a circle: all you will see is land and sky. Long seas of apple orchards stretch to the horizon, herds of Black Angus thunder over miles of brown grass, miles of barbed wire hold back the bleak beauty of the scab lands. High red cliffs split into gorges and wide lakes; and always in the distance low mountains hover and shift in the heavy air. Civilization doesn’t take here, it can’t put down roots. It perches on the crust of a billion years of geology, tentative and wary. Under the thick crops and brick buildings, the earth crouches, ready to fling us off at a moments notice. We are only visitors here. We are nothing but lies.
The college campus is no different than any other part of Ellensburg, except that it is neater—more manicured and pristine. I stood at the top of the central walkway in the early morning sun, feeling the hard plastic of my bike seat grow hot between my legs. To the right of me, the massive brick library loomed over a field of clipped grass split in two by a small stream—named The Ganges by the students in my mother’s graduating class, thirty years ago. To my left, more brick and mortar—human silos of a sort, for learning and studying, for fucking and fighting and sleeping. Activities that, like the buildings, seemed ephemeral wisps of nothing before the vastness of the land and sky.
And that’s why he stood out among all the students streaming back and forth—because he had the quality nothing else here but the land itself had. He was new here, but he was no visitor. I saw him at the other end of the walkway, standing in the center of the concrete slabs as if he’d always been there—a thick pole of bone and tanned flesh, capped with dirty-blond hair. Glaciers had come and gone, waters risen and receded, and yet— My fingers crept up, touching the scale that hung on a silver chain around my neck. As if on cue, the man turned and slipped behind the education buildings to the left.
My toes pulled at the concrete, and the bike began rolling down the walkway. I wove in and out of the light foot traffic, taking my time. Three weeks had passed since I’d passed out from heat stroke in the scab lands. In the ensuing weeks, summer school had ended, and autumn weather had crept in, taking the edge off the heat, both in the world and in myself. I’d dumped Jeff and moved into my own apartment in Student Village, kept mostly to myself. But I felt something of the old summer burn as I turned the bike around the corner, stopping to chain the bike to the rack. I looked around while fumbling with the lock—he had disappeared, but I knew he was somewhere near. Where he’d walked between the buildings, the air shimmered slightly, as if he’d left a jet stream of heat in his wake.
Between the two larger buildings stood a small octagonal building surrounded by a moat of water and a lush garden. It seemed a complete anomaly in a campus filled with neo-Gothic buildings and ugly dorms—a wild and tangled mess of life in the middle of so much landscaping. I shivered in the cooler air, shivered as branches and low ferns brushed my skin, shivered as my hand brushed across the railing of the short bridge. The building was a meeting room of sorts, almost completely glass, and I saw he wasn’t inside. I walked around
the concrete balcony surrounding the building, my breath unnaturally loud amidst the rustle of water and leaves. As I rounded the corner, a whiff of cigarette smoke hit my nostrils. I breathed it in deeply, and the burn of it raced through my lungs and settled with my blood in all the little folds of flesh between my legs.
The man stood at the railing, leaning back slightly as if he’d expected me. He looked like a lion, with his messy straw hair, pale sky-blue eyes, and a true Roman nose that jutted from a face covered in light stubble. He was handsome in a feral way, not like the complacent and beefy undergrads I was used to—this was a man, not a boy. He’d taken off his t-shirt and it hung over the railing beside him. His body was lean and muscular, without a trace of fat. Small scars covered his ropey arms, and soft hair covered his chest, tapering down to just below his flat stomach, where it flared out again into a lush matt of dark pubic hair. The top of his jeans was unbuttoned and partially unzipped. He’d probably been pissing into the moat—I didn’t know a single guy who hadn’t. The water was irresistible.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know anyone was here.” The tip of the cigarette glowed like a firefly, and his mouth tightened into a sardonic smile. I felt stupid—obviously I’d followed him here. I’d always been a terrible liar.
“Are you a student?” His lips moved around the cigarette, and the glowing tip bobbed up and down in the air.
“Yeah.”
“I thought school was out.” He took one last drag, and flicked the butt into the water. Smoke shot from his nostrils and mouth—he looked more dragon-like now, less leonine. I shivered again. We were all alone here. No one could see us. He could do anything.
Then again, so could I.
“It’ll start up in a couple of weeks. I was here for summer school. You’re not a student, are you?”
“Nah.” He smiled, a real smile this time, soft and wide. “I’m visiting friends. I’ve been traveling up the coast, from San Francisco. I’ll be here a few months.”
“Oh.” I shifted on my feet, and touched the scale at my throat. It was becoming something of a nervous affectation. “This must be quite a change from California.”
Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors Page 4