Transcendent 2

by Bogi Takács

  AJ wants to touch Jamie in return, kiss Jamie’s whole body with his clothes off. For some reason, the thought of acting on these things then and there, in the same semi-public way that Jamie acts on all of his desires, does not occur to AJ.

  What does cross his mind is an urge to steal tapes. He passively suggests they head over to the mall for some release.

  Jamie’s made a wet spot on the crotch of his jeans but tucks himself away and repeats AJ’s thought as though he’s just thought of it.

  “Good idea,” AJ tells him.

  The rest of the school is filing back into the building for the last two and a half class periods of the day, and Jamie wipes his mouth and focuses on opening a portal. He holds AJ’s hand because he believes this makes the magic stronger. If a teacher does see them, they’re not going to do anything now that Jamie’s got that serious look on his face. Jamie doesn’t have to take any tests, or even really keep coming to school, and the guidance counselors have recommended private therapists and grief groups but he won’t let anybody try to help him, not even his mother, Eileen. Everybody wants Jamie to talk, so they keep telling him yes, and he hates all of them.

  AJ doesn’t ask Jamie to talk, which is how they’ve gotten so close, but AJ wants it just as much as everyone else. He thinks that the trick is to be so reliable that any day now, all this time together is going to add up to something meaningful and Jamie will open up, finally, to AJ and nobody else. The saddest boy in the whole school will tell AJ things about his dad, and say “You’re the only one who understands,” and it will be the single most flattering and fulfilling burden of AJ’s whole life. He lies in bed at night and imagines the whole scenario. Sometimes he rehearses the hushed, intimate tone he’s going to respond in.

  They figured out the veil and the portals in the first place because Jamie was looking for a spot to set his diary on fire last Halloween, and AJ had been the one to bring him a lighter and show him how to use it. They burned the barely-filled notebook—what could possibly be in there, AJ wondered, as it burned—behind the bushes and buried the ashes under the mulch, and that’s when they saw other transient places in the town, the nothing spots, where nobody lived or worked and nobody wanted to stay for very long, and they could reach out and touch them and step into them and find themselves there.

  Jamie tried to use it to go back in time, but it never worked. AJ knew Jamie had tried to go back to September 10th alone, was never going to ask AJ to go there with him, but he had tried and failed and AJ knew this because one day Jamie got really philosophical about what the portals were and how they worked. People always get deep after they don’t get what they really want, AJ thought.

  They rip a wound in the world and walk through it together, still holding hands. They exit in the food court behind the photo booths, and separate inside Suncoast Video. AJ peels the shrinkwrap off an anime boxset and slips the individual tapes into his cargo pockets while Jamie dumps a handful of coins onto the counter and asks the clerk how much candy he can get for five dollars in loose change. This takes enough time for AJ to inconspicuously slip back out of the store and appear to be idly browsing bachelor-party gags in Spencer’s Gifts by the time Jamie joins him again. They have it down to routine, but this time Jamie takes more than an hour to rejoin. When he does, AJ is running out of excuses to browse the joke book section without buying anything.

  “Sup,” Jamie says with forced coolness.

  “I don’t get what the thing is about mother-in-laws,” AJ says, closing a book and returning it to the shelves. “What took so long? Are we in the clear?”

  “Yeah, yeah, just had to make a side trip.”

  They head to the basement level of the mall parking garage and climb through a portal back to school, in time for the procession of SUVs at the front circle. AJ rushes to change out of what he’s wearing and into the clothes he left home in that morning. When he’s done, he and Jamie meet out front and climb into the back of Eileen’s car for a ride home.

  Eileen greets the kids wearing a leather blazer and her hair styled for volume, cinnamon shoulder-length curls. She looks resilient, tired, and handsome. Jamie eyes the luxury jacket with suspicion. He wonders where her cat-hair covered fleece is, her usual abundance of bobby pins coming loose.

  “Happy Friday,” she sing-songs, and Jamie crosses his arms over his chest. She turns to AJ and asks him if he’s attending Crystal Sazerac’s sweet thirteen with Jamie that evening.

  “Oh yeah,” AJ responds, a soft fog of dread setting into his mood. “I’d forgotten about it.”

  Eileen hums along with the radio as she drives AJ home. The two boys wallow silently in their respective conjecture, slumped down, AJ with his knees pressed against the seat in front of him and Jamie twisted onto his hip, face and shoulders leaning onto the window.

  AJ’s mother had not forgotten that the next door neighbor’s daughter was turning thirteen, though she is still at work when he gets home. Set out on his bed is a hideous too-large jumper dress and an already-wrapped present.

  Even if AJ wanted to wear girl’s clothing, the things his mom picks out and mandates are humiliating. She still buys him little kid stuff in incrementally larger sizes, with no sense of context, telling him he looks “cute.” The word “cute” feels like an insult for the rest of his life. He puts on the dress, practically swims around in the garish materials.

  It’s no use arguing. His mother thinks his discomfort is an attempt to hurt her. He doesn’t yet know most other children’s parents do not physically restrain and slap them for wanting to dress themselves. This is how he started shoplifting in the first place. He wanted a denim jacket, unisex, well-fitting, so he nicked one from Kmart. The desire was so practical, but it gave him something he never had before—a secret, a part of his life he could control.

  The party invitations went to Crystal’s actual friends, plus a pity list of neighbors and losers like AJ and Jamie. They were almost too old for this sort of forced mingling. In high school, AJ sensed, there’d be no pity list, which was almost a relief. But Jamie didn’t seem to know that yet. He got an invitation to everybody’s birthday, bar mitzvah, and pool party since the fall. Eileen made sure he went to all of them.

  AJ arrives early, mystery gift in hand, in the ugly dress, and fusses with his hair by the chip and dip table, then fusses with the food, fills his discomfort with Tostitos.

  The trade-off Crystal had clearly negotiated with her parents was that if randos had to come, then her chosen few got to be co-ed, too. Her boyfriend Derek is there with the rest of his lacrosse team. The atmosphere is relaxed—the “fire drill” had made the Friday especially casual and Crystal herself isn’t a status-conscious girl, just eager to please people like Derek, who most certainly is.

  AJ inks into the shadows of the evening, melts into the wallpaper and the carpet, lurks by the French doors leading out to the patio of the Sazerac’s back yard which abuts his own. Mrs. Sazerac’s daffodil buds spear out of the garden on the edge of the property line. He watches the deep dark of the suburban night saturate the lawns, the daffodils, the patio.

  Jamie arrives just as the conversation turns into a game of truth or dare. He’s gel-spiked his hair, has too much cologne on, carries a distinct turquoise gift box. AJ recognizes it from the window displays of the Tiffany shop at the mall. By the size, it has to be the silver heart pendant, easily the most popular piece of jewelry among the rich girls at school since the end of Christmas and Hanukkah break, when they conspicuously appeared around the delicate necks and wrists of blossoming princettes. Getting one from a boyfriend, much less a boy at your birthday party, was unheard of.

  “Hey, you look pretty,” Jamie says to AJ as he approaches AJ’s spot by the patio doors. AJ squirms.

  “Jamie, that’s…” AJ says, pointing an accusatory finger at the gift box. “She’s gonna know you stole it, and Derek is going to beat the shit out of you.”

  “How do you know what it is?”

  “J
aim, you can’t give her that. It’s like a step below a promise ring.”

  Jamie defensively pockets the box.

  “Yeah, Jaim,” Derek snorts. He slithers over to the boys, but seemingly hasn’t overheard their argument. “You smell like a hooker.”

  Derek punches Jamie in the arm. Crystal is engrossed in truth or dare across the room, and doesn’t notice either Jamie’s entrance or Derek’s comment.

  “Leave him alone, Derek,” AJ says. Derek stares down AJ with sparks of that unhinged loathing unique to bigotry.

  “I don’t need you to fight for me,” Jamie snaps at AJ. Derek is a bully but at least that script is safer than letting a mouthy tomboy stick up for him in the middle of their own argument.

  “Look, fag,” Derek digs in. “You’re only here because everyone feels bad for your stupid dad dying in Nine Eleven, but everybody fucking hates you and wishes you’d stop coming to shit our moms make us invite you. The two of you should stay home and pee in each other, see if it makes an ugly baby to keep you busy.”

  Jamie is silent and still. AJ’s eyes well with tears, and he imagines himself gouging out Derek’s eyes, twisting off his balls, anything, but he can barely stop his lip from quivering. He might like to kick Jamie in the shins, too.

  “Oh my god, are you going to cry? Freaks.” Derek rolls his eyes and rejoins the main group of the party. Crystal looks up and greets him with a smile, oblivious.

  When they were very small, AJ and Crystal used to play Barbies together. They used to have fun. For some reason, this pops into AJ’s mind as he chokes back sobs. With hands shaking, he grapples for the handle of the French doors and lets himself out onto the patio. After a stunned pause, Jamie follows.

  AJ stares up at the light in the kitchen window of his own house. The light falls in long green stripes from the windows to the lawn, where it dissolves as the world between the houses tears itself apart and a portal offers itself to the boys. In the dark, dark night outside, only they can see that the veil has come undone, is dissolving completely.

  Jamie steps up beside AJ.

  “My mom is on a date tonight,” he says.

  “What?” AJ asks, barely able to fathom language in his fury.

  “I said my mom has a date tonight. She’s out with a guy.” Jamie takes the Tiffany box back out of his coat pocket and fidgets with it.

  “Oh,” AJ responds, watching the world crumble around them. The portal swallows the daffodil garden and envelops them both, taking them somewhere indiscernible in the dark.

  “You can’t—” AJ thinks aloud to the sound of the pedant rattling inside the box. “You can’t just give people really nice things like that. It’s too much.”

  AJ waits for a response but there’s only the knock of the silver against the cardboard and the howl of the veil, closing again like curtains around their unknowable destination.

  Lisa’s Story:

  Zombie Apocalypse

  • Gillian Ybabez •

  People die every day but when they don’t stay dead it becomes a real problem. Especially when they attack the living. Sometime during the fifth day the internet gave up all pretense and just started calling them zombies.

  Several of my neighbors packed their kids and some stuff into their cars and took off. If I had a car, I might have tried to leave as well. The nearest National Guard-established safe zone was a couple hundred miles away. God bless Texas and its open country. Not.

  A couple of days later, the power went out. It was getting worse.

  Power outages across the country. A safe zone in Kansas had dissolved when someone died inside. Fifty more people died before they were killed for the second time.

  The last of my neighbors left the apartment complex. A zombie wandered by the next day and broke into a nearby apartment. One of my neighbors had left their dog behind. The dog got away. I barricaded my front door with sofas and the two big front windows with mattresses and bookshelves after that.

  I waited for a sign that it was all over. Surely we were pushing them back, right? There was no way mindless zombies could really take over, right? The power might be shut down but that couldn’t last for much longer. We couldn’t really lose, could we?

  A few days later I realized, this is it. This is how the world ends. I looked out at the quiet apartment complex. I was alone and no one was coming for me.

  I counted how many days of food I had left. Seven days. If the stove wasn’t electric I could cook rice or pasta—there would be enough for several more days.

  I counted my hormone and anti-androgen pills. Enough for a few weeks. I could do without them if I had to but I’d rather not. Would it be hard to break into a pharmacy?

  The water was still flowing but how long would that last? I needed to find more water before that happened. I had to go out or die in my apartment. There was a convenience store a few blocks away that would be a good first stop. Beyond that there was a superstore that had to be overflowing with supplies.

  But first I had to deal with a problem closer to home.

  When I moved into the apartment, my roommate and I had split the cabinet and refrigerator space. Since the power went out, I had eaten all of my perishable food but hadn’t touched hers. Out of obligation to the roommate code I had respected her food rights, even as I piled her mattress against a window. I had believed she would be coming back after finding her father but now I doubted that I would ever hear from her again. I wished I had eaten her food. It was starting to smell.

  Sorting through the leftover food I realized none of it was salvageable. I briefly argued with myself over a block of mold-spotted cheese but decided against taking the risk. I repeated the process with the freezer. All the spoiled food went in a trash bag that I tied shut.

  I moved the sofas and I armed myself with a baseball bat, left over from that time I tried joining a local amateur team. I looked out the peephole, watching for a few minutes before opening the deadbolts. They scraped and squeaked as I twisted the knobs to open them. Had they always been that loud? I made a note to get oil for them. With the trash bag in one hand and the bat in the other I slipped out of the apartment.

  Fresh air blew across my face for the first time in over a week. I took a deep breath and looked around. Most of my neighbor’s cars were gone. A few cars remained, not that they were any good to me without keys. The neighbor’s door was busted in.

  The door was dented but still on its hinges. The frame, however, was cracked and split around the deadbolt and knob. I turned away, glad that I had remained undetected. I closed the door but didn’t lock it behind me, I wouldn’t be going far or for very long.

  The garbage cans were in the alley between my building and the next. I kept watch on the deserted complex during the walk. Once around back I quickly dropped the bag in a garbage can. Four cans sat in a row, one for each apartment in my building. The one for our—my apartment was almost empty. Two women just don’t make a lot of garbage, especially if they recycle like we did. The other three were covered so I couldn’t tell how full they were. It would only take a second to peek but I didn’t have that much interest. I didn’t want to spend more time out here than I needed to.

  I turned around and started to walk back to my apartment.

  As I rounded the corner, I saw a person walk through the entrance to the complex. I recognized the dark blue of the city’s police uniform. I should have ducked back and watched. Instead, I walked further into the open. Gut instinct said “Don’t hide, suspicious people hide from police” and when you’re not white suspicious usually means guilty to the police. After hearing numerous horror stories, I had no desire to find out firsthand what happens to trans women in jail, so I had always tried to not be suspicious.

  He saw me and began walking in my direction. He seemed to be trying to run but his left leg seemed too short and hobbled him. Then I noticed his leg wasn’t too short; he was missing his foot. It wasn’t a man. It was a zombie. In only a few seconds, it had nearly close
d the distance between us. With no more time to think, I gripped the bat in both hands and as he—it got close, I swung at its head.

  Its head flew to the side and it stumbled from the impact. I froze for a second, watching it regain its balance until it turned and lunged at me. I raised my bat high and brought the bat down on its head. It cracked and crunched but the zombie didn’t fall. It staggered back for a second but renewed its single-minded attack. I swung to knock it off balance one more time before running away.

  I ran between the apartment buildings and turned the corner behind my own. Behind me, I heard the shuffle-thump of it following. Looking back I saw it stumbling along faster than a person missing a foot should be able. It will follow me until I can’t run anymore, I realized. It won’t get out of breath or tired or hungry. I could make it back to the apartment but then what? I have to kill it. I can do this, I told myself. It’s hobbled and off balance.

  I turned, grabbed the bat in both hands again, and swung as it reached me. It stumbled but this time I didn’t give it time to recover and smashed my bat down on its head again. It doubled over from the impact so I hit it across the back, sending it to the ground. I circled around to its head and began smashing its skull before it could get up. After a few minutes my bat began to ring out as it hit concrete more often than flesh. The zombie wasn’t moving any more, it hadn’t been moving for a couple of minutes now that I thought about it.

  I snapped out of my killing frenzy. My heart was pounding and I was breathing hard. Looking down at the now mostly headless corpse made me feel ill. I swallowed back my nausea, then I noticed the black gore coating my bat, my arms, splattered on my clothes, and presumably on my face as well. I took a few steps away and retched.

  Taking deep breaths, I forced myself to concentrate on what had just happened. I had smashed in a zombie’s head. Should I move the body? Obviously I didn’t need to hide it from the police but just leaving it to rot didn’t seem like the best idea.