Genius Loci

by Edited by Jaym Gates

  She ripped off her shirt and balled it up, stuffing it into her mouth. She bit down hard to keep from screaming, her arms wrapped around her head in desperation.

  #

  Names were the first things lost.

  No one understood, at first. People gathered together, trying to comfort each other, find loved ones, make meaning. It took so long to find the connection between the slow losses and the scratching, the breathing, the buildings closing in to bite. People became as jagged and ruined as the buildings.

  First they lost their names, and everyone else's names too. They lost the name of the City.

  They didn't know why they were there. They didn't know who they belonged to. They didn't remember, and they started to fade.

  Entire families would watch each other vanish, the scratching and the ringing carving away their sanity even as the people they were standing next to lost limbs, became more and more translucent till eventually they became wispy and faded away. Their families watched and didn't know why they felt so profoundly sad. They didn't remember that there had been anyone there a few minutes ago. They faded away too, soon after.

  No one made a sound, that's what she remembered. Even when people first clustered together, desperate to cling to each other and make sense of what had happened, the voices were muted and choked. The City took that, so that the names would be easy to steal. What good is a name if you can't use it?

  She supposed that at some point she had a name. Perhaps there had even been people who brought her joy by saying it. She had been alone for a while. It didn't take long for people to realize that when they gathered, the vanishing came more quickly. The City saw their weakness, and delighted in it.

  But it isn't so simple to destroy people. Take voices and take companionship and take memories, but people will fight back. They forged new ways of communicating—hidden caches throughout the rubble where they hid their weapons. Survival meant isolation. The caches were the only way to communicate, the only way to cling to the last vestiges of human connection.

  She uncurled from against the wall, her heartbeat returned to normal and her breathing steady. With fingers that shook only slightly, she untied the tired, fraying cord from around the parcel. She pulled back the canvas and her lips curved up at the corners.

  On the floor in front of her were weapons. Some jars of homemade paint. A carefully sharpened bit of glass. Some scraps of brilliantly colored fabric, stained but still vibrant.

  She began with the fabric, ripping bits of her drab gray clothing and looping the cloth through so that it could be tied in place. Bits of pink clashed alongside safety orange, while a brilliant red bandana around her head warred with the yellow ribbons laced into her hair.

  Next, the paint. She dipped her fingers into the jars, smearing her clothing and skin with the slimy gunk. It was no professional compound, for sure, but it dried and remained crusted, which was all that she needed.

  Flames of color licked at her, but she knew it was not enough.

  The final step was the glass. She gritted her teeth and quickly slashed across her arms several times, fresh red lines surging into existence, the older, gentler scars fading into the background at the aggression of the new gouges.

  She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment. This was the choice she made. This was the choice they made, the people. They fought for themselves. They clung to some belief, vain or not, that it meant something.

  She carefully screwed the top back onto the jar and wiped the glass on her clothes. They were put back into the canvas, along with the few remaining scraps of fabric, and everything was tied up again, a grungy gift of survival for the few.

  She would return it to the pile where she had found it, so that someone else who knew about the drop could use it. Then, she would strike out to find more things to hide. She was better at finding food than finding color; she tried to leave provisions in the drops where she collected colors.

  Sometimes she would see another person and their eyes would meet briefly. They would nod, but that would be all—they would have to hurry on their way before they aroused suspicion or drew attention. A brief meeting of eyes and a tiny nod could sustain her through cold nights and empty drops, when she ran low on color and couldn't close her eyes for fear of the scratching.

  As she stood back up from burying the parcel back beneath the debris, she saw another figure. This one, unlike the last one, was distinct. It was another woman, tall and poised for flight, standing on the tattered remains of a fire escape across the street.

  The woman blazed with color, from the paint and the fabric that graced her clothes to the rich caramel of her skin.

  She looked up at the woman, their eyes meeting. They held the gaze for several seconds, never breaking the silence as they spoke. They nodded.

  Then like that, the woman was gone, running down the street in a flare of color.

  Watching down the street till the other woman was out of sight, she finally started walking in the opposite direction. She was tired; she hadn't slept well in days, and at long last she had enough color that she could sleep safely for a few hours. She had her armor against the vanishing; the ringing would wake her up before all her pigment was gone and the City could start to truly eat her.

  #

  No one had ever tried to defeat it.

  Well, she supposed, perhaps someone had, but no one remembered. Perhaps those memories got eaten up.

  But then, she suspected, everyone was too busy trying to stay corporeal to worry about truly fighting back. It was hard enough to not disappear; it was hard enough to keep what you had. Who could focus on fighting when there was surviving to be done? Fighting was the dream of course—when she sat, assuaging her loneliness with thoughts of eye contact and nods, she dreamed of fighting, of winning. But how could she fight the City?

  She stood in the street, looking up. The sky was dispassionate, refusing her the comfort of warmth, refusing her the solace of darkness. It was always there, always looming. More than a sky, it seemed a lid—there is no exit that way. If it felt anything, it was sadistic humor, the spiked teeth of skyscrapers showing its twisted smile. The silence was the City laughing.

  How could she fight? She couldn't touch her enemy; it had no face for her to punch.

  She frowned. A few quick steps took her from the center of the street to the side of a building. She reached out one hand slowly, touching just the tips of her fingers to the cool wall. Lightly, then more firmly, she pressed her whole hand against it.

  A faint smile flickered on her face for a moment.

  Suddenly determined, she began striding down the street. She had a destination in mind; there was another cache nearby.

  The City felt her confidence; the windows had seen her smile, brief though it was. The scratching began, and it was moving quickly. The breathing was full of lust, wet and slobbering with anticipation.

  She walked more quickly, willing herself not to run. She would not run.

  The buildings shivered and arched, the ringing splashing off of them maniacally.

  “No,” she whispered, but the syrup-thick air ate her words and filled her throat.

  She ran.

  The scratching followed, the sound of kitten claws on a floor, all excitement for the game.

  She wove around piles of rubble in the street, her heart pounding silently in her chest. Her breathing was ragged, and she knew that she should have been making a sound, but there was no sound. Nothing but scratching, breathing, ringing.

  The ringing clanged like a bell and was silent.

  She held her breath. Everything was so silent.

  The ringing picked back up again, the scratching now angrily clawing. The buildings were gnashing their teeth, but they were eager to chew on something else.

  She slowed and skidded to a stop, warily turning around, afraid of what she might see.

  At the last intersection was the woman she had seen before, fearlessl
y blazing with brilliant color, her head held high, her clothes swirling around her in a vibrant halo. She was walking away from the ringing with measured steps—still moving quickly, but moving without fear.

  The ringing was angry, the breathing fast and hungry.

  The woman remained defiant in her stride, her chin up.

  The teeth were ready to gnaw, the buildings shivering and shaking.

  The woman seemed unstoppable.

  A wall collapsed forward, the cement tumbling down on the woman, pinning her legs to the ground. At first she struggled, but it took only a few moments for her resolve to crumble, her face dissolving and her posture going concave.

  The breathing was laughter, the ringing a triumphant peal.

  She began backing up very slowly, her eyes still fixed on the woman. The woman's mouth was open, but no sound came out. The woman's vanishing from the world would happen without mark, only the victorious trumpeting of the enemy for dirge.

  The color of her clothing was fading, draining away. The color was a good defense—it took the City longer to eat them, they were less easily destroyed. But it was only a way of delaying, maybe buying the time to flee, to hide. It wasn't enough.

  The woman's clothing would turn gray. The paint would disappear. Her skin would fade to gray and white, all the richness gone. And the woman would vanish.

  She couldn't watch the woman fade. She felt the urge to stay, to try to offer some support or solidarity as the woman vanished, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't stay and watch, to see the woman's strength disappear… She couldn't risk herself for a pointless gesture.

  The woman was lost; the City was feasting on her in a cacophony of ringing and breathing and gnashing teeth; it was safe to walk away and not look back, for she was too insignificant to take away from such a victory.

  Never before had the absence of sound felt so cruel and kind at once. The echo of solitary footsteps should have been there to force her to face her isolation; the silence shielded her instead. Where there's no sound, one does not have to deal with the sounds of being singular.

  She would continue with her plan. She had been going to the cache, and so she would keep going.

  The cache wasn't far. She cut through some buildings to keep off the street, and soon arrived at what had once been a small park. There had been a playground for children, but now the tunnel slide was a popular drop for small canvas-wrapped parcels.

  The parcel was there, bulging with supplies. It was fresh.

  She curled into the mouth of the slide, barely squeezing into the gray plastic. Bruised fingers tugged the string that held the canvas wrapping on, releasing the fabric to fall away and reveal the contents: six jars of paint, all freshly filled.

  The whisper of a smile passed across her face again for a moment, but, like everything in the City, it soon vanished and was forgotten.

  She tied up the paints again and slid out of the slide. She couldn't think of the woman, not now. She couldn't indulge her loneliness. For now, there was only her, her paint—and the City.

  #

  She napped, and awoke feeling truly rested. She was reinvigorated.

  Paint smears on her body and hands affirmed that what she had done had not been a dream. She jumped up, slinging the parcel of paints over her shoulder with a makeshift strap she had fashioned; always carrying the paints in her hands was inconvenient.

  The scratching seemed far away; she was surprised. She trotted along, alert and wary.

  She slowed and then stopped. Her face filled with a glow of satisfaction.

  The paint smears across the buildings were huge. She had climbed and stretched and covered almost an entire story.

  Across the front of one building, “HELLO.”

  Across the street, “I AM STILL HERE.”

  The letters were large and jagged, made out of multiple colors of paint—messy, haphazard, clashing. She didn't care. She felt a swell of pride in her chest; she thought it was beautiful.

  It had worked. She didn't know if the paint would fade away on the buildings, but there it was, hours after she had painted it. Her idea worked.

  Filled with new resolve, she moved a few blocks further to a small square. There was a smooth glass-fronted building on one side. She took the parcel of paints from her shoulder and spread them out before her. There was more to be done.

  #

  The scratching was nearly on top of her.

  She was struggling to scrape enough paint out of the last jar to finish the last letter when she realized it. Her task had so absorbed her; her guard had dropped.

  She looked at the wall, to her hands, to the jar of paint, to the sky—to the scratching. How had she not noticed that the buildings surrounding this square formed a sadistic smirk in the sky?

  She stared at the teeth, could feel their eagerness to eat her.

  The breathing slobbered, its hunger matching the teeth.

  “No,” she whispered. “No,” she repeated, her voice getting stronger.

  She clawed at the inside of the jar, scraping up every last bit of paint.

  “You don't win!” Her voice was shaky, but she spoke; she did not whisper.

  Her hands slathered the paint on the wall, smearing what little she had as far as she could. The last letter was uglier, weaker than the last. But it was there.

  The scratching was there. The ringing shrilled in her ears, piercing into her.

  She turned and stood, hands on her hips, back to her creation.

  “I AM FIGHTING” blazed across the glass.

  The scratching seemed to falter for a moment, as if it had tripped. The lusty breathing paused.

  She stood, trying to swallow her fear.

  The scratching began again, angrier.

  There was rage in it. It knew.

  Her breathing was fast and shallow.

  Running was futile.

  Her clothes were already fading.

  There was no paint left in the jar. None of the jars.

  The buildings were tightening.

  She could feel herself shrinking.

  “No no no,” she whispered.

  The breathing snuffled with delight; a laugh of triumph.

  She was fraying, she knew it.

  The ringing pealed in victory.

  Her hand curled in her pocket.

  “No,” she whispered again, clutching at her voice.

  She pulled her hand from her pocket, her fingers holding a shard of glass.

  The scratching paused. The ringing fell silent.

  “This ends—on my terms!” she snarled, her voice ghostly and ragged—but hers.

  The scratching, the breathing, the ringing, the buildings—they all came together and the City raged and clawed and bit.

  She held the glass above her wrist.

  Her body was fading; her insides were disintegrating; her thoughts were fleeting.

  She was still fighting.

  She pressed the glass down.

  THE GRUDGE

  Thoraiya Dyer

  Once upon a time (in 1954, to be exact), two brothers in Beirut inherited two plots of land, one in front of the other. The plot in front was largely earmarked for road development, and therefore was virtually useless. The brothers planned to combine the two plots, but they could not agree on how to do it. Eventually their arguments became so heated that the brother with the smaller plot hired two architects (who, coincidentally, were also brothers) to design a tall but narrow building that would block the ocean views of his brother's building and ruin the market value. This family squabble resulted in one of the thinnest inhabitable buildings in the world, known as "The Grudge."

  The Grudge stands on 120 square meters of land. At its widest point, it is four meters (about thirteen feet) wide, and at its smallest it is only sixty centimeters (about two feet) wide. Each floor is divided into two apartments. The kitchen is the widest room, and subsequent rooms taper down t
o a tiny closet at the narrowest point. Currently, The Grudge has been abandoned by everyone but a mechanic who serves as the building's caretaker and who enjoys breathtaking views of the ocean from The Grudge's windows. The building built by the other brother has become a school.

  The Grudge can be seen as a symbol of the way family ties us together (neither brother was willing or able to simply walk away from the property arrangement) and how family estranges us from one another (The Grudge is born of the kind of spite we can surely only summon up against our relatives). It's also a symbol of mess and inefficiency, since the entire situation was initially created because decades of terrible urban planning had carved up the brothers' plots. It's located in a city that was once devastated by civil war, and thus is a symbol of both division and resilience. In Thoriya Dyer's story, "The Grudge", a man who is estranged from his family has built a fantastical version of the building, overlooking a chasm of space and time. It's a surreal story grounded in a man's need to reconcile with his family.

  ***

  The morning is normal enough, if Uthman avoids facing west.

  In the east, a sunrise over mountains like shards of frosted shower glass. Villages on ridges with snow on their Smart-Tile roofs. Jets to bring in the tourists, though their slipstream trails begin directly overhead, at the point where the sun marks high noon.

  Beyond that, there’s nothing for certain. Only the writhing possibilities of the Collision, which shows, non-chronologically, the past, the future, but almost never the present. Uthman hasn’t seen a sunset over the sea since he was four years old and the family took a vacation a hemisphere to the east. He saw the red neon sun swallowed into a different ocean to the one that’s behind him right now; the one that shows triremes full of dead men as often as it shows the holocausts of succeeding generations.

  His boots grate on the gravel of the building site and a stick-thin figure lurks around the corner, hesitating, her high-heels wobbling on wooden formwork.