That Skull

I don't consider this any good, but it does bring me a bit of literary nostalgia. And literary is being used very loosely here. I have a hard time reading this, as I make about a billion mistakes, but something about it has heart. I'll give it that. It was written years ago, and there are more pages of it (filled away in a box that says: Porno/Pencils), but the novella itself was never completed. And probably for the best. But either way, it occured to me that this could be lost at any time, unless I give it to the cloud. 

That Skull
PT Oliveri

            “Do remember that skull that would continually exploded in Cleveland?”

            “Seemed impossible to stop.”

            “Well, we fixed it.”

            “Was a handful.”

            “The live bats in Omaha? Dozens of them. Screamed all night, looked like the fake ones. Remember them?”

            “What was the name of that park?”

            “Morphine Daydream, I think.”

            “No that was the ride, although I’m still not sure what that means, what was the park’s name?”

            “Don’t know. But we got them out, right?”

            “We did.”

            Jackson tapped his cigarette lightly, staring straight ahead, yet in any way to make eye-contact after the inspection.

            “What about melting Satan in Poughkeepsie?”

            “Made it out of wax for a summer park. Lot’s of guests covered in Satan.”

            “A whole lot of them. But….”

            “We did fix it.”

            “We fixed it.”

            “Pittsburgh in 99’?”

            Miles chuckled. He could almost still feel the slicing skin cuts of that spring somehow.

            “The raccoon’s nesting in the vehicles or the mirrors that cracked nightly?”

            Jackson inhaled deeply and nodded, letting out a steady stream of smoke as he did so.

            “Forgot about the raccoon thing.”

            “Brenda broke up with me over those critters.”

            “I always assumed it was the millennial change.”

            “No, it was the raccoons. She started to think of me more as an exterminator then creative consultant.”

            “Is that what you call yourself?”

            “I did in 1999.”

            He dug his hands sveltely into his pockets, looking just around the attraction and out past the iron gates and through the cavernous post-industrial sprawl; into the pipes of reality and hearing the grinding uneven tempo of the nearby freeway. Absorbing the air, trying to decide if it tasted right, if it’d sour, if he could last a month here in this place, almost knowing already he’d have to at least try. Everything was trying around them. Jackson would talk him into the job, if he wanted the challenge, one way or the other.

            “And we fixed it, right?”

            “We did. Had to add a humidifier.”

            “Doubt that’s what fixed those mirrors. Pleased Mr. Hill though. Sounded like a technical outcome.”

            “Should have just introduced a new ride concept.”

            Miles heard Jackson calculating his disagreement with momentary silence.

            “Grand Rapids, we went ground up in 2004.”

            “Our best work.”

            “Something into nothing, we created a reality.”

            “Fixed nothing I suppose.”

            “Fixed everything, Miles.”

            “Remember the projectors in Jacksonville?”

            “Indeed, that was Stephanie’s idea I think.”

            “Don’t think we paid her.”

            “We did in some strange way. Everyone was paid the nineties.”

            Miles stared at the ground and pulled a hand across his forehead, rubbing his temples lightly and nodding in some meaningless way. In the distance the generator for the clan’s yellowing RV hummed melodically. Unwittingly luring them back home and assuring them they had one at the same time.

            “But Jackson, this place….”

            “Is a handful, I’ll give you that. Not even sure where to start the list.”

            “And we know who owns it.”

            “We do know who owns it.”

            Miles turned to Jackson slowly. Still not getting any eye-contact. Jackson’s attention seemed supernaturally wrapped around the aging attraction in front of them. Grass sprouting up unhelpfully around the steel vehicle lines, paint collapsing in dark green sheets from top to bottom of the aluminum shell that surrounded the actual concrete building, an eerie mechanical tick periodically clanging away somewhere deep in the haunted house, dark crows (unpaid) adding sad tension from the roof top, the large front wooden doors pushed slightly in, as they probably had been all winter, allowing for an unlimited quantity of trouble to slip in over the silent months and do damage that Jackson would find invigorating to methodically correct. Possibilities. Nothing where there could be something.

            “This isn’t exactly a great pitch.”

            Jackson nodded but continued to stare forward.

            “Tough one to pitch. We could use the money though. That generator doesn’t run on rainwater.”

            “It has before.”

            “Yes it has. We fixed it.”

            “How many months?”

            “It’s April, that human carnival of a man is going to want it up and running by late-May at earliest, I assume.”

            “Not going to be easy.”

            He waited for a sigh from Jackson that didn’t come, but he was having a difficult time placing a why at the end of that thought.

            “We can do it,” Jackson finally said.

            Miles sighed and shook his head slightly. Crumbs of winter’s cold death swirled around their feet, dancing between cracks filled with the golden green of spring, spiders spun webs with neat precision over these small creases and waited patiently. Overhead a distant jumbo jet harassed the sonic atmosphere around the park; echoing off empty swings and booths soon to be filled with the greasy dreadlocked teenagers of everyone’s procreated summer. He filled his lung, brains, and ears with all of this and then exhaled.

            “All right, we’ll fix it. But I negotiate. Not a word out of you when that awful fucker shows up, that level? This is going to be enough of a job in itself without getting on his wires on the first day.”

            “In total agreement. Good working environments need strong communication between employees and employers.”

            Miles turned quickly and sent a sharp somewhat playful glare in Jackson’s direction. Already tits deep.

            “What? I promise I’ll be cool around him.”

            And just then, around a cardboard corner, came a graphic red ball of fleshy loose humanity, absorbing every particle that dared near it and spitting back out the ones that did to project a canvass of messy selfish energy. The large man was stuffing half of an undercooked burrito into one side of his mouth while simultenesly blowing off steam into a small blue cell phone that was dwarfed in the dough of his purely overcooked hands. But he moved with surprising speed, seeming to pick up momentum as he approached the slouching brothers, and then in one unconventional and gag-inducing hand trick, both items vanished. Pocket or stomach; neither cell phone nor burrito would enjoy the stay.

            “Not a word,” Miles hissed out at the moment before impact.

            “Boys! God damn good to see ya’. Contractor’s are bad, cheap labor is worse and my scalp has been just itching all morning. The humidity is overwhelming. Causes skin concerns to be rivaled with plagues and dead fish,” and then Ronald Cross shook Miles’ hand savagely, ungluing himself quickly to give Jackson a backslap that almost laid him out. Spitting out thick strands of chewed up burrito as he did so.

            “Mr. Cross, good to see you again, and I assume all has been well,” Miles jumped in. Trying to stay ahead of a speeding train with only his legs.

            “Well, it’s been Miles. Once we start throwing around words like ‘happy’ and ‘to be alive’, well, then we find ourselves running the stove a little hotter then we need to, right? And Jackson, is everything been stable in your piece of personal airspace?”

            Jackson shrugged his thin shoulders quickly.

            “Fair enough, fair enough….”

            They sat in a quick moment of silence that Miles knew to be about as rare as the northern lights flashing in a sultry southern sky. It was a long and pure moment. One that made him shiver unexpectedly in a deep fearsome way. This tightly wound theme park owner almost let out self-awareness by going down the wrong road with an unclear destination. Miles watched him re-define the directions on his mental compass.

            “So, uh, what do you think of the mean little structure we have here. A dog that can be?”

            “It’s a mess Mr. Cross, I can’t mince words there.”

            “I wouldn’t begin to argue with you Miles. Been a mess. Wouldn’t have argued your next sentence either.”

            “Has that lead-in door been cut open all winter?”

            “Probably. Dipshit of a winter’s watchmen I had out here was more into watching meth then watching anything in particular, lest it be the History Channel.”

            “Lot of expensive things could have found their way into that haunted house in that time, Ronald.”

            Ronald let this wash over him like cool mountain water, feeling its sting at first but then fully ignoring it.
            “Perhaps. But this is, well was, one of the signature attractions in this little sandlot. I need her operational. Not a lot of other dark places to fondle your date after a ride on the roller coaster. It’s a draw.”

            All three of them were facing the decrepit building now. Miles tried not to think about how far apart their feelings on it may be. Jackson, at least, seemed to be mostly moving dirt around and generally ignoring the conversation, or as it was truly, the negotiation. A careful first dance of not saying to much and just saying enough.

            “When was the last time you put any work into it?”

            “Eh, nineteen-ninety five, ish.”

            “Uh-huh. And that building structure itself doesn’t look all that great. We sure it’s safe for renovation?”

            “Well damn boys, I didn’t know we were in a hard-hat safety meeting here. It’s fine. Never a worry.”

            Miles sighed, trying not to sound to calculating.

            “Can’t take things for granted Mr. Cross. We do know who built it.”

            “Yeah, I’ll give you that too Miles. Not the best work, but it got me by at the time.”

            “I mean, the fucking Thompson Brother’s Ronald? Jesus Christ. Even you should have known not to hire them.”

            Sharp explosions overhead. Women and children hiding any place they could. The crackling whip of impact, of absolute destruction, a tidal wave never to be stopped. And it came from Jackson’s voice like a careening uncontrolled old train flying around the tracks at warp speed, and not only had he been paying attention to the conversation, he’d actually been balling up a tight warm knot of anger at the set pieces as they we’re lay. Miles turned his upper body and stared at his younger brother in more of a passive disbelief then anything. They couldn’t even get past the opening conversation without a roundhouse.

            Ronald Cross didn’t even flinch.

            “Yes Jackson, it was the handy work of the infamous Thompson Brother’s. I didn’t say it was my finest hire now did I?”

            Miles was still staring at Jackson, who was staring at Ronald, who was staring off distantly now, into the horizon, past the rolling ball and to the drop below, grinding something into the lining of his mind, etching a full a scene to be played out at later dates, when the crowd was finer and air a bit less humid. And then, as Miles swayed staggered in between them like an unmoored buoy in a deep sea, Ronald turned with that spooky quickness of his, and shut down his mental shop before a full inventory could be taken.

            “So you boy’s going to fix this thing or should we just whip ‘em out and measure ‘em right here?”

            “Won’t be cheap,” Jackson said.

            “Didn’t ask it to be, son.”

            “What’s your timeframe?”

            “I need it smooth by June 1^st.”

            “Are you going to keep up with the maintenance? We don’t build these things to be unlit grab-ass rooms. We build them with purpose.”

            “June…first.”

            Jackson and Ronald stared right through Miles; he felt lost in a maze he should have been aware he’d be dropped into.

            “$50,000.”

            “$25,000, and you can keep that recreational vehicle that you call a home parked on my property.”

            “The RV never factors into the cost.”

            “Fine, try parking it at the Howard Johnson for two months, see if they let you do it for free. Twenty.”

            “Twenty-eight. And your not even having to pay use for watching this place overnight.”

            “Twenty-six.”

            “Twenty-seven.”

            “Twenty-six thousand is fine Ronald-“ Miles tried to jump into a moving car.

            Ronald stood silently.

            “Is twenty-seven a deal, or not Ronald,” Jackson continued the barrage, “We have other places we can be. This is the busy season before pure summer.”

            Ronald moved not an inch. Miles hoped he hadn’t died standing. They needed the money. But then he shot one of his cantaloupe sized hands out like a pinball plunger.

            “Sure you do.”

            Just as quickly as the two shook on it (the it being a little hazy) Ronald turned and headed off into the cloudy afternoon.

            Then Jackson said: “I’m going for a walk”.

            And he turned and was gone just as quickly. Miles found himself standing alone in an empty amusement park in front of a rotting two decades old haunted house with a deal, of some sort.

            “Deal,” he said aloud.

            So in the steep mid-morning sun Miles turned and began walking uphill into the grain of the shrinking green bricks that made up the footpaths of this place. He felt the silence of the park more solidly and acutely then it was ever designed to project; the swift flip of his flop and the shallow draw of his breath. Objects waiting to be in motion, brightly colored traps with grotesque meaning standing much to still, and then deep dark portions of space that he felt had probably always been so. As if naturally time had created some shadowy areas that were quiet and cool, and to be preserved through human understanding and development, and they manifested themselves, for his consciousness, and everyones, as still places, under shimmering snail filled oak trees that held stagnate haze close to the vest in a true pure way. Miles walked past these places in the amusement park and breathed them in as a thick dark smoke. Sorting them and deciding which was useful and meaningful. Or that was the vision he’d project for himself, or the reflection he’d absorb more colorfully, before questions that ran along the lines of why am I still out here, running on this long flat road, began to simmer.          
            He walked in the late spring dampness, dodging slugs and pulling at his itchy long sleeves, still a bit dazed from the verbal exchange he put himself though, and entirely unconfident of the situation they we’re diving headlong into. The reason for them to be here, fixing something new and mean, seemed like less of a given then usual.
            All around Miles, tightly coordinated dollar green vines corked themselves around the peeling iron rods enclosing the Victorian car ride. Deep in the distance the dry resin of off-season log-plume slides groaned and expanded with newly found humidity, and perhaps the hatching of a fully invested colony of wasps or hornets. And in the further distance, in the deep northwestern corner of the park, the sharp sun reflected off the bulbous contortions of the large playful Anglo-Saxon pirate ship swing as it was held vertically in a windy but desolate afternoon by large strong steel bars.
            Miles walked through it all, past more artificially inflated features and hollow buildings designed to look bigger then they were, towards one of the parks three main gates (a particularly weird and sore-point for his brother, who insisted that an artfully drawn amusement park have but one flourishing entrance), and out into the expanse of black pavement towards the idling retro-RV that the clan called a home.

            Out front he could already see Stephanie putting up the metal bars that held the aluminum front awning. Then she’d unroll a long red carpet they’d stolen from a decaying movie theater some years back, take the plants and cacti out into the sun, perhaps set up their three-legged grill (weather permitting), and usually pull a long white cord from the steep boxed back corner of the vehicle to a midlevel point on nearby streetlamp and rummage for some moist laundry. She was a wagon wheel and bonnet away from being a tough Oregon Trail midwife.

            But this hurried little act of necessary table setting was the only thing that would count her as a traditional woman in any sense, and it warmed Miles’ heart to know so.

            “How’d you know already?” he said.

            “Jackson’s face when we pulled up,” she said over her slender shoulder. And she continued to fuss around with cushions and foldout chairs from flea markets many times over the hill. Her long maroon hair swirling behind and around her as if assisting in the sleight of hand of some magical act. Her pale smooth bare feet shuffled around quickly and seemed to only occasionally touch the ground. When necessary.

            “Jesus, are we becoming that predictable?” Miles muttered, not necessarily as a true question.

            Stephanie turned quickly and looked at him.

            “If this is all predictable, then what isn’t?”

            “Well not our situation necessarily-“

            “We fixing it?”

            From high above them Marvin poked half his body out of the heat-cracked and rarely used plexi-glass sun dome and looked at the park, not Miles or Stephanie, as he hollered.

            “Did you see Jackson’s face when we pulled in?” Stephanie said.

            “Eh, that boy always looks about the same to me.”

            “He bumped him over twenty-five, Marvin.”

            The old man continued to survey the rangy pockmarked expanse of the northeastern in silence. Then said: “Don’t like this place.”

            “You don’t like any place.”

            “Nah, there’s places I like,” and he ran a hand through his fully white but undeniably full head of hair, “but this isn’t one of them. Don’t like the looks of the corners.”

            “It’s only two months, Marv,” Stephanie said.

            “How did you know the contract length already, too?”

            She shot him a quick look and rolled her eyes.

            “Two months is a lot of time when you’re dying, sweetheart. Empires have fallen in less time; the moon goes through a few phases in that kind of time.”

            “You’re not dying Marv. And stop saying that in front of Josh.”

            “We’re all dying.”

            Miles massaged the lining of his temples.

            “And we all know the jackass that runs this place. Not a grain of sand worth taking home on that beach.”

            “It’s an interesting piece Marvin. And we could use the money.”

            Marvin stared off for a few more seconds, visibly licking the linings of his gums, and then he shrugged and retreated into the cabin of the RV. Miles was pretty sure he heard him mutter that they could fix it on the way down.

            “And that reminds me; I thought you were negotiating the contracts from now on?”

            “I tried.”

            “So did Robert Moses.”

            Then out from the fraying screen door next to the pair bounced Josh, his hands cupped very gingerly with his eyes focused on the little dome they created. He paid no attention to either of them and hustled to the front of the van. There, he paused a moment, and then swiftly uncapped his hands and snapped them down to his thin sides. For a moment he seemed to watch nothing, and then he jogged quickly back inside the vehicle without a word.

            “I’m not sure I like that little habit,” Stephanie said distantly.

            “What was that little habit?”

            “He’s been releasing any insect he finds in the van back into the wild.”

            “Doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.”

            “No, I mean any insect. Moths, sugar ants, fleas, cockroaches; he won’t kill anything. He almost knocked me into the highway a few days back trying to avoid stepping on a misguided earthworm.”

            “No shame in having a soft-heart. Better then killing everything he runs into.”

            “There’s sweet, and then there’s a little weird. It’s a very line that separates the two. Plus you don’t have to worry about convincing his Mom it wasn’t something you ingrained in him.”

            “When does your sister want him back anyway?”

            Stephanie turned and looked back towards the screen door, than she craned her neck and face to glance quickly at the thin glassless window that ran along the side of the deeply yellowing van. Pausing for a moment to see if there was any noticeable child related movement to the cotton sunflower woven curtains that hid inside. Then she sighed fully, an undeniable layer of frustration vibrating into the cells around her, and bit her lower lip.

            “I don’t know Miles.”

                                                      **************

           

            That night a magnificent storm hit. Saber slivers of lightning cracked the Earth both distant and far. Gusts of wind rocked the boxy vehicle in a strangely tranquil rhythm, giving the effect of a large wheel based rocking chair. And light bulbs of pure cool rain assaulted the aluminum roof above in a relentless but uneventful attack. All of this was underscored and reassured by the steady vibration of the large generator that illuminated the living room they’d created for themselves over the years in the center of the cabin. Shaggy orange ruts of carpet hammered down with raw nails and basic grit, a small smooth table, a few kitchen lamps that had shades stitched with cartoon pigeons, and a versatile pull-out two-seater couch that had absorbed a meter of feeling over the years. Olive in its color, but it rarely showed. They always positioned the rig to face East no matter the circumstance and usefulness of that positioning in any area they pulled into. The couch then, always faced north. The living room created a neat order.

            Jackson had come home late in the evening smelling of cheap cigars and record stores. Or maybe both. And he wasn’t overly forthcoming on which had taken up the majority of his afternoon. Miles wasn’t sure he cared all that much either. The long drive to the park had worn him thin. The storm now pronouncing itself with much vigor around him didn’t help the matter. They’d ridden out many storms in that cabin, with varying degrees of success. He found it best to Hold Fast.

            But Marvin was calm, sprawled out mildly on a small hammock he called both bed and home in front of a thirteen-inch full color television that he took meticulous care of. And Stephanie was in good spirits; she’d managed to get the young boy currently in her care to eat a full meal of grits and spaghetti she’d cooked on a hot-plate, and then managed to get him to put on bright yellow pajamas that they’d found in his weekend luggage. Miles specifically remembered the tag of weekend being placed on the rectangular and rigged thing weeks ago.

            So the three had sat down for a rainstorm game of Monopoly. One of the many board games that seemed to manifest itself out of the corners and cracks of this aged thing. Jackson had jumped in at the last moment to claim the thimble. As was basically custom.

            “Don’t do it. You know what he’s going to do,” Miles said, and he meant it. She was but a move from ruining the game and turning his mind back to the pitch and yaw of the elastic storm outside.

            “It’s a good deal,” she said.

            “Don’t tell her what to do Miles, this is a friendly game,” Jackson offered.

            He gave him a quick look that he assumed would have about as much effect as the one he’d tried earlier.

            “What? It’s a good deal.”

            “Yeah, I don’t get it, why wouldn’t I do it? Two yellows, for one blue. The yellows are more expensive, the hotels are better,” Stephanie now.

            “Game is called Monopoly.”

            “Steph, he’s gonna flip those blues into hotels before you can even get a house or two on the yellows. The houses are expensive to build on the yellows.”

            “I’ll save.”

            “He does this every time, hon’.”

            Another strong gust of wind hit the vehicle’s side, causing it to momentarily lean, and all four leaned right back against it. Josh had his chin on his hand and elbow resting on his knee, watching the game unfold intently. Miles thought he looked to take very little interest in the storm. Perhaps it was because his bug freedom pipeline had been momentarily sealed.

            “I don’t remember you trying this before.”

            Jackson shrugged quickly, “I never have.”

            “How many times have you played him, and how many times have I?”

            “Don’t make the trade,” Miles was pretty sure he heard Josh mutter into his hand. The first thing he’d heard him say all day, actually. Potentially.

            “I’ll sweeten the pot with a fifty bucks,”

            Now Stephanie was trying to read him.

            “If I have to sit through another negotiation today-“

            “Seventy-five. And you have to give Josh Water Works.”

            “It’s my favorite,” Josh said.

            This sentence was clear and forward. Miles heard the generator struggle momentarily, the lamps all around them dimmed slowly, and then brightened quickly back up, as if controlled by a lazy stagehand who started pulling up the curtain a bit before show time. Out past the two stiff leather seats that formed the cockpit and through the cascading waterfall of ran that ran down the windshield he concentrated on the warped visions of dancing trees and swaying maroon streetlamps.

            “I thought I was getting the raw end of this?” Jackson said.

            Stephanie gave him the silent treatment.

            “Fifty.”

            “And Josh gets Water Works?”

            “Yes, and a get out of jail free card.”

            “Deal.”

            Jackson smiled, no, grinned, widely and quickly at Miles.

                                    ***************

            A few hours later, in the crisp but orange-tinted darkness of the night they were all sprawled out on their individual hammocks. Feeling the now cooling air of the night slither into the many open windows of their cabin, the blinking of various non-programmed electronic devices, the cooing of a distant brain-dead dove. Marvin said they slept in hammocks mainly for space reasons, although Josh preferred a sleeping bag on the floor, and Marvin himself the tight confines of the small couch. So really only Miles and Jackson slept in the long stringed hammocks. And on rare nights Miles could coo Stephanie with him into one, although the intimacy was itchy and basically unbearable.
            In summation, Miles and Jackson did not sleep in hammocks for reasons of space.

            Miles was staring up the ceiling, his mind idling between random late night thought and pure stasis. But his eyes were not closed, and he focused them on a single point for long enough, blossoms of many white dots overtook his vision and pulsated with the rhythms of his heartbeat. In times like these he felt fear.

            “You think this is going to work?”

            He heard it from below him (older brother; top bunk), and it dissolved the dots. Pushed him into the present. Into the van he’d traveled the country with, for many years, with many different people, for reasons he wasn’t entirely consciously sure of. On dark nights Miles comforted himself in the false modesty that he would never find out.

            “Do we ever know?” He said.

            He heard the hiss of water-vapor cigarette Jackson smoked while inside the cabin, and caught the blue glow of it’s stem reflect off a worn door handle.

            “I was trying not to get psychological, just on gut instincts, do you think this is going to work?” Jackson muttered.

            “No.”

            “We’ll try it anyway though.”
            “We will.”

            There was a beat of silence. Miles had a slight view outside of a small window to the right of his hammock, and he turned on his side now to gaze out it. In the distance of the park he saw the lights of the Ferris wheel blink to life unprovoked. Perhaps it was on a timer, perhaps not. It was too late in the night to care either way.

            “This is the last time I’m ever doing this Miles. It’s my last job, I’m moving on fully after this. I can’t stay in this space we’ve built any longer.”

            Miles closed his eyes, in that delicate space between sleep and life, thinking very hard and not at all simultenesly. Trying to give the right piece of advice, a vision of a consistent future, but deep in his core he knew that they couldn’t do this much longer either.

            “We’ll never move on,” he said firmly, and then fell asleep.

                       

                                                ***************

Chapter 2

           

            He’d killed two large car battery sized rats that rain-whipped night. Both were making to much racket for his brain to handle, both had seized and bled in a fashion he took to be grandiose, as if they were selling tickets for the next show. He’d stabbed both through the midsection of the rodents, pinning them against the wall and twirling them around like spaghetti on a fork. They hissed and spit, squealed even, but eventually died. It made him sweaty, even in a cooling night, even with his small wall mounted air conditioning running full blast, and even when he’d consumed every pill on his person. The ones that made him shake less when he vibrated to strongly; when he threatened to test the limits of his orbit.

            Sometimes he would fillet the rats he found, and killed, and then eat the meat off of a paper plate. He would microwave the paper plate and the carefully cut rat meat for precisely two minutes. And never were there leftovers. Often, as he ate, he visualized the last spasms they went through between dying, and it improved the taste.

            But for these two fellows Haloti had no such intention. He simply picked them up by the rubbery tails, stepped a few paces outside of his small apartment and tossed them into the dark sterilized waters of the water boats, assuming they’d sink deep to the bottom with eyes wide open. Instead they floated, but they would sink eventually. Of this he was sure.

            Back in his office he pulled on two large red boxing gloves, not minding to wipe the lines of rat blood from his hands and forearms. He tied the laces tightly, as his father had taught him, and as his father had taught him. In some time, in some place, where these things were taught. Haloti didn’t bother with tape, because if you tied the strings correctly the tape was never actually necessary. The key, was tying the string strong and firm. And he never failed to do so. And once he had the gloves on, he started in on his heavy bag.

            Haloti’s small apartment had two rooms. Both very precisely shaped as two squares. He had built them himself, over the course of one week, using plywood and hammers and nails and skin and cement. Until he lived in something that acted as a shell of ones own creation. He kept mainly to the inside of his shell. Venturing out for occasional necessities, but really he needed little and easily provided for himself.

            In one of the rooms were his firm cot and his computer equipment. A very large amount of computer equipment. Wires that snaked around corners, and small antenna equipment that repositioned itself on its own timeframe, for its own needs. Screens and keypads, hard drives that had been built and then re-built. Coordination in the face of chaos. The room produced much heat from its electronic heft.

            And in the other room was one small incandescent light bulb that hung by a single brown string from the ceiling, and a punching bag. The walls were still simply wood, with a few uncoordinated nails prodding out from places they did not belong. The heavy bag was positioned exactly in the center of the room. It, in fact, did need tape. Many long strong strings to keep the insides from finding the outside. Because Haloti did not punch this bag, he did not use it as exercise, or as a way to clear his mind; no, not at all, he attacked this bag. His goal, every night (every fucking night) was to break it, to punch a hole right through the damn thing, and on that day when he felt his fist clear from one side of the heavy-bag straight through to the other he intended not simply to stop there.

            After he had killed the two troublesome rats and sunk them deep in dark waters, and after he’d tied his fists with the comforting feel of bright red boxing gloves, he began his task of making a hole in that bag. Furious digs at its dented center, savage right hooks to push the insides closer to that center where he’d resume his attack. Grunting and connecting, his muscles taunt and primed for the job. Sweat and blood exploding off in generalized directions. His hands growing entirely numb, and then his full body beginning to do the same as the hour-long assault continued, and then, not to long after, his mind followed the lead.

            By the end of the hour (an exact hour) Haloti was now yelling with each punch, crying out a song he believed to be that of a warrior. The feeling of numbness began to give way to the feeling of pure pain. At fifty-nine minutes and forty-five seconds he suddenly stopped, and although his breath was rapid and short, he managed for one small moment to breath in one giant lung of air, feeling as it tore through the linings of his sarcophagus, as it delivered new life to his hands, and then he brought his right arm back, exhaling and sending the punch through all in one motion. His space heater sized fist connected with the bag, sending the object against gravity and into the ceiling where it made a tremendous thud, but just as quickly swung right back to him. Haloti caught it with his two gloves easily. It had no hole, and appeared to be not scarred at all. He would try again tomorrow.

            Haloti stepped outside for air. He’d pulled the gloves off with his many large teeth, and now ran his bare hands through the weeds of his rough beard and wiry hair. Massaging sweat into the pores that actually needed it. Gaining his breathe slowly, he walked around the end of the quiet water-boat pool that was basically his backyard, and moved over to a shed near the back corner. A place designed to be inaccessible to visitors, and known to fewer still. Once in front, he peeled the wooden door open quickly and stepped inside, engulfed immediately in the smell of dust and wasp nests abandoned long ago. The smell of age.

            He flipped open the cover of a large metal box mounted to wall, it had many thick black and blue cables protruding from it, scattering out in different directions with different purposes. Haloti scanned the small mustard colored tags that denoted the purpose of each switch and rubbed the nape of his neck. Finally, he closed his eyes and pointed in a general direction, playing a game of pin the tail on the donkey with himself. Having fun. His large pointer finger landed on a switch where the words FERRIS WHEEL EXTERIOR were scribbled in faded pencil, and flipped it. He then shut the box, cracked his neck from one side to the other, shuffled back to his small apartment, and shut the door quietly behind himself.

            The rats had yet to sink.

           

Chapter 3

            The morning dawned cold and raw. Getting out of bed had been an absolute war from the first round of morning light, and then harder still, pulling on moldy drawstring boots and a large crimson checkered and rarely washed flannel-shirt. The sun, seeming to make no discernable connection to the cold air it punctured, blistered off into every facet of the visual existence that had punched the clock for this day. Even the shadows had slept in.

            But once inside the attraction, and somehow stunned to be ankle deep in a soupy and pure brown lake of water, Miles decided the early trivialities of resuming the new day’s consciousness were a weak poison in comparison.

            “Christ,” he said, in general, as he flashed his sturdy square headed flashlight around the inside of what was the opening show room for the ride. As it existed now, at this point; basically a twenty-by-twenty box of blackness with a disabled coffin in its center, and a skinny yellowing plastic arm-bone protruding from its side in a very halfhearted way. Holes pockmarked this black box as if it had survived many gun fights, but it hadn’t, these were holes created by small mean creatures that undoubtedly claimed the entire structure to still be a home.

            Jackson was facing the decoy door that lead to the next room (which was actually full of nightmares now, Miles thought), and writing something with a small piece of bright white chalk. Miles couldn’t make it out but had a general idea of what he was doing.

            Marvin had yet to look up from the ground and the six inches of cold acrid water that covered it.

            “It’s gonna cost a fortune just to get this place dry,” he said glumly.

            “And it didn’t rain that hard last night,” Miles said. He flashed his light up to the ceiling but couldn’t view any notable holes at this point. Although he knew there had to be many. From any rational perspective, this room had no redemption and no purpose, beyond occupying a space: a fire-hydrant in a foreclosed neighborhood.

            “How long do you think this water’s been standing Marvin?”

            He licked his gums. “Two months. Easy.”

            “Two months,” He sighed to himself. “If there were any light we’d have kelp growing. Forests of it.”

            “Well, at least we know job one. Told you boys about looking at the inside of things before buying the outside.”

            Jackson was still wordlessly scribbling on the wall; small shapes and arrows. Some wording, but mainly design, graphic indications of fluid hydraulics and lighting. These things would baffle future archaeologists, if they ever stumbled upon those wall paints, but these scribbles had very little chance of making it to actual construction. Miles caught a quick vision of Jackson swallowing a small blue oval shaped pill without the aid of ice water. Marvin had pushed open the two wooden and rotting saloon like doors and stepped back outside already, leaving the two of them to prod around this horrid box of disrepair.

            “Any suggestions?”

            “Well, initially, I like a lot of lighting in this room, blues and purples. And very little sound, maybe something along the line of water dropping in a deep worn sink. Let’s ditch the whole coffin routine-“

            “I meant about the flood.”

            Jackson finally looked down. “Oh, that.”

            “Yes, that. It’s going to cost us a fortune to move it out of here. It may have compromised everything organic in this place. And the mold and mildew are probably as thick as battery acid.”

            “Probably.”

            “So…..”

            Jackson turned and made a few quick scratches at the wall with what was left of his chalk, then turned quickly towards Miles. In the darkness, Miles could see mainly pale hands and flashlight.

            “So, it’s not a long-term fix. We make something incredible, something that people will remember for summers’ afterwards, and let Ronnie worry about the mold.”

            “What about all that high-minded bullshit you were peppering him with?”

            “A little bit for show.”

            “Doesn’t sound like you.”

            Jackson turned off his flashlight and started trudging towards the saloon style doors. His footsteps sounded like a row-team that was terribly out of rhythm.

            “He’s setting us up to fail,” he said when he reached the doors. Which, when cracked open, just slightly, created a cipher of light just strong enough to cut through the blackness and expose his brother’s scant silhouette.

            “And you’re not worried about why.”

            “Not really. And I’m sure we’ll find out.”

            The doors swung shut quietly, smoothly somehow, as he stepped outside. Miles thought about this for a moment, but deeply he was elsewhere. After a few moments he turned off the startling glare of his own flashlight and stood for a good long while in pure darkness. He listened for sound, for life, but heard none.

                                                            ****************

            Josh was staring with some great level of concentration at a small bejeweled book, with what seemed like a hand painted mustard colored crucifix on the cover. Then she watched as he touched the jewels and ran a hand across the gold laced pages; never actually picking up the Bible. If, indeed, it even was one. Stephanie thought it looked like something made in a basement, maybe for a Sunday school class, or maybe by a recovering alcoholic with time on his hands. Either way the price seemed odd by any book’s standards: one dollar and sixteen cents.

            The place was cluttered even by the shallow principles of a small downtown antiques shop. One area seemed to be growing globes, another was bulging at the seams with books aged by both time and fingers, the barely lit corner of the place, near a non-electric cash register, stood a small towns worth of bobble heads, collectively staring off into dull space like stuffed pigeons and jiggling slightly. The effect was a bit more then mildly creepy.

            “Have you ever read a book?” She asked distractedly.

            He didn’t answer, but finally pulled the book down from it’s shelf to give it a full examination. She assumed he was more interested in the colors then anything, but one never knew. Maybe the boy was a little Rhodes’ Scholar in the making. Either way the slight movement of the book sent off a barrage of dust that sent her into a virtual frenzy of sneezing. Catching her breath only momentarily to inhale before the next round caught her, and somewhere in between the ruckus she was self-creating, it came to her attention that he was actually talking.

            “Books, no, not really. But comics-“ more sneezing, her eyes going past watery, for a moment she wondered if she’d been poisoned by the dust somehow, “Superman has lost a lot of his power lately. What’s the T stand for, Steph?”

            Did he just call her Steph?

            Outside quickly she absorbed a fresh injection of clean air and collected herself. She hoped he wouldn’t take offensive to this sudden departure; he seemed a sensitive boy. And half the point of this little jaunt to the outside world was something along the lines of bonding.

            No longer in spasms in this fresh crisp air, she wiped her eyes with her black long-sleeve top and ran both hands through her hair, collecting it in a bun and tying it down preciously. The clouds above her didn’t seem to have moved from the positions they occupied when they first entered the store, as if the tape had been paused in the atmosphere. And the narrow streets around her were empty. Not in a quaint quiet way, but with some strange menace. Many rows of early 19^th century brick masonry looming around like vultures that had eaten years before but had since forgotten what flesh tasted like.

            After collecting herself, she slid back inside the store as non-chantilly as possible. She could see Josh having a very animated conversation with the shopkeeper. This relic of a woman had her arms up in the air, waving them around in some uncoordinated looking fashion, and she was whirling around pointing at objects in the room. He seemed to be enjoying all of this very much, and the shopkeeper seemed to be telling a tall tale. Stephanie walked up to them for clarity, hoping voodoo was not involved.

            And at her approach the old lady grew grim and glum with what looked like no effort at all.

            “He seems to like you,” Stephanie said.

            “Ms. Whitaker can tell stories like a comic book,” Josh, still energized, interjected.

            “Can she now?” She reached out her hand, but received nothing in return, and sheepishly she brought her arm back and cleared her throat.

            “Stephanie Roseway. Ms. Whitaker I presume?”

            “Call me what you wish. See anything you’d like to buy?”

            Her gray wiry hair moved around slightly, although Stephanie couldn’t feel even the slightest bit of air circulating around the shop to move it.

            “Not yet. Just looking, I suppose you could say.”

            “Would you ever come into a store with your eyes closed?”

            The hostility had caught her off-guard, but she knew how to box.

            “Depends if there’s anything to see.”

            “I suppose it does,” she trailed off looking away.

            Stephanie thought she heard parrots squawking somewhere deep in the back of the store, but it may have just been the building itself. Groaning and stressing after years of subtle and unsubtle pressure. This downtown was old weathered, like a trustworthy winter jacket, in a way that recalled old Europe in her mind. Not that she’d ever actually been there.

            “You never going to fix that place.”

            It was a startling thing to say, sharp and straight-forward.

            “I’ve seen those boys fix rides in worse shape. One time in Cleveland-“

            “It ain’t the ride,” and this taunt old curator leaned close, “Some things, some places, some people, can never be changed. It’d suite you to leave tonight if you’ve have as much of a mind as you seem to.”

            Stephanie stared forward, losing mind and sight of Josh as he toyed around somewhere around the store. The hair on her arm was electrified, she felt closer to the storm then she needed to be, she couldn’t hear the hail on the pavement yet, but knew it was close.

            “But you won’t leave, will you? They never do.”

            Back out onto the street and towards the theme park she felt herself rubbing her hands together constantly, a left over piece of anxious compulsion that had stuck with her since childhood. The women had gnawed at her, gotten inside a feeling she knew preexisted it and exploited it, blooming a flower of thought whose petals would take all night to fold back in. Possibly longer. The town around them still felt fairly empty, as if it had admission gates somewhere as well.

            Finally a tall solemn man and what looked like his son approached them from what she thought was the setting day-moon to the east. He carried a dark leather briefcase, and had on a hat with the feather of a long dead animal. She smiled with a brief nod as they strode past, a quirk in her cheeks that had sunk careers in her freshman year of Physics, but the eye-contact that came back was hollow and quick. A piano whose keys were not attached. The boy he was with, about the same height as Josh, and probably the same age (she’d always thought it impossible to discern children’s ages, six to twelve all looked about the same), stared straight at the ground.  She felt Josh’s hand scratching around her waist, hoping to find a hand to hold in return, and she was happy for it.

                                    ****************

Knocking

The honest answer is that I didn’t want anything to be put above that, and was a bit scared of looking at it again. The more honest answer is that I’m lazy and flippant about my writing; more prone to staring at the ceiling and licking toads then working my craft and kicking-ass. The even more honest answer is some savage blend of the truth of those two that I neither have the ability to overcome nor the heart to reconcile. Fuck off on both counts if you have in mind to do it for me.

It’s brutal, what’s below this, as open as I’ll ever be about the places my life as been, as open as the window needs to be. As sad as life will ever be: dusty emergency lights in a building that is slowly burning to the ground.

One, two, three, four. That’s the numbers of stories that I published on the Long Sunset in 2013. And I never meant for it to be this way; for things to come with a cloud and question mark, each piece of writing its own insignia of the tightening your skin feels at the distant thunder of a rising tide. But then, I never had any choice in that matter, to some degree. Most importantly, to longtime readers, and myself, as matter of arching storyline, it had become a tragedy of translucent being. A place that no longer was a tree- house. And that’s fine, this place deserved and afforded everything that came its way, maybe it was even built for it, maybe it continues to do so, maybe I’ll always run from what it can be.

And again, probably I’m just lazy. And also, maybe I just get paid to write now, and like the plumber (which an old, sad, tired writer once related the profession to me as), doesn’t clean the pipes in his own house after work. Not that I work as writer for a living, or even come close, but generally, when I do write, I end up getting paid for it. I’m not sure myself what this means in the grand picture.

And I’m not sure what I’m trying to tell you. I used to write a column of some length every time I had failed to write a column of some length, and I felt the need to explain myself, to explain my lack of production. Perhaps I still do, but on a different scale.

I’m not sure what it is I can still write here. I’m not playful anymore, not animated and illustratively rough, and certainly not whole of heart. I started the Long Sunset when I was 21 years old (I think, all times approximate), and it spread and weaved and was printed in places I never thought it would. For a time, it was my mirror, the free legacy that I could make of myself and my words, but 8 years is a lot of time, and whatever it was I thought I created in candlelit nights in the center of this state those years ago is more difficult for me to carry on now. Or, at least, to do so consistently, to create stories, to live them, in this format, is harder and more distant.

Not that I’m tired of stories. It’s all I have, and all I do. And I have plenty of them, and all day, and all night, I look for more. It just may take me a while to remember how to tell them.