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[plural]

he sucks air in and out, washing his throat dry and sharp against the slowly spreading and leaking coverage of mucus. the slight disconnect of the rubber on his shoes vibrates up his legs in the bouncing, struggling throbs of a future exposition he can barely grasp he feels so badly. rain ticks off the edges of his jacket and flap off into the stains of soaked up water filling the concrete sidewalk like the world was painted just a little grayer. a little darker. a little less bright down low. but each drop cuts through the dark above and opens small beams of light shining through the colorless above. the path ahead of him synchronizes an autopilot into his head and the only thing that fills is head is home. his eyes water against the wind and he begins to fill his head with: the next time he picks up the phone, the next word he says right, the next smile he gets like helium in his veins, the next touch like a hearth's fire radiating against his skin, the next kiss like the last moment before a car crash. blood boiling before the fire. eyes streaming before the fireworks. his muscles churn themselves into the back of his head. there is a permanent dimple creased into his cheek like a scar carved with joy. he rushes up the slight ascent of the driveway and loses a few more thoughts into the depth of rising hot liquid behind his eyes. the spattering pattering of flapping and slapping raindrops fill the air suddenly like a fledgling waterfall; and it touches his head nascently at first, caressing his hair, then crashes over his shoulders and runs down his face in a teaming, running drive of liquid almost as light as air. and it was as if he were alone. and it was as if the thoughts he had in his head were the last ones he could ever have. and the last thing he could remember was the last thing he would ever have. and a smile would spread like water across the whole of the earth. tomorrow would be a hand on the phone. tomorrow would be music dripping off his lips. tomorrow would be pressure--it would be catching--it would be a fall without a landing. tomorrow runs down his body and thoughts and spreads out across every moment. and he expands against the next next. and he widens against the once was. and that last thing, digging into the moment to break it, can just get buried under a rising tide of rain and mud. he opens the door and steps inside. water pours off him onto the mat in front of the door. all the rain drowns into the fibers and all the love evaporates in the air and his body throbs and shivers for more. he slides his cellphone out of his pocket and holds the screen in front of him. and.

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as the door to the apartment building shakes and shudders shut there is a welling moment of wet red in her expression, dripping time and time back. her mouth quivers and she holds her hand over it, an act of defense in the moment but it turns into something longing and rapturous as she catches the watermelon scent still tracing life back on her palm. she slides her hand up and for a moment can remember the first moment they met and the first time she ever experienced that smell. a tear catches its fall on the fleshy webbing between her thumb and index finger. it waterfalls down the back of her hand and trails itself dry before it can fall again. the stiff hyperventilating exhalations that funnel their audio in gasping alien inflections wash her palm warm and then suck it cold in the opposite second in almost hopeless beating of rasps. tiny vibrations run unnoticed through her entire arm resonating in the bottom of her thumb. the day plays itself backwards and she can't stop it. the day keeps rewinding further and further to moments that cut to the present sharper and deeper and before she could even rattle her mind out of it—before there was even a rational or logical presence that could even be admitted into the moment and in almost concrete certainty that if it had it would end up an inoculation too late—she is in the moments where everything had started. and the wisps of hair against her fingers are just like air. and those shaky first words were just the hum of cars. and the lights burning in an expansive bokeh orb through the dirty glass were just the kind of dead grass hazel that could soak up your entire life. and jokes so close dropped in like a shy moth dotting the bright for enough lift to catch its drift. and remembered stories she took and retook to sew into her own geography brighter and thoughtlessly patchwork were clinging and clinging. and the shuffle of doors and feet behind her scrape themselves laughter like fireworks of far off smiles popping into her temples and down her jaw flashing in excess through the weakness in her eyes. a soft pressure presses through the fabric draped over her shoulder. lights dropped like a sunset. ashes in her hand. tattered clothes breaking beyond its age. a calm dead present in her throat throbbing out metered music. aching harder and breaking weaker. brittle bones and thin skin. the questions rise like erupting geysers and volcanoes. never and never again. she lowers her face into her hand and the pressure against her shoulder squeezes tighter. "i never wanted you to love anyone. i never wanted you to get hurt. and i know i can't help you. i don't know the right things to say and i don't know the right way to be. i never wanted this to happen because i don't want to have to know that i'm as helpless in making you happy as i always feel." it wasn't anything but words. she turns her head, the motion sliding a collection of tears across her cheek, and for one evaporated action, into the air like rain. the firm grip onto her shoulder holds her into a solid. it wasn't anything but contact. and the dead grass and ashes grow up flowers. and the music tainted from four intertwined ears could ache back to two. and the far off, far off was maybe not so rapturous. and the fight left to fight maybe wasn't too ruinous. and the the next night might not have to be just the next night. it wasn't anything, but she turns her head and looks up; it wasn't ever just anything. "i don't know any of the right words. but i'm here."

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at the bar she stared at the drink for a few seconds before picking it up. it was showing her fireworks, sparks, lights from the rotating light above them but to her it was the future, it was life and breath from years in the future burning so bright it burnt itself present. it was something oddly near when the whole world felt miles of heat away. she drank it and set it back down without going back to the friends she'd come with. the door to the alley out back rushed cold, cold world against her soft and she smelled the rotted remains of the day in the dumpster but it was so many miles back. so many days distanced. the sky above was filled navy under a canopy of tenting lights spilling out from the sides of the building above. she crossed the street a little rushed and light in her head. the drink was a mistake, but maybe she needed it. maybe it was courage, inertia, or something much more intangible. when she started squeezing herself through the rows of cars, she popped the trunk with her keys and burrowed into the trunk when she got there. she tossed the knife on the hood of the car next to her and brought out the shotgun and started pressing shells into the port at the bottom and then pumped a shell into the ready. the world hissed wind and silence. the occasional hum of a car's engine and wheels crept up her spine as she stared out at the nothing-there she was expecting to appear. she could feel that future moment in ways she hadn't felt until that bat held her down by the throat. she wasn't going to let that happen this time. she could smell it out there now. like the stench of pure sick desire pouring out of skin like the smell of alcohol in the bar. she flipped the switch on the light mounted on the end of the shotgun, keeping its bright in the air for a moment, and whistled. an uncontrollable moan issued from the bushes just beyond the end of the parking lot near the wall. she brought the light down on it. and trotted around the edge of the cars at the end. the dog was there. he panted and looked up at her sick with hunger. torn patches of skin were falling from his face coming from the clawmarks of fingernails. his legs were curled under his body and he was almost pulled into a sitting position, except his legs were planted flat against the ground, ready to pounce forward. a ratty brown coat hung off his body like a second skin. slick oily hair fell across the side of his face. he'd probably been infected for weeks. she fired without questioning it. but she knew it was only the first step. the first shot connected with the side of his head, blasting a hole open from his mouth roughly twice the size of his mouth, he barely responded, his tongue moved sick and hungry in its mouth in clear view now. he launched up off his legs at her and she fired again into him spreading out his entire head onto the wall in a mist of chunks and spray but his body was undeterred. the rest of his head that was connected still exploded backward like it was arranged into a mushroom cloud off his neck tapering down against his back. the hole in his exposed neck moved red and wet and his launched body connected with her over the shogun and started clawing madly at her sides even without his head. she stepped back, in a hop, away from the sharp fingernails and let it fall to the ground in a raging violent heap that shot out its arms in deathly angry movements with impotent action that came from a lack eyes or any senses for that matter. it was reacting in a purely primal murder that was still left from the brain that once controlled it and she knew would eventually regrow. another shot into its back, splashed a hole into the coat and it just kept thrashing. she knew it was never going to do anything. the knife slipped out of its place between her belt and jeans and tried to gauge the location of the heart for a moment before going in for a stab. the knife slid hard through the caked hard skin of the dog. air whistled out of the hole in its neck as she penetrated the heart. after a few seconds she brought it out, dark black blood was eating its way through the silver plating on the knife. she wondered if it would still be useful for the rest of them. she tossed the shotgun onto the body and walked back to her car and got inside. a few people came out of the bar to try to see what the sounds had been or where they had come from but they were too drunk and confused to tell or know anything. they quickly went back inside after they had forgotten why they came out. she started her car and the radio came on drumming.

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It was faint squeaks at first. The sort of just out of earshot sounds that evade the fully conscious mind. Kyle rolled over onto his other side and tried to arrange himself back into sleep. He constructed the usual routine of thoughts into his head that facilitated this. He began to dig backward into his memories. Yesterday, years ago, younger and younger until he could get back to a moment in his head that was something worth remembering and he could just—almost—lose control of his mind stuck back in that moment. But he couldn't. The squeaking was louder now. It almost sounded like a car alarm that was miles away but it wasn't that abrasive. The almost ethereal sense of the sound compounded its pervasiveness in a way that a constantly humming light or machine, or a muffled thumping of a music not quite contained in its house, or even the exhaling sounds of tires hushed across the always too near road could not compare. It was different but all the trappings of something familiar surrounded it. The need for identity began fueling his insomnia. He slid his feet off the bed and planted them onto the floor in one motion, a breathless lurch of energy that was equally impossible and ritual. Kyle slid up his blinds, the taut strings whining into themselves and the plastic material clattering for a moment, until they had rushed into a small gently swaying pile hanging from the frame. These sounds were familiar. They were the sounds that were expected to happen when the event occurred. The sounds coming from outside were somehow outside of the context in which they should be occurring. The need for identity was a fiery friction in his veins. He slid the window open. A distinct sense of understanding snapped into his head at the same moment his the window came to the end of its track. It was a bird. It was a God damn bird singing at—he whipped his head over his shoulder toward the alarm clock—3:47 AM. The tree shot up into the dark like a skeletal monster. It was a red oak tree that had been there for as long as Kyle had been living in the complex. This time of year though all the leaves were shed and the only thing left was this haunting jagged extension of hundreds of limbs, shooting up into the sky until the homeowner's association had all of them cut off—amputated—and left something broken and crippled in its place. Even as the leaves fell from the tree the ever present light of the suburban environment never seemed to be able to penetrate anywhere into the innards enclosed within the limbs. It was a darkness that nested secrets. It was eerie seeing Gale alone under the tree. The street lamps made the grass around her glow dull, reflected, artificial orange. Gale had her hands folded against her chest and she was looking up at the tree where the bird sang its psychotic car-alarm song. Her dull blue sweat pants seemed to hang so loose on her body that they might not even be there at all. She was so still except for her back moving up and down slowly with each breath, a lonely, beautiful scarecrow staring up at its failure. He only ever saw her in passing. Out of the car and in the house. He only ever saw her in the process of accomplishing something else. Out of the house to the mailbox. He only ever saw her in one word moments. Kyle panicked for a moment about whether or not he should approach her. A friendly “hi” was all he really had in any kind of knowledge about her. The prospects of conversation about this bird were too sudden. He wanted just get away before she saw him. It didn't matter anyway; if she was already here then it was going to be dealt with. He could go back inside. "Hey, Jack. It's Jack isn't it?" Kyle shuddered an involuntary flinch at the words behind him. "Sorry, didn't mean to sneak up on you, I just came out to see this damn bird." It was the guy with the motorcycles across the street. Kyle couldn't remember his name but he felt better that the he couldn't remember Kyle's name in either. He was wearing a T-shirt that had some logo he couldn't make out and shorts that came down to his shins. His swirled around his head unkempt and almost writhing for the need to be combed. "Actually, it's Kyle." "Sorry about that." He didn't really seem interested in Kyle anymore; he walked past him toward the tree. Gale was glancing over her shoulder at the two of them but she too seemed almost indifferent to the group that was forming. It was as if the siren song of the bird was all that really mattered now. Gale looked so much younger now without the sun above them. Her face was slack and nearly emotionless as if the bird was hypnotizing her even as she looked over to them. She turned her head back and just stared up, as if she were just curious about the bird above and not bothered by the sound at all. The motorcycle guy was more than curious. He walked up near the window of Kyle's apartment and then bent down and grabbed a rock out of a pile that was surrounding a small Rhododendron bush. He flung it up sideways at the tree as if he were skipping a rock. It hit a branch and ricocheted off into the ground somewhere a few feet to Gale's right. Kyle approached the tree, nearly behind Gale now, but still could not see the bird or anything up in the shadowy spine of limbs. "Hey! Don't throw a rock at it." Gale nearly ignored Kyle but for the small moment of eye contact that came with her twisting herself toward the man, and her eyes flicking off a little too far, just making a moment's note of Kyle's location, and then pulling them back to the motorcycle guy. "It's just a bird." The motorcycle guy was not moved. "I don't care. I have work in four hours and this fucking bird is louder than a fire engine. It's either gonna shut up, get hit with a rock, or fly away. Any one of those ideas is fine by me but it doesn't sound like it's going to shut up and it sure as shit doesn't sound like it's flying away, so I'm gonna hit with a rock." Gale looked like she was going to say something to him but just looked back up at the tree. Kyle wondered if she could see the bird through the shadows where she was standing. He wanted to ask if she did. He wanted to ask her what kind it was. He wanted to ask her what she did for a living. But he didn't. Motorcycle guy went back to the rocks a few more times throwing them up at a seemingly phantom bird. After about three attempts Kyle said, "You probably shouldn't throw any more if you can't see it. The gardeners are going to have to pick up all those rocks before they mow the grass." "I don't give a crap about that. That's their job." He went back in and grabbed another rock this time getting right under the tree before launching it up into the branches. The bird continued unabated. Eventually he gave up and stomped back toward his house, mumbling something incoherent. Kyle thought he should at least try to go back inside and get some sleep but then he saw two more people approaching out of the dark. Kyle didn't remember ever seeing them before. They looked so young. almost too young to be a real couple, but he tried to put that thought out of his head. He didn't want to think that just because they were young their relationship was less or didn't matter. Though sometimes he couldn't help those kinds of thoughts from entering his mind. The girl was a short blonde with a pixie cut. She was wearing green medical scrubs with a black long sleeve shirt underneath and peaking over the ends of her fingers. She closed them into her palm, wrapping the sleeve over her hand like a pair of makeshift mittens. The boy was wearing a tan hoodie and jeans that were far too tight. He wondered if they had just woken up or were just getting home. "We heard that bird too. What kind do you think it is?" The girl asked. She took a step forward into Kyle's personal space and even leaned a little more into that extending her hand in a sharp, sly movement. "Hi. My name's Alice. This is Theo. We moved in on Thyme. I mean the street." Kyle took her hands and she shook out the moment briskly and disappeared away from him as soon as he said, "Kyle Norton." Theo didn't look like he wanted to talk. Alice approached Gale as well and they shook hands, "Gale Schwartz." There was a slight brown stain on the side of Alice's scrub shirt. Kyle felt confident that she was a nurse but she could just be somebody who likes to wear scrubs. "It's probably the lights." Theo said. Everyone turned to him. "All the street lamps. They're on all night. You can't even see the stars here. I bet it just thinks its morning." Gale turned back to the tree and looked up into it, contemplative. "It's so dark inside it though. I can't even see the bird." There was a long moment of awkward social silence. Kyle could see everyone's mind moving but all their words seemed to be just out of focus; and whenever someone opened their mouth, getting in that small exhale before the tumble of words began, they invariable had nothing else to add. Whatever they thought they should do next it didn't seem to be happening. Kyle decided he needed to know. The need for identity was all he really had left at the moment. As important as it was to know what that sound that woke him up was, he needed to know what this bird looked like. It sang like murder. Kyle grabbed onto the trunk, digging his hands into the grooves of the bark. He was going to see that damn bird. Theo walked under Kyle and started lifting him up by the feet, wordlessly. Gale just said, "Don't hurt it." Kyle didn't look back down. He had grossly miscalculated the ease of climbing a tree. Looking back down now he was sure to fall. He just kept pulling himself up until he grabbed onto the lowest limbs, Theo's hands were gone from his feet and he suddenly felt his whole body get heavier as he barely managed to pull himself on top of the limb. "Do you see it?" Alice asked but he couldn't see anything. He just pulled himself up higher and closer to the sound of the bird. It was unnaturally loud now. Kyle couldn't tell if it was because he was getting closer or if this was some kind of defense mechanism meant to ward off predators. He could imagine it working as one though. He pulled himself up higher, scraping through the tighter and tighter knit wood. He had to see the bird. The need for identity was fire in his muscles. He felt like he must be at the top now. It still seemed higher though. The small audience below him was mute now, staring up into the chasm of the sky through the tree. The only thing up there to them was a few slightly ambulatory shadows that might be Kyle climbing up or just a cloud floating through. Gale heard footsteps approaching behind her and looked back at the motorcycle guy approaching but then went back to looking up at the tree, trying to see Kyle. Kyle stopped climbing. He could see it. Or could almost see it. It was bathed in shadow sort of twisting and bobbing in the uncontrollable Turret's-like way that only the fast acting insanity of a bird's brain could understand the use for. He didn't know what to do at first but then rolled his eyes and brushed out his hand in a sweeping gesture. It disappeared somewhere up or back. He couldn't make out where it had went but it wasn't far because it was still letting out its song. "Fucking thing die." The motorcyle guy was also World War II memorabilia guy. He had a .45 caliber M1911A1 Service Pistol. It took him a good ten minutes to find the bullets but he wouldn't be swayed. That bird was just too damn loud. He looked up and all he could see was darkness disappearing into the top of the tree. But he could hear where he needed to aim. The sound of the gunshot ate all the rest of the sound for a few moments. Kyle sort of slid at first. It wasn't as if he couldn't just reach out and grab hold of a branch to stop himself it was like his brain just couldn't react. He tumbled through a mess of weak branches and landed with a small thump on the large limb he had used to lift himself up into the branches. He slipped past it and fell onto the ground with an almost soundlessly hollow thud. Everything felt a bit slower. But everything still rushed out in such a hurry. Kyle touched his chest for a moment and rolled onto his side to try to push himself up from the ground. His wet, red hand slipped through the grass and resulted in a return to his side, head leaning back into the cold soft underneath. There was something flooded about the way his mind felt now. It was something so familiar but with all the trappings of something different. He could feel everything so vividly for just a moment and then it all began to slip away. There was a vague ethereal sense as if he were trying to attach a narrative to a memory that was just a snapshot—a moment: like an old grade school piano recital, or a movie on so late that the commercials in between were the only things that could keep him awake, or that song his mother used to sing back when he slept on the bunk-bed that had the red sheets. Everything was there; at once unknown and known, as if the past, concealed behind a dam of consciousness, was ready to rise and rush over all those too-high walls that paint the moments outside of the present impressionist and unreliable. Kyle coughed and felt a tremor of blood running down his chest and onto the ground. It was the clarity of history. Whether rewritten or invented whole cloth, they were all finally clear. He coughed again and shifted onto his back. He constructed a well-worn routine of moments connecting memory to memory and decided to get lost in it. It was so easy when it was this quiet. Alice bent down onto her knee and began pressing her hand against Kyle's chest while everyone else watched . She turned to the others, still standing motionless and silent; and simply said, "Call an ambulance." There was a moment after those words where nothing was registering. Information was static, overloaded and motionless in its filtering. It was almost easy to let everything become nothing, especially for just a second. Life was waiting for the next heartbeat. Time was waiting for its starting pistol. Everything was still. But then the bird began singing again and that moment passed.

Identifying a Song

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glass eyes. they told us not to stare at the injured but i figure what does it matter if she can't see us doing it. there is a splash of freckles down her cheeks that gets thicker the closer it gets to her nose. i wonder what happened but at the same time i don't want to know. right now she's perfect. the picture of her is broken in time and all i can see is glass green eyes, fiery red hair, the pinkest lips. i can feel my mouths filling with saliva and my heart beating up through my eyes. her glass gaze moves as if it's looking just at me. even though i know it can't be, i still freeze at the thought. i shouldn't be looking at any of them this way. i call the others in first. i know their missives. i can read their minds because i've seen the same ones so many times. but it's aching inside me that i might never see this girl again so i put her name to the bottom of the list. but i can see her sitting on the bench just outside the open door to my office. the faded burgandy dress shies itself away from her shins as her legs sway slightly. what the hell am i doing here? i can't think about the supplicants this way. i'll be stationed on the ship for sure if i do anything about it. but... i press the button on my desk and say her name into the microphone. she's ten feet away but i can't break protocol. she flips out her cane and taps her way into the room and finally into the seat across from my desk. i can see the metal inside her mouth as she sits down and sighs something sweetly out of my register. she must've been in or under the interloper when it crashed. it's amazing that she lived at all, she seems so undamaged besides her eyes. "i've been trying to push my papers through for three months." she's tapping her finger on the edge of the chair's arm as if she's divining some kind of math problem. "the benefits haven't been coming. and i didn't care, i really didn't want anything from you. but the service state transfer fee is twice my monthly wage. i want to get what i'm owed. i know you're not evil. you wouldn't have set this up if you were. i just need to get out of here. please." a tear releases almost mechanically out from under her glass eye. i bring up the screen with her name and i know what it will say before i can see it. dispensed. somebody has been chipping her benefit transfers. i know it because it is what happens to almost every person that comes in here. there isn't anything i can do about it but send her along to the next supervisor who will tie her up in paperwork for a year before she starts getting the regular benefit transfers again. and even then she won't be getting anything that was taken. this is just how it works. for a moment i'm stuck between the words that i always say and the words that i want to say. i want to say i can do more but this is just a readout. i can't change anything. "ms. reid." the tight feeling in my body collapses for a moment and i know what i have to do. i get her account number from the readout and then open my bank site. then i just start transferring. it's more than i can afford to do. it's enough that they'll notice but if she's going to state transfer it won't matter. i flag her account for chipping. "well, it must have been an error on our part. i took care of the problem for you." her hand holding the cane grips tight and tight and she smiles open that metal replacement teeth and jaw. she can't see me. i can feel the saliva dripping out of my mouths because i can't control it at all anymore. i know she could only have that smile because she can't see me. but i drink it like it's all i have left. i can't remember the rest of the day. honestly, the only thing i can truly remember is her face. they've asked me so many times and it's the only thing i know for sure.

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lights beam through the stalks making shadows and spilling sight against the cold night. they slid and moved and bobbed with the hands holding them. nothing but definitive concentrated focus was in their bright gazes. the wind exhaled across the field of corn, bending the world for a moment and letting it go. the sky above was a bitter black. the new moon hid and the stars shone as bright as they could but with no significant illumination reaching below. the flashlights were all they had. arresting shock came out of their throats as they called for the children. six hours earlier there was a nervous man standing by the side of the road along the corn field. the highway stretched out for miles with nothing but the fields and the farmers who worked on them. nothing at all. but this man was still there. standing in his drab suit and worn hat. he couldn't remember how he got there. he couldn't remember his own name. but he remembered being tied up and left for dead. alone and empty for so long and each day the sun would rise and eat away at him hungry white hot bites. and each day the sky would crash its cold air against his sagging, dead shoulders. and he rotted forever alone, dying and dying every day. but that couldn't have happened, he was standing here. alive. the sky beat down shy orange light and hissed an unwelcoming wind into the man's face. he turned his head away and felt a sharp sting of pain in the back of his neck and grabbed at it. as the wind died he slowly moved his head back against the pain and brought his hand to his eyes, sensing the strange wetness on his fingertips. there was dark shiny blood on his fingers. the man started breathing sharp. he took a step forward and felt ungodly pain in his foot. another step and another shock of pain radiating and pulsating within his shoe. he could feel something wet against his toes as well. he sat down on the edge of the highway. he didn't think about getting run over be a car at all. it was too painful to think about anything else. he pulled his scuffed wingtips off and dropped them onto the grassy embankment that led up to the highway. they slid down about half their own length and stopped. the man started rolling his brown socks down his ankle and he could feel a different kind of pain. the socks were tearing against the skin of his ankle. peeling it in crosshatched depressions of the sock's stitching. the dark blood was oozing out from the absence of skin. he closed his eyes and started screaming and sobbing but he still ripped the rest of the sock off. his foot that remained was bloated and breaking apart. the breaks in his foot were tightened and releasing redder and grotesquely open expansions of yellow tissue that didn't look like flesh but instead was a strange collection of sharp and brittle extensions. they looked like blades of dry grass. "what happened to your foot?" the boy and girl were staring from the edge of the corn. the light shed shadows across their faces as they moved curiously toward the bleeding man on the side of the road. the sun sunk until there wasn't anymore light in the world. and the parents called the neighbors and asked if the children were there. they weren't, hadn't been, so they grabbed the flashlights and went out into the expanse of hiding that the cornfield had now become. the mom reached the edge of road where the man had been and choked on her gasp as she saw the massive pool of blood staining the grass of the embankment. there were shoes sitting on the edge of the pool solitary and too clearly an adult's. she wanted to scream or to call someone over but her voice was gone. she just moved her shaking hand across the blood which formed out of the pool and into a line that went right back into the corn. she moved after it without a word, just silent choking breaths coming empty out of her mouth and white wide eyes. at the end of the line she didn't scream. the children were smiling. arms a mess. they were playing with the scarecrow. that's what they said. there was so much blood.

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this is a story about two people that never met. the girl woke up on the same day that she always woke up. tightness around the neck. aching around the eyes. the last sleep came across weak and brittle. she shook the dreams from her bones and was on her feet getting ready for the day. laces. layers. leg brace. gloves. knife. she winced against the stitches in her side. the skin broke open meek, like it was afraid to unwrap itself. the bandages circled themselves tighter the second time. and the glasses went on last. the boy never sleeps that day. his eyes race around the room, matted hair working itself down into his skin, wrestled wrinkles across his shirt sinking into his frame. he doesn't open his mouth to breathe. his entire body shudders in quick convulsive nasal inhalations seconds before he recognizes the pressure catch for the hatch. his breathing settles back to the air that's left in the box. he jams his hand into the catch and releases the pressure in the box. it sucks the remaining air out quick. and he can feel his lungs and face decompress in a sick weak throb out of his body like they were escaping. he stumbles across the platform's grated walkway and leans his entire body forward in a sprawl that collides with the side the platform's circular chassis in an absolute disregard for gravity and balance. the girl saw him down in the decks. the unbound levels. another wretch. another lonely empty urchin stuffed into a box because he was never meant to get out. and this one is another dropped, lost heart for her. strings attached to strings. he could already be dead but she pushed her glasses up her nose higher and headed to the relay station above the waste platform he was splayed on. she would save one but there would always be another. she moved down in sharp quick motions, the angles of her gloves catch into the walls, and then release, and then catch again. the bag wrapped around her shoulder had enough to save him if he wasn't already gone. he remembers now. the plan. the stupid plan. he was supposed to have air in the plan. he wasn't supposed to be pressurized. they didn't pay for this. it was a joke. he reaches down into his cracked, drooping jeans and pulled out the pin, setting it between the knuckles on his right hand. he could see the stilted stuttering movement from the girl in her braced leg. not quite mobile, not quite useless. she still drops her way down deftly as anyone. she spun her bag around to get the rebreather and felt a pinprick stab its way into her shoulder. and it was clear. it was tox. she didn't even have to know it first hand to know what it was. the fire burned right into her skin and in waves through her flesh and bones radiating out and down and up. swelling sharp pain up into her eyes. she reached down for her knife but the movement so familiar and simple comes out soft and weak. it was in her fingers now, darting down to the tips, and she could feel blood dripping out from under her fingernails. he flicks his wrist and drops the tox pin off the side of the platform and it whisks itself invisible into the black below. the girl isn't going to be trouble for anyone else again. he stands up as she falls, her glasses hitting the ground first and her body plopping on top of them. he tries to shake the fluttering pressurized weight out of his eyes but it doesn't budge. he takes one step. but. she reached out with her other arm and locked it around his ankle yanking as hard as she could backward. his body loses its balance and gravity again. and he tumbles back to the platform's railing and hits his back against it hard enough to have careened off if it had come to that. he sighs out in relief. "railing." she looked up at him with blood soaking down the dark bags under her eyes and opened her mouth in a red grimace and snarl. she lurched her arm to the emergency release and the railing suddenly fell away. because it was a gate. it always was. his weight carries him back but not far enough to fall, instead he slides off the edge and his ankle catches in the small depression that was left once the gate left the platform's floor. his foot sinks into the hole enough to catch and hold him completely. just enough to do that. but not enough to stop his bone from breaking. not enough to keep the fracture inside the skin. his leg twitches stuck, smashed, and broken inside the gate's open and motionless innards. it is the only thing keeping him from completely falling into the dark below. his arms hang down outstretched at the gravity below; his hair agrees with them. he feels the blood rushing and aching out of his leg where the bone was sticking out. pump and heat. if he tries he can strain his head just enough to see her face blinking helpless at the edge of the platform. blood is sitting thick against her corneas making her eyelids move through glue. there is a small trickle of blood coming out of her mouth that twisted and bent the light as her last breaths came wet. "gate." the corner of her mouth came up weak in a smile.

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i can count the mistakes on my left hand. one is more than enough for everything to fall apart. they're moving it with a truck. the idiots are using wheels. before we go in, i set up the scene. before we go in, i arm the others. they move the way i taught them. they talk the way i taught them. they're graceful. elegant. the maneuver is a thing of beauty. only three died this time. the trick to stealing other people's shit isn't the stealing. that part is always easy or hard but in the end it can always be accomplished. the trick is to be able to move what you have once you've stolen it. but that's not my trick. my trick is making things disappear. i can make anything a ghost. it's never a question of hiding something. hiding something is a surefire way to get something found because everyone looks for something that's hidden. but if you change something, if you manipulate something, if you transform it into something else entirely, it can exist openly in a world where it's being hunted ravenously. the fence scowls at me with her eyes through the slats. this is the greeting i always get. a familiar recognition of greed and guilt. she'll take what i have, she'll feel bad about doing it, but she'll take what i have. we set it up. god cut me into the world the way that he'll eventually cut me out. the people i've killed, the people i've let die and the worst that i let live are going to catch up to me. and i can see it on the fence's face when we meet. the way her neck explodes is unexpected as a method but it was an inevitability in outcome. when i saw the look in her eyes and she saw me see, we knew. another body in my wake. her head tilts precariously on her shoulder still connected with enough flesh on the half of her neck that didn't explode. it then rolls slowly off her shoulder and onto her chest as she collapses forward on top of it. it's a shame. i can count my own mistake as i begin to run. it was one of familiarity. an expectation develops that shouldn't. we are alone in this. we are always alone. those that live long enough to be comfortable in someone else's presence live just long enough to die with that comfort. the others start firing at anyone they can see on my behalf. i can't hear the shots so i know that the one thing going for me is that they want me alive. i press the button and set the trucks ablaze. scorched earth has always been a better way to live than die. i round the corner and call cody over. he's a good kid, but more importantly he's a fighter in the way that the others are not. a believer in something that i can't really fathom. some kind of perverse faith in me as a leader. as if i cared or led for something more than myself. it was bothersome to have that on my shoulders but right now it was an advantage. i tell him to start firebombing the buildings, i tell him to burn them out and kill them all. it doesn't matter. he'll die doing it but at least he'll keep doing it long enough to buy me some time. the explosions can maybe buy me enough time to just get a block away. i can start to hear gunfire. i can hear yelling but also bombs. the trucks are starting to twist and contort from the fire inside. my legs can only carry me as fast as they can carry me. it spins heat in the back of my head to imagine getting killed or caught because of this. i was an idiot. i switched out the cabs, i changed the container's but the whole thing was just about the trucks. my age is going to get the best of me. nobody uses trucks anymore. i round the corner into an alley behind a convenience store and between something that looks like warehouse or a really shitty apartment building. jacket off. i lay it down on the corner behind me just before the alley turns into sidewalk. at the other end of the alley i sit with my back to the warehouse, fifty or sixty paces from my jacket. radio detonators are tricky but it should work at the distance. detonator in one hand, i flip my knife out with the other and start cutting away this face. it served me well but it wasn't going to do anymore. you can hide. you can be who you are and let the world hunt you because you were too stupid to let it all go. the skin peels away easily and even though i can feel some blood starting to seep in the layer below it's still holding on. ripping the nose off feels like removing a giant weight from my face. i touch the raw, no doubt very white, skin beneath the skin. it's nice to feel my face again. even if it's only until i get a new one grafted on. as the footsteps round their way around the corner i can hear the faintest of commands as i let the bomb in my jacket explode, shoulder up, face down. the shockwave sends something into my back. it feels sharp but light. hopefully bone. the explosion was slightly larger than i expected. but that may have worked in my favor. the sharp twinge digging into my shoulder tightens for a red hot moment as i push myself up. the corner of the warehouse is gone, there's a broken crater and rubble in its place. the convenience store's back end looks almost no worse for the wear surprisingly. it was at least very good at containing the explosion. i toss my face onto the ground and start jogging around the other end of the convenience store to a crosswalk up ahead. the maglev should still be running for a few more hours. i can feel blood running down my back and i'm thankful that i chose to wear black today.

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thirty years ago: before there was an internet; before the sky turned black; before the disease had broken out; before you were born; i met her, your mother. her smile. i used to tell people that it lit up the room. i used to tell people that it was brighter than the sun. but it was more than that. it was warmer than that. it was brighter than that. it was so simple. so small. so elegant. it was atomic energy. it burns just as bright in my memory now as it did then. it was the first thing i saw. thirty years ago i saw that and everything else was gone. it was all i could think about or care about. your mother used to tell me that i stared too much but i don't think i ever did enough. i can remember every moment and i can remember every single smile like it was an entire year of my life. i can count them all backwards to that first smile and remember it like it's happening all over again. your mother loved you so much. when they came and took us out of the house she stood between you and that uniform like a tiny wall. there wasn't anything that was going to get between you and her. even when she got sick she talked about you every single day when they let me visit in the quarantine. every single day. she would tell me what to say to you. she said, "tell him for me, tonight when you get home, tell him i love him. tell him i don't know what's going to happen in the future. i don't know about that but you are the light in my life. the thought of you is what makes me breathe. every second i'm away is another moment that i love you more than i ever thought i could. you aren't just my son, you are the love of my life. and the beacon in all this darkness that gives me hope. loving you is not something i do, it's who i am. you make me whole in a way that i couldn't even understand being before you existed. i love you and nothing can change or stop it." one day the clouds are going to clear up. one day the sky is going to shine like her smile and you'll see what i saw thirty years ago. one day the explosions will just be on the news. one day we won't need these suits. one day you'll see the world that i lived in thirty years ago. the world used to be so bright. these clouds won't last forever.

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we let it lift us. the elevator ejects our gravity faintly and i lean forward, stumbling with the aching emotions in my gut but i don't let it get to me. the mirrors on all sides peer back and around and forward and into our eyes. i lock with hers for a second and we cease moving in that moment, knowing the next moment, knowing that it is almost over. she raises her head up as if seeing through the concrete and steel to the floor above. her eyes flash bright like death and i can almost sense hope in that. i can almost feel like they won't really be there. i can almost feel like even if they were we could make it. she could kill them. dying didn't have to be the only option left. her gaze tilts lower and lower until it's on the door. i reach for the shotgun hanging from my back and aim it ahead. the door exhales itself open. i could hear it before i saw it. the humming reckless energy of their blood, fertilizing the air electric and numb. she snaps an emp emitter from her belt and tossed it into the air. they are pretty much useless now because they knew what they were but it was still a good distraction. a blurry explosion of dark shards fills the air in a moment smashing into the emp emitter and grinding it into nothing. the white flash of control gave away the thing's location and i start letting loose shells in shots as quick as i could let them out. the nanite cloud just absorbs them like the emp emitter but i could see the whisps and ash and sparks fill the air in a dead haze that drifts to the floor almost like ashes of snow from a far off fire. she leans herself to the edge of the elevator door, so close to getting shot by me that it's hard to keep shooting but i know i can't stop. outside the door she falls back against the wall and i can't see her but i know what's going to happen next. two more shots left. the shells are padding themselves into the hard red carpet at my feet and just as i run out of shells i reach the door as it begins to start closing and tap it open with the barrel and dive into the corner as the nanite cloud rushes into the elevator to rip me apart. i can see through the mirrored wall the plan working. she snaps another emp emitter off of her belt and rushes at the flashing white eyes of the cloud's brain. the ticking, snapping, sharp bites and burrows of the little machines is cutting into me now like a thousand paper cuts at once and i can't watch her anymore. i close my eyes and put my hands over my face. but i can hear the small bursting misfire of magnetic and electrical energy shutting down. the noise of a lack of noise shocks me into hearing almost nothing but an empty pitch i couldn't identify as either sound or absence of the sound. i let my hands fall and looked up at her. she was saying words to me but i could only make out the movements of her mouth. "kale." is that my name? half of the skin on her face is eaten away from the nanites, i can see red welling itself up across her cheek and around her eye, dripping down her neck in a small wave. when she blinks part of her eyelid is gone like it was a sweater pulled apart from a loose thread. half the hair on that side of her head is eaten away short as well. she keeps talking but i can't do anything there's something wrong. i reach out my hand to have her help me up and i see the half empty, broken appendage that is left of my hand. blood is dripping out slow. she reaches and grabs onto my wrist instead, yanking my up and into the world in a shocking that felt a rushing surge of blood squirt out from my hand. sound begins to pop back into my left ear and i can hear that she's been talking ahead of me this whole time. i limp after her, taking note of the lump of broken metal human laying on the ground with the emp emitter jammed into its audio projection. "-ould be here in twelve. we don't have-" i stumble along past her to the edge of the building, the landing site has blown a hole where the wall would be. pieces of drywall, rebar, glass and cement are smashed in and over each other until the broken pieces formed into a wall of debris that caught right before a dead drop out of the side of the building. she turns and looks at me, there's concern there but all i notice is the area beneath her eye that has been eaten away and the way her eyeball seems to drift downward as if it was close to falling out of the socket. i try not to notice but i nod and feel a little more ache come into my hand as the numbness begins to breathe. she gets down on one knee and begins setting up the beacon at the edge of the debris. i can't hear anything again but i start to feel the heat rip through me. these aren't nanites. they're bullets. the hydrostatic explosions through my midsection feel like red hot fires seeping molten liquid slowly through my insides. something goes through my lung and it starts to suck in air through my chest collapsing and crumpling and i can't. she's looking at me with a crushed expression across the half of her face not bleeding or clotting. and i can see it too, why. i can understand because i can see but she just knows. the ship hovering is ours. it should have been ours. we should have been saved. but instead it's cutting us down like the expendable liabilities that we always knew that we were. she ducks down lower and slides herself into the corner between the building's wall and the wall of debris. before the final shots tear the rest of me apart i can only hope she makes it. that's all i have left before i let myself go.