Kathe Koja - The Cipher

“Let’s go,” she said, for the first time, “look at it.”

She named it, of course, it was the kind of thing she was best at. Named it and claimed it, although I wasn’t about to fight her for mineral rights. Frankly I was scared of it, not as much then as I am now, but scared as any reasonably normal person would be.

“Who knows what the hell it is?” arguing over instant coffee (me) and sluggish mineral water (her). The flat reeked of smoke; we’d been fighting, slow and tense, for hours already. Never questioning it, even then, never a shred of doubt, just the birth of the eternal disagreement. Because how could we, how could anyone deny that calm black fact, stationed there on the floor in a crummy unused storage room in a crummier building on a street no developer would ever claim? No romance about this, not at least to me: is romance possible, with a cast, a slant, this painfully oblique?

Speculation, sure. Where’d it come from, where—Nakota’s first, still most passionate concern—did it lead to? “If you went down there,” her eyes all shine.

“If you went down there.”

“Oh yeah.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Wouldn’t you be?

Had someone somehow put it there? She scoffed, and I had to agree; it was of no one’s making, not a thing like that. Did it just grow there? She, enamored, proffered that theory and had it embellished past baroque before I could even say yes or no: what strange seed, she came back to that idea over and over, what could have the beginnings necessary for the making of something like that?

“It’s alive.” Her ominous smile.

“It is not,” knowing we were both wrong but not able to say how. “It’s not even an it, Nakota, it’s a, it’s—”

“A what? A place? A condition?” What a sneer, exquisite as a skeleton’s bony glare, cigarette hanging out of her thin mouth, black against her sallow skin. “You don’t know any more than I do.”

She was right about that, though we did our best to find out. Strange that I never went without her, never checked it out on my own. Was I afraid? Sure, but not for the reasons you’d think.

From the first she was first, me hanging a little behind, her idea to wield the flashlight (no good), her idea to throw something down it (an asphalt rock plucked from the parking lot, not too big and not too small; it made no sound, no sound at all, can you imagine how spooky that is?). An empty glass: nothing, though the glass was warm when it came back, the heavy string that held it warm too. A camera, my single idea, but we never did, couldn’t figure out how to make it work, and we couldn’t afford one that would shoot by itself. A piece of paper, her idea (that should have been mine, some poet I am) but nothing still.

Talking it over, and over and over, theories abundant, her eyes slitted and hands not so much expressive as martial, me with my hesitancy and my beer, building fences for her to jump.

Just like now, today, the phone with its irritable little buzz: “Video Hut, howmaylhelpyou.”

“Hey Nicholas.” Over the phone she sounded colder than normal, but for her that was normal, just her phone voice, she would have made a great Inquisitor. “I’m coming over tonight.”

“Yeah?” She wasn’t coming to savor my presence, which gave me the right to fuck with her, a little and in a joshing way. “I was planning on going out tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there after work.”

She was, too, still in her barmaid outfit, which looked better than her regular clothes; at least everything was the same color, a decent black. She had something in a medium-sized paper bag; she held it like it was heavy. Seeing it made me nervous, I didn’t know why, but with Nakota you never knew anyway, you never got any warning. “What’s that?” I said.

“You’ll see. Ready?” She was. In fact almost jittery, which made me more nervous still. But I’m stupid. I go along with stuff.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Careful and quiet as always; still it was a wonder no one ever saw us, or that we never saw anyone. Maybe everybody in the building was in

on our little secret. It wasn’t the kind of thing you’d talk about, none of us ever talked to each other anyway, I couldn’t identify half of my neighbors by sight. I only knew the ones who were close by or obnoxious. Just like life itself.

When we got into the room Nakota did a weird thing: she looked for a lock, swore when there was none. Carefully she set the bag down. “What’re you going to do?” I said, standing a little farther back than usual. “Tie me up and throw me in?”

She looked almost sorry she hadn’t thought of that herself. “Good thinking, but no. It is an experiment, though,” and she reached for the bag, pulled it down and away. “Something we haven’t tried before.”

A big pickle jar, gallon jar, filled with bugs.

All kinds of bugs: flies and roaches and beetles and mosquitoes, even a couple of dragonflies. It was beautiful, kind of, and kind of nauseating too. “Why aren’t they eating each other?” I asked, and realized I was whispering.

Nakota whispered too. “I sprayed some shit in there,” and, declining to elaborate, pushed the jar, nearer and nearer the Funhole, till it sat at the lip itself, far closer than we had ever dared to go.

“Now what?”

“Now we wait awhile.” Her voice was shaking, she was so excited. “See what happens.”

We waited quite a while, there in the dark, my back against the locked door, Nakota for once at my side. Her scent was higher, her breath never slowed; she tried to smoke but I told her no, not in that airless firetrap, firm whisper, as firm as I ever got with her anyway, and she gave in. The insects jumbled, up and down, fighting the barrier they couldn’t see, then, “Look,” her sharp whisper but I was looking already, staring, watching as the bugs, one by one, began to drop, dying, to the floor of the jar, to whir in minute contortions, to, oh Jesus, to change: an extra pair of wings, a spare head, two spare heads, colors beyond the real, Nakota was breathing like a steam engine, I heard that hoarseness in my ear, smelled her hot stale-cigarette breath, saw a roach grow legs like a spider’s, saw a dragonfly split down the middle and turn into something else that was no kind of insect at all.

Finally they were all dead, stayed dead for a long time, or maybe it only felt long. I got courage enough to reach for the jar but Nakota cut me off: what instinct told her that?

“Wait,” she said, hand on my arm, voice very very dry.

And they boiled up, glass-bound airborne convulsion of wings and legs and shiny bodies and dead colors, mashed together like food in a blender, round and round so fast that the jar rocked on the floor, tiny polka till it finally spun still and stayed. My mouth was open. It took effort to shut it.

Nakota said, “Now.”

I did not want to touch that jar.

It was hot, I snatched my hand away, more cautiously used the front of my T-shirt to twist off the lid. “Aw shit, ” and just looking made me miserable, I had to turn my head away. Nakota took the jar carefully into her lap and, to my disgust, began picking through its contents.

“Nakota—”

“Shut up,” mildly, then, “Look at this.”

“No.” I sat back down, head canted back against the door, eyes closed as she went through her nauseating autopsy, listening to her small murmurs of surprise. Finally I heard the lid screw on, felt her hand on my shoulder.

“Nicholas. Look. It’s not that bad.”

“I don’t want to.” But of course I did.

It really wasn’t that bad, if you had a strong stomach. She had handpicked the best pieces, the strangest I should say: tiniest heads on double-jointed necks, a little splay of wings, four to the bunch, the half-intact body of the cockroach with the long spiderlegs. Her trophies, plucked from the underworld, displayed on a dusty floor. She was smiling, she touched my arm.