Kyle Muntz - Voices

"Can you keep going?"

"Yeah," he said, "but this would be so much easier if we’d just stolen that car." James committed his crimes on a grand scale. I knew I’d be fine, because no one

notices artists, even when you paint pictures on walls, but James was a focal point of the regular, a fanatic visage of the now. The derelict face of the city, he was steel and concrete, deep, deep corridors, paved over memory. Karma had two eyes for him, and vengeance.

And I had a vision of possibility.

He drove,

but he couldn’t go far because he couldn’t leave the city. There was no place for

him in this world, but he could fade away, making desperate grasps at departure. Neither of us had control of position, or any hand to maneuver context, just we were opposite ends, context and character, realization and being. He was a part of this place, its soul and body, messenger of the streets. The city was no-person. He in return. It didn’t care if he wanted to leave. He was the place, in definition, in act and execution. With all my heart, I pitied him. If not, I wouldn’t have run for him. When he was gone, he would leave a hole.

The desert was quiet at night. He drove. Cacti, statuesque in the shadows, were pale and unthreat-ening. Tumbleweeds tumbled, flipping in the sand. A thin moon knifed the horizon. James smoked. He knew this would be his last cigarette. When his time came, he would go with it, given options, to fade, or make faded.

"If you want," he said, "I could drop you off at the edge of the city, so you didn’t have to walk as far."

"No, it’s okay," I said, "I’ll walk. I’ve never been in the desert at night before."

"Whatever you want." And he kept driving.

I got out ten minutes later, waving as he left.

The next day, they would find his car, empty, off the side of the road.

I hadn’t realized, of course, when he asked, that I was making the choice for him. How he was going to go: by his own will, by others; final journeys onto darkness, that subliminal, pivotal decay. The light passed through. He shimmered like dust. The dawn would not bring rain. I hadn’t realized, until he bled, that I’d become his arbiter of change, his judgment of decease. It was because of me he ran. I owed it to him to keep running.

So we ran.

A hundred feet behind, they followed. They saw (only us, thought, felt) only us. We were their means of destination, their subject in matter. Smaller than they were, more human than they were: the mighty hand, downblow of crushing force, compression. They followed with one eye, seeing only, one, individual purpose, acclimation and death. It isn’t possible to explain how badly they scared me.

::::::::::::::::::::

Markus fell

with a stumble,

all in and down, to become the water. He’d been complaining for miles now of tiredness and decay, a weakness in the bones, but I thought he could go on, I really did.

The sky was quiet, and no wind blew, here in the

decease. An orange glow bubbled, hazing in the softness. No fish swam. A silvery glint overtook sharp edges.

Markus

broke the surface with a rush, descending.

He was a night-diver hurled onto secret depths, overwhelmingly small, and liquid clouds reached out to him, blanketing in ginger fields, golden sun, an

auburn flare, expunging heart and mind, to fade, to fade. Swirls masked him, and

more colors now: flaming gold, garnet fire, spears of purple, altogether an omniscient, ominous

swallowing, reaching to engulf him in warmth. I watched until he fell out of

sight, and long after, remembering his tiredness, too early to diagnose weakness, too early to contemplate grief, a quagmire of dimension. No fish swam. The stars would not

f

a l

l

for me.

::::::::::::::::::::

"This way!" James turned down an alley, past gravel strewn disgustingly, markings of pain. Sick trash laid careless, the defecation of a generation: gum-wrappers, paper cups, rusting pins. Arrows, chalked to the walls beside, pointed in opposite directions, misleading. The air grew thick with dirty mist.

I grabbed his arm. He turned, rasping. "We can’t go this way," I said. "There’s no way out, there’s no way…" Inside I made recreations, not remembering, and condemned us for fear, insidious certainty. I knew this place, this alley. We weren’t welcome here, by the spiders, the rats and oil; struck then by images of ailing growth, organic, fermenting skin, dappling parameters… what, by that smell, one gross, rotting carcass. I’d been here before. I knew the smell of death.

"What?" he said, "why?" but he knew, he must have known, because he knew this city, its every turn, its every bend and corridor. The maze had been made clear to him, to be manipulated. Manipulate it he did. He took shortcuts, he ran through hidden places. To him no place was hidden, no place too secret. Back here where it smelled like shit, where the spiders were.

"There’s no way out," I said. "We can’t get away."

"I know."

"Why did you bring us here?"

Though of course I knew.

They blocked out the alley- around the corner now, into sight. Unlike them, we

couldn’t go through walls. Unlike them, only one of us would leave. Standing motionless, they waited patiently, one eye ahead. Only the young die proud. Try as he might, he had never been young, he had never been.

He turned to shake my hand.

"It was nice running with you," he said.

Weird.

It was.

He took a step but

turned back.

"Oh yeah," he said, "I heard he’s ready to meet you."

"Who?"

"You’ll know," he said. "When the Chimera wants to meet you, you always know." He laughed, and he’d given up sweating. Sometimes, I wish I had the option.

"I guess I’ll see you later," I said.

"You won’t," he said, as he left.

And, of course, I didn’t.

I played

basketball with Travis again, for whatever reason. Sometimes I wish he’d just give up, but he never does. At least it makes me feel like a friend, for being gentle. I did a good job keeping secrets, even his own. He took baths in delusion. He’d seen so many commercials they were starting to rot away at his brain.

There we were,

in the beating sun. Ten minutes ago it hadn’t beat. It must have changed frequencies, making acclimation to the game. I hate basketball. Every time I dribble it wounds me. I think Travis

knew this. I wondered if he did.

"Someday," he said, "I’ll beat you."

He said this every day, but he seemed to believe.

And sometimes, I almost believed him too.

It’s

not as though I had any right to cut him down, any permission to justify statistics. Though of course, he wasn’t exactly on a role. Maybe someday he really would. But I doubted it.

Travis stretched.

"Someday," he said, "I’ll really beat you." Having gotten into a habit of repeating himself.

The sky was blue. The sun beat down.

"Hey dude." I looked to the sky, the beating sun.

"Yeah?"

"I’m not sure if you knew, but if I was a good friend, I would tell you Jacob was fucking your sister."

"Yeah," he said, "I know."

"You do?"

"Of course I do." He dribbled. "Whenever Jacob comes over, he disappears for fifteen minutes. Saying he has to take a piss, though course he doesn’t have to take a piss. And sometimes he disappears for fifteen more."

Oh. "I was just making sure."

"My sister’s a whore," he said.

"You probably shouldn’t generalize like that," I said. I wish he wouldn’t subjugate so carelessly. On some level, I felt mildly offended.

"My sister’s a whore," he repeated, "and I know that too."

He dribbled. The goddamn shitting pissing sun showering flame. The shitting pissing showering sun. The sky was blue. Travis dribbled, taking the word, bending its context by virtue of repetition.