Kyle Muntz - Voices

a symbol, it leered, intimidating.

It threw

avalanches at me, and snow. I couldn't get to the stream

because it was frozen, and I couldn't go down

because

I was frozen too.

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

I found her in the darkness, but she ran from me.

:::::::::::::::::::: I had dreams about visiting the subway. Somewhere within I'd always known I was a summoner of trains. They smiled to me, with two lights. The subway was the circulatory system of the city. Trains were its blood, pumping steal, compartments of flesh. The gods of the subway only came out at night. Somehow, many of them knew me.

From outside, the subway was a gateway into darkness, with a set of stairs leading into it, rails to keep you from falling. Inside the platform was dark. There were advertisements on the wall, featuring beautiful women. They had nothing human about them, no sense of the fallible. Square tiles and coldness, lines in the tiles, each magnified the sound of footsteps. If there were a ghost conductor, he would probably hear me.

The lights came on. The train was already ready. In restraint, like a gigantic, wormoid arrow, it coiled unsleeping, polished steal in the belly of the artificial monstrosity. Most probably I would be the only passenger.

I sat down. My train was remarkably comfort-able. If I hadn't been on a quest I might have written poetry.

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

I sat on my hill staring at the stars. Unmoving as a consequence of perspective, barely burning, they sat buried in graves of dark matter and blackness. No, they would never fall for me. Each possessed its own significance, but lost itself in the trappings of sky, paling comparison: such, the consequence of context, of togetherness and implications, they defeated each other, not some advocate of silent burning. They spoke to me implicitly by making cerebral patterns in the light.

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

He had me walking along a long carpet. The carpet was red (velvet maybe, to make

awkward guesses, though I've never claimed to be an encyclopedia of material), and

there was nothing to see beyond it. Very possibly if I stepped off I would fall. The

void is not a good place to spend vacation, the void is not conductive to the

expression of truth. Such spaces between the real: useless in themselves, that which

isn't. The only ones who care to go there are the dead, and they don't care.

He gave me

a golden light at the end of the carpet, unflattering. Obviously he had a

fondness for parody. If I'd had had an inclination to the obtuse, the slapstick and

crude, I might have found it

amusing.

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

Two weeks after she left, I found Veronica's body slumped in a dumpster somewhere. In death she defied description. I wished we'd run away to the desert.

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

The conductor was a nice old man despite the fact that I could see through him. He had a voluminous white mustache that danced as he spoke. In bulk, he filled the compartment, and by extension a very large sterile blue uniform. As we spoke parts of the train spiraled into smoke. Sitting in the back cars, too distracted to write poetry, I'd found this pass-ably interesting. On some seats could be seen the smoking remnants of passengers. I could hear the echo of conversation (an auditory dimness), not to mention the sounds of shuffling. Out the window there was very little: scenery intermingling blackness. I had no idea where we were going. Phantom trains are famous for having mysterious destinations. Mine was no exception.

"Hey," I said. With both hands, he turned knobs, switched switches, pulled pulleys. I got the impression it was a decorative gesture, for my sake. His hat sat steadily perched, the same blue as his uniform.

"Any idea where we're going?"

"The train decides these things."

"This your first run?"

"And last," he said. "Someone up high must think you're really important." "Yeah," I said. "I am."

I stood against the wall, still watching windows. Brief flickers: the park at

midday, the inside of a college student's apartment, a department store, alleyways, cafes where not even the poets understand poetry. Ripples in the wall. Unsurprisingly, very few things in the train were not the color of metal.

"I used to have a family," he said. "A long time ago."

"Are they still around?"

"My grandchildren are."

"Oh," I said. "I'm sorry."

"It's not so bad."

"I'm glad."

"Sometimes though-" I don't think I'd noticed before now, but he was smoking a

very large, very brown cigar, puffing clear smoke- "if I ever had the chance to talk to the Big Man, if there is such a thing, I would tell him just to get rid of the whole thing."

"Death?"

"Life. It doesn't work very well."

"Oh," I said. "Okay."

"There's not really so much to miss, when you think about it." Outside the

window I saw the flash of a basketball court. It reminded me of Travis. I hadn't thought of him in a very long time. "Just because people tell you there is, most people do. It's another one of society's lies. Barbecues, television, hours every day on a train. It's not so great. And neither are the people."

I itched my left arm.

"I outlived my wife," he said. "And my daughter."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said. "I didn't love them. And you aren't really sorry. You just

think you are, because people say you ought to be." I didn't interrupt him. He was right. "These things get so much clearer after you're gone," he continued. "Before, I was a very happy man."

"Do you ever see them anymore?"

He said he didn't care, which made sense.

"Just make sure wherever you're going," he said, "after you get there don't think

it matters so much what you do. Happiness, sadness, love and death. You're nothing but the echo of an echo. We all learn that one day."

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

When

I reached the end of the carpet, I found him waiting for me. Immediately I didn't like him. He shoes shined too bright, his teeth gleamed with too much whiteness. He didn't understand that suits and greased hair aren't cool anymore. In the true spirit of self servitude, he sat on a huge golden throne, burnished, that in comparison made him look small, but functioning as an extension of himself, meant to act as a signifier of magnificent golden presence. He wore sunglasses, and tipped them to me. I bet if he were to refer to them, he would call them shades .

"I'd just like you to know," he said, "that every time you met her, no matter what you thought, she was never alone." In one hand he held a long thin black cane. At one end it had a sculpture of something."I just figured I should give you a fair warning," he said, flashing eyes, "because I'm a fair guy, sometimes. That I'm coming for you." His suit had very few creases in it.

"It's fine," I said. "I'm a fighter."

"I've also heard that you're a liar."

"You're right," I said. "I am ."

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

I ran back for her in the forest, almost falling in the mud. Above, in the canopy, leaves cut a lattice through the moon, and drooped over the path, off heavy wet branches. Inhalation sheared paths in shadow. In one hand I held my palm, in the other my camera. It hurt without: diatomic, a soul deep splitting, way down where I wasn't me anymore, inside; optiod linkage, plastic and glass, tying me to me, the absence of my own shadow. In the dark, I doubt she noticed.

I broke through the woods, parting dark green curtains. Orange flashes, clouds of unfiltered smoke. There were no sirens, but residual eruptions refracted the flow, taking time and replaying it. Where I was, if I could be here. Hearing sounds, kissing beautiful girls in the rain. I leaned against a tree, to catch my breathing. She wasn't there, but she was still leaving.