Steve Katz - Kissssss - A Miscellany

That was beyond drashy, Dojie thought. Lenoci didn't even have a license.

Lenoci stood up and kissed Negger in front of everyone. All over the Trough, even looking in through the windows, brideys and gawks craned their necks, to see what they could see through her — Negger's leather pants, his silver buckle. Everyone gasped in unison as he grabbed her spinal case, tipped her horizontal, her small breasts swinging out of her tube-top, and he carried her out like a valise, while she waved at everyone, spreading big thrills with her beauty-queen smile.

That was the grandest drash, Dojie thought. Possibilities were endless with such a supreme puncture. She wanted one so bad. It was out beyond the beyond.

By the time he woke up the fog was so thick, Eukan could hardly see where he was. He folded his silver blankets and looked for a trail, or any landscape feature, even a tree, but everywhere he looked in every direction everything looked the same, white upon white. He stood trembling in his quandariness. Tears filled his eyes. Why had he tried this at all? Dojie had convinced him, but he didn't need to listen to her. That was a lesson, if he ever got out of here. Even if he decided to go home, he would never find his way in the midst of all this cottony white. White was stupid. White was the color of fear. This was what he deserved for rebelling against his family, and a family he actually loved. He had a huggy mom who was a good mom, and a dad who was always there to teach him something. His dad would have taught him something right now, would have helped him get out of here. He called out, “Hello! Anybody. Dad!” but he knew the cry was futile. His voice flattened back against his face, going nowhere. This whiteness was as if overnight the whole world had been erased, and turned to cold. Was it a world? What kind of a place was this? Not a sound in it, except his own hiccups that had begun to at least reassure him that he himself was present.

Then suddenly he felt a whump, and another whump, so hard it felt like the ground trembled. Two whumps. His hiccups were history. All was silent again. He stared into the whiteness at the place where he thought the whump had hit. A friendly smell, like garlic roasting, came from there. In the middle of the smell he thought he saw a light, not exactly a light, however, but as if some of the fog had condensed and brightened. It was so cold. He draped a silver blanket over his shoulders. The light disappeared. He took a step towards where it had been, and it appeared again. Then it was gone again, until he stepped towards it again. That was it, like a follow-me from a storybook. He knew what he was supposed to do. The whiteness was fear, and the light was hope. He was supposed to follow the light, and so he did, up a hill, across a long flatness, and up again. The glow kept itself just in front of him, disappearing when he stopped and moving faster if he ran to overtake it.

He followed on a steep climb, with no trail that he could see underfoot, and huge boulders, big as his house, that he had to scramble around or climb over. “Wait a few seconds,” he pleaded with the light. “I'm small. I can't go this fast.” The light pulsed rapidly, impatiently, as it waited for the boy. “Where are you taking me?” he asked, and the light flew ahead. “Wait a second,” Eukan told himself. “It's not taking me anywhere, I'm just following. Who told me to follow? Nobody. Why am I doing this?” Still nothing to see but fog, and a fine drizzle that soaked through his clothes. Eukan had to keep moving, to keep from shivering so much. That was why he moved, to forget how cold he was. He would never figure out how to get back ever again, wherever back was. It could be just a big circle he was moving in, like a joke played on him by this whatever it was. Who was laughing anywhere? Maybe nothing was there at all, just a figment. Then this fear grabbed hold, sank into his spirit. This wasn't real, this was a dream, and he was trapped inside, and he was tired, and he would never wake up. This was Hell, maybe his own special Hell, punishment for disobedience. He couldn't breathe. He had died; that was it, and this was Hell. But what had he done? What wrong had he done?

There was no one here to explain, no one to argue with. He had no choice but to follow this quirky light, just to keep going. Grandpa Hitchfred Alcock said, every time the old man took him on a hike, “Just put one foot in front of the other, one in front of the other. Then you'll get there.” That's what he did. Forget everything else. One foot, then the other foot, then the one foot, then the other. He stopped thinking about what lay ahead beyond the next step, and then the next one, just put himself forward following the light, whatever that was. He felt like a foolish boy, a very tired boy.

He didn't notice at what point the fog started to thin, but he felt an arm of the sun slant onto his shoulders from around the curve of the cliff. Could this have been the sun he was following all along? Maybe yes, maybe not. And this was his first thought in a while about the Tanoke tree, and how would he ever find the elusive Sterub spider? He grabbed a few gasps of breath, and looked down. How high he was, and what a narrow ledge. His back pressed against the wall of cliff that leaned over him as if it would press him into the abyss, and he looked down at the thickness of fog below. It seemed too solid, as if he could step out onto it. He worked his way along this narrowing ledge into the full belly of the sun. Its heat swamped him, steamed the moisture out of his clothes. There, not three feet away, was the double-leafed top of a Tanoke tree, a huge one, its two enormous green leaves, dimly spotted with pink and violet, spread as if in welcome, the spore pod thrust from the center, ready to launch.

He could see that other trees in the tight little valley had already launched their pods, and dropped their leaves; and, in the distance, one launched right there in front of him, like a rocket thrust skyward, a sound like the tolling of a bell, the pod flying deep into the valley, leaves dropping. The exhilaration he felt at this sight was almost too much for his young body to sustain. He had to stop trembling. Then he felt another kind of fear, that he could be too late, that he'd better get to work on a tree before the pod launched, and that maybe he really didn't know enough about this to do it right. Maybe he was too young and too small. He took out his special heat blade, and held it in the sunlight till it was too hot to touch, then launched himself off the ledge, onto the leaf, and he slid down to where it joined the top of the tree. His flesh was green in the reflected light. He looked out into the valley, now totally free of fog, a whole valley of Tanoke trees. Who from Monisantaca had ever seen something like this? Who but the Etatreh peoples? He leaned back against the pod and started to cut. This could go any second. He felt the giddiness of someone finally getting to do what he always wanted to do. Within the leaf, he was cutting, and he was giggling. The cut went so slowly. He had to be careful and patient, to cut without gashing. He paused to heat the blade again. Soon there would be the Sterub spider to think about. Where would he ever find one? But forget it for now. Now he was cutting. He wished Ajieck were here to see him. He was Eukan Severe, and he was at the top of this Tanoke tree, and he was cutting leaf.

From his office window Sitund Monfahf could see the whole of the Nealsty Burkick marketplace, with the Bysbu volcano behind it in the clouds. He looked directly at the Monisantaca Shoe Riser, the Heap, where he occasionally saw his wife scrambling like a tiny monkey in the distance. How could that monument, which seemed so ridiculous in its conception, now be so moving? Sometimes he would sit and daydream at his desk, just looking at it, and he would feel all these emotions well up, tears in his eyes. Even before Yerml Perset volunteered to work on it, he had all these feelings. What was it? Just some shoes heaped up into the shape of a hat. But it hit him, it always swept something off the shelves of his heart. It was an emblem of loss, of all the people who had worn those shoes, many of them now gone forever. Now that he was having all these feelings for his sweet wife, his son, his family, he thought of all those families whose shoes rested forever in the Shoe Riser. He was so high and became so emotional that he had to pull the shade during meetings, for fear of suddenly breaking out in sobs.