Justin Taylor - The Gospel of Anarchy

She puts the journal away and just sits there, a little pissed at herself but still more or less enchanted with the beauty of the place, etc. A few minutes go by, then she gets the journal back out, just to doodle or whatever. She draws a black widow, a rose, and on its own page, the A for anarchy inscribed in a heart shot through with an arrow that is also the crossbar of the A: Parker’s symbol, and the unofficial “logo” for their group of friends.

It’s getting on toward the time when the park closes. Probably she could stay if she wanted to — is the ranger really going to come all the way down here and check that it’s empty? — but it’ll be a long ride home, and there’s people coming tonight, and her still without anything to say to them. Plus she’s curious what happened with David and the raiding party. Better then that she doesn’t dawdle. She puts the journal and pen away, starts back up the stairs. It’s always such a drag having to leave this place.

It’s a few minutes before six and the living room is filled with the salvage of David’s life. Everyone’s sitting around on the floor, picking out what they want, or what’s salable. Liz is methodically checking the backs of about four hundred CDs for scratch marks. Open the case, pop the disc out, hold it to the light, put it back in the case, decide which pile it goes in. Katy enters, a sweaty mess. She’s tired from her ride, plus sapped by the heat of the day, so she gives perfunctory kisses to her girlfriend and her boyfriend then makes for the shower, which is in Fishgut’s only bathroom, which is at the head of the small hallway and shares a wall with the kitchen.

When she’s done she dries herself off with one of the four or five towels crammed on the rack, a royal blue one, fixes it around her waist, walks topless into the living room and announces that she’s taking a nap, if that’s cool with everyone. Anchor, supine on the couch, peeks out through the keyhole in the hoodie drawn tight over her face. “Huh?” she says, in this totally cute voice, like a puppy yawning.

“Aw, honey,” Katy coos. “What did you do last night?” Anchor shrugs. “Honey, why don’t you come lay down in a real bed?”

Without a word, Anchor negotiates herself up off the couch and sort of gingerly stumbles between the stacks of CDs, past Katy, and straight into the bedroom. Thomas and Liz, meanwhile, are sharing a look about five pages long. It amazes Thomas — not Katy’s audacity, which he’s long since accustomed himself to, but the weird way in which he and Liz are allies. If any of this registers with David, he doesn’t let on. Katy, of course, catches all of it, but she honestly just wants to curl up with Anchor and sleep — she’s in her nurse mother mode now — not that she’s going to explain herself to these two, and furthermore, not that it would be any of either of their business if she did have her mind on the other thing. Let them wallow in their negative energy, if that’s what suits them; we’re all freemen and freewomen here. “So okay,” she says to whoever’s listening, presumably David, though Selah — on the opposite couch from where Anchor was, at work on a new hemp necklace — might be giving her half an ear. “Somebody wake us in like, an hour and a half.”

In the bedroom, she takes the towel off, gives herself a once-more-over with it, then lets it fall to the floor. She climbs into bed naked and sidles up against fully clothed Anchor, who will be the little spoon. The women drift to sleep, together, almost immediately, and find themselves still together in a dream where they’re both standing — more like floating, actually — in some directionless, depthless, pitch-dark nowhere.

“Are you okay?” Katy asks.

“Yeah, I think so,” Anchor says. Katy reaches out through the nothing and squeezes her friend’s hand.

A faint light appears in the ungaugeable distance. Or has it been there and they’re only now noticing? And what is that small bright thing that wobbles but does not waver? It’s like a pinprick in a sheet at first, but then it’s more like a small coin. Before, Katy felt like they were steady, or at a mild drift, and thought that the dark was water or it was space or it was solid — that it held them, in any case. Only now does she realize, in the moment that she thinks to herself that they could start running (or is it in fact the moment before she thinks it? or is it in fact the moment after, as if wanting made it so?) — only now does she realize that they are not afloat, nor suspended, nor buoyant at all, but rather standing on warm ground.

Anchor squeezes back and Katy knows they understand each other. They release hands and start to run.

How long have they been running for? Anchor doesn’t know. She doesn’t get winded easily, and running in this world is so much easier than running in the other — the one she knows is her world, i.e., the real one — even though right now she can’t exactly picture it. From where she’s presently at, actual life is as hazy and scattered a memory as the last hour of last night’s dumb party. Right now it’s like only this running is real. She can feel sweat beads forming at her hairline. She could run forever, she thinks. The light doesn’t get closer or farther away. It doesn’t flicker or change again.

The laws of this place operate — and she’s sure that there are laws here — in a way that Anchor cannot grasp. But she’s got an inkling that she trusts: this world may be a dream, but the ground isn’t. It is real. Maybe it wasn’t before but now it is. It’s getting more real, in fact. Not just dirt now; sometimes the crunch of a leaf, and dull bursts of pain when she comes down hard on a small rock. She has no shoes on and is pretty sure Katy doesn’t, either. She thinks they’re in some kind of forest. She worries: What if there’s a hole or something? What about animals? What if one of them slams into a tree? Oh, but the trees all seem to be far from them. They are dim shapes. She sees them coming and skirts them easily. She does not, of course, stop running, or take her eyes off the light. Somewhere behind her Katy is wheezing and puffing, struggling to keep up with her faster, fitter friend.

What made her think this was a forest? It’s not anymore, if it ever was. Those trees, or those shapes she thought were trees, are gone now, replaced by shrubs and outcroppings of rock. The ground is different, too. The dirt is getting sandier, soon will be sand. There are hills in the close distance, mountains farther off. Desert again? She still doesn’t know much about where they are, the world is still mostly shadow, but she knows this: the forest has given way to the valley.

So the obvious question is: where does the valley go?

On and on they run, and she can feel it in her lungs now. The air has a crispness to it, a chilly bite. Her legs are getting tired: thigh muscles, calves. So there are limits, even in this world. And so how must Katy be feeling? When she next steps down, Anchor’s feet plunge into wet sand. She keeps her eye on the dime of brightness that sits so low on the horizon, as if balanced on that thin dark line. Is it alone the thing that lights this place up — what meager, miserly light that there is? What’s that sound she hears? That rushing. That crash that repeats and repeats, instances of crash and rush running into one another, becoming indistinct auditory mush: an unending roar.

The salt in the air makes Katy feel alert. Her legs are screaming for mercy; her lungs are tied in bows. This night feels as if it’s lasted a thousand years already. It may last another, could keep going on and on. Or it may end quite suddenly. Either — any — way would make sense. There will be some confusion and then they’ll be — well, somewhere familiar. Wherever they were before here. She can’t remember it just now, but she knows it was somewhere, and furthermore that they’ll know it when they see it, i.e., when they get back. Katy’s certain. But here they need to focus, because dream or no dream, whether time is short or long, they have run out of land, are inside of the tide line, down in the runny stuff, where pools gather and fill with colorful inchfish that wash in to feed and then back out again, tiny aquaverses existing for mere seconds, lifetimes on lifetimes, obliteration and rebirth.