Justin Taylor - The Gospel of Anarchy

Katy stumbles. One arm flails, wild. She goes to her knees, which sink in. Waves wash water over her legs.

Though the sea is frigid, positively North Pacific, she reaches down with cupped hands and draws some up. She points her face up at the dark empty sky, closes her eyes and spills ocean down upon herself. There’s no explaining how good this feels, even though the water is incredibly salty — so salty it burns. Merely closing her eyes wasn’t quite enough; she should have squeezed them shut. But she brings the cup of her hands back down to the water. Again. Again.

A bigger wave sweeps in and she’s knocked nearly over. The waves are getting bigger all the time now. Perhaps a storm is coming. And again as if thinking made it so, there’s a rumble of thunder. She looks around for lightning but sees nothing: no flash in the distance, no cloud-muted jag. Maybe she only imagined the thunder, but better to be safe. She stands up and walks out of the water, up the beach.

On a dune, Anchor is sitting cross-legged, the way that when she was a kid her teachers used to call Indian-style, holding a leather-bound book about the size of an encyclopedia volume for a second-rate letter, maybe K . She hasn’t opened it yet. The book has no writing on its front, back, or spine. It is shut with a metal clasp — brass, she thinks — but instead of a lock on the clasp there’s a button in the shape of a heart. She’s pressing it but it’s stuck and won’t budge. She looks up and sees Katy approaching, back from whatever it was she was doing down at the water’s edge. She’s glad to see her friend, and stands up in greeting.

“Maybe you’ll have better luck,” she says. Katy shrugs, gives her this weird wan smile, takes the book. She presses the heart-button and it pops right open — of course. This is fairy princess spirit mother pagan priestess Katy we’re talking about here. Who else should the enchanted book open for?

“What does it say?” Anchor asks, but Katy either doesn’t hear her or can’t answer; maybe can’t make words. It is brightening in night beach world, as if the moon had risen, and indeed it has. That dime light in the distance — she’d forgotten all about it, they both had — is centered in the sky now, larger by several orders of magnitude and blazing like an oculus at noon. It’s the brightest moon that Anchor’s ever seen. It burns her eyes even to glance. She looks away, back down at Katy, who is still staring at the book, though not, Anchor notices, turning pages. She walks around Katy and peers over her shoulder.

There are no pages in the book. It’s an unbroken surface, the inside, with no gutter in the middle, no valley where leaf curves in to spine. The inside of the book is a mirror.

When Anchor’s face enters the image in the mirror, Katy’s trance or whatever is broken. How long was she staring at herself like that? She snaps the book closed, holds the volume close against her body, and looks up at the moon, a disc of clean white fire, waxing huge. She feels Anchor draw close up beside her, afraid. The moon looks, Katy thinks, like the widening mouth of a tunnel, but she knows that what she sees is not an empty space, but rather a solid object or even a living thing. And of course they’re not approaching it — they’re not moving. It is the moon that moves, screaming silent down to greet them with its radiant kiss.

Anchor, bolt upright in the bed, crying: What the fuck oh my God Jesus fuck.

Katy, sleepily: What? Hey, don’t take His name—

Anchor, screaming: Fuck you what the fuck was that?

Thomas, kicking the unlocked door open: Katy, what did you fucking do to her?

Katy: I didn’t do anything. We had a dream.

Anchor: Shut up.

Katy: The same dream — right?

Anchor: What the fuck.

Liz, trying to get past Thomas, but failing: Katy, are you okay?

David, casually, from the living room: Hey, what’s going on?

Katy, to Anchor: We were there together.

Anchor: I, I—

Katy: And so you must know the same thing I know now.

Thomas: Katy, leave her the fuck alone.

Anchor, to Thomas: Hey, dude, you’re not my fucking father , okay?

Thomas: I just—

Anchor: No.

Liz: Thomas, let me through.

Thomas, hands in the air: You know what? Fuck every last one of you.

Liz, passing through the door space vacated by Thomas: Katy, are you okay?

Katy: I’m amazing. We both are.

Anchor, voice shaking: That was so fucked.

Katy, taking Anchor’s hands in her own: It’s okay. I know it’s scary, but it’s not a bad thing.

Liz, whining: What are you guys talking about?

David, from the living room: Everything cool in there?

Liz, to David: Fuck you.

Liz, to Katy: Baby, can you please let me in?

Katy: I’m sorry, but it’s up to Anchor.

Anchor: Fuck it. Let’s go look and see.

Here they come from the bedroom in a gosling line, Anchor out front, Liz behind her like a warden, and Katy — dressed now — behind Liz. David joins the procession and follows them out back.

(On the front porch, Owl and Selah are doing their best to pretend that none of whatever this is is actually happening, while Thomas, furious, has locked himself in his bedroom with the stereo cranked all the way up. Maybe this Propagandhi record will just blot everything out until he’s capable of dealing with his friends and/or lover without wanting to punch all their faces in. He punches the wall instead, which seems like it ought to be cathartic but isn’t, and now his fucking knuckles are bleeding.)

David and Liz have unstaked Parker’s tent and are dragging it off its plot of ground, trying to jostle as few of the items inside as possible in the process. Anchor is directing them in their work, her eyes growing wide as the newly exposed rectangle of earth is revealed to contain a small dark square that at some point was dug up and then refilled. “Fuck me,” she says, awestruck. The fear and anger that accompanied her awaking are apparently in recession now, or are maybe even gone. Her tears are dry. She looks excited, expectant, pumped.

“Should I look for a shovel?” Katy asks. “I don’t know if we have one.”

“I think we can do it with our hands,” Anchor says. “Shouldn’t be hard for all of us. It’s not in deep.” Katy is proud of the conviction in Anchor’s voice. They awoke from their vision both knowing this, and each knowing the other knew it, but Katy feels that she can’t be the one to lead here, so it really is all up to Anchor. She’s the key.

The four of them go to their knees around the patch and start to dig in the loose dirt. It doesn’t take long before they hit it. Liz’s fingers touch down on takeout bag plastic — they all hear it crinkle — and she digs a few more handfuls out, then grabs the bag and pulls. The bag is white and says THANK YOU 24 HOURS on it in red, with smiley face wingdings flanking the declaration on both sides. Its handles have been tied together to seal it off, keep the dirt and bugs and rain out. Liz does not attempt the knot at the top of the bag; she tears through the plastic. (This causes Katy to suck breath sharply in — she herself would have taken pains to preserve the artifact.) Inside the bag is a Mead composition notebook with a black-and-white marble cover. On the part where you’re supposed to write your name and what class you’re in, there’s a purple-Sharpie’d doodle. The A -inscribed arrow-shot heart they all know so well. Parker’s mark.

See them now on their knees in the leaves, dirt under their fingernails and racing eyes aglow, scalp-tickling sweat, bodies bunched in the tightest cluster, passing the revealed testament of their prophet from hand to urgent hand. Every moment of being is an apocalypse. Every instant the world is made anew.