“This area has always had problems,” he said. “Some of the buildings on that block were abandoned for a long time.”
“Yeah! Those were the ones with the best parties.”
“Well, they gave a hard face to those problems, and who would not want to make that go away? But to let it all sink, just like that… A world of terror has at its core the god of money and not the people.” Back in Priest Mode.
“You would have made a cool punk,” I told him.
“Thank you, Anthony.”
“But you know what, all the punks I know right now are trying to keep their tenant’s rights project from falling to shit. It’s too bad there are no entrenched cultural institutions for them to partner with.”
“Now, be fair.”
“It’s just a pity, that’s all! The people who should be at the heart of the world or whatever, I guess, are going to lose.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. I wondered if he’d ever kissed another man. I thought maybe I should find out.
“Christ and I are here for you, Anthony. We can fight the evil in this world together, through Him.”
That was a cheap shot because it would be true if I repressed EVERYTHING ELSE THAT I AM for people (not Jesus though because Jesus would LOVE me and we’d BALL).
From the dorm with the open window we could see and hear the tide crash over the rocks and cliffs and the water pulling closer to The Sin Seer and Our Lady.
“When we get back from waiting this out,” I said. “I will clean everything perfectly and fix it all up nice in time for Mass if you’ll please, please, please let me take Communion?”
He pulled his hand back to his side.
“That won’t be possible, unfortunately.”
I obviously was saying “why the fuck not” with my entire face and body cause then he started to back-peddle the whole being-a-person-in-front-of-me thing.
“Perhaps I should not be so candid with you. A change in tone is not a change in doctrine.” He stepped away. “We should get going sooner rather than later. I’ll meet you in my office in fifteen minutes?”
I said “SURE, FINE” to get him to leave me alone and then instead of packing I gathered my necessary supplies (herbs, balms, chalk, cookies and a juice box), raided the shed for an antique harpoon gun and spears, and barricaded myself inside The Sin Seer’s lantern room.
I was the Witch King of Trash Town. The Carefag Bitch That Gave a Fuck. I surveyed my surroundings for enemies. I gathered strength from the elements to better manifest my powers.
“Great uncaring mother of life,” I chanted to the ocean. “Drown us all in your watery tiddies. Flood this whole bitch-ass peninsula. Reduce this nightmare to crumbs. Return all our matter to the hungry universe.”
The waves covered most of the grounds and pressed against the hatch doors of Our Lady of Good Voyage. After half an hour or so, Father Gaspren hurled one open and trudged out into the storm searching for me. I loaded the harpoon and heaved it onto my shoulders, then leaned over the railings of the lighthouse tower.
“Anthony!” He cried. “We have to leave! Come down!”
“Why don’t YOU come up HERE and TRY AND MAKE ME!”
I aimed for his middle. The scrunch in his face shifted from concern to something else. He might not have heard me right, he might have got acid rain in his eyes, or maybe he was considering my challenge at face value and wracked with indecision. The water rose past his knees and kept rising, but he stayed planted where he was and just ogled and yawped like a complete chucklefuck.
“I know how you’re feeling!” He shouted, which FIRST of all, how DARE he? “Let’s redirect that rage!”
FUCK. NO. EVERYTHING had been taken from me and even the people who tried to help me took away my painkillers and my phone and sometimes my shoelaces. So SECOND of all, I was DONE being “redirected.”
I am completely, one-hundred-percent AWARE that if I destroy myself out of spite it’s neither confronting nor fixing my problems BUT! You know what? My problems are what I have left to work with! I’ve even tried heavy-duty therapy and hypnosis and exorcism and all they ever wanted to talk about was my childhood (ZZZZZ BORING) and “relationship patterns” (SNORE). There is ALWAYS A CATCH. Professionals yammer on about the “mental health crisis” in These Turbulent Times, like, GEE I WONDER if it has anything to do with most people being constantly in a state of desperation to sell their joy to oligarchs forever and ever? None of that goes away EVEN IF I could travel back in time and get un-fucked-up.
So I shouted back, “I GET TO KEEP MY RAGE!” I felt it everywhere in everything around me so I knew that I OWNED it and I knew that it was MINE. No more deals, no more feels! No more city, no more pity! My anger is me taking full custody over my body and my space FOR ONCE.
But of COURSE he didn’t have a DAMN thing to say to THAT so I added, “SUCK MY FUCK!!!”
Dude had NO idea who he was dealing with. At least I know what kind of BITCH I am.
THE NOTHING SPOTS WHERE NOBODY WANTS TO STAY
The veil is thin immediately outside the Salmon P. Chase Municipal Junior High School. A dense perimeter of flowering thorns grow two feet out from the exterior walls, and between the plants and the bricks is a zone dense with magical energy. Especially suggestible students and teachers can sense it; the stunted or abused into rupture, the intuitive, those in a state of spiritual drift. Like all liminal spaces, this one can be elusive, and sometimes it’s hungry, draws you near and lures you in. It gives, and it takes away.
The school building is newly renovated and the grounds heavily trimmed. It’s the drippy-snot-nose part of March in 2002, and the students file outside in assigned pairs because Mike Johnson—obviously—left a bomb threat on a stall in the yellow wing boy’s bathroom, but the teachers are officially telling the students there’s a fire drill. They have to be sensitive to the handful of earnestines who take every Sharpie pentagram and locker room firecracker stash at face value. The other four-hundred or so children know that this, like the “rabid dog” lock-downs, is entirely about someone and something else.
Jamie is the only student who has ever experienced the aftermath of public violence, and he wanders away from the crowd with AJ, leaving their assigned buddies to buoy in place with one another. AJ is sure a teacher can see them sneaking off into the bushes, in their ski coats and L.L. Bean super-sized monogrammed reflector tape backpacks, the clacking multitude of novelty key-chains on the zip pull, but nobody stops them. AJ is used to anticipating trouble, even though he’s with Jamie, and adults let Jamie do anything he wants now.
Out of view, the boys crouch over the buried treasures of their hiding place, Tupperware and pencil boxes stuffed full of contraband from the strip mall on the edge of town. The underpass and the mall parking garage are both reachable directly through a portal from the junior high school bushes. The portals present themselves when beckoned, but seem to possess a will of their own and something like a sense of humor—once they tried to get to the train station and it deposited them on the tracks with just enough time to dodge the approaching train.
Jamie believes this will is a reflection of his and AJ’s subconscious. AJ is not so sure anything that powerful could come from them.