“There were giant quakes because of the ground the Great Mother hath cursed, and deep trenches cut the earth and mountains lifted up.”
Chapter 1
Taylor stood at her bedroom door. She told herself she didn’t care; that she was ready to leave it all behind. Everything she needed was stuffed inside her backpack, stolen from an army surplus store two years prior, when she was barely fifteen.
She held her boots by the laces and tread lightly down the hall, past the room where her foster parents slept. Experience had taught her which floorboards would creak and which would carry her in silence.
Taylor glanced at her legal guardians, unconscious and with their backs to each other. Fuck them, she thought, though she knew they weren’t unkind. Of course, they were as strict as the others she’d lived with. They seemed like fetishists, too, in the way they collected kids to flaunt at the grocery store and church. But she hated them the most for keeping her alive.
It was their fault her wounds had healed; her liver hadn’t failed; her heart kept on beating.
Taylor had resigned herself, temporarily, to waking up each morning. Restless and ambivalent, she still planned for things to do. One involved the family computer.
She approached the living room, where an iMac stood atop a small desk. Taylor nudged the mouse and brought the screen to life. A faint glow lit her hands and face. Her chest tightened as she imagined being caught and offering her excuses: late-night homework, insomnia, an addiction to internet porn.
Taylor felt a phantom stare behind her, and glanced across her shoulder. The hall was dark. No shadows moved there. No one was coming. No one cared.
She went back to work, and followed the instructions of a hacker she’d met online. In terms of security, the website for Foster Care, Adoption, and Family Services wasn’t exactly armed. The admin page went down easy, granting her access within seconds. She scrolled through folders and files until she came across her name. Below it: an address where she’d never lived.
Taylor clicked print.
Her body tensed. She stared into the hallway, still dark, as the printer whirred and spit out paper.
Fifteen seconds later, Taylor had the paper folded within a pouch inside her backpack.
She opened the living room window, put her boots on, and leapt outside.
***
Taylor stood beneath a flickering street lamp and watched the light pool around her feet, expand, and disappear in repetition. She fished her pocket for a plastic bag, roughly the size of her thumb. The bag housed a pill she’d taken from a boy at school. He’d been hesitant to hand it over given how little money she had. But she’d promised him a blowjob. He’d made threats to what would happen if she didn’t follow through.
Taylor wasn’t going back to school, though. The boy who threatened her would never see her again.
She opened the bag on to her tongue. Swallowed the contents. Felt free.
***
Taylor walked, unsure how long or far. City lights guided her, shifting in her vision like fallen stars bleeding into distant landscapes.
She was nowhere near downtown, her destination but not really. It was just a place she thought she’d go, because she’d seen kids her age asleep there, on the sidewalk, with no one to bother them.
Taylor’s legs ached. She sat on a concrete ledge to rest. She looked around at the dilapidated houses, some with porch lights buzzing. For no reason she could name, she began to feel afraid.
I don’t care, she said silent, and worked to convince herself that she’d welcome any trauma.
A gust of wind shook her gently. When it died, she heard a cacophony of voice and song, and a steady bass rattle.
Taylor glanced up. A block or two away, she saw a two-story shack of a house bursting with light and energy. She stood and went toward it, a moth to a flame.
***
Taylor arrived at the house at the same time as several strangers. They showed no sign of hesitation as they invited themselves inside. So, Taylor went behind two young women and through the front door.
Music masked most other sound. Taylor recognized the song from a classmate’s phone and pictured the artist: a lean, pink-haired boy with face tattoos. He’d been a hashtag the day he’d died from mixing fentanyl with Xanax.
Taylor wondered what pill she’d swallowed and whether it would put her in a grave. The possibility excited her. But she was faded. Tired too. Nothing surfaced but an itch that she clawed with paint-chipped nails.
She wandered through the crowd of bodies, each young like hers. On occasion, she thought she recognized a face. But if she stared, the features lost their distinction, became fuzzy and distorted.
Overwhelmed by pharmacology, Taylor leaned against a wall.
She preferred to be inside, preferred it to the street, even though she’d run away in part to be uncaged beneath the stars. But she liked how it felt to be alone within the crowd.
From the corner of her eye, Taylor noticed an opened door. A thin, unshaven boy stepped through. Beyond him, she spied a toilet and bathtub. She swayed as she approached the bathroom.
Before she could cross the threshold and step inside, an arm thrust out to block her. The limb belonged to a girl, maybe seventeen. The girl’s style was some amalgamation of punk and hip-hop; her neon makeup and patch-dyed hair stung Taylor’s eyes and seemed to project a kind of danger.
“There’s a line,” said the girl.
Taylor saw no structure to the crowd. But she could barely speak and had no desire to put up a fight. She allowed herself to be pushed along and washed up beyond the narrow hall.
Trailing backward, she tripped and fell, and landed on the bottom steps of a staircase. The edges nicked and prodded her, but she felt herself uninjured.
She stayed a while on the steps, and observed whatever passed at eye level. Ripples flowed beneath pants and skirts. Taylor couldn’t tell which was flesh or hallucination.
Her head rolled back, weighted by casual exhaustion. Her body followed. She lay at an angle, across ascending stacks of wood.
Several steps above, Taylor noticed a barrier of criss-crossed plywood and electrical tape strung between the banisters. A spray painted message bled across the wood: KEEP OUT.
The paint was reflective, maybe metallic, and shimmered in the light of Taylor-didn’t-know-what. She believed that she could hold the shimmer, that it was separate from the paint and light and interaction between the two. She tried to grasp the immaterial flare, but her hand passed through and knocked against a thin plank. Her thrust was enough to send it crashing down.
Taylor saw the collapse as a kind of invitation. She could push aside the fallen wood and slide her body upward, beneath the remaining barrier, to the top of the stairs, where a black pit awaited her, an entrance to the unknown.
***
Upstairs, Taylor stood in the dark, her hands extended forward. Bass thumped beneath her feet.
She took a step and nearly tripped over a mattress, and so crouched low to search for other obstacles that might be strewn about.
She felt better on the floor, which pulsed and vibrated. For a while, she lay flat, so that her body filled with sound.
But an uncomfortable pressure bit at her, a thin and curving strand, like a sleeping snake turned to stone. Taylor ran a hand along her belly until her fingers brushed against a rubber tube. She pushed herself to her knees and examined the thing that had brought her some discomfort.
Enough time had passed for her eyes to adjust to the dark. And her pupils were dilated from whatever drug she’d swallowed. She was able to clearly see the orange extension cord that lay across the floor.
Taylor, a childish explorer, bored and enamored by her surroundings, tugged at the cord to see what it would do. She sensed movement near the far wall, but saw no electrical outlet nor any connecting device. The extension cord appeared to travel through a hole and disappear.
In the opposite direction, the cord connected to a power strip beside the mattress, slightly off from the room’s center. The strip had two sockets filled by plugs; the cables ran to a lamp and old television with a boxy exterior, cracked open to reveal its circuitry.
Beside the mattress, she noticed a plastic bin full of neatly folded t-shirts and boxer briefs. And beside the bin, a half-dozen shoes: some Nikes and a pair of thrashed Converse high-tops.
An odor from the shoes struck Taylor. She leaned away and toppled into a pile of books. She turned her head into a paperback and grazed her cheek against its cover. A faded monster framed the title, which she had trouble reading because her eyes kept shifting focus.
Who lives here? thought Taylor. The underwear, shoes, and smell seemed adolescent and pre-masculine. Her mind sorted through a hundred non-existent teenage boys. She pictured him, a carousel of mutation – green eyes, brown, then blue. The designer shoes and underwear seemed at odds with all the rest. Until she thought of every poor kid she’d known, her temporary foster siblings who lived one way but collected artifacts to suggest dreams of something better.
Taylor tried to dream.
She imagined herself as someone’s daughter, kissed on the forehead by a yuppie old man. She hated him even though he wasn’t real. And her mother? What stupid cow would agree to grow his brat inside her?
Her dream bore anger inside her chest and belly. She spat at every mother and father, especially hers, for forcing life into the world. But she was alone and on her back, and so the spittle fell on to her chin.
Taylor’s muscles strained. She felt as if she’d burst, and grasped for ways to pull herself outside her skin. But her fingernails were short. There was nothing sharp in close proximity that might flay her outer shell.
She fought against the pressure in her chest until she became exhausted by the forces that toiled inside her. Her mind pulled back, despite her efforts, into a calming vision or memory she couldn’t place in time:
A fenced-in garden.
In the distance, towering evergreens.
At her feet, a vine of ripe tomatoes.
The smell of mint, sage, and soil.
Cold air infiltrated the strange, mundane, and somehow sacred space.
Before the vision ended, a long piece of fabric danced before her in impossible, ghost-like ways.
Taylor opened her eyes and felt at odds with whatever place had briefly stolen her away, even though she knew the vision had graced her before. She’d wandered the garden in her sleep. Each time, upon waking, she’d felt a kind of loss. But what could she mourn about a place she’d never known?
The water-stained ceiling above her replaced her dream. She lay still. Her anger subsided, her agitation too.
She felt moved by necessity: a swollen bladder she’d ignored too long. Though she briefly resigned herself to pissing where she lay, she still knew shame, which thrust her upwards to waver in the dark.
Taylor glimpsed the outline of a door, and made her way over and pushed it open. It wasn’t the door she’d entered through. Instead, it revealed a rusted tub, toilet, and mirrored cabinet above a sink. The fact that Taylor, in need of a bathroom, had discovered one by accident struck her as serendipitous. She began to contemplate the secret order of the universe and other mysteries outside her grasp. She laughed, a single grunt, at the idea that a force beyond her understanding would grant her a place to piss and shit.
Taylor pulled her pants and underwear down and took her place on the toilet. She leaned forward, face resting on her knees, and nearly slept while urine trickled between her legs.
***
Minutes later, maybe an hour, Taylor stood and found her reflection in the mirror above the sink. A layer of grime covered the glass, so that Taylor saw her face within a haze marred by specks of dirt and toothpaste splatter. She seemed uglier than usual, but also different, easier to look at. Her features appeared neither human nor ghost but something in between. But she ached in normal ways and felt weighted to the floor. Her drug euphoria had faded.
The sensation of herself, unclouded, was uncomfortable at best. She searched for a way out; opened the mirrored cabinet in hopes to find some medication. Her recent foster parents, at least, had stored the occasional painkiller alongside their toiletries.
Taylor sifted through the litter of objects behind the mirror: nail clippers, a used razor, and a tall glass that housed a toothbrush and tubes of topical antibiotics.
She tipped the glass forward to get a better look inside. Near the lip, the glass was slick with vaseline. Her fingers slipped. The glass shattered on the floor.
Taylor stooped low to handle what she’d broken, to hide the shards from sight rather than clean them up. She sliced her finger in the process. Blood beaded on her skin. Soon, her palm was full of pooling red.
Taylor stared at her skin, split and turning color, and knew she hadn’t needed to run away for what she searched for.
“From the dust came woman and man, and they had dominion over all the earth, and over every creeping thing... The first woman took her husband’s seed and had many offspring and they multiplied across the earth.”
Chapter 2
Kaidan pulled on the last of his clothing as he exited the car. His crotch felt wet and swollen. Saliva slid between his fingers and the zipper he tugged along his pants.
The car door slammed shut. Kaidan tried to look in, through the window, but saw only reflections on tinted glass, the street light behind him and his own silhouette.
Hollow disappointment grew inside him. He’d made a mistake. Allowed his sex to take over and turn affection into trust. Now, a barrier stood between him and the troll who’d promised cash.
Kaidan thought of slamming his fist through the window and prying his wage from the old man’s wallet. But his brain still bathed in the aftermath of orgasm. He couldn’t bring himself to violence.
He spat on the sidewalk. The john’s nicotine kiss lingered. He couldn’t wait to be home and brush it from his mouth.
Kaidan heard the car’s engine roar to life and resigned himself to leave; turned his back and began walking. Though, a mechanical whir cut through the engine’s noise and stopped him in his tracks. He peered across his shoulder to the car’s window rolling down.
Dashboard light edged the john, so that his wrinkled form appeared alien and majestic. He raised his hand to reveal several wadded bills.
Kaidan went for the cash.
The john took hold of him and groped at unflexed muscles.
“Thanks,” said Kaidan. “That was, uh, fun.”
The john blew a kiss and shifted his car into drive.
Kaidan lowered his head as the car disappeared behind a crumbling structure, fenced-off and graffitied. He counted the money. It was less than he’d agreed to. Still, he felt lighter. He imagined his future, as he often did in the moments after work, when he was left alone and drained of sperm. He would live in a house, far away, with large rooms lined with windows. His home, his life, would be illuminated.
***
Kaidan heard a muted thumping in the distance, and rounded a corner to the block where he lived.
A few kids milled around the sidewalk and talked amongst themselves. Several others stood on the porch of a duplex that Kaidan rented with his friends. They smoked cigarettes and laughed, and rubbed their ash out on the railing.
The front door opened. Bodies flowed in and out.
He approached his home under the blurry watch of strangers.
***
Kaidan entered the cramped space that was his living room. His roommate’s cheap speakers rattled bass that moved his feet.
His housemate, Alex – mostly skin-and-bones and faded black from neck to ankles – appeared beside him with a half-empty can of beer.
Alex shouted to be heard above the song. “Where you been?”
“Out,” said Kaidan.
Alex shrugged off the non-information. “Crickett said we should have people over. We thought you’d be cool with it.”
Kaidan began to say something. Didn’t.
“I made a sign, so no one fucks with your stuff.”
Kaidan glanced to the staircase, where a pile of garbage had been nailed, staked, and propped against the steps and banister. He saw the value of his home, which didn’t belong to him in any real way, diminish further.
A pale-faced boy dropped a mug. Shards scattered near Kaidan’s feet. Pungent vodka splashed across the floor and seeped into the boards, dirty and worn down.
Alex laughed. Kaidan took the can from Alex’s loose grip, gulped beer, and laughed too, so that a frothy spray expelled from his lips.
“What the fuck?” said Alex, his face misted.
Kaidan raised the can, a toast to nothing.
He headed for the stairs.
***
Kaidan went into the dark of his room and turned a knob on his lamp. He heard a click but saw no change to his surroundings.
The bulb was dead, he thought at first, until he noticed the extension cord unplugged and curled in ways he didn’t recognize. His paperback novels, which he’d stacked in alphabetical order, were toppled in a pile beside his bed.
He replugged the cord and brought his lamp back to light. The corners of the room were exposed to him. Each stood bare.
One of his housemates’ friends must have invaded the space, done their damage, and left.
Kaidan lifted the sheet from his mattress. There was a slit in the bed, barely noticeable, where he reached forearm-deep to retrieve a tin box. The box held coins and wads of bills, wrapped in rubber bands.
Kaidan pulled his night’s earnings from his pocket and placed them in the box, then returned his savings to its hiding place at the center of his bed.
He closed his eyes and lay atop his little treasure, and let the floor’s vibrations rock him near to sleep. But a thud sounded nearby. Not from below, where the party still simmered, but to the right of him, just beyond the boundary of his room.
Kaidan stood and neared the bathroom, where he felt the noise had come from. “Who’s there?”
No one answered.
Kaidan kicked the door and balled his fists as if to fight, but found no attacker. Just a body beside the tub, knees bent to its chest, one hand gripping the opposite wrist. A young face, pale and feminine, barely touched the pool of blood that expanded all around.
