The Cordova Book Fire, Resumed
I wasn’t with Jackie now. I was -
“Breathe…active thoughts on your breath, and let the events as they happened scroll through your passive mind.”
I had learned breath was like the dial on a reticule. It decided the aperture of your focus. Lose control of your breath and you’re suddenly dialed in on the unhelpful details. Worried about the wrong things. My scope zoomed in on the deep velvet of pure mind space, zoomed out as my carriage relaxed and distractions dissolved into static tickling the inner ear. Before long there was only the silence that rests on the other end of a gasp, and soon after unstable geometries began [surrecting]; platonic forms, primary colors, emerging order.
A black sky needled with stars, unsheathed and sharp like murderous debutants. The Earth was the bruised purple of cheap cough syrup.
“Good.” I whipped around.
That wasn’t my voice. I was back with Dr. Trust. But we definitely weren’t in his office. In my periphery sidewalks phased into focus, then powerlines above me; squat buildings and clipped trees and -
I stopped, starving for sense as to what I saw. The doctor was polygonal, like a computer sprite that had hit a hiccup, and half his body was disappeared completely inside a block of pure night. The other was animated, a clunky rectangular arm sheeted in clunky rectangular white gesturing while he spoke. Trust, always saying things.
By this time I was struggling to inhale again. It was like watching an entire person download or melt in reverse. I dialed back in just as he was telling me, for the third or fourth time now, “breathe.”
The air caught my pipes like a shot of clear concealing glass splinters and I choked as he began rendering, depixelating, his skin texture and the weave of his lab coat refining into smooth detail. The obscured half began to take form from out its angular cocoon, clicking through phases from blocks to complex polygons until he at last looked like himself. He smiled in apparent relief then gestured with his chin to look behind me.
Honey waves of curlicues and static formations slid across the Beasts’ surface, like their skins were broadcasting messages encoded in obscure shapes. Little designs, diamonds and ovals, as well as intricate patterns I didn’t have names for folded in and out of one another, like a cardiograph fountaining in all directions. Like a Times Square news ticker liberated from lateral movement, the crawling symbols exploring everywhere. My thighs felt rubbery and weak.
“We’re back - the final sequence of events that ended with your institutionalization. Facing pending trials both formal as well as in the court of public opinion. It’s taken a while for us to get here. But that conversation you had with young Mr. Savage proved to be of therapeutic benefit.
I tried recalling the half hour of meditation before. There had been suggestive probes into our impromptu tete-a-tete massaging me to revisit what I had told the boy.
One hundred and thirty (!) pushups later, Jackie had sat with scrawny knees hugged to heaving chest and gasped, "It’s gonna be alright.” Closing my eyes I said nothing, sitting against the adjacent wall, in the twilight of having finally pieced together what happened those months ago.
Somehow, I was certain he was right. And just as certain I knew I needed to act. I had approached the next day with resolve - Candice remarked I appeared much more present during Group. And Trust was finally able to pry into the kernel I’d been protecting. In the night sky above I saw little Jackie’s form - sailing on a mighty elbow drop - flash through the dim heavens before dispelling into glinting vapors. Thanks kid. I owe ya.
Exhaled. "But how are you here?“
"I’ll explain - later. I’d first like to make sure our immediate circumstances remain stable. For that, I need you invested in keeping it that way. I want you to take me on a tour, explain to me what I’m seeing.” Over his head the voluminous rings hovered, gleaming. I walked toward the nearest huddle of Small Ones, their shoulders hunched, neon flaring through their syrupy bodies. With heads facing one way and torsos turned another they looked painfully distracted. Behind me Trust hm’d audibly. I had no idea what he could be thinking. I still wasn’t sure how he was here, or if it was even really him.
“These…uh, I call them the Small Ones. I don’t know what they really do, but they were the first thing I saw when the, uh, visions started.” I realized that in arresting the scene, keeping it both vivid and still so I could give the doc a walkthrough, I was operating two concentrations simultaneously. I could feel my brain flexing. ”They were a little livelier at first.“ I coughed.
“Why are there so many fast food restaurants?"
"It’s the hood.” “Hm.” With no follow up, just as before. I guess if you’ve never been (or only driven through) the hood can be a lot to absorb.
“Ay, doctor Trust, do you know what a food desert is?"
"Can’t say I’m familiar.” He sounded distant, as though he, too, were concentrating on a couple different things. He can’t be scared, I thought. No one’s finna rob you from inside a memory. Like reading from an encyclopedia, I offered, “A food desert is a residential area with no access to fresh groceries. General nutrition is limited to convenience stores and fast food. Food desert: There’s no real fuckin food. It’s where you’re standing right now."
We stopped short of a Beast’s foot. Up close, watching waves fold through their gelatinous skin made me nauseous. I looked at Trust and could almost see his mind’s gears feasting on the sight. I couldn’t remember whether I’d been this close to one before. They were breathtaking, stomach turning. Bastards of Mandelbrot violating everlong natural laws. They had to be taller than any building in downtown Sacramento, with great barrel chested bodies like sailors who exclusively drank and lifted weights.
"These are the Beasts. They - I think they’re the bad guys. They set in motion the system that got all the little ones messed up.” “Where did they come from?” “Don’t know. They were already here, I think. It seemed like they were always around, I just started being able to see them.
"Hm.” I hate that (Link to the cop piece).
“And…what do they do? Don’t think about it. Just say it. Focus on the words leaving your lips. Exaggerate on the sensation of every sound.”
It was silly, concentrating on every fricative and glottal stop; like some high shit or something. Everything around me felt like it was holding its breath in anticipation - the doctor, the rings, the Beasts, even the Small Ones.
“Well, I guess it’s simple: these guys here,” I pointed at their bubble bodies, the little syrup people, saw their skin jiggle in response, “are in a cycle. They go to these huge buildings, like fiefs almost. It feels like they’re paying tithes…”
As if my words were a crankshaft attached to a great wheel, they began shuffling toward the nearest mini-castle, a monstrous Taco Bell-Pizza Hut, spiked with parapets, grown to three stories and spanning an entire block. I imagined these mutations happened during the nightfall of my subconscious. The exact formula of a nightmare: A benign thing with secret recombinance, unlocked by the dark, re-emerging full with the horror potential beneath every surprise. I kept focus on my lips, amazed how I could make the scene perform like a living diorama.
They surrendered the circlets as I had seen them do before, the glittering sacrosancts visible momentarily before disappearing. The scene smacked of deep unholiness; a bad gravity you can feel in your center. "The lights go into the window, and out comes a package. And the package - “ I didn’t even need to finish. On cue one exploded in front of a bulbous head, and a wildstorm of color flashed through its body.
"Hm. Why do they keep doing it?”
“Must be like dope.” Sure looked like it: How they stumbled back and away without grace or presence. More accurately they looked dislocated - mind one place and the body somewhere else.
“Addiction supplies security to those lacking self-direction in the form of habits and priorities.” He said it without really thinking, as if recalling lecture notes. I let it hang in the air. The scene had stopped again. I had started breathing heavily; anticipatory sweat was making me clammy under arms and my neck chafed. The revolving overhead rings held tesseracts of light, like soap bubble skin.
“So how long did this go on?” He asked. The diorama resumed, this world that had filled my nights with so much private terror reduced to a simple back and forth mechanism. Like a Christmas lights display - the Small Ones crowding the window counter, one by one providing it with their (now) weak lights, the Beasts reaching into the roofs above, extracting the sparkle, the shine. Ad infinitum. Our whole world is a mineshaft, a mad grab for precious elements we didn’t even know we had.
I realized the scene was stuck because I was hesitating, apprehensive about what came next. "Well…this is where I…“ breaking off to lick my lips and swallow. "The ground…” and of course, the trembling began on cue. A deep rumble from down beneath, like riots inside the Earth’s core. Like the whole globe was splitting apart at the hemisphere. The Big Beasts as far as we could see stood rigid, the river-like flow of patterns across their bodies had cooled and ceased. They stood regimented as if heeding a directive.
Heading East down Folsom Blvd they began marching in locked step. Pockets of resistance swelled through my body - tightening in my chest, my quads, my back; my butt. My feet clenched. Everything was pleading one word, a stereophonic “STOP.” Physics and order escaped me like I was leaking formulae. A nearby car rose into the air, the roof straining as though hung on a balloon. It hovered there before flying off, a half dozen other vehicles following it into space. Across the street a light rail train wrecked into the station building and its shrieking girders cut the sky like mechanical birds. All that came out from the broken wall was packing peanuts.
The world gurgled, sucked, like a giant boil popped in the ozone stew above.
“Hold on, _D.” I turned to the fully reanimated Trust. His chest rose and fell in perfect rhythm in a model of meditative practice. My body picked up on his cues and followed suit. The blocks in my consciousness began dissolving again. Just focus on the words. I drew all feeling into my mouth. Just say it.
“So, next…” I saw Trust’s feet, those clinical dress shoes worn by the completely undiscerning professional, raise from the ground and I knew I was doing the same as we remained eye-level. His brows creased in mild surprise. Inhale.
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