EGGPLANT

© 2021 Ogden Nesmer

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CHAPTER 1.

A pebble, lodged between the grooves underneath Arda’s left sneaker, scratched like a metronome on the pavement as she made her way down another city block. The sun was white-hot, and it baked the concrete pads of the sidewalk until the smell of stale urine rose up like morning fog from a pond. Arda ran her finger along the curly-q binding of her tiny notepad, hidden within her jacket pocket. 

A man with his palm raised up asked from the gutter of the people walking by: “change? change?” But the walkers didn’t hesitate or glance downward. He raised the hand to Arda, but she shrugged and said “no cash.” Lonely figures in blankets and coats sat all along each block in this part of the city. They held their eyes down and their palms up, begging in hopeless monotone. Some of them stood, some ignored the walkers altogether. An old woman pushed a shopping cart. Some muttered to themselves and others shouted at unseen things. One man wrapped in garbage bags snored, next to a dried cake of vomit. The shuffling of feet and groaning and the persistence of pleas for change coalesced into a routine of sound and motion the walkers were oblivious to. An old man with scabs creeping out from under his coat’s collar stumbled forward, and a woman on her cell-phone simply brushed him back to the gutter with the back of her arm. To the walkers it was all unremarkable; the muttering and pleading and the stench represented only a sensory extension of what was supposed to fill the gutter of any sidewalk on any day of the week: filth, detritus, someone else’s lost things. Arda stopped and put a dollar bill in the hands of the scabbed man, and he moved on without thanking her. The beggars were a part of the city architecture, imminent in its low overpasses and plentiful dumpsters. They were designed not to be noticed, but Arda noticed. Though she made her way at the pace of the walkers and mirrored their tunnel-vision gazes, she couldn’t deny the apparent synchrony of the beggars. The unwritten rules of the city were made clear in their harmonious squalor. Those beggars on their feet only ever moved within a preset current, taking  them up and down the block, pole to pole, wary of the shoulders and toes of men-in-suits. Some failsafe still functioned in the minds of those who seemed to have lost them, keeping their shouts aimed upward or inward, not at the walkers where they might cause trouble. Of course, it was still early; most people were still sober. As the dance progressed the tension could build. Someone could slip. A clash between the walkers and beggars meant trouble for both parties. No one was safe. It happened sometimes, but not often. A crescendo was still somewhere far off. For now Arda kept time with her scraping pebble.

She had forgotten the address, but the neighborhood had already started its signature transition from distressed to trendy: the restaurants suddenly sprouted queues 20 people long. Tagging turned into street art. Pit-bulls morphed into corgis and australian shepherds. The cloud of beggars had disintegrated, except for the occasional, discrete straggler, hoping to find a bag of day-old pastries. In these early stages of gentrification the signs were subtle and often easy to miss for an outsider, but it was Arda’s crowd. She fit in, whether she wanted to or not. Passing a cuban place she had never seen before, a guy inside with large, round plugs in his earlobes, nodded his head to her. She nodded back, believing that this was probably one of Sandy’s friends from Michigan she had met at the Halloween thing. Probably. She kept moving.

“Arda.” 

She was waiting for the crosswalk and, amid the rumble of cars, almost didn’t hear her name being called. 

“Arda!” she turned her head to see an old friend poking out of the passenger side window of an idling sportscar. “How’d you know I needed to see you?”

“Lin? What are the odds of-?”

The car behind honked and shouted something foul in spanish, to which Lin’s friend in the driver’s seat offered a disinterested middle finger. 

“I’m joking, dear, but I do, really need to speak with you” he beckoned her closer.

“How about you just text me?” she shouted, trying to ignore the honking coming now from three cars back. But Lin kept summoning her with a single, curled finger. She approached and leaned in.

“I need you to come to my apartment-- my new apartment! Oh, goodness! It’s been so long-- you don’t even know my new address!” He slapped her shoulder with a limp-wrist. The effeminacy of the gesture drew a stark contrast between Lin and his driver, whose bulky and tattooed arms were exposed by a tattered tank-top. The clamor from behind grew.

“Text me your address, I can come by later. I’m on my way to Gabi’s show, and I think these people are about two seconds from--”

“Get my address from someone who knows, and be there tonight. We can’t text about this. Don’t even say your reason for getting my info--”

“¡PINCHE BABOSO!” 

A long, unbroken honk interrupted Lin. The tattooed man got out of the driver’s seat in a smooth motion, and turned to face the line building behind them. Only while standing was it now clear that he was about seven feet tall, with a sleeve of solid black from wrist to shoulder. He started towards the offender.

“Shit, Lin--” Arda started, but the honking car blinked first. Its driver stepped on the pedal and swerved around, followed by the buildup of about a dozen cars, all the passengers turning to see the seven-foot tall man with his fists clenched tight. 

“I have something for you, dear. Something very good, like old times” Lin tilted his shades, speaking low. “But you must be there. Tonight.”

The door slammed shut, and the car was gone before Arda could ask anything. The red hand of the crosswalk signal returned to it’s solid, resting state. 

***

 Arda spotted Mari smoking a cigarette with three skinny guys in heavy jackets, her formerly electric-blue bangs, now a humble green. Without motion, Mari called Arda towards her, and let her into the circle. One of the skinny guys was in the middle of making a point as Arda slipped noiselessly in, and took Mari’s cigarette for a drag.

“You’re early”

“It hasn’t started?” Arda returned the cigarette.

“It has, but you’re still early.”

Arda looked around. There were a couple dozen twenty-somethings smoking and looking bored. They crowded a half-opened garage door behind a fenced-in, six-car parking lot, wherein voices and the clicking of camera shutters could be heard. Arda could feel a waft of cool air break on her face as a stray belch from the A/C unit inside found her through the crowd.

“Are we doing anything other than Au?”

Mari shrugged and pulled on the cigarette, “some paintings, some photos...”

Arda got out her notepad and flipped to a cleanish page, “You got a pen?”

“Wow, paper and pen, very analog. I love it,” one of the skinny guys joked. He held an open box of cigarettes toward Arda. She refused.

“Where’s Gabi? Is he plugged in already?”

“That’s the show, isn’t it?” Mari took one of the cigarettes from the box and tucked it behind her ear. “He started at two, and he’s done when the bag’s empty. About an hour.”

“Well, did he ever tell you how he’s paying for it? The metals and shit, obviously?” she patted her jacket pockets. 

Mari shook her head, and blew her smoke outside of the circle, “Don’t even ask. You know he’ll kill me if I start telling you things without his say in what I say. Just go inside and ask him before he’s too high to respond.”

“Does he actually get high?”

“Well, you know, he gets… hazy and loopy. It’s like he’s high but, I don’t know…” she put the cigarette back in her mouth. “I’m not a doctor. He’ll be hard to talk to, though. Once he’s ‘high,’ or disoriented or whatever.”

“How many times has he actually done this before? Like, in preparation?”

Mari stuck a finger straight out towards an open door and stomped a foot playfully. The boys snickered.

“You’re Arda, right?”

“Yeah, hi,” she replied to the skinny guy with the box of smokes.

“I’m Cal. Mari’s shown me some of your articles, they’re pretty good.” Mari watched him and smoked.

“Thanks. Do any of you guys have a pen?” 

They shook their heads.

To view art, in the company of other art-viewers, is a skill akin to the making of art itself. One has to learn to temper their immediate reactions of shock or boredom or confusion or ambivalence with practiced expressions of pensive thought, and rumination. One does not simply walk into a gallery and find something to gawk at. The little motions-- the soft furrowing of the brow, a gentle tilt of the head, finger and thumb at rest on the chin-- represent a careful commitment to the craft of taking-things-in. Only those particularly skilled observers can master such high-level responses as distaste, or disapproval. Delivered by an amateur, a reaction of disgust will backfire: the viewer then becomes the subject of their own silent judgement by the fellow viewers, amounting to a kind of defeat. From the master viewer, on the other hand, a single, well-delivered snear can end a work’s life, and kill an artist’s career. In this way the dialectics between artwork and audience is a battle. One must submit to the other, and there is always a winner. Much scientific and marketing research has already been devoted to mastering the battle from either end. The artists have added weapons to their arsenal, and refined their reliable methods of attack, but nothing yet known can stop the fallout caused by a bad response from someone who would know. Clever tacticians must understand how to offend eloquently; they prey on the small-minded and naive in their audience, while catering to the apex viewers. Drawing lines between the audience to divide and conquer, along class, education, race. The alpha viewers enjoy this kind of supplication, as they end up on top of the infighting. They are far more willing to offer praise-- a form of submission-- to these artists who play the game well, thereby elevating them. Entering the garage, Arda felt her eyes adjust to the difference in light. When she opened them she saw Gabi, thoroughly dominating this game as she had never seen anyone do before, from the comfort of a velvet-cushioned throne, encrusted in little plastic jewels.

At 27, Gabi was nearing the end of what he saw as his window to truly have a career. He could produce until he died, of course, as most of those older artists he knew did. But they all had had careers already. This meant that sometime in their early twenties they each did something shocking or controversial that made everyone listen, at least for a moment. Now it really didn’t matter what they did or didn’t do. They were artists, and no critic or viewer could change that. They had jumped straight out their window and landed on their feet. They had transcended the game entirely. On the cusp of his thirties Gabi was getting dangerously close to the fatal plateau from which creatives either broke down and moved to friends’ couches indefinitely, or became boring and got what his mother would have called a ‘real job.’ The plateau haunted him. It wasn’t easy competing with the literal, actual children he kept hearing about through his instagram feed. He was fortunate that he was attractive and black, but these could only get him so far. More importantly, their worth wasn’t transferrable. Gabi knew with every tattoo he sat through, his other window-- his window of escape into the life of secure banality-- shrunk. He was smart. He may not have wanted to jump out that window, but he knew it was an important one to keep open. He thought constantly about his different windows, and when he may be forcefully defenestrated. He knew he was taking strange risks that didn’t make sense to a lot of people (mom especially) but he wanted it too bad. Reason and good-planning became his enemies. He sought guidance from successful people he knew didn’t give a damn about him. He hid his anxiety about failure unbelievably well. All of his friends thought he was destined for greatness, even when he was just trying to be a West-coast Genesis Tremaine. People were rooting for him, mom too.

Somewhere down the line Gabi got big into performance. He did a couple of truly bizarre shows with a troupe of white college kids looking for their token black, and realized how good it felt to watch his audience as they watched him. The more outrageous he acted the more people opened up like a book, and told him everything with only their faces. The theatre kids each jumped out their own shrinking windows, and the troupe faded away. But Gabi learned some valuable tricks he used to reinvent his painting and sculpture. He started attending his own shows as other people-- characters he had come up with, either through his time with the troupe, or simply minutes before opening. He did a show once in a French nobleman’s coat Arda found on her way over, and a drag queen’s wig powdered with flour. He called himself ‘Sir Niggerbottom the Eighth’ and insisted all his white guests refer to him as such, to their embarrassment and nervous shame. It was funny in the moment-- profound even. Unfortunately it didn’t translate well into the piece that Arda wrote afterward (her editor received some pretty angry mail about it from some pretty sophisticated people, and gave Arda a “talking-to” she was still sour about) but it was a great show, and not one of her worst pieces. 

To the surprise of no one at all, Gabi’s most acclaimed character was an aspiring rapper named ‘Lil Dirty Boi,’ whose actual artwork was just photos of his own tagging done throughout east LA. He was praised by quite a few writers more successful than Arda as a bold, implicit statement on ideals of race and their fatal intermingling with commercial entertainment, or some such shit. Gabi had actually released two albums as ‘Lil DB’ and was even mentioned in some pretty household tabloids after he attended a Lakers’ game as the character, bringing with him an unregistered, gold-plated handgun. He was getting a lot of attention, and he found he actually really loved doing the photography, but he had long since fallen out of love with ‘Lil Dirty.’ The attention had managed to turn on him; no one cared about Gabi, or Niggerbottom, or Quasius 900X, (one of Arda’s inventions) they just wanted Dirty. Gabi was getting fan mail for DB. He was being interviewed as him. Of course he was also getting fame and a bit of money as him; it wasn’t easy to say no. He could feel Lil Dirty Boi taking over his body, living in his flesh, having more of a claim to it then Gabi did himself. Gabi was almost rooting for the poor kid with a missing dad and a brother in jail, but he had to remind himself Lil Dirty Boi wasn’t real. 

Tonight would be another Lil Dirty Boi show. Gabi had made it clear to his friends, and to Arda, that it would be a real groundbreaking show. It would change his career, make him unbelievably rich and famous, and he could possibly retire Lil Dirty for good. One last job, then a glorious escape: apotheosis by means of that brilliant, open window.

Set on a platform of solid white, was Lil Dirty Boi’s throne. He sat, grinning stupidly, exposing a set of glittering grills to the crowd. His head was drooped lazily to the side, and a made-up woman in a skimpy nurse’s uniform rubbed his shoulders, keeping an eye on the fold of his elbow, where a hypodermic needle was stuck. She did not look like a real nurse, and from the redness on Gabi’s arm it looked like she may have been the one to place the needle. Cameras snapped and people whispered to each other. Arda turned to see their faces and couldn’t even count the shocked, truly disturbed looks of the stuffy viewers in their turtlenecks and thick-framed spectacles. Gabi lifted his head to spout some trademark, Dirty Boi belligerence. He shouted at “that white nigga in the stripes,” who people couldn’t seem to locate after a scan of the room. It was unclear how much of a show Gabi was putting on. The cameras did not stop. Arda’s eyes followed the sparkling intravenous tube up from Gabi’s limp arm as it pumped, by way of a compact dialysis machine, a steady stream of viscous, shiny liquid. She squinted until she could make them all out: the various flakes and shreds of pure gold and platinum swirling dreamily in the IV bag. Gabi had checked, and apparently it wouldn’t kill him: his final act of decadent self-abuse as the infamous Lil Dirty Boi would be to gild his veins from the inside, seated upon a platform above all.

“I think he said he did it once before,” Cal said quietly as he came up behind Arda and clicked the top of a pen. “That’s what he told me when I asked. He did it once, by himself, felt like shit, but didn’t die. At least that’s what he told me. I found this, too.”

Arda took the pen he offered. “Thanks.” she looked back up at Gabi as the light of a camera flash caught the bag and blinded her for a moment. Rubbing her eyes, she made sure: “so there are no actual doctors involved with this? No one I can talk to about safety measures? Budget? Nothing like that?”

Cal shrugged.

“Well... thanks for the pen.” She shouldered her way gently through the crowd.

Gabi was muttering profanities to himself as the nurse leaned in to kiss him on the cheek for a photo. Arda whispered his name.

“Bitch, it’s Lil Dirty. You read my face?” he lifted a finger to a fake tattoo above his eye that read ‘dirty dirty’ in cursive.

“I thought you didn’t like being interviewed in character?”

“Where the fuck you think we at?” He whispered sharply, “you think you at my ma’s house right now?”

“All right, fair point.” Arda pulled out the notebook and pen.

Gabi slapped the notebook out of her hand and the cameras fluttered. She left it on the floor. She could hear her name being whispered in the crowd.

“Gab-- Dirty. I just want to hear straight from the source what went into this show. Come on, don’t we like giving a hand to local journalists? Isn’t tussling with the press part of the job? Let’s tussle.”

Gabi closed his eyes and laid his head back. He reached over with his free arm and scratched the red area where the needle was penetrating his skin. “I’m sick of y’all misrepresenting me. Thinkin’ a nigga some kind of clown.” Arda tried not to smile. Even after years as Lil Dirty Boi, Gabi had not mastered the patois of inner-city black youth. He still wore his suburban upbringing on his sleeves.

“How’d you get the metals? That’s a lot of money.”

“I look like a chump to you? I got the connections.”

“How much it cost you?”

“Leave it be, Arda…” he trailed off. “Can’t I have nothing? Why you gotta… break it all down… down to the bones...” The nurse leaned down and pinched his cheek until his eyes opened wide and he breathed deep. “Art ain’t money.”

“Of the two, this can only be the latter…”

“Money is art…”

“But, wait--”

“If money… if it’s money…” 

“Gabi,” Arda said softly, “is this a good idea?”

He sneered. He put on his best, most impudent Lil Dirty Boi look and said in a voice that was solely Gabi’s: “years of writing about this shit and you still don’t get it. You won’t. Won’t ever.” Like royalty he waved her off. She bent over to grab her notebook and the crowd shifted to close her out of the group.

“He’s in character,” Cal said, shrugging.

“It’s no act; he really does suffer from terminal narcissism.” 

Gabi didn’t hear the jibe. His face was slack and satisfied. He opened his eyes straight up into the light and felt his transcendence. A tear rolled down his cheek, and he rubbed his bicep to fight the cold creeping up toward his chest. He clenched his grills tight, feeling his pupils dilate, opening up to accept the light.



CHAPTER 2.

“The progression, the movement forward, the build-- it all implies the climax, you know?” One of the skinny guys whose name Arda hadn’t gotten yet was back to his point from earlier. He was emphatic, drawing diagrams in the air. He hadn’t touched his banh-mi in so long his friends began picking at it. “If the progression moves faster and faster towards more violence, more sex, more gas-- and if the artist becomes the medium--”

“I’m eating this shrimp chip”

“If the artist--”

“No, eat this cilantro salad thing, I want the shrimp chip”

“If the artist--”

“You had the last one!”

“Have mine,” Mari was smoking at the table, all but daring the waiter to approach her and have her put it out. She held the cigarette between her fingers, studying it like a gem, admiring the way her lipstick had stained the filter-end a cloudy purple. The boys fell upon her chips.

“I’m saying the artist will have to kill himself-- or herself, you understand,” this directed at Arda, as if she were taking notes. “How else can the artist progress? You know?” She was pushing the butt of her sandwich around her plate, mind somewhere else.

“But art doesn’t move forward.” Cal was crumpling up a napkin and now ready to humor his friend. “It moves diagonally and backwards, it makes new dimensions and planes to expand in all new ways. There’s no predetermined end to art--”

“Please, stop.” Mari insisted, spreading smoke over the table. She kept an eye on the waiter avoiding her gaze from across the covered patio.

“What?” Cal looked around, “Arda, am I wrong? You’re the expert, no?” She said nothing.

“Stop. you’re going to get him going--”

“It may seem that way,” said the point-maker, rubbing his hands in preparation for the bomb he was set to drop.

“God, no--”

“Art is a tool, really. You and I may not think of it as such, because we admire the machinations and the beauty of the thing itself. But it is a tool-- a means to an end. To those who don’t see the beauty, it is only a tool. That’s a deadly combination: someone so empty as to not appreciate art, but hungry enough to wield it. A hungry void, desperate to fill itself. Rest assured these people exist. They’re everywhere.”

“Advertising majors.” The group laughed.

“But it’s true, and it’s not just about advertising. It’s about nazi propoganda, and white Jesus and Joe Camel-- all of this is art: utilized. Put to its highest setting of efficiency, with no regard for decency. Hunger has an end, and it’s a poor one for the prey. The accumulated impact of generations of this kind of visual subjugation-- people reduced to observers, and their tastes honed by basest animal instinct. Whether artist is complicit or not they become the vector and patient zero for a kind of revolt of the--”

“Excuse me, uhm,” the waiter, bald head blushing, was at the edge of their table. “Ma’am, I, uhhm… Have to ask you to, uh… you know…” he pointed at the cigarette with a weak finger.

Mari took a long drag, exhaled, and asked sweetly: “Is there a problem?”

Arda reached over and plucked the cigarette out from between her friend’s fingers, dropped it into a glass of water, and stood up.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“I’m tired. And I’ve got somewhere to be.” Arda pulled her phone and a ten dollar bill out of her jacket. It was 6:13. She dropped the money on the table, trying to come up with something snide. But she just shrugged her shoulders, and left.

She was turning the corner when Cal caught up with her.

“You guys aren’t fighting, are you?”

“That’s what you want to know right now?” Arda laughed and shook her head, rubbing her brow with thumb and forefinger. Now that she’d stopped, the city sounds caught up with her, bike chains and footsteps and someone coughing up phlegm. 

“I know you’re good friends. Mari talks about you all the time, you two grew up together right?”

“So what, you want my blessing? My recommendation? So you can go off and show Mari your seal of approval to fuck her?”

Cal offered his palms. “It’s not like that.” She scoffed, but he said it again to her face, “it isn’t like that. Really. Like I said before, I read some of your articles. I just wanted everything to be cool among friends.” he shrugged, looking back toward the restaurant. “Eh… You want a smoke?”

Cal smacked the little blue box against the heel of his other hand. As Arda watched she tried to think which articles of her’s Cal could possibly have read and liked. She had been putting out nothing but shit lately, if she put out anything at all. He seemed like a reader, somebody who could tell. She believed firmly-- about writing specifically, as opposed to any other means of creation-- that her life was all she could put onto the page. She had nothing more to offer. It had been a rough couple years. She thought about her shit life and her shit career; the messes that writing could not save her from, but in fact only led her back towards. 

Cal pointed the opened end of the box to her, and she refused.

“Do you know Johnny Lin? Maybe just goes by Lin?”

“I know Lin.” He said, and lit the cigarette in his mouth.

“Do you know where he lives?”

***

Arda pushed a plastic button on the wall, and a red light within switched on. The empty lobby turned to an uneasy crimson, and somewhere in the depths of the building an elevator groaned in descent. The walls trembled. Arda watched the digital numbers decrease silently, and tried to think of when she had last seen Lin.

She had first seen Lin at an after-party in Silverlake. It helped to start from the very beginning, because there were only so many times Arda had actually stood in the same room as Lin. Like most people their age, his presence loomed larger online and in text messages. He rarely granted in-person meetups, doing so almost exclusively for business matters. He must have had some semblage of an inner circle, people thought, but no one knew for sure. They did know he was insanely wealthy, and assumed or merely hoped that there was such a circle of beneficiaries. 

The first time she had seen him, he was standing on top of a scaffold, pouring paint out of a milk carton and onto a canvas twenty feet below, where two nude women were caressing each other. Eryk was standing behind, his arm over Lin’s, guiding the stream of paint onto the women like syrup on pancakes. Arda didn’t know the girls, and never got their names. Eryk smiled and Lin was cackling with glee; they made a threatening pair. The falling paint was putting clear limits on how intimate the women below could get, but they didn’t look too interested anyway. One girl put a finger up to pause as she wiped the buildup off her eyelids, then resumed her groping. The trail they left on the canvas looked bereft of any affection at all-- like pure, exhausted struggle. Smears of teal and violet, handprints and asscheeks limply dragged. A face pressed and twisted along the side, in a clearly forced swoop. Arda tried to picture it. Had there been other girls? Lin was loving it.

“They’re never getting clean that way.” She just had to say something clever.

“Arda,” Eryk straightened up, “This is Johnny. Johnny Lin.”

The women left and Lin descended, careful not to dirty his suit. He extended his hand and his toothy smile shone in the light. 

It was a productive relationship after that. Lin was already handing money out for free to any artist who could show him a good time-- even a little extra for the pretty ones like Eryk. He had more than enough for Arda’s services, and he even kind of liked her, it sometimes seemed. The mystical inner circle was opening up, just for her. 

Her place was to memorialize it all. To imagine the cavorting and the hedonism that were a part of Lin’s daily routine as a hero’s journey. She reinvented him, on paper. It took a bit of effort on her part, but he wasn’t too horrible to hang around. They grew close, and for a brief period Arda thought she may have been right there in the inner circle’s eye-- Lin’s very best friend. But she was sure now that she had never gotten that close. There were class issues, for starters. She now believed that Lin could not even be gotten-close-to by normal humans. Like a black hole things were constantly being pulled in, but it was unclear what was happening at the center, or where all the stuff ended up. Lin would’ve appreciated the comparison.

The elevator doors parted, and the static white of fluorescence drove off the redness. She stepped inside, only now aware that it was dark out.

Another Lin meeting had happened in the back seat of a limousine. It was after the era of Eryk, in the year of Padme and Gurpreet. Arda was at a really upscale show, waiting patiently to speak with a Brazilian painter who worked exclusively in urine; her editor had made her go. Suddenly she was approached by a large man in a suit she didn’t know-- one of Lin’s bodyguards. He knew she was inside, and he was waiting on the curb in the back of the aforementioned limousine. Her life was often like this: being pulled and pushed from place to place at the behest of others. She wanted to resist, but only on principle. She grabbed a cocktail from the open bar and followed the bodyguard out. 

When she got to the limo, Lin and some friends were offering each other bumps from their upturned fingernails. From there, the momentum only built. Arda was holding a puking girl’s hair back when she noticed it was 3 am, and she was miles away from her apartment at an unnamed club. She went out to get Lin-- to try to get everyone out and off to bed-- but found him busy dancing. He was gyrating vigorously with his eyes shut in ecstasy.

“LIN!” she shouted, again and again. But he was gone. Lost in the throes of a mindless rebirth. Beads of sweat came flying off his hair, suspended in brief tableaus by the strobe light. He was almost alone on the dance floor now. Arda looked around and couldn’t even find the DJ, the music was just set to play on its own. She left, and had to spend the night half-asleep in the booth of a 24-hour diner. They made her order food. 

Lin’s apartment was unlocked. The only light came spilling in through a towering window that faced the city. Outside a network of pulses and blinks gave a depth to the otherwise pitch-black mass that was the city at night. The intensity of the blinking below turned the sky above an awful, orange-brown haze that bled upwards from the horizon. The living room was filled with this sickly luminosity. Arda stopped in the center, alone.

“Hello? Lin?” she called.

“He’s over there,” a much older voice replied from the top of the stairs. A light switched on, and suddenly Arda could see her friend lying on a couch over against the wall. He was asleep, with his face turned away. He lay motionless, snoring softly.

“Sorry,” she called again, “he had asked me here. I’m--”

“Arda Beloff. I know, it was on my behalf.” 

A man of about seventy came down the stairs. He still had a pair of sunglasses on and, as he entered the light, a bald spot underneath his slicked-back hair glimmered. He descended silently, and the arm that held the railing showed a decent amount of muscle for a man of his age. Arda could picture him driving something luxurious with his shirt unbuttoned to the chest, and a pretty young thing like Lin in his passenger seat. The type of walking-mid-life crisis Lin loved to prey on, or perhaps vice versa. 

“My name is Errol Macke. Pleased to meet you.” He extended a wrinkled hand.

“Likewise,” she shook it.

“Sorry if he scared you,” Errol wagged a hand at Lin, “with all the secrecy, you know. I asked him explicitly not to discuss the details of my project with anyone. I don’t believe he even knows all the facts himself… would you care for a drink?”

She took a glass and sat down near Lin’s feet. His face was wedged in between two pillows.

“Do you like this?” 

Errol was pointing at a painting across from the window, standing about nine feet tall and wide. It was a swirl of warm color tones, murked by black fog. Blots of paint that had been set wet on the canvas to leak out, seeping into each other, and leaving their edges wispy and vague. In the center was a black box with white text, aligned left:

The tallest building

The jump from its highest floor

Everything dies together

Revolver 251c3a, Haiti 090d23, Monza D60505 

“It’s one of a series. The only one actually put onto canvas. The others are all NFTs, that kind of nonsense, which I’m sure you already know all about,” he took a sip of martini.

“Not my kind of thing.”

“Nor mine. I was never a fan of the digital angle. The rush to break boundaries has already become a rush to debase oneself. To be dehumanized. Where’s the next place to go when it’s already so lifeless to begin with?” He pondered, moving closer to the painting.

“Life is just another boolean,” Arda posited. “Alive or dead. Suffering or not. Vital binaries which become passé because humanity itself becomes passé. People are finding the new binary in computers-- no pun intended. You’re looking at the cave paintings of artificial intelligence, not-yet-self-actualized. The digitizing of art will bring on its own inhuman renaissance,” she slurped her gin, “possibly. It could also just be shit.”

“My--! You are quite the little sophist,” he raised his glass. “And all at the drop of a hat-- I love it!” 

He turned and strolled off towards the kitchen to pour himself more drink. Arda was debating whether she should try and wake Lin. He was so still it made her want to shake him by the shoulders, or perform CPR. 

“Johnny tells me you haven’t been really published in some time, but he didn’t know why,” Eroll said as he dropped two ice cubes in a fresh snifter and splashed brown liquor on top. “I hope it’s nothing personal, I don’t wish to pry. I’ve looked at your resume and some of your work-- I’d love to hire you for our little job, but if there are legal issues that have kept you from working, naturally I will need to know…”

“My reasons are strictly personal, I can assure you,” she smiled. “I’m afraid though I’ve never been hired for a job. Normally it works in reverse with me: I do the work, then sell it. I’ve done a bit of ghostwriting, but if it’s something as extensive as memoirs, something lengthy--”

“An interview actually. Likely a few, considering how elusive our subject insists on being, or is made to become...” Errol strolled back into the living room with a drink in each hand. “He’s not here. He’s far away on permanent vacation, somewhere in Micronesia. I’ll cover your expenses-- airfare, boarding, food, essentials-- I’ll need about four thousand words, and I’ll give you five thousand dollars on top of everything when you hand it in to me.”

“Ha. You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” he took a sip from his fresh martini, and set the other glass on the floor at his feet.

“Then… what’s the catch? Where is this getting printed? Or is this part of some project? Like a participatory kind of performance thing?”

“Well I’m afraid I can’t say too much about what happens after, in terms of publishing, but I can tell you frankly what the ‘catch’ is,” he clapped his hands twice in the air next to his face. “Your subject is not just a creative, he is also a criminal. He is in Micronesia fleeing the governments of several nations, wanted for various murders and sex crimes. You will interview him, and you will tell no one of how you found him. All credit for the article will have to be sacrificed; you will use a pseudonym. You will do this solely for the purpose of... creation, and of course for the money.”

Arda was still hanging on the words ‘sex’ and ‘crimes,’ when she felt something muscular and not-human brush her arm. She jumped, only to see a gargantuan dalmatian loping slowly towards Errol. It laid sphinx-like on the floor, and began lapping up the brown liquor.

“Is he… Is… I mean… what’s his name?”

“Bartholomew. After the saint,” Errol rubbed the dog’s head.

“The subject, I mean; who am I supposed to be interviewing?”

“Ah! Well, I’ve prepared this for you,” pointing to a manila folder on the coffee table, “a dossier of sorts. Don’t bother searching the internet, you won’t find anything. You see, he’s being scrubbed from the news as soon as he can enter the headlines. Powerful people do not want the world to know about Fevzi Goshen. Hence the significance of your piece.”

Arda flipped through the packet. “This isn’t…” she flipped and flipped, “This can’t be real. This is…” She stopped and splayed out the photos in front of her, a set of shots, different angles of a single piece. The withered head of a woman had been removed from its body. Her eyes were sewn shut with yarn, and her bottom jaw was pulled out and stretched upward grotesquely. In her mouth were a half dozen pink daisies.

“That one is supposed to be ironic, I believe. A lot of the other work is-- despite being so atrocious-- quite serious,” Errol said, aloof.

“The murders, then,” she flipped through more photos, more projects, more horror. “All these crimes-- they are his work. You want me to interview a murderer.”

“But he’s not just a murderer, he’s an artist! It may not be my idea of quality, it’s unbelievably gauche-- but do you see the precedent being set? What this means? The news won’t cover him-- they’re afraid people will adopt his methods. They think people will appreciate his genius--”

“Do you?” Arda closed the folder and looked Errol straight in the eyes, “is this what I’m supposed to do? Write a puff-piece that glamorizes an actual bloodthirsty killer so you can be the one who got there first? You think I’m really so devoid of- of- of-”

“You’re after the story, Miss Beloff. I don’t want you to lie. I don’t need you to redeem him, I need you to expose him. To do what all the other news outlets are too chicken-shit to do: your job. Inform the masses. There’s a murderer on the loose. As for me, yes, I want the fame. I want the catch. The artwork is juvenile-- the kind of thing a troubled teen would dream up-- but the artist. Good or evil, that is one big fish. You understand the metaphor, yes? This work, this story, it’s vile, but it’s undeniably groundbreaking-- earth-shattering, even.”

Arda was getting dizzy. She realized she had been leaning her elbow on Lin and he still didn’t stir. The dog’s lips and tongue were smacking wetly, in a persistent time. She killed her drink.

“That can’t be good for him,” she said.

“I don’t bloody care what’s good for him-- let them string him up after we’re done with him. All I want--”

“I mean the dog. Drinking liquor? That can’t be good for him.”

“He loves it!” Errol dropped to his knees and hugged Bartholomew, peppering him with exaggerated kisses. The dog kept guzzling his alcohol. 

Arda cracked the folder again to take in some more. She wasn’t into books or documentaries about killers. The disparity of so many lives lived harmlessly, all to be pointlessly taken by one sad man; it was disastrously unfair. The idea that this person would try and force a point to it all-- calling it art-- made it seem somehow sicker. A crueler way to treat a person’s eternal humanity. The destruction of body and soul. 

Little oblongs, eyeballs covered in some kind of varnish, were polished until they shimmered and then strung up on a cord like a necklace. They adorned the nape of a skinny model strolling down a runway. A man’s torso, separated at the spine and unfolded like a spatchcocked chicken, was spread out over a television set depicting static. A high-res photo taken mid-burst as a shotgun blast left someone’s skull. Some of the work was violent by circumstance, the rest were simple violence. A beautification of suffering. She closed the folder again and shut her eyes hard. 

She thought of all the stupid shock-schlock she had had to see during her art-school days. Some Keith Boadwee wannabe from first year did a baptism in pig’s blood out on the quad. He was expecting protests, police presence, maybe a riot. It ended up just being his naked self, sitting alone in a kiddie pool full of tepid, congealing blood. Then the sprinklers came on at seven pm. That made Arda laugh. This was making her sick. Errol’s folder didn’t include the names of any of the victims.

Mari had always been beautiful. Throughout all her phases-- goth, emo, scene, punk, goth-lite, some kind of cyberpunk-type-oeuvre, then goth-lite again-- she had been undeniably beautiful. Now in her mid twenties, she was well aware. But before, when she and Arda were kids, it hadn’t occurred to her. It took Arda’s breath away: that someone so pretty had no idea, and consequently, wanted to be friends with her. Arda had to sit through a lot of tears, and hear about a lot of terrible boys before Mari started to get the picture. At about 17 she could fend for herself. It amazed Arda, not just because of how pretty and how humble a person could simultaneously be, but because through all the hardships Mari was this one thing: beautiful. She was other things as well, but she irrefutably, inexorably was this thing. She was Beautiful. Arda was not, but she didn’t feel insecure about that. Plenty of fine people were unattractive, Arda was glad to have company. What Arda longed for was to be a thing. She wasn’t even ugly, just kind of normal looking. 

Beyond looks, Arda still wasn’t anything. Mari was Beautiful, Gabi was an Artist, Lin was Rich. Arda wasn’t those things or their opposites. She wasn’t Ugly or Poor, and even she couldn’t bear to think of herself as entirely Not an Artist. She was liminal. She lacked definition; Arda did. It’s why she couldn’t paint. After years obsessing, and wasting so much time doodling in sketchbooks and the corners of her high school assignments, she couldn’t handle it. She was in her second semester at art school when she realized everything she painted turned out wrong. To leave a mark on canvas just seemed too definite a move for someone like her. She shook at the thought. When she tried, her mind and her hands became two separate things. She wasn’t one or the other, trapped somewhere in between. 

She was lucky she was good at writing. The ambiguity encased in words and sentences, which escaped others, came natural to her. People wanted to hear what she had to say, but she couldn’t figure out why. She couldn’t even maintain her status as Writer for too long: It all faded away, into a transitional fog, a motion blur. She was lucky then that she had Aron. She shook her head, tried to think of something else.

Arda recognized her apartment drawing near, and pulled on the yellow cord lining the ceiling of the bus. She hadn’t opened the folder the whole way over, afraid someone might accost her for even holding such a gruesome thing. She hopped off onto the sidewalk, and instantly turned around. For a moment she thought about hopping back on. The bright white of the LEDs inside make it look like the gates of heaven; she could almost hear a choir of angels singing, inviting her back. But before she could form another thought, the doors swung closed, and the bus drove off. Another decision, made for her.



CHAPTER 3.

Saltwater rolled in, offered a foamy belch, and was pulled lazily back out to sea. In empty stretches of sapphire, struggle was raging: Nature vs. itself. The same wind-borne forces that carved cliff faces-- drowned men in merciless churning-- were reduced to motherly hushes on the beach. Watchers with their ankles in the sand could stare out for miles into the curling atmosphere and see nothing but stillness, and a twinkling on the horizon, oblivious to the trauma all around. The water fizzled as it was sucked into the sandy earth, and little bubbles revealed the hiding spots of subterranean crustaceans.

Upon two steady hands, a tray of sweating cocktails made its way down the beach. It was still too early for the tourists to be out, but the island had already begun its daytime phase. The ubiquitous din of birds and insects, bustling down dirt roads and lapping up at hotel balconies. Smells competing for nose-space: over-ripe fruit; donkey shit; uncountable and strange flowers; an abandoned row-boat, rotted by the sea. Weatherless as a postcard, Nap’are transitioned regularly between its only two seasons: day and not. Every day, the humming of life returned, and every night it was dispersed again. At night it was calm, and the world around was hidden. Stars awoke, reflected onto the rippling ocean. The black sky surrounded the atoll, swallowing it whole. In the night, the islanders were fixed in the silent whirl of space with no Earth left around them, but the waves remained. Like the ticking of a lazy watch, a persistent reminder of unavoidable process. In, and back out again. Without fail. Without the waves, the island could drift away like a cloud on a stray breeze.

Toby walked as fast as he could, stretching his long legs to their limit with each step. Two bushwhackers and a watermelon daiquiri were melting, and he could feel the potential for a  tip disintegrating similarly. Carefully, in his 4-year-old, sun-starched flip-flops, he made his way to the Executive Hut, squinting through his messy hair and the morning sun. It was a precarious path for a bellhop; one quarter mile of ungroomed, sandy dunes, laced with dried palm fronds and broken sea shells, longing to make contact with the arches of innocent feet. He kept his eyes on his goal, denying his innate clumsiness. 

He had asked dad if they could get a path put in-- something rustic and inconspicuous, for staff use only. No luck. The guests paid for privacy, complete separation from human society, if possible. That was the whole point of the separated units: isolation. Too much accessibility would make the property completely useless. Any trace of civilization visible from the Hut’s deck had to be removed, excepting of course the cartoonishly stereotypical Hut itself. 

Toby, being a timid and entirely forgettable person, was perfectly suited for this role. His invisibility allowed for the level of immersion the guests were seeking, and his father insisted upon. They were grateful, but they rarely remembered to tip. They rarely remembered his name.

“Toby,” said Toby, reminding nobody.

Tiki-themed blackout drapes were dancing in the breeze-- Toby recognized their fringes ruffling out from behind the ensconcing plumeria as he approached the Hut. It was the familiar sight of the deck-facing door pulled wide open to let in the day and the salty air. But as he approached, no one was there. He scanned the beach, left to right: not a soul. 

“Mr. Booker?” Toby called into the foliage. No response but the gentle sway of heavy fronds.

Mr. Booker was a writer, and a semi-permanent guest. He was a bit strange. However, he was never rude, and generally considered harmless. Toby could actually expect the occasional tip from the middle-aged eccentric. Booker liked to hand out small bills to people everywhere he went on the island, in a kind of uncomplicated and knee-jerk reaction to his status as a public figure. Nearly all of the guests on the island were wealthy or famous, Booker was one of the few who saw this as discomfiting. His other reaction to this discomfort was to remain perpetually drunk, stumbling from place to place. He tended to gather flocks. He was a shepherd to all the minimum-wage service workers looking for a little extra on the side. He welcomed gifts of fresh-squeezed pineapple juice, and little baggies of weed. When the call came in late last night for a tray of early morning cocktails, Toby decided he’d be at the hotel bar before the sun rose, ready to serve, and ready to receive a crinkled twenty dollar bill. Maybe.

A delicate tap on the bedroom window. “Mr. Booker?”

Nothing. Not even the exasperated groan of a committed late sleeper. He set the tray down and started searching. By now the cocktails were thin as water. Things weren’t looking good for poor Toby. He began to hope Booker was merely trying to stiff him, as opposed to being in actual danger. 

“Mr. Booooo-kerrr…” sing-songy this time. Maybe he was only hiding...

Toby sat, unsure of what else he should do. He considered taking a sip of daiquiri. It was really warming up now. Somewhere nearby a golf-cart was starting up, and in the laundry room fluffy white towels were being folded in silence. A bird repeated its call, over and over, to no response. How long would he remain undisturbed? And who would be the one to disturb him?  Would it be Eleanor? Would Mr. Booker turn up?

Out in front of him, a tiny white motor boat cruises along the water, blowing a continual, frothy raspberry. The pilot-- his outline wiggled by the heat-- turns and waves to Toby. Hi Toby.

Toby waves back: “Hi, Sam.” The pilot looks forward and, in a moment, is gone. 

The waves roll in, and return, and Toby kicks off his flip-flops to submerge his toes in the sand. As a seagull cries, he closes his eyes and breathes in deeply through his nose. The waves. The salty water. The scattered sound of fauna in the flora. The impatient tap tap tap of water dripping onto the deck. Maybe, in lieu of a tip, one could just sneak in a quick nap before the rest of the hotel is up. Before the front desk’s phone starts ringing with requests for scrambled eggs and Kona coffee. Strawberries and pineapples. A heat-lamp watching over a whole tray of crispy, thick-cut bacon. 

“Where is she?”

Toby whipped open his eyes to the blinding sun. Standing at attention, he paused as the streaks faded from his vision. When the world returned, there was Booker: completely nude, a single seaweed streamer tossed over his left shoulder, and wet sand matted into his hair. He looked like he just woke up in a tide pool. Toby, with a polite hand over his eyes, scrambled for the tray. The glasses tipped, and shattered.

“I am terribly sorry, M-Mr. B-Booker, I, I thought I-- thought you, that is, m-might have b-been--” He got on his knees and tried to pluck shards of glass from the sugary brine.

“There was... some woman... silverish bathing suit-- here, last night…” Neither a question or a statement. Passing thoughts, stopping a second in Booker’s head, gone again. He was still dripping, with a bluish pallor that made him look like a corpse. 

Toby reached for a hotel towel already hanging over a patio chair. Booker sat down and stared at his sandy feet. 

“It wasn’t a dream,” he said, as if Toby had suggested it. 

“I’ll go get a bucket of soapy water, and a dustpan, and take care of this right away.” He had forgotten his tip. “Should I, um, ask around? For this lady?” He was unsure of how else to comfort this devastated and dripping man. 

Booker said nothing and Toby rushed off, leaving his flip-flops behind.

***

Cal had a black 4runner. It guzzled gas, leaked coolant, and the paint was falling off in little flakes that his friends would find the next morning after he had come by to visit. It matched his vibe perfectly: a little messy-- somewhere between scrappy and rugged-- and of course, all black. Cal smoked inside, all the time, so it reeked of tobacco and pot. The ceiling had grayish, circular stains, either from the smoking or a hidden leak. It was the same car he bought off his dad at eighteen, never once taken to a real mechanic. He loved it and hated it. His friends just hated it.

“I promise I’m not as creepy as I look,” Cal called into the back seat. “You can come up to the front, with me, if you’re not scared.” He whacked the passenger seat with a hearty smack.

“Gonna have to be a little more clever than that, if you’re trying to kill me,” Arda replied, her eyes on her manila folder. Cal laughed, and cracked his window. In an instant the cloud of smoke filling the truck was sucked out into the night, dashed along the freeway. He closed the window and smoked some more. 

“So, you’ve never met this guy before?” he asked.

“I told you, he’s a friend of Lin’s”

“A friend? Or a ‘friend?’”

“How the hell should I know?” Arda kept flipping through the folder. She’d seen all the pictures at least once, but hoped that with enough familiarity she might never have to open the thing again.

“Like, a friend with benefits--?”

“He’s a friend with money. That’s what I care about. That’s what employed people care about. It’s a job.”

“Ouch,” Cal looked back through his rear view mirror. “Didn’t realize I was so obvious...”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she smirked. “I’m barely employed myself... I haven’t sold a piece in almost a year, and nobody wants to read a blog written by a nobody. So I’m a little desperate. I need a few more friends with money.” 

She paused on a black and white photograph: a blow-up of the underside of someone’s tongue, veiny and glistening. Going from top to bottom were three deep slits, leaking black onto the row of teeth below. Blood for Xoc was the title. The distinct crowding of the lower incisors showed that this was a portrait of the artist himself. Arda pulled out her phone to see if she could find out who ‘Xoc’ was, but she was out of battery.

“Do you trust this guy?” Cal looked at her through the rear-view.

“He’s a friend of Lin’s,” she shrugged.

“Do you trust Lin?”

Arda looked out her window. It was drizzling. The whoosh of headlights and cars was blurred behind the web of rain-water clinging to the window. She chased a few rivulets with her eyes, pulsing their way from front to back. She saw the tongue again, sitting in her lap. She closed her folder and stuffed it into her backpack. The airport was close.

“Do you have a phone charger? I completely spaced and forgot mine.”

“No. Sorry,” he cracked the window again and the cabin was cleared. “So, do you? Trust him?”

She pictured Lin: black shades, black suit, and ivory teeth: all with the greasy sheen you’d find on a snake. Even in her imagination he had a thick wad of bills in his back pocket, ready to be put to use.

“No.”

“‘No,’” Cal repeated, “do you normally hop on a plane and fly over the ocean for men you don’t trust?”

Arda chuckled. “Lin isn’t a ‘man--’ I mean, obviously, yes, he is. But he’s not ‘my man,’ he’s not ‘a man,’ like that. And I’m not flying over any oceans for him. I’m doing it for my other man: Ben Franklin.”

Cal laughed again, and puffed on his cigarette. He rolled down the window, and Arda pulled herself up to the front seat. Cal sealed the car up, and handed her the smoke. She took it and put it in her mouth.

“... it’s not a good idea… I don’t trust him either…” He kept his eyes on the road, but, even from the passenger seat, Arda could see the genuine level of concern.

“So what then? Should I trust you?” She handed his cigarette back, then turned to blow her smoke out of her own window. “I only met you a few days ago-- I appreciate the ride, don’t get me wrong.  But how am I supposed to take your advice in good faith? For all I know you want the job yourself. You could be a rival writer, fuming over the lost opportunity…” She was teasing, but she expected an answer. Cal was a nice guy and all, but something was missing. He didn’t speak for a while, and Arda went back to tracing water droplets on the window.

“I was a friend of Aron’s. We went to Mason Gross together. I guess he never told you, but it’s true,” his hands were both tight on the wheel. “I still think a lot about him and… I’m just… I’m really sorry, you know? If I had known--” 

He made the fatal mistake of glancing in Arda’s direction. She had become instantly serious, a tense weave of wrinkles on her forehead were enhanced by the freeway light. Her eyes were glistening, and angry.

“Arda, wait--” He could sense what was about to happen.

“Stop the car,” she said firmly, and rubbed her eye.

“Hold on. Please, I--”

“Stop your fucking car, Cal,” she restrained her voice. 

“I can’t just--”

She opened the door. Clammy air blasted in, scattering the stray papers and trash Cal hadn’t bothered to clean up. His cigarette was sucked right out from between his fingers. He cursed, thinking he saw Arda actually step out with one foot onto the road speeding by them. He swerved to the shoulder and turned the 4runner off. Several cars behind him were honking as they maneuvered out of the way and zoomed down the road, their horns dopplered into low groans, and then silence.

“Are you a fucking psychotic?” He stammered. “Are you trying to get us both fucking killed? Get back in the car, please. Now.”

She had her backpack zipped, and she was standing in the rain. She looked straight into Cal’s eyes.

“I don’t care what you want, okay? Turn around, drive off and never call me ever again. I don’t care what you want, I don’t care that you’ve lost someone too-- just stay the hell away from me, okay? I don’t have anything for you--”

“That’s not what I meant--”

“I can’t offer you any sort of closure, any sort of relief from--”

“That isn’t what I meant, alright? Why can’t you ever just listen to what people are telling you?”

She flipped her backpack onto one shoulder and checked her left and right. She was on the freeway, but just over the barricade was Hawthorne. She could walk from there, it wasn’t even raining so hard anymore.

“Because I already know what you’re going to say,” It was the best she was going to get. She shut the door and jumped the barricade. On the other side, a homeless man was sleeping on cardboard in the mud. He looked up at her and the first words out of his mouth were:

“You got any change?”

***

Arda considered how thorough a glimpse the average airport employee got into her own personal life. Of course they were privy to the essentials: name, country-of-origin, date-of-birth, etc. But did the proximity to such information allow for a true gestalt of the individual, such that these minimum-wage-earners could access the hidden depths of Arda’s soul? Was she the proverbial opened book to these jaded wise-men? The person behind her preemptively removed his shoes, and Arda could smell his socks. She wondered if the TSA agent ahead of her even cared that he had the privilege to be so personally invasive to thousands of strangers. Was he some kind of fetishist, receiving additional compensation in the form of others’ personal info? Maybe he was sworn to a code of constantly forgetting. She thought she heard the Sbarro’s behind her call her name over the intercom.

The security guard waved on another person, and an old lady waddled up to the podium. Arda eyed the women in front of her, all three in full hijabs, wondering what security would make of them. She thought about turbulence, and takeoffs in the rain. She thought about the little bottles of vodka, rum and whiskey.

“Well, don’t you look positively horrendous.”

She jumped at the sound of Lin’s voice. He was standing right beside her, in an empty queue. 

“What the hell are you doing here? I thought--”

“I hope you didn’t think you were doing this alone,” he pulled upward on the nylon-strap barrier, and directed Arda into his own line. “Come on. I know you don’t know what this means, but we have pre-check. Unfortunately, we don’t have any dry clothes.”

“Hardy har. Make yourself useful and hold my backpack,” she tossed it at him and began wringing out her hair. As it lost its water it sprung back up in tight, little curls. “So am I to understand we are on the same page about the details of this little job of mine?”

“I’m a couple pages further, in fact,” Lin offered cooly, “and it’s our job, dear--”

“Are you meeting with the deranged killer?” she shot under her breath.

“Well... no. Fair enough. But you’ll need a bit of a helping hand getting around. The island is small, but it can be a tricky place to navigate…”

“It’s an atoll, right? A big ring? Anywhere you are, just keep walking and you’ll be right where you started.”

“If only it were so,” he said before twirling off down a stray hallway, sealed off with a yellow strand of tape. Arda was wondering if she should’ve written a will; Lin was on vacation. He cracked a door that read ‘employees only,’ and peered inside. Once he was sure they were alone, he called Arda with a nod. She stepped in and he put a hand on her arm.

“This isn’t exactly a resort. But it also isn’t a prison.”

“Who said it was a prison?” She asked earnestly.

“It’s not a prison. Think of it as a camp. Although some people at this camp are not there willingly, perse. Perhaps a lot of people are there unwillingly. At this camp.”

“Maybe ‘camp’ wasn’t the best word?”

“We are welcome to the island, but not as guests. ‘Guests’ leave places after they’ve had their fun, but they have to follow the hosts rules, no matter how severe. We don’t have to follow the rules, but we can’t have any of the fun. We arrive more as… administrators.”

The word sounded particularly cold, coming from Lin as he smiled paternally, still holding onto Arda’s arm.

“There are no extra duties for you,” he continued, “it’s a titular thing. A status thing. It’s just important that you know this, and you don’t get too close to the--”

“Prisoners.”

“It’s not a prison,” Lin insisted.

“Right. The campers, my mistake,” she opened the employee door. “Is there anything else I need to know about this place? The folder didn’t say much, I couldn’t even find it on a map--”

She made a move for the doorway, but Lin did not let go of her arm. She turned to face him, and there he was, smiling friendly as ever.

“Trust me,” he told her, and let her go.



CHAPTER 4.

By the time the seat belt sign had turned off-- after about fifteen, teeth-clenching minutes of initial turbulence-- the clamor of the engines had become unnoticeable. The roar that always made Arda close her eyes tight and pray for the comfort of solid ground, had been demoted to white noise. Lin got them some pretzels and some drinks.

She looked out the window, but all that could be seen was covered by clouds in high-speed. Lin pulled her tray out, and put down a tiny bloody mary. He ordered her to drink, which she did. She looked back out the window and thought about Cal. She thought about the papers and things that were sucked out of his car into the puddles along the side of the freeway, and hoped none of them were important. She thought about Aron. She couldn’t help it, and she thought about dying. She told Lin to get them some more drinks.

The name of the subject echoed in her head: Fevzi Goshen. She didn’t need to pull out the folder any more, she remembered it all. Could even read Errol’s chicken-scratch filling the margins from her memories-- stuff about Mayan rituals and a guy named Atys, all the proper nouns underlined three times.

“How much did you tell Eroll about me?” she asked Lin as he returned to their seats with a drink in each hand.

“Just the basics. Job stuff, nothing too personal.”

“Did you tell him about Aron?”

His face became serious. Arda was immediately interested to see how long he could manage this look of sincere concern.

“I would never reveal something so personal, Arda. I hope you believe me,” he said. He then picked up his drink and began sipping.

“Do you know Cal? Kind of tall, black hair, black car, black clothes. He’s a painter, or… maybe…” She realized she did not know what Cal did, either for money or for sanity.

“Mmm, no. Don’t think so,” Lin sipped innocently. He was a terrible liar.

Arda swallowed her drink and began chewing on ice. 

When she was still a kid her family went on frequent trips anywhere it would snow. They felt that the constant sunshine of southern California was just not natural, and so they forced their children to experience other seasons. Once, after the long drive back home, Arda’s brother called her over to the opened trunk of their family minivan. Inside was a plastic cooler, the lid pulled back to reveal about twenty, slightly saggy snowballs. The two filled their arms and proceeded to pelt their parents and other siblings until a dogpile ensued. They were constantly making mischief like this. Arda and Aron were inseparable, despite the difference in age. Arda kept crunching little cylinders of ice with her molars, trying to get the image of the runny snowballs out of her mind. Her nose crinkled reflexively as she chewed up something unexpected, and bitter. Coughing into her hand, a single white speck was left in her palm.

“Lin--” she spat out through more coughs.

“I remembered you telling me once how much you hate flying. At least I think that was you,” he put down his cup, nothing left inside but ice cubes.

“Lin, did you--” she sputtered, “-- put something--?”

“I know this must seem very strange, but there were precautions we needed to take. And since you hate flying…”

She swallowed a mouthful of saliva and cleared her throat.

“You drugged me? What the fuck is going on?”

“Take this,” he handed her a complimentary pillow, “I’ll be right here beside you the whole time. And when you wake up,” he said dreamily, “I’ll have all the answers you want…”

Arda’s lips began tingling, and Lin suddenly seemed very far away. She clapped a palm to her forehead and didn’t feel a thing. She wanted to scream and giggle at the same time.

“Lin, this… this isn’t funny at all…” her eyelids drooped, and as Lin receded into the distance his smile reduced to a single sparkly dot. “Not one bit,” she continued, “not one bit.” 

For a while she was lost without body, in a fog, falling. She began to dream after some time that she was playing dodgeball with a bunch of kids, her being the only adult. Children kept beaning each other with red rubber balls, producing that distinct, rubber-ball sound that would bring one instantly back to their days on the playground. The kids were getting pelted left and right, but no one ever left for the benches. There were no benches that Arda could see. It was an ongoing game with no points, and no sides to the conflict, and no one ever cast a ball in Arda’s direction. She could see in fact that there were no boundaries: not a single white line was painted on the sprawling blacktop. As far as she could see children were heaving these rubber balls at each other, again and again, making a chorus of fleshy slaps. She sat down and no one cared. She lay completely on her back, and the children simply walked all over her, smothering her under the weight of their cleats. She was pressed down into the pavement, until it opened and began to absorb her. The ground sealed her up, and again she could see nothing, hearing only the muffled sounds of a thousand footsteps.

***

As a new millennium approached, and the thought of high school loomed large in young Sam Bone’s nightmares, something unbelievable was happening. The world was becoming smaller, and a formerly unappreciated apparatus of satellites and fiber-optic cables was working to pull the vast outside into its center: the world-wide-web was in full bloom. A new frontier had been declared open, and Sam saw his own salvation in the calm-ocean teal of his Windows desktop. His dad had apparently been good with computers, and Sam learned how to write code from a book the old man left behind. He was always up late, his eyes red, zipping back and forth, skimming endless cascades of pixelated text. Slowly the words began to make sense. He filled his head with commands and prompts like a wizard collecting spells. By day he was just another pimpled teen, running out of school at the final bell’s toll in a preemptive flight from his doting bullies. By night he was something even cooler than any cowboy or criminal-- some mysterious archetype still being forged. He was a rebel pioneer. The future was bright for people like him. It was the era Napster and Drudge Report were in the headlines, making the people on TV sweat. Sam had always considered these people to be a certain type of bully, and it felt good to watch them struggle the way he felt he had, his entire, short life. For the first and only time he would feel a part of something bigger and more important than himself.

After spending the first month of a summer vacation parsing line after line of dense code-- applying occasional cosmetic debugs for a malware program inadvertently downloaded from a favored porn site-- Sam had engineered his own trojan program for seeding onto the computer of anyone dumb enough to click a certain ‘male enhancement’ banner advertisement Sam had designed and paid for himself, during the second month of aformentioned summer vacation. Amazingly, miraculously, one such sucker happened to click from his work computer at a prison in Venezuela, thus giving 15-year-old Bone access to 24-hour streams from all the prison’s security cameras, including the remote control of radial arm movements for cameras with said feature. 

The nascent internet community was both horrified and amused. This kind of raw violence was not available for free in the era of television. An endless parade of five-on-one beatings that lasted for an hour each; one of the smaller men stabbed in the shower, pinned against a wall by a towering assailant; a guard who, caught cornered by a man he had tortured many times before, soiled himself and begged please no as his fingers and eyes were removed by his old friend, the both of them soon reduced to mush by a rain of bullets. 

It was some real eye-opening shit. Sam felt like he had tapped into something particularly bad that, like an artery where one was expecting a vein, signalled the urgency of unanticipated death. Something happened to him that was hard to explain. He didn’t really want to try. It made him feel more isolated when he went over it in his mind. He never mentioned it, but it felt like people knew. He walked around with the perpetual fear of accusation, worrying someone would uncover his secret and blame him for the images he unearthed. 

One prisoner was subject to a uniquely horrifying and perfunctory method of torture, in which a section of plywood was tied to the bars of his cell, covering the bottom half. Rats would then be thrown in, and shot at from outside if they tried to climb back out. The prisoner, and the rats, would then be trapped together in the cell for long periods of time. This one particular prisoner had been left in his cell for over two weeks. The rats would start hissing and snapped at his bare feet any time he made a move off of his cot, so there he stayed. Like a pack of dogs they could sense the prisoner was frail and easily overpowered. He remained for days, cowering in a pile of his own waste. As the rats grew hungrier they became bolder, sometimes even climbing up into the cot, taking bites out of his toes. 

Eventually the man’s sanity gave; he lept off his metal cot and started stomping on the rats, driving his heel straight down into their soft bellies, twisting them into the ground like a cigarette butt, smearing entrails and rat shit in a grisly circle. They gnawed desperately at his toes as they departed, managing to draw blood that mixed with their own. The guards began cheering. Spit was flying out of his mouth in strands as he yelled, smashing rats one by one. He got on hands and knees and pulled the last rodent out from under the cot and crushed it like overripe fruit. Chunks of red dribbled down his forearm. The guards threw in pocket change and cigarettes and cheered triumphantly. One puked in disgust. The prisoner, drained, collapsed onto the messy floor and slept. He was shot a few days later for reasons unclear. 

Forums across the internet went wild. People spread the clips without thought, as they would respiratory infections. Their minds were not equipped to process such horror; the same mechanisms that had brought them in contact with this misery made it all appear trivial. They credited Sam with the find, but he wasn’t watching the streams by this point. He heard about it on message boards. He saw little .gifs posted, sometimes hiding behind spoiler tags. Pixelated men being beaten and stomped on. Gestures of violence and terror, clear despite the grainy footage. Mouths open in scream-shapes, but no sound. He couldn't escape it. 

In the real world, he got ready to go back to school.

His screen name then had been rgis00000. Every so often, drunk and alone, Sam will type the word into a search engine and find archived threads. He rereads all the old posts. He tries to rethink the thoughts he used to have-- or should have been having. Thoughts for normal adolescent boys: getting laid, hanging out, loud music, anger, parents, homework, getting a car, blowing up the school, etc.

The life of a college student was perfect for Sam. He excelled in the frequent drinking, and he adored the drugs. He rose to the top of a hierarchy based more on accomplishments than on popularity. People finally found him interesting, but he was long past caring. Sex was finally available to him, but the mind-alterating substances proved to be far more enticing; LSD, psilocybin, DMT. Testing the limits of his perception was more fulfilling than he ever imagined sex would be, and he even managed to learn a lot of useful things in class. He rarely slept, studying in the hours his friends were recuperating from the drinking and the substances. With access to a lab and chemicals, he could actually make the drugs he knew others would pay for. He learned how to render pure scopolamine from the nightshade growing just off the quad. A fifty dollar bottle of phenylethylamine could be turned into hundreds in synthetic acid. He cleaned out what isosafrole his school had available. Sam became very popular. 

The life of a college graduate, on the other hand, was far too rooted. Sam couldn’t deny: he loved the impressed look on peoples’ faces when they heard what he was studying, and where he did so. It made him feel smart-- smarter than actually just being smart. He could see why people stuck with it. But things were moving too slow, and he knew himself well enough to see the premature end to his college career bounding towards him from over his horizon. So he left. 

He fell in love with Thailand. The people, the weather, the affordability of sex and drugs. The place stayed new and fresh, even after months in the same place. He actually went steady for a while with a girl to whom he taught a bit of English. He shared her apartment in Chiang Mai. He never learned any Thai. 

This too proved to be too rooted. Something deep inside Sam feared attachment; his favorite times were always in the archipelago, when he would set out on a boat and the overgrown shore would retreat to nothing behind him. After enough time land would spawn again in front of him, in another form. Different but the same; another iteration of land-meets-water. He spent the last of his US currency modifying a long-boat for extended travel. Floating down the archipelago, sleeping on the boat and starting again in the morning, brought him all the way to Indonesia. He grew a scraggly beard, mostly out of apathy. He sold synthetics to tourists, and he never spoke to anybody, floating further and further, spending more and more time out in the blank ocean.

One October Sam woke up on the beach. The sky was overflowing with fog, spilling it onto the sand, into the edges of his mind. A stuffed silence, like cotton balls in his ears. It was monsoon season. Rain fell, coating his face as he lay supine. He moved his limbs, but the sensation was delayed. The impressions of damp sand came up his nerves in faded pulses, unable to hold a note. Invisible bubbles bursting on his fingertips and toes, and a ringing in his sinuses.

His loyal vessel was driven up twenty feet onto the sand, resting on its side. Had the tide gone out, or did he collide with the coast? Did he fall here from the sky? Why was his tongue tingling like an inflated sponge? The rain turned to sheets and his pieces began to assemble themselves: he remembered: himself, maybe a week ago, and a man he had just met. He bought a jar with some loose, purple fuzz inside-- gray seeds were caught in its weave. The man said he was a tourist, but had none of the signature hesitation of someone selling contraband in a foreign country. Sam was supposed to sell it-- or eat it, if he felt bold. He didn’t remember much after that, and presumed he had chosen the latter. The jar had been sweating inside, and the fuzz had a name he had never heard before. 

He flipped the boat over his body like a shell, and listened to rain beat the other side. It was coming down hard, the wind jerking droplets sideways. Hallucinations were bubbling back up, rising from spine to chest. A new tide rose and found him ready in this isolation chamber. His numb fingers squirmed into the sand like worms, and icy waves shot up his nerves. He considered how rootless he really must have been for this past week, or was it more? He saw the image of his own brain stem grow out like a tree from behind him, but reaching back he felt nothing there.

When he awoke, it could have been days later. He was hungry and he believed he would probably die before finding anything to eat. 

He put his boat in the water, and picked a direction.

Sam swore he had been to this island before. It must have been East from even Vanuatu now, but this place felt familiar. It had the same foliage, the same pale sand cratered by raindrops, the same omniscient gray sky looming above. It was the same, but different. He felt something sharp with his toe, and saw that all around him, spread out in the sand, were hundreds of jagged black shards. Mussel shells, crushed and pulled apart. Their meat was torn out long ago, the little strings of orange flesh that remained had dried and hardened. Sam began sifting, thinking he might find one with enough on it to eat.

“Who in God’s asshole are you?” A shout tumbled down to Sam, “and how the hell did you find me?” The man had to yell over the gale, from up on a high dune. Sam looked up and saw his threatening glare concealed by safety goggles. His arms were folded tight, and his tattered lab coat writhed in the wind.

Sam’s jaw dropped; it had been a long time since he had last seen another person. He explained: he didn’t mean any intrusion, he didn’t know there was anyone living here. He didn’t even know why he was here, really. 

“Baz,” said the man. Sam could tell this was the man’s name only because he said it with an outstretched hand, ready for shaking. 

Baz led his guest into the sparse foliage, to two massive shipping containers set in an L-shape, fused together at the elbow. A generator was purring outside, with a worn tarp stretched over it to block the rain. Sunnier weather had bleached the sides, revealing that this set-up had been here since some time long before the monsoon season.

Sam was invited in. A turquoise glow coated the entire inside. The steady hum of filters and gurgling bubbles smothered the rush of rain on the aluminum roof. Dozens of eyes-- bulbous, large and small, some ovular and others with slit pupils, blinking and vacant-- watched him as he entered. Aquariums of varying sizes, some stacked upon each other clumsily, overloading high shelves and filling every corner. Filtration systems purred in quiet harmony. Fish of all kinds drifted behind the glass. Some tanks were filled with diverse communities of life, while others contained single, sulking sea-creatures. Sam recognized several as very poisonous. The fish and crustaceans and cephalopods and urchins allowed Sam entry, but kept their eyes on him. As the wind grew heavier outside, the light indoors pulsed briefly off, then on again. 

Baz put himself in a stained desk chair. He pushed a box full of papers towards Sam with his foot.

“That’s all I got for an extra seat. No beds. I sleep there,” he pointed to a crumpled sleeping bag under the desk. “You can sleep there--” head toss to some empty section of floor around the bend, “--until the rain stops. Stay longer, if you’re willing to help me out with some things…”

Baz stood up and twisted the top off a fist-sized cylinder. He pulled out clumps of a mysterious, scarlet hash with his fingers, and plopped them into a tank. Sam could see by the squirming that it was a wad of shredded worms that loosened as it sank. The fish went wild. Sam watched them rip it apart, releasing a pink fog into the water. Still-living sections of worm were trying to swim to the top. Sam watched closely; he didn’t know what they thought they’d find up there.



CHAPTER 5.

At some point Arda started falling again. The roar of wind rushing by her ears grew louder until she couldn’t ignore it, but her arms and legs wouldn’t flail or kick no matter how she struggled. The roar grew sharper, until it was almost tangible. She lifted her eyelids slowly, surprised at how heavy they had become. As her pupils adjusted, she found her whole body was wrapped snugly in a cotton blanket. Immediately it all came back to her:

“Lin,” she growled, but her voice was masked by the churn of propellers outside the plane.

She almost threw her fist into the seat next to her as soon as she unswaddled from her cocoon. Even though the plane was deafening, she could hear snoring coming from the seat next to her, and eagerly wanted to pummel Lin as he slept. But as she hesitated, realizing that the color of the blanket she tore off her body was different than the one she remembered, she saw that it wasn’t even Lin snoring. Stranger still, she saw that the ceiling was now lower than it had been, and there were no longer knobs for A/C, or reading lights.

She was on a different plane-- a completely different kind of plane. One of those little sea-faring planes everyone rides in nature documentaries. Lin was nowhere in sight. Claustrophobia found Arda and she squeezed the arm rests, breathing deep and fast, wondering how long she had been out and how she could have possibly been moved.

The person next to her coughed, and choked on spit for a moment, before resuming his steady snore. Arda tried to remain calm and not start screaming. The splitting headache helped. She went to undo her seatbelt and found there wasn’t one. Up the aisle was a chubby guy looking quite bored, seated facing the rows of people. Arda assumed from his positioning that he was not one of these fellow passengers-- passengers who may, she began to fear, have just as much clue as she about what was happening. She made for the front, careful to match each step with a firm grip on the edge of a seat’s back. A lady two rows in front of her was wearing a hat with real fruit on it.

“Excuse me,” Arda shouted in the polite way one shouts when normal volumes can’t be registered.

He stared.

“Did you see who I came on the plane with?” she continued.

The man pointed to a seat and she whipped around. He was referring to the snoring man. Facing him, Arda could now see he was one of those lizard-impersonators, with a face tattooed with scales, a split-tongue and, presumably under his closed eyelids, reptilian contact lenses. She caught sight of the fruit-hat again and saw there was a very life-like snake intertwined among the pears.

“Uh; no. I’m talking about the one who would’ve walked onto the plane with me in tow. I may have been asleep at the time. Skinny guy. Asian. Looks rich. Ring any bells?”

Arda received more blank stares.

“So, are you telling me that a man boarding with an unconscious woman, and then just leaving, is a normal thing? Something that happens often around here?” She was getting impatient, and genuinely concerned.

The man’s brow fell into a level horizon that asked: ‘are you serious right now?’ and he looked back out the window.

Arda clenched her fist, ready to pummel anyone at this point, but stopped at the soft touch of a hand on her arm.

“Please refrain from violence.” A man dressed like the pope-- only with shiny black, studded leather instead of holy-white silk-- reasoned with her. “At least until we’re off the plane?” Behind the zipped eye-holes on his mask, Arda could tell he winked.

She turned to take in the other passengers. It wasn’t really clear who she was flying with when all she could appreciate were the backs of their heads. Some people had suits on, like regular, annoyed business-types on a plane-- but others had face paint and beaded braids. A few people were nude. A French couple was passing a little clasp-purse shaped like a seashell with a pile of cocaine inside to strangers, and gossiping loudly. The BDSM pope was a part of a whole matching team of religiously-themed dominatrices. They talked gaily of remembered, violent orgies as their leather outfits squeaked with every move. The snake in the fruit-hat was real, and man in back in a full straight-jacket was sipping whiskey through a straw, while somebody in an oversized fur coat was holding the cup for him. 

Arda took a deep breath, and tried not to look so obviously terrified. She gripped a seat and trudged back. 

Outside the window, it was a two-tone split: bright, high-lighter blue, and dark blue. Blue and blue, from end to end, not a cloud in sight. Arda stared straight out, conscious of the strain the light put on her eyes. Paper was crinkling under her ass, and she found her folder tucked into the folds of her blanket. Lin had left a note inside:

Sorry, Dear. See you soon! He drew a little face winking.

Behind the note was a picture of Goshen. It looked like a mugshot, except for the pitch-black background. He definitely had the impatient grimace of a quality criminal. Arda wanted to be familiar with his face. Bald, angular head and a muscled brow. She wanted to humanize him-- in the sense that he would become ugly, predictable, mundane. Looking into his eyes, they looked back at her. She found another picture, this one catching some of his broad torso. There was little that was subtle or artful about his appearance: massive forehead, dark eyes, hunched shoulders. He wore a lot of thick black sweaters. In some pictures he was standing by his work, clearly having just finished making a breakthrough, his forearms drenched in blood. He never smiled, at least not in the photos. What would this kind of person be doing on an island in paradise? What did a creature like this do to relax? Or was he in the middle of his next project?

Arda put her hand on the window and warmed her open palm. She hoped wherever she was going there would be food. She hoped Lin would be there too, so she could punch him in the teeth. 

Coming into view was a limp ring of green, sitting on the water. Inside the ring it was white-washed, with a few dark craters. From up high it looked like a single-celled organism, alone on a slide. 

***

Technically, the plane landed. Arda was thinking of a few more accurate ways to describe it, but people were clapping regardless, and making for their overhead compartments. The carry-ons were, unsurprisingly, just as eclectic as their owners: instruments in and out of cases, a few disassembled mannequins, a handbag made from a taxidermied duck. Standing, Arda could feel the sway of waves in her gut, and realized they were not yet on land. A bamboo dock snaked its way from the plane to a concrete platform in front of a wall of dense foliage lining the coast. There were already people grouping together on the land, some in little red bellhop vests. She could hear monkeys and birds, and some of the drunken passengers were stumbling for the opened door. Arda released her grip from the arms of her chair and watched the impressions in the leather rise like bread.

“Not a fan of flying?” asked the lizard-man, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Not a fan of landings. Take-offs aren’t exactly my specialty, either…”

“Well, it’s over now. Time to relax,” he pulled a chrome flask from his bag and handed it to Arda. The flask was similarly decorated in scales. She took a polite sip. “Or work, if that’s your deal. I’m Zander.”

“Arda,” she shook his hand and returned the flask, “and I guess it’s a little of both for me. What about you?” The two of them got in the slow-moving procession for the door.

“It’s all play this time, baby. I just had the best show of my life and now I’m celebrating. I’m a painter, out in New York. Zander Gross. I don’t know if you know painting--”

“Sure. It’s what I write about.”

“Oh, yeah? You should write about me. Water of the womb-- That’s my show I just did. It’s a painting slash tattoo experience. Maybe you heard about it?”

“Mmm, no, sorry. I’m out in LA,” she tuned-out as Zander gave his rendition of the obligatory diatribe on how soulless the West coast is compared to the East. “Did you say you had been here before? Working?” she asked.

“--huh? Oh, yeah. Did I say that? Well anyways, I have. I was here last year, working with a few artists from Romania, or something? A couple of really crazy guys…”

Arda clenched her teeth. She didn’t know why, but she expected him to say Goshen’s name. She was terrified he would. Luckily Zander became distracted by something else he had to say, but Arda took the moment to commit herself right then to not knowing some things. To never ask certain questions. She reminded herself she was not a detective, she was not a hero; she had to do a job, and leave. Encounter pure evil, and leave it lying. If there were dark surprises waiting for her around every corner, she would walk straight and never turn. 

On shore, Zander and a few others found a group waiting for them, and he hopped in the back of a jeep without saying goodbye. The procession continued into the foliage. Arda stopped for a moment, expecting possibly a limo driver holding a card with her name on it, or even a kid in a golf-cart to take her up the road. But none of the other passengers-- those who didn’t find their place among the clusters of people-- seemed to mind continuing the trek on foot. They took off their nice shoes and rolled up their pants, so Arda did the same, hoping at some point things would begin to make a little more sense.

***

A low rhythm was thumping through the forest as they pressed on. It could be felt in the edges of Arda’s body before she could hear it clearly. The group she was with was getting tired, but they were all smiling softly to themselves, aware of something Arda was not.

She was already sweating and smacking bugs off the back of her neck, trying to estimate the mileage they’d already put in. Errol’s file had only mentioned a resort. Considering it was a secret resort, on a secret island, she was expecting some surprises, but not a hike. Perhaps ‘resort’ was just a euphemism, and Lin had been closer to the truth when he called the place a camp. Maybe she’d be expected to sleep on the ground. Whatever they were hiking towards, they moved with purpose, as a unit. Arda realized they wouldn’t leave her behind even if she wished; every time she stopped to catch her breath and lean against a tree, more people coaxed her forward from behind. She was caught in a steady flow, moving persistently uphill to a distant ridge.

The jingling of bells was coming in faintly from over the hill, shaking in time to different rhythms. Someone lit a joint. They grew closer to the noise, and the pounding and jingling became the chaotic rumble of dozens of drummers. Through the brush Arda saw the tops of buildings, and colorful streamers and lights. In the cobblestone center of an old village, people were dancing and drinking and playing different tunes simultaneously. It looked like a celebration, but when the passengers broke out into the crowd no one turned to them or cheered-- they either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Whatever it was, it was not for the new arrivals, and it had been going on for some time already. There were musicians, and mimes, and gymnasts and dancers swinging lit torches, all gathered in a little, cobblestone promenade. Some people were just there to dance in the center, and several from the procession jumped right in to join them. Some on the outside were engaged in their own projects: acrobatics, painting landscapes, making human pyramids, riding penny farthings, holding cardboard signs and shouting slogans. The air was choked with sparkling confetti, and a dozen people, lined-up under a colorful, cloth dragon, were dropping tiny red envelopes as they moved through the crowd.

“Cute,” Arda said to herself.

The last few passengers made their way out from the trees, and the group dispersed into the throng. Arda tried to find an oasis-- some breathing room in the sea of bodies-- but only ended up losing her sense of direction. She tapped the shoulder of a woman shaking dyed-silver dreadlocks back and forth. Suddenly out of her trance, she glared at Arda, confused and annoyed.

“Excuse me,” Arda started in polite shouts, “where’s the resort? I was told there would be a resort here?” The woman pulled a pacifier out of her mouth. LEDs in the rubber nipple twinkled red, green and blue. 

“You want The Moray?”

“Do I?”

The woman pointed over Arda’s shoulder, put the pacifier back in her mouth and danced off. Where she pointed Arda could see the prow of a massive beige building peeking over the nearby rooftops. Resting in the middle of it, bindi-like, was the golden silhouette of a swirling moray eel, trying to bite its own tail. Arda recognized it from a snake by the tiny teeth filling the mouth, and its beakish head. She made her way, shoulders-first, through the crowd.

The Moray’s main building had a large, open-dome structure, and its back unfolded along the coast so that its two wings hugged a private cove, just a short stairway down from the lobby, with rows of beach chairs and a tiki bar. The front hid all of this behind an imposing, brutalist facade-- something like the Pantheon meets a Soviet DMV. Vines dangled off its edges, and a twin set of tiled flumes channeled clear water along either side of the entryway path. Cast-offs from the festival in town were lingering around the premises, playing croquet and drinking in the sun. Inside, the carpet was a plush crimson, and all the metal was gold-- from the bell-calls, to the cuff-links the janitor was wearing. Arda felt the urge to hide her scuffed sneakers. She proceeded to the concierge. 

“Hello! Welcome to The Moray,” he began to enthusiastically list their amenities, their beach access, their history as a commune and retreat for artists, as one might in a radio advertisement.

“I’m checking in,” she interrupted, handing him her passport.

He typed her name into the system and perked up. Apparently they were expecting her, and her accomodations were all set-up. She was awaited by the owner of the property, Carl Everett. He wanted to speak with her personally, a privilege even the staff was only offered rarely. 

The bellhop took her backpack, and led her deeper.

Past the lobby, down every available route, was a series of complex hallways. Equipped with inconsistently patterned carpet and frequent divergent paths, they seemed designed to confuse. Turning left four times-- under normal circumstances a means of getting back to where you came-- brought them to an entirely new hallway. They seemed to go up and down levels without ever taking the stairs. This contradiction of spatial reasoning didn’t phase the bellhop, who moved forward without hesitation, Arda’s bag held stiffly out at his side. As they veered from one to the next, the color scheme shifted from crimson, to emerald, to sapphire. After a few repetitions of the zoetropic sequence, Arda was lost entirely. She walked faster to keep up with her guide, who seemed to take exaggerated steps, bounding through entire hallways in a single stretch of his legs. Weirdos like the ones outside lingered throughout the halls, rolling joints and pounding on doors to be let in. There were more naked people, some covered in mud and leaving footprints as they ran laughing through the halls, possibly lost themselves.

“Quite the lively place.”

“Oh, yes,” the young man began, “never a dull moment. Not since it’s re-founding in the late 80s. Mrs. Everett always kept good company, and Mr. Everett continues to do so, largely in her memory.”

“Who is Mr. Everett?”

Arda got more rehearsed information: he was a wealthy philanthropist, the owner of the resort and the entire island. He was close with many of the most famous working artists of today-- painters, performers, even a few pop stars. He oversaw the transition of the atoll from a lonely village, to an artist’s commune, to something far more profitable. It had taken decades; it was the realization of a grand dream.

“I’ve never heard of him,” she responded.

“That’s not surprising. Much of the expense is tied up in maintaining privacy here. It’s essential that no one has heard of him, or The Moray.”

“What’s the big secret?” She asked coolly, aware that it put him on the spot even though his strides were uninterrupted.

“I’m sure Mr. Everett will explain everything...”

They had to gingerly shove their way through a group having an impromptu fashion show in the middle of their path. The models were wearing animal skins, and gaudy masks. Pot smoke billowed out of their open door. One of the skins was smeared in red-- its owner flung it over her neck, pouted her lips, and turned back up her imagined runway.

The bellhop must have seen Arda’s reaction: “if there’s too much excitement here, all guests are welcome to relax at our other location, The Damselfish, on the other side of the island.”

“What goes on there?”

“Nothing too much, that’s kind of the point. It offers a respite from all of the activity of The Moray. It stays pretty quiet over there, with none of the events people often fly out for.”

Arda wanted to stop him and know more about these ‘events,’ but he cut her off preemptively:

“Here we are!” he pushed a door open to reveal a room far too large and luxurious for Arda. He placed her backpack down, bid her a good day, and turned to leave. She knew she should’ve offered a tip, or at least said goodbye, but she couldn’t speak. For a second she thought she might not be able to move. She forced her foot forward, stepped inside, and let the door close itself. 

The sliding glass-door to the patio was opened. It was almost comically beautiful outside: verdant palms, the shushing ocean-- the whole package. A strand of translucent smoke was rising from an ashtray set on the table outside. Draped over the back of a rattan chair was Lin’s black jacket. He had been here, and he was coming back. Arda knew she still wanted to hit him, but more important now was the obvious question staring her in the face: how the hell did Lin get here before her?

He had left her a fresh cigarette, but no lighter.



CHAPTER 6.

After two years of Sam’s time on the island, Baz would die. A phlegmy cough would turn bloody, and the old man finally had to get into his tiny motor boat to find a hospital. Sam never heard anything from him after that. It was possible he had capsized, and drowned. He could have run out of gas, and been stranded somewhere far off and unreachable. Sam missed him, and he chose to imagine the old man cozy in a clean white bed during his final moments.

Baz was involved with the military in some capacity, and at some forgotten time. Sam stumbled inadvertently across little pieces of his story sometimes, and they formed a grim and disjointed picture. Every so often ‘friends' passed through, displacing Sam to a hammock outside. Their stories were equally as bizarre, and the nature of their interactions with Baz were dubious. One of them was a paranoid old African who never slept, explaining it was because of the unbearable things he’d seen in his home. He told of the gruesome ends met by his loved ones. He had seen many women and children die, but it was never clear which things had been done to him, and which things he had been forced to do to others. Sam could hear him sobbing from inside most nights, as he lay bundled in his hammock. He wondered how the hell Baz could take it. After a month, the man disappeared. Sam was happy to sleep inside again. 

Sometimes the guests were there in a scientific capacity, to help with the fish, or bring in new specimens. These guests looked at Baz with a kind of respectful wariness. They brought their questions to him from over the ocean, and hung patiently on his every word. Baz was an expert, clearly; Sam could infer this much from the intricacy of scientific jargon that ensued whenever Baz and one of his fish-friends got going. It was like they were speaking in tongues. People sought his wisdom, but it was with a caution that one takes in dealing with a diseased person. Baz may somehow have gotten too close to the thing he was studying, and uncovered something that people feared, but were also fascinated by. Sam couldn’t pin down what exactly Baz studied in the fish, or what he wanted from them, but he was always interested in watching the process. Dissections were especially confounding; Baz always seemed to be after these little, purplish strands hidden away above the eyes, and in the spine. Something meshed in with their nervous system, only ever found in a few fish he split open on his tray. They glistened, thin and delicate as a thread, and he’d remove them gently, press them between glass slides, and be lost in thought for the next few days. 

When a fish would die and a vacancy opened up in the complex of aquariums, Baz would squeeze into an old wetsuit, patched up at the knees and belly with cotton t-shirts. He’d then drop an archaic diving bell helmet onto his head, which required securing via two grotesque, rusted knobs on the neck. They functioned by driving dulled pistons tight under Baz’s chin. The image disturbed Sam, and it required a good five minutes to get a perfect seal. It always looked like Baz had hunkered down in the sand to commit slow, thoughtful suicide in a contraption of his own divining. Sam had some extra cash from selling to tourists at a few nearby resorts; he fronted the money for some real SCUBA gear, but bought it in his own size. Baz’s days wandering the ocean floor were behind him.

Underwater, Sam was fragile as a leaf, moved from place to place at the whim of the ocean. An unforeseen current could drag him for yards, or pound him against jagged rocks. Flailing and fighting did only so much good, if one couldn’t work with and respect the current. They demanded his respect, and he was a supplicant bug to these leviathan forces. They called to him when he was on land, when he was dreaming or lost in his mindless routines. He felt phantom drifts carry his whole body off as he walked down the beach-- the familiar push and toss of the underwater lived now in his skin. He loved dives, and he cherished the residual effects of the silent conveyance. It was a pure high. Sam could be out for hours, going through several tanks in a day. He liked to drift; suspended, with no way to tell direction or speed until the murky edge of an oncoming reef became swiftly defined. The currents could fluctuate at a moment’s notice. 

Sam had set up a dozen permanent dive-lines all around Baz’s tiny island. These ghostly chains tying anchor to buoy, locks of algae tangled in their links, became familiar hubs to him. They were places to spot fish. He’d follow a chain to the bottom, trying not to shiver or be swept up entirely by an unseen current. The fish, tiny as they were, were completely unphased. Currents carried whole schools, picking them up and dropping them off somewhere new. Sometimes they were scattered and sometimes passed over, but their wide eyes never betrayed a look of perpetual alertness, and Sam envied their ability to hover undaunted, a part of the whole, larger process.

Sam returned from an early a.m. dive to see a new boat beached on the shore. As he neared the containers he could hear somebody scraping in the trees. A balding, sweaty man stumbled out of the brush, dirty covering his knees, and his two haggard eyes glared at Sam. 

“You must be the kid…” he growled. He cradled an assortment of plastic tupperware, each holding flora ripped fresh from the ground. His breath smelled rotten, and Sam could feel the humidity of his exhalations. “Help me with some of this, huh?” 

Sam stepped past him and went inside. Baz had a specimen open on the table, scavenging for usable material with scalpel and probe. He told the kid to just not worry about it: their guest would be gone soon. But ‘soon’ turned out to be several arduous months. The guest was rude, never bathed or swam or brushed his teeth, and always had tasks Sam was unable to blow off with enough force to actually send home the message. Once, as the guest was on hands and knees digging in the dirt, Sam had asked him what the hell he was even looking for. He stopped, and dropped his head to stare at Sam from between his legs, spitting through his inverted, hellish smile: 

“fungus.”

He was rapacious. He almost sunk the containers once, digging with a grizzled spade under the back corner, hoping Baz wouldn’t notice. He was looking for more precious samples of rot. Sam, jumping up behind him, grabbed the spade and javelin-launched it out into the water. Now if he wanted to destroy all of Baz’s hard work, Sam thought, he’d have to go take a bath first.

The guest hated Sam passionately. He used what little he surmised of Sam’s past to belittle him, and coax him deeper into the trap of his own self-hatred. He was not always successful, but the mere intent to hurt someone so deeply made Sam revile him equally. He could see the man’s anger was all he really had, and watched him nurse it like a wounded animal. On rainy days, the three of them were confined to the containers for hours. Sam would play nurse, handing Baz metal instruments and dabbing moisture off his forehead while he worked. The guest tried to work Baz: 

“Little bastard tossed my shovel into the fuckin’ ocean-- he doesn’t even deny it-- look at his fuckin’ face.” Baz wasn’t concerned. 

Sometimes it was just about ruffling feathers: “what’s he even doing here? You get lonely out here, Baz? You need… company?” Baz wasn’t concerned.

The guest made infrequent trips to some of the other islands, sometimes to the resorts nearby for booze, and glimpses of women in bathing suits. He left for a few weeks once; loaded his specimens up on his boat and zipped off toward the horizon. Sam prayed he would capsize and, if not drown, at least have his stench washed away. 

Sam and Baz were in the middle of dive preparations one morning, when the echoes of a celebration rang out somewhere in the fog. The sounds materialized into the image of their old friend, piloting his boat, shirtless and drunk, singing in his native tongue. He hopped onto land and put an open bottle in Baz’s hand. He had great news: he was going to be very wealthy from now on, but the details were vague. He said nothing on compensation for the extended stay. But he brought back his own cot, which was a lucky break.

“You need to get this fucking shit sold, my friend,” he would tell Baz in the containers, waving his hand dismissively, “all these fish-- you can’t even eat these fuckers, huh?” He could afford to be perpetually drunk these days.

Baz hacked up a wad of phlegm. With nowhere to spit, he swallowed it back. Rain beat the metal roof.

“How about you, kid? You like living out here? Just you and the old man-- I know how much you hate me. I know…” The guest sneered, his chin tucked and eyes low, holding down hiccups. “-- and why? I’ve only ever been gentle to you… kind, really.”

“Leave him,” Baz spat.

“You want to make some money, kid?” The man took a swig of liquor and rubbed his fingertips together with the other hand. “You should work for me, instead…”

“You shut your god damned--”

“I have a few uses, for a specimen like you--” 

Baz threw his fist into the guest’s nose. It sent him over backwards in his chair, his head crashing into a tank. Glass shattered and water gushed out in all directions. It swept the floor, fish flopping helplessly in its blooming puddle. Sam shot up, eager for the opportunity to throw the drunk out. 

The guest struggled to his feet, pointing a dread finger at Baz: 

“you damned old fuck! I’ll kill you with my bare hands!” He swung his open claws at the old man. A trail of blood was running down from his hairline. Sam caught the guest by the back of the neck, but he still managed to hit Baz hard in the ribs and scratch his neck. Baz fell back into his chair and coughed, exhaling long and wet, struggling to pull air back in. The guest clawed and scratched wherever his arms would reach, snagging wires and filters and pulling fish tanks to the floor. Sam grabbed the guest’s head with one hand and smashed his face against the door twice. He swung it open, and threw the drunk out. Baz was still wheezing, desperate to inhale, as the guest scrambled up again. Sam stood ready for more in the doorway. Somewhere a blood vessel burst, and the guest’s left eye had become devil-red.

Baz recalled around 1998 maybe was when he first started to feel old. He was formerly resilient, and could be underwater for hours, until that winter. That’s when his cough started-- collecting in the lungs before he’d fully surface, and haunting him until he fell asleep. He decided to dive just once a week, only if it was sunny. It was also sometime in ‘98 maybe that he found the thing which-- for reasons he couldn’t explain nor trace the origins of-- he had been waiting all his life to find. He was diving, colder than he’d ever remembered being. Clouds rolled in as soon as he was under and blocked out the sun. He was scouring a reef through a swirl of murky fog-- squid ink, algae and sand, probably tossed up by frightened prey. Something must have just come through; likely not a large predator, but impossible really to tell. But under a low arch, hovering ghostly on the floor, was this thing: filigreed tentacles, flexing and extending with oblivious grace, like a woman’s overturned hand. At the hand’s wrist, a fleshy sac billowed out behind. Where there would have been knuckles were two hollow eyes, with sine-wave pupils. It was a cuttlefish, hanging delicately as a fly in a web. Its face appeared somehow ancient, and its entire body rippled with vibrating technicolor. Was this a warning to predators? A warning to Baz? 

Getting the thing out was a real bitch. Baz didn’t want to crush it like an orchid, so he put the tank around it, underwater, before wrapping it all in a bag and hauling it up. The cuttlefish was oddly calm the whole time. It seemed on some level very wise. There wasn’t much info available to him back then, but Baz figured out these things only lived to be about two years-- this one looked to be two-and-change. It didn’t move much, but he felt like it enjoyed the tank. It’d flash neon from front to back, washes of fractal-patterns, set to the backdrop of aquarium-blue. Baz would watch him-- staring for hours at a time, sometimes all night. He swore he could feel the different colors on his own skin, like waves washing over his face. He loved the fish, and thought about how much he’d miss him in a few months-- but the bastard just kept on living. White wrinkles like scar-tissue collected under his eyes and signalled his aging. On these spots his color wouldn’t change, but otherwise he thrived. He gorged himself on wild mussels and frozen shrimp, and slowly became bigger. Baz told himself it was a mutation: the lack of any genetically prescribed mechanism for self-annihilation, which any normal creature should have. He initially took notes; maybe somebody should know about this. The time for being alarmed passed, around 2010 maybe. After that it seemed meaningless, and the universe encompassing it seemed to be a tenuous arrangement of misinformation. What was real? Why would anything live eternally? How, of course-- but did it even want to? Would it live forever if given a chance, and enough crushed worms? Baz was afraid now to put it back in the ocean. Something could happen-- to the fish, or to the ocean around it-- Baz wasn’t sure, but he felt it, for some reason... He put a blanket over it most of the time, in the far back of the second carrier, around the L’s bend. But every so often he’d return to watch it, and sometimes, he was sure, it wasn’t as oblivious as it looked. It was watching him too. When the kid showed up it was certainly interesting to him, and he could appreciate Baz’s reverence towards it, but he didn’t want to devote the time to watch the thing, and feel its colors as Baz had. He didn’t waste much time thinking about it when the blanket kept it hidden. Maybe he did feel what Baz felt, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe only subconsciously he understood what Baz recognized as an strict order: to keep the blanket down. Baz didn’t ask-- assuring himself it was because he wasn’t really interested in the answer, and not because he was worried of what the fish might do if he heard Baz’s concerns-- finally witnessing articulated what was formerly protected in Baz’s mind-- but were they protected? could the fish see his thoughts? How does a cuttlefish, any animal for that matter, without the recourse to verbal processing, think? How does a man think? How do the planet and the ocean think? Do I think? How can I be so sure, assuming I even know what thinking is? Is someone else doing my thinking for me? Did my thoughts drift here on the wind and find me, finally, in my isolation? Is there thought without connection? Can an idea be without an integral syntactic resonance by which it may be aligned along a network of significance through which anything means anything, and still simultaneously be? He caught a blow to the ribs-- snapped seven and eight, right side-- and a scratch along his neck. What does the fish think of us? Does it care? Is it necessary for it to care for it to think of us? How does one register caring or not caring without the hierarchy of significance? Knots of blood came up with the cough, and the entire L trembled with the struggle. In the back corner, the blanket is undisturbed. The cuttlefish hovers in silence, where no one can see. The guest scrambles back up to his feet and to the door, kicking up sand like an angry bull as the kid waits for him with his fists clenched tight.

An eye, perfectly circular, terrified and wet, locks with Baz’; a striped angelfish gasps on the floor, flopping desperately. The old man grabs his broken ribs, and scoops up the fish with the other hand. He drops it into a tank. 

The little fish, gulping water furiously, continues to stare at Baz: what does he think of all of this?



CHAPTER 7.

Despite having less than fifty miles of paved-road on the atoll, some guests of The 

Moray were vain enough to have their luxury vehicles ferried out to the island merely to sit in the parking lot. There were a handful of nice restaurants in the adjacent village that these guests could shuttle back and forth from, but a round-trip took only about ten minutes. On the evenings of big events, the lot became a quasi-dressing room-- women doing hair and makeup in rearview mirrors, their curling irons plugged into 12v adapters, and men who had never met tied ties for each other-- all in interest of making that grand entrance that everyone else would notice. The decadent facade, Arda had to admit, was impressive, in a predictable way.

People were like silt: the sediment and mud which only found its way to where it was by the persistence of the river. The river, in this case, would have to be ‘trends,’ or ‘circumstances,’ or the dreaded ‘society.’ By this logic, people, in their diversity, must also be like pond scum, and flakes of gold, and microscopic organisms and plastic trash-- all tumbling downstream towards their destiny. They were easily driven, like sheep. Like cattle. They were like snakes and wolves, too; they were both the predator and their prey. But people were like furniture and walls, and other unmovables. Inanimate objects, and slow-motion things like erosion and the growth of a plant. They mimicked each other like patterns on a carpet, and tiles on a bathroom floor. People were like the bubbles in a bottle of champagne. People were like traffic. 

Arda stood on the mezzanine and watched the soup of people below, turning and halting in different sections at a time. Everyone was dressed somewhere between the extremes of elegant and bizarre. There were ball gowns and cocktail dresses, and a couple people dressed in two-person horse costumes. Arda’s eye was caught and reeled in from multiple ends of the room simultaneously. They were beautiful and strange and horrifying and wonderful; the people were magnets for metaphors. Arda tried to qualify their ambulations with one parallel phenomenon: were they like an hourglass? Quicksand? A toilet bowl? 

She made for the stairs that would take her right to the center of the formless mess.

A check of the closet revealed a few dresses Lin had brought for Arda to wear. She came down in sweatpants and the same jacket from earlier. It was a nice event, but there were enough eccentrics that Arda wouldn’t stick out. She couldn’t look any worse than the nudists crowding the snack table. It must have been some big event, Arda thought, surely this was too organized to self-assemble at a moment’s notice. Large, abstract sculptures diverted the flow of bodies, making whirlpools and stray currents. All the doors of the lobby were open to various patios and balconies where people went to smoke, or chat loudly. Men in vests carried plates of food, and newly filled flutes. Arda spotted the bellhop from earlier. She called him over, and took an orb of cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto.

“Which one of these guys is Everett?” she asked through a pool of saliva. It was the first thing she’d eaten since possibly yesterday morning. She grabbed another.

“The bald one, right there,” the bellhop referenced the back of a shiny, cue-ball head, bobbing above a cluster of opulent hairdos across the room. 

“What is all this?” She managed to get out, with two full cheeks.

“A showing. Can’t remember whose, to be honest. Possibly a collective--”

“Can you tell me about another guest?” She swallowed, “I’m looking for Fevzi Goshen.”

“We know Goshen, but he’s not a guest here. Excuse me.”

Someone across the room was signalling for cantaloupe, and he zipped off. Arda wiped her fingers off on a tablecloth, and picked up a pre-poured glass of champagne. The cue-ball floated away as well, carried on a wave of admirer’s heads, all just a few inches shorter. Arda surveyed the room for Lin. Her stomach groaned, but she didn’t feel courageous enough to force her way past the lingering nudists and grab a deviled egg or some caviar. She meandered towards the nucleus of the crowd. Everyone was simultaneously engaged in deep or at least engaging conversations, and no one noticed her drifting by. 

She was drawn to the volume of a group near the back corner, cheering and drinking, likely a little too much. Shouldering her way into a circle being formed, she saw at its center Zander, deep in concentration on an impromptu piece. He was at work on a woman’s bare back, carving a long, swooshing image with a scimitar. Every few slices, he’d rub a handful of ink over the wound, leaving the palm there for a moment in a sort of healing-energy gesture. Zander was shirtless as well, and Arda could see that his lizard scales stopped at the collar-bone. His torso was a complex weave of random images-- many references to other works of art, in sundry media. The people in the circle were absorbed, and the subject herself was emotionless. She didn’t flinch, even as more blood started to creep out through the cracks packed with drying ink.

“It’s her sword,” a man reading Arda’s blank expression filled her in, “Mingzhu is a sword swallower, she’s the best. No ink, though. Zander said in an interview once he’d give her her first tat if he ever saw her.”

“Almost sounds like a threat, worded that way.”

“He’s obsessed with her, and he’s brilliant. He’s done these blindfolded before,” sweat dripped down Zander’s nose onto a delicate, bloodied shoulder blade. “But he wouldn’t dare miss seeing this. The perfect subject.” 

Arda pulled away politely, and drifted back into the flow of the crowd. She was drawn to the food, now free from naked onlookers. Meatballs and shrimp and an array of sauces hot and cold hit her nose. There was calamari and a pyramid of sliced melon. Her stomach wailed in anticipation, but as she closed in, a large hand clapped her on the shoulder and turned her cold.

“You must be Arda,” Everett said with a smile. All the hair on his head was confined to a pair of bushy blonde eyebrows, angled gently in a display of professional seriousness. Light bounced off his smooth cranium, and his tiny rectangular glasses. He was tall, and his suit was tight on his bulky torso. “I’m Carl Everett, pleasure to meet you.”

“Mr. Everett, I--”

“Nope. Please, call me Carl. We’re anything but formal around here.”

“I’m adapting,” referring to her sweatpants, “But if I could just quickly--”

“I’d appreciate it if you came with me, actually,” Carl insisted, turning toward a nearby hall and pausing for Arda to follow. She obliged, clutching her hungry stomach.

“Our mutual friend, Mr. Macke, has briefed me on the purpose for your stay; please understand that while you are welcome--”

“But?”

“But, one of the primary services The Moray offers is privacy. Not merely in the sense of seclusion, but of enabling one to express oneself in a ‘safe space,’ free from repercussions,” he turned a corner to a room that was nearly empty, far enough from the center of the swarm. Tall windows lined one wall, giving a segmented view of the immense, starry sky. 

“The whole reason I’m here is to inform,” Arda said, “If I can’t do that you might as well just send me home right now,” she almost hoped he would.

“I can appreciate this, and I admire your goals; I think informing the world about Goshen is a noble task--”

“But?”

“But, you walk a very fine line. My own wishes aside, there are the interests of the other guests.” Something outside caught his attention, and his bare head became red with frustration. “Speak of the devil,” he growled, turning his gaze towards an open sliding-door.

From the beach Arda could hear a man singing. Based on the inconsistent rhythms, it was clear he was drunk-- the rubber-ducky inner-tube was another dead giveaway. He was doing a sea-shanty version of some 1980s pop hits, scaring away a few couples who had come down to find a quiet place to get intimate. Everett clearly knew the man, as he was whispering sharply into a walkie-talkie, referring to the drunk by a code name. 

“Friend of yours?”

“Oh, yes,” Everett slipped out through a mock smile, “aren’t friends just the worst?”

“This place is part of the story,” Arda said, trying to bring back the man’s attention, “I can’t just leave a big black-hole where it’s supposed to be. And if there are secrets I’m expected to keep, I’ll need to at least know them first.”

Everett refocused without any of the polite formality he had struggled to maintain up to this point; If he needed to talk business, he could apparently do so.

“You won’t have the story without my help. Goshen isn’t here, but I can get him to you, or vice versa. Otherwise-- well, there really is no ‘otherwise.’ I’ve made this deal with Errol: your words have to go through him, and will consequently also go through me.”

“So where’s the request come in? What do you need from me that you haven’t already made sure to secure?”

He put his hand to his heart, “I can’t secure your respect.” Everett affected sincerity in the same opaque way that Lin did. “I don’t want to trap you here, I want to help you. All I ask is your respect,” a belch from the drunk on the beach reverberated off the cove walls, and cut Everett off. “As you can see, I’m in desperate need of a little respect. And look,” he checked his watch, “he should be arriving right about now. Go to the lobby, he may already be here.”

“Who? You don’t mean…” she didn’t really need Everett to answer. She turned and went down the hall, trying not to speed-walk too obviously.

She didn’t know what to look for. Some people were wearing gaudy hats, and some were tall enough that she could make out their chins above the sea of heads. She remembered Goshen was bald, but she didn’t know how tall he was, or what he might be wearing. It was hard to say if he was the kind of person who’d choose a demure or an ostentatious entrance. She tried to hear his name in people’s whispered conversations, but she didn’t know if he’d be revered here, or even noticed. He may have even been one of the whispering people. He may have been watching her this whole time. 

Arda went for the stairs and walked halfway up. She scanned the herd. She looked for his thick eyebrows and the hateful glare she knew from his photos. The image of the bloody tongue flashed in her mind, and the teeth on his bottom jaw. The front doors swung open.

He wasn’t wearing anything too flashy, and he picked his nose, checking his fingernails after to see what he exhumed. A group of people nearby actually offered a half-hearted clap, but they quickly gave it up, seeing the man himself not give a damn and make for the food table. She wanted to run to meet him, but Arda’s ankles wouldn’t allow her to move. She stood frozen for a minute, and watched Goshen toss a black olive into his mouth and crush it between his molars, scanning the table for his next victim. She took off down the steps in his direction.

“Miss. Mr. Goshen has just arrived,” the bellhop bumped into her on the way.

“Yeah, great, thanks--”

“Also a gentleman was asking for you?”

“What? I--” she saw Goshen joylessly recognize someone across the room, and brush crumbs off on his pants, “no time-- later--”

She got to the table across from him, as he popped a few more olives in his mouth.

“Mr. Goshen,” she said, feeling cold rush up from her feet, like she just jumped too early into a cold pool. She shook it off. “I’m a fan, Arda Baker.” 

She held her hand out, but Goshen didn’t take it. He was absorbed in the olives, and Arda began to notice everything else delicious on the table. Drool started collecting in the corners of her mouth, which she had to suck back silently. “I was hoping we could talk about some of your pieces.”

“I know who you are,” he growled. He didn’t look up.

“Then I don’t have to pretend to be a fan, how well things are working out already,” she smiled. She tried to be her sourest-- risky, considering he could walk, or decapitate her. But she took him as someone with no pity for the timid, but possibly a bit of respect for those with none. “Still, your work is of great interest to certain friends of mine. They, and I, agree it’s very important work,” turning on just the slightest hint of charm, “I’d love to sit down with you and discuss some of your pieces, your ideas for the future. Your process.”

He lifted his head. His eyes were bored, and there were inky smears of caviar in his teeth.

“I do not accept boundaries,” he said. He spoke with an accent that could only be described as ‘terrifying.’ “You people-- of writing, of the knowing and of telling-- you limit me. To speak and define is to limit the grandness of thought, and I will not. My work transcends the ability of a man to know, and leaves him broken.”

“Often literally, it seems.”

He shrugged, “the medium is the medium; an artist is not his tools, as a carpenter is-- or could become, with time.”

She wasn’t following.

“What is the point of working if not to communicate?” Arda tried to reason, as he began to walk past her into the crowd. She pursued. “A ‘medium’ is a means of communicating, you can’t tell me you don’t want to reach people-- you already do it anyway,” someone noticed Goshen and whispered to a friend. Arda dared to put a hand on his shoulder, and stopped him for a moment. “Who do you consider to be your audience?”

“God.”

“Well, at least that’s easy to remember…”

His eyes became slits, “American humor…”

“Mr. Goshen. Is it just Goshen? Look, I believe, as a creative, you must understand ‘the pull,’” he was listening, and it was time for Arda to prove what she could do.

“What is pull?”

“The pull. The way the world turns: in the wake of the great minds. You and I would probably just call them ‘the greats.’ The greatest artists humanity has ever known have always moved us forward-- pulled us all-- and no matter your dissatisfaction with the way the rest of us keep up, I know you feel this pull too. It’s why you create. I know your dark secret,” she became quiet and locked her gaze with his, “you may despise everything that ever was, but the pull is greater than all of it. I knew the instant I saw your work, why it is you kill.”

His arms remained crossed, but the tension was loosening visibly. He was beginning to crack. Arda continued, “I feel it too, but I don’t paint, I can’t work the way you do. I write. I speak to people. I need to tell them about you, for their own good.”

“You come to me as a doll, on strings,” he swirled his hand at the wrist, in search of the right word.

“A puppet?”

“A puppet. You see this man there?” he was pointing up to the mezzanine, where Carl Everett’s bald head was glowing like a beacon, turned away from them but still unexpectedly present. “Even now he is following, pulling your strings. He tells you what you can and cannot say--”

“How’d you know--?”

“I am not the puppet. I have no strings.”

“Where are you staying? The Damselfish? We can do this on our terms, without Everett’s knowing-- screw him,” after she said it she could tell she meant it. Who the hell was he to stick fingers in her work?

“You may ask whatever you like, I hold no secrets or lies. But you will not find me. I live beyond the reach of your strings, you see? I live outside of your fences and boundaries. Do not come find me, I warn you,” he turned towards the stairs. The crowd, all consumed in their own conversations, eased apart to let him through. 

Arda found a chair, and sat. The throng was thinning, and bellhops were picking up half-empty glasses, and plates of sandwich crusts and cigarette butts. The food table had been cleared. Arda eyed an olive dropped on the carpet, until someone’s heel pressed it flat. She needed more from Goshen, but Everett was only going to hinder her. Her stomach growled loud and painful. The lack of food was making her want to fart and vomit, so she stepped out to one of the many balconies that faced the ocean. 

She spotted a dish of cashews, and tossed them into her mouth, praying no one had picked this dish to ash their cigarette. She listened to her own chewing, and the greedy gurgling of her gut. Light and sound from the lobby washed against her back; which of these guests was her ticket in? Who knew where Goshen was, and how was she supposed to make them spill the beans? 

Someone was vomiting. Arda could hear the familiar wretch of a puking drunk reverberating off the cove walls. On the beach was the singing man from earlier, apparently ignored, left to burn out on his own. He was on hands and knees in the whitewash, throwing up nothing but bile from the sound of his strained groaning, like his throat was being wrung out. It made Arda a little sick. She became suddenly conscious of the bolus of cashews slithering down her esophagus, but she knew what she had to do. She started down the stairs.

“Excuse me?” she called as soon as she touched down on the sand. The drunk didn’t hear, still groaning pathetically, trying to blow left-behind chunks out of his nose. “Do you need any help?”

He raised a finger, requesting a moment to collect himself. He heaved up some more spit and mucus, then dunked his face into the water and whipped it back up.

“Pardon me, I think I dropped my contact lens.” Arda smirked, and offered him a hand up. 

“Normally that doesn’t happen. I’m known as quite the capable drunk, I can assure you.” He cleared his throat, spit, and started digging a finger around in his mouth as if looking for something.

“Oh, I believe you. This is a pretty wild place, and it seems only you have made Carl Everett’s shit-list.”

“Oh, but they love me at The Damselfish. That’s where I shine,” he pulled his hand away and checked it in the moonlight. There was a smear of blood on his finger, dark and unmistakable. He wiped it on his shorts. “My name is Elwyn. Elwyn Booker.”

“Have I heard that name before?”

“If you have, it must have been a long time ago,” he chuckled to himself. Arda must have shown her confusion; he clarified: “I write children’s books. Nothing even many children can be bothered to read,” he shrugged, and pulled up his floaty. Arda could see that underneath he was in a full suit, and completely wet. He peeled up one side of his jacket, and found a flask in its pocket. He took a sip and smacked his lips a few times, muttering “Salty.” He poured the rest down his throat.

“I’m a writer too, actually. A journalist,” she held her breath, fearing he might reply: ‘I know.’ It seemed like everyone on the island up to now had been in cahoots.

“Oh, really?” (Arda breathed again) “Not writing on the island, though.” he seemed sure of this.

“As a matter of fact, no. Our friend, Mr. Everett, has put restrictions on my doing so,” she explained, and Booker seemed to wilt. 

“That is a shame,” he patted his other side, “do you have any cigarettes?”

“If I could, I’d love to be able to work free from these restrictions-- I’m prepared to work around them, I just don’t know who I can turn to for a little direction,” she drew from her jacket pocket the single cigarette left to her by Lin. “I don’t have a lighter, though. Sorry.”

“No worry there,” he grabbed the smoke and planted it between his lips, reaching for a zippo lighter in his left pocket. Arda almost stopped him from wasting his time with the soaked contraption, but in one try Booker got it lit, and set it to the cigarette’s end. 

“So... ‘Direction?’ Hmm...” He blew out a ring of smoke that was immediately dashed to nothing on the wind, “I suppose that will all depend on where you’re trying to go?”

“Where can I find Goshen?”

“Now there’s a destination…” Booker scratched his chin.

“You mean he’s not at the Damselfish?”

“I’m afraid not. At the moment, you see, its only guest is me,” he performed a mock curtsy.

“But, I… You’re the only one? But I thought Everett hated you?” she remembered Lin’s comments about prisoners and campers, and she recalled her commitment to not asking too many questions. “Okay, wait. If Goshen’s not with you, where is he? Out somewhere in the jungle? On an island nearby?”

“Ah, my good friend has come to see me off,” he put a hand fondly over his heart, and held the other out.

Arda turned around to see Carl Everett standing on the balcony. He shouted at them, silenced by the waves, a walkie-talkie up to his face. Thick-armed men in black t-shirts were running down the stairs. Booker had pulled up his inner-tube and was making a clumsy dash into the water. 

“Wait!” Arda called, but he was in past his waist now, falling forward onto his belly and kicking himself out into deeper water.

“He’s at the king’s!” Booker shouted. He flopped over to do an exaggerated backstroke, as he swam towards the point of the cove, and off the property. He started singing again.

Arda called after him, but either she was overtaken by the sound of surf, or Booker was too drunk and far off to care. The security team was debating something in a foreign language, but it was clear none of them wanted to get wet. Arda spotted Carl Everett still standing on the balcony, his head glowing pink despite the dark blue cover of night. 

***

Arda put an arm on her door and leaned against it as she fumbled with her card key. Her stomach was making noise again, and one of her neighbors was having obnoxiously loud group sex. She pushed the door open and switched on the light and could recognize him instantly by the smoke drifting in from the balcony.

“Hello, dear!” Lin waved at her without turning, and patted the chair next to him. “The stars are brilliant here. Errol told me all the stars are different from ours. I can’t tell, but surely they must be,” he looked back up at the sky.

Arda squeezed her fist tight, but a familiar smell broke through Lin’s cigarette smoke.

“Do you have food?”

“Oh, yes. I got you some room service,” he wagged his hand in the direction of a white-clothed table in the corner Arda hadn’t noticed. She lifted the single, silver dome covering the plate and the aroma of lobster tail and baked potato bloomed in her face like a mushroom cloud. Minced chives sat in a pool of melted cheese, and two miniature cups of hot butter rested on a bed of shredded cabbage. Arda wanted to fall down to her knees and cry, but first she crammed potato into her mouth, using her finger to scoop up extra sour cream.

“I hope you’ve been doing research. I’ve had a busy day myself, and I’ve hit nothing but snags,” Lin called out over the sound of her scarfing.

Arda swallowed a mouthful of lobster meat, “how did you get here so fast? How long was I out? And how the hell did you get me on the other plane--”

“Arda, please,” he patted the chair again.

“I should kick your fucking ass, Lin,” she said.

“If you touch me I’ll make it one of your greatest regrets, you know that,” he said in the way a friend would break bad news to another, sympathetically. “I hope now you understand that Everett has made this whole experience very, very hard on me. He’s insistent on how we speak of the island and who we talk to. I’m sure he gave you the run-down tonight, as well.”

“So are you not on his side? And what about Errol? How does he feel about Everett?”

“I don’t want to think about Errol right now, he’s being incredibly childish,” Lin crossed his arms, “but ultimately he’s concerned with end results-- he may not see it at the beginning, but it’s true. We need to get our story--”

“My story”

“-- that’s the only thing we should be concerned with, and it’s why we need to find a way around Everett. Please tell me you have some leads?”

Arda wiped grease from her mouth, “do you know Elwyn Booker?”

Lin shook his head.

“Do you know what the Damselfish Inn is?”

“No. Goodness-- why am I even doing anything when you’ve managed to find out so much on your own?”

“Good question,” she was tired of Lin. Even now he was sending her mind running, wondering whether or not his ignorance was feigned. All she wanted to do was sleep and digest.

“Well, if you wanted an answer,” he pressed, “it’s to keep you safe. I understand Everett has different locations on the island, for different purposes. I assume the Damselfish is one of them? Well, outside of the properties is fair game: legal no man’s land. You need to tell me before you step off these premises, so I can assure your safety,” he blew a smoke ring that hung oddly still for several seconds, before dissipating. “You have no idea what goes on out there.”

“You mentioned prisoners, before--”

“I believe that was when I said this place is definitely not a prison--”

“Is Booker-- the guest at the Damselfish-- is he here against his will?”

He waited, then admitted “Possibly.” He grabbed her arm, “but that doesn’t change our purpose here. We can’t get distracted.”

She shook off Lin’s grasp and went to the edge of the bed, staring out into the sparkling night; her eyelids had grown heavy. She didn’t want to bother anymore with the truly worrisome questions. She didn’t trust Lin to give her straight answers, anyway. When she had been downstairs, braving the crowds and the weirdos, she didn’t look for Lin; she could already feel him behind the lens of every security camera, and lurking conveniently behind every corner. She believed she saw him several different times in disguise. She could never know, and of course it wasn’t likely for a person to be so many places at once, but she couldn’t trust Lin not to be. She watched the back of his head as he puffed meek, smoky circles that drifted into the sky.

When she left school, Arda went to live with Aron. She didn’t know how to ask, or explain her sudden desperation, so she just appeared on his doorstep in the pouring rain. Arda had actually stood in said rain for a few minutes, in order to mask her tears under a full veil of water. He opened the door and let her in with a smile and no questions. He went back to his painting, and she just watched-- falling asleep as he worked into the early a.m. hours, and finding him still at it when she awoke. He was devoted. He was passionately in love with his work, and Arda was ashamed of how jealous it made her.

Aron drifted through high school, invisible to his teachers and fellow students. He had none of the essentials to qualify him as a nerd, or even a weirdo-- and he certainly had no hopes of being a jock or a thug. Faculty were worried early on that he would ‘fall through the cracks,’ but eventually they forgot him entirely. None of his old classmates were at his funeral.

He listened much more than he spoke, making him a very unusual child. Sometimes he listened too well, observed things too closely, lost in his appreciation for the beauty of the world for hours at a time. His doodles turned to drawings, which evolved into watercolors and charcoal by his sophomore year. He had the patience of an ascetic, and did not ask for recognition; but Arda recognized. She saw his patience, his sacrifice, and she saw the beauty in him. She longed to see the same beauty that he saw in the whole world. Five years behind him in age, she mimed his creative development. When he was hunched over a sketchbook with a pack of pastels, she would be scrawling in her coloring books, trying to mirror the arch in his back. The summer after senior year, Aron painted what Arda privately believed to be his masterpiece. She was dumbfounded-- so speechless she, at times, literally could not make speech in the company of Aron or his painting. Naturally, Aron was neutral on the matter; it was just another stepping stone in his incomplete journey. Arda should have had the courage to praise him, and let him know how important the painting was to her. She was thirteen, and jealous, and insecure. She regretted not telling her brother. One night she got out of bed, snuck into Aron’s workshop in the garage, and watched the painting. She monitored it, as if it might sprout limbs and make for the exit. She had cried, alone, tring to take in every aspect of it.

“Does mom know?” Aron asked, eyes still on his canvas.

“How do you know?” she rubbed her puffy eyes, in hopes she didn’t cry again.

“I can tell. You know, twin stuff,” Arda scoffed and shook her head; the twin jokes could always cheer her up, even if she wanted herself to be miserable. Aron smiled too, but he was still involved in his canvas. Arda wondered if she was really just predictable; she always had the lurking fear that, her whole life, Aron had just been humoring her in her naive attempt to idolize him. If it was true, Aron was too kind to reveal it. She stewed on her suspicions, jealous of his sincerity.

“I can’t do it. Education is wasted on me. The harder I try, the further I get from where I am going…” She chewed on a hang-nail. “I can put two eyes, a mouth and a nose on the canvas, but it never makes a face.”

“You’re too good at kicking yourself when you’re down to ever get back up,” he picked up some titanium white with the very tip of his brush. “You could convince a pig it could fly, it doesn’t surprise me you’ve gotten so used to convincing yourself that whatever you touch turns to shit--”

“But it’s not shit because someone else said so-- it’s just me. I’ve made my peace with not working for someone else, but it’s left me stuck with my own hardest critic. Why paint if it only makes me hate myself?”

“Then don’t,” he added a twinkle to the eyes on the canvas. “The only goal is living with yourself. If you can’t do that you need to go backwards, and find out how. Trying to impress yourself, it always fails, no matter who you are, no matter how great.”

Then don’t. The words haunted her the rest of her life. Sometimes as advice, sometimes as the echoes of Aron’s specific tone of voice. She whispered the words when she felt completely alone, or missed him too much. She tried to apply the words to her current situation, on the island, but it didn’t work. She tweaked them, made the words different, but the same. She closed her eyes and whispered herself to sleep with Aron’s words, in her own tired voice.

CHAPTER 8.

Sunlight filled Arda’s room, penetrating the gauzy drapes and baking the wall opposite the glass doors. Lin pulled the blackouts back when he left late last night. He moved slowly, trying to minimize the sound of curtain loops, and the shutting of the door. Arda had her eyes closed as she listened, letting him think he was being sneaky. A glowing rectangle of light was slithering across the floor, up the bed, and encroaching on Arda. Her back started to warm up, and she rolled to the other side to where she could still hide from the rising sun. 

She spent another fifteen minutes trying to fade back into her dream from last night, where she was back in her childhood home, only the layout was distorted and weird. She only noticed how different it was from her actual childhood home when she awoke. In the dream everything seemed correct. She went to an apple tree that never existed, which she remembered distinctly. Digging under its roots she found blood seeping up from the earth, like water at the bottom of a well. In the dream, she was undisturbed, and started collecting some of the blood in her cupped hands. It felt cool and refreshing. The sun woke her up with her hands full, and in a stupor she pulled them out from the blankets to see if any blood was left in between her fingers.

The Moray was as alive in the morning as it was at night, but more now with the purposeful zing of staffers than an accumulation of excited guests. Coming into the lobby, Arda spotted a man carrying a top-heavy stack of soiled dishes, and followed him to the buffet room. She could smell bacon and eggs, fruit and cereal, juice and coffee. Her stomach was roaring, ready to make up for yesterday. She grabbed a plate.

There were assorted pastries, and a corresponding plethora of jams and jellies. Pineapple juice, pineapple rings and pineapple soft-serve for after breakfast. Sausages in both patties and links, and bacon arranged in a spectrum of crispy to soft. Arda picked up a pair of tongs and realized she was doing a little dance. She grabbed cinnamon rolls with extra icing, and hashbrowns. She twirled, and went for the waffle iron. The omelette station was empty, the chef in between shifts. But Arda grabbed a second plate just for eggs and a side of ketchup, and no one reproached her. Some guests were out on the balconies, enjoying coffee and cigarettes in the morning sun. Most were clearly still sleeping, letting the feast grow cold. Arda popped a grape in her mouth, it was cold and juicy. She was finally starting to appreciate where she was, and that she, for the moment, was free from oversight. She felt the sudden urge to rush out to the balcony and pluck a cigarette from a stranger’s fingers. She imagined a troupe of woodland critters there waiting to sing with her. She put another grape in her mouth.

Arda was generally immune to overblown language and obvious posturing. She had met enough self-described geniuses to take everything with a grain of salt, but she reflected on one of Goshen’s points. It wasn’t a novel one, but whenever Arda heard it, it got her thinking; language as a limitation. She could understand the general premise, and obviously she was experienced in attempting to make her own words crudely define otherwise nebulous, amorphous thoughts. But had Goshen never been misunderstood? Had he never been put on the spot, only able to save himself with the correct string of words that would make all the problems wash away? Could he not see that words were the most direct conduit from the vagueness of one person’s thought into those of another. Arda understood the limitations on words, but it was hardly a limitation on the ideas themselves. Without words, even the formlessness of thought couldn’t be described. It was compacting, transporting, and delivering in the most efficient way possible. She felt satisfied with this thought, and hoped Goshen would bring it up again when she did find him, so she could deliver her perfect rebuke.

As Arda chewed her pancakes at a table by herself, she spotted one last person getting in the buffet line. They were stacking fruit and bacon high onto their plate, with no regard for the boundaries of either. From the removed look on their face, it was clear to Arda that they were not piling this food for themselves. They were wearing the signature red vest of a Moray bellhop-- clearly this meal was intended for a guest who couldn’t be bothered to show. Arda picked up the familiarly apathetic body-language she herself had affected in numerous service industry jobs. She recalled the promise to herself: no unnecessary questions, and told herself not to care where the food was going. But as the staffer threw a couple single-serving packets of jam on top, a possibility hit her. She had seen the way Goshen walked straight in to the food last night, and she wondered how likely it was that he was simply right outside the building, sleeping on the edge of the jungle, only surfacing for the nutrients provided by Everett. She wiped her mouth and got up, heading in the direction of a pair of swinging doors the staffer had just exited through.

He took her on a tour of the lower levels of the hotel, where the doors all had little panels for entering four digit codes, and the lavish colors of the upstairs halls were foregone in favor of off-whites, and beiges. Placards denoted the offices of Facilities Administrator, Recreation Services, Resident Coordinations, etc. The man turned to push a door open with his butt, and Arda ducked behind a ficus. She was going to feel very stupid if this all ended up being a food run for the janitors. Someone coming out of a doorway with a stack of papers nodded and smiled, and Arda waved back. She was beginning to think no one would even care she was back here, and imagined a pair of security guards watching her from somewhere and just laughing. But she kept on the staffer, and he took her even lower. 

They passed exposed plumbing, and a passage lit only by a single lightbulb in a cage. The man veered around a corner, and the smell of his plate was lost amongst the stink of sewer lines. Arda paused after he rounded a corner and could no longer be seen. She could hear the man offer salutations to somebody, before his voice was cut off by the shutting of a door.

Arda crouched behind an electrical box. Her first thought was that no one could possibly approach Goshen in such a friendly manner, even if they were invited to. She decided this dingy basement couldn’t be where Everett’s office was located, unless she had misread him for a completely different kind of villain. She shivered on the thought that there could be more, even worse sadistic maniacs hidden on the premises. 

The door shut again, and the man zipped past without seeing her tucked away in hiding, and returned back to the surface levels. Arda went around the corner and saw the mysterious door: black with black handles and hinges. A bright light was coming out from underneath it, in flashes and waves. It was probably just some more weirdos, she assured herself as she reached for the knob. Some stoners, watching a laser show, getting the munchies real bad…

“Did you need me…?” 

An old woman sat on a stool in the dark. Her head was tilted up towards an glowing blob of light cast onto the ceiling, composed of intricately knotted neon threads that wove themselves into a generally rounded shape. She was muttering something fast, under her breath, in time with the throbs and stutters of the projection. 

Like an alien heart, the tangle of light kept thumping and stretching its feelers further outward with each pulse. It was growing, slowly. The projection was coming from a sleek prism that swung delicately back and forth from a cord tied to the ceiling. As it swayed, the tangle convulsed rhythmically, between states as an omni-colored speck and an outstretched tumbleweed. 

The woman picked up a wedge of pineapple, “one two three four, two two three four, one two three four, two--,” and ate it. Juice ran down her chin as her lips kept counting the beats. She was wearing old, dirty clothes, and the left lens of her glasses was cracked. There was a stack of plates in the corner, and a bucket. The walls, the woman, and Arda too, were bathed in shadow, as if the prism had sucked up all the light it could find. The blob was growing larger with each pulse, until it opened at the center and became a jagged ring, gaping like a fish. Each sway of the cord was a desperate breath. It spread wide enough that it reached the edge of the ceiling, and its movements changed. It became a solid line circling the room like a horizon, and started creeping down the walls. The effect of the sway was somehow reduced to a murmur on the line, like a faint heartbeat read by EKG. Arda realized that the pulse of the pendulum was being counteracted and reduced by whatever was contained inside the prism.

“Are you… are you here for me?” she asked, counting in between her words. Her pupils were scurrying, trying to take in every inch of the steadily falling line.

“It’s pretty,” Arda said, pointing up. She had been really expecting someone to jump out with an axe; she needed a moment to regroup, and the lasers were not helping.

The woman ate some more, and her open-mouthed chewing sounds echoed off the walls. It was otherwise silent.

Arda couldn’t find a place to sit down, so she stood. The glowing line was getting lower, lower. It kissed the top of Arda’s head, turning stray follicles of her dirty hair an angelic white for a second. Then, it began to rise back to the ceiling.

“Can you explain the piece to me?” Arda moved closer, and the woman did not react. She was hunched over, entirely immersed in the vibrations of the light. She drew closer to the woman

“The piece? The piece is... uhm, it’s… it’s magnetic, uhm… magnetic suspension device. There’s LED... inside, but, uhm... it’s not… it’s not what casts the light… uhm… it’s, it’s….” her lips were moving rapidly, “sixty-seven, sixty-seven, sixty-seven, four two three four two two three four.” The line reached the edge of the ceiling again and fuzzed. It was sucked quickly back in towards the center, to where the cord was tied. It began pulsing once more, the intervals of speck growing longer and longer. “Oh… oh…” something was wrong. The woman nibbled on a piece of toast, defeated.

“You’re tracing something?”

“The uhm… the intervals, and the... the wavelengths of the peaks and---”

“You can measure all of that? Sitting right here?

“No, no-- It’s equations and integrals, but… uhm, it’s…” she was transfixed, still munching.

Arda watched the tangle of light shiver into a spider web formation, an assembly of cavities spreading out symmetrically from the middle. It pulsed until the web thickened and the cavities filled. It became completely solid. It was like the shadow of a bouncing ball, only in negative resolution, glowing white.

“You’re telling me that you follow along? This follows a formula and you--?”

“It’s subject to the rhythm of the… uhm…”

“Pendulum,”

“Yes, and the magnetic field of--”

“The Earth?”

“Yes, and, and, uhm… a polyhedral mirror array suspended magnetically in frictionless counterbalance sway encompassing single LED diode-- two three four, three two three four…” she was consumed again, and a bit of food fell out of her mouth.

Arda put her hands in her pocket. She could see the light shrinking to a bead, and foresaw another swell in a minute or so. She wondered how long the old woman had been down here, and where she even came from.

“Anything we’re looking for?”

“Anomalies… two two three four, one two…” 

Arda saw scraps of paper with numbers and formulae all taped along the wall. She had more questions, but it was clear her host was off again, only to return once the tide of the light was low. She wanted to know about these anomalies, what they meant and where they came from. She wondered if Everett was interested in them as well. Arda saw the woman’s mouth, half-filled with scrambled eggs, as a soft haze of ambient light slid back and forth over her face. She was mouthing the word-- anomalies, anomalies, anomalies, without pause. The tip of her tongue was flicking bits onto the floor, in a hopeless commitment to the repetition. Anomalies, anomalies. The beat of her whispers overcame the pulse of the light, now a descending line once more. This time it fell to just above her eyes, fogging her vision, before floating back up. Anomalies, anomalies.

***

The imagined, three-dimensional diagram of The Moray’s interior that Arda held in her mind was growing. What seemed at the outset to be monolithic like a tombstone, turned out to have roots and branches, the majority of it concealed. The image was built of translucent green boxes, set on an x-y-z grid, generated via hypothetical military technology. It rotated clearly in Arda’s brain. She saw herself as the lone blip, somewhere in a peripheral tunnel, spiraling upwards and out to the surface. At the layout’s center must have been the old woman and the pendulum. Her room would be the seed the roots all sprang from-- less at its center than at its heart. A Navel. The woman whispered to her swinging prism and the image spun. Arda saw it when she smushed her eyelids closed tight, to keep the sunlight out as she emerged from a maintenance exit. The air was heavy with humidity. It vibrated with the scattered movements and chirps of insects all around.

Arda put her hand on a rail, and felt a rhythm coursing through it faintly. The lonely thump of a bass drum, carried far past the reach of its accompanying snares and cymbals. She pulled herself out of the concrete stairwell, past a small farm of A/C units giving off heat. She rounded the corner to still more thumping, travelling up through the dry grass to her ankles. She could feel the beat on her sternum, too scattered to keep up with.

Arda found the day’s drum circle coagulating in a grassy spot adjacent to The Moray. The group was still thin, and people were drifting in and out casually. It was early, but already there were people drinking, shouting, running in circles. A few of them were dancing, but most were standing awkwardly, kicking the dust and checking the time, waiting. Arda was coming down a hill when two girls in fur headdresses approached her wordlessly. She put her palms up as if she had been caught doing something shameful, but they ignored them and gently took her by the bicep, pulling her into the swarm. One of them put a flower in Arda’s hair-- she said something sarcastic, which the girls didn’t hear. 

The center was thick with pot smoke, and the air was antsy. Despite the drummers and the dancers present, most people were looking over their shoulders, waiting for the right time for something. Someone poked an upturned finger in Arda’s direction, with a little square of paper set on its tip. She picked it up graciously, and coyly slipped it into a breast pocket. Her two new friends were still holding on to her arms, lazily now, as if trying to steady themselves.

A trumpet sounded from somewhere in the trees, and the group collectively perked up. Some on the balconies heard the sound too and bolted inside to collect their things before rushing down. Arda realized she was the only person looking confused, who didn’t know what was about to happen. She felt sweating bodies press against her back and shoulders, and suddenly she was coerced into the same direction as everyone else. All of the group now was walking-- semi-stumbling at the center, but keeping a steady pace at the head-- into the jungle. Hundreds of bells and noisemakers were ringing out, scaring away birds in the trees. They found a muddy path that had been pressed solid through repeated use; the crowd followed it as it wound up a hill, snaking side to side. People in elaborate costumes appeared in the brush to watch the crowd as it passed; feathered robes, and sequined masks, with long snouts or beaks. They were silent, and the crowd ignored them. 

“Where are we going?” Arda finally felt bold enough to ask, still jogging, but no one answered.

The  path grew steeper. People were panting and sweating profusely, finishing bottles of water and discarding the waste in the bushes. Some were using their hands as claws, and loping uphill like clumsy giraffes. Few seemed willing to stop and take a rest. 

A man in front of Arda removed his cape in a swift roll of the shoulders. Out of a reflexive sense of politeness, Arda reached forward to catch it and save it from the mud. But her wrists got tangled up as another man put his heel down onto the fabric, and she fell forward. She tumbled, and scurried over to the side, getting her ribs and legs stepped on in the confusion. She was catching her breath when she saw that, all down the line, people were disrobing-- many were already completely nude, their tits and genitals bouncing awkwardly. The path reached the crest of a hill a few yards ahead, where yellow sunlight was twinkling through the canopy. Arda threw herself back in the flow of bodies, and rode the current up. At the crest, the procession dissolved, and dozens of naked people of all shapes and colors swarmed a grassy clearing. They formed a vague circle of dancers, instruments were already being played at an insistent tempo, beckoning them. In the center, men and women were tangled up in each other, caressing and nibbling and squeezing and thrusting. Some were handling another’s genitals as they offered their motionless bodies up to the desires of others. Some lingered around the outside, watching, cock in hand. Every so often one would saunter out from the middle and pull one of the dancers in, tossing them into the mud where five others would descend upon them. There was giggling and moaning and charged commands to fuck this, or suck on that. Arda saw the two girls in headdresses bounding towards the middle, their asscheeks bright and pale behind the swaying drape of animal fur. They were absorbed into the center, and she could see them no longer.

Arda blushed, feeling immediately the need to curl up her shoulders and arms. She sidled along the forest wall, to where a few others who were still clothed were haggling, and exchanging things. A man turned around with his cupped hands full of various, pastel-colored tablets and dropped two in his mouth, swallowing them dry. Arda suddenly thought of the paper square in her own breast pocket and realized her shirt was drenched with sweat and humidity. She reached in and pulled out damp crumbles of paper; the acid had melted. 

Everything she had heard about LSD from sources reputable and otherwise flooded her mind-- she could recall several different people telling her explicitly that acid could, or could absolutely not, be absorbed through the skin. She thought of when the last time she had even tripped was, and noticed her breathing was getting faster and shallower. Then someone spoke to her:

“Bad trip?”

She turned to see a tall man with stringy, efficient muscles covering his whole body. His beard was thin, and his battered t-shirt had a cartoon shrimp on the front, advertising something in Thai. He held out a bottle of pinkish liquid. “Drink This.”

Arda grabbed the bottle, and took a long swig of lemonade.

“I’ve heard about this-- isn’t the vitamin C supposed to stop me from metabolizing the LSD?” she asked, wiping her mouth.

“Well…” he shrugged, “It’s pretty hot, is all. Finish it.”

She did. “Thanks.” 

The influx of people had become a trickle; the fat and old showing up last, taking a seat in the grass as the young and beautiful people all finished up their fun.

“I’m Arda,” said Arda.

“Sam,” said Sam. They shook hands. “You mind if I ask?”

“Ask what?” 

“If you’re not here for that,” Sam pointed at the people screwing, “and you don’t seem to be interested in this,” dangling a bag of pills he was in the process of hawking, “why did you follow the train up here?”

“Looking for someone, actually. You know of Fevzi Goshen?”

“Nope.” Sam put a cigarette in his mouth.

Arda was beginning to feel stupider than usual; she didn’t have the energy to play games anymore. Here she was: indiscrete as hell, two seconds away from simply going from person to person asking if they’d seen a missing stranger.

She watched the people screwing and hated them; struggle, to them, was just an idea. They dreamt up their own boogie-men to justify their hedonistic exploits-- stress, pressure, anxiety and expectations-- while everyone around them had to find a place cleaning up the mess. A naked man with a hanging belly was looking at Arda, jerking his dick roughly. She held up a thumb and forefinger about half-an-inch apart, and squinted one eye. The man put his hands on his hips, offended, and stomped off.

“You know The Damselfish?”

“Sure,” Sam puffed quietly.

“You know of any other properties belonging to the hotel?”

“Only other one’s the king.”

“The king?”

Sam pointed over her shoulder. She whipped around and saw a tremendous, unlit neon sign, hovering among the tops of the trees. The segments of glass-tubing were contorted into the shape of a lanky, spider-like beast, perched upon three cursive words. Sam read them out loud: The King Crab.

***

Cool air plummeting toward the ocean focused itself into a forceful wind, and shot West towards the atoll. On the beach, Eleanor bent over slightly and shook out her hair, letting the wind rush through it and cool her scalp. The monsoon season would make it gray all day. She rested her head on the back of her chair and let the entire sky fill her vision; borderless, puffy, and gray.

From the balcony she could see the entire, sparse property of The Damselfish. Although she didn’t keep close tabs on the staff or the guests, simply being perched up on the one high balcony made everyone work harder and behave, as if she were watching. Eleanor didn’t really care. She closed her book, too bored to even read, and began to wander. The lobby was empty, as was the kitchen, the community space, everything, of course. A buffet was still set up for no one in the dining room, of course. Eleanor saw the staff folding the same unused sheets they folded days ago, and envied their ability to persevere. It was oppressively boring, and they soldiered on. Her brother, bless his heart, soldiered on. But the staff could always quit, and Toby was only 18, his optimism surely wouldn’t last.

She walked past all the huts; empty, of course, even Booker’s. The lone resident, challenging his orders and the rules set on him because even he couldn’t handle the boredom of this place. She grabbed a golf-cart and drove from one end of the property to the other, counting the shrubs and boulders for no reason. Maybe she’d remove them, just for fun. She parked the cart and decided to give it a wash. She organized the tools in the garage, and uncoiled and recoiled the hose out back. She asked the maids if they wanted to play cards, but they were busy, folding and refolding. She checked the mailbox and found a card from her father; apparently it was her birthday today. She tossed it in the trash. 

“Dad called,” Toby tried to get her attention as she walked past him in the kitchen.

The sun broke through, and Eleanor considered a trip to her favorite cove, where she had carved her name in the soft, sandy rock as a child, and could still make the word out today. The floor there was covered in soft, rounded stones. She and her mother used to escape to this place when she was a girl, and spend hours skipping them into the ocean. She still went every so often, but without the sun it wasn’t right. Under the gray sky it felt just like any other part of the atoll. She thought of taking the golf-cart there, but the sun was soon smothered by the clouds again.

Eleanor wanted nothing to do with this place. She returned to her miserable perch, and reopened her book. Out on the water, she saw Sam in his longboat. He was wearing a plastic poncho and a baseball cap, and he must have seen her watching because he turned and waved. She waved back.



CHAPTER 9.

For a long time Sam fed himself largely on what he could scavenge from islands nearby. Taro, and yams, only ever about thumb-sized. He’d find mollusks, fish-- toss fistfuls of little creatures and roots into a big pot and make a rudimentary, salty stew. There were villages and vacation spots nearby, but he was too much of an outsider to haggle for supplies with these people in the daylight. He sold his products to the local miscreants, every so often accepting a bag of rice instead of hard cash. He thought sometimes of eating Baz’s old fish, but couldn’t bear it. He let them all go, only he couldn’t figure out how to safely remove the cuttlefish, so it stayed where it was.

Sam and the stranger, despite their mutual hatred, shared the storage containers during this period. No words were exchanged, only bitter glares. The two took separate ends of the L and set up their miniature laboratories. Initially Sam was conjuring a mild opioid out of several pounds of kratom he’d managed to obtain, for petty cash and rice; he didn’t really care what the stranger was doing at his end. Sam fed and took care of himself, and the stranger kept his distance.

He recalled long hours spent fishing under gray and cottony cover of clouds in a little rowboat. Wedging the pole into a free cranny, he’d let the line drift where it wanted. He’d lay in the fetal position, and wait for anything he’d taken to kick in. Why not? Without Baz’s direction and demands, Sam became unfocused. He blurred. The clouds would enclose him and his boat, coming down to rest on the water with him, trying to soak him up. Shutting his eyes-- firmly, but gently-- he tried to submit, and dissipate into the misty air. He thought he recalled the faded image of his own father’s face, one he hadn’t seen since he was a child. He didn’t actually recognize it; how could he? But its slopes and valleys seemed somehow familiar. He was miserable, alone, sobs muffled by the fog. He wanted to find Baz and apologize, not knowing yet what for. Surely, somehow, Sam was the one to blame for everything that brought him here. He would have liked to die then, but believed possibly he was already dead. This was hell. 

The sun stayed hidden for months, and months…

Silence was not enough to keep the stranger out. In the emptiness left by Baz the stranger started to become an actual person, instead of just a shadowy concept. As Sam started to blur out of this world, the stranger was becoming clearer every day, until he was eventually, undeniably a person. 

“You want to make money, kid?” he sneered, as Sam hunched over mortar and pestle. “You want to eat, maybe? Something maybe other than roots and leaves?” 

Sam didn’t look up, but his stomach could answer for him.

It was not clear which language was his first. What was painfully obvious were his struggles with English. The verbal struggles were made worse by coincident struggles with oral hygiene, and spitting as he spoke. He hated English, and he hated those who spoke it well. He saw language itself as a means for control, and English was the virus that had already ravaged most of the globe.

He made plans. They were often rambling, incoherent tirades-- but occasionally one assembled itself into a fully realized scheme. It was his idea to start selling drugs at an inflated price to the weirdos on the atoll. He had access to supplements, chemicals and poppy straw and seeds. Before Sam knew it, he was working again. He had been given purpose once more.

“What is the thing most foul?” the stranger asked, drunk still. “It is control-- the control of you, by him-- the other,” he tossed whiskey down his throat as Sam worked. “To control another is sin, to hell with all who would ever dare control.”

The stranger seemed only to hate. He could speak for hours about what he hated, and why he hated it. He could drift off to sleep in the middle of a diatribe, his brows held taut in an angry V as he drooled quietly. He hated all governments, and all efficiently run countries. He hated political movements, and he hated people foolish enough to believe in things. He hated these things with the unabashed bitterness of a spurned lover. He wanted the world to fall apart so he could stand by and laugh.

“-- what is creation, but means for control?” his empty bottle rolled across the floor, and he growled beneath his words. “They create to fill the world with creations-- with things that obey laws and principles. They move in the same direction, always: cradle to grave. They consume with the same hunger, prey on weak, and leave a pile of steaming shit where once there was life.”

Sam heard him speak of something he loved only once. He had come back late on his motorboat from somewhere undisclosed, silhouetted by a sherbet sunset and slowly growing into view. He hopped off clutching tight a mysterious box he took directly inside. That night, busy at his end of the L picking apart some samples of a dried fungus, the stranger was grinning stupidly and humming a lullaby. He was in love with rot because he hated life. He was enamored with the ways in which it broke down the living, ordered world. His favorites were those particularly malignant spores which could find their way into the human body and destroy it from the inside. His desk was stacked high with petri-dishes, each one fogged and sweating inside.

“My creations are not created. They come from somewhere else, somewhere toxic to our world. I just open a door for them…”

He was making plans; Sam didn’t ask as many questions as he probably should have.

***

Any path initially designed to take one to the doors of The King Crab had long since been grown over. Arda kept looking up to find the neon sign through the canopy, like following a guiding star to its front door. The sign itself looked neglected, what state would the building be in? She pictured some massive gray edifice, smothered in overgrowth, waiting patiently to swallow her whole. 

Eventually a grizzled wall of chain-link materialized before her. She followed it around the premises, looking for an opening or a weak spot. The hotel was squat, and surprisingly humble. In the back was a pool filled halfway with rainwater and pond scum. At some point, many decades ago, it must have been quite luxurious. The fence reminded her of the many playgrounds of her childhood, and their one shared feature: the chain-link fence. Still, in her dreams, the limitless expanse of her psyche was closed-off by conceptual chain-link fences.

She found a separation, and a dirt driveway leading to the front entrance. Once, there had clearly been an elaborate walkway and likely a few topiaries, now all bulldozed and dead. She patted her jacket, feeling for her notepad and pen.

“You found me.”

Arda turned around to see the man himself. He was staring her down, more impressed than angry. His sleeves were rolled up for some laborious task, and his shirt was wet with perspiration. He passed her and made his way to the empty building.

“I told you, I need to speak with you,” Arda was impressing herself with her own composure. She wasn’t safe here, they both knew it, but she kept on. “I came to have a discussion with you.”

“So you did,” he nodded, satisfied, and walked past her. 

He waved her towards him. Inside it smelled simultaneously like bleach and stinking pipes. What furniture there was, the walls and the ceiling, were all stained by water long ago. The splotches of filth everywhere were bubbling over with mold in black and blue. Green tinged the carpet, and it squished with each of Arda’s steps. She picked the only wooden bench to sit on, realizing only after that it was a sort of front row seat; all of the furniture in this half of the old lobby was pushed out to make an empty circle. It seemed to be cleaner inside the circle, but not by much.

“You live here?”

“I work here. It is a stable environment for work, away from the rain and the animals. I sleep outside.”

“With the rain and the animals?” Arda clicked the top of her pen.

Goshen smiled. As he folded his arms the muscles in his upper body pulled together, like a cat about to pounce. “You are American, I know you have not heard of me. How did you get here, young lady?”

“Same way as everyone else: by plane.” 

“I know you cannot be working for the big news, nor the little ones. Who are you?”

“I’m Arda Beloff. I’m a writer. Is it my turn to ask a question yet?” She waited politely, and he smiled again and began to pace. He signalled for her to begin. 

“Is your work meant to speak for you?”

“No. Art is the thing itself. No means, simply end. It is different than what you do,” he turned to make sure she heard, “words are not themselves, the ideas they claim to represent. They are only what hangs around, and points toward.”

“Then what does one do with your art? We know that you make it, but why do we need to see it? What’s in it for us?”

He made a contemplative frown. “Maybe one doesn’t need to see it. Maybe one hears about it, and runs away in terror. The age of attraction is over, and art is tired of being looked at.”

“Then what are you-- a conduit? Or a puppet?”

He was quiet. “I am not the puppet here.”

Arda stopped scrawling for a moment. She suggested they switch topics.

“Where does it all start for you?”

“I was interested in bodies before I was interested in art. The body is art, of course, but it was the utility, and also its weakness that drew me to it. I studied it, studied medicine and biology, and then I left school. I had not killed yet, I had only the desire. But the first time it happened it was already like a memory: it was familiar and ultimately forgettable, so I continued, hoping to find what I was looking for.”

“Practically speaking, how does one get away with murder? How many people did you have to kill before it became steady work?”

“I killed only when the opportune moments came. The homeless and the desperate-- the world is not troubled by their loss. I became noticed by others like me, and fell in with a group of sexual fetishists. People who worshipped pain and suffering as the only true reality, the only way to enlightenment.”

“This group-- you all killed together?”

“It is where I learned the truest beauty: to take the life that wills it. To be given a soul, graciously, without expecting any pity in return. And to snuff it out.”

“Where… where does something like this happen?”

“Everywhere.”

“When did it become creative for you, as opposed to just indulgent?”

“It was never indulgent. I was a slave to death, I was doing her duties, which is why she favors me.”

“She allows you to create? Or does she do the creation? Because the work I’ve seen… It may be gruesome, but it is work. It takes time and patience, and a careful hand.”

“She is all, and everything. Everything is done by and for her. It is what you called to me the pulling,” he smirked as he used this new word, showing the yellow of his teeth. “From the tail end of this pulling, you only see enough  to fear her. At the front, closer to her, she beckons for your embrace.”

“Do you wish to die?”

“I wish for what all men wish for: a glorious, perfect death.”

“If death is the crux of your projects,” Arda paused, clicking her pen several times, “Then why the production? We come back to the audience and what they want: we get to see you-- hear about you, rather. Why? If death is so ubiquitous, everywhere and everything, personal and not, pulling us all the time, why does your relationship with her concern the rest of us?”

His back was facing her. “Do you know what it is to paint?”

“I do.”

“Then you understand creation. The severity of the act.”

“... I do.”

“Creation is the human mind’s way of knowing destruction-- of tolerating it. The blank space is destroyed by the mark. The past is destroyed by the present, in a hungry race for the future. I am to bring the people what they want and deserve: the inhuman future--”

“Inhuman… you mean AI? Technology?”

“I mean the earth, and the stars, and the atoms that pass through them all over the universe. We admire the complexity of things, but behind it there is only material and particles. Our own hopes and loves are reduced to chemicals, atoms, and even smaller bits still. We consider the universe and the earth and the materials inanimate, because we are blind. The universe thinks, and it hungers for death and glory as we do. Only some of us are able to listen…”

Arda was writing as fast as she could, giving her wrist a cramp and pushing through it. Goshen continued to philosophize, offering up some real succinct one-liners for a guy who didn’t speak English natively. He took a seat at one point, and eased into a posture that was weary, almost relatable. But when he looked into Arda’s eyes, the cold behind his own made her straighten up.

They discussed pieces of his: the jewelry made of teeth, bone and eyes; the blood paintings; the still-frames of impact wounds. She pressed him on the significance of a multimedia project, in which a severed arm was laid palm up, and was splayed apart from the wrist down. Its veins and nerves and various fibers were separated like the roots of a tree, and then pressed into goo onto a blank canvas, smeared all the way to the bottom. She asked him what was next. She asked him if this very place-- the circle in which they were sitting-- was where he did his work. 

“Do you know what this place is?” Goshen asked playfully. His eyes were locked to the floor, but he was grinning.

“The King Crab… it’s a hotel, right? Was a hotel?”

“That is the mask. It is the mask each facility wears on this island.”

Arda stopped scribbling. Everett’s one rule echoed in her mind.

“This is the place where Carl Everett made his money. Do you know the Everetts?” Goshen continued, no need for her to respond, “Your country gave it all to him, in exchange for this place.”

She drew a thick line across the page in her notepad, privately designating the bottom half ‘to-be-destroyed.’

“Tell me about this place, I’d like to know.”

“All battles are waged in the mind. The powerful men who drive thousands to war, to their deaths, what they truly want are the weapons of the mind. Such a thing is more powerful than the largest bombs. Your country knows this. They have searched for the answer in technology, and the beyond. They search in nature, in chemicals-- the materials of the universe. They pick apart the very fibers of the brain; that is what was done here. The holy quest for domination took place right here.”

Arda looked toward an open hallway, suddenly curious about what lay within. “Human experiments? But why here?”

“The isolation, and the privacy. And the proximity to subjects.”

“The guests--”

Goshen laughed. “Worse; wanderers, innocents, some of them purchased. That was a long time ago, when powerful men believed in hidden secrets. Now, this place is just a blemish to be hidden. People still come here to die, but they are not bought, they are coaxed. They are pulled,” he smiled, hoping Arda would appreciate the reference.

“Pulled to you? How? Does Everett supply them?”

“You are too focused, too centered. You must understand how the pulling works: there is the focused point to which everything is drawn. But it must, from somewhere else, where it begins to move unaware. You may call this the push,” now he was just being cute.

Arda didn’t feel done, but Goshen rubbed his eyes and stood up, suddenly bored. He was finished. He pointed to the open door and told her to leave. As she reached the threshold, he spat one more bit of familiar advice at her: “you are a puppet; your mouth moves, but someone else works the strings. I don’t have the answers to the questions you must ask.” with that he left, into the recesses of the dilapidated structure, running his palm along the surface of the walls, feeling the cracks and imperfections.

Arda found a rough path that brought her to a two-lane, paved road. She walked along its side, kicking rocks off the blacktop and into the brush. She knew she should be feeling relieved, having just survived a face-to-face encounter with a killer, but her mind was racing. She was leaving with more questions than she had arrived with. Worse, now she didn’t have several hours on a plane to prepare lines of questioning for Lin, or for Everett. She didn’t even know where to find them, until late at night when Lin would likely materialize with some new stick to shove in Arda’s spokes. The possibility that the two were really working with Goshen was briefly considered, then dropped-- more out of hope than deduction.

The trees on the other side thinned, and finally broke, giving Arda a 20 yard clearing from which to observe the tiny body of water enclosed by the atoll. Little waves formed by the wind shot out each way. It was shallow enough to see reef formations, and colorful fish. Arda stepped down to the sands to admire how things looked from the interior coast: the other side of the island, which was thinned to a fuzzy green line near the horizon, was blown-up at the borders of her vision, until it consumed her view entirely and became the jungle on either side of her. What was, directly ahead, symbolic and out-of-reach morphed into the reality on both ends that trapped her. She put her hands on her hips, and stared. She tilted her head slightly, putting her finger on her chin. What she saw humbled her. She dropped her arms to her side, and just stared, thoughtless and open.

Another soul was taking in the view as well; out of the corner of her eye Arda saw Booker standing still, looking into the same abyss as her. She called to him, and waved. He didn’t move. He was standing stick straight, wearing more wet clothes, his inner tube resting on the sand. She walked up to him, trying to get his attention. Coming around him, she could see he was pale, and his eyes were throbbing with tiny red veins.

“Are you okay?” She asked, “are you hearing me?” She waved a hand in front of his eyes. After a moment he gently shook his head, as if doubting the truth of what he saw.

“I’m losing my mind, dear Arda. It’s the only thing I’ve really got, and all I can do is watch it drift away…” 

“Well… you remembered my name. It can’t be leaving all that quickly…” She tried to get him to sit down and rest, but he was stiff. He was tense with fear, yet somehow it seemed he wasn’t fully there to experience it. As his mind was lost in deep thought his body seemed to be on high alert.

“I have lost my mind,” he repeated, “my thoughts, my soul…”

“You seem pretty good to me. Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on? I’ll listen to you--”

His eyes filled with tears, but his face did not crinkle or tremble. He relaxed and looked at her, trying desperately to make her understand beyond the ability of his words. “I’ve lost the only one I ever cared for. It was years ago, I know this. I can tell myself this. But I’ve lost her face, I’ve lost the sound of her voice… I don’t remember her anymore”

Her lip quivered. She heard Aron in her mind: then don’t. She wanted to help Booker, but he was striking her at her weakest point, without even trying. She recalled Aron’s face; his smile that was so reflexive-- so easy, and essential to him it could be found in any photo. Even his government ID cards, and candid shots taken completely by surprise all showed the smile. She remembered his picture on the news-- again the smile. She clung to the smile when she thought of how his body was found. He had hung himself in a closet, and they didn’t find him until the stench came. Arda knew his face would’ve been bloated and horrible. She knew this based on simple scientific facts, but her imagination ran wild with it and made it worse. The image she had never seen tortured her in her sleep. She saw it when her mind wandered. She saw it in old photos of her brother, and in faces on the street. She held on to his subtle smile, wielding it like a weapon against the visions when they became bad. Sometimes she longed to forget Aron’s face entirely, the way Booker had forgotten. She longed for an end to the pain, an end to this sour reality without her dearest companion, where she was less than whole. Alone, and incomplete.

“You don’t need to remember,” she said. He looked at her, finally. “The love you had was real. Everything keeps moving, and no one-- even the people who can remember-- no one gets them back. Remember that you were happy, because you were. It was true, so it is true.”

“But I’ve seen her. I heard her, and saw her-- here on the island,” his hand began to shake. He curled into himself and loosed Arda’s arms off of his shoulders. Drool and snot started flowing from his face. He was trying to whisper. “I saw her die. I watched her die every day for years, slowly, until I wanted simply to chase her into death. That was long ago, and I saw her again-- on the beach at night, approaching me, comforting me.”

“That-- surely there must be some--” but he wasn’t finished.

“--but I didn’t know. I didn’t know who she was,” he began to collapse, and sobbed into his hands, “I saw her own face, alive at last, and I didn’t even know! I held her in my arms, and I didn’t know--” 

He continued this way until his face was on the ground, breathing in sand as he sobbed and insisted that he didn’t know. Arda tried to cover him, and looked around. She didn’t know why but she didn’t want anyone seeing him like this. She tried to get him to stand. She had to take him somewhere safe; if Everett hated Booker as much he said, and if he actually was the kind of man Goshen said…

“Come on, let’s get you back to your room at The Damselfish.”

He stifled his crying and stood up, still covering his face. He knew the way, and took the lead. Arda followed. This flash of desperate vulnerability from a confused man had turned on her: now she was the one being pulled in one direction again. She wasn’t yet sure if this driving force was more or less unhinged than her last.



CHAPTER 10.

Toby Everett had lived on his father’s island his entire life, without ever leaving, even once; he was 19. His sister, Eleanor, was similarly trapped yet, as is the case with most older siblings, she appeared to her younger brother experienced, worldy, and blase about their imposed isolation. Neither of them grew up around children their own age, but Toby felt he was still the least popular kid he knew. His sister managed to rise to the top of the nonexistent social hierarchy, and not even care. She was a mystery to him, as she was to most people. She took after her mother. 

As a child Toby was closest with the staff of his parents’ hotels. These were generally middle-aged Micronesians from island clusters nearby, Yap and Chuuk. Most of them were over forty, and few spoke English. They kept the boy occupied between sessions of private tutoring, teaching him how to fold laundry and fill the steam trays. They felt bad for him, mostly. It was clear how disinterested his father was, and they tried to show him the affection they felt he needed. They never reached Eleanor in the same way. She was a beautiful girl from a very young age, and naturally her parents kept her away from strangers. With no other little girls on the island, she grew up isolated, locked away in her father’s hotel. The staff watched her burn through tutors; she proved to be too precocious for most of them, too smart as well. At least, these were the rumors they heard, the same ones they passed on to her younger brother. 

The sun began its descent. Its crescendo was now behind it, and the long fall from apex to the ground was being watched closely. In the main building of The Damselfish, Arda sat on the second story balcony, looking out at the sky and blowing steam off a mug of green tea. Below her, the staff had converted the empty lobby into a makeshift nurse’s office. A couple maids had donned little paper bonnets with red crosses on them, as they handed out tea and cookies to the rest of the gathered staff, and Toby. Someone had given Booker something to calm him, and he now slept quietly in a cot by the window. He was sweating, and one of the maids was humming a lullaby, as she had done with her own children when they had been small and helpless. Everyone sat, and sipped, as the man snored as the sun fell. In sleep, Booker maintained a look of terrified confusion, and Arda had to step outside. Watching someone breakdown so thoroughly, as she had lately felt tempted to do, had been too much for her. Toby peaked outside, holding a tray of day-old pastries out to her. She thanked him.

“He’s had a few episodes,” Toby explained. Over his shoulder, Arda could see his sister, watching everything from the corner.

It was a strange prison. On some level, it made sense: with no other guests all the focus was put on Booker. He couldn’t leave the island without being allowed, so it wasn’t essential to keep him on the premises. No matter how far he wandered, he ended up right back where he started. With no need for a security apparatus, Booker seemed to get along well with his captors. The staff all welcomed him back from wherever he’d been, and guided him gently to bed. It was like an episode of the twilight zone Arda was sure she’d seen before.

“You’re Arda, right?” the sister asked. She nodded, and was asked to step outside.

If she had to run, Arda felt she could. It would not be a hard jog back to The Moray, but was that the safer location to be in? She recalled that Lin said they were ‘administrators’ here. Was she free to come and go as she pleased, to keep tabs on the imprisoned if she wished, like Booker? Ultimately, she was trapped as well, it was starting to sink in. She shuddered, considering briefly, maybe the security was what was in Booker’s mind, ravaging his thoughts. Perhaps then for Arda, it was too late. Her doom was on the horizon, and every sound in the jungle, every hush of the waves, was really the ticking of her own clock.

“How did the interview go?”

“I’m sorry?” Arda squinted, leaning forward the way she imagined surprise should look. Eleanor was direct, and obviously knew more than she let on, but Arda wasn’t going to give her any extra information if it could save her life.

“You must have just spoken with Goshen if you were out on the road when you found Booker. So what did he say? Something dark and mysterious?” Eleanor continued, in a mocking tone.

“I’m working under a few, pretty strict, non-disclosure agreements. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you're going to have to wait to--”

“Something profound, I bet. Something perfectly succinct and--”

“We’re not fans,” Toby interjected. 

Eleanor was becoming frustrated; she clenched her fist and her teeth like she was about to strike. “Well, you’re not welcome here. Get out, and go back to The Moray.”

“Eleanor,” Toby pleaded.

“I don’t tolerate any of my father’s little games. I want you gone, and I’ll deal with the consequences.”

“Goshen is your father?” 

“Not Goshen. Carl Everett.” 

It clicked; Arda knew she recognized them from somewhere. They were both tall like their father, and subtly intimidating. Eleanor was all but ready to throw Arda out with her bare hands, as Toby tried to calm her down. 

“What kind of games?” 

Eleanor scoffed, but Arda saw her opportunity for some straight answers and started spilling everything. She told them what Goshen had said, where he was-- she even pulled out her notes and offered to read them aloud. There were dots that wouldn’t connect, she said, dancing around the most horrendous of the accusations, careful of who she was actually talking to. But Eleanor’s face was relaxed, and showed she understood.

“Why are you here?”

“I was hired to do an interview,”

“But not by my father? That doesn’t make any sense…”

“Privacy is of the upmost importance to dad,” Toby explained. “It’s how he can maintain control back on the mainland.”

“Control of what?”

“Well… everything,” Toby shrugged, as if this were obvious. Eleanor picked up for him:

“He controls what information gets out about the place, and the people here. Goshen is just the start.”

“Then your father… he supplies the victims?” They didn’t speak. “And the test subjects?”

Toby chuckled a little; is that what she called them? She was taken aback by his good humor, the way he could laugh off something so gruesome, as if it were as mundane as any other form of maintenance on the island. 

He could see he said the wrong thing, laughed at the wrong time. Arda was looking down to hide the wetness in her eyes, building with her terror. Did these two have a hand in the chore? How did it work, and where did they come from? The only thing she was confident in was that she could easily meet the same fate. 

Eleanor reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. Arda looked up, realizing just how much of her father’s height she had received.

“You are safe here, but you need to leave before that changes. Don’t ask anyone anymore questions. Rest a bit, then head back to The Moray. Tell dad you got your interview-- let him read your notes, if that’s what he asks-- then let him send you home.”

Arda sucked snot and tears back silently, holding a hand up to cover her eyes, as if she was just getting an itch. She looked back at the main building, and thought about Booker. Had the panic reached deep enough that it found him in his dreams?

The sun was still high, and it cast a scattered reflection on the water. The women inside got up, stopped their chatting and card playing, and laid out the day’s lunch buffet for no one. Sandwiches and fruit salad and single-serving bags of chips sat untouched for an hour, until the few things that would survive were put back in the fridge or the pantry. The only guest at The Damselfish was still dozing anxiously in the rec room, muttering in his dreams. The food would wait until the hour was up, and the staff could then descend upon it. It was policy. A mouthful of egg-salad had never made Arda feel so superior, and so powerful. It probably ought to have made her hesitate-- a dozen hungry eyes watching her put little pickles in her mouth, and five bags of chips in her pockets. But she did it anyway. She stuffed her mouth and the staff could only watch. She ate a banana in two bites. She was starving. It had been nothing but exhaustion since she got to the island-- since even the ride to their airport, when Cal spilt his guts. Things hadn’t made sense since long before that. Every answer had three more questions, waiting underneath for the right moment to jump out and gobble her up. There was a plate of store-bought cookies; she started grabbing them two at a time. She was hungry and confused, and terrified. Ignoring the sugary sodas and fruit juice, Arda put both hands on a pitcher of ice water. She put the spout to her lips and washed all the food down her throat, gulping loud, as the staff watched and waited their turn. 

Arda stayed, hoping to see Booker awake again before departing. There wasn’t much to do in the meantime. Toby took her on a tour of their side. The siblings knew it all without thinking, they had been kept here so long. Arda wanted to know more about their relationship with their father-- how sympathetic they were to his wishes, and how much did that put Arda at risk. But Toby didn’t have much to enlighten her with; he was kept in the dark, it seemed. He did his job and tried to be content. He was a seasoned rock-skipper, and he showed Arda the ropes.

“The best ones are flat-- obviously-- but even better are ones with a little curve in it, like a boomerang,” he said to the ground, bent over in a passionate search for the perfect stone. 

He took her to a small cove where the sand was hidden by thousands of these round and flat rocks. Toby was hoping to find the best one of them all. Discs of gray and beige, fanning out into thousands, and Toby parsed them all with care. Eleanor had work to do, and Booker didn’t wake until the next day, after Arda had left.

That night she dreamed of Mrs. Everett’s spirit. Her face must have been the fabrication of Arda’s mind-- a smattering of the other Everetts she knew-- but her presence was still familiar. Arda recognized this woman she had never met. There was no interaction; it was a connection beyond words or images. Descending into the fog of sleep, Arda felt this other presence she could only name once she had woken. She wondered if Booker’s vision had been a similar, foggy premonition. Maybe this was how he was unable to recognize his love, she was incorporeal, and vague. Had they both been haunted by the same ghost?

Eleanor gave her coffee before she left. From the balcony, they watched the island come to life as the sun rose on the other side.

“What will happen to Booker?”

“We don’t know,” Eleanor sipped. She could see that Arda’s casual lean against the railing was a put on. She was biting her lip, nervous. “I promise you, it was nothing we did to him…”

Arda laughed, not knowing why. She relayed the plan in her head: get to The Moray, find Everett to tell him ‘job’s finished,’ get the hell out and make something up on the plane. Would he want to check her notes? And if she turned in something mundane, would he have her searched-- make sure she wasn’t smuggling out info?

“You said your dad controlled things, back on the mainland-- what kind of things? I’ve never heard of this place, no one has, so how is it controlling us?”

“It’s not the place, it’s the people. It’s like a whirlpool: just some point in space, but the water drawn to its center makes it something else. A point of significance, and draw.” She blew steam off her mug and caught Arda’s confused look; she tried to rephrase. “It’s an intricate process, and it’s not foolproof, but he ultimately gets to decide which artists people listen to, and what they consume. They come here, make their connections and their masterpieces and they owe him a debt of secrecy-- often legally codified. He has journalists who connect the dots and inform the masses, and naturally very many wealthy corporations are interested in the results he can achieve.”

“So who’s involved? Artists I would have heard of?”

“Painters, pop-stars, famous Hollywood celebrities and their handlers-- everybody,” she sipped her coffee.

“But why Goshen? What does he have to gain by keeping his people hid?”

“Everything. You may not have heard his name, but there are whole movements-- whole schools of thought based around that man’s work. He is my father’s prize possession. He was discovered-- even made-- through the efforts of my father.”

Arda started to feel nauseous.

After breakfast, Arda set out again on the paved-road that yesterday had brought her to The Damselfish. The trees parted just as she remembered, and exposed the same brilliant, untouched view of the middle of the atoll. She was thinking about words again, their inherent limitations and inevitable insufficiency. There was nothing anyone could say to answer her questions. Lin and Everett were waiting for her, and she was ready to give them what they wanted and go, just one more quick stop.

At the location she found Booker, she veered left, back into the jungle. The rain started soon after that.

***

All of the pressed mud paths that wove limply through the jungle had been reduced to a fluid state. Swirling pools of muddy water gathered all over the earth as rain sifted through the canopy, colliding everywhere below with loud slaps. Arda took wide, spread-leg steps, trying to avoid the deeper pools, despite her shoes and socks already being soaked through. 

She could have been lost, and not even known. A thick mist hung around at eye-level, obscuring any landmark she would have recognized. The memory still in her legs and muscles, the trees she remembered leaning against or brushing her fingers across were leading her back to The King Crab, hopefully. Should Goshen still be uninterested in her, she would find a way of getting answers out of him, provoking him if necessary. She felt there was no one she could trust on the island, but at least she had done her research on him. The edges of the structure could be caught through the haze, and Arda maintained her awkward loping towards it.

“Hello,” Arda called into the lobby, and began to wring out her jacket. No one responded. 

She followed the same path Goshen had left her yesterday, down one of the open hallways, running her hand on the walls as he had. It was cold throughout, and the echoing sounds of water dripping danced up and down the hall. 

For an exotic, island resort, The King Crab was unimpressive as a hotel. Designed more like a roadside motel, with one story and a jacuzzi but no pool, it seemed lacking. Arda was afraid to find a secret hatch or a hidden door taking her to the testing facilities Goshen had teased at. Somewhere, she feared as well, would be Goshen’s work room. Corpses could be found somewhere, perhaps of people she had met the other day, at the party or on the plane. She heard his footsteps squishing the carpet as he approached.

“You have come back.”

She turned to see him looking dissatisfied, and his sleeves rolled up. His clothes were damp-- not shoulders-down, as the rain would have hit him, but around the collar, and splotchy on his chest. He had been sweating, hard at work on something.

He turned away and left her, and she followed.

“I need to ask you some questions-- not interview questions, anymore--”

“There would be no difference-- you want the information from me, you must beg for it-- beseech me like a starving dog.” He was leading her back towards the lobby, and he didn’t turn to say these words to her. 

“Then I’ll beg-- if that’s what it takes, I will beg you. Right now.” Arda stopped walking, hoping he would turn and she would have a chance at guiding the interaction further. She was being precise and blatant in her utilization of assertive body language. She was prepared now to be unsubtle. He waited for it to become uncomfortable, then turned to look at her.

“What use would I have for you? You grovel and it means nothing. You are too worthless to beg.”

“I’m sure you must hate me--”

“Then what reason do I have for listening to this? Why should I not kill you right here?” He stepped closer, and Arda shrunk, “Why should I not take your life as you beg? Perhaps that is what you will offer me, then?” He stepped closer, “you will offer me even more? I could teach you to beg.”

“I’m-- I’m sure you must hate me,” she put her hands backwards to confirm she had indeed, literally been backed up against the wall. “But I bet there’s no one who hates as much as you-- as well as you hate.”

He laughed, coldly. “You may be right--”

“Then you could kill me,” a well-placed pause, “but you would get nothing from it. You could smash a mosquito and be more fulfilled.”

He was listening.

“You could help me leave-- get off the island, as I’m sure someone like you must be able to do-- and take a stab at the one person you must hate more than anyone in the world…”

A grin was creeping across Goshen’s face, but it seemed more sadistic and mocking than Arda had hoped. Had she lost her chance? She dropped the last bomb regardless, in vain:

“Carl Everett…” Goshen threw his head back and bellowed with laughter, and Arda shrunk more, in timid fright. She had bet wrong and it may now cost her life.

“You are ever the puppet-- a true, committed liar of great skill, or just a stupid puppet. You dance for your master without even needing the order--” he laughed some more, and then struck her in the face. He towered above her, and her whole body was flung into the side wall. She collided head-first, and began to bleed. She scurried away on all-fours, one hand covering her swelling cheek, and Goshen laughed. His steps were broad, and she scrambled to get away but he grabbed her by her hair and brought her near to his face.

“You are the writer-- a thief of meaning and significance. You wield the words of another-- tools of another, left to you, to attack the world and reduce it to bits and shreds. You are not even a poet, a writer of songs-- you are a tabloid whore-- an extension of money and greed--” he dragged her along the floor, to a shut door.

“You all come to me-- the writers, the money-dealers--” he kicked the door open and brought Arda again to his face, “sycophants and lovers-- and the beggars, the ones who come to me and plead-- they want my knife. They long for death’s sweet acceptance-- they come to me and ask permission, through pleading tears, and I grant them their wishes.”

He tossed Arda inside the room, where is was pitch-black. She sat upright, and began to scoot backwards, careful not to let Goshen leave her sight in the darkness. But he stood in the doorway, watching her.

“You all wear different masks, but it is the same face underneath. You, and Everett. And your brother.”

Arda froze, and slipped backwards, knocking her head on something lumpy on the ground. 

“What did you say?” she whispered.

“You all wear the mask, but it is not your face. It is mine. You are the puppets, pulled by your string to face your master.” He stood above her and tilted his head, looking preciously at the lump behind her. She couldn’t help but be curious:

The dead man on the floor had his head twisted clear around, and his face was swollen and blue. His corpse lay prone, but his pale eyes were locked on Arda, just as she recalled. He still had the look of concern, smothered now by death. Cal was even still wearing what he had on when Arda had last seen him as he leaned over to scold her, and her, slamming the passenger door in his face. In his empty eyes, Arda finally saw the reality lurking behind the visions of Aron’s dead face. Her worst nightmares were manifest, and laid out in front of her as a gift. 

She could not manage a scream, and Goshen leaned in to whisper: “now you may beg.”

Like an animal she saw her opening and ran, flailing her arms in a reach for anything she could grab to pull herself farther quicker.

She was out the door and trudging again through the mud, this time sprinting, only hindered and sluggish like in a dream. He watched her sprint off into the rainy jungle, sobbing and confused, as he stood in the doorway. 



CHAPTER 11.

“Let me tell you how it goes,” he was saying in a gentle voice. “How it all falls apart, and everything dies,” Sam tries to keep his eyes open, to listen.

Life without Baz was life without a head. It was life without a face-- as in some means of directional orientation from which to process the universe and simultaneously move through it. It was life without identity or interest. 

The island was small enough to do an entire loop in forty minutes.  Sam circled, lost, sometimes eight to ten hours a day. Keeping his eyes on the horizon left him dizzy. The view was identical from every end. There was no line that separated the water from the sky, only the concept of one. The idea of separation, somewhere out there, when in actuality enough distance out over the horizon would only bring one back around the globe, to the exact same spot. The sun rose and fell at a silent pace, haunting Sam and turning his neck leathery. It drew its own circles in the universe, along an axis grandiose and beautiful; Sam mirrored it pathetically, his own feeble trail like that of a drunk slug. His thoughts were heavy, they slowed him. They felt thick tumbling around in his head, oozing down his veins, and leaking through the various nooks and fissures in his body to collect in his guts. He didn’t want to eat, and the stranger didn’t particularly give a damn, lost in his own work, and his own relations with the universe.

The man hated plans. He hated all forms of order and belief and hope. The idea that one might attempt to actualize something beautiful and utopian in their minds made him violently angry. He lived for sorrow and ruination. But he did not relish his own pain, nor particularly anyone else’s. Efficiency was the purpose of life, as he saw it. To slither around in the muck was a beautiful thing. The decomposers, the parasites and pathogens-- these were the biological hegemons. Capability was triumphant. Adaptation, the destiny of all perfect things, was hindered by the wishes and virtues of humanity. He despised their insolent dreams, and their disgusting plans. They were an insult to life. Life was really meant for backstabbing. Overthrowing society. Eating your children. 

His hatred was built on a form of respect: an admiration for a universe composed of depravity and heartlessness. It worked through him, and he was a dutiful servant. Everything he did was for the greater good.

For the most part, fungi are saprotrophic, meaning they absorb nutrients from decaying organic matter in soil. Shed leaves, rotten wood and the occasional carcass, pressed into the earth, layers deep all become food for the mycelium. The mushroom one sees in the dirt is merely the fruit of a shapeless subterranean body. Vast networks of threadlike mycelia dominate the underground-- simultaneously monstrous and microscopic. They release enzymes to disassemble starches and cellulose and et cetera into fundamental chemicals. These are then drawn up into the hyphae, where they sustain the mycelial bundle, aiding it in growth and maintenance. The bundles lurk motionless in the earth like titans, growing silently, too big to be destroyed and far too patient. Our footsteps reach them as the sound of rain finds us indoors, warm and secure. They could cross oceans and span continents, perhaps, if they wanted to. Within the reaches of their spores are our own frail bodies. We are the delicate insects, with short, insignificant lifespans. They will outlive us all. 

Sam was desperate to stop his thoughts. He had come to the painful realization that his own mind would kill him if given the chance. It drove him deeper into his own bottomless misery. He circled the island and spiraled downward-- down continually until he appreciated its absolute depth. It would never end. It would swallow him whole and feel no fuller. A false step down a wet rock almost snapped his leg. It left him with a deep cut that did not want to stop running. For a brief moment he felt something other than the pull of his bottomless pit. He continued his lonely wandering, from then on with a limp.

He was still taking a lot of drugs. Benzos and narcotics and the occasional amphetamine derivative. Nothing would phase him any longer. His resting state was one of nervous vibrations calibrated by the substances currently coursing through his body. Hallucinogens were always a favorite. Hours in his “lab”-- a free oasis of space on his otherwise cluttered desk-- he had a dozen disorganized plastic tubes filled with pills and powders and dark glass tinctures. Somethings he’d traded and saved, some things entirely experimental, of his own design. He’d pop a tablet and get to work on some more, wait and see what happens.

When the buzzing of chemicals in his system was at bay for long enough, he could see logically how bereft he had truly become. Then came the onset of crushing depression. Sluggish misery. He’d take some more of anything nearby. Mortar and pestle. Datura steeping in a kettle. Pupils dilate. The stranger made horrible, wet coughing sounds around the corner. He sometimes spat inside. His presence was unavoidable.

“This is not my plan, it is the plan of god,” he assured Sam. “You are a lucky man to see it, and to take part in its unfolding.” 

Sam was in a bad place those months. He lost himself, and found he had become something else. He mirrored the hatred he saw in the stranger, for a time. He became cruel, and purposeful.

“You do a good thing. You have found your place, with this,” the stranger was looking over his shoulder, proud of him. It felt good to make someone proud.

Sam didn’t really understand at first. He had thought they were making a drug. The stranger had always talked about releasing the product, distributing it for free. It made sense, Sam believed. There were aspects of their project that appealed to him-- finding familiar elements in the molds and fungi that he knew from his own craft. Tryptamine was the long lost cousin of his old pal phenylethylamine. It was interesting, but mostly it was purpose. It kept Sam away from circling the island.

They were making something. Breeding something, on a cellular level. Under very specific chemically induced conditions, they were trying to get separate species to intermingle, and become something new. To break their own circular trap of life and death, as the stranger would put it. What started out as a biological entity soon was engineered into something lifeless, and utile. It responded to chemical catalysts the way a computer responded to prompts. It could excrete toxins, and establish dominance in a given ecosystem with the application of the right foreign substance. It was efficient, and it was eventually to be packaged into an ingestible tablet. It became slowly clear: there was only one purpose for such a creation, and Sam no longer cared. 

“Death is a grateful master,” he was assured.

There were plans for testing the product out on a human subject, and Sam didn’t care. It would destroy the subject, if it had been manufactured correctly. Slowly, from the mind out. This subject’s misery would have to be monitored closely, and documented. Sam didn’t care.

The idea that thinking is done in the brain is a misconception; memories and knowledge are stored throughout the body, as formless intuition, waiting in the nervous system. The brain is merely a concentrated knot of these nerves. It is a fruit. The tendrils of the brain reach out into the body like mycelium, thriving off misery. It absorbs pain and dreams it as struggle. The honorable, limitless struggle of life. Cellular death and decay, incumbent in the very act of existing, converted by the mind into experience and character. The universe was pure decay, only punctuated by the human brain’s ability to recognize its own, peculiar suffering-- not even its own, but that of the body it belonged latched on to. That’s what the brain really was: a godly parasite. It spoke the language of another dimension, and attached itself to an exigent and dying lifeform. It turned misery into grace. Why?

Sam walked in circles around the island; a complete loop should take forty minutes. His pace was altered by the substances in his system. The image of an endless, wrap-around horizon hung clear in his mind. He’d open his eyes after staring at it, realizing he hadn’t actually been staring at it at all. Sometimes he blinked, then saw he’d fallen once he opened his eyes, unsure for how long. In the next blink he was back on his course, but now a moment sooner than before. The continual looping of time became upset and split off. He was in different seconds at once, non-sequentially. He reached out to his side to steady himself but found his palm clutching his heart. Feet formerly in the sand were now in the water, or the air. The horizon was ubiquitous. 

His mind tried not to think thoughts of people he knew-- of faces and personas. He sought the infinite interconnection promised by generations of drug users before him, but found only more separation lurking under the surface of a single thing. Heartless categorization and discrepancy on a microcosmic level. Nothing was the same. Nothing was connected. Everything trapped in its own bubble. It was a horrible realization, but his own soul had already been shattered into so many thousands of separate atoms by the drugs and the loss and the sheer pathetic, pointless existence of a person like him. He wanted to smash the bits further-- making them smaller, more separate. Back in the lab at nights, he was mixing up new concoctions he’d never tried before. Ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and white vinegar, shaken vigorously and injected. He was back at his beginning. There was no end to a circle, and there was no way out. There was no way to jump from one circle to the next-- Sam was condemned to his shameful orbit around the island, and the sun mocked him, complacent in its own circle-- another prison but on a cosmic scale. A glorious incarceration-- but Sam was doomed. Codeine pills and codeine cough syrup in a rudimentary slurry, taken with a glass of fizzy water. The infinity implied in a circle terrified him. He couldn’t make this fear go away with any substance. The ring he walked around the island, and the horizon wrapping around him on all sides. The sun-- an orb-- left brightly colored circles stained on the inside of his eyelids. His pupils were circles, gazing into other circles. Everything was trapped, and everything succumbed- everything except the cuttlefish. It stared at Sam through sine-wave eyes, its form somehow immunized. It was foreign, something unnatural to a world of circles and dots and orbs and rings, and Sam could feel it watching him. What did it want? What did it see? Desperate to flee, he set out on his boat with little gas in his engine. He zigzagged and turned sharply without reason, just to evade the predictable end of a circle wrapping the earth: the same as his beginning. Pickling lime, more white vinegar, and the powder of dried and crushed mimosa leaves-- suck out the goodness with a double-boiler, naphtha bath-- injected for optimum results, but smoked in a pinch. He found the stranger had samples; ergot, and mucor and psilocybin, just waiting to be refined and ingested. Psilocybin was a ring. Tryptamine and phenylethylamine-- the fundamental element was the double bonded ring. The same ring was in most of Sam’s best-selling products: tetramethylene and cyclopropylmethoxy. Phenyl rings, indole rings. Cathinones and benzodiazepines. Another double-bonded ring in serotonin. Out of gas and drifting through the ocean, Sam hoped he would die. Worse, he was found by that sign of his unending turmoil-- 2C-T-13, MDMA, ALEPH-2, 4, 7. He was beached on an atoll he’d never noticed-- a gigantic ring of earth on the water. Vibrant patches of coral and rock accumulated on the seafloor and peaked, breaching the surface of the ocean in a solid, searing loop that burned on Sam’s forehead. The idea of it was terrifying. MDHOET, LOPHOPHINE, MDMEOET, GANESHA. It was life consumed, he thought. Life was only a vector for the ubiquity of hunger, that swam around and around in circles, chasing its tail. Visions of anemones and eels and thousands of colorful fish compressed into rock turned his stomach. Sam felt the burn of the ring on his skin, sprouting all over his arms, branding him invisibly, leaving a mark he could neither locate nor remove. He was afflicted. He was found on the beach. Hungry islanders took him to an altar to drain his blood. It went black, and he could feel the sensation of his body being pulled by the currents. A giant loop. Back to his beginning. The death before life, which waited patiently the entire time.

When he opened his eyes, a girl with long, soft hair hovered over him. She sat by his bed and gave him hot water with lemon. He was still seeing things-- shapes and faces and disturbing patterns-- but she felt real. He couldn’t speak yet, and had trouble walking. She let him sleep, and gave him food and a bucket for his vomit.

ARIADNE: 2,5-Dimethoxy-alpha-ethyl-4-methyl-PEA. 

He left when he could stand, trying to let her know he was grateful, and he would repay her, and he needed a map. He returned to the stranger, as he ultimately feared he would.

“You are a purposeful being. You are a man.” He told Sam on arrival. Instead of the anticipated thrashing over all the consumed samples, the stranger held his arms out in a paternal embrace. Sam accepted, feeling his hot, stinking breath on his neck. “You were lost, but now you are found.” This wasn’t the same man he’d left. Did he have the same visions as Sam? Had he come to the same conclusions?

This is when they began their work.

Sam lived up to his promise; he started selling product again, and brought the money to the woman who saved him, but she refused. She said she only wanted him to be okay, which Sam didn’t believe. He became familiar with the atoll she lived on, and the strange people inhabiting it. They were good customers for Sam, and, as things progressed with the project, he knew this is where the stranger would find their first subject.

One familiarly gray morning, Sam was abandoned. He awoke to find the stranger’s half of the L emptied in the night. He didn’t leave a note. The catalyst Sam had prepared was also gone from his desk; he knew what was about to happen. He went for a walk around the island.

It was still early, and the sun was beginning its own loop for the day. Sam curved towards the water to walk in the freshly soaked sand, leaving deep, deflating impressions that were washed away in a moment. He thought about his hometown, and his mother, hoping she was still alive. It had been a long time since he had spoken with her. He couldn’t remember the year of his birth. He was disconnected, almost entirely. Attached to the world only through the access to language-- as deeply rooted as his sense of self, bodily permanence-- he was otherwise outside everything, but stuck on the Earth. 

He stopped walking, looked up to the sun to orient himself, and faced the direction of the atoll where Eleanor was. What did she think? She was beautiful, and Sam cared about her. Trapped in a circle, in a million circles that existed in every direction, forming a sphere of limitation, she served as the single point he’d been glad he reached. Secretly he believed his entire miserable life had been a straight line to her beach. He didn’t know her as well as he would have liked, but he came to her on his knees, lost and confused, and she’d accepted his arrival. 

It began to mist, and the sand across the island became damp and loamy. He made his way back to the L, leaving limp footprints in the sand, perfect, empty receptacles for the oncoming rains.



CHAPTER 12.

It was in the meandering, RGB hallways of The Moray’s upper floors that Arda realized her ankle was twisted. A light drizzle on the way out of the jungle washed away the tears on her face, but she was still spattered with mud. She didn’t want to be noticed, walking quickly down the halls to where she thought her room must be, trying to brush some mud off her thighs. She turned left, right, left again-- no hall was straight for more than thirty feet, it seemed. Her eyes kept bouncing around the ceiling’s corners. There must be security cameras, she thought, and somewhere behind them Lin must be watching her. He had to be.

Arda arrived at a door numbered about three hundred higher than her own room.

“Fuck,” she turned and hobbled off, trying to conceal her limp.

There were too many dots to be connected. Somehow Arda’s most personal life had been sucked into the middle of this indescribable hell. He hadn’t used his name, but he might as well have-- how did Goshen know about Aron? The only possible link from A to B was Lin; Aron to Lin to Errol to Everett to Goshen, right? She was in an emerald hall now, still nowhere closer to her room’s number.

The walls were still lined with weirdos, and none of them noticed her. She didn’t want to draw any attention, fearing some may be affiliated with the wrong people. Some of them looked even more wet and haggard than she did. A group wearing dirty animal skins was teasing a maid, tossing their clothes into her hamper and trying out the phrases they had learned of her language. They tried to convey a sense of playful comradery between guest and staff-- equality even. The group stripped down to nothing, men and women, all athletic and beautiful, and then they strutted off. Arda watched the maid groan, and push her cart down the hall.

Cal knew Aron-- did that mean he knew Goshen? Was Cal the missing link? She saw his pale face again, and braced herself against a wall. Eleanor had mentioned her father’s web of artists. Did this include her brother and Cal-- other people she knew and considered friends? Had Goshen been a menacing presence on the periphery of her own life this entire time? Arda moved carefully, stepping first with the edges of her feet, so as not to make more sound than the squeaking wheels of the laundry hamper. The maid made a left turn, Arda was close behind.

Lin’s bad behavior was never based on ill intent, but rather the menace of the action itself; jumping out from the bushes at night, wearing a bloodied hockey mask, pinning you down and making you piss your pants only to pull back the disguise and asking through laughter: ‘what are you so scared of--’ that was Lin’s game. He was a bully, but just a bully. It occurred to Arda that much of what she knew about Lin was based on presumption, fabricated by her own mind to fill in the gaps between the rare glimpses of the man himself. Their time on the island was already a microcosm of this. The maid entered a laundry room through a thin, swinging door. Arda let it sway naturally, and snuck in, careful not to give away her presence with even the absence of anticipated sound. She stepped in and made sure the room was empty-- of staff, and of cameras.

Arda’s rational mind told her she would not be safe here either, but the idea of staff quarters calmed her. Lin’s gaze could like only be deterred by his distaste for the underclass and their menial labor. The sound of the industrial washing machines told her she had left the realm of the subject and entered a region behind-the-scenes. In this place, of course, she would not be allowed. So she looked for an apron, or some other identifying garb to slip into. She thought she could melt right into the crowd of laborers-- bus a few tables then hop onto a garbage barge and make her way from there. Someone’s waterproof shoes squeaked louder and louder, moving in Arda’s direction.

Without another thought she leapt into the open hamper. She curled up and draped the muddy animal skins over her. Calm voices filled the room, busy with their day. A gut feeling was telling Arda to slowly stand up, explain her situation to the workers. Surely they had to be, by the dictates of class membership, antagonistic to Everett and his wishes. 

Her stomach gave a nervous groan. She couldn’t speak whatever language the workers were using, but it seemed like they hadn’t even noticed her. Her muscles tightened. She felt dirt and animal-fur get sucked up with her breath, and stifled a cough. No one seemed to be paying attention to the hamper, so she slowly shifted a leg into a position more tolerable. Something wet was soaking into her pant leg fast, but even twisted she couldn’t stop it. A dripping was tickling her neck, and she began to cringe thinking perhaps she had become wrapped in some addict’s soiled sheets. She dared her eyes to open to take in the damage to her clothes, mindful not to breathe in through her nose in case the smell would make her gag. She glanced down, and shifted the cloak over her head to cast some light. A slick cavern of fabrics enveloped her, all smeared completely with a deep and liquid crimson. She breathed in and content the rich smell of blood.

Something primal in Arda’s brain fired down her back, and jolted her upright. But there was no footing in the hamper, so she merely writhed deeper into a tangled mess. Deeper into a swirl of blood and fabric and now it seemed another person, with hands on her legs and back, and caressing her face.

One of the staff saw her move, said something to his friends. No sound was coming from Arda’s mouth, and she jolted again. She saw the hand now, slithering around her shoulder; its bloody knuckles, it’s leaky stump.

People were chittering more and Arda jolted again, and this time she screamed. Her body wanted to stand and run-- to simply stand and take in the picture from a removed distance and be a viewer of this horror. She writhed, and sank deeper into the mess. There was another hand and smaller bits too: toes, and eyes and a single lip with make-up still on it. Arda thrashed, and screamed. At the bottom of the hamper blood had pooled. She made her way deeper into the muck with every thrash. Skin, and blood, and bone, and organ.

***

A fluorescent buzzing was making a loop in Arda’s brain, circling back in on itself over and over as she opened her eyes. A lone lightbulb glared straight down at her from the ceiling, shining a brilliant, transcendent white. She twitched and felt the familiar crinkle of sanitary paper under her body.

“I suppose it’s all my fault. I’ve been keeping you in the dark, but only because I know how fragile you really are.”

Arda was in a nurse’s office, alone with Lin. She had been dressed in a sanitary hospital gown, her underwear and shoes had been removed, but her knees were still stained burgundy with someone else’s blood.

“I just didn’t want you to think you were ever in any danger. These little events get messy, but it isn’t as bad as it looks.”

She turned her head to face him. He looked as clean and as slippery as ever.

“But it’s all consensual, you understand? No one is ever really ‘hurt,’ in a certain way of looking at it...” he tossed a hand around in the air, as if churning up the right word. “The victims are willing, you see?”

The restraints were figurative, but Arda knew she was trapped. Splayed out on an operating table as Lin bided his time, waxing philosophical and letting his imagined scalpel catch the light. She wasn’t sure if he’d pull back the mask this time. She wanted this all to just be a cruel joke. He explained calmly about rituals from ancient times, and how vital it was for those who create to connect with their roots. There was no such thing as murder on the island, only gloriously repeated and exalted death. The victims were not actually victims, but emblems of something amazing. They volunteered, and were privileged to be chosen. They died valiantly.

“Arda, you’re crying. Dear, please sit up,” he stretched his arms out to her with the look of pity reserved for a sobbing baby. “You make me feel like a monster. I only want you to feel safe.”

“So you don’t know…”

Lin scoffed, taking offense at the accusation of being out-of-the-loop. Arda turned back to the ceiling; perhaps she wasn’t yet caught.

“I’m trying to tell you, dear: the bodies, the blood, they’re all part of the experience here. There’s no need to be afraid of a little blood,” he was not impressed that Arda didn’t seem to be listening. Tears were still running defiantly down her cheeks, and she repeated:

“You don’t know.”

“Then quit being coy and start telling me.” Few things were more frustrating to him than exclusion, Arda knew.

She sat upright. “You have been lying to me,”

“I have not, I--”

“You’ve been keeping secrets. You brought me out here and you’ve been jerking me around-- and that’s all without this--” she held her wrists out to him, where dried blood had settled in the lines of her palms and fingertips. She was shaking, rotating her hands to show him how it seeped into her knuckles, and crusted around each of her fingernails. 

“Okay, okay. I should have warned you about maybe a little more than I--”

“Who is Cal?” She was leaning forward, all but jabbing Lin with her dirtied finger. “Who is he? One of your plants?”

“Arda,” he laughed, “I have no idea what you’re--”

“You’re lying. Again. Tell me the truth-- now.”

“Or what?” He was cool, and petulant.

Arda paused, trying to hear anyone who may be lurking outside the door. Even if her friend was naive, and even if his control of the situation was just a front, Arda was sure that the strings were being pulled somewhere. A string from her, to Lin to Everett to Goshen-- or perhaps Goshen to Everett-- or maybe--

“He’s dead, Lin. And you got him killed,” she said. “Goshen’s killed Cal; I saw his body and he’s fucking dead. So you need to start telling me what the hell is going on or else we’re next,” She reached him. The color left his face and his smile quivered. “If he kills me, he’ll come for you next--”

“Does he know my name?” He was trembling.

“Yes,” she lied. “I told him who you were. That you were my contact and my whole reason for being here.” Arda could see he was actually sweating now, his lips pursed. “He said he wants to meet you.”

Lin stood up. He started pacing backwards, slowly, towards the door.

“Who is he?” she repeated.

“He’s a friend of your brother’s. Friends from school,” he cracked the door and peered out. It was subtle, but Arda thought she saw a tilt of his head signal to someone outside ‘back off.’

“I’m not talking about Cal,” Arda spat, “for now, at least. Who is Goshen? Why am I really doing this?”

Lin turned back inside to face her, smirking again, but uneasy.

“Arda, please do not schiz-out on me. We’re here to do the interview. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything, but it doesn’t mean it was all a lie. What you want is what I want: the dirt on Goshen,” he sat back down and tried to regain his cool. She stared at him expectantly, letting the threats linger in the air until he continued.

No one had really expected Aron and Lin to hit it off so well. It was kind of a joke: getting the pure soul who believed in the power of beauty to actually interact with the embodiment of bourgeois nihilism. Right up to the moment it happened Arda felt like she should have warned her brother. Prepared him for an impending danger she couldn’t exactly identify. But it went well.

Naturally, Lin saw opportunity in Aron. That kind of raw talent, tempered by a discipline and work ethic that few people his age would even notice; Lin was impressed. He was happy to help Aron’s work get seen. It wasn’t clear what Aron saw in his new friend. Perhaps he thought Lin was predictable, and somewhat small, and so he pitied him. Maybe he wasn’t so smug, maybe he just liked the guy. 

It wasn’t exactly clear how word of Goshen’s work spread. Artists, especially younger artists, found it incredibly fascinating if hard to take in. They discussed it in private chat rooms online, and in the back of their life-drawing classes. Cal introduced Aron to it.  Sensitive as he was, he must have been horrified when he fully grasped what this artist was: an abuser and a predator, aside from simply being a killer. Goshen didn’t hide these things, but some viewers simply didn’t want to accept it-- their initial fascination with its authenticity let them believe that such vile traits couldn’t coexist with daring, and talent. To finally grasp this was the first step to becoming his victim, the first act of accepting his cruelty. It was still very interesting. Many others thought so as well, but they all had to stay quiet. Goshen was a criminal, and deservedly so. None of his followers debated this-- they preferred not even to be called his followers. Aron certainly did not, but he paid close attention to the forums that were discussing his name.

It was years into a successful partnership that Lin discovered Aron’s dirty secret. He was a bona fide superfan. If one were to really press him, Aron could go on for hours about the fundamentally groundbreaking nature of what Goshen was trying to do. The refusal of medium and the embracing of pure, unencumbered creation, or some such shit. Aron was hooked, and when he described Goshen, Lin envisioned a man of great power, hidden somewhere as yet unknown, who drew people toward him from every corner of The Earth. In a way, this was how Lin saw himself. 

The two fell out of touch as Aron became more reclusive, absorbed in his own work, hoping to take it in some other, equally important direction. Perhaps getting less people hurt in the pursuit of perfection. He began to worry that the entire process was just vicarious bloodlust. That which he worshipped was really just rapacity in another form, the familiar quest for submission wearing another mask.

Lin didn’t speak to Aron again, and he didn’t attend the funeral. He was busy with his own obsession, and his own work.



CHAPTER 13.

What everybody always liked about Arda was her sense of humor. In public school she floated between cliques as the funny one, always ready to please jock or nerd with a well-timed quip. She had a knack for saying the right thing at the right time, and it was probably the only reason she ever began writing. Otherwise it didn’t really interest her.

Arda loved painting. Before she ever actually committed brush to canvas she saw the inherent beauty of such a thing. It was speaking beyond words-- to even call it speaking was to have already reduced it to something pedestrian and forgettable, something unworthy. As an artist one didn’t merely float among the cliques, one floated above. There wasn’t a need for anything else if she could paint. Arda spat one-liners and kept the wall surrounding herself very high-- she didn’t care who wanted in. One day soon, she had hoped at 16, she may even dispense with the need for the one-liners. To live the socially monastic lifestyle her brother had exemplified since kindergarten, that was her idea of heaven. Aron floated above everything.

Arda’s wit was still a valued tool. It could get her through the odd job interview or frustrating social circumstances. It was vital in the aftermath of Aron’s suicide. It kept people at a safe distance. The problem was she could never tell where it would lead her. Lin had not been the only unsavory character to take an interest in her. Los Angeles was full of dirt bags. She remembered getting Cal to laugh a few times in the car, and she was sure they would have been close, but she was trying not to think about him now. It was making her tear up, and she knew she was going to have to muster.

It was still raining softly, and familiar, thick mist swarmed the jungle. Arda pulled the collar up on a pea-coat she borrowed from Lin, and a cool burst of air snuck up her hospital gown. Someone had apparently burned her bloody clothes, pockets still full. She had no ID, no cash or cell phone. Lin was careful to make this clear to her-- she was nobody, now. Not until they returned home. He would be back at The Moray with the staff, all searching for her, but who would he be looking for? She was nameless-- an undiscovered creature or an unconsidered thought-- trudging through the mud in borrowed rubber boots. She could die and no one back home would ever know.

Her rubber boots were filled. Mud and brown water. Silt and blades of grass gathering between her toes. It was freezing. She tried not to connect the dots, or to draw lines of order stringing her thoughts together. She took the boots. A room full of tools and a haz-mat-type suit. Maybe she should have taken that. Arda shook her head, trying to forget, lose any reservations. Take action. Make a mark. She grabbed the boots, slipped out while Lin was smoking. Picked up the knife. Lin told her nothing; he knew nothing. He was caught in the pull, a puppet on strings. She smacked her forehead with the heel of her palm. Soggy rubber boots. Less than a mile left. Make a mark.

By now, the way to The King Crab was familiar. Pressing forward she could feel its figurative embrace reaching out to her. She put a hand out to brace herself against a tree, and with the other, gripped the lacquered handle of a work knife.

The edges of the building were becoming defined and sinister, menacing as the presence of Goshen himself, somewhere inside, brooding and waiting. From where Arda stood, it looked like the King Crab had two big angry eyes; a pair of shattered windows gave it the appearance of a man passing into death with hatred on his face. 

She arrived at the gate, and Goshen stepped out of the black interior into the doorway, quite possibly expecting her. She petted the knife secretly.

“Did you come back for another beating?” He shouted down at her, leaning smugly against the jamb.

Arda reached into Lin’s inside pocket and drew out a fresh notepad, and a ballpoint pen.

“I’ve still got some questions for you,” she said. Goshen scowled, and went back inside. Arda followed him, one hand still in her pocket with a firm grip.

“Where are your handlers, and why have they let you come?”

“Busy-- and they haven’t” Arda stepped casually, as if scoping out the place for the first time, ready to get comfortable. She rolled the fear off of her body like a robe, and let her muscles relax. She was right at home, in her element, she tried to tell herself. He laughed.

“Then it is too late for you: you long for me. You are hungry for what I can give you.”

“I’m starting to doubt that…”

He leaned in. He was already smiling maliciously, waxing more to himself than to his next victim.

“I had hoped to try one last time,” she went on, “but I don’t know now if you’re even capable of truthfulness.”

Sneering, he pulled back and laughed some more. Arda elaborated:

“Honesty, maybe. But you live in a dream world; I’ve come for the answers to real questions, but you’re simply too far gone, lost up your own ass.”

He chuckled some more, and started walking down the hall. Arda followed, recognizing the spot on the floor where he had grabbed her, and the edge she had cut her head on. 

“Why do you follow me? Why do you want to die? You are not like the rest.”

“What were they like?”

“Miserable. Desperate for my salvation. There are many more like them, who do not yet know it.”

“And are you not miserable or desperate? You spend your life in devotion to this horrid art-- you mean to tell me it isn’t out of desperation? Your own subconscious longing for death?”

“My time will come and it will be beautiful--”

“And when does Everett have that scheduled?”

He stopped, and for a moment stood facing the empty hall in front of him, his expression a mystery to Arda. Slowly he turned around, wagging a finger playfully.

“You think it will work to insult me? As if I care?” he asked earnestly.

“It’s a fair question: Everett supplies your victims, no? Your work is only here because of his good graces. He feeds you and let’s you sleep in his creepy, abandoned building-- what doesn’t he do for you?”

“Nothing that matters--” he growled.

“He must be the mastermind behind whatever success you can claim-- he’s got you trapped on this island like a pet. You only dance for people because he says so-- because he allows it.”

Goshen walked away once more, Arda followed.

“What about Cal?” 

“Hmmm… this is your friend?”

“Did Everett bring him to you?”

“He came of his own volition, somehow, to beseech me for pity--”

“Which you refused to grant--”

“It was not pity for himself.”

Arda turned her head away, holding back the tears in her eyes.

“You’re imprisoned,” she said. “Whatever force pulls people here, it isn’t controlled by you. Everett keeps you here, locked up, and the only way to sneak past the bars is inward to get a glimpse of the monster, never out into the real world-- not without the approval of your master.”

Goshen was leaving, and Arda called after him: “why did you kill him?”

“Because he is nothing to me,” he stopped and shouted back at her, “nothing but the slime under my shoe, begging to be crushed--”

“Is that what he begged for? Or is that just what you have to tell yourself because you aren’t prepared to deal with sincerity. For all your worldliness, what eludes you is people.”

“People are not worth understanding. I am the one they must learn to understand and accept, not the other way--”

“People are the only reason you exist. You are nothing without a trail of sycophants doing the dirty work of making others give a damn. You are ahead of no one, only propped up at the front of a big crowd, by a few loyal admirers--”

“Like your brother?” He was becoming red in the face, and he jumped at this opportunity to lash back. “I knew the little man-- well, knew of him. Talented, but he was so dull. Talent is wasted on someone with nothing inside to separate them from the hopeless masses of nothing. He wrote me often. He was eager to reach me. I wonder why?”

“And what about your family, Fevzi? All dead? All nobodies?” She gripped the knife handle tight. “Or is Everett the only family you’ve got? We already can see he’s your keeper--”

“Everett is a swine--” Goshen shot forward and lifted her by the wrist. Her knife-wielding fist squirming awkwardly above his knuckles, it wasn’t clear if he noticed or even felt threatened. “Everett is a money-changer-- he is dirty, and he is nothing to me.”

Arda was dangling, “he’s paid for and supplied every piece you’ve ever done-- how many has he come up with on his own. For how many did he have to guide your hands--”

He grabbed her by the neck and began to tower over her. The knife hit the floor and Arda was now on her back, losing oxygen, starting to feel the pressure of Goshen’s grip in her spine. Her hand flopped desperately for the knife but he was squeezing her neck so hard her eyes were beginning to go black.

“You are just one of the many who knows nothing about art,” his voice was coming out strained, as he focused on breaking Arda’s windpipe. “You want to know? I will show you.”

She felt the handle, and in a reflexive motion swung the knife around and sank the blade into Goshen’s arm, between radius and ulna. Its tip penetrated the other side.

Thrashing back wound-first, Goshen was bellowing and gushing blood all down into his shirt, but he kept his good arm on Arda’s neck. It wasn’t enough-- she pried apart his fingers and slipped away, falling against a railing as her vision bubbled back. The knife’s tip glimmered on the inside of Goshen’s arm, a bead of silver in the dark stream of blood spilling out onto the floor. She stood and backed up, searching for something else dangerous.

“Bitch!” he cried, stumbling in his own puddle. “Bitch!” Arda took off into the room where Cal had been but was now not, looking for an exit. In the other room Goshen rose and gained his composure. He clenched his teeth and pulled the knife out steadily, using his shirt to tie himself off at the shoulder, and was off in Arda’s direction.

Arda was lost in the halls of the old hotel. In borrowed shoes, and nude under her gown, she tried to decide which dark hallway was the best one to turn down. She had no ID. She was destined to become a nameless corpse. Aron’s smile came back to her, but it was twisted and slack, the way she always feared it would become. It was Cal’s. Somewhere Lin was laughing, she could feel it, and Errol-- an evil she had never truly understood-- was somewhere pulling the strings. But where was Everett? Where were Eleanor and Toby? Where was Sam? Was anyone out here to help her? She could hear him stomping after her, his yells vibrating through the walls. She was walking in a circle, she could feel it without seeing. It wouldn’t end. She stopped in the door to a decrepit bathroom. Inside it was pitch-black, certainly no exit, but she tucked inside.

“All paths lead to me,” he shouted. “Run and you will find yourself again at my feet.”

It was dark, but she could feel a section of the wall near a toilet that had been removed. She got on her knees and crawled in, Goshen’s pounding growing closer.

He cursed her again, told her she wouldn’t even make a good piece. Something for the scrapheap out back.

She crawled around a corner, lost in the walls. Completely black. Dust and mold and dead rats. It was another circle.

He was pounding on the walls trapping her-- he could hear her scuttling and squirming and she could hear his heavy breathing. 

“I was told when your brother died,” Goshen spoke, his face pressed against drywall. Arda could feel it in her body. “I was one of his companions. I was his friend.” Hot tears were falling from her face, and she clutched her head, doomed. “I could have made him great, if he had only the patience. I would have made him a truly beautiful thing.”

Arda opened her eyes and saw a shred of dim light cast on the floor in front of her; it was a vent to the adjacent bathroom. As she placed her hand on it, Goshen began banging at the wall with his fists trying to break it away. Dust fell and she threw her body into the vent and rolled into a utility closet.

He must have heard her, as the squeak of his shoes on bathroom tile told her he was making his way to the closet. As her coughing drove clouds of dust away, a tiny gleam caught her eye. An old pipe wrench lay waiting on the ground. Goshen’s steps were growing louder, more urgent as he circled her and tried to find the right door.

Arda stood up and cocked back the wrench. When he opened the closet, smug hatred on his ugly face, she brought the tool down hard, right above the eye. His skull caved, and as his ass hit the floor. He crumpled and laid out supine, his eye-ball dangled out from the ravine left in his forehead. His entire face became rich with blood, nealry black in the dark corridor. He gurgled something, twisted a little, and his hands curled up in praying mantis formation, like a beatific sculpture. Arda breathed out. It was a masterpiece.

Lin would be looking for her. He had told her to wait, but he never really had any control over her. What he really wanted was now gone anyway. It wasn’t important to Arda what he did with her. She had done what she had come to do, but had never understood. This place, whatever was really here, had been guiding her towards it. It drove her to murder. Goshen received the death he craved, but the glory was hers. Walking through the trees, she felt light and dizzy. She tried to make herself feel nauseous, on principle, but in truth she felt fine, relieved even. 

She may not even make it to The Moray. If the staff was really on high alert, she may even be intercepted before she go to the building. Maybe Everett had been watching this whole time through means inconceivable. Anything felt possible, and everything dangerous.



CHAPTER 14.

As Arda came down the last, muddy hill, she could feel the pain thumping back up her leg from her ankle. It was functioning, but still bruised. She focused on each step, careful not to place her foot down awkwardly and twist it anew. 

The Moray and its ensconcing village were coming into view through the island fog. It was another gray, muffled day. There were a few people on the roads, but they weren’t making many sounds or movements. They seemed frustrated, and there were only so many. It was a strange sight, and for the first time Arda was compelled to slow down and act natural, embarrassed of how she might be seen. Perhaps someone important had died. Maybe it was Everett, and she had gotten grimly lucky. She pulled her coat closed and made her way to The Moray’s entrance.

It was sleepy inside, as well. People weren’t as vibrant and jovial today; something was up. There seemed to be less staff as well, and the ones that were there were moving about distracted, with a distant and irritated look on their faces. Arda noticed the same look on the guests’ faces, and she noticed a sound coming from down the halls. Someone was yelling, either in pain or anger, but it only came through to the lobby softly. 

Arda walked coolly past the bellhop at the front desk. She found the right staircase and entry way leading to her room, hoping to find refuge from the mysterious yell. There were fewer people in the halls, but more cracked doors. A couple of smears of blood on a corner, but that was nothing to be afraid of now. At least not something unexpected. It could have even been left by her. Arda was unsure of what she would tell Lin. He would likely be very upset, and he may even rat her out to Everett. This may be the time for her to run, but she kept moving forward. One of the hall-dwellers was in a fetal position on his side, crying quietly. Arda slowed to take in the scene. Stopping, she could see that many, many things were actually not alright.

Falling into a laundry bag full of still-twitching limbs had put Arda’s whole experience into perspective, but she was still keen enough to notice the subtle flaws around her: there were scratch marks on a few of the doors, a couple of dirty sheets were strewn across the floor. The yell was only getting louder and more aggravated, and someone had taken an impressive-sized shit in the middle of the carpet. Something was up, and the surroundings were becoming more and more tormented the deeper she went down the halls. The yelling became howling-- possibly from a small chorus of people. Writing on the walls, in either blood or feces, didn’t seem to be in any formal language. The Moray had become an insane asylum in the hours since she had left-- or was this all part of the plan? Was it some bizarre and dangerous new festival where even Arda was not safe. It wasn’t clear if she should lay low or blend in, but she didn’t stop.

Theirs was one of the many doors hanging slightly ajar. Arda reached gently forward and opened it slowly.

“Lin?”

He was inside, muttering something softly, sitting hunched in a wicker chair against the sliding glass door. Arda approached, palms up, ready to apologize. Clearly he was affected by her disappearance, and he wasn't going to like what she had to tell him.

“It’s over Lin.”

He didn’t look up.

“I killed Goshen. He’s dead, and he told me nothing more.”

He was still, except for his soft words, and a gentle rocking.

“We’ve got no reason to be here… and you can’t have any of what you want without me. If you sell me out, to Everett or anyone else, you and Eroll will have nothing… do you understand?”

“I did it… I did it… I did it… I did it…” He was whispering this to himself, looking down at his shoes. Suddenly he noticed Arda, and looked up with his classic gaze of sincerity. Only his eyes were glassy, and his smile was somehow duller. He could feign nothing, his sincerity had been forced out of him by something. 

“Arda, dear?”

“Lin, are you--?” She resisted the natural urge to come to his aide. He looked very ill, and uneasy. Sweat was collecting on his forehead, and soaking his collar. Even if he were healthy, she was concerned with how he’d react to her news.

“It’s you, dear. You’re back?”

“Yes, didn’t you expect me?”

He laughed, then coughed, then laughed a bit more. “I did a very good thing.” He seemed genuinely proud.

“Did you do this? All of this chaos? What happened?”

“I don’t even know--” he sputtered and smacked his chest with his fist until he resumed composure. “--what you’re talking about. It’s hot out, isn’t it?”

Again the urge to step forward, to grab him by the shoulders and tell him to stay focused and keep talking, but there was drool coming out of his mouth and Arda wasn’t sure he could even feel it.

“I did a good thing. I made myself, and my family very proud today. I will be very famous, and everyone will see how good I am.” Lin shut his eyes and basked his face in the sun like a tired dog. He was his old smug self, only effortlessly, without any doubts or cares. Underneath the veneer was the same thing on the surface. “I will be famous.”

“Tell me what you did,” She said as she covered her mouth with a stray washcloth; Something had to be in the air, driving everyone mad, and Arda would need to get the two of them out immediately.

“I am a hero, Arda. This whole place, this disgusting pit and all these worthless animals, ripping each other apart and eating guts-- they’re the villains. That’s obvious. Carl Everett, he’s a villain. Just as bad as Goshen,” he smiled lazily.

“I’m with you, buddy. But what did you do?” His face lowered and she started to move towards him, carefully. “Please, Lin. Tell me.”

He looked around, moving his eyes side to side mischievously before saying, “I’m spilling the beans on everything. Blowing the top off and letting the world know what kind of sick place this is, and who is involved-- this actually goes way far up, you’d never believe…”

“Is that what Errol’s plan is?”

“To hell with Errol. He’s as bad as Everett-- and as bad as Goshen. They’re all the same. I’ll blow his top off too, people should know about him, it goes all the way up…” He faded out. Arda crouched down to look up into his dimming eyes.

“How did you do this, Lin?”

“Why… I wrote an article.”

“You… what?”

“I wrote a lovely little piece. An interview with a murderous madman being harbored on a secret island. No one thought I could do it, but I did. And once I was done, I slayed the beast, Killed him, and left. Now, all I have to do--” he swung a heavy clay lamp from a nearby bed stand into Arda’s skull. She hit the floor and thick shards of ceramic tumbled over her.

Lin stood up and began stomping on Arda with his boots, yelling “where is it-- where’s that notebook--” and thrashing his arms. She managed to get up and heaved the phone at him, a pillow, a stray shoe, anything she could find. He lurched taller than he normally seemed, imbued with someone delusional strength, and knocked each object away. His eyes were red.

“You’ll give me your notes-- all of your work-- it’s mine!” He lunged at her and caught her leg. Suddenly they were both on the floor. She clawed her way out, but he was on top of her now. He flipped her over and screamed at her: “You’re mine you worthless bitch! You’re mine!” 

His grip around her neck was not nearly as strong as Goshen’s but he slammed her head back into the floor, again and again. “Give-- it-- to-- me--” He screamed, high-pitched like a woman, as Arda started to lose consciousness. She tried to grab a knife that wasn’t there, left back at The King Crab, and her skin began to turn blue.

The formless spirit-- the ghost of Mrs. Everett, or perhaps that of Arda just an hour before, wandering half-naked through the jungle, detached from time and caught in a loop of space-- came back to her. It tried to rise up through her body, and save her, but she was already too weak. She accepted dying, felt the ground start to swallow her up where she’d finally have some rest.

Through her blurred vision, Arda saw the foot fly true, right into Lin’s nose, sending his head back jaggedly against a dresser. She filled her lungs in a single, desperate breath and sat up to see her old friend writhe on the floor, clutching his bloodied face. Stepping over her and towards Lin was Sam, limping, sporting a soiled bandage over his head. He raised his foot again over Lin’s screeching head.

“Leave him!”

Sam stopped. He helped Arda to her feet, and Lin shouted more curses through his broken nose as they left. Sam explained what he knew: something was infecting people. It was in the air, and possibly the water. He fessed up, and said it was all his fault. He was crying as he pulled her by the hand, out throught the ravaged halls, deflecting any oncoming guests with dead, hungry eyes. They had to leave now. To the other side of the island, and then to somewhere else. 

She was pulled down the halls, out of the entryway, and into the brilliant gray of the day. Somehow she had defeated the ring-- she’d run along the island in one direction and end up somewhere completely unforeseen.

CHAPTER 15.

Wind was coming from the Northeast, blowing downward and swirling around the atoll. Lithe tendrils of gray were caught up and pulled along, stretching outward from the wall of clouds that filled the sky in Arda’s view. It caused her to feel completely unsmall-- her minute existence on the planet was frighteningly noticeable to these large and distant forces, and they were charging toward her at top speed. She watched the tendrils curve, and the mists swarm forward: they washed toward her over the landscape, first only a sound, then a blanket of wetness hanging in the air. Sam was driving a golf-cart they’d found, and Arda sat on the passenger side, letting her legs dangle. She had lost her boots at some point in the scuffle, and never thought to grab something else. Mud and rainwater sprayed against her bare feet, suspended just inches over the speeding pavement.

Somewhere behind the wall of clouds was home, but she didn’t know which direction it would be in. She picked a spot and tried to visualize it in the haze: her apartment, her friends. Mari looking bored, smoking a cigarette. The homeless and the business-types, yin and yang. The palms were all leaning in synchrony now, pressed by the building wind. She imagined Goshen’s lifeless body, crumpled and forgotten. His only chance at being truly remembered sat snugly in Arda’s coat pocket, and she didn’t know yet what to do with this token. Maybe stick with the plan and see what Erroll would give her, despite botching the entire job. Maybe it belonged on the beach, waiting for the tide to rise. 

Helicopter blades were beating somehwere in the fog. Arda looked up, but she could only see a handful of murky blobs. Sam was explaining that this must be Everett’s affiliates, coming to his aid. Surely they were coming to help all the residents of The Moray, but he didn’t sound confident. They could just as easily be there to burn it all down-- it wasn’t clear. These forces that lurked on the outskirts were on their way to the center, still elusive, their motives a mystery.

Toby was standing on the corner, flagging them down and directing them to a dirt path. They picked him up.

“About to be a big monsoon-- did you find my dad?”

“He’s okay,” Sam said, pointing backwards with his thumb, “his people have him.”

“Oh…” Toby looked off, trying to see the choppers, pressing a bucket hat close to his head so it wouldn’t get blown off. “I guess that’s for the best…”

The dirt path disintegrated onto the sand. Sam veered left, and Eleanor was waiting by a beached longboat. Her hair was braided, but the free strands by her hairline and ears were whipping around her face. About a dozen Micronesian hotel staff were sitting on the boat, waiting patiently in disposable, waterproof ponchos. Sam parked the cart and pulled the spare gas tank off the back.

“Where are we going?” Arda asked.

Sam pointed straight out from the beach, into nowhere. “There.”

“There should be an island nearby with a small village,” Eleanor informed her. “We’ll stay there, get supplies and island hop out further, hopefully to the Phillipines or Indonesia--”

“And then?”

“Let’s get there first,” Sam ended the discussion.

“Did you hear that?” Toby asked, still staring out in the direction of The Moray. “It sounds like gunshots.”

Some rapid crackling sounds, not unlike muffled gunfire, were out there. But the group couldn’t make it out clearly. No one felt comfortable acknowledging them as shots-- either out of doubt or fear.

“Dad’ll be okay,” Eleanor called over to him. “He’s in control here. Always is.”

Toby turned around and helped Sam push the boat backwards into the water.

“Where’s Booker?” Arda asked.

“Wouldn’t come.” Sam pointed off to a tiny, bamboo hut. The doors and windows were open, and Arda could see a figure standing behind the flowing curtains. She told them to wait, just two minutes, and she hopped off.

He was pacing the room, walking in a lazy circle. He held a stout glass with whiskey and ice, jingling it nervously. Arda stepped inside and he nodded, then returned his focus to walking. Sweat dripped off his forehead into his drink and onto the floor.

“What are you doing here,” he was talking at the ground, “you need to get on that boat.”

“Why aren’t you coming?”

“Don’t be so glum. It’s not the end of the world. It’s the end of… my captivity, maybe? Who knows? Who knows…” He stopped walking, thought on something, and then resumed.

“Come, please.” Arda could see the rest staring impatiently outside. “I don’t want to leave you without… without your mind? Does that make sense?”

Booker chuckled softly, “it does. My mind is… either gone, or going… but, it makes sense.” He stopped finally and looked at her. He was clearly very tired. “I understand, but I just can’t. I’m… I’m not well. Sam will tell you, I’ve been used… something of a test subject. If my mind is gone, I’m not finding it out there.”

“Did you find her? In your memories? The woman you saw-- because she isn’t gone, Booker. She’s still with you,” Arda shook her head. She wanted to laugh, letting something so corny leave her lips, but it made her cry.

“She is, Arda. Even when she isn’t in my memories, she’s here. She is who I am… if that makes any sense.”

She laughed, and she cried a little more. She gave him a hug and left him to his steady, circular pacing. She tried not to think about him any more, and to leave him alone.

A few more cracks-- distinct this time-- could be heard from The Moray’s side of the island. Toby sat on the bow and watched black smoke rise slowly and dissolve in the wet clouds. Eleanor had a hand on his shoulder and whispered reassuringly as the boat rocked back and forth, drifting off from its spot in the sand. Someone started the motor, and they were off, pumping up and down as the hull slapped the waves.

The island was soon a blip on the horizon, which surrounded them on all sides, undisturbed by land. The infinite straight line reminded Arda of the old woman in the basement, and her search for anomalies. She thought of the fate of the hotel’s guests, and Lin, left writhing and insane on the floor. Would she ever see him again, back in the real world? Where was Gabi this very second? Where was she? It struck her that she never did reclaim her wallet, or her phone. She was a ghost. Like the Everett children, like Sam, probably even a few of the staffers, she was nothing to the world, barrelling headfirst into actualization on a foreign shore. Who would she be? Would she be liked? Would anyone care?

The sky was gray, and the water almost black. Beneath and above were empty expanses of opposite kinds, and Arda was there floating right between. Nothing, and no one, with everything waiting to be discovered. She pulled the notepad out and skimmed her notes; this story could be anything she wanted.

The End.