another time another place - negative one

Eyes open, facing forward, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.
It was early. Four in the morning by his guess; the digital clock by his bedside told him it was 3:58. He turned to the anonymous form next to him, asleep, breathing regularly: in, hold, out, in, hold, out. He sat up; she didn't stir. He swung his feet out and felt them touch the carpet. He turned back to her one last time, getting a good look of the back of her head and her long brown hair. He didn't remember a name.
He didn't really care to.
He checked his watch. 4:02. He found his pants, his shirt. He slipped out the door and shut it quietly with a click.
She rolled over and pulled the covers closer.

It was a cold September morning. He sat in his car and watched the breath hover in his face. The windows were covered with frost. He started the engine and turned on the defrosters, clearing his vision. It was still dark; the sun had not risen. He pulled the beanie tighter over his head, and he shivvered. 4:15. He turned on the heater, and hot air blew in his face. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling it drown the car, and then put the car into reverse and backed out of the driveway and drove down the street, away from the rising sun.

He drove up to Skyline Drive and parked on the little turnout. He sat on the cold hood, huddling up inside his jacket, hiding inside his beanie. The sun rose and he watched; he hadn't seen it in a very long time, and he had a gut feeling it would be eternity before he saw it again. He took a long deep breath and exhaled into the cold morning air, the vapor from his lip hovering for a moment in space before dissapearing. He sniffed and wiped at his nose with his sleeve, never looking away from the rising sun. His watch beeped. 6:00. It finally broke free of the horizon, and he climbed back into his car and drove on.

monday - six

They sat in the bed of the pickup as the sun set quietly behind them, painting the sky hues of purple and gold and fiery orange and red. She fidgeted, holding on to the camera in her lap, trying not to look at the old man. He studied the clouds as the old man had done, trying to draw memories and smells and sounds and life from the inanimate blobs two thousand miles above his head, but failed miserably.
"What do you think his name was?"
Rhys shrugged. "Does it matter?"
"Of course it does. Someone has to remember him."
"So we'll remember him as the crazy old guy who drove fast and fell in love with the pine trees." He looked at her. "Names are just words for someone that's so much more complicated and real than words could ever convey."
"But what about his family?"
"They know him as 'daddy' or 'grampa' or as a set of images and smells and memories, or something. Names don't mean anything to anyone except for people who want to classify everything."
They sat quietly for awhile. Rhys turned back to the ever darkening sky. Maura climbed out of the bed and jumped into the dust and walked over to where the old man still lay and looked down at him, her camera hanging down from her neck, craning for a closer look. For a man that had driven at breakneck speeds and ranted quietly about a life that was beyond them, he looked incredibly fragile lying in the desert sand. In his cold frail hand he still clutched to the scented palm tree, the only connection with his past he'd ever have again. He had a content smile on his face, as if something warm and wonderful had just happened, and a similar aura hung around him; Maura could feel it the moment she gazed into his tired weary face.
She pulled the camera up and set her eye against the viewfinder. The lens focused and adjusted, and the shutter slipped closed, sealing the vessel of his soul forever and ever amen. The film advanced and the camera fell back to her chest.
She stood up and looked over at Rhys. "Are we sleeping here tonight?"
"Yeah, if you want."
"What do we do about him?"
She looked down at the old man. "I don't know. We could bury him, or maybe take him with us."
"To where?"
"Whatever's down there." She motioned down away from the way they came.
“We can’t leave him here?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Okay. Then we’ll take him in the morning.” His stomach growled; it echoed dully in the desert landscape around them.
Darkness fell. Crickets a million miles away chirped, and that was all the noise there was.

monday - five

12:36 AM.
The moon had dissolved into the velvet night sky; the sun hovered just below the horizon. They sat in the nonexistent shadow of the giant sign, looking up at it, looming above them, quiet, resting in the cool night air with them. Welcome to the City, it proclaimed, Population 3,589,692. Their breaths hung on the air, white dragons of mist in the night. They were laying against the small bluff underneath the sign, tired from the long walk that had been from the city interior to the edge. A sign of their eaten dinner – a few sandwich wrappers and a couple of empty soda cans – rested, buried in the dust, behind them. They drifted in and out of sleep, often waking to the sight of an infinite sky above them, their only pillow their hands and Maura’s bag, their only source of warmth from the cold desert landscape was the blanket that Maura had brought; they shared it between the two of them. The air was cool, but crisp and clean, and easy for them to breathe.

5:47 AM.
As the sun rose above the edge of the world, the sign was illuminated in no blinding glory, faded and grey against the vast desert landscape. Houses twinkled beyond, the suburban city limits.She reached into her handbag and pulled out a can of spray paint, popping the cap off. Rhys stirred and sat up sleepily, rubbing at his eyes. She grinned and handed the can to him. He looked confused. She dropped it in his hands, and he shook it instinctively, listening to the ball rattle around. He shook it for awhile, and then stopped."Now what?"She pointed at the population."It’s says 3,589,692. We’re the two. And we’re not there anymore."He stood up and fixed it, crossing out the two, a sloppily placed 0 hung over it. "3,589,690," he said to himself. He stepped back and examined his handy work."It’s the crappiest piece of work I’ve ever seen."He laughed and agreed. He dropped the can into the dust along with the cap. She folded up the blanket and put it into her handbag, and they stepped onto the main road.The sun cleared the horizon, and morning light flooded the eternal sky.

9:32 AM.
He was walking backwards, his thumb out in space, she walking face front and looking towards the nowhere they were headed.
"Are you sure this works?"
She nodded. "They always did it on TV."
"But this isn’t TV. Look!"
She turned.
A pick-up truck was approaching fast, light glinting off the windshield. It bounced on the road and emitted a sick grinding sound. It passed them quickly, the air nearly pushing them over, but it somehow stopped a few feet ahead of them.
Rhys jumped into the bed. Maura climbed into the passenger seat and waved happily at their driver, an old man of about 70 years of age. His furrowed brow was wrinkled, and he had a tired weary face, but he still smiled happily. He looked like a mole, or a small cute gleeful rodent.
"Wher ya goan?"
She shrugged. "Where ya wanna go, old timer?"
He laughed and turned around to make sure Rhys was securely sprawled out in back, and Maura turned too. Seeing him flounder, the old man slammed on the gas pedal and the truck bolted back into the road. Rhys, trying to maintain a butt-ing, or at the least a firm grasp onto something securely fastened, slid back into the tailgate and stuck there, dazed. Maura laughed and turned back to the crazy old man. They barreled towards the horizon, riding a bullet to vanishing point, and Rhys held on for dear life to the sides while Maura and the crazy coot were safe inside the cabin.
"So wher ya two from, if ya’in’t goana tell me wher ya goan?"
"We’re from the city. And we’re going to wherever you’ll take us, or at least as far as you’ll take us. We don’t want to be an intrusion or anything. "
"Nah pra’lum."
"Why are you driving so fast?"
"I gah’ places tah go, an’ not enough time."
"Of course you have enough time.""Nah I, li’l missy. My time’ near, an’ I gotsta make it to the ol’ gas station a’fore it’ all over."
"Before what’s all over?"
"My time, li’l missy."
"Aha." She turned and rummaged in her handbag and pulled out a air freshener – a random trinket she had in her handbag, one of many. She handed it to him.
He turned and took the air freshener, wondrous, overjoyed to the brink of tears. He grabbed her hands and thanked her profusely, and she tried to grab onto the steering wheel so they wouldn’t veer off the road, but the alignment stayed true, and they continued on their straight and narrow path.
"Oh, I don’ know what tah say..." he examined the tree through his thick glasses and laughed happily and looked back up at her and said in a clear, strong voice: "Thank you very much." He took the foot off the gas and they began slowing down. Maura held his hands and saw as his eyes wandered from her face to the sky behind her. His eyes filled with a warmth that was only hinted there before, and she knew that it was coming.
The truck rolled to a stop in front of an abandoned gas station.
Rhys jumped out. Maura had opened the passenger door and had laid the old man in her lap. He stared up at the little air freshener and held it above his head and spoke quietly, clearly, not in his wily-old-coot voice he had before. "I was born by Yosemite in California. Merced. It’s nice there, but it’s in the middle of nowhere. In winter it would always smell like pine trees. I don’t know why I left home. I..." He drifted off, and Maura stroked his hair, shushing him and calming him down, and he looked up at her and Rhys standing over her shoulder, looking at an old quiet dying man. "I haven’t seen my home in a decade. I don’t have any family. My wife’s been gone for years. I don’t have anything now but this gas station. It’s as old as me. And I just..." He drifted off again and shuddered. "It’s funny how places become you, and how hard we try to break away from them, but in the end we always come running back. I was afraid...I was afraid I wouldn’t make it here." He tried to sit up, and Maura helped him up and out of the old truck and into the empty gas station, in the middle of Nowhere with the great expanse of Sky capping the dustbowl that was their world. He looked up and tried to lean on Maura, but was too weak and ended up falling down to his knees. Maura supported him as he lay in the dust and looked up at the clouds passing overhead. "I used to lay in my front yard and watch the clouds and smell the pine trees and wonder what it’d be like to live and die and just be. And I think I know now." He glanced at his wrist, but realizing he had no watch, he asked Maura for the time.
She glanced at her watch. "10:30". Somehow an hour had passed.
He shook his head vigorously, the only remaining sign of life besides that in his eyes. "Life never happens at 15's, 10's, and 30's. I’ll wait a few more minutes." He turned to Maura. "Thank you very much for the present. It’s the best thing I’ve ever gotten." He grasped her hand weakly and smiled, and looked back up at the clouds passing overhead. "..."
"..."
"..."
"What time is it now?"
"10:31."
He smiled and closed his eyes. She saw a glint of hope in them before the eyelids slid shut, securing them forever and ever. "Good."
They waited in silence, a tired old man and a girl and a boy in the middle of nowhere.
"What’s your name?" She whispered.
He didn’t respond, and held tightly onto the small pine tree in his weary lifeful hand.

four

She leaned against the doorway, watching him through the small eyepiece, the lens slowly adjusting, focusing. Everything looked different through a lens. It’s all about perspective, she thought. Perspective and perception and what kind of glass you were staring through.
He was leaning against the window, looking out towards the sky. The sun was bright and orange this morning; it shone hard through the bars and cast his shadow on the wall behind him. He was bathed in the orange tinge, his grey pajama-like clothing (she thought) contrasting softly against the pale white shadowed wall.
The shutter slipped closed with a snap, and back open again.
He turned. "What was that?"
"Camera." She hefted it up, displaying it.
"What’d you do?"
"Take a picture."
The film advanced. He turned back to the sky. Rhys looked tired; sleep eventually had come, but had been rudely broken by the rising day. Maura looked tired too, but she always had difficulty sleeping. She had things on her mind.
"What are you doing here?"
"I don’t know. I don’t have anywhere else to be."
"You did earlier."
"I don’t have work on weekends."
"What day is it?"
"Sunday."
Moments passed. Maura tried to think of meaningful words, and then empty words, to fill the space, but nothing came through. She stepped into the room and leaned against the corner, staring at her feet. She wiggled her toes in her shoes.
"You look tired."
She looked up. "Yeah. I didn’t sleep so great."
"Why not?"
"I had stuff on my mind. What about you? You look tired yourself." The greatest way to continue a conversation, she mused, was to reciprocate equally, if not moreso, meaningless banter at the expense of sounding like a parrot.
"I couldn’t sleep. Things happened outside."
"What kind of things?"
"Things. There were noises. Someone’s gone."
"That’s too bad."
"Yeah."
Infinite pauses.
"That’s too bad."
"There’s nothing here for you. Why don’t you go?"
"Go where?"
"Anywhere."
"Why don’t you go?" Repeating the questions was easy; no thought processes required. Just mirroring the conversation, like talking to a wall that echoes things.
"I have nowhere to go."
A bright idea struck her mind, bricks flying through windows in a handbag.
"Let’s run away."
"Why?" Confusion.
"You know how when you’re a little kid, you always want to run away because someone does this or someone won’t let you do that?"
"No."
"Well that’s what people usually go through when they’re kids. Let’s do that now."
"But we have nothing to run away from."
"We have this." She pointed to the room. "You have this. I have my own."
"But where are we going?"
She shrugged. "Anywhere but here."
Moments of pausing.
"Where are we running away from?"
"Here. The world. Where we’re stuck all the time."
He touched the bars of the window. A cloud passed overhead, blocking out the sun.
"How will we make it?"
"We’ll find ways." She tugged at his arm. "Come on, let’s go."
He followed her out the door and down the steps, away from the abandoned condemned building.
The clouds grew ominous and dark, rain on the horizon. She looked up at the sky and wondered if it would rain; he didn't really care. They stood there for some time, looking up and down the alley, trying to figure out what the next step was. She pulled a coin out of her pocket and poised to flip it.
"A coin?"
She grinned. "You don't know how many life-altering decisions I've made with the flip of a coin."
"Do they always work?"
She shrugged. "Does it matter? Heads we go..."
"...left."
"Left." She flipped the coin into the air and let it drop into the dust. They both leaned over it.
"Tails."
"Right it is." She picked up the coin and brushed it off, dropping it into her pocket.
They turned right and stepped out of the alley into the street. Lunch hour traffic flowed by at a steady pace, and hordes of people mimed the cars in the road. People stared at the strange figure in the grey pajamas, strolling down the street with an out-of-place teenager, and Maura noticed the stares. Rhys paid no attention, instead looking around at the giant urban jungle growing around him.
"You need clothes."
"I'm wearing clothes."
"I mean people clothes."
"Oh."
"Follow me. You can wear some of my brother's old clothes."
She whirled around and led him back towards her apartment.
"What's wrong with my clothes again?"
"They're out of place. No one walks around in pajamas."
"But they're comfortable."
"Between being comfortable and blending in, I think blending is the better choice."
She led him up the stairs and into her apartment. She pointed at the couch.
"Sit."
He sat. She smacked the digital clock, knocking it back and down behind the TV. She walked into the closet and began rummaging around through the boxes and cartons.
"You live here?" He looked aroud at the nice room and the small kitchen beyond the doorway.
"Yeah." She called out from behind the closet door, still digging. "It's actually my brother's place, but he's gone missing. They're drawing money from an inexistant bank account right now. Once they find out, they'll probably take this place back real quick." She emerged with some shirts and jeans, thrusting them towards Rhys. "Bathroom. That way." She pointed, and he went in, closing the door.
While he changed, she went into her room and began collecting her pictures and various clothing, throwing them into her handbag. They had to travel light; she left everything that wasn't significant to her in any way at all, the exception being the shoebox: she tied it with rubber band and stuffed the whole thing into her bag. If they needed money, she could always try to sell photographs to people.
He emerged from the bathroom victorious, dressed. His hair was combed and his face was washed; he looked decent and could easily pass as an unsuspecting drooling member of society. She came out of her room at about the same time and examined him, nodding.
"You look good."
"Thanks."
"Ready to go?"
"Yeah."
She craned her neck and glanced towards the kitchen. "Want something to eat or drink before we go?"
He yawned and stretched. "I'm good."
"Okay. Let's go."

three

It was a cold and long night.
He spent a majority of the night sitting in the middle of the room, knees to his chest, waiting, wide eyed, staring at the window. He was wide awake, and sleep was the last thing on his mind.
Maura had left earlier in the evening after telling him his name. After that one sentence, everything had changed. He had forgotten about the world, and for a moment his universe had boiled down to that room, that girl, and that word with so much meaning attached to it. That name.
They had laughed and smiled and reveled in the glory of the completion of his birth. They drank more, and she had left for the night, and he had laid on the floor with the fan swirling above his head, dust raining down on him in little slithers like snakes of dirty rain sliding down the sky, and the urban neon glow lighting his walls.
And then there was a noise: a loud noise, with the sins and anger and hatred and pain of the world attached to it. The silence that followed was agonizing. There was a groan. A whimper. Loud whining noises wailed in the night, echoing in the canyon walls. The neon lights faded, washed away by flashing red and blue lights. Yelling. Another noise, like the first. And then quiet.
The noise echoed in his head, screaming, drowning out the excitement he had felt only moments earlier. He felt like saying something to comfort the silence, but he was too scared, too stunned; something more powerful than the silence had gripped him, and he stared in bewilderment at the window, where, as far as he knew, the sound had come from.
The moon passed overhead. The red and blue lights were replaced by the comforting neon glow he had remembered from earlier. A car passed. Then two. Many of them stopped. The noise still remained there, piercing the silence. He tried to utter something into it, but nothing came, and nothing went. Silence came in from the windows, from the door, seeping in from the cracks in the walls, but it failed to drown out the echoing in his head. It was driving him slowly mad, and he wanted to know what had happened.
Eventually, he got the courage to stand, stumbling a little. He finally pulled himself up and tripped over to the window, grabbing onto the bars, and looked out. Red and blue had replaced the neon again, and soon he found out why: cars had pulled up, white cars with black stripes, white cars with red stripes and crosses. People were everywhere, strange men in black and stranger men in white, hovering those lying on the ground. A man in green was mopping the asphalt, a cigarette in his mouth, the pale white smoke slithering up into the night air, like the snakes that had rained down on his head earlier.
A man was lying in the asphalt, outlined in white, covered in a thin and blue sheet that was much too small. Red pooled under his head, a gaping hole where his nose once was. His mouth hung open in terror, his eyes wide and halfway rolled up into his head. A hand was reached out towards the window, as if beckoning, asking for forgiveness, or a sin, or a copper penny. Anything to save his gaping nose and slack jaw and thin paltry blue sheet.
The man wasn’t moving. His lacked a certain glow that other people had, and in a way, he didn’t think the man would ever get it back.
He stepped away from the window and leaned against the wall; the gaze of the man’s half eyes had burned into his skull, the noise echoing in his head. He slumped, sinking down the wall and into the floor, hiding in his arms and legs. He focused intently on the word that had now become important to him, to the phrase that Maura had uttered to him. He focused on the word that had defined him more than his actions could at that particular moment in time. He focused on anything to block out the sound and the image and he focused on everything.
Slowly, eventually, with time, it became muted in his mind. The lights had gone and the neon had returned; the street was quiet and once again empty. The only evidence that remained was that in his head, and he tried intensely to remove any last reference. He focused on the fan that spun round and round without a purpose or a reason. He focused on Maura’s face and eyes and smile and laugh and hair and the way she brushed it from her face. He focused on her handbag and the color of her eyes and her inability to throw popcorn into the air and catch it in her mouth. She permeated the corners of his mind, pushing out the image of the grounded and the angry violent sound accompanying it, replacing it with much more soothing images.
His eyes were closed, and he brought his head back against the cool concrete wall, feeling warm inside the cold room. The fan had begun twirling faster, and its thwap thwap thwapping filled the room. He slipped down the wall and lay again on the floor, sprawling out. He opened his mouth and felt the cool air slip down his throat and into his lungs, enjoying the crisp clear recirculated air. He held his hand out towards it, eyes still closed, feeling the air gently push against his hand, playfully, lightly, casually. He let it fall against his chest and exhaled, hearing the hiss of the air into the space in front of him.
Everything seemed much more surreal, at this moment in time. His mind was clear except for the echoing in his mind, but it lacked the nagging and panic and franticness it had earlier; now it was calm and soothing and endearing. He smiled, and he heard her say it a million times over, and replayed the precise moment a billion times more.
She had said, “I think your name should be Rhys.”

two

He slipped in and out of waking, lying on the floor, watching the lazy fan in the ceiling, constantly moving, but going nowhere at all. There was no sense of time in the small, dark room; only the lights of the city and the waning darkness of the sky. He was sprawled out on the floor, hands grasping at nothing, mouth hanging open as if to capture some minute amount of stardust or dew, whichever came first. It was cold; the window was shut. Aside from the hands and minor twitching, he did not move for hours. His mind was clear, and he thought of nothing in its infinite nothingness.
The moon rose and sank. Clouds passed by. Stars yielded and succumbed, their energy slipping into the vast expanses of space and through his nostrils. He inhaled deep; the air was dry and thin. Time yielded nothing, and nothing yielded the time.
The night passed slowly. And then the sun exploded into the sky, shattering the midnight skies.
He sat up, shivering in the morning cold. He was hungry. He huddled into a corner, waiting for something to happen. An eerie stillness hung on the air; the sounds of the city had temporarily ceased for the time being. He looked around and whispered to himself, failing to form coherency, but filling the silence with emptiness. He looked at his toes and wiggled them. He stretched his legs and looked up at the ceiling fan; it had wound to a stop. He wiped his face with his hands, trying to pull off some unseen masking, but failing.
He could feel the walls closing in, and the voices were asking him his name, his identity. He was a nothing, and someone wanted him to be a something, even if that something were a faceless name. He couldn’t decide on an identity, though. He had no idea who he was, or what he wanted from anything. He didn’t know anything.
He felt the need to escape. He crawled to the singular panel against the wall and turned a knob. The door slipped open, and the light of the rising sun engulfed his face full force.

Maura sat at her box, wading through the thousands of negatives that sat inside. Her mind wandered, and she merely looked through them to busy her idle hands. There was no work today; the photo lab didn’t need her. She was in her pajamas, and the streaming light played patterns through the splotched dirty window against the fading yellow photographs. She closed the shoebox and set it back underneath the makeshift end table. She was alone now in the room, with only her thoughts and the heat echoing around her. She looked out the window towards the rising sun, and closed her eyes as the warmth pervaded her body. It felt good, better than the cold of the night before.
She sat there for hours, meditating on the warmth, and feeling oddly refreshed. It was mid-morning before she finally stood up and strode from her room to shower.

He flew into the dark cool corridor, breaking from his room and slamming into the smooth concrete wall. Light spilled from the room and into the hallway and he shut the door quickly. The heat following him quickly dissipated off; he wiped the sweat from under his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. He looked up and down the corridor; nothing moved. The smell of stale and immobility invaded his nose, hinting at the inactivity that had cursed the building for years. He looked down at his bare feet. The dust that covered the floor was thick, broken only by a few footprints from long or recently ago. He rolled up his long sleeves and stood where he was, at a loss of what to do next. He turned and began to walk one way and decided against it, turning instead and taking a few steps down the other way. He trailed his hand along the wall, leaving behind him a trail in the dust. Doorways passed, maybe scores, maybe hundreds. The numbers and any form of identification on them were all but faded, and as he walked farther and farther away from the hole he called home, the floor grew colder and colder. Eventually he reached a lonely door in the wall, with a barred window. The sunlight was prevented by a series of boards that had been tacked up from the outside. He turned the knob and pushed, but the door didn’t budge; he was stuck. The glass was cracked and the blood on the shards were dry, as if someone had tried to smash through and push the boards, but there was no sign of victim or life aside from a few spatters and shards on the floor.
He turned around and began to make his way back, trailing his other hand against his inbound tracks, bloody footsteps in his wake. Forgetting which door was his, and satisfying an innate curiosity, he turned all of the knobs, trying to find the one that was his, or one that held at the least some interest.

The water had rained on her for half an hour, and she had not moved; only closed her eyes and felt the cool irregular beat of a million drops on her back and neck. Everything was okay in the shower. The universe stopped for a moment and let her recover, clearing away the sins and worries and comforts and fortunes of the day, and everything was new again when she stepped out. She wiped the fog from the windows with her hand, and sat against the wall, tired but rejuvenated. She tilted her head back against the wall and opened her mouth, feeling the swirling flurry of mist slip in and out of her throat and nose. Her eyes slipped closed and she lost herself in the lack of a moment, feeling nothing at all. For a few seconds, she didn’t exist in the universe; nothing had happened, nothing was going to happen, and nothing was happening. She wasn’t, and for those few seconds, it was okay.
And then her eyes opened, and she was back in reality.

He turned the knob, and the door opened. He stepped back into his room and stood beneath the fan, waiting for something to happen. The fan had begun to twirl endlessly again and he looked up and followed it with his eyes, progressing eternally towards a point in space without lines. He reached out to touch it, and for a moment, it lingered just within grasp, but slipped out from his touch. He stood staring at it for a moment longer, and then sat on the floor. His eyes closed and he let himself fall against the warm linoleum. He saw no need to get up, and he found no desire to either.

She stepped onto the bottom step, breathing in the warm dirty city air. A man passed by, and then two. A crowd of chattering school girls. A waiter, late for work. She strolled down the street towards the park, but she had no direction or goal. She just walked, and soon passed the park, and veered away. She walked and looked up at the dirty blue sky, and the urban grey that framed it. She tripped onto a curb; a passing taxi honked, and a man shouted obscenities at her. A man in a green jacket passed, dragged along by a shopping cart full of tin cans. He tipped an imaginary dirty hat to her, and she instinctively curtsied.
She found herself in a large quiet alley, a stripped car sitting on cinderblocks against the wall behind her. She was standing in front of a boarded up door, a faded eviction notice pinned to it, “CONDEMNED” sprayed slanderously across the rotting wooden boards.
Once upon a time, people had lived here, but now all that remained were ghosts.
She tried to pry the planks off, but despite their age, they would not budge or break. She took a rag from her handbag and wrapped it around her hand, punching through the minor square of glass that was visible. The glass shattered with a meager tinkle, and fragments flew inward. Shards still left in the pane tore through the fabric and cut her hand; crimson stained the glass and her hand. She cursed and dropped the cloth, wiping her cut hand against the wall, across the various fading flyers and advertisements pasted across the stenciled “POST NO BILLS”.
She couldn’t fit her hand through the pane, and even if she could, there was nothing she could’ve done. She saw no point in doing what she had just done, but something had compelled her to do so. She sucked on her wound and thought about what she had just done, and found no logical explanation for it. She stood for a moment, and then made her way around the building to the barred window she had visited the previous evening. She stood up on her toes and tapped the glass, but there was no response. She sat on the curb and watched the cars pass, waiting for him, waiting for the universe, waiting for everything to catch up.

He walked across the floor, ignoring the wincing pain in his feet. The blood had dried; his tracks remained engrained on the faded surface of the floor. He slipped the latch and opened the window, feeling the warm afternoon air float through the gap and into his face. He saw Maura sitting on the curbside, and waited for her to turn. She felt his eyes, and she stood up and walked to the window, pulling herself up by the sill.
“Hi.”
She smiled and brushed the hair from her face.
“Where were you?”
“I was walking around.”
“In your room?”
He shook his head. “I left my room. Up and down the halls; the door at the end is locked. So I came back.”
“Is it hot in there?”
He nodded. “Did you wait long?”
“Not long.”
“Why’d you come?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t have anything better to do. What are you doing in there still?”
“I don’t have anything to do.”
“Come outside. It’s a nice day.” She looked up at the dirty sky.
“I can’t. I think I’m trapped here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. The door’s stuck shut.”
Boards. Eviction notice. Condemned. Shattered glass. Blood. “Boarded?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll be back. Go wait by the door.”
She looked up and down the street, and ran towards a shop under construction. A man in a hardhat was sitting, eating a sandwich; lunch was in full swing. She asked for a crowbar in temporary exchange for her handbag, and ran to pry the boards off the door. After some time and effort, they came off with a dry thud, landing in the sand gravel with a cloud of dust. She swapped the crowbar for her handbag and stood at the door. She stood, waiting, the eviction notice staring her in the face with bold red letters. She called out through the hole, and waited. The knob rattled and he stepped through the entry way, standing in the shadow of the building on the doorstep in what seemed to her to be pajamas. He squinted against the post-midday sun.
“It’s bright.”
She nodded and beckoned for him to step out. He took a reluctant step, and another, and another until he was standing in the dirt a few feet from her. She stuck out her hand again.
“Hi again. I’m Maura, and this is the rest of me.”
He shook her hand. “Hi. I’m no one and this is the rest of me.”
She laughed. He tilted his head, confused. She shook her head and smiled, batting the hair from her eyes.
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
He looked down at his feet. The blood had begun to run again, and only now did she notice the footprints. She looked around him and into the hallway. Then she looked down at his feet too.
“Your feet. They’re bleeding.”
He nodded, and sat on the step, stretching his legs out. She winced and sat next to him.
“So I guess walking’s out of the question?”
He shrugged and examined his feet. She stood up and stepped quietly into the dusty hallway, leaving him to tend to his wounds. She followed his footprints into his room and stood inside, beneath the spinning fan, entranced by it. He stepped quietly behind her and she jumped, whirling around, ready to beat him with her handbag before realizing who it was.
“You scared me!”
“You’re in my room.”
She twirled around and examined the corners. “It’s so...empty...”
He nodded and followed her as she walked around.
“Where do you sleep?”
He pointed to the floor.
“I sleep on the floor too. It’s more comfortable. Do you have a mattress? Pillow?” She looked around. “Do you have any furniture at all?”
He shook his head. “This is where I was born.”
She stopped and turned.
“What do you mean?”
He began to speak, but she stopped him.
“Sit down first. It’s always easier when you sit down.”
He sat and began to speak:
“This is where I was born. I don’t know of anywhere else but here. I don’t have any memories beyond yesterday. I don’t have a name, I don’t have a friend, I don’t have parents, I don’t have anything. I’ve never left this room until today, and you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to. I don’t know anything about the world outside of this little room of mine. This is my womb, and I’m afraid to leave it. I’ve seen the people out there, and frankly, they scare me.”
“Do I scare you?”
He shook his head. “No.”
They sat quietly, examining each other, truly meeting each other for the first time. His stomach growled loudly, and she laughed. He looked surprised.
“Are you hungry?”
“I think so.”
She handed him another bag of popcorn, and he ate it quickly. She managed to grab a few kernels for herself and threw them in the air, catching it in her mouth. She missed a lot; he laughed and emulated her, succeeding more than she did. She pulled out two sodas, and they drank together, sitting in the lonely empty room with a fan above their heads. The sun sank and the light of day dimmed. She gathered the trash into her bag and they sat on opposite sides of the rooms, facing each other. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip and sighed heavily. The setting sun echoed in the room, and she glanced lazily at her watch as the fan spun round.
“You need a name.”
He nodded quietly and finished the soda. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. What would you like it to be?”
He shrugged. “Surprise me.”
She thought for awhile, and finished her soda, too.
“I think your name should be”

one

   It was a brisk November morning; the sun was grey, birds were silent, and somewhere in the city, someone was being born.

   That corner of the world held a particular anonymous apartment in the heart of the bustling metropolis, in a neighborhood that was slum to few and home to many. The room was white and fading; stains of age began to seep down the walls from the ceiling; the floor no longer a sparkling white linoleum but a dry beige, untouched by dirty feet. A single lamp hovered overhead, embedded into a twirling fan from days of noir. The singular window of the room was barred, a view of the street outside separated by a mere pane of fragile glass.
   At that particular point in time, consciousness had been bestowed upon him by forces unknown. His eyes saw, and stared into the progressing light of the rising sun, veiled by a low grey ceiling. In his mind, it was that point where memories begin, and where the universe begins to exist. There was no recollection of a time previous, of a name, of a number, only of a sudden existence perpetuated by nothing at all. Craving and wont invaded his mind, stealing away any sense of incomprehensibilities of the realities in which he had existed for such a time.
   He stood in the center of the room and felt the sunlight warm his body. He wiggled his toes on the cold floor, a positive sign of existence. He turned his head and stretched, as if awaking from a long sleep. He stumbled over to the window in front of him, putting his hands and face against the glass. Like a child looking into a toy store, he looked out at the new world before him, in its infinite brutality and vulgarity. People walked by without a glance, as he stared out at them with wondering eyes, exploring in his mind the infinite possibilities of their identities. The moment passed, and the onslaught waned until there were little left to walk the streets but vagrants and rats.
   His stomach angrily protested, and for the first time he felt the pangs of hunger. He walked around his room and sought to satisfy, but nothing existed there in his tiny void of space. He walked to the window and scrambled at the edges, trying to peel the layer of glass away. He found the latch and slid the window open; the meager mid-morning air blasted his face, catching him off guard. After staggering for a moment, he approached the windows and gripped at the bars again, looking out. As people walked by he opened his mouth and tried to speak, but hoarse gasps came out. Words existed in his mind, but not in his reality; his statements were confined to his internal.
   A homeless man in a green coat and brown vest passed, pushing a shopping cart of empty tin cans. His bearded face sneezed into the air, and he wiped at his nose with a dirty sleeve. A can fell out, and the homeless man paused to pick it up. He turned to the window and studied the figure staring out at him from behind the wrought iron with interest, and waved a single gloved hand. The figure from behind the bars and glass returned a sad, lonely wave, and the shopping cart full of in cans continued down the street towards the horizon, green-jacketed man in tow. He heard the homeless man sneeze again, and then he was gone from sight and mind.
   He stuck his arm through the bars into the air in front of him. He grabbed weakly at nothing, and then let his outstretched hand fall limp against the concrete wall. He leaned his head against the bars, the cold metal branding his forehead. His jaw involuntarily moved up and down, trying to force out a syllable, but nothing escaped.
   More anonymous figures passed, indifferent to the strange unspeaking man leaning out the window. No one stopped, no one cared. After awhile, he began to stare into space, failing to focus on anyone in particular. His hand remained dead against the concrete, his forehead against the bars; they had begun to make imprints in his forehead. Sweat dripped off his nose and his muscles grew sore from lacking movement.
   A young girl in a black jacket lined in pink walked by, and paused in front of his window. Her handbag was black, but light; empty, from an outsider’s perspective. She approached the window and wrapped her hands around the iron bars. She brushed the hair from out of her face, and peered up into his unblinking, unfocused eyes. She waited, and he stared into the distance.
   After a few minutes, she whispered something. He blinked and looked down at her, through the bars. She brushed the hair from her face again and smiled. Curious, he tried to speak again, but only hoarse whispers came out.
   “Are you thirsty?”
   He croaked. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a bottle of water, uncapping it and handing it to him. He took it gratefully and drank, drawing in the cool clear water into his dry throat. He gave the empty bottle back to her and she smiled again, slipping it into her handbag.
   “Hi.”
   “Hi.” The greeting came out dry and raspy, but quiet; as far as his consciousness was concerned, it was the first word he had ever spoken.
   “My name is Maura.” She stuck her hand through the bars, and he took it. She shook, and he followed suit.
   “I don’t know what my name is.”
   “Why not?”
   “I don’t know. I have no name.”
   “Of course you have a name. Everyone has a name.”
   “Except me.”
   “What did your parents call you?”
   “I don’t know my parents.”
   “Why not?”
   He struggled, but couldn’t find the words to explain. She waited patiently, and he gave up trying. He shrugged, and she nodded.
   “So what are you doing?”
   “Being.”
   “Being what?”
   He shook his head. That was it. “I’m hungry.”
   “Why don’t you eat?”
   “I have no food.”
   She reached into her handbag and pulled out a bag of popcorn. He took it gratefully and tore it open, scarfing them down.
   “When was the last time you ate?”
   “Never. I was born this morning.”
   She was confused.
   “Born this morning?”
   “Yeah.”
   She waited for an explanation, but again, he could offer none. He shrugged and finished the pretzels.
   “So where are you going?” He handed Maura the empty bag.
   “Away.”
   “Away to where?”
   “Wherever my legs take me.”
   They stood in silence; he clutched at the bars and looked down at her. She brushed the hair from her eyes again and looked around nervously. The lunch-time crowd had begun to flow into the streets.
   “I think I have to go.”
   “Why?”
   She stepped quickly away, and waved to him. He returned the wave and called out after her.
   “Are you going to come back?”
   The last thing he saw was her ponytail bobbing behind her as she hit the pavement running.

   He sat in his corner, the ceiling fan idly spinning. He looked around quietly, waiting for something to happen. The neon lights from the outside bathed the pale room in pastel greens, blues, and pinks. He rocked and buried his knees in his corner, working his jaw, as if about to say something to the infinite silence of his cell. A siren sounded from outside. The cool evening air had seeped into his dark room.
   A light tap at his window broke him out of his self-induced trance. He jerked up and quickly scrambled to his feet, tripping on his own feet running to the window. He hit the wall and glass full force and looked down into the darkness below.
   “Hi.” She looked up at him, bathed in the neon lights, brighter and more alive than anything inside of his room.
   “Hi. Where did you run to?”
   “The park.”
   “What was there?”
   “People.” She grabbed onto the bars and pulled herself up on her tiptoes, leaning as close against the bars as she could. She tried to look into his room, but it was dark and she saw little except for their shadows playing against the wall.
   “Do you ever leave your room?”
   He shook his head.
   “I want to see your room.”
   “Then come see it.”
   “Which one is it?”
   He shrugged.
   A bottle shattered across the street. She turned and panicked.
   “I have to go.”
   “Wait –”
   She ran and disappeared into the darkness.

   As quickly as it opened, the door slammed shut as Maura ran into her room and slammed into the couch. She lay there, staring at the black ceiling above, dropping her handbag to the floor. Her wide, frantic, panicked eyes scanned the cement slab hanging over her for a sign of clarity, but she found none. She curled up into a fetal position and stared at the red patterned fabric on her couch, listening to the quick beating of the blood in her ears, blanketed by the darkness. A cat screeched in the alley below; she twitched. She was tense.
   An indeterminable amount of time passed. Eventually she calmed, and shifted from a fetal position to general flailing about on the couch. She groped the coffee table next to her, grabbing a remote and pressing the power button. Faintly, a song echoed softly across the room, haunting the silence. She calmed, and her eyes grew more and more alive. She finally focused, and sat up quietly. She looked at the digital clock on top of the small TV; three faint digits stared back, challenging her. She turned on a light and dug through her handbag, pulling out various canned food items, water bottles, and her camera. She reached into her pocket and fished out three canisters, two of which contained rolls of film. She stacked the food and water onto the coffee table and slung the camera over her shoulder. She stacked the film canisters with a small pyramid on an end table nearby and walked into her room.
   Unlike her well worn living room and kitchen, Maura’s room was small and sparse. A mattress sat in the corner; the bed sheets were old, the springs were worn out, but it was comfortable and warm. Against the other corner sat a low table, sans legs, set atop stacks of books and cardboard toilet paper tubes. Her camera sat here, along with a shoebox with scores and scores of her negatives. Her wall was originally white, but the old paint was chipping away. Hundreds of photographs, some faded and yellowed with age, and others crisp and new, were taped onto the walls around her room, a makeshift ever evolving wallpaper to hide the old fragility of the building that was collapsing around her.
   She lit a candle and collapsed into her bed, hiding her face in the sheets. She had no pillow; she couldn’t sleep with one. She looked at the pictures on the wall that were readily visible to her, illuminated by the candlelight.
   It had been a long day, but she was not ready to sleep. Not now. Too much had happened, and at the same time, nothing had happened at all. For no reason other than variety, she had taken a different route to work, through an old neighborhood where her friends had been born and grew up in. Most of her friends had already moved on, in either senses or, in a few cases, in both senses. She was tired of walking the same route, and as a consequence, she had found someone that had intrigued her. He had no name, no identity; she knew once a friend who lived there, but the building had been abandoned for years. To find a stranger, much less one wearing what were essentially prison clothes, in an abandoned building hanging out of the window as her friend used to night after night had struck her as simply a coincidence beyond the control of the altogether powerful Universe. She found it unusual that he had no name or identity to speak of, and that he failed to explain his situation. She was either afraid or didn’t care enough to ask what he was doing there. She didn’t mean to go back, but her curiosity had willed her back to that iron window to talk to the stranger without a name or identity, like the other million inhabitants of the city. Unlike the million inhabitants of the city, though, there was something different about him: he lacked the resigned aura of the denizens of what she liked to think to herself as the Collective Underworld. His eyes were clear and blue, and they actually saw things; the people she had dealt with merely looked at things.
   She tossed and turned in the night. A breeze that had slipped through the window blew out the candle, saving her the effort. She mulled over her day, trying to ignore the stranger in the window at the abandoned apartment building, thinking instead of the hundreds of people that came in and out of the pharmacy photography counter. She encountered all sorts of people, with all sorts of pictures on her film. That was the one thing she loved about her job: the random assortment of images that came with each roll. Each roll had a particular personality, which often associated with the personality of the person taking the pictures. She enjoyed looking through the developed film, despite the strange and sometimes disturbing pictures some people took.
   Her job had introduced her to the world of photography, and she loved taking pictures. After the world had abandoned her, it was all she had left. She found the cataloguing of a vast immensity strangely satisfying. Between her job and her devotion to photography though, she felt something missing. She felt restrained, although nothing was holding her back. She was missing something, she could feel it, but she didn’t know what she was missing. Something big. Maybe it was purpose, maybe it was focus, maybe it was clarity. Maybe she was tired of the city in all of its great vast expansive glory, and craved for the middle of nowhere with nothing above her head but the desert sky in all of its great vast expansive glory. Maybe she craved the nothingness that the Collective Masses of the city lacked. Maybe she craved to breathe.
   Maybe Maura was, plainly and simply, sick and tired of her little corner of the universe.
   She was cold. She huddled under the sheets and blankets, staring at the dark ceiling above, the eternal faint hum of a nocturnal life echoing up from the alley through her window. It had been awhile since she felt it, but she felt it now. Her room grew more and more empty the more and more she stared at it. She tried to close her eyes and force herself to sleep, but the thoughts echoed in her head louder than ever before.

   She slipped off her jacket and balled it up under her head, burying her face in it. Tonight, more than anything in the world, she wanted a pillow.