

## DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS

## A NOVELLA

### Katya Mills Publications

www.katyamills.com

### Copyright © 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in an form by any means,

without the express written permission of the author.

Book Reviewers & Bloggers may quote passages.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious.

Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to my father,

without whose help it might

_still be in my head_ _._

## -HOME-

Oakland, California.Ten years on.The voices, no longer in my head. Asleep on the passenger side of somebody's van, I woke up to neon light showering down upon me at the corner of Grand and Lake Park Avenue. I knew then and there, I had arrived. The electric light they always talked about, day and night, incessant light! I looked up through the glass to a marquee raping the Republican Party in a Twitter-length one-liner rip. Something about voting fraud and the theft of the American presidential election. I squinted in the light and turned my head to catch the blood red neon lettering in its entirety.

I really would have laughed, I would have. Problem was, I had not a clue where I was. No clue whose dirty-ass van I was sitting in. Not a clue why my head hurt, nor how I got here under the neon light pissing down, the smell of tobacco and leather in the air. No damn clue about anything, except that my life was clearly derailed and a strange new movement, perhaps a nocturne, was rooted in the base of my spine and branching out like a tree in fast forward flash photosynthesized heroics. I began to lose my breath and could not catch it. The air felt frozen against my face, and my eyesight suddenly became so sharp I could read the street sign a hundred yards up the hill leading on to the highway. It said Santa Clara Avenue. I repeated it to myself. There was no reverberation, no echo, no nothing! Just my crystal clear voice in an otherwise empty head. The voices had left me to my lonesome.

## Book One

Grand Theft Life

## -I-

Here dark nights thickened, in the shadow of the hill. Terrifying screams were heard to echo along the ridge. Something sinister crept up the spine. So we could and we would sense our friend crawling, sometimes jumping up into the nerves. Paralyzing our prey like widow venom! Black and thick as oil in their lifeblood.

Some legendary creature would finish them off, those now frozen in its heavy sap, after we had our way with them. Perhaps to suck slowly upon the blood. Perhaps a Hidebehind with yellow eyes the size of autumn leaves, waiting behind a single tree.

We would not need to contend with any of them, for we drew off disparate sources. They helped us toward our sustenance, and we helped them towards theirs. They could terrify and invigorate the human bones. We could fill ourselves full of it: the sap, the vital _terror._ And leave what was left of any human, from the carcass on down to the soul, for any and all the other creatures of the night to tear apart and consume.

We held our supremacy, whether we cared to or not, in a culture which kept a great and endless storehouse of the element. The remarkable yet common brand of _love gone south_ or sideways, which took seed and flooded the human body sometimes with a quickness! Or slow-roasted the subconscious, softening the brain for to compromise the heart, as it slid and backslid through the fluid circuitry of artery and vein.

The most unwelcome of emotions: from the smallest consternation to the headiest dismay! From a tickle of trepidation, to an cold electric panic! From mere apprehension to the deepest unease. Yes! _Fear_ was the disease which every human contracted, and which we then subtracted from the marrow. And, as luck would have it, in our time, fear was in fashion.

## -II-

I grew up in a large sweep of pine forest, known far and wide as The Green Mountains _._ I lived a usual kinda life of a kid; outdoors exploring, knees banged up, kicking up dust with the others. Only I was not like them. Sure, I looked a pretty plain-jane American girl. Freckled in the sun. Hair the color of dishwater. And I was fast, real fast. Preternaturally fast! And a tomboy for sure. There was always a question in anyone's mind upon meeting me.

There was not much else to notice. I kept to myself a little. Climbed trees alot. Drove my parents crazy 'cause they never knew where to find me. Yet they were too kind to punish me. I was given such nice people for parents. Some say you choose where you are born. I guess I chose well. I tried to show my gratitude by being a good kid. I did my chores. Said my prayers. Read a lot of culturally-sanctioned literature; from Charles Dickens to Jane Austen to Hemingway. Ate like food was going out of style. Carved salt and pepper corn on the cob with my buck teeth, like a woodchuck carves wood. I played and slept hard.

Then they came for me. I was still very young. They came from inside me. They told me all sorts of stories at first, none of which I could believe. I thought these voices were the gods talking to me, but god does not talk that way. Oh, the things they told me! They made me promise not to tell anyone or my own mother. This could be hard, because I found myself talking out loud to them, and my parents got worried. I would shout out in distress in the middle of the day, "No! No! Don't burn them! They are still alive!" or "They know too much, what other choice do we have?"

They insisted I see a therapist at a local clinic. The therapist insisted I see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist pushed some anti-psychotics into my bloodstream. The voices told me not to worry, they would not abandon me. And they did not. All of the pharmaceuticals and all of the king's men, could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. They only had the ill effect of further isolating an already solitary young girl. The medications did help me keep the voices mostly inside my head, so you can thank Pfizer for that. Nobody and my parents needed to hear my reactions to the violent inner world which had taken root and now owned real estate in my head.

I spent time by myself, safe up in the harboring pines where the winds and the voices would whisper my name... _Ame_... _Ame_... _Ame._ Again and again. They spoke of a different kinda world, a world full of strange people and strange ways. Nothing a mountain kid ever imagined could exist. Electric neon light so bright, there was no night. Homeless people wandering the streets. Pushing shopping carts full of cans. Parks and predators. Guns. Cell phones. Cars everywhere. Movement. Energy. Stillness. Blocks without any trees, just pavement. Kids running and running away. Violence. Some day I would see this strange place and meet my people, they said. _Who were my people?_ I recoiled at the thought. But I easily shrugged it off. I did not believe in fortune tellers. Not since the night at the county fair, a charlatan separated me from my allowance. Kissing my ass about how I was some special or chosen one. I wanted specifics!

Good luck winning an argument with voices in your head. I had to listen, yes, but they seemed to know a thing or two. And unlike therapists, they were not getting paid. What did I know? Nothing. Dirt. Trees. Corn. Air. Solitude. Which was fine by me. I did not want to leave the Green Mountains. I loved the smell of pine, the taste of maple sugar. The sound of the test of the annual pile of stacked wood for water, against my stepfather's hammer and pick. The feel of heat from a young fire in the hearth. The sight of flames licking up the stone and into the flue. The sound of the cold, dry air trapped in the chimney, running for the sky. The crickets and tree frogs, fireflies and dragonflies. I loved sprinting out across the fields and down into the pine groves there, my feet softened by the needles. And swaying gently in the cradle of a pine tree, a hundred feet in the air.

The year was two thousand and three. I was ten years old and the fastest of my friends. The boys just scratched their little heads. They chalked it up to my long legs. But some things you can't outrun. My father died the day I was born. My mother gave me up. I know not why. I was adopted and raised an only child by a kind and loving couple in the woods. They would have to homeschool me, because by elementary school I was already playing hooky. The schools did not know what to do with me and my empty seat. They tried but could not deter me from wandering away and roaming the countryside. Which I did at all hours of day and night. They called the police sometimes when I went missing. The police were very nice at first. After repeated offenses, they tried scaring me straight. They put handcuffs on me and locked me in the back of the car. But I just lay down on my side and fell asleep. The other girls kept asking why I ran away. Some of the boys were inspired to run away, too. The guidance counselors were concerned. One of them almost lost his job for tying my shoelaces together. I never understood how there were so many rules to follow, or why I should follow them. They couldn't have stopped me had they duct-taped me to my desk.

Meanwhile the voices were calling me. Choosing me. There would be no person, place, or thing could deny them. No medication could stop them. They never made me do anything, or bullied me. They were kind and sweet. I began to believe in them. The feeling began to take! Was I brainwashed? I don't know, but I no longer felt so alone. They were with me, and this world they whispered; a larger and kindred collective spirit I could neither see nor possibly explain to anyone.

All I cared about was maintaining my cred as the fastest one around. My step dad encouraged me, yelling out across the fields, "Run like hell, my little lightning bug!" I would go from one knee bent forward and the back one locked against the earth, to gone. Kicking up dust, ready for any challenge and unable to sit still. Some of the girls hated me with a passion, but most of the kids revered me. My reputation preceded me. I had been the fastest for so long, they stopped trying to catch me. I hollered out, but they pretended I was invisible. They played the game without me, so someone else could be the fastest kid around. I realized, too late, being a show-off is no good.

I started to change my strategy. They thought they could ignore me? _Good luck!_ I hid in the woods, then jetted out of nowhere and came upon them like a ghost. The element of surprise. The thrill of catching someone completely off guard. I watched the color drain out of faces stricken with fear. I could feel heartbeats quicken, and my own. They might lose the ability to speak, or breathe! Or fall to the ground in shock! I soon mastered my craft, eliciting terror wherever I roamed. And not just in other kids. In anyone! The mailman, the police officer, the dude driving the ice cream truck. After the first coronary, I decided to leave seniors alone. This was not a good way to make friends, and soon I had none.

The voices. They were incessant. They reminded me I was not like the others. A feeling of belonging took root in me - belonging to the voices. I let them in. I listened. They did not want me to get too close to anyone else. Sometimes I honestly craved true human companionship and contact! But the chatter would outlast these thoughts and feelings. The message I put out with my body language was _don't touch me_. Not because I was scared. Because I was different. They went ahead and presumed I was scared. Which was as good a cover as any, for the truth. Fear was not and would never be my experience. Only in the taking! _Only in the taking_.

I did feel cheated at times, waiting for something else to happen. I got tired of being different. Tired of being alone. I wanted something new. I told the voices: "Bring it! Come on, take me! I dare you!" Sometimes I wanted companionship. The other kids had friends. I became resentful, ornery. This ever-expanding dark world inside of me, was keeping me from real happiness. I wanted to be just another kid.

The voices laughed at me! They reminded me of my great difference, my preternatural capabilities. I wanted them gone! I told them so. This was natural, they said. Being different was hard. They empathized with me. They advocated patience. I belonged to them, and they belonged to me. Soon, very soon, I would be with them, they said. I would be home.

When adolescence arrived, I knew it was over \- I was claimed! They told me I would not bleed like the other girls, that I would not change like the other girls. None of which really mattered. For none of the mountain girls I knew ever became women in a pleasant, happy manner. In fact, quite the opposite. They were full of lamentations and protestations, most of them. Tears and ashamedness all around. What a drag!

Ultimately what mattered was _trust._ All what the voices told me, came to pass! I remained strong and wiry, and intense in a way that frightened many of the other kids away, without scarring. Someone said I had the Aurora Borealis in my eyes. Some of the girls considered me lucky. They were all feeling awkward. They shared consultations with one another, and empathic moments. Tearfulness and crying jags. I could not relate. Sometimes this made me sad.

I would be further differentiated. I became alienated. I became _other._ The boys grew suspicious of me. The girls hated me more. They began to distance themselves from my unusual yet appealing nature. The strange light in my eyes. I cried alone, at the top of many a pine tree, overlooking the unforgiving, angular terrain. What was before soft and sweet, now seemed rocky and harsh. The wind carried gossip down into the groves and tumbling out of mouths for everyone to believe. There was a meanness about humans, to which I could not relate. An easy mistreatment of all sentient beings and me. My former friends now had fire in their eyes.

My adopted parents never gave up on me. Despite my outlandish behavior, they loved me just the same. Nobody could convince them I was all bad _._ My stepmom said I came to her in a dream, and could never be her nightmare. My stepdad said, "Lightning Bug, you're the apple of my eye." I loved them so.

I will always have warmth in my heart for those days. The simple way of life. The beauty of nature. Friends. Respect. Love. Those were some of the best times, when I was little, deep in the Green Mountains for miles. I sometimes cry, recollecting them. Living like a human. Accompanied by voices. Beginning to get the faintest idea who I was. Learning patience. Learning about human fear and judgment. Soon I would be gone, long gone from there, and not to return.

## -III-

Oakland, California.Ten years on.The voices, no longer in my head. Asleep on the passenger side of somebody's van, I woke up to neon light showering down upon me at the corner of Grand and Lake Park Avenue. I knew then and there, I had arrived. The electric light they always talked about, day and night, incessant light! I looked up through the glass to a marquee raping the Republican Party in a Twitter-length one-liner rip. Something about voting fraud and the theft of the American presidential election. I squinted in the light and turned my head to catch the blood red neon lettering in its entirety.

I really would have laughed, I would have. Problem was, I had not a clue where I was. No clue whose dirty-ass van I was sitting in. Not a clue why my head hurt, nor how I got here under the neon light pissing down, the smell of leather and tobacco in the air. No damn clue about anything, except that my life was clearly derailed and a strange new movement, perhaps a nocturne, was rooted in the base of my spine and branching out like a tree in fast forward flash photosynthesized heroics. I began to lose my breath and could not catch it. The air felt frozen against my face, and my eyesight suddenly became so sharp I could read the street sign a hundred yards up the hill leading on to the highway. It said Santa Clara Avenue. I repeated it to myself. There was no reverberation, no echo, no nothing! Just my crystal clear voice in an otherwise empty head! The voices had left me to my lonesome.

I went for the door handle but there was none. I went to roll the window down but there was only a star-shaped cylinder. _Hey!_ I cried aloud and turned as if to claw my way back behind the tore up nylon of the navy-blue upholstery of my seat, and as I began to move, got caught with a steady cross-check of a forearm in my neck, and my ass hit the metal floor and my back beat against the side of the seat, and the forearm pressured me there while the cars behind us let go on their horns. _The light's green!_ I somehow squeaked out, my eyes blinking up in rapid succession. The green light coming in from the windshield like a fog, against the neon.

"Are you gonna sit still?" someone said in a voice that was vaguely familiar, "Cause we can wait here all day if you want." I could barely nod my head, but he felt my chin coming down on his forearm and let up the pressure just enough that I could see. Our eyes were wide aperture in the semi-light of the Oakland night. He had my undivided attention. I saw something there in his eyes, which helped me slow down and relax slightly. There was someone who cared about something, behind those eyes. Lord only knows what. All my lonesome, happy, nappy head could think was: _I am no longer alone_.

## -IV-

The entire line of cars pushed around us, generous on the horns. His eyes locked with mine, the entire time. Getting-to-know-you. Generous with the eyes. Once the tacit understanding was between us, he pulled his arm back, grabbed the stick and stuck it in first. His left hand never lost his grip on the wheel. He pulled himself up and hit the gas. Not a car around us, just a yellow light about to turn red. Tires squealed. I put my elbow around the corner of the seat, and held on to dear life as we jerked up past Santa Clara Avenue and on to the freeway. _Can you please slow down?_ He was chewing up tires. My head was clearing, my body electric.

Freddy was a man of any means necessary. An OG on the streets. He was born and raised in this madness. And yet his eyes radiated such calm as could anchor your soul. They did mine. One eye was slightly discolored like dishwater. Same as my hair. The other was a strange blue I cannot quite describe. Reminded me of a marble I once had been given. I had seen a pitbull with eyes like his. Freddy was more than double my age. And age was a silly number meaning next to nothing.

I could not have got away from him, fleet-footed as I was. He would have found me. But thank god for that half hour on the highway, that day. Because in that amount of time, nothing more, nothing less, I became aware of the great awakening about to rise up in me. I became aware that this was my blood, there beside me. I became aware, sitting there, that I had no fear at all, in this the most fearful of circumstances. I felt none at all. Maybe heat, maybe anger, maybe adrenaline, okay. But in the absence of fear, grew a large seed of understanding. For he was also like me, without fear. And for the first moment in my life, that I could remember, I was daughter to a man I never before seen my entire life through. Through and through. _Through and through!_

## -V-

He took me to a broken old tool shack in the heart of East Oakland, California. The beating center of clandestine criminal activity, pumping its black blood of underground decentralized mercenary trade out across the land. Stifling good-naturedness, choking civility and perpetrating chaos. A real triumph of the black market. A home for the underground, a perversion of faith; a viral sickness of sociopathy and anti-establishment terror, murder and hidden power, blackmail and deception, betrayal and violence.

Half an hour south was San Jose. Half an hour west, San Francisco. East was Mount Diablo, north was Berkeley. And an hour north from there was Sacramento, aka _Capital City_.

Little did I know, this one room dilapidated shack, about six by twenty feet, was ground zero for our people and my new home. And this cold-blooded man who had exercised his power over me in a hot second? He was the heart of it all. Not by choice: by obligation. Freddy had a long history of struggle and rebellion against the established power. He spent long periods of time behind bars, incarcerated in the prison industrial system. The city of Oakland and the state of California wanted him dead. They no longer knew he was alive. He struck fear in all other men. No one gambled with him. Unless they were gambling _on_ him. There he was. Indomitable. Bulletproof. Whose authority in the streets was not to be trifled with, or questioned.

And here I was, his choice. His pick. The new diamond in his discolored eye. Taken against my will, yes, but already locating in my heart a subtle longing for the willingness to drown my past, so I could resurface and grab hold of this uncanny yet familiar, dark wilderness. For now I was struggling to make sense of it all, but no matter. Shit happens. Whether I liked it or not, there I was, in the living, breathing black furnace of East Oakland nefariousness. Close my eyes, take a breath, and pray for guidance.

Freddy reiterated what the voices had told me all along. I believe his baritone was one of the chorus all those years in my ears. But hearing it from him, made it real. A solo standing out from the choir. Virtuoso. He confirmed what I vaguely understood. That I was one of them. That we came to this land in the 17th and 18th centuries, in what some call the greatest exodus ever know to mankind. Before then, I did not care to ask and what does it matter? Today is today. Had I gone back a few hundred years into the ledgers of our collective memory, I would still be left with my current state of being.

We came alongside the others, then. The humankind. And not for the same underlying reasons. We did not have to escape persecution for our religious beliefs. No. We did what we wanted, quite freely. We practiced our faith in our faithless manner. We fought one another to the death. We loved one another severely. Loyal to our kind, to the dot in an crooked eye.

We came alongside them, naturally so. For we could live off the Fear. Simply a free ride to an uncertain adventure, in a new and treacherous land. We are not Protestants. We are not affiliated with any religion. We are neither Wiccan or Pagan. We do not worship the devil. We are not Anonymous, nor are we gang-related. We are of not of any particular ethnicity, nor do we subscribe to any newsletters. We do respect the Pagan and Wiccan ways. We take no issue with those descended from the word of Martin Luther, though they may at times get in our way. We are not Anarchists, Vampires, Masons, or Devil-worshippers, although we do have love for others who inspire the Fear. Which is just about all of them. Symbiosis is a beautiful concept. Even if the symbiotic partner is not conscious, they are participating. But in most cases, they saw and knew how their campaigns of terror upon humanity left us replete with our source of sustenance. And we were grateful.

We once were disappeared, our kind, the elders say. But in the infancy of our nature, few then lived to tell. No one knows where or when exactly, other than to say the northern hemisphere. They locked us away. Starved us. Exposed us to the elements. We were used for slave trade. Anything of value to our long lost culture was stolen from us, claimed by the humans. You know how the story goes, of any downtrodden tribe. They used to burn us at the stake, torture us. They wished in their no-good hearts to eradicate us. We were noticeable then. We were obvious. They could pick us out in a crowd.

They sometimes screamed when they saw us. Their faces grew pale, froze up. They reacted with fury and fire. But we have acclimated to them over time, the ones who caught the Fear. Like the others, marginalized and downtrodden, we have found our way in their world. We blend into the melting pot like cumin. They may think we do not live among them, but we do. Though we may not be outwardly known by anything other than the great chasm that lives between us. All they ever offered us was fear, from the gate, so fear is what we took. Fear is what we take.

## -VI-

There were tools scattered everywhere, and Freddy had to push them out of the way just to make a place for me. I was sitting on a makeshift loveseat that had been yanked from the back of somebody's minivan. I was sitting on my hands because they were cold. I was cold. I doubt it had much to do with the temperature. I looked around me. Tire irons, wrenches, drill bits, glue guns, nuts and bolts, car parts, radiator fans, motorcycle exhaust pipes, shovels, rims, washers, engine parts. It was all there. Barely room for bodies. And my body felt so soft and weak with all that steel and metal around. I just kept looking at the irons and comparing them against my arms and legs. How easy it would be for him to split me wide open. I guess I had not yet come to fully trust the man. My neck was still sore from his forearm!

Freddy asked me if I wanted something.

I shook my head.

"Huh?"

I shook my head again.

"You sure?"

I shook my head. Much more shaking and my head might be dislodged.

"Don't go nowhere."

He went out the front and swung the two door panels back together, and shut me in there. Me and the tools, in dim orange and yellow light. I waited. I wondered if this was a test, to see if I would run. I was full of adrenaline, and I could have run. He had not locked me in there. I would have heard the lock, just as I heard him unlock it. I would have heard the two by four come down across the door. I could have run!

I did not. I waited for something to come over me. Surely I would finally experience that universal human emotion my stepmom and dad and all my friends in the mountains had described to me on so many occasions! And then for once in my life I might be human, I might be _normal_! Free from the voices in my head. Now give me my fair share, come on gods and goddesses!

But the Fear I hoped was my birthright, never arose. And I waited right there, though I knew I could jump up and push out into this crazy new world, and possibly get away from this strange but familiar man. I was so far from _frozen_ with that sap which I now know penetrates the lifeblood. The human lifeblood, at the time of greatest calamity, froze up and the body turned to stone. But here I was, and nothing happened. Sitting there on some old, beat up, soccer mom car-seat upholstery; all alone but for a little orange-yellow light cast over the metal and wood interior of a shack no bigger than a cell.

I found myself without worry, more and more relaxed. Waiting turned into anticipating. Excited for whatever was to come! Excited for a future, pried out of my moorings. I rubbed the palms of my hands along the cushions beneath my legs. I guess me and this car loveseat got something in common.

I was daydreaming at night, when Freddy came back. He had a Big Gulp of Dr. Pepper and he shared it with me. I guess he knew I was dying of thirst. He had a big bag of those neon orange corn puffs you find at the store. He offered me some, but I passed. "You gotta eat," he said. But he did not try to force them on me. I would come to know that wasn't his style. As much as he wrenched me right out of my life, he might never force me again to do anything. Freddy was about as _live and let live_ , as some dudes are about _live and let die_. I did not know him from any old ignorant fool, but I already liked him. And the strange feeling like family I never knew I had. Maybe I was ready to start making my own hallmark cards around the clock for a year.Ya _._ Then open my veins in a Sylvia Plath bath.

He started talking to me softly, almost lovingly, working into my inhibitions. He was the calm of some hurricane. I was the eye, watching. I watched as he hung drills on the wall, and gathered up the drillbits. I watched him take a rag, and start cleaning the oil off some stuff. The mundane and earthly habits of a human. I watched him notching spark plugs like my stepdad. He was a big man, tall and thick at the waist. Hair like Don King when not in cornrows. Big bones, some teeth missing, stark with dark skin. Working was both his class and religion. And the facade he would present to the rest of the world. This was how he blended in, I learned. We all had to front, to survive. They would bring their busted up cars and trucks, and motorcycles. Anything which rode on wheels. He could take a quick look and then get to work. He knew his way around under a hood. Sometimes they just needed to borrow some tools. Some were just friends coming to talk. Some were apprentices. Others were associates, who referred business to him in return for the same. A few were our people. Many were human.

Now I happened to be there, in the chewy maelstrom of his life, by his side. He taught me how to live in this fucked up environment. East Oakland. How to deal with the people. Which ones to avoid. The new currency was trading out what you have for what you need. And then maybe trading up for what you want. The new time was not told by the sun. Light or no light, we lived as things happened. I would soon realize there was no other way.

## -VII-

We headed for downtown Oakland. Freddy was a man of few words. He let me control the radio dial, and turn it up loud as I wanted (which was as loud as it would go). I found some hip-hop, Drake and Lil Wayne trading mics. Music holds memories, and one song I would come to cherish, years to come, for it always recalled the fresh bright new eyes through which I saw the world and my relationship with Freddy, was Drake's _Best I Ever Had..._ the bass thumpin' engine jumpin' all the while rolling north up I-80 with downtown Oakland on the horizon, and Rocky Road wasn't just an ice cream anymore.

Maybe it was the shocks or maybe I was in shock, or maybe both. But the windshield was a window to a new world with the San Francisco Bay to my left and Fruitvale and the elevated BART train on my right, and electric systemic in me, not knowin' nothing and loving every minute because in the moment, guess what? I was okay. I was starting to feel safe. I wasn't restrained or being abused in any way. I had even been trusted not to run away, when he made that quick trip to the Seven Eleven. Hell! This was all very unusual, unreal, and nobody would have believed me outside of my own personal conviction, steady pushing across to anyone and everyone who cared to listen, from now until forever. I was not under attack. Plenty of neon orange corn puffs and Dr. Pepper to keep me satiated, plenty of Oakland hip-hop to keep the mouth waterin', in the land where rap reigned supreme and love, both hot and cold. Oakland was to rap heavyweights what Chicago was to Blues. A remarkable collection of the best of the best of the best. So whenever I felt lost in this crazy new world, where I often found myself a clear and present minority, I could turn to Freddy or the radio dial if I needed.

## -VIII-

We got off somewhere near Chinatown, and headed East towards Lake Merritt, surfing a wave of green lights turning yellow, one after the other, as we crossed each intersection. The terrain was flat with a slight incline, then a slight corresponding decline then sloping down to a small park on the other side of which was Harrison Street and the lake. Snow Park.

Freddy drove carefully. He wasn't interested in hotshotting with the youngbloods in their Escalades with the spinning rims, or their tricked out old Impalas or new Mustangs and Chargers, whatever. Freddy was proven. He used to show off back in the sixties and seventies. He even raced cars up near Cap City, at a number of oval tracks, most of which had long since been shut down. He fixed and raced cars. Drag racing. He had his fill.

My first eyes on Lake Merritt. There were old standing lantern-type lights all around the lake, spaced evenly. The lake, about three miles around, had one of the first ever bird sanctuaries in the nation. A little island, the only one, where all these amazing species of birds found refuge throughout the year. The climate here was described as almost Mediterranean. I would say bland. The lake drained into the Bay, or vice versa, whichever one felt like giving. There was the Cathedral of Light on the north shore, and a museum on the west. The south shore was the entrance to Death Valley of East Oakland, via Foothill and International Boulevards. Long wide boulevards where weekends saw neighborhood rallies and marches against violence. Because sadly, of the hundred or so homicides in Oakland annually, probably half occurred in East Oakland, on or near these two renowned boulevards. Gang shootings sent stray bullets due north and south down the streets, infrequently finding lodging under some poor sweet baby's skin. Death was a frequent flyer.

## -IX-

The sun was drawing its blood into the sky, which immediately turned orange, before dark. The colors filtered from yellow and pink, and the light rinsed away. The sky was the sink and the basin turned black. All night long we drove around East Oakland, stopping here and there, so Freddy could visit with friends. I was left in the van for about a half hour, near dawn. Freddy had stepped into one of a thousand nondescript apartment buildings on this side of the lake. He had taken the keys, which I thought was uncalled for. I wanted to listen to some classical music down the dial. Scriabin. Rachmaninoff. All six foot six inches of him! To cool all that wonderful hip-hop burning my ears. To calm the nerves. He knew better than to make a simple mistake. I confess I would have driven as far east as one could go on a tank of gas, had he left me the keys. Looking back on that time, yes, it was a new beginning and I was excited, but _life looks better in the rearview mirror._

Pimps and whores walked the street. How did a woman get so low she would let herself stroll the sidewalks - all cracked out - with the most pernicious of men, these merchants of souls? This was difficult to fathom until i reached the foregone conclusion typical to the human condition. Fear. I had plenty of time awaiting Freddy, to watch the drunk and otherwise intoxicated folks of all shapes, sizes and colors pass by. Some walked the street proper, others took to the sidewalk. No one saw I was there, until this one dark and hairy barnacle came slipping up through the parked cars, weaving quickly in and out. I could see him through the mirror, and wondered.

Next thing I know he was in the back of the van, because the rear gate was unlocked. He was a scrubby stout man, with a chain for a belt, in a long coat and a black leather golf hat. I had not been in a situation like this all my life. Of course, he was the one with the Fear. I could see the jagged outline of it, feeding off his aura. So what had I to worry? My consternation was upon him, and he was so created to feel it like a hot iron I sent through his spleen. I would have chosen the human liver, but presumedly at this hour in this sneaky and dangerous undertaking, he already set about to heat up his liver. _Liquid courage_. Or some other form of chemical courage introduced to the bloodstream. I was shocked by only one aspect of the entire situation. That I felt violated, myself, when none of this business need concern me at all; seeing as I was witness to the trespass of property owned (and even that was a murky presupposition) by the man who kidnapped me not long ago.

A word on my behalf. I am not a vile creature. I am a youngblood. I am neither feminist nor a hater. I am only a _hater_ in one exact way. I hate those who sacrifice everything to be ruled by the Fear. For though I cannot understand what it feels like to succumb to fear (it not being in my nature to even harbor fear), I can feel it in others and know that all humankind, even creatures in certain moments of being utterly engulfed in flames or otherwise immolated or robbed of viable life, are vessels prone to fear and, like any vessel, may be secured against the inevitable storm; whether they be covered, strapped, or lashed to a pier. The owner of said vessel, and in this case the human spirit and mind, is responsible to prefigure a means to defend themselves (to the best of their ability) from this mutable virus.

Yes, I have little patience with and much insipid venom towards those who become soon inflated with fear in all sorts of circumstance, and then react in fearful fashion, thus perpetuating an ignorant cycle and poisoning the environment by the littering of consequence. The sad and hapless thief who stumbled upon the lifted cylinder of a chrome car door lock at the back of a van tonight, was only shocked out of his impulse to crush my skull with his hammer, by the burning sensation he so suddenly felt in his spleen, and much hotter than the fire water he tossed down his throat, earlier.

I digested his fear like we do, instantaneously, and found my mind focusing in on it, my eyes crossing outward and in and scanning. But it was my intuition that sensed, my mind that saw, and the darkest shade of my shadow which shot out at him transparently, energetically, to penetrate his body armour and disarm him completely. The hammer dropped from his hand, and his elbow kept that perpendicular for a good three seconds before his arm fell to his side and his body fell back by the knees, and he hit his head on the open gate as he fell out the back onto the pavement. I was then but witness to his succumbing to the violent sudden pain which ended as decisively as it started, and left him high on endorphins, getting up and yelling into a heavy deep laugh then a grunt. And he never looked back but jumped like a man of his age does not jump, and fled on foot in the middle of the street laughing like a madman, for sure.

## -X-

I was breathless from the focus and realization of my malevolent nature - or was it benevolent? Some sorta propensity for self-defense which caused me to be violent. I was really quite dismayed, for I am not otherwise so. But the outcome confused me. The man seemed lighter, relieved? I knew of things I might do with both hands tied behind my back - read minds, telepathy and so forth. But of what use were these abilities to me? To violate another's private thoughts was disdainful. As for my other innate abilities - telekinesis, well, I did have perfectly capable arms and legs for that sort of thing. I much preferred to fight my own battles on an even playing field. Hand-to-hand combat. No weapons. No secrets. But if someone wanted an uneven playing field, I could provide counterbalance. Otherwise I do not play that way. No interest in competition, or in taking advantage of someone simply because I could. The personal code I tried to live by, did not include deception and exerting hidden strengths over the less fortunate. My mom and dad, they taught me well. But turn on me, I turn back.

Just after the old thief went howling away into the dawn, and before I had fully recovered from the exertion of self-preservation in the face of danger, Freddy appeared by the back of the van. I could hear him breathing. Freddy was a heavy smoker - Kools. Who knows how long he had hung menthols out to dry, but clearly by the wheeze in his voice one could assume he had been smoking for many decades and was probably a personal friend of the Marlboro Man himself.

I turned back again to the position I had been in when I caught the thief in his misdeed, and saw Freddy in the frame of the dawn, with the thief's hammer in his hands. "Thanks for the hardware" he said, and laughed. There were a bunch of other tools strewn about, but rather than leave the hammer there, he placed it in a sprawling toolbox he had back there, in the location where sometimes he fit the seat that now sat in the toolshed of a home.

I said nothing. I had a bad feeling I had just been tested, and was none too happy about it. He shut the gate with such strength I could feel the air rush me. Then he came around his side and got in and dropped the key into the ignition. There must have been another hundred keys on a ring. He smelled of tobacco and oil. I would not have struck a match anywhere near him.

Who did this bastard take me for? Some retro-fitted, mal-adjusted drama queen? I would show him the wicked witch from the northeast, for his troubles. He would not know what hit him. Really. Who was he, anyway, the jailer of a hundred different girls in a hundred different tool sheds all across this barren concrete jungle? Probably, I thought. _Probably_.

The old van cranked up with great force of a twice rebuilt engine, and jerked us forward into the new day. The sun would be an unpleasant surprise to my eyes.

## -XI-

Less than a mile away and within a hundred feet of the lake, we pulled into a large parking lot. What is it with America and her love affair with asphalt? Were there not other untapped resources? Other ways than road construction and concrete infrastructure building and rebuilding, to fuel their special economy? Was this some sort of greater design of which we were unaware? Concrete mud mask on the face of the earth? What an experiment. What awful surfaces trying to cover up god's greenhouse! And the only guarantee was failure. Cracks and fissures, as mother earth broke free of any and all oppressive confines. Patchwork efforts to keep her in line. All these pet projects seemed only to serve the purpose of buoying employment percentages. But why not employ the people in other ways more fruitful? This was a question (among questions) I would throw out to the atmosphere, for there was no local representative who was not possessed with the Fear around the implications of admitting to the larger blisters on American economic policy.

Freddy ordered me out of the van. I walked ahead of him toward the orange-pink neon sign that read Merritt Bakery. An historical landmark for local residents, I discovered. Not by looking at it. The only redeeming feature was the giant neon sign. If I could have an industrial space of my own large enough to hold it, I would place it in my living room for sure.

I was angry at Freddy and he knew it. I glared at him over his fried chicken and waffles. Still he had that calm in his eyes, which seemed contraindicated in this hood. He was trying to break into my thoughts, but I resisted. I saw he meant well. He wanted only to help calm my ass down. His smile was the Buddha kind, a flat smile just slightly turned up at either end. Indicative of the same bizarre pacific facade. I tried to push back past his firewalls, to see if I could know more. Eavesdropping was against my principles. But he was on a full court press, so I pressed back as I bit into the horn of my croissant. Then suddenly, surprisingly, he let me in.

Everything about me suddenly relaxed, my body, my anger; the flakes of croissant tickled my esophagus while the powdered sugar dissolved on my tongue in all the right places. _Holy shit!_ This strange wedding cake-strewn oversized square footage bakery slash Popeye's with the kidney-shaped layout, was suddenly all aglow in my pink neon heart. A rising, soft-hearted machine bakes a mean croissant. And it goes down so nice. All is not as it appears. Freddy. A hard exterior, with a soft core.

And as I chewed slowly, I came upon my manners in slow motion, watching this crazy man who done me wrong, ya, he done me wrong in so many ways, ya ya ya...but wait. Wait for the miracle and here it is! Hit me between the eyes. Watching him watching me. That Buddha smile. That hard exterior. The soft core.

"Somebody's hungry," he said.

I had to wait and finish chewing. My step mom always told me not to talk with my mouth full. "I like croissants more," I said, "the bread is unlike anything."

"You want another one?"

I nodded.

He got up and got me another one. It was fresh and warm. Just like the whole enchilada. An Oakland morning. In a bakery. A new life. Remarkably fresh and warm all of a sudden. He watched me and smiled. I smiled a little and watched him back. I found it funny, both of us watching one another, and laughed. Then I got uncomfortable and let my eyes dart around the room, before settling back upon the Buddha. The perseverating thought in my mind: _Why me?_

While scanning his interior with tacit unexpected permissions, I found the most wonderful man in there. The soft, delicious center of a tumultuous life worth living. A miracle to behold! All the times he had been stabbed, shot, fought, beat down by the law and the lawless, all sixty or so years locked down in this crazy world. Wow. I was speechless. My jaw fell loose and my lips began to tremble, there, facing him facing me, telling me it was gonna be alright and telling me how sorry he really was the way it all went down so bad, so hard. Telling me how yes, he had tested me, I was right, he knew I knew he knew, and that if I only trusted him, if I only gave over a little faith in him, I might find what I was searching for... a home, at last. At last a home. And he was sorry. He was truly sorry it all went down like this, the force. The trauma. _But there was no other way, Boo, such is life. Gotta accept it. Stop fighting. Let someone in. The only way._

No more! I pulled back and fell into the plush foam behind the vinyl covering the booth. I couldn't take any more. I could only look at him from behind my tears and how it all had hit me, and who he was and what he had been through, so terrible, so bad. And how finally for once in my life there was someone who (I never would have any question) had my back. So certain on point here - this crazy man in this crazy world, was the eye of the hurricane where I might finally relax and just be. Be my crazy self in the insanity of it all. And so it was. On the seventh day, the gods whispered: _rest_.

All I remember then was him helping me up and out of there, and I let my weight fall into him and walked to the beat of his walk, slightly crooked but firm, back to the van. He slid open the side door and sat me down on the metal, and then sat down next to me, and held me in his arms. Yes, held me, in his arms! I wasn't crying or anything. But I had been touched. And I could breathe different now. Deeper. And I breathed in the leather and tobacco and oil beneath which was the aura of the man who would be my refuge on these streets. On these mean streets.

## -XII-

Not bad for a sudden and uncontrollable gps reconfiguration. Goodbye Green Mountains, hello California! I would have thought myself inclined to never stop screaming! But I underestimated myself. Sure, I wanted to back out the rabbit hole. I wanted the man dead for the first 24 hours. But homicide is only a thought. Violence was not second nature to me. Not in these times. Not yet. I got away on a technicality. I guess we both did.

We went to a gathering of thieves and whores. Jesus wasn't there. The whores called themselves _escorts_ and the thieves called themselves _survivors_. They all could have owned the audition. Rare was a smile. Expect to hustle or be hustled. I expected myself to feel out of place, but I did not completely. I kept my mouth shut and let Freddy do the talking. He acted as though I wasn't even there. They all did. He did not introduce me around. I was slightly offended.

Some chick named Uma was bending his ear about a problem with her car, and he listened and kept repeating _umm-hmm_ about twenty different times while she went on and on about her troubles, working creases into Freddy's forehead. Then she asked what he thought, and he said _sounds like the alternator_. Much later I would come to learn that he always had one-liners for a woman with a car and wanted it fixed and wanted to know what was wrong, who had no intention of ever hiring or paying anyone to fix it, just expected handouts.

Uma was no ordinary chick. She was bossy because she could be. She wasn't gonna let it go at the alternator. The converse between them continued, "Ya? You think so? The alternator?" she said, walking about the room, attending to this or that, looking for her keys so she could give them to him, "maybe Freddy, well I can make some coffee if you want some. I have to go look for Shelley because she hasn't been home and Dan is asking about her, he wants to see her you know, but she can be so hard to find. She does it on purpose."

"Huh" Freddy said, non-committal.

"Well I'm so glad you came and what's with the other business we talked about?"

"I took care of it."

"You did? Because I just got a call from him not even yesterday."

"Uma, I took care of it."

"Ya? Really? Great, that's great."

What a case of nerves. I was grossly unimpressed, and slightly jealous. All her questions, rapid fire at him, couldn't she lay off? Her rhetoric was stale; she kept on foaming about the mouth with juicy or not so juicy gossip. She tried to make tentative plans for him to take a look at her beat up old Pontiac, and both of them seemed to lock down a time and place, but I noticed that neither of them actually made any note of it unless mental. Freddy realized I was staring at him, and he looked back first to make sure she was gone. She was. She had walked out the apartment and we could both hear her outside talking and venting on some other poor soul out there.

He looked back at me and smiled when he saw the look of disbelief on my face.

"Don't worry, we won't be here much longer, boo," he told me.

I wanted to walk away from this scene but I did not. Where was I gonna go? Nobody else in the room was interested in me. I may as well have been a rotary phone, or an old desktop computer. They were all lost in talk about this or that scandalous person, place, or thing, with various levels of feeling, sometimes dropping their voices down to a baritone of pent-up frustration or even clear resentment, getting quieter and then louder. And the women became cautiously pessimistic so to not offend the men, and would try and lighten the converse or spice her up, or move her in a different direction, which sometimes rolled the dish over into a crescendo of re-engagement about this or that, usually something the women who knew the men might know to be of interest to them, to turn their mood back up like an upside-down cake. Still a cake, just a different way of looking at it. And if they got a smile or even a hint of one out of a previously disturbed frame of mind, the women would call attention to this, in hopes that the men might feel the love and the attention, and respond.

Here there was something off. Plain to see a courting going on here in Uma's apartment. Not very well disguised. The women were mostly in heels and stockings and straps, dressed like they were gonna hit the club. Some looked classy, others looked trashy. A few were smoking, tapping their ashes into glasses. All were made up, though Uma was not. I could not have been more out of place, disheveled. I noticed the chicks mostly keeping cool or keeping quiet. Some seemed to talk freely, in an uninhibited fashion. Others were reserved. Like there was a hierarchy of some sort. Maybe it was just age, because the quiet ones looked to be the younger ones. Clearly there was an overall effort to help the men feel comfortable. Which was a little unusual. In the realm of affect, most men were stone cold outmatched by women, and naturally conceded. And were manipulated. In social spheres, some men were goners. Especially the ones who grabbed for power. And, come a woman with a grudge against him, having been treated unfairly in other realms of life where men hold all the cards -- he would be all the less able to be revived. The man who died a social death at the admonishment of a woman, well -- he easily fell away into the chasm of social disturbance, disconnect, progressing to isolationism, even despair over time. Could even be fatal.

Looking around the room, I guessed the ways and means here did not add up to compassion. The men clearly were an instant away from pawing the silks and stockings right off these girls! I knew better than to believe all these women were in the grips of trying to rescue anything other than their own bank accounts. If they had bank accounts.

## -XIII-

After an eternity of my being silent and listening like an overbooked therapist to a great number of mentally disturbed cases in the room, one young man caught my eye. He looked about my age, maybe a little younger. His short black hair was tousled. He was wearing a Black Flag t-shirt and some charcoal jeans all patched up at the knees and ass (of course I was just dreaming of his ass, until he got up off of it, and my imagination proved accurate). By his posture and demeanor I could tell that he, too, was hoping the couch he was sitting on might sink into the floor and transport him to another time and place. He was staring straight ahead toward the far bank of windows, dreaming they might open and some great displacement of air pressure might literally suck him into outer space. I could not catch his attention, and though I tried to send him some of my thoughts, he either could not hear or was not listening.

He was considerably younger and unlike the other men in the room, who were guaranteed to show him zero respect if he dared tried to speak at all. Anyone who looked or dressed like a punk, in the USA, was promised to be treated like one. Only punks paid punks any sorta kindness or compatriotism. He was disinterested. He wanted to be somewhere else. How he got here was anybody's guess. An Asian girl sitting beside him asked him his name. I could hear them above the chatter around us.

"Maze" he said.

"Hi Maze. I like that, that's a really interesting name," she said. Her eyes were made up like butterflies, and her eyelids and lashes were flapping their wings.

"Oh, thanks. I like your eyes. Did you do them yourself?"

She giggled. "No Maze, I got them done at the salon. I wish I could do eyes like that!"

"Well you could learn, couldn't you?"

"I suppose."

I was watching and listening and wishing I could be the one sitting next to him, talking to him. He seemed pretty sweet and sincere. Lucky little butterfly had him all to herself. Maybe I should get my eyes done, too. I was thinking about a Venus flytrap though, to catch that butterfly and digest it slow.

Freddy was saying something to me about leaving, a couple minutes later, when all hell broke loose. Apparently the boy had made an advance on the Asian girl, or an allegation was tossed into the air, and in no time there was a brawl! I could feel the floorboards vibrating beneath me, and heard the screams of the Asian girl as she backed up to the far wall, her back arched over and her fingers in her mouth, her butterflies flapping madly to keep her head aloft in the air! The couch was actually walking across the floor trying to get out from under the two men who had the poor boy now riveted to its midsection. The boy was crying out _I didn't do nothing, I swear!_ and fighting back with any part of his body he was able to still move. _What the fuck?_ he yelled. I pleaded to Freddy to do something! But he was just standing there casually, like it was none of his business, letting it go on! Maybe even a slight smile. They had the boy's arms pinned, but he was able to arch his back and twist an elbow into one of the guy's ribs, knock the guy over the arm of the couch, and swing his hips around so he was almost on his feet.

All of the chicks were over by the Asian girl, who was telling them she didn't know how it happened. They were looking back to the couch with mean and upset looks on their faces, some of them. Others did not seem to be concerned. A couple of guys had not even gotten up, and were still relaxing where they sat. They were joking with one another about something. Then one of the girls ran over and stabbed a knee into the small of the boy's back. He bellowed in pain!

I was incensed, "Freddy, damn it, DO something!"

"What am I gonna do, boo?"

I grabbed him by the arm, and tried to wring it. His forearm was so large I could not hurt him. "Freddy! That kid, he didn't do anything! He was just talking to that girl, she doesn't even know what happened! Those dudes just jumped him!"

"I don't know, I didn't see" Freddy said.

"Aw Hell!" I ran over and pulled the chick off of the kid, but it was too late. The guys were back punching him and pinning him with his face to the ground, telling him not to move. He kept squirming and one of them was pinning and one was punching him in his sides and back. He was crying out in pain. The chick tried to grab me by the hair, and broke a couple nails as I slapped her arm away then elbowed her in the temple. She screamed bloody murder and one of the other girls came at me with a stiletto in her hand, and stabbed me in the neck with it. Uma then knocked her off of me, and Freddy broke up the other fight. I was lying on the ground, beginning to cry. Not for myself so much but for the boy. But then he picked himself up quickly, and pushed his way out of the room with a whole lotta cursing going on. I watched him from the ground as he stomped on out of there. He threw a chair against the wall before he left. "Fuck all of you!" he screamed as he slammed the door. I did not have to cry anymore.

Freddy helped me up off the ground. The girl who had attacked me was having a bitch session behind Uma's back, and Uma was pushing her out of the room. My neck would sustain a bruise, nothing more.

## -XIV-

"Some friends you got there!" I said, when we were safely inside the van. I inspected my neck in the vanity mirror.

Freddy didn't answer. He fired up the engine.

I already guessed that other than Uma, these were not necessarily his friends. They were associates of a lowdown dirty business. Some might be useful to him, just as he was useful to them. He could fix their car. They could provide for him, if he got locked up or in some other sorta trouble. Probably not good for bail money, but they could put down for an endless supply of cadillacs on the commissary. Hot chocolate coffee could sustain the spirit behind bars. He had a pretty good lawyer and could get answers to questions about intricacies of the law. They knew people who knew people, too. And an ever expanding and perforated web of attempted trust woven out from there. This was a culture of trade. Exchange of goods and services, under the table. And you would need bulldozers to clear out all the bullshit manufactured in the process. And a whole line of dump trucks to haul it off.

A phone call came in before the wheels were rolling. Freddy took it, and there was Uma on the line, I could hear her. Her pitch had an expansive volume such that Freddy had the phone quite a ways away from his ear. She wasn't happy about the way that I cut in one of her girls, sure, but she was considerably more upset about the drama the punk kid brought into her home. She was wondering where the hell he came from? Who he came with? How he could have broken up a pretty festive party, which would have paid off for her rather nicely, _goddamn it_! Freddy let her vent for a little while, apologized for not being able to intervene sooner, then reminded her _I'm driving_ which did not stop the flood of her rant. He listened for a while longer, offering intermittent acquiescence, breakbeats of verbal intercourse, then, finding himself unheard, made some closing remarks in a rhythm and tonality antagonist to hers, and hung up while she was still going on.

I could not believe that Freddy had not told her to put the chick down, who attacked me. She could have punctured my jugular! I kept it to myself. I, too, was wondering about the lost boy, Maze, where did he come from and where had he gone? I was fascinated by him and that attitude of his. He really turned me on. Would I ever see him again? Oakland was just large enough not to know. He might get swallowed up. So was I. Maybe I would meet him in the gut. Hopefully I would find him before the enzymes did.

The van jumped away from the curb, and the force of it knocked a laugh out of me, I was trying to hold in.

"What?" Freddy asked, "You say somethin'?"

"Nothing."

I looked out my window and away from his eyes.

The sun was directly overhead.

"Hey?" he asked.

"Ya, what?"

"Are you okay?"

"Ya."

"Well of course you are!" A big laugh charged out of him, as we crossed an intersection. I rolled my eyes. "Now fasten your seatbelt." I reached over and drew the belt around me and fastened it with a click.

The streets of Oakland were all scarred up. Sidewalks and gutters strewn with trash on some blocks; only the ones the street sweepers hit were perfectly swept. Palm trees almost everywhere. Cypress, oak and fruit trees filled in the gaps. An occasional sycamore or pine. There were not nearly as many corporate chains around this area as there are in the East. Not so bad on the eyes. Lake Merritt and the surrounding parks and the bay and the hills, all made for a diverse and exciting landscape. Plenty of liquor stores and Seven Elevens and coffee shops. Mom and pop were still king and queen of this town.

I was to be immersed in the life. Freddy was not gonna ask me much, out loud. He already knew the contents of my heart since I spilled it. Maybe even before I spilled it. He was twice my size and commanded my loyalty by that calm I spoke of earlier. Every time I got worked up with hatred and venom, every time I got drawn into my own drama queen, he stared me down casually yet thoroughly, and pulled me up and out of my emotions, like a mother cat grabs its young by the neck, and I subsided from within.

I cannot quite describe it cause the words will not fit around my experience of his presence. One can be within a hundred miles of a certain person and know it. Anybody of better than substandard consciousness would say the same. Being of my kind and knowing my nature as his own, Freddy exerted the same clear, cold, pure energetics over my being. And this ain't no psycho-babble new wave nothing! Sure as Walt Whitman throwing his arms around life, this was something powerful real!

## -XV-

They brought me into the fold. The others began to trust me a little. Then one day, without half-realizing, I became a _wheel girl_. I picked my ass up off the cold hard floor of that dilapidated shed with the pile of blankets Freddy threw down the night before, and _Ooh!_ _was I sore to the core!_ Freddy was already up and knocking about, sorting out some wrenches, taking a soldering iron to some metals, letting off a little heat. I gravitated toward him. The sound of the soldering iron was a peculiar comfort to me. I was yawning aloud, as I wrapped a blanket tightly around me. Then quietly I watched him: the black and gray stubble of beard, the real guns for arms (at least three times as thick as mine), the illegible ink from homemade ink guns, black on black and faded. One of his dissimilar eyes focused in on what he was doing, and infrequent (kinda cute) grunts came out of him as he readjusted himself to do whatever random DIY appealed to him. He was fashioning weaponry for a blitz I was to be part of that very day. _Hell no!_

Hell yes. Look what he got me in now! With a Kool hanging off his lower lip and his eyes squinting against the smoke, and not all the marbles left in his head, all of us a day older and crazier, too! He wants me to shut up and drive the van. Spare the conversation. I don't have much of a choice, and I do like to drive. So off we go in some kinda hot silence with the cold morning behind us. The air dead still. I have both hands on the wheel, following directions. He waits to the last second to tell me where to turn, and I gotta adjust real quick on an unforgiving suspension. I break the rules and shout, "Jesus, will you give me a little more notice, please? This ain't a Porsche!" And he tries. And then forgets. And I forget to stay shut up like he wants. Reacting when he yells at me for missing a turn. And he lets me react without any notion of punishing me, because our gods were not punishing gods, thank god.

## -XVI-

Punishment comes in many forms. We scooped up a confluence of attitudes, Freddy's crew, and that would be punishment enough. Cynics, all of them. And I had to break bread, inextricably affiliated with their grand theft endeavors! Hell, I had been five-finger-discounted myself, torn out the green mountain socket and absconded.

They had me park somewhere in a finer part of town - just off Piedmont Avenue - where all the high class people strolled and showed off their flashy jewels and high-dollar denims and international pea coat etiquette. Flash-flash!

I was kinda thrilled because Freddy had left me the keys this time, trusted me not to roll his wheels as far east as they would take me. He played the odds against my leaving. Only days into my new open door captivity experiment, and goddamn he was right. There I was, counting a ring of keys with an Oakland Raiders fob hanging down from the ignition, to pass the time. I consciously chose to stay. I guess I am a masochist or just plain crazy.

Here they come, Freddy and his crew, screaming around the corner in their work boots and leather, three of them, armed with six laptops they jacked off some students in an upscale cafe. Armed fucking robbery! And they slide the side door open and all jump in, and _Go Go Go!_ I gotta step on it. I hear the wheels and see the smoke in the rearview as we careen around the corner with the split second internal guidance I have come to rely on, seeing as I cannot get any advanced directives from these fools. I locate 580 East and head that way as fast as four wheels can carry, down the back side of East Oakland, not far from Highland Hospital.

There on the pavement back where we left, lies a man who got shot trying to chase down his laptop. I can see him in my head. I was telling myself: _he's gonna survive, dear god, he's gotta_ _survive_. I am furious to get thrown in with this insidious lot, just furious. My blood is on fire! I confess the adrenaline has me wired. I cannot believe I am related with these dirty low-downs. My feelings antagonize one another. The one that wins says: _we do what we do to survive._ Do I believe them? Freddy says nothing, as usual. And I am drawn only to him. The others can get scarce.

Freddy reassured me the weapons were only meant for show and nothing more. One of his crew was high behind something, and lost his sense and fired on the man. This was forbidden! He told me "you did good." Some kinda wonderful, to hear you done good from the lips of a psychopath! I am far from comforted. I can see the scene in my head. Doesn't look so hot to me. We sure as hell were not saving lives! I purposefully drove like a maniac long after driving like a maniac was needed. Everyone in the van stopped whatever they were doing, except crashing into the walls and falling over one another. They started to curse me out in uneven, agitated tones, but Freddy shushed them all. He played that calming card on me, deconstructed my temper. But only after scolding me loud enough so everyone could hear. I began to obey the laws of physics and traffic. And Freddy. He promised me the guy would live, anyway, and true to his word the guy lived. I saw it on the news the very next day.

## -XVII-

So began my life of crime. Goodbye Dunkin Donuts. Hello assholes and donut holes alike. Dudes with rocks for brains. Other petty criminals with rocks in pipes, which quickly turns brains to porridge. Welcome to the eternal hustle on the streets. Welcome to separating people from their cell phones. Permanently. Welcome to trying not to hurt anybody, but hell, if they get in the way, then? What are we to do? _They got in the way_ and that's on them.

Fierce. Welcome to a world of mostly hard types who could care less. One in five, a sociopath. Usually guys, but not always. Watch out, honey, cause the chicks who have not a feeling in their heart for a soul can break out in a spree of some of the worst crimes you never seen. Sociopathy on the streets looks like a stable full of teenage escorts to bank off, over here, while dabbling in identity theft rings over there. Then they got guns for hire, in case someone pisses them off or tries to move in on their action, and somebody gets shot or raped, or just plain disappears.

Unfortunately, these all counted among my people. The fearless ones. Otherwise I knew them not. And by my great fortune, by design of the divine, Freddy was a kindred spirit of mine. Not just kin. He was no sociopath. He did not expect his wicked deeds to go unpunished. He was not free from responsibility. We both knew we would be accountable to the karmic cycle. We both had faith in our divinity. He was tough as nails and would do what he had to do, Freddy, but he sure felt the hangover and understood \-- no bad deed escapes karma. I often saw him come back from some unmentionable, head hanging low, and as I braided his hair I listened to his thoughts beating him up in his head, and felt compassion well up in my heart for him. He would start saying to me, in a low rumble of a voice but full of remorse:

"I'm a bad man, Ame, I am a _bad_ man."

"No, you are not," I protested, "you are not! So please stop calling yourself that, Freddy."

"Yes I am. _I am._ "

"Freddy!" I would pull on a corn row and insist - "You are not a bad man! Maybe you've done some bad things, okay, but you have a real big heart, so stop it. Just stop, Freddy, please?"

And he would wait a minute and then again: "But I am a bad man."

This time, instead of a corn row, I went straight for his ear: "Hey! Tell me something, Freddy. Who was that guy who spent an entire afternoon sitting here carefully threading bubble gum out of my hair?"

He got quiet.

"Who was that, huh?" I persisted. "Who?"

"Okay -- Okay! it was me," he admitted.

And not just because I insisted.

Because it was true.

I would not know all what he had done, unless I heard it from someone else or happened to witness it myself. A thousand suns would rise and set, and still there were things he would not tell a soul. I learned to keep my own misdeeds as much to myself, also. I, too, subscribed to karma. My mouth watered for revenge sometimes, like any young blood. The aforementioned sociopaths, the ones who lacked all feeling, those who abused power, the ones who would get an idea in their heads to pass the time in some malevolent way - _just because_ \- might find themselves on my hit list in my head. These were the ones I wanted to _off._ They were no good. And when they crossed my kindred spirits, well, that was it! I got vindictive in my heart and started to burn. I might talk to Freddy to inspire him to brood alongside me so we could handle them the way they handled the rest of the world, malevolently. Indiscriminately. With a wave of violence that would ripple out its damages across all of Oakland and beyond.

Freddy usually stayed calm to my great torment, and rather than answering my cry for war like I wanted, just took me and my burn all with a grain of salt, and made me see the higher purpose. The karmic proof. These moments helped me see his hidden heart, and by which I could honestly implore him when he got rough with himself, _you're not a bad man, Freddy, honestly, you are not!_

## -XVIII-

I came to know the difference. Real bad seeds and Oakland raised the hardest. Copper miners and mail thieves and armed robbers came a dime a dozen. Did what they did to survive. But the real masters of misery were the ones who got home from whatever it was they did - gambling, drinking, working on cars, scrapping metal, pulling copper out of construction sites - and raped their loved ones, one way or another and not necessarily physical. Control freaks on a power trip.

The sweetest thing I ever met was a hellcat of a girl, about my age and full of red blood, maybe hotter than mine. A rare jewel. Her name was Bless. Freddy was good friends with her man, Everett, a card-carrying member in good standing with the alpha male society of assholes. They lived in his house a stone throw from Grand Central Junkie Station, MacArthur at Telegraph, down the stroll - a strip of motels which accommodated prostitution. Hookers filled rooms. There were plenty of working class customers to fuel demand. West Oakland warehouses and industry lined the streets, to house the container ship contents which came through the thriving Port of Oakland from all over the world.

I saw Bless a number of times before we first spoke to one another. Victim to the poverty of introductions in our world. I got used to it. Introductions could threaten an otherwise concealed identity. Outlaws were hiding in plain view. I sat down across from her in Rett's living room, and she glared at me. Turns out glaring was routine. I was fascinated by her and the next time Freddy took me there, I sat down beside her on the couch. She saw I was slender, tall and soft in the aura, and decided to let me be. I would have been happy to be friends with her, except I saw she wanted to kill somebody. I hoped it wasn't me.

Everett and Freddy did their usual backslapping comedy routines with one another, talking a language us girls did not speak. Maybe that's why we finally decided to talk. They had a lengthy history. Rett looked clean cut, strong and able. He was two of three. His mom was white, his dad Mexican. Bless was about my age, about my height. Both of us wore black and silver. I really could not wait to get to know her. I thought it might never happen. She asked me for a cigarette the third time I saw her. I didn't smoke, but I did not want to disappoint. I told her _hang on a sec_ and I went over and waited for Freddy and Everett to notice me so I could ask Freddy for his Kools. They failed to notice me. So I went behind Freddy's back and pick-pocketed him.

Bless studied me carefully for the first time ever.

"Thanks," she said, pulling a square from the foil wrap in the green box, "Brilliant! What's your name?"

"Ame."

"Thanks Ame, do you have a light?"

I searched myself. No light. I went back and bumped Freddy, quickly pilfered his lighter and excused myself. Charles Dickens had taught me well.

"She smiled and lit up. "Fantastic!"

My eye caught a nice glass ashtray on the other side of the room, and seeing how I was on a roll, I went and fetched that, too.

"Good dog!" she said, and patted me on my head.

I pushed out my tongue and panted for her.

We both laughed.

She did the same, and I saw the silver stud in the center of her tongue.

We cracked up.

I sat back down next to her. She spoke demonstratively on varied subjects. Fashion. Crime. Love. Hate. Occasionally she would place the inside of her wrist down on my knee. Then she ashed a cherry on the carpet.

"Oh!" I kicked out my foot to put it out.

"Don't worry about it, Ame," she said, grabbing my knee, "I wanna burn this fucker down." She was referring to Everett's house. With him inside.

I watched uncomfortably as the ember died out on its own.

A little curl of smoke arose from the carpet.

"Umm, Bless," I remarked, touching her arm, "that doesn't look so good."

"Wanna cover it up?" she asked, "be my guest."

I looked at her to see if she was serious.

She held a straight face for a second, then laughed at me.

"Too cute" she said.

The cherry turned black, and the mark was easily visible on the beige carpet.

Darn. The house was not gonna burn down like she wanted.

Her upbeat demeanor fell right off her face and dissolved to an ashen gray, when Rett and Freddy came over by us. Rett was clearly pissed off that she was smoking in the house. He had not seen the carpet. I slowly slid my boot over the mark. She put her hand on my knee, and left it there. She went ahead and blew smoke in a straight channel out between her eyes.

"Is this shit menthol?" she asked, as though she didn't know.

"Mm -- yes," I said, hesitantly, playing along. I was worried for her. I could tell she was nervous he would discover the mark.

"Oh, good. I love menthols."

I was relieved nothing happened. For a second, I thought I was about to witness a whole lotta ass-kicking. Rett kicking hers. Freddy kicking mine. Her kicking the dog. The dog howling. Rett and Freddy were quietly watching us. It occurred to me they were both getting off on having us there in the same room. As if they owned us. We said nothing to them and they went away. I believe they were discussing the pros and cons of in-line versus V-cylinders. They went out to look under someone's hood. Bless was fantasizing about the hood coming down on Everett's head. I started to think about sweet, early model American cars, and subsequently Cuba.

"Have you ever been to Cuba?" I asked my new friend.

"What?"

"Cuba. Have you been there?"

"Why the hell would I go to Cuba? Isn't it illegal?"

"Not if you go for educational purposes, it's not."

"Educational purposes? You mean school?"

"Ya. School."

She took a long drag, looked up at the ceiling and blew a pipeline of smoke straight up and said at the end of her breath, "Fuck school."

Another cherry fell directly down.

The glass ashtray was unable to catch it.

The carpet fibers looked up and shrieked.

## -XIX-

We went for a walk. Bless started to open up and talk to me. Alot of these spaces warehoused illicit trade on every black market you can name, she said. Prostitution, dope, stolen cars and merchandise. Guns and ammunition. Precious metals. Weed. Lots of weed growing all over the Bay Area, under grow lights or the sun. Sneaker electricians snatching wires right off the pole to get a current surreptitiously and direct from the street, so that the numbers could not spell out _Operation Grow_ so clearly to law enforcement.

Nobody said anything. PG&E would have no problem at all cooperating with the law. Corporate snitchery was easy. Only individual snitchery got hard-pressed and snuffed. Didn't matter if you were in the pen or out on the streets. Often a scenario got busted up by the cops, involving multiple raids in different locations. Cost a lot of people a lot of money and time, or half-time, in Santa Rita correctional. Bless had been there herself. "Trust me," she said, "people are always talking. One leads to another."

Sniffing out a snitch was high priority. This wasn't New York City or LA, this was Oakland. Most everyone had six degrees or less of separation from someone else, so if you tried really hard or had a burning desire to know, all you had to do was take a walk through your connections and put the puzzle pieces together, who was where and how did they get there, and where was the one instance or interaction that made no sense at all, dissonant to the rhythm of the life of the street? Inevitably snitches would be found, and marked. How could business possibly go on, otherwise? They might be mixing with us, still looking clean as a cuticle, when tracked down by bloodhounds to the tune of their trail of fear. For only someone in the grips of fear would ever get suckered into spilling their words over to the law, and upending an operation.

"Sorry," Bless said, roleplaying, "Hate to see you go. Hopefully you go as quietly as you came, maybe a hot shot of Oakland's finest black tar. And guess what? Free sample for you, my friend. On the house. Keep on talking all that bullshit, how you escaped a squeeze play, hustled this or that, here or there. Tonight you can talk until you're blue in the face. Literally! Up in the clouds. Coming soon: _Eternity in a spoon_."

She seemed to know a lot. I still wondered what my part in all of this was, and I wondered if she knew.

"Bless," I confided, "I have no idea what I'm doing here."

She heard me and stopped everything.

"What did you say, honey?"

"Nothing," I said.

I could not hide the emotion coloring my voice.

I felt really stupid to be saying such things.

"Come here, sweetheart, come here."

I went to her. She gave me the biggest hug.

"It will work itself out okay. You are one of us. Just be yourself, keep your eyes open."

"But I'm lost."

"The Gods have a plan for us."

"I thought I would get away, first chance I got. But I stayed. Something's keeping me here. I don't even wanna go back, anymore." I felt a tear slide down the side of my face. And the cool air on my wet cheek.

"You miss your family, right?" she guessed, "But there's something here?"

"Ya. Pretty much."

She held my hand. "I understand."

"You do?"

"I sure as hell do!"

"Where did you come from, anyway?"

"The Northwest."

"Portland? Vancouver?"

"Ya. Something like that," She brushed it aside. "You?"

"Back East. The Green Mountains."

"The Green Mountains?" she laughed, "Sounds like a fuckin' fairy tale! Are you kidding?"

"No."

"No shit? _The Green Mountains!_ " She repeated the words like I made them up,

"What, was the Jolly Green Giant your uncle?"

"No, but Jack and the Beanstalk is my cousin," I replied.

"Seriously, honey, the Green Mountains aren't going anywhere. You might see them again. But trust me. _Stay_. You've been treated well enough. Freddy hasn't hurt you, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then stay. Remember how things were growing up? The voices. Knowing you were not like the others. Remember?"

"You heard them, too?" I asked her. I was amazed.

"Of course I did."

"I thought I was the only one!"

"We have more in common than you would think, Ame."

My heart was skipping beats.

She continued on.

"We were predestined. You were brought here because you belong."

"I never thought of it that way."

I started scratching the polish off my nails, "maybe."

"Freddy hasn't put a gun to your head, has he? You're not chained to a bedpost behind some artificial wall, are you? Wake up! You're not Patty Hearst and this isn't the SLA."

"But he took me against my will."

"Same thing happened to me."

"Who? Everett?"

She nodded. "Shit happens, Ame. You gotta move on. What are you gonna do, lawyer up? That's a fucking joke."

"But Bless! It's my freedom!"

"Exactly! And like you said, yourself, there's something keeping you here."

"What about Freddy?" I asked her.

"What about Freddy? Do you care about him?"

"No! How could you say that?"

She laughed again but cut herself short.

She pulled her hair back and tied it behind her ears.

"Ame, you know how to _read_ somebody?"

"No."

"Come on! We all can. _It's in our blood_!"

There were no secrets with her, I realized.

I felt ashamed. "I don't know why," I confessed, "but I would. I really would miss him. Isn't that messed up?"

"Ame" She stopped me and put her hands into mine, and looked me in the eyes, " _I've been there_." Her voice began to fill with emotion, "whether we want to be here or think we belong here or not, here we are."

## -XX-

I may not have unraveled the mystery of why I was here, but I had found someone I could trust. Bless. Freddy. I began to have some confidence I could unpack the whole experience with their help. And I tried to remember what they said, and more and more to accept the circumstances of my life. They would share with me whatever they could, and show me how to live.

Our associations had to be purified. End of story. There was no other way. The violence was a byproduct of an corrupt social fabric within which we all were woven. The fabric was tearing apart at the seams. This was not unnatural. We were here to help along the systemics into a new and more honest era. Like the philosopher Ken Wilber said, a pioneer is the guy with all the arrows in his back. The best of us had a heart that beat out a repatterning of life that made them naturally bristle. We were rejects to them. They were repulsed. But secretly they wanted what we had. For who wouldn't want to walk through life less cautiously, less scared of their own shadow? We had a _live free or die_ consciousness and a mad madness of energy about us that could hijack a lower level aura and make a misfit out of an angel. And the quality of life was good, for it left the past behind and the future ahead, and was an unsensational momentary DIY kinda issue the world really needed. I believed. Outside of the violent necessities, we brought a fresh take on a stale atmospheric. And there was no stopping us.

Here was Home Depot, for all the thieves to find the tools they needed to thieve, all the sneaker maintenance men and mechanics, and small time burglars. And Bless and I walking up and down its open, airy corridors, trying on fashionable work gloves with a matrix even spider man would be envious of, and boosting battery-powered pen flashlights.

Next to the Depot was the messy Save Mart parking lot scene of pushers and friday night dime draws off the habit chippers, payrollers off work for the weekend. Security guards just standing there watching. Getting a sack for themselves. If the quota wasn't met or the law came and told ya to get lost, the rest would have to be made up recycling or thieving. Life of a hustler. Spark plug pieces thrown at car windows to shatter without a sound. All the little tricks. Devil in the details. Dirt under the toenails and fingernails. Gray morning squatters waking up and moving real slow like snails. Rigs hanging out their arms.

These were not often our kind. Pushers, users, those surfing the demand and supply waves of chemical seduction. But they were part of the fabric. An ecosystem is delicate, even the urban degraded kind. We needed all of them, Freddy explained, the dealers and users especially, for they kept the authorities preoccupied on the war on drugs while we sent our undercurrents through and got made. We were echoes through their halls, and voices through their walls. They would feel a subtle push and pull, and react in such predictable fashion, lockstep like slave labor or draft material at wartime. Marching in masses to allow us to carry out our dark agenda. Well, they saw it as dark. But only so to contrast light. "There is no light without darkness, mind you, were some of the very first words my friend spoke," out on the rails through that hidden industrial town at the westernmost edge of the city.

Neither is there shadow, without a source of light. They referred to our people as 'Delux'. I asked Bless what it meant. She said it comes from Latin, meaning ' _of the light'._ A calmness came over me when I heard, like the kind you get watching the sun rise or set.

## -XXI-

Bless stood about my height, and we stood tall for girls. Men would stop and watch us go by. This kind of attention was not always nice. We hit a killer thrift store on Telegraph in the Temescal district. She turned me on to a pair of fine leather calf boots, black. All my damn boots were black. Half my clothes were black. Three quarters of her clothes were black. Today my hair was black. Yesterday her hair was blue. Tomorrow, who knew? We were about the same size, too, so we could wear each other's clothes. And try on one another's attitudes. Like switching channels or instruments, trading thoughts or moods. We both had the punk persuasion.

We kicked rocks on down the rails. One day a couple of drunks approached us with pints in hand, and offered us salutations from twenty yards away, then cracked up over us, expecting we would quickly walk away. I looked them over. They were swaying from side to side like cattle cars leaning to go off track and free the discontents.

Seeing us approach rather than walk away, they froze up. Something in us conjured the Fear in them. As we came even closer, they started to look as though in the final moments before an actual train bore down upon them! One of them dropped his Southern Comfort, and it fell on the rail and shattered, freeing the so many milliliters of loving fluid to splash out on the stones. They stood like statues, immovable and fixed. Like glass. Staring at us.

Bless took it impersonally. She stepped in with a fierceness, coming upon them with her arms wide like a child comes at a family of pigeons in a square, picking listlessly away at crumbs fallen between the blonde bricks underfoot, and told them _move the fuck on!_ with a pseudo-ferocity.

I followed her lead with the maddest look I could conjure, like Amelia Earhart on her first ever flight. But these flat-foot soldiers in some imagined war on prohibition, having lost their liquid courage to the stones, summoned some pride out of their bewilderment and stood their ground, bit down on their tongues against the sting of fashionista faux fronting.

Bless laughed and gave one of them a big hug over his overcoat instead, having seen the spirit! The wonderfully intractable spirit! One outcast to another. They surprised her just as she had surprised them, by not cowering as though expecting to be struck senseless! One outcast to another.

I ran past them down the tracks, in a sudden impulse to run like I always ran all of my young life across the mountains in the East. My legs had not lost their strength, for I could feel and hear the space I was pushing into, push back. And I felt young again, as I followed the tracks to where they sunk down into the ground and cut across the streets there, not far from the San Francisco Bay. The streets may have ploughed down the trees, the homes, the world in their way, but they could not stop these tracks. Only the national rails could hold ground over the network of roads constructed thereafter.

Bless raced after me and soon caught up. My eyes were watering and my feet were getting warm by the soles. I decelerated down to zero motion. She came bursting into me then, and with her momentum we both took flight and she was holding me fast in her arms, just laughing hysterically as we fell together to the ground, ripping new holes into our clothes beside the tracks. I hollered.

"Sorry sweetie, I had to take ya down" she explained, as she dressed my cut knees with some cotton she tore off her Iron Maiden T-shirt, circa 1985. "Wow, you sure can run!" More insane laughter. Her own legs were cut up by the stones, too, but she did not care. Shards of rock and glass embedded in us both. We plucked them out of our legs and arms like it was commonplace. More ripped cotton, more insane laughter. I began to smile and laugh, too. I ducked my head inside my jacket, then poked strangely out of the neck hole at her. "Turtle!" she exclaimed, then pulled the Iron Maiden tourniquet so tight down on my kneecap she pushed it out of place, and I screamed bloody murder.

## -XXII-

I had an unusual encounter while wandering up by Lake Merritt one day. The clouds were puffs of cotton floating in the sky. I hopped a BART train from the Oracle Arena north to the lake, got off on the west side and walked East to where the high rises of downtown Oakland give way to trees and parks, low rises and homes. I hit the Seven Eleven on Harrison and 24th Street for my daily cup of half powdered cappuccino machine mix, half regular coffee. Sugar sweet, the way this girl likes it.

I had begun to get my bearings on the scene, and chose my own adventures. Pretty much anybody who knew anybody on the street, knew not to fuck with me by now. I had the _guns of navarone_ behind me, Freddy and my kin Delux. Sure we were hated by people who did not know any better. I was ready to throw down with anyone. Yet no one could touch me. There were women, like the ones in Uma's apartment, who hated me for no good reason. Some judged me by my androgyny. All looks behind their tar-lash Maybelline mascara, they filled in their Apple Bottoms and pushed the cushions whenever I walked in the room, antsy with bad attitudes, craving a dopamine fix to substitute for the oxytocin they never got anymore, seeing as their sex appeal was in shambles. Wondering where my dimensions went: they were hidden, in plain sight! Wishing on a real man like the one who had my back and would strike down any drama-fueled scandal that might be brewing to pull us apart. They all probably thought we were laid up together, Freddy and I, but they would never know and did not dare ask. Maybe they had a little sense.

Freddy and Bless were always with me in this dark world; either physically, by eyes on the street, or through the subtle senses. If I was in trouble somehow or confused about anything, I just had to clear my mind and study my energy into vapors twirling up into the mad sky collecting dust along the way, and the tracer double helix I could send them through the air, flattening all the telecom signals, burning like fire in vapor form, and, with one strong exhalation, breathe expansiveness like you never seen into their perceptive midst.

They would catch the signal. The mismatched discolored eyes of Freddy's ever calm, draining the stress and confusion right out of it. The sweet and loving arms of Bless. And I could throw my long arms around her neck, take refuge in Freddy's expansiveness, flash some electricity right up the chakras, disarming the CNS. Sacred communion. The spectrum of color would radiate all the badness and the illest among haters' hatred into a smart-bomb deleterium, washing the scene clean of confusion and chaos and drama. The divine had bigger plans, wait and see. Meanwhile, I could go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted with whomever I wanted or by my damn self, thank you very much, and no bitch, no hater, no queen, nobody was gonna stand in my way, no matter what!

So I was leaving the Seven Eleven this day with my coffee in hand. I walked across the street and climbed a hill which rose up from downtown Oakland toward Piedmont. Vernon Street. Halfway up the hill, I came across a man walking himself backward up the hill, across from the Whole Foods mothership. Honestly I cannot be right sure he even was a sentient, at all. He blurred out around the edges and though he tried throwing his arms and energy all about, none of this seemed to take root. At the top of the hill was Piedmont, one of the wealthier districts of Oakland. The money lived in the hills. Better views.

Vernon took ya uphill at a sixty or more degree angle, which made walking backwards even stranger. A transient, blur of man, light in foot and heavy on the smile, shining down upon the city. I was impressed by his technique, whereby he was watching everything below, and me. Studying me. I could feel the attempted invasion. I wondered who the hell he was, kinda charismatic and intrusive, but light-hearted and amusing.

There were cars coming from both directions, modern cars with modern man inside preoccupied by cell phones, in the mad scramble to get whole foods from Whole Foods, the four pm early-bird rush hour special, having just escaped the cubicle conundrum with a Houdini slip into very American escapism, alluring semi-freedoms, belted into automobiles, locked into Amoled-screen sexting, behind curvaceous windshield safeties.

They were coming up from the Grand Avenue turn off, or down from the 580 exit. I witnessed them pass without incident through the man, the magician high-stepping in reverse in the middle of the road, smoke and mirrors hidden up his silk vetements, conjuring up Jimi Hendrix with the faux buckles and the fitted cumberbund. My eye witness was outwitted! I blinked a couple times to clear the impossible, but sure as the sun in the sky, he was not struck by the machines, he did not die. Just kept stepping up backward with a twinkle in his eye, and that Cheshire grin wide like a bowtie. I realized that no one could see him but I.

## -XXIII-

I followed him up and over the ridge. He took me over Highway 580, walking quickly forward now up alongside the sheets of chain link strung up against a fall. Like a dream we cut down Santa Clara and then northeast up a small side road called Jean, and passed a peach-flavored Craftsman home at the corner of a small but steep path named Alta Vista. I looked up on high, toward the heavens, and the cottons were plump and the sky was a decadent blue and the air hit my lungs very clean. I saw him ahead of me, but paused at an elm tree at the corner of these two streets, as a benevolent force drew my eyes up the face of the west wall of the Craftsman, to the small window looking down, and behind the cream painted planters with lili of the valley peeking out, was a face and eyes of an older woman looking down on us, and I saw a great and unexpected kindness in those eyes. I knew not who she was, only that she was one of us. Delux. For she gave me her thoughts. Her name was Anne. She welcomed me. This was her territory. She wished me well. I turned toward her and put my hands together in prayer position and bowed my head in deference. Then walked into the sky.

The road ascended then dropped almost vertically to where Jean Street crossed itself, a pair of Jeans, and there lay fertile ground, behind an entranceway marked by Corinthian columns. A hidden gem of the North, the Morcom Amphitheatre of Roses. Behind the columns stood redwoods and pine, sheltering a prodigious bed of roses rising up in concentric circles of steppe. Hendrix had disappeared straight into the garden, up her aromatic alley to a great amphitheatre and reflecting pool before it, with roses encompassing probably fifty yards in every direction but one, hundreds of varieties, and a mother-of-the-year walk, with names engraved on the ground recognizing the matriarchs of Oakland going back to World War II. And there were two wild turkeys I soon met, who lived unmolested there all year round, even in November. All plant and wildlife were under protective spells of Anne, the matriarch of Alta Vista, whose powers pervaded and cultivated the scene. What a refuge. Even the squirrels were fat and happy. And fountains! Cascading down at a thirty degree angle from top to bottom, and up top some benches all in a circle, where one might see couples holding hands, people relaxing, flautists and guitarists and singers, little kids chasing around up and down the bushes and vines and roses cascading just on either side of the manmade waterfall, down to the little framed brick edifice which held the latrines. There at the base of the waterfall, lay the emerald reflecting pool - which held just the right amount of afternoon light - and gave away the rest.

In repose, with his back to the rock edging the pool, was a handsome young man. As I skipped up between roses about to bloom on either side of the aisle, I found a hunger developing from within, I could not control. I mistook it at first. The young man was handsome and in the full vitality of youth. He was reading the Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley.

My body was not responding like it might at the sight of such a gorgeous man. I walked around the reflecting pool. I looked up along the steppe and followed the water back to its source with my eyes. There were a few people lying about in the sun. Reminded me of the cover art for The Houses of The Holy. My new friend Hendrix was nowhere to be seen. I imagined he climbed a tree, impossibly backwards! I continued walking past the hedges which surrounded the reflecting pool, and again my gaze fixed upon the boy. He was fully immersed in his reading, and had not seen me. The amphitheatre there was contained by a rudimentary bandshell which housed a shaded area with cork boards for upcoming events such as the 'Deadhead' community service weekend schedule, when folks could volunteer for a day beheading the dying roses. A revolutionary act, indeed! There were benches situated beneath the corkboards, looking out upon the garden. The brickwork cupped out on either side of the shell, in a semi-circle, and it was out toward the end of the granite table housing the bricks where I situated myself; hopping up and turning around to face the young man and the pool and the garden stretching out around us.

Something unnerving was happening to me. I let my eyes fall to the hedges, within which arose a pattern of dots, purple beauties intermingling on a vine and standing out against the hunter green leaves. These were the Aster X Frikartii. A purple flower with a golden globe at its center. These colors banded together appealed to my nature, and I found solace against the change which was overtaking my body and sending wild ideas into my mind! The sun was out, the cotton was floating, the day was calm and quiet, and still no sight of Hendrix. I was kicking my legs out and letting my heels fall into the brickwork, as I sat there supporting my back by my arms. Palms planted on the edge of the table. A fat and cheerful squirrel came down a nearby pine and brought his flickering tail to within a few feet of me. He was talking to me with his tail, and I looked at him intently and saw he wanted to be friends. I put my hand out to him. Then suddenly he pushed off and away quickly, scared, like he had seen a ghost. I looked back to the pool, and the emerald color was a brilliant green. Again discomfort inside me. I was fighting for control over my instincts. The sky which had been blue began to grow darker around me, and the Asters grew bolder against it. The whole garden was fallen into twilight under some dark cloud. But there was no particular giant cloud to be found in the sky? Just wisps of cotton. My focus opened up past the asters and the hedges, to the young man in his polo shirt and jeans. I realized then that I could study his thoughts, and that his thoughts were materializing as affect inside him, and coursing through him was a river of existential angst! Couched in the bright and encouraging quotes of all the great and spiritual leaders and saints the world had ever known.

As the sky grew darker, and the grasses and waters and Asters became bolder in contrast, I became hopelessly transfixed upon the young man whom I now saw as little more than an extension of the waters, his body a vessel up against a wave machine of fears generated inside him, as a reaction to the book he was reading. And strange as this may sound, I found myself like a child in the summer seeing the shore for the first time, and running across the beach towards the tremendous foaming surf! Declared for immersion. Without a second thought! I was no longer sitting on the stone table, rather the stone table was supporting my weight. And the scene was no longer pastoral, or anything out of Jane Austen's body of work. No, it was now a Van Gogh. Or a Capote. Or a Dali. Or a Garcia Marquez. Surreal.

I could no longer fight the feeling and rose to my feet. I was light, I was strong. I walked through the hedges to the boy, and placed one hand on his head. I looked up to the sun, a bold orange in a purple sky, and saw myself from above, and there we were beside the reflecting pool; and there were the Asters, shining stars all around us; there we were embedded in a moat of one hundred thousand roses like a wreath all around us! And the current of Fear began its transduction into the sustaining lifeblood coursing into me, out of the boy and into me, _my God what a rush!_ The entire steppe seemed to be moving, circulating around us, the emerald pool at the center. Turning like a solar system.

The last thing I saw was the boy convulsing beneath me. The book fell to the ground, the pages of the philosophy flapping in the air circulating warmth all around us. I blacked out. And when I awoke, moments later, I was being accosted! Pinned down by a gardener who had rushed to the aid of the young man, along with others who slowly became aware of something terrible happening down where the silver waters cascaded. They all jumped upon me and wrestled me to the ground, and I was strained by my neck, the grass burning my face, and my arms were twisted up behind me and too much pressure of a man twice my size all upon me and angry, yelling for someone to call the police. I could not see the boy, for there were people all around him. I was worried for him, I really was. What terrible thing had I done? My heart was pounding and my head was clear, and I was glowing with the charge. I began to smile against the pain. But I could not move and the pressure only became stronger. I believe my organs were getting mashed! I was trying to speak but I could no longer breathe. The man was twice as strong with his anger behind him. And because I was not able to answer his questions _Who are you? What have you done?_ He was becoming increasingly resentful and forcing me, pushing me into the earth. Distressing the C4 in my spine. Bullying me! What the hell just happened? I wondered. My mind was racing with Asters commingling in my synapses, and drawing away any negative thoughts as they were seeding. The only electrocommunications carried across my CNS like a bullet train through my body, gathered into a sea of euphoria and calm.

Still, my body was helplessly pinned. I centered my heart and vision upon my friends, Freddy, my sister Bless, and opened up a line of nonlocal touch, which very quickly was telegraphed to them; and they both stopped what they were doing, Freddy dropped his tools beneath a car in West Oakland, Bless rolled off of Everett in bed. They pinpointed my GPS with their skills, cell phone free, and rushed to help me. Freddy skidded off the Grand Lake exit and blew a red light dangerously merging onto Grand Avenue, and rolling down past the Theatre and its political Marquee: _See the Forest for the Trees! No more Bushes!_

Freddy found me at a pair of Jeans. Bless had made it to the front door half-dressed, with the keys to Rett's pickup in her hand, when he grabbed her and pulled her back. They were both hot and perspiring. She demanded he let her go, but he was laughing in her ear, and kissing her all over and running his arms around her waist while she squirmed to get free. "Get the hell off me, Rett! I gotta go!" She could not cut loose from him, however, and he took her body right there, throwing her on the couch. She howled. I could hear her in my head, and I could feel him stabbing inside her, too. I howled at the grass which backed down to the force of my breath. This was the last exhalation before I lost consciousness again.

## -XXIV-

This dark art I just learned left me speechless. These teflon-coated hearts gave us valence to recharge. Our energy, restored by alchemical means. The humans we bloodlet could carry on without the cursed Fear, an incident forgotten. Only a dream perhaps, or a nightmare in the mind. A vivid hallucination they might shake off as impossible. The ones who witnessed? Well, technically all they saw was a seizure. Humans and their repetitive, worrying nature might need a little dusting off to shine. Extricating the Fear was a win-win. We got our nourishment, and they had a chance to be fearless for a minute. Back to their lives with presence, toward the future. While we patched ourselves out of the equation, seamlessly, like biodegradable suture.

I woke up in the back of Freddy's shed, my whole being ignited in flawless blue flame. The Queen of hearts. Once I realized where I was and saw Freddy and Bless talking by the open doors, where shadow drew a heavy line with the sunlight, love filled my heart. Somebody cared about me! I was home. Bless danced me into the street. "You did it, girl, guess who's not a virgin anymore!" Freddy's eyes glowed surreal beneath the cars. They were proud of me. I wasn't sure if I was proud of myself, but at least I felt loved. The valence sang a thick current of sweet energy bouncing in and out my pores. I became half a blur, with no edges to see. Just like that man, Hendrix. The apparitional quality. I could see through myself like a time lapse exposure. I glowed like a star in its infinite bright shining.

"What about the boy?" I asked them, " Is he okay?"

"Okay?" Bless answered excitedly, inserting herself in my face, "He's better than okay. You cured his ass. Pretty boy. Hahaha."

"Oh. I thought I killed him."

"You killed _it_ " Freddy replied, and started to rumble with laughter.

The comedy was alarming.

How could I have lived life so long without awakening? I know now what sustains us. Closing in on the Fear these hearts are always pumping. Turning them half blue to pump such toxins through the bloodstream. I could now see through their poor eyes the poverty of spirit it inflicted. _What needless suffering!_ To have as one's concern 24/7 these little problems and worries mounting and not surmount them at all, but rather magnify and analyze and ultimately amplify and replicate the whole nasty thought pattern into one big ball of tepid neurosis; which then lodged itself rather permanently between the shoulder blades, only to become in time a cancer, ravaging body and mind, left the spirit flagging and lagging about it like a broom in the desert trying to sweep away the sand. _All too late!_ For the malignancy has grown to the size of a mountain, and now shadows and chokes off all life.

I was eating a bowl of fried rice with Bless, at a little hole in the wall Chinese take-out, when she came up behind me and dropped an amulet on a black cord around my neck. She said she had been saving it for this moment. She said it would protect me. I pitched my chopsticks into the bed of rice so I could inspect it in the palm of my hand. The carving was a scarab set in sterling silver. My stepmom had taught me this was the Egyptian symbol for rebirth. Bless told me to rub the scarab's curved back if I was in trouble. I held it in my palm. Carved from nephrite, she said. Smooth and waxy to the touch. I turned and kissed her on the lips. She smiled and we embraced.

## -XXV-

I reflected often upon my _first kill_ as they say. I thought about Anne, Hendrix, and the boy whose Fear I subtracted in the secret garden away from the city, her atrocities and exhilarations, her toxins, searching myself for the answer to certain complexities of my life. The hunger which struck me as I approached the boy, bothered me most. Being overpowered by the craving. In my mind I saw life boiled down to simplicity. But my thoughts were not my experience. Hadn't I acted outside of my intentions and choices? Hadn't I been under the spell of this hunger? Was the violence it perpetrated, my inheritance, too? These thoughts disturbed me. Bless said many of them do not survive our subtle interventions. Especially those who fully identify with the Fear.

"Without Fear, who are they?" She asked rhetorically, "They cease to be!"

"So what if the boy had died in the process?" I asked.

"So what?"

"That would make me a _murderer_! A killer!"

She looked at me, perplexed. "I guess, if you wanna look at it that way."

She shrugged her shoulders.

I could tell she thought I was a drama queen.

Unbelievable! Dare I accuse my own sister of callousness? Well, she could follow my thoughts and by the way she went quiet, I could tell I hurt her feelings. So then she had not a callous heart? Could both states exist, like flip sides of a coin? Here is where I realized on a deeper level our own true nature, Delux _,_ and our helplessness to it. Nothing could be done about this craving for the Fear! Surely I might steel my will against misdeeds, but to follow a course against one's own nature was to steer into the wind and end up in irons - or capsized! The salve was faith. This violence could only be accepted as a means to a greater good. The eradication of fear initiative. Similar battles were ongoing in scientific communities, were they not? Chemists and biologists and doctors were working together to kill off cancer. Chemotherapy and radiation were nothing, if not violent. Many lives were lost to the toxicity, and many were saved. The processes were aligned with the best of intentions.

Coming to this conclusion at this moment in time, I could not only feel the light clarify as I took each deep breath of the aromatic dream, but also see how I might - like the reflecting pond in the amphitheatre of roses - take only some and give away the rest of that refracted light out to the corners of the earth where it was most needed. The darkest places among the shadowed eternities of East and West Oakland.

## -XXVI-

Days I headed into a land of six million villains with a prayer on my lips dripping off my clasped hands and fingertips. Just down the steppe of gardens on the hill above Piedmont Avenue, past the Art Tree and the Issues magazine store, down to Moss Avenue which fed into MacArthur, up to Lakeview Cemetery. On Broadway, Art's Crab Shack infused the air with more pink neon lighting your way to Temescal, an up-and-coming district of Oakland where a parade of restaurateurs continue to defect from San Francisco for the cheaper real estate along Telegraph.

The point on the map where MacArthur met Telegraph was the heart of West Oakland and the deepest darkness, and what I considered the gateway to six million villains. The West Oakland neighborhoods in the 20's, 30's, and 40's -- aka Ghost Town, Dogtown and The Lower Bottoms, respectively. All pushed west toward the Port. I always put on my stunners here, so no one could see my eyes. You could enter the dragon by way of Pill Hill, just up from auto row, Broadway, where the gold diggers kicked tires and counted spokes. They would sell you some cracked up piece of pavement or the Brooklyn Bridge, for the cash in your pocket or your bank account to burn.

Through this dark land, malafide currents ran. But I wasn't alone. Hendrix often materialized out of nowhere to accompany me. I waited to see what hand he would show. One-eyed jack, a deuce, and nowhere to go. We moved across space as water flow, all smiles and no edges at all, up over the highway into the trappings of wealth, the dripping materialism under which we went stealth. The soap opera me-tv crowd were sitting ducks in their homes, having found blunted means to bypass the heart with artificial light through the eyes. We could prey on the Fear that contained them, our methods camouflaged by the analog audio-visual of the tubes. The terror would have killed them anyway, Bless told me. So their minds made us imaginary. Now the hearts we could steal. With a focus of hand swept over the chest. The colors get scrambled and the beat, we arrest. Then we pull the hearts softly with influence kinetic. Then massage them perpetual with our strange energetic. Wrap them in teflon, warm to the touch. And walk out the front door. _Thank you very much_.

## -XXVII-

I found my fresh punk boy, Maze, from the legendary fight at Uma's apartment. He was sitting there at the bottom of Pill Hill in his patched black jeans and Chucks, enjoying his salsa verde, curbside, by the taco truck which often parked in front of the Grocery Outlet. You could wash down killer burritos with Mexican Coke and construction workers. Real sugar and glass went scarce when _N.A.F.T.A._ took it south of the border. The Outsource Slave Labor For Meagre Wages Agreement. U.S. soda conglomerates packed up their operations and relocated, to prop up their already thick bottom lines on the balance sheet. Americans were left with high-fructose corn syrup and soda water bottled in poisonous, plastic, cancer-by-the-sun containers, and only corner stores in the bodegas stocked the original glassed sugar and soda water with the unaccosted carcinogen of all these years, caramel color.

I was amused. Jack had been pushed down Pill Hill, by Jill. He didn't recognize me at first, but when I pushed my stunners up to my forehead and stood in front of him, he did. His eyes followed my legs up to my short shorts and said:

"Hey! Aren't you the girl who pulled that chick off of me?"

"That's me."

"Hey, thanks a lot."

"Sure. I would do it again, too."

"You live around here?"

"Kinda sorta."

He took off his sweatshirt, folded it and placed it on the curb next to him. "Here. Why don't you sit down. I'm sorry, I never got your name?"

"Ame."

"That's a nice name. Care to share my burrito with me?"

I sat down.

He put the plate on the sidewalk between us. Then took a plastic knife and began to cut off the folded end of the tortilla. I put my hand over his, "Wait, that's too much!" I guided the knife, and replaced it. I was about to pull my hand back, but he swiftly and adeptly rolled his hand over mine. We cut into the juicy occasion.

Maze introduced me to the Lower Bottoms, and did circles around me on his skateboard. If we found a lot with a nice embankment, I would stop and watch him skate it. He knew all the tricks in his head, and could execute a few. He fell down a lot. I was especially impressed by his Crossfooted Half Truckhook Impossible caught into a No-Handed 50/50, a variation on the Broken Fingers - without hands so you won't break any!

We became more than friends, pretty quickly. The first time we hooked up, in his apartment, we _came_ together. The synchronicity was exceptional. To call him my _Lower Bottoms Booty Call_ would not do us any justice! More like my _Lost Boy_. We both were kinda lost in the world, and we roamed together days and nights when we did not want to be alone. Better to roam together. Safer. Less likely to be singled out on the streets. Less likely to be taken off of planet earth by a BART cop, like Oscar Grant on that sad new year's day the city should never be allowed to forget.

Maze knew the stretch of land west past MLK and San Pablo and the Greyhound Bus Terminal where all the orphans hung out begging a ticket to Portland, Oregon -- Transient Central Station. The sociopaths stopped up there on their way to pay homage to the Green River Killer, and maybe stay for lunch. Portland was dreary enough, meteorologically, so why go any further? Nevertheless, no one at the filthy Greyhound terminal there under the highway at the sad encumbered gateway to downtown Oakland - via Ray Peretti's sign shop and the social security office hanging food stamp and Medi-Cal lines out like legs - was gonna get a free ticket to anywhere unless they knew how to juggle stray cats lying down, or had a bindle of some dope to exchange for one, or were willing to soften a Greyhound bus seat on their back; as a means to get patched in by an terminal service worker on break, feeling frisky.

Absolutely nothing was ever free in this part of Oakland, but you _yourself_ might be expected to cost nothing. Which is why when roaming I never stopped there, no, I avoided it like the plague, that underpass, to beg off pushing daisies too soon. We roamed right by that bitch of a locale, me and my ice cream sandwich-loving, antisocial boy friend. Down past the Arco where all the diesel trucks in the area stopped to fill up off the highway, amidst gangbangers and wannabe gangbangers on BMX bikes and stolen ten-speeds they would barter out from under them in a hot second for a pair of dimes, black or white or green.

Across from the Arco, a brief angle of road went up to a head shop on the corner, which was currently being run by the boyfriend of a hooker, cause the owner (one of her johns) had been outlawed from even entering his own store while an investigation was underway, after they had found a weed growing and selling operation going on behind the front business, which was mostly tobacco papers and pipes, bubbles (aka methamphetamine delivery systems), and the ever so popular little plastic baggies half of everyone in that neighborhood needed to package their product.

At any of a number of corner stores, my new boyfriend would practice the art of dipping one's arms down into the frozen confectionary freezers, which were usually quite visibly placed just before the counter, and pulling ice cream up into the sleeves of his jacket surreptitiously. I would be outside sitting on the curb waiting, scratching scratchers, when he would either come out on his own accord or - with some momentary but great and vocal disturbance - get thrown out to the curb by the proprietor. The ice cream he did steal would be there to cushion his fall, sandwiched between arms and jacket. The art was an art and would never be a science.

He got banned up and down the streets of Dogtown and the Lower Bottoms, out toward De Fremery park as the bullets fly, and north up Adeline to the Save Mart. I couldn't tell if he was a sugar addict or an adrenaline junkie. Even if he had the cash to buy, he stole! And however many he got away with from any chosen store, he wouldn't give me one unless he had four or five for himself.

We went entire days subsisting on ice cream sandwiches alone. There were times where he was outlawed from all the corner stores in the general area, and these were times I usually made myself scarce. Cause he could be an irritable bitch of a young man around the clock. Waiting for some mom or some pop to tell him to get ghost or not. And he had a short fuse. I think he was born that way.

The high twenties of the Lower Bottoms, is where I often found myself. Watching buses go by. There were some boarding houses in the area, and lots of foot traffic. I sat on the bench in front of a small laundromat run by a real nice lady who befriended me. I would talk to people, or listen. Or sit there and absorb the whole scene: ethnically diverse, with a slight Caribbean lean. Funeral homes, fast food spots, and fronts. Just at the base of the Hospital, on the other side of Pill Hill. Didn't matter what time of day, there was always something brewing here. You could find work, get laid, get robbed, do your laundry, purchase something on the black market, bury your friends, make new enemies, barter pills, shoot up, nod off, fall down, get up, whatever. A pyschedelicatessin. A real home for the kind of freedoms our founding fathers sat over their feather quills and inkwells and paper pulp to write up for the generations to come.

## -XXVIII-

Bless, Freddy and I, we worked ourselves into a frenzy one day, trying to get a '54 Chevy off the road before it got towed. He had us help him with tools under the car, running to the AutoZone for parts, and searching for things in the shed. When he finally fired her up after a jump, we all cheered. Afterwards we were anchored to the old couches in Bless' living room. Her old man was gone, but he came back booming into the house, slamming doors and drawers and cabinets, screaming.

"Where the fuck is it?" He was looking for his dope.

Bless and I both bolted up. Freddy was unaffected.

"What in the hell is the matter with you, coming in here like that, you old goat?" Bless shouted back at him. The old goat started searching the cupboard in the pantry.

Bless kept on: "Me and my friends we were trying to suck on some perfect silence, before you came in and dropped your _monster_."

"Ouch!" I said, mostly to myself.

Freddy's eyes were open, but he let the lids down half-mast, because he knew what we were about to see would not be pretty. No one else spoke in the room for about a minute. I could hear only drawers and cabinets opening and closing. Then a tapping of the monster's fingers on the kitchen counter, and the sound getting louder as the place got quieter. Bless was trying to ignore him, and Freddy was still. I was feeling slightly nervous by the tension all around, and the tapping lodged into my brain like a _Ren and Stimpy_ episode.

"Do you think you could go away, already?"

No sooner had the words left her mouth, Everett said something terrible under his breath, then rushed her!

Another couch fight.

She slid out from under him, cursing him out, and backed into me. I put a hand on her shoulder. She was tense. Locked into battle. She looked back at me for a wide-eyed second. Her face was angry but her eyes were flecked with hurt.

He came at her again.

I yelled "Hey! Don't! _"_ but it was too late.

He grabbed her and twisted her arm behind her back to subdue her. Though she was trying to get some leverage with her other arm, I watched it fold and get crushed beneath her. She had her chin up off the wood floor and was growling a bit. He twisted harder, said nothing, and she dropped her head down sideways on the floor, in pain.

"Bitch!" she screamed, "Get off of me!"

He was holding her there firm, undeterred by her insults.

She bit his arm. He pulled away.

I grabbed my legs up on the couch and was scrunching my knees into my ribs hard, hurting myself. I started chewing on my fingers. Why didn't I do anything? Because Freddy forbade me. He told me - telepathically - there would be nothing we could do with these two, not right now. This was a patterned madness, and all that ferocity would be turned on anyone who interfered. The energy in the room was convoluted.

Freddy stood up. He wanted me out of there. He knew I could not stand aside and watch. He offered his hand, and helped me up. Bless escaped and ran into the kitchen. I touched into her thoughts, to see what she wanted me to do? And she gave me a clear signal: she was strong and could work her way out by herself. Not to worry. We all had the metaphysical capability beyond bodies. So the size and strength of a person was not so dangerous to us. But Everett was one of us. Who had the edge of subtle senses could not be predicted. Both at the moment exerting influence.

Freddy pulled me out the front door with him. I could not resist the calm waves of our connection, against my desire to turn back and puncture a lung with some great concentration.

## -XXIX-

Freddy took me for a long ride on his Harley.

I began to cool off. Holding on turned into hugging him.

He sometimes put a hand on my thigh, for reassurance.

He took me to San Francisco.

We went to a lingerie store not far from skid row. He wanted to distract me with retail therapy. He knew I had a new boyfriend and was happy for me. He smiled when I told him it was Maze. "No shit?" he said, "That wild kid? Well, good for you. I'm sure he's met his match."

He waited in a embroidered velvet armchair in the Secrets store on Market Street, while I tried on a few silky possibilities. He was patient. I decided to come out and strike a pose for him, once or twice. Not a secret anymore.

Freddy was not any danger to me. I knew a predator from a real man. Not too hard to decipher. Voyeurs are one thing. Most men are not afraid to admit or showcase their voyeurism in public in this country: at the cafes and the clubs, the after parties, the pre parties, in line at the grocery store, while smoking, walking, running, driving, while doing business, recreationally, poolside, on the beach, in the mountains, in the valleys, at the theatre, the campsite, the library, the classroom, and oh -- the most opportune place of all -- the yoga studio. Doing a cat when you're doing a cow, upward of your downward dog, sun salutations except you are their sun.

Vinyasa Voyeur

Ashtanga Flow

Eyes so full from watching

They glow

I did not forget about my sister, but I knew she would communicate if she really needed me. Freddy was tossing some secrets he found, over the dressing room door. I found a couple pairs that fit my body perfect. My androgynous figure made clothes shopping easy, because the models were usually androgynous, too. Some men needed serious dimension attention. But not Maze. He was taken by my figure. I had no dimensions to mention, and he didn't care.

## -XXX-

You cannot believe the action on the street at night! East Oakland. Players doing donuts from the 30's on up. International past the 80's is a mother of a war zone! Stiletto city. A scene out of Taxi Driver. Crazy! The West Coast Spanish Harlem. And a sight for sore eyes. I avoided the streets in the east. Too much concentration of our blood in one area meant trouble for sure.

I nominated Freddy for President. I was his Hot Ticket VP. We were going to the VIP lounge for sure. Leaded glass suspended in air. Strobe light snapshots. Vodka rain, between double panes. Genuine rawhide sofas and armchairs for two. Ya. Freddy and I could fit into one for sure. His soles and my heels on the polished, knotty, pine wood floor. I got the lingerie on beneath my leather and denims, for my boy. Sorry Freddy.

The darkness offsets the light. His eyes glow with great color front differential. He loves me. And not that way. And this is so sweet to me now, here in my new life created by him and by design of the divine. Everyone gettin' busy in the VIP late, late, later. We are getting busy, too, with dreams and visions. How to take over the world and not by accident. Relaxed in the comfort of a world that is all ours, what a difference.

Anyone with the Fear, well, we could pray for them like we prayed for our own extant kin. And celebrate the status quo. Without fear, there could be no fearless. Darkness offsets the light. No need for a war of attrition. Such an affair would be self-destructive at best. Civil wars and culture cleansings were disgraceful! Darkness and light need to co-exist. Commingle. Interplay. The ecosystem was exactly the way it ought to be. Sure is easy speaking from the top of the food chain, but our position did not undermine our appreciation for and love of the system.

## -XXXI-

I got a feeling something was wrong, about two or three am. Bless was calling for me. We didn't need cell phones. She was lighting up my cells, all right, and I got up immediately. Freddy let me borrow the van, no questions asked. There was a brunette across the way, just itching to take my spot. I turned my head so fast, she didn't have time to turn away. She blushed, but I stepped over to her and looked her up and down. Not one of us, but she would do. I asked her what she drank. She said _Cosmo_. I told the bartender to bring her one, from where I stood. Then I got the keys and took an open air elevator down to the dancefloor. All the girls and guys let off a giant exhalation, as they pulsed to the music. Some dude with eyes bigger than his face came over like he was gonna touch me. I pushed a toe swiftly into his abdomen, then danced my leg up past the perpendicular until my heel caught him under the chin. _Did you need something?_ He was standing like someone too proud. _Maybe a little ego deflation._ I brought my foot back down, and his jaw dropped after it. Nine Inch Nails was on deck, I could feel it before they could. Mostly humans here, but there were some who fell not far from our tree. I looked up and saw at least twenty Cryptids folded in the shadows of the upper level, lurking around the dance floor. I could barely make out the bloodlust half-smiles. Then came Reznor's wonderful refrain:

"Bow down before the one you serve!

You're going to get what you deserve!"

A sweep of lights synced in with the music at that time, tried but failed to capture me as I stole at superhuman speed through the seemingly frozen bodies backed up toward the entrance, in a crooked line to the gates and out into the streets. The dancing swelled with a fervor. The sweetest thing about a club that size is that truth is always presumed stranger than fiction, so almost all the rules can be broken. Everyone needs some shelter from the rules. The girl was already on her second Cosmo, courtesy of Freddy, who wanted nothing more than to loosen her up. He shot me a sweet sentiment through the telepath as I fired up the van... _be careful, boo._

## -XXXII-

Rett was working her over, when I stole into the room and rushed him. He barely had time to react. I barrelled into him head first, and he threw an elbow at me, just as my head slammed into his back! Bless sank down against the wall. She had bruises on her arms and face. Her blouse was torn in a couple places. Her eyes were watering, and she was grimacing in pain. I had been knocked to the side, but still made contact, which freed her from him.

He spun around as I went crashing with my momentum into a photograph of the two of them on a coffee table, and a lamp short-circuited as it hit the floor. I fell to the floor, keeping my eyes on my sister, my temperature steadily rising as I saw what he had done. I jumped to my feet but was too late. He smacked me down. I hit my head on the floor.

Back in the club at that very moment Freddy's lips suffered a tremble, as he felt my energy short-circuit for a second, so much that he jumped up from the armchair causing the girl to spill her fourth Cosmo all over herself. She screamed and was left screaming while Very Unimportant People gathered round her Very Unimportant Self, all in a highly unimportant scene. Freddy had exited. The wet girl became a wet t-shirt contest hosted by one, featuring one, with accompanying vocal track created, produced and delivered by one.

The clubgoers experienced a great upswing of affect from the crowd by the impact of an oak tree of a man slamming through carelessly, leaving possibly ten people laying and writhing in pain in his wake, on the dance floor. He shot through anyone between him and the gates. The place was packed. Quite a large debacle. The Cryptids saw an opening and swooped out from the shadows and down in the darkness, taking half the light show with them, and some bodies beneath bodies, in the surge and fight of relative mortals, drunk and intoxicated in the late hour.

## -XXXIII-

Before I got knocked the fuck out by enemy number one, I heard Bless shout - " _Nooo!"_ at the top of her lungs. My world went dark.

I awoke, lying on the floor. Somewhere. Something shining on either side of me, under a pale blue light that permeated everything. My head was wrapped in a towel, my body in blankets. I could not feel my forehead. I was cold. Maybe on ice, at the morgue, in a drawer in the glue factory.

Then my sense of smell informed me.

Leather, oil, tobacco.

The shed! East Oakland. The window.

The shining! All of Freddy's tools lying around me. I tried to turn my head, and felt my skull break into a thousand pieces of stabbing pain. I began to moan.

Then I felt a rush of air beside me.

A voice told me "don't move."

I was happy to acquiesce. The pain was terrific.

"I know you're in a lot of pain, boo," Freddy said in his softest, sweetest voice, "but don't you worry, I'm gonna take care of you."

"Thank God," I whispered.

He adjusted the wrap on my head, and re-adjusted my position to my liking. He offered me some Dr. Pepper and corn puffs, which were glowing orange in the pale blue light. Everything was gonna be alright. One could only hope.

Later - I know not when - I got up, then fell back down, then got up, slowly. I was pretty woozy, but I could manage. I went outside and found him working under a car, like usual. I sat down cross-legged and asked him about Bless, what had become of her? He kept on with his work, tightening something here, cranking something there, headlamp affixed to head, overalls stained with oil, eyes squinting into the automotive intestines there above him.

Finally, he got out from under the car and looked me over, "Hey! It's the heavyweight champ!"

"Ya, ya. The champ. Sure. Now what about my sister?"

"She'll be okay," he said.

"What does that mean?"

I never could understand how a man could leave matters of such significance with a comment so immaterial and nonchalant. I pressed for more. Sucking in some Dr. Pepper and polishing some chrome, Freddy told me, "I never knew Everett to go so far, _too far_. He won't go so far, never again. When I come in there and seen you on the ground knocked out, and seen Bless sitting there beside you, well, it was too much for me to take, you know. I won't never let anything happen to you." He shook his head: "Damn! He went too far. Too far."

Hearing Freddy's account of the situation, I could breathe easy. My sister was okay. Took a few days to clear my head. In the meantime Freddy took care of me anyway he knew how, lots of junk food and scratchers and simple conversations. Soon I would discover our antagonist, Everett, was deceased! Freddy had destroyed the man. His friend. He might not cry, but his heart was heavy.

I felt bad for him. I gathered up all his tools and started organizing the different sized ratchet sets, and made a home for all the orange extension cords and soldering irons and screwdrivers and car and motorcycle parts everywhere. Some could relocate either on the wall, or in one of many toolboxes, or just out of the way so there was room to walk around, and for both of us to lie down, unimpeded.

## -XXXIV-

I found myself less and less homesick. Oakland and all her twists and turns began to make a strong impression on me. Her great Port with its stark white container cranes and cats. The Cathedral of Light reflecting off Lake Merritt. Her long and wide boulevards tagged with street art. The Tribune Tower, its clock aglow in the night. The Fox and Paramount Theatres. Chinatown. Her shoreline, hills and flats. Uptown. Cemeteries and coffeehouses. Her parks and schools. Her people. Lots of energetic, friendly, creative, intelligent people.

The Green Mountains of my youth were a distant memory. The distance only grew the more I realized my true nature. Getting back in touch with my step parents was next to impossible, in my mind. I knew they loved me, and I loved them, too. But I had changed so. Come into my own. My life was no accident. I was by now aware of my origin: Delux. _Of the Light._ An ancient race of forgotten sentient beings - extraordinary humans - with extrasensory consciousness. Those who came before me had fashioned our alchemy, my inheritance, by the development of subtle senses. We meant no harm toward humanity. Our intentions were pure. Yet we were outcasted as a result of practicing our faith in plain view. Persecuted with abandon and without reason, in an age of ignorance. Obliterated to the tune of good and evil. Marked and judged and despised. Our affiliations were sought out and killed. Such was human nature.

A steady shine of superhuman potential came from within us. To carry the light, to polish and show the alchemy, caused many of us to be cut down before our prime. We only wanted to give the light to them, to share the light with them! But humans are creatures of comfort in alikeness, and by nature resist a foreign element. We were victim to their bad reaction. We wished to bridge our differences and meet them in a place of high regard and mutuality. After all, we descended from a common ancestor. Our evolutionary paths had split. But they were terrified of us!

A massacre was at hand. Our intelligentsia came together in Europe, when they realized living in harmony with the general human population was no longer viable. Something had to be done and quickly. They decided upon the migration of our people here, to the great continent known as America, within the larger exodus of peoples already taking place. Some of us remained behind by choice. To die.

Even in the new land, there was danger inherent in letting ourselves be seen. This was impressed upon me emphatically by the others. And by my experience. Even if we could benefit the human race, human nature was to despise dissimilitude! I experienced it first hand. Remember how they came to fear me? The other kids spotting me for something unique at first. My androgyny. My speed. The voices. Something they could not quite ascertain, or touch. Somewhere we could not relate. Which at first awakened respect and fascination, then turned to hatred and led to my alienation.

I unhinged the insipid Fear in them! And I found myself strangely attracted to it. _The very thing that might kill me, also gave me life_. The same process almost ended our kind, centuries ago. Unless we took precaution and went underground, and developed means to disarm them, we faced extinction. Here in the new world, America, we would disenfranchise them of the Fear. _Only in the taking!_ The taking... then transforming the ever abundant element. There was no other way to heal the divide.

## -XXXV-

Oakland was my home. My life, forever changed. The sudden and shocking happenstance - having been ripped from the womb and rushed to my kin in such violent fashion - no longer bothered me. This was the masterful stroke of our intelligentsia. To hide us out among the rising tide of humanity - our children - like flora and fauna floating in the ecosystem. To keep us unharmed. And then, before it became all too clear who we truly were, to do whatever was necessary to intervene and bring us back into the fold. Delux.

Everything was beginning to make sense. I had grown to love Freddy. He took care of me. I wanted to stay with him. He did not make excuses. Not for himself. Not for anyone. And I cared deeply for Bless. I never knew a sister, before I met her. They were both above the kind of petty, human nonsense that gets in the way of true loving kindness. Lies and excuses, all inspired by fear.

Nights were my favorite time to roam - once I realized I both desired and needed to roam. There was a restlessness in me only roaming could unravel. A preponderance of unsettling complications in my mind could only be uncomplicated by lacing up my boots, getting on my feet, grabbing the long multi-cell baton of a black flashlight, my knit cap, and steady walking out the shed, down to the corner where the corner girls I came to know solicited the prowling men out on the hunt, exchanging bittersweet glances, and down the alleyways, making my way north past Highland Hospital where Oscar Grant exhaled his final breath, up and down the small and rolling hills just south of the lake, down the final one to where the Parkway Theatre stood, where decent, common people came to watch independent films or concerts, join in activism, or just gather on the couches and lounge, get away from the corporate push of billboard-laden marketing campaigns leeching this city as any other.

Then I would pass by the bar and lounge down there just across from the grocery store and Merritt's Bakery, where I first found a place in my heart for Freddy, and exchange evil pleasantries with some sotted monster or two unwilling to go in and spend a couple bucks for a beer when they could get a half-pint of the cheapest vodka from the tobacco store next door, or Chinese no-name brand smokes, or maybe just save their money and collect snipes off the ground over the stumbling course of any chemical-driven day. The repartee left me laughing before I walked away. On to nowhere special, sometimes unaccosted, sometimes misread for a mark or a fool and got mixed up with some old jag. Eye to eye, toe to toe, I would see how far they wanted to go. And if they wanted to take it to another level, damn right I would defend myself. Maybe find their stash of the element, to satiate me.

I roamed east along the lake, past the Grand Lake Theatre, with its Bright Lights, Big City Marquee eternally etched in my strange, recent memory... how I woke up to the world painted by voices in my head all those years, with the colored neon light pissing down on me to the smell of dead leaves mixed with urine and tobacco and leather, in a van next to the total stranger who brought me here, who, in only a few months really, earned my trust and became the dearest one in my life, and whose misdeed I had forgiven. The grand theft of me was no misdeed! I was on this blood-soaked, blue-green, mystery marble for good reason. Best to disengage from existential reflection and leave the past in the past. Try and embrace all of who we are, all we have been given, and all we are becoming.

## -FIN-

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Cover design **©** Alchemy Book Covers

Cover concept by Jade Knight

https://plus.google.com/+jadeknights/photos

Photograph courtesy of Sandy Manase

My trusted beta readers:

Frank Ramon

Rich Gibney

Thank you for supporting Indie Authors!

https://plus.google.com/+KatyaMillsauthor

Please rate & review this book @

amazon.com or goodreads.com

Other K Publications...

http://www.amazon.com/Katya-Mills/e/B00F5DWHGC

Girl Without Borders (A Novel)

Apparition (A Short Story)

Coming soon...

Daughter of Darkness

Book Two

