

New Fathers

By

Xavier Kind

Smashwords Edition

*****

Published By:

Xavier Kind on Smashwords

New Fathers

Copyright © 2013 Xavier Kind

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the

hard work of this author.

*****

New Fathers

BOOK I: Asleep

1.

In late September 1989, Jacob Donal disappeared. His blue Ford Bronco was found in a campsite in Manning Park. The four doors of the Ford Bronco left wide open. A mixed tape on repeat. The music crackling, because the volume had been turned up to full and the shitty Bronco speakers had blown out. It was a disappearance as strange as the music on Jacob Donal's mixed tape (Rick Astley and George Michael and other girly shit like that).

By all appearances, it looked like Jacob Donal just got tired of living in the city... tired of living... and walked into the woods never to be seen again. No sign of foul play. The only prints in or around the car, his. The only footprints leading into the woods, his.

Jacob Donal was 25 years old. The assistant manager of the meat department at a Safeway in North Vancouver. He had a girlfriend named Sally. He played beer-league baseball and loved hockey. Generic. Normal. All's well that... His friends said he was the happiest motherfucker in the world. Loved telling jokes about Americans and drinking shitty beer. Got a little obnoxious when he had one too many shitty beers in him.

If Jacob was wearing a mask, he was the only one that knew it.

When he disappeared, his story appeared on BCTV for almost three weeks. His parents were filmed on a couch weeping. At the campsite weeping. In front of the refrigerators in the Safeway weeping. Always pleading for Jacob to return. To call them. To send them a sign. For God to send them a sign he was alright. They said they'd search night and day till they found him. They offered a ten-thousand dollar reward for information about his whereabouts. For any information. Posters went up all over the Lower Mainland. Flyers were left at rest stops along the Crowsnest Highway. In Manning Park.

Jacob Donal was never found. Just a young man who wanted to disappear. And disappear he did.

So why am I telling you about Jacob Donal?

Why should you care about this guy?

Because Jacob Donal's disappearance was strange. Not only for the fact that a seemingly normal dude just walked off the face of the Earth, but because I now know it was the first of a string of disappearances in British Columbia by men between the ages of twenty five and thirty five that has been kept very hush hush by the media and the police for more than a decade now. I know this, because I was one of these missing men. Because I met Jacob Donal nine years after he was declared dead. I met him and laughed at a joke he told me about an American hooker and a man from Winnipeg.

And then I became his friend for a short time.

"But look," Jacob would say and toss the shotgun on the ground. "I'm jumping the gun here." And then he'd jump the gun and laugh his ass off. And Jacob would be right. I am jumping the gun a bit.

So let's go back to oblivion.

Yes, oblivion.

Sometime in the mid nineties a big corporate coffee company moved into town. My town. Our town. Abbotsford, British Columbia. A little hell hole of religious excess an hour, give or take ten minutes, east of Vancouver. This coffeeshop had a deep-rooted belief that they could be my Third Place. They were in Abbotsford for God's Sake. Belief was an easy thing to sell. And they wanted me to believe that my time away from home (my first place) and my time away from work (my second place) could be spent with them, sipping their coffees, sitting at their tables, listening to their baristas shouting words we all know, but words many of us who aren't coffee baristas have trouble speaking.

Our coffeeshop was not the spawn of a big corporation, but it was our Third Place. And as our teeth stained brown and our hearts began to pump coffee over blood, our little coffeeshop also became our Second and our First Place. My parents may as well have been the owner and the employees of The Meanest Bean. Karl and his people fed me. They put a roof over my head. They instilled rules that guided me through my everyday life. My happiness derived from them... from the tasty, brown liquid in the mug that was always in front of me. When I pushed open the door of The Meanest Bean and I heard that bell ring above me, I knew I was home.

We did not work. We watched life pass by as we sat in the worn plastic chairs that littered the patio outside The Meanest Bean. Sometimes we sat for hours. Sometimes for whole days. We said things like, "We'd like to get involved" but somehow it was easier just to sit at the fringe of life and observe it. And critique it. There were three of us there, slowly committing suicide. Our guts rotting away from our excessive ingestion of caffeine, cigarette smoke and blueberry scones.

"Me thinks me needs another mug of java so I may quench my thirst. I shall return."

Another mug of coffee and another half hour to talk about our greatest achievements in life, all of which happened during our five years in high school. Five years ago. Another half hour to talk about our future plans. Those ones we never got any closer to starting. And another half hour to talk about all the girls (from our past, in our present, and in the future) we'd like to fuck.

I looked behind their bloodshot eyeballs and I saw emptiness similar to the emptiness in the coffee mugs in front of us. It was emptiness stained with the dirty colours of regret, remorse and lack of effort. As I sat there watching them, on a day no different than any day in the past six months, I suddenly realized my greatest fear. I had become what I said I never would. I had become one of them.

"Another cup, eh? What says you dig through that thick, greedy-assed skin of yours and find it in your heart to bring me back another cup as well?"

""Hey man, UI isn't paying me to support your addictions. It's paying me to support my own. And to get a wicked tan at that. So why don't you get off of your lazy ass, pull out that twenty your mom gives you every day and buy your own damn coffee."

Every day the stories changed. Every day the memory of the moment was different from the memory of the moment from the day before: the name of the girl, the year it happened, the amount of time it took. It was funny that the three pathetic boy-men huddled around a stinking ashtray, sipping on cold coffee, were the three things that never changed.

The two of them stood up. One of them opened the coffeeshop door, but I don't know which one, because I wasn't looking. I was trying too hard not to gag. The stagnant ocean of cologne on their clothes and in the pores of their skin mixed with the smell of roasting coffee beans inside The Meanest Bean had thrown my stomach into a series of loop de loops.

Only when the door was closed and I was left with the smell of smoked cigarettes and the cow manure that hung in the Abbotsford air twenty-four seven, did I look at them. Through The Meanest Bean stencil on the window, my view framed by the top circle of the B in Bean, I watched them flirt with Amy. The poor girl had only worked four or five shifts at The Meanest Bean. I wondered if she knew their intentions. I wondered what she would say if she knew they went home most nights after The Meanest Bean closed and they spanked it to porn on the Internet. What would she say?

I ran my index finger around a coffee halo stained onto the table. I circled it eighty times and they were still in there chatting up Amy.

White chairs and white tables. I wondered how someone running a coffeeshop could think white was a good idea for us dirty, outside people. Outside and inside. There were two types of people who inhabited the Earth.

Inside People and Outside People.

Inside People drove BMWs and new Honda Accords. They played racquetball and smoked cigars on special occasions. They had three kids or talked about having three kids. And they all knew somebody who knew somebody who had the right connections to land them that cushy job that gave them the gall to sanction off part of their paycheck for a daily five-dollar decaffeinated, skinny, hazelnut café latte.

Outside People -- my adopted people \-- drove pick-up trucks and rebuilt Volkswagons. They drank coffee, and coffee only, and one of their big goals in life was to weasel free refills from whatever coffeeshop they happened to be at. Whenever possible. They smoked more than a dry forest struck by lightening in the middle of a summer heat wave, and they rambled on and on about schemes they were concocting to make themselves rich. And no outside person would ever tell another that these crazy schemes were impossible to do if all they ever did was talk about them. Outside people drifted from one laborious, minimum-wage job to the next, or if they were lucky, they succeeded somehow in getting Unemployment Insurance. The definition of romance for an outside person was pizza, a Jackie Chan movie and a blowjob.

So there I sat, at a coffeeshop, buying coffee with money my mother had "lent" me, stereotyping people I didn't know into categories I had made up. "You have such a creative mind," my mother would say. "Put it to use. Write a book or something." I guess what it really came down to was those who embraced the warmth inside were doers, while those of us who huddled around our warm mugs and lighters on the outside were dreamers. What made me such a judge of the people carrying on their happy lives around me? What made me so goddamned bitter?

Everybody has a back story. I was never really a fan of the back story. All those mundane events and facts from a character's past laid out so you can more readily accept their actions and reactions. Nope. Not for me. The fact that the gunman came from a broken family and was shunned by the only woman he ever loved didn't interest me one bit. All I cared about was how much blood splattered against the wall when he filled his targets full of bullets. But I will share my back story with you so you can understand in some small way why I ended up at that coffeeshop cursing my life and why I allegedly did what I did in the weeks following. I will share my back story so you can judge me.

It is only fair.

My life had become routine at that point. But what lead me to routine was a past filled with deception, rejection, irresponsibility and frivolous sex.

I was famous once for falling off of a British Columbia ferry. I was Canada's baby Jessica. The well I happened to fall into was the Juan de Fuca Strait. I didn't know this until my grade-one teacher Miss Moxley said to me on my very first day of elementary school, "Aren't you that little boy that was thrown off the ferry?" So 'fell' and 'thrown' are totally different words, but the fact remains, one minute I was on the upper deck of the Queen of Saanich, gurgling away like babies do, and the next minute I was bobbing up and down in the Pacific Ocean. I don't remember the coldness of the water. I don't remember the passengers crowding the two passenger decks after they heard my mother screaming. I don't remember anything from that day or from the months that followed. My childhood and teen-years memories of the 'incident' and the fallout were formed from quarter stories and half truths told by uncomfortable parents.

Most of the story, however, was there to be found if I looked for it hard enough. And I wasn't looking in the direction of my mother and father. When I went to college to be a journalist, I used my newly acquired skills to investigate the ferry 'incident.' And what I found on microfiche deep in the bowels of the Vancouver Public Library was what I had expected. An unsettling mess. My mother was charged with attempted murder. They said she threw me over. Threw. Me. Over. She even spent a week in jail. The charges were only dropped when a lawyer named Amos Strain (for real) proved that she had slipped on some ice and lost her grip on me.

An accident. That's all it was.

I tried bringing up the 'accident' with her. I tried to get some sort of explanation from her mouth, but I would get nothing. It was a time of great darkness, she would say. To relive it would be too devastating. So I let it go.

I graduated from college... from three years of intense study, devotion and college sex, and I returned home with a little piece of paper that said I was a Journalist. And I did it all while my father's health deteriorated. When I left for school, he was a tower of a man, strong in physique and in opinion. When I returned home he barely spoke a word. He was fifty pounds lighter and he was on a diet of pills and liquids for ailments I was too afraid to ask him about. I was all set to find the job of my dreams and move myself to wherever that dream was taking place. Start small, they always told me. Start small and finish big. I wanted to replace Stone Phillips. I wanted to report on wars abroad and end my pieces with, "Ryan Paul, NBC News" or what have you. But the rejections came quick. And there were plenty of them. Hell, I was even given the big "Fuck You" by a newspaper in the Yukon. After three months of job hunting and thirty-three rejection letters spanning all the Canadian provinces and seven U.S. states, I gave up. I turned to cleaning my parents house every other day. I vacuumed. I disinfected the toilets my thirteen-year-old brother still insisted on pissing all over. I washed floors and I washed cars and I mowed lawns for that feeling of contribution... so I wouldn't fall into a deep depression I knew was sitting peacefully on my shoulder waiting for that split second I started to believe my life was worthless.

While I was at college my brother learned to be sarcastic and cynical. He gained an ability to degrade me worse than I could ever degrade myself. I drank so much coffee that I got headaches when I went without it for even a couple of hours. I hadn't had sex in more than a year. And I was suffering, without really knowing it, from the culture shock of being back among certain people I once thought I had seen the last of.

The door to The Meanest Bean swung open.

"Man, would I like to bend her over a table and fuck her five ways from Friday," Fraser Janzen said and reclaimed his seat across the table from me.

"What the fuck does that even mean?" I asked.

"Don't really know. Some dude in a porno I once saw said it. Thought it had a bit of a nice ring to it. Five ways from Friday. Hey college boy, isn't that alliteration?"

Fraser and I became friends while sleeping through grade ten. To be more accurate, I befriended a group of slackers that revolved around Fraser. We weren't the popular group and we weren't the group of misfits in the chess club or banging their heads to Pantera in the smoke pit. We were somewhere in the middle of all these groups. Inbetweeners. There were eight guys and four girls in the group and our mission in life was to be as cruel as we possibly could be to our bodies and to have the best possible time while doing it. On weekends. On school nights. It didn't matter. We filled our bodies full of beer and vodka and tequila and whatever else we could get our hands on. If one of us got lucky and scored some weed or some acid, our night got that much better. We called this period The Time of Experimentation. At that age consequences were nothing more than urban legends. Living in such a small city, cocaine and heroine only existed in movies and the bowling alley could stave off boredom for only so long. We knew how it worked. We'd run around terrorizing the city and ourselves and the adults would pass it off as "that teenage phase." But Fraser never grew out of that phase. Five years after graduating high school he had yet to live on his own. He had one job in his entire life cutting down trees, or something like that, up north, which allowed him to live comfortable off of unemployment insurance ever since. And like me, every night Fraser could be found up at The Meanest Bean sipping on a cup of coffee, smoking an unfiltered cigarette.

"What's Todd still doing in there?" I asked, not really caring if an answer was given.

"He's still loading that shit up, man. You know how that bitch is with his coffee."

Todd Phillips, another player from The Time of Experimentation and Fraser Jansen's right-hand man, stood at the condiment stand pouring sugar into his coffee. As the seconds passed and the white, rocky avalanche of sweetness continued to flow from the jar, my teeth began to hurt.

"He must count to five, eh?" I said. "You know, he must time the amount of sugar he puts into his coffee."

"I don't know. But I'm sure that's part of the reason his teeth look like a bunch of rotten corn on an old-assed cob."

"Hey, two highs in one go. Guess we can't complain about that, can we?"

"Amen, sister. Amen."

Coffee was my addiction. The drugs were long gone (mostly because I was too lazy to hunt them down) and I barely touched alcohol, because I couldn't afford it. Caffeine was my heroine. A poor man's heroine. It was the shit that kept me from jamming a gun down my throat and pulling the trigger. Yes, it was coffee pumping through my veins. If you pricked me and emptied me into a mug, the dark brown liquid that had come out of me would smell roasted and earthy. It would steam mist-like over the rim of that mug. There was something comforting and safe about sitting outdoors sipping on a mug of coffee. When it flowed down my throat and spread itself through my body, I always had an overwhelming sense of peace. Life without coffee would not be life.

When Todd opened the door to The Meanest Bean, the bell above it rang. I thought of angels. I thought of Heaven. I wondered if they drank coffee up there. I wondered if all the angels gathered at a local coffeeshop, ordered up vanilla lattes (decaffeinated, of course) and talked about the appearances they had made that day. Talked about all the lives they had touched down here on Earth. Todd returned to the seat that had been his throne for the three hours prior.

Fraser removed the cigarette from his lips and said to Todd, "She's so sweet, eh?" He let out a "Hooey" and snubbed out the cherry on his smoke with his thumb and index finger. The feat never got old with me. "I need to keep the rest of this for later when my thoughts finish running their course. You know what I mean, boys? You know what I mean?"

Todd took a sip of his sugar and nodded his head like his thoughts were running the same course.

"That girl couldn't be older than seventeen," I said in a fatherly manner. "Seriously, that 'two legs, two tits, it will be fucked' philosophy of yours is going to get the two of you in a lot of shit one day."

Todd pulled out his pack of smokes, tapped one into his palm, spun it around his fingers like a drummer spins his drumstick, and lit it up with the Zippo his ex-girlfriend had given him on their one-month anniversary. He burned up a quarter of the smoke with his first drag, then exhaled a machinegun blast of smoke pellets into my face.

"Once, I had sex with this chick that was like fifteen," he professed quite boldly.

I wanted to spit out the coffee that was in my mouth, but the waste was unjustified for one of Todd's untruths.

"Was this before you turned nineteen, Toddy?" I asked.

"Actually, dude, it was just a few months ago. But hey, don't get me wrong. I didn't know she was fifteen. I swear. Bitch told me she was eighteen and I swear, man, she looked like she could've easily been twenty."

"But you're twenty-four," I said, playing with him. "Let's think about that for a second."

Fraser had obviously heard the story before because he pulled his cellphone out of one of the inner pockets of his black leather jacket and he placed a call to somewhere else. Somewhere I wish I could've been.

"I was at this house party," Todd said. "Don't remember at all how I got there. And you know, I couldn't find anyone I knew. I had already had like fifteen beers before getting there and I was spinning like a yo-yo, so I decided the best thing for me to do was to plant myself and sober up a bit so I could get the hell out of there. Anyway, I'm sitting on this big-assed couch and this girl collapses next to me. I tell you, Ryan, it was like she just fell from the ceiling. Like she was one of those sticky hands that had lost its stick at that precise moment. So I look over at her and she's giggling. And you know, she's not wearing a bra and with her shirt as loose as it was I could see major cleavage and the upper edge of her right nipple. Being the gentleman I am, I introduced myself. I'm waiting for her to tell me her name, but instead she lunges at me and throws her arms around my neck. She starts kissing me. Her breath, it smells like vodka and mint toothpaste and I'm eating it up, man. After like a minute of her tongue down my throat she says, 'You know, this is my house and I think you and me should go upstairs to my bedroom.' Never one to pass up such a golden opportunity, I defeat gravity and the whirlies and I stand up and I pull her up with me. On the way up to her room I asked her how old she was and I swear to motherfucking God, man, she said she was eighteen. Now, this chick obviously wasn't new to sex, because it was only like the most mind-blowing fuck I've ever had."

He raised his mug then took a sip of his sugar. He kept his eyes locked on mine. He was waiting for a congratulation, like a high five or a kiss on the cheek. Like he had climbed Everest and not the body of a minor. But I wasn't going to give it to him. "So, how'd you find out she was fifteen?"

"Oh. Well, the next morning her sister, who was the one throwing the party, came into the room to wake her for swimming or something gay like that. She freaked out on me. She was all like, 'You fucking pig! She's only fifteen! My dad's going to kill you! Blah blah blah.' I threw on my shit and bolted."

He raised his mug to his lips. Before he sipped his sugar he whispered into his mug, "Fucking sister," like what he did wasn't so wrong and what was her fucking problem anyway?

"You know it's illegal to have sex with a girl that's fifteen years old, right? You could go to jail."

"Hey, man, I haven't seen any cops at my door and I sure as hell know you guys aren't cops. and Hell, it's not like I'm going to pass up getting laid. Life goes on, man. Live it to its fullest. Fuck."

"Toast to that," Fraser said, breaking away from his phone conversation.

We sat there for a few more minutes listening to Fraser's end of his phone conversation, but his repetitive use of the phrase, "Fuck yeah" soon bored me.

I closed my eyes and watched the film playing on the back of my eyelids. It was a slow motion clip of me kicking my chair out and smashing my coffee mug on Todd's forehead.

When I opened my eyes, Amy was cleaning things up on the inside, preparing for her close. We had been sitting on the patio of The Meanest Bean for four hours. Day had left its post and night had taken over watch and I hadn't even noticed the change. Warmth put up a fight, but in those late April days the cold still had a bite that was hard to pry off the skin.

"I'm just going to take a piss before she kicks us out for the night," I said. "Then I think I'm going home to bed. I'm shot, boys."

"Hold up," Fraser said from behind his cell phone. "We're heading over to The Barge for some beers after this. Do you want to maybe join us tonight?"

"I don't know. You know my stance on nightclubs." (I fucking hated them).

Fraser grunted something that sounded like "pussy" but the bell ringing above me as I pushed open the door to The Meanest Bean drowned out his voice. I thanked the angels. When I dropped my mug off at the front counter I took a closer look at Amy. The boys were right. She was cute. My morals kicked in right after the thought and reminded me how much older I was than her.

"So I guess I'll see you back here tomorrow, then," she said, topping off her sentence with one of those always-be-nice-to-the-customer smiles.

I nodded and chuckled uncomfortably. I dropped my head and made my way to the bathroom, searching the whole way for my ego that was now somewhere down there mingling with the dust and shreds of dead leaves. I had become predictable. My metamorphosis from interesting, always on the go, always willing to try new things guy, to daily coffee whore with nothing much else to be proud of in life but his past memories, was almost complete. All I needed was the Harley t-shirt, the cheap cologne and the poorly shaved goatee, because to deny what nature, or God, or whoever was running things had planned for me would have been to deny my whole existence.

I quickly slammed the bathroom door shut to hide the redness my embarrassment had painted me in. Whether Amy had still been looking at me, I did not know. A fog crept under the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor. And it filled up the bathroom and my head. I grabbed the sink and I held tight as the floor rumbled under my feet. Then the walls closed in on me. My flare for being overdramatic wasn't the culprit this time.

Then it all stopped.

There was a brief moment of clarity and in that moment I saw myself in the bathroom mirror. Spiders crawled behind my eyes. Spun webs in the emptiness. "There has to be more than this," I whispered. My reflection answered me with a grin, then like a flash flood, it allowed a pain to rush into my head and slam into my brain. There was so much pressure in my head I thought it would pop. I thought, Amy is going to be hella pissed about having to clean this mess up. The pain then rushed down my neck and into my body. It rattled off my bones and bear-hugged my organs. And when that flood of pain rushed out of the pores in the soles of my feet, it took everything with it. My head grew light and my body went limp. So much emptiness. I saw porcelain and I smelled piss. And then all the bulbs in the washroom blew out leaving me in the dark.

Black.

"Are you alright in there?" It was Amy. Her voice hit me like a fist. It jostled me out of my daze. I shook the remaining fog out of my head and I stood up drunkenly.

"Yeah... I'm okay."

"Good," she said. "I wouldn't want to have to break this door down and save your sorry ass."

"Ouch," I said, disorientation still holding me tight.

I took my piss, focussing extra hard not to get any on the bowl, floor or wall, then I returned to the great outdoors. Amy was now stacking chairs and dragging tables indoors. Fraser and Todd were off in the distance walking toward Fraser's Camaro.

"Wait up!" I yelled

I ran to the car and said something I thought I'd never say. "All right, I'm in. Let's go to your stupid night club."

2.

A small line of people was waiting at the entrance doors to The Barge. Girls wearing cowboy hats, and guys with cell phones glued to their ears. The line was of no concern to Fraser. He had connections, or so he had said on the drive over. Fraser gave the bouncer a nod and we walked right past the line and into the club. Was there more to Fraser than he lead me to believe?

"I got the first round, boys!" he declared. His chest puffed out like he was the king of the peacocks in this twisted petting zoo.

Todd and I ducked into a booth a few steps from the dance floor. An odd place to sit. Thick bass rumbled out of ten mammoth speakers tiled along the ceiling, making it almost impossible to have a conversation. But I guess that was the point.

The bass jiggled my brain. Jiggled my organs. It reminded me of why I hated places like The Barge. Why I hadn't been to a night club since my first year of college. I looked out across the dance floor and spotted Fraser chatting up one of the waitresses. I looked across the table and Todd quickly turned away. He had been staring at me. I looked down at the floor and spotted a quarter. And then another quarter about an inch away from the first one. And another quarter an inch away from that one. I reached down to pick them up, but they were glued to the floor. There were hundreds of quarters, like a trail of bread crumbs, leading to each of the bathrooms. When I sat back up, Fraser was in the booth sitting next to Todd.

"Here we are, boys!" I think he yelled.

"What?" I yelled, my hand cupped to my ear.

"Beer!" I caught that and nodded.

Fraser slammed down a mug in front of each of us and doled out beer from the pitcher he had bought. We sat through ten songs, watching people, drinking flat, watered-down beer that tasted more like piss. Every so often Fraser would put his mouth to Todd's ear and point something out somewhere in the club and the two of them would laugh. And I would notice how demonic people looked when they laughed and you couldn't hear the laughter coming out of their mouths. Every so often they would snap their fingers in front of my eyes to make sure I was still with them. I would smile and nod and continue to sit, quietly observing the madness going on around me. Todd bought the next round and then the round after that. As the beer saturated my insides, my unease disappeared. I dropped down the fifteen dollars I had in my wallet \-- all the money I had in the world -- and a waitress magically appeared. She put her ear down to Fraser's mouth. His lips moved and she smiled. Then she took my money. A few minutes later she was back with a pitcher of beer and three shots of tequila. The music waved and I waved. And the people walking by me and dancing on the dance floor split into two.

Split into three.

I downed the rest of another pint and noticed that I was alone in the booth. The sound in The Barge had meshed into a low hum. The sound of a monster's upset stomach. There wasn't a specific conversation I could put my ear on. A specific lyric I could pull from the hip-hop boom booming out of the speakers. Mouths moved and people laughed and bottles smashed as they rolled off tables and hit the floor. But it was all just a hum. I scanned the club, my radar set for Fraser and Todd. But they were nowhere to be seen. What I did see was a girl out on the dance floor. She was staring at me, gyrating hips that had twenty extra pounds on them. Her belly oozed out of the crack between her way-too-small t-shirt and her unbuttoned jeans. She mouthed the words, 'I want you.' I closed my eyes and thought, there's no place like home.

There's no place like home.

I opened my eyes to her staring at me. Still. I hoped to God or Buddha or Satan that it was anyone but me she was propositioning, but when she pointed the neck of the beer bottle she was dancing with at me and mouthed the word, 'You,' I had to accept the truth.

Warm air blew into my ear. Then Fraser's voice. "Fat girls need lovin', too. Trust me, man, they give it up real easy."

"That's wrong on so many levels!" I yelled.

His mouth returned to my ear. "Doesn't really matter who's doing it, does it? As long as your dick gets wet, you've ended the night a winner."

"Don't know if that's winning," I yelled and nodded toward the dancing goliath. "I think you have some serious issues that need immediate attention. Serious serious issues."

He was high up above me now. "Yeah! Yeah! But I also get the occasional pussy and we all know you ain't been getting much of that lately."

I expected the record to scratch and the room to go silent. I expected to see everyone in the club stop what they were doing and stare at me like I was an alien. But this wasn't a second-rate sitcom starring John Stamos. And my life was anything but funny. I bowed my head to the master of self-esteem annihilation and I rewarded him with two middle fingers. He smiled down at me, then walked off to a pool table where Todd had magically appeared.

The girl made her move. Moving toward me with the grace of a three-legged elephant on a catwalk. Coloured strobes bounced off her body. Each new colour a new beast. Red, by far the worst. It made me think of some Jenny Craig-themed hell where the demons were forced to dine twenty-four seven on salads and tofu. I chugged the ounce or two of warm beer still at the bottom of the pitcher and I grabbed my jacket. I was going to make a break for it, but before I could slide my arm through the sleeve of the jacket, the girl was in front of me. The beer wasn't masking anything. She was huge. A monolith. And the clothes she wore made her look even larger than she probably was. I wanted to break a pool cue in half and dance around her, wildly banging the cue pieces against my chest.

She threw her arms (arms as thick as my legs) around my neck and she spoke into my ear. "You should buy me a drink."

I stayed quiet until her right arm left my neck and slid down my back. It stopped on my ass, then slid into my back pocket. "Oh, umm, uhhh..."

What was the safe word? What did I have to say to make the nightmare end. I pinched my arm, but it only proved that I was wide awake. Night terrors had nothing on this girl. I yelled for Fraser and Todd. I yelled for them to save me, but all I saw was their backsides as they stepped out of the club with two girls I didn't recognize. If I survived with little more than therapy, I thought, I vowed never to go out with Fraser and Todd again.

Her hand squeezed my ass. I wriggled free from her grasp and I said, "I, uhh... I'm sure you're nice and all..." I couldn't finish speaking because the contents of my stomach began spinning like clothes in a drier. The club began spinning. One big clothes drier. I tried to focus on something, but everything was moving. I tried to focus, but couldn't until she grabbed my face with her baseball-mitt hands. I looked up into her giant brown eyes and I threw up on her. All over her and her tight white shirt. I threw up again, but this time I was able to turn my head and hit the table I had been sitting at. She stumbled back and looked down at her shirt. Tears welled and sparkled as strobes flashed. She broke down sobbing and before I could make a half-assed apology, she was running out of the club. The floor bouncing with each step she took. Or maybe from the bass.

Nothing stopped. Slutty-looking girls continued dancing with other slutty-looking girls. Greasy-looking guys continued playing pool and challenging each other to shots. Shots of tequila. Shots to the arm. I tapped a waitress walking by me and I pointed out the mess on the floor. The mess on the table. The mess everywhere. She growled at me and stormed off. I followed the quarters to the men's bathroom. Follow the money and you'll find bliss. Right? Two people were fucking in one of the stalls. It reminded me of college.

If I didn't stop to throw up or take a piss, the walk from The Barge to my house took forty-two minutes. It was a walk I made dozens of times when I was in high school. Back when The Barge was called The Mardi Gras and the name on my driver's license was Evan Fershau.

I was five years younger than Evan, the older brother of a friend of mine, but I was a dead ringer for him. Teachers in school called me Evan. People on the street stopped me, thinking I was him. The resemblance lead me to the greatest score in my young life. When he went to get his license renewed I bought his old one off of him for a hundred bucks. I was seventeen at the time. I got into my first strip club with that license. I got into night clubs and bought lottery tickets. I bought liquor whenever I wanted it. And in the two years I used Evan Fershau's license no one questioned it. Not once.

The alcohol refused to dissipate. The anger refused to dissipate. My head wouldn't stop spinning. All I could think about was being deserted by Fraser and Todd. I stuck my finger down my throat and I threw up another two pints of beer and the quarter plate of gooey nachos still in my stomach. A hard wind and the sudden release of so much of what was inside of me sobered me up enough to walk in a straight line. I walked on. Up the main drag. Past old buildings filled with real estate agencies and second-hand stores and golf discount shops. I walked on and the alcohol still inside me stirred a nostalgia for the Abbotsford of old.

For so many years I ran around this dump of a town and all I could do was dream about the day I could run out of it. Abbotsford. I couldn't even say the name without cringing. Before 1995 there were two districts in the Fraser Valley. One was Matsqui and the other was Abbotsford. They were these country-like utopias. And within these two utopias, little towns with unique identities flourished. In 1995 Matsqui and Abbotsford amalgamated and became the city of Abbotsford. All of those little towns were eaten up and told to only identify themselves as Abbotsford. I no longer lived in a place called Clearbrook. I lived in Abbotsford. I loved living in Clearbrook. Fairy Tales had places called Clearbrook, where all the roads were paved in bronze that never turned green and rainbows always arched across the sky. A Fairy Tale, Abbotsford was not. A lot had changed in Abbotsford since the day it had become a city. Ma and Pa, they used to run the town. They set up the first shops when they set up the town and they never left, because when one generation faded away, another took over. That was the way of old Abbotsford. But then one day a mall was redeveloped and a Gap store appeared. So did an Old Navy and an Earl's Restaurant. Chains. Ma and Pa all but disappeared. To most people, this was progress. To most, this was growing up and moving on. Everything and everyone seemed to be able to do it. Everyone, but me. Despite all the change, Abbotsford was able to retain its status as the Bible Belt of Canada. Every block in the city had a church on it. There were seventy-four churches for our population of sixty-four thousand. But that didn't stop us from having the highest rate of teenage pregnancy, and the highest rate of teenage alcoholism per capita in the entire country. No sir. That was the disenchanted youth of Abbotsford for you. God bless them, one and all.

A pick-up truck slowed down as it drove by me. The redneck driving the truck rolled down his window and threw a half-full beer can at me. Luckily, he was drunk and the can missed me by five feet.

When I had left The Barge I had set the stop clock on my watch, for old time's sake. I was fifty-seven minuted into my walk when I stepped onto the front lawn of my parents' house. A light was on in the kitchen. I tip toed through the front door and shut it as quietly as I could.

But not quiet enough.

"Hey, your mother's trying to sleep. Keep it down."

My father was sitting at the kitchen table sipping a glass of milk. A familiar smell hung in the air. Familiar, but so out of place. I took off my shoes and sat down across from him. My father was looking out the kitchen window at the dark. I hadn't seen him out of bed for weeks. "What are you doing up?" I asked. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I guess."

My father died the day they told him he had lung cancer. We all died a little. He quit his job and he went to bed. The pain was too much to bear. The doctors gave him six months to live. But the cancer was like everything else in his life. Inconsistent. It moved slow and caused immense pain. I cried a lot the first few weeks after we found out. It was odd crying, because I hadn't cried in more than seven years before that. We went through all the stages as a family. And we all came to acceptance at the same time. My father, however, did not. Night after night he wept and mumbled things like, "What did I do to deserve this?" and "I hate you God! I hate you!" My mother slept with earplugs and told me I should do the same. In the time I had been back from college I learned to shut him out. To ignore him. Eventually, his late night ramblings were no more intrusive than the toads croaking.

A toad.

Croaking.

He took another sip of milk and spoke through the glass that was still at his lips. "I thought I heard something out in the fields."

"Are you sore?"

He tapped the back of the glass to get the last drop of milk into his mouth and he set the glass down on the table. "Surprisingly, I feel alright. I took... my doctor gave me some new medication for the pain and I..."

He stopped as though the rest of his sentence suddenly disappeared and he had to go back and search for a new ending. His red eyes and perma-grin a giveaway that a new ending would never be found. "Another young man disappeared last night," he said, changing his line of thought. "Strange thing, all these young men just up and disappearing. This fellow left a nightclub on Granville Street... in Vancouver... around midnight. Never got home. It was all over the news today. Said the fellow was a computer science major at UBC. What does a computer scientist do?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Don't know," I said. "Builds Terminators, I guess."

"Hmm," my father said, blindly accepting my answer. "You know, just before you came in I was thinking about when you guys were teenagers. Remember how you and your buds used to think I was a spy? How you and your buds would make up the most amazing stories about my business trips? I don't know... I don't know why I was thinking about that."

He laughed.

"Dad. Hey. I thought we were supposed to be quiet here."

"Yeah. Oh yeah. Shhh."

He put his index finger up to his lips, but it couldn't hold back another chuckle.

"Dad. Are you high?"

He reached across the table and put his hand on mine. Even after the weight loss, his paws were still massive. His hand completely hid mine. I couldn't remember the last time I felt my father's touch. He squeezed my hand winked at me. "It's late, son. Why don't you go to bed?"

"What about you? Shouldn't you be in bed?"

"I've been in bed for months. I think I'm going to stay here and watch the sun come up."

"That sounds good, Dad. I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night, son."

"Good night."

I went to my room and fell onto my bed, puke-stained clothes and all. I had forgotten about the whole spy thing. A thing born out of a lack of understanding of what my father actually did for a living. As a child I often asked for specifics and all I got was that he travelled around the world selling products for big manufacturing companies.

"You're a salesman, then," I would say.

"No, I am an international sales agent," he would reply, perturbed by my generalization.

So when people asked me what my father did for a living, I told them he was a spy. So much more intriguing than a glorified salesman. And when you say something enough times, it sometimes becomes a sort of truth. To the person who's saying it. To me. He was away four days of every week. He was in places like Houston and New Orleans selling things like doors and wood moldings, or whatever it happened to be that week. I would tell my friends he was in Monaco, or the Alps stealing secrets. Assassinating right-wing political leaders. One time he came home with a large bandage wrapped around his neck. When we asked him what happened, he said he had slipped on some rocks when he was heading down to a creek to do some fly-fishing. It was a twig buried in the rocks, pointing upward that clipped him in the neck. When he removed the bandage, the wound looked like it had been made by a bullet grazing the skin. My father wasn't a spy, but those little stories I chose to believe, reminded me that I actually had a father while I was growing up.

I was glad he put the memory back in my head.

The last thing that entered my head before I drifted off to sleep was the distant sound of sirens.

3.

Manchester Dodd.

Named by his twisted parents for the city he was conceived in. We hated Manchester United with a passion, so we called him Dodd. We were simple like that. Or so we liked to pretend.

In early August 1997 Dodd was at The Roxy, a nightclub in downtown Vancouver. He was celebrating a friend's twenty-sixth birthday. Or as he puts it, "I was sitting at a sticky table sipping on a watered-down rum and coke, watching my friends celebrate my friend's birthday. They were acting like frakin' idiots on the dance floor. But hey, I did pretend to be having a fine ol' time. So that counts for something, right?" Dodd couldn't stay late, because Dodd had to be up early for a Programming exam. I think it was C++. Or one of those other programming languages nobody but computer science students care (or even know) about.

Dodd loved computers. And he loved the Internet, which was new and exciting and full of potential (to exploit and use to make gazillions of dollars). He loved Star Trek: TNG and Dungeons and Dragons. And Mario Kart. God, did Dodd love Mario Kart. I remember one night where he must've talked about it for four hours. Dodd was a nerd, but not your stereotypical nerd. He was an extremely good looking nerd.

Dodd was majoring in Computer Sciences at the University of British Columbia and he was having a hell of a time with C and C++ programming. He knew he needed another couple hours in his textbooks before the exam, but he also knew he had to make an appearance at the party. So he compromised and stayed at the club till midnight. He was only a twenty-minute walk from home, so he could easily get a couple more hours of study in before hitting the sheets.

But Dodd never made it home that night.

Potential was the word people most often used when talking about Dodd. Teachers saw it. One teacher once said that when Manchester Dodd grasped a concept and began tinkering with it, there was no one on Earth who knew said concept better. Friends and family saw it. One friend was quoted as saying, "I felt smarter just standing next to Manchester." Even future employers saw it. A representative from Microsoft told a reporter that Manchester Dodd's ideas about content management, which he hypothesized about in a first-year paper, were revolutionary. Microsoft had a very close eye on Manchester Dodd. And that is why people had to believe foul play was involved in his disappearance, because a young man with so much potential would never disappear intentionally.

Never. Ever.

Nine months after Manchester Dodd disappeared, I was reborn in a forest outside of Prince George, British Columbia. One of the new fathers in my new life was Manchester Dodd. More than a father, he was a friend.

Nine months.

Conception to birth.

The day after I was conceived I was sitting in a chair with a wobbly leg on the patio of The Meanest Bean. I had been there for an hour and watched a dozen or so police cars speed by, their sirens wailing like hungry babies in search of a tit. And every time they sped by, I raised my my mug and toasted them for their plight, though I knew not what it was, or where it was taking place.

After two particularly loud, fast police cars sped by, the door to The Meanest Bean swung open and Karl appeared in front of me. "Those like ten times I hear siren today. What you think goes on?"

Behind Karl's hulking frame I saw flashes of Amy sweeping the inside floor. "Is there no school today?"

"Huh?"

"Amy. Does she not have school today?"

Karl scratched the bald spot on the back of his head. "Is Saturday today."

In the life I was living days came and went. One was no different than the other. I smiled one of those, 'I'm just fucking with you smiles' and said, "What did you say before? Something about ten times."

"The sirens?"

"Don't have a clue. Whatever it is, it must be big. There's sure been a lot of them. If you ask me, I think this town is in dire need of a good crime."

"Huh?"

"Cops around here. They've got to be tired of dealing with drunken red necks beating up their wives and... and pulling over punk kids racing their rice rockets down there on the flats. Know what I mean?"

"That's not too positive way to think."

"When have you known me to be positive, Karl?"

"Fuh," he said and waved his hand at me before returning to his perch by the cash register.

I closed my eyes and tried to figure out which way the cruisers were going. It sounded like some were heading toward the Fraser River, about seven kilometers north of The Meanest Bean. Some were still quite loud when they abruptly cut off. Those ones sounded like they were at the hospital. Made sense.

My coffee was cold, so I slipped back into The Meanest Bean to get a refresher. I had purposely gone to the coffee shop early so I could get some 'me' time. That precious time before Fraser and Todd's benign banter poisoned my soul. But the minutes were passing by. My 'me' time was coming to an end and I could feel it. I had to make every minute alone count.

I smiled at Amy and stepped up to the counter.

Most days we arrived at The Meanest Bean just as Karl was leaving. "I am early bird," he liked to say. And he wasn't kidding when he said "early." He opened the doors of The Meanest Bean at four thirty in the morning, and though his first sale rarely came before six, his routine never changed. "I am like army. I get more done before nine than most people get done in entire day."

Karl was the coolest foreign old guy I had ever met. None of us really knew where he came from because he never gave us a straight answer when we asked him. He would tell us that he grew up in many different countries, but Canada was his only home. His knowledge of the English language seemingly cobbled together from old television shows and Western music that was popular on the radio wherever he was living at the time.

"Sorry, Karl." I said, not sure what I was apologizing for. "I've umm... I've been a little spacey today. I forgot to ask you how things are? So, how are things?"

"What is it you kids say? Same sheet, different day." He closed the comic book he was reading and tossed it onto the counter behind him. "Now sir, perhaps it is refill you require."

"Polly does want a coffee, my fine foreign friend. I must say, your intuition is most remarkable. I will have to recommend this place to all my psychic chums."

"All the advertising I can get would be very good. Sure. You know, then maybe I steal away some of those Ahab customers. You know..." suddenly a seriousness entered his tone. Our conversation was sliding into territory for which I had no map. "Rumour says they bought old meat shop across street from here. I have terrible feeling when they move in they eat up all my customers, like shark."

I shook my head. I wanted Karl's devastating news to leak out of my ears and out of my system completely. But it was too hard to shake out. Another Ahab's Coffee in our little city. They would kill Karl and they wouldn't even learn his name before they did it. I once read in Time Magazine (or maybe it was Maxim) that an Ahab's Coffee opened somewhere in the world every other day. The article said they were even planning on opening an Ahab's in Ethiopia. Did they really think Ethiopians were going to fork over five bucks for a latte?

"Count on one thing, Karl. I will never give in to them. Shit," I swore. "Even if that addictive chemical they put in their coffee somehow gets into my system, I will fight it... and I will prevail. Your mild roast is like the key to my survival. Giving that up would be like giving up a first-born child, or... or like handing over that million dollar lottery ticket to the waitress because you haven't got any change for the tip. It's not going to happen."

Amy chuckled while she scrubbed the base of one of the tables.

"Bring on the onslaught of wired yuppies in their BMWs and their Land Rovers. Let's see them try to take this away from me. Dammit Karl, let's just see them try. Now if you'd be so kind, please give me a refill of the mild roast."

It felt good to show emotion toward something, even if fifty percent of the emotion was just for show. But I believed in Karl and his little coffeeshop. I believed in something and that made me feel a tad more human than I felt when I had woken up that morning.

"You are one of the stranger ones, Ryan... that is for sure. This coffee for you is on me this time. Good?"

He filled my mug with the magic elixir that would take all my pain and anxiety away. He placed it in front of me. I wrapped both hands around the mug and picked it up. Slowly. My palms absorbed the heat captured in the glass of the mug. The heat rushed through my body, from my hands out. It touched every part of me. It was...

Orgasmic.

Religious.

My lifeblood.

And when I landed on the ground again I was standing at the condiment stand doctoring my medication. A splash of cream from the carafe labelled HALF AND HALF. That's all it took. The splash smashed against the murky bottom of the mug and exploded, sending a mushroom cloud of cream up the middle of coffee, turning the coffee several shades of brown as it climbed higher. I thought about the end of the world. Would it be a nuclear end? Would Mother Nature kills us? Or the computers when we hit double zeroes? Or would it be God when he said, "Okay, I'm bored of this shit," then nothing when he turned the lights out for good?

I stirred the coffee until it was all the same colour, until the colour of my thoughts returned to gray. I snatched a newspaper and returned to my own perch outside. Before I could even settle myself, a ghost tapped me on the shoulder. I put my mug down on the newspaper and the coffee that was clinging to the bottom, that had spilled during my wobbly journey back outside, was quickly soaked up by tax cuts and house fires. I looked up into darkness.

"Hey boy," the shadow said. "What says you lend me a smoke?"

"I don't smoke, buddy."

The shadow grunted and moved on, exposing the sun that had been hiding behind its head. My eyelids went into lockdown, but it was too late. The ball of fire had made it in. Had burned into my retinas and was now dancing on the screen in front of my eyes.

"You fucking asshole!" someone yelled. The shadow. It was an old man and he was now far enough away from me that if I got up and chased him he'd be able to get away.

A lowered Honda Civic crawled over a speed bump in front of me, its tail pipe screeching as it connected with the asphalt.

Staring at the sun. The yelling old man. The screeching tailpipe. The little things that were so much bigger than they should have been. It was all too much to handle, so I closed my eyes. I closed my eyes and...

"Hey... Hey, wake up."

A finger flicked my earlobe waking me instantly. I wiped the spit from the corners of my lips I looked up at another ghost. But this one was familiar.

"What's this?" Fraser said through his smirk. "Did the act of sitting and sipping coffee all by your lonesome become too boring?"

"I must've..." I must have dozed off, because my coffee, which was just steaming hot, was now ice cold. "Shit."

Fraser sat down across from me. "You must've shit?" he said. "I hope you did it in a toilet."

"Hardy fucking har. But seriously, that fucking hurt man. You can be a real dick sometimes. You know that, right?"

"Why so sensitive? Is my little R.F.P. on the R-A-G?"

"Last night, man. That was cold. I can't believe you just left me there."

"It looked like you were in good hands," he said and laughed. I wanted to punch him. Drive my fist into his nose and listen to the sound of all bones breaking. But I knew that had I thrown a punch, three seconds later I would be pronounced dead. Fraser was a big dude and even if someone was a "quote unquote" friend of his, any attempt at confrontation was considered a threat and was taken seriously. Seriously.

"Well, whatever... I'm never going anywhere with you assholes again."

"That's really sad, Ry. We'll miss your company." Just one punch and I would've felt so much better.

"Fuck you," was the best defense I could come back at him with. "So what's going on around here?"

"Watchutalkinboutfoo?"

"I'm talking about all the sirens and shit. Didn't your dad tell you anything about what's going on?"

"Why would he do that?"

Fraser's dad was a cop, which made for some super paranoid times smoking up in his basement when we were in high school. He always assured us that his dad left the cop stuff back at the office. That as long as we didn't go off the property with our joint or our beer-can bong, there would never be a problem.

"Cuz your dad's a fucking 5-0."

"Oh... yeah... all the sirens and shit. Yeah, some girl stumbled into the hospital last last night. Guess she got the shit kicked out of her. Some friend that was with her earlier in the night is now missing. That's all he told me. He was in kind of a rush this morning."

The door to The Meanest Bean swung open and Karl poked his head out. "Hey. Hey. You should come in here. Hear the news. It sounds bad. Very very bad."

Karl held the door open and waited for us. And waited while we shrugged our shoulders back and forth. And waited while I took one more sip of my cold coffee. Karl held the door open for us. When we stepped through it, Amy was turning the volume up on the radio. "They're just about to talk about it," she said.

The report was vague. Vague, because of the lack of information it contained and because it seemed like some junior reporter was filing the report from her clunky cell phone. On the moon. The poor girl stuttered through her name and location before reporting, "Two girls, both sixteen, were attacked last night on Bourquin Crescent. One of the girls lies in a coma here at MSA Hospital, while the other girl is considered missing. Police are putting together search teams and are planning to comb the riverbanks, the forests and the fields that lay northwest of Abbotsford. They are also planning to talk with the press sometime in the next two hours. We will keep you updated as new information becomes available."

Her amateur reporting infuriated me. Made me stop listening.

"Well," I said. "That's a new one for our humble, little city. Isn't it?"

No response.

Not much more information than Fraser had given, but confirmation that he wasn't lying. Confirmation that Abbotsford had taken another step in its evolution. A spurt of growth, when it had been stunted for so very long. I returned to the great outdoors and took to my perch. The concept of growth growing in my mind. With growth comes change. One does not happen without the other. We come into this world as children. We drink lots of milk and eat lots of peanut butter and we go through puberty and experience things like acne and wet dreams and the occasional uncontrolled erection. And we call these problems "life ending" and "the worst things in the world" and we cry and we scream and we grow. In mind and in body. And through this growth we learn to manage our acne and erections. We learn to grasp concepts like love and marriage and taxes... and death. We grow and we change. We change and we grow. A town is similar to a human in this way. A town is plagued with problems when it grows. And it changes. Once idyllic and safe, a town evolving into a city becomes frantic and dangerous. Abbotsford, once idyllic and safe, was becoming frantic and dangerous. Big-city folk and retiring babyboomers, growing tired of speed and size, were opting for the simplicity of life in the country. They were packing up their worldly possessions and heading to Abbotsford. Where the grass was greener. Something was sticking to these people, though. Something they couldn't leave behind. It was The Gap. And Ahab's Coffee. And prostitution. It was homicide. Where once lay swamps where we spent endless hours catching tadpoles and butterflies, now lay giant subdivisions filled with Lego-like homes. Where once stood forests where we spent endless hours dressed in camouflage, pumped full of prepubescent testosterone acting out bulletless wars, now lay four-lane roads and townhouses with sidewalks for backyards. Where once little girls could walk home without the worry of being attacked, now lay the reality of big-city life. With growth came change. With change... growth. I hated the fact that Abbotsford was growing up on us all. I hated that it was growing up without me.

I looked toward Bourquin Crescent. Six blocks from where I sat.

"It was so close to here, eh?" Fraser said, having joined me while I was in thought.

"Yeah, it's kind of creepy."

"Yeah," he said and took a sip of his coffee.

We sat in silence for several minutes. Looking at nothing and everything. Wrestling with out thoughts. "Speaking of wrestling," I said.

"Huh?"

"Did I say that out loud?"

"Huh?"

"Aren't you supposed to be at the gym?" I asked. "I mean, isn't this the time you're usually popping steroids and shooting your load all over some dumbbells?"

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Did your brain just fart?"

"Huh?"

"As luck would have it, the gym is closed today. They're prepping for some sort of weightlifting competition. Oh, and Ryan, go fuck yourself. I've never taken steroids in my entire life and you know it. You know it you fucker!"

What I knew was that Fraser had been taking steroids for years. I knew it. His dad knew it. Everyone in the goddamned city knew it. But he still believed he could make us believe he wasn't taking steroids. By overreacting with rage when we jabbed him. By forcing his innocence upon us. By doing exactly what steroids would make him do.

"Those things will make your dick shrink. But I'm sure you know that."

"Shut up you little bitch! You know I could kill you without even breaking a sweat. Want to arm wrestle?"

Yes. Arm wrestle.

Fraser talked trash, but when it came down to killing, the only killing he knew how to do was during an arm wrestle. He would've arm wrestled Ghandi if the guy had rubbed him the wrong way. To his credit, though, he never lost a match.

"Look at these arms," I said as I pulled up my sleeves. "They're a couple strands of spaghetti. You and I both know that I wouldn't even last a second against you. Moving on..."

I hated my body. Hated talking about my body. But I was usually forced to talk about it when I didn't want to physically show how weak I was. Thin arms. Thin legs covered in black hair. And a belly that stayed nice and round like it was holding a midget baby, even after months of crunches and sit ups. Fuck crunches and sit ups. I had accepted I was not Brad Pitt. I was never going to be Brad Pitt, so I'd wear excessively baggy clothing instead. I'd hide behind insults and sarcasm and self loathing.

"...What's that?"

"What's what?" Fraser replied.

"On the side of your mug."

He raised the mug to eye level and spun it in a circle. "Goddamned lipstick," he said. "I sure wish Karl would fork out the dough for a decent dishwasher. This is always happening to me here."

He inspected the stain. Ran his fingers along the outline of the lips and said, "What do you think the chick that left this looked like, cuz you know, I'm picturing twenty-six or seven, brown hair down to her finely shaped ass, and titties like torpedoes. Big fucking torpedoes."

"Shit," I said. "That's like the total opposite of what I'm picturing. I'm picturing sixty-ish, overweight, blue hair and elephant-like wrinkles all over her body,"

He gently ran his thumb over the lipstick, then shrugged his shoulders and took a sip from the side opposite the stain.

"You could wipe it off yourself. With you fingers. Or a napkin. Not hard, man."

"I know that, but this is like the closest I've been to a chick in weeks. Just because I don't know what she looks like doesn't mean I'm going to brush her off."

"That's kind of sad."

"I'm not going to argue with that. So let's take a cue from you and move the fuck on."

We sat in silence for a few more minutes, him staring at the lipstick stain on the mug and me staring at him staring at the lipstick stain on his mug. In our silence I heard the clouds passing over my head and ants walking past my feet. I heard the coffee I was drinking making its way down my throat and splashing into my stomach.

"What do you think happened to that other girl?" I said at some point. "You know, the one that's missing?"

Fraser didn't answer me right away. He was, I was to assume, thinking. I had heard on occasion he did that. He took a sip of his coffee. Pulled a long drag from his smoke. Exhaled. And said coldly, "I think she was most likely taken somewhere, raped, then dumped."

"Wow, not much optimism in that hypothesis."

"Come on, man. How often do these things end happily. About as often as Karl gives me a free coffee. My bets are on them finding her dead. That's if they even find her at all."

"Yeah, but... but shit like that doesn't happen here. Shit like that happens in movies starring Mel Gibson and Ralph Fiennes. Anyway, just out of curiosity, big guy, where were you last night? I recall the two of you ditching me at the club with a couple of girls. The club isn't that far from Bourquin. Just the facts, man."

"Whoa, shit-turd, what is it you're implying?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't think I was implying anything."

"Fuck you, Ryan."

"Hey sensitive Sally, I'm just joking around with you. Joke. A rabbi, a priest and an ostrich walk into a bar... funny ha ha."

He forced a chuckle and gulped down the last of his coffee. "You know," he said, "if they don't find that girl things are going to get pretty tense around here. Cops here, they don't know how to investigate this sort of thing. They're going to round up everyone in this city that's ever been in the slightest bit of trouble and they're going to question the hell out of them. Hell, if you have a dick and you live in this city, I bet you're already a suspect. You know the cops know me... and it's not just because my dad's a cop. The last thing I need in my pathetic life is for people to think I had anything to do with this."

"Whoa, man. It really was a joke. So chill the fuck out. Anyway, while you were sitting there bitching and moaning, I figured it out. Because that's what I do motherfucker."

The tension oozed out of him. The veins on his neck and forehead disappeared. The red in his cheeks turned back to a normal, human pink. He cracked an 'Oh Yeah' smile and oozed back into his chair like he didn't have a care in the world.

"Hear me out. Okay, imagine this. These two girls have planned the whole thing. You know, what if it's like a ploy to get some attention. Obviously, a crime like this in such a small, still somewhat safe city is going to make national news. Now, this girl who's been hospitalized remembers more and more, day after day, week after week, and each time she remembers something, another article is written. Another television crew stops by. And one more time her name and her face and the name and face of the missing friend are published. Or broadcast. Then, one day out of the freaking blue, the missing girl returns with this incredible story about being abducted and forced into all sorts of horrendous sex acts while being filmed, or something like that. It's so perfect. They'll become stars. Hell, if I was bored enough, and had the motivation, I'd do it. That missing girl... she's probably at her boyfriend's house, or living in a hotel up in the Interior. She's probably laughing at our stupid hick city right now."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Yeah, well it's a little more optimistic than saying she's dead in a ditch."

"But the girl in the hospital... she's in a coma. Was that part of the plan? Because that's fucked up, if it was? I mean, how do you even put yourself into a coma?"

"Fraser, I don't think you've grasped the fact that my guess is as good as yours as to what happened last night. But I do have to say it. There's a lot more going on up in that brain of yours than you sometimes lead me to believe."

"Yeah, well, you know, with all this free time I'm reading more and watching more A&E Biographies, and believe this, bitch..."

A middle finger in my face. A middle finger, as common in our little get-togethers as coffee and whining.

"Since we got out of high school, your life has been nothing but free time. You should be a freaking doctor by now."

We both laughed.

Like the day before and the day before that, we sat under the coffeeshop awning and watched the shadows created by a moving Earth as it moved faster than us. We talked about the nothingness that filled our lives and we sat in quiet contentment. Eventually, Todd got off work from down at the car lot and joined us in our cage. We sipped the same coffee for hours, its coldness, its rotten taste doing little to steer our attention away from the anecdote or the joke of the moment.

"Sorry guys, we're closing up a little early tonight." It was Thora, another one of Karl's aproned minions. I couldn't remember her coming to work. I looked at the watch that wasn't on my wrist and I asked Fraser for the time. He stuck his wrist in my face.

Nine o' clock and all wasn't well.

"Oh why!? Why tonight, God?" Fraser yelled at the sky. "So rarely do I gather up enough courage and money to stave off the forces of evil outside my bedroom door and make my way up here to indulge in this liquid of life. Your liquid of life. Why do you forsake me God?" And then to Thora, "Why do you forsake me, Thora?"

"You're here every night. Quit being such a whiney bitch," she responded.

"Is that any way to treat your customers? I know... why don't you clean up here and join me and Todd back at my place for a movie and a little dessert, if you know what I mean?"

Thora rubbed her nose ring. "Aren't you guys like ten years older than me?" she said. "That's kind of sad, man. Listen, I'm so sorry I've ruined your productive and eventful evening, but Karl is closing the shop tomorrow for some party he's throwing one of his brothers, who just flew in from God knows where, and he'd like to start setting up for the party tonight. So please leave."

Todd grabbed the part of his jacket over his heart and pretended to pull his heart out of his body. He held his hand up to Thora. His fingers contracted as the ghostly heart beat in his hand. "You may as well take this with you," he said as she returned indoors. "You bitch," he added when the door to The Meanest Bean was completely closed.

"Drama queens," I said.

"Hey Ryan," Todd said. "No matter how sweet and tasty the candy looks, don't ever get in the van, okay?"

"What the fuck does that mean, you psycho?"

"It means..."

Todd flashed his two middle fingers and laughed. We all laughed. And then we agreed to meet back at The Meanest Bean in two days. And we went our separate ways.

4.

A newscaster spoke about a new virus sweeping through South America. I hit the snooze button before I could catch the name of the virus. I was still half asleep. Had I heard the story through, I wouldn't have remembered much about it anyway. The kids at the house behind ours were in their backyard laughing and screaming. Stealing my attention. My patience. I pulled the curtain back with my finger and saw the fat little guy, whose name was something like Spiner, sliding down one of those silly yellow Slip n' Slides. He barreled off the end of the slide and slid a few more feet along the soaked grass. What, I thought, gave them the right to be having so much fun at nine in the morning? And then I remembered, Oh yeah, they're children.

I used to be one of those.

I let go of the curtain and rolled out of bed. The skivvies and flannels I was wearing when I had fallen asleep were now on the floor. I slid them on and stepped through my bedroom door into a tomb of a home. An empty home. A dusty home. I looked into my parents' bedroom. Their bed was made and my dad was gone. Their alarm clock flashed 12:00. 12:00. 12:00. Another power outage. The bi-weekly occurrences, usually caused by drunk cowboys driving their pick-ups into power poles or by the constant wind constantly knocking trees over onto power lines, were an annoyance, but easy to manage if you had battery back up... in everything. I scratched my head and tried to remember if anyone had forewarned me the ship was going to be abandoned. Tried to remember. Tried. It is usually when someone is deep in thought, trying to remember something, that something loud -- a ringing phone or knock on the door -- startles them. It was three loud knocks at the door that made me jump.

"Shit," I said. And thought of Jehovah and his Witnesses. Most knocks at my door at nine in the morning came from a Jehovah's Witness's soft knuckles.

I wasn't in the mood to be saved, so I tip toed up to the front door and peeked through the peephole. Fraser's distorted head moved in and became more distorted when he knocked again.

"What the fuck?" I yelled through the closed door.

"Throw on some shit, man. We're going four by fouring."

"It's nine in the fucking morning."

"Open the door, Ryan."

I opened the front door and repeated my last statement with more emphasis on the 'fucking'. "It's nine in the fucking morning. Come back when I've had a cup of coffee."

"Dude, we'll stop at The Bean and grab a cup. Let's go already."

"Go with Todd."

"That pussy bailed on me. Said he got called into work or some shit like that. I sure as hell wouldn't trade washing cars for four by fouring on a day like this... and look."

He pointed at his father's Jeep, which was idling in my parents' driveway. Pointing at the someone sitting in the passenger seat.

"Who's that?"

"That," he said, "is Denise Coleman."

Denise Coleman. Denise Coleman. I shuffled through the Rolodex in my mind and the image of a tight sweater stretched over giant, perfectly round breasts appeared. "Denise Coleman from high school?"

"You better believe it."

"How? What?"

"Never mind that, man. Are you gonna pussy out on me, too?"

I did a mental check of my engagements for the day. Nothing. "Give me five minutes. I got to change, pee and brush my teeth. Is that cool?"

"Fuckin' A."

Five minutes later I was sitting uncomfortably on the back seat of his dad's Jeep, flotsam in a sea of empty Tim Horton's coffee cups and crumpled McDonald's wrappers. Fraser was shuffling through radio stations never giving one enough time to figure out what type of music it played. Never giving the road the attention it deserved. Denise's eyes were on herself in the sunvisor mirror. She was teasing her hair and applying lip gloss. At the same time.

"Crap," I said when I remembered. "Karl closed the shop today."

Fraser clicked the radio off and muttered, "Goddamned radio. Goddamned Karl. Goddamnit."

"You know there's an Ahab's over by the hospital," Denise said while she picked at something in her teeth. "It's on the way out to the highway. We could stop there. Come to think of it, I could really use a mocha."

"No fucking way," I said. But my objection went on deaf ears. Fraser's deaf ears. All he could hear was tits and ass. Had anyone other than Denise fucking Coleman suggested stopping at the Antichrist's coffeeshop for a mocha, Fraser would've smothered them. But he was different around this girl I hadn't seen in five years. This girl I maybe spoke to once in our five years of high school. She had, in one twist of the hair, one shake of her tits, smashed his loyalty mechanism into a million little pieces.

"To Ahab's!" he roared.

My promise to Karl skipped in my head as we pulled into the Ahab's parking lot. Into the only available parking spot. My promise to Karl, the chorus of a song sung by me. A scratched CD playing over and over again. How could I willingly walk into the enemy's den and return to The Meanest Bean the next day like nothing had happened. I needed a coffee, but did I need it that badly?

"Get the fuck out of the car and get your own damn coffee!"

How could I refuse such a friendly request? I stepped out of the Jeep and into the rain. My body, battered by defeat, slumped as the three of us walked toward the entrance. A sign that said AHAB'S COFFEE stuck out about a half a foot above the doors to the shop. The sign's giant letters were formed from plastic and metal. And intertwined through each letter of the word AHAB was a goofy looking whale. Fat drops of water fell off the sign and into my eyes. I let them roll down my cheeks. Into my mouth. The water tasted salty. It tasted metallic. Like tears. I heard the hum of a finely tuned machine coming from behind Ahab's tinted glass windows. I heard the pen touching the paper as I sold my soul over to the devil.

Fully expecting a stampede of yuppies with skinny vanilla lattes in hand, I pulled the door open cautiously. But my caution was not needed, because the only thing I got hit with was the thick smell of roasting coffee. The sweet smell of roasting coffee. It clung to the hairs in my nose and it swung back and forth on them just to make sure I noticed it. I did. And I also noticed a couple of doctors sitting at a table in a corner of the shop. They were nursing what appeared to be hot chocolates, or mochas. As they talked, one of them was dipping a wooden stir stick into the mound of whipped cream and chocolate drizzle that topped the drink and he was mixing it all together. Through the clear glass mug I saw the whipped cream split apart as it was immersed into the hot, brown liquid. It looked like a galaxy of creamy white stars sucked into a black hole. My mouth watered. I noticed a man writing in a notebook at a bench that ran along one of the windows. He was tapping the handle of his mug with his thumb and mumbling something about 'sacrifices' and 'suspects'. Behind the long counter at the back of the shop, three neatly dressed employees were dashing to and fro like honeybees hard at work. A man, maybe in his early twenties, with a goatee and shaved head, was pouring coffee beans into a grinder and humming along to the Frank Sinatra tune coming out of speakers hidden in the ceiling. A girl, who looked fifteen or sixteen, stopped reorganizing pastries in the pastry case and acknowledged Fraser and Denise, who were now standing at the cash register. Another girl, a little older than the other two, was sweeping up leaves and stir sticks from the floor behind us.

I moved in close to Fraser's ear and said quietly, "This place gives me the creeps, man. I feel like they're going to start singing 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow' or something like that. Like they're animatronics in some twisted coffee theme park. Let's get what we came for and get out of here."

Denise walked over to the bar where the bald guy was steaming the milk for her mocha. Fraser turned to me and said, "Jesus, we'll grab our coffees and go. Quit being such a little bitch."

"You're one to talk."

"Just humour me, man. If this goes well she'll be sucking my dick by lunchtime."

"Where does that leave me? I mean, why did you even bring me with you if your intention was to get a little sucky sucky from her anyways. I could be at home right now watching Ace Ventura, with a tasty mug of my own damn coffee and a clean fucking conscience."

"She said she wanted someone to come along with us. She didn't care who... just as long as someone else came along."

"What does that say about you, man? Wow, you might just be the densest motherfucker I've ever known."

"Just get your coffee and try to have a little fun, K?"

He paid the girl and joined Denise at the bar. Our conversation was over.

"So what can I get you this fine morning?"

We often used the word 'cute' to describe the girls that were right in the middle of the ugly-beautiful spectrum. The girl across the counter from me was unbelievable cute. And I liked cute. When only a moment earlier I had wanted to run away from Ahab's, I now wanted to stay and talk. To her. She had the bluest eyes I had ever seen, eyes which were made even bluer by her unnaturally natural blond hair, her rounded bangs, and the short locks that poked out from the back of her head like little angel wings. She had full cheeks, but not chubby cheeks. And when she smiled, two perky dimples appeared, deep enough for any man to jump into and lose his way. She couldn't have been any taller than five foot four. Stuff her full of cotton and she could have been sold as one of those Cabbage Patch Dolls my father once punched a man for just so his youngest son would have the Christmas gift all little boys and girls wanted that year. That's how cute the girl was.

And I liked cute. A lot.

"So what'll it be?" she said.

"Umm..." All. Words. Gone.

"Did you want a cup of coffee? We have a dark coffee and a not-so-dark coffee."

"Water." It was the best I could do. My conscience was back and it was telling me not to follow this siren's song. Stay faithful. It's all you are anymore.

"Oh come on," she said playfully. "I'll tell you what. I'll give you a small cup of coffee... on me. You won't be sorry. Promise."

A crack dealer. That's all she was. A cute crack dealer. And just like a crack dealer she would supply me with my first hit for free. Hook me up all nice like knowing one sip of their liquid crack would make me a junkie. And then my conscience stunned me. If you're not paying for it, it said, then you're technically not giving them your business.

My conscience didn't know how addiction worked. But it was a convincing argument. "Umm... okay," I said.

"So what coffee do you want to try?" she asked. "The Colombian or the Kona? I'd suggest the Kona because it's very expensive by the pound. It's actually the only coffee that fluctuates in cost day to day. Something to do with markets and tsunamis and leprechauns and blah blah blah. Don't ask. So then..."

"Just plain old coffee, please."

"Plain old coffee, eh? I think that went extinct with the dinosaurs. Seriously, does anyone really drink plain old coffee anymore?"

Was she joking with me or making fun of me? My receptors had been turned to mush, the goo leftover at the bottom of the milk jug after it had been expired for more than a month. I wanted to apologize to Fraser. I didn't know this 'thing' could be so strong.

"Hey, I'm just messing with you," she said. "If it's plain coffee you want, the Colombian should do it for you. But you're really missing out by not trying the Kona."

She took a paper cup from the stack next to the brewers and placed it under the urn marked COLOMBIAN. A gentle pull of the lever on the spigot and she released a stream of irregularly dark liquid. She filled the cup, leaving a half an inch of room, then she placed it down in front of me. So the steam rising from it would rise up into my nose. Calculated. "Here you are, sir. Enjoy."

I snatched the coffee and walked away without thanking her. I walked over to Fraser and said maybe a bit too loud, "Now I'm really creeped out. Can we please get out of here?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Denise is in the can. We're gone like Donkey Kong as soon as she's out. Okay?"

I waited by one of the front windows where I could kill time staring at the rain.

"It's quite tragic, isn't it?" It was the guy writing in his notebook. I was standing so close to him I was almost touching his arm. I mentally smacked myself for continuing to be so unaware of my surroundings.

"I'm sorry," I replied. "What?"

"Those girls."

"Oh. Oh yeah. Tragic."

"I've seen this before," he said. He was looking out the window at the same spot I had been looking at before he had spoken to me. "There's going to be a witch hunt. Small cities like this have a real hard time believing a crime like this could happen within their limits. These towns get bloodthirsty. They get focused on finding a suspect, or a scapegoat, as it turns out in most cases. Someone's going to pay for this and I bet you my career it's going to be the wrong person."

The doors of the Jeep shut and the backlights flashed as the engine started up. Denise and Fraser had forgotten about me and I couldn't have been happier. I had an excuse. An exit. I couldn't stand being in Ahab's a minute longer. Listening any longer. "I'm sorry," I said to the man with the notebook. "I've really got to go. My friends..."

I left the man there mumbling something about the six o'clock news. "The six o'clock news. Watch it." Or, "Make sure you watch it. Watch the news." It didn't matter. All I cared about was getting out of the belly of the beast. I pushed through Ahab's entrance and was free.

The Jeep's engine was revving. I hopped into the backseat and smacked Fraser on the back of the head. "Thanks for the heads up."

"We'd never leave you, man. You know that."

They passed a sly smile, then Fraser popped the Jeep into drive and sped away. Rain exploded off the windshield. Tim Horton's cups rattled at my feet. Denise's tits jiggled. There was so much gray, outside and in. Like a season's worth of leaves burned in one go. Suffocating and gray. I wanted to get away from it all so badly.

I sipped the Ahab's coffee. The Colombian Brew. Compared to Karl's coffee, it tasted burnt. But it was not bad. It was also not the only thing I took away from Ahab's. Along with the free cup of coffee, I stole a new object of desire. The Ahab's girl. The cute one. I wanted to get to know her, because I sensed there was so much more to her. So much more than that sweet and innocent demeanor. A wild side even. And I wanted to know that side. Plus, I had a crazy thing for cute girls.

Thirty kilometres outside of Abbotsford we left the highway and turned onto Chilliwack Lake Road, which ran along the Vedder River. Tradition was to sing Pearl Jam songs as far as the road took us. Thirty-five minutes later, while poorly singing Jeremy, we turned off Chilliwack Lake Road and onto a dirt road I hadn't been on in half a decade.

"Yo," Fraser said and looked through me in the rearview. "Reach behind the seat and grab me the plastic bag."

"What's in the bag?"

"Your momma. Jesus, just get it and find out for yourself."

I reached back and fished around for the bag. When I snagged it I pulled it up and set it in my lap. It swooshed like my brain. Like the pothole lakes we drove through. The bag carried two six packs of Kokanee. "Beer? You think that's wise?"

"Quit being such a p-u-s-s-y, man. Shit, four by fouring and beer go together like P B and freaking J. You know that."

Denise undid her seatbelt and leaned over her seat. Her talons snagged the bag off my lap and cracked open two beers before I could respond to Fraser. "You want one?" she asked. "Cuz if you don't, I'm just gonna keep them up front. K?"

"No thanks, Denise. Think I'll stick with cold coffee."

"Suit yourself."

She handed Fraser one of the opened cans and he slammed it down. Then he slammed down on the gas, spinning the back tires, kicking up a wave of pebbles, sticks and mud behind the Jeep. Fraser couldn't have asked for better conditions. He tore up the wet road and he tore up the soggy land just off the wet road. The Jeep moved through the forest with ease. Rocks and fallen trees... no more than sticks and pebbles when confronted with the Jeep's speed and Fraser's recklessness. Fraser and the Jeep. They were like lawnmowers trimming a giant front lawn, eating up obstacles and spitting them out without a care in the world. After half an hour of bumping and jerking through mud and over rocky embankments, my insides were goo and my bladder was a timebomb ready to go off.

"Yo! Fraser!" I leaned forward and saw a wasteland of empty beer cans and Denise's hand on Fraser's crotch. "Whoa..."

She startled and pulled her hand away. "Shit," she said. "I forgot you were back there."

"Obviously."

Fraser slowed the Jeep down and looked back at me. "What the fuck, dude?"

"I have to take a piss. Can you pull over for a minute."

He stopped the Jeep in the middle of the muddy backroad. "You've got the bladder of a fucking five year old," he said. "Get out and go then."

"You're a dick."

I jumped out of the Jeep and sunk my white Adidas into the mud. The wet slipped through the shoelace holes and soaked my socks. "Dick," I mumbled and ran fifty or so metres toward the sound of a rushing creek. I dropped trou and set Ahab's finest free. The piss hit the damp, cold ground and steamed up. It flowed down a little hill and puddled up against a very familiar tree. Familiar, because it marked the spot where we had buried our past.

Chipmunk Creek saved us from ourselves. From the reality of being teenagers in a deadend city. We could drive an hour from our homes and be in the middle of an uninhabited world where nothing mattered, because nobody was there to tell us likewise. A teenage wasteland governed by wasted teens. Our term in office always began on the first day of May and ran until the third week of September. The opener of each new term was always a doozy. The opener always drew the largest crowds. One year there was more than thirty of us up at the creek. We'd smoke and drink and swear and fuck until we threw up. And we'd do it over and over again. Until high school ended and we went our separate ways. And then Chipmunk Creek became nothing more than the setting of one too many stories told over a cup of coffee outside The Meanest Bean.

"Remember that one time up at Chipmunk when..."

During our last trip to Chipmunk, the August after graduation, six of us made it up to say farewell. We stayed up all night just talking. Of course we had brought all the usual supplies -- the beer, the pot, a few tabs of acid -- but the whole night we only cracked a few beers. Instead of getting fucked up, we sat around the fire talking about the future. About fear. And regret. It was the most adult talk I had ever had with them. Adam, Bill and Matt were leaving the next afternoon for university in a different province. Fraser, Todd and I were taking a little time away from school. When the sun rose the next morning and all of our scavenged wood had been burned up, someone had the brilliant idea to bury all the things that went along with a Chipmunk Creek excursion: a bong and three pipes, a jackknife and hacksaw, a box of condoms, a few cans of unopened beer and a short note from each of us. We shoved our treasures into Adam's duffle bag and we picked a spot we'd all remember, so we could all return sometime in the distant future and dig it back up and reminisce... and laugh at our teenage idiocy. The spot we chose was near the base of the tree my piss was puddling up against. We dug for a half hour. We dug a hole that must have been five-feet deep. Then with little fanfare we tossed the bag in the hole and replaced the dirt. We were so serious and precise that when the operation was over, not even we could tell the earth had been disturbed.

I couldn't remember the words I had written on the note. As I stood there watering the already watered ground, all I wanted to do was remember them again. Remember if I had ever had hope. I shook off the hangers-on and put myself in order, then I followed the dark piss trail down to the tree. Along the way I picked up a damp tree branch I could use to dig. What I couldn't see from up the hill became very clear as I neared the tree. The ground above the treasure duffle bag was ripped apart. Dug out. Disturbed. Where I expected flat earth baring only the scars of time, I saw a deep hole.

An empty hole.

"Fucking campers," I said. "Probably thought they'd discovered Paradise."

I raced up the hill to tell Fraser about the untimely exhumation of our past and was greeted with his bare white ass thrusting back and forth. His pants down around his ankles. His feet sunk in the muddy ground. Denise. Delightful Denise. She was lying on the driver's seat, her two legs propped up on his shoulders. "Fuck me!" she screamed.

"Fuck me," I screamed.

Because of our loud cries, we couldn't hear the car approaching. It pulled up behind the Jeep, flashed its red and blues and gave off a two-second siren blast. Only then did we notice it.

Fraser brushed Denise's legs off his shoulders then looked back at me. Oh shit, he mouthed.

Oh shit was right. Whoever was in the police car sat and waited for several minutes while Fraser and Denise pulled up their pants and fixed their hair. The car's tinted windows made it hard to get any indication of what the officer was doing. I imagined he was in there trying to dig his eyes out of his head after seeing Fraser's ass. Haunted, as I knew I would be for quite some time.

When the door to the police car finally swung open, my bad feeling went to the next level. Downright terrible. The officer stepped out of the car and said in a deep, pissed off way, "Fraser, you little shit. What in good God's graces are you doing out here?"

"Dad," Fraser said. "What the hell are you doing out here?"

"Didn't I just ask you that same question?"

Fraser looked back at me, still standing there a good twenty feet behind him... looked at me with eyes that said, "Help." But I was gone. The situation had become a farce. The sound of the rushing creek couldn't hide my laughter. I covered my mouth and tried to hold it in as Fraser pleaded with his dad. My eyes watered. My body shook. Denise had closed herself in the Jeep and had buried her head in her hands. Assumedly, she was crying, too. Our tears were composed of the same chemical components, but they were coming from completely different places.

Officer Janzen grabbed his son by the arm and dragged him into the police car. The interrogation lasted three or four minutes, then Fraser was forcefully ushered back out into the rain. Into the middle of the muddy road where he stood shaking his head and laughing.

The police car reversed, and sped away.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"Did you see anyone else up here? Anywhere?"

"What?"

"I don't know. My dad said someone called him up all anonymous like and reported some kids drinking beers and tearing up the woods up here."

"That's weird. No one knows we're up here. Yeah?"

"Yeah. What's even stranger is they phoned my dad's cell phone. I don't even have his cell number."

"That's..." My thought trailed off as a gust of wind snuck down my shirt and reacted with my damp body. "Let's get out of here and get dry before we catch pneumonia."

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

"I can't believe you fucked her," I said when I reached the Jeep. "Don't you remember her nickname in high school?"

"No."

I whispered, "STDenise. Shit, I'm surprised your dick hasn't shriveled up and fallen off already."

Before he opened the door he pointed at a muddy condom on the ground. "What do you take me for, dude?"

"My apologies..."

Denise was now lying across the back seat whimpering like a toddler who'd lost her mom in the mall. "I'm so sorry about that," Fraser said.

"Just take me home. Please."

We didn't speak during the drive back to Abbotsford. The only sounds, the tinny plunk of rain against the Jeep's roof and Fraser fiddling with the radio dial. DJs and commercials for home insurance fizzed in and out. A brief buzz of technopop, followed by a twang of country. He hated jazz, but when he reached a station playing Miles Davis' Seven Steps to Heaven, he took his hand off the dial.

God, I needed a coffee.

5.

"We are born diseased, man. The disease is called life and it's terminal. If we're lucky, we get sixty or seventy years before that disease takes us. Not much time, is it? Is it? So don't fucking waste a day of your diseased life. Just don't do it."

Davis Cummings chose not to do drugs because the drugs chose him when he was a teenager. The drugs turned him into a space cadet. A rambling prophet. A loser, according to his family. Davis liked to tell us that he didn't need drugs to see Her, because She was in him all the time.

Davis also liked to tell us that there was no deadlier disease than life, because it always ended in death. Davis Cummings disappeared in May 1993 when he was twenty-six years old. In October 1993 when his bloody shoe washed up on a beach in Richmond, Davis Cummings was declared dead.

Another victim of life.

Davis was a carpenter's apprentice and a darn good one at that. What his mind lacked, his hands more than made up for. His appreciation for construction was discovered during a one-year stint in a medium security prison when he was twenty. His crime: possession of pot. Of bad judgment. His family turned their back on him and so did his friends. "When we go to prison," he once told us, "we become one thing, and one thing only: we become a criminal. Rapists, murders, thieves, potheads. To the outside world, we're all the same thing. We're criminals. And no one wants to be associated with a criminal." But Davis also learned about self worth in prison. He learned that he could be a contributing member of society. And the day after he was released from prison he found a carpenter in the Yellowpages and convinced that carpenter to take him on as his apprentice.

When Davis didn't show up at the site for a townhouse complex being built in Port Moody, the carpenter knew something was wrong. Davis had never been late for a day of work. He had never called in sick. When Davis's bloody shoe was buried, the carpenter and his wife were the only ones at the funeral who cried. Because they knew. They knew what the world had lost.

And what the world had lost, we gained.

I used to wonder about what the world might be like today if we hadn't lost certain people before their potential could be reached. You know, people like John Lennon. Like JFK and MLK. Like John Keats. And Jean-Michel Basquiat. Joan of Arc. Jesus, even Jesus. The list goes on and on. Would these people have made a difference? Would our streets be safer? Would there be more colour in the world? Would we all just get along with one another?

The day after my trip to Chipmunk Creek with Fraser and Denise, I began to think the people who had died too soon knew something the rest of us didn't. Like the world was fucked no matter how hard we tried to fix it. All you had to do was turn on Daytime Television to see that.

A talk show host broke through from under an avalanche of unpleasantness. A game show host feigned excitement, giving false hope to those on the screen and those on their couches at home. Yes, this was Daytime Television. On one channel the topic was Teenage Daughter, Teenage Hooker, while on another channel the question was True or False, Uranus is the third closest planet to Earth? In-between, men in overalls tried to sell me mini refrigerators and juice makers and carpets for sixty-nine cents a yard. And Doctor This and Chef That tried to make me believe my life wouldn't be complete until I owned an electric muscle relaxer, or an indestructible, lifetime-guaranteed butcher knife. A pool of spit formed at the crescent in my lips, then drooled out onto the pillow on which my head was resting. Drool. It may as well have been my brain matter. My grade ten physical education teacher Mr. Williams once told me that drugs would make me stupid. After spending two hours watching Daytime Television, I realized it wasn't pot and acid he was talking about. It was the images and the messages and the information vomiting out of the thirty-six inch box against the back wall of my parents' family room. Two hours watching Daytime Television and I wanted to jump in front of a bus.

And as the sun moved westward and dipped below the horizon, the shows of tragedy and triumph that had filled the airwaves disappeared, only to be replaced by more shows of tragedy and triumph. Home-grown tragedy and triumph. I flipped past syndicated sit-coms and infomercials and found the local news.

The anchorman, made of plastic and hair gel, spoke with authority, his baritone voice rich and creamy like fresh cup of doctored coffee. As he spoke, a picture of two girls swatting each other with pillows appeared in the space above his right shoulder. His story of the moment was about a young girl named Kimberly Paint, who was now lying in a coma at MSA Hospital in Abbotsford, and a young girl named Melody Marks, who was still missing, but being searched for diligently. Anchormen used words like diligent. It was great for effect. His story included profilers, and vague descriptions given by Miss Paint before she slipped into a coma, and artists. Then he alluded to a sketch that faded in and filled the whole thirty-six inch screen of my parents' television. It was the person the Abbotsford police believed would have all the answers. A suspect. The story's antagonist. Caucasian, twenty-four to thirty-two years old, thinly built, wearing baggy jeans and a dark-hooded sweater.

Those details.

Those bloody, generic details. I sat up and took a good look at the sketch on the television screen. And my heart skipped. The sketch... looked like me. Yes, it looked like me and everyone else I had ever known. It looked like Fraser. And Todd. Hell, it looked like that guy Jeff who tried to pick on me all through high school. Had they added big CHiP-style sunglasses, the sketch would have looked like the Unibomber before we all knew it was Kaczynski. A white man wearing a hoody, the hood pulled down over his eyes. Only a shadowed nose, mouth and chin visible. I had worn my hoody that way so many times. I knew the look. I had seen it on the boy next door. And the boy next door to him.

To my neighbours, I was the boy next door.

The sketch faded out and the anchorman's story continued. He said that more than a hundred search and rescue volunteers and two helicopters were combing the forests and searching the banks along the Fraser River, just outside of Abbotsford's city limits. He said Mary-Anne and Peter Marks, Melody's parents, had spoken with the press earlier in the day.

A quick edit and we were on the Marks' front porch. "Please," Mrs. Marks said tearfully. "Please don't hurt my baby. Let her come home. Her family and her friends miss her so much."

Pictures of Abbotsford... of the Marks... of the girls in high school... flashed across the screen. The pictures we always saw when something bad happened to a child. The type of pictures that asked, what type of monster would do harm to a child like this? I wondered whose lousy job it was to ask a grieving parent for those pictures of their children.

The news continued on, but I tuned out. I tuned out, because something other than the sketch was off. Something else was not sitting right in my gut. Kimberly Paint and Melody Marks. I didn't know the names. But I did know the girls. I knew them, because I had met them before. Both of them. At a party Fraser had dragged me to a couple of weeks earlier.

I had met them.

Melody had even asked me if I wanted to go down the lane and smoke a joint with her. I had mentioned that I didn't smoke weed anymore and she said something like, "That's too bad. You may have just missed out on getting your cock wet, too." At least, that's what I think she had said to me. Memories have a way of writing themselves when alcohol and time passed is involved.

Wet little men tap dancing on the windows snapped me out of my memory of Melody Marks. I got up off the couch and walked to the glass patio doors. Raindrops hit the glass and exploded, then ran down the door in vein-like rivers. I ran my finger along one of these rivers. It was good to focus on something else. But my focus was lost when I reached the bottom of the door. I stood up straight and pressed my cheek against the glass. Pressed my palms against the glass. And I became the window. The raindrops ran down my face and dropped off my chin and sought out a quiet burial in the carpet underneath me.

So many raindrops.

Something was happening to me. Something was...

I needed familiarity, but none was to be found in the house, because the house was empty. I wanted my mother. I wanted emotional support for an emotion I still couldn't decipher. But like every other time in my life I looked for this support, my mother was nowhere to be found. And that's when the phone rang.

My mother. "It's your father," she said. "Ryan, you need to come to the hospital."

"Mom..."

"He's..." She was hyperventilating.

"Slow down, mom. What's going on?"

"I expected this... I prepared for this. I did. But..."

Silence, and then a dial tone.

I once wrote a story in Creative Writing about a boy who thought he was living inside a fish bowl. His clothes were always drenched. His vision was always blurry. He had great difficulty moving because of the force of the water he believed was always pushing against him. And he had this feeling that someone was always watching him. The problem, it seemed, was that this boy was the only one suffering from these problems. They called him crazy and said he suffered from delusions. They told him to get help or he'd end up in an asylum. The boy, becoming more and more troubled by his belief, set out to prove to the world that everyone was living in the same fishbowl. And that they were the crazy ones for not realizing it. The more and more he brought forth proof, the more and more people began to fear him. Finally, they locked him up in a room with rubber walls. One night while lying on his mattress, staring up at the cement ceiling in his asylum cell, the building began to shake. He watched as the roof shifted from side to side, then lifted up toward the sky. He watched as five enormous fingers appeared out of the blackness above and fished around in his cell. When they hooked him, they plucked him from atop his mattress and carried him off to wherever. As the world got smaller below him he laughed and cried and yelled at the top of his lungs, "I told you so! I told you so!" But no one heard him, because they were all asleep.

My mother had the car, so my only mode of transportation was my brother's old mountain bike. Three years of hibernation in the back shed had left it in a rusted state. It still worked, though. And that worked for me. I could have been that boy in the fishbowl as I wheeled down soggy roads. For the second time that day I was soaked. The rain blurred my vision. It held me back from riding faster. Cars drove past me and nameless faces safe inside stared out at me with looks of wonderment. Of pity. Fish in rain slickers, hiding under drab umbrellas, darted to and fro, searching out their families and their homes. As the gray day turned into a charcoal night, puddles grew into ponds and ponds grew into lakes. Then oceans. I no longer rode a bike; I paddled a dinghy.

I thought there'd be more sadness. I thought I'd hate the world and God even more than I already did. But all I felt was relief. Not for me, but for him.

I rode up to the emergency doors where the ambulances pull up and I met my mother. She was sitting on a bench under an awning smoking a cigarette. "I didn't know you smoked," I said.

"I don't."

She stood up and handed me the keys to her car. "The car is just around the corner. Put your bike in the trunk and come and pick me up. I have to go home."

"But what about..."

"Ryan. Please... just get the car."

When I returned with the car, she was in the doorway signing some papers. She handed the signed papers back to a nurse and walked to the car, her shoulders slumped, her eyes on the ground. She slid into the passenger seat and slowly did up her seatbelt.

The radio supplied the unsettled score to our drive home. She fiddled with the dial looking for something, but I knew not what. She passed by the monotonous whine of top forty without so much as a listen. Onto a sad jazz cover. Blues morphed into samba, then into a classical movement by Beethoven. Voices flew by like power poles outside the car's windows. A woman screamed, "But how can any of us be safe when there's a killer out there?" Another spin of the dial, and then it stopped. I didn't complain. I couldn't complain. It was what my mother needed. A low chant. Weeping strings. A pained songstress. The woman sang about loss. About keeping memories alive. My eyes welled up.

I stole a look at the woman sitting next to me. A woman I knew very little about. She gave birth to me and fed me from her breast and kept me alive. She dressed me in funny clothes and drove me to school all through my life. She was my mother, but mother seemed to be a loose designation in her case. Something was missing in the Paul family. It took me a long time to figure out what that something was. And when I finally did, I was livid.

My friends. They used to come over to my house because I had the greatest family in the world. My parents weren't divorced. They never yelled at each other, or at my brother or me. And before the cancer, they were both in perfect health. The perfect Baby Boomers. My friends would sit on the patio and smoke cigarettes with my dad and talk about fishing and golf. My friends would say things to me like, "Your dad is so cool." I felt proud that my screwed up friends found solace in my home. But the more time I spent at their homes, the more I saw that it was my family that was screwed up. When my friends left their homes for nights on the town, or just up to the corner store for a pack of smokes, I'd observe strange little rituals I had never heard or seen before. These rituals involved things like hugs. And kisses. And the words, "I love you." My mother never kissed me goodnight, or hugged me when I was sad. I didn't know that type of affection existed. I didn't know what growing up without that kind of affection would do to me.

Things were coming to an end.

Things were changing. In order to change, we have to give some things up. To get healthy, we have to give up smoking. To lose weight, we have to give up double bacon cheeseburgers. To get relief, we have to give up life. My father's life had ended. Inevitability was something he couldn't run from. I was running from something, too. And it was tearing me apart on the inside. I needed to change.

"Did you throw me off the ferry, mom?"

"What?"

"I said, did you throw me off the ferry when I was a baby?"

"Why would you ask me that right now?"

"It's a simple question, mother. Yes or no. Did you throw me off the ferry?"

"Of course not. I... I..."

"You what? You love me and you would never do something like that to someone you love? If you love me, then say it. Say, 'Ryan, I love you.'"

She reached into her purse and shuffled the contents around for a few seconds, but when she pulled her hand out it was still empty. "How dare you do this to me now, Ryan," she said. "How dare you."

She turned up the volume on the radio and looked out her window. One of the tears that had welled up in my eyes escaped, but I couldn't feel it as it slithered down my cheek.

I couldn't feel a thing.

6.

An obsession is a funny thing.

When I woke the next morning after my dad died, it wasn't his death I was obsessing about. My obsession was the girl from Ahab's coffee. My morning erection... the result of this obsession. I took hold of it and imagined the Ahab's girl lying next to me in bed. We were looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, running our hands all over each others' bodies. At some point she leaned over and whispered into my ear, "First I'm going to blow you, then I'm going to make you the best damn cup of coffee you've ever had." She licked her lips and made an 'mmmm' sound, then she slid under the covers and wrapped her soft lips around me.

That was all I needed to imagine.

I was gone.

I got out of bed and looked down at the dark spot expanding in the cotton of my boxer shorts. Proof of the Ahab's girl's effect on me. I had to see her. I had to hear her voice again.

Obsessions have the power to destroy loyalties. Friendships. Trust. Obsessions have the power to break promises as easily as a promise is made. My newborn obsession would lead me right back into the lair of the enemy. And I didn't care.

The house was empty. A note taped to the coffeemaker read, GET A JOB OR GET OUT. I took the cue and rode up to Ahab's Coffee.

The sun had come out again. But the wind refused to give up. It was a warm wind, though, so tables and chairs that hadn't been out on Ahab's patio the day before were out now. And there were butts in those chairs. Two women in business get-ups sipped on what looked like lattes. From the brightness of the lipstick rings on the paper cups in their hands, they had to have been sipping on those same lattes for a very long time. A student with textbooks about literature and essay writing was typing on a laptop. His mug was empty. Two Harley Hogs were parked along the curb. Their owners, two burley men wearing bandanas and Harley t-shirts, at a table alongside the Hogs. The Hog brothers sipped from giant cups of coffee and talked about the annual meeting of something coming up in two weeks. The sight of these two at an Ahab's surprised me. But then again, seeing me back at Ahab's was a little surprising.

I pushed through the door and waited for bells to ring, but there were none.

Air conditioning mixed up the air inside the cafe: a soup of roasting coffee, aging pastries and freon. The cafe was empty of customers, but not of life. The girl... my girl was there. She was alone behind the counter brewing another urn of coffee. "Urning your keep," I said as I strolled up to the counter.

She pushed a button on the brewer, which sent a stream of water from a spout at the top of the brewer into the urn. The clear water quickly turned dark brown as it mingled with the grounds in the brewer basket. When the girl was happy with this transformation, she turned and faced me. "Pardon?" she said.

I took the gift and chose not to repeat myself. "Um... hey... hello," I stammered.

"Hello," she said. "What can I get you?"

"Ummm, yeah... hi. I was in here yesterday..."

She cocked her head, then widened her eyes. Doe-like. Aha. "I remember you," she said. "I didn't think you'd be back so soon."

"Yeah, well..." I laughed uneasily and tried again. "I just wanted to stop by and thank you for that coffee yesterday. And maybe buy a coffee today."

"Well, then, what can I get you?" She smiled and her two giant dimples appeared. I wanted to climb into them. I wanted to lose myself in her.

"Umm... I don't know. I guess... I guess I'll have a medium coffee."

"For here or to go?"

An Eeyore sticker was stuck to her apron overtop the Ahab's logo.

"Pardon?"

"Do you want your coffee in a mug for here or in a paper cup to go? Simple enough question, right?" She smiled again.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'll have it in a mug, I guess."

"Praise Jesus," she said and raised her hands in the air.

I tried to hide my embarrassment by throwing it back her. "So, you like Winnie the Pooh, huh? Aren't you a little old for Pooh?"

She turned her back on me and took a mug from atop the coffee brewer. Body language told me nothing, other than she hadn't heard me. She placed the mug under the spout of the urn with the freshly brewed coffee in it and she pulled down the lever on the spigot. The steam rising from the hot coffee was quickly assassinated by the air conditioning. When the mug was full to within a half an inch she pulled the lever up, stopping the flow of coffee, and she placed the mug down in front of me. "Yeah, I love Pooh and Eeyore and all the rest of them. I love them because they remind me that I was once a child. How about you, buddy? Are you down with Pooh?"

No, I wasn't.

"Yeah, he's a funny little guy," I said. "I'm not fooled by his gently simplicity, though. I think... I think Pooh's much deeper than he leads us to believe."

"You know he's not real, right?"

I smiled. It was hard not to when talking to her. Suddenly, I felt a pop in the back of my mind. A degree in Journalism, ambition for fame and riches... it was all bullshit. I wrapped my hands around the warm Ahab's mug and knew that what I really wanted... no, needed to do with my life was to be there with her calling drinks and building something. Yes, I suddenly wanted to be an Ahab's drone, pushing the public their daily caffeine hit.

"Hey listen," I said. "I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your name."

"That's cuz I never told you my name."

"Ah... yes." Caught.

"It's Amanda."

Amanda. Amanda, the Ahab's girl. Ryan and Amanda.

"I don't suppose Ahab's is... hiring?"

"Oh, we're always hiring here. Turnover in this place is insane."

"Oh," I said. "Are you... are you planning on leaving soon?"

"Not me. No, I love it here. Jeez, I make eight bucks an hour to make and pour coffee. How can I complain about that? If you want me to, I can go get Wind from the back. He'll tell you a little more about the job. He can give you an application, too."

"Great."

"Great," she said. "Oh, and the coffee's a dollar fifty, bub."

I had become one more statistic. A Junkie and his Junk. Coffee. What a business.

She rang through the coffee then ran to the back room leaving me alone on Ahab's cafe. I went to the condiment stand and doctored my coffee. When the coffee was fixed, I sat down on a stool at the bench running along the front windows. I stared out at the two businesswomen. One of the women was wearing a loose fitting blouse that was being blown around by the wind. Every so often I caught a glimpse of her glorious cleavage.

Wind was big. Big like a bull. I saw his reflection in the window and turned to look at him. He barreled out of the back room and rushed at me just like a bull rushed a matador. The preposterous blue apron wrapped around his whale-like frame fluttered as he moved. "So," he said while still in motion. "So, you're looking for a job?"

He stopped a foot or so from me and held a hand up, halting my response. "Mans," he turned and said to Amanda who was rearranging pastries in the pastry case, "I'm craving civility. Dean Martin and a small soy cappuccino, if you'd be so kind."

"Jimminy Christ, Wind," she said. "You know how much I hate making those things. And who the hell drinks soy milk anyway? Come on."

He chewed on his goatee and mumbled, "Smart ass." His shaved head glistened under the halogens. When he finished feasting on his facial hair he said to me, "Well,we're not really hiring right now, but I'll give you one of these babies right here and when the time comes that we need another minion, perhaps I'll give you a call."

He dropped an application form on the bench and then he was gone, lumbering back toward Amanda, where his drink awaited him. And then he was gone again. Back to the depths of the back room from where he came.

Pleasant fellow, I thought.

Another guy dressed in Ahab's garb came out of the back room and announced to the empty store, "I've arrived. There's no need to panic anymore."

"Thank God," Amanda said. "Wind is stressing out about something and the store is deader than my grandmother. I'm out of here like Richard Gere."

She disappeared through the door to the back room and returned a minute later with a jacket folded over her arm. "Later skater," she said to her replacement, who was already behind the bar pouring himself an espresso.

Amanda the Ahab's girl walked out of Ahab's and away from me. But I wasn't going to let it end at that. Not a chance. I chugged down the last of the coffee and ran out after her. "Amanda!" I yelled.

"Are you following me?" she said, still walking.

"I... I..." I caught up to her. "I don't know what's come over me, but I was wondering if maybe you'd like to go and... ummm... get a cup of coffee, or something?"

"A cup of coffee? You silly monkey, I just worked eight hours in a coffee shop. Coffee is the last thing I want. Plus, how do you know I don't have a boyfriend?"

"I don't, but it doesn't hurt to ask, right?"

"Yeah, it only hurts when my boyfriend finds out you were hitting on me and he beats the shit out of you."

I took the hint and turned to head back home, but before I could start walking she giggled and said, "Well, where do you think you're going?"

My insides fluttered. It was good to know the butterflies hadn't died.

"You don't really have a boyfriend, do you?" I asked.

"I guess that's a risk you're going to have to take if you choose this adventure."

We walked along streets I had never seen before. Past schools I had never heard of. Into alleys that were makeshift graveyards for rusted pickups and broken-down lawnmowers. We talked about music and movies and the important nothings we learn about each other in those first moments together. And then we stopped at a gate. "I know all this stuff about you," she said, "but I don't know your name."

"I'm Ryan."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Ryan." She stuck her hand out and I shook it. "Would you like to come inside for a cup of coffee?"

I nodded and she pushed us through the gate into a backyard littered with busted-up toys and overrun with wild grass. "What a dump," I whispered.

"Hey mister, this is my home," she said. "Be nice."

"I'm sorry, I totally didn't mean to say that so loud..."

She giggled. "I'm just effin with you," she said. "I live in the basement. The owners are slobs. And their kids... don't even get me started on those little shits. Ooh, I'm sorry. I've got to watch my mouth. My mother says I'm a vulgar young woman. And according to her, proper young men don't go for vulgar young women."

"No need to worry about me. I'm not very proper."

We entered her tiny one-bedroom basement suite and she put on a pot of coffee. "You can chill at my awesome kitchen table, if you'd like," she said as the machine began to gurgle. "I have to get out of these clothes. I smell awful."

"You smell great," I said as the blood rushed out of one head and into another.

"Mmm... sweat and coffee. And a wee hint of pee." She giggled and retreated to her room. I took a seat and listened while she noisily shuffled through dresser drawers and opened and closed closet doors. While she dropped something made of tin. While she sang a compilation of Disney tunes.

A sort of best of mix.

"Are you okay out there?" she asked at one point.

"Supercool," I said.

"Supercool," she repeated. "You're kind of a dork, huh?"

Davis Cummings once told me, "The only true love is the love you feel for Her. And you know it is true because you can feel it everywhere in your body. You can feel it tingling in your earlobes. In your hair follicles. In the tip of your dick. You can feel Her everywhere. She is true love."

The moment Amanda called me a dork I felt true love for the first time in my life.

"Hey, you're the one singing Disney tunes."

"Blasphemy!" she yelled as she sprung out of her bedroom. She approached me fiercely, and in a very soft and serious voice she said, "You can mess with me and you can mess with my family, but don't ever mess with Disney."

She giggled, then poured us a couple of mugs of coffee and took a seat across the table from me. She rested her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her clasped hands. She looked at me. She looked into me. "You know, you look so familiar," she said. "I know you said you went to Mouat, but are you sure you didn't go to my school for a bit? Really really sure?"

"I think I'd remember if I went to your school or not."

"Yeah, but you look so darn familiar. I can't seem to put my finger on it. It's... It's your mouth and your chin... and..."

Her eyes opened wide.

"What?" I pushed. "What is it?"

"Well..."

"Yes."

"Well, you know, if you block out the top of your head, you kind of... oh, it's silly."

"No, say it. I kind of what?"

"Well, you kind of look like that guy in that sketch. You know, the sketch of the guy who attacked those girls."

I laughed. An obvious nervous laugh. I hadn't done anything, but I felt the need to protect myself. "Shit, that could've been anybody in that picture," I said. "Look at me, I'm as generic looking as it gets. I can't help that. Five eleven. Slender build. Heredity's a mean bitch. A mean bitch."

She stared at me some more. Pondering my weak-assed explanation. Her silence like a butterknife in the eye. Everyone was going to become a suspect. Words never more true.

"So," she finally said. "What do you feel like doing?"

And in that instant, I knew we were good.

"What's that for?" she asked.

"What's what for?"

"That smile. You look like the Cheshire cat."

"I..." I thought for a moment. "You know, I think it's because for the first time in a long time I feel happy."

"Happy, huh? Is that because you're a murderer and you now know I trust you?"

"Funny. But no. It's because I think I really like you."

"But you barely know me."

"But I know I want to know you. And I know that from here on out we're going to get to know each other very well."

"That's some serious confidence you've got going on there, mister."

"Confidence shmonfidence. I haven't felt this way about a girl since high school. I'm nauseous I'm so nervous right now. You make me want to puke."

"Oh, well, that makes me feel like a very special young lady."

"No... you make me want to puke in a good way."

"Ooookaaaaayyyy," she said slowly. "Let's say we go and do something now. How's that sound?"

She stood up and bolted to her bedroom. When she returned a half a minute later she had a plastic baggy in her hand. "You seem like an out there kind of guy. What says you and I eat some of these mushrooms, then head on over to the mall and see just how badly we can freak ourselves out. I had some of these the other night and I must admit, they're quite deadly. In a good way."

"Are you serious?" I asked in disbelief.

"Oh. Oh my god. Did your image of me just shatter?"

"No. I've just... umm... never been in the situation where the girl was offering me drugs."

"You know, I never even thought to ask you if you do shrooms."

"It's been like..." I had to think hard, because I hadn't had mushrooms in years. "Like five years since I last did them. But I've always been a fan. Hell. Bring 'em on."

She opened the baggy and pulled out a nugget-sized object wrapped in tinfoil. She handed it to me and waited until I unwrapped it to grab one for herself. Inside the tinfoil, a crudely cut piece of chocolate. "Mmm," I said and popped it in my mouth. "Just the way I like 'em."

She unwrapped her piece and popped it in her mouth. The chocolate was a poor mask. The gritty mushrooms mixed in the chocolate crunched between my teeth. I had never tasted a chocolate-covered cricket, but I was sure the sensation was similar. I took a sip of my coffee and washed the whole mess down my throat.

"Pretty gross, huh?" she said. "But just wait till you start tripping."

7.

A clammy hand pressed against my forehead.

"Are you okay? You've been conked out for like twenty minutes now."

"I'd like to go swimming, thank you."

Amanda was standing above me. Her dimples were the size of swimming pools.

"What did you just say?"

"I'll go home and get my bathing suit."

"No... about a ditch."

The words coming out of my mouth were different than the words I wanted to say. I looked past Amanda at spiders playing tag on her ceiling. I twisted my mouth and licked my teeth and said, "Ahhh."

"Oh my god. I'm so sorry, Ryan. Are you... shouldn't you be home with your family?"

"What?"

I heard, "Ahhh" and she heard, "My father died yesterday."

"I mean, shouldn't you be home with your mom, helping her, you know, grieve and whatever?"

"I... I just had to get away for a while."

A long second passed. While the clock clicked from one notch to the next I saw her scratch the back of her head, pull out a craggy strand of hair and look up at the spiders I had just been looking at. "I think what you really need is a drink," she said.

I blinked and we were outside heading back into the city's core, fighting the wind and the bleeding pavement, searching for a pub I didn't know existed.

The pub's interior made me think of jousting.

I sipped on a Guinness and she sipped on a Strongbow and we talked. We talked about goals and fantasies and the rampant teen pregnancy problem in Abbotsford. She knew three girls in high school that got knocked up. I knew two. When one minute of time passed by, I could hear the next sixty seconds following close behind it. The pitter patter of their little feet sounded like rain on the roof of a car.

At some point in our conversation, while we were rambling on about music and my monumental dislike for pop music and top-forty radio, we both stopped talking. She sipped her drink. Sip. Gulp. The golden liquid in the sleeve waved back and forth flinging surfers from their boards. Sip. Gulp. I heard them scream as she swallowed them whole. Sip. Gulp. I heard the liquid rushing through her system. Looking for places to deposit its alcohol. Its surfer bones. I wanted to reach out and touch her skin. A conversation from the booth behind ours wriggled itself into my head. I snuck a long peak at a guy with a fake mustache and goatee talking to an old, wrinkled woman painted from head to toe in blues and pinks. They were talking about "The Girls." Their eyes swung back and forth like pendulums from their beers to me. From me to their beers.

From their beers to me.

"Hey," I said and pulled the sleeve of Strongbow away from Amanda's mouth. "I think the two weirdos behind us are looking at me. I think they're talking about me."

She giggled. "I think you're officially in the seriously-fucked-up stage," she said. "There's nobody in the booth behind you, silly."

Nobody was in the booth.

"Enough said," I said. "Let's get out of here. I need some fresh air. It's the paranoia that made me stop doing this."

As we made our escape, the conversations taking place around the pub floated in and out of my consciousness. Mouths moved, but the wrong words came out. People talked about fucking and baseball and movies. They talked about pulling the whiskers out of kittens and riding unicorns. Below the confusing conversations, so quiet I could barely hear it, one word repeated over and over again. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

Someone rushed toward me. They were yelling. "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!"

"Of what?" I cried back. "Of what?"

A woman. A waitress. She grabbed my arm. Fire shot from her palm into my skin. "Sir," she said. "You didn't pay for your drinks."

"Oh shit," I said as the volume of Amanda's spastic giggles went from a tolerable six to an unbearable eleven.

I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and told the waitress to keep the change. Amanda and I ran out of the pub laughing. Entranced by each other and by a set of yellow lines... yellow lines that lured us to the mall. Once we reached the mall and were protected by the glass awning above the mall's entrance doors I turned to Amanda and said, "If we continue to hang out together after this ends, don't ever let me take drugs again. Okay?"

"You're such a woman."

"Silly rabbit, drugs are for kids."

"Really? Are you that much of an old man inside? Really"

I grabbed her with both hands and pulled her into me. I pressed my lips against hers and tasted berry lip gloss. I sucked on her bottom lip and saw fields of wild berries. They were growing out of her skin. I ate them up. I gorged on their sweetness. Absorbed their life. At some point she stuck her tongue in my mouth. It ran along my teeth and wrestled with my tongue. We tightened our grip on each other. Her nipples hardened and poked through her blouse. They tickled my chest. I ran my hands down the swell of her back and grabbed at her blouse. I pulled it out of her jeans and slid my hands under it. Felt the crack of her ass. Was about to slide deeper when I was reminded of our indiscretion.

"Get a fucking room!" said some guy walking into the mall.

"Oh my god," Amanda said. She broke away from our embrace and ran into the mall. I chased after her through the revolving door and into the Sears department store. I hunted her down in the lingerie section where she was crouched behind a display of black bras and panties. When she spotted me she rose up like she was on a mechanical lift. She snatched a black thong and spun it around her finger. "Think I'd look good in this bad boy?"

A different kind of paranoia washed over me. I feared... was absolutely terrified that I had popped a big fat public erection. I casually brushed the front of my jeans like I was brushing off dirt. Brushing away my fear. "You'd look good in just about any of those things," I said. I knew I'd be imagining her in them when I finally went to bed. I knew the erection would be all too real then. And I couldn't wait for it.

"Yeah right," she said. "Look at the size of my ass."

She dropped the thong on the floor. "I'll be at the pet store. Meet me there," she said and ran out of Sears and into the mall.

I strolled down the middle aisle in the women's department at Sears and I listened to the hum of the fluorescents above me. I put my hands out and let the shirts and skirts and pants slide over my fingers. Rayon. Cotton. Wool. Silk. So many textures. So much to feel. The silk of a button-up shirt slid over my skin and I knew what an egg must feel like on Teflon. I pulled the silk shirt from the rack and rubbed it against my face.

Things had changed so fast in only a couple of days. Voices in my head said things were going to continue to change. When we grow, we change, the voices said. The voices were never more prevalent than when I was high. A high-school science teacher named Mr. McElroy once told me that the voices in our heads are our subconscious in an audible state. They tell us what we must do. They tell us what decisions we must make in order to function in society. Mr McElroy also said those same voices can also be a sign of delusion. Of sickness. A sort of warning that the old brain has taken a metaphorical wrong turn and has gotten itself lost. Mr McElroy was a bit of a scumbag, so I never bought into much of what he taught. This was a guy whose class experiments always seemed to involve one of the more shapely girls in class and a lot of bending over. "Look," he'd say. "The pen and the textbook hit the ground at the exact same time. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't gravity amazing? Please Marnie, could you pick those up for me?"

Still, those voices in my head.

That voice in my head.

Was it good?

Or Evil?

"I am... who you have been searching for."

"I haven't been searching for anybody."

"I did not say I was anybody."

"Then how could I have been searching for you?"

"Do you know where you are right now?"

"I'm in the women's clothing department in Sears."

"Think in the Abstract, Ryan. You are... in a good state of being to do that right now, aren't you?"

I was lying on my back. Looking up at the sky. The sky was a void of blackness, except for two stars, eye distance apart, shining brightly high up above me. The stars twinkled in shades of green and orange. Then one of them briefly popped out and returned a half a second later. Like it was winking at me.

"It's funny. I can feel your voice all around me and all through me. It feels like the wind blowing against my face... like blood flowing through my veins. But I can't see you."

"But I am here, Ryan. I am everywhere. I always have been. I've just been in the shadows waiting. I am... what you have been searching for."

"What I've been searching for? I don't understand. I didn't know I was searching for anyone or anything."

"Come now, my dear boy. You are empty. And what you have been searching for is Substance. You have been searching for it for a very long time and I am here to tell you that I am Substance. I am Direction. I am Mother to you and to all. I am the God you no longer believe in, but so wish you did. I am..."

"This is some serious tripping?"

"You are lost, Ryan, and I am the Map that will lead you home. Home, where you are in complete control of your destiny. Where you are in control of the destiny of those who choose to join you. Home, where your voice will matter. Where your voice will give you and others just like you the hope and the direction they so crave."

"I don't need direction. There is a girl now."

"Ryan. There is a storm brewing outside the front doors of your world. You will soon see that things are not as they seem. Your world will turn on you. It is turning on you as we speak. I am your only Hope, Ryan. I am... Ummm, is there something I can help you find?"

"What?"

A tap on my shoulder brought the lights up on the night that had been all around me. "Is there something I can help you find?" An older woman with a bored look on her face and a nametag pinned to her breast pocket that read JANICE tapped her boot on the linoleum and stared at me.

The silk shirt was still pressed against my face. "Well now, I do believe I've found what I'm looking for."

She "Hmphed" and moved off to the women's shoe section where she vanished behind a rack of clearance sneakers.

Down where Sears opened up into the mall I saw Grade Ten. I saw it there like an episode on a giant television, being acted out by people who looked just like the people I grew up with. It was a time before real sex and before drugs, and even before real rock and roll. I saw my old friend Mike. Look at us there, shoplifting porno magazines from the bookstore. Look at us there sitting on benches in the middle of the mall making farting noises as old people walked on by.

And look, there's Ken.

Before Grade Ten, there was so little for us to worry about. Dealing with pimples, cracking a distasteful joke here and there, hiding a post-pubescent erection from girls like Sabrine, or Jill, or any of the other members of their little clique of anorexic dolls. Yes, that was about it for worries before Grade Ten. Because we were still in the comforting confines of home, and still firmly placed in the branches of establishment, where breakfast, lunch and dinner was always on the table. Where a bed with a big comforter was always there to wrap around us at night. Where thoughts of leaving the nest only occurred when mom or dad stayed firm on a midnight curfew. Where the words 'rent' and 'taxes' and 'job' were as alien as the words 'chalcedony' and 'zucchetto'. Where money really did grow on trees... mommy and daddy trees.

I remember plucking two-hundred dollars from my mother's branches and watching Mike uproot two fifty from the garden his father grew out of. I remember setting off by public transit to Seven Oaks Mall feeling like we could buy the world. We were on a quest to sharpen our image. As neither of us had much of an image to begin with, sharpening something that dull was going to take a hell of a big whetstone.

In Grade Ten, suddenly nobody cared about 'A's in Math and Social Studies, or extra-curricular activities or what instrument you played. What they cared about was Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfigger. Jordan and Hugo. In Grade Ten I learned that what you wore was what you were. Where before Brooks and GWG were just letters and names tagged onto the clothes I wore, now they were poison. Silly me. Up until Grade Ten, of all the things I thought made someone cool, being different -- not conforming or caring -- was the best of them.

But no.

During those hollow days, any sign of weirdness incurred instant excommunication from the masses. You may as well of told them you had AIDS, because social death was imminent. Or so the media brainwashed me to believe.

My wallet empty and my soul sold to a devil name GUESS? I wandered aimlessly behind Mike like a lost puppy looking for treats. He had decided that he wanted a pair of shorts to match his new Nike Air Jordans and Boy's Co t-shirt. So we went into a Gap-like store near the food court. It smelled like Orange Julius' hot dogs and Chinese food. The walls of the store were littered with racks and racks of preppy-chic clothing. Salmon (not pink) sweaters, khakis, button up, collared shirts. That sort of stuff. Phil Collins' top-forty voice sang through hidden speakers, his song about murder in the air tonight. The air in the store was poison and we were the only two suckers breathing it in.

"Can I help you guys find something?"

His nametag read KEN. His dark brown skin put me in awe.

"We're cool, buddy," Mike replied.

Ken pulled off his thin-wired glasses and rubbed his his eyes. "Well, call me if you need any help."

"Righto," Mike said.

While Mike paraded back and forth from the change room trying on blue shorts, red shorts, green shorts and even more of the store's shorts, I wandered over to the cash register where a piece of paper taped to the counter read PART-TIME JOB AVAILABLE, APPLY WITHIN.

"Hey Ken," I said, a little reserved.

Ken lightly jogged around to the clerk side of the counter. "What can I do for you?"

"I was just wondering about this job here. I was wondering what it takes to get a job here."

"Are you messing with me, kid?"

I was confused, because I was genuinely curious about what it took to get a job. I really had no clue. I knew the day was coming where my mother would tell me to go out and get my own damn money. So I needed advice. Fast. "I'm sorry," I said.
He gazed at me for a moment. "What are you, like fifteen?" he asked.

"Yeah... how'd you know?"

"Fifteen... fifteen... fifteen," he repeated, his voice trailing off only to be replaced by the chorus of a Bryan Adams ballad. He looked up at the ceiling and muttered, "This is my hell."

"Sorry?"

"Your friends," he said. "They're all getting jobs now, aren't they? At McDonald's. At Burger King. Am I right?"

I nodded. Mike was one of only two friends I had at that point and neither of them had jobs yet. But I nodded, because I felt I had to.

"Do you know how old I am?" He didn't let me give him an answer. "I'm twenty eight. And I work here. At this... clothing store."

I felt like a burning match and Ken was the fuse on a firecracker. Something I had said set that fuse alight and I knew that when it reached the end, my ears were going to ring.

"Cherish it, kid. Cherish everything you have now. Cherish the lengths your parents have gone to keep you happy, because one day you're going to have to leave home and you're going to have to try and fit your square ass into a world full of round holes. And you're going to see that fitting in becomes a very hard thing to do. Failure is this awful sickness spreading through society right now and if you're not careful, you could catch it just as easily as I did. And you could end up here at twenty eight. Is that what you really want?"

I half expected him to pull out a revolver, shove the barrel down his throat and pull the trigger, just so I'd take him serious.

"I'm sorry..." he said when he realized who he was talking to. When he realized he had just made an ass out of himself in front of a kid who didn't know the difference between the Brady-Bunch world he saw on TV and the one he lived in every day. "I'm just... I'm sorry. Do you want to buy those shorts?"

Mike had crept up beside me. His eyes were locked on Ken. He handed over the shorts. He said nothing as Ken rang them through. I had to make use of the awkward silence. I had to rewind what had just happened and play it back in my head. A complete stranger had just opened up to me about his difficulties. About the unfairness of life. But Ken would not be the last stranger to open up to me in this way. Ken was the first of many I would listen to. Because sometimes all people wanted was someone to listen to them. A year or so later a girl I hardly knew named Erica said to me, "There's something about your eyes, Ryan. They're like magnets. They pull out all that stuff in me I can't seem to tell anyone else about."Erica went on to tell me about the night she snuck into her baby brother's room and smothered him in a fit of jealousy.

Before Ken, when teachers, or relatives, or God squads would ramble on about their stupid beliefs, or their formulas for figuring out life's little problems, my ears would turn on filters that transformed their so-called enlightening words words into puking sounds. Maybe it was because Ken was black and I had never spoken to a black person before, or maybe it was because what he said scared me. Whatever the case, he got to me that day. And I wanted to hear more.

"You know, Ken, I used to want to be a policeman."

He shoved the shorts in a plastic bag and handed the bag to Mike. "What're your names, guys?" he asked.

"I'm Ryan and this goof is Mike."

"Well, it's nice doing business with the two of you. I was starting to think I wasn't going to make a single sale today. The mall is D-E-A-D. I hope I didn't freak you out there. I'm just tired of dealing with fat, stuck-up women and hyperactive kleptomaniac teenagers. And you know, when you inquired about the job... it just made me a little sick, because, I mean, who in their right mind would want a job like this?'

We hung around the shop for another half hour talking to Ken. He told us about his many attempts to get ahead "in a racist world" and then he told us more about his failures in life. About the power of failure.

When we left the store and entered the final few minutes of our childhood, Mike said, "That will never happen to me."

That will never happen to me.

That was almost a decade ago. I hadn't thought of Mike or Ken in almost as long. The drugs were the keys that opened up the safe holding memories I had long forgotten. Or hid. The mall was the map to the safe. The fucking mall.

"Are you alright?"

"Pardon?"

"You've been standing there with that shirt up against your face for like fifteen minutes now and I was just wondering if everything was alright."

The memories of Ken and Mike and the mall exploded into a billion fragments of colour, then faded away leaving me awash in the fluorescent light of Sears. A man was looking at me, awaiting some sort of explanation for my strange behavior. The light made his skin look green. Like he had some sort of sickness only I could see. I thought that maybe he should seek help, but I didn't say anything. I wanted him to drop dead right then and there so I could continue rubbing the silk against my face. I waited a good fifteen seconds for him to drop dead and when he didn't I lied. "I wanted to know what it would feel like to wear silk all day long without actually buying it. Shit's expensive, you know."

"Right," he said. "I think maybe it's time you left the store."

He grabbed my arm and pried the shirt out of my hand. Heat from his palm seared my skin. I smelled cooking flesh. Burning hair.

"Don't fucking touch me!" I yelled, attracting glares from customers throughout the store. "I'm going, okay!"

He followed me past the perfume counters and past the luggage section. So close, he could've been my shadow. When I reached the mall he turned around and walked back into Sears. On the back of his jacket, in big yellow letters, the word SECURITY.

"Fucking One - 0!" I yelled and laughed. I hadn't acted that childish since I was a child. The release was enlightening.

People rushed by me, then slowed down like they were being controlled by a remote. The crinkling of their shopping bags and the cracking of their dentures was deafening. Conversations about people I knew and events I knew little about went on all around me. Crinkling Crackling Conversations. Someone was blowing up a balloon in my head. How did they get it in there? When the balloon popped someone said, "Make sure to tuck your head in when you collapse."

Someone else said, "A little rest isn't such a bad thing."

And when the lights began to flicker I looked down and saw all the strength in my legs spill out of my shoes. And then I saw a slideshow of images in front of me: people running, people kneeling beside me placing their ears against my mouth, Amanda picking up my hand. Her skin... I had never felt anything as soft.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

"I'm tired, Amanda. You can let me sleep. It's okay."

She let go of my hand and I slipped away.

8.

The Big Bang.

"But someone, or something had to cause the Big Bang," my mother would say.

Elements floating in space. Connected. Big balls of rock and gas. Created.

Science.

God.

He created the Earth in seven days. Snapped his fingers, like the Fonz and BAM! There it was.

I evolved from a tiny fleck of bacteria floating in a puddle of sludge, tens of thousands of years ago. My ancestors were monkeys and fish with legs and Scots. I was created from the image of G-O-D. Trace my people back in time and you are left with only two. A man and a woman. Mother and Father to all. Adam and Eve.

During the first couple of years of the nineties, the high schools in Abbotsford couldn't decide how to teach its students about the creation of man. The religious majority opposed teaching Evolution and the educated minority couldn't justify teaching Creationism. After a two-year debate, both sides came off the curriculum. Just to be safe. We cut apart pig fetuses and sheep's eyes and we learned the technicalities of how living things worked... how human beings worked. But we never learned about how we were built in the first place.

As a devout troublemaker, I was on the side of the minority. And getting a rise out of the student churchies was almost as fun as getting a rise from drugs. I had one of those big ol' Darwin fish on the back of my 1984 Volkswagon Rabbit GTi and the churchies hated it. In my high school, "Darwin" was as dirty as the word "fuck."

I'd walk by the churchies, most of them Christian, and they'd look up at me from their bibles and mumble things like, "Antichrist" and "Heathen Cocksucker." They'd shake their heads and tell me they felt sorry for me.

They felt sorry. For me.

One Tuesday night I was at O'Brien's Pool Hall with a few friends. The pool hall had opened the week before and had instantly become the place to hang out in downtown Abbotsford. It offered bored teenagers a smoky environment with loud music (that didn't suck) and girls in tight tops and painted-on jeans. Oh, and there was pool, too. For a brief period of time we were up at O'Brien's every night of the week. School and our nagging parents were the only things keeping us from hanging out there all day long, until the place closed at two in the morning. On this Tuesday night I had just called it, eight ball left corner pocket, when someone in the hall started yelling, 'Hey, get the fuck away from there!" I looked up from the shot I was about to make and saw everyone in the pool hall rushing to the front windows, which overlooked the parking lot. Even the guy I was about to make the kill shot on had joined the crowd.

"Kids," someone said. "It's goddamned kids hanging around the cars."

"They're keying cars," someone else said. "I think they got that Rabbit."

That Rabbit. The only Rabbit in the parking lot. I ran out of O'Brien's with the pool cue still in my hand. According to pool-hall lore, this act was a big no-no. Thou shall not remove blah blah blah. Someone swore at me from inside, but I ignored them. My attention was solely on my little white Rabbit. The parking lot was dark, but the darkness couldn't hide the feet of my Darwin fish, which had been broken off and were lying on the ground next to my back tire. It also couldn't hide the scratch in the driver-side door. But it wasn't just a scratch... it was words that had been scratched into my door. And when a car pulled into the parking lot and its headlights shone on my car, I could read those words loud and clear. JESUS RULES.

Mike ran out and took it all in. The abuse. The suffering. "Let's get those motherfuckers," he said. "No car deserves this shit."

"Get them?"

"Yeah, man. They can't be that far away."

He removed the pool cue from my hand and ran it back in to the guy at the front counter. When he returned, his face was glowing. The dark couldn't hide that either. "Man, they're going to pay," he said. "Philly says he saw three of them and they all had baseball hats on."

We hopped in the Rabbit and peeled out of O'Brien's parking lot. The possibility of finding them was next to none, but the anger, and Mike's goading, was driving me. For the saved, Tuesday night was Youth night in Abbotsford. Flocks of Mennonites and Christians and Vulcans would gather at their place of worship around seven and they'd spend the next two hours singing about Jesus loving them so, listening to speakers who spoke for God, and devoting themselves to this and that. After their meetings they'd wander the streets and spread their word. Their word always had "Jesus" and "Rules" buried somewhere in it.

Instinct (or divine intervention) lead me to the nearest church. And when I got there I was rewarded with three punk kids in baseball caps slapping high fives in the parking lot. I sped the rabbit up, then yanked on the e-brake when I was in front of them. The rabbit spun a half circle then came to a stop. When the punk kids recognized the car, they ran off in three different directions. Mike grabbed the aluminum baseball bat that was behind my seat... the bat I had forgotten to take out after practice the night before (more divine intervention).

"Relax," I said when I saw the fire in Mike's eyes.

"I just want to scare them. That's all."

It was my car that had been defaced. My ego violated. Yet Mike was the one burning from the inside out. He jumped out of the car and took off after one of the kids. I followed him, because I didn't want to be an accessory to murder. And because his animal reaction was captivating.

Mike hunted the little punk kid down like he was a boar and Mike was fucking starving. He backed the kid up to the garbage bins behind the church and he poked the kid's gut with the fat end of the bat. The kid couldn't have been older than fourteen.

"Did you fuck up my buddy's car?" Mike yelled. "Did you?"

"No!" the kid yelled back. "Don't hurt me. Please God, don't let them hurt me."

Mike yelled, "You're lying, you little piece of shit!"

"Calm down, man," I said. "He's just a stupid kid."

"Fuck that, man," Mike spat. "We're all just kids here."

And so we were.

Mike swung the bat into the kid's shin. A sickening crack. The bone, not the bat. The kid didn't react to the blow right away. He probably couldn't believe God had let him down so badly. When the pain of deception left him, the pain of the broken bone hit. He screamed like a wounded animal. His screams echoed down the alley behind the church. We ran away from the kid, leaving him writhing in pain next to a dirty dumpster filled with God knows what. We could hear him screaming from the parking lot. His screams brought people out of the church, people who were now searching for even more answers. None of them noticed the little white rabbit speeding away.

We didn't know. The kid could've been one of the kids who scratched JESUS RULES into my car, or not. We just didn't know. Same as we didn't know whether man was created by God or by evolution. Our blinking was the loudest sound on the drive home. I would've paid to know what Mike was thinking. He didn't say anything to me when he got out of my car and walked, shoulders slumped, into his home. He didn't have to say anything.

"Pardon?"

"I said we pumped your stomach."

"Why?"

"No one knew what was wrong with you. So we pumped your stomach and found nothing but beer and bits of mushrooms. Were they mushrooms?"

"Why does my throat feel so sore?"

"I told you, we pumped your stomach."

I shook my head. When my brain didn't try to run down my throat, I knew I wasn't hallucinating.

"Where's Amanda?"

"There's no one here named Amanda. The paramedics brought you in by yourself."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You passed out in the mall. Someone called an ambulance. And now you're here on the third floor of MSA Hospital, recovering from having your stomach pumped."

"And why was my stomach pumped?"

"You were convulsing while you were passed out. I thought you might have alcohol poisoning."

A child walked by the doorway of the room I was in. His hands were pressed against his nose and mouth. Blood was spilling through his fingers onto his white t-shirt. A woman was yelling something about her baby being hurt. So hurt. Nurses and doctors passed by the boy barely taking notice of him. Through his hands the boy said, "Mom, it's okay. It doesn't hurt. I don't hate you." His mother yelled some more.

"Your mother's on her way over to pick you up."

The man speaking to me wore all white. It was the same sterile white as the walls. But he wasn't a doctor. He didn't have a stethoscope around his neck. He didn't have that doctorly air about him. A nurse called him by his first name: Michael. Michael had a little tuft of hair growing under his bottom lip, which he tugged repeatedly while he spoke to me.

"Did you tell her what happened?" I asked.

"Well, I'm not sure myself what happened. Maybe you can help me out here."

A stretcher blurred by my doorway. A man was lying on the stretcher, his arms hanging limp over the edges of the stretcher. The speedy movement made his limp arms sway like the limbs of a tree in a windstorm. The man was silent, but the nurses pushing the stretcher -- running alongside the stretcher \-- were yelling about gunshots and car crashes and... then they were out of earshot.

"I ate some mushrooms this afternoon for the first time in years. I guess I didn't handle them too well."

"How's your energy?"

"What do you mean?"

"Before the mushrooms... the last few weeks. How have you felt? Tired? Irritable? Disoriented?"

"D. All of the above."

"Do you suffer from headaches?"

"I've had a few doozies in the last couple of weeks. But doozies are manageable. I used to get migraines as a kid. I'd take ten doozies over one of those migraines."

"Do you ever wake up not realizing you had fallen asleep?"

"Well, yeah, sometimes I find myself being woken up at the strangest times and in the strangest places, but I just pass that off to boredom."

"Do you ever suddenly feel weak, or lose control of your muscles?"

"Yeah, sometimes, I guess. What are you getting at?"

"Have you ever had a CT scan of your head?"

I shook my head.

"Have you ever been to a sleep therapist."

"No. Is there something you're not telling me here? Are you even a doctor, Michael?"

Just then my mother walked into the room. "What in God's name is going on with you, Ryan?"

"Yes mother, I do feel great. Thank you for asking."

"Don't get smart with me young man. I came home to find two policemen talking to your younger brother about you. And then I got a call saying you were in the hospital. What the hell is going on with you?"

"Your son," Doctor Michael chimed in, "was brought here because he passed out in the mall. Or he fell asleep. He appears to be alright now, but I think it wouldn't hurt to get a scan done of his brain. I heard he hit his head on the mall floor pretty hard. I wouldn't want there to be any hidden damage. A concussion or..."

"Or what?" my mother said, the tone of her voice shifting from anger to concern in a matter of words.

"Just a precaution," Doctor Michael said.

"Can you do it right now?"

"Probably not. But in the next few days for sure."

"Fine. God, this is all I need. Set it up and call us. Can I please take him now."

"Yes. But can I have a quick word with you outside before you take him?"

Doctor Michael and my mother stepped out of the room, leaving me baffled and angry I wasn't a part of whatever conversation was taking place. While I waited, a nurse handed me my clothes. Fifteen minutes later I was standing outside of the hospital.

Night had moved in while I was comatose. My mother pulled the car up in front of the emergency doors and opened the passenger door for me. After I fastened my seatbelt she said, "I have never met someone so selfish. Do you know what I'm going through right now? Do you?"

We drove away.

I was suffering not only from a sore throat, but from a serious case of déjà vu. Heading home from the hospital. Again. Sadness and confusion heavy on our heads and our hearts. But this time she was behind the wheel. I wanted to talk to her so badly, but the conversation was long over. It seemed the conversation had ended the day I left her womb.

9.

Before my grandfather lost his mind and my parents shipped him off to the old-folks home, he would run his stubby, sand-paper fingers through my hair and say, "Boy, we're all just clumps of clay lookin' for two big hands to mould us."

Sadly, the hands that moulded me were the dirty, scabby hands of Abbotsford, the city I spent my formative teen years in. You see, when something shapes you. Takes credit for you. Won't let you forget what it did to you. It's hard to let it go. Abbotsford, that place not too far from Heaven for so many, but way too close to Hell for others. Abbotsford, built on old-fashioned family values and an old-fashioned fear of God. Twenty minutes south and the three letters that spelled God were U-S and A. God, I wished I could've chopped those hands off and replaced them with the hands of my childhood.

My parents dragged me to Abbotsford when I was a pimply twelve year old raging through early-stage puberty. My father had made a few too many bad business decisions and ended bankrupt and broke. He swore and drank and hit walls for weeks until the day an old friend of his offered him a job in a small factory in Abbotsford selling their products. It was a crash course in reality for the Paul clan. We had become accustomed to four-thousand square foot homes and Audis with individual seat warmers. Then, like that, we were in a seven-hundred and fifty square foot home and our Audi had morphed into a Toyota stationwagon. "Moving down" was a necessary evil "to get us back up" my father would say. Get us back out of debt. Put food back on the table that wasn't made by Kraft.

Vancouver gave birth to me and held my hand through childhood. Vancouver introduced me to my first friends and first memories. Friends and memories that only make me smile. Vancouver kissed me goodnight every night for twelve years. And then she was gone.

I resented my parents for their mistakes. For so many years I actually believed that they had moved us just to spite me. Our first six months in Abbotsford I didn't say a word to them and I tried my hardest to avoid them as much as I could. I entered and exited the house through my basement window. I ate late at night after everyone had gone to bed. My parents tried to make it up to me by buying me things. But I kept my lips locked, I kept my distance, until the day my father grabbed me by my shirt collar and told me my childishness was tearing the family apart. His breath was spiked with whiskey and there was a look of desperation in his eyes I had never seen before. He said my mother was depressed. He said she had packed her bags because she wanted to leave. And my attitude was only making things worse. I cried a lot that first year. And I learned to hate money that first year.

We were not a religious family, but when we moved to Abbotsford, my mother tried to bring religion into our lives. Her goal: to get a fingerfull of God in my brother and I. Her attempts: fruitless. Her reasons: never explained. On Sundays, if my father was home, the two of them would sit in front of the television and watch services broadcast out of glass cathedrals in California. That was "their religion." They would try to wake us and entice us downstairs to their cathedral with pancake breakfasts. Food was good bait, but it wasn't enough to make a young teen bite. Had my mother said God was a porn star named Trixie and the women giving sermons were topless, I would've been downstairs in a flash, standing in line with millions of other young men waiting to be touched by God.

A big part of Abbotsford's population was of German descent and a big part of the German population was Mennonite. Mennonites were as strange to me as Kubrick movies.

We lived in a cul-de-sac of ten homes and in eight of those homes lived large Mennonite families. That first year in Abbotsford my only friends were a hockey stick and a ratty old net. Most days after school, my brother and I would set up the net at the end of the cul-de-sac and spend the rest of the day shooting orange rubber balls at it. The Mennonite kids would stand at their living-room windows a watch us. For hours. But they'd never come out and join us. For years, I wondered why. Then one day, I overheard a passing parent whisper (a little too loudly) to another, "Those Paul children are rotten to the core. Can you imagine how they would corrupt our children? Can you?"

Their children didn't play with us because we were evil. Evil? I came to Abbotsford and learned I was evil. I was an outcast and I needed to be brought into the fold. I could've conformed to any of the cults inhabiting our city, but I eventually found a much greater enjoyment in shunning them. To the parents and the youth leaders and the children of God I was a GodHater. An AntiChrist. God became my sworn enemy.

Every day I lived in Abbotsford, even those days after I had accepted my fate, those dirty fingers on those dirty hands that worked the clay, formed my world view. My personality. My hate. Who, I often wondered, would I have become had we only stayed in Vancouver.

Who?

"Who the fuck is at the door?" I said through clenched teeth.

The fast-paced wrapping of knuckles against the front door woke me from a deep sleep. It was an impatient knock, like that of a child who had been chased and was looking for safety. I rolled out of my bed and wandered over to my mother's room. Her bedroom window overlooked the front driveway. I had to know who was out there before I made my presence known. Jehovah's were bad, but my worst fear was Mormons. Somehow, they knew I had returned home after college. Even more frightening, they knew my name. My first morning home they told me I was searching for answers. They told me all the answers were found in their bible. Before I could tell them to, "Fuck off!" they shoved the book in my hands and told me they'd return at a later date to see if it had made a difference. Bastards were good.

I pulled the blinds up an inch and saw the roofs of the two police cars parked in the driveway. "What the shit?" I mumbled. I ran downstairs and opened the front door. How I had wished it was Mormons. There were two of Abbotsford's finest. One cop looked like Uncle Fester on steroids. The other cop looked like he was wearing football pads under his uniform. This cop sported a slicked-back hairdo and wore aviator sunglasses. It was all so CHiPs.

"Are you Ryan Paul?" Fester asked.

"I am."

He looked down at a notepad in his hand and without looking back up at me, he asked, "Where were you on the evening of April twenty six?"

"Well..." Considering I could barely remember where I was ten minutes earlier, going back days was a challenge. "I was at The Meanest Bean. I know that. I was there until they closed and then I guess I came home."

"You guess you came home or you did come home?" Fester asked. He was looking at me again and his glare was giving me chills.

"Have I done something?"

"Just answer the question," slick-backed-hairdo cop said.

"No... No, wait a second. I went to The Barge after the coffeeshop. Yeah, I was with Fraser Janzen and Todd Phillips. Talk to them if you don't believe me. Fraser's probably still at home. Todd's working down at the car lot. The one next to the Wendy's on South Fraser."

"Okay, Mr. Paul," Fester said. "Please let us know if you're planning on leaving the city any time soon. We'll be in touch."

"Does this have something to do with those girls?"

My words bounced off their bulletproof vests and fell to the ground. They turned away from me without a response and returned to their cars. Slicked-back-hairdo cop flicked on his lights and siren and sped off up the road. Fester drove away slowly, talking on his cell phone.

I needed Amanda. I needed her but I didn't know how to reach her. I still didn't have her phone number. I dressed and made my way to Ahab's hoping/praying all the way that she was working.

Ahab's was empty of customers. Wind was behind the espresso bar reminding himself to finish the schedule for the next week. A girl I hadn't seen before was wiping the shelves in the pastry case free of scone and muffin crumbs. Neither Wind or the girl looked up at me.

I saddled up to the bar and finally received some acknowledgement. "Hey," Wind said. "You can order over there where Carolyn is."

"Oh no, I don't want anything, thanks. I was just wondering if Amanda was working today."

"Friend or foe?"

"I'm kind of a friend. Remember, I was in here the other day asking about a job."

Wind's eyes once-overed me. "Oh yeah.. yeah, you're... wait, let me think a second. Ryan, right?"

"Yeah."

"Cool. Amanda's supposed to be working at noon, but that girl has a tendency to include her walk to and from work as part of her shift. If I was a betting man, I'd say she should be here around twelve thirty."

"What time is it now?"

"Was almost noon last time I checked... and that was like ten minutes ago."

"I guess I'll wait then."

"Cool," Wind said. "Why don't you have a cup of coffee. It's on me this time. But just coffee, okay?"

"This place is unreal."

Carolyn poured me a mug of Ahab's Late-Night Blend and it was good. Damn good. "The hint of spiciness," she explained as she handed the mug over, "comes from the aged Sumatra beans that are included in the blend."

Fascinating. But not.

Coffee was coffee. No brew was any better than any other. If it was brown, hot and someone somewhere called it coffee, I would drink it. When I heard people comparing coffees like they compared wines, I had to laugh. Who were they trying to fool? Coffee was coffee.

The only time coffee tasted better to me was when it was accompanied with jazz. The shit went together like peaches and cream. Like politicians and lying. My love of jazz and coffee began when I was seventeen. My parents felt a little time away from them would do me (and them) a world of good. And they weren't kidding when they said "away." They shipped me off to Sweden for a summer to live with an uncle I had never met before. Uncle Lars was a single, forty-five year old tour-boat operator. He worked all day long pointing pointless things out to tourists in and around the harbours in Stockholm. After work, he'd kick his boots off into his broken sauna, put on one of his four hundred jazz cds and brew a pot of coffee. All the guy drank while he was at home was coffee. I had never had a cup of coffee before living with Uncle Lars. Growing up, my father told me that drinking coffee would put hair on my chest. Would stunt my growth. Little did I know that the real culprit was heredity. I began drinking coffee out of necessity. There was nothing else other than water in Lars' kitchen and I was too shy to wander into the village looking for something more. But out of this necessity for change, my love of coffee was born. Uncle Lars, who spoke barely a word of English, and I would sit outside under the midnight sun sipping our coffees, eating our buttered bread topped with unrecognizable meat, and we'd listen to jazz. And it was...

Billie Holiday was singing about longing... to forget. The music seeped into my pores. Her sad words made me warm. She sang about balance between good and bad and I took a sip of coffee. Coffee and Jazz.

Balance.

The front door swung open and Amanda yelled, "Fuck! I am so late. I am so so sorry."

She stormed into the back room without noticing me. Wind chased after her yelling, "It's only fifteen minutes today. That's a vast improvement, Princess A."

A minute later she kicked open the swinging door that lead to the back room and she b-lined for one of the tills. Her untied apron was swinging around her neck. Her unhinged mouth was tossing out a flurry of "fucks."

"Amanda," I said.

Only after she had tied up her apron and logged into her till did she look over at me. "Oh, it's you."

Oh, I thought. Looks like it's back to Internet porn and empty friendships.

"You freaked the shit out me and most of the people in the mall," she said. "What happened to you?"

Carolyn was poorly minding her own business at the condiment stand. Wind was back and his ear had suddenly shifted toward us.. "I uhhh... do you mind if we talk about it somewhere else?" I said. "Somewhere a little more..."

"Private," she blurted out. "I have to work now. Some of us do that, you know? I'll be done work in seven hours and forty-five minutes. You can come back then, if you feel so inclined."

She turned away from me and I no longer existed. One more nameless customer. This was not the Amanda I had been with only a day earlier. I left Ahab's without finishing my coffee. I walked to the mall where I sat on a bench and watched seniors play chess on a board big enough to land a helicopter on. The old men picked up pawns the size of babies and overtook rooks the size of golden labs. I sat there until the mall closed and then I returned to Ahab's. Just in time.

"Lucky you," Amanda said. "It's freaking dead in here, so Wind's giving me early parole. Another minute and I'd have been out of here. You want to walk me home?"

She was plucky again. I nodded and followed her out of the store.

"What the fuck happened to you yesterday?" she asked when we were well into our walk.

"You realize you do talk like a trucker, don't you?"

"Are you my mother all of a sudden? Jesus, man, what gives?"

"I just think... I just think it isn't very attractive. That's all."

"You really are kind of a girl, eh? Stop making yourself unattractive and tell me what happened to you yesterday."

"I don't know what happened. But the doctor asked me all sorts of weird questions about sleeping and headaches. He wants to do a scan of my brain. Wants me to see a sleep therapist. I didn't even know that was a real thing."

"Shit."

"I know."

We stopped speaking. At some point during the walk she grabbed hold of my hand. I had forgotten what holding a woman's hand felt like. I savoured it. When we reached her basement suite she disappeared into her bedroom. Something about getting out of her work clothes. She wasn't kidding. When she returned to the kitchen, where I was leaning on a counter biting into an apple, she was naked. I coughed out the apple and felt the erection pushing up against my jeans. My authentic, anticipatory erection. No longer would it endure brutal tugging... the chaffing effect of paper towel. I pulled off my shirt and wrapped my arms around her sweet little body and I hugged her as tightly as I could without suffocating her. She stood on her tiptoes and whispered in my ear, "I haven't had sex in more than a year. Be patient."

"It's been so long for me," I said, "I forgot it was actually called sex. So we're both kind of in the same boat here."

She nibbled my ear then got down on her knees. I lifted her back up. "Let me just hug you a little more," I said. "I had forgotten what another person's skin against mine feels like."

She put her hand on my chest Her nipples hardened and tickled the hairs on my pecks. She ran her hand along my side. "You're so hairy," she said.

"Keeps me warm in the winter. Does it... does it bother you?"

"No. Not at all."

She looked up and kissed me under the chin. Her lips shot electricity into me. Through me. The top button on my jeans came undone. I let go of her and pulled her into the bedroom. As I threw her down on the bed, somewhere outside her bedroom window a car screeched. Then the sound of metal colliding with metal... metal tearing apart and glass shattering, ripped through the bedroom. But all I could hear were her words. "Promise me," she said. "Promise me you'll be nice to me and promise me you'll stay around."

I made that promise.

10.

When we were children, the time it took to get to the place we wanted to be was forever. Birthdays never came fast enough. Christmas never came fast enough. Even the end of a school day never seemed to come fast enough. We would stare at the clock and the second hand would stare back at us and almost say, "Hold on, kid. You know good things come to those who wait." The hardest thing for any kid to do is wait. Yet, wait we always did.

When we became adults, time played a cruel trick on us. Didn't it? It flipped the whole damned forever thing around. Time never seemed to slow down enough for us to catch up. "I'll figure out my life tomorrow. I have all the time in the world to set goals and open up an RSP account." Tomorrow turns into a year, a year then turns into a decade and we're left sitting there with a dumb look on our faces wondering what the hell happened to all the time we thought we had.

Dustin Jayne had a Masters in Chemistry and a shitty job at Rogers Video. One early July morning in 1992 he climbed up onto the ledge of the Port Mann Bridge and he looked out at the Fraser River. The only two things on his mind... how much time he had squandered and how much time it would take his body to hit the water. For so long, Dustin Jayne had killed time with excuses and video games and liquor and failure. When he leaped, he would let time take its revenge and kill him.

Like the rest of us, Dustin Jayne was a young man filled with promise. In high school he was an 'A+' student. A class president. An inspiration. His parents and his teachers said things like, "If you stay focussed, there's nothing you can't accomplish. Stay focused. Study. Don't worry about the things you're missing out on. There's plenty of time to do those things later." Dustin Jayne stayed focussed and carried on his winning ways into college and university, winning umpteen awards and scholarships. And in University, under the guidance of professors and fellow go-getters, he found the noblest of direction... his purpose in life. Dustin Jayne would devote his post-academic life to finding a cure for AIDS. No matter how much time it took.

During a particularly stressful exam week in his last term at university, a fellow chemist brought over a Nintendo and a bottle of whiskey to kill a little of the stress. Dustin Jayne had never really played video games before. There never was enough time for them. He'd never really gotten drunk before. He passed his exams with near-perfect marks, and he graduated top of his class with glowing recommendations from his professors. But Dustin Jayne no longer cared about the marks and the accolades. He had tasted something new. Something exciting. And he began to resent all those people who told him to hold on. To wait until he had reached his potential before he wasted time. After graduation Dustin Jayne decided to take a year off and do nothing of value. He bought his own Nintendo and a library of games and he began playing. And soon, finding a cure for AIDS had become a little less important than finding a way to beat The Legend of Zelda.

As the years passed, debt and extra body weight built up. Tuition repayment. Mac and cheese. Rent. Liquor. More games. Potato chips. He maxed out three credit cards, but did not worry. He knew that all he had to do was buy a nice suit and go get the job that had been promised to him by half a dozen drug companies. He just needed a little more time to finish Mario 3. Only when all the bosses were beat, all the puzzles were figured out, all the whisky was consumed... only then was he ready. But years had passed. The jobs had been given to others who wanted them more. They had moved on. Technology had advanced. Dustin Jayne was outdated. And his phone was ringing off the hook. The debt wasn't going anywhere.

Dustin Jayne was like us in so many ways, but unlike us, he actually tried to kill himself. The irony was nobody saw him jump off the bridge. No one found the suicide note that slid out from under the magnet on his fridge and slid under the fridge. Only after he had missed his second shift at the video store did anyone take notice.

Neither time, nor a great fall could kill Dustin Jayne. He hit the Fraser River with all the force of a cannonball shot from a cannon. He shattered the bones in his left leg and left arm. He was knocked unconscious. But a current picked him up and carried him to the shore where Jacob Donal was waiting. Cursing himself for thinking he had all the time in the world to make himself known to Dustin Jayne.

A week had passed since the night I spent at Amanda's. It was one of the fastest, most intense weeks of my life up until then. There was sex. There was coffee. And there was the hint of what I believed to be love growing between us.

In that week I hadn't had a headache or an episode like the one I had at the mall. I also hadn't had any mushrooms. But my mother wasn't going to let it go. She took full charge and made an appointment for me to get a brain scan. She also checked me into a sleep clinic for a night without full disclosure as to why. She was so upset with me and with life, I didn't press her. I figured I'd get all my answers in due time. The only problem was the clinic was in Vancouver and the scan was taking place at St. Paul's Hospital, a few blocks down from the clinic. Vancouver was an hour plus drive I didn't feel like making alone, so I called up Ahab's and pretended to be Amanda's uncle. In a gruff voice I fed Wind some bullshit story about Amanda's father having a heart attack. Yeah, I was going to hell for doing it, but the way I looked at it, I was already there (at least, in the eyes of the Abbotsford churchies), so it didn't matter. To my surprise, Wind fell for it and covered Amanda's shift. Whoever my mother had spoken to at the clinic had told her there was a guest room available, if anyone needed, or wanted, to accompany me to the clinic. Upon hearing the details, Amanda couldn't wait to "get the hell out of the Ford" and stay at a creepy sleep clinic for a night. "Free is free," she said. "A night away from all of this is just what my doctor ordered."

I drove along Highway 1, toward Vancouver, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding Amanda's hand. I never tired of her palm squeezed against mine. She made faces at me and told dirty jokes. She babbled on about nothing, often for several minutes at a time without pausing. Her words left her mouth and mixed with the air inside the car. I gulped down the rich mix of Amanda and oxygen. She made me feel giddy. Alive. Optimistic.

I hadn't thought about Fraser or Todd or The Meanest Bean in the week Amanda and I had been together. I hadn't picked up a newspaper or turned on a television. My knowledge of the world outside the world I had created with Amanda came from snippets of conversations on street corners, or in line at the grocery store, or while taking a piss at the movie theatre. The missing girl was still on everybody's mind. Everybody's, but mine. Opinions about her whereabouts... about her condition floated around like escaped helium balloons. The truth was just as elusive.

Vancouver was my first home, so long gone, but never far from me. Since moving to Abbotsford, I had returned to Vancouver often for Canuck's games, concerts and first-class, big-city drinking. I knew my way around on foot. But I did not know where the hospital was. Under the solemn glare of skyscrapers and massive cranes building skyscrapers to be, we made our move. "Your mom said it's on Burrard, a few blocks from the bridge," Amanda said, streetmap in hand.

"And that's where I'm heading, dear."

The one thing I didn't like in Vancouver was its dirtiness. Its intensity. Especially, on the east side. There was garbage everywhere. Everything was gray. Down alleys, bums darted from trash container to trash container looking for bottles and cans and half-smoked cigarettes. Junkies shot up in front of store windows. Tourists in pink and green t-shirts and khaki shorts infested the streets, cameras hanging around their necks like albatross. Panhandlers with crudely drawn signs sat against light poles and newspaper bins at every intersection cursing passers-by who ignored their pleas. Old, loud men shouted from bus stops and park benches about the second coming of Christ. About the End of Days.

"Go down Robson to Burrard," Amanda said. "Then turn left. It should be about three blocks up. Easy peasy."

While we waited at a red light, teenagers in tank tops and red mohawks barraged us with squeegees from both sides of my mother's car. I had no time to retaliate. To shake my head. In seconds, they soaked each window with dirty water, then wiped it all away, leaving us with an even hazier view of the city. Amanda squeezed my hand hard. "Don't give them anything," she said. "Look how dirty they are. Just drive away. Please."

"I can't just drive away without giving them something. At least they're trying to be productive."

"Please don't open your window. They'e going to... they're going to carjack us or something."

I dug into my pocket and found a dollar. As the light changed to green I rolled down my window and tossed the dollar to the kid on my side. "Thank you, sir," he said.

"See how polite they are," I said once we were through the light.

"Yeah, but they probably take all that money they extort from people like us and they buy drugs and guns with it. Why can't they just go out and get jobs like the rest of us?"

"Jesus, Amanda, they couldn't have been older than fourteen or fifteen. For all we know they ran away from homes where they were being beaten and molested. Give them a break."

"I just wish there was somewhere they could go that would keep them off the streets. You know, keep them away from me."

"Wow, who else do you hate? The Jews? Blacks?"

"Shut up, Ryan. Street people creep me out. That's all. I mean, wouldn't this be a much nicer city if you didn't have to step over some bum every ten feet, or you didn't have to worry about being pestered for spare change every ten steps? Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?"

"Maybe you're right Amanda. Maybe it's time for a good ol' fashioned cleansing."

"Again, shut up, Ryan."

Vancouver had become a city synonymous with coffee. Most of Vancouver's streets boasted three to five coffee shops. Coffee shops in Vancouver, like churches in Abbotsford, were places of worship. Of celebration. Of refuge. On Robson Street there weren't enough fingers or toes to count the number of coffee shops. One intersection had an Ahab's on two of its corners. Such a ludicrous concept building two of the same coffee across from each other, but as we drove down Robson, there they were... lines of people winding their way out the doors of both shops, waiting waiting waiting to put down five dollars on an iced mocha. To be seen without a coffee in your hand was to be seen as an outsider. Even the panhandlers begged with cups from Ahab's.

"Maybe one day I'll break those chains keeping me in Abortsford and I'll transfer out to one of these Ahab's," Amanda said, her forehead pressed against her window. "It's real easy, you know."

"What's easy? Getting out of Abbotsford?"

"No silly," she said and looked at me. Her forehead was red. "Transferring. They're really good with sending you wherever you want to go. You just have to give them a bit of a heads up before you do it."

"Interesting."

She sighed and looked back out the passenger-side window at a guy carrying a sign that read, "Best 16-Ounce Steak in Town. Only Fifty Steps Away."

"Do you ever want to disappear?" she asked.

I had asked myself the question a million times. Up until last week, the answer had always been yes. "At one time I did," I said. "But I'm pretty damn happy where I am now."

We turned up Burrard and quickly found the hospital. I searched out a free parking spot on a street behind the hospital. Finding free parking in Vancouver was like finding the leprechaun's pot o' gold. Next to impossible. I high fived Amanda and we got out of the car. The street was lined with rain-stained apartment buildings, old brownstone homes and oak trees standing still like soldiers awaiting orders. Amanda took my hand and we walked.

Well, I walked and she skipped.

I ran my free hand along the bricks of St. Paul's facade. So strong and sturdy on the outside. So full of chaos and pain on the inside. A metaphor for... A great fear suddenly entered me. A fear I couldn't explain. The fear made me stop walking. "I can't do it," I said, not realizing I had just voiced my thoughts.

"Can't do what?" Amanda asked.

I formulated my words. Tried to understand this new fear. "I've felt better than ever this week. I don't think I really need to do this. If there was something wrong with me, I would've gotten worse, right?"

She let go of my hand and looked up into my eyes. In her blue iris's I saw schools of angel fish. "There's no harm in doing this, though," she said. "It's better safe than sorry, right?"

"I'm in my mid twenties for god sake. People my age don't have problems in their heads. I think... I think I'm going to bail."

"You're going to bail? But what if... what if there is something wrong with you? What if you have a tumor or fluid build up... or a staple in your brain. Come on, Ryan. We came all this way just to do this. You can't bail."

I took her hands and kissed her on the forehead.

"Are you patronizing me?" she said with venom.

"No. I'm just so grateful you came into my life."

She smiled. "So let's go get this done then."

The fear of an unknown future had nothing on this new fear. This fear of the unknown inside of me. Of maybe having cancer, or something... worse. I hadn't really thought about it until that moment Amanda and I were standing outside St. Paul's Hospital. "I can't, Amanda. I'm sorry."

I expected her to pull her hands away from mine and storm off to the car and out of my life forever. It was something I dreaded, but it was something I was willing to accept in order to not have to accept what might be going on inside of me. But Amanda didn't pull away from me. Instead, she stood on her tip toes and leaned into my ear. "You," she whispered, "are a stubborn fool. I'll let this go, but I'm not letting my free night in the city go. You're going to that damn clinic tonight, or I'm going to kick you in the balls." She dropped back down on her feet and said, "So then, what do you want to do till nine? That's when you said we had to be at the clinic, right?"

So grateful.

We spent the afternoon sampling different coffee shops, laughing at tacky tourists and shaking our heads at panhandlers. In Gastown we sat for an artist who drew a caricature portrait of us. He accentuated Amanda's dimples, making them look like deep craters on the moon's surface. He turned the hair on my arms into a dense forest. We looked like monsters in the portrait. But we looked happy. so I still paid the guy twenty bucks and thanked him.

We walked up Granville Street and passed kids in sleeping bags, wrapped around mangy dogs. Kids tucked in the cracks between buildings and propped up against walls. Some asked for change while others stared coldly at the pavement. I stared at a girl with a cat on a leash and a sign at her feet that read, "All I care for is Daisy, my cat. Please help me feed her," and I thought about selfishness. My selfishness. I always had a roof over my head and food on my table. I always had a bed to crawl into at night and a place to come back to if I ever lost my way on my own. And I never thanked my parents for it. I never told them how much I appreciated them. These kids, for one reason or another, had nothing. I dropped a dollar in the cat girl's empty coffee cup and I said, "I wish you could be loved as much as your cat is."

And I meant it.

Amanda looked at me with quizzical eyes and pulled me away. "What was that all about?" she asked when we were far enough away from the girl and the cat that we couldn't be heard.

"I don't really know," I said. "I see these kids... because that's what they are... and I wish I could find somewhere for all of them to go. To be loved. You know, somewhere where they could eat properly and not have to worry about being rained on because there's always a roof over their heads."

Amanda squeezed my hand. Tight. She said everything she needed to in that tiny act. Nine o'clock was approaching, so we made our way to the sleep clinic. I had no idea what to expect. We turned onto a road of apartment buildings and old brownstone homes. Giant oak trees stood along both sides of the road, lining it like soldiers with no battle to fight in. The address lead us to a brownstone nestled in-between two run-down looking apartment buildings.

"This is an odd place for a sleep clinic," observed Amanda.

"Whatever, I just want to get this night over with."

A sign on the front lawn pointed us to the clinic at the back of the house. We followed a path laid in pebbles to a glass door. Another sign on the door handle said to ring for entrance. I rang the buzzer and seconds later another buzzer rang, popping the door open.

When I pulled the door open, a lobby full of television monitors was revealed. An image of a different person sleeping was on each monitor. A desk in the shape of a half moon was at the back of the entrance lobby. Behind it sat a woman in a lab coat. She looked up at us as we cautiously closed the door behind us. "You must be Ryan Paul," she said.

"And how would you know that?" I replied.

"Well, we don't have many appointments on any given day, so it's just simple deduction. And anyways... you're our only appointment today."

"Then who are all those people?" I asked pointing to the monitors.

"Those are people who came in yesterday and the day before that. Please, sit down."

We took a seat and she pulled out a pen and a booklet from a drawer in her desk. "I want you to read over this," she said and handed me the booklet and pen. "After you've finished reading it, please sign it on the space provided at the end."

"What is this, a liability thing? You're not doing anything life threatening to me here, are you?"

"Come now, Mr. Paul, we're just here to see if you have a sleep related illness, but for insurance sakes you must give us authority to test you. Okay?"

I nodded my head and shuffled through the pamphlet. It was filled with medical jargon and illustrations of things like beds and electric pulses. I looked up to ask the woman what the electricity was all about, but she was gone. Amanda was fidgeting next to me so I flipped to the end and signed my name in the allotted space.

"This place creeps me out," Amanda said.

"Yeah, it's very sci-fi, isn't it?"

"What the hell am I supposed to do while you're doing this?"

"I'll ask when that woman comes back."

Just as I finished my sentence a door swung open and she re emerged gripping a clipboard. "Finished already?"

"I'm a quick reader."

"So this is what's going to happen. You two can go through the swinging door behind me and go up the stairs. You'll find a lounge where you can hang out for the next hour. Play some video games. Watch a little TV. Whatever. At ten thirty, you can come back downstairs and we'll get started. We have a guest suite down the hall from the lounge where your friend will be very comfortable for the night. There's a VCR and a great selection of movies, a minifridge full of tasty treats, a jacuzzi tub. It's nice."

"And that's it?" I asked.

"That's it."

The woman crossed something out on her clipboard and excused herself from our presence. She disappeared behind the swinging door and left us under the lazy watch of the three sleeping people on the monitors above us. Amanda tugged on my shirtsleeve and whispered, "I don't really know if I want to be here anymore."

"Don't be crazy," I said, as reassuringly as I could. "These people are doctors. They're not mad scientists."

She tried to smile, but the slow, cautious rise of her lips made me believe that even if she achieved the full smile, it wouldn't be that sincere.

"I want you to tell me everything about your condition."

It was a simple room. There was a double bed, four dark blue walls without windows, and a video camera on a tripod placed at the foot of the bed. The doctor who was talking to me had brought a chair in with him when he came into the room. He introduced himself as Bing. Just Bing. He sat staring at me, a pad of paper in one hand and a pen in the other. He jotted down notes even before I began speaking.

"I don't know what my condition is. I kind of thought that was why I was here."

"All right, then tell me some of the things that have been happening to you. The types of things that have brought you here."

Had the doctor carried a phaser gun and wore a skin tight maroon uniform he would have been a dead ringer for Jean-Luc Picard on the deck of the Enterprise.

"You know, really I don't feel like there's anything wrong with me, but sometimes people wake me up in the strangest places... at the strangest times. And I seem to be sleeping a lot, but I'm always tired."

"Go on," Bing said.

"Sometimes I'll be walking along and I'll trip, but nothing will be there to blame for the fall. It feels... it feels like all the muscle and all the bone and all the blood in my legs just disappears, causing me to tumble."

"Is there anything else?"

"Yeah. Sometimes... this is going to sound silly, but sometimes I think I'm dreaming when I know I'm awake. I hear things and see things that don't make sense. Like people moving in slow motion and disembodied voices."

"Hmm..." Bing pondered. "Have you been under any stress lately?"

"Well, kind of, but since I met Amanda, the stress hasn't been that bad."

"Where was this stress coming from?"

"I... I don't know." But I did know and something about Bing, his sincere, captain-of-the-Enterprise look, made me want to open up to him. "I guess most of my stress comes from the failure I feel from moving back home after university. You know, I really thought I'd be able to jump right into a job in my field. But it wasn't that easy. I basically gave up. The rejection was harder than I could bear. Until Amanda came along I felt I was stuck in a deep hole and the worms and bugs that lived in there with me were digging it deeper and deeper every day. It was a hole that, until recently, I thought I'd never get out of. I just... I just don't want to get stuck. I don't want to be just another normal guy. Do you know how awful it is to be afraid of normalcy? But I've gotten off of the topic here, haven't I?"

"Not really, Ryan. Sometimes problems like yours are nothing more than mild depression. Everybody goes through it in his or her life. Depression is manageable and so is pretty much everything else. To play it safe though, we'll test you over the next twenty-four hours, and whatever we might find, I'm sure we will be able to help you with it."

Bing exited the room and returned a minute later. He was pulling a monitor and a computer on a trolley behind him. He placed the equipment at the head of the bed and motioned for me to get under the covers.

"I'll be placing these electroencephalogram electrodes on your scalp in four different areas. Behind that wall we will monitor your brain activity while you sleep."

"That's it?"

"For tonight that's it. Tomorrow we will begin the next phase of the study. Now go to sleep and we'll see you in the morning."

Bing flicked the light switch leaving me in near dark, save for the red light on the video camera, which reminded me my every move was being recorded. I was asleep before he completely closed the door. And then I was alone in a clearing in the center of a nondescript forest, looking up at the stars. The stars were as bright as camera flashes, but like a camera flash they too were disappearing. I watched as one at time, the stars fizzed out leaving a larger piece of the sky black. I watched for hours and hours until there were only two stars left in the sky. They looked like two eyes, alone in the sea of blackness above me. They looked like they wanted to run so they wouldn't suffer the same fate as the rest of their brothers. And then they did run. They galloped toward me as I lay on the forest floor looking up at them. They got larger and larger as they closed in on me, and then a burst of light flashed all around me and brought me back to the world of the real.

I rubbed my eyes and let the waking world come into view.

"Good morning, Ryan."

Bing stood next to the computer and flicked on the monitor, bringing forth three images of my brain. A large one in the middle of the screen was three-dimensional. When he ran the mouse across it, a new angle of the image appeared. He looked at it for a few minutes Hmm'ing and Haw'ing but sharing nothing. Finally, he said, "Go get some breakfast and we'll begin again after you have eaten. All right?"

I was lead to a kitchen where Amanda was already seated and eating pancakes. With a full mouth she said, "This place is crazy. The bedroom they set me up in has a big screen TV and a freaking Playstation with like two hundred games. They probably got every channel in the known universe on that thing. And then... and then, get this... there's this big bathroom with a giant tub and all this aromatherapy stuff. I slept like two hours last night. I was too busy having the greatest time. Ever! How was your night?"

"Well," I said, "They hooked me up to a computer and they filmed me while I slept."

"Sounds like a blast. So what's next?"

"I don't know. They said after I eat they're going to begin the next phase of tests."

"Thrilling."

"I don't think we're going to be out of here until late tonight. What are you going to do today?"

"You know that creepy woman we met here yesterday when we first came in?"

"Yeah."

"Well, she said the centre has a driver who will take me anywhere I want to go while you're doing your little thing, and she gave me a free pass to the aquarium. I haven't been there since I was like four. Is that cool, or what?"

A man pushed through a swinging door with a tray in his hands. On the tray was a plate of pancakes and a cup of coffee. He put it down in front of me and told me to enjoy it, then he returned to whatever planet he had just come from. The coffee was delectable and the pancakes were some of the best I had ever eaten.

For another half hour we sat sipping our coffees, coffees that seemed to always be full, and we chatted about nothing. When I was with Amanda, nothing was my favourite thing in the world to chat about.

Eventually, we parted and I was lead back to my sleep room where Bing was waiting for me. "How was breakfast?"

"Unbelievable," I said. Honestly.

"Good," he said. "It's got to be that good when a little visit like this is costing so much."

We both laughed.

"Hey, I have a question for you Doctor Bing."

"The name's just Bing. What's your question?"

"Why do I never see any other patients roaming around here?"

"Right now, Ryan, you are the only patient here."

"What about the three people I saw on the monitors yesterday when we came in?"

"To tell you the truth, those are just recorded videos of past patients. If nobody else is here when someone new comes in it can be a little frightening and intimidating, and it could affect the tests greatly. We just tell people those are patients currently being tested and it just lets them know... you know... that they're not alone."

A breeze of paranoia swept over the landscape in my mind. It blew away cobwebs and leaves, and left me wondering if, in fact, I was still dreaming. Bing's explanations seemed more like masks. Distractions from something much uglier hiding just beneath... some truth I was not supposed to be aware of. As I looked at him I thought of underground labs testing biological weapons and new types of hairspray on unsuspecting bunny rabbits, or worse, on humans.

"Over the next eight hours you will be napping several times. What we will be observing is how quickly you fall asleep and whether or not you enter REM sleep. We're going to start now, okay?"

"But I basically just woke up."

"That's all right," he assured me.

I climbed into the bed and watched Bing leave. He turned the lights off and I was once again left in the dark, staring up at a dark void I knew to be the ceiling. Suddenly, I saw the two stars again. But now they were falling, getting larger and larger. I shielded my eyes, as they were about to drop onto me. But it was a flash of man-made light that woke me.

"Good job," said Bing. "Good job."

Five more times over the next eight hours Bing returned me to my room and asked me to go to sleep, and five more times I had the same dream, the one where the stars fell from the heavens, getting larger and larger the closer they got to me. I could feel the heat of the stars, and each time, just before they were about to turn me into nothing more than ash and wasted air, Bing would wake me with the flicker of the room's fluorescents.

At five o'clock I was brought into a more traditional doctor's office. The woman who introduced me to the place the day before said the doctor had my results and would be along shortly. I waited for half an hour.

Bing stepped into the room with a clipboard in his hand. On it was a sheet with my name in bold black letters at the top of it. That was all I could read.

Without even saying hello he got into it. "What we're looking for in this type of testing is redundancy. Generally, a person suffering from a neurological disorder that affects the control of sleep and wakefulness will fall asleep in eight minutes or less when he or she chooses to do so. These people will also enter REM sleep at least fifty per cent of these times. You fell asleep almost immediately every time we asked you to, and you entered REM every single time faster than anyone we have ever studied. This suggests that you may suffer from a neurological disorder like narcolepsy. However, from your described symptoms, I just can't believe it's that serious. If you really had narcolepsy, you'd notice the symptoms a lot more than you say you do. So what does this mean?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Honestly, Ryan, I don't know what it means. Your scans were normal. You have regular levels of serotonin and norepinephrine, which means clinically, you aren't depressed. You don't have mononucleosis, or any other disease for that fact, and despite being a little out of shape you have an extremely healthy system. So what is it?"

"That's what you're supposed to tell me."

"With something like narcolepsy, either you have it or you don't. You, Ryan, kind of have it, and that is my straight forward personal opinion."

"How can I kind of have a disease?"

"You tell me. I'm just as baffled as you are. But in the end, you do display classic signs of having narcolepsy. So that is how I'm going to describe it... a mild case of narcolepsy."

"And how do I deal with mild narcolepsy, Bing?"

"I could prescribe an antidepressant to control the cataplexy and the hallucinating, and a daytime stimulant to make sure you stay awake through the day, but honestly, if you just exercise more regularly and sleep at least eight hours a night, you should regain some control over your sleep patterns. Oh, and avoid nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine in the late afternoon or evening."

"I'm sorry, did you just tell me to avoid caffeine?" I knew full well what he had just told me. I mean, he could have told me I would need my testicles removed and my response would have differed very little. These were serious things we were talking about here.

"Only in the evening," he replied.

"You know, Bing, I'm not going to exercise, and I'm not going to get eight hours of sleep at night, and there is no way in hell I'm going to give up caffeine, so it looks like I have chosen to suffer. I can live with that. I am sorry I wasted your time and mine. I'll just be going now."

I got up to leave and Bing stopped me. "Wait," he said. "There may be something else we can try."

There was a pause as if he was waiting for me to acknowledge him. I stayed at the office door staring at the picture of a brain above his bald head.

"Have you ever heard of gamma-hydroxybutyrate?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"It's also known as GHB, and it has been proven to be one of the most effective sleep aids for people suffering from narcolepsy."

"GHB. The same GHB kids at raves take?"

"And that is the problem, Ryan. GHB has been classified an illegal substance by the FDA in the US. Health Canada has the same attitude toward it. A little less than a decade ago, you could buy it in health food stores. Now, you can go to jail for just possessing it."

"So how does that help me?"

"Scientists across the continent are doing detailed research and testing of its effectiveness in battling symptoms of narcolepsy, and they're putting together the data in order to get the FDA to overturn their classification. These scientists are hoping to market it as a prescription drug for those that suffer the worst. I know your symptoms don't rule your life, but if I was to say there was a chance of you getting in on one of these studies, would you be willing?"

"How the hell does a rave drug help someone who is always sleeping?"

"With the proper dose, GHB will put one in a deep and restful state of sleep, one that closely resembles natural sleep. That means both REM sleep and non-REM sleep occur. It is the period of non-REM sleep where one's body rejuvenates and grows. It's where the body gets the rest it needs to function the fourteen to eighteen hours it is awake."

"So if the body is rested, then it won't give out on me through the day?"

"Correct."

Drugs and youth. They seemed to collide together like virgins on prom night. In high school, I studied drugs like I studied the works of Shakespeare. Slow and meticulous. My first experience with acid came only after I had read several books by Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. I researched mushrooms and their effects for weeks before I chomped down on a mushroom-filled chocolate ball. And Mary-Jane, oh Mary-Jane, did I love you. I read encyclopedias and learned everything I could about you, from the way you looked to the way you smelled. Some said skunk, I said heaven. If heaven had an odour, that was it. Dennis Leary once said, "Yeah, I did my share of drugs... and his share... and his share". Well, I did my share and his share as well, but they were drugs that did not leave us convulsing on the floor and frothing at the mouth. They weren't drugs that involved trickles of blood from veins and burning holes in our noses. They were "fun" drugs. They were drugs that even a parent could look past, because they too experimented with them, and they, too, grew out of them. Drugs designed for kids to have a good time and to grow as human beings.

Bing's proposition came as both a surprise and a challenge. I knew I wasn't that bad. Hell, I didn't even realize I had fallen asleep or lost control of my legs until someone mentioned it to me. I had read stories about GHB causing ravers to slip into comas, and in the rare case die. GHB was the type of drug I once said I would never put into my system. Never ever. But there I was being given a chance to help not only me, but future generations of people suffering from narcolepsy. And besides, even with Amanda in my life, boredom was still a big issue with all the other waking moments I wasn't with her.

"Well then," I said. "Let's do it. Let's get me high."

11.

I signed for the package and watched the Purolator guy drive away. The box in my hand was the size of a Rubix Cube. An excessive amount of mover's tape was wrapped around the box securing whatever drug, or poison, or virus was living inside of it. My name was printed in bold, capital letters on the plain white envelope that was taped to the top of the box. It was spelled wrong. Who spelled Paul P-A-H-L?

The package was sent from a lab in Minnesota. As odd as it was getting drugs in the mail, I didn't question it. The whole thing was legitimized through the study. For four weeks I was to take a dose of one to two grams of GHB each night before going to bed. Forms and questionnaires on which I would record everything, from how many hours I slept each night to how many craps I took in a day, were sent to me via e-mail. Every detail had to be catalogued. Everything had to be done in complete secrecy. I signed a form that made it a crime for me to share my involvement in the study with anyone. I couldn't tell my mother. I couldn't even tell Amanda.

Instinctively, I took the package to my father's office. I hadn't been in it since he had passed away. I wondered what kind of emotions it would stir in me. I had yet to really let the man's passing sink in. The office smelled like him: a mix of baby-boomer aftershave, pennies and pencil erasers. I found a box cutter in the bottom drawer of his work desk. The drawer was filled with paperclips and boxes of staples and Whiteout. For the first time since my father had died, I suddenly felt a pang of sadness. All of those little inanimate objects... those little practical treasures, more precious than gold when the stapler was empty or a word was misspelled. I realized they would probably stay there unused forever, or until the house grew old and collapsed under the weight of time. And that saddened me. That saddened me. I carefully punctured the tape that covered the crease along the top of the box. The tape melted to the press of the razor. I opened the box and removed a tiny, clear bottle. The bottle had a dropper in its cap. Directions, and the dangers of the liquid inside, were microscopically printed on a sticker stuck to the side of the bottle.

My research on GHB was limited to the Internet, a place where everything written was the truth. Right? I kept an open mind. I learned GHB formed naturally in the human body in minute proportions. And that the GHB the kids at raves were taking was basically degreasing solvent mixed with drain cleaner. Liquids of life. Cleaning minds and cleaning pipes the world over. My hope was that the liquid in the bottle I was holding was a little more pure than the cleaners my mother kept under the sink.

Amanda was working her third day in a stretch of eight days in a row. Amanda and work were on the opposite ends of reality. She did it to survive, like most of us do, but her abhorrence of working life was unlike that of any other human I had ever met. She was the happiest, most polite thing in the world while her apron was on and she was serving the public, but when she returned home after a day of a million 'thank yous' and 'please come agains', all that suppressed rage was released like a cloud of blood-thirsty mosquitoes. And it was usually me stuck in the middle of that cloud without any bug repellent to keep me safe. She would talk about shooting sprees and torturing yuppies. She said if she lit them on fire they would probably melt down into a puddle of plastic, because that's all they really were; plastic cut-outs from some FAO Schwartz catalogue. She would go on to curse the Italians for coming up with the whole coffee-shop concept and she would curse God for making her put up with all the crap of the world just so she could pay for her shoebox of an apartment and No-Name soup and crackers. Most of her shifts were 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm shifts, which meant Ahab and his goddamned whaling boat consumed her entire day. After the newness of our relationship wore off, she would return home tired and irritable, and the last thing on her mind was sex, or watching a movie. Without Amanda gabbing in my ear, or rubbing her hands up and down my back, I was left in a state of limbo. Sometimes I'd ride up to Ahab's to see her, but my appearance would draw scowls that scared me far more than being alone. I thought of trekking down to The Meanest Bean, but I was sure a 'Wanted - Dead or Alive' poster with my ugly mug on it was posted to the cash register. I had sold out on Karl and Amy and Fraser and Todd, and I felt very little guilt in doing so. But that didn't mean I still didn't crave a cup of Meanest Bean joe once in a while.

With the clear bottle nestled tightly in my palm I marched through the house wondering what to do with myself. Eventually, the boredom left me with only one option. I unscrewed the cap on the bottle and squeezed the head of the dropper. The liquid filled up to the two-gram line inside the dropper. Tap water. That was all it looked like. I had read somewhere that a lot of drug trials involved placebos. Would I ingest the liquid and would my brain play a horrible trick on me? Would it make me think I was high just because I was told I would be?

I placed the dropper on my tongue and the bitterness of the liquid made me retch. Without thinking any more on the subject, I squeezed the head of the dropper. The liquid mixed with the saliva in my mouth. It washed down my throat in a wave of bitterness, but not unpleasant bitterness. It was like the sour sugar put on candied jellies. It had to have been flavoured. I was sure liquid Draino didn't taste anything like sour candies.

The strange liquid in my stomach began reacting with its environment. I felt it in me, lubing up the holes in my stomach and preparing itself to enter my blood stream. It was decaffeinated and it lacked the carbohydrates most of the things in my diet contained, but it was making itself comfortable quite fast.

The house was empty. There was no note. No sign of life having been lived there in days. The solitude was what I needed. My body felt beaten up, like it had just run a marathon. I went straight to the family room and turned on the television. I would let the hum of misery carry me off to a deep, GHB-induced sleep. I sprawled myself across the couch, my head comfortable on one of the armrests. As news about a crash between a car and a truck, which was carrying two wayward bears back to the wilderness, filtered through my ears, my eyelids gained a hundred pounds. The news anchor's voice softened. Got static-y. Got into me. Through the static she spoke about a fire in a Vancouver neighbourhood. She ran her tongue along my ear and whispered something about a fourteen-year-old girl being abducted from her bedroom in Oregon. I was so tired. The words from the television and the dreams meshed. A bedroom window on fire. She wriggled into my brain and yelled, "Look!"

I snapped up into a sitting position and saw a picture of Melody Marks floating above the news anchor's left shoulder. I gained control of my senses and turned the volume up on the TV.

"A week after the official search was called off," the anchor said, "Abbotsford police have received their first true lead in the Melody Marks case. Two nights ago Abbotsford police received a phone call from someone claiming to have information about Melody Marks. The message was brief and cryptic. In an unprecedented move, Abbotsford Police have released the call to the media in hopes that someone will recognize the voice."

Another school photo of Melody Marks filled the screen. Static played through the TV's speakers, then voices below the static. First, a 911-operator's voice: "Hello. Hello. Is anyone there?"

A click. More static. And then a second voice. A familiar voice. "She's lying dead somewhere in a ditch." A click. Then silence.

The picture was replaced by the anchor. "Police traced the call to a phone booth at a rest stop just outside the city," she said. "If anyone recognizes the voice, or has any further information about the Melody Marks case, they are asked to contact the Abbotsford Police."

A shot of Melody's parents appeared on the screen. Two large microphones were set up in front of them. They spoke to a throng of reporters and photographers about closure. About doing the right thing. But most of their speech sounded like gibberish, because I couldn't hear them over the sound of my heart, which was beating so fast, it hurt. I wiped away the sweat that was pouring down my forehead and turned off the TV.

"She's lying dead somewhere in a ditch." I heard it in my head over and over again. I placed the words in the mouths of all the people I knew, but the voice didn't match any of them, except for one. The last one. The one I hoped it wouldn't. The tone was identical. The pronunciation of every consonant was identical. The inflection... identical.

The voice on the recording was mine.

The ceiling ripped away and everything around me was pulled out with it into a black void that was now above me. The couch I was lying on began to decompose. I felt its pillows and body rot away. I felt the springs press into my back then turn to rust. Then dust. I sunk as the couch returned to the Earth from where it once came. I was lying on the ground looking up at two stars in the black void. It all seemed so familiar.

"I am... who you have been searching for."

Those voices. A voice. Her voice. It was all around me. It was inside of me. Her voice flowed through me. My blood.

"I told you before. I haven't been searching for anybody," I said.

"I am not any body."

The stars grew larger. Got brighter. Looked angrier.

"This is messed up. This is the drug speaking. It has to be."

"You are an empty shell, Ryan. You've been looking for substance for such a long time. I am here to tell you that I am that substance. I am the direction you seek. I am Mother to you and to all. I am the God you no longer believe in. Believe in me, Ryan."

"I am not looking for anything. I have a girlfriend now. I've forgotten the bad. Locked that shit up in an indestructible vault. I have direction now and I don't need some figment of my imagination telling me likewise."

"I am the map that will lead you home, Ryan. Home, where you can be in charge of your destiny and the destiny of many others. Home, where your voice will matter. Where your voice will give others just like you hope and direction."

"You're a bitch. Get out of my head."

"There's a storm brewing, Ryan. I am your only hope of weathering it."

"Get out of my head!"

A ringing phone ripped a hole in the hallucination and returned me to the world of the real. The great dilemma: answer the phone or let it ring? I had to hide. I had to hide from the world. From myself. Had I really done something to that girl and not remembered doing it?

I climbed the stairs three stairs at a time. I needed to get to my safe place. To my bedroom. Once there, I jumped under my comforter and pulled it up over my head. It didn't muffle the sound of the goddamned phone as I hoped it would. The phone kept ringing. And ringing. And ringing. It was taunting me. I wanted to take a crowbar and smash it into a billion pieces. But I couldn't risk the exposure. And as the minutes ticked away and the tension and worry evaporated from me, it all stopped mattering. The phone became part of the background, like the heater rumbling, or the Earth spinning. Happening, but not of any real concern. And as the minutes ticked away, the weight of my comforter pushed me down into my mattress. Then through my mattress. When I hit the floor, the weight of the comforter became the weight of an arm wrapped around me. Comforting me. It helped me up into a sitting position. I was no longer in my room. I was in the center of a large field again, a dark sky above me. Only two stars twinkled in the sky.

"I am who you have been searching for, Ryan. You will see that I am..."

I could no longer ignore the voice. Persistence paid off.

"You are what?" I cried. "My insanity? My apathy? My dead twin sister I don't know I have?"

"I am She. I am..."

A comet tore through the sky, like the talons of an eagle tear through the skin of a trout. Rivers of light seeped out the darkness and into my eyes. "My God, Ryan. Was that your voice?" My eyes adjusted to my environment. My bedroom. I was on the floor with my comforter wrapped around me. A name was on the tip of my tongue. My mother was in the doorway with her finger on the light switch.

I held up my hand freezing our one-sided conversation for a moment. The name in my head. I couldn't connect the letters to pronounce it. But the name was there, swimming through the juices in my brain. I saw a letter 'A' and an 'H' and an 'R'. I saw more letters, but it was all alphabet soup.

"Don't you dare treat me like that," she said. "I want you to tell me the truth, Ryan. Was that your voice? Was it? Because a lot of people sure seem to think it was."

"Calm down, mom. Please."

She huffed. "How can I be calm, Ryan? How can I be calm when all of these things keep happening? These things that say... that say my son has something to do with a girl's disappearance?"

"Jesus, mom. I barely have the motivation to do the damn housework. Where am I going to find the kind of motivation it takes to beat up two girls and take one of them away to God knows where?"

"That's not funny," she said, and turned at the sound of the front door opening.

"Listen mom," I said.

"Kevin, is that you?"

"Listen to me, mom." She wouldn't look at me. "You have to trust me. Your son. I have absolutely nothing to do with any of this... this bullshit."

She mumbled, "Any more of this bullshit and my heart's going to give out," then left me there on my bedroom floor. Feeling empty. Alone. I closed my eyes and looked for the remaining letters of the name I was so close to recalling.

I saw a 'D' and shuffled the letters around in my head. Not even a Journalism degree could help me with this word game. Something hit me hard in the arm. I opened my eyes and saw my brother pulling his arm back, cocking it for another shoulder punch.

"Whoa... whoa... whoa," I said. "What the fuck?"

"Are you stoned?"

The man-child standing overtop of me in no way resembled the quiet little brother I once forced to eat worms. Back then, he took my abuse, because that's what little brothers do. Because he didn't know how to stand up for himself. Now he was taller than me and he weighed more than me. Now, I feared my little brother. Because little brothers grow up and they never forget.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" I asked.

"Shouldn't you be working?"

"Touché," I said. Touché.

"Yeah, well, I was thinking about going to my career prep course, but you know what father... I just didn't feel like being there on a beautiful day like this."

"But the weather's shit."

"You say shit. I say... shut the hell up."

"Did mom see you?"

"She's not blind."

"What did you tell her?"

"What do you think I told her? Class was cancelled. Later, loser." He punched me in the shoulder again and ran out of my room laughing. I wanted to hate him. I hated him so much. But I also wanted to be him.

I still tingled. So I focussed on the tingle. It was everywhere. But I could also pinpoint it: earlobe, behind the knee, left index finger, and so on. The challenge centered me. Brought me down to a level where I could face my mother and brother and not sound any more foolish than my usual self. How long I had been doing this, I do not know, but it was abruptly brought to a halt when Kevin's voice ripped through the house.

"Holy shit!" he screamed. "Holy shit! Holy shit! Mom. Ryan. You've got to see this."

"Where are you?" My mother yelled out.

"In dad's office. I'm in dad's office. Quickly, get down here!"

I shed my comforter and drunkenly stumbled down to my father's office. Two times in one day. Kevin was at the window pointing out at the vegetable garden my mother kept in the corner of the backyard. My mother was standing next to him, her hand over her mouth. I stepped up to them and saw our backyard and the forest beyond the backyard and the mountains beyond the forest.

And I saw them.

Two very large black bears. Still as statues. Standing on the rotting zucchini. They were both up on their hind legs, looking directly at us. Or at the window to my father's untouched office.

Looking through it... at me.

"Oh my God," my mother said. "What do we do?"

"Wait. wait," I said. "I heard something on the news earlier about two bears. I wonder if... maybe we should call the police. They're probably looking for them."

"I'll go get the phone," my mother said, leaving Kevin and me there at the office window, as still as the bears. Them looking at us. Us looking at them. The four of us like the misplaced works of a master taxidermist. Kevin and I were on the same wavelength, hypnotized by the creatures' massive beauty. Neither of us wanted to move for fear of scaring them away.

"Dubhe," Kevin said through clenched teeth.

"What?"

"Dubhe," he said again. "It's Arabic for the bear."

"How the hell would you know something like that?"

"In Science class yesterday we were looking at stars and constellations. The one we were talking about when the bell rang was Dubhe. It's a star in the Big Dipper. Kind of weird, eh?"

"What's weird?"

"You really are stoned, aren't you? It's weird that we were talking about a star named 'The Bear' and here we are only a day later looking at two bears in our backyard."

"Yeah, I guess that is weird. What other stars are up there? You know, so I can prepare myself for whatever might show up next?"

Kevin was a smart kid. Sometimes too smart for his own good. He was the type of kid that didn't have to study to achieve good grades. He was the type of kid that if he did put an effort in, he could change the world. But there was so much more to Kevin's good mental fortune. When he was seven, he took these IQ tests and it was discovered that he had a photographic memory. Doctors and teachers alike said his photographic memory would be his ticket to a successful life. I hated him. But I wanted to be him.

I broke away from my staring match with the bears and I watched Kevin flip through the textbook in his mind. "Most of the stars are named after animals," he said. "You know, like dogs and rams and hares. Lots are named after Greek gods, too, but you'd have to be a real dumbass not to know that."

"Let's get a little more specific, Einstein. Or can you not remember," I taunted.

"Don't try me, man. If I wanted to I could go through a list of more than a hundred stars and constellations and never stumble. It's all right here," he said while tapping his finger to his temple.

"Okay... give me some of the ones that start with the letter A. Name and meaning."

The conversation was pointless. Out of context. Two bears had wandered into our backyard and were staring us down, and we were suddenly talking about stars. I really was stoned. I tried to return my attention to the bears, but my mind, still under the influence of the GHB, wanted to stay focussed on Kevin. He closed his eyes and began to recite names. "Acamar, a star in Eridanus," he said. It means 'end of the river' in Arabic. Achemar, the brightest star in Eridanus. It also means 'end of the river.' Adhara..."

One of the bears roared. The window rattled and Kevin stopped talking. The two bears dropped down on all four legs and jumped over the fence, quickly disappearing into the forest behind our house. I got sweaty and anxious. Not because of the bears. The bears were gone, so they no longer mattered. What mattered was the word Kevin had spoken.

"What was that last star you named?"

"Are you serious Spacecase? We just had an epic staring match with two monster bears and you want to talk about stars?"

"What was the last one you said? Just before that bear roared?"

"I only got through two of them."

"But you named a third one," I said and grabbed his arm. "What was it?"

"Adhara. It was Adhara," he said and twisted out of my grip. "It's a star in Canis Major. It means 'The Maiden.' Happy, you psycho?"

I closed my eyes and the letters in my head danced in circles, then came together. Do-si-do. The word they formed was Adhara.

Adhara.

12.

There's such a thin line between coincidence and crazy. And I was standing on it, losing my balance. Teetering. Teetering. I wanted to shake people and tell them it wasn't me. It wasn't. I wanted to tell them it was all a coincidence. Someone who sounded like me. Someone who was the same height as me. But I no longer even believed myself. And so, my normal, boring life, filled with coffee jaunts and meaningless chatter slipped away from me.

I ran to Ahab's. I ran fast and hard and didn't notice how dehydrated I had made myself until I pushed through the entrance door and shouted out for Amanda. The mucus on my tongue and in my throat buffered my words. The words came out as a sickly groaning sound. The same sound a bear dying in a leg trap might make.

Two nurses in line stopped talking about nurse things and asked me if I was okay. I pushed past them and pushed my way through to the front counter. Only then did I realize how busy Ahab's was. Busier than I had ever seen it. The shop was packed. Every seat and every stool had an ass on it. People stood in corners with eyes above their mugs, and scowls on their faces. A child tore through the store and knocked a mug off a display shelf. It hit the floor and shattered into five jagged pieces. The microcosm of chaos didn't sway people's attention. Everyone in the store, except for the child who was now crying, was looking at me. Whispers floated through the air like swarms of angry bees, stingers out, looking for a vulnerable piece of my flesh to bury them into.

Wind was behind the bar. "Amanda," he yelled. "Come out front, please."

The door to the backroom swung open and Amanda slinked out. Her face was the colour of a tomato and her eyes were swollen. She came around the counter and grabbed my arm.

"What?" I asked.

"You're... making a scene, Ryan. Please, come with me."

The alley behind Ahab's smelled like coffee grinds and day-old pastries. Amanda pushed me up against a cardboard recycling bin and put her hands on my shoulders. She looked up into my eyes and looked into me. Something was missing from her gaze. "Why were they all looking at me like that?" I asked, already knowing the answer in my heart.

"This is still a very small city, Ryan," she said. "Word travels fast. The word is the police are coming for you. Someone called them and told them it was you on the recording. Someone said it was you, Ryan. Was it you?"

"No. Wait. Amanda."

"Oh Ryan," she said and broke down crying. "You were such a beautiful person. You know, I had my doubts at first. I really did. But I saw a sincerity in you... I saw it and it made me trust you right away. It's rare I let someone in so quickly. And now... and now... I know it, Ryan, just as everyone else who has ever met you knows it. It was your voice."

"But it wasn't," I said. "Oh my god, Amanda. Did you call them?"

She let go of me. She let go. "I'm so sorry, Ryan," she said. "I don't think I can see you anymore."

"Amanda, I didn't do anything. I swear. I swear to God! Somebody's trying to frame me."

"That's ridiculous. Please, just go tell them where that girl is. And leave me alone."

"But Amanda. If you think I'm guilty, why would you come back here with me? We're alone together. Shouldn't you be afraid of me? Shouldn't you be afraid of what I could do to you?"

She kicked a rock that was next to her foot and it banged against a garbage bin. "I really thought you might be the one," she whispered before walking away from me.

"I love you!" I screamed as she turned the corner and returned to her minimum-wage barista job at Ahab's Coffee. "I love you so much! I need you, Amanda. I need you more than I've ever needed anyone in my life!"

A mangy black cat jumped out of the garbage bin and dashed underneath a hedge and into someone's backyard. "I'm not crazy," I said out loud in the alley behind Ahab's. "I'm not. This is all just a crazy coincidence."

In the distance, sirens wailed. I was alone in the alley.

I was all alone.

We all thought we were alone before we found each other. Suffering our coincidences and our crazies alone. In one way or another, Her voice was all through us. But until we had all come together as one, Her voice was the only thing keeping the lot of us from doing what Dustin Jayne did.

Or worse.

Frederick Patterson, aka Fancy, aka Paddy, aka Killer Pussycat, had a stockpile of weapons hidden in his mother's basement. He had hand guns and rifles and even a machine gun. Worse than that, he had enough rounds to annihilate the population of a small city. And that was what he was intent on doing.

I didn't know about the guns or about the intent until the day Fred picked me up in a rusty Cutlass Sierra on the side of Chilliwack Lake Road. He appeared out of nowhere, like an angel in a broken-winged chariot, ready to pluck me out of one existence and carry me to another.

I mentioned the angel allusion to him once, while we were preparing meals for the family, and he laughed it off saying, "If I was any kind of angel, I was an angel of destruction."

When Fred was seven, two men wearing balaclavas and carrying baseball bats bashed their way into his home. Fred heard the door break apart. He heard his mother scream. Then he heard silence. He was in his room at the time and his first instinct was to hide. Only when he had tucked himself behind a box of Christmas decorations in a storage room at the end of the hallway did he realize he had brought the hallway telephone in with him. He hadn't remembered grabbing it or holding onto it. But there it was in his little hands. His mother's voice echoed in his head. "If ever something bad happens to you or me, or to anyone else you happen to be around, find a phone and call 9-1-1 and the police will come and make everything better. Fred's dilemma... the phone chord stretching down the hallway. It gave his hiding spot away. He had to be quick. He dialed the three numbers and after three rings a woman with a very calming voice said, "Is this an emergency?" Fred replied in a whisper, "I think so." As the words left his mouth, the phone rocketed out of his hands, pulled away from him by an unseen force. It smacked against the storage room door and bounced on the floor like a fish out of water. The noise sent him into a panic. "Help!" he yelled. "Help! Help! Help!" The door swung open and two creatures out of his worst nightmare appeared above him. Their faces looked like they had been blacked out with a felt pen. Only their eyes and a couple of centimetres of skin around their eyes were visible. One of the creatures blinked one of its eyes, then swung the bat it was holding, bashing Fred in the head. Fred woke up three hours later in a hospital bed. His mother was standing on one side of the bed and a police officer was standing on the other side.

Fred was never again the same. Socially awkward. A misfit. He couldn't make friends. He couldn't stay focussed. He couldn't be normal no matter how hard he tried. The bat against the head changed his brain. It slowed him down. Made him incapable of doing so many of the things he really wanted to do. Like joining the police force. Since that day in the hospital, recounting his nightmare to the police officer, all he wanted was to be on the police force. To be a good guy. He ran two-and-a-half kilometres in twelve minutes. He passed all the written tests with top marks and he was honest when he said he had never doing a bad thing in his life. But as soon as he got to the psychological testing, it was all over. Fred worked tirelessly on the psychological side of the testing, strengthening his brain and his response times. But it was all for naught. One cop told him, 'you can't fix broken'. After the fifth year he was passed over, Fred fell into a funk that he couldn't get out of. He hated the world for being so judgmental. He hated the men in balaclavas for breaking him. He hated everyone and everything. Except for guns. After the fifth year of being passed over by the police, Fred started to collect guns. And bullets. At first, he just liked the way the guns felt in his hand. He liked the control he felt when he had a gun in his hand. He liked having all the control.

But Fred was a good guy.

The guns were never meant to be anything other than an escape. A drug that really wasn't a drug. And then one day he turned on the news and saw footage from a high school in some mid-Western state. Three kids were shooting the school up. They were dressed in trenchcoats and vitriol. He saw the power behind their actions. The attention they were garnering. His broken brain was repairing itself, and in doing so, was allowing to see him the world in a way he had never seen it before. It no longer was about just hating the world. It was about making the world pay for making him so wrong. It was about making the police force pay for not seeing the officer Fred could have been. He bought a trenchcoat and planned to storm into the police department and kill as many people as he could before he was killed.

Frederick Patterson disappeared in May 1995, two days before his planned attack. and nobody but Fred and Jacob Donal knew why. Fred was 25 years old when he disappeared. It was three years later, sitting next to him in his Cutlas Sierra, as we drove toward Prince George, that I also learned about why he had disappeared.

Fred was a good guy. And this world couldn't see it. But Jacob could. He saw it in Fred's eyes when he struck up a conversation with Fred in a gun shop. He saw Her in Fred's eyes. Jacob promised Fred that in the new world, he could be anything he wanted to be and no one would hold him back. No one would ever judge him. It was the only convincing Fred needed.

My mother's car was in the driveway. Its driver side door left open. I closed it and entered the house cautiously. Kevin and the woman who had brought me into the world were sitting at the kitchen table talking. When I closed the front door, they turned and looked my way. "You left your car door open," I said. "I closed it for you."

Kevin stood up and left the table. He didn't look at me. "What's going on?" I asked. I hoped her motherly instinct would kick in and she would take me in her arms and make me feel like everything was going to be alright.

"I think you're in a lot of trouble, Ryan."

I dropped my head.

"Why do you think that?"

"I called my friend Wendy. She works reception down at the police station. She said they'd be here sometime tonight with a warrant."

"Why would you call the police?"

She looked so sad. "That was your voice, Ryan. I've heard it a dozen times now. A mother knows the sound of her child's voice. A mother knows."

"Jesus Christ, mom. What can I do or say that's going to make you believe me when I say I had nothing to do with this? Nothing."

Oh God, I wanted her to wrap her wings around me and squeeze me so tight I would lose my breath and die. I wanted her love more than I wanted her to believe me. But she did not move. So I took her hand. I took it and ran my fingers over it. Over the many lines life had scratched into it. I had never touched my mother's hand like that. I put it up to my cheek and smelled the Oil of Olay that moisturized it. I let go of the hand but she kept it against my cheek. She ran it up and down my face. My lip trembled. "Mom," I said. "I had nothing to do with this. I swear to God."

She dropped her hand onto the table and whispered, "Okay, dear. Okay."

"What do I do now?" I asked.

"You be brave, son. If you haven't done anything, then they can't do anything to you. So be brave."

She gave me a sad smile.

I left her and went up to my bedroom, my last safe haven. But the room felt all wrong. It had lost its innocence. Its protective power. I didn't know where else to go, so I jumped the threshold into my bedroom and slammed the door shut behind me. I started peeling the posters off the wall. Bjork standing next to a large window, her long, flowing dress blowing in an unseen wind. Nirvana thrashing their instruments and themselves. Smashing Pumpkins dressed up like astronauts. Peeling away the artists and bands I once used to define my personality. To define me. I tore them up into little pieces and showered my bedroom floor with them. I pulled all the books off my shelves and all the clothes out of my drawers. I stomped on the wreckage and laughed. I spat on the bare walls and swore as loud as I could. I was falling apart, so adding a bit of drama to the part seemed justified.

When I had worn myself out I collapsed onto my bed and looked up at the faint glow-in-the-dark stars that were camouflaged against the white ceiling in the light of the day. My body relaxed. My eyelids got heavy. I was so tired. I listened once more for the world that was alive and kicking beyond my bedroom door. All I heard was my mother sobbing from somewhere in the house.

White turned into black.

A glorious hoofed creature trotted toward me. I opened my arms to it. But before it could run over me, a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the dream. It was my mother. She was shaking me and saying, "They're here. Compose yourself and come downstairs."

Sleep was still heavy in my system, but I forced my way out of it, out of bed and into the swarm of officers buzzing around the house. As busy as bees they flew from one side of the house to the other gathering their pollen. They took photos and shoes and clothes. They bagged up dirt from several spots around the outside of the house. They asked the same stupid questions they had asked me before and I answered the same way. But this time the looks on their faces were more accusatory... more suspicious... more angry. One cop whispered the word "Intoxicated" just loud enough for me to hear.

From the living room, where two portly cops played twenty questions with me, I saw three vans pull into the driveway. Someone in the room said, "Shit. I can't believe those fuckers are here already."

Doors swung open, blinding lights flicked on, and men carrying video cameras on their shoulders like bazookas exited the vans. Three cops met them halfway to the house and were attacked by lights, camera, and action. The phone rang and I swear to God, it didn't ever stop again.

13.

There was a muffled tap at my bedroom door. So faint it could have been my imagination. I had been cooped up in my room for two days ignoring the world. Getting loopy. But the world was baying at my door... baying in the back of my head, shouting, 'You can't ignore us forever." I flung my protective comforter off my head and was smacked by the stale smell of my tomb. I mean my room. "Go away," I said.

"Ryan, you can't ignore us forever," my mother said. "Please, can I come in and talk to you?"

The police didn't want to create a media firestorm. They didn't want the public tearing me apart with their pitchforks. They wanted me to come down to the station of my own accord. The sun was trying so hard to squeeze through the blinds. What few thin rays made it through were filled with dust. Even the sun was dirty in my room.

"Ryan," my mother said. "You know I believe you and you know your father would have believed you. We're on your side here. But this... this behaviour isn't making it any easier for anyone else to believe you. You haven't eaten in days. And the police keep phoning here. You have to talk to them some more. You have to do that for us... and for yourself."

I stayed in bed, choosing to keep the wall up between us. "I don't know what to do," I said. "You have to help me get out of this mess. I didn't do anything. Why are they picking on me?"

"I'll get you a lawyer, dear. I promise. But you have to go and see them willingly before they come back here and break the door down and take you away using force. You know that's what's going to happen if you keep ignoring them, don't you?"

She whispered, "Please" and the phone rang. The phone ringing in our house was as common a sound as the sound of water running. Everyone called: newspapers, neighbours, the police. Most times my mother would let the answering machine pick it up. Most times. But she was compelled to leave me with her pleas and get the phone. The hum of her conversation was just under the audible level. When the hum stopped, I heard her approach my door again.

She tapped my door and said, "Ryan, before you do anything, I want you to go and see your grandfather."

My grandfather was a memory. After he had "Lost it", as my mother liked to say, she kept us away from him. She wanted us to remember him the way he was and not the way he had become. Her out-of-the-blue request only added to my teetering sanity.

"I haven't seen grandpa in almost five years. I don't understand."

"I don't either, Ryan. But a nurse from the home just called here. She said your grandfather wants to talk to you."

"Really?"

"She said he asked for you by name. She said it was the most lucid she's seen him in years. He's not going to be with us much longer, dear. If he's asking to see you, I really think you should go."

"Jesus, mom. Am I going crazy?"

"Go talk to him."

"I thought... I thought you didn't want us to see him. I thought he didn't know who I was anymore."

"This doesn't make any sense to me, either. I saw him... just after Jim... after your father died. He looked awful. He didn't even recognize me. Please Ryan, take this opportunity. Take it. For me."

She moved away from my door and went behind her own. I heard it close. I heard her crying through the two closed doors. The sadness I felt listening to her cry surprised me. I had to get a hold of myself. My mother was right. I had to face the world. I had to give up and believe the system was a just one. I didn't do anything. It was all a big mistake. Someone wanted me to take the fall. That was all.

Before the police, I had to see an old man I had almost forgotten about. I had to do it for my mother. I had to do it for me.

My father once told me a funny story about my grandfather. It went something like this: In those last few months before the old man "lost it," he would wake up every morning, strip out of his pajamas and put on his best three-piece suit. He knew death was coming for him and he wanted to look his best for that cold bastard when he arrived. So the old man would get dressed and go back to bed in his suit and he would stare up at the ceiling waiting... waiting for death to come. The nurses would coax him out of bed for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But the time inbetween, he was always there in bed waiting. When finally, he fell asleep at night, the nurses would change him out of his suit and into his pajamas. Too bad, my father would say, the poor guy will never get to meet death with a clear head.

I dressed myself in clothes I hadn't worn in years. I put on a baseball hat. When I drove to the old-folks' home I kept to back streets and alleys. The dark sedan that had been parked across the street from the house since the police left followed me at an obvious distance and parked three spots down from me in the old-folks' home parking lot. I kept my head low as I walked past the sedan. Its doors never opened. Whoever was inside the sedan didn't follow me into the home.

The home smelled of mothballs and mints. Death's pets wandered the hallways, walking into wrong rooms and addressing each other by the wrong name. It was all so wrong. The last time I had wandered the same hallways was the day my grandfather had been brought to the home. He still kind of "had it" then and believed he had a dozen good years left in him.

I asked a nurse which room he was in and she laughed at me. "Oh, you're Charlie's grandson," she said and looked me up and down. "I seen you on the news. They sayin' you did some pretty bad things to that poor girl. Made you a right monster they did. And you ain't even been charged yet. I'll tell you who the real monsters are... those quick to judge, t'is true. Tha's who. But me, I ain't the judgmental type, nosiree. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt."

"Thank you, maam," I said uncomfortably.

"Strange thing that is, your grandaddy just up and blabberin' on about talkin' to you and you alone. He's been goin' on about it for hours now. Up until he started mentionin' you, we didn't even think he knew he was still amongst the livin'. Quite a character, that Charlie. Anyhoo, you just keep goin' down that hallway there and he's through the very last doorway on the right."

I walked down the hallway, sneaking peaks through half-open doors. Men and women too old to move lay in beds or sat in rocking chairs. Some of them were hooked up to oxygen tanks. Others looked like they were being kept together with a needle and thread. Most of them were staring at the wall. Or the ceiling. Staring.

The door to my grandfather's room was closed. I knocked and waited for a response. When none came I turned the knob slowly and entered the room. I had been to open-casket funerals. I had seen the dead up close. My grandfather was breathing, but he looked dead lying there motionless on top of his sheets, dressed in the suit I had heard so much about. His unblinking eyes were focussed on a spot on the ceiling. "Sit boy," he said.

I sat in a seat placed at the head of his bed.

"I hate this being old," he said quite lucidly, before I could say anything to him. "But what can I do? When they say life is short, they aren't kidding around. A bloody blink of the eye... that's how fast my childhood blew by me."

He stopped and took in a deep breath. As his stomach fell, his ribs formed little islands in his suit. "And that's how fast my adulthood passed me by... a bloody blink of the eye. I have lived through so much. I know it. I see flashes of the me I used to be. But without the ability to remember what it is I lived through, being alive really isn't that fulfilling. Life is a series of steps now. A series of mind-numbing steps. And steps get tiring very quickly. I bear the scars of age, boy. I am fed and bathed daily by hands that aren't mine. I have no control over my bladder and twenty years ago I forgot to leave the window open a slice for the dog. The heat killed the poor bastard. Baked him like a meatloaf. Flashes. That's what I see."

He never stopped looking at the ceiling. Talking to it like I was up there, my back glued firmly to the stucco. His voice didn't rise or lower in tone or volume.

"They think I'm a vegetable," he continued. "They think I can no longer think for myself... the dementia does the thinking for me. But they don't know squat. I know where I am. And when I really want to, I can take hold of my mind and I can think for myself. I can think about all the other raisins in here, with their pathetic minds and their skewed looks on life, rotting away. And I can think about how sorry I feel for them. I want to die, boy. I want to die and I want to know that when death comes for me I know exactly what's happening so I can face it with open arms and embrace it. They think I'm a vegetable, but I'm sharp, boy. I may not remember my first girlfriend's name, or which city my parents were born in, but I can tell you a great story, or trick you with a game of the mind. Here, in this place, life becomes a game of the mind. The mashed meat and carrots, the medicine, the piss in my pants... it is all forgotten when I am running free in my mind. Running away from the nurses and doctors who sugarcoat the shit out of things. I want to die not because I am giving up on life, but because I want to get back to a place where I can be productive and use my mind for more than creating elaborate escapes. I want to die because I don't want to be here anymore. Why can't they understand that?"

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I'm telling you a story, boy. Just listen."

So listen I did.

He sucked in another deep breath. "Once upon a time there was a young man," he said slowly. "About twenty-four years of age. I believe that's around your age. Well, this young man, he was a good person. A good son to his mother and father and a good brother to his siblings. He was devoted to Christ, to his country and to his wife of three years. One day a letter came in the mail. This was no ordinary letter. It was a conscription notice and it was effective immediately. There wasn't a moment of hesitation for this young man. For twenty-four years his country had served him well and now it was his turn to show his gratitude. A week later he kissed his wife on the lips, hugged his parents and stepped on a bus and into a war he knew very little about. Before the war, the young man had never even seen a dead body. Early into the war, he was taking the life from bodies all around him. The first life he took was the most difficult of them all. He had run out of bullets. The smoke from the gunfire... the artillery fire had clouded over the sun leaving the world gray. The young man heard footsteps behind him. Out of panic and utter terror he swung his rifle around and stuck the bayonet into the oncoming assailant. The bayonet went through the man's throat and spat blood all over the young man's face. When he wiped the blood out of his eyes the young man saw his commander lying on the field. Dead. He could taste his commander's blood in his mouth. He could taste his own cowardice. He laid down on the bloody soil next to his dead commander and he wept for hours until the smoke cleared. Until he was spotted and whisked away to a basecamp. The young man lied. He said the enemy had surrounded them. They were the real killers. In the heat of battle, the young man's thin explanation was accepted. And life went on for him. Killing from there on out got easier. Killing was as bad as it got. So when the young man found himself in blown up villages raping and pillaging, it seemed tame in comparison. Yes, he would march strong and proud with his close-knit unit into these villages and he'd find women -- they'd all find women -- and he'd... and he'd have his way them and then he'd shoot them. They were the enemy, too. They deserved what they got. Or so he thought. All morality and humanity died the moment he stuck that bayonet into his commander's neck. For sixteen months this young man raged through hell until the day he was shot in the back. Two weeks after being shot, he was home. He spent the next three years recovering from the flesh wound, but an entire lifetime couldn't heal the wound that was left in his mind. Life eventually evened out and this young man grew into a full-fledged contributing member of society. Tinkering with vehicles in the war lead to a career in mechanics. He opened his own shop and achieved great success fixing other people's cars. He had children and by all outward appearances, he had a sort of normal again. But he was far from normal. There were voices in his head. There was a hunger that had nothing to do with food. And late at night he'd scream out from dreams about rape and torture and murder. He hid his lack of normal as best he could from his family, but he knew it would come out eventually. Unless... he gave it what it wanted. One night the young man told his wife he had to go away for a few days to a mechanic's convention. The next morning she wished him well, kissed him on the lips and waved at him as he backed his sedan down the driveway. He drove out of his city and out of his country and he took to the highway where he kept his eyes open. Open for hours and hours until he passed a woman holding a sign that said SOUTH. That is when his eyes closed. He turned the car around and pulled over next to the woman. She was alone and wore tattered clothes and carried a small backpack. He invited her into his warm car and began the slow, uneven drive to a twisted sort of salvation. As the sun set and the hitchhiker slept next to him, he pulled the car off the highway and drove it down a long, rocky road that ran through a forest. He stopped the car and watched for almost a half hour. He watched for other cars. He watched for God. He watched the woman snore and spit in her sleep. She was pretty, but not his type. It didn't matter. The voices said they needed to be fed or they would never go away. Anyone would do. So he put on a pair of black leather gloves and wrapped his hands around the sleeping girl's neck and he squeezed..."

"Jesus," I said, forgetting for a moment where I was and who I was talking to. And then my brow began to moisten. It was my grandfather talking to me. I couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth. The words were like water that had broken through an invincible damn. I wanted to run from the water. I wanted to run out of that coffin of a room, but I knew I had to be there. For him. For me. There was a reason for his confession, if that was what it was. I looked up at the same spot on the ceiling he was looking at and I saw the struggle going on in his mind and in his car. I stayed and heard him out.

"...and he squeezed. And he blocked out the startled pleas of the girl in his grip. The girl's nose began to bleed and then she just stopped. The young man sat there for an hour with his hands wrapped around her neck, listening. And when he removed his hands from her neck they creaked like a rusted gate. They were numb and stuck in a claw-like shape. He shook them until the feeling returned. Until the feeling returned. And then he buried her. He buried that poor girl so deep, not even the worms could have found her. Goddamned if that young man didn't dig halfway to China before dropping the lifeless body into the hole. The beast was gone. The dreams stopped and the voices went silent. Despite a rare slip back into reflection, he was some form of normal again. The young man never told anyone about what he did. And no one ever knew the wiser. No one..."

"Except me," I whispered.

"I have made my peace by telling you this story. Peace is a good thing. God be good to me. God be good. Ohhh...," he said, what little life he had left, escaping with that breath of relief.

One of the residents down the hall screamed, "I can't find my slippers!" I looked out into the hall then looked back at my grandfather. His eyes were closed. His breathing had evened out and a light snore rattled through his nose.

I stood up and whispered, "I don't know why you chose to tell me that story. I don't even know you anymore. And you don't know me. I am a good person. I am. And I had nothing to do with those girls."

I put my hand on his arm and said, "Good bye."

A smile was on his face. A smile as big as a half-eaten lemon-meringue pie. As I walked toward the door, my grandfather said, "Oh, hello..."

An hour later, he died.

14.

Worms crawled over my face. Under my shirt and through the hair on my chest. They exploded from the earth around my body and dragged bits of dirt in zigzag patterns across my arms. Across my forehead and cheeks. They rested in the craters of my sunken eyes, and as they found the energy to continue squirming forward or backward or whichever way they were squirming, they allowed me to glimpse the death of a billion stars in the night sky above me. Like bathroom lightbulbs that had been turned on and off one too many times, the stars popped out in great flashes of light, and then were gone. They fizzed and sparked and shook the ground I was lying on, shaking the worms off my face. Off my arms. In time, only two stars remained. If nothing had a shade of black, it was the black of the night sky after the stars died. The two remaining stars danced in the black nothing like UFOs taunting Roswell townsfolk. And then the stars came together and fell to Earth.

When I wish upon a falling star.

"Sometimes, all we need is an excuse." The voice came out of the falling stars. The stars became the eyes of a silhouette that became a unicorn with wings. It landed on the ground right in front of me. I sat up and showered the ground with two-dozen disturbed worms.

"I know your name now," I said. "It is Adhara."

"Yes."

"Why are you in my head?"

She trotted over to me and put her giant nose in front of mine. She smelled like lilies. "Look at me, Ryan," she said. "I am fading. You look into the sky and you see me looking down at you every night with my millions of eyes. But if you looked closer, you'd see that every night a few more of my eyes have closed shut forever. This onset of blindness is not of my choosing, but is born out of revelation. You see, Ryan, as proud as I am of the world I created, I no longer have any control over it. I sprang man from the sludge and gave him abilities unlike any creature before it, or after. I gave him the ability to choose and to react with thought... not just instinct. And what does he do? He sets out to disprove my existence and to destroy everything I have given him. The end has been predestined, Ryan. Had man not been so inclined to end the world, some other force would have taken his place. If there is life, there must be death. It is a law of duality. But my son, I did not see the end coming so soon. Soon, there will be a night where all but two of the eyes in the sky blink out for good, and when that night comes, I will return to Earth and I will pick a select few who I will take to a place far greater than your Earth. And far greater than any Heaven man can conceive. It will be a place of new beginnings, where the grass always stays green and the sky always stays blue. The people I choose to carry on my back will be the Adams and Eves who will procreate and recreate a new society... a society of loving, peaceful individuals. It will be a society built on the principles of love and peace. Not on war and technology. It will be a perfect society, as I once envisioned the society on Earth would be."

"But who am I? Where do I fit in?"

She reared her head back as a swarm of mosquitoes flew out of the black and into her main. She neighed and shook as they plunged their proboscis's into her skin.

I woke to the sound of something pelting against my bedroom window. My clock had jumped three hours since the last time I had looked at it. The GHB stole more than brain cells, I thought. It stole time. I got up and went to my window. Fraser was at the side of my house. His arm was back behind him like he was about to throw something. He spotted me and dropped the pebbles that were in his hand. The sun was setting below the hedge behind him, leaving a world of fire reds and rich purples in its wake. I slid the window open a crack. "What the fuck, man?"

"Get down here," he said. "I want to show you something."

"I'm in a heap of shit, dude. I can't leave this room."

"It's all right. We'll be back in five minutes. Swear. I've got to show this to you, man. It's insane."

"I haven't seen you in like forever. What's going on?"

"Just get that pretty-boy ass of yours down here."

He seemed persistent. Like he wasn't going to go anywhere until I caved. I snuck downstairs and out the front door ninja-like. Fraser was now standing in the middle of the driveway with a shit-eating grin on his face. Parked behind him was Todd's beat up pick up truck. Todd was behind the wheel mouthing the words to whatever song was playing on the radio. When he saw me he gave me a military salute. "What the fuck, man?" I said again, this time with a little more emphasis on the 'what the fuck'.

"Get in the truck."

"I can't. If the police, or anyone else for that matter, see me leaving, I'm fucked."

"Don't worry about the cops, man. My dad said they aren't coming for you tonight. Something about solid preparation and no stone unturned and all that other shit. This thing's going global, man. Abbotsford hasn't ever had this kind of attention. The cops need all the extra time they can get to ready themselves for their close up. They know you aren't going anywhere," he said and grabbed my arm. "Now get in the fucking truck."

"So they are going to arrest me? You know that for sure?"

"You're the scapegoat, man. Unless, of course, you actually did it. And I'm sorry to say it, but everything does seem to point in your direction. I'm not even a cop and I can see that."

Todd rolled down his window. "Come on, man," he said. "Get the fuck in here." There was nothing playful in his tone.

I climbed into the middle of the cab and felt the great weight of Fraser climbing into the cab after me. Without understanding why, I had willingly cemented myself into a wall. "What's going on here, boys?" I asked.

Todd turned the radio up and backed out of the driveway. Some song that sounded like every other song on the radio screamed out of the speakers. Todd's raggedy old subwoofer, that was built into a wood box behind my back, pumped out distorted bass. "I love this shit," Todd said.

"Are you kidding me?" Fraser said. "This sounds no different than that song we were listening to on the way down here. They're all just Pearl Jam clones. Shit, Eddie should be collecting royalties from all of these plagiarizing hacks. Don't you agree, Ryan?"

"What?"

The truck sped up the road, swerving around a slow-moving tractor. I shifted in my seat like a rag doll. "Is there a seatbelt or something I can put on? I'd feel a lot safer."

"We're the ones sitting next to a murderer," Todd chuckled. "How do you think we feel?"

Fraser laughed, too. "Here you go," he said still laughing. He handed me a piece of torn seatbelt that was under his seat. "Sorry, dude. I have the only belt in here that works. But don't you worry. Todd is one of the best drivers on the road. He's only had like three accidents and half a dozen speeding tickets."

"Pretty damn good, if I do say so myself," Todd said.

"This thing's a fucking death trap," I said.

"Yeah, it is," Todd said. "But I love it, and as I've said many times before, if you're going to go, you may as well go doing the things you love."

"That doesn't even make sense," I said.

Todd turned up the radio again. The scratchy bass rattled my heart. For the first time ever, I was nervous in Fraser and Todd's company. I knew they were crazy, but it was always that "man, you're crazy" crazy. This was something else.

Houses blurred by, and morphed into schools, then gas stations, then industrial sites and cornfields. Then darkness. The sun was gone and we were speeding east along Highway 1 toward Chilliwack. Five minutes had turned into twenty. Todd was humming along to yet another song that had been pumped out of the Eddie Vedder puppy mill and Fraser was pounding his fist into the palm of his hand. He was fidgeting and mumbling, and every so often he'd look over at me and give me one of those "this is going to be amazing" smiles.

"That's it!" I yelled above the music. "This isn't funny anymore. This isn't fun. Turn around and take me home."

Todd turned off the radio and put a hand on my shoulder. In a too-calm voice, he said, "Calm down, man. We just want to show you something. That's all. Things are going to get pretty hairy for you after tonight. Why not have a little fun before the shit goes down?"

The pick up truck's headlights flashed across a road sign that said we were twenty kilometres from the Vedder River. That meant we were sixty-five kilometres from Chipmunk Creek. "You and everybody else in town seems to know something about me I don't even know. Shit, I haven't seen you guys in weeks and out of the blue you show up at my house and you want to show me something. You lie to me. You say we'll only be five minutes. And now we're out in the middle of fucking nowhere. What could you possibly want to show me that could make me forget that people think I'm a kidnapper? A murderer? What?"

Fraser flicked the top up on Zippo lighter with the palm of his hand, then snapped his fingers across the wheel, lighting it up. He lifted the flame up to a smoke that dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Just sit back and shut up," he said between closed lips.

When does a boy become a man? Is it when he loses his virginity? When he has his first child? His first pubic hair? Or is it when he moves out from under the protective wings of his parents, and fends for himself for the first time? I had accomplished all of the feats of growing up, save for fathering a child. I considered myself a man. A grown up, who happened to be a little down on his luck. But Fraser... fucking Fraser, who had the physical appearance of a man, was far from being one. He depended on his parents for everything. He'd never learned to be independent. I would mock him incessantly about this. But as I sat on the bitch hump in the cab of Todd's old pick-up truck heading to God knows where and I looked at him glowing above the flame of his Zippo lighter, I saw a man sitting there next to me. A very scary man.

"You know, you guys are kind of freaking me out."

"Come on, dude," Fraser said. "We're buddies. Why would you be scared of us?"

"A lot of things aren't making sense to me right now. Jesus, my entire life doesn't make sense to me right now. I'm scared, Fraser. I'm scared of what you're about to show me. I have this sickening feeling in my stomach that whatever it is, it's going to clear a lot of things up."

"You're paranoid, man," he said and took a long drag from his cigarette. He exhaled the smoke against the front window, fogging up the cabin.

"Open your fucking window," Todd snapped. "I can't see a goddamned thing."

Fraser rolled his window down an inch. The world speeding by outside sucked out the smoke from the cab. I could hear the faint sound of a rushing river beside us.

"Remember that time we stole that guy's tube and dared Dave to tube down this bitch?" Fraser said as he stared out at a river too dark to see.

Todd laughed. "Shit, man," he said. "We must've run like ten kilometres along the shore before we could reach him with that branch. Dumb gullible bastard."

I remembered that day. Dave Parmer was the poor kid who was born with an abnormally large nose, and who, after years and years of torment, went to the extreme and had that nose surgically reconstructed. Poor Dave Parmer had never been camping before and somehow weaseled his way onto one of our excursions into the woods (he convinced us with excessive amounts of beer, paid for by him). By three o'clock that afternoon he was drunker than a sailor on shore leave. On the way into the campsite Todd had noticed a truck that had a boat on a trailer behind it. Inside the boat were two inner-tubes. No one was around the truck, so he stole one of the tubes. As the day wore on, our tolerance of Dave and his drunken bantering weakened, so we dared him to take the tube to the river and see how far he could ride it. We didn't think he'd actually do it. But he tossed that big, rubber donut over his shoulder and he walked three kilometres to where the creek met up with the river. We followed behind him, downing our beers and laughing our asses off the whole way... until he actually threw it in the water and hopped onto it. Instantly, the river grabbed hold of the tube and propelled it forward, snapping Dave's head back. We ran along the rocks and screamed at Dave to hold on. "Hold on until we can reach you, you dumb bastard!" He thrashed through the rapids and between jagged rocks, and then he hit a rock that popped the tube and sent him flying. Luckily, he flew to a spot that was close enough to reach him with a branch we had picked up along the way. We dragged him onto land where he spat out some blood and water and where he passed out. We picked him up and carried him back to our campsite, unaware of the seriousness of his injuries. For another full day he laid in his tent unconscious while we smoked up, drank and roasted hot dog wieners over the campfire. Every so often one of us would check in on him, just to make sure he was still breathing. But it was only after our camping trip was over that we took him to a hospital. He spent three days in the hospital recovering from two broken ribs and a shattered shin bone. Dave Parmer never came camping with us again.

"Dave could've died," I said, suddenly feeling guilty.

"Hey, man, Dave was alright. That's all that mattered. It was all good fun," Fraser said.

The pick-up truck turned off the road running along the river and onto a road made of dirt and stone. I knew the road well. It had originally been made for the logging trucks that drove up and down the mountain hauling their clearcutting victims. A genocide of trees so we could have our coffee tables and bookshelves. Twenty minutes later we drove into the Chipmunk Creek campground. Todd pulled the truck into one of the sites and killed the headlights. Even in the dark, I knew which site he had chosen. It was the only campsite we ever chose when we were up at Chipmunk. At the furthest end of the site, there was a gravel pad that could park two cars with room to spare. From there, there was a yardstick-wide gravel path down into the forest that bordered the creek. Half way along the path, and in the middle of five giant pine trees, a circular pad of earth had been cleared for tents and folding chairs and beer coolers. A firepit was built into the center of the pad. I closed my eyes and saw a fire burning in that pit. Or maybe I just saw a fire burning.

Fraser and Todd got out of the truck and ran behind it. Fraser opened the back gate and fumbled around the bed for something. When he found what he was looking for he handed it to Todd and returned to the cab. He reached under the driver's seat and grabbed a flashlight. "Ahah!" he said and clicked the flashlight on. He shone the light in Todd's eyes and said, "Where were you on the night of April twenty-sixth, young man?"

"Well, Mr. Police Occifer, I was nestled snug in bed after going to evenin' mass with my dear mother."

They both laughed. Fraser shone the flashlight on me, then motioned with the light for me to get out of the truck. "Hooeey," he said, "sure is clean out here." He sucked in a deep, embellished breath of air. "Pine needles, dirt, clean water... it's to die for. Get out of the truck, Ryan."

I did as he asked. When I had my feet on the ground he grabbed my jacket sleeve and pulled me down the path toward "our" campground. "Why are you doing this?" I asked. "Why have you..."

"Why have we done what?" Fraser replied.

"I know what you're about to show me, and I... I just can't make any sense of it. Why did you do this to me? I thought... I thought we were friends."

"Huh," Todd huffed behind us.

Fraser knew exactly where he was going, like he was a guide dog guiding his blind master. We walked past the campground and neared the creek, then we moved along the creek into another part of the forest. Every so often he would tell me to watch out for a root or a stray branch. And every so often he would turn around and give Todd the thumb, index finger, pinkie finger heavy metal sign.

"Here we are," he said, ten minutes into our walk. "It's not a ditch, but it's pretty fuckin' close. Wouldn't you say so, Ry Guy?"

"Ditch? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Ditch? What the fuck are you talking about?" Fraser repeated, mockingly.

He pulled a voice recorder out of his pocket, put it up against my ear and pushed play. The voice on the recorder was mine. "She's lying dead somewhere in a ditch," I said.

Fraser pulled the voice recorder away from my ear. "They do this shit in the movies all the time," he said. "It seemed so... what would you say? Cliched? But it worked like a motherfucker. It was just so... easy."

Todd stepped up beside me and once again I found myself walled up in-between them. He grabbed my left arm with one hand and with the other he slashed my arm with a Swiss Army knife, cutting through my jacket. Cutting me open. Drawing blood. "What the fuck!" I screamed. The pain was no match for the fear.

Fraser shone the flashlight in my face, then spun it around and shone it on the ground. 'Check it out, dude."

"Check what out?" I spat out as I grabbed hold of my wounded arm. I felt the blood seeping through my fingers. I heard it plunking against the forest floor.

"See where I'm pointing the light, dude?" Fraser said. "Go there and start digging."

"What?"

"Just do it, man. Quit being such a fucking pussy."

I got down on my hands and knees and crawled along the beam of light. The ground where the beam ended was moist, like it had recently been turned over. Todd and Fraser stood close behind me. When I looked back up at them, they looked like giants that had just hacked down the beanstock, leaving me no chance for escape. They stood there with their arms crossed, surveying the dig.

"I thought we were friends," I said again, reaching for some sort of emotional connection.

"Put your hand in the fucking dirt and dig," Fraser shouted.

The creek rushing beside us was so loud and we were so far from civilization, I may as well have been on the moon. No matter how loud I could be, no one would hear me, even if they were fifty feet away from me. Fear coursed through me like poison. It infected my muscles and my brain. I was getting light headed. The thought of passing out became a welcome relief.

Todd ran off into the darkness and returned a minute later. "Oh no you don't," he said and tossed a bucket of frigid creek water on me.

I jumped up and shook off as much of the water as I could before it soaked my clothes. "Fuck! What the fuck is going on?" I was sick of not knowing why they were doing what they were doing to me. The blood on my arm was getting thick. Matting my arm hair. "Please," I pleaded.

"Just get down on the ground and dig," Fraser said.

So I did. I put my hands in the moist earth and I threw clump after clump of dirt into the darkness. I dug knowing full well what I would find. And then I felt it. It was as cold as the water running down my back. But it was soft. Under the dusty ray of Fraser's flashlight I unearthed an arm that was connected to a body still buried.

My gaze slowly rode the beam of light up into Fraser and Todd's black eyes. Into their black souls. I was no longer looking at two people. Instead, it was two lifeless shadows hovering above me. And the shadows were smiling. "I..." I looked for any combination of words I could pull from my frenzied head... any five or six words that would bring a sense of understanding to the situation.

"I don't understand," I said. It was the best I could do.

They snickered, then Fraser squatted and put his mouth against my ear. In a broken sentence he strung out the words, "There... is... no... explanation."

"How can there be no fucking explanation?" I screamed. My fear was fading into anger. Then back into fear again. The two emotions were hands clasped in my head, wrestling each other in a battle that never got close to either side of the table.

"You want an explanation, fucker!" he yelled, spitting into my ear.

"Yes!"

From his squat he looked up at Todd and asked with his eyes, "Should I tell him?" Todd shrugged his shoulders. "Dude," Fraser said. "We were just really fucking bored."

"You were..." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You were bored!"

He stood up and the two of them walked away from me. I yelled, "You were bored you pieces of shit? Read a book. Polish some rocks. Bored people find hobbies. They go to movies. They don't fucking kill people." They ignored me and kept walking. I was so confused. So afraid. In a deflated voice I said, "Why? Why have you done this to me? I thought we were friends."

They stopped and Fraser rushed back toward me. He reached down and grabbed my aching arm and pulled me up to my feet. I bit down on my lip to quell the pain. He dropped the flashlight, the errant beam rolling over fingers and dirt and sticks. Fraser placed his hands on my shoulders and said, "We don't know you anymore. You were gone for years, man. Your shit grew and changed, but we stayed the same motherfuckers we were in high school. When you returned you had this whole holier-than-thou attitude, like you were better than us because you had a fucking piece of paper that said you were. It was the way you treated us man... the way you talked to us. Like we were fucking children. The Ryan Paul we knew in high school craved two things... getting high and having a great time doing it. You... you're just some jaded Xerox of the guy we once knew."

"But this... this," I said and looked down at the arm protruding from the ground. "Why would you bring me out here to see this now. I mean, Jesus, man, I can just go and tell the cops everything now."

"That's where we got you, man. We put a lot of effort into this little venture. Go big or go home, right? There's evidence that points to you all over the place. You seem to forget that my dad's a cop. I know how it's done. We needed that final bit of DNA to secure the bitch up. You know how it is. Shit, man, you just made it so easy, especially once you started blacking out. Sometimes you'd nod off two or three times while we were having coffee and you wouldn't even know it. You should really get some help for that. Seriously, that could a fucking tumor or something."

"What does that have to do with linking me to any of this?"

"Oh, but I can't tell you that. You'll just have to wait and see."

The moon moved over our heads, and moonlight poured through a maze of branches and glinted off of Fraser's teeth. He was smiling.

Anger had overtaken fear in the arm wrestle. I wanted to beat the shit out of him. And out of Todd. I wanted to take the handle end of the flashlight and smash their bared teeth in. Shove it through their eyes. Bash their heads in. But instead, I turned and ran. I ran through the dark and became the victim of dozens of tree branches trying to hold me back. They scratched my face. Slapped me. Tripped me up. Fraser yelled out, "It's useless, man. You're just going to get yourself lost."

I craved Aspirin. I craved Morphine. Anything that would numb the pain of my slashed arm and the botched life I had created for myself. When I was far enough away from Fraser and Todd I bent down and tried to catch the breath I had lost five minutes back. My jeans tightened when I bent down and the vile that I had forgotten was in my pocket pushed hard against my leg.

GHB.

My medicine.

GHB had vastly different effects depending on what dosage was administered, as was the case with most drugs. I remembered reading on the Internet that super low doses had the same effect as a few pints of beer. I needed to be numbed, but still coherent enough to run for my life. I twisted off the cap and poured a quarter capful into my mouth. Before it could work its way into my system, headlights busted through the darkness and grew as whatever they were attached to sped toward me. The two headlights became four and the four became eight. They spun around the darkness like fireflies playing tag. You're it! The trees around me began to jiggle. The earth under my feet began to rumble. When I shook the hypnosis out of my head, the pick-up truck was stopped next to me. I tried to dive into the trees, but I couldn't move.

"Get in the fucking truck," Fraser said. He had me by my bloody jacket sleeve. "We're going to see this thing through, okay?"

"Let go of me, you psycho."

"Are you drunk, man?"

"Let go of me!"

"Listen to him!" Fraser yelled. "He's slurring like a fucking wino."

The world became a flushing toilet. It spun round and round, taking me with it. I was pulled into the truck. Fraser reached across my chest and slammed the door shut. The bones in my neck turned to mush and when the truck drove off, my head bounced uncontrollably from side to side.

"What was the point of all that?" Fraser mumbled.

"I didn't do anything to you guys."

"No, you didn't," Fraser said. "But you sure fucked up that poor girl. I really liked her, too. Bitch had the greatest ass."

"I don't get it."

Fraser smacked Todd on the arm. "Should I tell him?"

"Whatever."

The truck hit a pothole and my head slammed into passenger-side window. I didn't feel a thing.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, man? That looked like it hurt."

"Not nearly as much as my goddamned arm."

The pick-up truck turned off the gravel logging road and headed west along the river. The bones in my legs turned to mush. Todd pushed the truck to its limit. And the harder he pushed on the gas pedal, the more the shitbox rattled. I focused all of my attention on my arm. I took over enough control of it that I could search out a seatbelt. I clumsily cast my arm behind the seat and in my first attempt caught the truck's one and only seatbelt. The one for the seat I was in. It took all of my remaining energy to do it up, but when I heard the belt snap into place, I felt a tiny semblance of safety that had been so severely lacking only seconds earlier.

"Do you feel better now, little guy?" Fraser asked in baby talk.

I turned and was ready to tell him to "Fuck off," but Todd beat me to it.

"Oh, fuck off!" he yelled just before the pick-up truck collided with a car parked at the side of the road. In that moment before metal kissed metal, I experienced peace. Beautiful, all-encompassing peace. And then it was blown to pieces by tearing metal and shattering glass and uninhibited chaos. The headlights popped out as the front end of the pick-up truck crumpled in. The impact propelled the car it had hit further off the side of the road. My head flung forward and my neck burned against the strain of the seatbelt. As my head flung back, under the green glow of his stereo lights, I saw Todd ejecting from his seat. I saw him break through the front windshield. The windshield glass, it cracked into a web and shattered completely when his feet tried to go through the small hole his body had made. Then Todd was gone. Lost in the darkness in front of the truck.

Fraser was trapped against the front dashboard. He must have put his hands out to stop himself, because they had punched through the dashboard's vents. His body moved like he was trying to free himself, but Fraser was gone. That was obvious. The movement was caused by the skidding pick-up truck. And it had control of me, too.

The pick-up truck rolled over something that could have only been Todd before it slid into a barrier at the side of the road. Only then did the pick-up truck come to a stop. The river continued to flow and the wind continued to blow. A drop of water fell onto the back of my neck. I tried to lift my head, but the pain was a vice keeping me immobile. All I could see was the floor and the dim outline of the lifeless body next to me. Another drop fell on my neck. And then another.

The rain began to pour down after that. It poured through the empty hole that once held a front windshield. The comforting rain ran through my hair and down my shirt. Minutes later I passed out to the muffled patter of raindrops hitting the carpeted floor of Todd Phillips' shitty pick-up truck.

The world we had been born into... we held its hand and kissed it on the cheek and it slapped us for it. So we stepped off of its busy sidewalks and we stepped onto empty paths, severing thousands of connections we had made over our lifetimes. What connected us wasn't the defect in our brains, but the explicit need to break free from the chains that had been placed around our ankles and wrists the day we emerged from our mothers' wombs. "We are five," Jacob would say. "But we are five who represent thousands. And they will come. They will see the signs we have left for them and they will find us. And we will be their new fathers. And She will be..."

For the first few weeks under the ancient cedars of The Ancient Forest, I gorged on the peace Jacob fed me. And I lent my hands wherever I could. I built cabins with Davis. I bottled the drug with Dustin. I wandered the forest with Fred, setting up perimeters and security measures. When Dodd ran back to the city to strengthen our web presence and pick up supplies, I kept him company. For the first few weeks I just was and it was beautiful.

But soon after, a word from my old life buried itself into my brain like a tick. I tried to grab it by its ass end and pull it out without leaving its head in, but the damn thing was in me too deep. And it was causing the beauty to decay.

They had a purpose. It was perfectly obvious. What wasn't obvious was my purpose.

So many nights, as the light from the bonfire flickered off our faces, Jacob would talk about our need to rewrite the meaning to many of the words in our vocabulary. Purpose was one of those words. "The reason we exist is not to keep an economy alive," he would say. "Or to prove we can be better than the person standing next to us. The reason we exist is to love and be loved. And that is it. She will afford us that freedom. She will return us to our base form and rewire us to behave the way we were always meant to behave. To unquestionably love everyone and everything."

"But we are not there yet," I said one night when it was just Jacob and I sitting around the fire. "And I am trying to figure out why I am here now. I am trying to figure out why you have included me as one of the fathers of Her new world."

The fire filled Jacob's eyes with garnets and sapphires. He put his hand on my knee and warmth flowed through me. "I wanted you to figure that out on your own," he said. "I wanted Her to tell you. And I'm sure in time she would have. But I can see the not knowing is causing you great distress. Ryan, there is something inside of me... in my head, that has been growing. It was there before She was. And it is even stronger than She is. And it will kill me. At one time in my life I was told it would kill me within a year. That was almost ten years ago. But she kept me alive, so I could fulfill my destiny. My task was to assemble the fathers. My task was to start the process. Your task, Ryan, is to finish it... to be the loving figure this lost generation needs to carry it home. It is your destiny. It is why you are here."

BOOK II: Awake

15.

I had plenty of experience with non existence. I was once in high school.

During those first couple of years I was no more than a face in the hallway. A body in the way. Especially to the girls. Sometimes I would bump into one of the blossoming flowers, hoping for no more than a little eye contact. But I was a wall to these felines... a piece of rock or wood that somehow got in their way. They would barely notice me as they sidestepped around me, and continued on their walk without even losing a step.

When I got a little older... when exams and essays and ex-girlfriends began to chase me, I began wondering more and more about what it would be like to really disappear from both the sight and mind of everyone I ever knew. And I began to hypothesize ways of doing this.

When I was a child, my brother and I would be shuffled back and forth from the Mainland to Vancouver Island. My grandparents lived in Victoria, where the air was old and the salt-water taffy came in a million different flavours. We loved going to Victoria, because we got to ride double-decker buses and sit on beaches and eat greasy fish and chips. We got to be spoiled.

Getting to Victoria was half the fun. It was an hour and a half trip by ferry from the Lower Mainland. The ferries would have names like THE QUEEN OF VANCOUVER and THE SPIRIT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. I had once "fallen" off of one of those ferries when I was a baby, but as a kid, all I saw was fun. As the ferry sputtered through open ocean and passages peppered with dozens of little islands, I would pretend I was a pirate searching for the X on my White Spot Pirate Pack map. I would stand on the upper deck and yell at seagulls flying alongside the ferry. I would get high on the fresh air blowing my hair back and puffing out my jacket. I would wave to other ferries passing by in the opposite direction and I would cover my ears and scream at the top of my lungs when the captain blew the ferry's horn. I couldn't resent something, or be afraid of something, when it was so much fun. But as the years passed by, the fun turned into intrigue. I began to see the little islands between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island as places of refuge. Of escape. I imagined them filled with men and women who no longer wanted to exist. Who no longer wanted to sit in boardrooms and cubicles discussing profit margins and memos. Who no longer wanted to pay for six dozen TV channels that never had anything on. Who no longer wanted to get in line to order a coffee and have to wait ten extra minutes while the woman ahead of them tried to explain her latte: soy, half-caff, one hundred and seventy degrees, one and a half pumps of sugar-free vanilla. Fuck off.

I often wondered if I could do it.

I'd bus to the ferry when the sun had gone down. I'd walk on with nothing but the clothes I was wearing and the change from the money it cost me to get on board. I'd spend the trip outside on the upper deck, huddled out of sight. Out of mind. The late ferry ride would mean darkness. It would mean that most of the passengers would be inside feasting on soggy french fries and congealed gravy. When the ferry reached the inside passage, I'd climb the guardrail and throw myself into the icy Pacific water. And then I'd swim to whichever island was the closest. The sound of my splash into the ocean... of my arms slapping against the surface of the ocean as I swam to freedom, would be nothing against the roar of the ferry's engine.

It was a perfect plan, except for one thing. I would die in minutes from the cold of the water. The swimming would only deplete my body's heat faster. That's part of the reason I didn't die when I was a baby. I hit the water and just bobbed up and down like a giant baby-shaped bobber. The man who jumped in and rescued me got hypothermia. He spent a month in the hospital recovering. Told reporters he'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. I never met the man.

I loved the idea of disappearing to one of the islands along the inside passage, but I it didn't want to die to do it. Even at my lowest. Even when the world had convinced itself of my guilt and turned against me. But death was the ultimate disappearance. In death, not even the sun could find you. I didn't want to die, but I wanted that kind of escape from the world. And when consciousness slipped back into me... when the sound of the running river became audible again and I could feel the pain caused by the crash I had just survived, I saw a great opportunity lying in front of me. For the first time in my life I believed I could truly disappear. The death kind of disappear. My blood was everywhere. My whereabouts opened and closed with a single glance over the scene. I was tossed out of the pick-up truck and into the river. Drowned. Carried away to the ocean. Eaten by the fish and the birds. Dead without being dead.

Gone.

And so very imperfect.

It was still so dark. I shook my body and evaluated my state of being. Feeling everything was a relief, but feeling everything was also a curse. Every square inch of my body radiated pain. It was like I had been beaten with a variety of weapons: crowbars, lead pipes, axe handles, baseball bats. The worst pain came from my neck, under the seatbelt, which had cut deep into the skin. I undid the belt and yelped as I pulled it out of my neck. I held my hand to my neck and felt for the geyser of blood a severed jugular would bring forth, but it never came. Another relief. Under a still present moon I could see a strand of smoke billowing out from under the crushed in hood of the pick-up truck. "Fraser," I said. "Fraser, are you okay?"

I kicked at the door until it popped open. The strength of my kick gave me the motivation to leave the pick-up truck. When I stepped down onto the pavement, my legs stayed firm. A small fire underneath the pick-up washed the scene in an eerie orange. It looked like it was right out of one of those road safety videos we were shown in high school before prom night. Drink a beer and this might happen to you. It was bad. But I was sure the gruesome quotient of the wreckage would multiply exponentially once the sun began to rise. And I didn't want to be there for that.

About fifteen feet in front of the truck, lying in the middle of the road, was Todd's body. It was face down and bent in all the wrong ways. A frightening thought crossed my mind: the bastard deserved it. But did he? Did anyone deserve to die like that? I walked over to his body and grabbed it by the feet. It. A piece of meat. I dragged the meat off the road. I dragged it and swore I heard it moaning. But I passed it off to the dying sigh of one of the vehicles. I propped the meat that used to be Todd up against the popped front tire of his shitty baby and I began to walk.

It was not uncommon to go a long time without seeing a car on Chilliwack Lake Road. I walked for hours with only the river running beside me as company. The moon went away and the sun rose behind me. The forest on my other side began to wake. Birds chirped and coyotes howled at first light. I disturbed two elk chewing on a blackberry bush on the other side of the road. They eyed me for a moment, then carried on with breakfast. A little further up I turned a bend and saw a bridge crossing over the river about a kilometre in front of me. The odd car drove across it. I wondered what kind of wacko would be awake and on the road at that time of morning. I wondered what I'd tell that wacko when I stumbled in front of their car all bloodied and bruised. I didn't have to wonder long.

As though I had summoned it with my thought, a car pulled up alongside me. It had come from somewhere behind me. The window rolled down and a dark-skinned man drinking out of a stainless-steel coffee mug looked out at me. He looked me up and down and took another sip from his mug. "Damn," he mumbled. "That there is one hot cup of joe." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, "Mornin' boy. You look pretty roughed up, that's all I'm sayin'. Can I help you out in any way?"

"No, I'm fine. Thank you."

"Yeah, but your neck there. Looks like a half-cooked fillet of trout, it does. You sure I can't give you a lift to a hospital?"

The man was wearing a suit. And a concerned smile on his face. He was Native... the Indian to my Cowboy. But he was unlike any Native Indian I had ever seen. "Where did you come from?" I asked.

"Well, I was born at the hospital in Mercer, up near Yellowknife."

"No... that's not what I meant. I mean, where did you come from? Just now?"

His black eyes didn't blink. They didn't quite look at me, either. More like through me. Or into me. "Oh. Well I was parked at the side of the road about ten minutes up," he said. "I couldn't find a hotel last night so I slept in my car. Now my neck's all crinked up. My back's all achy like. And I have a new appreciation for my big, comfortable bed."

"Why up there? There's nothing up there."
"Are you sure I can't take you somewhere, boy. That neck of yours does look something bad."

I couldn't pretend any longer that it didn't hurt to swallow. That it didn't hurt to walk. To think. My stubbornness had taken me as far as it could. I had to relent or die at the side of the road. The choice was an easy one to make. "Where are you heading?" I asked.

"Back up north."

"To Yellowknife?"

"Nope. Don't live there no more. But I live closer to Yellowknife than I do to here."

"I kind of..." I said and stopped to look at the man in the car. I hadn't seen his car during my walk. I was sure I would have noticed it. But he seemed sincere about where he had spent the night. Believable but so unbelievable. So out of nowhere, an angel in an Oldsmobile swooped down and carried my lifeless body back to Heaven. The pain in my neck was proof I wasn't dead. Couldn't be dead. The smells of the world living around me. The memories of the night before. Proof. Angel or not, the man in the Oldsmobile was a vessel to the somewhere I needed to be and I knew I couldn't miss it. "I kind of live up that way," I lied.

"Well, hop in, boy. Truth be told, I could use me the company. There's only so much humming and whistling you can do before you start talking with yourself. And as my dear old mom used to say, 'Boy, unless you're havin' a vision up there, don't be talkin' to yourself. Normal folk don't do that. And you, boy, are normal folk.'"

Before my better judgment could tell me to do likewise I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket, removed what cash I had and a picture of Amanda, and I tossed the wallet in the river. Then I hopped into the strange man's Oldsmobile. We drove off into the sunrise, one lonely Indian and one sad Cowboy.

"My name's Albert," he said. He shot out his arm and opened up a giant palm in front of my chest.

I awkwardly grabbed it and shook it. His skin was soft, like it had been moisturized. And his grip was gentle, like he knew I was hurting and he didn't want to cause me any more pain. "I'm... I'm Steven," I said.

"Nice to meet you, Steve," he said and winked. "But I think I like Ranger better, you being all on your own out here and all. So tell me, Ranger... what'd you get in a fight with? Wolf? Black bear? Night Club Cougar?"

Stories ran through my head. A dozen stories. All of them far more believable than the truth. "I came down yesterday," I said, "to do a little evening fishing. I lost my footing on the rocks on my way down to the water. Must've been knocked unconscious or something, because I came to this morning and all my gear was gone and my body was all busted up."

"Hmm..." Albert said. "That's a darn shame. And you didn't even get to toss out a line."

"Yeah, I know," I said... nervously.

The conversation needed to change. My body was in autopilot, leading me away from danger. It didn't need my mind to get me back into a pile of it.

"So, how'd you get that coffee, Albert?" I asked. "There are no stores back there. Sure as hell aren't any coffee shops, either."

"Sadly, my new friend, this here coffee is of the instant varietal. I always carry some with me just in case the sort of thing that happened last night occurs. Got me a kettle from Canadian Tire that plugs right into my lighter. River water and instant coffee. Does the trick in a bind?"

He sipped his instant joe. I watched him like a chessmaster watches his opponent. The coffee talk made my own caffeine withdrawal apparent. "I don't suppose you have any more hot water and instant coffee you could send this way?"

"Sorry Ranger, that was the last of it, but..." He pulled the lid off his stainless steel mug and looked into it. He replaced the lid and said, "you're welcome to the last few sips of mine. I know that's not the most sanitary thing seeing as you and me just met, but you look like you could use a shot of joe. Just tryin' to be polite is all."

I declined his offer, regretting the decision the moment I voiced it. I needed a diversion from the caffeine headache growing behind my eyes. "So, what's your story?" I asked.

"My story?"

"Yeah. How'd you end up down here?"

"Good question. Oh... wait... I love this song." He reached down to the radio and turned up the volume. The two blown speakers in the back doors rattled as another Eddie Vedder clone sang about hating the people who made him famous. Albert sang words that weren't quite the same as the ones in the song and he hummed along to the music in-between the lyrics. He was an overgrown kid in a suit. When the song ended a DJ came on screaming about a big concert announcement at seven thirty. Albert turned down the volume. "Obviously," he said, "It's MorganHead."

"Who's MorganHead?" I asked. I really didn't know.

"Who's MorganHead?" he repeated. "Geesh, Ranger, do you live under a rock or something like that?"

"No, I just don't listen to a lot of radio. It all kind of sounds the same to me."

"Hmm..." he said and sucked back the last few drops of instant in his mug. He tossed the mug on the backseat and said, "Anyway, back to me, right? I was in Vancouver for a job interview. I'm a computer programmer. I spent all day yesterday driving driving driving to make my four o' clock interview. Now I have to drive drive drive all day to get back home for my job, which starts at eleven. I didn't feel like driving in the dark last night, so I pulled off the highway and wandered up close to where I met you. I slept until the sun came up. How 'bout you, Ranger? What's your tale?"

I looked out the front window at the mountains growing quickly in front of us. A hundred miles from them and they still looked enormous. Intimidating. Unbreakable. Their snowy peaks made me think of purity. Of rebirth. And that was the direction I was heading.

"Ranger..."

"You know what Albert? There isn't much to me. I'm just a guy looking for a change."

"Mmm... I know that feeling all too well. I've been dating girls that come from the same place I do all my life. But all I really want is to find a nice black girl to settle down with. How's that for a brain scratcher?"

I laughed. I couldn't tell if he was joking around with me or being serious. But the statement made me howl. The laughing reverberated through my body and reminded me about all the spots in my body that hurt. Especially my arm. My bloody, scabbing arm. I pulled up my jacket sleeve and saw the infection setting in.

"Wow," Albert said when he saw my arm. "That there is one dirty cut. Hold on a sec." He pulled the car over into the side lane of the highway. After he put the car in park he opened the glove box and popped the trunk. He put a finger up indicating he'd just be a minute and then he got out of the car. He spent a minute rummaging around the trunk, picking things up and tossing them back in. When he found what he was looking for, he slammed the trunk with excessive force.

"Sorry 'bout that, Ranger," he said as he was getting back into the car. "The damn thing doesn't shut if you don't put a little strength into it. Here."

He handed me an orange case labelled EMERGENCY. "I think there's some Polysporin in there and some wet wipes. You're going to need to clean that cut up before your arm really gets infected."

I knew nothing.

"Thank you, Albert."

He said, "Mmm" and drove the car back onto the highway. With a "Yeehaw" to boot. I tore open one of the wet wipes and dabbed my cut. It stung. It made my eyes water. But the pain was good. As I wiped away dirt and congealed blood I loosened something else. The fear. The need to become something I wasn't. The need to prove myself. I loosened it and wiped it away with all the bad. I rolled down the window and tossed the bloody wet wipe out onto the highway. I no longer felt hollow or shallow. I no longer felt like I was asleep. For the first time in a long time I was wide awake.

Albert pushed down on the gas and the Oldsmobile rattled as it broke one-twenty. He yelled "Yeehaw" again. Then I yelled "Yeehaw!" Then I yelled it again because the first time felt so damn good.

16.

Albert and I travelled along the TransCanada Highway, a massive snake of a road that stretched from one end of Canada to the other, through city, mountain and prairie. The snake was poisonous and took hundreds of lives a year. Where it took them was anyone's guess. We wouldn't be on it long enough to find out. We were only going as far as Cache Creek, where we would slide off the snake's back and hop onto Highway 97, which would carry us up to Prince George. Albert lived in a little town called Reserve, a hundred kilometres north of Prince George. He loved the irony of the town's name.

A few minutes past seven we exited the highway into Hope and pulled into Pete's, a gas station slash snack shop slash information centre. Three vehicles were parked at the gas tanks. Beside the vehicles stood weary-eyed travellers sipping on steamy cups of coffee, squeezing every bit of gas they could into their RVs and minivans. Kids slept on pillows against windows and women ran fingers through their hair in front of vanity mirrors. It was all so...

Albert parked the Oldsmobile next to Pete's entrance door. He left the car running. "Topped her up last night," he said. "Just need a Coke for the road."

"Maybe I'll grab a coffee while we're here."

"Nah," Albert said. "You just sit here with the car. I'll be back in two shakes. We'll stop later for some real coffee. This place serves dirty dishwater and calls it coffee."

"Oh..."

But Albert was gone. I looked back at the vehicles at the pumps. One had an Albertan plate. The other two were from Saskatchewan. A minivan side door slid open and a terrier the size of a football jumped out. The terrier was attached to a leash, which was attached to the wrist of a boy whose face was frozen in a perpetual yawn. The dog yipped at an empty plastic bag spinning in the wind. "Calm down Sadie," the boy said through his yawn.

The driver side door slammed shut and the Oldsmobile squealed as Albert slammed his foot down on the gas. The spinning tires kicked up a plume of blue smoke and gravel before grabbing hold of the pavement and lunging the car forward. I was thrown back hard against the seat."

"Shit, man!" I yelled. "Lucky I had my..." Albert was looking up at the rearview mirror. Not listening to me. I turned and looked out the back window. Pete's was disappearing behind us. A man, who might have been Pete, was outside of Pete's jumping up and down, pointing at us.

"What the..."

"Relax, Ranger. Relax. Here." He pulled a stack of scratch-and-win lottery tickets out of his coat pocket and handed me one. "Maybe today will be your lucky day."

I stared at the piece of paper in his hand and thought of all the things I could have said at that moment. But I wouldn't have meant any of them. So I said, "Shit just keeps getting weirder," and I took the ticket and started scratching it.

"Tell me about it," Albert said. "But tell me after I get our asses safely out of here."

Hope disappeared and the pressure in my ears began to build. I expected a speeding parade of police cars to pull up behind us, but what I got was a sign that read, "BE WARY OF YOUR SPEED. WE'RE WATCHING YOU." We were far above the posted one hundred and ten kilometre an hour speed limit. If they were watching, they had blinders on.

"You win anything?"

I had scratched the ticket clean, but couldn't figure out the concept of the game. "I don't know."

He snatched the ticket from my hand and gave it a quick once over. "Not one red penny. But no worries 'bout that. I got about fifty more of those in here," he said and patted his coat pocket.

"What's the deal, Albert?" I asked. I never wanted to get out of the Oldsmobile. I never wanted to call the cops or berate the man. I just wanted to know. I felt a strange ease sitting next to Albert despite him being a crook... and being kind of big and leathery looking.

"About what?" He said coyly. "Oh, about what just happened. You know, Ranger, I'm not a bad guy, but I got me this little addiction. Can't seem to beat it no matter how hard I try. It's funny, they stereotype my people as alcoholics and troublemakers, but I haven't had a sip of the fire in twenty years. And I ain't got a violent bone in my body. But I do love chance... and the rush of a bet. Sometimes I just don't have the bills to make those bets or take those chances, so..."

"Albert, my friend," I said cutting him off. "Say no more."

The hours clicked by like minutes. When four of them had passed by we stopped at a diner called GORDIE'S. The sandwich board out front of GORDIE'S claimed they had the best burgers in British Columbia. I put GORDIE'S burger to the test and was not disappointed. Albert and I sat in the diner for more than an hour drinking bottomless mugs of diner coffee, talking about everything from the use of Native stereotypes in professional sports teams' names to the episode of the X-Files that had aired the Sunday before. As we talked, he scratched one ticket after the next. "Maybe the next one," he'd say and toss the spent ticket on a growing pile next to his empty creamer cups. "Nope, maybe the next one." He told me about the twin brother who fell off a canoe and drowned in Fisherman's Lake when they were six. And I told him an abridged version of my story, censoring out most of the events of the past few weeks. And as I sat there speaking with Albert, I began to wonder if the night before had actually happened. Or had it all been a dream... and my journey with Albert was merely an extension of the dream? The pain emanating from the wound in my arm was the only real proof I was awake and five-hundred kilometres from home.

Albert talked about the Internet and the way the world was going to change because of it. Because he believed it was the most powerful tool (and weapon) ever created by man, he had to be a part of it. "Put your name on there," he had said, "and anyone in the world with access to the Internet can find it... if that's what they're looking for. Anyone in the world. Makes the world seem like a much smaller place than it used to be, eh?"

He said that homes up where he lived were unable to get access to the Internet, but there was a cafe in Prince George that charged eight bucks an hour for use of their access. Every other day he'd drive the hundred kilometres to Prince George and sit himself in front of the monitor for hours on end. He was sure he had spent more than three grand in that little cafe, drinking their bland coffee, learning about a world he had never seen. Our world. He also learned, through that same Internet access point, that Prince George had a university of its own that offered computer training. "The rest was history, like smallpox and whisky. History," he said and chuckled.

I wasn't sure if I was allowed to chuckle, so I took another sip of my coffee. I had poured way too much cream into it. And coffee-flavoured cream was not my forte. So I waved over Bernice, our real, live Northern B.C., stereotypical diner waitress. "What can I do you for, sweetie?" she asked.

"Can I get a top up?" I asked. "Poured way too much cream in."

"Sure thing, sweets," she said and made for the kitchen. I watched her walk away. The g-string peeking out from above her jeans like a magnet for eyes. My eyes. Every dude's eyes in the joint. She was fifty something, but had the shape of a woman half her age... and it was clear that she knew that.

"Anyhow," Albert said as he tossed another dead scratch ticket onto the pile, "I've been working on my own website for the past couple of months. It's nothing special, really. Just a place to share some stories, show some pictures and tell the people of the world a little bit about me. You might not know this by looking at me..."

"By looking at you, Albert," I said cutting him off, "I can't tell a single thing about who... or what you are."

"Yes, well, I'm also really into astronomy."

"Isn't that just the cherry," I said and laughed.

"Yes, well, if you're ever online, check out some of my night pictures. You know, star trails, Northern Lights, la lune... stuff like that. Gorgeous. Makes you feel small. Like the world."

"Sure thing, Albert. How do I find you?"

Before he could answer me, Bernice shuffled up to the table. She bent over and poured more coffee in my mug. Another button on her blouse had popped open and the bending over loosened her bra. Two large, perfect breasts hung like water balloons just above the bra's cups. I could make out the top of her nipples. I could see there wasn't a wrinkle on those breasts. How, I wondered, could that be?

She caught me looking and I was sure she was going to say something nasty. But instead, she gave me a half smile and walked away. Albert looked up from another ticket he was scratching clean. "Geesh, Ranger, your skin is as red as mine," he said and resumed scratching. But now he was chuckling as he scratched.

"Come on, man. I'm cool. It's just hot coffee. That's all."

"Yes, hot coffee. Anyway, refresh me on what were we talking about before Mrs. Robinson showed up?"

"Where do I find you online?" I asked, happy for the change of subject. "What's your web address?"

"Web address, eh? Well, if you're down at Fuller's in the PG, type in insidealbertsteepee.com."

A funny address for a funny guy.

We finished off our seventh and eighth cup of coffee, tipped Bernice generously, and returned to the Oldsmobile. I offered to drive the rest of the way up the 97, but Albert wasn't sure I "had the balls" to break the speed limit. We were nowhere near Prince George and only five hours away from the start of Albert's graveyard shift at the mill. "Tonight we need to drive like Hell and I'd rather you not take the blame if the devil catches us."

"That's probably for the best," I said and leaned my head against the window, suddenly feeling very tired. I dozed in and out. During my outs, I caught glimpses of Albert fiddling with the radio, of Albert cursing himself, of Albert shaking the daydreams out of his head. The clock in the dashboard jumped ahead in great leaps with each new glimpse. Then the moon started to tailgate us. Or maybe not the moon. Maybe...

"Oh, good lord," Albert muttered, waking me. "What now? Lord in Heaven above, what now?"

Up the road, a few hundred yards or so, the highway glowed red. The trees alongside the road glowed red. Red radiated off everything. Albert slowed the Oldsmobile right down. And as we neared the glow, a line of ambulances materialized along side the road. Half a dozen of them. In front of them, a line of flares as far as I could see. The flares lit up an eerie giant crashed on the side of the road. The shapes of men and women moved in and out of the red-tinted darkness. We drove past the first ambulance and I noticed it wasn't meant for man, but for beast.

"Whoa, dear Jesus," Albert said and pointed out the front window. "What's that?"

Someone jumped in front of the Oldsmobile and Albert slammed on the brakes, leaving us at the mercy of our seatbelts. The shadow waved us away from the convulsing lump in the road Albert was still pointing at. The shadow yelled at us to get as far over to the left hand side of the road as we could. I rolled down my window as we passed the shadow and I asked for an explanation. Before he said anything, I saw what the lump in the road was. And I saw dozens of other lumps all over the road leading all the way to the crashed giant.

The giant was a cargo truck. Folded over. Broken. What made it crash was not a deer jumping out in front if it, or the failure of its brakes. What made it crash was the weight of its cargo. Once cows. Now road lumps. Some were alive, but most were not. The "living" ones howled like beasts far removed from the bovine. They howled not at the moon, but because of the unconceivable pain they were in. They howled and shook their mangled bodies. The cargo trailer appeared to have split in the middle, dropping most of the cows onto the highway, while travelling at a speed far above the posted 110 kilometre an hour speed limit. I imagined the road as sandpaper. The road. It had ground the cows' legs down to their fat tummies. The stumps that remained in place of their legs kicked as veterinarians administered drugs to relax them. To take them away from all of it. I had never seen anything so... horrible. Under the red glow of the flares, I had never seen such tortured expressions on a living creature. The driver of the jack-knifed cargo truck sat emotionless on a barrier wall next to the truck. He was staring at a flare. The red glow made him look evil, but I did not feel fear from him. I felt sadness for him. And when he was out of view, I felt nothing.

"That gives a whole new meaning to ground beef, now doesn't it there?" Albert said and chuckled uncomfortably.

I was confused, because I wanted to punch him in the face for his remark. But even in the dark I could see the glinting tears falling from his eyes. So I squeezed his shoulder and kept my peace.

The lights of Prince George appeared in front of us just after ten. Albert was still more than an hour away from work, but his slumped body and constant speed-limit speed said that he no longer seemed to care. "What's your plan, Ranger?" he asked. They were the first words spoken in the car since we passed the cows.

"I really haven't thought that far ahead."

He kept one eye on the road and ran the other one over me. His skin glowed green from the light emanating from the dashboard. On the side of his face I saw white horses and fires crackling. I saw men in masks dancing and clutching their hearts as they fell into the flames.

"Geesh, Ranger, snap out of it."

"Hey Albert. Are you an angel?"

"That there is about the silliest thing I've ever heard," he said rather quickly. "I'm just a fellow looking for a way out. I like computers and I like the stars up in the heavens. I like to make people think I'm no different than they are. I like to think I can make a difference in the world."

"I think you might be the coolest person I've ever met."

His big teeth looked toxic as they glowed green behind his big smile.

"Seriously, though, Ranger. That there Internet cafe I was telling you about. I think it's also a hostel. Would you like me to drop you off there? I mean, there really isn't much else between here and Reserve. And I'm sure as shit in an outhouse you don't want to end up in Reserve. Reserve's about the last place in the world anybody wants to end up."

Albert was right. I needed a place to crash for the night. A place to plan. For the future. For the hour after next. "Sounds good, I guess."

We drove through Prince George, a town trying hard to be a city. P. George, as Albert affectionately called it, had gun shops and cowboy bars. And next to those establishments, coffee shops. Even an Ahab's. But the town was asleep. Or dead. What day it was slipped my mind, but I thought it must be midweek, because it wouldn't be this dead on a weekend night. The Oldsmobile slowed and pulled up to a building with a flashing neon cappuccino sign in its window. There was a hand-drawn sign below the neon sign. In big, black letters it said FULLER'S HOSTEL. ALWAYS OPEN. UNLESS WE'RE NOT.

I had only known Albert for sixteen hours, but in that time I had built up a lifetime's worth of feelings for him. He was a better friend than anyone else had ever been to me. To just let him go would have been an awful waste.

"You know, Albert, I really hope we can stay in touch. I don't have many friends and..."

"Go figure your life out, Ranger, and send me an email when you're feeling settled. My email address is on my website. Remember what it's called?"

I smiled. "How could I forget insidealbertsteepee?" I said.

He took my hand and cupped it in his two palms. I felt so safe. "I'd love to get some coffee with you again. I know some great diners around here. Now go get some sleep. Heal those wounds, okay Ryan?"

"Okay," I said. "Okay." I hopped out of the car, but before I could say an actual goodbye, Albert and his Oldsmobile were speeding away, the passenger-side door slamming shut with the forward thrust of the car.

I stood there laughing out loud. Laughing until it hit me that he had called me Ryan. Not Ranger. Not boy. But Ryan. The real me. I couldn't remember ever telling him my real name. My hand began trembling. I reached into my pocket with that trembling hand and pulled out a wad of bills and a handful of coins: two tens, a twenty and three fives and two-fifty seven in change.

I ran into Fuller's in search of a computer and an Internet connection.

17.

Fuller's was small. Swing a cat, break something small.

Two round tables with two chairs at each, and a cubby off to one side of the room, next to a cigarette dispenser. Small. A computer that looked like it was too old to run the Internet was in the cubby. The words FULLER'S INTERNET CAFE & HOSTEL slithered across the computer's monitor, saving it from damage caused by excessive underuse. A man with a patchy beard sat behind a cluttered desk at the back of the room-slash-cafe. Next to him a Mr. Coffee coffee maker gurgled the last few times before announcing another pot of coffee (that probably would never be consumed) was done. A jazz-electronic hybrid was being pumped out of the speakers of a busted up boombox sitting on a table next to bearded dude's desk. Fuller's was so not what I had expected.

When the bell above the door rang a second time, signifying somebody was now inside the cafe, bearded dude looked up from the book he was reading and said, "Evening."

I walked up to his desk and saw that underneath the beard was a person much younger than I had originally perceived. Late teens. Early twenties, maybe. The patches of visible skin visible through the beard were covered in pimples. His t-shirt had the words COMING SOON printed on it.

"Evening," I said. "I was told this place is a hostel. Is it?"

"If two rooms the size of closets, with futons and a shared bathroom, makes for a hostel in your books, then that is indeed what this place is,"

"Is there still room tonight?"

He laughed and pointed at the empty cafe. "It's you, me and the ghosts in here."

"Ummm... how much is it for say, a week?"

"Wow, you're voluntarily staying in the PG for a week?"

I nodded.

"For anyone that brave, or stupid, I'd have to say a hundred bucks and we've got a deal."

"Okay then, how about for just one night?"

He eyed me like I was an alien. Green. Ugly. Out of place. I spoke a language he recognized, but he still had to translate it in his head before he could respond to it. To me. "Dude, it's a freaking Wednesday night. If someone does happen to stumble across this place, it won't likely be till Friday, or Saturday. Any cash flow coming in through the week would be a bonus. Twenty bills and you can stay tonight and tomorrow night. But you still got to pay for Mr. Coffee's piss and anything else extra you might want."

"Looks like you have a new resident for a couple of nights, then. My name's..." I stopped. And only after I had stopped did I realize my hesitation would be deemed suspicious, even by one of these northern hicks. "Sorry," I said. "That coffee just smells so damned good and I haven't had a cup in what feels like days. My name is Steve."

"Well Steve," he said, "rooms are down the hallway past the computer there. There are no locks, so take whichever one you want."

"Thanks..."

"Martin."

"Thanks Martin. I was wondering if I could use the computer for a few minutes before I called it a night?"

"Eight bucks an hour, but seeing as I don't expect much action in here tonight, you can use it as long as you want for eight bucks. Unless, of course, you're going to be gawking at titties. Don't want any of that shit in here."

No gawking at titties. Down in my world young men breathed titties. I really was an alien. "No worries," I said and dropped down twenty-eight dollars. "Titties are the last thing on my mind right now."

"Two more bills and I'll give you the biggest cup of coffee you've ever had."

"Deal."

I dropped down another two dollars, activating Martin. He reached under his desk and retrieved a mug the size of a two-litre pail of ice cream. He poured almost the entire pot of coffee into the mug and handed it to me. He reached under his desk again and this time retrieved a handful of Creamos. "There's sugar next to the computer. Do you need more cream?"

"Nah, that'll be more than enough I just use enough to change the colour a shade. Habit and all that."

"Okay," he said. "Internet's already up. Just move the mouse."

I double palmed my pail of coffee and carefully walked over to the computer. The machine was humming. A tune I knew well. I took a seat and placed my hand on the mouse. The slight movement killed the screensaver and replaced it with the Hotmail sign-in page. I took a sip of coffee. It tasted like nutty piss, but I swallowed it down and savoured every millisecond the liquid was in my throat.

The jazz on the boombox fuzzed out. I heard Martin fumbling around behind me, but I no longer cared about him. I typed Albert's web address into the address bar and hit enter. The hourglass appeared on the screen and flipped over five times before it was replaced with a message that read THIS DOMAIN NO LONGER EXISTS. YOU ARE BEING REROUTED.

The computer spat and farted as the page I was being sent to loaded up. Bass, thick as soup, filled the little cafe. It pounded against me. Gave birth to goosebumps on my arms. "Martin," I said while turning toward him. "That's some sweet..."

But Martin was no longer in the cafe with me.

The boombox speakers convulsed. They shuffled toward the edge of the table they were on. Then they shuffled back to the centre of the table. It was an epileptic dance of metal and sound. A harp with a heavy reverb effect moved in over the bass and a sad voice layered under echo and flange moved in overtop of that. I opened my eyes, sang the woman. I opened my eyes to a desert of alien thoughts / I found myself standing on a cliff with a stereo in my hands / The garbage spewing out of the speakers left rot in my gut / So I tossed the stereo into the void and watched it destruct on below land.

And then she spoke to me.

Whine little voice as you plummet into silence / curse technology and false heroes for killing the word original / Forget the coffee and the shit that colours your eyes / They are the beasts breeding in your garden of sound / They are the beasts that are keeping you down.

The webpage I was sent to was empty. Nothing but white, framed by the button-littered gray of the Netscape border. But the empty page had a scroll bar on the right-hand side of it. I ran the mouse to the scroll bar and fused pixel with pixel. I dragged the page down. Down. And down even further.

After seconds of scrolling... an end. And at that end, four words right-hand justified to the side of the white page.

Four little words.

Four little words that appeared prophetic, but meant very little to me.

I hovered the cursor over the words and they turned from black to blue. Something was behind the words. Something waiting for me in cyberspace, tucked in between the porn and the Simpson's fan sites. I left clicked and IT ALL BEGINS HERE disappeared.

They are the beasts that are keeping you down.

They are the beasts that are keeping you down.

Another white screen appeared. And for a second or two nothing else, until the letter 'a' flew down from the right hand corner of the monitor and planted itself center screen. Then, like a swarm of wasps moving in to attack a small child who's poking at their hive with a pointy stick, letters flew in from all over the monitor. They spun and dove and fluttered down. Words began to form. Sentences began to form. Paragraphs. I saw my name in the mess.

The toilet down the hall flushed and Martin returned, waving a magazine in the wake behind him. "Do not go back there," he said. "I think I left about ten pounds of me in that toilet."

The action on the monitor caught his attention. "Wow, that's some messed up Flash," he said and stepped up next to me. I could smell remnants of his recent expulsion. I tried not to gag.

"What's going on here?" I asked.

"I've never seen anything like that before. It would take somesort of Flash wizard to do that. An Internet Gandalf. What is it? Some kind of subliminal game? Those things give me a headache."

"I don't know what it is."

We both watched the words continue to form from the letters shooting out of the sides of the monitor. A minute later an entire page of text was on the screen in front of us.

"Impressive," Martin said. "Very impressive."

He returned to his desk, leaving the odour of refried beans and Brussels' sprouts in his place. "Sorry, man," he said from his desk. "Aftershock."

I raised my bucket of coffee to my nose and inhaled until the outline of ribs appeared in my shirt. When I exhaled, Martin's smell had faded away.

Let me take control of you and show you where it is found.

The song ended and the silence before the next song seemed to go on far too long. If there was a sort of quiet before slipping into death, it was that fuzzy nothing that filled up Fuller's between songs.

"Hey, sorry man," Martin said. "Cd's scratched to hell. Sometimes just cuts out between songs." He smacked the boombox with a clenched fist and the sound of a twangy guitar filled the room. A guy with a drawl began singing about having friends in low places.

In dreams, it is all right to hear voices and to follow people you do not know to places you have never been. In dreams, animals talk and teapots trade tales about civil wars fought across great almond-coloured plains. In dreams, it all makes sense. But when these things begin to happen in your living, breathing every-day life, making sense goes out the window. You are crazy or psychotic. Or delusional. I was sure I was none of these. But this sureness was cracking, because there in front of me was a screen full of words all directed toward me by someone I had only spoken to in dreams, most of which were drug induced. Somewhere along the way, dreaming and waking became one.

It all begins here.

I did not read the words in front of me. They were being spoken to me. My eyes had become my ears and they were listening to everything Adhara had to say.

It all begins here. Here where my words reach you and where your words will reach those searching for them. At your deepest peace I have come to you and spoken of unbelievable things, of things only a madman might speak of. But they are the truth, Ryan. They are the truth and it is you I have chosen to deliver that truth to others just like you. You will spread my word to those lost souls. You will love them like they have never been loved. You will care for them like they have never been cared for before. And you will prepare them for their exit from this world into the new world I have created for them. You will do this, because it is what you came all of this way to do. It is what you were born for. There are reasons for the fates that befall us. Think of these fates as steps. Each step is one step closer to your destination. The girls disappearing. Meeting Amanda. The drugs. The boredom of your friends and their unveiling of a truth you knew, but refused to acknowledge. Meeting Noah and riding in his ark. To where? To Safety. To home? To a new life? To here, a mere few steps to the final destination. Your fingers on the keys to your future. Here, where you will type the words that will reach those in search of you. Of us. You know who they are, Ryan. They look like you and they think like you and they need more than what this pitiful life of theirs can offer them. When you finish reading this you will push RETURN and you will take the blank screen before you and you will type the first thing that comes to your mind. Those words will be a roadmap to salvation. Send it and they will find you. They will all find you.

I hit RETURN and the screen flickered, then went blank, save for the flashing cursor on the top left hand side of the screen. It flashed impatiently like a man wrapping his fingers on a desk. "Type something," I mumbled. "Type something. But what?"

I placed my fingers on the keyboard and they took over. The words I typed were not the words I thought I was typing. They were words that made very little sense. I read them as I typed and looked for meaning. But I could not find any.

THE COFFEE TASTES BEST WHEN IT'S SIPPED UNDER THE STARS OF A SPRINGTIME SKY. THE COFFEE TASTES BEST WHEN YOU ARE AMONG FRIENDS, WHEN YOU ARE IN THE FOREST OUTSIDE PRINCE GEORGE.

It read more like an ad for Nabob Coffee than a message from God.

"Hey... Hey Steve..."

I had forgotten where I was. My surroundings were like the fizz shooting off the top of a freshly poured cola. There, then gone. A tickle on my chin. It took me a few seconds to remember that I was in a tiny café slash hostel being eyed by one of the locals, and that Steve was the name I had given him when I came in.

"If you're that tired, you should crash, man."

"What?"

He pointed at me and tilted his head back. He closed his eyes and began making exaggerated snoring sounds. When he finished his portrayal of sleeping man, he asked, "You want me to make some more coffee or can I lay this thing to rest for the night?"

"I'm good, thanks." Good. The near-empty vial of GHB was lying next to the keyboard. I hadn't remembered taking it out of my pocket. I slipped it back in and looked over at Martin. He was picking up a MAXIM magazine that was open on his desk. When he closed it, another magazine trying hard to stay hidden inside the MAXIM slipped down. It was a SWANK. Hardcore porn. He tucked the magazines into a drawer in his desk, unplugged the Mr. Coffee and made for the washroom. So, I thought, the preacher doesn't practice what he preaches. I wasn't shocked. Men like women, especially when they are naked and on their hands and knees.

I returned to the riddle on the screen in front of me. The riddle my fingers had typed. I hit the enter button and an upload button appeared under my words. The button pulsed like a heart... like it was a living thing waiting to be unleashed into an alternate universe of phone lines and fiber optics. Waiting... waiting...

I placed the arrow over the button and I set my message free.

18.

Pale fluorescence. Darkness. Pale fluorescence.

A fluttering of eyelids, like a swarm of wings in front of my eyes. The room came into focus and the memory soon after. Fuller's Hostel: the end of one universe and the beginning of another.

I tried to follow that mouse click. Through cords and fiber optics. I tried to follow it blind into the darkness. But it was the same darkness that was in my head when I slept. Sleep. Suddenly, sleep was all I could think about. I was so tired. Tired like a baby full of breast milk. Like a little piggy full of holiday turkey and stuffing. I gave into the tryptophan rush without a struggle. It carried me away from the computer that was chugging along into the ether. I was a zombie, arms out in front of me, hands one on top of the other, like a fleshy divining rod, leading me to the source. My hands dipped when I entered the first room. They dipped even more when I neared the bed. I crawled into the itchy bed and fell into the deepest, most uneventful sleep I had had in months. Not even the fluorescent lights washing out the room (which I hadn't bothered to turn off) could keep me from the sleep I so badly needed.

And in an instant, it was morning.

I rubbed my eyes hard, trying to make them work faster in the morning light. Over the squishing of my eye juices I heard a buzz of chatter. It crept under the crack between the bottom of the door to my room and the floor. Electric chatter pumped out of a tiny mono speaker. A voice seemingly as far away from me as home.

I stumbled out of the itchy bed. Out of the room. And into Fuller's café. Martin's head was buried in the pit made by his folded arms. The fluorescents highlighted a bald spot forming on the top of his head. Poor balding bastard. On the desk, three inches from where he was snoring away and grinding his teeth, a three inch black and white TV blared at a level far too loud for its little speaker. It was the morning news. The news was about me. Instinctively, I reached out and turned the volume way down, killing the crackling and silencing the accusations. Then I snatched the portable TV from the desk as quickly and quietly as I could, and I carried it back to my room.

When I was sure I hadn't woken up Martin, I shut the door and put the speaker to my ear. The anchor was halfway through the story, but it wasn't hard to get the gist. I was a wanted man: wanted for questioning in the disappearance of Kimberly Paint, wanted for questioning in the disappearance of Fraser and Todd, who were now also missing. Wanted for answers it seemed only I had. Before signing off, the reporter had an answer to a question many people were probably asking themselves at that moment. "If you've seen Ryan Paul," she said, "do not approach him. He is considered dangerous. Call the police."

"It all seems so suspicious."

Had I said that?

A storm of near biblical proportions was stirring in Abbotsford and I was nowhere near it. Oddly, that realization didn't make me feel any more confident. I turned off the TV. My god, I thought, people will be looking for me. Joe and Janet Public will have their eyes open and they'd notice me no matter where I was in this goddamned province. There was only one quality news broadcast in B.C. and everyone from the American border in Washington State on up to the American border in Alaska watched it. My face was now etched into the mind of every person who happened to have the morning news on. And it was a no brainer they'd replay the story on the noon news hour and the six o'clock news and so on. Disappearances were money in the news business.

We can't predict what the future holds for us. We can't prepare for the things we don't know are going to happen to us. So we rely on our past experiences to help us adapt and deal when those future situations become present situations. I had never been in a similar situation before. Not even remotely. Once when I was six, I got fed up with all the attention my baby brother was getting, so I stole his favourite toy and in a schoolyard fit, I smashed it to pieces. After I calmed down I did see my future. I saw a hand belonging to my father giving me the spanking of a lifetime. The pain of the spanking would be far greater than the pain I may have felt from getting a little less attention than I was accustomed to. So I ran away from home. I ran as far away as my six-year-old mind (and legs) would take me. I ran all the way to the side of the house where we kept firewood. I hid well enough that no one could find me. I hid for hours and I watched as nervous neighbours ran up and down the block yelling my name. I watched as my frantic mother succumbed to her convulsions of fear and fell to the ground in tears. I hid in my spot at the side of the house next to the firewood until the sun went down and the blues and reds of police car lights lit up the street. Around nine that night, my hungry stomach did what no one else could. It roped me out of my hiding spot. I will never forget the mix of relief and anger on my parents' faces. I will never forget the spanking I received that night. It was the spanking of a lifetime. Several years later I learned that my childish prank was cause for even greater concern because of a man named Olsen, who had been snatching up young children at the time. Olsen was a monster who preyed on children just like the child I was. When Olsen was caught, it was discovered that he lived eight blocks from where we had lived. I deserved the beating I got that night.

At age six, we think only about the moment and ourselves. We haven't lived enough to know the world doesn't revolve around us. But the world doesn't revolve around us... unless we are wanted for questioning in the disappearance of three people. I was once again at the side of my house, but I didn't have the firewood to protect me from searchers of the truth. I needed to make myself completely invisible. I needed to adapt to my present situation. So I turned to the place we turn when we don't know where else to turn. I turned to the movies. Surely, there was a movie I had seen that had the solution. Surely, there were a dozen movies that had the solution. I scanned the database in my head and brought up a classic.

I tiptoed out of Fuller's and headed into a city as foreign to me as Madrid. Ten minutes by foot from the hostel, I found a drug store. Would I find the new me inside? Before entering the store I once more recollected the scene from The Fugitive where Harrison Ford goes into the washroom of the gas station looking one way and comes out looking another way after shaving off his beard and dying his hair. I needed peroxide. I needed razors. I needed scissors. I needed to be half as cool as Harrison Ford (which is something I knew I could never be no matter how hard I tried).

Once I found my supplies, I chose to skip the dramatic gas-station bathroom and returned to Fuller's. I locked myself into Fuller's tiny bathroom and for an hour I breathed in the ammonia of the hair bleach, and nicked my neck, chin and cheeks in a dozen places while I shaved off four days of growth. And all the while, Martin never woke. When I broke out of my cocoon, I had a baby smooth face and a head full of orange hair. It was messy, but it was effective. I did not look like the Ryan Paul the Abbotsford Police and now, the province of British Columbia, were looking for. I looked like a bad imitation of the guy I used to be. A second glance. A, "Was that... nah, couldn't have been."

I swung the bathroom door open with a force I hadn't intended. It slammed against the hall wall and did what nothing else could. It woke Martin. He jumped up and ran at me with terror in his eyes. Genuine fucking terror. "Who the...!" he screamed. "Who the fuck are you!?"And as quick as his pace had been, the confusion and terror passed and recognition set in. My change of appearance hadn't had the effect I was looking for. "Well godamnit, man," he said as he slowed to a stop in front of me. "If you didn't just scare the bejeezus out of me. Christ almighty, I think I just squirted a bit in my pants."

He looked me up and down then turned and walked back into the cafe. I followed behind him and noticed that he hadn't been lying. There was a small damp spot expanding out from the ass of his jeans. The shit in the pants didn't seem to concern him any, though. He walked to a cupboard behind the desk and pulled out a tin of coffee. It was a new tin, because he placed the tin on the desk and peeled back the foil layer sealed under the lid. After that he woke Mr. Coffee and fed the hungry bastard eight tablespoons of ground yummy and six cups of water from a pitcher sitting next to the machine. When Mr. Coffee began to burp and gurgle, Martin turned to me and said, "I like the look, man. It's very Seattle. Very ninety-one."

This coming from a guy who shit his jeans and decided it was more important to put on a pot of coffee first than to change the jeans. "Whatever," I replied, drawing out the grunge god in me.

But Martin turned out to be more than just a guy running a shitty hostel with shitty jeans. After he finally changed his jeans, we got down to what was really important. We got down to drinking coffee and doing a lot of nothing. The day sped by, fast like the caffeine fueled thoughts in our head. We didn't notice as the open signs in the shops around us flipped to closed signs. We didn't notice the traffic go from gridlock to trickle to gridlock to nonexistent. I made up a story about growing up in Victoria. A magical place where the elderly handed out Scotch Mints like dealers handed out crack. Martin talked about Prince George. His hometown. Home of Mr. PG, the 8-meter high, creepy wooden man that towered over Prince George, symbolizing the importance of the forest industry and haunting generation after generation of PG's kids. Still haunting Martin. He told me his dad was partially to blame for Mr. PG's birth and that he (his dad, not Mr. PG) owned the building Fuller's was in. He also told me he hated his dad. I didn't push for more. We had quickly learned each other's boundaries. I was holding back and he was holding back and we were okay with that. What we didn't hold back on was having a great fucking day. We played a dated version of DOOM for four hours. Or eight hours. We drank thirty plus cups of coffee. When the coffee couldn't sustain us any longer we ventured out into the "real world" and picked up a couple of pizza subs from the SUBWAY up the street. It was a day of laughter and diversions. It was a day to forget where I had come from and to put off the reality of where I was going.

We did almost the exact same thing the next day. And then we did it again the day after that.

During my fourth day at Fuller's the bell above the door rang and the person entering Fuller's was neither Martin nor was it me. During my fourth day at Fuller's a girl named Candy, and another girl named Bernice (or Bernie) arrived. Bernice. Before jumping in Albert's car I had never met a Bernice and there I was meeting a second one in less than a week. The girls were in town to check out the university.

Candy pushed through the door hollering about sore feet and an orgasmic desire to sleep. Martin looked at me the moment after he looked at Candy and he mouthed the words, "I think I'm in love."

I didn't see what he saw. The girls weren't horribly disfigured, or anything like that, but they both had a touch of chunk to them. And Candy had noticeably yellow teeth. Later that night Martin said to me, There ain't nothing wrong with a few extra pounds. It's more to love."

I swore I had heard that before.

Martin and Candy hit it off immediately, and that night while I slept in my room and Benice slept in the other room, Martin and Candy fucked on the floor underneath the computer. It sounded like cows being slaughtered. Fucking cows.

The next morning Martin burst into my room and straddled me. "I need you to do me a huge solid," he said.

"Careful, man," I said. "Still got a bit of the morning wood going. Wouldn't want this thing between us to get weird."

Through our days and days of killing time Martin had learned many honest-to-God true-to-life tidbits about me. He had learned of my plans to stay in town for a while. He knew I was going to set out and find a job as soon as I was ready. He had also learned that he held some pretty strong cards in our new friendship.

He handed me the keys to Fuller's Hostel and asked me to run the joint for an indefinite amount of time.

"Come again," I said.

"I didn't think you wanted this thing between us to get weird."

"Hardy fucking har."

"It's easy, man. Super easy. We take cash only and if they've got the cash, we take whoever it is that wants to stay. You make coffee and beds and you sweep up once in a while. That's pretty much it."

He jumped off of me and ran out of the room.

"Wait!" I yelled. "Wait! Wait!"

I ran into the cafe in my boxers and t-shirt. The blood had dispersed from my dick and was pumping nervously through me. I followed him outside where Bernice and Candy were loading their bags into an old jeep. When the back of the jeep was full, the girls jumped into the front seats and told him to hurry up. Martin ran back to the doorway where I had retreated. The morning cold had its hand wrapped around my balls, shrinking me. Shrinking me. "Jesus, man," I said through shivers. "What the hell is going on?"

"Really, man. It isn't that hard and you said you need a job. Call it fate or the stars aligning or some hippy dippy shit like that. I'll give you a call tomorrow and tell you more of the specifics. I've been waiting for something like this to happen to me all of my life. I'm not going to let it pass me by. All I ever do is let people pass by me. It's the nature of a place like this. I know we've only known each other for a few days now, but I feel like I've known you forever. I trust you, man and that's a big thing. A big fucking thing. Listen, my father comes by once a week, every Thursday afternoon. Just to make sure I haven't burned the place down or some stupid shit like that. You can't tell him where I am. You can't tell him you're running the place either. He'll kill me. Then he'll kill you. My dad is the biggest, meanest cowboy you'll ever meet and he doesn't like to be messed with. You have to lie to him and you have to lie good."

"What are you getting me into, Martin?"

"Don't worry. I know you're intelligent, man. I know you're creative. And I know who you are, Ryan."

Candy revved the engine impatiently. "Sometimes we don't have control over boundaries and where they lie," he said. "One way or another the news gets to you. You need this as much as I need you now."

"I... I didn't do anything wrong. It's all a big misunderstanding."

He smiled and turned from me. As he ran to the jeep he was saying something, but the revving of Candy's impatience drowned out his words.

When he was in the jeep it revved once more then shot off leaving only a cloud of exhaust in its place. In my face. I looked down at my underwear, flat against my body. The cold air had turned me asexual. I was both a man and a woman, confused, and once again very alone.

I went back into the hostel and locked the door behind me. I flipped the sign on the door around so the outside world knew that Fuller's was now closed. Indefinitely.

19.

I unlocked the door to Fuller's Hostel and stepped outside into a crisp October morning. I was only wearing pajamas and thin socks, which allowed the cold easy access to my body. I stretched my body. My arms. I breathed in and let the cold penetrate me. When I exhaled, my frosty breath hung around in a cloud in front of me. I thought I saw my ghost intertwined with the breath. But the ghost was actually Mr. Barlow, outside of his hardware shop, across the street from me. He, too, was preparing for his day, but in a vastly different way. His preparations involved sweeping up and organization. Professionalism. He spotted me and waved. I waved back. Our mornings went like this for most of the month I had been running the hostel.

When I returned to the cafe and its ample warmth, the blinking red light of the answering machine caught my eye. But the hook wasn't strong enough. Coffee was my priority. Mr. Coffee had been set up the night before, so all I had to do was flick his switch and he was up and babbling. With that done, I moved to the answering machine. Three messages, all from Martin.

Message #1: "Answer the phone, Steve. Fine, I'll try you later." Click

Message #2: "Pick up... pick up pick up... shit." Click.

Message #3: "Dude, you really can't be sleeping through all of these calls... can you?" Click.

Since he had run off to Alaska to be with Candy, his paranoia about the hostel and his dad had increased tenfold. He checked in every night and every night I told him the same thing. "A few kids came in to use the Internet and that's about it, man."

When he first left the keys to Fuller's in my hands, I thought he was a sucker. I couldn't even manage my own life. But quickly... quicker than I thought possible in my case... I took my job running the two-bedroom hostel people never seemed to be looking for, but always seemed to stumble across very serious. The first couple of weeks were busy. The rooms were always full, which meant I spent most of those nights sleeping on the floor under the desk in the cafe. But as summer came to an end, Prince George shook its boots free of tourists. Of backpackers and wanderers. Most days, the cafe stayed empty from morning to night. I lied to Martin to keep him content.

Before he left, he filled an envelope with a few hundred dollars and taped it to the underside of the desk in the cafe. During his first phone call to me he said to use the money only for incidentals. I took that to mean coffee and Subway. The money gave me enough security to sit on my ass and wait. For what? I still did not know.

I surfed the Internet constantly. Searching for breaks in my case. There never were any. No one knew where I was. And no one knew who I was. But every day, like clockwork, my hands would click over to the next link to the next top story of the day. For two weeks my disappearance and the recovery of Melody Marks' body made the headlines. It was a group of grade twelve students, up at the creek to celebrate their last year of high school, that found her. How very apropos. They were so horrified and confused by the discovery that they forgot to stash their alcohol and weed when they called the cops. Seven of the students were charged with possession and seven more were fined for underage drinking. I searched for news about Fraser and Todd. About their deaths. About anything. And I found nothing. In dozens of articles about the case their names never came up. Not once. Someone had to have found the wreckage I walked away from. Someone had to have had more to say about Fraser and Todd's role. A tip hotline had been set up. A link at the end of the story lead to a video clip of my mother and brother standing in front of a dozen journalists, pleading for me to come home... pleading for anyone with a tip to phone in. I felt nothing seeing their faces. But I lie. Seeing my mother and listening to her say she loved me very much and she'd stand by me made me want to throw up. The first couple of weeks I stayed in the hostel as much as possible, not to arouse suspicion and all that. But when it became clear that the picture of me they used on the news wasn't changing -- the picture taken half a dozen years ago of me at Playland just after I stepped off the rollercoaster, the one where I had no facial hair and was all skin and bones, where my eyes were spinning like they were crazy eyes -- I started taking short walks around the neighbourhood and I started to have short conversations with some of the locals. No one thought the wiser of me. The little oasis of protection I had stumbled into was a Godsend, but I knew better than to believe God had anything to do with sending it to me. God gave up on me about the same time I gave up on Him.

Leads dried up and soon after, news coverage dried up. The voice in my head, the one that wasn't Adhara, reassured me that things were going to be okay. That we were getting away with "it". Whatever "it" was? I still didn't fully comprehend that part. Every morning I'd look in the mirror and I would see less of Ryan Paul looking back at me. I'd see the new me. The Steve I was becoming. And I'd say to this Steve, "Is this who we are going to be forever?"

My need for GHB bordered on addiction in those first couple of weeks. I needed it, or felt I needed it, to sleep... to feel. Gamma Hydroxy Butyrate. Battery Acid. Georgia Home Boy. Grievous Bodily Harm. Jib. My perfect dose was one gram. Or one beautiful round drop. Too little and I was tipsy, like I had had one too many beers at the pub. Too much and I was comatose. Until the GHB ran out I'd slip a drop of it on my tongue before hitting the sheets for the night, hoping the drug would connect me with Adhara who I hadn't heard from since my first night in Prince George. I had a million questions for her. She must have thought I was a big boy and could figure out the answers myself.

I figured, if something was going to happen in the forests outside of Prince George, it wouldn't happen until, at least, April. Winters in the PG were cold. According to Martin, winters were so cold in the PG that a dude had to take a picture of his balls before winter just to remember he had them during those long cold months, while they hibernated high up in his warm stomach.

And so I would wait until spring to do something.

The phone rang again. I picked it up and before I could say, "Fuller's Hostel, Steve speaking," Martin spoke. "Finally, asshole!" he shouted. "Do you remove your ears at night, huh?"

He didn't give me a chance to respond.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "Listen, number one, Candy is pregnant and two, we're getting married."

He said it like he was ordering a meal through a drive-thru microphone. "One supersized fries and two Cokes with that, please."

I barely knew Martin, but that didn't mean I was any less shocked by what he had just said. "Jesus shit, man. Do you have a clue about what you're getting yourself into?"

"Shit, man. I thought you'd be happy for me."

"Martin, I barely know you."

"But..."

"But what about the hostel?"

"Yeah... well, we'll just keep doing what we're doing. Candy's dad is giving me one of his old pick-ups. I'll drive down once a month to do all the books and stuff. You know, appease my father. How's that?"

"You're not going to tell him about the wedding and the kid?"

"Well... not right away I won't. Besides, I told Candy and her family my parents are dead. Shit, they may as well be."

He whispered to someone on his end something about being right there, then said to me. "Okay? Is this going to be okay? Oh, man, I got to jet. I'll call you later."

He hung up and I was once again left with an answer on the tip of my tongue with nowhere to go. I swallowed the words back down my throat and went to the washroom where I doused myself with hard PG water out of rusty FH taps. Dark roots sprouted from my head, giving my hair a Boston Creme pie look. My beard was now living a life of its own and my eyes looked empty. I doused my face again and blurred out the vision in the mirror.

It was Thursday, so the hostel had to be in pristine shape. No fucking around. Martin's dad Buck was a picky, prickly bastard, and if anything appeared out of whack, it was Martin's ass first, then mine. "You see, kid," Buck would say, "I've got an entire collection of asses on my wall at home, but I'm missing the "freaky, hippy-kid-from-the-city ass" and boy, would I ever like that one. So watch yourself, kid. Watch yourself." He would say this and then he would slap his thigh like he was the funniest fucking guy in the whole world. As Buck warmed up to me and began to eat up the bullshit I fed him on a weekly basis, he began punching me in the arm really hard and wrapping his giant arm around me and giving me the most painful noogies. And yes, the guy would actually say, "Can't you handle a noogie, kid? You some kind of girlie-boy? Do you wear your mommies clothes when she's not around? Should I start calling you Samantha?" It wasn't a stretch to see why Martin hated him so much. But Buck wasn't that bright and that suited our little situation just fine. The stories I told him about Martin went in, were processed, then accepted without even a, "You're full of shit, kid." He liked that Martin had taken on some part-time help. It added to the whole "maturing-as-a-business-owner" thing he always rambled on about.

I was thinking about what to clean first when the door swung open and Buck stepped through, bringing half of the autumn air in with him. "Surprise, kid," he said. "Thought I'd break routine and show up in the a.m. for once. Maybe catch you whacking off to smut on that there computer."

"Jesus, Buck, it's effing cold. Close the damn door."

"Oh, hey, sure thing. Wouldn't want those tiny balls of yours to shrivel up any more than they already are. Say, where's my boy Martin today?"

I hadn't yet had my paid hour to create Martin's story o' the week, so I pulled the weakest strand of shit I could've come up with out of my ass and I fed it to a hungry Buck.

"Martin... Martin's shopping for supplies. He said a few things around here needed to be fixed up... updated and the like."

"Yeah," Buck said, "like what? What needs to be fixed around here?"

"The faucet," I said, because faucets always need to be fixed. "The faucet in the bathroom is leaking. And... and the computer crashed last night. We had to completely reconfigure it. He's out getting some of the software we lost."

"Well, I'll be. Sounds like my boy Martin is once again going to be busy all day long. You know, I haven't seen that little so and so in more than a month. One would almost think he was hiding from me. Or hiding something from me. He wouldn't be doing that, would he?"

I laughed uneasily. Unconvincingly. And Buck could see it. I know he could. He stomped over to me, dragging mud and whatever else was jammed in the tread of his boots with him, and he gave me a love tap on the shoulder (which sent waves of pain through my body). Then he left the hostel.

Feeling in my legs disappeared. My bones turned into jelly. I tumbled to the floor and joined the thousand dust bunnies and dead moths already gathered there. Together, we watched the spot Buck had hit me turn red, then purple. We watched the bruise grow to the size of a hockey puck.

I laid on the floor for an hour before deciding I was in no mood to deal with anyone else. With that big decision made, I crawled to the front door and flipped the open sign around, closing Fuller's before anyone even knew it had been opened. And then I crawled back to bed.

I wanted to fade into peaceful unconsciousness, but the GHB was gone. I could've cried, but a click in the cafe diverted my emotion. I now found myself in fear territory. The fear made the bones in my legs harden back up. I got out of bed and tiptoed into the cafe, invisible hammers clenched in my fists. The clicking sound was not an intruder (or a tired backpacker), it was the power button on Mr. Coffee. And the power was now off. A whole pot of coffee almost wasted. Steam still funneled out of the glass carafe. I poured the majority of the coffee into my ice-cream pail sized cup and I sat down in front of the computer. Computers and coffee. The future. I couldn't bring up my usual search engine, so I used one called SPYDER. I typed the three letters before I had even thought about typing them. GHB. I hit enter, still not sure as to where I was going with this search. A thousand pages of search results popped up.

The Internet. A dynamic beast. Before it, what was there? Libraries? Research? The truth? It came into my life like so many other things. Without warning. It may have been a slow evolution to the gods who were giving it life, but to me, it seemed that the Internet wasn't there one day and the very next day it was running my life, from my constant need to keep in touch with people around the world to my constant need to look at porn. The Internet. A world of misinformation, hate, and gruesome rumour at the touch of a button. I hated it, but I needed it.

I loved it.

My search of the moment. GHB. God Hates Blacks. The dangers of GHB. So much garbage. So much nothingness. Out of nothingness nothing is born. But like gold panning, if you sift through the nothing long enough, discoveries can be made. And on the fourth page of search results I discovered Atlantis.

I clicked on the link and was sent to a page that had a menu of drugs. I placed the arrow on GHB and left clicked. A white page filled with writing appeared. The writing was full of spelling errors and simple grammar mistakes, leading me to believe that this was text I shouldn't lay a lot of faith in.

But I read it anyways. My future depended on it.

20.

A twelve-hour coma. That's what I got with the first batch I cooked up. The coma came with a gash in the forehead that bled out a puddle of blood. I hit the floor so hard I even put a dent in the floor. But fuck the floor, right? When I woke up twelve-hours after collapsing I was sucking on a giant dust/hair bunny and my hair was stuck in the blood that had long congealed under my head.

The process looked so much easier on paper than it turned out to be in real life. Take this many grams of one chemical and mix it with this many heated millilitres of another. Zip! Bang! Boom! You've got GHB.

I was my own guinea pig. Kind of had to be. I didn't believe the bullshit myth that GHB could kill, even at low doses. Or maybe I just didn't care. I was bored and I needed to get high.

I bought a hotplate, some pH papers and the sodium hydroxide at Barlow's. I hadn't taken a chemistry class since grade 11 so my recognition of common compounds was a little off. The woman at the cash register, who had the blackest eyes, lead me to the lawn care aisle and pointed out the lye I needed. She didn't even look up at me when I returned to the register with the rest of my items. She just bagged them up and ushered me along. To play it safe, when I got back to the hostel, I opened up the lye and sprinkled a bit of it on the weeds growing out of the cracks in the front sidewalk.

The gamma-butyrolactone took a little more effort to get. I found it online on a website devoted to private sales of chemicals used in the production of pesticides and herbicides. The site claimed it was legitimate, which meant it had to be legitimate. What I was looking for had nothing to do with pests or weeds, but there it was, nonetheless. So I used a credit card one of the travellers had left behind a couple of weeks back. To my delight, the package arrived by courier three days later. I unwrapped the brown-paper skin of the package and pulled out a bottle of specially developed paint stripper made specifically for antique wooden furniture.

My lab was the hostel bathroom. My power supply courtesy of a hallway outlet and a fraying extension chord: one of those long orange ones you find in every father's workshed. I followed the instructions word for word. Laying so much faith in the words of a cyberspace druggie wasn't hard. Five other druggies inhabiting the same space offered similar instructions. Offered similar warnings. They all warned that improper synthesis could be deadly. They warned that pH level did matter. That doing things too fast was irresponsible. Precision was key.

The first mix was rotten and had to be tossed. I was lucky I only banged my head. Only knocked myself out. The next day when I tried again, the liquid I placed on my tongue was an exact replica of the stuff we bought in Vancouver. It put me in the exact state of mind and left me feeling just right when its effects dissipated. The only difference was the salty taste my mix had.

Production became my purpose. There wasn't much else I wanted to do. I woke every morning, coffee already brewed, and I made for my makeshift laboratory full of caffeine and mad-scientist dreams. The process really was about proportions. If those proportions were off by even a milligram, everything was fucked and I'd find myself groggy on the floor six, eight or ten hours after I had knocked myself out, wondering where I had miscalculated.

The stainless-steel cooking pot I used was the same one I used to catch leaking water from the ceiling when it rained. I'd pour my gamma butyrolactone into the pot and then I'd slowly mix in my sodium hydroxide. I'd heat up my hot plate and pour warm water over the mix. The introduction of the water and the heat began the reaction. The reaction would leave me with pure, concentrated GHB. The trickiest part for me was getting the pH right. The mix had to be below a pH level of 7.5. To do this, I had to add a touch of vinegar to the mix, but if I added too much, the mix was burnt toast. My concentrated GHB was then added to enough water to make 1000mls of usable and sellable GHB. I bottled my GHB in Mason jars and stored them in a closet near the back entrance of the hostel where it was dry and very cold.

The packages of GBL would arrive in the morning and by three in the afternoon I'd have another six jars full of GHB. I'd spend the rest of my day in a drunken stupor brought on by the continuous ingestion of the drug. I lived for the drug and the drug lived because of me. I would doze in and out of consciousness, and during those periods when I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't, I'd call out for Adhara. My belief... in Her... in what was happening to me... was most real when the drug was running through me. My career in drug manufacturing ended with a phone call.

Three weeks (to the day) after my successful first batch was synthesized, while I was checking my pH levels, the phone rang. And it rang and it rang. I had been letting the answering machine pick up everything up until then. Forty-six unanswered messages. But when the phone rang this time, it did not stop. Four rings. Answering machine. Click. Four rings. Answering machine. Click. And on and on until it punctured my nerves like a scalpel in search of a cause.

I picked up the phone and before I could say, "Hello," Martin yelled out, "What the fuck!"

"Whoa, what's up Martin?"

"I just talked to Buck," he said. "Or better put, he just yelled at me for like an hour straight."

"But Buck doesn't know where you are."

"Well obviously he does know."

"I don't understand." And I didn't. The homemade GHB was turning me into a dull knife.

"He says the hostel has been closed for weeks. Is that true?"

"Well..."

"Steve, he says someone is getting packages sent to the hostel with purchases made on stolen credit cards. Is that true?"

"Well..."

"Visa phoned him. They traced those purchases to the hostel, which is in his name.They asked him if he knew anything about anything. He said he didn't, but he'd look into it. He said he drove by about a week ago and noticed the closed sign, He drove by again the next day and saw the same thing. Then he started talking to the nosey fucking neighbours. They told him, man. They told him the sign hadn't been flipped around in weeks. They also said they saw me leave in a truck with Alaskan plates almost two months ago. He hired fucking Magnum PI and the guy found me. Fuck, Steve, he found me. What is going on?"

"Well.." I thought about what to say, but obviously, I didn't think too hard because what came out of my misfiring brain was, "I guess I wasn't feeling too hot."

"Well fuck, Steve! Buck wants me back there tomorrow and he wants to talk to the both of us. That may not scare you. But it scares the shit out of me. Seriously, man, my undies are brown right now."

Martin hung up and I became a fossil. Frozen in time. An hour passed and I did not move from that spot in the hallway of Fuller's Hostel. Phone in my hand. Two words circling in my head: illegal and wanted. The Abbotsford police still wanted me. They were still looking for me. But that didn't stop me from illegally using someone's credit card and that didn't stop me from illegally producing drugs inside property that didn't belong to me.

It occurred to me then and there that I might have been the dumbest asshole on the planet.

When I snapped out of my daze I went to extraordinary (and paranoid) lengths to get rid of all the evidence of my entrepreneurial side trip. I tossed the chemicals, the pH papers, the hotplate, and even the vinegar into a hockey bag a hosteler had left behind. I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed the bathroom floor clean of dried GHB splotches. Then I scrubbed and vacuumed the rest of the floors in the hostel. I took a toothbrush to the grout. That's how deep I scrubbed. When I was done I changed clothes, grabbed the hockey bag and headed outdoors, where winter's head was peeking over the horizon.

The air nipped at my nose, but couldn't get near my body. Martin had left a closet full of clothes he had given me permission to wear. We had the same waist size, and the same shoe size. I had on one of his old jackets, a pair of long johns under my jeans and a some rubber boots. A flake of snow landed on my eyelashes as I passed the hardware shop. I looked through the shop's steamed up windows and saw blurry men in orange aprons pointing electric drills at other men as though they were dueling. The front door slid open and a wave of warm air washed over me. "Bill, there's a call for you on line one," a voice crackled over a loudspeaker inside the store. A car screeched as it hit a spot of black ice and the driver slammed on the brakes. The car slid a several feet, crossing the centerline of the road and bumping up onto the sidewalk just behind me. Because the roads were empty of other cars and other people, the incident went unnoticed. The driver got out of his car and patted his body down. When he was sure he was in one piece, he walked around his car inspecting every visible inch of it. When he was sure it was as okay as he was, he hopped back into it and sped off.

Martin once told me that if I ever got bored I could hop on a bus and head out to The Ancient Forest, which was an hour and a bit east of Prince George. He said that if I hiked deep into the forest, I would find the best hallucinogenic mushrooms on the planet. Said they'd fuck me up for days. Said I had to try them to know what he was talking about. He described a well-worn path made by generations of mushroom pickers. All I had to do was find a tree with a mushroom head crudely carved into it. The tree was along one of the government created trails. Behind the tree was the small path. He said I couldn't miss it. The path would wind through the forest for about half an hour until it spat me out into an open area about the size of a basement suite. It was the only spot in the forest where the mushrooms grew. It was where I would dispose of "the evidence," or at least, leave the evidence for another bored druggie to play with.

When I finally got to the forest, I walked the trails for almost three hours before I found the tree Martin had described. The crude mushroom carved into it looked more like the head of a dick. I looked around me, scoping for life. For witnesses.

But I was alone.

The path was completely hidden from the government created trail. As soon as I stepped off the trail and rounded the tree, I saw it. It looked like it had been walked a million times, flattened and distinct. The path followed a rising landscape and disappeared deeper into the dark forest. I climbed the hill and stopped momentarily at the peak of the hill. The loneliness of the moment suddenly hit me and a strange thought entered my head. Is this what it feels like to be the last man on Earth? "Yes," I said aloud and continued forward.

The wind was blowing. The near naked branches of trees waved back and forth. Needles and broken limbs rained down on top of those that had already fallen. The path was clear for the most part, but from time to time it would disappear under a large tree's discards and I would have to guess where it reconnected. From time to time, I found myself wandering blind for several frustrating minutes before finding the path again and continuing on. Bushes shook with the scattering of little things as I passed by, and birds up high spoke loudly with one another, most likely about the intruder walking on their forest floor. I walked for forty-five minutes before I stumbled over a ridge and into an area overrun with unspoiled, unharvested mushrooms. Below me a world of bald men congregated. Some were fat and some were skinny. Others looked old and rotten. They huddled in groups around rotting stumps. They were tucked into beds of soggy moss. They were... everywhere.

Fifty yards out from from the mushrooms I buried the contents of the hockey bag. Originally, I had planned to bury the bag as well, but seeing all of those mushrooms made me feel like a pirate again. A funny feeling I hadn't had since those youthful days on the upper decks of the Queen of Nanaimo and the Spirit of Vancouver Island. It seemed I had finally found the X on that pretend map and underneath that X was pure hallucinogenic gold. They were so much more than just mushrooms. I had to take some back with me.

I picked them for an hour. My wrists and back ached, but the pain felt good. And looking at the hockey bag full of mushrooms felt even better. When I was sure I couldn't stuff another mushroom in the bag I wiped away the sweat leaking into my eyes and I sat on the ground with my back up against one of the rotting stumps. A fresh battlefield surrounded me. It was covered in the torn apart, decimated bald men that only an hour before thrived there. I felt no shame in my wrath. To celebrate the victory I picked the biggest, juiciest looking mushroom I could find. It was stupid to consider getting fucked up in the middle of nowhere with darkness only a few hours away, but I felt like getting stupid. Getting naturally high for once. Plus, experience had taught me that it took a good forty-five minutes to start to feel the effects. Plenty of time to get back to the government-built trails. I wiped off the dirt that dotted the mushroom's cap. I pulled out the stalk and tossed it to the ground with the other limbs and body pieces that were scattered about. The shroom was soft and a little bit gooey. I choked a little of it back up when I tried to swallow it. But I eventually got it all down. When I felt the shroom sloshing around in my stomach, I stood up and left the mushroom patch.

The walk back was awkward and slow. But it was peaceful.

Boot against earth... boot against earth... and then somewhere along the way my footsteps went from mono to stereo. There was an eerie echo to them, like they were being matched by another's. I spun around to catch the predator, but only saw wooden soldiers, some of who, I was sure, had been at attention for more than a hundred years. I looked to them for an explanation, but they remained solid and unhelpful. I pushed forward and the footsteps hiding in mine got louder. And closer.

"Hey!" a voice shouted out.

I noticed the toe of a hiking boot sticking out from behind a giant Douglas fir on my right. "Who's there?" I said and slowly stepped back from the tree.

"What the fuck you doin' out here, bro?"

The toe moved back and disappeared from my sight. A bush behind me rustled. I spun around. Something large was moving about inside it. Branches broke. And the earth below me rumbled every time the thing inside the bush repositioned itself. "What's in the bag?" the bush said.

"I was..." I couldn't come up with a logical answer. My brain was being pulled apart. "I was looking for a pick-up game. I guess I got lost on the way to the rink."

The bush rustled again. The earth rumbled and birds watching from high up above spooked. They gathered in a ball above the tree tops and flew away in a raucous, smoke-like cloud. I took my cue from them and ran from the talking bush and the talking tree. "Come back here, bro!" They yelled out behind me. "Those are ours!"

I ran off the path and into a denser part of the forest. It was darker and the trees were like blades of grass, too numerous to count. I made myself thin and slipped through two large pines and then I ducked under a fallen fir that was help up off the ground by the stump of another fir that had fallen long ago. There were no footsteps behind me, but I continued to run as fast as I could as straight as I could, so when I did turn around it wouldn't be so hard to find my way back. The forest had become too quiet. The silence amplified my heavy breathing, like my mouth had suddenly become a bullhorn. I climbed over large rocks and pushed away errant branches in my path. The forest had become so congested it was night dark. The darkness disoriented me. I knew I had veered from my straight path. I knew I was in trouble. And then a glorious ray of light touched my foot. I followed the ray out of the woods and into a clearing. A perfectly round clearing a couple acres in size, covered in a thin sheet of snow.

"All right asshole, hand 'em over."

Two young men appeared out of the dark forest from where I had just come. They couldn't have been much older than me. Coloured strobes flashed against their bodies. Colours I passed off to the blinking Christmas lights that had slipped behind my eyeballs. They wore plaid lumbermen jackets and baggy 501s. One of them had a bandana tied around his head. Bandana man grabbed me by my shirt collar and pulled me up close to him. My bag dropped from my hand and the mushrooms tried to make a break for it. Their momentum died when they realized they were a long way from home. I yelled at the mushroom to keep running. To run for their little lives.

"This dude is tripping," the other guy said.

"Sure is," said bandana man. "What do you think we should do with him?"

His grip on my collar tightened. I felt my shirt stretching. My mind stretching. Nothing worse than a stretched collar... and a stretched mind. "I have an idea," I said. "Why don't the two of you take the lovely mushrooms and leave me alone. They're all yours. It's all good in this neighbourhood."

"It is all good, isn't it?" said bandana man. My eyes were drawn to the stubble on his chin. Stubble that looked more like pubic hair.

"Listen," I said. "I didn't know you guys owned the forest. I'm not from around here. A friend of mine who lives in the city... he told me about the mushroom patch. He said it was a nice little hike. I didn't mean to take what was yours." I sounded like a whiny bitch, but it appeared to be working. The shrooms working their way through my system helped me see through bandana man and his buddy. They were wearing costumes and masks. They were out looking for a little trouble, but not the type of trouble that could land them in jail.

"Who's your friend up here, eh?" Bandana man said.

"Umm... Martin. Martin Fuller."

"Well holy shit, how is Martin?" Bandana man asked. And then he pulled my collar so tight I couldn't breath.

21.

Martin used to be the leader of a group of kids called The Enforcers of Onin. The Enforcers of Onin were comprised of six boys between the ages of ten and twelve. The boys were in different grades and different classes, but they all shared a similar trait. They were all missing a mother in their lives. Two of the boys' mothers had died and two of the boys' mothers had run off with other men. The last two boys had never met their biological mothers, leading them to believe they had been created in a Petrie dish in some top-secret laboratory. This missing-mother trait acted like a magnet, drawing the boys to one another.

The Enforcers of Onin would meet twice a week at the base of an oak tree in a small forest behind Martin's home. The tree was an oddity among the native spruce and pine and hemlock trees. Oak trees weren't particularly adaptive to the harsh northern temperatures. They were prone to be found on the islands scattered along B.C.'s southern coast, where it was always wet and the temperature never waned beyond the uncomfortable. The tree had five thick branches that sprung out from a singular stump, which rose only a few inches off the ground. Each branch had several little branches growing out of it. The five branches looked like fingers on the aging hand of a giant, gnarled by arthritis, but open, waiting to receive whatever may fall from the heavens: a star, an angel, a cure for being old, or whatever. Martin named the tree Onin and made it the symbol of the motherly figure missing from each of their lives. Onin was the one who would listen to them and comfort them and tell them everything was going to be okay. One by one, the boys would step up to Onin and wrap their arms around her as much as they could. Some of the boys would cry (usually the ones whose mother had died) and some would laugh. The meetings of the Enforcers of Onin consisted of this moment with Onin, the odd story shared with the other boys about liking one of the girls in class or wanting to be an astronaut or a famous actor, and a time when they'd all come together and do it again. And they continued to meet until the summer, when school had been over for more than a month.

The summer had been the hottest in fifty-three years. Reservoirs dried out and bans on car washing and lawn watering were put into effect. A couple of girls, who had just left Martin's school for the greener pastures of junior high, stole a pack of smokes from an older brother. They figured that's what high-school kids did. Stole and smoked. They snuck into the forest and lit up for the first time in their lives. When the cigarette was lit, one of the girls (to this day, it is still not known which girl it actually was) tossed the still lit match onto the ground and absentmindedly started one of the worst fires in Prince George's history. Hundreds of hectares of forest and land and homes were destroyed. And so too was Onin.

The boys stopped hanging out together after that summer. Once again they had all lost the mother figure in their life. And the shared pain was too much to handle. Eventually, they all grew up and they all moved away. All of them except for Martin.

"I haven't seen that kid in like forever," Bandana man said, his hand still tightly gripped around my collar.

"Yeah, it's bringing up some memories all up in here," the other guy said while rubbing the side of his head.

Bandana man let go of me and said, "I heard his dad shipped him off to the army and he died in Cambodia... or Colorado, or someplace that starts with a C."

"Actually, he's running a hostel in Prince George," I said. "Well, he was running a hostel in Prince George. He recently got married and moved to Alaska."

"Wow, he may as well have died in the army," Bandana man said. "It's really no worse a fate."

We stood there quiet for a few seconds, kicking at the dirt, stirring up memories in our heads. "I'm sorry," I finally said. "Seriously, let me give the mushrooms to you. I mean, if you say they're yours, then take them..."

"Shit man, we were just trying to freak you out," Bandana man said. "I hate those fucking things. And so does Riley. You keep that shit."

The mushrooms I had eaten were fucking up my every sense now. I tried to keep normal, but the tracers and the echoing voices made it difficult. "You know, I'm super fucked up," I said as I dropped caution onto the ground and stamped it under my foot. "You guys think you can help me get out of here?"

"You know..."

Bandana man stopped and waited for... I knew he was waiting for me to give him my name, but I couldn't. I couldn't because my brain had forgotten which name was the right name. Martin's voice spoke out in one of those lingering memories. "Fuck Steve..." he said.

"That's a goofy name," Bandana man said. "You don't look much like a Fuck. So what says we just call you Steve?"

"I'm Steve," I said missing most of what Bandana man had just said to me.

"Yeah, we got that."

"So Steve," Bandana man said very slowly. "You want to head back into town and get some coffee at Denny's?"

Coffee. I saw the word in front of my eyes. It was covered in multicolored Christmas lights. I heard metal forks clinking against ceramic plates. I smelled pie and grease and coffee. I felt the wind brushing past me as the waitress rushed to the kitchen to grab another order.

"Coffee sounds good."

Their names were Riley and Richard. They were once Enforcers of Onin.

We talked for hours, nestled comfortably in a corner booth at Denny's. We sipped on bottomless cups of fake-assed diner coffee and nibbled on fries that started off steaming hot and ended ice cold. Richard told me the story of Onin and he told me many more stories about the Enforcers, including the one where Riley accidentally ran his BMX bike into a black bear and was lucky to get away with only a foot-long gash along his arm. He said the five boys who weren't being attacked joined together and fought the bear off as best they could with only branches and rocks.

Riley rarely opened his mouth except to ask the waitress for a refill. Richard said the two of them had moved into a trailer together after high school, leading many to believe they had become gay lovers. He assured me they were nothing more than the best of friends. After the summer Onin died only Riley and Richard stayed close. "Our moms had died," Richard said. "Our dads were friends. We were more like brothers. It's tough disassociating yourself from someone you have to see outside of school every other day."

I came down from my high and saw things for what they were. Richard and Riley were just like me. Just looking for something to do to pass the time. They had followed me into the woods and watched me as I buried my supplies and picked the mushrooms. They had been intrigued by the stranger using their woods like he had every right in the world to do so. They thought they'd teach me a lesson for being so brazen. They didn't expect me to not only dig up their mushrooms (which they hated) but to also dig up a part of their past they now cherished.

But behind the conversation, behind the reminiscing, I sensed impatience. I sensed a need to know more. Their eyes were shovels, digging into me, and the more we talked, the more exposed I became. I sunk into the pleather of the diner booth and let loose words I had been holding onto for a long time. About the girls in Abbotsford. About Fraser and Todd. About my 'on purpose' disappearance and my lucky run in with Albert. About meeting Martin and taking over his hostel. I told these strangers about the GHB and the trouble I had made for myself in Prince George and about the trouble I expected tomorrow when Buck arrived to talk with Martin and me. The only thing I didn't tell them about was Adhara.

They sipped their coffees slowly and processed my words. I was not interested in their conclusions about me. About my situation. I was only interested in shedding the words. Words trapped like butterflies in my stomach. Each sentence I spoke flew out of my mouth, out of darkness and into the light where it quickly took advantage of its freedom and flew away from me. And when I finished speaking they just stared. At me. Beyond me. I couldn't tell. Neither of them spoke for a long time after I finished setting my words free. Then somewhere between the third and fourth minute of silence Riley snapped his fingers and said, "Waitress, I could really use a top up on my coffee."

And we laughed because it was just what we needed to break the strange silence that had crept up and smothered us.

"That," said Richard, "was one of the most amazing, and if you don't mind me saying, unbelievable stories I have ever heard."

"If some guy told me the same story," I said, "I'd tell him to fuck off and get a life. Shit like that just doesn't happen to real people."

Two dozen more questions were sent my way and I answered every one of them. Fifteen cups of coffee and three hours later we were the best of friends. And best friends kept secrets. They promised to keep my many secrets and I promised them that if they really did keep my secrets and I could continue hiding out in Prince George until spring, I would share with them the granddaddy of all secrets.

The circle of empty land in the middle of the forest, where we had ended up, entered our conversation. Richard said it was odd finding it, because he had been through that forest a hundred times throughout his life and he had never seen it before. Riley said the same thing.

The waitress dropped our bill on the table and as politely as she could, she asked us to cough up the four bucks we owed for our coffees. Her shift was over and she wanted to go home with whatever measly tip we were going to leave her. Through the clinging advertisements on Denny's windows I saw the night. It had moved in as quietly as a ghost. We paid our bill and stepped outside into that ghost and chills ran through us. The ghost bit at our exposed skin. It froze the saliva in our mouths. The snot in our noses. The liquid on our eyeballs. I hadn't been outside after sunset since before the PG winter officially began in late September. I didn't know it could get that cold on planet Earth.

"You want to come back to our trailer and smoke a doob?" Richard asked.

"I thought you guys didn't do that shit."

"Just the shrooms," he said. "Mary Jane on the other hand... that bitch is tight. We party with her every night. Come summer, we even grow that bitch in a little field behind our trailer."

Riley nodded his head as he blew hot air into his gloved hands.

"Sorry boys," I said. "I'll have to take a rain check. I've got to rest up for tomorrow when all hell breaks loose at Fuller's."

"Maybe we can help you out some," Richard said. "Riley and I used to hang out at Martin's all the time. Maybe Buck would be surprised to see us. Maybe he'd go easy on you guys if we were there."

"And maybe... nah, I can't get you guys involved. But if everything works out and I'm still alive after tomorrow, drop by the hostel and hang out."

"Indeed we will," Richard said.

We shook hands and went our separate ways. I walked fast to keep the blood flowing, but as the mushrooms in the hockey bag began to freeze, and the weight of the bag doubled, my pace slowed. I sucked in heavy breaths of frigid air and it burned as it went down my throat.

It burned and it felt good.

22.

Brakes locked up about a hundred yards from the hostel. I heard the vehicle sliding along the road. But it wasn't this sound that brought me to the window. It was the vehicle's horn honking in short, rapid bursts that did that. I split the blinds and peeked out. It was Martin. In a pick-up truck. He had a death grip on the steering wheel and his eyes were closed tight. It was a recipe for a horrific accident. Or hilarious story if everything turned out to be okay.

Luckily, the road was empty of people and cars. Nighttime clouds had dumped a foot and a half of snow and the snow removal crews had yet to make their rounds, and most likely weren't about to get out of their shit-stained undies and wife beaters to do so. The guys that drove the big trucks with shovels on their grills and salt in their beds decided they didn't make enough money. Decided that striking in the heart of winter would show the local government just how serious they were. Local samaritans were left to pick up the slack. But even the heartiest samaritan couldn't get his store-room truck out of the ice vault his garage or his driveway had become. It was a right mess. What we needed was Homer Simpson and his big snow-removal truck. I thought, where was Mr. Plow when we needed him most?

Martin's truck slid up onto the curb and slid to a stop inches from the hostel's front door. I opened the door and screamed, "Marty, how the hell are you!?" His eyes were still closed. His snow-white fingers still wrapped around the steering wheel. Snow, as fine as the shavings that fly up when a figure skater spins, still fell to the ground. Fell in my hair and in my brow. Sparkling momentarily before it melted away, leaving me cold.

"Martin," I said and tapped on the driver-side window. He opened one eye, then the other. "Well holy flying shit," he shouted, his voice muffled slightly until he flung open the truck door. "I can't believe I didn't hit anything. I can't believe I didn't go right through the wall. I can't..."

"Welcome home, Martin."

Closed signs in the surrounding shops gave proof to the state of the day. If a tumbleweed had blown across the road, I would have thought I was in a ghost town. A really, freaking cold ghost town.

"Man, it's as cold down here as it is up there."

"Peel yourself away from that wheel and get inside where it's warm. Mr. Coffee's pissing out a pot as we speak. Buck should be here any minute."

He jumped down from his seat and placed his hands on my shoulders. "Steve, I kicked her," he said seriously. And sadly. "I fucking kicked her."

"What? Kicked who?"

He looked up and down the street, then he looked back at me. His cold palms were sending chills through me. "She was bitching, man. Bitching about me leaving for a few days... and she was calling me a pussy and a prick and a coward and a liar. It wasn't a good mix, man. I guess I just snapped. I kicked her and she fell to the ground. And I just left her there in the kitchen. What if... you know, what if I hurt the baby?"

"Jesus, Martin, I don't know what to say about that."

He lifted his right hand up off my shoulder and pulled it back next to his ear. He closed his fist and threw it into my face as hard as he could. I only saw it coming when it was already leaving its mark. His fist hit me so hard I fell to the ground. Red blotches peppered the white snow around my head. Red blotches filled up my eyeballs. Martin crouched down on my back and pulled my head up by the forehead. With his free hand he picked up a handful of snow and pushed it into my bloody face. Warm liquid spilled onto the back of my neck. Onto my cheek. But it wasn't my blood. It was the froth of the venom Martin was secreting in his rage.

"You caused this," he yelled. "Whoever the fuck you are! You made Buck find out about me. About me and Candy. You've ruined my life, asshole!"

"Martin," I tried saying, but the snowball in my mouth made it sound more like, "Marthin. Marthin, I'm sorry. I'll ssplain t'all. I'll take the blame. I don't..."

He dropped my head and whatever snow in his hand that hadn't melted against my face. He got up off of me and without helping me up, said, "Just how the fuck are you going to explain this?"

I didn't need an answer because the phone inside the hostel rang and stole Martin from me. It was a theft I didn't mind. I picked myself up and drunkenly followed him in, looking the whole way for the composure that was beaten out of me when Martin's fist hit my face. In high school I tried to get along with everyone. By doing so, I was ensured I would never suffer a beating by some rival's hands. Early into whatever grade I was in, I would consciously try to be awesome with everybody. This meant cracking jokes at other's expenses, or finding a common element that would bond me to whatever group I happened to be buttering up. It was ballsy doing this, especially during a time when cliques were at their plastic high, but it worked. East Indians, Metalheads, Skaters, Football Jocks, Drama Geeks and even the Geeks. I was friends with some and friendly with all. Until all the shit started happening five months ago, I had never been punched, kicked or threatened. In my entire life. It was a stat I wished I could have taken to the grave. To die as the guy everyone liked... that would've been swell. But out of the mess my life had become, I had given birth to many enemies. And I knew there were more enemies growing in my man womb, waiting for that day we crossed paths... and I pissed them off.

I closed the front door, or at that moment, the page on another bloody chapter in my life. I turned around and stepped into the next chapter. Martin was listening to someone. Listening and getting flustered. Before he could respond to whoever was on the other end, he dropped the phone. When the phone hit the floor, the batteries popped out and rolled under the computer desk. He walked over to the desk and sat on the rolling chair. He spun it around slowly and stared up at the ceiling. "You know what I wish?" he said as he spun.

"What's the deal, Martin?"

"He tried taking me fishing once. It was... it was going to be the greatest day of my childhood. I was sure of it. It was the sound of the coffee machine gurgling and the smell of the coffee brewing that woke me up at four thirty in the morning. He was in the kitchen slopping a glob of peanut butter over a layer of jelly. When he noticed me standing in the doorway he said, "Thought I'd make us some lunch for the trip. PB and J alright with you?" I wanted to ask this stranger who he was. I had never met this man before. It made me so excited that I could barely contain myself. We hopped into the truck just as the sun was peeking over the mountains. Everything was... perfect."

Martin stopped talking for a moment to wipe away a tear on his cheek. He lowered his eyes from the ceiling and met mine. Steam was rising from his clothes and his skin. But it wasn't steam, because it was multicoloured. I saw it as clearly as the walls of the hostel around me. I saw it, but I couldn't explain it.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing."

The steam funneled out of his ears and off of his head. As clear as day to me, but not to him. "Yeah, well, we got to this little creek about a half hour later and we set up our poles," he continued. "I stuck a worm to the hook then looked to Buck for guidance. 'Just hold in that button there on the reel until your cast is just above your head,' he said to me. 'Then let that bugger go and watch it soar.' I did as he had said, but the line didn't shoot out from my rod. I tried again and again, but I couldn't get the line to cast. I could see him getting impatient. I could see the real Buck returning. And then he was there. 'Give me that goddamned thing,' he said and pulled the rod from my hands. He cast it and reeled it in. He cast it again and reeled it in and then he did it again and again. I didn't touch the rod again that day. He never even got his rod out of the back of the truck. He just took over mine and tuned me out. Just like he had done every day of my life before that. He probably would have driven away without me at the end of the day had I not been in the back of the truck sleeping. Goddammit Steve. You know what I wish?"

"What? What do you wish?"

"I wish I had had a father who didn't care about the way a line was cast, or even about the fish that could have been caught. I wish... I wish I had just had a father like everyone else."

"But you do have a father," I said. I was confused. "Things can be undone. Things can change."

"Steve," he snapped. He was now crying. "That was the hospital. Buck's dead."

I waited to hear the sound of the clock ticking, for that is usually what we hear when silence ensues. Seconds passing away one by one, signaling the death of one more little bit of time in our short lives. But the clock on the wall had stopped. It's hands frozen at 7:01. I wondered, had the clock died the night before? Or had it been dead for weeks?"

We walked the three kilometers to Prince George Regional. Flapjack-like flakes of snow quickly filled in the footprints we left behind us. Our feet crunched and squeaked with every step. The thick snow not only hid our tracks, it also hid a world we knew was all around us, but only saw in spurts: men in foot-thick jackets shoveling their driveways and walkways, cars revving and exhaust rising. During the walk, Martin slipped in and out of personalities. One moment he was crying and the very next he was laughing. I did not speak. Whatever he was working out in his mind had to be worked out alone. But I could not help think that I had been responsible somehow. I could not help wondering if karma was coming back to bite me in the ass.

The hospital was nearly as empty as the streets outside of it. A couple of nurses were sitting behind a counter just inside the emergency entrance. A police officer was chatting the women up. Martin wiped his feet on a mat and made a dash toward the three of them. I followed and caught the end of the officer's conversation with the nurses. Something about his days working security on a big movie shoot in north Prince George the summer prior. He said he and the star, whose name I didn't catch, had become friends and started hanging out in the evening after shooting was done. "Oh Dave," one of the nurses said. "You are such a fibber."

Martin's clomping boots drew their attention. "Buck Fuller," he said. "What happened?"

"Whoa there, boy," Officer Dave said. "And who might you be?"

"I'm Martin. His son."

"And you?"

He looked at me with eyes like shovels.

"He works for us," Martin answered.

"He does, huh?"

Officer Dave looked me up and down. Passed some sort of judgment and said to Martin, "We need you to identify the body. It's just procedure and all of that." There was no feeling in his voice. He could have been a telemarketer pushing a product he knew nothing about. Like his job wasn't to care.

"What happened?" Martin asked again.

"As far as we can tell," said Officer Dave, "his truck slid off the road into a ditch along the highway. He wasn't... he wasn't wearing his seatbelt. We're guessing the force of his head hitting the windshield is what killed him."

Martin chuckled like a little boy. "That bastard. I told him. I told him that would happen," he said more to himself than to us.

"Pardon?" Officer Dave said.

"Buck never wore his damn seatbelt. Said seatbelts were like straightjackets. I told him he would die if he ever got into an accident. I told him."

Officer Dave, who couldn't have been much older than us, put his gloved hand on Martin's shoulder and directed Martin to a large green swinging door down the hallway.

"Will you come with me?" he asked me. "I don't think I can..."

The last thing I wanted to see was Buck lying dead on a metal trolley like a big slab of meat ready to be butchered. But I still felt like this had been all my fault. Accompanying Martin to the morgue was the least I could do. We pushed through the door and entered a room that smelled like disinfectant and shit. Fluorescent lights in the ceiling washed out the room. Made it look like an overexposed photo. Filled it with the hum of mosquitoes. The only thing in focus was the gurney in the centre of the room and the body lying on top of it. The body was covered head to toe with a white sheet. The same white as the light of the fluorescents.

"Are you sure you can do this?"

"Doesn't matter if he can't," said Officer Dave, who was a step behind us. "Procedure states he must."

I wanted to punch Officer Dave in the face. The guy was a serious jerk.

Martin ignored the both of us and dashed for the gurney. "Wait," Officer Dave said. "I'll lift it."

As I got closer I noticed the body under the sheet was missing much of Buck's size. "Are you sure this is Buck?" I asked.

"Only body in today."

Officer Dave grabbed the sheet and pulled it back revealing a woman.

"Who is that?" I asked

"Jesus, Steve," Martin said. "It's Buck. It's really him. I can't..."

I rubbed my eyes and looked at the body on top of the gurney again. It was Buck, blue and dead. His forehead was a deep purple, swollen out from the collision between face and glass. It was the only sign of an injury.

"I can't believe the fucker's actually dead."

"Hey Martin, are you okay here?"

"I... I don't know."

He turned around and walked out of the room as casually as someone walking out of a movie theatre.

Officer Dave pulled the sheet back up and followed Martin out, leaving me alone with the body of Buck Fuller. I wanted to leave, but I couldn't. I had seen a woman under that sheet as clearly as I could see the stainless-steel tools lying around the room. Her face had been as white as the sheet that hid it, except for two blush circles on her cheeks. Her hair was raven black and tied in a bun on top of her head. She looked like a life-sized China doll waiting to be wrapped up in plastic, stuck into a cardboard box and shipped of to some jewelry store in Bumfuck, Missouri. She was there and she was letting off the same coloured steam Martin had been letting off earlier in the day. I wanted to see that woman lying there, but the body under the sheet was Buck's.

"Am I to blame for this, Buck?'

Guilt was still something new to me. Though it wasn't infecting me completely, I knew it couldn't be more than a rest stop away. I needed to learn how to deal with it properly, so when I did get there, it didn't completely overwhelm me. Questioning a dead man probably wasn't the best way to start.

"Your friend Martin is in the car," Officer Dave said from the doorway, startling me. "Let's go. I'll drive you guys home."

Home.

Officer Dave stood there at the big swinging green door, waiting for me. He was going to take me home. If only he knew how difficult it was for me to tell him where home was.

23.

It was a strange ride home. The only one talking was Officer Dave and most of what he was talking was trash. With a complete lack of compassion, he told us that Buck was the first dead body he had ever seen in real life. "You see 'em a million times in the movies and in training films, but not till you see 'em in real life does it hit you how final death is. Honestly, boys, I'm still shakin'." Martin ignored him. I wanted to punch him in the face.

Officer Dave dropped us off at the hostel. We stood on the sidewalk and watched him spin the tires on his cruiser for several seconds before they got the grip they needed to continue forward. Then we went inside.

The hostel was dark except for the blinking red light on the answering machine. I flipped on the lights above us and went to Martin. He had taken a seat at the computer and was loading up a first-person shooter game I didn't know he had. I watched him for a minute. Looked for purpose in the game. He ran around the corridors of some underground world switching from one weapon to the next, killing everything in his path, whether it be friend or foe. With a chainsaw, he hacked off limbs and beat other adversaries to death with those hacked off limbs. He returned to the pixelated bodies of the dead and with double-barreled pump-action shotguns, he emptied round after round of ammunition into them. With the speakers off, the murderous rampage went on silent.

I went to the phone and hit play on the answering machine. The robotic voice announced that there were thirteen new messages. Candy had left twelve of them. In the first couple, anger filled her voice. In the next few: panic. Then she was passive. By the twelfth message, all I could feel in her was a deep sadness. She was sure Martin had acted out of nerves and fear. She was sure of it. She blamed herself: for not being there, for not understanding Martin's predicament. She called herself "a horrible horrible partner. A horrible person." Martin did not look away from his game once.

When Candy's voice cut out, message thirteen played. "Mr. Martin Fuller. My name is Phillip Halloway and I am your father's lawyer and the executor of his estate. Could you please give me a call when you get a chance? We need to discuss a few things. I will be here all night. Thank you. My phone number is..."

The pixelated beheadings stopped. "How the fuck would they... how could they know already?"

Before I could offer my thoughts, Martin picked up the phone and dialed the number Halloway had left. He started talking to someone almost immediately after he stopped dialing. He said "Uh huh" and "I understand" half a dozen times. He said, "I'll be there tomorrow," and hung up the phone. Then maybe to me, or to no one in particular, he said, "I'll be darned."

"What was that all about?"

Martin walked away without answering me. Without looking at me. As if I no longer was sitting there in his world. He locked himself in the bedroom nearest to the cafe, where he stayed until the next morning.

As I feigned sleep at the front desk, he slipped by me. Out of the hostel and into another snowy Prince George day. I heard his truck warming up. I heard it popping into gear and slipping its way into the city. I felt like the guy who had tagged along to the party and was left sitting on the couch sipping on a warm beer while all his buddies were in the kitchen, or on the balcony, or in the laundry room doing various sick things to girls they had just met. That guy who didn't know any of the other loud, drunken teenagers running around the house. That guy who wished he was anywhere than there, because at that moment, on that couch in that alien house, there was the loneliest place in the world.

All I could do was continue on like it was any other ordinary day at Fuller's Hostel, the loneliest place in the world. I made a pot of coffee and logged onto the Internet. The news site I frequented had a small caption on its upper right hand side that said I had been spotted. It was the first time I had seen my name on the site in weeks. I clicked the link and was sent to a short article with no byline. I was spotted in Finland, of all the strange places in the world I could've been hiding in. It was a tourist from B.C. who had spotted me playing a KENO machine in a mall in some small city called Pori. The tourist, who wasn't named, said that upon seeing me and recognizing me, he rushed back to his hotel room and contacted the Canadian Embassy. The embassy alerted the police. By the time Finnish police got to the mall, I was gone.

Seeing my name on the site made my heart race. It was an excitement I hadn't felt for weeks. I left the site up and I got myself a cup of coffee. While I was pouring the brew, someone knocked on the door and startled me. I spilled a bit of coffee on my hand. On the desk. "Shit," I mumbled and turned to see what kind of idiot wouldn't just come into a place that had a lit open sign next to the front door. Through the glass I saw Richard and Riley hitting each other on the shoulders.

"Hey... Hey, we need a room for the night," Richard yelled and banged his forehead against the window. "Are you guys open?"

"Yeah... we're fucking horny," Riley said uncharacteristically.

"Shut up, man. That's not cool," Richard shrieked. He punched Riley on the shoulder and this time Riley responded with a flinch.

"Jesus Rich... that hurt."

I unlocked the door and they tumbled into the hostel, bringing with them a handful of shit-sized clumps of snow that fell off their boots and melted on the linoleum floor. After every step they took, a little puddle was left as a reminder of the route they had taken. My socks and the bottoms of my feet were going to suffer. I just knew it.

Richard scanned the hostel. "Wow," he said, "this is a real business."

The nightmare of the thought I had had a moment earlier suddenly came true. A boot puddle dammed up against my foot and was quickly absorbed by my sock. "Christ, guys... take off your friggin' boots already." I peeled the sock off and grabbed a dry pair and a towel. I wiped up the puddles and when I was done I looked up at the two galoots standing above me, watching me like puppy dogs waiting for their walk. "Couldn't have maybe grabbed a towel and given me a hand?"

"You didn't ask?" Richard said.

"So that's how kids in Prince George are raised, eh?"

"What's that mean? Riley said.

"Forget it." I got up and tossed the wet towel at Riley, which he grabbed and tossed back down to the floor. "It's a little early," I said. "What do you guys want?"

"We had to see if everything..."

"Shut up, Riley."

"Seriously, what do you guys want?"

"Where's Martin?" Richard asked.

"I don't really know."

"How'd yesterday go?"

"What about yesterday?"

"You said Buck was coming down."

"Yeah."

"You said it was going to be a problem."

"Yeah."

There was a pause.

"Well..."

"Well what, Richard?"

"Did Buck make it down?" Riley said with a bit too much expectation.

"Shut up," Richard said. His lips twitched like they were holding something back. An admission. Or maybe a laugh.

"Come on, man, tell him," Riley said.

Richard looked over my shoulder at the computer. "Well look at that," he said. "You were seen in Finland."

I grabbed him the same way he had grabbed me that day we first met in the forest. I held onto his collar and I said very slowly, "What is going on?"

He flicked me away like I was a fly and he was a big middle finger. "You need to chill, Steve... Ryan... whatever the fuck you're calling yourself today. We like you, man. You need to know that. You bring a little excitement into our otherwise dreary lives. You seem like you're a little crazy and that craziness is a bit addictive. Who'd have known the kind of adrenaline one feels when they jump out onto the highway into the path of an oncoming pick-up truck. I mean, really... until you actually do it, you have no fucking idea."

"Can I sit down?" I asked as a sickening sense of deja vu ran through me.

"Why don't we all."

We each went for one of the various chairs lying around the hostel and we convened around the desk.

"We ran Buck off the road," Richard said cooly.

"Why?"

"You know... we were sitting in front of the TV the other night after being at Denny's with you and we were smoking this killer weed Riley's brother scored down in Harrison, and we were... we were intrigued by all the stuff you told us and we really wanted to hang out with you again. I mean, you know how hard it is to make new friends at this age..."

"I don't know... how to take that."

"Yeah, well we decided to force Buck to have a little car accident so he'd have to postpone your little meeting. So you could have a little more time to come up with a more intelligent way to deal with the problem. We assumed the roads would be quiet, you know, because of the snowfall and all. And we assumed he was still driving the same pickup he had when we were kids. We just waited at the side of the highway until we saw him coming. That was it, man. I jumped out in front of him and he swerved off the road to miss me. When the truck hit the tree, we ran."

He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, taking a moment to reflect on what he had done. Savouring it. And then he said, "And we caused that little sighting of yours as well."

"Huh?" I closed my eyes and saw my brain sparking. Misfiring. I was going into overload protection. My eyes glazed over and a string of saliva drooled from my mouth as I worked to process all that Richard had said.

"Yeah, Riley here spent a year in Finland when he was a kid. One of those Rotary exchange programs... So he calls up this buddy of his over there and this buddy of his places a call to the Canadian Embassy and then to the local news, acting as a Canadian tourist. It was all so easy. And fast. Yeah, that one was all Riley's idea."

Now it was Riley's turn to sit back in his chair with his arms crossed.

"I was amazed Riley, of all people, could even come up with an idea like that," Richard said, deflating Riley's moment. "And even more amazed people fell for it. It's ridiculous how gullible people can be."

There I was listening to Fraser and Todd talk about killing their boredom. But I had left Fraser and Todd broken and dead on a back road just outside of Abbotsford months ago. Do things ever really change. Sure, the landscape was different and the shops I spent money in had a different feel and the roads I walked along had different names, but even with all of those physical differences, I was still in the same place. I wondered, if I kept running my entire life, would I ever find a place I hadn't seen before?

"Isn't that just the shit?" Richard said and put out his hand for me to slap. He was seeking approval of their actions. And I couldn't. In my delay, Riley took the opportunity to offer his approval. They slapped hands and bounced in their chairs, sharing some sort of joy I couldn't comprehend.

And out of the shadows the parked truck suddenly appears. Why is it in the middle of the road? Didn't the owner have the foresight to push it out of the way of oncoming cars? I can brace myself for it, but the force of 100 kilometres an hour brought to zero in less than a second will tear my soul from my body. So why even try? I undo my seatbelt this time and I wait. The yellow lines, illuminated by the headlights, pass by in front of me like comets. The driver slams on the brakes, but we still skid as fast as we were driving. It is all so beautiful... and just as our truck is about to kiss the bumper of the truck parked in the middle of the road, the hostel door flies open.

Martin stepped in and a gust of flake-filled wind followed him. He turned and shut the door with both hands, and then he stood there staring at us in a stance that looked like he was about to be frisked by some leather-clad 'officer.' Had he noticed that I was sitting with two of Onin's Enforcers?

"Martin," I said. "What's going on?"

"You're not going to fucking believe it," he said.

My head was so full of information I thought it might explode if something else was crammed in, so I quickly dumped grade-eleven mathematics and freed enough space to hold whatever Martin was about to say.

"Believe what?"

His eyes widened when he finally realized who was sitting there with me, but he didn't speak to them. He only spoke to me. At me. "The fat bastard left me everything."

The colour in Richard and Riley's skin disappeared, They became still... even corpselike after Martin spoke.

I asked Martin to repeat himself.

24.

"Every fucking thing," Martin said slowly. "Everything he owned. All of the insurance money. It's all in my name. It all goes to me. Can you believe it?"

"But..."

"Jesus, Steve, I get his house and his car. I get this building. Get get get."

He opened his arms up like a planet had fallen into them. A new planet that was all his. Richard and Riley kept their heads down, most likely in embarrassment, or contemplation, of the outcome of their actions. An outcome I am sure they failed to consider.

"Martin," I said. "Are you okay?"

He ran over to Richard and Riley and put his hands on their shoulders. "Am I okay?" he repeated jovially. "Hell, I have never been better in all my life. That bastard dying was the best thing that ever happened to me. Shit, I'm so excited I think I'm going to piss my pants. Just a sec. I'll be right back."

Martin darted for the washroom, leaving the three of us to make sense of what had just happened. I whispered to Richard not to say a word about what they had done and he whispered my same advice to Riley. Riley whispered, "I think I'm going to throw up." I think we all had that same thought.

From the washroom, Martin yelled, "Sorry guys... sorry for being so rude, but hell, it's good to see you both again.

"Likewise," Richard and Riley said together.

When Martin returned, coloured steam was filtering out of the pores in his exposed skin. It was the same coloured steam I had seen pouring out of the body in the hospital. The same coloured steam now pouring out of Richard's and Riley's body. I rubbed my eyes, but the steam remained.

"Do you guys..."

I stopped asking my question mid sentence. I already knew the answer. The GHB running through my system, the shit happening in my brain. I was damaged.

"Shit," Martin said as he grabbed a chair and sat down next to me in our little circle. "How the hell did you guys end up in my hostel on a day like this. I mean, I haven't seen you guys..." He stopped for a moment and I saw what he was thinking. I saw Onin and the flames as the burned away their childhood forever. "... in like forever."

Riley shuffled in his seat. His forehead glistened and the white of his face was now even whiter. He looked to Richard, hoping Richard might offer up an answer. But Richard was just as gone as he was. "Uh..."

"I met them in the forest the other day," I said. "They just happened to drop by today to see what I was up to."

Richard thanked me with a smile.

"You guys look like you're scared shitless of me," Martin said.

"It's not that," Richard said, finally finding his voice. "It's just... This is just a little weird."

"Well, then, we have to get past that weirdness," Martin declared, "because this is the first fucking day in Martin Fuller's new life, and as is the norm with any new birth, a celebration must occur. I'm rich boys. Fucking rich. They estimate Buck's estate is worth more than a million bucks. A million fucking dollars."

The coloured steam didn't stop pouring from their skin. As they talked about the good ol' days, the room became hazier and hazier. Shades of red and green and blue. Wetting my brows. Burning my eyes. And as they took turns sharing stories from the years in-between their coming together again, only the uneasiness that had existed earlier, evaporated away. At some point Martin excused himself and ran out to his truck. He returned with a flat of beer and a bottle of vodka. An hour later we were drunk and laughing and swearing and hypothesizing about the immense distance one could stretch a million dollars.

Richard said he'd rent the Goodyear Blimp. Said he'd fly it around the world stopping in every key city along the way, where he would indulge in as much weed and as many women as he could. He'd just drop that blimp right in the middle of the first road he saw and he wouldn't care about the chaos it would cause, because with that kind of money, he didn't have to care.

Riley said he'd give most of the money to some wildlife foundation, revealing a sensitive side Richard hadn't even known about. For that, Riley received a severe arm beating from both Martin and Richard. After the beating stopped, he changed his idea. He said something about being a guest on the Jerry Springer Show. He said he'd spend every one of the million dollars just to throw a chair at that smug motherfucker and knock him out cold. It was a stupid idea, but we liked it a lot better than giving the money to some stupid wildlife foundation.

"What about you, Steve?" Richard asked. "What would you do with a million dollars?"

A pain shot up from my bladder.

"Hold that question for a moment," I replied. "There's a beer, or ten, behaving badly in my stomach. I must remove it."

As I stood above the toilet pissing out the past hours worth of draught, a thought slithered into my head. I don't know how it got in there, but it overtook everything else I had been thinking about. Like a plague, it knocked those thoughts off one by one until I could barely remember how to shake and pull up my pants.

Share the drug.

Without flushing or washing my hands I left the washroom and went to the closet where I kept my GHB. It was well hidden under some sheets and an extra comforter. Well hidden, if it was a child hiding it. I took one of the mason jars and returned to the café area of the hostel, where Martin and Riley were engaged in an arm wrestle.

Richard swayed in his chair as he cheered Martin on. "Beat that bitch," he slurred. "Beat him good."

Martin pinned Riley's arm on the desk and Richard counted loud and drunkenly, "One... two..."

Riley's face went red and a vein in his forehead popped out and pulsed furiously. He couldn't budge from Martin's pin.

"Three!"

They all laughed and slapped hands and said things like, "Shit, I've missed hanging out with you."

It was all so tear jerking.

I purposely coughed and drew their attention. I wasn't sure how they'd react to the drug. I wasn't sure why I was even bringing it out, except to maybe appease the snake in my head, so maybe I could start thinking about other things.

Share the drug.

"What's that?" Martin asked.

I could have told him it was the catalyst to the position we had found ourselves in. I could have explained the chain reaction it had caused to get us there. Had I done this, there were two possible outcomes. Martin would either embrace me and the drug, or he would deck me again. I chose to leave out the fact that the drug was to be blamed for everything. Instead, I chose to tell him I bought it off one of the hostellers late in the summer.

"This is... GHB."

"Shit," Richard said. "I tried some of that shit at a rave last year. I can't believe how much of it you've got there."

"Yeah, well... the dude said he needed the cash."

"What's that shit do to you?" Martin asked.

To describe what GHB did to me would have scared them from any possibility of trying it, so I dumbed down the effects quite substantially. "I guess it just gets you drunker a little faster."

"Yeah, man," Richard jumped in. "It also makes you really happy. The guy who gave it to me called it FKDUP. "

Martin looked up at me and said, "Well, happiness is today's slogan, so bring it on. Will you guys have a bit, too?" Riley and Richard accepted almost too willingly. "I mean, the snow's really falling now and there sure as hell isn't anything else to do today."

The snow was suddenly falling very hard. It knocked against the window like it was dying to find a room for the night.

Using a spoon, I dripped the GHB into their beers. "Wagers on who can drain it first?" Martin pulled out his wallet and took out a five-dollar bill. He tossed the bill on the desk in front of Richard's can of beer. "Are you guys in?"

"Well, we're not all millionaires now, are we?" Richard said.

"Ah, whatever... first one finished gets the five dollars. Go."

Without thinking about it, the three of them had their cans to their mouths. Their Adam's apples bobbed up and down rapidly as the beer and the drug drained down their throats. It spilled onto their shirts and spilled onto the floor.

Martin slammed his can to the desk first. "Done!"

Riley stopped gulping and a mouthful of beer spat out of his mouth unable to go anywhere else. "Shit," he said. "I couldn't do that in high school and I can't do it now."

Richard slammed his can on the desk. "Pathetic," he said of Riley.

They wiped their mouths with their sleeves and Martin asked me why I didn't join.

"I like it straight," I said. I poured the GHB onto the spoon and I wrapped my lips around it. My tongue tingled under the weight of the spoon and the drug. I always loved that little moment just before I tipped the spoon and let the drug flow into me. When the spoon was empty, I filled it again, and repeated the process.

They all asked for more and I gave it to them, but after they finished the second round, they slipped into a unified unconsciousness. I panicked at first, but the panic faded when they all started snoring and talking in their sleep.

The coloured steam continued to rise off their bodies and fill up the hostel. I waved my hands to clear my view, but the faster I waved, the thicker the steam got. It was a technicolour soup I couldn't quite eat up. And then in the middle of the blues and the reds and the greens I saw a black shape dart out from the hallway. It rushed past me leaving a panel of clarity in the steam behind it. The black shape moved what looked like an arm over each of the bodies slumped over and asleep on the desk. Then it opened what looked like a mouth and it sucked up all of the steam.

As the colours went in to its mouth, they filled out its features. The pinks and the reds and the browns built its face and its hair and its body. When the room was completely empty of the steam, standing there in front of me was the woman I had seen lying on the gurney in the hospital. She was naked, like she had dropped straight from heaven and landed not in Prince George in the middle of some damp smelling hostel, but in the middle of Eden. I felt myself getting hard. The bulge in my jeans proved it.

My cheeks burned with embarrassment until I told myself I had to be hallucinating.

"Don't be ashamed," she said.

"Are you... real?"

She picked up Martin's arm and dropped it back onto the desk. The thumping sound stirred the other two, but they did not wake.

"Does that answer your question?"

"This... this is all just a hallucination. I know it is. I've hallucinated naked women a million times. It's the drug."

"Yes... yes it is. It is the drug that connects us. It opens your mind just enough to let me in. Ryan, it is the drug that allows you to see."

She walked toward me. Her body carried the odour of trees and soil and life. I got even more drunk on her. The room began spinning faster and faster as she got closer to me. And then she was gone and the spinning stopped.

"We are all dying, Ryan."

She was in me, penetrating me with her warmth. I fell onto a chair and slumped my head forward as she wrapped her fingers around my brain and massaged it.

"I need you, Ryan."

A dark, warm spot grew from the bulge in my jeans. Her words made me come.

"I created the world with the snap of my fingers. It grew and grew and grew to the point where it has grown out of hand. Man, my most cherished creation, lost the point somewhere along the way, and I don't think I will ever be able to teach him again what that point was. I have a million eyes in the sky that watch as my ideas and ideals unravel. Every night I lose a hundred of those eyes. They burn out leaving the world a little darker than the night before. One night, Ryan, there will only be two eyes left in the sky. This will be the night after which the world will not see another day. This is the night I need you to prepare for me."

"Prepare for you?"

"Yes, Ryan. I need you to find me the Adams and the Eves that will recreate a new world: one that I will be able to control and correct. I need you to find me those people I can take away to begin anew. You see, when the night comes, where only two of my eyes are left in the sky, I will use what little sight I have left to assume the shape of a great winged unicorn and I will swoop down and pick the chosen ones up on my back. I will carry you away to a place greater than heaven and greater than hell where you will procreate and you will recreate a society of loving, peaceful individuals."

"You are not real."

"But how can you say that. I have been with you for a long time. I chose you, because you were looking for a way out. I am the answer that has always been on the tip of your tongue. I am the God for you to believe in and for you to serve. Deny it all you want, but in your heart you know the truth. I am offering you the chance to start over fresh. You will never again have to run from the falsities that fill your life. You, like your friend Martin, will be born again. It is what you have always wanted. Is it not?"

"Am I going crazy?"

"Look at your friends. The steam is the key. It is your little marker to help you in your search."

"You want these three to help populate this new world of yours? You really expect me to accept that?"

"Ryan, you said it yourself. These three are just like you."

"But what am I supposed to do? I mean, I'm hiding because a whole city thinks I killed those girls. I can't just go into the open and sell this whole crazy prophecy of yours."

"You don't have to, Ryan. You've already begun the process. It is just a matter of following it through. Remember, the world is not as small as it used to be."

An invisible force turned my head toward the computer.

"Under the stars of a springtime sky. The map has been made. They are already out there looking for you. They will follow the map, if you tell them it's for real."

And then she was gone.

Feathers flowed through my veins tickling my body awake.

Something new was in my head. It was a consciousness that hadn't existed before She entered me. The nerves and neurons in my brain that had been misfiring most of my adult life found a connection and the energy and knowledge these newly formed circuits gave me was almost orgasmic. I was awake and coherent. I no longer sought to question my sanity, even though I was seeing things that could have only been found in dreams, or in the hallucinations brought upon by some illicit drug. Rolling white hills grew and dipped from the walls. There were shapes in the spaces between the snow that pounded against the window. Shapes of men and women walking hand in hand laughing, because life was such a wonderful thing. More coloured steam billowed off the bodies of Richard, Riley, and Martin.

An image from my childhood.

Had I closed my eyes and tried to look back at my childhood I would see relatively little. That is, the memories that I did have were nothing more than snippets of events all thrown together in this big soup bowl leaving me very little to pull out and specifically identify. There were the umpteen birthday parties with screaming kids and frantic parents putting on flimsy masks of enjoyment. I couldn't tell you which one I went to Chuck-E-Cheese and which one we lined up for an hour to see Return of the Jedi. There were the hundreds upon hundred of schooldays, one not much different than the other, where we learned a hundred thousand little things that never did us any good and over several hundred weekends I played several hundred soccer games, losing twice as many as I won. During sleepovers we fought dozens of wars, our armies comprised of G.I. Joes and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with missing limbs. A thousand faces came and went during summer holidays and fieldtrips, and youth camps, and a thousand times I wondered, "Will I remember this when I grow up?" My childhood was great. A million events occurred between the age of zero and twelve. Ask me to pick out one specific event and I would be at a loss. There was no time for specifics in youth. Learn it. Experience it. Move on.

I say this to emphasize the one experience I do have from my childhood that is loaded with specifics. There are dates attached to this experience. There are smells and emotions. There are images so clearly definable, it's like the whole thing happened yesterday.

My one prevailing memory from the twelve years that encompassed my childhood was the man with the cross. It was common knowledge that things weren't supposed to make sense to a child. Questions were our vitamins. Questions were what allowed us to grow in life and experience all that life had to offer us. We had to know, because we did not know. All my questions about girls were answered. All my questions about drugs were answered. I learned about the consequences of driving a car while you are drunk and the consequences of getting caught trying to steal a House of Pain cassette. I had several questions about the man with the cross, but none of them were ever answered.

He came to me the very first day we moved into our house across the street from Jericho Beach. There was a continuous excitement during my time in that house, but who wouldn't be excited? I was ten years old and fifteen feet from the beach, living in a house large enough for a family of ten. Two blocks down from us were some of the largest homes in Vancouver. They were homes with identities, with names like Brock House and Charlemagne. We weren't rich, but as my father liked to say, "We're doin' a hell of a lot better than most of the other saps out there."

My life consisted of movies, candy, the odd book report on Treasure Island, or Chile, fish and chips, and Nintendo. God, I spent hours banging away on those a and b buttons, mindless of the realities of my parents financial trouble, and mindless of what the future had in store.

My parents had set the Nintendo up on a desk in front of a large first floor window that looked out on the street and the beach across the street. The Nintendo was to keep my brother and I out of their hair while they unpacked in their bedroom. As big as the house was, we could still hear the yelling. Ahh, the yelling, a daily occurrence and just one more ingredient in my childhood soup. We were taking turns trying to save the princess in Super Mario 3 when he passed along the sidewalk in front of the window. He was wearing a suit and tie, but he had no shoes on. He moved slowly, because he was dragging a giant wooden cross. It was turned sideways and one of the cross's arms was pulled over his shoulder. His shoulder was then wedged into the nook where the two pieces of wood crossed. I ran down to the sidewalk and watched him. Like a modern day Jesus, out from the office, he was heading toward some crucifixion only he knew about, past Jaguars and BMWs, past homes with five- car garages and tennis courts, away from a curious ten-year-old kid named Ryan. He did not shout at people as they drove by, and he did not talk to himself. He just stared at the ground and walked. When he walked around a bend and disappeared from my sight, all that proved I had really seen him was the trail of wood splinters and wood dust chalked into the sidewalk in front of me. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen in my life.

The man returned the same time the very next week. His cross was a little shorter. His burden, a little lighter. His suit was torn and dirty, like it hadn't been taken off since the week before. A beard grew where a week earlier was a clean-shaven face.

He walked by at exactly the same time the week after that and the week after that. Eventually, the man with the cross was able to carry the cross, instead of drag it. He was able to do this, because by the sixth week, it looked like nothing more than a wonky plus sign. By this time he looked like any of the other bums that made their homes in the alleys and burned out buildings around Vancouver. After the sixth week, the man with the cross stopped walking along the sidewalk outside of our home. After the sixth week, I never saw the man with cross again.

My father said he was glad the man with the cross was gone. He said, "Wackos like that shouldn't be allowed to walk the streets." He said, "People who do things like that are usually crazy," and, "Crazy people are usually dangerous people." He said the religious nuts were the most dangerous of them all. I was too young then to care for much more of an explanation.

Yes, the man with the cross remains one of the only specific memories I have from my childhood. The six days he crossed my path were six days where something so out of place entered my world. It was six days where I remember what the weather was like. I remember whether or not the breeze that brushed against my body was carrying the smell of the ocean in front of our house or the smell of the park behind our house.

And I remember the dreams that came afterwards.

About the time he stopped walking up our road, dragging that big, wooden cross behind him, I began having terrible nightmares that continued to haunt my sleep for years. In the beginning the nightmares were about him. They were the type of dream where you're alone in a giant house wrapped up in your blanket in your bed trying to assure yourself the noises you're hearing are just those made by the fierce storm raging outside your window. They were the type of dream where the lightening flashes and a silhouette of someone outside appears. I'd hear a bang bang bang on my window, and then the giant wooden cross would smash through it and the barefooted man in the suit would be standing their with rain water pouring down his face and the flickering light of the streetlights glaring off his teeth and he would be laughing maniacally. He would be laughing and shouting, "The end is near!"

The end is near.

It was something I had thought about a lot, especially spending those formative teen years in a bible belt. It was written on rocks and on signs throughout the city. It was written all over the news.

Yes, the media was the chronicler of the end. Through the media I lived through pointless wars and poverty and famine. I saw a growing number of wealthy men get richer while an even larger number of poor men got poorer. I watched as decency disappeared, only to be replaced by complacency. Through the media I learned the world wasn't such a content place. I learned that we were imploding. Jokingly, I would read the paper and say to whomever happened to be around me, "Well look at that, the end of the world is near." And then I'd say something like, "that's probably for the best, because I really need a vacation."

I looked over at the three men passed out on the desk of Fuller's Hostel, and I said, "The end of the world is near."

And I had never been more ready for it.

25.

The coffee brewed and a chalky steam flowed from the top of the coffee maker. It spread through the room like the hand of God, bringing new life to everything it touched. Three sleepy heads raised up when it touched them. Up from the pillows their arms had made. Martin rubbed his eyes with his two closed fists. Riley wiped away drool that had crusted on his chin.

I welcomed them home.

"What happened?" Richard asked.

"You fell asleep. It's one of the effects of taking too much of the drug. I apologize. I only know my limits. I guess it's different for everyone."

"Now I know why they use that shit as a date-rape drug," Riley said.

"Date rape, huh? Shit, you could have killed us," Martin said half-jokingly.

"Nah.. I know the fatal levels. I'd never do that to you guys. Besides, we have way too much to talk about. I brewed some coffee. Who's game?"

They stared at me like something was different about me but they couldn't put their finger on it. Like I was an upgraded version of the me they once knew with a whole bunch of new features they weren't quite sure how to use. The phone rang and cut off any attempt they may have tried.

Our heads turned toward it. We all sensed something. Something wrong.

Two rings.

Three rings.

"I'll get it," I said.

There was a second of silence after I picked up the phone and said hello. In that second I heard a sobbing breath being sucked in. "Put Martin on."

It was Candy. "I... I don't know if he's here."

"Please," she said. "It's about... it's about the baby."

I cupped the receiver and mouthed to Martin that it was about the baby. Martin's shoulders slumped forward as he slowly got up from his chair and dragged his body to me and the phone. I handed him the phone and stepped back.

"Hey, baby," he said. "I've got some great..."

He stopped because he couldn't get another word past her cries, which we all heard. As he held the phone to his ear listening to Candy on the other end, his bottom lip began to quiver. Streams of blood flooded into the whites of his eyes and tears collected beneath the streams. He turned his back to us and he whispered into the phone, "I'm sorry, baby. I'm so sorry."

Richard tapped Riley on the shoulder and said quietly, "Let's go."

They stood up and tiptoed to the door. Richard waved at me, and then made the hang ten phone signal with his hand letting me know he'd call later. They opened the door to the hostel and were instantly erased by the white nothingness that suckled the outside world.

The door slammed shut and an already freaked Martin jumped.

"Sorry," I whispered... but he was already over it.

I floated across the hostel floor and locked myself in the room I had used since the summer hostelling season had ended. The bed was unmade and the sheets were speckled in stains. Had I not changed them since summer? The gall some people had still amazed me. The walls were paper-thin, yet they'd go right ahead and fuck, and they couldn't care less who heard. Of course, the only one that usually heard anything was me, seeing as the hostel only had the two rooms.

The sound of destruction filled the hostel.

Martin was swearing and throwing things. I wanted to step out of the room and comfort him. I knew what Candy was going to say the second I heard her voice. When Martin had said he had kicked Candy, he had meant it. Abuse begets abuse. Even though he never came out and said it, I knew Buck had the tendency to smack Martin around. I knew Martin's greatest fear was turning into his father. Hell, it was a fear most of us had.

Glass shattered. That bothered me a lot, because I knew the glass shattering was the coffee pot. It was the coffee pot full of fresh, tasty coffee that would never be enjoyed. But it wasn't about the coffee anymore. It was about sympathy, and I was now a bringer of sympathy to the lost. To Martin, for Martin's mess was now as great as mine. The rampage went on for several minutes and then it stopped. Were we merely in the eye of the storm?

There was a tap on my door.

"Steve... Steve, I don't think we're going to be open for business for a while."

"What?"

"Well, I just smashed the place up."

Our conversation continued on through the closed door.

"Do you feel better now?"

"I don't know... I'm definitely worn out."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't know."

I got off of the bed and stepped closer to the door.

"Martin, if I come out there, do you promise not to hit me?"

"Why would I hit you, Steve?"

"Well..."

"Steve, I'm the only one to blame for what's happened in the last few days."

Suddenly, I didn't feel the need to take caution. I felt Martin's honesty through the hollow door. He had surrendered. I unlocked the door and opened it a crack. "Are you okay?"

"Well," he said. "I could use a cup of coffee."

"Didn't you just throw the pot against the wall?"

"How'd you know?"

"Kind of a sixth sense I guess."

"Yeah, I did, but I poured the coffee into cups first."

"You are..." I was going to call him one of a kind, but before I could get it out he shoved the door open, pushing me back a step. "Martin, you said..."

He came at me and put his arms out like they were going to wrap around my neck. But his arms slipped past my neck and wrapped around my body instead. He squeezed me close to him and he laid his forehead down on my shoulder. We stood there embracing for almost a minute before he spoke. I had never hugged another man like that before. I never thought I could.

"Steve, I'm in a lot of trouble."

"I figured that."

A state of emergency could have been enacted upon seeing the destruction in the hostel's café. It was like Martin had taken the form of a tornado that somehow became confined to that one small area. Chairs were broken. Table legs were snapped. Glass was broken. The computer monitor lay on the floor, the desk pulled over on top of it.

On the floor by the front door sat two coffee mugs, the two lone survivors after the tornado. They could have been a little old couple surveying the damage their insurance company surely wasn't going to cover. Martin retrieved them and handed them to me. "Sorry, I tossed the milk jug. You'll have to drink it black."

"Yeah... yeah, that's okay."

He flipped the front desk back onto its feet and ran to the back closet where my GHB was stored. He returned with two folding chairs. We set them up around the desk and we looked out over the destruction. "I knew I shouldn't have bought so much of that Swedish furniture. It's all crap. I mean, look at this. It can't even stand up to a tantrum."

"Martin," I said and handed him one of the mugs. "Tell me what happened."

He took a sip of his coffee and looked at me. "She miscarried the baby."

"I'm... I'm so sorry."

"But that's... that's not the worst part."

"Not the worst part?"

"No."

How could it be any worse?

"She told everyone..." He stopped and took another sip of his coffee. "Sorry, the coffee's so cold. I didn't expect to be having such a long fit."

"Martin. What did she tell everyone?"

"She told everyone..." he began shaking. "She told everyone she fell down the stairs."

"What?"

"She said she didn't want to get me in trouble. She said she didn't care about the baby. She just cared about me. Steve, what's wrong with her?"

"I..." I didn't know how to answer that.

"Steve, I've got to go back up there and make things right. I've got to tell someone what I did. This... this is going to haunt me forever if I don't."

Martin put his hand on my knee. "I've got to go."

I put my hand on his hand and coloured steam rose up from between my fingers. It rose up to the ceiling. It filled the room and I sucked it in. "Martin, I never told you what I'd do with a million dollars if I had it."

"What the fuck, Steve?" He said, pulling away from me as though I was diseased.

"No, listen. Listen to me. I believe I have the answer to all of our problems."

The gears in my head began spinning a hundred times faster than they had ever spun before. The blood moved faster through my brain, giving me the clarity and the confidence to introduce Martin to the prophecy Adhara had spoken of. In him I saw vulnerability. I saw a sponge looking for the liquid that would fill it up. I had to fill him up.

"What are you talking about, Steve? You sound a little crazy. Everybody's sounding a little crazy these days. What the hell is going on?"

"Martin, I thought I was going crazy for the longest time, but then I realized it is my destiny."

"Steve, you're scaring me here."

He sucked down the rest of his cold coffee; he stood and walked backwards away from me. "Steve, I think I better go now. I'm sorry for leaving this mess with you, but... I gotta go."

"Martin. Look out the window. It's a white out. You know they won't let you on the highway. Be realistic."

"Realistic? Listen to you. You're talking about destinies and shit, and I just found out I killed my unborn baby. Who the fuck have you killed, Steve?"

"Martin," I smiled up at him. "You know who I am. You've always known who I was. But you've also known that we were very much alike. That is why you never turned me in. That is why you entrusted me with the hostel and with Buck. I've felt this bond, and because of that I feel I can share with you a most important, most unbelievable bit of information. This information will set us on a path to rejuvenation. It will allow us to lead the lives we never got a chance to lead before. It will show us there is so much more than just this."

For emphasis I opened my arms and pointed out the hostel. I suddenly felt like a sincere salesman, an oxymoron if ever there was one. The authenticity of my speech, of my tone was something I'd never heard in my voice before. I was passionate about what I was about to say and that passion flowed from a well in my soul Adhara had tapped.

"Who are you, Steve?"

"My name... my name is Ryan Paul and the day before the day I walked into your hostel was the single worst day of my life."

"You're... you're the one they've been looking for. You..." He ran his eyes over my body. "That's right. I... knew that. I just... after I figured it out I guess I just never wanted to admit that I knew. You and I... we got along so well. It's just so hard to find... You know, everybody's so... so busy and focused on getting a career and getting a wife and having kids... and it all fades away. I..."

"Martin, what if I knew for a fact that the world was coming to an end?"

He scrunched his nose. "Did you kill those girls?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"Did you kill your baby?"

He dropped his head.

"I'm sorry," I said. "That was unfair of me. Listen, if it makes you feel any better, I did not kill those girls. I was merely a pawn in a game a couple of people with too much time on their hands were playing. Please believe me."

"Steve... Ryan..."

"Call me Ryan."
"Are all those jars in the back filled with GHB?"

"Yes."

"Why do you have that much GHB?"

"I don't really know yet."

"Yet?"

"Martin, I was lead here for a reason. I was lead here by God."

"Holy shit, Ryan."

"Martin, what is it you crave?"

"What?"

"If you could have the one thing in the world that you've been dying to have for as long as you can remember, what would it be?"

"This is crazy, man."

"All right, maybe it is a little crazy, but humour me."

"I don't know..."

"You do know, Martin. It's the same thing Richard and Riley want. It's the same thing I want."

"Well, I guess all I've ever really wanted was a mother. But that's kind of gay, isn't it?"

"A mother. A mother's love. There's nothing gay about it, Martin. What if I told you I could give you that mother?"

"I'd say you're full of shit."

"Martin, I didn't believe it until I saw Her with my own eyes and I felt Her. I didn't believe I could be chosen to parlay her prophecy, but it all adds up. One step has taken me to the next, and until now I hadn't been able to see that. Until now I thought I was going crazy, when in fact, I was merely becoming more aware."

"Aware of what?"

He squatted and put his elbows on his knees and his chin in the cup his hands made. He looked at me no longer in fear, but in interest. My words were doing something they never had done before. The words were selling this idea that any sane minded individual would find crazy.

"Aware of the truth, Martin. The truth is we are in a downward spiral. Actions no longer have consequences. You know this and I know this from personal experience. A woman... a god, who has used me as her vessel for several months now has told me we are as near to Armageddon now as we ever have been. There is no stopping the coming of the end. She has said this is so. But she has also said that she had learned through her errors here and she has made it correct elsewhere. She has offered a select few salvation. She has offered to make a select few the fathers and the mothers of a new world where the meaning of life is found in love, not in hate. She has chosen me to spread this word to you, and to the others who have been chosen."

He stood up again. "This... this woman, you say, has chosen me to be a part of this? She said, 'Martin Fuller, come on down?' It sounds like the drugs have permanently fucked you up. You know what? You're a fucking psycho, Ryan."

"Martin, I need your money. I need it to build a camp in the forest where we can prepare for Her. I need it to find the others she has chosen. She will be here one night and when she takes us away, this world will end and our new world will begin. She has told me this is the way it's going to happen."

"I can't take this anymore. Nothing makes sense here. Nothing. You. Candy. You're all crazy. You're all just looking for an excuse to hide the truths in your own lives. You're looking for some sort of... of diversion so reality won't find you. Stop it! Just stop it!"

He slipped his boots on and ran out the front door. The snow dissolved him before I could figure out which way he was going.

A minute later the door flung open and he reappeared.

"Fuck! I can't see a foot in front of me out there. I haven't seen snow fall like that in... well, in forever."

He kicked off his boots and rubbed his bare arms. "I really didn't expect to get far without my coat."

"So why'd you leave?"

"Because you're a fucking psycho."

Gears were shifting, oils were lubricating, and words were forming. "Martin, aren't you bored of this? I mean, what do we do? We're born. We live brutal lives fighting for position and power and respect, which nobody seems to give anymore. And we die. Even if I am just spouting off crazy talk, doesn't it sound intriguing? Doesn't it sound possible? We can build this society of people just like us: people looking for substance and love. We can give them something to believe in. We can give them a purpose. Isn't that all we really want? A little purpose? I know I do."

He sat back down next to me and we sat silent and watched as colours seeped into the white outside the window. First it was the grays and the blues of the space between the road and the hostel, and the area underneath the awning drew itself onto the canvas in front of us. Then the road and Martin's truck appeared. A few other cars parked and partially buried across the road came into view. And as the flakes began to trickle down in no more than a dusting, we saw the many shop lights along First Street.

"Look," Martin finally said. "Barlow's is open. I think I'm going to run across and get a new coffee machine. I could really use a hot cup of coffee. How about you?"

"That sounds like a good idea. I'll start cleaning up around here while you're gone."

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."

26.

We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the hostel. The broken furniture was tossed in the back alley where we hoped it would be buried by a few more months of snow. We swept up glass and months worth of dust bunnies and hair tumbleweeds from the café's floor. We changed sheets and we put new duvets on the quilts.

During the process I found the picture of Amanda I had kept back when Albert picked me up on the side of the road. The wall and the back right post of the bed had enveloped it. It was a picture we had taken in one of those photo booths outside the movie theatre in Abbotsford. Four shots for two dollars. She sat alone looking away from the camera. Her blond hair was as white as snow that had been plowed and was piled up on the sides of the road. The cheap black and white photos tended to do that to light colours. I remembered that day. I didn't want to take the pictures. We were late for the movie, but she insisted because we didn't have any pictures of the two of us together. I refused and I refused again, but she went right ahead and jumped in the booth. The first shot snapped off while she was calling for me to join her. The second shot showed me stepping into the booth. The third and fourth shot showed a happy girl and a perturbed boy trying hard to be the couple they both hoped they could be. She ripped off the picture that showed the side of her head and she gave it to me. She ripped off the second picture and then ripped it into a hundred tiny bits and tossed it on the sticky floor of the movie theatre. The third and fourth pictures she kept. It was only fair.

I tucked the picture into my back pocket.

The coffee was our gasoline. Martin splurged and bought a hundred-dollar coffee machine with a stainless steel carafe. There would be no more cooking the coffee on the burner, which really never bothered me anyways. There would be no more breaking the coffee pot because it was made out of glass. He was proud of his purchase and I was proud of him for the foresight to purchase something so logical.

Exhaustion beat us both into unconsciousness around nine that night. Since Martin had returned with the coffee machine we hadn't once mentioned our talk from earlier in the day. I knew he was thinking about it. I knew he needed to digest all that I had fed him. He knew better than to just jump right in and try swimming the English Channel after such a big meal.

Adhara was in me. She didn't need the drugs to open me up to her anymore.

She came to me in my natural dreams. She told me to be persistent. Persistence was the key. It was what my mother always told me. She told me to be patient. The snow wouldn't clear until April, and therefore, it wouldn't begin until April. April. A year from when it all began. A year from when the girls in Abbotsford went missing. She said they would find me under the stars. They would find me and follow me through until the end. She assured me of that. She assured me she would never abandon me.

When I woke up the next morning Martin was standing over me. Looking down on me.

"What's up, Martin?" I asked. His eyes seemed cold and distant. Martin had the ability to snap. I had seen it several times. I didn't want this to be one of those times.

"What's her name?"

"Who?"

"God... your god."

"Her name is Adhara."

He scratched his cheek. Coffee brewing in the café was stretching its steamy hands into my room, tempting me. Taunting me. Willing me to ignore Martin and make a dash for it.

"That's... that's quite beautiful, isn't it?" he said.

"Yes it is. I believe it means 'the Maiden' in Arabic."

"Arabic, huh?"

"What would you like, Martin?"

"I think... I think I saw her last night, Ryan. She was standing at the foot of my bed and her black hair was flowing behind her like there was a wind blowing in my room. It was so dark, but I could see her perfectly. She was smiling and she had her arms open and I felt... I felt like I needed to cry on her shoulder. I needed to open up to her and tell her all of the bad things I've done in my life. I needed to feel her skin on mine. Not in a sexual way or anything... but..."

"I know, Martin."

He sniffed up the snot that had dripped down around his nostrils. "I phoned Candy earlier. I phoned her and told her to come down here as soon as she could. I told her I want her to join me in something very important. I didn't want to explain too much of it to her, but she just loves me so much and I... and I really love her... and she said she would die with me if that's what I asked her to do. If I joined you, Ryan, it would have to be with Candy by my side."

His quick acceptance of the situation came as a shock. His one condition was unforeseen, but it was not at all an obstacle. "If you'll let me talk to Candy when she gets here and she is willing to help us, because this not about forcing people to do what they don't want to do... if she is willing to help us, then it will be allowed."

"Ryan, are we crazy?"

"I don't know," I said. "I guess if everyone wasn't a little crazy nothing would ever get accomplished."

"That doesn't make me feel any better."

An endless flow of coffee filled our mugs as I told him everything I could. I told him about what Adhara had prophesied and how it would come about. I told him about every little event that seemed to lead to me sitting there talking about it to him. I told him about the coloured steam and about the narcolepsy. I told him how I now believed she had given it to me so I'd eventually get the drug that would open me up to her. He listened with a kindergarten student's ear, focused on every little twist and turn. He said things like, "No way," and "Unbelievable," and when the story was over he fell back in his chair and said, "whooee".

The winter dragged on.

Candy couldn't get down till late March when the roads were clear enough to get a bus down them, and her father felt confident enough to let her get on that bus. Candy and Martin talked on the phone everyday. They talked about everything and anything, except what was going to happen in April. She pushed, but Martin was solid about not giving out anything until she got to Prince George. Listening in on their gushy trivialities I always felt the smallest pangs of envy.

In late February, almost three hundred thousand dollars cash went into Martin's bank account. The home, the building and Buck's other assets totaled around six hundred thousand, but Martin said he couldn't be bothered selling them until it was absolutely necessary. He sent a few thousand dollars up to Candy for her bus ticket and some new clothes, and the rest he left for us to use in the future. We stayed up late into the night eating copious amounts of food, drinking coffee, and building our commune from the ground up. First we drew it on paper, and then we constructed it in model form using balsa wood, glue, and gravel. I told him about the clearing in the forest I had found, and eventually we convinced Richard and Riley to get on board and help us find that clearing again. At first they joined us because they said they had nothing better to do, but after we had found the clearing again and trampled over it leaving footprints in the snow and blueprints in our minds, their focus became almost obsessive. They came to the hostel every day full of ideas and full of excitement. And every day they believed in my words a little more and I believed I could really do what we were setting out to do a little more.

When I slept at night, Adhara slept next to me in the plains that made up my dreamscapes. We slept among the wildflowers one night, and the next night we slept in a field of corn. We'd be on the sands of an endless beach another night, or simply laid out across a king-sized bed. The location never really seemed to matter, but what did matter were the lessons she taught me while we lay next to each other. She taught me about the prejudices that prophets faced from an outside world not willing to listen to them. She told me how strong and confident I'd have to be if I was going to be accepted as a prophet. She said confidence was the key to the whole thing. It doesn't matter how outlandish your words might sound, she would say. If you have no doubts, you speak them with explicit conviction, and you believe them as the truth, so will they. You cannot waver, though, for if they see even a moment of disbelief on your face, it will fall apart. She told me not to fear being charismatic. If you can make them laugh, or make them connect with you on any other level, it is a bonus.

She praised me and encouraged me. She rewarded me with hugs and kisses on the nose. These things were all I needed to keep me going forward, to keep me believing in the unbelievable. Belief had become the word of the month. It had become my veil.

27.

Candy arrived a day before she said she would.

The temperature was above zero and only a thin skin of snow was left on the ground, so she walked to the hostel from the bus station.

Martin, Richard, Riley and I were sitting around the new oak dinner table Martin had bought earlier that morning from a furniture maker down First Street. We were talking more about the types of materials we needed for the build when Candy walked through Fuller's front door. We all looked up at the same time and we all dropped our jaws at the same time.

Candy was gorgeous.

Martin shook his head, like he was trying to shake out a leaf that had fallen into his hair. Most likely he was trying to shake out the disbelief that the woman standing in front of us was his wife. He stood up unsure of what to do. Of what to say. "What... what...?" he pointed at her body.

"Aren't you glad to see me, baby?"

"I'm... you look amazing. What happened?"

"Can I get a kiss first?"

He did not move. It was like someone had snuck in and nailed his feet to the floor.

"Well hell," Richard said. "If you're not going to kiss her, I will."

"The hell you will," Martin said back. "And you guys can close your mouths. This is my... this is my wife. You can't look at her that way."

"Martin," she said. "Martin, it's okay. I've never had men look at me the way they look at me now. I love it."

"But... but you're married to me."

"I know that, silly. That doesn't mean I'm dead."

"But..."

"Oh Martin, quit being so insecure. I would never leave you. God, I did this for you. What do you think?"

She did a little pirouette and said, "Tah dah."

Even with the ski jacket on, her new shape was hard to miss. Somehow, every ounce of fat she carried the last time I had seen her was now gone. Her ass was a very pleasant apple shape, and her breasts, always her greatest asset, looked better than ever. They had raised up and when she moved, even slightly, they bounced with a perkiness I hadn't seen since co-ed gym class in high school. I hadn't been aroused by anyone or anything in the real world in a very long time. Seeing Candy standing in the doorway with the sun shining behind her, giving her a glow even the angels would be jealous of, I suddenly felt very horny.

Martin finally pried loose his feet and went to her. He cocooned her with his arms and his body. They wept and kissed and shouted out how much they had missed each other. Richard, Riley, and I took the cue and went down to Subway for dinner.

The cool outdoors was what I needed to slow my heart rate down and get me back to that state of asexuality I had comfortably slipped into before Candy's arrival. It amazed me that when the sex and the temptation weren't there, the need to satisfy the urges that the sex and the temptation brought on weren't there either.

After we were fat on processed meats and plastic vegetables, we walked back to the hostel. The satisfaction of our full bellies kept us quiet the whole way. We walked past barbershops, where men with mustaches read newspapers while waiting for their next customer. We walked past greeting card shops, where the music of Yanni and Michael Bolton slipped out from under the cracks under their entrance doors. Richard and Riley pretended to vomit when they heard the soothing sounds. A couple of metalheads sat on their BMX bikes in the parking lot of the Seven Eleven. They were sipping Slurpees and smoking Camels. Riley waved, and the meaner looking of the two gave us the finger back. I picked a bit of lettuce out of my beard. It had grown down to my chest and had become a sponge that sucked up particles floating in the air and falling from my mouth. I loved the beard. It made me look so much older, and so much meaner. My hair came loose from its ponytail when a draft of wind blew past us. As I pulled it back and placed it in the grip of the elastic band, I looked over at the two men next to me. For the first time in as long as I could remember I felt completely at ease with where I was and where I was going. I hadn't ever felt happier. The sun was shining down making the snow that hadn't yet melted sparkle. We walked along a road of diamonds.

The hostel smelled like sex.

"Hello, we're back," I said as loud and as obvious as I could. "Hello?"

A shoe flew by my head and hit the door behind me. "What the fuck did you do to my Martin, you psycho?"

Candy stepped out from the hallway and tossed the other shoe. It missed me but hit Richard on the arm. "Wow," he said. "How quickly they change."

"And who the fuck are you, anyways?"

She was breathing heavy. Martin stepped out from behind her and told Richard and Riley their best move would be to take off.

Thirty seconds later I stood alone in Fuller's Hostel with a woman who appeared to want to kill me and a man who didn't have the strength to stop her from committing the murder.

"What's up, Candy?"

Martin put his hand on her shoulder, but she pulled away and ran up to within an inch of my face. I smelled Martin on her breath.

"Martin says you're using all his money to build some crazy fort out in the forest." As she spoke spittle landed on my lips. It made me quiver thinking about what was mixed with that spit. "He said... he said you told him the end of the world is coming. Do you know how fucking psycho that all sounds?"

Psycho.

It was a word that had been used to describe my actions many times since Adhara came into my life. Yet, every time I heard it in regards to me, I didn't feel belittled or doubtful. I actually felt a little stronger and a little saner. Go figure.

"First of all," I said quite calmly, "It's a commune, not a fort, and second, Martin wasn't supposed to say anything to you. I was."

"A commune. You mean like Waco and Heaven's Gate? What are you, some kind of cult leader wannabe? God knows you look like one." She backed away a step and turned to Martin. "Is this for real? Is this what you've been keeping secret from me? Has this guy brainwashed you?"

Martin fumbled a word, and then another word, but before he could get anything coherent out he chose to run back down the hall and lock himself in the washroom.

She turned back to me and said, "What have you done to him?"

"I haven't done anything. What have you done to him?"

"What does that mean?"

"It means, how could you just let him get away with murdering your child?"

She stepped back a foot and stumbled on a boot lying on the ground. "What did you say?"

The gears creaked and started spinning. "His whole world has been a little backwards since Buck died, you know. You didn't even blink when that child miscarried. Had the snow not been so bad he would have returned to Alaska and admitted everything. He couldn't live thinking it could just be swept under a rug. He was confused. I offered him something that would bring him peace. I offered him something he's been searching for his whole life."

"And just what might that be, Mr. Koresh?"

"Honesty, hope, and pure love."

"What? Did you guys fuck, or something? Is that why he's become such a priss in bed?"

"Candy, why do such crude words have to come from such a beautiful face?"

"Fuck you, Steve."

Martin appeared behind her, his arms behind his back. In a tone void of emotion he said, "Candy, why don't you just have a glass of water and relax for a second. We'll all sit down and we'll talk about it. If you give us a chance you might be able to see the way I do."

He brought his right arm out from behind his back. In his hand was a sweating glass filled with water. She looked at it like it was a dead puppy. "I don't want any water."

A swash of red crossed Martin's face. "Just drink the fucking water and shut up for a few minutes."

Her mouth opened in disbelief. She chose not to retaliate and took the glass from his hand.

"Good. Now why don't we all go and sit around my lovely new table and we can, you know, just chat a little. There's no harm in that."

The three of us took chairs around the table. We spent a few minutes staring at the ceiling and at the walls and out the windows. We were waiting for the bravest of the bunch to speak up. Candy sipped at her water slowly. When she finally opened her mouth to speak, the water was gone. "I feel a little funny."

"Well, there's a lot I'd like to try and explain to you," I said.

"No. No, my head feels a little funny. It feels spinny, like... like when I've had too much to drink. Martin, did you put something in my water?"

He looked at me and smirked. "Don't be silly, dear. You would have tasted it had I put anything in there."

"Wow. Maybe I took too many Aspirin earlier. Maybe I'm just... maybe I'm... because I feel totally out of it. I'm just going to..."

She stood up drunkenly and stumbled backwards onto the couch that ran along the wall.

"Candy." Martin jumped out of his seat and sat on the floor next to the couch. He rubbed his hand through her hair. "Baby, are you okay. I didn't..."

"Martin, I feel fine. I actually feel better than fine. Can I... can I touch your earlobes?"

"What?"

She reached out her hand and grabbed his earlobe. "You're skin is so beautiful. It feels like silk, baby."

Martin looked up at me and opened his eyes wide. I think he wanted me to decipher the riddle Candy had become, but I could only shrug my shoulders. I didn't have a clue how to do such a complicated thing.

"Talk to me, baby," she said. "I want to hear your voice."

"What do you want me to talk about?"

"Baby, I don't care. Just talk about anything. Dress me up in your voice, baby"

She bit on her lip as the hand stroking his ear moved to the collar of his shirt. She ran her fingers along his neck.

"Why did you take all that Aspirin, baby?"

"Headache. Bus ride. Screaming kids. Just talk."

I tapped him on the shoulder and opened my eyes wide. He seemed to understand.

"Baby, Steve here, his name is actually Ryan and... and he is a messenger from God."

"Mmmm..." she moaned.

A messenger from God. Someone else was speaking those words for the first time, and out of the mouths of the chosen it had never sounded truer. I was a messenger for God. Martin said so, so now it must be.

"Ryan introduced me, and the others that were here, to God. Her name is Adhara, and she is the most beautiful being in the universe. He has said that Adhara will save us. She will give us the opportunities we never had here on Earth. She will give us the chance to begin again and do it right."

"Mmmm... that sounds nice," she said in a sleepy voice. "Tell me more."

Candy's arm fell from Martin's neck and hung limp over the side of the couch. Her breathing deepened and her eyes rolled under the lids that were coming down fast on them.

"Candy," Martin said, as he waved his hand over her face.

"Tell me more."

Martin was playing a Sim Game on the new computer he had bought a few days earlier. He was releasing the wrath of a hurricane on a city he had spent the last three days building. The destruction was evident by the repetition of 'holy shits' and 'my gods' coming from his mouth. The computer was a necessity I made Martin believe we needed. The Internet had played a small, but evident role in my progression, and I was sure that role was only going to get bigger as we neared April. I had been doodling on a piece of paper at the front desk when Candy sat up on the couch. She was looking at me.

"Tell you more about what?" I asked.

"I don't really know. I... I had this dream and I saw this place where nothing was wrong. Everyone was smiling and I could feel the love in the air. I could actually feel it as though it were the air itself that I was breathing in."

Martin shut down the computer and took a seat next to Candy on the couch. "It is what Adhara promised us."

"Who?"

"Don't you remember what I was telling you about before you fell asleep? About Adhara and about Ryan?"

"Who?"

She pulled her hair back tight then released it. It avalanched down her neck and over her shoulders. "The last thing I remember is us sitting around the table and I was sipping on some water. And... and then I woke up and all I can think about is this place I dreamed about. And everything inside of me says you know where this place is. And everything inside of me says listen to whatever it is he has to say."

She was staring at me again.

The pencil dropped from my hand and rolled overtop of my doodles. For the first time I noticed what it was I had been sketching. There were stars and there was fire. One was intertwined with the other. The stars were melting and exploding and a little stick man at the bottom of the sheet of paper was choking on all the stardust.

"She will take us there," I said with conviction. "All you have to do is believe in Her, and let her lead you."

"How?"

"Through me."

Yes.

Through me.

"Why through you?"

"Because she has made me her messenger."

"This should all be sounding so crazy to me, but it doesn't. My blood feels warm. My head feels warm. But this is not a fever I am suffering from. No... this is something else that wasn't there only hours earlier. Am I going crazy, Steve? Ryan?"

"No," I said. "To follow what is true is not crazy. It is destiny."

She scratched her head and laid it on Martin's shoulder. "Martin, did you put something in my water?"

"I would never stoop to that level, baby."

"Then why do I feel this way? Why does this whole thing not infuriate me anymore?"

"Because," he said as he ran his hand through her hair. "It is the answer to the question we have all been asking throughout our lives."

"I don't understand, Martin. What question?"

"Is there more than this?"

She smiled, closed her eyes, and repeated what Martin had said. "Is there more than this?"

"Is there more than this?"

28.

Adhara ran her fingers through my hair.

"The time has come," she said.

She opened up her palms and pressed them against my cheeks. "It is time to forget the human being christened Ryan Paul. You must now assume your true form and identity. It is time to find the others and tell them to do the same."

She brought my forehead to her lips and she kissed me. "You have come so far, but the final destination is still a little further away. Finish the walk, Alioth. Finish it."

With that I awoke.

The hostel was empty and still, save for the dust particles moving about in the sunlight shining through the front window.

It was late April. Ice patches still clung to most things, but for the most part spring was winning. With the warming air, the first blooms appeared on the trees and plants growing along First Street. The birds in those trees became our alarm clock. They chirped and chattered and woke us each new morning with their songs. We slept very little, though. How could we sleep when we needed every moment we could get to work on the commune, and on spreading the word?

One night, three weeks earlier, Adhara had come to me, as she always had. But this time she told me to use the words and the tools I had been given, and to begin the journey. Months of planning meant we all knew what we had to do.

Martin set up bank accounts for Richard, Riley, Candy, and me, and he put ten-thousand dollars into each account. He bought two new pickup trucks with flatbed extensions big enough to carry four new ATVs. He also bought two flatbed trailers, which would be towed by the ATVs once we reached the forest.

When I gave the word, Richard and Riley began buying lumber from Barlow's. We bought it in small amounts and stored it in the alley behind the hostel until night fell. The goal was to do it quick and to be as unnoticeable as possible. When it was dark, they transported the lumber to our clearing in the forest. Richard was good with his hands. He said it was the only thing his father ever gave him that he was proud of. He could build anything. He and Riley created hand-drawn blue prints of several types of living quarters. Once I chose a suitable design, the two of them would stay in the forest after they had taken the wood out and they would build. Some nights they stayed out there until the sun came up.

Martin was to take a weekend course at the college on web design. Using Dreamweaver, Flash, and a local server, his task was to create a website, and make it as visible as possible. The web was the key. Millions of lonely and suffering people drove its highways day and night searching for answers they couldn't find in the real world. So many tears dampened so many keyboards, and why? Because for many, the keyboard was the only physical contact these people had with anything in their empty lives, and they knew it. I told Martin that his goal was to convince these people that we could replace the cold plastic of the keys with the warm touch of a hand.

Candy's assimilation into our machine came quick. My only explanation was the Aspirin she had taken conflicted with the GHB Martin had spiked her water with. Somehow this conflict caused a sort of brainwashing effect. Or maybe it was something more simple. Like love. I wasn't a real chemist. What did I really know? Within days of arriving, though, she was as much a part of it as the rest of us. Her task was to sew the clothes we would wear. It was something I had never thought about, until she mentioned it. She came up with dozens of concepts for a unique look, but in the end, the five of us unanimously decided on simple green robes tightened at the waste with a green belt fashioned out of the same material as the robes.

"Happiness is found in the most simple of things. Complication causes complications," Adhara would say.

Three days a week I gave the four of them juice laced with GHB and dissolved Aspirin. When their heads began swaying and their hands began touching the skin of each other's body I would begin to preach Adhara's words. I couldn't credit my control over them to this alone.

My way of speaking had changed. I no longer had the ability to just chat. I was a messenger, a prophet, and so I would have to act as a prophet does. I had become the human equivalent to a positive reinforcement. My words were no longer used to entertain, or break silences. They were used to teach, and to praise, and to enhance self-esteem. It was through this combination of words and toxins that the four of them had become another part of me, thinking as I do and acting as I would. They were a third arm or another eye on my body, living off the same blood I lived off of.

My task was clear.

I was the leader.

I was the link to the God who would bring them salvation.

Alioth was my name.

The computer giggled and chirped. Hands were reaching into it and stroking the motherboard. I knew it was 'the chosen ones' receiving our message. I knew it was 'the chosen ones' wanting to learn more. At the back of the hostel's café our computer station had become our link to a world that was impossible to reach by foot. It brought 'the chosen ones' to us. I tapped the mouse and the monitor clicked off of the screensaver and on to our web page. Martin's skill as a web designer had surpassed anything I could have ever imagined. He built the entire web page out of Flash, using the initial message I had received on the computer from Adhara as his template. Letters floated in from off of the screen like confused bumblebees, dashing from side to side then taking their place in an order that slowly created our message. There were no pictures and no games, just the message, and a crudely drawn map using the computer's paint program. We paid thousands of dollars and incorporated hundreds of keywords to get our page listed at the top of search engines like Yahoo and Altavista. It worked. In the first few days we received a few hundred hits, but after that we began receiving more than a thousand hits a day, leaving me full of hope that 'the chosen ones' would find their way to us.

The door swung open and Richard walked in without Riley.

It was an unusual sight. It was like seeing half a person.

"The nights are still so cold," he said. "We worked until we saw the peaks of the mountains glowing. We spent the night out there so we could get the first few cabins finished."

"All of you?"

"Yes. Even Candy. With only a flashlight she took to the forest and collected the pebbles and the stones that will make up the paths we walk along. When I left them to come here she had filled up fifteen ice-cream buckets."

Most nights I found myself alone in the hostel. The four of them had taken on their tasks so fervently that they chose to rest only when I made them do so. I would lie on the couch or in my bed and I would stare up at the ceiling and through the ceiling and I would watch the stars blinking and I would wait to hear from Adhara. Her voice became the only voice in my head. She talked to me about the wonderful world she had created, and she promised me that this time she had gotten it right. I wanted so badly to get my hands dirty, and scratch my skin with the lifting and the hammering and the sweating the others were doing, but she said my job was to stay with her. So that is what I did.

"Is it done?" I asked Richard.

"The shelter is ready. That is the important part, is it not?"

"Yes. Good. Go back and tell the others to return to the hostel. After you have all rested, the four of you go and fill the coolers up with as much food and water as they can hold. Stick with organic foods only, for tonight is the night we shed our skins and rid ourselves of all the toxic chemicals that make up our lives. Tonight is the night where we leave this all behind and prepare for the ultimate journey. Go forth, and when I return after sunset, be prepared to head out."

"And you, Ryan? Where are you off to?"

"I'm not quite sure yet, but I think I am supposed to walk somewhere."

"Where?"

"That I cannot say. I guess I will know the destination when I step out that door. Now go."

He turned to leave, but I stopped him before he could get out of the door.

"Richard," I said. "My name is no longer Ryan. It is Alioth."

"Alioth," he repeated. "I love looking up at the Big Dipper. It's just so big and obvious up there."

He repeated the name again as he walked out of the hostel. I thought I heard him laughing as he made his way along First Street, back to the commune.

Candy gave me the test robe she had made, and I hadn't been out of it since that day. The hostel offered the perfect temperature to wear such a garment. Though April was a spring month most everywhere else in B.C., up in Prince George it still had a few of winter's teeth stuck in it, therefore, the robes wouldn't become mandatory in our little commune until it was comfortable enough to wear them all night long. Therefore, I couldn't be seen in the streets of Prince George traipsing around in a robe and sandals. The beard and long hair made me look frightening enough as it was.

I slipped on jeans and socks and a t-shirt and I stepped out of Fuller's Hostel. The hostel had been officially closed since the day Buck died. Martin had no intention of running a business he didn't have to run. We printed out a little apology to anyone who had been looking for a place to stay, or a place to check their e-mail, and we posted it in the window right above the closed sign. Since that day, our view from inside the hostel was a door with a sign in it that said the world beyond was always open for business.

The wind was blowing in the direction of the downtown area, so I followed it. Following closely behind me was torn newsprint and an empty potato chip bag. I was sure I was searching for something. I was sure it would make itself known to me when the time came.

A brave young man wearing a bandana and shorts was washing several storefront windows with a squeegee. Coloured steam rose from his bare-chested body. As I walked past him I whispered our web address and told him that there was hope. I was going to tell him more, but he politely asked me to fuck off so he could continue wiping away suds from the windows. He was not smiling. He was the only one, though. The gloom that had been firmly placed on everyone's face for the past six months had lifted and had been replaced by an anticipatory joy. It was the joy of camping and boating and touring wineries that was just around the corner. It was the joy of knowing that indescribable heat was coming and though it may be uncomfortable and even deadly, it didn't matter. That was life in B.C.'s north.

I looked from store to store for a clue. I looked down alleys and up fire escapes. I don't know why I felt I was looking for something, I just did. And then it struck me.

I was looking for our identities.

The names of 'the chosen ones' had to be in line with the prophecy.

Above me was a sign. It jutted out from the shop I was standing next to. I stepped into In A Bind Books and headed for the astronomy section. The four people in the shop eyed my every move. I didn't blame them. If I saw a shady character who looked like me walk into my shop, I'd watch his every move, too.

The store was mostly devoted to fiction. At the back of the shop, next to the shelf labeled Horror/Fantasy, was a nearly bare shelf labeled Non-Fiction. The first book I pulled from the shelf was exactly what I thought I was looking for. I paid the eighteen dollars it cost and left the bookstore.

On my walk back to the hostel I passed a little café I hadn't ever noticed before. I should have seen it because I had walked the same streets hundreds of times, but there it was nestled snug between a used cd shop and a dollar store. Romeo's Coffee claimed to have Prince George's best cappuccino.

One night we sat around the table at the back of the hostel and we made a sort of mission statement and rulebook. It was decided as a group that the simplicity Adhara had requested meant not only in the things we kept with us, but also in the things we ate. We decided that once we moved out to the forest we would fill our bodies with only the most natural, healthy foods. This ensured that when Adhara did come there would be no toxins in our bodies: that we would be pure again. The goal was to eventually grow a garden, but until then it would be a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, rice, and soy. We were all quite content with the plan until Martin mentioned coffee. We knew it came from the earth, but it had been turned into the poster child for consumerism. It fueled a lot of the evil in the world. The demons that ran things woke up groggy every morning, too. Surely, a good morning cup was always on their kitchen tables. It was a heart-wrenching decision, but unanimously we decided to give it up the night we moved out to the forest. After that we cut our consumption down drastically so the withdrawal wouldn't be as intense had we gone cold turkey.

Looking at Romeo's, I felt a little nostalgic. There was no patio, but through the windows I could see a layout very similar to that of The Meanest Bean. Almost automatically, my feet carried me through the door and into the shop. A bell above the door rang behind me. The girl behind the counter looked up from the magazine she was reading. There was a moment of trepidation in her glare, but it passed when I smiled at her.

"Hello," she said.

"Hello."

A roaster in the back corner was spinning and the beans in it popped and crackled. A cocoa-like aroma filled the shop. It was thick and sweet. I took in a deep whiff of it and floated toward the counter.

"What can I get you?" the girl asked as she tucked her Vogue into a drawer below her.

"How long have you guys been open?"

"I don't think we have anymore of those left."

"What... oh." I'd almost forgotten what a sense of humour was.

"We've been here for about three years now."

"That's funny, I've never noticed you guys before."

"Yeah, well not many people do. You're like the third person who's been through the door today."

"That's too bad."

"Well, what can you do? You see that empty shop across the road?" she said as she pointed it out.

"Yes."

"Yeah, well, it's being turned into one of those stupid Ahab's Coffeeshops. Once they open that... well, maybe I can get a job over there."

A mallet thudded against my heart.

"What's with the look?" she asked.

"Are you this open with all the other people who come in here?"

"No, it's just... it's just, there's something about you that makes me want to talk to you. Do you get that a lot?"

"It must be the guru look I'm trying to perfect." We both smiled.

"Did you want a coffee?"

What I wanted was to see coloured steam rising from her hands and her head. I wanted to tell her she was a 'chosen one'. I wanted to repopulate our new world with her. Unfortunately, the only steam I could find rising was that from under the coffee brewer.

"Just a small one, please. I'm trying to give it up."

"Mmm... good luck with that."

"Thanks."

She got off her stool and poured out a small ceramic cup of coffee. "I'm sorry we only have the one type," she said as she put it down on the counter in front of me.

"Coffee's coffee," I replied as I handed over a five-dollar bill, and insisted she keep the change.

"Is that your girlfriend?"

"What?"

"That picture." She pointed down at the counter. "It fell from your wallet when you pulled it out of your jeans."

"She's... she's..." I had forgotten about the picture. I hadn't looked at it since the day I found it behind my bed. Back then I felt very little emotion when I looked at it. Back then I was consumed by the events of the moment to really stop and look at it. There in Romeo's Café I looked down on that little black and white photo of Amanda and a lump of something got lodged in my throat. "She's my ex," I said. I swallowed and the lump lost a little of its size.

"She's cute."

"Yes. She was... is. Thank you for the coffee."

"No. Thank you." She smiled, and as she did I thought I heard the bell above the door ringing again.

I grabbed the photo and my coffee and I went to a table next to the roaster.

The ghost in the picture looked off at something not in the frame. It was me she was looking at. I was there, yet I wasn't. Had she really existed? Had I really existed back then? The answer my mind responded with was that even if I hadn't existed, I did exist now. People knew me and listened to me and believed me. The reflection in the mirror was of someone who was real, someone who could touch things and move those things. That was all I needed to continue on. I was going to tear the picture in half, but this act was a lot harder to accomplish than I would have thought, so I bent down and slipped it into my sock.

The coffee was too hot to drink so I opened my book about the stars and I read. Billions of balls of energy floated up there in the heavens and billions of balls of life walked around down here on earth. The task I gave myself there in Romeo's Café was to assign each soul a star.

It was to be an enormous undertaking.

29.

The dipping sun turned the world bloody red. It was like a sword had been plunged into the Earth and all of Earth's life was spurting upwards, staining the sky.

Only a few customers trickled into Romeo's over the next few hours, which was all right by me. The girl running the shop said she didn't like to waste any of the old coffee, so she refilled my cup for free the rest of the day. She said I looked like I might need it.

Her name was Mira Cle Westfield. She said her mother was infertile. After dozens of tests and retests, the doctors told her mother she would never be able to have children. It was heartbreaking, because all she ever really aspired to be was a mother. With very little hope, she sought out a fertility clinic and began taking drugs. Mira explicitly described to me how her mother and father then began fucking and fucking and fucking, until they couldn't do it anymore, and then, by some miracle, the seed sprouted. And because the conception was such a miracle, the name just seemed appropriate.

Other than a our brief conversation about her name, she left me to my reading.

About space.

Cyberspace.

Limitless.

Everything was connected to everything else. Until the star Adhara took on a shape and entered my life, I had never thought about the stars and the galaxies and the infinite possibility of all that existed beyond the clouds. The book about stars was filled with numbers and estimates and guesstimates, but it couldn't come close to proving just how vast space was. The Internet was kind of like space, tens of millions of websites floating around out there, twinkling, like stars, but most never being seen. Their existence only proven when someone had spent the time and the energy tracking them down. The only proof of their existence to everyone else, a number in a search result.

I thought back to university when I was known by 'the system' as 941055734. Like a star in space, or a number in a search result, I existed, but until someone actually said, "Hey, aren't you Ryan Paul?" my existence was a hard thing to prove.

The stars in the book were not given numbers. They were given names. I would give those names a life.

When I left Romeo's, Mira waved and said she hoped to see me soon.

"Likewise," I said. "Likewise."

I said it knowing that if the prophecy were true, I would never see Mira, or anyone else, except for 'the chosen ones', ever again. I turned and watched her wipe off the table I had been sitting at. I wasn't sure what I felt at that moment.

The blinds were drawn at the hostel, but the lights were on. Shadows passed back and forth over the screens in the windows. It looked like they were pacing. I knocked on the door because it was locked, and a long minute later it sprung open. Martin, Richard, and Riley were sitting on the couch at the back, and Candy was staring at me as if I had just risen from the grave.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Of course I am. What's going on?"

"Did he find you?"

"Who?"

Martin got up from the couch and took a hold of Candy's hand. "We were at the grocery store and this guy was following us up and down the aisles, and... and when we were getting the lettuce, he tapped Richard on the shoulder. He brought out a picture and asked if we'd ever seen the man in the picture. It was... it was you."

"What... what did you say?"

Richard stood up and joined us at the front door. "I said I'd never seen you before in my life."

"We all said the same thing," Martin added.

"What did he look like?"

"He was kind of big. I don't know. He was kind of built like a football player," Candy said. "Who do you figure it is?"

"I don't know. Did he say anything else to you guys?"

"No," Richard said. "He just put the picture back in his suit pocket and walked away from us."

"Did you get all the supplies?"

"Yes," Martin answered.

"Are you all ready?"

"Yes," he answered again.

"We better go now, then."

The switch had been turned on. The software had been installed correctly, and was in the process of repairing the soul corruption that had been occurring in each of their bodies since the first day they had breathed in the Earth's air. When I said it was time to go, all cause for concern had disappeared from everyone... everyone but me.

Like robots, they systematically tied up their shoes and put on their sweaters. As the seconds passed, a little more of the world they were leaving was removed from their systems. Their emotionless glares told me so. They no longer thought about double tall lattes and foot long pizza subs; half hour sitcoms and reality television; hip hop and vanilla-flavoured pop; CDs and STDs. They thought of one thing as they walked in front of me to the back door and into the back alley where the packed up pickups awaited us. They thought of Adhara and her gift to them.

A gift?

Trailers loaded with supplies were attached to the pick ups. Dozens of coolers were stacked and tied with rope. Among the bricklaying of coolers were blankets and pillows and the robes that would eventually become our uniforms. Tucked carefully in the back corner of one of the trailers was a padded box filled with the remaining GHB. Next to it was a box of Aspirin.

We filed into the two pickups and slipped out of Prince George as quietly as souls slip out of bodies at the moment of death. None of us looked back at the bodies we were leaving behind.

When we reached the Ancient Forest we ditched the pickups in the spot Riley had found and constructed for them. We covered the pickups in branches and tarps he had glued leaves onto, and we all took to our ATVs. Candy and Martin shared one, leaving the other three for Richard, Riley and me. In unison we started up the engines. They purred like mountain cats. Our secret parade moved through the forest in silence. I looked back and saw a focused crew.

But my focus had shifted.

There were ghosts haunting me. On the day when I was to let go of my past for the rest of eternity, these ghosts were appearing and telling me it might not be that easy. I pulled my ATV over to let Martin take the lead. It had been several weeks since I'd last trekked out to the site, so my sense of direction was a little rusty. I moved in behind Martin and Candy and we continued forth quite slowly. Our headlights gave off only enough light to see a few dozen meters in front of us, and the terrain felt even rougher (even more disturbed) than it was when I first discovered the site.

For almost half an hour we drove along under the canopy of the forest with only the hum of our engines and the frantic bee-like movement of our headlights to tell us we weren't alone. Thoughts of the man carrying my picture swelled in my brain. It bothered me because the swelling should have been a result of Adhara's influence on my brain. I knew she was all that the others were thinking about.

A frightening thought entered my mind. What if Fraser had survived the car crash? What if he had become set in some sort of quest for revenge? What if he had tracked me to Prince George?

A pair of eyes a hundred meters in front of Martin and Candy's ATV caught the light from their headlights and glowed like flaming rubies. The eyes blinked, and then whatever they were attached to darted off into a bush. As I passed by the bush I tried to see what had taken refuge in its labyrinth of thorny limbs, but all I could make out was black. The distraction was what I needed.

The further we moved into the forest, the more defined the path became. Trees had been cut down and large rocks had been moved. It still would have been impossible to find the path had you not known where to look.

We climbed hills I hadn't remembered existing and we wove through an obstacle course of strategically placed tree limbs and odd shaped boulders. One looked like a man with his hands wrapped around his knees. Another looked like a VW Bug.

We passed a boulder shaped like a blimp and Martin brought his ATV to a stop. I pulled in just behind him and was quickly sandwiched by Richard and Riley as they pulled their ATVs up behind me. Martin jumped off of his ATV and walked over to me. My headlights shone on Candy as she pulled her hair back and retied her ponytail. I was about to do the same when Martin put his hand on my shoulder.

Since the GHB had become a semi-regular part of our existence, the four of them had become much more touchy-feely. They believed their words of explanation and interpretation were better conveyed if they were accompanied by a touch. It was a touch as simple as a finger on the hand or a palm on the knee, but it was a touch that ensured a stronger connection between the speaker and the listener.

"The path ends here," he said to me, his eyes following some sort of insect trapped in the beam of my headlights. "This is probably the densest few acres of forest we are entering. From here on in we travel through a series of trees set just wide enough apart to allow our vehicles through. If you know where this first set of trees is, then you can find the rest of the way." He paused to swipe at something fluttering around his face. "These trees grew naturally, but we believe Adhara must have had something to do with their placement. It will ensure an even greater secrecy than we had originally conceived of."

"This is more than I could have ever asked for," I said.

"This is for real."

"Yes it is."

"Make sure you pay attention to where I go."

He let go of my shoulder and a chill entered the spot where we had briefly been connected. In one fluid motion he jumped on his ATV, started it up and got it moving again. His ATV turned forty-five degrees and drove over what looked like a line in the forest floor drawn out of rocks. He pointed down at it and then forward at the wall of trees in front of us. He drove into what looked like a crack in the wall, and then he disappeared. I stayed as close to him as I could. After five minutes of weaving through the army of trees we broke free of their brigade and entered the commune.

A full moon hung at an arm's length above the commune, tracing my new world in yellow. When I brought my ATV to a stop Richard flew by to the left of me and Riley flew by to the right. A flame sparked from each of their palms and one by one they drove up to and ignited tiki torches set up around the perimeter of the commune.

With each new torch lit, my dreams became more real. I closed my eyes and I was back at summer camp making smores and singing songs about God and the sacrifice he made by sending his only son down to save us from our sins. The cabins were identical to the ones I spent all those summers in. There were three of them lined up like Monopoly houses along the other side of the commune, across from where I had stopped. In the center of the commune was a large fire pit and something around the pit that looked like the boxes the winners at the Olympics stand on when they receive their medals. There were three of them, each set a little lower than the last.

After Riley lit the last torch he drove to the middle of the commune where Martin and Candy were in the process of starting a fire. He jumped off his ATV and waved me over. I drove up to the other parked ATVs and was greeted by a very proud looking Richard. "So," he said. "What do you think?"

"Richard," I said. "I am in awe."

"Wait till I show you the cabins."

He grabbed me by the sleeve and like an excited child he pulled me off my ATV.

"Is it just like you imagined it would be?"

"Richard, in all honesty, I thought there'd be a few tarps attached to some tree branches. I wasn't expecting much."

"But what about the blueprints we made?"

"Yeah, well, I guess I just didn't give you guys enough credit. I guess I didn't really believe you guys when you said you could do it."

He let go of my sleeve and I sensed his excitement level dropping. There was enough light shining from the torches to see he was a little confused.

"But we did do it. We did all this for you and for... for Her."

I had faltered.

Had my judgment slipped away from me on the bumpy ride in?

I needed to think fast.

"Richard, what you guys have done here exceeds anything my imagination could have ever mustered up. I cannot begin to describe to you how proud I am of the four of you."

A smile grew on his face. He took hold of my sleeve again and led me to the first cabin in the line.

"This one is yours," he said.

We climbed the three stairs and pushed through the sheet of canvas that was used as a door.

"Just a second," Richard said. He left my side and with a ball of fire that grew in his palm he lit a series of candles lined up along the windowsill and exposed the raw interior of the room. "We chopped down a few trees deeper in the woods and we cut those babies in half. We used those halves as the outside walls. In here, though, we used the wood we bought from Barlow's, and we basically built it like a room in a house is built. This way we'll be a little warmer. You know, logs are just too uneven. So anyways, this cabin has only the one bed whereas the other two have six bunks each. We have enough wood left to build four or five more cabins if the need arises. We're so good at it now we could put one of those babies up in two days."

"Wow."

A bed frame built with Barlow's lumber encased a futon I had never seen before. Beside the bed was a small table with a green candle on it. A small desk had been built into the wall below the cabin's one window that looked out over the commune. The window was covered with the same material used for the front door. A full log cleaned of its bark and limbs ran along the ceiling of the cabin. Held up above the log was the cabin's roof; two sheets of green-translucent fiberglass. Richard caught me looking up at it.

"Cool, huh? Barlow's had a ton of those things. I know we had originally planned to use the tarps for the roofs, but the fiberglass was cheaper, and it actually worked out better. It's so much more stable than a tarp."

"No, I like it. I just... I just can't believe how real this all is."

"I know."

We stood quiet for a minute running our eyes over every inch of the cabin. The candles flickered as a gust of wind snuck through a crack in the window's cover. Outside Martin shouted, "The fire's lit! The fire's lit!" Beyond him I thought I heard locusts.

Richard took a hold of my hand. "When the sun comes up we'll show you what else we've done."

"I can't wait," I said.

The fuel in the tiki torches burned away, and as each torch fizzed out another star in the sky got brighter. Thousands of them sparkled above us while we sat around the fire warming our hands. A satellite flew by and Martin whispered, "five".

His voice, the first sound, other than the crackling of the burning wood, in more than an hour, prompted me to speak to them as a whole for the first time since we had arrived.

"Up there Adhara waits for the day when she can retrieve us."

Their eyes started to blink as though they were awaking from a trance put on them by the flames. I was sitting on the highest of the three boxes and they were all sitting cross-legged on the earth around the pit below me. "Up there a new existence awaits us." Their heads raised up to the sky again. "We must prepare ourselves for that existence. To do so, we must first learn to be born again. On these perches you have constructed, I will re-christen you, so to speak. I will pull off those skins you were born with and layer you with a new skin, and a new identity. I am now and will forever be Alioth and I warn you, to revert back to the ways of old will be cause for ejection from here and from salvation. I have never been more serious in my life."

The words spilled out of my mouth faster than I could comprehend what the words actually were. They floated through the air and into the ears of my disciples. The flames from the fire danced on their eyeballs. A perfect metaphor for their passion.

I jumped off my perch and went to the trailer we had yet to unpack. I took from it a bottle of GHB and a bottle of Aspirin. When I returned to the fire pit I dosed out an ounce of the GHB and a single tablet to each person. Fifteen minutes later they were holding hands and swaying drunkenly.

"Martin," I said. "Come forth."

He stood and came to me.

"Remove your clothes and take a seat on the highest of the boxes."

He did not hesitate. When his clothes were off, he grabbed a hold of my hand and brought it to his lips. He then grabbed my finger and ran it down his chest and around his belly button. He continued to move my hand down his body until I pulled it away and motioned for him to get up on the box. Even though it was still quite cold I could see he was fully erect.

As he sat, I looked down at the other three, silhouetted by the fire glowing behind them. "The soul of a star is the light it shines down on us," I said. "Because a star has a soul, it also has the ability to be a soul mate. I have matched you and everyone who comes to us with a star. You will take on its life. You will shine as it does so Adhara will still find her way to us even when it's pitch black up there."

I put my hand under Martin's chin and I lifted his head to the sky. I hadn't planned on making the christening an event, but I thought perhaps doing so would authenticate our purpose. My imagination was still one of my main guides in this little venture.

"From this day forth and forever on, under the gaze and direction of Adhara, you will be known as Pollux."

He whispered the name and his breath carried it up about a foot until it disappeared into the blackness of the night.

I looked down on the others. "The first star to make up our galaxy is Pollux. Come forth and greet him."

They stood and one by one they stepped up to him and shook his hand and kissed him. After they all had their turn meeting Pollux I allowed him to jump off the box and put his clothes back on. He chose to stay naked.

Richard stripped and took his seat atop the box. I christened him Sabik. Though the names came from the glossary of a book on stars, they seemed to encapsulate everything we would be about. They were completely foreign and very exotic sounding. When I had read the words for the first time I had pictured lush lands of green and sky blue waters. I had seen people in robes sitting on blankets eating fruits and sipping wine.

Riley came forth and was so named Aldebaran.

And then Candy came forth.

We had neglected to feed the fire while the christenings were taking place. As Candy removed her clothes, the glowing ashes that pulsed in the pit gave her skin a devilish tinge. I couldn't take my eyes off her body. She was perfect.

She saw me looking at her breasts and she took a hold of my hand as Martin had. "Please," I said. "Take a seat."

She directed my fingers to her left breast and she circled them around her nipple. Her other hand grasped my crotch. I instantly got hard.

My concentration drifted. The name I had conceived for Candy slipped from my mind. I looked down at Martin expecting to see rage, but instead I saw a look of anticipation.

With the hand she had on my crotch she unhooked my belt and unzipped my jeans. Gravity pulled them to the ground. She slipped my cock through the slit in my boxers and she stroked it. The ashes lost their intensity, but the stars made up for it. They twinkled like they were jealous. The sensations overloaded my system. Candy's nipple hardened. She pulled me toward the box where she had sat down with her legs spread apart. All sounds stopped.

She moved her hands to my ass and she brought me closer to her. Had I any respect for Martin, I would have stopped, but my system was so under her control, all I could do was hope he wouldn't remember anything after the drugs wore off.

Her head tilted back as I entered her. She chewed on her bottom lip and moaned. Her hands tensed as she pulled me in and pushed me out. The pressure was building fast. It had been a very long time since I last had an orgasm. It had been a very long time since I had wanted to have an orgasm. My thrusting became faster. The friction of the skin rubbing on skin was killing me. I wanted to explode and to fall to the earth in a shower of light.

The plug had been pulled out and my brain was emptying. Blood and tissue swirled round and round and just as it was about to be dispersed into the garden Candy had invited me into, she pulled me out.

She grabbed my balls and pressed her thumb into the skin behind them. The pressure subsided. Rational thoughts of consequences and duty filled my mind again.

With her hand still tightly wrapped around my testicles and her head still tilted up at the sky, she said, "Now christen me."

I looked down at the three shadows sitting on the earth below me. Their expressions were indefinable. I hoped it hadn't gotten too weird for them.

"From this day forth and forever on under the gaze and direction of Adhara you will be known as Cassiopeia."

And like that it had come back to me.

Martin, Richard, and Riley stood. They walked behind the box Candy was still spread out upon and they placed their hands on her. The cool night air had no effect on any of them. They did not shiver and as far as I could tell, their cocks had not shrunk into their stomachs.

"We love you, Alioth," Candy said.

"Yes we do," the other three repeated.

It was the first time they had addressed me as Alioth. At that moment I felt like how I looked, a prophet with his jeans wrapped around his ankles and his best friend's wife's hand wrapped around his balls.

"Now fuck me," she said. "All of you fuck me."

When I started to see Adhara without the influence of GHB, I stopped taking the drug altogether. This was a sign I no longer needed the chemicals to believe. This was a sign that my faith was at its peak. The drug was to cure the affliction. The affliction was originally narcolepsy, but the narcolepsy was merely a device to introduce me to the real affliction. The real affliction was the life I had begun living. It was a life of mundane repetition and boredom where the only love I ever felt was for my cup of coffee in the morning. The drug was a portal to the truth. When I had learned the truth I had no more need for the drug. The drug had side effects that helped in the explanation. One of the side effects I dearly missed was the love it allowed me to feel for other things and other people, no matter how ugly or annoying they happened to be.

As our bodies touched I knew that what they were feeling wasn't a need to copulate with their friend's wife. What they were feeling was a need to share their love, because they had a lifetime of it stored up in a body far too small to contain it. It was bubbling through their pores and out of their orifices. They needed release, as I had needed release. I re-entered Candy and thrusted in and out at a very fast pace.

We were all connected, skin touching skin touching skin.

A wind blew through the camp shifting the ashes and relighting the fire that had almost completely burned out. The shadows lit up revealing their identities. Richard and Riley were rubbing Candy's breasts and were stroking each other with their other hands. The shadow that was Martin moved around the box in behind me and wrapped his hands around my waist. I knew what was going to happen, and I knew a year ago the thought would have made me throw up, but the night had become wild and unpredictable and I had found myself feeling very content with where it was going to take us.

We had removed ourselves from the human beings we were only hours earlier. Something different lived in this commune. The rules of the old world no longer existed and we took advantage of that.

As I was coming inside of Candy I felt an intense sting. The pain was fleeting, though, and within seconds the pleasure rushing through me was euphoric.

For the next few hours under the cold sky of a late April night we loved each other. We loved each other like we had never loved before. We let go of the inhibitions that human law and religion caused in us and we allowed our bodies to be free, to experience all the things we were told we were not allowed to experience, because it was wrong.

When I finally crawled into my cabin and began to fall asleep on the futon with no covers, I was so sore and numb, any little movement caused my eyes to well up. I did not mind it though. The pain I felt that night was the most wonderful thing I had ever felt in my life.

30.

A firecracker exploded in the forest.

I closed my eyes and I imagined a kid, not unlike the kid I used to be. How did he get there? He had thrown a baseball through the neighbour's window. How else? I tried a little harder and I imagined his mother yelling at him. "Go to your room!" she screamed. "Go and think about what you've just done. And while you're spending the next ten years of your youth in there thinking about all the trouble you've caused, clean up that pig sty." I didn't have to imagine too hard, because my room doubled as a prison more times than I could remember. Breaking windows. Caught with pot. Telling my mother to fuck off. When I saw my father's finger pointing up, I knew the opportunity to appeal was gone. My sentence had been delivered. I imagined this kid sitting among the chaos of his room for hours and hours, adamant about not moving a muscle. His room was his domain. Nobody could make him change it. But boredom has a way of making even the most adamant mind stray. It would be an archaeological dig of massive proportions. It was three years of life piled up four feet high in some areas. His task was to sift through clothing and magazines and outdated video games and find that one elusive artifact: the hardwood floor. Amidst the rubble of the past, a lone firecracker buried in a jean pocket was discovered. Other than the musty smell it carried, it was perfectly intact. He rolled it between his thumb and his forefinger and he smiled at the memories the firecracker evoked in him. It had been a long time since he had smelled a burning fuse and the gunpowder smoke that hung in the air after a firecracker went off. It had been a long time since he had blown anything up. His dig was over. In searching for one artifact he found an even more priceless one. With a new mindset, he tossed everything that was still on his floor into the closet, and using as much force as he possibly could, he squeezed the closet door shut. He knew his mother would kill him if he lit the thing off around their home. She would say to him, "Tad, these folks around here are pretty old. They sure wouldn't be expecting a sound like that at this time of year. You might just give them a heart attack and all, and then I'd have to get your father in here to give you a good whoopin'". I pictured Tad hopping on his BMX and speeding off to the forest where the trees would amplify the explosion, and the explosion just might scare a few tiny animals to death.

That's what I imagined as I stepped out onto my cabin's front porch, where the sun that washed over me seemed a lot brighter and felt a lot hotter than it had in the past few days. My brain configured my system to this new level of intensity and in doing so hatched an ache just behind my eyeballs. As I rubbed them with unnecessary strength, another firecracker exploded. This time the sound was closer. An echo ricocheted off the trees and sent the birds of the forest from their nests. They flew across the open roof of the compound looking just like a black cloud of death. When the sound of the fleeing birds faded I made out the faint cries of a human being.

There was another pop.

Pollux stepped out of his cabin. He was wearing the Calvin Klein pajamas Cassiopaeia had given him only days before coming out here. Our commune's ethos was still a work in progress, but I already knew any trace of the materialistic world beyond the forest would not be tolerated. We were to free ourselves from the chains of consumerism. We were to free ourselves from the identity these companies created for us. That said, I told Pollux it was okay to keep the pajamas until it was warm enough for the robes. "Wow," he said as he looked at his watch. "Have we really been sleeping for two days?"

"Two days," I exclaimed. "I thought I just went to bed."

And I did. It was odd to think an entire day of my life was spent in the darkness of sleep. I hadn't dreamed. I hadn't the urge to wake from a full bladder. The prior day had simply been erased.

"Sounds like someone's hunting out there."

"Hunting what?"

"I don't know. Elephants. Dinosaurs."

"Very funny. Seriously, though, I heard someone yelling. Listen."

We both turned our ears in the direction of the pops.

The wind breathed in a deep breath. As it exhaled, debris flew into our compound. Among the leaves and the pine needles and the dry dirt was a very faint word. As faint as it was, both Pollux and I made it out.

Pollux perked up and jumped off his porch. He cleared the three steps that lead up to his cabin. He hit the ground and ran in the direction of the commotion. When he reached the perimeter of the compound he cupped his mouth with his two hands and he yelled, "Hello! Hello!"

"Adhara," the wind screamed again. "Adhara!"

"We're over here!" Pollux yelled. "Follow my voice!"

The two voices yelled back and forth at each other for several minutes. Cassiopaeia stepped from her cabin and looked at me. Her pupils were in the shape of question marks. I shrugged my shoulders. A few minutes later Sabik and Aldebaran joined Pollux and yelled with him. Their three unified voices lead the lost soul right to us. He was spat out onto the floor of our compound by a thick grouping of trees that appeared to have eaten him up and were displeased by his taste.

He got to his knees and waved a handgun. He pointed it at the area of trees from where he had just come from and then he aimed it at the three men who were running up to him.

"Who the fuck are you?" he yelled. "Who are you?"

Pollux, who was quite a lot bigger than the kid, ran past him snatching the gun quite easily from his hands. It was all so quick. Before the kid could realize he wasn't holding the gun any longer he stood up and pulled a trigger full of air. Whether it was out of embarrassment or defeat, he dropped back down to the ground and laid his arms and his face on the dirt. Then he wept. That was when I moved from my porch.

I approached him as though he were a wounded animal. He was scared and frantic and unpredictable. The quivering of his upper body said it all. I squatted down and placed my hand on his back. He twitched and turned his eye up at me. It was an eye I had seen so many times in my life. It was an eye that was once like my own, filled with emptiness and a lack of hope. "Do not fear us. We are who you have been looking for," I said.

"Adhara?"

"Soon, she will give us that which we have been missing all our lives. Soon, she will free us."

"I..." He pushed himself up on to his knees and he looked at us one by one. Dirt fell from his cheek and indents pocked his skin from the pebbles he had laid his face upon. My hand did not move from his back. "I got lost yesterday. I... I wandered around without any water or food all night. I said if I couldn't find you by the time the sun was over my head I'd shoot myself. I..."

"Stop," I said. "Come and have some water and some food, and then we will talk."

And that was what we did.

His name was Ross.

When Ross was nine, his parents died in a plane crash. They were flying home from Las Vegas. They had won an eight-thousand dollar jackpot at a blackjack table and they were excited to get home and celebrate with their son. That celebration became a reoccurring dream in Ross's life. With every negative turn his life took from the moment that plane disintegrated into a hillside in Northern California, he escaped to that celebration. He escaped to that very moment where they walked through the door and they both threw their arms around him, smothering him with the same affection they had smothered him with all his life. It was all he thought about when he was shipped to his uncle's house. It was all he thought about when the abuse began.

A couple months earlier, while his uncle was showering upstairs, Ross contemplated his many options. He thought of running away and living the rest of his life on the streets of Portland, or hopping on a bus and taking to the streets of any of the other large cities around him. He thought of taking a knife and stabbing the unsuspecting man in the heart while his flabby face was blurred by shampoo and immorality. And then he thought of poison. In that basement, still smelling of his uncle's foul body odour and lit only by the glow of a computer monitor, Ross went online and asked the world of ones and zeroes, 'How do I poison someone and make it look like an accident?' In less than a second the search engine brought up more than a million sites. Our site was on the first page of results. 'How do I' was a key phrase for our site and whenever anyone asked a question in their search engine that began with those three words, our site came up near the top, even if it had nothing to do with what the question was about. Lots of money and a computer geek did that for us.

We sat around the fire pit, I on my pulpit above the rest of them, and we listened to Ross tell his tale. I couldn't believe it had worked. I called out to the world through the Internet and they heard me. As Ross went on about his journey from Oregon to Prince George, my mind wandered. How many more would come? Would our camp be able to handle a hundred more? Fifty more? Ten more? I thought of the dreams I did not have as I slept for more than thirty hours. I wondered why I hadn't heard from Adhara since the morning she told us to leave. I knew it had only been a couple of days, but for the months prior to that, her voice was more common in my head than my own.

Ross swung his arms around as he added movement to his tale. He told us about the shadows that followed him through the forest. He told us that when the sun came up, the shadows did not disappear. They were sitting on the higher branches of the trees laughing at him. He said he tried to make them stop by shooting at them, but their laughing only got louder. The dehydration was making him mad and he was ready to do himself in when he heard Pollux yelling at him. He wasn't sure if Pollux's voice was merely another hallucination, but because it was so different from the shrieks of the shadows, he followed it.

Pollux turned his head up at me and grinned. He excused himself from the group and motioned me to follow him. As we headed toward my cabin he said to me, "That guy really creeps me out."

Ross brought an air of uneasiness into the commune with him. I felt it, too, but I couldn't expel him, because of a feeling. Adhara had said the 'chosen ones' would find me. Ross had come a long way and he had found me. I had to give him a chance.

"He hasn't had water in more than a day. That would make even the sanest man mad."

"Yeah, but why'd he have the gun? I mean, what reason would he have to bring that out here?"

"I will keep the gun. If he refuses to let me do so, I will not allow him to stay."

"I know, but..."

"Let it be Martin. I mean... Pollux. He's here and it's all coming together and I don't want to hear another word."

"Hey, I'm just saying, let's be careful. All right?"

I looked back at the fire pit where Ross had again picked up the gun. It looked like he was removing the clip.

"All right," I said.

Ross sat on the futon at the back of my cabin. He looked at the walls and up at the ceiling, then out at the emptiness that still filled the commune. "It doesn't get much more simple than this, does it?" he said.

The other four had been dismissed to search out firewood, leaving me some time to talk to Ross alone. By being the first to find our commune, he had inadvertently become the guinea pig for my little one on one experiment. These people knew they needed what I was offering them, but caution would continue to be on their side until I could relieve them of it. I was sure of that. I needed some time alone with them right in the very beginning to solidify their belief and their allegiance to our cause. I needed to make them as serious as we were.

The first thing I did was offer him a bottle of water. We had spent a night about a week earlier spiking the bottles with GHB and powdered Aspirin. Though I still wasn't convinced the drug brainwashed people, I did know it opened them up to believing a lot more than they would when they were straight and sober. I also knew the words I spoke to them while they were under the drug's influence stayed with them and continued to affect them even when the drug's power had dissipated. Like a stamp, an impression was always left.

He sucked back the entire 750mL bottle, and with his dirty sleeve he wiped away the dampness still left on his lips. I waited for the gears in my head to start grinding away, but there was nothing. Salvation was not in the divine. My thoughts drifted away from the road I had practiced driving them along a hundred nights before. What I wanted to achieve in our first meeting together... our key meeting together, was not being achieved. Salvation was in the organic. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on an image of Adhara and on the things she had taught me, but suddenly, all I could think about was coffee.

His body swayed and my hands trembled. The ache behind my eye returned and my heart began to beat irregularly. Thump... thump... thumpthumpthump... thump... thump... thumthumpthump.

I bit down on my lip and tasted the bitterness of the blood trickling over my tongue. Ross reached out and took my hand. "Hey, are you okay?"

With my eyes closed again, I turned my blind eyes upward and mouthed her name. I said as quietly as I could, "Please Adhara, help me."

"Please Adhara, help me, too," Ross slurred.

I ran a hand through my hair and grabbed at a patch of hair near my neck. I pulled it out and the sharp pain that ran through my system put an end to all the other things going on. It was a pain I could handle. I looked down at Ross, and though the gears still weren't turning, I began my spiel.

His hand held mine the whole time I spoke. He rubbed it against his face and through his hair. He listened to me talk about Adhara's prophecy and the role we would play in it. He listened to the rules of the commune, some I was making up as I was going. He accepted the complete devotion I asked from him. He said it was worth it to start over again.

I christened him Corvus.

When the others returned from the forest with a trailer full of wood, I properly introduced Corvus to them. His high was at its peak and his need for affection was past the point of being reasonable. He went up to them one by one and before he hugged them he laid a big kiss on each of their mouths. It didn't seem to faze them.

The sting in the back of my head had subsided and the craving for caffeine had disappeared as I thought about all the other things we needed to do before the sun went down. I knew the craving wasn't really gone, though. It was just hiding amongst all the other reactions taking place in my body, waiting like a pervert in the shadows for that moment when I would be at my most uncertain, when I would be unable to defend myself against it.

More than forty ice-cream pails full of pebbles and rocks were stacked up behind the cabins. They were to become the pathways of our commune. We spent the remainder of the day sprinkling the pebbles in messy snake-like lines from each cabin's stairway to the center of the commune where the pulpit and the fire pit lay.

The paths were quite pathetic, looking more like the breadcrumb trails of hikers who weren't trying to get lost. They served their purpose, though, even if that purpose was just a metaphorical one. By the time the last pail was sprinkled, we had something that was there and tangible, and linked each cabin to the other. It was the connectivity that was so implied in our philosophy.

When the sun went down and the fire was lit, we all got high. I hadn't taken the drug in weeks, but I needed to reconnect with Adhara. Her voice had left me during the chaos of the preparation and the move. I needed to know I was heading in the proper direction. I needed her praise, or her criticism. I needed to know the voice that had been in my head for so long was a real god telling me a real truth, and not just a reaction created out of some imbalance in the chemicals flowing through my brain.

The bestial orgy of two nights past did not occur again. Instead, we sat there hand in hand, and for several hours we stared up at the tips of the flames, lost in our own thoughts... about what I could not say.

Gray clouds moved across the roof of the commune and blotted out the concert of stars twinkling above us. A drop of rain fell into my eye snapping me out of some state I couldn't remember slipping into. The blood running through my veins had thorns. I needed to rise and wake myself up. I let go of Aldebaran's hand and instantly a cold spear punctured my palm. It pushed out all the warmth I had been feeling during those hours in front of the fire. It made my teeth chatter.

My movement did not rouse the others from their introspection. The glass in their eyes continued to sparkle off the ashes that glowed in front of them.

I went to my cabin and I stripped off my shirt and my jeans and I slipped on my robe. I was beginning to believe Adhara did not respond to me because she was disappointed in me. I was not taking her prophecy as seriously as she would have liked me to take it. I was not giving my every breath and thought to her cause. I pulled off one sock and then I pulled off the other. Stuck to the hair on my leg was the picture of Amanda. I peeled it off and brought it close to my face, but it was too dark to see anything but a silhouette of the rectangle piece of paper in my hand. Suddenly, the clouds broke and the full moon hovering above them shined through. It lit up my cabin and the face on the picture in my hand.

A second later I was in darkness again. I dropped onto my bed and lay there for a moment caught in a surprise storm of emotion. Then, without hesitation I slipped the picture between the back wall and the futon and I closed my eyes to an even greater darkness.

31.

On the fourth morning, it sat at the end of my bed waiting for me to wake. I felt its greasy palm wrapped around my leg. It reached across with its other hand and tugged at my beard. It wanted my mouth open so I could taste it. It wanted me to hurt for it. The smell coming off it tickled the hairs in my nose as it filtered up into my brain. Chemicals were dispersed to every corner of my body. They made me shake. They made my heart beat erratically. Had I known the craving would return so quickly, I would have prepared myself better for it.

But there I was, an easy target, sleep still heavy on my eyes and my coherence. Withdrawal had begun. Sweat formed at my brow and trickled down my face onto my mucus-skinned lips. The sweat had a saltier taste than the tears of the night past. The saltiness made the craving worse.

I threw off the covers and flopped around on the futon. I was a fish out of the cooler jumping around on the boat deck in one last vain attempt to escape. I pulled at my hair, but the pain did not mask the craving as it had the day before.

The others gave it up cold turkey. Sure, there was the initial bitching and moaning when the concept was forced upon them, but after that had passed, they never again mentioned the need for caffeine. Why then did I suffer so?

When the (de)construction began in my head, the decision was made. As the jackhammers pounded away at my brain and the dump trucks dropped their loads in behind my eyes, I gave in to my weakness. I stripped off my robe and dressed again in the clothes of the real world.

The craving grabbed me by the hair and dragged me out of my cabin. Pollux was down at the fire pit building the kindling cabin he would ignite when the others woke. He had suddenly become the consummate early riser. He looked up at me and said, "Looks like you had a rough night?"

I stumbled down the steps and as I was doing so I said, "You don't know the half of it."

"So," he said, "what's going on?"

"What do you mean what's going on?"

"Well, it looks like you're going somewhere fast."

Story after story turned over in my head. I needed to find the right words to convince him that my reason for leaving the commune was a just one. "I must return to the city."

"Why must you do that?"

"Adhara... she came to me last night. She said there are lost souls that need to be shown the way."

"But..." he stopped and thought for a second. "But didn't you say that if they were meant to be here, they would find us?"

Pollux stood up and hooked my gaze with his. It was an intense stare that reminded me of staring contest opponents from my youth. So focused. So controlled. I wanted to break away, but what would I be losing if I did?

"All I can do," I said, "is take what she gives me and decipher it as best I can. Most of the time her messages are vague and confusing, and they are almost always a contradiction of some message she may have given me earlier, but if I did not take these chances, we would not be here waiting for our salvation, would we?"

He blinked and I knew I had won the match.

"What are we to do today?"

"Pollux, you are more than just a member of this group, you are a leader. Remember that. You are essentially the second in command. When I'm not available, you must decide the way. Because I have complete confidence in you, whichever way you choose to go is okay. Okay? You know what we want to achieve. You know what we want the others to achieve."

He turned from me without a response and returned to the fire pit where he placed another piece of kindling on the cabin's roof.

I made for an ATV and sped out of the commune so fast that when I looked back over my shoulder I was unable to tell whether Pollux was waving at me or fingering me.

I couldn't have cared less either way. I was in the trees, my ATV whizzing along paths only I could see, spitting up earth and the empty carcasses of long dead insects behind it, and I was thinking about how much those trees were making me sick. Suddenly, I wanted to set a match to them and watch them burn, but alas, the ground was still damp from a winter that had only just passed. It was a winter that saw record amounts of snow and water fall. It was a winter the locals termed "a once in a lifetime" kind of thing. Being the dumb city boy I couldn't help but be, I had just assumed that was the way winters always were up in the PG.

What was going on with me?

I had been led to this point, believing all along it was the place I was destined to be. I had removed myself from the mundane existence I had slipped into. That existence that was warm and safe, like a pair of underwear just out of the dryer. I had slipped out of those nut huggers and created this world where what I said goes... where my words were listened to and believed... where I was in charge... where She was in charge.

It was then, only days after we had moved into the forest, as the trees blurred by me in a painter's palette of browns and greens, that I felt a focus in my mind. It was like the hand on the camera's lens was taking the sharpness away from me and giving it back to the background, a background that had been blurry and away from my consciousness for almost a year. I could now see where I was and I could now see where I was going and it didn't look good.

The forest tried to hold me back but the speed I was moving at was enough to break me through. On the other side of the forest, a hundred and some kilometers away from the forest, a year could have passed, for the world looked nothing like the way it had looked only a few days earlier. The sun seemed warmer on my skin. The air felt cleaner as I sucked it into my lungs.

A question nagged me. What was real anymore? Was it that which lay behind me, the infant taking its first steps and saying its first words, or was it that which stood in front of me, a creature alive for millions of years, established by experience?

I parked the pick up along a residential street with a generic name like Hemlock, or Smith, and I walked into the city, taking in every little moment that was occurring around me. The streets of PG were flooded with people. They wore long-sleeved shirts underneath short-sleeved shirts, and they mumbled to one another about their summer plans in Vancouver, and Hawaii, and England. I knew this because the intensity of the sun seemed to raise the volume of their voices, as though they were shouting over the white sound of its very glow. Some gave me quizzical looks as I walked past them. I was indeed an oddity, my beard and long, dirty hair waving behind me. Most of the locals just let me be, though, and continued on with removing the shells from their pasty bodies.

The electric hum of the small neon sign hanging above me told me that I had reached my destination. A guy in a lumberjack jacket and wearing boots covered in dry mud walked through the door before me and released a torrent of trumpet and saxophone sounds into the spring air. I followed the jazz into Romeo's steel and vinyl environment.

"Hey guru," Mira said after wishing the lumberjack a good day. "It's funny you're here. I was thinking about you the other day."

"Really."

"Yeah, well, I saw this picture up at the post office. It was a picture of some guy that kind of looked like you. You know, you, if you weed whacked that beard and that hair and you put on some clothes that had been washed within the last month."

She smiled and the glare from the halogen's pointing down on her made her perfect teeth glitter. It was like a special effect added during post-production of a toothpaste commercial she had secretly filmed.

"Yeah, I didn't think much about it at first, but the last day or so, I've begun to wonder if, in fact, it was a picture of you."

The picture was of me. I knew it had to be, but the concern it should have drawn had second billing to my need for caffeine. Oh god, did I ever need a coffee. I needed it like cigarettes need addiction.

The bell above the door rang as the lumberjack pushed through it with excessive force and disappeared down the sidewalk. Mira, Louis Armstrong and I were on our own.

"God damn tree murdering sons of bitches," Mira said, most likely to herself, as her eyes were drawn from me to the dirt trail the lumberjack left on the floor. "What ever happened to cleaning up after yourself? What ever happened to common decency? Those motherfuckers walk around this town like they own it. Them and their big pick-up trucks and their little fucking dicks. Sometimes... sometimes I just hate this god-damned place."

I tried to connect the toothpaste-add girl of a few seconds earlier with the girl who had suddenly stepped into her place. I never even saw the switch. I never even had time to prepare myself for a reaction, whether she expected one or not. I simply opened my mouth and said what I believed I was supposed to say.

"I understand the ignorance of his actions, but he didn't just come in here and rob you. He gave you his business. It's not like you can't just go get a broom and sweep the dirt up. I mean, I'm sure all the other customers waiting in line wouldn't mind."

I quickly turned and pointed out the empty café behind me. I thought the humour might ease her rage.

Her head leaned to one side, and then leaned to the other. She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it just after starting her sentence, only allowing a few consonants and a vowel to escape. Her eyes became slits. She drifted from the floor to me. From me to the floor. From the floor to me.

The craving now had a knife against my throat. I couldn't believe how badly I wanted a coffee. My fear had become the possibility that little Romeo's Café was no longer the place I was going to get that cup of coffee.

And Mira said, "And who exactly are you to tell me what I can say and how I can react?"

"I..."

"I'm sorry for thinking you were so much cooler than you actually are. Here, let me get you a coffee and then I'll tell you what... why don't you get your hippy ass out of here."

I fished a couple of bucks out of my jeans, but she pushed the cup in my face and said, "No, this one's on the house."

I decided to forgo the cream and I left Romeo's before Mira could take over the role of coffee god and ban me from the juice forever. The look in her eyes told me she just might be able to do it.

A bitter taste filled my mouth and I hadn't yet taken a sip of coffee out of the paper cup in my hands. Confused signals bounced back and forth from my brain to my hands. They both wanted me to raise that cup to my lips, but something was not allowing them to do so

Who exactly are you?

Who are you?

Who?

They were words that had a million different answers and a million different meanings.

My answer eluded me. It always had. Was I a voice of God? Was I a psycho? Was I a messenger sent to spread the word? Because streetlights went out when I walked under them, did that make it so?

I walked past the consignment shop three doors down from Romeo's. Through the window I could see a woman screaming at her daughter to behave. The little girl was running around pulling outdated skirts and blouses off a circular rack. I could hear the little girl saying, "Ouch, mommy, why did you do that?" But I had passed the consignment shop before I could see what it was her mother had done.

Everything was so alive. Everything was so real. "Come On In, We're Open" signs invited me in to every little shop along First Street. The flower shops. The Kwik Marts. The vacuum repair shops. I wanted to go in and smell the lilacs. I wanted to go in and buy a Coke. But I kept walking until a rotting, empty corpse got in my way. It was Fuller's. The hostel's pulled shades and "Closed" sign were alien. They were cold. They belonged in a building in some downtown slum. I felt embarrassed to have once been a part of Fuller's. I felt embarrassed for having left it that way. I wanted to grab it by the legs and drag it out to the forest and bury it. It was just a building, but it deserved better than to be abandoned and alone.

A piece of paper taped to the doorknob distracted me. On it, written in large, dirty letters was the name Steve. I pulled it off and walked away. I wanted to look back one last time, but I couldn't.

A note was written on the back of the paper. I skimmed down and saw the name Albert signed at the bottom of the note.

Albert. My Noah.

Steve, it said. I was in town checking out this new media course at the university and I thought of you. It's been a heckuva long time, so I wasn't sure if you'd even still be here. But I asked around and this guy across the street said you were working at the hostel now. I was hoping we could get together for some coffee and maybe scratch a few lottery tickets I recently purchased.

The word purchased was put in quotations. This made me chuckle out loud. An elderly man, who was holding a golf putter, looked up at me from the bench he was sitting on and mumbled something that sounded like, "wacko kid". I ignored him and kept on reading.

I think I'll probably be heading down to the PG more often, the note said, so hopefully we'll cross sometime. My new e-mail is on my website. It's still insidealbertsteepee.com. Later, smoke hater.

I folded the note up and put it in my back pocket. I hadn't been to Albert's website since that very first night I was in Prince George. With everything I had gone through and everything I was going through, I had to wonder what would appear on the monitor if I went to insidealbertsteepee.com. Would it be what I saw that first night? Would it be the cryptic note from Adhara?

The sound of an organ up Main Street put music to the chirping of birds and the distant whine of lawn mowers. I followed it past Ace's Bike Shop and past Stacy's Gelato. I followed it to a building with a large white cross attached to its roof.

I dropped my full cup of coffee into a wastebasket near the front door of the church and I found myself drifting inside. The door had been propped open for me as though those inside the church knew I was coming.

The church was bright and empty except for an elderly woman who was sitting behind an organ off to the left side of the church's altar. As not to disturb her I floated up the center aisle to the first pew where I took a seat. Sunrays shining through massive windows warmed my face and displayed the dance of dust taking place in the air I was breathing. It had been a thousand years since I had last sat in a church. Why did I hate God so much? Was it because of Jennifer and Jonathon Janz standing by their goddamned living room window watching Kevin and I play hockey? Was it because of their goddamned mother who drew the curtains on us? I still remember seeing them sneak peaks at us as we took turns being goalie and breakaway guy.

A stained glass window that stood from the floor to the ceiling made up most of the back part of the church. It depicted angels and scenes from the bible (I may have hated God, but the bible was a wonderful read). In front of the window was a life-sized crucifix sculpted out of wood. It was adorned with the dying body of Christ. It was an image that existed in everyone's psyche, whether they happened to be Jewish, Buddhist, Satanist, or whatever. It was as famous an icon as the arches of Sir Ronald McDonald. It was an icon that defied the boundaries of taste, for if it were any other man nailed to a couple of wood planks, bleeding from all over his body, it would be deemed gratuitous. If it were an image in a movie it would cause the film to have an "R" rating. My thought was the same every time I looked at it, how could people adore something so morbid?

"He's just so beautiful, isn't he?

I hadn't noticed that the organ had stopped organing.

"Mmmm..." I responded.

"What brings you here?"

A thousand possible answers ran through my head and all I came up with was, "Coffee."

The organist got up off of her stool and I stood up a moment after her. My sudden movements made her jump back and reach out as if she was pulling her frightened soul back into her body. The dress she wore looked like the windows behind her. Triangular. Pointy. Sharp. Once she had assured herself I was more harmless than I looked, she moved away from the organ and walked toward me. My experiences in church were minimal to say the least, but I did know that if you were to step into any other church in any other part of B.C. at that moment, a woman who looked quite the same as the one in front of me would be tuning an organ and humming hymns to herself. The authenticity would make even Dana Carvey envious.

As she came down the three steps of the church's altar, her wrinkled hands gave away the fear she was obviously still feeling. They trembled, but that didn't stop her from moving to within a couple of feet of me.

She said, "God."

I screamed. I don't know why, but I screamed at the top of my lungs like a wolf caught in a leg trap. It was pain. It was release. It was something.

The old woman backed away, but she did not run off. Her hands had stopped trembling and in her eyes I saw something I hadn't seen since I was a child. Compassion. It didn't stop me from screaming, though. I screamed louder, stretching out vowel-laden sounds that bounced off the organ's pipes and echoed around the ceiling. My tantrum took a toll on my energy. My throat became sore and my voice began to skip after almost a minute of yelling. And then it was over. The old woman turned from me and returned to her stool behind the organ. The pipes sprouting up from the back of the organ began to groan. It was a low, sad note she played.

"All I wanted was a cup of coffee," I said.

The organ groaned again, and then the notes of a familiar tune began to fill the church. As I walked down the center aisle toward the exit, I thought of summer camp, sitting around a chatty campfire hopped up on smores and Shasta cream soda. I thought of Thorax, the camp councilor everyone wanted, but only I and five other guys got. He had an acoustic guitar in his hands. The fire reflected off its varnished body. The dome of trees around us made it sound almost ethereal. "Now I know you all know this one," he said as he tuned a couple of the strings. "But don't worry if you don't. You can just hum along." And he began to strum his guitar and notes floated up into the branches with the embers that had broken free from the fire. And as he sang, I saw Michael rowing his boat ashore. I heard the wood of the bow grinding against the sand of the beach. I heard the ocean behind him fizzing and shooshing as it lapped against the shore. Most of the kids knew the words. They swayed back and forth, shoulder glued to shoulder and they smiled as they sang, completely unaware of the significance of the moment. I did not know the words. I did not know I was the only one who didn't know the words. My humming cut through the choir of campers and invoked within me a new kind of fear. It was a fear of being labeled a fraud. A fraud? How could I have been the only one who didn't know the words? Before Thorax had strummed the last chord, my eyes were full of tears waiting for the command to drop. The eyes I feared had been watching me the whole time, now were. The ceremony of innocence had become drowned in child-like judgment. Guilty, they all thought. You are guilty of being a heathen, because you don't know the words to Michael Row The Boat Ashore. Who did my parents think they were pleasing by sending me to such a place? Who?

But it was all in my head. It was always all in my head. "Oh Ryan," my mother would say. "It's all in your head. Your depression. Your lack of motivation. The hate you feel toward your brother. It's all in your head."

The kids were not condemning me. The kids were concerned for me. Thorax was concerned for me.

I wanted to run. I was good at running. Put me in some Reeboks, hire me a trainer, and the ticket to the Olympics would be in the mail soon after. Who's to know what would have happened to me had I dragged my beaten carcass back to Abbotsford and hit them up with some old fashioned honesty. Who's to say where I would have ended up. Jail. Insane Asylum. The patio at The Meanest Bean. Running made me a god.

And I ran when I left the church. I ran all the way back to the pick-up truck.

The streets were nameless. The world I was in was alien. It had to be that way, or my mind would have given out on me, leaving me motionless and in a vegetable state on the bench outside the Taco Bell. The beast awaited my return. It needed my hand to carry it through to that next level. What that level was still remained a mystery to me. I had to focus on what I was doing and not on what I was thinking. My thoughts were faltering as they had done a year earlier. To give up on my creation would be to give up on everything I ever dreamed I could do.

Adhara was my saviour. Just the sound of her voice would make everything all right.

An hour and a half later I kicked through the fence of trees around the commune and I drew only Aldebaran's eyes. He sat at the fire pit roasting something speared onto the end of a stick. I hoped it was a marshmallow. I sought justification for my desires.

"Pollux said you took off on one of the ATVs. He said you were looking for those that were lost."

The crackling fire stopped him for a moment. He looked at it as though it was trying to tell him something. He shook his head and looked back up at me. "I don't see either."

"Where are the others?"

"Tofu?"

"Huh?"

He jerked the spear out of the fire and flung it under my nose. A seared glob of tofu smoked from its tip.

"No, thank you."

"Your loss."

He pulled the glob off the stick and tossed it in the air. He tried to catch it in his mouth but his position under the falling tofu was off by centimeters. It bounced off his cheek and into the flames where it quickly caught fire and bubbled away into nothingness.

"Shit," he said. And then I thought I heard, "I'm sick of this."

"What did you say?"

He jabbed his tofu spear into the burning logs that fueled the flames and he got to his feet. Without saying a word he turned away from me and went to his cabin.

The commune was still. Its emptiness ominous. I suddenly felt the same way I'd felt while traveling in Europe, hopping on busses randomly, no destination in mind, being dropped off at the end of the line in the middle of the night knowing that indeed, I couldn't be more out of place. I remembered those Germans in their wool caps. I remembered their blue eyes even under the skewed light of a snowy night in December. In their imported North American movie English they said to me, "Hey, we're super cool. You join us for drink?" How different would things be had I joined them?

"Adhara! Adhara!" I screamed her name as I ran into my cabin and took the jar of GHB sitting next to my bed. I twisted off the lid and swigged back a mouthful. The dose would have killed a lesser man.

I didn't wait for it to take hold. Back at the fire pit I shouted like I was Jesus himself. "Come to me!"

Blurs of colour seeped from cracks in the wall of trees. The blurs oozed across the commune leaving a trail of colourful slime behind them. In front of me they solidified into the form of human beings.

"We need to go deeper," I said. "We need to get as deep into this as we can... Here."

And I held out that Mason jar filled with GHB. And I waited for one of them to read me. It was an unimaginable weight in my hand.

A blur.

And the weight was lifted.

32.

All I wanted to do was step down from my perch/my pulpit/my podium and run into the forest. All I wanted was to be anonymous again. To blend in with the oak trees and pine trees and rabbits and deer. I wanted to emerge from that forest normal. A young man with a life of opportunity ahead of him. Job, wife, townhouse, sedan... that sort of thing. Normal. Was that normal? Getting up, going to work, going to the coffeeshop to chitchat with friends for a few hours, and then going home to kiss the wife before going to bed? I used to think that was a sort of hell where people went when they didn't have anywhere else to go. Of all the things I wanted, the thing I wanted the most was to never have heard that voice. That voice that started this whole thing.

"So... is this where the story ends?"

I looked up at the sky. I looked past the V of geese and the airplane chemtrails, where space and heaven lie. I looked for a response I knew was not coming. I shouldn't have been surprised. She hadn't spoken to me in days. Or maybe it was weeks. Her absence had allowed a beast to be born. I beast I could no longer control. It had grown too large and too smart in her absence. And it was so close to taking me over. I heard its breath blowing through the trees. Knocking needles and rotted limbs onto the forest floor. The people sitting next to me and those sitting below me weren't the same people I had dragged into the forest only days earlier. The beast had already gotten to them.

"Answer me, damnit! Answer me, you cunt! Tell me I haven't lost it. Tell me you still exist!"

And then the arms of the drug, the mixture of gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid and acetylsalicylic acid that was slowly working its way through my body, grabbed hold of my brain and returned me to my place. Cassiopeia and Pollux by my side, faced forward and still... their minds so far away from mine.

Made of wood and nails, the perch of mine on which I sat cross-legged was to be the birth canal that would lead me to salvation. I would rule my Eden from it, telling the boys and girls who made their way to me that I could give them all they couldn't get in their first life. I would fill their bodies with GHB and I would fill their minds with hope, and I would keep them so unaware of just what the point of their being there really was.

I looked down at the two below me, dressed pathetically in the lettuce-green robes Candy made us. Were they innocent once? Was what I did to them a form of corruption?

I looked to my right, "I love you Cassiopeia."

I looked to my left, "I love you Pollux."

And still they faced forward, their pupils singed by the image of the flames dancing over top of them. "And we love you, and our entire galaxy of stars. Our love will only fade when the lights of the night sky fade."

Silence again, and my senses thrown into rewind. Had I told them to say that? Was there something sarcastic in the tone of their combined voices? I passed it off to drug-induced paranoia.

As little puffs of clouds passed over us and the sun moved from one side of the sky to the other, the drug began to dissipate. Little men holding pitchforks jabbed gently at my muscles and my organs. Their presence would be felt for more than an hour. I got to my feet and I cut the air with my hand signaling that I was done. I tapped Pollux and Cassiopeia on the shoulder and they stood to meet me at eye level, however, their eyes looked everywhere but at mine.

"Forgive me," I said. "Forgive me if I don't join the rest of you tonight. I really need some sleep."

As I stepped off my perch, leaving the four of them to come down at their own leisure, Pollux grabbed my arm. "Are you all right?" He asked.

"I was..."

He stepped off the podium and arm in arm we walked toward my cabin. In a voice just audible to him I said, "I was just wondering if you ever thought... well, if you ever thought that what we've done here... what we are doing here, is crazy?"

He stopped, stopping me. His brain glowed. I saw it through his skull formulating thoughts. Remnants of the drug's effect on me, I hoped. After what seemed like an hour of silence his eyes looked into mine. It was the first time he had done that all day. And as cold and as hard as I've ever heard anyone in my commune speak, he said, "Do not lose your faith, Alioth. There are too many of us here ready to die for that faith. If you start saying words like 'crazy,' you will send this place into a tornado of confusion and anger. We know you are faltering. We know you are lying when you speak to us. And if it continues, Alioth, we know we will be forced to step in and take control. You brought us here. You started this. But this is so much bigger than you now."

The words reeked of the truth, but they still hurt me. "You cannot take control of something I created. And you cannot speak to me that way."

"Just don't lose your faith, Alioth," he said. "Because we all know who the true Creator is." Pollux let go of my arm and ran back to the podium where the other three were throwing stones into the fire.

I took a step and then another. The mountains poking their gray and wrinkled heads above the tops of the trees seemed to watch my every move. They knew the future, because they had seen so much of the past. They knew the direction I would go because they had seen a million other men take that same course. They knew the little commune, still in its infancy, could not last much longer than it already had. They knew because they could see its leader no longer believed in the god that was supposed to save them. All those sermons of false prophecies and outlandish promises were stacked up like a house of cards that reached to the moon. It couldn't see the wind with unimaginable force heading toward it, gaining momentum so when it struck, everything created from a voice in my head would crumble. Everything would be lost. Again.

I couldn't hide from the truth.

My cabin, so much larger than the others. Filled with so many things only I knew about. Thoughts and reminders of the past. They were told to rid themselves of photographs, keepsakes, jewelry, and all the other obstacles keeping us from giving in completely. They were told to cleanse their minds and their souls of everything they used to be. To become empty shells, which would be refilled with the memories and the knowledge I was to give them. If they couldn't do that, they were told to turn around and walk back out of the forest into the world that hated them so much. I could preach it, but I couldn't let go... I couldn't let go of my coffee. I couldn't let go of Amanda.

Hidden between the layers of my futon was the photo I couldn't seem to get rid of. Finally, I knew why. The photo and the memory of the girl in the photo kept me from slipping completely into insanity. It helped me sleep when all I could think about was the running. It comforted me when all I really wanted to do was cry.

I lifted the futon and unzipped its skin. I slipped my hand between the foam and the cotton and I felt the photo. I pulled it from its giant sleeve and I stared into the eyes of the girl in the photo. She smiled at me and left me nervous. I kissed the photo and I tasted the berry lip-gloss that always coated her lips.

"What am I doing here, Amanda? How did it ever get this far?"

I waited for another answer that would not come. I laid down and rested the photo on the pillow next to me. Wood bugs crawled in and out of the log running along the ceiling. One of them fell to the floor and scuttled off under my bed. Its resilience left me envious. There was no confusion and no shock. The wood bug just continued to move as though it were still above me.

"How could you let me take it this far?" My question was now at Adhara. "You can't just disappear. You have to tell me what to do next."

And still that voice in my head stayed silent.

"I must continue, you realize. I must prevail and take this... this thing to its conclusion, whatever that may be. Even if you choose to never answer me again, I will not lose control of this. My faith will be stronger than ever, even if it is a false faith. My faith will get me through."

And then I prayed. I prayed not to Adhara, but to the god my parents had introduced me to when I was still a child. I slid off my futon and got on my knees. I put my hands together and I said to God, "I do not know if this is appropriate, and I do not know if you can help, but I need... I need someone to talk to. They told me at church and they told me at camp that even though you may not answer, you are always listening, and right now, that's good enough for me. First of all, you know I didn't kill those girls. You know I've never really done anything wrong except hate myself a little too much. My answer was Adhara, God. She spoke to me like she was any other person. I saw her and I touched her and I believed it when she said she could give it all to me. Was it narcissistic of me to believe others out there felt the same way as me? Was it narcissistic of me to believe I could give it all to them? Yes. Yes, I think it was. Adhara was never real. She was... she was a diversion. A distraction from my shitty life. Or, at least, the life I thought was shitty, but really... Oh Jesus... God, they're going to follow this thing through. How can I get them back?"

There was commotion outside. Cassiopeia screamed. Someone yelled, "Oh, Jesus!"

My hands parted.

Someone was running toward my cabin. "Alioth!" he shouted. I heard the crunching of pebbles under foot. The sound got louder and louder until it was replaced with frantic knocking.

"Oh god! Oh god, Alioth! Come. Come quick! Ross. Ross has..." Sabik stopped speaking for only a second. Though I couldn't see him, I read the silence. "It's Corvus. Please, just come!"

I slid my feet into my sandals and met Sabik on my porch. He turned and made for the cabin two down from mine. Twice he peered back over his shoulder. His bottom lip was twitching.

Aldebaran and Cassiopeia were standing outside the cabin, their faces buried in their hands. Cassiopeia looked up when she heard our footsteps. She wrapped her arms around me and dropped her head onto my shoulder. Her tears seeped through my robe. The cold tears hitting my skin made me shiver.

"He... we... we didn't know... he said he wasn't feeling well. When you called us he said he wanted to rest. Alioth, what is going on here? Why would he do this?"

I pushed her off of my shoulder and yelled at them all to get away from me. I yelled at them, "Get the fuck away from me!"

I yelled and they didn't move.

I turned my back on them and looked at the entrance to Corvus' cabin. A gentle creaking emanated from it. A boat tied to a dock. A tire swing tied to a tree branch. Peacefulness. I pushed through the canvas door. A small candle in the corner of the cabin flickered. I saw his shadow against the wall first. Then I saw him. His eyes met mine, but the life in his eyes was gone. A breeze blew in through the open window and rocked his body. On the floor, several feet below his swaying feet, a puddle of piss veined off in several directions. A piece of paper was in one of the piss veins. It was soaked and bleeding ink. I inched toward it. There were words on it. Big, scribbled out words. Words that looked like they were the handywork of a child of four. I didn't fully take in what the note said at first, so I picked it up by its one dry corner and held it out at arms length until the piss dripped free from it.

And I read it.

I WANT IT BACK.

And I read it again.

I WANT IT BACK.

The oxygen in my blood disappeared. I fell onto one of the bottom bunks and I began hyperventilating. Wood and decay and the smell of piss filled my body. I stole a look at Corvus. Even in death, or maybe because he was dead, he was beautiful. I thought about his words. His request. What did Corvus want back? Was it the abuse? Was it the loneliness? Or was it as simple as an evening up at the coffee shop sipping on a cup of cold coffee, spouting off about politics and music and all the other little things that made up life?

I sucked in several deep breaths replenishing the oxygen I had lost and I got back up onto my feet. I wrapped my arms around his waist and I held him for several minutes. I held him and I apologized to everyone he may have ever known. I apologized to his dead parents and to his teachers and to all the people that told him it would be all right. My apologies brought little satisfaction. When I finished apologizing, I loosened the belt around his neck and pulled him down. He floated gently into my arms.

I carried Corvus out for all to see. Their eyes were full of teeth. Their eyes bit at me. Tore away pieces of me. "Go home!" I yelled. "It's over! Go home!"

Pollux appeared. They were looking at him the way they had looked at me only days earlier. "Alioth," he said. "We are home."

The weight in my arms was unbearable. "This is not your home!" I yelled. "This is the creation of a... of a madman." My insides crackled and sparked like kindling. The jammed gears caved in on themselves. Pure chaos. "Go home to your families and tell them you are alive. Please."

Pollux stepped up to me and spat on the ground in front of my feet. "How can you say that to us, Alioth? You have instilled in us through punishment and promise that this is where we belong. You are our mother and our father. You are our lover. You made us believe that. You fucked my wife and you made me believe it was okay. You said you would send us away if we couldn't believe that. How can you tell us to leave our home, Alioth?"

"Look, Pollux... Look Martin, he's dead because he knew it was all a hoax."

"No, Alioth. He is dead because you are a hoax... because you no longer believe in the words that come out of your mouth, and because you no longer have any control over this thing you created. We will all lose our faith if you continue on in this manor. You must leave."

"How can you lose a faith that never existed before I thought it up?"

"Your ego and ignorance are no longer welcome here," he says. "They are no longer needed. This faith is out of your hands, because this faith is as real as Christianity or Buddhism. It is more real. Hope. Direction. Belief. Belonging. These are the things religion breeds. People need something to believe in, Alioth, and you gave it to us. Whether it was out of some selfish need for approval, or place in the world, or whatever, you gave it to us and we will always be grateful to you for it. We will always speak of you as the bringer of Her word. But you bring us nothing anymore."

Pollux kept his eyes locked on mine as he told the other three to return to their cabins. They headed off without an afterthought. Richard and Riley discussed all the opportunities the new world would offer them. The bile rose in my stomach. The stomach acid in the bile burned in my throat and briefly distracted me from the mutiny taking place. I was slouching now.

"I am lost without this, Martin."

"You've been lost since we got out here. You had this, Ryan. You had it and you were still lost."

He was right. "I will not leave without a fight."

"If that is what it takes."

Had I meant words or fists? His heavy breathing implied his willingness to tear open my flesh. His heavy breathing faded as he walked away from me without starting a thing.

"What about the body?" I yelled.

What about the body? Life goes by and you assume that the only dead bodies you'll ever see are those of your grandparents and your parents. You assume you may not even have to see those if they choose cremation or closed casket funerals. Bodies are things of movies and television police dramas. They are white and stiff and catalysts for one-liners by sexy homicide detectives.

"The body is your problem."

"Martin..."

But he was gone.

The weight pulled me closer to the ground until I could do nothing more but drop it.

When the pain in my arms receded, I grabbed Ross's body under the armpits and I dragged him into the forest. I dragged him over top of rock and wood and dirt. I dragged him through bushes. His body stayed limp making the task easier. Easier, that was, in a physical sense. I found a large patch of disturbed earth and began doing the only thing I could think of doing at that moment. I dug. With my bare hands I dug up handful after handful of cold, moist dirt.

Time passed. A hole six feet long and at least six feet deep surrounded me. I pulled myself out of it and looked into the abyss I had just dug. Nothing.

Ross's body felt heavier... a little tighter, like it needed to be lubed. I dragged it over to the hole and gently lowered it in. For the first time I realized just how far out of the commune I had dragged him. Nothing was familiar. No tree. No rock. No thing.

A chill came on. Soon the sun would grab hold of the mountain peaks and pull itself over them. Soon, Ross's body would be covered in dirt and more lost than it had ever been. I sat at the edge of the hole and watched Ross until the darkness took his body completely from me. By the light of the moon, I filled in the hole and I cried.

I cried until the sound of a moving forest shut me up.

Branches broke.

Voices rang out.

My name.

My name.

"Ryan! Ryan Paul, are you out here?"

Rays of light splintered through the trees. "Ryan! Are you here?"

I followed the light past the grave and opened my arms to whoever was approaching.

The light blinded me, but I did not cover my eyes. I kept staring into it.

"Are you..."

"Oh my God! Ryan? Is that you?"

The voice rang through my head, eliciting memories I thought I had all but erased: my first day of school, talks about sex and drugs, receiving the keys to the car for the very first time. The light moved from my face to the flattened ground behind me. The veil lifted. A large man, just a shadow, stepped in front of me, and from behind him a thinner shadow stepped out.

"Hello," I said. "Hello mother."

"Oh baby..." She grabbed my head and brought me to her chest. Her heart beat so fast. I tried to count the beats as we stood there for who knows how long, but when I got to ninety I gave in. I trembled at her touch. I sobbed in her arms like the child who just lost his favorite toy. She ran her hands through my hair and she kissed the top of my head.

"Oh baby... I knew we'd find you. I knew..."

My ears were blocked but her voice radiated through to me.

"What did we do to you, baby? What did I do to you?"

"I wanted..."

I had no answer. I had nothing.

She loosened her grip on me and stepped back so she could look into my eyes. Suddenly, my thoughts were hijacked by images of the commune, and the paths I had laid, and the life I had conceived.

"I wanted to be loved."

"But you are loved. I love you, Ryan. Kevin loves you. Your father loved you. And Amanda... Amanda loved you so much, Ryan. She still loves you. I know this, baby, because she calls me every day to see if we've found out anything new."

And then my commune didn't exist anymore. The stars, and the galaxy, and the goddamned unicorn were gone.

"Ryan," my mother said. "Please come home now."

"But... but what about the police. What about those girls they think I killed? What about Ross?"

"Ryan... you don't have to worry about that anymore."

"But..."

"Ryan, just come home. We have all the time in the world to go over things. Just come home."

She wrapped her arm around my waist and pushed me forward. I was amazed by how easily she moved me. We stepped away from the grave and headed deep into the forest toward wherever.

"Did you see that?" the large man leading the way with the flashlight said.

We entered a large clearing in the forest I had never been to before.

"See what?" My mother replied.

"A star up there just fizzed out. Hmm... that's strange."

My mother and I looked up at the sky. "The sun's just rising, that's all," she said.

"No, look," the man said and pointed at space. "They're popping out. Like light bulbs."

We watched the stars burn out. A succession of bright flashes, then nothing, until only two stars remain.

"They're so bright," my mother said.

Somewhere in the distance I heard feral screaming. The grip I had on my mother tightened.

"Did you hear that?" I asked. I felt it running through my body. How could they not have heard it?

"Hear what?" My mother replied.

"The screaming."

"Ryan, are you okay?"

"Look. Look up in the sky." I was frantic. I never believed a night would occur where only two stars shined in the sky. Hale bop passed and the members of Heaven's Gate killed themselves. The FBI raided Waco and Koresh killed his people. I was no longer in charge. I no longer believed. But Martin believed.

"Oh, Ryan. Baby. It's all in your head."

"Yes. Yes," I said. "It is all in my head. Let's just keep going. Let's just keep going forward, okay?"

EPILOGUE.

I am a regular.

I get up every morning and I walk to a place called The Meanest Bean Coffeeshop. The people who work at this coffeeshop know that I like a medium mug of organic coffee. I like just enough room in it to add a splash of cream. I do not add sugar. The sugar takes too much of the taste away.

I sit outside. It doesn't matter what the temperature is outside. I am an outside person. I will always be an outside person. Jazz out of speakers is nice, but the jazz of my thoughts is even nicer.

I sip on my coffee and watch the hordes of people enter, then leave the big Ahab's Coffee across the street. Something I've noticed about these people is that they are never smiling. I'm glad Karl never gave in to them. I'm glad his regulars never gave up on him.

I read the news of the day. I read about other young men disappearing from the face of the Earth. Men whose friends say the disappearance is totally out of character. I scour the classifieds for jobs. Once in a while I find something that peaks my interest, like a copy editor at an independent newspaper, or a salesman for erotic toys. I tell my mother that I've sent out resumes, but we both know I'm lying. We both know it isn't really that important anymore.

What's important is the truth.

The truth is, I did slip out of her arms. The truth is that to this day she hasn't forgiven herself for not holding on tighter. The truth is, I have never resented her.

I went through several weeks of counseling and testing when my mother brought me back to Abbotsford. In the end, a group of men in white robes concluded I had a bipolar disorder. They prescribed me some sort of antidepressant I can't pronounce. They said I might experience side effects like constipation and restlessness and erectile dysfunction, but the only side effect I've noticed is a gain in weight. It's not a massive gain, but my cheeks are a little fatter and another chin has appeared. I don't know if the medication is helping any, but that doesn't stop me from popping one of those little white pills each and every day.

Once a week I walk up to the prison and I ask to see Fraser. He never sees me, but this won't stop me from trying again the next week and the next week after that. There are so many things I want to know that only he has the answer to. I say I'd like to know these things, but I don't need to know them. I think I just want him to know I have forgiven him. I have forgiven him, because I understand where he was coming from.

I don't see Amanda much these days. She has immersed herself in school. She says she wants to be a nurse. She says when school is over she would like to try the relationship thing again. I told her I'd be waiting. I told her I'd wait for her until the end of time if she asked me to. I told her she just had to check the patio at The Meanest Bean to find me.

I am a regular.

I read books and watch movies. I do crosswords in the local newspaper. I've learned that there's a method to doing crosswords. The clues recycle, so the more crosswords you do, the easier it gets. I can now finish a crossword in less than ten minutes. Once in a while I play Risk with Kevin and his friends. Once in a while I have a couple of beers and immerse myself in the hockey game.

Right now, though, I am walking. I am heading somewhere I haven't yet been. I've been telling myself to go and do it for a while now, but I always seem to find an excuse not to. I woke up this morning and I said to myself, "No more excuses."

I am walking up a path that is paved in gravel. Large power lines hum from both sides of the path. I see no end to them. I can't see where they are coming from or where they are going. I only know my destination, because I was given the exact coordinates by a teary-eyed woman I had never met before. She told me that if I traveled up the path for about five minutes I would see an old wrought iron gate on the left-hand side of the path. And that's exactly what I see. A circular hedge about the size of recreation-sized swimming pool runs from one side of the gate to the other. Buried under the earth inside this circle are members of her family going back almost a hundred years. Buried under the earth of this circle is Todd Phillips. His mother told me his grave is under a plum tree. It is the only tree inside the circe, so I can't miss it.

A wind is blowing, but it seems the wind is always blowing when we are among the dead. The wind has knocked many of the plums from the tree. They have split open on top of the gravestones and they have spilled their guts. Guts that are now hard and rotting. A sweet smell perfumes the air around Todd's grave.

I don't say anything. I stare down at his gravestone and I read it a hundred times. "Our Boy," is etched into it. Under that it says, "Todd wasn't perfect, but he was ours. We will never stop loving him."

Did I really know Todd Phillips?

The better question is why didn't I really know Todd Phillips?

I leave the graveyard and I walk back into town. Electricity fills the air. There is a storm coming. I can smell it. I am looking forward to this storm, though. I will watch it from under the awning of The Meanest Bean Coffeeshop. I will take my shoes off and let the rain fall on my toes. I will drink five or six cups of coffee and then I'll call my mother to come and pick me up.

I am a regular.

I am a regular human being with a regular life.

It's not perfect, but it's mine.

I will love it.

######

Xavier Kind spent his formative teen years in Abbotsford. New Fathers is his second novel.
