The Altonevers (3 page)

“
That
sounds...weird,”

“
Yeah, there's alotta weird
stuff out there kid,” he says.

“
I'm not a kid,”

“
That’s childish, we don’t
have time for this. We really should be going on account of, well
all this happening right now and it’s getting late, you see,” he
says pointing to the ground. “It's capsizing and it's already
tilting at two thirty toward the east,” he shakes his head to her
holding a look of impatience, more worried for her life, though not
very much for his own.

“
What's your name, anyway?”
he asks.

She announces herself triumphantly
through a sniffle, “Anna.”

“
An, na,” slips from his
mouth. That name rings a loud bell deep in his abandoned memory, a
triangle bell, resurfacing with a scene from hazed remembrance. Of
himself as a child, barefoot in a dusty field filled with wavering
heat. Hearing the mother of the house down the road, yelling for
her children to come off the dirt and eat. He recalls one of them
having the name of Anna. He looks to the direction of the rung
bell, seeing only rows of laundry lines blowing like sails, and
blocking his view. In an oasis of nostalgic thought, though knowing
the girl in front of him is not the same as the name shouted from
his memory, he feels compelled to help her.

“
And you are?”

“
Cider,” he states, “Wanted
the Altonevers over, and under,” he smiles stretching his hand for
her to shakes.

“
Your name is a juice!” She
laughs.

“
Well, if it makes you
smile, sure,” he says. Anna, seeing no reason why not, and slightly
smitten, reaches out to take his hand in hers. Her fears fall away,
strangely relieved by his touch. Feeling to her like certainty,
something real in the unreality unfolding around her. She watches
the end of his smoke disintegrate over his shoulder, dragging his
attention to it. He imagines her sucked into the vacuum of space,
screaming in silence while floating away, becoming blue, and
bursting through her skin. Atomizing and sifting away until
indistinguishable from the black of oblivion. He shivers, shaking
himself of the thought.

“
Why is this happening?”
she asks.

“
Oh yeah that's right, this
is happening,” he snaps out of his daze.

“
Nice to meet you Anna, but
this is a helping hand, not a hello.”

“
What the hell!” she
shouts, staggering like a stumbling giraffe as he pulls her into an
uneven stride. The pavement is sliding under foot as it slants so
that what’s to their left, west is sliding below them, and what’s
across the street’s becoming above their heads. The fluidly flowing
asphalt is overflowing, pouring out from the trenches dug for the
streets, rushing up to meet the descending dissolution that's
devouring the city structures story by story. As the minutes and
intersections pass, the city slants more and becomes like running
across a wall, wearing the rubber of her shoes as she scrapes at
the pavement to keep up with his racing pace.

He squeezes her knuckles white,
grabbing the edge of the curb with his right hand, and swings her
off the ground and over the edge of the curb into an empty street.
He pulls himself up after her, and rolls onto the dirt trench that
was a four lane avenue, now more of a cave cut in half. Leaving
them standing upright on the side of the sidewalk inside a half
tunnel walled by obsidian fluid flowing upward. Brushing the dust
off her behind, she catches him staring at her hips.

“
Really? the world is
collapsing!”

“
What?”

“
Stop staring at
my...you're such a dick.”

“
Is that what I am to you,
a piece of meat?”

“
WOW!”

“
Yeah, wow, that’s good to
know,” he answers, and the two trade sharp eyed smiles. He turns
his head left, leading her to the see the pillars of modern man
once standing as though to suspend the sky, now lying as horizontal
rows of eroding city spires.. Swathes of cityscape are crumbling
through the air while ascending as a violently rising illuminated
sea of vapor sweeping into the wake of the sundered sun. A subway
car crashes through an airborne mass of brick, that breaks into an
array of light bending wavelengths twisting out in slow
motion.

“
Hope that's not ours,” he
says.

“
It, it's...wonderful,” she
whispers entranced. As all of the glass face of the building that's
stretching out in front of her like a pier into the sky, spills
upward while melting and bubbling, spiraling and coalescing into a
field of red orange beach ball sized glowing globes. Effervescently
rising and colliding to shatter with a field of brilliant flashes
in the colors of fall leaves.

“
We're almost there,” he
says, tugging her into a sprint down to the end of the block. His
heels slide across the ground as he tries to slow, only coming to a
stop with his toes teetering over the edge of the curb. He flaps
like a penguin trying to fly before she pulls him by the neck of
his shirt to safety.

“
Whew, that was close. It’s
still there though,” he says.

“
What's there?”

“
The station,” he says out
of breath.

“
Oh, right.”

“
But, there's a
thing.”

“
What thing? why is there a
thing?”

“
The thing is, there’s
alotta stuff, kinda avalanching up the city, uh, toward
us.”

“
How can it be avalanching
up?”

“
It looks like an avalanche
and it’s crashing upward, from below, us,” he says.

She looks over the edge to see what he
said and, “Okay, so what now?”

“
Well,” he says lighting a
smoke “You’re not gonna like this.”

“
Do we really have time for
a smoke break?” she asks waving fumes from her face.
Exhaling, he answers, “not really no, but we do
have to get to those rails.”

“
To the,
Altonevers?”

“
Yes Anna, we don’t have
time for questions, urgency is upon us, and we have to get down
there,” he points over the edge of the curb.

“
Down there!?” she
yells.

“
Anna! C'mon with the
questions. This is vital time.”

“
Don’t yell at me! How can
you be so calm right now?”

“
I wasn’t serious,” he
says.

“
That’s my
point!...whatever, nevermind,” she says.
He says nothing only pointing down again, animatedly, and
stepping to the ledge and waiting for her to join him. After a
moment she takes her place next him, and laughs a desperate,
nervous laugh.

“
Are you afraid of
heights?” he asks.

“
Not usually.”

“
Well this is unusual, for
you anyway, but I think you'll be fine.”

“
You've done this before?”
she asks.

“
Not exactly.”.

“
What do you
do?”

“
Uh, weather chasing, is a
hobby,” he says shrugging.

“
Weather chasing, you said
you were wanted the Altonevers over.”

“
And your eyes are brown I
see, but they read so easily as green,” he replies and
she peeks wearily, weak kneed over the
edge.

“
You see the yellow and
black glowy thing?” he asks.

“
You mean the subway
sign?”

“
Right, try to hit that and
roll in. Not too hard or you may break something. Just tuck and
roll, and hope for the best,” he says.

“
Nope, I'm not doing that,”
she insists with shaking head and arms folded.

“
You got a better
idea?”

“
No!” she cries
hysterically “no, no I, I can't, we’ll die.”

“
Maybe, yeah maybe, but, we
definitely will die if we don’t. so chin up Carrots, the only way
to live is to fall.”

“
To our deaths, or
definitely die.”

“
That's out of our hands
after we leap, right, so relax. The best we can do is try to live,”
he says.

She stands tense, in disbelief of his
disregard for the danger they're currently in.

“
Listen, I can get you
home, okay,” he says,. already adoring her smile, and wanting to
tame the tearful tides of her eyes.

“
How? it's all...that
doesn't make any sense.”

“
Neither does any of this,
but it's happening anyway,” he says, watching intently, and
enjoying the elation wash over her face.

“
You, really can? get be
back here? If the impossible is happening then why not happen
again, in another way, any way, right?” she says through
sniffles.

“
Of course! We can always
find our way back through the infiniteness of the Altonevers,” he
says consolingly, convincingly as though to talk her off a
ledge.

“
Ready?” he asks.
She retreats to herself, seeking her own in inner
silence. Thinking of nothing, not her own bad habits or the daily
routine of her soul dulling job, or mundane life's anxieties. Not
the minor triumphs or self loathsome failures of a life without
aspiration. Not of living check to check, or vicariously living a
life worth living only in her daydreams. Not her foster parents,
dead mother or missing father not missing her. Not of her
impatience and unreliability to even herself. Her mind is devoid of
thought, as deep as the void pursuing her. Her existence is
soundless for seconds, before
realizing
she must plunge to her life, and accept she has no choice in the
matter. With surging breast and primal passion of survival pulsing
through her veins, she thinks of wanting to be free, free from
alarm clocks, free to live an adventure as her own life. She stands
straight with toe’s teetering a city block over the subways stairs
sinking into the sidewalk, and a mile over an ascending avalanche
of sublimating matter.

“
Okay,” she
sighs.

“
You’re ready this time?”
he asks. His hand is steady when near death, he thrives in the
adrenaline of fear, it being the only thing that makes him feel as
though he's alive, among the living. Enamored as he watches her
expression shift from soft and horrified to tempered as steel.
‘She’s ready’ he thinks, while feeling pins and needles stinging
again at his empathy, as worry for someone other than
himself.

“
Yes! I'm ready!” she
shouts triumphantly. To die, or live, she asks of herself. He
reaches for her hand, she pulls away.

“
Don't think about how much
it's gonna hurt, alright. Forget about broken bones or split
organs, and really don’t think about spinal injuries, alright?
Great, break a leg, actually don’t, tuck and roll, wait, run
first,” he says.

“
Stop it,” she
says.

“
No, we have to
go”

“
Talking about how much
it'll hurt,” she says leaning over the ledge, entranced and
enraptured in a sense of relief by the sight of the yellow glowing
entrance.

“
Whoa,” she says seeing
through her fear for just a moment, long enough to embrace the
majesty in the magnitude of the dematerializing
metropolis.

“
I know, it's what I came
for,” he says.

“
No, that we're free,
completely free of...everything,” she says. “Compelling, but now’s
not the time, or it is the time. It both is and isn't the time for
thought of it,” he says, slapping her on the back before diving off
the pavement plateau.

Anna closes her eyes, hesitating for a
second that lasts forever in her mind, though ending when her
eyelids lift, reminding her that life doesn't last as long as a
single thought could.

She tediously leans forward. Squeezing
her eyes shut, struck by fear growing as her body tips over the
edge, and she’s free falling a second later. Without a thought
she's stampeding down the wall, with toes barely tapping the
cracking and fracturing surface of the vertical sidewalk. The whole
way down she's screaming at the top of her lungs. Not even trying
to slow her gallop, she glides easily past him. Oblivious in the
caress of her carelessness, and never wanting to stop falling in
stride. She curls into a ball and meets the yellow and black sign
with a yelp and a thud. Dropping as dead weight then tumbling down
a long and twisting white tiled stairwell. The avalanche vaporizing
reality quakes through the ground as it rumbles closer. Washing
over the hole like an ocean wave seen from below, a second after he
shouts and thuds and drops to follow her tumble down the stairs.
The city and its history, the stars burning brightly in place for
billions of years, the Alto in it's entirely is evaporated from
physical persistence in a matter of minutes.

Hop, skip and
jump

Rolling, and rolling still, tumbling
down the long way down a narrowing white tiled stairway to
eventually flop flat on her front onto a dirty cement landing.
Slopping the sweat from her face to the ground, that smiles back at
her as her own reflection. Kneeling under an arcane decorated arch
of brass and wood, crowning the entrance of the Altonevers station.
She gets to her feet drunk in dizziness as he brushes himself
off.