Manuscript

A man and a woman and a dog arrive at a boardwalk. It’s a beautiful Cape May morning, sunny with the promise of unrelentingly clear skies. The beach isn’t quite empty—there’s a few older couples under rented umbrellas, some teenagers boogieboarding, kids burying themselves in wet sand—but there’s more than enough room to spread out a towel on the ground and relax. All in all, a promising beginning to the first day of a weekend vacation.

You read it over once and you know it’s not nearly interesting enough.

A man and a woman and a dog arrive at a boardwalk. It’s a blustery Cape May afternoon, breezy with the promise of cloudy skies. The beach is quiet except for them, with no murmuring couples or noisome teens or squalling infants to disturb the peace. As they spread out a towel on the ground, on the wet packed sand, the man turns to the woman. “The baby’s not mine,” he says. “Is it?”

Patently nonsensical, you realize. And your prose is starting to repeat itself.

A man and a woman walk along the beach. Beside them a dog canters, a small dog, undersized and overfed. It’s nipping at their heels, yanking at the fraying ends of its leash. It won’t stop yapping. Finally the man caves. He digs into a pocket, retrieving a section of jerky, and he tosses the treat to the impatient dog. It spins in a joyous circle for a few minutes before taking a shit on the boardwalk.

Now the dog’s getting too much play. You haven’t even figured out what the dog’s meant to symbolize.

A man and a woman—no, a dog and a man—a woman and another woman sit on a bench on the boardwalk, chatting about the weather and the economy. One of the women is older, with wire-rimmed glasses and a painted-on smile. She’s the mother, yes, that’s right, and she’s rambling on without realizing that there are cracks showing in her daughter’s WASP-y façade. All of a sudden the daughter bursts into tears. “We’re getting a divorce,” she sobs. “I wanted to tell you sooner but I knew you’d be disappointed.” She blows her nose and continues. “I’m just so afraid of failure, of starting over.”

Afraid of starting over. You should get that on a fridge magnet.

When you were in third grade, they sat every student in the class down next to one of those black-and-white children’s book illustrations. You know the ones, you can see them so clearly: two brothers floating above a playground swathed in darkness, a tiger padding its way down onto a grand piano, a fleet of massive blimps cresting up from beneath ocean waves. The teacher told everyone to imagine what was happening in that picture, to piece together a story to go along with it and to write it out on the page. Everyone groaned, but you loved those exercises. You convinced yourself that you loved them. Now you can’t even craft a convincing beginning.

Secondary characters, that’s what you need! Parallel desires and goals. In undergrad they encouraged you to rely on secondary characters. And you need a more fleshed-out arc, anyway.

Two men gamble at casinos on the boardwalk, one with a black eye. The man, not the casino. He’s glued to a slot machine, well, not literally glued but—anyway, he’s at a slot machine and he’s rattling a cup of quarters. His friend taps him on the shoulder and asks him if he’d like a drink, and the man ignores him. They’re both waiting for an apology they’re not going to get. Finally the friend sighs and adjusts his necktie. “Good luck,” he says, and he stumps off to the bar, his peg leg clacking on the faux-marble tiles.

You’ve dived headfirst into caricature. Why a peg leg? Why not a crutch, or a knee brace, or a simple walking stick? Why couldn’t you have just stuck to what you knew and left well enough alone?

Everyone who’s read your work has had advice for you. Strive for authenticity; don’t over-research your material. Focus on what is familiar; use your characters to explore the unknown. Ratchet up the tension while avoiding melodrama. Your writing must be enjoyable to read, and it must also provoke discomfort. Wake the reader up, give them what they expect, trim the gristle and fat from your ideas until they are intriguing, revealing, marketable and unrecognizable. Do not write about anything, ever, unless you are certain you know your subject inside and out. Or do.

A man and a woman step off a boardwalk onto the beach, twenty paces out on the sand, and then the woman stops and she takes out a shovel and she beats the man to death. “Buried treasure,” she says apologetically, and she starts digging.

You’re sick of the boardwalk now, but you’ve staked your entire draft on its existence. At this point if you throw it out you might as well start fresh.

It’s like this, your process: you flip the switch on the garbage disposal that is your mind. You watch the sparks and silverware fly, you root through the wreckage and you pray that what’s left will make some semblance of sense. That’s what writing is to you, now. Praying that something will make sense to someone, that it won’t be just another waste of time.

“Chin up,” she said to you, rubbing your back. “You just haven’t found the right fit yet.” The next girl said something similar, then the next.

A man with a peg leg and a woman and her mother and a small yappy dog all scream at each other on a boardwalk. Their voices intermingle, tangled and twisted over one another into ugly white noise. Around them a crowd begins to form, jostling and shoving and fighting for space until all that’s visible is a trembling crush of bodies. It’s a free-for-all, it’s a mass and a mess, and none of it makes any sense.

You swallow and point and one by one, each of them begins to die.

You recall now why you gave this up in the first place. It’s all been told before, all of it. All your ideas, all your stories. Maybe somebody else could sew those stories together in a way that’s original, that feels fresh and real, but not you. Never you.

A man and a woman and a dog arrive at a boardwalk. It’s gray and empty; it’s about to rain. “Let’s drive away,” the man says, and they get back in their car and they drive away with the top down. They don’t look back.

TBD

         There’s a creek behind my apartment, a tiny stream with a drop that I like to imagine is a waterfall. Really it’s just falling water, a slight dip in elevation that creates the impression of beauty, something I can pretend makes the property unique. On weekends I dangle my feet over the railing and picture Niagara, photos of Angel Falls in Venezuela, what it must look like to the guppies and mosquitos trawling through the current. It reminds of the dreams I used to remember having, before the Zoloft and the Wellbutrin.

         I try to take care of Rita, though her eyes are getting dimmer, more vacant. She’s a terrier, missing most of her teeth, and the ones that are left have minor fractures in them. I brush every other night but they’re only lines, traces in the surface that I hope don’t sting too much, despite the surrounding discoloration. If I had a salary I would pay to restore or replace the crowns. I don’t care how few months she has left. But she’s still a good dog, content with her lot. I’ve promised her I’m going to spread her ashes in the yard when it’s time, and I think she’d wait about a week to eat me if I bled out onto my living room couch. So together I know we love each other.

         I’ve lived in Pittsburgh for two years and it’s just about fed up with me. It’s chilly when it should be warm and hot when it should be cool and I think it’s waiting for me to take the hint. My neighborhood is inoffensive, home to clumps of university students and small families that hang laundry lines and the generally unsupervised. I doubt there’s room here for a dropout past due on the rent. I could barely afford my place on a waiter’s dime, back when I had the dime to spend.

         I take a sip of watery coffee and check my mail. Junk mail, coupons, bills, bills. A subscription form for Pottery Barn. A reminder from my landlord that the first of May is rapidly approaching. A previous resident’s TV Guide, which I keep because it’s tall and thin and good for smacking lanternflies off the walls. That’s been my major project here: exterminating the Japanese Spotted Lanternfly, a species invasive to Pennsylvania that’s been breeding and secreting and choking helpless trees for years now. I smash them into goo with rolled-up magazines, spray them with a Google-recommended mixture of vinegar and dish soap, wrap sticky paper around the willow out back so that they smother and starve and strain themselves to death. I make my rounds every morning. It keeps me occupied, the illusion that I’m singlehandedly defending the environment, that I’m making a difference, one larva at a time.

         Image strings unspool in my brain when it rests for too long, chains of thoughts and pictures in rapid, paralyzing succession, and now a new one ensnares me: dozens and dozens of lifeless lanternflies, legs twitching, squashed and heaped and compressed into a carpet of dead insects. The new arrivals clamber upwards, straining to the surface, cannibalizing the corpses of their parents before shriveling and dying themselves, to start the process anew. On and on they rise and recoil, piling their bodies further and further in layers that refuse to disintegrate, until the whole backyard is nothing but a garden of rotting bushes with red-and-black spots. The berries twitch when you pick them, and they explode into goo when you pop them into your mouth.    

         Two weeks without antidepressants are starting to catch up with me. It’s probably good that I’m getting back on the job market.

         Last night I had a chat with one of my friends, my roommate of three years back at college in Raleigh. He’s gay but I’m not, and sometimes I wonder if that’s the only thing holding us together. That he can say he’s had an open-minded straight friend for 3+X years, and I can say I’ve lived with a gay guy and we’re still buddies. Nothing weird ever happened. (Plenty of weird shit happened, but it wasn’t his fault. Anyway I’m too proud of calling myself tolerant to acknowledge that it did.)

         “It seems like you’re doing better,” he said. His chin looked slightly sunken, compressed by the video. He was drinking white wine out of a mug.

         “Yeah man,” I said. I say “man” to everyone now, for no real reason. “As well as I can, you know? All things considered. But I’m doing okay.”

         He’s heard this lie before. “Well hey, Will,” he said, “there’s a theater gig down here that I thought you might be interested in.”

         I hadn’t acted since high school, and I reminded him of this. “Not on stage,” he said. “Up in the lighting booth, flipping switches. It’s for a ballet troupe. They need someone reliable and I namedropped you to our producer.”

         “How much does it pay?”

         He shrugged. “It’s a foot in the door. Think of it like an internship.”

         I thanked him and kept my face still, muting myself to type up a search on Raleigh apartments, knowing that the average cost of rent in Pittsburgh was 47% cheaper. I supposed I could bank my hopes on the long-term prognosis of…whatever this position was, even though I’d never been particularly intrigued by dance. Not that I couldn’t enjoy it, but I much preferred singing, acting, the aspects of the theater with which I was far more fluent. Maybe I’d be able to fake sincere interest to this producer, apply my limited technical knowledge to making ballerinas look even skinnier and prettier than they already did.

         “They need someone reliable,” he repeated, and this time there was an edge to his voice. A request to think carefully about my choice. An unspoken reminder, not to let him down this time.

         “Thanks man,” I said again, and I changed the subject.

         My interview at Turning Point is scheduled for 2:00, so I’m only fifteen minutes late. Their shift is winding down, given that they’re a breakfast place, and as I approach a tall waiter in one of their maroon shirts holds the door for me. His eyes are dull, and after I enter he brushes past me to the parking lot. I see a pack of cigarettes dangling under one arm, clutched to his chest like a life preserver.

         The manager has large hoop earrings and a too-white smile. “Nice to meet you, William,” she says as I sit.  

         I used to get a secret thrill, when someone said my name like that. Not the rote roll call of attendance or the disapproving summons of a parent, but the feeling of a new person testing your name on their tongue. People rarely use your name once it’s been established, instead it’s “Hey you” or “Hi” with no heading or they keep it short with a wave and a nod and jump right into conversation. There’s promise in the way a stranger says your name. There’s potential. Before they get to know you, at least. Before you get to know them.

         “Prior experience looks good,” she says, scanning my slightly stained resume. “We’d probably be able to get you on as a server in a month, after a trial period bussing. That sounds reasonable, right?”

         To our right I can see a packed counter, knockoff French presses lined up in rows and bins full of dirty dishware waiting for transport. There’s notes of egg and onion grease and burnt bacon wafting from the kitchen in the back; it’s not terrible, but I’m already getting sick of it. Busboys slink from table to table, clearing off crumbs with wet wipes between concealed bites of leftover chicken fingers. I get the impression that everything here is hanging by a thread, held together with butter and soapsuds and readymade Employee of the Month plaques. I don’t even want to guess how many health code violations there are.

         Maybe I really do belong here.

         “You get discounts on the food,” she says. “And if the chefs are up for it they can make you something after a shift.” The discount was my main draw for choosing Turning Point: there’s a milkshake machine in a corner of the counter, and I haven’t been able to afford ice cream in forever. Sugar and dairy; that plus the serotonin from the antidepressants should keep me going for another few months at least.

         She stares at my resume again, squints. “And why did you leave your last job?” A stack of plates collapses onto the tiles behind her, and the girl who’d been clutching them lets a torrent of swears fall from her mouth. The manager shoots a glare over, her question forgotten for the moment.

         I left because it was exactly like this.

         My stomach gurgles, and she pretends not to hear. Polite of her. Or she’s just plain desperate. I bet the turnover here is pretty steep, and she looks close enough to my age that I doubt this was her first choice.

         I’ve been skipping breakfast for weeks now, so it’d actually make sense to end up here. I could think of it as a benefit, like I’m working for one of my meals. It’s not a terrible idea. Aside from every other single fucking thing.

         I don’t like loitering at the library—too much dust, not enough room to breathe—but the power’s gone out at my place. Maybe it’s a simple blackout, or maybe the landlord’s putting me on notice, but either way I need at least an hour of Wi-Fi right now. Most of the computers are occupied, so I plop into a squishy lounge chair and pull out my phone. I nestle in place and dig my other hand into the armrest, feeling the fabric flex and pulse beneath my fingers.

         I reopen the email on my phone. It shimmers, winks, mocking me. The Community College of Allegheny County is encouraging me to apply.

         I was only a third of the way through the application, so there isn’t much to redo. It’s hard to see it all on a smaller screen, but I make the effort anyway. Under age I write 26, under major I put TBD. Under race…I don’t know which race to select. Back then I was Asian in all the ways that mattered and white in all the ways that didn’t. By which I mean schoolkids thought I was too smart and schools thought I wasn’t smart enough. By which I mean my eyes were angled enough to stick out but not slanted enough to blend properly. By which I mean, by which I mean. It shouldn’t make a difference to me, I never felt like I belonged to one group or the other. But there’s only room for one checkmark and suddenly I’m wedged in place.

         I have more in common with the lanternflies than I’d like to admit. Everyone calls them Japanese, but they originated in China, Taiwan, and India before spreading to neighboring countries. They’re mislabeled, their place of origin misattributed, their home distant and forgotten. Not that that gives them the right to exist, of course, meaningless as their contributions to society are.

         Why would I go back to college? What would I go to learn? I left NC State because I didn’t know the answer, and four years later I’m still clueless. That’s actually a more flattering revision of the truth: leaving, as opposed to being expelled. Like I made a conscious decision to find myself, rather than being so unmotivated that I just stopped showing up to things. Like I hadn’t failed out of every class, like I wasn’t as depressed then as I am now. What a charming pretense.

         People like to think of depression as a fog, but that’s only half of it, the half reserved for the depressed themselves. For everyone else depression is a rock. They think there’ll be more to it somehow, if they’re able to flip it over, some shiny gem or treasure buried inside, but there isn’t. It’s just a rock. And you certainly don’t want to tell them so, because then they’ll try to test the weight—the weight you’ve spent your whole life learning to bear, struggling to keep upright—and they won’t be able to take it. It’ll crush them. They’ll feel bad that they couldn’t lift more, and pity you, or they’ll pretend they can but you’ll know different, you’ll see the strain in their eyes, and eventually they’ll resent you for it. Or they’ll hand it back to you and never talk to you again, which is the sensible thing to do. Because who would want to be burdened like that forever, if given the choice?

         The dust is starting to make my nose run. I wipe it away, along with something wet at the edge of my eye, and head for the automatic doors.

         I stop at Wendy’s on the way home, scarf a handful of spicy nuggets and wash them down with ketchup. The power’s still out when I return, so I slide the screen door open to let Rita walk. She’s eager to go, I can tell, but she doesn’t move right away. She just hangs back, eyes blank, waiting for something or someone else to take the lead. A pit settles in my stomach, and I push through the door without checking to see if she joins me.

         Indecision is worse than death, I think. If I were a corpse I’d at least be fertilizer, fuel for weeds and bugs and scavenging mammals. Dead I’m part of nature’s course, but alive? Alive and listless, stuck in place? It’s pathetic. Except I’m not nearly brave enough to end it prematurely. I’m afraid of the pain, however momentary. No, that’s not it: I’m afraid of letting go. It’s all I have. Imagine that, I’m scared to give up on the thing that’s hurting me. I’m in an abusive relationship with my own life, and I’m too used to it by now to take the plunge. There’s no easy way out, not even the easy way out.

         Rita’s following from a safe distance. She can probably tell I’m upset. Perhaps talking aloud to myself about suicide isn’t helping.

         I head for a spot shadowed by trees. I don’t like the night sky here because there aren’t any streetlights, and I can see straight through to the stars. They’re too far apart, the blankness between them vacant and vast. Thinking about it makes me dizzy. Another image string to get stuck on: heat death, black holes and supernovas, planets cracking and tumbling and spinning out of orbit into ashy fragments. Everything ending in an instant, billions of years from now or tomorrow, tick-tock. And yet when you bring that up to people, they shrug. They think you’re the crazy one for mentioning it, they’re tired of you being a downer. I know it’s uninspired, and it makes me feel ashamed. But there’s not much nuance in dread.

         I guess it’s hard to see a point, when you know nothing in the universe is going to pan out. That’s a deep hurt, unapproachable and unmarketable. So you keep trying. Because the alternative is awkward bar conversation.

         It’s a beautiful evening though, even I have to admit that. Warm and a little muggy and blanketed in beads of dew. There’s an owl a few oaks down who’s refusing to hoot, in case I mean him harm, and Rita takes a few sniffs in his direction before squatting on the ground to piss. I find a seat on the grass, feeling lanternfly larvae flee before me and the dew staining my legs. Above me a spiderweb drifts, an intricate latticework of a web that’s empty for the moment, though I recall there being an oversized orb-weaver hovering somewhere close.

         My options are myriad. I can move to Raleigh on a pipe dream to pursue the vague internship, trusting myself to find the joy in it, to not return to the headspace I was in last time I was there. I don’t really trust myself that much. I can work at Turning Point and keep my place here, only then I probably would end up killing myself. I can apply to CCAC with the funds I don’t have—I guess I can stay with Turning Point for a bit, then wherever else for however long, and then finally when I’m forty I’ll have saved up the money (minus rent and medication) to shoot my shot. Or I could ask my dad and stepmom for help, but they’ve got two kids in college and their own mortgage they’re managing. I could apply for another loan, but I still owe money on the last degree I failed to earn. No, it’s restaurants, then community college, then I have no clue because I won’t be employable, I’ll be forty-two with an associate’s degree in who knows what and I’ll be a nervous wreck, I’ll be depressed and alone and waiting feverishly for the end, I’ll have no options. I have no options.

         The stream burbles nearby, oblivious to it all.

         It occurs to me that spiders have it the worst. Spiders have less time than any of us and they can’t afford to whine about it, because they spend the entirety of their lives making masterpieces. And when the wind picks up, it all blows away. No one ever even sees the discarded webs. And the spiders, they have to start all over again. It’s a nightmare. But they don’t know, or they don’t care. They do it anyway. Maybe because they’re too busy to know better. Maybe that’s life to them. That’s all it is.

         I don’t need to make a decision yet. I can decide not to decide, at least until tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow.

         Rita circles in place beside me, then rests her head on the grass in a comfortable spot. I breathe. I watch what’s left of the evening pass us by.

Correspondence [Excerpt]

ÈR YUÈ 23RD, 2142. 04:36 HOURS.

Staff Sergeant Brian Morrison of Squad Sobek, LanzaTech Industries, noiselessly flexed his fingers as the dual motors of their gunship chuffed and spun. Sheets of rain crashed and scattered against the craft’s sleek black outer walls. It was storming again, and each peal of muffled, far-flung thunder rattled the belly of the gunship. The interior would have already become a swirling torrent of broken equipment, thousands of credits lost to the squall, if they hadn’t been strapped into their seats. Against the mesh harness and beneath his armor, the nape of his neck futilely itched.

They’d woken in their bunks only a few hours before, built-in vibrators shaking their beds to the relentless rhythm of blaring alarms and flashing sirens. “Threat level Indigo,” the automated interface had intoned over the chaos, oblivious to Asuang’s stream of swears and Mara’s groans. Brian had jolted upright and rolled over to see Jersey curled in a ball on his mattress, staring into space. It was obvious the kid hadn’t been able to sleep.

There’d been nights like that for Brian too, early on, nights when he’d felt wracked by guilt or consumed with existential horror or hopelessly lost or just plain homesick. Mostly he’d missed his family. Whenever the pangs got too strong, he’d close his eyes and count to ten and think about the sizable LanzaTech stipend putting a roof over the heads of his sisters and father. It was a harsh, thankless job, working for Corporate-Police, but he’d gotten the hang of it. Jersey would too.

“So, what do you think our overlords on the board lost this time?” Asuang was drawling again, the echo bouncing off the inside of his titanium-alloy helmet. “Microscopic cameras for your bloodstream? A nicotine substitute that keeps your teeth clean? Hey, maybe the schematics for another cloned zebra. That would make for a fun company brochure.”

Brian sighed. “Threat level Indigo, Asuang. I wouldn’t say even if I knew.” He heard Mara snort beside him; he could practically feel her eyes rolling behind her visor. He had to struggle not to smile. “And keep your chatter off the comms.”

Fraternization wasn’t exactly encouraged amongst squad members. Technically it wasn’t really policed, either, but…the less Brian did to jeopardize his contract, the better, as far he was concerned. He liked Mara, but he liked his family’s well-being more. The questing looks she sometimes shot him would just have to go unanswered.

The door to the gunship yawned open, wind and water whipping past as the ramp lowered and extended. They were passing over the Caravan now, blocks and blocks of automated cars and self-driving trucks backed up into one another, a fixture of local traffic spawned by a few dozen errors in programming. It was a mess, a year-long accident that showed no signs of abating: just another symbol for the sorry state of downtown affairs. Brian would have preferred to spend the day here, deactivating and scrapping empty vehicles in relative safety, but they had a job to do and orders were orders.

The locks on their harnesses disengaged, and the four moved as one to the exit of the craft. Carbon-steel cables ferried them down to street level, allowing the gunship to again take to the skies. It would return on its rotation in half an hour; plenty of time for the squad to comb their assigned area for a solitary fugitive. A trio of youths nearby—twenty-somethings maybe, rich kids slumming it, judging by their camera setup and full heads of hair—swiveled to face them, lenses snapping amidst curious murmurs. One took a step closer and opened his mouth before Mara fired into the air, scattering the layabouts to the streets.

Brian nodded approvingly and racked his rifle. No distractions. “Move out.”

They loped down the block in a unit, two and two together on either side, weapons at the ready and checking corners as they went. Deserted market stalls flanked the avenues, and a mechanized fuel compactor sat in a driveway, inert, by a pile of previously-processed trash cubes. A bolt of lightning pierced through the gloom, striking one of the far-off buildings, but this time no thunder came. All was silent save for the splatter of armored footsteps on damp pavement.

“Movement,” Jersey interrupted. Brian raised a hand and both pairs halted. “Ten o’clock. One-point-six-meters, possible female suspect. Down the alley.”

 “Acknowledged,” Brian responded. “Nice work. Pursue.”

They moved in tandem, Asuang and Brian crossing the street to follow the other pair into the alley. Brian felt his suit’s cooling systems crank up against the heat of the falling rain. They emerged into a plaza of sorts, the backs of a handful of buildings intersecting in a rough circle. A rusting crane with an attached metal disc hung lifelessly from a neighboring lot. Cracked windows leered down on them from every angle, and a hub of crisscrossing alleyways spiraled outward in a network of identical exits. They’d stumbled into a kill-zone.

Asuang swore again. “This was a mistake.”

“Quiet, Asuang,” Brian snapped. “Two to an alley. Meet back here in ten.” Asuang grumbled, but Mara hissed a reply and he fell into lockstep behind her. Brian and Jersey stepped forward as one, alternating between scanning the windows and alleys for assailants. Something halted him, however. There was a faint vibration in the air, an insistent hum permeating the plaza. It was as if a bolt of lightning were forming nearby, or a massive supercomputer were stirring to life, or…

“Jersey, move!” Brian roared.

The kid’s arm bent with the gauntleted sleeve, and then the rest of his armor crumpled inward and shot into the sky. Jersey’s screams were stifled by the impact as his body smashed into the metallic disc above. The crane shuddered, and the magnet it was carrying groaned, and then the weight of the armor brought the whole rickety structure crashing to the ground.

Something oily and glowing lanced from one of the windows, shattering across Mara and covering her central plating. There was a brief rushing noise and a burst of orange light as her armor caught aflame.

Brian turned and sprinted for cover, more bottles bursting and breaking around him. His heart thundered with the exertion; even with his implants, several hundred pounds of titanium-alloy armor was not ideal for running. Asuang was snarling and shooting, high-pressure blasts from his weapon cutting through brick and plaster like wet paper, and bullets were ricocheting and deflecting off him in all directions. Then a vial of liquid splattered against his helmet, sizzling, and as the metal bubbled and blistered he began to scream.

Brian fumbled with the buttons on his gauntlet. “This is Sobek requesting backup, we are under attack by unknown assailants. Officers down. Requesting backup, repeat, requesting—"

The exits were blocked. Clumps of figures were circling the plaza, guns and knives and sparking hacksaws in their hands. Mara was still burning, still struggling to put out the blaze her armor had become, and Asuang could only gurgle helplessly as his jaw dissolved into acid. Brian felt his rifle droop down, soaked through by the storm and the weight of his own sweat.

“Come on, then.”

The mob closed, and he opened fire.

Rotation [Excerpt]

The housefather liked to tell them that they were meant for big things. “Listen up, fellas,” he’d say, exhaling a current of recycled menthol, “every single one of you is destined for greatness. You’re special, you’re the future of the world, you’re bright and shining stars, and the best thing you can do for yourselves is to be the best version of yourself that you can be.” Then his gaze would wander, glassy and fading into the backdrop of the city while his charges heaved broken bottles and plastic casings into warped, half-melted garbage bins.

          Saint Augustine’s was surrounded on all sides by urban sprawl. It sat on the fourth floor of its building, trapped between a greasy meat-shop, cramped apartments downstairs, and a connecting storage room that none of the students were allowed to enter. The spaces further upstairs were abandoned—a series of gutted financial offices, dingy and dank—but they had the remnants of real windows, so it was the best place to get a view of the outside. At night, when the rest of the boys were asleep, Sixty-Seven liked to creep up through the maintenance shaft to watch the color-leeched rain slick the walls of the tiny alley below.

          The Academy had been Sixty-Seven’s home for his entire life, ever since a passing delivery man had heard him squalling and fished him out from the belly of a decommissioned trash compactor. Saint Augustine’s had taken him in out of the kindness of their heart—as well as a keen desire to nurture his potential, as the Headmaster was so fond of reminding him—and he was forever grateful for their attention and compassion. (They hit him harder when he wasn’t grateful). The staff prided themselves on the school’s devotion to its students, which meant a great deal of their time was spent extolling the virtues of the patented Saint Augustine approach to education and self-betterment. In between lessons the boys stacked unmarked boxes and scrubbed the Academy’s stained floors. One of the others, Fifty-Two, had told them a story about the storage room: that they had the real-life immortal Saint Augustine tied up back there, and that they fed the boys by carving pieces off of him, because he couldn’t die, just slowly enough that he had time to regrow everything and feed them all over again, and that was why the floors were always red. Then one of the passing housefathers overheard him, and beat him badly enough to leave a new dark stain on one of the hallway tiles. Fifty-Two didn’t get back out to work for three whole days.

          The students were only allowed out of the building twice a week, for work-study, which basically meant sweeping and collecting trash from adjacent city blocks. Despite the temptation, no one ever really tried to escape; the chips in their brains would have let Saint Augustine’s know exactly where they were going, and the housefathers would snap them right back up. Anyway the city was a dangerous place, and it was imperative (said the Headmaster) that everyone do their part to help fix it, which for Saint Augustine meant cleaning up the streets. Everything was gathered and separated in sheer black bags, bags which reminded Sixty-Seven of the opaque sleeves that the Corp-Pos used to pack up corpses. The smell was rancid and there were always people staring, but Sixty-Seven didn’t care. It was better than being inside Saint Augustine’s. Anything was better than being inside Saint Augustine’s.

          Today they’d been split into pairs with a “Go save the planet!” and set forth to comb the block for bottles. Sixty-Seven was partnered with a younger student, Eighty-Four, who usually got distracted chasing down cockroaches and sifting through the carcasses of washed-up slugs. Yesterday’s rains had overflowed the sewers, and so it wasn’t long before Sixty-Seven was on his own, weaving his way through chattering electronics stalls and streets shadowed by pulsating advertisements. It was all so bright and intense, so vivid and crowded and hypnotic, but he kept his eyes focused on the figures around him. He was small and skinny, even for his age, and he knew exactly how easy it would be for someone to grab him as he passed.

          There was a pair of hard-nosed businessmen across the way, exchanging secretive looks and furtive glances while their mouths motored and twisted. There was a woman in tatters standing on the street corner, holding a sodden sign high in the air—the rain had ruined most of the letters, leaving only “END” and “FREE” still legible. And there was another boy watching him now, only a few paces away. He was swarthy, tanned and tall, with a confident smirk and a jagged scar-line running down his mouth. The boy caught him staring and smiled. Then he pointed at his face.

          Sixty-Seven started. “What?”

          “You got a black eye.”

          He turned away hurriedly. “Yeah, so?”

          “Cool.” The boy threw a pebble, watching it arc and bounce away into the frenzy of the road.

          Sixty-Seven waited a moment, but no more words came. He cleared his throat. “Okay. I’m kind of busy.”

          “With what?”

          “Cleaning up the streets. Saving the planet.” Even as he said them, the echoed words felt hollow.

          “Whatever.” The other boy seemed to think so too. “I live on the streets. Nobody cares if they’re clean.” He threw another pebble. “You an orphan or something?”

          “I’m a student. And I have a family, I just haven’t met them yet.”

          “Yeah, okay,” the boy snickered.

          A wave of irritation rushed over Sixty-Seven. He didn’t totally believe in the Academy’s mantra, but what gave this stranger the right to think the same? He doubted the other boy had ever even been to school, much less suffered through the beating of a housefather. “So where’s your parents, then?”

          “Dead. Least my dad is. I got away from my ma and her cabrón boyfriend.” He said this proudly, matter-of-factly, as if retelling a victory from some distant battle. “I’m Mateo.”

          “Your dad named you?”

          “I named myself.” Sixty-Seven couldn’t keep from gawking. The kid smirked, pleased with himself, the awe on the face of his audience not unnoticed. “You got a name?”

          “Not yet. But my housefather says I’m getting close. Til then I’m Sixty-Seven.”

          “That’s stupid. If you want a name just pick one.” Mateo tossed one of his pebbles into the air, counting under his breath then catching it lightly. “How about… Raoul?”

          “What kind of name is Raoul?”

          “Saw it in on a billboard. Better than a mongolo number.” This time he lobbed a pebble straight at him. It bounced lightly off Sixty-Seven’s shaven head, and Mateo chortled. “What kind of crazy-ass orphanage numbers the orphans?”

          Sixty-Seven rubbed his forehead, frowning. “It’s a school. Saint Augustine’s. I told you, I’m a student.”

          “Oh.” Mateo withdrew, suddenly quiet.

          “What?”

          “How long you been there?”

          “Eleven years soon.” Silence. “Why?”

          He seemed to be chewing the inside of his cheek, deciding whether to say something. Then: “If you’re there too long they slice you up and sell you. For organs or whatever. My friend told me.”

          “That’s not true.”

          “En serio. She said they bring you into a backroom and put you to sleep, then they start cutting you open and taking stuff out. Said they keep what’s left in a freezer til they’re ready to sell it.” Mateo spat. “Swear on my grave.”

          The bag of trash fell limp at his side. They were going to kill him. Somehow he felt like he should have been more surprised, more angry, but he just felt…hollow. Empty. He’d always suspected, but now he knew. There was no family waiting to meet him.

          “Sorry,” said Mateo. “You should run.”

          “Run where?”

          “Anywhere.” Mateo shrugged. “There’s a couple of us in the old subway. It’s all flooded, so nobody goes down there anymore.”

          “I can’t. They put a tracker in my head. They know where I am, all the time.” Even as he said it, a line of fear trickled forth from the back of his mind. “I should probably go.”

          “They’re lying. You think Augustine’s has the credits for that? They barely make enough to keep the lights on.” Mateo pointed to the neon sign across the street: Saint Augustine’s Academy for Talented Young Minds, the letters sparking and fizzling in and out of focus.

          “Nobody’s gonna adopt you, niño. Not before they chop you into pieces.” Mateo shook his head. “But we take care of each other. We’ll do for you, if you do for us.” He tossed what might have been his last pebble to Sixty-Seven, who caught it in one hand. The black bag still hung at his side, matching the shade of the bruise over his eye, traces of oily liquid pooling below.

          Sixty-Seven stared at the ad. Then he glanced down at the pebble. It was a small thing, but somehow still sturdy. It was imperfect, rough, cool to the touch, soaked with rain. It might have come from the alley beneath his window.

          “How do you spell Raoul?”

          Mateo cocked his head to the side, quizzical. Then he grinned, flashing the glint of a tarnished golden tooth.

The First Duty [Excerpt]

“Guilty.”

The Chief Justice’s voice was smooth and clipped, the verdict immediately followed by two quick raps of his gavel. The echoes rang throughout the room, reverberating off of the polished obsidian walls and looming, stern-faced statues. Thereafter fell a somber silence, save for the sobs of the condemned (punctuated by fervent pleas for mercy and compassion) and the quiet snores of Justice Pomponius, sinking ever lower into his swollen armchair. Finally the guards regained some sense of propriety and began to drag the fair-faced lad out of the chamber. He struggled at first, until one of the men—looking bored—reached across and broke two of the boy’s fingers. Afterwards he was led meekly out, the ornate black Doors of Departure swinging smoothly shut as if to beckon the hapless victim to his fate beyond.

Justice Hadriana shifted back in her chair and sighed. The day was not off to a promising start.

On her left Justice Crispus coughed loudly and leaned over. “I don’t see,” he muttered, in what was clearly meant to be a conspiratorial aside, “quite why that business was so grim. After all, it’s only a foot. We’ve all got two of them.”

Hadriana resisted the urge to grind her teeth. “He’s a peasant, Crispus. He spends his days out in the grain fields while we sit indoors and talk about how hot the grain fields are. He needs to be able to stand upright; otherwise he can’t work, and if he can’t work he has to beg. A farm boy like that panhandling on the streets of the Capitol—we might as well save some time and toss him into the canal ourselves.”

Crispus crinkled his brow and made a show of mulling over her words. Then: “I suppose if he wasn’t a peasant he could probably afford one of those…” He gestured to her seat. “What do you call them…wheeled chairs?” A smirk stole across his face. “Maybe you could recommend him a physician.”

She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t expected remarks, irritating little pissant that he was. And it was irritating. Six upcoming cases sorting through traffic violations, a double burglary conviction with a veritable mound of paperwork, their third amputation sentencing of the week, and now Crispus was trying to be funny. This was why she hated sitting on the end of the bench.

Behind her, her slave kept adjusting her weight from one sandaled foot to the other. Lengthy trials made her restless; Hadriana could feel her tanned fingers drumming a poised rhythm into the wooden handles of her chair. They were sending tiny, multiplying flickers of pain through her swollen legs, but she didn’t truly mind. The throbbing helped to distract her from Crispus’s unrelenting tedium.

“Bring in the next one,” called the Chief Justice, and Hadriana relaxed into the ebb and flow of the Court.

*          *          *

“A moment, my dear?”

Her eyes flew open. She was always the last to leave after the day’s trials. Several of her colleagues, she knew, assumed she was trying to avoid the scrutiny and foot traffic of the end-of-day departure from the Hall of Order. Others liked to theorize that a woman—even one with her condition—could not stand to see any room left unclean. Hadriana let them believe what they wanted. Truthfully she enjoyed just being in the courtroom, experiencing its near-majestic stillness once the hustle and bustle of Gracian law had died down. She had certainly never expected to have someone else waiting with her, least of all the Chief Justice himself.

Felix Festus was close to forty, yet (as the criers were fond of pointing out) he didn’t look a day over thirty. His teeth, polished and crisp, could transform into a winning smile at a moment’s notice, and his lustrous black hair was pared down to the finest edge. Every part of his appearance was strictly tailored, as if he’d crawled from his mother’s womb donned in lavender silks and violet velvets. His ascendancy from third-circuit chariot clerk to Capital Arbiter to Chief Justice of the Republic of Gracia had been nothing short of meteoric. And there was no denying his charms either—although Hadriana, nearing fifty-three, had always considered herself beyond his notice.

“In private, if you please,” said the Chief Justice, motioning dismissively to her slave.

“No need,” she said at once. “I bought the girl some time ago. Her previous master removed her tongue, and she cannot read or write.”

          “All the same,” he replied, watching her closely. “She has ears, and my words are not meant for hers.”

She nodded and patted her slave, who gave Felix a rigid curtsy and left the room. The Chief Justice’s piercing eyes stayed fixed on a carving of lions until she had gone, whereupon he turned back to examine Hadriana once more.

“It is a great pleasure to speak with you at last. I’ve wanted to meet you for some time, but the usual concerns of the country have contrived to eclipse…personal pursuits. At what foul point in history did the High Court’s duties descend into doldrums?” He did not wait for an answer. “I have long admired you, Hadriana. You share little of your secrets with the rest of the world, and to those whom you respect you speak even less. In the three years since my appointment, you have done naught but watch the innocent and the guilty trickle by. But your wisdom, shrewdness, and resourcefulness have not gone unnoticed. Oh yes—” he continued, for here Hadriana’s eyebrows had reached their apex, “—for a woman, gout-afflicted and widowed, to remain a Justice of the Republic in good standing? An impressive accomplishment, to say the least.

“Fortunately,” here he paused and glanced around the room, “a matter has arisen which requires an individual of your unique caliber. A matter concerning another Justice. It must remain between us, of course. Consider it of the utmost discretion. But I can think of no one better to charge with its completion—and by doing so, you would find yourself extremely advantaged in your own endeavors. The favor of a Chief Justice is not granted lightly.”

He extended a hand and regarded her closely. “Do we have an accord?”

After a moment of consideration, she reached across the desk and took it. “We do. Thank you, Chief Justice.”

He smiled lightly. “Call me Felix.”

*          *          *

            By the time they returned home the sun was setting, casting slinking shadows off rows of creaking palms. The streets were still bustling with overladen traders, staggering dockworkers, and chortling soldiers teeming in unwashed crowds, but Hadriana’s carriage cut a familiar figure in the Capitol and they were given a wide berth. Her house stood solitary on its block, choked with overgrown ivy and looming military frescos. It was an ugly building, squat and solid and still squarely grotesque. And yet it was all Hadriana really had, the only lodgings she could afford to keep, and somehow that made her dislike it even more.

            Another servant opened the front door for them, and her slave deftly wheeled her into the sitting room. Here especially in the house, erratically scrubbed pockets of cleanliness mingled with stubborn holdouts of dust. The girl pushed her several paces towards the staircase then rotated around to her front, squaring her stance and stretching out her arms in a carrying posture.

            “Not just yet, thank you,” Hadriana said. “Could you bring me the latrones board?”

            The slave girl seemed momentarily surprised, but bowed. She left Hadriana and withdrew into the darkened office across the hall, returning after a minute with an elegant section of wood in her hands. After placing it softly on the table, she pulled open a small compartment on its underside and began to remove carefully carved circles, white and black, distributing them across the board in starkly mirrored rows.

            “You’re illiterate, but you know how to set up latrones.” Hadriana smiled. “I suppose your previous owner must have gotten bored from time to time.” The girl gave no sign of having heard, apparently engrossed in completing her task. It took only a few more seconds before she’d straightened to regard her master, awaiting further instruction.

Hadriana merely tapped the board. “Well?”

The girl kept her face blank, but Hadriana could tell that she was curious. After a moment she nodded and sat on the opposite end of the table, watching her closely. Hadriana extended two fingers and delicately lifted one of the white disks into the air.

“These pieces were my husband’s. The man who owned this place. He was always too busy to teach me the rules, so I learned by watching him.” She laughed. “Not that he was ever very good.”

           The slave girl cocked her head, inquiring.

“I don’t typically discuss him. We met decades ago, at a different Justice’s villa. It was a masquerade; he was wearing a moleskin mask, while I was blindfolded. He offered me a probationary position as a clerk in his office.” Hadriana replaced the piece, and her hands came to rest on her chair. “That was before my illness, of course.

            “The source of his interest in me seemed rather obvious, but it was interest nonetheless. When a person in power makes you an offer, sometimes it’s best to play along for a while. If only to see what comes of the game.” She gestured at the board between them. “For example.”

The girl seemed somewhat preoccupied with examining her own pieces. She raised one of the dark discs, studying the jagged letter carved into its surface.

Hadriana nodded. “Morlux. One of my husband’s most frequent opponents. They used to play once a week, but he hasn’t been back to this building since before I became a Justice.

“He’s a dangerous man. And it seems the Chief Justice thinks so as well. Does that frighten you?”

The slave girl sniffed and pulled the front of her tunic to the side, where a brand lay over her left breast. It was faded, but Hadriana could still make out the symbol for “runaway” stamped above her heart. The girl patted the letters with a fierce sort of pride, then let the fabric fall gently back into place.

As good a response as any, she supposed. It was time for her first move.