I land on my ass next to Coral. She’s still smiling that weird smile, looking around us at this huge stone room. I look up, half hoping we can just climb out again, but the vaulted ceiling above has no hole, and is far out of reach besides.
“What the fuck?” I ask nobody in particular.
“Wonderland.” Coral answers. Her serenity doesn’t come as much of a surprise, honestly. If anyone is going to take this shit well it’s the girl who spent half an hour telling me that animals know how to talk but they just don’t want to. I stand and offer her a hand up, which she takes, then curtsies with extravagant grace. I would roll my eyes but I’m too busy staring.
At the far end of the room from us there’s a fountain. It is massive, jetting water high into the air from a circular fixture in a circular pool. Around it there’s a small crowd of people, seated in ornate dark wood divans and wide stone chairs, outfitted with copious resplendent cushions and draped with colorful silks. The people are draped in silk as well, those who are draped at all. Some are half clothed, with impeccable sculpted bodies boasting muscular dark skinned arms and abs or shapely pale thighs and breasts. They all watch us with a mild curiosity. Some whisper to others and a few stand up. In several hands are long odd looking stone pipes with wooden stems. Bright white smoke curls up from them.
One of the women who stood at our arrival makes her way across the many layers of rich velvet carpets toward us. She walks with the undulations of a dancer, hypnotic, her shimmering dark purple skirts flow around her like poured cream. Her dark straight hair drapes over her shoulders and bare breasts like shining tendrils, curling at the ends.
“Hello newcomers,” she says. I take a step back.
“Where are we?” I ask nervously. Meanwhile, Coral reaches her hand forward.
“Hi, you’re beautiful, I’m Coral. What’s your name?” Coral is bubbly, like she’s meeting a celebrity. “Oh, this is [garbage].” She adds. At the mention of my name the woman’s eyes flash darkly. She accepts Coral’s hand but she’s watching me.
“This is King Null’s castle.” She says, answering my question first. “My name is Lotus,” she continues to Coral, “I’m the king’s mother.” She turns back to me. “I think he will want to speak with you.”
Coral looks at me, still beaming.
“A king.” She says reverently.
I’m not convinced.
“Look I’m sure he has some sacred mission, some lost princess, whatever. I’m not interested. I have my own life,” I gesture up toward the ceiling. “I have my own mission.” Lotus smiles.
“Finding someone?” She asks mildly. I blanch, but I should’ve expected it really. Magic castle. Magic king.
“Not so much finding. I mean I know where he is.” I say.
“Do you?” She’s watching me like she has all the cards. Like she wrote the game. Meanwhile Coral outright abandons us. She wanders toward the crowd on the couches while Lotus continues staring me down. Searching me thoroughly with her confident gaze. Her dark thin eyebrows are arched, expectant. I cave.
“Fine,” I say. “Take me to your leader.” I wave my hand dismissively.
“Not leader, not really.” She says. But she motions for me to follow her.
She takes me through a labyrinth of hallways, all smooth stone and illustrious hangings. Gold candelabras placed irregularly along their lengths create bubbles of dancing light, but they’re sparse enough that we’re occasionally walking in near total darkness. It feels very strange to be in such a majestic place wearing socks with little rubber grips and hospital scrubs that hang off my shoulders like a plank. Lotus remains silent for the entirety of our walk, which suits me just fine. The chip on my shoulder only grows as we proceed. What has me ruffled is that this is exactly the kind of thing Gus would shit himself to see. I know he’d be right next to Coral, chatting up the decadent bunch we left behind. Being here wasn’t just taking me farther away from him, it was holding him up right in front of me bound and gagged, behind iron bars.
Finally we arrive at an inconsequential dark wood door. Lotus stops at it and turns to look me dead in the eye.
“The king is busy.” She says.
I feel like stomping my foot. Like a child.
“What do you mean?” I demand. “You walked me through miles of creepy hallway-”
She raises a hand to silence me. Thin gold bands jangle on her wrist.
“He’s always busy. Always working. He wants to see you, but fair warning: he won’t give you his full attention.” Her eyes briefly shine with unreachable sadness, but are back to their lofty proprietary gleam before I’m sure of what I see. She opens the door.
The room is a wide one, like the one we left with the fountain, but it’s sparsely furnished and has the addition of tall narrow windows paned with thick glass. Beyond them is a forest at the bottom of a shallow grassy hill, lit by the noon day sun. Before I see anything else, that forest moves me. I can feel Garbage recoiling within me. Flashes of memory. Fleet racing, snarls and pain. It’s a dream I’m remembering remembering, accompanied by a clear warning:
[Do not wander. Or be taken again.]
Then it’s over. I see the king, standing over his incredible brass model, holding a gleaming white cup. I recognize him immediately.
“Zach.” I say.
My voice carries, bold across the stone. My fists are clenched and my vision swimming. He turns to me, uncaring.
“Zachariah.” He says. His voice, though faint, seems to fill the space, like smoke in a valley. It’s all he has to say. Lotus steps out from behind me.
“My liege.” She says. Her voice is lofty and detached. “This is [garbage]. I understand he is of interest to your work.”
At the mention of my name, Zach looks at me in an entirely different way. He is at once searching, intent, and somehow doubtful. He waves me forward. But I remain rooted to the spot, sure that if I move I won’t be able to stop the violent bile surging in my limbs.
“I know you, asshole.” I manage, still quivering.
“And I know you too,” he gestures up at his incomprehensible orrery vaguely. His absolute apathy is too much for me. I feel the heat of anger wash up my throat. I take a fevered step toward him, wanting nothing less than to feel his slack face cave beneath my hands. To crush a look of panic out of him. Darkness clouds me like soot thrown into water, oily and thick. I hear Garbage usher me back into the waking sleep.
[let me speak.] He orders, calm as the king.
It isn’t hard to let go.
He always handles these things better.
____________________________________________________________________________
When Coral and [garbage] had said their goodbyes to Don and climbed into the car to make their way east, Coral took [garbage]’s hand across the console between them. His legs were still bouncing wildly. He watched the road in front of them, gleaming gray from the ubiquitous drizzle of the pacific northwest.
“We’ll find him.” She said softly. “He’ll be okay.”
[garbage] watched the trees, the occasional cliffs, both foreboding and grim as they blurred past him.
“I’d like to hear more about your friends and stuff. If you want.”
He felt Coral’s cold hand squeeze his.
“It’s okay if you don’t. I just thought it might be something to distract you.”
“Sure. I mean I pretty much finished the story about the beach. We were dumb kids, the end, you know? But I can tell you more about the home.
______________________________________________________________________________
The house itself was a pretty normal place. It was a five bedroom continental brick of a building, with a couple satellite offices we’d sometimes see the inside of, if we were in trouble. I saw the offices regularly. And that’s the main reason I was in the system til I was eighteen. Back then I didn’t have any kind of filter. The doctors talked about all kinds of disorders, but what it amounted to in my mind was two factors: anger, and rage. I saw my share of ativan before I was out of diapers. Black outs would hit me every week, like clockwork. It got a little better as I got older. But obviously not better enough.
Anyway those two kids, Matty and Paul, stuck with me despite my outbursts. Maybe because of them. I was top of the totem pole there, nobody could touch me. Usually, if I liked someone, I’d protect them with the same ferocity I used to protect myself. Matty once told me another kid stole his shirt, some glow in the dark space thing, he loved it. I tore through the place. I felt like I could rip apart the walls. Before the staff got to me and stuck me up with the tranq, I’d gone wild on two of the five bedrooms, screaming at kids, throwing all their clothes around and shit. I didn’t find it, but I’ll always remember looking. I felt like lightning. Matty said my face was bright red.
It’s one of the few rages I did remember. More often I would just black it out. That was before Garbage, so my blackouts actually did some damage. But yeah us three were tight like a trampoline. We spent every movie night together, every meal and every field trip. We even snuck into each other’s rooms after lights out, just to whisper about dumb bullshit and feel cool for being awake. Paul was kind of like our bodyguard, or that’s how we thought of him then. He was a big kid. Too tall and wide to be pushed around, and he stood watch or just stood between us and the others. It wasn't like we had a racket going, you know, we were probably playing with someone else's CDs or squeezing toothpaste on the floor, but together it was like a heist, every other day. We were blood brothers. I kept that green glass shard up on a shelf with my legos and books. We never did the ritual again, like we said. But I looked at it with pride every day. Like it proved something.
It was the Christmas season when Matty got adopted. He said he would send letters, call us, all that fake shit that falls apart in your hands. With just Paul and me, the mood had soured. When I looked at the shard, it just looked like a dumb piece of glass. And my anger doubled down. The first week wasn’t so bad. I think the fact of losing a friend hadn't settled. But when it did lock in, I started taking it out on Paul. I said you couldn’t push him around, and that was true, but I sure tried. We got in a lot of fights for the first six months after my tenth birthday. I got us in a lot of fights I mean. He had a growth spurt in the midst of all that, turning out even bigger and stronger than before. Won myself a lot of black eyes and bitter tears. Then he got adopted too, and I was fully lost.
I didn’t even try to make new friends. I’d seen so many kids leave around me, and I was always stuck there. The way I saw it, anyone I made friends with would be gone before I could even finish a game of hide and seek. So I spent my time in the woods. It was just a few trees in the backyard really, but that’s where I lived, every moment I could get away from the others. I played the same games I used to play with Matty and Paul, but I assigned roles to imaginary players, just told myself stories really, played out roles. One sided conversations. My rage was getting completely unreasonable by that point. Almost every conversation with another person would result in a blackout. They were talking about a high security facility for me. A hospital, like where we met. That terrified me. I wouldn't be allowed in the forest, the only place I felt like I belonged.
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I guess that was the threat I needed to find Garbage. I didn’t call him that back then. He was just a character I would play in the woods. I called him Captain. He was always the guy in charge. The head pirate. The king. First he was in charge of how I played, of what battles to wage, what ships to attack. Then he was in charge of when we played, and what games. Finally he started talking without me even asking, telling me when to bite my tongue, when to walk away. I never got shipped to the high risk place, and I know I have him to thank. But being who I was, I started to hate him pretty quick. I stopped doing what he said, he was just another voice in my life telling me I couldn’t, or else. I called him Garbage then, because I thought of his little demands as garbage.
But he was strong enough by that time that it didn’t matter what I thought. Instead of blacking out and kicking through walls and screaming at people, I started blacking out and apologizing and acting like a civilized little human being, then waking up to Garbage filling me in on the details in the back of my mind. Letting me know how he had fixed everything. I hated him for it, but I knew he was the only reason I got to go outside, and even though I still called him Garbage and told him to fuck off with every other breath, I didn’t tell any of the staff what was happening either. I was afraid they would take him away, and without him, I would be taken way too.
______________________________________________________________________________
The soft drizzle had become a steady sheeting rain. When [garbage] stopped his story the sound of water against the car roof combined with the whoosh of driving along a wet road. It filled the space with an embracing white noise. The rhythm of the wipers meted out the moments. The reality of their mission to find Gus hung patiently over [garbage]’s anxious head. He had propped his feet up on the dirty dashboard and reclined his seat. Coral let the wet pacific punctuate his story before she quietly offered her perspective.
“I’ve always loved the woods too.” She said. “Since I was a little kid. Mom was sick a lot, so it was hard and sad to be around her. And the woods was the only place I could go to be a little girl.” [garbage] watched her from half lidded eyes while she spoke. She frowned down at the road, and at the streaks of water dancing across the windshield. “I took my sister’s clothes with me and changed when I was alone, then I got to be me. I played pretend like you did, but mostly I just colored or read books. All the stuff I would do at home you know?”
The wipers continued to churn their metronomic cycle while the two of them, lost in thought, stared along the winding highway, dim in the wet, gray and twinkling green. [garbage] worried at his lips a bit, then reached back over to retake Coral’s cold hand into his.
______________________________________________________________________________
“I haven’t heard him. Well, no, I have, but not as loud. Not ‘loud’, but like, not as strong. I don’t know.”
[garbage]’s doctor watches patiently from behind his laptop. His hands, dusted with hair along the knuckles, faintly spotted with age, are pointedly folded and resting under his chin. [garbage] articulates with his own hands as he speaks.
“It’s like he’s still there but I can ignore him easier. He’s not distracting anymore. It’s kind of nice actually.”
The doctor types something. [garbage] notes that his typing is halted and wandering. His eyelids feel a little heavy.
“Okay [garbage],” the doctor begins. “From what you’re telling me, I feel very positive about the effects of the (_____). I also see that you’ve been attending groups, going to lunch, and keeping up on your hygiene.” [garbage] nods along.
“So do you think I can leave soon then?” He tries not to seem too rushed, too desperate.
“I’d like to continue monitoring, since the circumstances of your admission were so severe. Let’s say, just tentatively, that we can look at discharge on Monday. Now you’ll have to arrange for somebody to pick you up. Do you have a relative or a friend who can come get you?” The doctor tilts his head a bit, his hands still poised over the keyboard.
“No. I told you my situation with Gus. I need to pick him up, why can’t you just let me go? I can walk to my apartment from here for christ’s sake.” [garbage] pushes back from the desk. The doctor raises his thick eyebrows and closes his laptop gently.
“There isn’t any need to get upset, [garbage].” He says softly. “You can arrange for a taxi, an uber, as long as there’s a person we can release you to, it doesn’t have to be a friend or relative specifically.”
But something in [garbage]’s face, now twisted up into a contemptuous mask, refuses to let go. His hands are shaking, his breathing is shallow and quick.
“I would have someone!” He shouts. I would have Gus!” He stands up, his eyes are white and stark. He kicks out behind him, knocking the heavy square seat over and back against the wall of the small square office. The doctor lifts the receiver of the black phone console on the corner of the desk and presses a button. A ding over the PA system, then his voice:
“Code Gray, conference room three. Code Gray-”
[garbage] sweeps the desk of phone, papers, and laptop. The doctor stands, hands raised, and opens his mouth to speak, but [garbage] is already yelling.
“It’s fucking stupid to keep me here at all! You already know I’m doing better, you said so your fucking self!” He pounds on the chipped enamel desk with every word. His face is bright and tears leak from his eyes. The doctor nods along, actively listening to the tirade.
“You have been doing well, there isn’t an issue there. The way you are acting now, however, doesn’t look like a healthy patient.”
The chair is lifted up, [garbage]’s eyes wide to bulging, he spits as he yells.
“Then fucking just let me leave you cunt, just let me leave!”
And it’s dashed against the wall, adding another scuff to the mosaic of crises crossing it.
The door opens and admits two tall men. One has a needle prepared. In the grapple that follows, [garbage] is laid down, groaning, against the cold floor.
“Fuck you!” He shouts, directionless.
Consciousness melts away. He can taste bitter metal in his mouth.
He wakes up slowly, feeling serene, pillowy. He’s in a small room on a plastic mattress, laying on a bed built into the wall. He remembers, slowly, first who he is, then where. Then, with an ice cold crumbling sensation in his stomach, like a glacier breaking off into the sea, he remembers why he’s there.
The tail end of a substantial injection of (_____) still casts a rosy glow over his perception, but he’s had enough experience being tranquilized to realize that the false sense of security will be washed out of him in a few short hours. He sits up on the bed. It’s bare, as is the room, as are the walls. He doesn’t bother making his way over to the window. His home growing up had a similar room, in which he spent regular time, hours, sometimes bleeding into days. Out of instinct, he reaches out in his mind, a wordless question, but the presence he feels there, and the dim word [you] are nothing more than well defined ideas, and not the protective charge he needs now.
He swings his head back once, sharply, against the worn wall behind him. The blossom of pain focuses his awareness to the reality of what he’s done. Tears liberally stream from his eyes. He feels the droplets tapping against the scrubs shirt below. He tastes the salt of them, then scrubs his bare forearm across his face. As he does this, a black object catches his eye. Against the back wall of the room, sitting upright as if it was placed there carefully, is the leather notebook.
He crawls over to it from the bed, his head spinning. It’s cold in his hands. He lays there on the shiny lacquered floor, propped up against the wall, fervently flipping through its icy pages. Just as before the yellowed book is blank and frosty. He feels the now familiar cool breeze against his face as the pages flutter. The pale confinement around him presses in. Garbage is meek in his mind, the faint roll of his presence is only barely detectable. It’s as if [garbage] knows there is a word perfect for use in this case, but can’t remember it. That adjacent space where unremembered words are kept serves as a miniature confinement to match the bare room in which he’s crammed against the walls, searching an empty book for some proof of the odd-angled castle filled with hedonists, and with Zach.
But when his haste becomes meticulous, when each page in its individual length and breadth is surveyed, held a hand’s span away from his nose, when his spine has grown stiff from the crumpled posture, his eyes blurred after scanning each page, he is left, after all, empty handed. He considers tearing pages from the notebook, or dashing it against the wall. What he does instead is carries it reverently and places it at the head of his bed. He lays down, allowing himself to feel the kinks and pain of his study, and rests his head on the cool leather surface of the book. He stares out at the web of chips and stains mottling the wall. Inane messages scrawled in pencil, scratches and scuffs that form a vague byway, crossing roads and cul de sacs along the surface which grow disparate higher up, a broad ribbon of inarticulate stories at reachable height.
There is an electric hiss to the lights above. A sterile, quick staccato. His cheek feels freshened by the cool book cover. In the endless twilight of unnerving fluorescence, he modifies his strategy for discharge. It is clear to him that he cannot find his way without the help he overlooked so easily in the past. He tucks his knees neatly up into his arms, closes his eyes, and ventures into the space where Garbage, mute and lethargic, waits. It is like he is reaching through space with his arms tied and trawled back. Like his dreams of a fight whose each punch demands exponential effort.
No words emerge or strength. No cold insufferable hesitance. Yet, withdrawing from it, [garbage] has, in primitive messy molded form, a sense of what the maze ahead demands. He sleeps, and sleeping dreams of much the same - the muddled raw clay compulsions that promise to lead him back to Garbage, then forward to Gus.
When he wakes from those dreams it is to a nurse bringing him his breakfast and his medication. He pops the yellow pills wordlessly and the nurse leaves him with his brown plastic tray of food. He picks up his plastic utensils, stirs his limp scrambled eggs, then spits, as surreptitiously as he can, the offending now slimy circular pills in amongst them, and covers them up quickly. The rest of his food he picks at, and finally returns to the cold book, to searching for new words among its small stubbornly blank pages. Every time a staff member enters, whether to remove his food scraps, to check his vitals, or to ask him in scripted survey about the events that led him to the room itself, he hastily tucks the journal under his pillow.
Finally, at what time he has no way of determining, Madaline comes in dragging an office chair with her. She has no interest in the outburst that confined him, and says as much in her first breath, and would prefer instead that he continue the story of what led him to the ward at large.
“Last we had a chance to meet, you were telling me about your relationship to your boyfriend, Gus.” She has the clipboard on her lap again, her finger guiding her eyes, and she looks up from it. “You were about to move in together?” She prompts.
______________________________________________________________________________
The day we moved in I was fit to jump right out of my skin with excitement. We pulled our truck up, which we had filled half with his stuff, the rest with mine, like an oil and water desk toy, about to be shaken. The apartment complex was very close to PCC, where we were both still attending school. Gus was full time but I had cut back and continued my work at the bookshop. It was a pretty nice place. Gus and I both had incomes so we could afford something a little fancier than absolute poor boy shit. Somewhere with maintained hedges, a little pool we’d never swim in, weight room with cardio machines, equally ignored, that kind of thing.
When we parked the truck out front, it literally looked like too much. Like I remember gawking up through the bird shit on the windshield, thinking I couldn’t possibly deserve it.
“Home sweet home,” Gus said. He was watching me watch it.
“Say something more cliche,” I responded. But I kissed his cheek before hauling the door open and starting the labor of love that constitutes a move-in. We wanted to arrange as we unloaded, so it was a day long project.
We ordered pizza, had a six pack prepared, and did the whole job alone. When it was done, the beads of oil that were gus were suspended in the water of me. But we really made our mark on that place over the next few years, and, slowly, his stuff became my stuff, mine became his. We spent a lot of time and effort capturing our blend of tastes, creating a space that spoke to both of us. Gus was a true designer at heart. Still is, when he’s got his head straight. He was the one who painted all our furniture either rich purple or dark green, sometimes swirls of both. And after a few months of spatial experiments I let him take over when it came to feng shui of it all, too. He was practical where I was eclectic, subtle where I was, well, disastrous. Honestly I lost my foothold , looking back. I guess I didn’t notice my slipping grip of the say-so, but my eyes were fixed right on Gus.
That describes the entirety of our relationship, really. I was too preoccupied with the naked fact of being loved, I guess. I slowly lost myself. He was losing himself too, but not to me.
When the dust of moving settled, when we had the curtains up and the books all in a line, alphabetical by author, we fell neatly into our rhythms. I worked, I read, I wrote. He poured himself wholly into his career. Even back in college he was single minded. I’d have said workaholic then if I'd known how deep it went. He spent every moment on projects, side projects, making connections at cast parties, putting his name out there, all the stuff an artisan like him had to do. And it’s funny now, remembering it, laying it out like this for you, because I couldn’t tell you fuck all about what I was doing, but I could describe exactly which show he was on at any time, exactly what extra tech classes he took on the weekends to get that edge, to add to his growing list of skills.
I know it sounds bad, but this whole bit in the beginning was the idyllic picture I only wish I could return to. If shit had stayed like that I wouldn’t be here now, talking to you about it. Id be, sure, a little lost still, taken in, but jesus I’d give anything for some clean easy codependency to be my only issue again. Anyway that apartment tells a better story than I can. Like I said it didn’t take me long to drop the stick on that front. Gus knew all the secrets for creating space and making objects talk, and he designed a straight up palatial fantasy suite for us.
The walls were covered with dark textures, mirrors and cloth, velvet and perfectly placed pieces, the whole home was like walking into a set that spoke to its audience of comfort, love, care, relief. The purple gnarled-foot tall backed chairs, the gradient muted rainbow tapestry over the kitchen wall, in front of which brass pots hung like the fruits of domesticity. And so, so many set pieces. All of his favorites, even whole walls, put up in panels, painted to look like glimmering wet stones from a dark audience seating area. I loved it, much as it was beyond me as far as style goes, but I loved it, because I loved Gus. Love Gus. Still do, it’s just harder now.
Right, and that’s why the apartment is better at telling the story than I am. Because a broken mirror gone unrepaired in a designer’s home is a loud thing. An argument, screams or no screams, can’t say what a hole in a set wall can. A wall painted lovingly, too lovingly I’d thought, right when my arm protruded from its sleek portrayal of a classical japanese paper door. I can sit here and talk about how the sex got stale and forced, about the silence and the anger. Or I could talk about the advent of a second bedroom, bitterly unburdened by the rich exquisite hangings, furnished only by a single twin sized mattress and a writing desk I purposefully kept as white as the bare wall.. As empty as that place, really.
It wasn’t all wedges and distance though. I mean we were still in love, in our way. We just fucked it up. Each in our own style, just like the house started out. I was an idiot about my own life, I mean about everything that didn’t involve Gus directly. I didn’t make friends, none at all really, except the old owner of the bookstore I worked at. And we only spoke in a private language whose vocabulary was made up of plot and character, prose and poem. Gus had plenty of friends, but all that talk of growing close, growing up, getting married once it was legal, all fell away. His friends were his work, and if I wanted to speak with him, that was his vocabulary. Forget love language, work was his only language. If I wanted to talk food it better have a reference to a production in it , or else a procedural description of how to make it look real in the bright yellow light that the script of life was calling for. I sound bitter, I know I sound bitter, but the bitterness hasn’t even begun, because all this bullshit, all the petty distance, my dependency nonsense and his workaholism, all that is just to explain the circumstances of Gus’s encounter with (_____). Of course that’s when the real fireworks started.
______________________________________________________________________________
Madaline nods along, encouraging [garbage], even, or especially, when his tone becomes clipped, when his eyes begin to rim red from sweeps of his arm across his face. As he speaks however, his other hand, which he has crammed below his pillow, resting firmly on the book, feels the temperature of its cover reliably drop. The more emotional he is, the colder the leather binding gets. Until finally, when he mentions (_____), he feels a numb pain.
“I don’t really feel like talking any more.”
It isn’t a lie. He’s desparate to scan the pages again, true enough, but the bitterness of recollection is burdensome. Madaline clears her throat.
“That’s just fine, [garbage], I’ll be happy to put this to rest for the moment.”
She clicks the pen away, and leaves.
The book has already started to reach its frost fingers out onto the bed. This time, however, [garbage] picks it up before it’s unreachable, and opens it to a random page. It’s like trying to hold a deeply frozen brick of meat, fresh out of a solid state freezer. His hands are numbed and begin to ache quickly. But the pages open to him finally contain some text. He leans in, greedy for confirmation of his previous experience.
A layer of frost covers the words, which are printed in the same swooping calligraphic font as before. He tries to brush the dusting of wet white away, and is just able to make out some names before they’re covered once again. Just names, nothing else. And none he recognizes.
He drops the book to the bed and rubs his hands together for warmth. Names, drawn up in an indecipherable web. Garbage turns within him. Stronger now for his refusal of the little yellow pills, but still too weak to form cohesive words. [garbage] can feel the earnest longing to communicate... something. There is a vague connection just outside of comprehensible, pushed weakly into him by Garbage. Like remembering that he couldn’t remember something. Before he gets his fingers under the thing at all, he realizes that the frost is on him again, flat over his bed and inching up his thighs and hips. He utters a startled sound and pushes to lift himself away, but he’s waited too long. A muted crack and crumbling opens his bed down, into another hole.
Twisting in the air again, the cold wind biting at his face and arms.