Unfinished Business. Terminus Back on the Desk

It always happens at New Years. As soon as the day has past, there is a furious desire to clean out the cache, the drawers, the fridge, repack the decorations, and wash one's face to meet the new year. But there are always threads left unstitched from the year before that need securing -- and this is one of them. Somewhere in the months of last year, I had a moment to myself and started this, "Terminus" a novella (I think) for a Bordetown collection I want to write called Bordertown Born and Bred -- as all my stories seem to be about kids who come from Bordertown, rather than journey to it. Not a story of crossing, or running away and to, but a kid whose genes go deep into the taproot of Btown's wildness and magic. This is to be a story of shifting identities, and a nod to Jose Arguedas' beautiful and mystical rites of passage novel, Deep Rivers. 

And this is all I have. I must have been interrupted...left my desk, hurried to do something, promised to come back...and then, and then, like Btown's own shifting streets, somehow this got lost. I like it a lot...and I am hoping to pick up the threads again and make it whole. In the meantime...here it is. 

 

"Terminus"

 

Asker stumbled out of the bar, his ears ringing with the buzz-saw sounds of Solvent���s mad guitar and Vec���s shrill laugh which made it clear to him they were both damn-straight drunk. He tried to find his feet but they lurched, confused by the ground rising and falling beneath him.

���Baby, wait, I���m sorry,��� Vec called after him. ���I didn���t mean it!���

He looked back, squinty as the street swirled, globe lights streaking across the spangles in her dress, making her shimmer. The light caught the smooth outline of her cheek, the pouty mouth, and the wash of black and blue hair trailing her throat. His heart ached, his body slumped, still wounded by her verbal jabs at him in the bar. Humiliation hurt. She was never going to change. But he wanted, needed to believe she was telling the truth. ���Th-th-that���s ������ he stuttered and she exploded in another round of laughter.

���That���s cool, he finished and turned away. He wanted to run, he wanted to get as far away from her as he could before he puked. He loped down the alley, his shoulder banging into the brick wall of line of shops and bars. He found the high street, awash with Saturday night partyers. He could hardly see through the flickering street light, the glow sticks, the girls lit up with fairy dust and neon colors. Asker shouldered through the crowds and they pushed back with a growl, a shove, and a curse. The last stopped Asker, for even drunk and angry, and feeling stupid, a curse was no joke in Bordertown. He waited, eyes closed feeling the drift of the crowd around him, their voices loud and happy, drowning out the memory of Vec, serving him up on platter as the barking dog in a bad joke. A joke. That���s what he was, a stuttering joke.

He felt the spaces around him widen, and opened his eyes, slowly. The road still swayed, but it was quieter now, and he could make his way again, this time placing his feet carefully one at a time in front of him. At the corner where three streets formed a small triangular park, Asker turned down the narrowest and the darkest of them. And as he moved from the light of the park into the shadows, his foot struck a stone, firmly planted half in and half out of the cobbled road. His leg buckled and his shin cracked against the rough, ridged rock, tearing through his jeans.

���Fuck!��� he cried as he staggered forward and sprawled out on the road. He rolled onto his back, grabbing at his injured leg as blood spilled from an open gash. Pain exploded up his leg and he turned on his side to vomit up beer and French fries. ���Fuck, fuck, he moaned.

���Hey Buddy, you ok?��� a halfie-girl appeared next to him, touching him on the shoulder with her fingertips, her child���s face swaddled in a too big-cap close to his. He felt the feather touch of her other hand in the pocket of his coat and he jerked away from her, swatting her away non too gently.

���Fuck off,��� he snarled, angry all over again that he never stuttered when he was mad. Only when he was nice. Only when he cared about someone. Idiot tongue. 

"Suit yerself, buddy. I ain���t yer enemy. It���s that stone there. Take it out on that���not me,��� and she hustled off, leaving him there in throbbing pain, stinking of puke.

Asker hoisted himself upright from the street, fueled by rage. He limped to the stone and bent down to examine it. Two feet of weathered black rock reached out of the ground, a few threads from his jeans snagged on the jagged edge. He wrapped his arms around it, and thinking of Vec and her laughter, he pulled at the stone. It wouldn���t budge, but that only made him angrier. He tried again, waggling it back and forth and felt the soil beneath it give a little. It moved under protest, but Asker, now fully committed to the task continued to pull at it as though it were a rotten tooth that needed extracting. He leaned back, his arms aching from the strain, but he had to keep going he thought. He had to hit back at all the hurt that he felt, all the times he had let pass when Vec did as she pleased and he let her, even if it meant amusing herself by publicly making him into a stammering fool.

Asker felt it shift again, a tremor in the earth. Just the booze he thought, as he grabbed another breath of air, clutched the stone deeper into his chest and pulled. Loosened from its mooring, the earth released the stone at last, and Asker fell back on the ground again as the stone lay heavily on his chest.

���Gotcha,��� Asker said. And with pain temporarily forgotten in the delirium of his success, he forced himself to his feet, still holding the stone like���like he once held Vec, he thought as hurt drilled him at the memory, only to be replace by a surge of energy as he stumbled forward with the stone to the riverwall that held the roiling waters of the Mad River in check. He hoisted the stone to the wall, rolled it across the ledge, and pushed into the river.

���So long, Vec,��� he called after it, and heard the splash answer him just before it vanished.

Then

 

Art: Russian Academy School, Karla Ortiz, Street Artist Axel Void