The Cipher

by Kathe Koja

You can know something and never think about it, if you’re any good at it.

Nakota’s notions had taken me places that I had never dreamed of going, but the places were rarely good ones.

“there’s something so big happening to you, why do you have to get fucked up to let it happen?

What had I wanted that made this happen? Nakota’s taunts and Randy’s silent doggish respect, the bugs in the jar with runic wings, the video and its glimpsed emissary figure, the hole in my hand, the void in my head that led me into this, now there was a real Funhole, where the darkness came in. Was the darkness always there? Was all it needed to infiltrate a lack of determination to keep it out? and had I really done all this to myself, by myself, by being the little I was?

What do I want. I thought. Transformation? Do I want, at all?

Because in the end we are what we are, we want what we want, whether we know it or not. Whether we care to resist or not, or whether in the end it’s worth resistance after all.

we used to joke that in my building, the tenants were the vacancies, and lucky for me it wasn’t hard to play at being nothing.