And Should I Wake, Chapter 1

PHEL

I can smell the city on my hands, in my hair, see it on my teeth and feel it under my fingernails. It’s been so long… I’d almost forgotten the roar of traffic, the constant sirens in the distance. Every alley is darker than the last, with thin wisps of steam erupting from the manhole covers like little volcanoes, twirling up into the atmosphere like an escaping dream. There’s a gritty vibe emanating from the very streets up through the soles of my feet and into my bones. But this is where I belong. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I close my eyes and breathe in vibrations with a small smile. It’s been a while. I missed you, Reven. I think you forgot me, but that’s okay. I never meant to come back.

         I know how that sounds, and I’m sorry… but I was pretty adamant about sealing my past. I tired to shove the memories into that lockbox that sank with the Liaison, but they didn’t seem to fit and they floated back up to the surface with me when I got out. I was left treading water surrounded by my unsinkable past, in paper form.

         My fingers squeeze into a rigid fist, and I lick my lips, tasting the city on my tongue. I begin to walk again, my hands buried deep in my pockets, my eyes listlessly scrawling across the blank brick walls, the dead flower boxes in empty windows, the rusty fire escapes. I hear a low, raspy laugh behind me.

         “Lookin’ for something, sugar?” the voice inquires eagerly. “Anything at all?” he adds, taking another step towards me.

         I don’t turn as I reply, “Only every day of my life, handsome,” a smile curling up my lips. I bend down slowly, reaching my fingers lower and lower on my thigh until I reach the edge of my boots, just past the top of my knees. My hand is hidden by my waste coat, and for that I’m grateful; I slip my fingers carefully under the lip of the boot and withdraw a blade between my middle and index. He takes another step towards me.

         “Mind if I help you look?” he whispers, his voice curling into my ear, inches away.

         “Not at all,” I breathe, twisting my torso to an angle and thrusting the dagger back into his chest. He coughs and sputters, then falls. You remember that small smile from before? It stretches into a bigger one now, a little bitter but a lot at home. The desert was no place for me. Only the city. Only my Reven. I’m Phel Triste, and god I missed this place.



                   BOBBIE

         My fingers drum along the rim of the desk, my eyes shifting from computer screen to clock. How long is left? I can’t remember. All I do know is that I finished my test ages ago, and all the other jocks and preps are still trudging through their equations and proofs, either too bored, too strung out, or too dumb to click the correct answer bubbles. Don’t get the wrong idea: I’m not a bitch. I’m just tired of waiting. Today is the day my test results come back. I don’t mean test results like school or college admissions or anything trite like that. Yeah, I used to be that girl. But then they found a tumor in my brain. I’m not that girl anymore.

         So here I sit, watching the seconds drag by like a fat chick trying to pull off stockings. My fingers move from drumming to cradling my chin. I sigh loudly enough that a few people actually look up from their monitors to verify that someone actually breathed aloud or if they’re simply going insane. My feet unconsciously tap lightly against the linoleum of the sterile-white classroom with no wall adornments. Eight desks to a row, fourteen rows in this insanely large classroom. Hm. I hadn’t noticed how large it was before. It is pretty big. This distracts me for about five seconds before I remember that I need it to be whatever time the bell rings. That distracts me for about thirty seconds: “Bell.” That’s funny, because as far as I know, the sound that indicates the end of class doesn’t resemble a bell in the slightest. Bells, from what I understand, are antiques: small brass cups with dangling balls that rattle against the sides and make some sort of ringing sound. Apparently, quite beautiful. But it’s been decades since one was produced. Bells… And then I remember where I am. A low hum sounds through the room, even whispering through my headphones, a ghost message I can’t hear because I’m not wearing them. I pick up my bag and switch off the monitor in one quick motion before jumping towards the door.

         Finally. I race home. Tear open the envelope waiting on my door stoop. Despite the modern world where paper is practically obsolete: hospitals still send their regards in thick envelopes. Which officiates the process in some way, recollecting back to the olden years of paper and letters. My eyes wander across the paper and then slide out of focus, disbelief smoothing out the wrinkles on my forehead.

         My name is Bobbie Thomas, and I know: two boy names for my own girl self, I get it all the time. But, my name is Bobbie Thomas, and I am benign.



         BRYCE

I’m looking at some couple going at it across the street, right there: out in the open, and I can’t even begin to imagine what that must be like… the complete release of letting your guard down in public. I would never be caught dead doing that… I guess that’s the problem; I’m kind of…wanted, and not in a sexual way or anything, like “wanted” by the police for illegal activity. So, if I was caught, I’d literally be caught and killed or at the very least imprisoned for life, so essentially, ‘caught dead.’ And I wouldn’t do it in the first place. So I really wouldn’t be caught dead…. Some times I explain things too much.

         I was seventeen the first time I broke the law. I ‘accidentally’ stumbled into a restricted website, an e-mail account of some minor detective agency. Anyway, I sifted through a few files, witnessed a few illegal transactions, sold the information to the highest bidder, and before I knew it, I had tuition for a good school and a pretty serious reputation for hacking. Useful, that. It opened a lot of under-the-table doors for me. I know what you’re thinking, I’m kind of an untrustworthy rat for selling shady information I acquired illegally, but it sort of brings a lopsided justice… and I need the money.

         Anyway, I’m sitting here, holding a bagel in a plastic wrapper and trying to tune out the love bugs while looking nondescript/inconspicuous. No need to draw attention to myself with some spectacle. I have one of those easily forgotten faces, which I definitely use to my advantage. Lots of times, I’ll meet with someone in person, in a dark alley or something equally stereotypical, and then bump into them on the street a week later and they won’t recognize me. It works well enough for me, except when I’m looking at this douche bag and the girl he’s currently eating the face of. I don’t want to be him. But he makes me remember how lonely the lifestyle of a hacking legend can be. But, when I’m sitting in my penthouse tonight, flipping through my hundreds of channels in HD, 3D stereo-optics, full sensory experience: I’ll think of him and merely laugh. I’m Bryce McMasters, and I’m on top of the world, totally alone.





         MAX

I honestly don’t remember her name. I should remember. Isabell? Annabell? Christabell? Was there a “bell” in it at all or was that yesterday’s girl? We’re sitting on a park bench on a not-so-busy street corner on the outskirts of the city. It’s a little past ten, which, I must admit, is pretty early for one of my endeavors. This kind of engagement tends to get awkward when we run out of things to say and do, so to speak, around dinnertime. We pause for a moment, a blissful smile parting her absurdly luscious lips.

         That’s when I notice this guy sitting across the street. He must be zoning; he looks really focused on something, but it happens to be directed towards us. I kind of nod a bit, wondering what the protocol for this is: guys usually get angry when another guy’s staring down his work, don’t they?

         Here’s my problem: I haven’t been me for very long. I don’t know exactly who this persona is yet, so I’m experimenting with mentalities until I find one I can live with for a while. This hedonism thing is pretty nice… but it might get a little prosaic after a while; that’s something they don’t explain in the movies: how colorless instant gratification gets after a while. But here I sit, with what’s-her-face on my lap, tracing patterns on my neck with her tongue, and I suppose I can make this work for a little while. I smile to myself. I wonder how long before I won’t be this ‘me’ anymore.

         Today, my name is Max Lombardy, but last month it was something else, and it will probably change again before the week’s out; I’m running away and won’t stop until no one remembers who I used to be.



         JAMES

I slip my glasses off of my nose and onto the desk my office frames so nicely. It is a shoebox of an office; hardly that at all, but I make it work because it’s simply all money can afford at the moment. I jot a quick thought down on a piece of paper and stuff if it in my pocket; I have to get back to the lab before all these potentials slip out of my mind and I forget them entirely. In my studies, ideas hit me like dodgeballs, and if I don’t catch them, they’ll slip through my fingers and bounce away and I’m simply out. So I try to scoop as many of them up as I can, taking advantage of the fact that they were sailing towards me in the first place.

         The city is so busy this time of night; almost eleven. I can’t remember what it is, but something’s picking at the tip of my brain: some errand I forgot to run or appointment I forgot to keep. A meeting? A conference? A… date. Oh. Poor Erin. Well, it’s too late to call now. I’ll call her in the morning. Erin, a friend of a friend has recently arrived in the city, and her cousin, my friend, thought we could entertain each other. I don’t know about Erin, but I’m far too focused on my professional life to be very interesting on a date. At least, that’s what I thought until I saw her.

         She’s just walking around the side of a building, creeping out of a deep alley that stretches all the way back into Old Reven when I see her. Medium height, thin, with long arms and long, dark hair bunched into a messy pile on her head, pieces flanking her pale cheeks. She’s wearing thigh-high black boots, a belted waste coat, and her gaze is directed at the ground, but I see a hint of a smile pulling her lip back. I’m mesmerized by that lip, those dark eyes, the curve of her jaw and collarbone. She doesn’t belong in the same world as me, some second-rate scientist with no prospective breakthroughs. So much for any of the ideas that had lighted my brain a few moments ago; they’re all lost now. All I see is her.

         She’s coming closer, and I wonder if I should talk to her; if anything like her would ever talk to something like me. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen in my life. And though she looks like she could kill me in a fight, I am transfixed by that subtle curve of her lip; her smile must be electrifying.

         I wonder idly if she could ever exist in the sunlight; she seems to be a figment of the shadows, impossibly bound to them, as they seem to follow her.

         She’s just a few paces in front of me now, seemingly lost in thought. Her stride is confidant and fixed; her eyes are like blue steel focused ahead; her hands are buried so deeply in her pockets I could never find them; her heels slap into the concrete like she has a point to prove. What do you say to that? Hi? Hello? Hey? How are you? I don’t even know what I’m doing as I step in front of her, blocking her path.

         “Hi,” I try to say; but she side steps me and keeps moving. I wonder what that means. Did she hear what I said? I turn to face her back; she’s already ten feet behind me.

         “Hi,” I call again. She pauses for a fraction of a second and turns her head, not fully around.

         “What?” she growls, not bothering to turn enough to see me. I seem to have interrupted some inner reverie of hers.

         “Nice night,” I offer feebly. Despite twenty-eight years of life, with fifteen odd years of dating and romanticizing experience, this woman scares the shit out of me. But equally, possibly more so: I am captivated by her.

         She turns now to fully face me. Her face is mottled with anger, but as she studies me, it dissipates a little, I think. Now her face is blank. She stares at me, a trace of confusion in her eyes. I wonder what it is she found on my face that resolved some of her fury.

         “Yeah,” she replies at last, her eyes straining up, but instead of reaching to the stars, they stop at the vertical limits of the buildings around her, scraping across them for every last detail she can collect, drinking them in. “There’s nothing like the city,” she sighs, that phantom smile I saw hiding on her lip before now resting fully in it. The air leaves my chest. It is electrifying. She turns to leave again, and my heart creaks. I want to yell after her to wait, but remember that that’s just plain creepy in time to stop myself.

         “What’s your name?” I call to her, wanting to take an approaching step, but scared it will frighten her off like a bird eating seeds in your hand. I don’t want her to fly away just yet…

         “What’s yours?” she counters, holding her position, but not turning back to face me, her hands reaching back down into the depths of those pockets again.

         “James,” I call to her.

         She is quiet for a while, her eyes presumably scouring the street for the details she so craved once again. I want to continue talking, but I know she must be the next one to talk. It has to be her choice to continue this conversation.

         “You seem nice,” she said, though it sounded like it was directed at herself more than to me.

         “You love the city,” I say, as statement rather than a question.

         “More than anything,” she concedes. I hear a smile in her voice, but am left to wonder what it looks like; if it is melancholy or whole-hearted, or if its even there at all: she hasn’t turned back yet.

         “Do you live around here?” I call, but before the words are even out of my mouth, I realize this conversation is over; maybe it never really started. She doesn’t answer, but doesn’t leave either, so I hope I’m wrong.

         But I’m not. Her foot swishes forward, stamping down on the concrete as she begins moving again.

         “Goodbye, James,” she practically whispers. By the way she talks, I wonder when the last conversation she had took place.

         “I don’t even know your name!” I call to her, hoping beyond a hope she will hear and respond. She doesn’t slow, but shifts as she walks, turning her body toward me.

         “Phel,” she calls back, the smile still playing on her lips, but not so radiant as before. And she turns the corner and is gone. Phel. Wow.

         And like that, my life is not the same. My name is James Thyme, and I need to find a girl named “Phel.”