Beyond the Sea Ch. 01

1 : Nihil inimicius quam sibi ipse

There is blood in the room, but they can't find it. They know it's there. Blood always comes through. It can wait.

For hours, days, since, there's been washing and rubbings, sprayings and windows opened, but a small colony of maggots has still managed to thrive on a chunk of forgotten lung tissue caught under a chair leg. The flies will not disgust them when discovered in a few days. They will never find the bronchiole, and one day it will be swept up by a landlord or a rug cleaner.

The murdered one is not as important as the murderer, though, in this situation. Broken, affectless, the murdered woman does not concern us, as she did not much concern anyone in life; their theory to why she is dead.

Ah, we hold the key to something awful, something truly, deliciously awful, that we want.

We will start looking after hours, in a small, quiet part of the world. Things can hide in silence. But blood always comes through. It waits.

*

It twists in his gut, the memory of every no, every dismissive glance, each turned ankle, each beat of a high-heeled retreat. He's grown to accept the odds, the disadvantages of himself. Even lucky nights are rarely truly lucky. But he persists, like a good soldier, like his daddy had always told him to do with all things, and in that persistence he had grown mean.

He doesn't realize this quite yet; he doesn't hear the casual disdain in his voice when he compliments women on their bodies, their clothes; doesn't realize that he sounds rude, even dangerous, when he invites them home for drinks, and more recently, blatantly, sex; isn't consciously aware of the change between the pitying, uncomfortable glances and offended , nervous ones he now receives. No, he merely chalks up women in general to "having changed", to being even more frigid than they had been before, to a new trend in sexual politics. He is not aware that he has, more and more often, begun to refer to women as "cunts" in his internal monologues.

He only feels the twisting of gut and heart and down-there parts, and accepts his lot in his life.

Tonight, he sits in the coffee shop and watches the waitress serve him and the rest of her tables. He watches her bring trays of hot breakfast to the rowdy, drunken after-bar crowd and scans her flock for targets.

That blonde in the corner is trashed... Three of em. What, are they dykes? Too risky. Cunts in packs…fuckin' wolves.

Then the dirty girl comes in. He has of course picked the table which allows him to watch the door. He is one of the customers that waitresses hate, the kind that seats himself regardless of any lineup, and always picks the dirty table in the section full of clean ones. He watches her come in and his radar goes haywire.

She must be loaded, bitch is loaded...look how dirty she is, she can barely walk...she looks terrified....

A terrible, but scarily inviting, thought surfaces in his mind.

Maybe she's retarded.

Without any conscious effort on his part, his dick starts to get hard. Six months, a year ago, this thought would probably have caused him to look hastily away, remonstrating himself for using non-politically correct language, but now his evolving sexuality entertains the thought like a courtesan.

Retards don't get laid much, I bet, he thinks, and laughs, taking the immature pleasure in using such elementary-school terminology.

He giggles a bit more, covering his mouth with its awful two broken teeth behind his hand. Old habits die slow, but they do eventually die, and he looks down with some surprise to find that his Young Callahan is now obviously awake.

The girl looks awful; stringy hair, smudge of what may be puke on her arm. She is standing by the hostess podium, eyes as wide as Christmas, waiting.

Your wait is over, honey. He gets up from his long-finished coffee, shambles toward her. He left two dollars on the table, a four cent tip for the harried waitress, who always threatens to kick him out when he tries to talk to her privately. Just talk, just ask her how she is, how the boyfriend she always tells him she has is doing these days (he doesn't believe that she has a boyfriend; he thinks she must be a lesbian, which would explain why she's so rude to him when all he does is try to be nice to her), but fuck her, she can bitch about her tip to someone who cares, some loser with nothing to do after the bar on a Saturday night. Not him!

He has something to do. There it is now, trying to swipe napkins from the counter while none of the staff is looking.

The hostess swoops in, a vulture on his prey, and he stops in his tracks, steps back and drops into his recently-vacated seat, needing a moment to rethink his plan. He slides the edge of his saucer over the two dollars to keep the waitress at bay and watches, sliding his discount cigarettes out of his pocket, mourning briefly that he can't smoke in these places anymore. But there's no law against holding one, and so he slips one out of the pack, puts the rest away and strokes it thoughtfully under the table as he watches, the pad of his calloused thumb rasping over the paper seam between the filter and the tube, the tip of his deeply ridged nail digging slightly into the seam of the tube. A strange choreography overtakes the movement, as it always does when he's concentrating: over the seam, into the seam and back; over the seam, into the seam and back. Sensation begets sensation, and numbs his body, focusing him inwards, a single eye looking out upon the world.

The girl flicks a lank strand of hair away from her face as the hostess speaks to her. He can't hear what they're saying, but their bodies sound like disdain and fear, condescension and shame. Over the seam, into the seam and back.

His breathing grows more rapid, his heart pounding at her shame. Dirty girl, dirty girl, hello little dirty girl, he breathes softly to himself, imagining what it would be like fucking her from behind up against an alley wall, slick with grime and graffiti, breathing on her thin, unwashed neck, his hand in her hair, holding her head firmly against the bricks, the sheen of horrified saliva glinting on her teeth under the streetlights. Oh yes, little dirty girl.

Over the seam, into the seam and back. The moment stretches out as he pictures the rictus of her face as he ejaculates in her ass, feeling her heartbeat flutter through her body, an undulation of a pulse, one after the other, crescendoing and decrescendoing rapidly, her torn flesh like clutching fingers that have forgotten how to let go.

The girl, only half-paying attention, seems to feel someone watching her, and slowly glances around the room, meeting his eyes. Her face is slack, her eyes bovine, but she's aware of him. Shit. The cigarette under the table snaps at the filter under the sudden pressure of his thumb, and he curses himself for being so obvious. His erection wilts.

Bitch, he thinks. That stupid fucking cow.

The hostess gestures the girl towards the door. She is not welcome here. He sneers, one lip sliding upward, a snake through pock-marked mud, slow and nasty. How do you like that, you dirty little cow?

The girl daubs at her nose with one of the stolen napkins, which comes away delicately bloodied, intriguing him further, his dick on the move again. He senses the waitress hovering near, coveting her four cents and his table, and holds his ground for a moment, watching the scene at the door.

Without looking at the hostess, she nods only once, a movement so slight that it might have been that her head just drooped, and turns to walk out the door, napkin still in hand. The hostess has written them off; it's worth it to have her gone.

As the door begins to swing closed behind her, he stands, sliding the saucer away from the money, humming an old pop tune under his breath, even though his preference is country, timing the beat of the song to the step of his feet, thinking of wolves' teeth and saliva as he follows her out the door.

2 : Nemo nascitur artifex

Before the summer came, and the Lost Time, Ruby Daniels was somewhere else. She remembers the Time Before and the Time After but there are five weeks missing and she has given up hope of their safe return. The bus trip to San Antonio is long, and she has time to apply more mortar to the doors that keep it Lost. Doodling idly in her coiled blue notebook, she passes the time between paragraphs with childlike drawings of dogs. One has sabretooth-type fangs, and beneath it is scrawled Fiat Lux. She plans to look it up in the library when the bus gets to San Antonio.

The notebook is smeared, falling apart. But she must keep it whole. She has copied the contents of the book into three new ones now – word for word, drawing for drawing, by hand. It is her living concordance, and without it the Lost Time seems much more appealing than the highways of Texas.

This is what it says:

For a women's shelter, it's not too bad. I thought they would be dusty places with endless rows of cots, cheerfully lit by the smiles of self-hating affluent housewives, co-op social work students and over-bright fluorescents. But it's just like a hotel - a rather run-down hotel where all the guests wear pajamas until 7 p.m.

It's August, windy, and the heat blows through one sturdily barred window, barely stirring the heavy fog of cigarette smoke in the common room. I am playing gin rummy with a woman named Cheyenne. Except her name isn't Cheyenne. It's Pat. Pat used to be a hotel manager until she discovered Shambala.

Shambala, from what I can tell, is a place that existed thousands of years ago, populated by aliens and spirits who created our Earth as an experiment. "Not everyone on Earth has a soul," Cheyenne informed me in her soothing customer-service trained voice. "Some of us are reincarnated citizens of Shambala, here to guide the soulless ones towards greater understanding and steer the earth towards a wonderful time of peace." I think the idea of alien forces subtly shaping us into a retake of their lost paradise is terrifying. Cheyenne can't wait. And she's won every hand so far. Shambala seems to be working out well for her.

The common room tends to bring the moms together. I expected crackheads and crazies, but what I have is a separate nation of tiny mothers swapping smokes and swearing lustily. The babies are always loud. I think they shout so much to blow the smoke away from their eyes. The mothers are the weepiest, the elderly distant salutatorians. Tiny girls. Tiny women. Tiny mothers, with their tiny mistakes, refusing to accept that the party is over, that they can't apologize or write an essay or do community service to get away with their particular error in judgment. Some of them have decided to clasp motherhood with arms of lead, and those ones don't cry. They plot. There are two of them.

Cheyenne lays down a five card straight.

"Fuck a duck!" My hands drop the cards. "How do you do it? That's four games in a row."

The serene Shambala smile. "I think I'm beating you by about a hundred points here. Will we be forfeiting the game, dear?"

I'm not frustrated, but I play it up for laughs as she goes through the ashtray and picks out all the butts with an inch or more left on them. Into her silver cigarette case they go, to be dissected and rerolled into homemades.

"Here come the leeches," says Cheyenne as she finishes up. It's her term for the two mothers. We both smile and she walks out. I don't bother saying goodbye because we'll meet up after dinner for more cards – what else is there to do?

Flick, crack, whoosh. My lighter still has a few days in it. I only have four smokes left, but that's okay. I make homemades too. The leeches wander in to the common room, shouting.

"It ain't right. That shit is not right." Heather, I think. The alpha.

"I know! What the fuck?" Is it Patty? Penny? I can never remember. Every leader has a lackey, what difference does the name make?

"It just, that shit is not right, that's no way to be pregnant." Heather is truly righteous. Heather will not be satisfied with a private bitch session. Her legs are shaky when she sits down. Her voice is strident and rushed. One of her carefully made ponytails is loose.

Part of me, still a teenager and knowing well the rage of loud and scary girls, wants to leave, but I make myself stay. My room is full of my own whispering problems. It's better than being alone, and two weeks of weary routine in this place is starving me of excitement.

"Eve says this is her fourth fucking baby. Social Services already knows and they're going to take it right at the hospital this time. They already have a house for it. Fuck, after four fucking babies you'd think someone might have told you you can't just eat shit when you're pregnant." Patty. It is Patty. Vice-President of fire-stoking and shit-disturbing. The girls who smack beehives and then run to Daddy for protection are the worst.

"Yeah, well, I think we need to do something. I mean, it's like, just as bad for us to sit here and watch it. I think it might even be illegal. Like if you watch someone get hit by a car and you don't do anything, you can go to jail, and this is totally the same thing."

Now I know who the target is. Cheryl. Cheryl is one of the only two long-term residents. Cheryl is functionally developmentally delayed, and I have also watched her eat with incredulity. Double servings of every dessert in the kitchen. Uneaten servings of vegetables. A box of Twinkies in her room, refilled every two days. Three cases of warm Pepsi sit on her dresser, always full. I would be surprised to find out she voluntarily ate anything unsweetened. I didn't know this was her fourth child.

"Is she out having a smoke?" Heather stays loud and becomes threatening. I can almost hear the tumblers turn over in her head, freeing the self-righteousness that grows so fast from jealousy. It's unfair. It's unfair to Heather that Cheryl eats what she likes, because Cheryl isn't going to keep her baby. Heather has decided that her baby is a blessing to bear with honour. Heather's baby will be a lawyer, or a rap superstar, and he will give Heather back her dreams someday, if she chains herself to him and forgets all about being fifteen, and pregnant, and living at the YMCA.

"I think so. She's out there with that cabbie guy, so she's probably getting high."

"She's in 226, right?"

"I dunno. I'm not on that floor."

"Who is? We can't ask Eve."

"Why? What does Eve care if you go talk to her?"

"I'm not gonna talk to that stupid twat. We're gonna go throw out her fucking crap."

And then they realize I am there. I put out my smoke carefully. I am scared of two fifteen-year-old girls. I am twenty-three and homeless and I don't remember much of the last five weeks, but I remember to be afraid of teenage girls. Especially when you are the only person around and they are out for blood.

Not everyone has a soul, hums a memory of Cheyenne. In Shambala I was a great judge. I was fair and honest, and that is why they sent me back. This world is in need of justice.

"Did you hear what we were talking about?" Heather swings. "Because I don't fucking care, it's all true anyways."

"I heard you. Cheryl's on my floor." Why did I tell her? Why did I do that? Fear, fear, ancient fear. Fear and conditioning to do whatever they want. Do whatever they want and they will break your glasses but they won't beat you up. Say whatever they want you to say and he won't throw you around by the hair. I realize I am stroking my neck and I do not have long hair anymore. It disappeared in the last five weeks. I don't remember them very well. My neck remembers fear though; it is tense.

"What room? We're gonna throw out her pop. All she eats is fucking shit and it's bad for her baby. She's like a killer in advance." Patty rolls the emphasis around on her tongue and the contract is now on the table. "If you don't help us, you must not care about her baby. If you don't care about her baby, you must not care about mine either. And we will be enemies, you and I."

"I don't know. I don't exactly talk to people here. She's always outside with people, and I'm usually in my room. Just knock on doors and ask. Tell whoever that she has a phone call and Eve sent you up to look for her." I am negotiating the contract. Eve will know in a second that they were not delivering a message. Cheryl does not get phone calls.

"How can you not know what room she's in? There's only, like, five on this floor. Don't you understand that this is important? That poor baby, it's gonna come out all fucked-up and shit."

I can tell them, then run and get Eve. I need to get away from their eyes. I'll tell them anything. I can feel the reflex as it happens, like a menstrual cramp; inevitable, manifest destiny.

Not all people living on Earth have souls. Shambalans try to find the lost sheep. To lead by example, slowly remaking Paradise.

My whole back stiffens with memory. I cut off my hair in case he finds me. I did it the minute I got off the bus in the town square. I remember the sore, scabby patches on my scalp. They hurt if I was shaky with the scissors. Then from behind me, two cops taking the scissors away, then me. I can see my hair in a pile in the fountain by City Hall, slowly rippling under the surface of the water and becoming thin black fishes as the car speeds to the shelter, to a different form of his anger. It's not fair, it's not fucking fair. I have nothing left, not even my hair. He has taken it all.

Hatred is a human invention. We don't quite understand it.

"I don't care about her fucking baby and I don't care what you stupid bitches do with your lives. If you worried as much about yourselves as you do about other people you might not be living in a fucking homeless shelter with fucking babies and spending all your welfare money on smokes and weed. You have no right to shit on her. Hear me? No fucking right." The chair upturns with the speed of my rising. Flakes of grey spill a little from the ashtray – there are no butts to tamp them down.

They wait until I start walking out to throw the pack of cards at me. I don't look back. It is a new lesson. I am a fast learner.

Ruby sleeps. She knows it by heart, and has to be awake to meet the detectives at the station. The detective's name is Graham, and his business card has a Latin phrase. She knows the Lost Time is coming back. For now, sleep.

*

When the bus does not arrive in Chicago, Merrit Graham calls the Plano police station.

"We put her on a bus."

"Yes. But the bus is not here. In fact, the bus appears to not be in this county at all." Graham is light, but his tone belies knowledge. He is waiting for the news. Something is wrong.

"Well…I don't rightly know what to say. We put her on the bus, watched her get on m'self. I don't think she's a flight risk – to be honest, looked like she could use a change of scenery after that thing at the diner. Are you sure it's the one-thir-oh, hold on." Rustling papers. Graham's neck gets warm.

His cell phone vibrates the second that the Plano sheriff comes back. They have the same information.

"Seems the bus made a stop in Memphis, at the Tennessee state line. Your girl got off and disappeared. No one saw anything. I'm right sorry, Detective. Found her backpack and her wallet though, so I don't know as she's gone too far."

Graham is already walking towards his car. "Have the bag sent to me this afternoon. Don't touch it without gloves. Bag it. Get that bus driver in for questioning, too." The driver wasn't notified of Ruby's trip. He should have been, and Graham made sure the Plano sheriff knew it. "Ruby Daniels is a suspect in a major homicide investigation, and I was under the impression she'd be monitored."