Short Fiction

Issue III | Contents | Fiction

Justin Reed

University of Illinois

Urbana Champaign

These are the days we paint our faces: 

A pale blue streak melts into soft yellow pink as the sun falls below the last skyscraper, smirking at the city as it pulls down its blanket of cobalt and apprehension.  An entire city’s empty spaces are filled by the dark; people no longer have to stand as they walk through the streets.  Gently, they glide through the comfort of dark, no longer exposed; the city throbs.

Diner wedged into the corner of a building, pink neon flicker.  Inside rows of tables, half smoky, half empty.  Fluorescent lighting.  In the corner a boyish man eats alone.  Crew cut.  Black pants, black shirt, he looks down through pencil eyes and a painted frown.  He eats cherry pie, no ice cream.  Corner of a booth, table settings for one; the ice in the water half melted.  His eyes droop towards the messy end of his fork, his brain is static.  Buzzing, the lights keep buzzing and flickering.  He sits, listening to the lights casting no shadows.

Blocks away, marble and glass.  Steel behind glass rises up.  More glass, sheets of glass, reflecting the city where there is no light within.  A lit room framed by these unlit mirrors hovers, a television in the middle of the skyscraper.

Blush powder is ground onto her cheeks, eye shadow carved around her eyes.  She stares, anointing her mouth with red.  Glossy lips, sharper eyes, redder cheeks—a livelier face.  Tight shirt, pants; breasts, hips that could curve their way into the minds of men—filling up any gaps.

Her mirrors are her windows.  Lights from the inside block shapes on the outside.  She sees her face—red and blue makeup painted across a pale face contrasts from the modish black of her shirt and pants.  Glint of silver around the neck, the rest of her body unbound.

The woman straightens her necklace and turns out the lights to her apartment.  A city blooms where there was once a mirror.

A car is low on gas and an orange red light flares into the driver’s eye.  So close to the city, he drives on, cautious of the warning, but hypnotized by the jagged columns.  So close, he cannot turn off now.

Jazz winds through the car.  A saxophone cries; the pauses in the sound are muffled shakes of some unknown sadness.  The music consoles him, filling the gaps in consciousness where there could be thought.  He presses into the city, orange warning light blaring in the corner of his vision as the ripples of lightning flash silhouettes of concrete.

            The city vibrates; each person’s ambition a thin chord weaving through steel.  Skyscrapers are balanced upon these chords of will.  But the vibration is too much to go undetected; beating all life to the rhythm of progress.

            She slips out of his arms like vapor and appears in the corner of the room.  He wonders of his arms, too ethereal to hold her.  The walls, windows keep them near as they drift through the room.  He tries to run his fingers through her hair, but his hand slips through.  He cannot touch her, their love is ghost love. 

            A ghost is a losing proposition in the city; the wind will blow the ghost into the streets, into the chic clothing stores, into jobs, but it won’t stop blowing.  Ghosts are pushed through space, glass and concrete the only things that can hold them in a room, but even so, the room floats to them as if they were dead.

            Her vapor hands find her jacket as his vapor hands tie his shoes.  No words spoken between them, only ghost thoughts of things put off to when solid things would again have meaning.

            A boy puts on his shirt and tucks it in then hastily untucks it.  He looks at his hair in his yellowed mirror and decides he ought to comb it.  Groping for a comb among poems, albums, photos, he finds nothing.  Walking to his bathroom, he runs his hands under a cold faucet, then through his hair.  Little improvement, the hair still stands at all angles.  Giving up, he searches for a ticket and finds a picture.  The picture is between his fingers and the gloss of the photo only reflects his face. 

            He struggles through the surface of his desk, finding more junk and then coming upon his knife.  He would slash his wrists and let the blood flow, drive the knife into his heart and twist.  He wants to die with his blood steaming around him.  He wants to die and return, to go up to somebody, to show them his wrists, the torn chest.  He wants to say I died for you.  I bled hot wine so you could drink of my soul.  I am nothing but red, and I gave that up to show you how much I need you. 

            The boy looks back into the mirror, into his own eyes and tries to show pity for himself.  Opening the blade of the knife, it jumps to his throat.  He holds it there, resting upon his Adam’s apple.  “You don’t want to die,” he says to his reflection, and closes the knife, placing it amidst the garbage on his desk.

            Pencil eyed man, man of pale skin and black attire finds his way to the counter of the diner.  Fluorescent blue and pink highlight him as he pays for his pie.  A waitress smiles at him while turning away.  He falls out of the diner and begins his walk down the city, stopping near exhaust vents to feel the warm discharge.

            A car drives by, headlights cutting him in two.  The car runs over a puddle, and the splash seems to hold in the evening air.  Looking back upon the car, he notices an orange light inside, an open window leaves a brassy hint of sadness. 

            Inside the car there is no more sky.  The buildings have obscured all vision.  Only concrete and steel and glass remain to be seen, stretching upwards, to heights unknown.  The idle conversation of a double bass fades away and he drives in silence.  So close now, he finds a place to park, and puts his car in between hundreds of others, quietly laid, red lights blinking on the dashboards.  He slips outside and the cool air catches him.  He was in the car before, safe in melancholy jazz and orange, but now he is raw, at the whim of wind and the sharp shapes of pillared metal.

            Red and blue painted face hovers over the black outline of her body, dancing in the vapors of a martini.  Her watch speaks to her, whispering that he is late.  She whispers back that she is not surprised, turning her martini and taking a sip.  Her table would be in the shadows, but the shadows here are the color of avocados.  She whispers that she chose a different life when she stayed in the city; he was the one who had left her.  She hisses that it is not her fault she got angry.  Not his fault that she stayed.  He will be here soon, and they will have to chase each other through time, finding where their paths have wound, knowing that tonight their paths will drift back to sharper outlines.

The group pushes through other people.  Boy with the untucked shirt in the middle of the pack, surrounded by friends who lead him to where he needs to be.  There are whiffs of excitement and aggression.  The loudest of the bunch flirts with women on the streets—getting laughing responses, but enjoying this boy’s attention nonetheless. 

            Boy slides along with his friends.  His hand lives in his pocket, groping at his ticket.  Their legs bring their minds to the club; there is no church like there is music.  The group is too young, tickets in hand they realize that their oldest member is several years too young.  The group looks into him, the flirting, loud boy, thinking.  The loud boy smiles and points to a side door, hidden away in the alley.  The other boys nod in agreement as they press closer to the club, the boy in the middle frightened, but guided by the others. 

            An alley nearby is wet with garbage.  Two empty buildings rise up along the broken strip.  Pencil eyes look down onto a small mirror with two white lines.  It used to feel like something out of a wet dream; an orgasm that would last for twenty minutes a line.  Now it was the ground that pushed up on his feet, the ground that tilted and swirled, spilling him throughout the city.  He is a gymnast on the balance beam, and in a graceful bow, shadows grasping, he takes in one of the lines.  The coke instantly bounced him back up, the gymnast cart wheeling on the beam, a backwards handspring, another line, somersault dismount, and he sticks the landing, balanced on the ground with his face in the air.  “Today I breathe ash, tomorrow I spit fire.”  He smiled and cut himself out of the alleyway, streaking into the street, his eyes sharpened under the billboards.

            Ghost couple floats, hands trying to hold one another, missing flesh.  Feet drag behind them as their hovering chests lead them through the passageways.  Ghost woman smells faintly like perfume, a cloud behind her bathes lavender on the sidewalk.  Ghost man tries to take in the smell, but it fades through his empty nose.  Ghost eyes never meet, some excuse always shoots by, a taxi with an advertisement, a neon green window, dinner being served.  Ghost couple with ghost lungs breathes night air, and fades down the street.

            The martini stirs as the door opens and a man walks in and sits down.  Red lips ask where he’s been.  The man is dressed in a tie that is already loosened and will come off.  The dress shirt around him is midnight blue, it has a delicate shimmer, encouraged by the neon avocado. 

            The man’s lips purse around unimportant words as she glances down, looking into her martini and finally takes a sip.  “It’s been a while” falls like rocks on the table, and sits there.  The rocks get in the way and she has to place her drink in a new spot.  The next words fan out of his mouth, “How have you been,” smoke drifting upwards and getting lost in the smoke gathered around the ceiling.

            Her hand falls to the table, brushing away the rocks.  His arm gains weight as well and tumbles, thumb ending up in between her fingers, his fingers resting along the backside of her hand.  His thumb gives her palm a tentative rub, and she squeezes back.  “It has been a while,” pours out of the shaker at the bar, filling two martini glasses.  The waitress brings them to the table and they both take a sip.  She excuses herself to check her makeup, and, in her absence, he focuses on a streetlight just outside, bathing the frescos in orange softness.

            When she returns, he looks at his watch and looks to the street.  He puts thirty dollars onto the table, and because the rocks are gone, he weighs it down with his half drunk martini, and they leave the avocado neon behind and enter the warm orange of the street.

The club is an old door with rust on the handle, a crowd of people push against it as a bouncer opens and closes it.  The club gulps people in two at a time.  No signs hint to what is inside, but there is anticipation around the door.  The people trust the bouncer, trust their tickets.  Money buys experience and they are here to cash in and fill up.  Two more are swallowed with smiles on their faces.

            The pack of boys is too large and too young for the door.  It will not swallow them; the bouncer will have to spit them out, detritus on the sidewalk.  Middle boy, still frightened wants to turn back, to leave.  He would go back to his desk, and sifting through the mess, find headphones, and listen, beige carpet softness kissing his bare feet.  Skirting away, the loud boy finds the side door.  He has been here before, and knows that with the right push and tug, the door will slide open, letting them slide inside.  Heavy air sticks to them, the boy in the middle can’t get enough and his eyes show fuzzy, but the pack presses in and diffuses, moving toward the stage, away from the tables where a man stares ahead, black eyes fixated on the empty stage. 

            Two black tears of graphite and sweat run down his face as he turns a cigarette in his fingers.  He pulls some smoke into his body and lets it escape through his nostrils.  Dark eyes cut through the people in the club.  Everyone is standing in place, statues waiting to be animated. 

The ghost couple drifts in the door.  The smoke in the room gives their bodies more form and they land at a table near the bar, ordering drinks to fill.  He tries to talk in steam but can’t yet hold on to any form; the couple settles in their chairs, reminded of conversations past.

            The room crowds and swirls.  People are the color of the place and it shimmers.  Lights dance from place to place, illuminating couples, highlighting gesture.  Drinks explode with color and spill down gaping throats.  Noise of conversation blocks out all speech.  Eyes are wandering now, latching upon other eyes and quickly turning away.  Some eyes catch one another and pull.  People swell and fold and nothing is still.

            The necktie is in his pocket now and he holds her hand her red lips pull him through.  “We have to be close,” she says, and they press towards the stage.  She is fashion, every inch has been arranged.  His hair gel holds spears in his head.  The lights begin to melt them and he plays his hand up her back, fingering the clasp of her necklace.

            Lights out, the darkness brings shouts of anticipation.  The crowd surges toward the stage, bodies pressing against one another.  The friction intensifies as sweat begins to burn out of the small of backs, between breasts, and on the crowns of foreheads.

The band hit the stage like a bomb to explode the crowd.  They ripped their instruments and began to pound the floor with noise.  The sound throbbed, spilling decibels into the nooks of the room.  Glasses vibrated and people writhed and contorted to the sound.

            One hundred beats per minute of unadulterated bass lashed the crowd.  Ribs shook, and hearts changed rhythm to match this noise.  People began to jump and slam into one another as stylized confusion broke way into passionate destruction.

            The man had unbuttoned more of his shirt and he pressed himself into the woman.  Her red and blue makeup stained his face and collar as his sweat bled into her hair.  Nothing could make them do otherwise; they flowed on the current of sound, digging into one another to escape its torment. 

            In a slight lull in the music the circle of boys broke apart, loud boy now drowned out by the crowd as he sought a girl to dance with.  The frightened boy was no longer in the middle, and he began to drift, bounced by the pounding crowd like a pinball, swinging from one side of the club to the other in bare seconds, fading away.  He closed his eyes and felt the clothes, the bodies, sweat and sound holding him as he cut through. 

            A new song began to play and the sound was intensified.  Now, boosted with distortion, the noise became foam, trapping everyone.  Mirrors distorted reflections as they flexed in the noise, the steal girders supporting the room threatened to crumble.  There was no room for more sound.  The crowd screamed, demanding more, louder, heavier, but it could not be heard, everything was jammed with guitar, shaking with bass. 

            Ghost couple was filled up and they began to be able to touch one another.  They were not yet solid, but liquid, contorting through the club, finding new life.  They were danced by the strings of the band, congealing fast. 

            The pencil eyed man was carried above it all.  This was what he needed, the coke had been a warm up; this is what he craved.  There was no need for him to leave his table, it just hovered as his veins filled with sound, so thirsty they had been, and deflated. 

            The music cut out for a second, echoes still filling the room and the singer stepped to his microphone and gave his pronouncement, “This isn’t Rock and Roll; this is Genocide!”  The crowd leapt and packed tighter into a knot.  People smashed each other, losing form and turning into a ball of flesh and paint that could no longer speak or hear.  Feeling became arbitrary as the bass rhythm shook their every molecule, winding them up, readying them for a great explosion.  Some violence before the sound fades away, before the bass returns to the thump of a human heart.  This is genocide.