Silk

2.

Putting the old mill behind him and its casual three-tiered judgments, Keith walked west, walked toward downtown Atlanta and away from far-off morning. Away from Daria. Headful of ashes and simmering hate for no one but himself, plenty of room left for regret, and he didn’t know the name of this street, didn’t know where that alley led, and that was good, that was how it felt inside, exactly. Anonymous brick and cinder block like his soul and the expression on Daria’s face when he’d smashed his guitar. Like she hadn’t already done the honor, like he’d hurt her by making her decision final, irrevocable, her one wish on the monkey’s paw and he’d sealed it tight.

Spaces between streetlamp pools and the eyes that watched him suspiciously from black faces, the sound of his boots on concrete cold and hard as the cast of her mouth.

He shivered, zipped his jacket closed and kept moving; turning here, crossing empty chain-linked lots of cracked and potholed asphalt, broken glass, junky little white mousie in the maze-big hollow man striding under the moon and sodium-arc suns. Hey man, give me a buck, man, and he stopped to look at the ragpile that had spoken from a doorway, nailshut doorway and glass painted red. Something human in there, or just something alive, empty Thunderbird bottle in one claw like a lifeline, and he found two dollars in his pocket, held the bills out and the ragpile snatched them away and mumbled bitter and thankless to itself.

You go down, and down, thinking there’s not a bottom, and Keith looked past the ghetto ruin at the shining new towers, clean light up there, windwhistling Heaven up there and ragpile wino Hell down here, down and down, and this time she wasn’t go

Absolutely untogether, Mr. Barry, and just an hour before he’d been somewhere else, someone else, a mile away and the burn and eager need of all those bodies stretched out before him like a banquet, and Daria there beside him. Now, just the knowledge that things might have gone differently.

If we hadn’t followed Spyder home, and he knew that was true, that it wasn’t the H this time. Rushing to the door and that damn old lady, whatever he’d touched, whatever had touched him. Something bad left lying around, and his big feet had tangled in it. Too cold to shiver anymore, Keith closed his eyes and tried to think about nothing but the night before, sleeping over at Daria’s place and her in his arms, radiator warmth and their hard bodies straining against the things held between them, sex and the musky safe smell of her. And afterwards, sleepless, he’d read from a book about Vietnam and thought about Niki Ky while Daria slept, had spent more time listening to the smooth chest rise and fall of her breathing than following the pages.

The lines on her face, the wrinkled place between her eyebrows betraying her nightmares, and he’d put an arm around her, as if he could drive them off, or at least keep her company down there.

He had enough junk left for one more fix, and two Dilaudid he’d scored a week ago and been holding back. Without opening his eyes, he fished a prescription bottle from one pocket and dry-swallowed the Dilaudids, tossed the empty plastic bottle away. And smelled something, damp dried stench, jasmine and roadkill, dusty basement air and the cold-rot smell of something left too long in a refrigerator. Wind swept down the alley, wind that went straight through his clothes, and he was shivering again; wind and the puke smell of all that fucking garbage, and he tucked his face down inside his jacket, a little warm air in there and just his own rank, familiar sweatstink.

Something bad that cut if you weren’t careful where you stepped, as mindless, pointless and mean as barbed wire wrapped around his ankles and trailing after him. And what he hadn’t said to Daria, bright dream of the hole torn in a spider’s web, and whatever had escaped dying anyway, writhing in grass, silk-tangled wings and never mind that the fucking spider hadn’t even wanted it in the first place.

“Please,” she said, voice so close, voice that seemed to spring and then roll back on itself, reverb, and he opened his eyes, nothing but the empty alley leading back to the empty street. A prickling rash of chill bumps on the back of his neck, kid fear, and he yelled at the nothing, fuck off, go the fuck away, I don’t have any more goddamn money. But he watched the shadows of the Dumpsters, the space between the high brick walls. And she said, “Please, wake me up…”

“Fuck off, I said,” and a panel truck rumbled noisily past the other end of the alley and was gone.

Keith unzipped his jacket, bleeding all his warmth away into the night, felt for the comforting bulge of his kit, tucked safely into an inside pocket, his rosary, trinity of spoon and powder and syringe.

“It’s a dream,” the girl said, same voice, same papery wasp-nest voice, and there was a knife in that pocket, too, just a little pocketknife, but he took it out and held it clasped in the sweating palm of his hand.

Something scuttled from one shadow to another, too dark for him to see, just the impression of mass and movement, and he tried to open the knife, but his fingers were sweaty, too, and it was hard to get a grip on the blade.

“It’s just a dream,” and the knife popped open, dull and tiny blade he used for cutting his nails, for splicing cable. The scuttling sound again, closer, “…wake me up.”

He wanted to stand, to leave the voice and the rancid smell, what all this meant or didn’t mean, and she said, “Please…” before one leg like a giant’s beetle-shelled finger reached slowly out of the dark, jointed leg and hairs more like quills, and another, then, testing the paler darkness that surrounded him. Keith wanted to close his eyes, but he watched as she came, all that was left of her and what there was now, instead. Enough of her face in there that he knew, the way he knew the pain in that one green eye, swollen and helpless contrast to the others, her new eyes, bulging, all-seeing pools of pitch and the stingy hours before dawn. The eye and the voice and the tufts of green hair.

Her lips there between the furred vise jaws, the needle-hooked fangs, lips cracked, and this was worse than anything from the dreams, worse than the thing hanging, dripping, from the rafters of Heaven.

“I want to go home,” it said, she said, too-pink lips, raw, and clumsy mandibles, and now the air was full of drifting threads, gossamer falling around him, settling everywhere like spun sugar or glass, cotton candy or angel-hair. The world growing too bright and thin around him, before the flash. The strands burned his skin, and the ground sizzled and smoked where they landed.

“It’s worse,” she said, “over here,” perfect, beautiful sadness and inched backwards into the shadows, leaving something glistening wet and sludgy behind. Keith Barry shut his eyes, as the sparkling silk rained down like Christmas, and he tried to find the memory of Daria’s face through the acid filling his veins and hold it as the world dissolved around him.