God's Punchline

This is a 556 page book on sale for $11 on Amazon. I shortened the link with a Chrome extension called tinyurl, but it takes you to Amazon if you want a copy of leaves ~enjoy~
https://tinyurl.com/2xl8fwz5

August 2001: Spokane County Jail

The summer sun was still up and blazing when I was ushered across the street in cuffs. I looked up at the bleak building. Its ten-story mass took up a quarter of the city block. With slits for windows, it struck me as repulsive. From below, I could see the windows couldn’t open, squeezing off not only the outside air but most of the daylight as well. I would be in for a few weeks of roasting in the dag nab slammer unless they had decent air conditioning.

To my relief, the opening of the doors was accompanied by a frigid blast of air. I squinted as my eyes slowly adjusted to a room that seemed brighter than the world outside. The white tile floor was offset by pea-green bars, and everything was eerie with a dreamlike waxiness. The overall atmosphere was sterile and severe.

We were greeted by an austere woman who floated a form across her counter for me to sign. Without makeup and quite stout, she fit there behind that desk. She sat, formidable, perched atop a stool behind a shield of plexiglass and had been there long enough to have taken on the physical characteristics of the place. I scrawled a squiggle in the signature box. After glancing up at me, she retrieved the form and dropped it in her wire basket. With a small nod of acknowledgment to the cop who had escorted me, she pressed a red button that buzzed open the bars.

Then, from one gate to the next, two goonish guards led me down the gleaming hall and into an elevator. The doors closed. When they slid open again, all was silent on the fourth floor. I had been expecting more green bars and some hoots and hollers. Instead, it was silent. All the cells were shut in by thick steel doors from which, I supposed, no sound escaped. Or maybe they put the yellers on another floor or the psych ward. The corridor looked much more like a mental asylum than the jailhouse of my imagination.

Halfway down the hall, the guards stopped to unlock a cell. When the door opened, I noticed there was another inmate inside. In black jeans and a polo shirt, he looked to be around my age. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or had just woken up, but he blinked at me as I entered. The guards uncuffed me and left without a word.

“Hey,” said my new roommate. I thought he sounded timid, which was much better than the opposite of timid.

“Hey,” I said.

He introduced himself as Chris. A smidgen shorter than myself, he had longish curly hair, a beak of a nose, and the slight build of the smartest guy of the geek squad. Chris had been in for a week and said he was going stir-crazy without anyone to talk to.

“A week of silence to put things in perspective,” I said. “Did you meditate or read?”

“No, and to be honest, it’s just been a couple of days.”

“Do you have a head cold?” I asked, as his voice was nasally.

“No, but I get that a lot. This is just my voice—like, a weird register. I’ve been compared to Yogi Bear, and I wish I could change it.”

“It works for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You haven’t heard that? That’s a compliment. I’m just saying what you’ve got going works.”

“I just said my voice was all fucked up and weird, and you go and say it fits my face and then do some abracadabra mumbo jumbo, some flip and reverse, and tell me that it’s a compliment—thanks a lot. Fuck your face, too.”

“Whoa,” I said, holding up my hands, like we arwere in a jail cell, so too far.

“Yeah, I apologize, but I don’t like being manipulated by wordplay.”

“I could protest,” I said in an English accent, “but the vibe doth call for me to acquiesce. Or wouldst thou say otherwise, there, Chris?” No one appreciates my English accent.

Chris held up his hand. “There was a guy when I arrived, but he wasn’t exactly someone I felt comfortable talking to. So, if you don’t want to talk or can’t agree that what you did with your wordplay was messed up—”

“Bro, I said I acquiesced, meaning that I waved a white flag, surrendered.”

“Oh.”

“So, was your last bunky the silent type?”

“No, I wish. That wouldn’t have been bad, but he kept wanting to have contests.”

“Contests? Like thumb wars? It would be cool to do word games.”

“No, more like push-ups and pull-ups.”

“Oh, like a military type of guy.”

“More like a bully. I told him I knew that he could beat me, but he wouldn’t shut up about it until I at least tried. It wasn’t like I could walk away, so I had to.”

“That’s not nice,” I said.

“No,” Chris guffawed, pulling at his earlobe. “He definitely was not a nice person. This whole place sucks. The food sucks. I shouldn’t even be in here.”

Chris told me about what happened last Friday. He’d been a designated driver and had no idea that the people in the back of his car were drinking. The cop who pulled him over slapped him with a DUI.

“I told the cop to breathalyze test me,” he explained. “I didn’t even have a drink—not one drop of alcohol. The douchebag said it wouldn’t matter because I’m twenty. But he can’t do that, right?”

“You didn’t have alcohol in your system?”

“No. Like I said, I was the designated driver.”

“Dick move by the cop, but your friends sound like douchebags too—they should bail you out.”

“Well, they didn’t. They won’t. But anyway, just having open containers in your car is different from drunk driving. If he had given me a ticket for that, I could understand. But this is completely unfair and unjust. And now my car is in the impound, which costs like three hundred a day. I’m going to have to pay a ton for insurance if I ever want to drive again, not to mention the breathalyzer thing I’ll need to install just to start the engine. Plus all the fines and the classes they make you go to… I’m totally fucked. He didn’t even breathalyze me, and I didn’t have one drop. Not one fucking sip.” Chris shook his head, looking like a picture of futility.

“Bummer. But with all that pent-up angst, wouldn’t exercise be cathartic?”

“What?” he winced, his forehead wrinkling.

“Those contests. You know—do some pushups to blow off some steam.”

“You obviously didn’t hear me. I’m telling you, the guy before you was mental. You might like pushups or whatever, but that other guy—” Chris leaned against the ladder of the bunk beds, his look conspiratorial. There was no one else around to hear us, but he still whispered.

“He had a swastika tattoo on his neck.” Chris nodded.

“Well, that’s some shit,” I offered, realizing he was a Jew.

“Seriously, like something’s not right in his head. Who has a swastika tattoo in 2001?”

“Apparently, a deranged Nazi who wants to have push-up contests?”

“But on your neck? He couldn’t even hide it with a collar. So how would he get a job?”

“Work for the KKK or the Aryan Nations. They’re around. I’m sure it wasn’t a good time for you. But then again, what else is there to do in here? Might as well get shredded, right?” I felt like making light of it.

“Please tell me you’re joking.” Chris shook his head with a look of distaste. “I don’t exercise like that. You do what you want—just leave me out of it.”

The bunk beds were sheet metal, welded together so that no screws or pieces could be loosened and used as a weapon. They had thin green gym mats and blankets made of what looked like dryer lint. It wasn’t so bad—much more comfortable than the saggy bedsprings I’d feared.

When I was lying on the bottom bunk with my hands behind my head, Chris said that he was bored.

“Do you have any stories?” he asked.

“I was a monk. I could tell you about that.”

“Like, with a shaved head sitting like Buddha?”

“No, but it would be best if I could tell it from the top—set the stage.”

“Please take as long as you need. Paint the picture because I’m stuck in the same hamster wheel of thoughts that just don’t stop.”

“Okay, but it might be boring at first, but I swear it—”

“God, just get on with it.”

“You just told me to take my time.”

“Right, go on, sorry.”

“This story begins four and a half years ago, in February of 1997. My family is in a quaint home north of Seattle—the type of place that had been around since horses and buggies were in the streets. I’m in the downstairs of this old house and talking to an Orthodox priest about the Prayer of the Heart.”

“The what?”

“The Jesus Prayer.”

“Come again.”

“The story.”

“I have no idea what…”

February 1997: Lynwood, Washington

The face of Elder (Geronta) Joseph filled an entire page of the National Geographic that Fr. Thomas pulled off his desk to show me. I was seventeen, still figuring out what holiness looked like in real life, but I could see it there—compunction etched into the lines of the old monk’s face. That unmistakable blend of contrition, humility, and spiritual weight I’d only read about in the lives of saints.

Fr. Thomas explained that Geronta Joseph had lived as a Hesychast—one of the silent ones—alone in a cave on Mt. Athos for ten years. He spent that decade purifying his mind through fasting, night vigils, and above all, the Prayer of the Heart.

He practiced a kind of soul alchemy, a mystic’s blueprint for inner union with God. The goal was to unite the nous—the eye of the soul—with the divine, through constant repetition of the Jesus Prayer. Even if the conscious mind didn’t understand the words, the soul would. Christ would.

Joseph didn’t just practice this path; he passed it on. In 1947, he took in a young monk named Ephraim—a sickly twenty-year-old, barely over five feet tall. Though he mentored others, Joseph zeroed in on Ephraim, pushing him harder than the rest. He assigned him the most grueling chores and called him useless. Ephraim wasn’t allowed to sleep until his body gave out—and when it did, Joseph was there, lifting him up, apologizing, insisting it was necessary. That his destiny demanded more than gentleness.

When Ephraim was strong enough to return, the stern training resumed. Joseph would lift his arms and demand the prayer—louder, deeper, more from the heart. “Why can I not hear you, Ephraim?” he’d cry. Ephraim yelled the prayer until his voice broke. When it finally returned, it cracked with each word.

Joseph apologized again. But the next day, he was back to being the tyrant.

This was the path up the ladder—fasting, vigils, relentless asceticism. And Joseph, fierce and loving in equal measure, never stopped urging Ephraim upward.

Fr. Thomas closed the National Geographic, returned it to the shelf, and picked up a pixelated picture of Geronta Ephraim he had printed.

“So this is the new Geronta,” said Fr. Thomas.

“The baton was passed from Joseph to Ephraim?” I asked. “Is he teaching the Jesus Prayer—‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’?”

“Yes, but not quite like that,” Fr. Thomas replied. “Some say the language doesn’t matter, and maybe that’s true. But in Greek—Kyrie Isou Christe, eleison me—it’s... something else.” He bunched his fingers together and kissed them like an old-school Italian praising his grandmother’s meatballs. He smiled with the kind of satisfaction only years of prayer and feta cheese can produce.

Fr. Thomas, a friend of my mom’s second husband, had a wife, kids, and a library overflowing with Orthodox tomes. He was thrilled I’d taken such a deep interest in the mystical side of the faith—especially the monastic tradition. He’d heard I’d caught the eye of Hierotheos Vlachos, the bishop who’d written Orthodox Psychotherapy, a book that treated the Jesus Prayer like both medicine and metaphysics. It didn’t just soothe the psyche—it realigned the soul.

“Yeah,” I said, “I was front and center when he spoke. Vlachos looked like he was lit from the inside out. There was something in his eyes—like he’d seen the other side of the veil.”

“And you’re already practicing the Prayer of the Heart?”

“A little,” I admitted. “But I’ve read that it’s best to get a prayer rule from a spiritual father. I’m keeping an eye out for an elder. Sounds like you’re saying Ephraim might be a connection to Source—whatever that really means in Greek. I’d love to visit Mt. Athos someday.”

Fr. Thomas chuckled. “Well, count your prayer rope knots, because you won’t need a passport to find a Geronta.”

Despite the long white beard, he reminded me of Doc from Back to the Future—eyebrow raised, eyes bright. His study, cluttered with filing cabinets and bookshelves, felt like the inside of a brain that had spilled open into wood and paper. He stepped over to his desk and flipped on a lime-green lamp—the kind you’d find in a high-end library.

Among a scatter of papers, he pulled out a grainy black-and-white photo.

“Geronta Ephraim appointed Geronta Paisios as the abbot of a monastery in Arizona he founded a couple years ago. Paisios spent twenty years on Mt. Athos, at Philotheou Monastery.”

“Wait—on the Holy Mountain?”

“Exactly. Mt. Athos. And from what I’ve heard, he’s incredibly wise. More than qualified to guide you, and to give you a prayer rule.”

Fr. Thomas took back the printout of Elder Ephraim and tapped it lightly with his fingers.

“St. Anthony’s is patterned after Philotheou,” he said. “That’s Elder Ephraim’s monastery on Mt. Athos—though technically, I believe he’s still abbot of both. In any case, they follow the ancient tradition.”

“The Jesus Prayer with every waking breath?” I asked. It was a shot in the dark, but that was the very premise of the commandment to pray without ceasing.

Fr. Thomas nodded and gave a conspiratorial wink.

We began to talk about the legendary ascetic feats of the saints—men who had lived like exiles within the flesh. Stylites who perched atop stone pillars for decades, scorched by sun and battered by rain. Others who subsisted on nothing but bread and water, who wore chains beneath their robes, slept in coffins, or sat in mosquito-infested swamps, unmoved. They denied the body to awaken the soul.

But those extremes, Fr. Thomas reminded me, were just the opening act. The "prison scene" came early in The Ladder of Divine Ascent—right at the bottom of the climb. Up near the summit, the real adversaries weren’t hunger or fatigue or lust. They were subtler. Pride would creep in like a gentleman, whispering that you had arrived, that you were chosen. And once you recognized that voice and cast it out, despondency would slip in next, whispering that it was all meaningless. That you were alone. That even your striving was vanity.

The higher one climbed, the more refined the demons became. And the more slippery the rungs.

Jesus endorsed what would become the Prayer of the Heart in a parable about a man nobody liked: a publican, a tax collector, despised and disdained. This man stood in the temple, beat his chest, and cried out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Nearby stood a Pharisee—a polished, well-to-do religious type—thanking God for his virtue and, with a hint of smugness, for not being like that guy. According to Jesus, it was the publican’s prayer that pierced heaven. The Pharisee’s self-congratulations, not so much.

Over time, Christian mystics shaped that plea into a mantra. The original form became: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Later, it was refined to “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Fewer words, same surrender. Even now, fragments of it echo through modern music, but for thousands of Orthodox monks, it remains the heartbeat of their inner life—a sacred loop inscribed on the soul.

1997: Florence, Arizona, St. Anthony’s Monastery. The Elder Ephraim

On spring break in 1997, when my family arrived at St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, we were met by a very thin monk, Deacon Ephraim—who introduced himself as “Dyako.” He clasped his hands warmly and looked us each in the eye before saying, “You’re fortunate. Geronta Ephraim is visiting.”

“Would any of you like to go to confession with him?”

Before my jaw could fully drop, I found myself nodding and stammering, “I would—yes, as in the Elder from Mt. Athos?”

“Yes,” Dyako confirmed. “Geronta Ephraim flew over from Greece quite unexpectedly. He’ll be here for a week.”

My mom raised her eyebrows and smiled, clearly excited for me. Internally, I was swirling.

From the greeting room—decorated with icons and baskets of prayer ropes—Dyako led us down a red flagstone path to the guest quarters. The courtyard was quiet, save for one monk raking weeds from the base of a few ornamental shrubs. In the center of the grounds stood a white gazebo with an icon of St. Anthony tucked inside.

Up to the right, the sun bounced off the cathedral’s greenish copper dome. The red cinderblock walls we passed radiated shimmery heat waves. Stepping beneath an awning, the temperature dropped by at least twenty degrees—instant relief.

As Dyako strode ahead, he explained that men and women stayed in separate dorms. They didn’t eat together, and weren’t supposed to talk to one another on the grounds. If we needed to pass along messages, he could help, or we could meet in the parking lot. He thanked my sisters and mom for bringing their own scarves to cover their heads—much better, he said, than the monastery’s napkin-like spares that always slid off.

Dyako had a slight whistle when he spoke his S’s, and every time he addressed us, he’d clasp his hands and scan our faces as if trying to memorize them. He was a gracious host, but so thin and willowy that I wondered if he’d taken fasting to the next level—or maybe he had Crohn’s.

The dorms consisted of two double-wide trailers, placed end to end, with a flagstone path running between them. They were insulated with red stucco exteriors that matched everything—from the red cathedral to St. Anthony’s red robe.

In the men’s dorm, two other pilgrims lay on their beds. Dyako pointed toward ours and gave a nod, as if everything was in order.

“If this sounds alright,” he said, turning to me, “I’ll see if I can arrange a confession with Geronta Ephraim tomorrow afternoon?”

“Awesome—I mean, yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”

Dyako nodded, satisfied, and slipped out the door.

Nathanael picked up a folded paper from the end table beside his bed—it was the daily schedule.

“Looks like dinner’s after Vespers,” he said. “And Fr. Thomas told me they make their own feta cheese—and it’s excellent.”

He sat on his bed, and I set my suitcase on mine.

A guy wearing tinted prescription glasses introduced himself as Mathias. Like me, he had one year of high school left before officially leaving the world behind. He also felt called to the monastic path. His father was a priest, and both of them had long admired the monks of Mt. Athos.

“I’ve visited twice,” he said. “At Philotheou, it’s a chorus of monks chanting the Jesus Prayer all day long. I hear the monks here say it aloud at midnight.”

“At midnight?” I echoed. “I thought they said it with every waking breath.”

“They do—I think—but mostly to themselves. Midnight’s more like the out-loud version.”

The schedule at St. Anthony’s wasn’t for the faint of heart. Guests weren’t required to follow it, but for the monks, the day began at 11:50 p.m.

First, down a cup of coffee. Then, from midnight to 1:00 a.m., into the courtyard to chant the Jesus Prayer aloud in unison—a fellowship of whispered supplication: Kyrie Isu Xriste, eleison me.

From 1:00 to 3:00 a.m., back to your cell. Alone on a stool in the dark. Breathing with intention. Inhale: Lord Jesus Christ. Hold the name—let it anchor you. Exhale: Have mercy on me.

Inhale the name. Exhale the plea.

Over and over, you offer your nous—your inner eye—to the rhythm of the prayer, tuning your consciousness toward God like a monk tuning a broken instrument.

At 3:00 a.m., you file into the cathedral to confess the stray thoughts of the previous day—each one carefully jotted down in a notebook. You whisper them to Geronta, not so much for his ears, but for your own humility. Then you take your place in the temple.

Matins follows, then a slow reading of several chapters from the Psalms. The Divine Liturgy—what most guests wake up to attend—begins around dawn. After the long vigil, there’s a simple breakfast, followed by a sanctioned two-hour nap.

At 10:00 a.m., it’s back to work. Labor runs until 1:00 p.m., break for lunch, then back at it until Vespers, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. Dinner follows. Then, one last short service—Compline—before you’re allowed to rest.

I know—you’re tired. So rest from 8:00 p.m. to 11:50 p.m., and then: up and at ’em. Forever and ever, amen.

“I heard most pilgrims wake up at 5:30 for Liturgy,” said Mathias, glancing over the schedule.

“Not me,” I said. “I’m getting up at 11:50.”

“Same.”

We smiled. We’d both come to do the thing.

That night, right on the dot at 11:50, Mathias and I were still rubbing sleep from our eyes when Dyako poked his head into the dorm.

“Coffee?” he asked, already halfway to the kitchen.

A minute later, we were each holding a small mug of Greek-style brew, dense and earthy, with fine grounds settled like silt at the bottom. Potent stuff—like a shot of jet fuel wrapped in a liturgy. Maybe two espressos’ worth, easy.

Dyako pointed out where to dump the dregs and where to leave the mugs, then vanished as quickly as he came—his robes whispering behind him like a stage curtain drawn shut.

Soon after, we heard the symandron—a wooden plank struck in a hypnotic rhythm. Ancient. Familiar in some forgotten part of the soul.

We stepped out the back door and paused. Above us, the stars glittered with desert clarity. The air was warm, like a blanket fresh from the dryer—cozy but not stifling.

Over the dorm’s roofline, in the northern sky, a dull orange haze pulsed faintly.

“The penitentiary,” Mathias said, nodding toward the glow. “Penance. Same root as atonement.”

I nodded. “If you stack a prisoner’s life against this place, they’ve got it like cake.”

Mathias smirked. “Oh, prisoners have it cush compared to here.”

We began whispering the Prayer as we made our way around the building toward the courtyard. Before the monks came into view, we could already hear them chanting. Some appeared only as silhouettes—three-dimensional shadows gliding through darkness—while others were bathed in the faint orange glow of lamp posts lining the flagstone path, which traced a hundred-foot loop around the gazebo.

Mathias and I drifted apart. I took up a spot on the cathedral steps where no one was within twenty feet of me and let more sound rise from my throat with the prayer.

The chanting wasn’t synchronized. It overlapped in murmurs—less like crashing waves and more like a creek gurgling through stone. Some monks circled the path. Others sat quietly on benches. All flowed with their own rhythm. When the symandron sounded again an hour later, they retreated silently to their cells for the next round: the nonverbal, breath-bound Prayer of the Heart—the hardest part of the 24-hour cycle.

Mathias returned to the dorm, but I wandered, whispering the mantra under my breath. Under the light by the public restrooms, I came across a tarantula and a gang of chonky beetles lurking like sentinels. The monastery itself was an oasis, fed by deep aquifers, but the surrounding desert was no joke. It felt like the kind of night where everything living was taking a calculated risk just by being. Nearly every creature I saw wore armor, fangs, or spines—except a lone rabbit on the edge of the parking lot. A coyote’s buffet. I wondered how many times it had misjudged a leap and been stabbed by unforgiving flora.

I walked further into the stillness beneath the effervescent stars. Saguaros stood like worshippers, arms lifted in praise. There was no better place to hold vigil. The Jesus Prayer rhythm pulsed with the landscape. Coyotes yipped to one another in the distance. An owl screeched from a hidden perch. The moon hummed. The stars sang. Kyrie Isu Xriste, eleison me.

Looking up from the moon-silvered garden, I followed the Big Dipper’s handle to the North Star—the one fixed point in the slow whirl of everything. A strange familiarity overcame me. Not nostalgia exactly. More like an ancient recognition. I had always been here. I’m here now. And you’re here with me. And together, we say: Kyrie Isu Xriste, eleison me.

Just before 3 a.m., I heard the tapping of the symandron. Ten minutes later, the cathedral bells followed—sonorous, slow, and certain.

Inside, the air hovered around 75 degrees—a kind of womb-warmth that coaxed the body toward sleep. But the ache in my feet kept me tethered. Phantoms—formless, drifting—skimmed the surface of my consciousness like undertows, trying to drag me from the prayer. Even swimming furiously, I rarely made it through a full cycle of “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” with full presence. I was like a sloth trying to lasso a butterfly. About as effective as a chain-link fence holding back a tsunami.

Then came the light.

As the first rays broke through the windows below the dome, the orange tile floor caught fire with predawn glow. The bells rang again—this time for the Divine Liturgy. My sisters and a few other pilgrims showed up, bleary-eyed at 6:30.

Front and center stood the Fr. Paisios before the chalice, preparing to perform what the Church calls a miracle: transubstantiation. The “holy of holies.” At the climax of the liturgy, he called out: “With fear, with faith, and with love, draw near.” And then—yes—the Orthodox eat Jesus.

There were only ten more minutes of prayer after communion, but my feet were screaming. Relief and reverence mingled in equal measure as we shuffled from the cathedral to the dining hall.

Breakfast. Toast, eggs, cereal, oatmeal—and, as always, feta and bread. The morning staples that fed the monks every day.

I hadn’t eaten since the Greek coffee before midnight, and now the hunger hit like a revelation. I devoured my meal, grateful down to the marrow, and then stumbled off for a nap, lulled by exhaustion and the faint echo of bells still ringing somewhere in my chest.

Out of a dead sleep, at 11 a.m., Dyako gently woke Mathias and me to ask if we’d like to help the monks. Mathias was recruited for cleaning duty, and I was sent up to the gate, where Fr. Antonio and Fr. Anthony were working.

An eighteen-wheeler had just arrived, loaded with four enormous date palms. I was handed a shovel.

“We make mud together,” Fr. Anthony said with a laugh, gripping a hose. I took his meaning: my job was to shovel dirt onto the roots once the palms were lowered into their holes, while he kept the soil damp. Fr. Antonio, the monk operating the tractor, didn’t acknowledge me. He was deep in focus with the truck driver, moving the levers with calm precision. His sharp nose and hawk-like eyes gave him an air of vigilant intensity.

Fr. Anthony was his inverse in every way—jovial, easygoing, sun-warmed from the inside out. He cracked a smile and joked about the heat.

“But if I use hose to make cold,” he said, accent thick, “what if we like wicked witch from movie, yes?”

“The Wizard of Oz?” I asked, catching on.

“Yes! We monks dress like witch, yes?” he said, lifting the hem of his black robe. “We might melt. But worth it—so hot!”

I laughed with him. His joy was simple and infectious.

Fr. Antonio, however, seemed less amused. He gave us a side glance, the kind that says wrap it up, and we piped down. Once the palm was set, I shoveled, and Fr. Anthony sprayed. When Fr. Antonio turned the tractor to fetch the next tree, Fr. Anthony mischievously sprayed me.

“At least I know you no witch,” he said, grinning.

During a break, we drank Gatorade from a five-gallon orange jug filled with semi-melted ice. Fr. Anthony refilled a plastic mug and told me he was twenty-four and had been a monk for four years at Philotheou Monastery on Mt. Athos.

“But Geronta make me go here,” he said. “Like palm tree, he make up to plant. Yes? My English not best.”

“You’re a transplant,” I said.

“Yes! Like date palm! And now we drink—like date palm!” He laughed again, delighted by the metaphor, clinking his mug against mine.

His joy, however, seemed to draw another side-eye from Fr. Antonio, who stood a ways off, expression unchanged—sharp, unreadable. Fr. Anthony’s smile faltered just slightly as he looked down and took another sip.

“Did you ask to be transferred here?” I asked.

“Yes, because—”

Before he could finish, Fr. Antonio rounded the corner, striding into the rehydration station with something between purpose and warning in his step. He filled a mug, gave me a nod sharp as a blade, and turned to Fr. Anthony. No words reached me, but their body language told the story. They stepped just into the sun near the side door of the cathedral, and when Fr. Anthony returned, his head was bowed. His robe didn’t swish anymore. It dragged.

I watched Fr. Antonio head back toward me, eyes cast down, face unreadable, when a voice behind me made me jump.

“Lukas?”

It was Manelos—a pale, doe-eyed monk who seemed to have materialized from thin air. His voice was soft, but precise.

“Geronta Ephraim will see you in fifteen minutes, if you’d like to change.”

He waited just outside the dorm as I hurried into clean dungarees and a collarless black button-up. Then we were off—me power-walking across the sunbaked jigsaw of red state-shaped flagstones, and Manelos somehow gliding ahead like he was being pulled. His robe fluttered gently in the breeze, the way curtains do when a fan kicks on in a silent room.

As we entered a hall outside of the cathedral, a drinking fountain buzzed to our left, stainless steel, but I was already well hydrated. Manelos seemed to note this with a glance and a slight nod, then stepped to a door across the hall and opened it, gesturing me inside.

As I stepped into the office, the first thing I noticed was the antique grandfather clock ticking softly like a second heart. On the wall opposite, a constellation of icons glowed in candlelight. Suspended by brass chains, a red-glassed flame flickered with a steady calm—bright and unwavering, much like the face of Geronta Ephraim as he looked up at me.

Words like beatific, glowing, and bright felt clumsy in comparison to the presence behind his gray eyes. He had the gaunt cheeks of an elven wizard. His beard, white and immaculate, forked down his chest like twin peaks pointing toward a golden cross that rested between them—about six inches long, heavy with meaning.

He extended the back of his hand. I kissed it gently, as tradition prescribed, then lowered myself into the wooden chair before him. Manelos closed the door behind me and sat quietly in the corner, hands folded like a prayer made flesh.

Geronta didn’t speak English, but when his voice came—raspy, papery, high-pitched—it cut cleanly through the silence. He didn’t so much look at me as through me, like someone surveying a landscape he already knew by heart.

“Geronta would like to know why you’re visiting St. Anthony’s,” Manelos translated softly.

I told him I was considering the monastic life—but that I also felt drawn to wandering, to pilgrimage, to living out of a backpack and drifting from monastery to monastery in search of something I couldn’t quite name.

Geronta lifted one finger slowly, like a conductor calling in the first note of a hymn. He spoke a few words, finished with a nod and a smile that seemed older than time.

“Geronta says…” Manelos began, pausing to gather the fullness of it. His wide brown eyes widened even more, as if trying to hold what he’d just heard. There was wonder in his voice now, something just shy of awe.

“The reason you’re here now… is because you will become a monk at St. Anthony’s Monastery.”

“Here?” I asked, blinking.

Geronta Ephraim smiled again, his voice like wind in old pine needles:

“Welcome, Lukas.”

I was struck dumb—and the big symandron, a thick wooden plank hanging in front of the dining hall, was struck, too.

“Geronta wants to know if there’s anything else,” Manelos said with a gentle tilt of his head, “or shall we eat?”

“Oh, no—I mean, yeah. We can eat.”

I kissed the back of Geronta’s hand, received his blessing, and stepped out into the desert air grinning, whispering the Jesus Prayer as I followed Manelos toward trapeza—the monastery’s refectory. Gratitude warmed my chest like a second heart.

Inside the gymnasium-sized dining hall, I found my seat next to Nathanael on the long wooden bench. I couldn’t stop smiling. Before me, a stainless steel plate—partitioned like a military tray—held lentils, rice, and the main course: a slab of vegetarian lasagna. A shallow steel bowl cradled cabbage salad with cherry tomatoes and seeds. Between every few guests, twin glass bottles of olive oil and red vinaigrette glowed like burgundy and gold relics. Loaves of steaming bread were wrapped in cotton cloth. Feta cubes rested beneath lifted metal lids. A red apple crowned each tray like a final punctuation mark of simplicity and grace. Each of us had a place card—Dyako’s calligraphy surprisingly elegant.

To my left sat Dimitri, a guest hoping to quit smoking. Then Mathias. Then Nathanael. Our backs faced the women’s table where my mom and sisters sat quietly near the farthest wall—at a gentle remove, by monastic design.

When Geronta Ephraim and the abbot, Paisios, entered, everyone stood. A hymn honoring St. Anthony filled the room with reverence. As I took my seat again, I caught a glimpse of Fr. Anthony across the hall—still in his yellow, mud-splattered robe. He avoided eye contact. I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of rebuke Fr. Antonio had delivered earlier.

After dinner, I pulled my mom aside and told her I didn’t see the point in finishing my senior year of high school.

“You still should,” she said gently.

“But what’s the point? There’s nothing I’ll learn in school that will help me here.”

“It’s about completing something—closing the door.”

“That’s why they call it graduation,” I said. “But I’d rather not. My whole point is to get away from the world.”

She bit her lip. “Why don’t you come to Brook’s wedding, say goodbye to everyone in the family, and then…” She trailed off, her eyes watering.

I gave her a hug.

“I feel like you’re dying,” she whispered.

That struck me. It echoed a line from a book I’d read by monks in Platina, California—Death to the World. The message was clear: forsake the world. Let your earthly desires die, that your soul might live. It was a calling, not a coincidence.

“We can write,” I told her. “You can visit.”

“But it’ll be like visiting you in prison.”

Again—what she said rang true.

“Yes, but it’s a prison I’m choosing. Emily and Gabe told me I was joining a cult. But you’ve read The Way of a Pilgrim. You know. The Jesus Prayer—this is it. This is where I want to be.”

Still, I compromised. I flew home to attend my cousin’s wedding in Oregon. I worked the salmon run in Alaska through mid-July, then returned to Washington to slowly wind down my worldly life—saying goodbye to friends, family, and everything I’d known.

And then—finally—in August of 1997, just after my eighteenth birthday, I flew south to begin my new life.

My forever home.

A tall monk met me at the Phoenix airport. He apologized for not being able to help with my luggage—bad back—and shuttled me two hours into the desert, away from the city lights and noise, to the monastery.

Dyako greeted me when we arrived.

“Oh, Lukas, you’re back! It’s good to see you.” He nodded warmly. “I’m sorry to say you just missed Geronta Ephraim, but he also sends his blessing and a warm welcome.”

“Thanks, you too,” I said, unsure what else to say.

Instead of leading me to the guest quarters, Dyako brought me into a newly built two-story building that housed the monks. My room was small, with a sink and toilet. There was a shower too, but Dyako gently reminded me: monks don’t take showers unless they receive a blessing from Geronta Paisios—for medical reasons.

Then, with monk-like precision, Dyako asked to go through my luggage. I had what amounted to a minimalist kit: a few black T-shirts, black pants, black shoes—Fight Club chic. I’d also brought a handful of icons from home to hang on the wall, but Dyako told me I’d need a blessing before putting them up.

They issued me three robes, a black vest, and a thin cotton skullcap called a scufia. One robe for work, one for sleep, and one for church. Underneath, I’d wear the clothes I came in. Toothbrush, toothpaste—and I was set. So was Mathias, who’d also been fitted in monastic black.

That evening, after dinner in our new getups, Mathias and I walked back to our quarters. He was talking about Patriarch Bartholomew--head of the Greek Orthodox Church--and the drama surrounding Geronta Ephraim’s mission to bring the Jesus Prayer to America.

“Big Monastery versus Big Bart,” Mathias said, smirking. “Despite an official cease-and-desist from the Patriarch, the Greek Orthodox community in the U.S.—especially the wealthy ones—kept pouring millions into Geronta Ephraim’s vision.”

“Aren’t you rich enough?” he said, mimicking the donors’ tone. “Can we not help fulfill the prophecy of holy Geronta Joseph, the cave-dweller?”

“Not in America,” I replied, echoing the Patriarch’s imagined rebuttal. “And that’s an order.”

Mathias grinned. “What’s better than a monastery?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“A rebel monastery,” he said. “And the donations speak for themselves. The monks are building like crazy—gardening, expanding—and this place? These three hundred acres? They were just raw desert five years ago. Now look at it. That cathedral alone—do you know how much loot it took to raise that dome?”

“And it’s all against the orders of the Patriarch?”

“Yup. But my dad’s a priest, and he says, ‘Follow the money.’ He sees the transfers. The Patriarch wants Greek money to stay in Greece. He’s not thrilled that Americans are backing Ephraim instead of wiring money to the old country.”

I nodded. “People in my parish back in Washington think St. Anthony’s is going to be a refuge during the Apocalypse.”

Mathias laughed. “You ever look at those saguaros? They’re no joke. You can’t just roll up on this place without going down that one access road. You station some guards out there, and…”

“You’ve been daydreaming Mad Max scenarios.”

“I’m not the only one. The cacti are like natural barbed-wire sentinels. But Geronta Ephraim keeps saying not to worry about the end of the world. And then people start worrying about why he’s telling them not to worry. Spiral.”

“That’s a thing?”

“Oh, it’s a thing. There are three women at our parish in Jersey who follow Geronta updates like it’s a soap opera. You can’t avoid it at coffee hour. Wait—what was I talking about?”

“Geronta Ephraim being a rebel.”

“Right. He’s basically the last living saint—and people know it. He wants to build a monastery? Well—” Mathias gestured around us, “here we are.”

“Here we are,” I echoed.

And we kept walking—two kids in borrowed robes, talking prophecy in the desert night.

August in Arizona is often the hottest month of the year, but at least it’s a dry heat. Somehow, the robe seemed to protect me from the sun. I noticed that all vegetation around the monastery had evolved to defend the water it held—spines and spikes, poisonous chemicals, bitter flavors. The saguaro, in particular, seemed like an iron maiden. Its three-inch spikes didn’t bend or break. Saguaros didn’t invite visitors for tea or entertain guests, except for a few tenacious birds who made nests. I imagined them hovering for hours, pecking away at the spikes and thick hulk-colored skin to make a home that no predator could reach without impaling itself.

For the first few months, I had an extremely poor success rate in tethering my mind to the ten syllables. Although I whispered the Prayer, my mind drifted away almost every other second. I’d spent the summer mending salmon nets in Kenai, Alaska, listening to Pink Floyd for hours each day. The captain played nothing but The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon. Even as my mouth moved over the Prayer, I’d hear refrains like, "The lunatic is on the grass."

That was something to confess to Geronta Paisios. I was given a small notepad to write down all thoughts other than the Jesus Prayer to confess to him at 3 a.m. As the last to join, I was also last in line—behind two dozen monks. The others took a few seconds, maybe thirty tops, to make their confessions, and I wondered what they wrote down.

I always had Pink Floyd to confess to—well into September. But honestly, I was clueless about what else to confess. My mind drifted from climbing a hill, to drinking from a garden hose, to boy, my eyes feel heavy, to am I thinking about my notepad? What about judging people for not saying the Prayer?

But I stuck with confessing the Pink Floyd lyrics instead of my thoughts on the job. For the first month, I had my favorite assignment: working outside with a shovel and wheelbarrow. Not only was it good exercise, but it was methodic and rhythmic—ideal for focusing on the mantra.

But then:

I was pushing the wheelbarrow when I noticed a mouse crouched in the shade of a cactus. It looked like a miniature kangaroo, which reminded me of my little sister’s Maple Town collection, which reminded me of elementary school in Flathead Valley, Montana, and how cold my hands got hauling snowy limbs from a snag my dad had felled, and—wow, this wheelbarrow is too heavy—it’s gonna tip—ahhh, whelp, there it goes.

Gotta get the shovel.

Dimitri, who hadn’t donned a robe or given up cigarettes, had told me to go easy and not give myself heat stroke. No need to run with the wheelbarrow.  It was a downhill slope. I suppose I could’ve written all this down and confessed it at midnight. I could’ve been writing all day.

Instead: "Forgive me, Geronta; I imagined Pink Floyd again and felt animosity toward Dimitri after I spilled a wheelbarrow."

After absolutions, sleep was a constant pull in the darkness, so I was always grateful to sit with the bright candlelight—my mind taking a break from the Prayer to pray along with David, who had some great ideas about what to ask God for:

"Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord, and keep watch over the door of my lips."

My working day began at 10:30 a.m. After a much-needed two-hour snooze, I’d slap the alarm clock, roll out of bed, and perform three prostrations—touching my head to the floor—as I said the Prayer in a talking voice. Then I’d whisper it, and Kyrie Isu Xriste, eleison me wouldn’t leave my lips. My tongue stayed dedicated to flicking out the words as I quickly brushed my hair, secured it into a ponytail, then twisted and tucked it under the back of my scufia—a light cotton hat, black with a red cross over the third eye.

I changed out of the cassock I was told to sleep in. The cassock I worked in was made of tougher material than the other two, and the vest I wore on top was coarse—but not so much that it was abrasive. I wore T-shirts and pants underneath, but aside from a daily change of underwear and a weekly body scrub-down with a dirty T-shirt, I was always clothed.

As work boots were left outside, I’d pad my way down the hall in socks, bang my boots together to dislodge any asylum-seeking scorpions, strap them on, and then head out to dig holes and shape the donut retaining walls of mud for plants irrigated at night.

All was splendid—until Fr. Menas, a surly carpenter in his mid-forties, roped me in as an assistant. Hammering things together would’ve been marvelous, the way I imagined carpentry to be, but the monastery had received a shipping container filled with custom-made stasithia that needed to be sanded, stained, and assembled before October when Patriarch Bartholomew was scheduled to visit—according to Fr. Menas.

"The Patriarch? As in, the guy who didn’t want Geronta to build St. Anthony’s? Isn’t that, like, Geronta’s nemesis?"

"That’s above our pay grade, Lukas. All we need to focus on is getting these things sanded," he said, waving a hand at the stacks. "Shouldn’t take more than a fortnight, I reckon. Oh—and I may as well tell you now: when we stain, don’t leave the stain rags crumpled up. Wouldn’t want to be the one who accidentally burns down the monastery, would you?"

The stasithia were standing-chairs with fold-out wooden seats and armrests for standing monks. Hundreds of years ago, monks discovered they helped prevent face-planting during nightly vigils. If one nodded off, the armrests would catch them.

Fr. Menas had Mathias help at first, but Mathias lucked out—he got reassigned to cleaning after sneezing and suffering headaches from the sawdust. I wasn’t so lucky. Something about the sanding really got to me—an unbearable, vibrational hideousness that bordered on intolerable. I couldn’t articulate my anxiety to Fr. Menas, who always pushed for more urgency, more elbow grease, more pressure on the rough, hard-to-reach spots. The stasithia had to be flawless before staining—faster, please.

He tried not to let his frustration show, but I wished he’d recruited someone else—anyone else. Fr. Menas explained that Geronta Ephraim wanted the monastery to resemble Philotheou as closely as possible before the Patriarch’s visit.

As awful as sanding the stasithia was, it didn’t compare to my last day working with Fr. Menas. A hieromonk, Fr. Athanasios, had given him a new task that took precedence: sanding the mud strips over the tape of the sheetrock on a section of the cathedral wall. Which meant it was now my job.

If sanding wood had been rough, something about the sheetrock—and the sandpaper—was catastrophic. When the sanding block made contact with the mud, I shivered. As I pressed and scrubbed down on the dried mud, I spasmed and dropped the block.

To account for this bizarre reaction, I can only say that I’ve always had a strong aversion to chalk. I’ll plug my ears if someone in a movie writes on a chalkboard. Chalk messes me up. For some people, it’s the sound of styrofoam squeaking or a fork scraping a plate. For me, it’s chalk-like tones—like chewing sand.

I remember the first time I discovered this hardwired revulsion. I was a toddler. My mom had bought giant sticks of chalk for my two sisters and me to draw with. Although I found it unspeakably uncomfortable to scribble the stick on the sidewalk, something really happened when I touched it to construction paper. A current of yuck surged through me—confusing, alarming. I couldn’t do it. There was a vibration, a hiss-grind-hiss that felt… putrid.

I looked at my sister, my face scrunched. She was happily gripping the chalk, drawing sunshine colors on her paper. I watched for a moment, winced at the noise she was making, and left the table. Even hearing her scribble was too much.

Back in the cathedral, this time with a sanding block, I was baffled by this unasked-for psychological anomaly. But Fr. Menas wasn’t confused—he was annoyed. We needed to finish the wall so we could get back to the stasithia.

Roger that, I indicated. I realized I needed to face whatever this thing was that chalk-like textures did to me. But the mud on the sheetrock was even more repulsive than chalk. Or maybe it was the sandpaper—or the combination of both. Whatever it was, the second time my block touched the mudded sheetrock, I suffered an even bigger spasm. I dropped the block and nearly fell off the ladder.

“You good, Lukas?” Fr. Menas asked. He’d only seen me in his periphery as he was working up a sweat, vigorously sanding.

“I—um. Yeah,” I said, my voice wavering.

I was all pinpricks and shivers, like opiate withdrawals, but I managed to put the sandpaper block into the mud for a third time. Third time’s the charm, right? My eyes were watering. And as I bit down mentally and forced myself—using the mantra, mercy—to get past the lacerations of whatever this vibrational aversion was, I began to shake. I was salivating. I whimpered as I tried, with the most piteous effort, before freezing completely—my arm locked. The sensation was far worse than the pain.

Fr. Menas came down his ladder and climbed up mine. He had me lean aside as he said, “You really gotta get after it like this.” As he demonstrated, I covered my ears.

“You gotta get over whatever that is,” Fr. Menas said, smiling.

“I don’t think I can, I mean…” I picked up the block again, but even bringing it close to the mud made my breathing hitch.

Fr. Menas started sanding again as if the issue was my comprehension of the task. I dropped the block, slapped my hands over my ears, closed my eyes, and moaned.

Fr. Menas gave me the most warbling expression as if he were completely reorienting who I was in his mind.

“I just can’t,” I stammered, heaving.

“You have to,” he insisted.

“I don’t even know what the thing is.”

“You have to. There can’t be a thing. Don’t let it be one. We’ve got to get this done, and that comes from the top down. Literally—the Patriarch. Capiche?”

“Maybe the stasithia, but even sanding that…”

As he began sanding again, I covered my ears and fled the cathedral, hunched and shaking.

Outside, as I was recovering in the shade of the cathedral wall, I happened to overhear Geronta Paisios talking to Fr. Arsenios, the dining hall master, about needing someone to do the dishes. I stood just around the corner. The moment felt like divine intervention—or maybe a test. Either way, I figured it was time to shoot my shot.

I stepped out and apologized for interrupting.

"I’ll do the dishes," I said. "I’ve been helping Fr. Menas, but I’ve hit a strange… impediment that I don’t think I can overcome. I’d gladly do the dishes if you still need someone."

Geronta Paisios looked at me curiously. I couldn’t tell if he thought I was out of line for eavesdropping—or for abandoning my post—but there was a flicker of reprimand in his eyes. I looked down and apologized again.

And so it came to pass that I became the dish monk.

I washed the plates, bowls, saucers, cups, platters, trays, and silverware. I scrubbed the big pots, pans, dippers, and spatulas used by the three cooks, who were all loud, commanding, and unapologetically Greek. They shouted to each other constantly, cracked jokes, and made a great racket. And if they could speak English, they didn’t with me. Not only was I a non-Greek imposter, but I was a novice—to be hazed until tonsured. Perhaps that explained the eyes of disdain as I passed, or the barked Greek that followed me around corners. One of them, Petrov, learned the word “hurry,” and for a week, it became their mantra whenever I was nearby.

But I didn’t mind. I actually enjoyed the taunting. I kept my head down, cast my eyes away, and squeezed by. Inside the dish pit, surrounded by three walls, I fell into the rhythm of mindless, almost meditative movement. Dishes weren’t quite as satisfying as shoveling or wheelbarrowing, but the upside was no one distracted me. My nous was still unruly, and focusing on the Prayer had been like trying to lasso a butterfly. Sleep deprivation didn’t help, of course, but in the dish pit, I stood the best chance of syncing mind and heart.

The cooks' chatter became white noise, drowned out by the roar of the industrial dishwasher. I pulled down the handle to close the gaping mouth of the scalding beast, steam hissing like incense from its hinges. Rinse, rack, roll in, repeat. Above me, a giant vent sucked up the vapor, so while it was still 80 degrees, I wasn’t melting hot, as Fr. Anthony had once put it.

No chalk, no sanding. Just steam, steel, and silence—blessed silence.

I’d heard that in the Philotheou Monastery, the dishwasher had to be cranked up in a bucket out of a well and boiled. There was often no soap, and the dishes were inspected and rejected if they weren’t immaculate.

I noticed that Fr. Antonio, the tractor-driving monk, and Fr. Athanasius didn’t go down for a nap after breakfast. I was a soft American, and the overall vibe was that I was a non-entity. Which, honestly, was perfect—because that’s what I was trying to become: egoless and detached. Any adversity would only make me stronger. And yet, when I asked Geronta Paisios if I could sleep on the floor, he told me no.

“Sleep on your bed.”

When I asked for a blessing not to eat the garbanzo beans, as I was bloated and gassy and the cooks were unhappy, he told me I could lie down for twenty minutes after lunch—but that I needed to eat everything on my plate.

I was petulant that night, and there was an orange. Eat everything? I thought about what it meant to be obedient, and I ate the entire orange like an apple.

Before Matins, when I confessed what I’d done, Fr. Paisios shook his head.

“Why?”

“You said to eat everything.”

“But you knew what I meant, Lukas.”

“Evloison, Pater. Forgive me, Father.”

I kissed his hand and walked in front of the Theotokos icon to stand in my stasithia. I felt like a fool but tried not to dwell on the underlying issue—one that would have to be addressed at some point. The truth was, I was genuinely confused about what it meant to be obedient—faultlessly. What did it mean to confess every thought?

Although the kitchen was ideal, I was still failing when it came to harnessing my nous. I often thought about how my rule was to write every thought other than the Prayer down, and then I’d think about writing down the thought of the thinking. Thinking about thinking was, after all, a mental avenue that diverged from the Prayer. But then I thought that writing about that would be the equivalent of eating the orange peel. I smiled. Should I confess that? Would that be like eating the plates and cutlery? I nearly laughed—until I caught my nous slipping.

“Kyrie Isu Xriste, Eleison Me.”

The lasso looping. The butterfly dodging. Every waking breath. The cooks were laughing at some wisecrack, and my watery beast was purifying the stainless steel everything. My hands, covered with thick black gloves that went up to my elbows, were scrubbing and spraying and scraping—and could basically belong to someone else. All mindless, and the movement helped me stay awake and kept my blood flowing for one single purpose.

Directly after my morning nap, I’d rise to do dishes from breakfast and the night before. I’d finish around lunchtime, and then I’d wash those dishes too.

Around 3 p.m., I’d help Fr. Menas for two hours until Vespers. Even though sanding the stasithia was still unbearable, I did it anyway. I imagine when he found out I had requested the dishwashing job, he felt abandoned—maybe even betrayed—so I kept showing up.

Fr. Arsenios, an American monk with big brown eyes and long lashes, had a gentle presence but a plastic tone I found grating. He often spoke in a way that felt condescending, his smile stretched too tightly. Some mornings at 4 a.m., he’d ask me to help set the tables for breakfast. He was persnickety about the process—especially the angle of mug handles—and it wore on me when he’d tilt his head and go into this exaggeratedly polite script:

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Lukas, could you possibly reset the mugs? That’s right. Just like that. Splendid. Now, can you remember that for next time? Let’s try, alright?”

He didn’t pat me on the head, but he clasped his hands in front of himself and did this thing with his wrists that… well, looked flamboyant. Honestly, with all those affectations, the micromanaging, and the syrupy tone, I couldn’t help but wonder: was he gay?

After standing for Matins from 3 to 4 a.m., you’d think I’d welcome a little movement. But setting up breakfast with Fr. Arsenios was like moving through molasses. The air itself felt heavier under his saccharine oversight. I tried to keep the Prayer on my lips, but my eyes burned and my limbs ached. As he flitted around adjusting silverware I’d already placed, it took everything in me not to explode. But I reminded myself: any irritation I felt was just the baby of the ego, crying because the sun was in its eyes.

Maybe it was good for me to receive direction from someone I found detestable.

Thankfully, Mathias was usually the one drafted to help Fr. Arsenios, which meant I could stay in the temple, grinding away at the Prayer in front of the Theotokos, free from the need to resist vomiting in my mouth as Arsenios fussed over napkin corners.

Around 3 p.m., I’d help Fr. Menas for two hours until Vespers. Even though sanding the stasithia was still unbearable, I did it anyway. I imagine when he found out I had requested the dishwashing job, he felt abandoned—maybe even betrayed—so I kept showing up.

Fr. Arsenios, an American monk with big brown eyes and long lashes, had a gentle presence but a plastic tone I found grating. He often spoke in a way that felt condescending, his smile stretched too tightly. Some mornings at 4 a.m., he’d ask me to help set the tables for breakfast. He was persnickety about the process—especially the angle of mug handles—and it wore on me when he’d tilt his head and go into this exaggeratedly polite script:

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Lukas, could you possibly reset the mugs? That’s right. Just like that. Splendid. Now, can you remember that for next time? Let’s try, alright?”

He didn’t pat me on the head, but he clasped his hands in front of him and did this thing with his wrists that… well, looked flamboyant. Honestly, with all those affectations, the micromanaging, and the syrupy tone, I couldn’t help but wonder: was he gay?

After standing for Matins from 3 to 4 a.m., you’d think I’d welcome a little movement. But setting up breakfast with Fr. Arsenios was like moving through molasses. The air itself felt heavier under his saccharine oversight. I tried to keep the Prayer on my lips, but my eyes burned and my limbs ached. As he flitted around adjusting silverware I’d already placed, it took everything in me not to explode. But I reminded myself: any irritation I felt was just the baby of the ego, crying because the sun was in its eyes.

Maybe it was good for me to receive direction from someone I found detestable.

Thankfully, Mathias was usually the one drafted to help Fr. Arsenios, which meant I could stay in the temple, grinding away at the Prayer in front of the Theotokos, free from the need to resist vomiting in my mouth as Arsenios fussed over napkin corners.

And then, one sunny afternoon, a buzz rippled through the monastery: we were all summoned to stand by the gates. A stretch limo, flanked by four police motorcycles, kicked up dust as it glided across the lot.

Both Gerontas—Ephraim and Paisios—stood waiting with hands folded, eyes downcast. As Patriarch Bartholomew stepped out of the limo, they each approached, kissed his hand, and stepped back in a gesture so practiced it bordered on choreography. Media producers barked at camera operators to adjust angles, anchors spoke into microphones about the "historic moment." Patriarch Bartholomew, however, didn’t smile. He offered no hint of appreciation for the clanging bells, the scrubbed flagstones, or the desert sun gleaming off the copper dome.

Dyako escorted him away—presumably to his quarters—and I didn’t see him again until Vespers.

That evening, the cathedral swelled with over a hundred attendees, many carrying video and audio equipment. Bartholomew sat on what amounted to a raised throne, facing the altar. After the service, he delivered a long speech. It was what the media had come for—except he spoke in Greek, and judging by their faces, no one had arranged for a translator.

As the speech dragged on, boom mics sagged. Camera crews shifted uncomfortably. A few tried not to nod off as the Patriarch’s baritone echoed off the warm walls. The monks looked even more uneasy. I watched them fidget, exchanging glances. Only Geronta Ephraim remained still, eyes fixed on the floor like a pillar of obedience.

On the walk between the cathedral and trapeza, I overheard whispers: the Patriarch was reportedly displeased by the monastery’s splendor.

“Is this a monastery or a resort?” he’d asked.

“And yet he arrived in a stretch limo,” Fr. Athanasius muttered to Fr. Menas.

“Isn’t he also a monk?”

“That’s politics,” the carpenter monk replied, shrugging. “Above my pay grade.”

A few weeks after the Patriarch left, the number of pilgrims dwindled, and things settled into the familiar rhythm of the long-haulers: middle-aged men who had no intention of leaving, but also no desire to put on the robe. They weren’t exactly encouraged to stay, but they worked. Maybe Dimitri still snuck a smoke or two when he drove into town, but he was here to quit. That counted for something.

One afternoon in early November, I had a rare two-hour window between dish duty and Vespers. Avoiding the carpentry shop like a bad dream, I took up a rake and set to clearing weeds between the date palms. The sky was a clear and innocent blue when the horizon tilted. A sharp, emotional pain squeezed my chest—sudden, uninvited. “Kyrie Isu Xriste, eleison me,” I whispered, as always. But this time, it wasn’t a balm. The pain surged higher with every syllable, a crown of thorns cinched tight around my heart. My vision blurred.

I clutched the rake like a cane, the only thing keeping me from collapsing. The mantra faltered on my lips. The sensation was like watching everyone I had ever loved being tortured—while they looked me in the eyes, knowing I could make it stop. But I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t.

The weakness radiated out from the left side of my core, a bruise being struck again and again. My voice cracked as I prayed through a swollen lump in my throat, the size of a mandarin orange. My knees buckled. I slid down the rake handle like a ragdoll. With pathetic effort, I managed to lever myself halfway up, barely upright, trembling. I knew—intuitively—that if I stopped saying the Prayer, I might regain control. I could finish raking. I could save face. But something in me knew that the pain wasn’t to be avoided. It was to be endured.

Each repetition of the Prayer hit like a hammer. My tongue, once my servant, now served as the conductor of torment. Every syllable—another strike to the ribs. Thankfully, no monks were nearby to witness my red, soggy face or my hunched shuffle toward the public restroom, limping like a drunkard.

I sat in the shade outside the bathroom, overwhelmed. Closing my eyes made the darkness too intense, so I went inside, grabbed a roll of toilet paper, and wiped my face with trembling hands. I drank Gatorade to stay hydrated and stashed the soggy wads under my robe. I was a mess.

Mathias passed by once with folded towels in his arms. He slowed as if to say something, saw the state I was in, and kept walking. That was mercy.

When the symandron sounded for Vespers, I straightened my gait and tried to internalize the whimpering. My lips barely moved, but my tongue still lashed out the Prayer like a penance. After the service, I sat at the far end of the long table in trapeza, the newest novice always placed furthest from Geronta Paisios. He sat at the head, next to Fr. Athanasius, solemn as ever.

After the usual blessing and prayers, Fr. Gerasimos climbed into the back pulpit to read about the saint of the day. But I couldn’t wait until 3 a.m. to deal with what was happening. I rose—breaking all protocol—and walked the length of the room.

I had never seen anyone interrupt trapeza except the cooks or a few of the senior monks. But I had to know.

I dropped to one knee beside Geronta Paisios. He looked down at my blotchy, tear-streaked face with clear irritation.

“Yes, Lukas?”

“Something in my heart feels like it’s breaking.”

His eyes widened slightly. “Are you sick?”

“No. But it hurts. With the mantra.”

He paused. “Ah,” he said, voice lighter. “You’ve been saying the mantra.” He looked relieved—and mildly annoyed. “Lukas,” he said, “this is your ego. When you say the Prayer, your ego no longer gets to run the show in your mind. The pain you’re feeling is its disconnect. But this is not something to discuss at trapeza.”

I nodded. “Sorry. I just needed to know.”

I kissed Geronta’s hand and walked back to my seat. My ego? My ego. The whole tone of my inner world changed. Geronta had basically called me out—like, stop being a little bitch and get to work. Buck up. Grind. Enemy identified.

After dinner, I stepped out of the trapeza into the purpling end of the day. I felt like a bruise with legs, and although the weather was cooling off, I radiated a new kind of heat. If that pain was my ego, then like Geronta, I couldn’t afford to show it any pity. Ego, to me, was synonymous with pride—and I had come here to kill that thing.

Strange how I had recoiled from the pain, my nous squinting into the discomfort, asking “why?” But now? Now that I knew it was my ego clawing at my heart as the Jesus Prayer ripped it loose? I snarled the mantra. I dove into the pain. The Prayer became a weapon.

I’d mistaken myself for the one in pain. I’d mistaken the pain for myself. I’d read about saints lashing demons with their prayer ropes, and suddenly I got it. The mantra wasn’t a gentle balm—it was an extractor. Like tweezers pulling out a splinter buried deep beneath layers of scar tissue.

For three days, I chanted it like a warrior—every syllable a blow. Pulverized and buckled, I kept going, cultivating a new kind of fire. I’d thought that the pinch I always felt while praying was the first glimmer of divine light, but now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was my ego slowly being exorcised.

And the pain changed. It went from a sharp bruise to a burning pyre. A furnace. I had a mountain of garbage to burn. My nous became a magnifying glass tilted toward the sun. The name of Christ, the Sun itself.

The idea of being “tired” vanished. Each morning, I sprang from bed and performed the customary three prostrations, crossing myself with fresh intensity. Though I was getting maybe five hours of sleep, I felt revved up. Geronta Paisios even gave me a blessing to do pushups and sit-ups upon waking.

By December, as the desert cooled, I received another blessing—from Geronta himself—to walk the dogs. He had three mutts with collie in them, all loyal and good-natured. When I asked about walking them, he actually lit up—genuinely pleased. It was the only time I’d seen him show appreciation for a suggestion I made.

Until the Christmas pilgrims arrived and my dishwashing schedule went full tilt, my favorite part of each day was running with the dogs. We’d sprint a mile to a steep hill that rose like a drum out of the earth. I’d race up it while the dogs beat me there, of course, looking down with that smug canine pride—tongues lolling, tails wagging, like, “Nice try, buddy.”

From the top, 50 feet above the valley floor, the view was divine. A full 360° sweep of cactus-covered land. Northward, I could see the compact monastery: the rectangle of red dorms, the copper dome, the gardens expanding like a living blueprint. Geronta’s vision was taking shape.

All the money that didn’t line the Patriarch’s pockets had built this oasis. Amen.

Off in the distance, I could spot the penitentiary and the highway two miles away—cars crawling by like ants on a picnic table.

Cardio plus the Jesus Prayer? I felt grateful. Alive. Almost as happy as the dogs beside me. Sometimes, I’d spread my arms and spin in circles, chanting aloud as the sun rose. “Kyrie Isu Xriste, eleison me!” It was corny, but I didn’t care. My heart swelled like it might float right out of my chest.

The prayer had grown wings, and the hills were alive with the sound of my new-found bliss.

That fire—burning away the last toe-hold of my bitch-ass ego—never felt better.

Jogging back, I always tried to time the symandron—hoping to catch it just as we reached the edge of the monastery. I’d toss the tennis balls for the pups along the way. One was faster than the others, so I brought two balls to keep things fair. They weaved through cactus and brambles like spirits—dodging spines, chasing rabbits, always returning without a scratch.

Then it would strike—the woodblock rhythm of monastic time.

The symandron.

I’d break into a sprint. Ten minutes to Vespers. The dogs, still full of energy, would race with me back to their stations. Each one had a runner leash, a triangle formation around the chicken coop. Their job was to guard the egg house from coyotes, but every monk loved them. Each would say a word, give a scratch, whisper a blessing as they passed.

Even in silence, those dogs got more affection than I did. But I didn’t mind. I was right where I was supposed to be.

It’s interesting how a cassock over a clean T-shirt can contain the funk. Monks aren’t allowed to shower or shave, but after my daily dog run, I’d take my T-shirt and scrub down my greasy torso—as was permitted—before changing into the one I’d hand-washed the day before.

Vespers was the only service where I felt truly awake. Post-cardio, I could lock in on The Prayer. Still and unresisting to sensation, my tongue flicked the words silently while tears fell from my lashes and splashed at the toes of my Dr. Martens. The monks, eyes to the floor, were wrapped in their own prayers—no one noticed the puddle. I didn’t know what to make of it other than: I should rehydrate. Geronta Paisios nodded when I mentioned it.

When feeling dried out, I’d slip into the hallway and drink from the cold spout across from Geronta Paisios’s office. Sometimes I’d glance at the chair where Geronta Ephraim had told me, five months ago, that I’d become a monk at St. Anthony’s. Only five months? So much had changed.

Then came Christmas—and with it, a feast of novel dishes, including greasy octopus that tasted… wrong. Within hours, I was shitting sideways. Couldn’t keep water down. I missed dish duty, curled up in intestinal agony until Geronta came in with a bottle of charcoal pills. They were enormous.

“Take six,” he said.

I grabbed my gallon jug of mineral-rich monastery well water and downed the lot.

“Not all at once!” he gasped.

He thought I was being literal again—but I could’ve swallowed twice that without blinking. I suspected he couldn’t have managed even one. I averted my gaze from his dismal expression—like he was trying to fit two puzzle pieces together that didn’t quite match—excused myself, and shut the bathroom door behind me. Rude? Maybe. Insubordinate? Possibly. But what was about to happen was not an open-door event.

Maybe octopus made sense on Mt. Athos, rising out of the sea. But in the middle of the desert, the supply chain had apparently failed. Seven monks went down, and who knows how many pilgrims got on planes praying their guts wouldn’t blow out mid-flight.

The nuns took it personally that I didn’t show up for dish duty. Americans, SMH. In Philotheou, a monk on his deathbed would still have made it to the sink. That was the vibe.

A nun, shaped almost poetically like a potato, gave me the “what for” in clunky English. Her words stumbled, but the disappointment came through loud and clear. I apologized. She shook her head slowly.

“Like wood pretend to be marble in the temple,” she said. “You not real Greek monk.”

The other nuns laughed, and I proceeded to the dishpit in silence, chewing on the profundity of her insult. In the cathedral, some of the columns had been painted with a faux-marble lacquer. Rather than elevate them, it only made the wood look cheaper, tackier—like it was ashamed of what it really was.

Compared to Philotheou… was I just stained pine, lacquered in cheap imitation? Was my spiritual rock just a knock-off? A temple façade pretending to be something sacred?

After New Year, the nuns left, and the guest count dropped low enough that I was no longer living in the dishpit. I got to walk the dogs again—until mid-January, when a flood of guests overwhelmed the monastery. More than ever before, and this time, many hailed from Greece. Unlike Americans, who came with quiet reverence and soft questions, the Greeks were boisterous. They laughed with abandon, clapped backs, and shook Geronta Paisios’s hand with both of theirs—congratulating him, it seemed, on how well he’d spent their donations.

To accommodate the overflow, Fr. Paisios, Mathias, and I set up fold-out beds in the basement of the two-story monk’s dormitory.

A few nights before the Feast Day of St. Anthony the Great, I found myself doing dishes during daylight hours. Then, at 4 a.m., Fr. Arsenios pulled Mathias and me to help him set up trapeza. Because of the crowd, we needed to shorten the monks’ table so that pilgrims could sit at the end. It was a logistical puzzle, and Fr. Arsenios looked ready to pull his hair out.

He ping-ponged between us, giving conflicting directions, then revising them, then revising the revisions. He wrung his hands, inspected our work, adjusted it, muttered to himself, and adjusted it again. After several rounds of this, Mathias spoke.

“Maybe you could wait in the temple while Lukas and I finish, and I can come get you when we’re done?”

Fr. Arsenios snapped. He said that yes, he would love nothing more than to be in the temple, worshipping, but boneheads like us made that impossible. While he appreciated our help, he was starting to think maybe it was better if he just did everything himself—because clearly, we didn’t get it.

“But what do you do?”

The way Mathias said it stopped me cold. It wasn’t sarcastic, just simple. Direct. And devastating.

Fr. Arsenios turned on his heel and left without a word.

“Wow,” I said. “You went there.”

Mathias looked up, visibly stunned. He hadn’t heard me speak aloud in months. Neither of us had uttered more than a whisper of the Prayer since we’d joined.

The next morning, we both confessed to Geronta and were told to apologize.

“Let’s just put that behind us,” said Fr. Arsenios. “I may be a bit of a perfectionist. I have something they call OCD. Either of you know what that is?”

We shook our heads.

“Well, never mind all that. I shouldn’t have said what I said, so I apologize too.”

If we weren’t monks, I’m sure he would’ve called us in for a group hug. But being monastic, we gave a few stiff bows—three guys in robes, trying not to trip over our own awkwardness—and went about setting up for breakfast.

The night before St. Anthony’s feast day, the nuns arrived. Once again, I was the only male allowed in the kitchen. And again, they didn’t exactly welcome me into "their" domain—but they didn’t want to do the dishes either, so they waved me toward the dishpit. The potato-shaped nun asked if my tummy was okay with mock concern. It was impossible not to smile. She laughed and slapped me on the back, like I’d just now realized the teasing was all in jest, all in love.

The nuns had gone to Compline, hung up their aprons for the night, and I was alone in the kitchen. Still had at least twenty minutes of washing to do. I was scrubbing a large stainless steel spatula when, suddenly, my arms lifted from my sides. My palms opened, and the spatula slipped from my fingers onto the rubber mat. I stood there—unmoving—as my arms stretched into a cross-pose, eyes closed, and something… broke through.

I don’t know how long I stood like that.

Rays of light—at least, that’s what they felt like—pierced through the centers of my palms, not as heat or pressure but as a strange and sacred current, tender and electric. It was as though the invisible sun behind all suns had reached down and found me—anchoring me to the Earth and lifting me beyond it in the same breath. This was not bliss, not merely pleasure or euphoria. This was union. A whole-body yes. An amen from marrow to skin. It was a recognition without language, a truth too ancient to articulate. Something eternal brushed against me, not with force but with an unbearable gentleness, like the whisper of a world I once knew and had long since forgotten.

I stood suspended in that moment—no clock, no self, no weight of history or fear. Thought vanished. Even the edges of pain and longing were absorbed into the light. And when the experience began to fade—like incense slowly losing its shape—my arms floated back down to my sides. That’s when it broke open: a floodgate of warmth from within, like a sealed chamber of joy had burst behind my ribs. Tears streamed down my cheeks—quiet, clean, and wholly involuntary. Not sorrowful, not ecstatic—just true. There was no resistance in me anymore. Only a simple and undeniable presence. I was awake in a way I had never been awake before, as if every cell had been kissed by something holy and reminded what it means to be alive.

When I resumed the Prayer, every syllable tasted like honey and roses. No metaphor—actual taste. And with it came a feeling of radiant love. Sweet and intoxicating, it poured through me like everything I’d ever hoped mercy might be. After six months of saying “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” without knowing what kind of mercy I longed for, here it was. And it felt like the purest "thank you" I’d ever spoken.

I finished the dishes smiling, my face still leaking tears. Around 9 p.m., I floated out across the flagstones as though carried by grace. I set my alarm for 11:50, whispered, ‘eleison me’ and fell asleep wrapped in that still-glowing mercy.

Despite less than three hours of sleep, I awoke elated. The taste of honey and roses lingered on my tongue and bloomed stronger as I whispered the Prayer. I did three prostrations and forty pushups, drank some green tea, and headed to the courtyard.

From midnight to 1 a.m., I chanted aloud with the others, tasting that same sweetness, overflowing with gratitude. Even if this was the only hour the monks truly “did the thing,” I wasn’t judging. Just: thank you. Just: have mercy on us all.

From 1 to 3 a.m., I sat on my stool, breathing the Prayer in silence. Grueling. The Prayer of the Heart was a beast of a level—inhale, “Lord Jesus Christ,” hold the Name in the heart, exhale, “have mercy on me.” My nous spun like a gyroscope, but beneath the restlessness, I still felt connected, loved, held.

When the symandron sounded for morning services, I filed into the temple, whispering the mantra, the taste of honey and roses still on my tongue. As usual, I was last to confess. When it was my turn, I stepped forward, smiled at Geronta, took a breath, and told him what had happened in the kitchen—the light through my hands, the cross-pose, the sweetness, the love that bloomed like bliss in my chest.

Geronta nodded, then looked at me with that same unshakable gravity he’d worn the night he told me the pain in my chest was my ego detaching.

“That was a delusion of the Devil, Lukas,” he said, as casually as someone noting the weather.

“Oh… um. Okay.”

I nodded, kissed his hand, and walked slowly to my stasithia in front of the Theotokos. But the taste of honey was still on my tongue. The warmth still glowed in my chest like an ember that wouldn’t go out. With each whispered breath of the Prayer, the sweetness deepened. So what was I supposed to do with that?

Of all the moments in my life I’ve tried to make sense of, this one still kneels on my chest and stares into my eyes. If I could reach back and pluck just one thread from the tapestry, it would be the moment I told Geronta Paisios what I had experienced. I would have softened it—called it “a moment of stillness,” or “a trace of clarity in the prayer.” But there are no take-backs in a life lived for obedience. And maybe it had to unfold just as it did. Still, twenty-six years on, I remain haunted by the sense that something delicate was broken in me that night—not out of cruelty, not even error, but from a rule too rigid to bend for wonder. With a single sentence, he named it delusion, and in doing so, closed a gate that had just opened to the garden.

He told me, without hesitation, that what I experienced—what I’d believed to be Divine Love, wrapped in honey and roses—was a deception from the Devil himself.

Reader, let me break the fourth wall here. Because if you really want to understand what happened next, you have to picture the spiritual earthquake this created inside me. The first rule I’d internalized was obedience to your spiritual father. That was gospel. No exceptions. The second rule? Say the Jesus Prayer without ceasing. Every waking breath. Got it. But the third rule? Confess every thought. Every single one.

Now imagine the knot: the mantra—this holy invocation—had triggered something that felt like love, like light, like communion. But Geronta told me it was diabolical. So what did I do? I thought about it. A lot. Which I then had to confess. And thinking about the thinking? That too. And on it spiraled. My mind became a courtroom without a judge, and I was both defendant and accuser.

I remembered the scripture: that Satan can appear as an angel of light. Had the father of lies filled my chest with love in the name of Christ? But then again, at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow. Could the Devil veil himself in a feeling so pure, and hide in the syllables of the Holy Name?

That’s the pickle. That’s the cliff-edge.

When my ego had been identified, it became an adversary. A worthy opponent. I could fight it. But this? This was different. I was stranded in a fog with no coordinates. Was I being “too literal” again, as I was so often told? Maybe. Maybe not. But standing there in my stasithia, arms limp at my sides, mantra on my lips and fear twisting in my belly, I didn’t know how to continue.

And then it came again—that sweetness, that warmth. That whisper of love.

The Devil?

I froze. My tongue stopped. I looked to Geronta, hoping he might turn, read my thoughts, lift a finger to say “No, child, it’s okay,” and dissolve the paralysis.

But he didn’t.

And I didn’t dare bother him again.

For the rest of the service—and all through the following day—I scrubbed and prayed, but the confusion only thickened, like smoke in a sealed room. It didn’t fade with time; it compounded. Several times I caught myself frozen mid-task, paralyzed, just standing there—unsure of who I was or what I was doing, repeating the mantra like a machine. It felt as though I had been scooped out of myself, distanced, suspended in a body that moved while my soul remained inert.

The next morning, I brought Geronta a list of unconfessed thoughts. Small things. I’d looked in the mirror and popped a zit. I’d written in my journal—a journal I’d received a blessing to keep. But I wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe I’d misunderstood. Maybe I needed to offer it all up for clarity. Anything but this growing doubt of Geronta’s authority. So I handed him the stack—seventy pages in all.

“Where did you find time to write this?” he asked, thumbing through.

“Five minutes before bed,” I said. “You gave me a blessing to—”

“I thought you were cataloging things like the weather,” he interrupted. “Not... this.”

“Okay. I’ll stop. But what should I do about the taste? The honey and roses? And the feeling of—” My voice broke. Tears rose up again. “The feeling of love. Are you sure it’s the Devil?”

“Yes,” Geronta said, without hesitation, his eyes fixed on the altar.

“But when I say the prayer, I taste it. I feel this warmth—this joy—”

“Don’t think about it. Don’t focus on the taste. Just say the mantra.”

“But I don’t know what to write anymore,” I said. “The thoughts—they come so fast. My head is so loud, and I never know which ones to confess. I can’t capture them all.”

“Write down the ones that aren’t the Prayer,” he said flatly. “That’s the rule. You know this.”

I nodded.  I shouldn’t have.  Inside I was spinning. Was I to scribble ceaselessly, like a madman transcribing static?

Where was the grain of salt in this impossible instruction?

At eighteen, I didn’t have the voice to demand clarification. The rules were the rules. And yet—I couldn’t help but notice—no one else seemed to be following them. There’s no way those five-second whispers before Liturgy were full confessions. It was logistically impossible. And if we were all to be crying out the Jesus Prayer with every breath—unceasingly—why was St. Anthony’s so quiet? Why wasn’t it a thunderous chorus?

Everyone spoke of Philotheou as a kind of spiritual Everest—worthy of awe, but not to be climbed. As if it were myth. A story. A relic, not a model. And yet all the books, all the elders, said the same thing: the Jesus Prayer was to be unceasing. Eventually, it would take root in the heart. That was the point.

And yet… what had blossomed in my heart had been named, unequivocally, as The Devil.

Still, my orders were clear: say the mantra, ignore the taste. And—perhaps sensing that I needed penance to resolve the dissonance—Fr. Paisios gave me one. A public one.

He had me kneel before the brothers as they left the cathedral after Matins, bowing in prostration before each one, asking forgiveness in Greek as they passed. I’d never seen it done before. As I bowed—again and again—I could feel their hesitation, their confusion, perhaps pity.

But as I pressed my forehead to the orange tiled floor again and again, the sweetness inside me only deepened. A warmth bloomed in my chest, soft and shining.

Which meant—by the rules I’d just been given—it was Him again. The Devil.

It took a week for me to completely unravel.

On my last couple of nights, I remember approaching Geronta Paisios at 3 a.m., whispering that I was afraid I was losing my mind. He tolerated my stammering for maybe a minute. Then, seeing that I was nowhere near finishing the litany of thoughts I’d brought scribbled in my notebook, he raised a hand and told me to wait in his office.

I crossed the narthex like a ghost, walked past the humming drinking fountain. I didn’t need water. My eyes had dried out days ago. I passed the chair where, months before, Geronta Ephraim had looked into my soul and told me that I would become a monk at St. Anthony’s. The last living saint, ordained by a cave-dwelling elder to bring the Jesus Prayer to America. And me—a disciple by prophecy.

“Confess every thought,” I muttered aloud, as if to the grandfather clock ticking beside me. The burgundy carpet warmed the space, matching the mahogany trim. So I wrote that in my notebook, too. Then I wrote about the mantra, about the taste of honey and roses—but the moment Geronta entered, I was off again. A tidal wave of words. I knew I was manic. I could see it reflected in his tired eyes. He wanted me to stop.

“Lukas,” he said, “it hasn’t even been a year for you. Being a monk isn’t a sprint—it’s a marathon. Do you remember how you were when you arrived?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Could you get back to that?”

I was stunned. “You mean back before my ego detached? Back before the mantra lit up my heart like a furnace?”

I looked from Geronta to the brass pendulum of the grandfather clock. Its sway felt like a metronome, marking out the tempo of my unraveling.

He didn’t have much to say after that. He wanted me to relax. But how could I relax knowing that I was supposed to confess every thought—and yet the one I was confessing to clearly didn’t want to hear them? My mind was jammed with distractions, deviations, dissonance. Obedience is the cornerstone of monasticism. I was trying to obey. I told him all this, then asked again how something so clearly made of love could be of the Devil.

“Just take a breath,” Geronta said the next night, as I sat across from him again in his office, notebook now filled. I looked at him—really looked—and saw it: he was exhausted.

“I don’t think I can dial it back,” I said. “I want to. I would. But this sweetness—it floods my heart. The honey, the roses. If that’s the Devil, then part of my mind is now divided—one half running the mantra, the other half steering away from the pleasure it brings. And just to be clear—your advice is to what? Chill? How does one chill out with the Devil?”

“Lukas,” he said, gently but firmly, “Elder Ephraim will be here in three days. I’ll organize a time for you to meet with him.”

“But the honey—” I started.

“My child,” he sighed.

“Why is it,” I asked, “that none of the other monks are saying the mantra with every breath, like I am? That’s the rule, right? ‘With every breath.’ I do it. I’ve done it.”

“It is the rule,” he said. “But perhaps you could say it more… calmly.”

That stopped me cold. Calmly? How can you speak calmly with what you believe is the Devil pouring sweetness through your soul?

“I don’t understand,” I said. “How can you ask me to moderate something that you say is from the enemy? If it’s from God, why repress it? If it’s from the Devil, why entertain it at all?”

“Lukas, it’s been over an hour,” he said, rising. “Let’s return to the cathedral for Liturgy. I promise—I’ll make sure you speak with Elder Ephraim. Three days. Alright?”

“So until then, I’m not to confess my thoughts?”

He hesitated.

“Let’s just go back in, alright?”

I stopped. “Just give me a nod,” I said, “if I’m no longer supposed to bother you with thoughts other than the mantra.”

And he nodded.

As we reentered the temple, I took it as a tacit closure of the channel between us. He hadn’t said the words, maybe couldn’t—maybe tradition forbade it—but something in me felt dismissed. Like he'd washed his hands of me.

And just as Jesus bore no grudge against Pilate, I held no bitterness toward the one entrusted with my soul.

The next afternoon, I stood outside Geronta Paisios’s cell on the second floor of the monks’ quarters, my knuckles hovering inches from the door. I needed to knock. But I didn’t. I just stood there, frozen in the hallway, not sure how long I’d been staring at the wood when Fr. Menas, the carpenter monk, came up the stairs and asked what I was doing.

Spinning on my heel, I blurted out, “Do you see the face of Geronta Paisios as the face of Christ?”

His eyes widened. Without hesitation, he gently took hold of my elbow and guided me down the stairs and out into the open air.

“You’ve clearly got something on your mind,” he said. “And I was looking for help. Want to give me a hand installing the new sprinkler line in the garden?”

I grinned and clapped my hands. “Of course I can!”

“Shhhh,” he whispered. “I think Geronta’s resting.”

As we walked toward the garden, words tumbled out of me like water from a broken dam.

“Confess every thought, Fr. Menas? I’m just asking Geronta for a grain of salt. I mean, you don’t confess every thought. You can’t. No one can. And what about a thought of a thought—does that count? And why don’t the other monks say the Jesus Prayer all day like I do? Why not you? I’m here to say the fucking mantra!”

“Lukas!” he said, half-laughing, half-shocked.

“Yep. I cussed. Add it to the list. I don’t even know what’s real anymore.”

He shook his head, chuckling. “I never would’ve guessed this side of you. Honestly, I thought you were kind of a dunce.”

I laughed. “Because I couldn’t handle sanding the sheetrock?”

“No, because of other times I gave you directions and you went totally sideways—like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” I said. “Maybe I’m just seeing everything flipped. But seriously, aren’t we supposed to say the mantra with every waking breath? Isn’t that the whole point?”

“Well, yes,” he said, “technically. That’s the rule. But, you know…”

“I don’t.”

He admitted that he’d heard monks on Mt. Athos took it more seriously. But Ephraim understood Americans might need concessions.

“I get that. But I didn’t come for concessions. I came for the real thing.”

“You have a point,” he said.

“I mean, I know you’ve got to focus on carpentry, and novices like me get in the way. But why can’t anyone explain how to actually confess every thought? And when I asked Geronta, he just… backed off.”

“Well,” he said, “maybe you can ask Elder Ephraim when he arrives.”

We crossed the monastery grounds to the garden. I saw where the PVC line ended in a T-joint, a row of pipes and a mound of sand waiting nearby. As Fr. Menas connected the pieces, I shoveled sand into the trench to cushion the pipe against sharp rocks.

Sweat soaked through my cassock, but then, just as if by divine cue, the clouds darkened and winter rain began to pour. I lifted my arms and howled with joy.

“Woohoo!”

Fr. Menas smiled. “I never would’ve guessed you were like this.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s a thought you’ll have to confess tonight.”

We both laughed, and then I told him about the moment in the dishpit—the spatula, the cross-pose, the taste of honey and roses.

“I went all in,” I said, “and apparently that opened me up to Satan.”

“If you could just tone it down a little,” he suggested.

“I came here for spiritual warfare,” I replied. “But you guys... never mind.”

“Pride,” said Fr. Menas. He clucked his tongue. “Have you considered that pride is what got the Devil cast out in the first place?”

“Every moment,” I said. “And maybe that’s why I’m acting like a fool. Maybe I should just accept the sweetness, the beauty, the love that blooms in my heart when I say the Jesus Prayer—a delusion of the Devil. I get it. Pride would make me question Geronta. Pride would resist obedience. I know I’m not sharp. I do things backward.  And I know better than to trust experience over the rule…”

“Could you keep shoveling?” Fr. Menas interrupted. There was a shift in his energy—something anxious, almost fearful.

Rain matted our hair and soaked our robes, but beneath the physical discomfort, I sensed something deeper churning in him. A line he didn’t want crossed.

“I think he’s going to give me the boot,” I said.

“What?”

“Fr. Paisios. I think he’s going to send me back to Washington.”

“No,” said Fr. Menas, dismissing the thought. “When Geronta Ephraim gets here, he’ll sort this out.”

It was late the next afternoon when Manelos approached me. “Geronta Ephraim is ready to speak with you,” he said.

There was no time to change out of my work clothes. Still streaked with sweat and earth, I followed him toward Fr. Paisios’s office, where the Elder’s Elder sat waiting. I took the seat across from him—this radiant, hollow-cheeked man whose eyes, last time I met them, seemed to carry the whole of Heaven.

But this time, I didn’t lower my gaze. I didn’t bow or cross myself. I was too desperate for protocol.

“Fr. Paisios wants me to say ‘Kyrie Isu Xriste eleison me,’” I said, reciting the Prayer with feigned detachment, casual, almost bored. I faked a yawn. And then, erupting from that sleepy pose, I let the force inside me speak. “But I’ve been saying, ‘KYRIE ISU XRISTE ELEISON ME!’”

My voice cracked, not from volume but from sheer emotional torque. I needed him to understand what this had done to me. How this mantra had hollowed me, remade me, broken me open.

Geronta Ephraim’s face flickered with something like shock. He leaned back with a soft yelp, clutching his wrist. His lids closed. Then he began to count aloud in Greek, voice trembling. Manelos leapt from his chair, knelt beside him, whispering rapidly in Greek.

I blinked, unsure if what was happening was real. Manelos shot me a look—sharp and full of fury—and pointed at the door. No words. Just the command.

I stood and stumbled out of the room, dazed. What had I done?

Closing the door behind me, I spotted Dyako nearby.

“I think Geronta might need help,” I said.

“Oh?” Dyako asked gently, tilting his head with a smile.

“I… may have accidentally given him a heart attack—with the Jesus Prayer.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Who are you talking about?”

I pointed to the door.

He knocked as I turned and slipped away, heading toward the gazebo that sat like a compass rose in the center of the monastery grounds. I lowered myself onto the bench and nodded at St. Anthony’s icon—robe of red and blue, hand lifted in eternal benediction.

“You didn’t have a Geronta accuse you of being possessed, did you?” I muttered.

His painted gaze offered no comfort. Only that same stern, otherworldly stare.

I’d let him down. I’d let everyone down. Killed the holiest man on the planet, right there in the office, with the very prayer meant to sanctify the soul. If the Devil had taken up residence in me, wouldn’t that be the punchline? To murder a living saint with the Jesus Prayer?

The laugh that escaped me was sharp and fragmented. I covered my mouth. It happened again. A staccato chortle. Then I whispered, “It’s over.”

I sat there, broken in the center of it all, as monks began to trickle past. Some glanced, slowed, and hurried on toward the cathedral. Others congregated near the portico, whispering and gesturing. No one approached me. I watched them as if they were seagulls, flapping around the edge of a shipwreck I hadn’t yet drowned in.

And then I started singing—softly, under my breath.

“Hello. Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me…”

Not loud. Not dramatic. Just to myself.

Was I still supposed to say the Jesus Prayer?

Guys? Fellas?

My boys in black robes—surely you’d agree. Maybe I ought to lay off the Heart Prayer for a while. Just in case, you know… manslaughter. Probably not murder, but let’s not tempt fate.

Maybe better to say literally anything else.

Maybe best to climb down from the Ladder of Divine Ascent for a bit. Sit quietly on the bottom rung, hands folded, mouth closed. Just… try not to kill any more saints.

The sun had long set, and I was still sitting in that gazebo when the EMTs arrived. The chapel bells had stopped ringing. My thoughts hadn’t. Dyako appeared beside me, his presence like a whisper wrapped in black robes.

"Geronta Ephraim will be alright," he said. "But it’s best if you return to your cell until you're called."

"Was it a heart attack?"

"He’ll recover, but if you could please--"

"But let me guess," I said, cutting him off, "the official diagnosis is: old monk traumatized by deranged novice yelling the Jesus Prayer like a war cry?"

"Lukas, if you’ll just..."

"I get it. I’ll go."

He escorted me without saying much. I told him about the whole thing as we walked, but his silence said more than words. When I asked, "So what would you do if the Jesus Prayer made you feel possessed by the Devil?" he didn’t answer. I was already a ghost, and he was simply walking the dead to their tomb.

Back in my cell, I shed my robe. Just black Dockers and a black T-shirt underneath. I muttered the Jesus Prayer under my breath and laughed when I caught sight of my legs—spindly, exposed, absurd. Then I lay down. I tried to nap.

A knock came. It was Fr. Menas.

"So," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "I suppose you know what’s coming down the pipe."

"Yeah. I prophesied my own exile. Back to Washington I go."

"Correct. Dyako already called your mom. I’m supposed to walk you up to the phone by Fr. Paisios’s office."

"Just one question," I asked, pausing in the doorway, "do you think I should keep saying the Jesus Prayer?"

"I’m not getting into that."

"Why not?"

"Above my pay grade."

"Ah," I said, smiling.

"What?" he asked, not meeting my eyes.

"One of the books that made me want to become a monk said the Jesus Prayer was psychotherapy for the Orthodox," I said. "I guess I just put the 'psycho' in it."

Fr. Menas didn’t laugh. But unlike Dyako, at least he tried to hear me.

The next morning, as I loaded my carry-on into the back of an SUV, I spotted Dimitri at the far end of the parking lot, puffing on a cigarette beside his car. He waved—hesitant, confused. I waved back, the gesture more fog than farewell. Fr. Yakov, tall and stiff from chronic back pain, eyed me with cool mistrust as he shut the hatch. No words. Just the gravel of tires, the low hum of exile as he drove me to Phoenix in silence.

But the billboards screamed. Prosperity. Purpose. Plastic paradise. All the things I had renounced, now accosting me from the roadside like carnival barkers: Come back, prodigal son, and buy something. I hummed Comfortably Numb in the airport like a fugitive from meaning, a ghost in a sea of glossy shoes and latte steam. Nemo—I was no one.

I hadn’t showered or shaved in over six months. The woman assigned the seat beside me on the flight from Phoenix to SeaTac murmured to the flight attendant and was promptly relocated. Couldn’t blame her. Should’ve showered. Six months of divine funk, and all I had left was my prayer rope. So I began the mantra.

But the honey-rose taste was gone. My concentration, gone. That thread of light I once followed into my heart had been snapped, and now the part of me that wanted to separate from sensation just stared out the plane window at the blades of steel and commerce slicing the sky. High-rises, clean and cold, like they were built to keep out boys like me. I could feel it: I’d never belong to any team. Not one that did anything worth doing. Even the Leave the World Club had kicked me out.

I laughed. Quietly at first. Then again, a little louder. At least The Devil wasn’t with me anymore. Just a husk now, empty in my final act of obedience. I was finally doing what Geronta Paisios had asked: saying the prayer “all chill-like.” My nous on the loose. Brain spinning in ten directions, unbothered by obedience or direction. But the laughter—it was too much. Unhinged giggles that startled the people around me. I didn’t want to land at SeaTac in restraints, so I pinched my forearm and tried to regulate my breathing.

I gave up on the mantra. Turned the dial inward. Cranked up memory. Pink Floyd. The Wall which was plate on repeat in Alaska. I could see it: the slime-coated fishing nets, the cold hands, the endless loops of mending thread. Six hours a day on that salmon boat, the water slapping, The Dark Side of the Moon locked into the grooves of my consciousness. “So you thought you might like to go to the show…” sang Roger Waters. Loop, knot, loop. And the fish would tear through it all. A perfect metaphor, in retrospect.

Now here I was, in black Dockers and a stinking T-shirt, a pilgrim cast out, flying through the clouds like a failed science experiment.

And yet, a thought took hold.

According to the saints, the soul of a disciple is on the Elder’s tab. If the monk is obedient, then the responsibility for his soul falls squarely on the shoulders of the one who guides him. Orthodox math. So when Geronta Paisios agreed to be my spiritual father, he inherited my chaos, my seeking, my soul. And when he sent me away, well… wasn’t I still being obedient?

Maybe that thought alone could get me into heaven. Or maybe it’s a thought I’ll have to confess to him someday.

I’ll be waiting in your office, Geronta.

Chapter 2

Fire and Water in Wilkeson

When I met my family at baggage claim in SeaTac, my mom’s face did that slow-morphing thing people’s faces do when they’re trying to act normal but their inner sirens are screaming. My pupils were fully dilated, my movements slow and delayed, like my soul was buffering.

She’d been glad I was coming home. But I didn’t look okay. And I wasn’t.

I wasn’t in front of them. My two sisters, Nathanael, and Mom might as well have been holograms projected by a mildly malfunctioning empathy-bot. They flickered, a little too sharp around the edges. It felt like they were waving from inside a snow globe I couldn’t shake myself into.

I’d been practicing thinking just one thought for six months. One. Thought. Now I was standing in a carpeted limbo with CNN on mute overhead, and all I could think was: “People have skin. Skin not covered with robes. Oh no.”

I hugged Mom like someone folding a coat they didn’t mean to wear. Robotic. Mechanical. A hair blown into a tumbleweed, trying not to roll.

Nathanael grabbed my suitcase off the carousel. It had my icons inside—the ones Mom sent me, the ones I’d lined up like sentries on my wall, the ones I bowed in front of daily, roughly 1,200 times. I’d kept count until numbers lost meaning.

I also packed two pairs of black pants, two black shirts, and—though I technically wasn’t supposed to—my cassock. The black robe I used to sleep in, dream in, dissolve in. Inside it I’d tucked a hundred pages covered in poems and half-mad prayers to Kyrie Isu Xriste. When everything breaks, you pack the shards. You wrap them in cotton and contrition. You let your stepdad haul them to the car.

I nodded to my sisters. Maybe hugged one? Or both? Or neither. It all felt like performing social choreography underwater with no goggles. They weren’t really there. Or I wasn’t. I was a shadow on a layover. Person X. The ghost in seat 33A.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t speak. I did. Eventually. Once the Welcome Home dialogue fizzled into small talk and awkward foot shuffling, Mom asked what happened.

I took a breath to answer—but hadn’t made it three words before she gently stage-whispered:
 

“We’re in an airport.”

 Her eyes darted to the TSA agent.

 “Maybe don’t wave your arms like that? And could you—maybe—use your indoor volume?”

But I wasn’t there. Not in the terminal. Not in this body. I was in the overlap between dimensions, where your mouth moves and your soul is somewhere else entirely, watching, taking notes.

I laughed. Not because anything was funny. Just muscle memory.

I fell silent.

Then I mouthed the prayer. No honey, no roses, no light pouring through my fingers. Just dry syllables in a noisy airport with Cinnabon in the air. Still, the habit lingered.

Mom tried again.

“So… on the phone, you said something about almost killing Elder Ephraim with the Jesus Prayer?”

I tried to explain. But the words didn’t line up. In the car, I got too loud. I kept laughing at nothing. Tangents spiraled out like spaghetti from a blender. I explained how I wasn’t really in the car, not in it, although I obviously was. I mean, we were moving. But my soul? Still at Gate C22, sipping paradox through a paper straw.

And then I asked them—very calmly, very sincerely:

 “Could we all just say the Jesus Prayer together?”

I’d been babbling on I-5 for the half hour it took to get to Highway 16, like a monk-turned-manic tour guide, with my family strapped in as unwilling pilgrims. When we crossed the Narrows Bridge, I asked everyone to say the Jesus Prayer. We did, sort of. It didn’t feel hollow or reverent, but more like the words were drifting through a dream, spoken by avatars dressed like my family. Ghosts reciting syllables. Or maybe I was the ghost. Maybe we all were.

On the Peninsula side, I announced, “Maybe the ego needs to stay attached to survive in society, but I lost mine, along with my soul. But at least the Devil’s not offering me joy and love anymore, if Geronta was right about that being a delusion.”

I tried to explain how my heart had broken during the mantra, how my ego dissolved, how bliss had shattered into despair. But my words came out like scrambled fortune cookies, and halfway through an incoherent sentence, I started crying. Then I insisted I hadn’t meant what I said, because I’d said it—which didn’t make sense, even to me. So I shut up and stared out the window. Gig Harbor slid past like a screensaver. Nothing had changed, which felt like an insult. Six months was nothing to a town made of commerce and chain stores. But I wasn’t me anymore. I was a glitch in the matrix, a floating observer reinserted into the simulation. A brain in a jar in a minivan.

At the house, everything waited as if nothing had happened. The “Welcome Home” doormat, the cats, the smell of cinnamon and anxiety. But I was new—fractured and clueless—and nobody quite knew what to do with me. I paced the halls like a monk trapped in a sitcom. I spoke in riddles about saints and scripture. I’d run to the Bible and point out a line I thought unlocked the cosmos. “Can you see it?!” I asked my mom once, holding it like a torch. She blinked at me like I’d just quoted the phone book.

One day, I cut a picture of Christ out of a magazine and taped it to the TV. I told the family that if they wanted to watch The Simpsons, they’d have to take down the face of God. You know, normal stuff.

I woke up at 3 a.m. every morning to chant the Jesus Prayer. I tried to turn my bedroom into a chapel. I made pancakes before dawn, clanging around like a culinary cenobite. You’re welcome.

Eventually, my mom suggested I see a doctor. She said it gently, like one might suggest a light jacket before a tsunami.

“Just talk to him,” she said. “You don’t have to agree with him. Just… hear what he has to say.”

So I did. I saw Dr. Craddock, the family physician, who squinted at me like I was a walking math problem with a beard. He prescribed Depakote and Risperdal, heavy hitters in the psychiatry game.

“You know I’m not going to take those,” I told him, like he’d just handed me a vial of poison.

He didn’t flinch. “Keep them nearby. Maybe someday you’ll decide to try. And as you say, they won’t take away the truth.”

I took a Risperdal the next day, just to prove it wouldn’t work.

Twenty minutes later, something blinked off inside me. It was subtle but seismic. Like a radio had been playing my soul on low volume in the background, and someone finally clicked it off. My thoughts didn’t stop—they just stopped mattering. The Jesus Prayer, once a divine incantation, now felt like alphabet soup.

I was in the car with my mom, waiting to pick up my sister from her alternative high school. It was raining. That registered. But not emotionally. Just input: rain. Drops on the glass. A gas station. Some lady in a gray skirt. Everything was bland. Beige. No sparkle. No God.

I wasn’t thinking—I was observing. And even that felt like too strong a word. There was just stimulus and my eyeballs.

And that’s when it occurred to me, in the most boring, detached, pharmaceutical way possible: the pharmaceutical industry had invented a Truth-killer. There was no Devil, no God, no mind—just me and the weather and a slow crawl toward whatever came next. My sister and mom walked toward the car. I saw them, but I didn’t feel them. I was still in the jar. And the rain kept falling.

“Are you okay?” Mom asked, cracking open the car door like she was unsure what version of me she’d find inside. Shiloh climbed into the backseat, silent as a cat sneaking into someone else’s dream.

“Is my face…” I started to say, but the words came out like warm pudding. I wasn’t sure what I was asking anyway. I had lost the thread halfway through the thought. “Risperdal,” I managed. “It killed the Jesus Prayer.”

That night, only because I’d previously agreed to, I took one Depakote. It blurred the edges of my vision like fog on a windshield, but for the first time in days, I felt like I was sitting at the dinner table instead of orbiting it. I had less to say than anyone thought possible. A quiet dinner with me at it—a miracle.

But that night I made my decision.

I couldn’t abide by the soul-crushing regimen. The chemical solution. The bargain where peace came at the price of presence. So I started faking it—tongue under the pill, a sip of water, nod of compliance, and a quiet trip to the toilet.

Within days, I felt something stir. Not stability. Not clarity. But maybe a flicker of soul, limping home. I whispered the Jesus Prayer under my breath like a lifeline. Each syllable a stitch. The fog began to lift.

As for Mom, she reached a quiet conclusion of her own. She loved me, but she was in over her head. I wasn’t a puzzle she could solve with oatmeal and physician referrals. So she called Gideon.

A reader in our Orthodox parish. Middle-aged. Lived in the woods up in Wilkenson. The kind of man who wore wool in June and didn’t own a microwave. She thought he might know what to do with me.

I wasn’t so sure. But I went.

Because something in me was still hoping there was a way back.

Pascha

And so it came to pass that I lived in the foothills of the Cascades, in an old mining town. The three-story house backed so tightly into the hillside that the ground floor had exposed rock jutting right into it—like the mountain was reclaiming its own. Saying the house was drafty would be an understatement, but there was a wood stove on the second floor. If you got that fire roaring just right, you could heat enough pots of water for a bath, and if you timed it perfectly, you might even wash the dishes before the water went cold. If that sounds like your idea of fun, then maybe your name is Gideon Pete.

Gideon’s family had built that house in the 1800s, and now he lived there alone. He told my mom he’d be more than happy to host the prodigal son, said he had space to spare for the spun-out kid he’d once trained to be an acolyte.

I was fourteen when we met. Gideon had shown me the art of the altar—the choreography behind the curtain at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church. The name might’ve been grander than the building itself, but I was one of five acolytes, and we had our roles. There were specific times to light the charcoal for incense—always by the edges, like so, he demonstrated—and precise ways to cut the prosphora bread for those who’d just taken communion. He’d give me a subtle nod when it was time to walk out before the congregation, candle in hand, and face the opposing acolyte like we were part of some sacred pageant.

As a reader, Gideon had the job of chanting through the Book of Psalms. And he was good at it—resonant, measured, and deeply committed. Gideon was a man of the church, no question. But come coffee hour after Divine Liturgy, he'd start airing his unpopular political opinions with a bluntness that made people visibly squirm. Still, outside of his polarizing worldview, Gideon was a loyal foot soldier to our parish priest, Fr. John.

He was a rock. And I came in like a wrecking ball.

I did damage. I shook their little system. I know I did. Because apparently, I’m that guy.

Somewhere out in the multiverse, maybe there's a version of me who’s a little softer, more gracious, more tactful. A Jasper who knows how to play nice with other humans.

But not in this timeline.

In this one, it’s Jasper Smash.

Before I moved in with him, Gideon already had a bone to pick with Fr. John. I never got the full story—probably none of my business—but it seemed like some old wound about being overlooked or underappreciated. That said, I may have fanned the flames of his discontent. After a couple long griping sessions about how both of us had been snubbed or dismissed by Fr. John, we came to a decision: this Pascha, we’d celebrate elsewhere. The service, after all, would be the same across the Orthodox world—Christ is Risen, no matter the ZIP code. So we kicked around a list of possible venues. St. Spiridon’s up in Seattle? St. Nicholas’s in Tacoma?

We knew, of course, how things would unfold back in Wilkeson. At 11:30 p.m.—thirty minutes before the breaking of Resurrection morning—the entire parish of Holy Trinity, including the annual pilgrims and once-a-year candle holders, would be handed beeswax tapers with flimsy cardboard drip-guards. Outside the locked doors of the church, Fr. John would light the first flame and begin passing it down the line. Gideon played a crucial role in that yearly orchestration. So did Jim, the other reader, and Nathanael, who manned the bell.

Once everyone was lit up, the procession would circle the temple three times, singing about worshiping Christ’s holy resurrection. People in the front always sang a beat or two ahead of the folks in the back, creating a holy echo chamber of off-key alleluias. Fr. John would knock on the church doors. Two men—one almost certainly Gideon—would swing them open. The temple, symbolically the tomb of Christ, would be revealed: empty and blazing with hundreds of candles. The acolytes would be in position, the charcoal perfectly timed for the incense, thanks to Gideon. He’d tell the altar boys to really pile on the pellets, make it smoke like Sinai. It was Pascha. The porch would be packed. Candles lit up the interior like the church itself had been resurrected. Smoke curled from the doors, tongue-kissing the painted angel beneath the dome, drifting skyward into that chilly spring night.

Fr. John would be counting on Gideon to have the podium ready for his homily, the gospel reading arranged just so. Pascha wasn’t a regular service. It was midnight to 3 a.m. theater. The acolytes would all be bleary and out of sync, but Gideon? Gideon would hold the line.

That’s what should have been happening tonight. But it wasn’t.

Fr. John had encouraged Gideon to take in the black sheep. Sheri’s problem child. Not even Elder Paisios could break him. Now he’s back from the monastery, stress-testing his poor mother—and where’s Gideon?

That’s what Fr. John would be wondering in about an hour.

Because right then, at 9 p.m., Gideon and I were trundling toward Tacoma in his beat-up old Ford. She couldn’t break 45 mph without sounding like she was rattling apart bolt by blessed bolt. Her name was Betsy. Highway 16 made her nervous. She was a mountain truck, not a ferry-bound creature. Every mile was a gamble, the whole ride a nail-biter. The ferry didn’t care that Betsy needed extra time. And the Resurrection waits for no man.

After creating a Venn diagram of possible contenders for where to celebrate Pascha, Gideon and I decided the monks at the All-Merciful Savior Monastery on Vashon Island would be the most appreciative. Fr. Tryphon, the abbot, lived there with Fr. Paul—the only other resident monk. Occasionally, they had visitors. Unlike St. Anthony’s, which had become a veritable Byzantine metropolis in just two years, All-Merciful Savior was slow to grow. Donations weren’t pouring in like the Greeks’ cash-flavored incense clouds. The monks were under the Russian Orthodox jurisdiction, though neither of them were Russian, nor did they speak a lick of it.

Fr. Tryphon, who got his degree in psychology from Berkeley, liked to call himself an old hippie. He often wore tie-dye under his cassock. Fr. Paul was a botanist who grew much of their food, which was handy—because they needed it. They sold coffee under the monastery label to scrape by, but life on Vashon Island wasn’t exactly paved with rubles. So who better to celebrate Pascha with, surmised Gideon and I, than these two faithful, broke-as-hell monks.

Fr. John had encouraged Gideon to take in the black sheep. Sheri’s problem child. The one even Elder Paisios couldn’t set straight. Now I was back, and Fr. John would be wondering why everything was going sideways. Where was Gideon? Where was his reader, his right-hand man? The one who made sure the homily podium was set just right? The man who ran a tight liturgical ship while the rest of the crew wandered around in candlelit confusion?

As if echoing Fr. John’s apprehension, the truck chortled.  

“I don’t know, Bunky. Maybe Betsy’s telling us to head back.”

“It is a test,” I said, “and there’s a question about choosing honor or humility.”

“But which is which?”

“I just say words. Pay no mind.”

“That might be our fundamental preponderance—the panties that are thus bunched because of words. However, old Betsy might not be so existentially inclined as to consider words that don’t lead to immediate action,” Gideon said.

The truck seemed to cough, though it was hard to tell if it was a determination to persevere or a plea to quit and go home.

But we made the crucial ferry. After a 20-minute rest, Betsy seemed to enjoy the two-lane road on Vashon Island. How was it she could suddenly go 50 without trembling?

“She doesn’t like the city,” Gideon said. “And can you blame her? All those newer models racing around her.”

“Disrespectful,” I added, knowing she was listening.

Gideon steered Betsy off a cracked strip of pavement onto a dirt road, then took a hard left up a very steep driveway. Betsy groaned and growled, but you could tell—she was loving every moment of the quarter-mile climb. And then we were there: the hilltop, with a gravel lot just flat enough for her to cool off. She gave a couple of post-ride twitches before settling. Gideon turned the key, pocketed it, and we stepped out into the night.

There were a few other cars, but it appeared they belonged to the monks. Indeed, it was just the four of us—but Fr. Paul and Fr. Triphon performed the Paschal Liturgy as if a thousand angels and a brass band were in attendance. After the service, we went into the kitchen for a modest breakfast—eggs, cheese, strong coffee—and that’s when Fr. Triphon turned to me and said, “I’m on your side.”

“My side?” I asked. I wasn’t aware I had one.

“Having you say the Jesus Prayer compulsively, and not letting you sleep when your brain isn’t even fully developed—that’s wrong,” said the abbot of the All-Merciful Savior Monastery.

“Well, that’s not exactly my side, because—”

“Putting psychological stress on you and then blaming you for breaking down? That’s wrong. It’s disgusting. And I’m sorry.”

“Okay, but it’s more that I was told to confess every thought to Geronta Paisios, and he wouldn’t clarify what that actually meant.”

“I believe that’s called hyperbole,” he said.

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “But he didn’t make me say the mantra. We were supposed to, technically, but no one there said it like I did, so it was—”

“You call him ‘Geronta’ Paisios, but he’s not even 40, is he? Not a gray hair in his beard, and they call him Elder?”

“Well, Geronta Ephraim appointed him as abbot, so—”

“But I’m an abbot. And I would never call myself a Geronta! I’m older than Fr. Paisios—look at my beard!” Fr. Triphon tugged at the thick white curls with theatrical indignation.

“I think it’s just a cultural thing.”

“And so,” he asked, with a smile half-hidden in his whiskers, “here we are—and where is Geronta Paisios?”

“In St. Anthony’s?” I offered.

“In a monastery. But you are in a monastery as well.” His eyes twinkled.

“Ah,” I said.

He winked and erupted into a hearty laugh, slapping my back with a hand that felt like a large pizza. He looked like Gandalf if Gandalf had eaten two too many cinnamon rolls and borrowed Friar Tuck’s robe. Around Christmastime, he rode the back of a firetruck dressed as Santa Claus, waving to pedestrians like a holy lunatic, chaplain of Vashon, protector of orphans and cracked souls like me.

As for Gideon, he was looking increasingly distressed and haggard as dawn drew near—like a man who’d misplaced his loyalty and couldn’t remember which pocket he’d left it in. He didn’t tell the monks why we’d come—not exactly—but after Fr. Triphon gave his two cents on my situation, he turned to Gideon with a mischievous gleam and asked the obvious:

“Do you think Fr. John suffered a mental collapse—like this poor young man here”—he gestured broadly at me—“when he realized you weren’t going to be there to keep the acolytes in line?”

“Ah, he doesn’t need me around,” Gideon said with a dismissive wave, but there was a crack in his voice, a little too much nonchalance for a man so tightly wound.

And again, Fr. Triphon erupted into one of those irrepressible belly-laughs that made the fine china rattle in the cupboards. It was the laugh of someone who’d seen through everything and still chose joy.

The Pete House

A few days later in Wilkeson, I was wandering an old logging road overlooking the town when it struck me: there was a river that divided everything. On one side stood the Catholic church. On the other, The Holy Trinity Orthodox Church. Gideon and I always crossed the river to attend the Orthodox services. But didn’t Jesus say to Peter, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church”?

As I whispered those words, the sun caught the river just right, as if the water itself agreed. The Catholic and Orthodox churches had been long divorced, but only by something as crossable as this stream. Doctrinal quarrels like papal infallibility and whether the sacrament used leavened or unleavened bread had caused the Great Schism. But was it really that great? What if the Pete House—built on a literal rock, on the Catholic side of the river—became a sanctuary for Orthodox Christians? Puzzle pieces cascaded through my mind like a waterfall. That sort of thing happened to me a lot back then.

“Gideon!” I shouted.

“What’s that, Bunky?” he called, as I ran down the trail, over the bridge, and up the porch stairs.

“You were thinking of selling this house, right?”

“I’ve been considering it.”

“What if it became a sanctuary? A refuge for Orthodox Christians? A little monastery, maybe even a place of worship. You and I both talk about how it feels like the earth is getting hotter beneath our feet. I’m not saying it’s the End Times—but I’m not not saying it.”

“Where are you going with this, Bunky?”

“Okay, remember when you brought up how the Book of Revelation says the Church will reunite? Think about it. The Orthodox and the Catholic Church have been split for centuries, but here in Wilkeson they’re divided by nothing more than a river—loose ideas flowing like water. And the Catholic church is on this side, right next to the Pete House. You’re Orthodox. Your house is on a rock. You are literally Gideon Pete.”

“You’ll love this one,” he said. “My name was Craig before Fr. John gave me the name Gideon.”

“Oh, so you’re a double rock? Craig—as in crag? You’re Rock Squared!”

“Rock cubed, if you factor in my density,” he muttered. “But go on. I have no idea what you’re saying, but I can see it matters, so let it out before you rupture something.”

“You remember how Jim, Lori, Scott, and Genie were saying they wished they could live together—make a community? Play music, garden, share meals. They’re all Orthodox. How many rooms are in the Pete House?”

Gideon breathed in through his teeth and scratched his head.

“The problem with all this, Bunky, is that Fr. John’s moving the church to Puyallup. When he goes, it’s just you and me up here. The last hangers-on to this crag. You’ll get called elsewhere soon, I can feel it. And honestly, I don’t know where I’m headed either—but I know I’m ready for something new.”

“You think I’ll be called?”

“Are you joking? You’re getting up at 3 a.m. to simmer in your thoughts, wandering the hills like a prophet. People have noticed. You've made quite the impression.”

“So I’m not welcome.”

“Not what I’m saying,” Gideon said gently. “But you’re dressed in all black, scruffy-bearded and wild-haired. People just want to know you’re not casing their sheds. I told them you’re a young man going through a hard time, staying with me until you get things sorted.”

“That’s the truth,” I said. “But what if ‘getting things sorted’ means turning the Pete House into a spiritual hostel? Something that symbolically reunites the Orthodox and Catholic churches? We could dedicate it to St. Peter. If Fr. John would just bless it—”

“If ‘ifs’ were helium balloons,” Gideon sighed, “you’d float to heaven, Bunky.”

From 1 to 3 a.m., I practiced the Prayer of the Heart in the attic. Then I read the Psalms by candlelight until something Gideon had said floated back to me—about being called. It reminded me of Christ’s words: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” I flipped to the end of the Gospels to double-check what following really meant. I’d thought it meant cloistered silence in a monastery. But that morning, I looked up the original Straight and Narrow.

Gideon was right.

The narrow path wasn’t inward—it was outward. One pair of clothes. No gold, no silver. Key word: Going Out.

When I heard Gideon rustling in the kitchen just before dawn, I skipped down the stairs, grinning.

“Mornin’, Bunky,” he said, blinking into the early hour. “Did you have a good prayer session?”

“Had a realization,” I said.

Gideon nodded—like a man who appreciated insight, but not before coffee.

“Do tell,” he said, turning to dump grounds into the percolator.

“My boots are made for walking,” I said. “So I’m going to walk out into the world. One pair of clothes, no George Washington, no Andrew Jackson. Put my faith to the test and let God do the rest.”

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been feeling antsy too—like I’m supposed to go somewhere, though I haven’t the faintest idea where. I’m a little jealous, honestly. You’ve got no worldly obligations weighing you down. But your mom’s not going to be thrilled about you taking off on foot without a dollar to your name.”

“That’s what JC told the apostles to do,” I said. “Have you read The Way of a Pilgrim?”

“Yes. It’s why my email is Wayward Pilgrim.”

“Oh. I thought it meant you weren’t going that route.”

“Nope. Just my Gmail handle.”

“I should change mine. I think it’s still Grassoline.”

“Suits you,” Gideon said. The kettle shrieked. He poured the boiling water over a mountain of grounds in a pottery pitcher and slapped a plate on top. Then he glanced at the clock. Always seven minutes. “Let it cowboy up,” he said.

Then he walked over to the counter, grabbed an envelope, and handed it to me. Inside was a hundred-dollar bill.

“Your mom gave me this in case of emergency,” he said. “But whoever picks you up is going to want ass, cash, or grass. So you’d better break that and see how far five bucks at a time gets you.”

“What?”

“There’s no such thing as a free ride, Bunky.”

*** Platina St. Thomas Sunday 

After a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon, and hash browns, I mopped the plate clean with a slice of sourdough toast and downed the last splash of coffee—so strong it vacuumed the moisture out of my mouth. Gideon told me to take the rest of the bread with me, so I could be like the pilgrim from my book.

“See how long you can live off bread,” he said.

I filled my Nalgene bottle with water from Gideon’s well, and he fetched me a blue wool blanket—Civil War issue, Union side.

“Might not be warm, but it’ll keep you alive,” he said.

I thanked him, then descended the stairs beside the rock that jutted through the floor of the old, rickety house. I patted it on the way out.

“Goodbye, Pete.”

Crossing the bridge, the air was cool. Long-legged bugs zigzagged just above the surface of the river—the one that split the town like a quiet theological disagreement. A veil of thin clouds stretched overhead, and it was cold enough to numb my hands if I didn’t keep moving. But I had no plans to stop. I walked along the roadside with my thumb extended, facing forward. I didn’t look back at the cars that passed me.

After a few miles, an old green truck that reminded me of Betsy pulled over and took me to Bonney Lake—a town with a bit more bustle, four lanes of traffic instead of two, and the vague smell of fast food and brake dust in the air.

I’d walked almost to the far end of town when I spotted a lanky guy waving from a gas station pump. I hesitated—his eyes were bloodshot—but he called out that he was out of gas, and if I could fill his tank, he’d take me anywhere.

I pulled out the hundred-dollar bill and handed it over.

“Wow, really?” he said, fingers nimble as they took the bill.

“Yeah. Ass, cash, or gas, right?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“You’re lucky you met a traveler,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was gonna do. Betsy was almost dry, and then I saw you.”

“Her name’s Betsy?” I asked, eyeing the gray Geo Tracker. The tires were bald, and there was a ding above the left headlight, but she had a certain grace to her—a wiry tenacity. Not a drop of mud on her flaps, unlike Gideon’s Betsy, but I just hoped she wasn’t allergic to the Interstate.

“She go?” I asked, pointing at her.

“Betsy goes,” he said. “My ex named her. I told her she could have it, but… well.” He trailed off, eyes drifting to a power line across the street where a few crows had convened like old men on a porch.

“Hey,” I said. “Fill up your tank and tell me all about it.”

“Oh yeah, and thanks, man. You’re a lifesaver.” He turned toward the station, then paused. “Almost forgot my mug.” He reached into the center console and pulled out a chipped ceramic cup that read World’s Best Dad, then walked inside.

“You want me to grab you a coffee with this?” Mark lifted the hundred.

“Nah, I’m jacked and juiced. Just get Betsy a drink. Fill the old girl up.”

From Bonney Lake, we dropped down into the Puyallup Valley. As we curved through the foothills, Mark explained that he was fleeing Indiana. His baby’s mama had broken up with him—took what he knew of life and smashed it into pieces. He’d been driving nonstop, couldn’t sleep even if he tried. Only thing that soothed his mind was the focus it took to keep Betsy between the lines.

“That explains your bloodshot eyes,” I said.

“Really? That bad?”

“You looked kinda sketchy when I first walked up.”

He adjusted the rearview mirror, handed me the wheel for a sec, and tilted his head back to drop in some Visine. In Sumner—just a few miles down the road—Mark stopped at a gas station to refill his mug with coffee. Then again in Fife, not twenty miles later. Said he drank at least a gallon a day, and most places didn’t charge him when they saw the mug.

I started smiling every time I watched him. I could read his lips from the passenger seat as he held the mug up like a badge of honor:

“Mind if I fill this?” World’s Best Dad, ceramic and chipped.

Not a single cashier ever objected.

Headed south on I-5, I told Mark about the monastery. He told me about the wreckage of his relationship. We were two peas in the rejection pod. Life had chewed us both up, swallowed what it wanted, and spit us back out onto the freeway with nothing but road noise and heartburn.

I had a Jansport backpack with a pocket Bible, a black cassock I’d pilfered from the monastery, and a Civil War–era wool blanket. My hoodie, t-shirt, and black Dockers would need washing soon, but this was the path Jesus described—travel light, no gold, no silver.

Mark, at 28, had a decade more than me to accumulate stuff. The back of Betsy was loaded with a few essentials: plastic totes full of tools, clothes, and odds and ends that might be useful if he ever landed somewhere. Which he probably wouldn’t. Not anytime soon.

“Where are we headed?” Mark asked.

“Would you be interested in visiting a monastery to kick off our California tour?”

“Tour? After everything you told me, I’m not sure a monastery is something I’d want to touch with a ten-foot pole.”

“There’s one in Platina. It’s not like St. Anthony’s. They publish books about saints, do a few services a day, but they don’t chant the Jesus Prayer or pull all-night vigils. It’s mellow.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sleep again,” Mark said. “A real bed would be nice, sure, but you don’t get it—I’m stuck in a loop. I’m glad you’re here to distract me, but my brain’s just… chewing the same cud.”

“Want to say the Jesus Prayer for a while?”

And we did. I led, and he followed—slow, steady—in Greek. Which, for Mark, sounded less like sacred language and more like someone whispering gibberish through a bathroom vent at 2 a.m.

“Kyrie Isu Xriste Eleison Me,” I said, clear and reverent.

Mark squinted, listening hard. “Curious zoo? Crisco lace on me?”

He snorted. “Bro, it sounds like I’m asking Jesus to butter me up with holy shortening.”

I kept going, unfazed. He tried again, nodding to the rhythm: “Carry a shoe… Christ say... L.A. zone... meh?”

By the tenth repetition, he was laughing so hard he had to wipe tears from his eyes.

“It’s like I’m chanting an ancient recipe for divine rotisserie chicken. Kyrie Crisco, lay soy on me!”

“Close enough,” I said.

He grinned, still giggling. “Man, I hope God speaks typo.”

Somewhere in the middle of Oregon, Mark pulled into a rest area and cut the engine. He said the coffee wasn’t cutting it anymore, and the visions weren’t going away. He needed to close his eyes, even just for a bit.

I’d been asleep against the window but stirred as he eased into the parking spot. Families shuffled past us, stretching their legs, herding kids toward the restrooms. Mark sat in silence for almost an hour, gripping the wheel like it was the last thing keeping him tethered to the planet.

Then he let out a long, heavy sigh.

“Man, I can’t sleep with her...” he muttered. “She’s right fucking there. Like...”

He didn’t finish. Just twisted the key in Betsy’s ignition and pulled us back onto the highway, headlights slicing through the dusk. I didn’t ask what he saw—but I could imagine it. Darlene, standing in his mind’s rearview mirror, holding their baby with a look that could gut a man.

In Redding, California, as we turned west onto Highway 299, the sun rose behind us. Sacramento Valley's fields slowly gave way to the foothills of the Trinity Mountains, and Betsy climbed steadily upward. The slopes were dotted with Ponderosa pines and oaks rising out of golden grass, while gulches burbled with hidden creeks. Everything else looked highly flammable, like the whole landscape had a secret craving for a match.

In Platina—a town defined by a single gas station with pumps that belonged in a museum—a friendly woman gave us directions.

"The monks stop in from time to time," she said. "Lovely lads, but they can smell ripe. I’m not sure if they don’t have running water or just find bathing overrated, but their musk has inspired more than a few customers to air their grievances. Still, it’s not my business to lecture folks who plan to spend money."

She directed us two and a half miles southwest of Platina to the base of a dirt road, marked by a weathered Orthodox cross. Under a canopy of oaks, Betsy grumbled her way up a mile-long incline until golden onion domes peeked through the trees like something out of a Slavic fairy tale.

"There’s a monk," I said, pointing as Mark cut the engine.

"Wow," Mark said, eyeing the bearded figure in a black cassock I’d indicated. The monk, who must have heard us, made no gesture of acknowledgment and simply disappeared behind a modest building that looked like a rectory.

"This is really happening," said Mark. "Are you sure we’re welcome?"

"A million percent," I said. "A week ago this place would have been packed for Pascha, but most pilgrims clear out unless there’s a feast day."

"I have no clue what you just said."

St. Thomas Sunday

It was midway through the afternoon, a comfortable 70 degrees in the shade of the conifers, when Mark and I got out. I shouldered my backpack, and Mark pocketed his keys. We both looked at the temple.

Fr. Geranimos, who had just stepped into view carrying a stack of books, spotted us near the monastery gate. We hadn’t yet crossed its threshold—waiting, perhaps, for an invitation.

"Hello, hello! Who goes there?" he called. He set the books down on a wooden bench beneath a trellis of wisteria and strode toward us. All his movements were brisk. As he walked, his cassock flapped against his legs like someone shaking out a wet pair of jeans.

After giving each of us a firm handshake and introducing himself, Mark commented that the onion domes looked like Christmas tree ornaments. Fr. Geranimos placed his hands on his hips and looked up.

"They do, don’t they? Cost an arm and a leg, but they were a ‘must-have,’ according to Fr. Herman—being Russian Orthodox and all. From our book sales, we probably shouldn’t have, but we did. And what am I saying? They’re lovely, aren’t they?"

"Why do the crosses have three bars?" Mark asked.

"Ah, a frequently asked question," he replied. "Would you mind if I show you to our guest room while I explain? You do intend to spend the night with us, yes?"

"You’re an answer to my prayers," said Mark.

Fr. Geranimos picked up his stack of books again and led us through the grounds toward the temple, chatting amiably about the Orthodox Church as we walked. By the time we reached a small cabin—what looked like a former shed but had been converted into a guest room lined with books and equipped with two thin mattresses atop raised plywood boxes, each covered in patchwork quilts made by Russian babushkas—Mark was utterly absorbed, hanging on every word.

Fr. Geranimos appeared to be in his mid-thirties, affable in a distinctly American way. When he asked what had brought us all the way from Indiana—having noticed the license plate—Mark glanced at me to fill in the details.

"Mark parted ways with an unreasonable woman," I said, "and maybe you’ve heard of a monk who was recently exiled from St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery?"

"The one they thought might have been schizophrenic, but who was, quite obviously, so mentally deranged they had to send him back to his family?"

Mark laughed at that, and Fr. Geranimos gave him a wink.

"So, the grapevine is giving me sour grapes?" I asked.

"Well, that’s one side of things, I’m sure."

"Say, brothers," Mark said, "mind if I take a nap while you two talk? Not that I find any of this boring, but I’d like to crash out, if it’s all the same."

"Oh, you must be a weary traveler—pardon my manners. Lukas, would you like to see our temple while Mark gets some rest?"

"Did I say my name?" I asked.

He motioned for me to follow.

"I knew who you were the moment I saw you. There’s an APB, of sorts, concerning your whereabouts in the grapevine, as you say. Dressed in black, scruffy beard—a confused young man who might need a hot meal and some direction."

"Is that from Fr. John in Wilkeson?"

"No, the monks on Vashon Island called. Said you might be headed our way."

In the temple, our voices echoed off the dome ceiling, lending everything the dramatic tone of a Greek tragedy performed in a teacup. I told Fr. Geranimos my side of the story—the Jesus Prayer, the mental unraveling, the all-consuming obsession with confessing every errant thought.

By the end, Fr. Geranimos, with a face that could have sold wisdom by the scoopful, leaned back and said, "Sounds like your spiritual father might've done better clarifying what you were meant to write down."

"No, he did clarify," I insisted. "Geronta Paisios told me many times—explicitly—to write down every stray thought before returning to the prayer. But you know how one thought can trip into another like a drunkard down a hill..."

"But did he ever say to use a little prudence? Maybe a teaspoon of discretion with your pen?"

"Every thought that wasn’t the prayer. No ifs, ands, or buts."

"Ah, well then. No wonder you short-circuited."

"But none of the other monks did. At least, not that I ever saw. I never heard their 3 a.m. confessions, but it always looked like business: Fr. Antonio would whisper, Geronta would nod—probably something about garden logistics or which stretch of desert to bulldoze next. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in the scullery praying with every breath and wondering whether to confess thinking about a fly slamming into the window near the ceiling."

"A fly?"

"It flew in through the kitchen door—no plan, just vibes. Then it gets stuck, and starts slamming into the glass like it’s reenacting Moby Dick in miniature. And I’d wonder: Do I confess that? Do I take off my dish gloves, get the pen, and write down that I pitied a dumb fly? Because maybe, if it had just turned around, it’d find something sweet—a soup ladle, a countertop crumb, even a grease puddle under the stove. Instead, it’s up there head-butting the window, crying freedom."

"And if that fly really broke the mold," said Fr. Geranimos, his eyes glittering like a cat who’d just spotted a heretic, "it might find a dead rat decomposing behind an old fridge. Spread the word. Start a colony. Be the founding father of a maggot metropolis. Future generations dining on rat tartare, all thanks to your brave fly."

Fr. Geranimos had been a good listener, and I quite enjoyed what he added—but when I finally finished my longwinded metaphor, he blinked.

“So… was there a correlation between your life at St. Anthony’s and the fly? Or was that just a freestyle?”

“Oh, that? That was something I wrote the day after Geronta told me the sweetness I’d felt—the honey and roses in my chest while whispering the mantra—was a delusion from the Devil. I asked for clarification on what to confess, and when he said, ‘every thought,’ I basically wrote nonstop the entire time I was supposed to be washing dishes.”

“Too literal,” he said, shaking his head.

“That’s what he said too. Geronta Paisios literally told me I was being too literal. But I was trying to be… I don’t know. Obedient? Honestly, it was a total mindfuck. Pardon my French.”

He smirked. “Oh, you’re pardoned. Though it sounds like you weren’t just literal—you were Olympic-level literal. And wasn’t there something about nearly giving Elder Ephraim a heart attack?”

“With the Jesus Prayer, yeah. I may have yelled it. Loudly. I was trying to express how lost I felt. Still feel, actually. I picked a spiritual father who maybe wasn’t… I don’t know… qualified?”

“When’s the last time you spoke with him?”

“Not since I left. I gave him a hug goodbye and he tensed up like I’d slipped a porcupine under his robe. Five minutes later, as I was tossing my backpack into the SUV and waving goodbye to Dimitri, Fr. Yakov told me it looked like Geronta thought I was going to swing on him.”

“Swing? As in hit him?”

“Yeah. I mean, he was the one sending me away. I guess he thought I’d go down swinging.”

“Are you angry with him?”

“No. I mean, sort of. Not angry, just... dislocated. I’m here, but part of me’s still there. Still doing dishes and writing about flies and not knowing whether I’m being faithful or psychotic.”

Fr. Geranimos’s eyes twinkled. “Would you like to call him?”

I blinked. “You have his number?”

Fr. Geranimos led me into a trailer that served as the monastery’s office. Inside, it looked like a publishing time machine: metal contraptions with gears, mechanical presses, and reams of paper scattered across the floor like confetti after a particularly nerdy parade. He flicked on a switch, and the whole place buzzed to life in sterile, humming fluorescence. At the back, behind some hulking gray file cabinets, were icons of the Virgin, Christ, and St. Herman, but notably, no candle—wise, considering the Trinity Mountains were basically a tinderbox waiting to sneeze.

Near the rear sat a gray, sheet-metal desk crowned by an old rotary phone—the kind that clattered like a skeleton tap dancing in a closet. It had belonged to one of the monastery’s founders, Fr. Seraphim Rose. The monastery wouldn’t dream of replacing it. It was practically a relic.

Fr. Herman, the abbot here, had written a behemoth of a book called Not of This World about Fr. Seraphim’s life. I’d read it back in my sophomore year of high school, and it had lit a fuse in me—one that still hadn’t gone out, despite the debris.

I found the number for St. Anthony’s in the Rolodex, read it out loud, and Fr. Geranimos spun the dial. When someone picked up, it wasn’t Geronta Paisios—it was Dyako. I stiffened. He offered to leave a message.

“I’m in Platina and…” I faltered, frowning. “Wait, did you ever tell Geronta what I told you about what happened with Geronta Ephraim?”

“What?” Dyako asked, flat as a dropped hymn book.

I couldn’t. I handed the phone to Fr. Geranimos. Hearing Dyako’s voice stirred too much. He’d guided me to my room like a hall monitor escorting a truant to the principal’s office. I understood—Manelos probably told him I screamed at Geronta Ephraim. But I didn’t scream. I said the Jesus Prayer, and maybe a little loudly. Did Manelos mention that, Dyako? Or just that I yelled? Because the devil, as they say, is in the details.

You never really listened, Dyako. You looked through me. You looked through me the way I looked past that fly slamming against the glass. You set the social tone. You decided I didn’t need to be heard. I spoke, and you let my words ricochet around like nonsense—like Antarctic penguins squawking about UFOs. You were upset, and I get it. But you refused to hear me.

By the time Fr. Geranimos hung up the phone, he looked at me with an odd tenderness. “They’re probably worried about you,” he said.

I doubted it. I was a liability—a loose cannon. As long as I stayed far away, I couldn’t cause more damage.

Then, to my surprise, he looked me over and said, “Your story’s remarkable. Do you mind if I write it down?”

“Sure,” I said. “I mean, I should probably write it myself. Maybe I could even do it here. But I also want to see how you guys do your thing up here in the Trinity Mountains. Beautiful monastery, by the way. And I was wondering… if Mark and I stayed on for a bit, helped out, worked—maybe chopped wood, fixed things, did dishes—would that be okay?”

“Sounds wonderful,” said Fr. Geranimos, already smiling. “I’ll have to run it by Fr. Herman, of course, but now that Bright Week’s over, we’re not expecting any pilgrims. Everyone comes stampeding for the Resurrection, then vanishes like the Myrrh-bearing women. But Christ is Risen!”

“Indeed, He is Risen,” I replied automatically.

It was one of those reflexes burned into the Orthodox nervous system—like someone says “knock knock,” and your soul politely whispers, “Who’s there?” Or a sneeze detonates across a room and someone’s Protestant cousin blesses you out of sheer Pavlovian instinct. Some liturgical codes go deeper than language.

After our talk in the temple, Fr. Geranimos conducted Vespers. About seven other monks filed in to chant the hymns. I knew the entire service by heart, which, oddly, made the place feel less monastic. I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly—maybe it was the English. Something about it felt clunky, a language built for commerce and contracts. Even the melodies, compared to the haunting, syrupy Byzantine tones at St. Anthony’s, felt like skim milk. Familiar, but lacking that rich, untranslatable flavor that once stirred something in my bones.

From Vespers, I followed the brothers into the dining hall. Two long wooden tables stretched down the room with bench seating on either side. At the far end stood an enormous cross mounted on the wall, beneath which sat a high-backed, almost throne-like chair reserved for the abbot. Fr. Herman, we were told, had missed Vespers, just back from a business trip to San Francisco.

He entered with a broad grin and a swagger not unlike Fr. Triphon’s back on Vashon Island. He made a beeline for me, hands already half-raised in welcome.

“So you escaped the prison of Geronta Ephraim?” Fr. Herman boomed, as if congratulating me on a jailbreak.

“Well, I—”

His laugh cut me off. A grand, belly-deep guffaw that shook the silverware. He followed it up with a jovial backslap that nearly sent me into the soup. That made it two-for-two: Russian Orthodox abbots who could shake the shingles off a roof with their mirth and weren’t afraid to dominate a room. I could tell he was a social creature—charismatic, observant, always clocking who was paying attention. He spoke not just to me, but through me, with a performer's instinct for audience.

Fr. Geranimos leaned in and asked if he should wake Mark.

“No, he’s been driving forever,” I said. “Let him sleep.”

“That’s what I figured,” said Fr. Geranimos. “I’ll save him a plate.”

“Nonsense!” Fr. Herman declared, flinging his arms as if launching a parade. “Wake our guest and have him join us! Let him celebrate with us. Christ is Risen!”

“Indeed, He is Risen!” the brothers chorused like a well-rehearsed band of pirates.

And then, as if on cue, the door creaked open and Mark’s groggy face peeked in.

“And you have risen by yourself, it appears. How wonderful,” called Fr. Herman from the head of the table, arms raised as if Mark’s entrance were liturgical confirmation of divine favor. “I’m always delighted when things go a certain way. It lets me know we’re doing things correctly to glorify His Holy Name.”

“Amen,” murmured the brothers in unison.

Mark shuffled over to us, rubbing his eyes.

“Something delicious-smelling woke me up,” he said.

“Oh, nothing fancy,” Fr. Herman replied with mock humility. “We are but poor monks who can afford no more than stale bread and water—but our cooks can work wonders with it, sometimes.” He winked and folded his hands on the shelf of his stomach, which jutted like a cheerful planet beneath his cassock. If he were one of the Seven Dwarves, he’d be Happy—with maybe a touch of Bacchus. He was a shade red in the face, which might have suggested drink in another man, but in his case it seemed more like intoxication by his own irrepressible moxie.

“Let us welcome our guests!” he declared, arms flung open like he was introducing a Broadway finale. “These two wandering pilgrims have sojourned far—and what better time to celebrate than St. Thomas Sunday?”

Each monk stood and introduced himself, names I mostly forgot the moment they left their mouths. Then we gathered around two of the four long wooden tables where place settings had been arranged with quiet reverence. The brothers sang a hymn in honor of St. Herman of Alaska, and I joined in for the Our Father, which was comfortingly familiar. Everyone stepped over the benches and took their seats, except for three monks who disappeared through swinging saloon doors and reemerged moments later with large trays stacked with steaming plates.

Fr. Herman, it turned out, had strong opinions about presentation. God, he believed, was perfect—and therefore, dinner should at least try. The trays were delivered in synchronized rhythm, dishes aligned with near-military precision. The servers placed meals before us, returned for sides, then once more for dessert. Finally, they stacked their trays at the far end of the hall and sat in coordinated grace, even sipping their water at the same time like liturgical choreography.

Fr. Herman remained standing at the head of the table, not on a bench like the rest of us but on a plush, high-backed chair with lion-headed armrests—less monk, more benevolent Russian czar. He drummed his fingers on the carved heads and surveyed the feast with satisfaction. Behind him loomed a life-sized crucifix, a fitting counterpoint to the extravagance of the dining scene.

“To celebrate the feast of St. Thomas,” announced Fr. Geranimos, seated beside him, “we’ve prepared pasta in a white sauce with grilled fresh salmon, a garden salad of romaine lettuce with shaved almonds, cherry tomatoes, Greek olives, bleu cheese, and a vinaigrette made with honey from our own hives. There’s fresh-baked bread, and for dessert—a cheesecake made by our sweetest babushka.”

“The babushka named Vera?” Fr. Herman asked, perking up like a man who had just heard a familiar sonata.

“Yes, and she’s outdone herself again.”

Fr. Herman leaned in theatrically. “And is that a diced strawberry with a sprig of basil on Babushka Vera’s cheesecake?”

“It is,” confirmed Fr. Geranimos. “The basil and berries were harvested this afternoon by Brother Timothy.”

“Winter strawberries? I am impressed.” Fr. Herman lifted a lemon wedge between two fingers. “And this… this is a lemon?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Well then—shall we squeeze our lemons together, brothers, in honor of St. Thomas?”

“Glory be, St. Thomas,” the monks chimed.

They squeezed their lemons solemnly across their plates, like a sacrament. Fr. Herman clapped his hands once, then gestured grandly to Mark and me.

“And now, gentlemen, please join us in this feast. St. Thomas will appreciate your enjoyment—have no doubt about that!”

Laughter rippled down the table as the meal officially commenced. Mark leaned toward me.

“What was the joke?”

“Thomas doubted Jesus had risen from the dead until he touched the wounds,” I explained. “He needed proof.”

Mark nodded, then raised an eyebrow. “So... then did Thomas run because, you know—zombie?”

I shook my head, and Mark shrugged.  

“Just sayin’.”  

Even as I ate the delicious meal, something didn’t sit right—though it wasn’t the pasta. It was Fr. Herman, perched like a crowned rooster in that opulent chair, casually tossing out wisecracks that didn’t exactly harmonize with my understanding of monastic humility.

Some of the monks were still chewing when he patted his belly and declared, “Absolutely delicious—but I must be careful. Got to watch my girlish figure.” The monks chuckled, but to me it was more sitcom than skete. His whole vibe clashed with everything I’d lived and labored under at St. Anthony’s.

Then, still rocking contentedly on his heels, he peppered me with questions about Elder Ephraim and the monastery I had left. But there was something unfriendly in his eyes now—jeering, even. He didn’t bother hiding his disdain.

“Even Patriarch Bartholomew said your million-dollar complex is more of a luxury resort than a monastery,” he said with a knowing smirk.

That got under my skin. And then it hit me—he looked uncannily like the portly Patriarch himself, down to the resonant baritone.

“He did,” I admitted. “But he arrived in a stretch limo, hypocritically speaking.”

“He’s a Patriarch!” Fr. Herman shot back, as if the title nullified any hint of inconsistency.

“Yeah, but he’s also a monk. Took the same vow of poverty as Geronta Ephraim.”

Fr. Herman chuckled, but it was forced. “I don’t want to besmirch your Elder’s good name, whom I hear you nearly gave a heart attack, but maybe he should’ve kept a better eye on you instead of running around the country planting monasteries like fast-food franchises. Spreading himself rather thin, wouldn’t you say?”

“Geronta Joseph told him to bring the Jesus Prayer to America,” I said, my voice firming. “And if Geronta Paisios was his first pick, then I figured I was in good hands.”

“Ah,” said Fr. Herman, “so you put stock in lineage.”

“I’m Orthodox. That’s kind of the whole point—tradition.”

Fr. Herman laughed, tilting his head. “You’re a most interesting specimen.”

“Like a fly slamming into a glass window? Or maybe an ant under a magnifying glass?” I offered with a flat smile.

For the first time, his easy-going façade flickered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” I said, “you’ve been roasting me and my monastery all evening.”

Some of the monks laughed, but Fr. Herman didn’t seem amused. He reclined into his throne, resting his back against its burgundy upholstery. He thrummed his fingers on the twin lion heads carved into the armrests, reassessing me with narrowed eyes.

“I assume you’ve read The Way of a Pilgrim?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “And your book, Not of This World.” That one raised an eyebrow.

He gave a nod of approval and asked what I’d been given to read at St. Anthony’s.

“St. Isaac the Syrian.”

Fr. Herman scoffed. “St. Isaac? Much too heavy for a young man like you. No wonder you had a mental breakdown. I’d have given you Emily Dickinson!”

The monks laughed, but there was something pompous in his tone—like a substitute teacher trying to sound profound. Despite his stories of Fr. Seraphim Rose, he suddenly struck me as a showman, a spiritual opportunist draped in robes.

I stood, bent down, touched my forehead to the floor in a prostration, and said, “You sit on your throne, but if you cannot abide by the teachings of St. Isaac, I’m afraid I cannot abide a night in your humble abode.”

Fr. Herman roared again, thinking it was part of the show—until he realized it wasn’t.

He tilted his head side to side, that smile bigger than ever, but something behind it had curled up like a wounded tail.

I tapped Mark on the shoulder.

“Let’s go.”

“What?” he asked.

“You don’t have to. Maybe you want to crash here, check this place out, but—”

“Come now!” Fr. Herman interjected. “No need to rush off into the night!”

“But why, exactly?” Mark asked, clearly catching the weird vibe.

“Chalk it up to bad energy,” I said. “But disrespecting St. Isaac... nah.”

“I was only suggesting,” Fr. Herman huffed, “that his writings are too advanced for a novice like yourself.”

“Mark, up to you. But I’m out.”

Mark scratched his head. “Well... I could really use some coffee. Think that gas station in Platina’s still open?”

*** San Francisco Fog

---

The gas station was open, but for the first time on our journey, the cashier wanted money for coffee. Real money.  Gone was the cheery woman who’d filled mugs for monks regardless of their hygiene. This new cashier stood with arms crossed, mouth a straight line drawn by someone with no time for curves.

“What if I get gas?” Mark asked, turning up the charm like a broken radio tuned only to FM flirt.

“That’s fine,” she said, “but to fill up your mug’ll still be a dollar twenty-nine—after tax.”

Mark’s shoulders slumped as he peeled off one of his last two twenties.

“You getting gas?” she asked before making change.

“Can’t afford any here,” Mark said. “Just the coffee.”

We didn’t turn inland. Instead, we followed the road westward toward the coast. Betsy whined as she climbed to Buckhorn Pass, and Mark and I watched the fuel gauge dip toward the realm of faith-based propulsion. At the summit, I suggested we coast. For a few blessed miles, Betsy got a break—headlights sweeping a road so empty it felt like a held breath.

Around a bend, a rabbit crouched by the roadside. Something winged and fast—a blur from the corner of my eye—sliced through the night.

“So much for that rabbit,” Mark said.

“What happened?”

“Owl. Pretty sure.”

We sat in silence until Mark said, “So what was your beef with that monk?”

“Oh,” I said, “just got tired of Fr. Herman mocking everything I consider monastic. Didn’t feel like a monastery to me.”

“Have you ever seen Pinocchio?” I asked. “The part where the boys get turned into donkeys because of indulgence and vice?”

“I think so. But let me get this straight—you got mad because he insulted the monastery that kicked you out?”

“Yeah, but it’s still the only one I know that actually practices the Jesus Prayer. I don’t know what St. Herman’s is, exactly. A boys’ club? A publishing house? Sure, they put out great books, but you saw Fr. Herman.”

“The throne guy?”

“Exactly!” I said. “That wasn’t a chair. That was a throne. When he said he’d have given me Emily Dickinson instead of St. Isaac, I swear he outed himself as a spiritual imposter.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Mark said. “But that was a bomb dinner.”

“Super bomb,” I agreed.

Betsy wheezed down the last of the switchbacks and rolled into Weaverville on fumes. Nearly twenty bucks filled her tank, and Mark got his coffee refilled without incident. We were both still full, but when Mark saw them about to toss the donuts, he rescued a half-dozen like they were kittens in a drainpipe. He said he could survive on coffee and donuts, and I didn’t doubt it.

Beyond Weaverville, the landscape softened—oak giving way to Douglas firs, and the Trinity River coiling beside us like a restless thought. The air grew moist after Willow Creek, and then came the fog, curling in over the road like incense smoke. Sequoias rose like columns of a cathedral.

Mark insisted we pull over so he could hug a redwood. And so we did.

But by the time we crossed into Humboldt County on Highway 101, he started jerking in his seat.

“Should we pull over?” I asked.

“Well... I don’t think we need to,” Mark said. “I can tell what’s real and what’s a hallucination.”

“You’re hallucinating?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

But soon he was twitching and muttering to himself, laughing at things I couldn’t hear. Not far from Arcata, I said, “Mark, I think we should pull over.”

He nodded and took the next exit—Clam Beach Drive—and veered onto a gravel road that ended in a shadowy lot near a creek. He shut off the engine, leaned his head on the glass, and started breathing heavily. Then his eyes closed.

I can’t sleep sitting up, not well. So I stayed awake and tried to practice the Prayer of the Heart. But Fr. Herman’s laughing face kept invading the silence like a fly buzzing in a sanctuary.

Mark mumbled in his sleep, something about it not being his turn. The wind buffeted Betsy. It was cold in the cab. I reached into my pack for my cassock. Twisting into it was awkward in the cramped cab, and I shook Betsy in the process, but Mark didn’t stir.

Wrapped in that familiar black cloth, still smelling faintly of desert sage and incense and distant bells, I used my backpack as a pillow. My head leaned against the window, and finally, I slipped into sleep—into a dream of rushing water and murmured prayers rising like mist from the Trinity River.

When I awoke, everything outside the windshield was painted in shades of gray. Mist clung to the glass in a mosaic of beveled droplets. Not quite rain—more like the sky had been weeping in its sleep and hadn’t yet noticed.

Mark was already up, mid-donut.

“You want one? There’s a few with goo inside, a maple bar, a couple of glazed, and an apple fritter.”

“I could go for an apple fritter.”

“Oh, that’s my favorite too.”

“Then it’s yours,” I said. “Too early for me anyway. Could go for some coffee, though.”

“You sound like the voice in my head,” Mark replied, holding the donut in his mouth as he twisted Betsy’s key.

The engine grumbled awake. The road shimmered under the soft film of mist. The air outside was like cold soup—dense, briny, thick with coastal breath. Ocean salt had smeared across the windshield in streaks, so Mark hit the washer and we rumbled south.

“I can’t believe these trees,” he said, craning his neck to take in the redwoods. He wore a grin like a child staring up at gods.

At a gas station on the outskirts of Arcata, we debated coffee economics.

“I bet I can get you a refill at another place after I fill up here,” Mark offered.

“Well, if I can have first dibs on the mug you’re about to walk out with, then fine,” I said. “But I’m not just going to sit there and watch you sip while I fantasize about the last drop. For two bucks, we could have a simultaneous sip. That’s sacred.”

“I just want a bite of the fritter,” he said. “How much do we have left?”

“Twelve bucks and change.”

“Either I get the first mug or I’m buying coffee.”

“Fine. Then you’re buying your coffee,” Mark said, fishing a crumpled five from his pocket.

“I’ll be back,” I said, stepping into the air-conditioned shrine of fluorescent temptation.

The interior was sterile, glossy, humming with fridge buzz and fluorescent judgment. Places like this always have the worst edible options—the healthiest being a dusty box of Fig Newtons or a granola bar with forty-seven grams of sugar. The coffee machines made obscene gurgling sounds, half-profane, half-erotic, like caffeinated ASMR. Always go for the 24-ounce biggie. Always add Irish creamer. Always accept the black plastic stir straw—gotta stay current on your microplastic quota.

Cost: $1.79. Soul tax: unclear.

Mark passed me in the doorway as I came out with my prize.

“Mind if I get a refill?” he asked the cashier, holding up his mug.

“No problem,” she said, without even blinking.

And it wasn’t. Because coffee, more often than not, is the only thing keeping the world stitched together.

Back at the truck, I juggled the cup in one hand, three dollars and change in the other, trying to do the math on survival. Mark appeared moments later, eyes a little brighter.

I said, “We’ve got three-quarters of a tank, a few bucks for San Francisco, and donuts. Not ideal fuel, but it’ll do.”

“Why San Francisco?”

“Saint John Maximovich. His incorrupt remains are in the Russian cathedral there. My dad was born in SF, so maybe there’s some rhyme to the reason.”

“Back to the ballsack,” Mark mused. “Second stop on your tour?”

“My dad’s stomping grounds,” I smiled. “But really, I want to visit St. John. The man was an archbishop who used to make faces at the kids during church. Lighthearted, avoided serious talks with adults. But one night they found him in the bell tower—kneeling in the rain during a windstorm, soaked to the bone, holding vigil long after midnight. A real mensch.”

“I wish I had some tobacco.”

He turned and reached into the back of Betsy for a duffle bag that looked like it had been dragged through every oil spill and ashtray in Indiana. Grimy. Where it had once been fire-engine red, it had congealed into the maroon shade of dried blood and heartbreak.

He plopped it onto the center console like it was a wounded animal, unzipped it, and rifled around until he found a five-times-folded pouch of Top Tobacco—yellow, except where it had been tattooed with greasy fingerprints and brown creases from riding shotgun through America.

“Could you roll us a couple of these?” he asked.

“I could try. I’ve never done it.”

“Strike that. You just hold the wheel. I’ll roll two. If I’m gonna smoke one, I’ll need another. You think they got a gas station in Redway?” he asked, nodding to a sign that claimed it was seven miles ahead.

Redway did have a gas station, but gas was priced like it came from a Saudi prince’s bathtub. Mark went in for his free coffee instead. He took longer than usual, and when he pushed through the glass door, he was shaking his head. His walk was off—half swagger, half confusion.

“There’s a redwood tree with a gift shop inside it not far from here,” Mark said.

“In it or next to it?”

“In it. In Leggett. The cashier told me Sequoias don’t burn easily. Said some wildfire must’ve hollowed the trunk, but the tree didn’t die. Big enough now to host capitalism in its chest. Wanna check it out?”

“We must.”

“Yeah, but that guy, man—the cashier. I’m glad we never have to come back here.”

“What happened?”

“Well, after he told me about the tree, I pointed to the paper on the counter. The front page had this story about a girl named Julia Butterfly who’s been squatting up in a redwood to keep the loggers from cutting it down. I made some wisecrack about not wanting to deal with her shit—literally—and the dude did not like that.”

“Talking shit went sideways, eh?”

“I’m sorry, but come on—if you’re camped in a tree, somebody’s gotta deal with the bucket. And the article said she’s been up there for over three months. No plans to come down. I get that she’s a hero, but even heroes have bowel movements. That’s all I said. Cashier turned beet red and told me I shouldn’t disrespect Julia.”

“She’s been in a tree for three months?”

“A little longer. She’s holding out until Pacific Lumber promises, in writing, not to fell the tree. They’ve already clear-cut everything around her. I mean, yeah, she’s a badass, but my joke was anatomically inevitable.”

“I think you mean she’s a heroine. Heroes are male, I think.”

“I meant hero.”

I raised an eyebrow, wondering: was Julia a man? Possibly? Maybe he was saying she was a hero in spite of gender? Language is tricky like that.

As Mark adjusted the rearview mirror, he said, “Originally, swastikas were cool. Represented Buddha’s footprints and the cycle of rebirth. Hitler just went and screwed that up.”

He took a sip of his coffee and merged back onto the highway.

“Thing is, Hitler was really into Buddhism. Total buzzkill. My dad used to call that ‘contamination by correlation.’ Like, you’re a white dude, and even if your shoulder tattoo’s spinning the other way and means peace in Sanskrit, it’s still gonna scream Nazi to everyone else. You can explain it, and some people’ll get it. But it’ll never not be a Nazi symbol now.”

“Your dad had a solid point,” I said. “But is Julia a male or female? You said she’s a hero.”

“Swastikas,” Mark replied, which I thought meant he hadn’t heard me. But then he added:

“See, swastikas are like the word heroine. Even if you know it means female hero, your brain still flashes on dope and junkies. Spoons, lighters, the smell of scorched vinegar, some despot on a stained mattress cooking brown Coke syrup into oblivion. Just for a split second. And that’s the power of a contaminated word.”

He paused and shrugged.

“So I say hero—and unless someone’s a persnickety little grammar cop, they’ll get what I mean. They’ll know I mean Julia Butterfly, not heroin chic. But you’d be amazed how many Nancy boys want to quibble about diction while the forest burns down around them.”

I said nothing. Just stared out the window at the Sequoias, feeling like we were all driving through a world on the verge of metaphorical combustion.

Not far past Garberville, Betsy began to lose power. First a slow sputter, then a rattle, a lurch, a cough—like a tired old woman finally laying down. Then she died. Mark popped the hood and stared blankly into the tangle of belts and black metal like he was trying to interpret an ancient script.

“I don’t know what I’m looking at,” he muttered, then handed me the keys and set off hitchhiking to find a mechanic, leaving me and Betsy to commiserate about what ailed her.

He wasn’t gone long. An old truck pulled up with a man who smelled like axle grease and resignation. The mechanic opened Betsy’s hood, poked around, flicked a switch on a voltage meter, and frowned.

“It ain’t the battery or alternator,” he said. “Fuel pump, maybe. Either way, she’s not going anywhere unless I tow her.”

“How much are we talking?” asked Mark, trying to sound casual, like he wasn’t already counting coins in his head.

“I said I’d take a look, so this visit ain’t gonna cost you. But towing her in, cracking her open, poking around—that’s ballpark three hundred. Could be more, could be less.”

Mark looked at me. His mouth was still, but his eyes screamed, Help.

“You got a miracle for me, my friend?”

I swallowed hard. “You could leave it behind and follow me,” I said, and immediately felt ashamed—like I’d asked a man to abandon his child. “Sorry,” I added. “What’re you gonna do?”

Mark didn’t answer right away. He just looked down the highway like he was trying to measure the cost of staying against the cost of the separation.

“I wish I could go with you,” he finally said, voice cracking just a hair. “And I would. But my daughter’s baby book is in the back. And I got about a thousand bucks worth of tools. They’re all I’ve got left. I can’t just… leave it.”

I nodded. What else could I do? There are no right words for a moment like that.

I untied the wool blanket Gideon had given me from the bottom of my pack, stepped forward, and hugged Mark.

“Keep the six bucks,” I said. “And here’s three more—I had it left from when I got the coffee.”

He took the crumpled bills and change with the reverence of someone accepting communion. His face was flat, but there was something behind his eyes. Not tears. Something heavier. Something that doesn’t move because it doesn’t know how.

“Hey, Lukas,” he said as I turned to go, “take the apple fritter.”

I took it. Bit into it. It was stale but sweet, like a goodbye sealed in glaze and regret. I waved.

“Adios, amigo.”

Unlike the gray, soupy air back in Arcata, the sky near Garberville was sharp and crystalline, the kind of blue that felt almost cruel. Sunlight danced on the asphalt like nothing had ever gone wrong. My Dr. Martens struck the pavement with dull, final thuds, and my cassock brushed my legs with every step, like a curtain slowly closing. The mountains to the west rose like old sentries, quiet and unmoved, holding back the sea’s damp breath but offering no comfort.

The beauty of the day only made it worse—the air too clean, the light too honest. It felt like the world was moving on without us, like it didn’t care that something quietly broke by the roadside. I didn’t want to look back. But just before the bend in the road, I glanced over my shoulder.

Mark stood beside Betsy, shoulders hunched, clutching something tight to his chest.

It was his daughter’s baby book—held not like a keepsake, but like a shield.

On the southbound onramp at the edge of Arcata, I waited for nearly an hour without anyone so much as glancing in my direction. Then a battered Tercel rolled up and stopped about two hundred feet down. I jogged toward it, hopeful—only to stumble into the middle of what was clearly an ongoing argument.

“He’ll kill us, Howard!” the woman in the passenger seat screamed as I approached. “He’s the I-5 Killer! You want to end up chopped into pieces?”

“You been crying murder since Reno,” Howard muttered from behind the wheel, his voice weathered but steady. His white hair stuck out beneath a once-navy trucker hat so stained it was now the color of dry clay.

“Hop in back,” he said, not looking at me. “And don’t mind her. She’s got a gift for worst-case scenarios.”

I climbed in, shut the door, and we lurched back onto the highway. The woman flipped down the sun visor and stared at me through its tiny mirror with eyes ringed in red. Her nose was bulbous and mapped with broken capillaries, her complexion that gray-pink shade drinkers get. A half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey glinted between her and the driver.

“You want a pull?” Howard asked, catching my glance in the rearview mirror.

“No thanks,” I said.

“He’s a priest, Howard,” Maggie hissed.

“Well that don’t mean he ain’t thirsty,” he replied. “Anyway, weren’t you just convinced he was a serial killer?”

“Are you a holy man?” Maggie asked, turning to study me with tragic urgency.

“No. I’m a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”

“We’re all sinners,” Howard said, still not looking at me. “But dwelling on it don’t unring the bell, does it?”

“Don’t bring up my father,” Maggie snapped, her voice cracking.

“Then you do it,” Howard said.

“I’m sorry, Father,” Maggie said, tears bubbling over. “My father was the flight captain who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.”

Through the vineyards of Napa, Maggie unraveled. Her voice was threadbare, catching on shame and whiskey. She told me about prayer circles, exorcisms, the unshakable belief that her very DNA was cursed. Howard said nothing. He stared ahead, jaw locked, the hollows beneath his cheekbones like trenches. I could tell he’d been listening to the same confessions for years, riding shotgun beside her madness, too stubborn to leave and too worn out to fix it.

They’d left their ranch in Petaluma on a whim, hoping the coast might loosen something. She’d stopped taking her meds. Howard thought maybe the ocean could help where the pills had failed.

Late in the afternoon, we veered off the highway, winding through rolling green hills. Then up a gravel road, we reached a mansion that didn’t fit any of the context—red brick, fountains, a statue of a naked cherub peeing into a stone basin.

“Wow,” I said.

“What good is any of it,” Howard muttered, “if she’s talking about ending it every third mile?”

“You have no heart,” Maggie said. “You’re a stone with legs.”

He just scratched his head and killed the engine.

Inside, it felt like an Irish hunting lodge—dark wood, velvet chairs, air that had never known dust. Howard led me to a sitting room in the south wing, where floor-to-ceiling windows framed a panoramic view of an emu farm three fields away. He handed me a pair of binoculars. Beside him, an expensive Canon camera with a telephoto lens rested on a tripod.

“Why emus?” I asked, lowering the lenses.

“Rich ladies like feathers in their hats,” he said.

“And that justifies breeding dinosaurs?”

“I don’t make the market, son.”

We sat in silence until he asked, “You really going to San Francisco? Or just wandering back toward the monastery?”

“I’m hoping for clarity,” I said. “Mark called it going back to the ‘ballsack’—his nickname for his dad’s hometown.”

Howard nodded, then said, “We don’t have kids. Don’t know what to do with all this. When Maggie goes, I won’t be far behind. I don’t believe in your God—not yet. But I won’t pretend I know what’s true either. Maybe you were sent here. Maybe you’re meant to turn these 400 acres into something peaceful, Father.”

“I’m not actually a priest,” I said. “I was a novice. Barely that. And technically, I wasn’t supposed to keep the robe. So no, not holy—just a dropout in clerical cosplay, hoping no one checks credentials.”

Howard chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “Well, sounds like you’re more qualified than most, then. Ain’t nothing holier than someone who knows they ain’t. And speaking of unexpected blessings—here comes one now, probably carrying something that’ll outshine communion wafers.”

Maggie appeared in the doorway, carrying a tray with a silver kettle and three porcelain cups so white they looked like they’d never been handled by human hands. She moved with a strange elegance now, as if she belonged to the house the way a ghost might—regal in her own ruin.

She set the tray down on the coffee table.

“You keep this place immaculate,” I said.

“Thank you,” Maggie replied stiffly.

“Cry and clean, that’s all she—”

“Shut your hole, Howard! Father, I apologize for my outburst.”

“He’s not a priest,” Howard said, almost gently.

“Novice monk,” I added, still seated, still trying to tread lightly.

“Then why are you wearing that robe if you’re not a priest?”

“Leave the boy alone,” Howard said.

“No, but I thought you said you were in a monastery,” Maggie protested.

“Was. Just a beginner. Barely there long enough to screw up,” I said, trying to smile.

“I don’t know if I feel comfortable with you in my home,” Maggie said, stiffening like a dry branch.

“Oh—I didn’t mean to mislead—”

“Maggie, let the boy alone. I think maybe his God sent him to us.”

“But he’s not a priest, Howard! He said he was a priest, and he lied to us.”

“I think maybe you misunderstood,” I said. “I never claimed—I was just a novice monk.”

“You said priest,” she insisted. “You need to leave.”

Her eyes, wide and wet, were full of grief and disorientation. And even as Howard tried to reason with her, I could see the line had already been drawn. She would not back down. I stood up and thanked them for the tea, and the hospitality.

“Oh, come on now,” Howard said, rising as well. “It’ll be dark before you even reach the road. We’ve got a cot in the garage. Sleeping bag too. No need to go storming off. She’s all bark.”

“Howard!”

Before I could answer, he disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a plate of salami and a chunk of cheese. “No crackers, I’m afraid,” he said, leading me across the gravel drive to a beat up shed.

“I think the driest corner’s over here,” Howard said, unfolding a rusted cot. Blue dusk seeped through the warped slats in the walls. He rummaged through a tote and came up with a Marmot sleeping bag—practically a miracle, and not moldy.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “If you need to tinkle, anywhere but beside the shed. If it’s... the other kind of business, come through the side door. I’ll leave it unlocked. Just don’t go through the front. She’ll blow a gasket.”

He set the sleeping bag out and placed the plate of food in my hands.

“I’m sorry about all this. You seem like a decent kid. You’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You want the door open or closed?”

“Closed?” I said, unsure why it felt like a strange question.

“Alright then.”

The shed door clicked shut behind him, and in the dim quiet I sat on the cot, savoring the salt of meat and cheese. Then I tucked myself into the warmth of the bag and thought of Maggie’s tears, of Howard’s steadiness, of what it costs to love someone who’s falling apart.

I wasn’t a Geronta. I couldn’t build a monastery. I could barely hold my own head above water.

That night, I dreamed of crashing waves again—but this time there was a little girl in a red swimsuit being pulled out to sea, and I was sprinting through the surf, arms outstretched. Our fingers brushed just as she slipped beneath the surface, and I woke with the cold water still clinging to my skin.

The next morning, Howard woke me with a soft knock on the shed door and a whispered apology.

“She woke up screaming,” he said as I crossed the gravel drive, everything blue and hushed in the early light. “Said she needed you gone. I told her to take it easy, but then she threatened to call the cops.”

“She’s carrying more than most could,” I said, sliding into the Tercel’s passenger seat.

Howard nodded, his jaw tight. The sky above us was a dull pewter. “Clouds’ll burn off by noon,” he said. “Is Santa Rosa alright?”

At the Santa Rosa bus station, just before I stepped out, Howard pressed a crisp hundred-dollar bill into my hand.

“For breakfast and the bus,” he said. “Now, I don’t believe in your God—but in the off-chance I’m wrong and the universe has a sense of humor—may whatever’s running the show bless your journey.”

I didn’t look back, not because I didn’t want to, but because some departures are too delicate to rewatch.

---

The clouds may have burned off in Santa Rosa, but by the time I got off the bus in San Francisco, the sky was leaking again. I felt hollow and adrift, a sack of bones and longing in a borrowed cassock.

I wandered toward Geary Boulevard, chasing a rumor of grace. I asked directions to the Russian Orthodox cathedral, and a woman at a bus stop told me its name—Joy of All Who Sorrow, after the Virgin Mary. It felt uncannily apt.

Inside the cathedral, under a haze of incense, I approached the glass reliquary containing the dark, mummified body of St. John Maximovitch. I’d come expecting tears, or awe, or at least a sliver of peace. Instead, unbidden, a line from Animaniacs elbowed into my mind: “Mr. Skull Head Bony Hands.”

My chest tightened. I wasn’t horrified by the relic—only by myself. My mind was a parody reel. I groaned out loud, disgusted with my own irreverence, just as I realized I was no longer alone.

A family in Sunday clothes had formed behind me—father, mother, a small boy with slicked hair—all blinking at me like I’d farted in a library. I nodded awkwardly and moved aside.

Outside, the wind gnawed through my hoodie and cassock. The colors of the city seemed dulled, as if San Francisco had been washed too many times on cold.

Under the awning of a corner grocery, I spotted a man in a wheelchair, bundled in layers of gray and brown corduroy. A laminated sign hung around his neck on a plastic string:

NEED HELP WITH EVERYTHING.

He was sleeping, chin to chest. His hands, gloved in fingerless leather-palmed mitts, rested like folded wings beneath the sign.

I stood near him for a while. I didn’t have anywhere to be. My body worked, his didn’t, and it seemed natural to just... stand there, in case he needed something. 

I recited The Prayer.  Fifteen minutes passed. Then twenty. At forty, I started wondering if something was wrong. If he’d died there, would anyone know? Would anyone care?

Just as my concern started pulling me away from the prayer, he stirred.

His eyelids cracked open like a reluctant vault. His gaze found me slowly—staring at my black robe, my tired, expectant face. He seemed to recognize something. Or maybe he just saw a shadow worth acknowledging.

He nodded.

Then tried to speak.

But coughed instead—one sharp, painful bark—and a white fleck of phlegm landed on his coat like a snowflake that didn’t belong anywhere.

---

“Can I help you?” I asked.

The old man stirred and cleared his throat one final time. Then he slowly raised one of his filthy gloves and studied me like a man scanning a far-off horizon.

“By the look in your eyes,” he rasped, “I can tell I’m not the one of us who needs help.”

I tried to offer him sixty dollars anyway, folded bills extended like an apology.

“Listen,” he said, waving it off, “you’ve got one oar in the water and you’re just spinning in circles.”

I froze. How did he know? My lack of direction had started as an ache, and now it was written across my whole body, like a billboard only strangers could read.

“I just want to go back to the monastery,” I said, voice thick with tears.

He pointed west, toward the crags of Seal Rock.

“Well, that ain’t an option. I’ve seen that look before—in Nam. Next thing you know, it’s a jump off the cliffs… or a one-way ticket to the psych ward.” He nodded toward the hospital across the street.

“But where do I go?”

“You could start by not walking in circles. You got a mom, don’t you? Something to do this summer?”

“She wants me to go fishing again. Alaska. Says Peter was a fisherman, and that maybe I’ll clear my head.”

I told him about the cathedral. About St. John’s dried-up corpse. About how I’d come looking for awe or clarity, but all I’d gotten was a cartoon punchline and a sense of spiritual impotence.

“Fishing is something,” the old man said. “Better than this. You’re in an eddy, Luke. You need a current.”

“You sure you don’t want this money?” I asked again. “I can push you somewhere, I can—”

“Use it for a bus ticket. Go home.”

“You knew my name,” I said.

He coughed again, then smiled.

“You’ve got a bus to catch. Don’t worry about me—I got someone coming.”

I waited for him to say more, but he’d already shut his eyes.

---

I walked the length of Geary like a ghost with a blanket cape. Cars hissed past, splashing filth. The deeper I walked, the more I disappeared into the anonymous choreography of the city. At Seal Rock, the ocean mist kissed the cracked cheeks of San Francisco. Everything glistened with a wetness that felt tender and cruel all at once.

I wandered down toward the caves that once terrified me as a boy. I’d imagined they were the throats of sea monsters. Now, they just seemed like postcard sadness, worn out and graffitied.

But I had a plan.

Fishing in Alaska. That was something.

Three seals on the rocks barked at the sky, then fell quiet, then barked again, like they were debating the nature of being.

As twilight settled over the Pacific, I climbed to a concrete shelter with a metal roof, crawled inside, and wrapped myself in the blue wool blanket. The rain returned in sheets, but I was dry. Sort of.

I slept in fits—shivering, dreaming of nothing in particular.

Around midnight, the cold on the cement grew teeth. I stood and started walking again. In the empty hours, with no altar and no god to prop me up, I whispered the Jesus Prayer like it was a lullaby of pure gibberish.  

I wandered through city streets soaked in coppery light. At some point, I ran into a man with a bag of donuts.

I chose the apple fritter, of course.

Thought of Mark.

“Problem is I get high on my own supply,” said the man with seven teeth, tapping his belly with delight.

“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us,” I said.

“Amen, brotha!” he hollered, cackling like twigs snapping.

“You know where the Greyhound station is?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s far, my brotha. You’ll want a bus.”

“I want to hoof it,” I said. “Walk and pray till I find some cardboard. You know of an alley with any?”

“Nope. But God bless you.”

“Amen,” I said, and kept walking.

I could only afford a ticket to Santa Rosa, which is to say I could afford one leg of the prayer home. But as soon as I sat down in the back of the Greyhound, my body went full Lazarus-in-reverse. I died a blue wool death. Face pressed to the window, knees to the seat back, I slept like the world was over and nobody told me I’d survived.

At some point the bus hissed to a halt, something murmured through the haze—maybe Santa Rosa? Maybe Venus? Maybe the voice of God asking if I’d prefer window or aisle? But I drifted deeper.

The road unwound up I-5, into realms unspoken by ticket stubs or reasonable expectations. My consciousness lifted now and again like a broken garage door—squeak, creak, slam—and then I was back in blackout oblivion, a monk on ambien with a head full of fog and no monastery in sight.

It was Portland when I was jostled awake.

“Sir… your ticket?” the bus driver asked, voice clipped.

I blinked, half-asleep, and lazily fished the folded stub from my pocket under my robe. He took it, read Santa Rosa, and his face went flat—expressionless, but with a quiet malice blooming beneath the surface.

The driver was wiry—one of those Vietnam leftovers pickled in diesel and quiet suffering. His frame was all elbows and regret, leaning on a bad hip with a limp he tried to hide but couldn’t. His jaw was locked tight like he'd swallowed a secret in 1971 and it never quite went down. One eye yellowed, maybe jaundiced, maybe just tired of looking at the world.

He held my ticket like it had insulted his mama.

“Santa Rosa?” he said, slow and southern. “Boy, that was six hundred miles ago.”

I yawned. Loudly. Something about his accent made me toss my hair behind my shoulder.  Maybe I batted an eyelash.

He studied me a second longer, robe and all, squinting like he was trying to solve a riddle that stank.

“You a priest?”

I gave him a languid blink, tilted my head just so. “Oh, heavens no, darling.”

That made his eyebrow twitch.

“Then what the hell’re you doin’ dressed like that?” he asked, voice scratchy like gravel in a coffee grinder. “You one o’ them transvestites?”

I straightened up, chin high, and let the character bloom like a spring flower in the gutter. It was second nature, a persona I used to slip into years to hand out with the LGTB club as a Q activist petitioning for inclusivity.

“Well,” I purred, voice sliding up an octave and trailing with tragic theatricality, “if you must know, I’m a monastery reject in a stolen robe. A scandal! Kicked out before I could even take vows. Apparently, obedience and I don’t quite see eye to eye.”

He shifted, clearly disturbed but too tired to process it. His fingers twitched like they wanted to reach for something—authority, clarity, a cigarette—but found only air.

“You oughta wear more makeup,” he muttered, eye darting toward the front of the bus. “If you're gonna do it, go all in.”

“Oh sweetheart,” I sighed, flipping imaginary curls, “you couldn’t handle me all in.”

He stepped aside, gripped my elbow, tried to assert some control, but he was brittle. I could’ve broken free like cracking dry kindling. He knew it. I knew it. That’s why I stayed in character—because it was fun, and because I knew he couldn’t keep me if I didn’t let him.

He tugged my arm awkwardly. “We’re waitin’ outside.”

“No,” I said, stopping cold and pointing toward the fluorescent-lit station. “It’s late. It’s cold. I’m the leading lady in this tragic farce, and you, my reluctant custodian. The very least you can do is be a gentleman.”

His lips parted to protest—but he spotted them. Two security guards inside. Sipping coffee. Bored, but not too bored to notice a struggling old-timer manhandling a robed weirdo with femme intonations.

His grip loosened. A sigh escaped like steam from a cracked valve.

“Inside then,” he muttered.

“That’s more like it,” I whispered, sweeping us forward, the two of us wading into the fluorescent purgatory, equal parts awkward and divine.

And in that moment, I let myself enjoy the absurdity—me, the fallen monk in stolen vestments, dragging this jaundiced relic of Nixon-era masculinity behind me like a tattered veil.

Then came security—two guards whose names were probably Chad and Also Chad. They zip-tied my hands like I’d hijacked the bus with the power of slumber alone. I didn’t resist. I was zen incarnate. Go limp, let the tide take you. I’d already been spiritually detained by my own apathy.

One of them—probably the more literate Chad—radioed the cops while I sat on the bench, zip-tied and watching the bus driver converse with the Chads.

When the cops arrived, they were everything I’d hoped for: one had the posture of a cornfed stoic, the other looked like a sentient hangover. I dropped my flamboyant character and explained the situation as concisely as possible.

“Fell asleep,” I said. “Had a ticket to Santa Rosa. Woke up in Portland.”

Hangover Cop blinked, scratched his jaw like he was trying to dislodge a memory from his stubble. Stoic Cop processed.

“Ticket’s no good now,” I added. “Didn’t even know I was here till the bus driver woke me up.”

Hangover Cop sighed the sigh of a man who has seen too many unpaid citations and not enough donuts. “So what happens if we write him a ticket?” he asked Stoic Cop. “He won’t pay it. Then collections, warrants, clerks… That’s hours of paper-pushing to get blood from a spiritual stone.”

Stoic Cop looked at the driver, who, bless him, did not press charges. Just nodded like a man who’d seen too much, including me.

They snipped the zip-ties.

“Don’t do it again,” Hangover Cop said without looking at me.

“Thank you,” I replied.

And then I was loose. Cast into the brisk air of Portland’s night like a freed lab rat that still smelled of latex and accidental dreams. I stepped out into streets slick with indifference and neon drizzle. My feet remembered how to move before my brain did.

The night looked like a watercolor painted by a sleep-deprived mime. Buses wheezed like asthmatic rhinos, bars pulsed with the laughter of the unrepentant, and I—weird prophet with a blue, wool blanket draped around his head and shoulders—walked among them, unwashed but tethered to a magnetic itch pulling me north. Storybook north—the kind with oil-slick harbors and salmon like muscle-bound confessions flinging themselves into nets I didn’t yet know how to set. The land of Jack London fever dreams and gold-lust ghosts; a place where men either find something, freeze trying, or turn into folk songs. I had no clew what nine nets meant, but it sounded like a riddle the sea would eventually answer.

---

That summer, I worked, the salmon run in Kenai, Alaska. Whatever mystical glow I carried from Wilkeson or Arcata or St. Anthony’s got salted and sunburned right off.

I bunked with seven fishermen who smelled like guts and grease and whose spiritual practice was to swear with creativity.

I once asked my bunkmate where my rubber gloves were, and when he joked they were up his ass, I barked, “If they are, I’ll nut in your mouth, you fuckin’ fuck, where are my gloves?”

No saints. No skulls. No skull-head bony hands.

My job was brutal in its simplicity: haul the set-nets into the aluminum boat, pluck the salmon quick as you could, toss them into sloshy bins while the captain barked curses so poetic they could blister paint. The tide came in like a freight train, always faster, meaner, the nets bulging with fish and seaweed and the weight of the North Pacific herself. That last net always felt like trying to reel in a drowned moon.

The boat was a thirty-foot slab of aluminum—ugly, loud, and without mercy. No cabin, no cover. Just diesel breath, fish guts, salt spray, and the unholy choir of gulls overhead. We worked soaked and shivering or sunbaked and stinking, always exhausted.

There was no Jesus Prayer out there. No quiet repetition, no peaceful breath. Just shouting and slipping and raw muscle memory. I swore more than I spoke. My hands were aching and calloused. My back was a knot of fatigue.

But later—after the haul, on shore—when we’d dumped the fish and cracked open beers, I’d sit on an overturned bucket with a blanket draped around my shoulders and let the ache settle in. That’s when someone would fire up the boombox. Pink Floyd, always. Wish You Were Here, The Wall, Dark Side—the same CDs that had once distracted me from the Jesus Prayer in St. Anthony.

And with the irony, there was a release, a slow unhooking from who I thought I was supposed to be.

The prayer I had clung to like a lifeline was let go—not in rebellion, but in relief. My longing didn’t vanish; it transmuted. No more monk costume, no more spiritual father’s guiding hand. Just a quiet, aching acceptance.

I was just me.

And for the first time in a long time, I knew exactly what I was supposed to be doing at all times.  The only mercy came in the trailer where we’d coat our hands in Tiger Balm and slip off into sweet oblivion, comfortably numb.

Interlude: Spokane County Jail

“Yeah, that’s pretty much how my monk phase concluded,” I told Chris. I was on my side on the bottom bunk of our 10 x 10 cell. He’d gotten up to pee once, but mostly he’d been stretched out on the top bunk while I wrapped up my monastic memoir.

“Did you ever go back to the monastery?” Chris asked.

“Yeah, I hitched back a year later. August, 1999. Talked with Fr. Paisios, but it was all broken. The spell, or whatever had been between us, gone.”

“Your Geronta?”

“Yeah, that one. Not the big one—the one I almost killed.”

“I know. Paisios. The guy who told you it was all The Devil. How was he when you showed up?”

“Cordial. I told him I didn’t know what life was about anymore. He basically said, ‘Keep looking.’ I felt lost for a year and a half. Then I ate a pound of psilocybin mushrooms.”

“You mean an ounce.”

“No, a pound. Three solo cups full.”

“Why?”

“For the story.”

“Alright, cool,” Chris said, rubbing his eyes. “But maybe you can tell me tomorrow. My attention span’s shot, and I keep tuning out.”

“Goodnight. And thanks for listening.”

“Yeah. Cool story, monk-bro.”

Despite the thin mat, I slept like a baby and woke up fresh as a daisy.

“Are these even eggs?” Chris asked the next morning as our breakfast trays clunked through the slot. He was stabbing the fluorescent flubber with his plastic spoon.

“Maybe it’s eggs mixed with some kind of gelatinous goo,” I offered. “What do you wanna bet this stuff glows in the dark? Probably toxic waste. But I’ll take yours if you’re not gonna eat it.”

“No, you got your own. Don’t ask for mine.”

“I can’t even ask?”

“No. I mean—please don’t. That’s how the Nazi used to punish me. If I didn’t exercise, he’d eat my food.”

“That’s one hell of a motivator.”

“No, dude, what the hell? That fucker said if I couldn’t do a hundred push-ups a day—which I couldn’t—he’d eat half my food. I had to earn my calories.”

“My bad,” I said. “I’m guessing you weren’t about to tell the guards.”

“Yeah, great idea, Jasper. Tell the guards about the demonic shithead who listens to every word I say. Would you? No—let me rephrase that: you’d have to be a complete moron to think telling the guards would help.”

“The squeaky wheel gets the grease—and maybe the guard hands you some lube.”

“The fuck?”

“Nevermind. But if you started screaming through the slot—”

“They wouldn’t do shit. They’d laugh. You know what he told me once?”

“The guard?”

“No! Weren’t you listening? I didn’t say a damn word to the guards. I’m talking about the Nazi. He said the only way he’d beat someone up in here was with body shots. Said a black eye’s a dead giveaway, but nobody notices blood in your piss from a clobbered kidney. Isn’t that sick?” He whispered it.

“Damn, Chris. He didn’t do… anything?” I watched his face, half-expecting a deeper confession.

“No. Not that kind of stuff,” he said, eyes down. “But you’ve seen what they give us to eat. It’s barely enough. I was starving.” He took a bite of the questionable egg product. “Who knows? Maybe it gives us powers. Like the Ninja Turtles. I could use some of those.”

“Yes,” I nodded. “It does look radioactive.”

“Oh, score!” he said. “Look! Three napkins! They’re stuck together!” He peeled them apart, holding them up like raffle prizes.

He looked so proud I burst out laughing.

“What?” he asked, beaming. “This is awesome, right?”

“It’s the look on your face, man. Like Charlie finding a golden ticket. I don’t know. Priceless.  We’re not too bad off here, are we?”

“This place is shit,” he muttered, joy already fading.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” I said. “Unlike you, I’m probably looking at community service. Maybe time served if I’m lucky. I laughed because—day to day—it’s not so bad with Buddy Chris when he finds an extra napkin. I’m trying to look on the bright side. Even if we’re starving, you’re alright to kick it with.”

“Huh,” he said, deflating. “Thanks. But my life feels over.”

“Hey, it could be worse. They could’ve given you one napkin. And I could’ve been another push-up demanding Nazi.”

“It could always be worse,” Chris huffed. His mood slid from napkin glee to napkin grief, then settled into a tired kind of nothing.

“A lot worse.”

“Is that really the point?” he asked. “Even if you’re getting kicked in the balls, someone else could be having their fingernails ripped off. Is that supposed to help?”

“Hey Chris, how about I spin ya another yarn, something to ease your mind about a time when I broke mine?”

He walked to the window slit, fidgeting. 

“Whatever. Because now I’m thinking about the car in the impound and it makes me feel helpless. Hopeless.”

“Alright, in this one, assume I ate a pound of fresh psilocybin mushrooms, got voices in my head, and I’m about to encounter Michael the Archangel on the Big Island of Hawaii.”

“Wait. A pound?” he said, staring out the window. “Thought you agreed you misspoke and it was an ounce.”

“Three solo cups filled to the brim  Over a pound, honestly. But this story’s not about that night.  It’s about the aftermath.”

“Well, tell me about that night.”

“No, I want to tell you about two weeks after that night, when something sinister happened and—”

“Can’t you just shoot it straight?”

“Nah. Linear story-telling isn’t the way.”

“You suck but whatever.”

“You ever had auditory hallucinations?”

“Plenty. Get an eight-ball of meth and stay up for a week, you’ll see and hear some shit. Guaranteed.”

“Garanz ball barenz,” I said.

“Yeah, whatever that means—”

“Pidgin.”

“But yeah, meth takes you through all the dimensions until your brain’s split across fifteen timelines and you’re completely incoherent, but the meth won’t let you stop. And it’s the sleep deprivation that really tears you down. Shows you the raw feed.”

“Noice.”

“Not really. But maybe it was. Hell and back. I wouldn’t do it again. But that’s why I’m listening now. A pound of boomers? You must’ve pile-drived all your matter into a cosmic suplex.”

“Yeah, but at least I met Gabriel.  No body, but a cool dude.”

“Oh, the voice in your head?”

“Yeppers.  I was really emotionally raw after the break-up with Erin.  Had no business eating all those mushrooms.”

“She was the one? The one that got away?”

“I lost her because I couldn’t say it, man. Just couldn’t.”

“Say what?”

“The words she needed to hear. I couldn’t. Or didn’t. I should have.”

“Wait—how’d you two meet? Start there.”

Chapter 2: The First Cut

I thought back to the first time I saw her—May 2000, the Folklife Festival, under the Space Needle, where patchouli smoke curled like pagan incense and the drum circle pulsed with the desperate rhythm of mixed kids trying to summon ancestors they never met. I was barefoot with weed swirling in my bloodstream and half a falafel tucked into my cargo pocket for later. I was a little stoned, a little dizzy, and wildly, catastrophically single.

That’s when I saw her.

Or thought I saw her.

She was standing just outside the circle, looking at me like she’d dropped down through a wormhole from a better dimension. Eyes scintillating. A celestial smirk that said: You. Yes, you. It was so surreal, I figured it had to be a trap. A mirage. A stoner hallucination.

I literally shook my head and waved her off like nice try, brain. But then her expression changed—surprised, even a little hurt—and just like that, I was sprinting toward her, dodging dancers, bongos, and a dude selling vegan brownies with questionable legality.

“Are you real?” I asked, breathless.

“Am I what?” she said, cupping her ear. “I can’t hear you. Come.”

She grabbed my hand like we’d already eloped in a past life and led me out of the chaos to a cement bench that looked like it had hosted thousands of awkward teen breakups. She sat cross-legged beside me, chin in her hand, studying me like I was a riddle she’d already solved.

“You asked if I’m real?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Because you looked at me like a Disney princess, and I didn’t think you were real. You stared at me like I mattered, and I’m just not used to that.”

“Nobody thinks you matter?” she asked.

“No,” I admitted. “But I’m rambling because you’re beautiful and asking me questions, and also, yes, I’m very high.”

She grinned. “How high?”

“High enough to promise you anything. Diamonds. Waffles. A jet ski. Name it.”

She tilted her head, eyes skeptical but twinkling. Almond-shaped eyes, chestnut curls, lips curled like she knew the punchline to a joke I hadn’t lived through yet. I told her all of that. She laughed.

Her name was Erin. She worked as a hostess at Red Robin, had her own car, and was seventeen with one year of high school left. Her real love was drama. Theater. The stage. I asked her to sing something. She said no. Always no. Until eight months later, on Christmas, when she gave me a homemade CD: her voice, angelic, singing Waiting on an Angel by Ben Harper.

It wrecked me. Because I knew I wasn’t her angel. But she was definitely the catalyst that broke my brain enough for me to find mine.

Without Erin dismantling my ego like a Jenga tower in a windstorm, I wouldn’t have been open to the voice of Gabriel—the disembodied homie, the cosmic hotline, the angelic dude whispering metaphysics into my skull.

And sex? Erin was, as she put it, “an oral girl.” Which was just fine by me. She tasted like sour candy and came easily, often, and unapologetically. She credited her Filipina side. Said one of her Filipina friends could orgasm twenty times in one night. I was not ready for that conversation and apparently looked like someone who’d been handed a live grenade.

I’d only been with one other girl before—a five-second trainwreck best left off my resume. But Erin? I could last with her. But only in the cell.

My room was split: upstairs futon for the born-again slacker; downstairs concrete slab for the ghost of my monastic past. The cell was ascetic purgatory, just a rug over cold floor. That’s where I used to pray, fast, repent before the monastery. Erin insisted we do it there. 

She’d climb on top like a Valkyrie exacting tribute—eyes locked, hips in full siege mode. I wasn’t thrusting. I wasn’t even moving. I was just in there, buried to the hilt, like a forgotten relic in a pressure chamber. And she gyrated. Not tenderly, not sensually—with intention. Every twist sent a shockwave through my nervous system. My dick, bless its soft-tissue heart, was not designed for this kind of torsion. It’s a blood sock, not rebar. And she was wringing it out like she was trying to exorcise demons. I clenched my teeth, went somewhere far away in my mind, and tried not to scream. She finished with a satisfied gasp, looked down at my trauma-numbed face, and called it monk sex. As if I were being spiritually purified through passive, throbbing martyrdom. I wasn’t having sex—I was surviving.

But at least she got hers.

“I know I can’t compete with your Isu Xriste,” she said once. “But you should still thank me. Just don’t ask for mercy.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t deserve it, Bear. You have to earn it.”

By the end of the first week, I told her I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. But now that she was here, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: stupid, openhearted joy. She was my Shroom Boomio. My extra life. My 1-Up mushroom.

Two weeks in, she revealed her actual superpower.

I’d found a porno magazine in a grocery cart at the Safeway where I worked as a courtesy clerk retrieving carts from the parking lot. Plumpers, the magazine, had been abandoned. Not my usual choice, but the woman on page six had a sparkle in her eye and a grin like she just won a pie-eating contest. At home, I went for it. Thirty seconds of shame and fury. Then I tucked the mag under the rug in the cell, flopped onto the futon upstairs, and vowed to be a better man.

Then I heard tires on gravel.

Erin opened the door.

She smiled. Raised an eyebrow.

“What?” I said.

Without a word, she walked into the cell, lifted the rug, pulled out the magazine, flipped to the exact page, and held it up.

“Her?” she said. “Really?”

I froze. “How did you—?”

“Hold on.”

She took my hand, led me upstairs, shut the curtains.

“Sit on the futon. Cross your legs. Face me.”

She sat across from me, pointer fingers held close together like she was tuning a spiritual radio.

“What color do you see?”

“Orange.”

“Correct. Your aura is green right now, but mine is orange. But when you're in the cell, it turns red.”

“Okay but—how did you know about the magazine?”

“Bear. Let me explain.”

She said she had a gift. Not just empathy. Sight. If she thought about someone deeply enough, a kind of diagonal split-screen appeared in her mind. Her thoughts on the bottom, theirs on the top. If she focused, she could see through your eyes.

“You could be famous,” I said, sincerely.

She laughed like I’d told her she could fly by flapping hard enough.

“I don’t tell people. But I trust you. And when you jerked off to that woman, I laughed so hard I slowed down on the freeway and got honked at.”

Noticing my look of bewilderment, she suggested we do an exercise..

“Picture something colorful,” she said.

I thought of Santa Claus.

“Red and white,” she said, frowning. “That was supposed to be Santa? Weak, Bear.”

I tried a school bus.

“Yellow. Black wheels. Spokes.” She opened her eyes. “School bus?”

I nodded, stunned. “I was mentally singing The Wheels on the Bus. Did you hear it?”

“I don’t hear. I just see.”

A month later, she showed up with red-rimmed eyes. Her dad had accused her of lying, called her a whore, and grabbed her by the throat. She pulled down her hoodie to show me the bruises on her neck.

She moved in that day.

Mom liked her. So did Aurora. Erin commuted to Red Robin a few nights a week, 45 minutes each way. School was out. Summer had begun.

I had no plan.

But I had Erin.

And she could read me like a picture book.

She moved into my bedroom like she was finishing a sentence we’d been writing since that first eye-lock at Folklife. For a while, everything felt like a fuzzy montage scored by a Broadway musical and hormones. But then I woke up one morning and something was off. The air felt thinner. Her breathing didn’t sound like music. And looking at her sleeping face gave me a knot in my stomach, not butterflies.

I frowned. Not because she’d changed—she looked just as beautiful, maybe more so. But something in me had shifted. Without warning, a dark wave of clarity crashed into me: I don’t love her anymore. It felt like someone had burglarized my heart overnight and taken the crown jewel.

She stirred. Opened her eyes.

“Bear, are you okay?” she asked, sitting up.

I looked away. “I don’t know if I love you,” I blurted, staring at my twitching fingers like they were to blame.

She blinked. Smiled faintly, maybe waiting for the punchline.

We had The Talk.

She explained, in calm NPR tones, that the brain releases all these chemicals when you first fall for someone—dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin—and those fade. Everyone goes through it. That’s biology. That’s life.

Which made me feel worse.

Reducing our connection to brain soup? The same magic that had split my soul open at Folklife now had a half-life?

But what really bugged me was this feeling that she had turned off the magic spigot and didn’t tell me. The pure bliss I’d felt was gone. Now she was... familiar. Just a person with shaped eyebrows she called her birds and eyes like flying saucers, yes, but the royal illusion had evaporated. My Shroom Boomio had become mortal.

“It’s like I was robbed in my sleep,” I said.

“You’re being dramatic,” she replied. “It’s kind of cute. But stop.”

I may have teared up. I may have fled to the computer room where my oldest sister had stashed a half gallon of tequila.  With the door locked, I might’ve taken a few too many medicinal swigs, hoping to dissolve whatever bitterness had curdled my insides.  Didn’t work.

“I know you love me, Bear,” she said through the door.

I wanted to believe her. God, I tried. But when I saw her face, glowing like always, all I felt was the echo of something that used to be there. I felt like a mannequin on a movie set—hollow, posed, and profoundly out of place. And yeah, she saw it. Of course she did.

She left. Said she needed space. Went to her friend’s house. The next afternoon, she called.

“Can I come grab my things?”

I panicked. Apologized. Told her I was an idiot. That yes, maybe she was right about brain chemistry, but I had handled it like a sleep-deprived caveman.

“Do you still want me?” she asked.

“I do.”

“It seemed like you were rejecting me. Like you were looking at me like I was... disgusting.”

“I don’t want to blame the tequila. Or anyone. Maybe it’s just... chemicals. Love. It’s a ride. I got thrown. You broke it down like a magician explaining the trick, and suddenly the wonder was gone. I didn’t expect that.”

“You seriously haven’t heard of the honeymoon phase?”

“Eh, I’m not up on what you kids are saying these days,” I said in my best old-man voice.

She groaned. “I hate that voice.”

When her friend told her I was a predator for dating a high school junior at age twenty, I invented the character of Wheezie Wendleton—my creepy old alter ego.

She laughed, and just like that, the storm clouds lifted a little.

“I still think love is a lie—or at least, whatever I used to think was love,” I said. “That rush, that high... it fades. And when it does, you’re left with something quieter. But I think you know what I mean. You know how I feel, even if I can’t name it anymore.”

“You’re more emotionally honest than I am,” she said.

“No, you’re the grown-up. I’m getting grandfather energy from you.”

“You’re not funny when you try to be.”

“But you laughed when I said I’d kill myself if you cut your hair.”

“That was funny because of how serious you looked. And I’ve said it a thousand times: you belong on stage.”

“Okay, Grandfather,” I teased.

She snorted. “I’m just gonna come grab my stuff. We don’t need to talk. I’ll just pull up, run in, grab my things. Maybe don’t be in the room when I get there—sound good?”

“Um... no.” My stomach curled. I felt a thousand spiders skittering up my spine.

“Bear, I’m joking. I thought you liked jokes. I’ll be there in 45. Might not stay long.”

“Ouch. Okay.”

For 45 minutes, I cleaned my room like it was being inspected by royalty. I was ready when her Honda rolled up, gravel crunching like tension under tires. She stepped out, shielding her eyes from the sun—or maybe from me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“If I unvisor my eyes, who am I gonna see?”

“Me. Bear?”

“Will you look at me like I’m garbage?”

“No, lemme see my Shroom Boomio.”

She dropped her hand. Her eyes—still those perfect chocolate saucers—were rimmed in red, heavy with sleeplessness and second-guessing. She was breathing deep, slow. Measuring.

I opened my mouth to say something stupid, but she shut me up with a single look—a raised brow that said Don’t ruin this. Then, silently, she took me by the hand and led me into the cell.

─────────────────────────────────

Near the end of June, Shiloh and I decided to hitch out to a National Rainbow Gathering in Montana. Erin couldn’t come—her job at Red Robin kept her duty bound—but she told me to keep up with my journaling. “I want to read it all when you get back,” she said, which made it feel like I was leaving on assignment. I promised I’d write her the whole wild tale, and off we went.

The first day, we made it to Medical Lake, where my dad lived. We drank some boxed wine, played questionable chess, sang badly harmonized songs, and conked out around one in the morning. In the blue murk of predawn, Dad was already up—clanging pans, talk radio blaring. Shiloh and I stumbled into the kitchen for coffee. On his way to work, he dropped us at a decent onramp on Spokane’s east side.

From there, the trip turned into a slow-motion relay race. A string of reluctant rides inched us eastward, each one delivered by a uniquely irritated woman who clearly didn’t approve of hitchhikers—especially ones like Shiloh, who looked younger than she was. They’d pick us up just long enough to lecture her about safety and grill me like I was smuggling a teen runaway. A cop pulled over at the Liberty Lake onramp, suspicion written all over his face. But we passed inspection: Shiloh was eighteen, I had ID, and I told him she was my sister—which, in this case, was entirely true.

He let us go, and we caught another ride into Post Falls. Then, around mid-afternoon, just as the sun had that warm, buttery angle, a 1970s VW Bus pulled over—painted in full psychedelic bloom, flowers and stars and cartoon mushrooms drifting across its rusted frame. The middle-aged couple inside waved us in like we were returning from war.

“You headed to the Gathering?” they asked.

“Yeah,” we said.

“You’re in luck,” the driver smiled. “We’re family.”

“You like the Grateful Dead?” he asked.

“They’re the best!” I lied.

Shiloh elbowed me in the ribs. She knew I found the Dead musically aimless and Jerry Garcia’s voice a little too helium-and-hayfever for my taste. But this was Rainbow diplomacy.

In the front seat, the woman—wrapped in tie-dye with an infant sleeping in a chest hammock—fished weed from a mason jar and packed a glass bubbler shaped like a dragon. She lit it with a torch lighter and passed it back to me.

I hit it, coughed hard enough to impress her, and she smiled. “Home grown,” she said.

Shiloh took a hit, and as the pipe made its way back up front, something inside me dropped. Not metaphorically—dropped. My inner sense of self began to fall through itself, like an elevator plummeting with no bottom. I closed my eyes and expanded into a terrifying vastness. Then I heard it:

“You are ours,” said a voice.

Not a hippie voice. Not a friendly mushroom elf. No—this was low, ancient, and unmistakably demonic.

My eyes flew open. I started breathing in quick, shallow bursts. The air in the bus had changed—thicker, charged, tainted. I whimpered.

Shiloh looked over. “Are you okay?”

I turned to her, trembling, eyes wide. “Shiloh... I’m in hell.”

Whatever she saw in my face hit her like a punch. Her expression cracked.

“Stop the van!” she yelled.

It took the driver a few seconds to register it wasn’t a suggestion. He veered to the shoulder and rolled to a stop. Shiloh flung the door open before we’d fully parked, sprinted up the embankment, and puked into the dry yellow grass.

The deadheads stayed in the van. “Everything okay?” they called back.

I ignored them. Shiloh staggered back down, wiping her mouth.

“I don’t think I can go,” I said, meaning the Gathering.

“Are you going back to the monastery?” she asked, reading my mind.

“I don’t know. Maybe. But I can’t go to the gathering.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “That was... messed up.”

“What did you see?”

Shiloh shook her head.

Just then, an 18-wheeler screamed by, honking so loud the bus trembled. She handed me my pack, slid the van door shut, and stepped away.

The VW pulled off, wobbling back into traffic. Only then did I realize: I should’ve asked to get out somewhere near an overpass. Now I was on the wrong side of I-90, in the wake of something dark and unspoken.

Back on Fox Island with Erin, things were good—on the surface. We laughed a lot, talked freely, but she didn’t exactly appreciate my growing fondness for bitter irony. She had no patience for my “emotional complexity,” which is a polite way of saying I was becoming an insufferable little emo prince. She adored Chris Cornell but refused to play Flutter Girl just because I loved it. Said it was too self-indulgent. “'I give my pain for free'—yeah, that's a little much,” she said. But she had a knack for pulling me back from the brink, talking me down from my ruminative ledges with startling efficiency. Her success rate was unsettling.

I had signed up for fall semester at Tacoma Community College and roamed campus like a ghost haunting a bureaucratic nightmare. Geology didn’t rock. Psychology was all common sense and obvious, and Math 99 was a cinder block wall I clawed at with bleeding fingernails until I gave up and walked away. My financial aid check kept gas in the tank, but after limping through the semester like a wounded marsupial, I decided to take time off and get a job.

After applying all over Gig Harbor, I landed a gig at a Cuban restaurant called Cubana, thanks to Wallace, the head waiter, who saw something in me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t table-waiting talent.

The owner was a 24-year-old wunderkind with icy blue eyes and an unnerving habit of staring like he could hypnotize steak into medium-rare. He only showed up on Thursdays, which just so happened to be both comedy night and baller night—as in, literal ballers. Towering men, most well over 6'3", rolled in with NBA swagger and a dusting of gray at the temples, like ghosts of glory days past. Bald heads gleamed under the low lights, and some lit cigars like they’d never left the VIP lounge. Their women were all dimes dressed to the elevens—slip dresses, runway hair, stilettos, and that haunting air of a double life. Wallace said they were high-end escorts, limo-delivered and handpicked by the wunderkid himself, who was, allegedly, a basketball fanatic with money to realize his dreams.

On New Year's Eve, Wallace informed me that actual members of the Seattle Supersonics were coming. Real ones. The dining area was reserved. Showtime.

Now, one thing about the wunderkind: he hated when servers used notepads. Thought it was “tacky” and beneath his high-concept vision of casual elegance. He wanted us to memorize everything.

So there I was, standing in front of a nine-top, no notepad, hands folded behind my back like a nervous intern at a mob trial. The table was alive with cigar smoke, clinking glass, and the kind of laughter that follows jokes that aren't funny but are said by rich people, so everyone laughs anyway. One woman, who looked like Whitney Houston with reptilian green eyes, pointed at me and said, “He’s making me nervous, this poor white boy.”

Everyone laughed. I smiled like a hostage.

As I walked to the kitchen, repeating the order in my head like it was a sacred mantra, Trenton—a wiry redhead with a pixie face and a bad attitude—locked eyes with me, and just like that, my brain bluescreened.

“Uh... three Caesars, three penne pastas, two calamari, two New York steaks, both well-done with fries, a prime rib, and...” I hesitated. “A T-bone, medium rare?”

Trenton blinked. I knew I’d fucked it up but said nothing.

Thirty minutes later, we brought the food out. The tallest man at the table—half a head taller than me sitting down—looked at his plate, then at me. Slowly, with majestic disappointment, he shook his head.

“I ordered a Tomahawk,” he said. “Not a T-bone. Can I speak with your manager?”

Wallace appeared like a disappointed parent at a parent-teacher conference. He apologized profusely to the table and assured them he would personally attend to their needs.

In the back, he sighed and said, “It was you or me. But messing up Sean Kemp’s steak?”

“Sean who?” I asked.

“Sean Kemp. The Sonics' number one player.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna have you use the back door. I’ll silence the alarm.”

And that was how I got fired in front of the Seattle Supersonics.

With about a thousand bucks to my name and a growing itch in my soul, I felt the road calling.

Erin looked at me with a mix of hurt and confusion when I told her I needed to go. I couldn’t explain it clearly. There was something under the surface—pulling, humming, calling me out of the life I’d tried to make fit. I packed up my 1977 Toyota Celica and drove to Kalispell, Montana, hoping my childhood friend Cody could get me a job. Maybe teach me to snowboard. Maybe remind me who the hell I was supposed to be.

The drive from Gig Harbor to Kalispell took ten hours, two mountain passes, and a mounting sense of doubt. As I wound through the Rockies, I kept wondering how Cody would react to me showing up unannounced after years of silence and a spiritual detour that had made me significantly weirder than I used to be. When I finally pulled up to the old double-wide on the outskirts of town, I knocked on the familiar door with a mix of hope and dread.

It wasn’t Cody who answered—it was his dad, looking like he’d just woken up from a nap he hadn’t consented to. His mom appeared behind him, arms crossed, mouth tight.

“Hi,” I said, grinning like a Labrador caught in the rain. “Is Cody home?”

They exchanged a glance that said everything. “Nope,” his dad said flatly. “He’s down in Oregon. Snowboarding.”

“Oh,” I nodded, trying not to let my face fall. “That’s cool. Mt. Hood?”

“Yup,” said his mom, unmoved.

I stood there, hoping they’d offer me a spot on the couch, or at least a patch of carpet with a blanket. “Well, hey,” I added with a forced chuckle, “I guess I should’ve called.”

“You should’ve,” his dad replied.

I stood there a second too long, still grinning, like maybe my dumb optimism could manifest a place to crash. It didn’t.

“Well,” I said, slapping my thigh. “I guess I’ll find a place.”

“Good luck,” his mom said, and the door closed with the soft finality of a guillotine.

That night I curled up in the front seat of my Celica, parked outside an Ace Hardware, shivering in the brittle Montana dark. Even if Cody had been home, I was starting to suspect this whole Kalispell detour had been a bad idea.

The next morning, I turned the Celica around and began the long crawl back to Washington, gripping the wheel like it owed me answers, with disappointment riding shotgun and silence hanging thick in the passenger seat.

Erin was thrilled to see me, practically glowing with hope. But just looking at her—at how deeply she loved me, needed me, believed in me—I felt something ugly stir. Not because she wasn’t enough, but because I wasn’t. The guilt of not feeling what she felt, of not being able to mirror that back with the same purity, gnawed at me. Her almond-shaped eyes reached into me like warm hands on a locked box, and I hated that they made me flinch.

So I did what any emotionally stunted semi-mystic in his early twenties might do when cornered by love: I bought a one-way ticket to the Big Island of Hawaii.

I told her I’d call. That she could join me after her senior year. And when she looked at me with those big, brown eyes brimming with hurt and disbelief, I smiled like a coward and hated myself with a silent, burning vengeance.

Interlude – Spokane County Jail

“I need to take a leak,” Chris announced, already standing by the toilet like he expected a ceremony.

“I like your story—rambling man, soul on the run, whatever—but I can’t pee with you monologuing.”

“Yeah, cool,” I said, shifting to get up and fill our eight-ounce, translucent, plastic goblet of sink water.

“Whoa, hold up,” he said, aiming but not firing. “You’re really gonna stand up while I’m midstream?”

“What—oh,” I muttered and lay back down like a chastised dog, hands behind my head.

“Goddamnit,” he grumbled. “And now I can’t go.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You’re laughing?”

I chuckled again, and that made it worse.

“Run the water, man. Help a brother out.”

I obliged, twisting the tap and chugging cup after cup of that prison-flavored chlorine cocktail while Chris finally let loose.

When he was done, he wandered back to the sliver of a window, staring out like he expected God or an alien ship.

“Tell me about the mushrooms,” he said. “The pound of them. I want the breakdown.”

“I will, but you need context. Erin was a catalyst. A psychic detonator. Things got fractured when she sent me a dream, a nightmare, really.”

Chris scratched his neck, still gazing out the window. “You ever think maybe demons in hell are haunted by the voices of saints? And they gather in circles to chant hate at them—to fix them?”

“Hatred therapy instead of healing light?” I nodded. “Sounds like a support group run by Stalin.”

“Exactly. Satan’s a communist—so government healthcare for all demons, but no doctors, just pamphlets and broom closets.”

He suddenly perked up, cupping his hands to the glass.

“You see someone?” I asked, climbing off the bunk.

He spun around. “What’d I say about sneaking up on me?”

“Bro. Chill.”

“You’re a lot bigger than me and I don’t like it when—”

“Chris. You’re missing the thing.” I pointed.

He turned, leaned in.

“Figures,” he said and climbed up to the top bunk in a huff.

I checked the stop sign through the window’s clear slit. No one.

“What’d you see?”

Silence.

I flopped onto my mat and cracked open the Bible. Genesis, chapter three. The Nephilim were getting frisky with humans when Chris sighed.

“She was hot, I think,” he said. “Turquoise shoulder bag. I saw an arm.”

“Noice.”

More silence.

“So… you broke up with Erin?”

“What?”

“In your story. You ditched her for Hawaii.”

“Do you know anyone psychic?” I asked.

“Not like your girlfriend. But yeah—my brother once had a freakout, drove straight to a highway wreck, and found his dead friend before the ambulance got there. Knew it. Trippy stuff.”

“Okay—perfect example. But with Erin, it wasn’t just intuition. She could project. I was dead asleep in a lava tube when she sent me a dream—like, directly into my skull.”

“What the hell’s a lava tube?”

“When lava flows underground, it leaves hollow tunnels. I found one off a coastal path outside Pahoa. Eight-mile bike ride from town to Mackenzie Park. Slept there for a bit.”

“Why?”

“Super quiet. Negative ions. Magnetic fields. Feels like sleeping inside a cosmic tuning fork. I’d crashed there before—best sleep of my life.”

“But then—dream time.”

“Yeah, not just a dream. A transmission. I woke up bolt upright. Almost cracked my skull on the lava roof. I knew what I knew, like the vision had been inserted by an outside hand.”

Chris whistled through his teeth like he was watching a car crash in slow motion. “So let me get this straight—you ghosted some psychic Filipina goddess who could read your mind and give you head like a blessing from the stars?”

“She wasn’t a goddess.”

Chris looked at me like I was a math problem with too many variables and no equal sign.

“You’re a jackass either way,” he said. “Bailing on her if you loved her? Jackass. Staying with her if you didn’t? Still a jackass.”

“I know,” I muttered. “I was a jackass with options.”

He grunted. “And you picked all of ‘em.”

I nodded. “I did. That’s why I started going by Grass when I got to the Big Island—figured if I was gonna make a mess of things, might as well do it under something low and trampled. Jasper came later, after a girl gave me a necklace with a chunk of jasper in it. Said it suited me. I guess I upgraded from weeds to rocks.”

Chris squinted. “Grass?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I figured if I was gonna keep running, might as well do it under something soft and dumb. Something that gets stepped on without a second thought. Lukas meant enlightenment—but I wasn’t feeling remotely enlightened when I set off for the Big Island. Grass just grows sideways and gets cut. It doesn’t mean anything. That was the point.”

Chris snorted. “You changed your name like it was a costume party.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, well—figured I’d try on a few new masks before settling into oblivion.”

He gave me a look, half amused, half concerned. “That’s not profound, man. That’s just silly.”

I grinned. “Exactly. And speaking of silly… ready for a ridiculous day on the Big Island?”

“When you ate the mushrooms?”

“Just before. And since you know how I did Erin dirty, maybe you’ll enjoy watching the universe cook up my just desserts—served cold.”

Chapter 3: The Pay Phone

The air in the lava tube turned hostile, thick as wet wool. I clawed my way out, gasping, half-convinced the stone was trying to seal shut behind me. Outside, the forest looked mutated—ironwood branches splayed above like broken ribs, and the red bark on their trunks resembled scabbed-over wounds. Even the light filtering through the canopy felt like a threat. My heart jackhammered in my chest, still echoing with Erin’s betrayal, as if the nightmare had left a residue that clung to the lining of my skull.

Some dreams are more than dreams. I knew it in my marrow. She’d sent it. A psychic payload straight to the soul. My Shroom Boomio had cheated—maybe not in the flesh, but her spirit had wandered, and it found a new bed.

I yanked my bike from the second lava cave I’d been calling “the garage” and pedaled out of Mackenzie Park like a fugitive. Mango trees blurred along Pohoiki Road, their branches lunging like arms trying to pull me back. My lungs burned, but the panic outpaced them. Every pedal stroke uphill felt like swimming in cement, and the reel of that dream—Erin with that dude, his dumb beach-blond-brown hair—looped until I wanted to scream.

Through the Albizia forest past Lava Tree State Park, I raced, soaked in my own steam. At last, I reached the payphone at the end of Pahoa’s boardwalk. Across the street, Rafael stood outside his thrift store, dressing a mannequin like it was Sunday brunch, totally oblivious to the emotional hemorrhaging across the road.

I wrenched the receiver, twisted the cord like it was a lifeline, and listened to it ring.

“Hello?” she said—soft, familiar.

“I saw you with him,” I blurted, chest heaving.

“Oh…” Her voice crumpled like tissue paper.

“I know you sent that dream. I saw him. Brown-blonde hair, chin like a shovel. I felt it, Erin. Don’t gaslight me.”

Rafael waved, gesturing toward his mannequin, as if asking what I thought of her outfit. I shut my eyes, gripped the receiver with both hands.

“I haven’t done anything yet,” Erin whispered. “But I need to know. Do you love me?”

The question cracked through me. That was the hammer. Hovering.

Love. Magic. Brain chemicals. Who the hell knew? She was my first everything, but whatever had once animated my love had ghosted in the night, and now all that was left was the aching outline. A memory that wouldn’t stop breathing.

“So that dream—you really sent it?” I asked, stalling like a coward.

“Do you love me, Bear?” she repeated. Her voice trembling, achingly alive.

I pulled on my goatee and pressed my forehead against the sticky phone receiver.

“We talk every week, Shroom,” I said, voice frayed. “After you graduate, we’ll travel. You can come here. I just couldn’t do another winter in Washington. But I miss you. God, I miss you.”

“I need to hear it,” she said. “Say it, or I’m done. Do you love me?”

I wound the metal phone cord around my hand until my knuckles blanched. Then:

“I… don’t know.”

Silence. Just the ocean of distance between us.

“Goodbye, Bear,” she said, the finality in her voice like glass cracking. “Please don’t call me again.”

Click.

It shattered me. I tottered down the boardwalk like a man hit by invisible gunfire. Rafael watched, one hand shielding his eyes, the other still gripping that mannequin. I gave a dazed thumbs-up, but the world had turned radioactive. The bright turquoise of Jo Mama’s Café, the red-yellow blare of the Meaner Wiener hotdog stand—it all seared my eyes. Even the trees hurt to look at.

I turned around.

Love. Of course I loved her.

I sprinted back to the payphone and dialed again, hand trembling.

“Erin does not want to talk to you,” said her mother, her tone colder than the winter I’d escaped. “Don’t call here again. We’ve taken her phone. She’s getting a new number. You won’t have it. Understand?”

Click.

That one landed like a coffin lid slamming shut.

My bike was gone. Someone had stolen it. I barely noticed. Didn’t care. I drifted through the too-bright town, my soul clanging around in my ribs. I wandered under the overhang of the community center, feeling like I might drop dead right there. I slid down the wall, knees to my chest, but the day wouldn’t stop. The doors opened. A flood of people poured out—too many eyes, too much light. I buried my face in my arms and sobbed like the world had ended, because for me, it had.

I climbed the dugout steps like a man surfacing from deep water, not sure which world he was reentering. I sank onto the wooden bench and stared through the chain link fence at the green of the field and the impossible blue of the sky—colors turned cruel, oversaturated, like a cartoon drawn on raw nerves. I finally understood what Pink Floyd meant by blue skies of pain. The world looked too real, too sharp, and too false at once—like a memory that won't admit it’s over.

For a moment, a fragile, self-pitying moth flitted against my ribs. I thought about curling into that melancholy, but instead I pulled out my journal and scrawled the words: I need to hear you say it, Bear. That line was a bell I couldn’t unring. I should’ve said I loved her. I did love her. But love, like some bastard magician, had revealed its face only after the curtain had dropped.

A pressure lodged in my throat like a golf ball made of grief and denial. Swallowing it was impossible. Write, I told myself. Move from your heart to your head. I uncapped my pen.

Then—trickling water. A soft burble, rising into the dugouts like a spirit. My pen began to move, slowly, elegantly, across the page: The golden sp... But before I could finish, my hand was no longer mine. The pen dipped downward, as if tugged by a magnet. I could have fought it. I could have snapped out of it. But I didn’t want to. Curiosity overruled resistance. This was the first time since the monastery my body had moved without permission—and this time, it didn’t feel demonic. It felt like being summoned.

Suddenly I wasn’t in my body. The dugouts, the journal, even Erin—all vanished. I was tumbling, lucid and suspended, into another realm. And I heard Shiloh’s voice. Distant. Desperate. Calling for help.

A blur of green. Riverwater. Cool and alive. I was in it, under it. I felt the pull of a current around my ribs. The sweetness of drowning.

This is a memory, said some quiet watcher in my head.

The Russian River. I was eleven. Shiloh, nine. We were supposed to leap far from the waterfall because the undertow could suck us under. Dad had told us so. He jumped first. Then I did. Shiloh followed last, like always. But she didn’t leap. She stepped—plummeting straight down.

She didn’t surface.

I looked at Dad. He just stood there, watching. Not moving.

I jumped in again.

I found her hair first, then her hand, then her whole self. I shoved her up and let the current take me. A trade. One breath for another. The pull was strong. Death came with its velvet ropes and trumpet fanfare. And I, eleven years old, felt the deepest joy imaginable: a death with purpose. A burial by water. Heroic. Beautiful.

But just as I was being welcomed into that watery Eden, I was yanked through some cosmic drainage pipe—sucked backward through time, space, and memory. And spat back into the dugouts, gasping.

The real memory surfaced: I hadn't drowned. I’d pushed off the river floor and swam back to shore. Shiloh had been fine. Annoyed, even—said I pulled her hair too hard. She’d just wanted to see the bottom.

I blinked. My pen rested on the page, trembling.

"Who are you?" I whispered.

Nothing answered. But the presence hadn’t gone. It lingered—not threatening, but impatient. Like it had somewhere to be and I was running late.

I thought of Erin. The final click of the phone. Her mother’s voice like a judge slamming the gavel. I bent over my journal and wrote her a letter—tears streaming sideways as I leaned back so they wouldn’t warp the ink. You knew I loved you, I thought. You must’ve known. I just didn’t know I knew it until now.

As I scribbled, the pen began to tug again. Not violently. Just enough to say: Come on. Let’s go.

I sat up, heart pounding.

“Hello?”

Nothing. Just that waiting silence. Expectant. Urgent. Loving, maybe. Or judging. It was hard to tell.

My bike was gone. Stolen, apparently. I didn’t care. I tucked the journal into my pack and took off running—through town, through colors too vivid to bear, past people whose joy felt like static against my skin. The pen was still in my hand. And it was still pulling.

Girl in the Red Bathing Suit

---

Yosh, a sunburned, dreadlocked kid of about twenty, was perched on the guardrail at the end of town, where Highway 132 spills toward Kalapana. He was thumbing to the beach too and grinned as I approached. He cocked his head, eyeing the way I walked—arm extended, pen out front like a divining rod leading me.

“Oh hey, maybe you want this fat-ass wallet,” he said, producing a tan, faux-leather monstrosity. “It’s got a pen holder. Found it on the sidewalk. Totally empty.”

“Thanks,” I said, blinking like I’d just woken up underwater. “I’ve always wanted to look like I had money. Been stuffing my ID in my backpack like a hobo magician.”

Yosh squinted. “Dude, have you been crying?”

“My girlfriend just—”

“Oh damn,” he cut me off, distracted by a slow-rolling Buick boat of a car pulling over. ’80s, seafoam green with tail-fin blinkers and a trunk that could comfortably fit a choir.

The driver looked like Gandalf after a coconut cleanse.

“You headed to Kehena?” Yosh asked, already halfway in.

“Mmhmm,” said the wizard without turning his head.

I slid into the back seat. The wizard's bloodshot eyes met mine in the rearview mirror—half-lidded, tired and knowing. He blinked once, slow and gentle, like we were sharing a secret.

“Big waves today,” he said.

Yosh clambered shotgun with a “Mahalo,” his pack clunking to the floor. The door shut with a solid clunk, and the wizard nudged the gear-stick into Drive. The Buick groaned into motion, like a dragon waking from a nap.

“Storm off the coast last night,” he muttered. “No one expects it on a sunny day.”

I nodded absently, slipping my pen into the wallet’s ring, snapping it closed, placing it beside my journal in the top of my pack. That’s when the current returned—arms lifting. My left wrist hit the door.

Not again.

The air had thickened, turned liquid. My arms were caught in a gentle but insistent updraft. I dragged them back down into my lap, clasping the fabric of my shorts. The pull intensified, elbows rising like a marionette’s. I pressed them down, tried to breathe, tried to laugh. Tried not to look possessed.

Yosh kept rambling, the wizard grunted. No one noticed. But the air knew. It swelled around me, waiting.

Not now, I pleaded—whatever you are.

And just like that, the balloon of force deflated. The world exhaled. Peace, for now.

The Buick drifted like a dream down the Red Road, and somehow we were there—Kehena. The jungle cracked open at the cliffs and we slid to a stop.

I jumped out, slung my pack, and immediately felt the Magnetic Force again. This time I didn’t fight it. My arms rose like antennae as I stumbled into the foliage. Nobody on the trail saw me veer into the greenery. I found a hollow in the jungle, a pocket of solitude, and let the force take me. My arms went rigid, outstretched, cruciform. The vision came fast:

Water again, but not the green river of memory. This time it was ocean—writhing, wild. White rakes of waves shredded the basalt shore. I hovered, disembodied, above Kehena. I saw the cliffs, the drum circle, the jungle receding from the beach. I saw her.

The girl in the red bathing suit.

Tufts of blonde hair caught the breeze as she perched on a boulder at the cliff trail’s base. Her mother reached up to her. A wave lapped around the mother’s ankles.

I knew her. I’d dreamed of this many times.

Then I snapped back—still on the cliff, arms spread, wind in my face. And it hit me. The Russian River had been a rehearsal. This was the moment. My trade. One life for another.

I peered down through the trees. Kehena sprawled out like a stage set: black sand, a scattering of ironwoods, people lounging like sun-drunk seals. The drum circle pounded out its pagan heartbeat.

I scanned the beach, and found the girl in the red bathing suit.  I thought of the wizard’s ominous warning.  I thought about the clawing waves in my dream that whisked her out to sea.  Thought of Shiloh at the bottom of Russian River as I reached down.

I wasn’t thinking, not with my head. My body was a vessel, a windsock of spirit. The force tugged me forward, and I understood. This was my exodus. My exit ramp. A karmic coup de grâce.

A chance to become holy by vanishing.

---

Using rope-like roots to lower myself down the cliff, I paused five feet above the ground. My pack thudded softly against the sand, and I sprang off the cliffside, rolling into a crouch at the base of a sun-bleached ironwood snag. I posted up about 150 feet down the beach from the girl in the red bathing suit, who waded with eerie calm in the kid’s tide pool at the foot of the trail. Another boy lingered nearby, but they ignored each other—two tiny satellites unaware they might collide.

I leaned against my pack, slid out my journal, and flipped to a blank page.

As the pen met the paper, my head lolled back as if tugged by marionette strings. My jaw dropped, a comical yawn swallowing the world, and into the hollow of that inhale came something foreign yet intimate—a soul. Not metaphor, not fantasy. It sat down behind my eyes, settled into the cockpit of my perception like it had been waiting for me to put the keys in the ignition.

At St. Anthony’s I had once tasted honey and roses—ecstasy, divine, untouchable. But this was different. This was someone human. I hadn’t been replaced, but I was no longer alone. My vision shifted. My body adjusted. My pen hand twitched with quirks not my own. The guests—whoever they were—began to write. Some left cryptic koans like, “The quail in the underbrush waits for the worms to appear.” Others just made me smile. I could feel their age, their gender, their temperament. One lefty was so frustrated he bailed mid-sentence.

Then a malevolent force tried to slither in. My face curled into a sneer. I felt its contempt before a hard yank sent it skyward, up and out through my mouth like spit on a boot. That’s when I caught a flicker of him—Gabriel. Blue and white, pixelated like a busted VHS of an archangel with a sarcastic grin. The bouncer at heaven’s velvet rope.

When the session ended, I stood up and felt pins and needles stab my feet awake. I’d been sitting for a long time. A couple of folks nearby looked at me like I was a public mental breakdown in progress. I flashed a goofy grin, tried to look like just another beach bum journaling his weird little poems.

I turned my gaze to the tide pool. The girl in red was still safe, her mother close behind like a shadow bodyguard. Then I spotted the wizard up the beach, perched behind the drum circle like a sea sage. He pointed to a rogue wave that slapped a new watermark onto the shore. Some sunbathers squealed, but the girl was far from the danger zone.

I exhaled.

I uncapped the pen again. This time the words were mine. I wrote poems of thanks and farewell, tearstained love letters to a world I believed I was about to leave. Nostalgia bloomed in my chest like a bruise made of roses. I looked around at the drummers, the sun-fried loungers, the jungle atop the cliff, the turquoise shimmer of ocean—it all looked perfect, too perfect to be mine for long.

Slowly, the sun shifted. Shadows crept down the sand like a curtain lowering. I looked up—and saw the girl in the red bathing suit and her mom ascending the cliff.

No. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

I froze, my pen trembling in my hand like it had just remembered how ridiculous this all was. I’d missed it. The moment. The timing. Whatever it was supposed to be, I was late. Too late. Today was meant to be the grand finale—my exit scene, my one shot at turning all the chaos into something clean and meaningful. A trade: my life for hers. One task, bizarre and unspoken, but clear as sunlight. And now… she was fine. Out of reach. Out of danger.

And the weight of that hit me. Not like a tragedy—more like the slow leak of air from a balloon you’ve been clutching too tight. The vision, the purpose, the idea that this whole thing meant something... it all slipped away in that moment. The fantasy dried up under the sun, brittle and stupid. I was left holding a pen and a pack full of gibberish and scribbles.

Confusion curdled into betrayal. I felt played. Again.

I looked at the drum circle—Rasta Randy stood like a king with his Coors. Ordinarily, I’d bum a drum or wander over to smoke with the crew on the bluff. But not today. Today was supposed to be The End. I was supposed to be dead already, drifting skyward on the wings of absolution. I wasn’t just disappointed—I was humiliated by the cosmic bait-and-switch.

“Nope,” I muttered aloud. “You’re just nuts.”

I jammed the pen into that oversized, useless wallet and hurled it into my pack like it had betrayed me. Then I stormed up the cliffside, each step burning with the sting of realization. Halfway up, I turned for one last look.

The beach buzzed along—drums, laughter, sunlight, the usual hypnotic hum of Sunday. No one had noticed. Of course they hadn’t. Because there hadn’t been anything to notice.

There was no heroic cue, no cosmic baton pass, no divine moment missed. Just me—gullible, manic, hopeful—projecting meaning onto chaos.

Up on the trail, the girl in the red bathing suit was already halfway to the top. Her mom followed behind like a quiet shadow. They were fine. They had always been fine. The only one who'd been in danger was me—of believing my own delusion.

My toe slammed into a root. Pain lanced up my leg. Good. Pain meant I was real. Pain meant I’d been wrong.

At the top of the cliff, I watched the girl and her mom climb into a rustbucket Puna-beater and ease onto the Red Road. I stood there as the car disappeared over the rise, my mind like metal rims on pavement—grinding, sparking, shredded raw.

No sacrificial death. No sainthood. No cheat-code to salvation.

Just me. Stuck in a body that couldn’t lie to itself anymore.

Erin’s voice rang in my skull: “Don’t call me again.”

But I could fix it now—I could say it. I knew now. I loved her. Of course I did.

Too late.

Way too late.

And there I was, roadside in paradise, standing in the golden gap where the rustbucket had disappeared, staring through the sunlit lattice of vines.   Pizza-sized leaves caught the late-afternoon light like they’d been laminated for dramatic effect.

A breeze stirred, gentle as a sigh, and I decided not to be devastated.

Nope. Not today.

Anger tried to lace up its boots, but I swatted it away like a drunk mosquito. I gave confusion a polite nod and told it I’d call later. I wasn't going to let this become a long, brooding walk back into my own psychic swampland. I was just a guy who’d misread the script of the day. It happens. Not everyone gets to be the protagonist. Sometimes you're just the guy who brought a pen to a hallucination.

Still, my chest pulsed with the echo of Erin—the dream, the click, the terrible silence after her goodbye. Shroom Boomio, my forbidden fruit bathed in moonlight. That had happened. Right?

I tried to make her the villain for a second. That helped. Why wouldn’t she let me explain? I had the right words now! I’d say I loved her—shout it from every lava tube in Puna. But too late. Her mom hated me, sure, but she had a point. I bailed. I was riff raff. And isn’t that the whole problem? I wanted redemption but didn’t really deserve it.

Okay, enough. I clapped my hands, literally, to scare away the circling vultures of thought. Onward. One foot, then the other. Walk it off, champ. Maybe I could loop the full 30-mile Puna pilgrimage, make it back to the lava tube where I woke up—a spiritual reset button.  Everything was made of loops, after all.

Nature, as always, was showing off. The clouds looked like scoops of sherbet melting into marmalade, and I swear the leaves were clapping for me. Grief always made the world too beautiful. It was rude, honestly. Like it knew I needed a hug and was doing its best impression.

Past Seaview, I paused. The ocean sighed. I asked the sky if anyone was still watching.

Silence, save for the pavement whispering you’re on your own, braddah.

I nodded, accepting the promotion: solo pilot of my own madness. Not haunted. Not chosen. Just a guy with a pack full of oatmeal and no bike.

I thought about the beach and winced. What was I doing, playing human Ouija board in broad daylight? Tossing my head back like I was conjuring ancient wisdom, when in reality I probably looked like I was having a mild stroke. 

Flipping through my journal, the pages whispered back in a dozen strange voices. One had written The bell at night is right for the time. Thanks, ghost. Very helpful.

I remembered the bouncer, the guardian, the shimmer that blocked the angriest ones. Or so I remember, I muttered. My own brain was filing complaints against me.

I sighed. Still alone. Still weird. Still haunted by a dream of a girl in a red bathing suit who didn’t drown, a wizard who might’ve been high, and storm-waves that never arrived. But I had dreamed of her. 

Loops.

Erin’s voice echoed again. Don’t call me.

I nearly choked. Her voice was velvet laced with finality. Even the sky reminded me of her—cream soda clouds the exact shade of her neck when she tilted her head and whispered where to kiss.

Nope. Delete. Trash file. Click “Permanently Remove.”

Three deep breaths. Headstand on the journal. Let all the nonsense drain into the earth. Felt kind of great, actually. Upside-down enlightenment.

Then upright again, checking inventory. One jug of water. One bag of oats. One hope for a roadside papaya. I tapped on the jug like a djembe: tubidy-tap-tap-ta-bong-adum. 

A beat-up Mercury slowed down, probably to offer a ride. I waved it off with the grace of a monk who’d taken a vow of foot travel. The driver gave me a what the hell gesture, so I bowed and mouthed Namaste, bitches.

Everything looked absurdly cinematic. The western sky blazed with tangerine promises. The east was turning steel-gray like a closing curtain. The road shimmered ahead like it couldn’t wait to be walked on.

I plodded forward. Every time Erin’s memory tried to stick a fork in my ribs, I sidestepped it like a matador. Ole! Not today, heartbreak. I got oats to chew and sunsets to watch.

And so I walked. Not toward destiny. Not toward salvation. Just toward whatever came next.

Nearing Kalani, I rounded a bend and glanced upward. The monkey pod trees arched overhead in an intricate tangle, their limbs braided like gossiping aunties at a Sunday potluck. They seemed intimate, conspiratorial. Did they cherish this web of interlaced canopy, or was it a passive-aggressive civil war up there? I imagined them in group therapy, leafing through unspoken grudges—each limb's reach a delicate act of diplomacy. Certainly they maintained appearances, posing as the benevolent, community-minded Treefolk. But everyone knew about Stanley, that one monkey pod off to the side who'd made some inflammatory remarks about carbon monoxide and had been socially exiled ever since. Be pleasant above all, Stanley.

Though I hadn't planned to hitch a ride, when a familiar, armor-gray van pulled over thirty feet ahead, I reconsidered. The side door slid open and out billowed a stoner's dream cloud of ganja. Hatti scooted her bag aside as everyone compressed like a human accordion. I claimed a five-gallon-bucket-sized patch of floor between tangled limbs and elbows. Ewok, who looked like a cross between a wise gnome and a couch cushion, greeted me with his signature few-toothed grin.

Shon pulled onto the pavement and the van tilted, causing Yosh to tumble into Gingko. Hatti narrowly avoided becoming collateral. Paul smirked as Gingko caught herself on his shoulder. A few seconds later, Ewok laughed with a lagging beat and said, "Hold onto your hats." Anthony muttered that was terrible advice and people should hold onto their spines. Sitting shotgun, Ora swept aside a curtain of plastic beads and passed back a joint fat enough to qualify for citizenship.

I smiled politely and passed it along. A few in the van must have witnessed my theatrical meltdown at the beach earlier. Great.

Gingko, Hatti, Daeragan, Amberay, Yosh, Paul, Anthony, Raven, and Ewok were shoulder-to-shoulder, resembling a bohemian sardine tin. Yosh asked if anyone had ever played Sardines—the backwards version of hide and seek where everyone crams into one hiding spot.

"Where are we headed?" I rasped.

Paul offered me his water bottle but I sipped from my trusty jug.

"Pops rented the Monkey Temple. Big moves underway. We get to be the Merry Pranksters for a week."

Paul was three years older than me, looked like a skeptical lizard that had read War and Peace twice and still didn’t buy it. His blonde hair fell like overcooked noodles, uncut since exiting the military.

"What branch?" I had asked him once.

"Same shit, different assholes," he’d replied. "I came here to detox from all that."

Most of the van crew had flown in from Walla Walla with Pops, a gravitational being around whom this planetary debris naturally orbited.

The van's back was windowless, and Ora’s beaded curtain obscured any view of the road, but I sensed we'd turned off the Red Road about a mile before Mackenzie. The van jostled violently. Beads clacked like windchimes.

Then the door opened.

Ora's face appeared, cheekbones high and cut from glacier ice. Her blue eyes scanned us with amused disappointment.

"What a sorry lot I've been sought with," she said.

"We’re a motley crew, how do you do?" Ewok replied, then hacked up a laugh through what he described as his “phlegm pouch.” He claimed he only needed 500 calories a day thanks to the energy his nicotine-enriched mucus provided. Coffee, he said, was the cleanser that kept the engine purring.

Ora nodded to him solemnly, then turned to me. "Hello, Grass. I suppose you'll be the first to pee on a tree in your new forever home."

She stepped aside theatrically.

"Monkey business," I muttered as I hopped out.

The structure loomed above us like something dreamed up during a ketamine trip in an architecture school final. If M.C. Escher and Dr. Seuss had built a fortress for David Bowie at the climax of Labyrinth, it would’ve looked like this.

"That's the Monkey Temple," Paul said, stepping out beside me.

We crunched over cinder gravel and passed through the reinforced concrete maw of the building. I spotted iron rebar and chicken wire peeking through places in the walls—fortress-level stuff, like a bunker masquerading as a playground.

The kitchen had a good coffee setup. Ewok would survive.

"Sweet, huh?" Paul asked. "This is gonna be a hippie haven for the next month. You know Pops, right?"

"Amberay mentioned him my first week here. Said he was getting land. I’ve heard... stories."

"All true," Paul grinned. "And the weirdest ones haven’t even happened yet."

On the third floor of the Monkey Temple—a squat concrete ziggurat birthed from the psychotic union of Dr. Seuss and Brutalism—we spiraled into the inner sanctum of Pops.

"Too high for skeeters," he’d said when claiming the space, gesturing like Moses parting the jungle. "And the view! The goddamn view!" Through a breach in the gray curvature, the jungle roared back: greens screaming chlorophyll, reds bleeding the fading sunlight, yellows hallucinating themselves off the leaves. The birds were in full Pentecostal freak-out mode, cawing confessions to a setting sun.

There sat Pops, half-lotus on a bed draped in mildew-seduced sarongs, hair zapped to the sky like he’d just French-kissed an outlet. A folding chair nearby held a Mormon-faced troubadour strumming acoustic balm for Kelsie, who was writhing and belting Bobby McGee with enough passion to impregnate the concrete. Her eyes were shut. Her hands fluttered like she was channeling serpents.

"Welcome, you beautiful miscreants," Pops wheezed, stuffing his herculean marble pipe with what looked like a dehydrated Christmas tree. The pipe was obscene. White and weighty, the size of a Roman scepter. He sparked it with a butane torch and inhaled the universe, turning a gram of flower into the kind of carbon they’ll find on Mars.

Paul passed the monster to me, eyebrow raised.

"You good?"

"Just reassembling my reality," I said.

He nodded solemnly and towed a cloud the size of Nebraska into his lungs.

Two kerosene lanterns flickered like oil-drunken fireflies as Pops launched into a tale. Back in Texas, a bad batch hit his guts mid-transport. He dove into a roadhouse and made a charitable donation at the bar before sprinting to the john—a plywood coffin where the toilet sat on a throne of shit. No sooner had he begun to unload than the throne crumbled beneath him, and he crashed through the stall like a scatological wrecking ball, painting the bar floor with Texas fudge and dignity.

"And I just pulled up my pants," Pops growled, triumphant, "and got the hell out before anyone could kick the shit outta me."

The room exploded. Kelsie guffawed and threw herself against his chest. "Love me a man who can craft a tragedy from turds."

"Lovin’ you, Pops," echoed around like a cultish mantra. Even the pipe seemed to nod in approval.

Yosh, half-possessed, declared that the coqui frogs weren’t chirping but screaming orgiastic war cries: "FUCK MEEEE! FUCK MEEEE!"

Paul had his arm around Gingko. Ora and Shon vanished behind a rainbow of bead curtains to, presumably, make jazz in the universal key of G.

At some point, Pops wheezed into unconsciousness with a grin on his face, Kelsie curled beside him like a loyal jungle cat. The rest striped the fourth floor with bedding, but I padded down to the first floor and tucked myself under the concrete stairs, wrapped in the echoes of laughter and frog-orgies.

Ewok warned me: "You’re gonna be mozzie meat, bro," but the bloodsuckers never came. Instead, the coquis sang their Dionysian hymns while the structure itself—rebar bones and chicken-wire sinew—settled around me like a sentient, concrete behemoth.

I rubbed one out for the sake of spiritual hygiene and let my eyes close to the lullaby of horny amphibians.

At some witching hour, a storm cracked open like a piñata of God’s regret. Rain cannoned down on the Temple’s skull. I woke from a dream of drowning—of being swallowed by water that hated me—but realized I was dry and intact. No spectral girl in a red bathing suit. No spirit possession. No failed martyrdom.

Just the jungle breathing.

The Monkey Temple had held me through the night.

I pulled the bandana back over my eyes and slipped into the velvet nothing of a dreamless sleep, my nervous system purring like a post-coital cat. The war was not over. But for this night, I had won. For now, the cosmos had zipped its fly.

Chapter 3: Pound of Flesh 

Exodus 16:14 And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing. 16:15 And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna. 16:21 And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted.

The next day was gray and drippy, like the sky had a hangover. We lounged supreme, sprawled like retired jungle cats, sipping bitter coffee while the clouds overhead played a cruel game of cosmic peekaboo.

"Guess where the sun is," the clouds taunted, swelling with passive-aggressive mist.

Wrong. Guess again. Wrong again. Rinse and repeat until they laughed so hard, they pissed rain—fifteen-minute bursts right as you'd think they’d agreed to just hover. It was like trying to read the mood of a drunk ex: momentarily still, then weeping, then flaring into a storm.

Someone—maybe Hatti, maybe Gingko—mused that the weather was, in fact, perfect. Not for beach days or solar panels, but for the fragile, mind-bending bloomers known as panaeolus cyanescens. Little gray parasols of psychospiritual revelation that rose proudly from cow shit to proclaim, "Eat me, Earthling, and pierce the veil."

Hatti squinted at me over her ceramic mug. “What do you think, Grass? Mushrooms for the party tonight. You in?”

“You say they grow out of cow shit?” I asked, already bracing myself for some kind of smug confirmation.

“Sure do,” Gingko said, as casually as if she were describing a boutique farm-to-table mushroom risotto.

“If the sun comes out,” she added, handing me coffee, “they melt to black slime. We’re lucky it’s been such a wet Kleenex of a day.”

I sipped and made a face. “This field is how far?”

“Two miles-ish,” said Hatti, peering into the jungle like it owed her a door.

“Could be epic,” I admitted, “but my only concern is the rain. It might dump on us.”

“Who cares if it does?” Hatti scoffed. “You could stand to get a little wet. When’s the last time you had a shower?”

“Yeah, no,” I said, “I’m no fan of being cold and wet.”

“Once you get caps in you,” Gingko said, “you’ll be singing in the rain.”

“Coming or not?” Hatti asked, arms crossed like a disapproving gym coach.

“I’m a Leo,” I sighed. “Cats don’t like water.”

“Oh, is da witt-oh kitty scared of getting a witt-oh wet?” Hatti mocked, full kindergarten regression.

I relented, gulped my coffee like a potion, and we headed out. The Red Road glistened under its misty shroud, and the monkey pod trees hovered above, their branches like gossiping grandmas leaning in to eavesdrop. Giant leaves caught stray sunbeams like hungry hands.

“This is perfect,” Gingko breathed, almost reverently.

The air smelled like moss and mango sweat. With no cars, we walked straight down the middle of the pavement like post-apocalyptic flower children.

“I hope we’re not too late,” Hatti muttered. “It might look cloudy here, but to those baby boomers, it might as well be a tanning salon.”

“What’s that name again?” I asked. “Pana-something?”

“The kind that gets you higher than pixie dust and fairy farts,” said Hatti.

“And you’re sure these fairy farts aren’t crawling with parasites?”

“Maybe,” Gingko said, “but if I have any, they don’t bug me.”

“Good one,” said Hatti, then she looked out into the murky day.  “God, I hope it’s not as far as I’m now remembering.”

We turned up Opihikao Road. The incline was a root-strewn stairway to heaven or gastrointestinal ruin, depending on your attitude. I loved it. A cardio junky at heart, I surged ahead while the girls trudged behind, mumbling about hippie ambition.

Ramshackle houses with rust-colored roofs squatted in the jungle like forgotten pets. Some were barely visible, hidden behind thickets that seemed to judge us. One yard featured a pitbull that had clearly made a deal with Satan, but it was chained to an engine block like a junkyard Cerberus.

A mile up Ophikau, we passed a papaya farm and I spotted some ripe ones.

“How about I grab us some brunch?” I offered, practically salivating.

“Not today. We can’t risk it,” Hatti snapped.

“It’s all about stealth,” Gingko agreed, ninja-serious.

“Is that a challenge? Are you saying I couldn’t be stealthy—”

“No!” they barked in perfect unison.

“Fine, whatever,” I muttered.

And onward we marched, three renegades chasing fungus through the rain-kissed jungles of lower Puna.

A half mile later, our destination lay to our left.

"Whispering only from here on out," Gingko said, her voice barely above the hush of the wind, as a green pasture unfurled in front of us. Hatti pointed toward a blue cap of ocean resting on the tangled crowns of guava trees. Then, without ceremony, she led us down an access road beside the pasture. Elephant grass mohawked the center strip, an overgrown middle finger to maintenance. We were off-grid now. The land was no longer welcoming, but it hadn’t quite noticed us yet.

"Old man up front shoots trespassers with rock salt," Gingko said, the kind of sentence that inspires loyalty to the stealth doctrine. "This pasture’s fallow. The cows were in the third, but we’re heading to the fifth. Shit needs time to become sacred. The fourth ain’t cooked yet."

I opened my mouth to comment on cow pie alchemy when Hatti suddenly hissed, "Down!" A flatbed truck trundled up the hill, slow and suspicious. We melted into the weeds.

By the time we made it to the fifth pasture, we were full-on ninja mode. The barbed wire fence was more suggestion than barrier. We slipped between the strands and onto a lumpy emerald battlefield, each of us armed with a red Solo cup to gather the bounty.

"Stealth," Gingko reminded us, like a general issuing orders before a guerrilla campaign. Then, like a treasure hunter discovering El Dorado, Hatti pointed to a bloated, grey cow patty speckled with white-capped gems.

"Well, holy shit," she said. "We’re off."

A dozen little lunar helmets had burst from the crust—some thumbtack-sized, others ready for martinis. I knelt before one and pet it with reverence.

"You’ll be my first, little buddy," I said, and consumed it. It tasted like the earth itself had told a joke and then buried the punchline.

"Well?" Gingko asked.

"That mushie told me to flick the next one before I eat it, to give the spores a fair shot."

"Rain’s already done the job," Hatti said, squinting into the overcast sky. "But good on ya."

We spread out across the pasture. A cow a hundred feet away stared at us with bovine judgment.

"What’s that wooly bully thinking with those haunted eyes?" I whispered.

"It’s on the other side of the fence," Gingko reminded me.

"You’ve seriously never done this before," Hatti scoffed, watching me clip stems like an overcautious florist. "One time I went picking with a guy who yanked ‘em out roots and all, like a savage. We boiled the whole mess into tea. Tasted like dirty socks."

"Like vampires," I said, pointing to a golden-melted cap. "The sun roasts these guys."

"But they’re not evil like vampires," Gingko said. "They’re just misunderstood."

"You ready to have some fun tonight?" Hatti grinned.

"There’ll be music back at the temple," Gingko added. "But we’re bringing the magic."

We fanned out. The guava-shaded fence line turned out to be prime real estate: mushroom Mardi Gras. I gasped.

"Looks like someone tossed ghost marshmallows from a speeding truck," I said, kneeling into the revelry. Ten minutes later, we regrouped, swapping intel.

"Damn, Jasper," Gingko said, inspecting my cup. "Have you been eating half of what you pick?"

"No! You’re just in a better zip code."

She waved me over. Sure enough, jackpot city. Soon, my cup was brimmed and gleaming. Hatti approached with dilated pupils and a suppressed smirk trembling at the corners.

"Hope y’all don’t come down before the party even starts," Gingko said. "I only ate two."

"I had a handful," Hatti said. "Way better than cubensis."

"Cubensis make me gag," she added with a shudder.

I dry-swallowed. "Let’s not mention gagging."

"Feeling sick already?" Gingko asked. "You sure you didn’t eat some random fungi off a decomposing guava log?"

"Pretty sure," I muttered. Less than sure.

They sifted my collection. No baddies. All blue-bruised and glowing with promise.

"The DJ should be setting up," Hatti said, scanning the cloud-swollen sky.

"It’s gotta be early still," I protested. "Didn’t we leave this morning?"

Gingko handed me a cap the size of a derby hat. "Tis my finest, good sir."

I folded it ceremonially and munched. "Picked this one just for you."

Hatti handed me a prize of her own. Our eyes met like drugged-out diplomats exchanging psychedelic treaties.

Then we hatched the whisper-plan.

"Let’s say we didn’t find any," Gingko said, "then gift them quietly. ‘Just for you,’ we’ll whisper."

"Make everyone feel special," I agreed.

"Vamanos, hermanos," Hatti said, already turning toward home.

As we strolled down Opihikao, the road began to hum underfoot. Every pebble shrieked meaning. Every pothole held ached to be fathomed.

"Wow," I whispered.

"What?" Gingko asked.

"Just wow. If you’re not wow-ing yet... eat another mushroom."

And without hesitation, she did.

We exchanged stories about different psychedelic trips we'd taken, though it quickly became apparent that today’s mushrooms were less about melting visuals and more about the tactile theater of reality itself. The aura of everything was dialed up—textures hummed, colors made declarations, and faces revealed their emotional wiring like backlit schematics.

By the time we hit the bottom of Opihikao, eye contact became a high-voltage risk. Locking gazes meant instant hilarity, the kind of psychic exposure that made your soul flinch and your teeth chatter with shivering giggles. It was like seeing someone naked, but only on the inside.

Somewhere around the halfway point, my Tevas felt too self-serious. I peeled them off and went barefoot, the gravel massaging my feet like a million tiny monks on meth. Each pebble was a tyrannical philosopher. Each step was tough love.  But exquisite, beautiful. And very breath felt better than the last. I burst into spontaneous cartwheels, sprinted until my lungs hiccupped, then skidded to a halt on a patch of grass just to savor the slide. 

Hatti and Gingko, ever the stoics of our holy folly, ignored my frolicking entirely. They strolled and chatted like nymphs on a lunch break.

The clouds above had shifted from melancholic gauze to shadow puppets of sadness. Light peeled sideways through the canopy, and a few coquis began to chirp the jungle's most absurd mating call, a squeaky plea for amphibian amore, some of that sweet brown chicken brown cow froggy style action.  

A quarter mile from the Monkey Temple, we heard the heartbeat of bass, relentless and primal.

"Is this an all-nighter?" I asked.

"Unless the cops come," Hatti said, "but we’ve got half a mile of plausible deniability, and the jungle will dampen the sound like a giant velvet tongue licking the whomp-whomping bass from the air, I’ll wager.”

A dance party sounded like an excellent way to obliterate thought. To drown Erin. To forget the girl in the red bathing suit, the pen, the prophecy, and the cosmic prank I called a mission. Just move my body until I became it—until the brain shut up and the bones took over.

Bear, I need to hear it, do you love me?

"Yes, Erin, I—"

"What’s the matter?" Gingko interrupted. Of course she knew. On mushrooms, private thoughts are just short-range broadcasts.

"Nothing. Just the shrooms," I lied. "And maybe a shattered heart. But I’m here. Ready for my reboot."

"A coconut thudded behind us—twenty feet shy of splitting my skull to match my busted heart, like the island itself was trying to make the outside look like the inside."

"That would’ve been a real bell-ringer," Hatti observed, deadpan.

"But did I die from it?" I countered, snickering through the static of my thoughts.

Gingko gave the tactical reminder. "Hide the cups. Pass the stash one-on-one. Make everyone feel like the chosen one. I’ll do Ewok, Ora, and Shon."

"Raven, Anthony, and Paul for me," I said.

"That means Kelsie, Pops, and DJ Prime Time for me," said Hatti. Then she squinted at me. "You all good, Grass? Are you... are you crying?"

"No," I lied, as a teardrop merged with a dribble of snot.

"Jesus," she said.

"It’s nothing," I muttered. "I keep seeing her face. Erin. Asking me if I loved her, and me saying nothing. And now it’s all too late."

"This happened when?"

"Sunday morning."

"Yesterday?!" Hatti’s eyes bulged. "And you’re on mushrooms? That’s beyond dumb. Don’t you dare be a buzzkill. No one has time for romantic roadkill on a joyride."

"Tonight’s gonna be epic," Gingko assured.

Hatti gave me a shrug that said, go on and feel it, then turned and climbed the stairwell like she was rising toward a sacred chorus. The rhythm above wasn’t just music—it was invitation. She was ready for the tribe to merge, for the dance to melt our outlines. Psilocybin would do what it always did—pull masks from faces, and soften the soul’s armor until each of us was laid bare in shared wonder. No secrets. No pretense. Just raw spirit, boogying down to the same beat.

Gingko lingered, looking at me like I was a half-peeled fruit.

"Maybe mushrooms weren’t the best idea," she offered.

"No," I said. "They were perfect. I’m just… the soft underbelly of a bad decision. But I’ll dance. I swear. Just… give me a few beats."

"Fair enough," she said. "But no wailing in the corner, okay?"

"Scout’s honor.”

We climbed the stairs—Gingko stayed a step ahead, both of us stepping the rhythm that spilled down from above. 

On the second story, the Monkey Temple breathed. Not metaphorically—it actually seemed to exhale. Thick with bass and sandalwood. Candles clung to every ledge, flickering like the eyelashes of angels mid-blink. In any other structure, this would have been a five-alarm fire hazard, but in the Temple, the concrete walls weren't afraid of a little wax and wick.

We slipped past sprawled bodies lounging on the stairwell like melted crayons, making our way to the third floor where the speakers throbbed like a giant heart trying to pound its way through the ceiling. As soon as the floor took us in, we were hit with a wall of vibe so pure and giddy it popped the bubble of grief right off my chest. WOOOOOT. Instant baptism. Bass like butter churned in reverse, vibrations that massaged the insides of your thoughts.

The sun had clocked out. It was dark. Dark like anything could happen. That perfect, pregnant void. Gingko gave the signal. The mushroom mission was a go.

I spotted Paul.

"Hey bro," I shouted over the bass, but leaning in like I was handing off state secrets. "Slim pickings out there, but these—these are yours. Thought of you first."

I held out the scraggly caps under a string of white Christmas lights, their bruised blue streaks glowing like low-grade bioluminescence.

He stared at the gift in my hands like I was offering him scabs off a space lizard—anything but appetizing.

"I’m good," he said. "Got hit with some L right before you showed. Tigger said it’s fire. Still waiting for lift-off."

"Oh," I said, trying not to look like a dog who fetched a stick no one wanted.

"You should eat them," he added. "Plenty of people didn’t take anything. But Pops’ crew? All tripping balls."

I nodded. 

“You should eat ’em,” Paul said, barely glancing at the bruised caps in my hand. “I don’t do cow-pie cuisine. But you, Grass?” He leaned in with a smirk. “Your name is your destiny.”

“Come again?”

“Green pastures of…?”

“Oh, got it.”

After a nod, a wry smile, his eyes drifted past me—up the stairwell where Kelsie stood bathed in flickering candlelight and a soft web of Christmas lights. Paul gave me a wink, then drifted up.

Fine. More for me. Wasn’t that the rule? Never look a gift mushroom in the gills. I ate his. Then Anthony’s. Then Raven's. Then Kelsie politely declined, claiming "divine timing," so I housed hers too.

When Gingko and Hatti returned, I saw that their cups were still full.

"No takers," Hatti said.

"You gotta be kidding," I said, laughing.

"All dropped already. Acid wave hit while we were out."

I looked down at the remaining bounty—a surreal stew of caps and stems curled like holy scrolls.

“They won’t go to waste on my watch,” I said, high as a helium balloon tethered to a prayer. Then, without pause—no discussion, no ceremony—I scooped the boomers from Ginkgo's cup and shoved two fat mouthfuls past my teeth like I was stuffing evidence before the raid. Chew, gulp, no regrets. And then I ate Hatti’s.

“Oh my God,” Hatti breathed. She wasn’t laughing.

I wiped my lips, patted my belly, threw my arms open like a televangelist at the peak of his career and hollered, “I am okay—and I am only going to be better, better, best!”

I started dancing—a blur of limbs and ecstatic angles. My body a prism, reflecting everyone’s wavelengths back at them with upgrades. The Mushroom Mambo. The Funky Fungus Foxtrot. My grief hitched a ride on the rhythm and melted..

I needed the Temple to swallow me whole and spit me out a newer, stranger animal.

But even as I tried to dissolve into the tribal thump of now—basslines and stardust sweat—I couldn’t shake the echo: my journal, the cruciform sprawl, the alien handwriting that had hijacked my narrative. Stop. Breathe. But no—focus. I had to. I clawed my mind out of the memory hole and slingshotted it into the strobe-blitzed present: bodies moving, candles flickering, Erin—nope! I bark-laughed at my own synaptic sabotage.

“Positive vibes,” I whispered, like it was a spell, and let it slip out on a breath.

Then—freedom. I was a tendon in motion, a tongue of muscle licking the sweat from the ceiling of God’s armpit. My skin buzzed with synesthesia; color had temperature, sound had taste, and we were all tethered by a filament of ecstatic awareness. The dancefloor was no longer a place—it was a shared mind, a swirling, writhing hotpot of grins and dilated pupils. I could dip in and taste someone's childhood, catch a flicker of someone's pain, flash a silent “yo” to a stranger’s soul before pulling out in reverence. This was the psychedelic parliament, and every body was voting with movement, a bi-partisan ‘hell yes!’

But the network turned too loud, too tight, and suddenly I didn’t want to be seen—not like that, not in full broadcast mode. I needed to ground, just for a second. I slid toward the wall above the stairs where someone had left a half-finished cigarette in a ceramic ashtray like a sign from a lesser god.

No lighter. I slapped my boardshorts. Empty. Ora was swaying nearby, hips writing poetry in the air. I tapped her arm, made the flick-flick sign with my thumb. She nodded coolly, fished out a Bic, handed it to me with the grace of a priestess handing over a flower.

I nodded thanks, lit the stub, took a drag—and gagged. Harsh. Acrid. Like a raccoon’s butthole soaked in ammonia. It clawed down my throat and scraped the inside of my lungs with fingernails made of tar. The mushrooms said, “That’s what this is, fool. Look at it.” And I did. In my mind’s eye, my lungs were toilet paper, and the smoke was fecal smudge. I was smoking shit. I’d been doing it for years, justifying it with flaccid logic. I was about to snuff the stub when I thought, someone else might want this.

I turned to Ora. “Wanna finish this?” I asked.

She turned, face half-lit in candle and Christmas lights, pupils blown like portals.

“Oh,” she purred, eyeing the cigarette. “Is that how big it is?”

Her eyes darted to my crotch and back up. Her smirk curled sharp. “I don’t want that.” She pouted, blew a malevolent kiss, and pirouetted away.

I stood still. Paralyzed. As if she'd taken a machete to my sense of self and lopped it off in one go. The high-gloss lovefest collapsed. Time froze. I was naked in public, stripped not of clothes, but confidence, posturing, narrative. My breath failed. My heart forgot its choreography.

Had I really thought I could hide in style? In hair and abs and swagger? Ora had stabbed my mythos with one line. I don’t want that. The cigarette in my hand smoldered like a metaphor that didn’t need finishing.

Heat surged into my face. I flushed. Could anyone else have heard her? Probably not. But the hive mind had already taken the hint. Ora’s barb had rippled out psychically like an EMP. Suddenly I was being seen again, and not in a good way. I dropped the cigarette. Stomped it. Someone hollered a whoop, oblivious.

I couldn’t stay. I bolted—down two flights, legs stiff with adrenaline, and found myself blinking under the hot glare of the picnic table bulb. My fingers fidgeted like they were trying to detach from my body. My lips were whispering, “No… no… no…”

It had only been ten minutes since I ate the world’s worth of mushrooms. A brief, luminous eternity. And now the real trip was beginning.

I considered escape—jungle, jug of water, fingers down throat, purge the fungus.

But it was too late. The portal was open. I’d swallowed the key.

A voice snapped through the static.

“Hey man,” said Anthony, materializing like an emaciated prophet at the base of the stairs. Twenty-five, introverted, eyes like wet soot under the weight of a pilgrimage to India where he’d baptized his gut flora in corpse-laced Ganges water and refused antibiotics on principle. The beard was biblical—an oil-slick nest that made his neck look like an afterthought.

He didn’t look at me.

“You know I’ve always had an issue with, uh…” he mumbled, glancing sideways at the ether.

I knew. We both knew. But how had he heard? The hive-mind? That ambient psychic webbing? Didn’t matter. He kept talking, barely.

“Girl… once said something… size…”

He faded into unintelligible hums as my temples throbbed and my stomach swirled like wet cement. He shuffled backward up the stairs, as if embarrassed by his own manifestation.

Breathe. Breathe. You got this.

Then came Paul.

He slunk down the stairs with the gait of a bored gremlin, flung himself onto the bench like it owed him money, and stared at me. His grin was crooked—reptilian. His pupils had melted into inkblots that bled into his irises.

“Grass, chill the fuck out,” Paul intoned. “Everyone knows it’s not about the size of the hammer. It’s about how well you nail.”

I blinked. Said nothing. Wanted to say you’re projecting, my guy, but the mushroom clamp had sealed my windpipe in spiritual duct tape.

Paul leaned in conspiratorially. “You can finger a girl into nirvana with a pinky and a prayer. Rhythm, geometry—relax.”

Again, I said nothing. But my face must’ve screamed how is this even happening because Paul laughed, stood up, and sneered.

“You wanna sit here and sulk, cool. But you look like a toddler that just realized cake isn’t dinner.”

Then came the honk. Not a word, not a sound—just a honk. From me. A mushroom-mangled whimper that escaped like a balloon animal’s death rattle.

Paul bolted up the stairs like I’d farted apocalypse.

Enough. Get out. All the way out.

I floated—literally floated—out of the Monkey Temple kitchen. The night was blackout velvet, no moon, clouds stuffed thick as ceiling insulation. I knew there were roots and potholes and jagged cinders in the driveway’s S-curve, but I didn’t care. I was incorporeal. A wandering shame-ghost.

Then I was there. The Red Road. Cold, smooth asphalt. Nothing visible, but behind the black: distortion. Emerald serpents of code wriggling through everything. The dark wasn’t just absence of light—it was canvas. A living diagram, etched in simulation.

“This is the Matrix,” I whispered. Then louder: “And I want OUT. NOW.”

I’d prayed before. But this wasn’t prayer. This was litigation. I was suing the Architect.

And then?

Agony.

Not pain. Pain is a stubbed toe. This was atom-ripping, soul-tearing, thermonuclear disassembly at a cellular level.

“No, no, no, not like that!” I protested.

Like a magician’s snap, the agony ceased. My lungs vacuumed in the thick ocean air, and the night breeze met my sweat-slicked skin like a balm—too little, too late. My body still sizzled with aftershock, a ringing in every cell. That pain, that thing, had been physical—more than fire, more than nerve endings could rightly process. It wasn’t metaphor. It was searing, molecular anguish, as if each atom had been torn apart by a divine dentist with no anesthesia and a grudge. I’d touched the perimeter of hell and come back glowing. Not triumphant. Not unscathed. Just aware.

I knew I’d crossed a line. Kicked the veil. Shouted at the puppeteer. Asked to be deleted like I was hot shit. Who did I think I was?

I looked up at the black dome of the sky and muttered the only question I could muster:

"What am I?"

The response came from the upper-left quadrant of the universe. About fifteen feet above the sea. Out of nowhere, like a Dolby surround sound speaker in the void, came The Voice.

It was Monty Python God meets Barry White. A thunderous celestial belly laugh boomed:

“HA! HA! HA! HA!”

Then the verdict:

“You’re a joke! And if you don’t like it, you can jump off the cliff right now and die.”
I frowned. This was not exactly existence-affirming or uplifting. Life was full of ultimatums lately, and here was another: leap or live.

I walked cautiously to the edge of the road, through streaming glyphs and blinking reality-glitches, to where the guardrail should’ve been—and was. I climbed over it, looked down.

And just then, the clouds rolled back like curtains on a cosmic prank, revealing a streak of starlight and a wave—white, foamy, dramatic as hell—crashing against lava boulders fifteen feet below.

All I had to do was jump. I was a joke. Life was a trick deck. The girl in the red suit, the pen, the heartbreak, the humiliation—

Hold up.

The first rock was right there. Like, right there—ten feet below, tops. This wasn’t some majestic plunge into the yawning void of oblivion. This was a slapstick face-plant  and saltwater fury, maybe crack my spine like a fortune cookie—and spend the long, humiliating night howling for help or just moaning like a wounded sea lion, some goddamn cautionary tale for barefoot ravers.

Then came a voice.

"Of course it would hurt, Dipshit."

Raspy. Male. And it didn’t come from anywhere in particular—it circled my head in 360 surround-sound like a ghost through a donut/dome speaker.

It reminded me of that moment when you’re coming out of a dream, where someone’s talking and you’re tracking it but losing grip, and then, snap, the world boots up—but the voice in your dream carries over, just for a moment.

Startled but not entirely surprised to be insulted by a disembodied bro-voice, I looked around. No one. Just the digital static of the night, green code-bugs tracing tree lines. And waves crashing, indifferent as ever.

"What are you doing out here?" asked Raspy Voice Dude.

Yep. In my head. Full-blown. Great. I didn’t answer.

"Why don’t you just go back to the party?"

The voice wasn’t the thunderous, all-knowing baritone that had earlier declared me A Joke. No. This was  cracked tenor with sandpaper edges. A surfer with bronchitis and a bone to pick.

“Dipshit, let’s go back,” it said—casual, like it was greeting an old drinking buddy fresh outta rehab, wearing the same hoodie he went in with.

The moment I considered the word dipshit, it hit a tuning fork deep in my brainstem—bong—and suddenly, I was back in the dishpit at St. Anthony’s. Steam rising like ghosts from boiling pots, clanging pans, and that scrawled Sharpie note taped above the sink: “DIPSHIT IN THE DISHPIT.” Like my subconscious had a label maker and a long, slow vendetta.

Somewhere behind it all, circus music started up—a warbling calliope doing cartwheels—and then came the canned laughter, thick and relentless, like a sitcom from hell. My confusion became the punchline for a phantom studio audience I couldn’t see, but boy, could I hear them. Louder and louder, until it felt like the walls of my skull were made of laugh-track reverb and grease-trap humidity—

And then—gone.

But wait—blue and white flashes behind my closed eyes. Not shapes, not thoughts, but images flickering in the theater of the mind. A cartoon grin—gleaming and Cheshire—surfaced and slipped away the moment I thought, I’m seeing this in my mind’s eye. Curtain closed. Gone.

What the hell kind of projector was my mind’s eye? What model? What mechanics? What circuitry in the squish-sack behind my eyes was stitching memory to hallucination?

That’s when I thought it—nous, the Greek word for the eye of the soul.

Boom.

A white plastic noose—Clue edition. In the Kitchen. Miss Scarlet grinned like she tied it herself. Not just a game piece—she knew knots. The kind that left bruises and made men beg. Her heels clicked on linoleum, echoing murder. I’d wandered onto the board, as she squatted down to roll the dice.  She looked up at me.  Snake eyes. 

Then crumple—the whole scene balled up like a Divine doodle and yeeted into the trash bin of my mental desktop.

I half-laughed, half-winced.

It was my first encounter with the being I’d later dub Gabriel. He never claimed the name. The one he did offer was a string of nonsense syllables, fifty long, like glossolalia spoken through a broken kazoo. Said it once, grinning. Definitely trolling. But hey—I was new to talking with invisible entities. Forgive me for being a little on edge.

“Who are you?” I asked, voice steady but eyes twitching at shadows.

Another wave slammed the rocks below, a black crash of warning.

I stepped back over the guardrail. No way was I giving some raspy smartass the chance to shoulder-check me into the void.

"Doesn't matter who I am," Gabriel said, like he’d smoked every philosopher’s pipe and decided names were for suckers. "This is about you. What are you doing out here? People are wondering where you are."

"Who are you?!" I shouted. "In the name of Jesus Christ, leave!"

A pause. Then: "You don’t even know who you are, do you, Dipshit?"

There it was. The gut punch. I didn’t answer, because answering would mean accepting the conversation as real.

And then I realized: I’d officially cracked. I’d snapped like a glow stick at a middle school rave. The pen that took over earlier was foreshadowing. This was not a demon. It was the sound of my brain breaking bad.

Gabriel, now fully comfy in my frontal lobe, said, "That’s right, Dipshit. You’re batshit. Mushroom-brained.  Permafried. A carnival ride with no off switch. But even broken, why come here? You’re not gonna jump."

Goddamn him. But he was right. I didn’t want death. I wanted clarity. I wanted meaning. I wanted out of the trap, not off the planet.

"I just..." I began, then gave up. There was no 'just'. There was no clean sentence that could wrap this spiral.

I’d heard about people frying their minds on psychedelics, doomed to mutter in alleyways, drooling on dream fragments. But Gabriel—he made sense. Horrible, accurate sense.

I laughed. I shrugged.

Whatever.

I give up.

Walking back up the driveway, my hands glowed like radioactive jellyfish. Orbs flitted at the edge of vision—shy little bastards—vanishing the moment I tried to pin them down. The Monkey Temple flickered through the trees, candles twitching in the upper windows like it was signaling ships fairies to gather and watch.

Twice I stepped off the path, fooled by phantom curves. The ground was riddled with the same roots and ankle-traps I’d levitated over on my way out—but now they snapped at me like the jungle wanted its due. After ten minutes of barefoot quantum tiptoeing, I ghosted back into the kitchen, my atoms still debating whether to reassemble or just dissolve into kitchen vapor.

Gingko was there, back turned, making coffee like it was wartime and caffeine was morphine. Her short hair swayed like wheat in a windstorm. She turned, radiating warmth, bent down and hugged me like I was her lost cousin from the other side of the veil.

“Where were you?” she asked.

Gabriel’s voice piped up, dry and amused. “See that, Dipshit? Good thing you came back.”

I had no mouth and I must mumble. Words failed. Ginkgo felt real, but I was helium and ectoplasm.

Paul was on the bottom step, eyes shut, grinning like a lunatic who’d just licked God’s toe. He nodded to rhythms from above, locked in a loop.

“You vanished,” Gingko said, concerned and maternal. “Everyone noticed.”

I nodded. Because what else could I do?

“Whoa, dude,” she said, backing up. “You’re fucking glowing.”

She flicked the light switch. Darkness. And then—proof. Blue and orange filaments wove off me like I’d been plugged into an interdimensional socket. But she was glowing too. Green aura, soft like moss in moonlight.

“What did you see?” she asked.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing.

“It’s fine, Dipshit,” Gabriel said. “Your words are just echoes of old frequencies. Let 'em fade.”

“It’s okay,” Gingko nodded, eyes dreamy. “This party is fucking lit.”

She motioned toward Paul. “He’s been doing that for half an hour.”

As if on cue, Paul opened his eyes. His goblin grin didn’t fade. He looked from her to me like he knew exactly what I’d seen.

“Oh, you’re back from the dead and glowing, huh?” Paul’s elastic smile snapped into a sour slit of suspicion. Vampire. He winced like the bare bulb burned his soul. Unlike Gingko’s eucalyptus aura, Paul’s vibe was swampy—slimy, mineral-rich, and home to things that bite. As if catching my internal Yelp review, he blinked, stood up, and kissed Gingko’s cheek with the affection of a cobra nuzzling its handler.

“Paul’s so funny, right?” Gingko tried. Her eyes darted, scanning the awkward in the room like a Geiger counter. She’d felt it too—whatever transparent filament stretched between us all tonight. She looked at me, eyebrows raised in punctuation: say something. I tried. My mouth opened like a flower in a wind tunnel, then shut with a breathless snap. No words. Couldn’t.

“Another time then,” she said, mercifully. “You’re probably still processing.”

I nodded.

From the black soup of the driveway came another form, barefoot and beatific—orange cargo pants and a sagging knit hat like a Himalayan sleeping bag for the head. Isa had arrived. Abstinence Incarnate. A thousand-day dry spell worn like a badge of bizarre monk-cred.

“Greetings, Gingko,” he beamed, wrapping his arms around her. His voice—melodic, twinkly, and suspiciously familiar—echoed something deep and recent. Gabriel’s cousin?

“He’s fucking glowing, isn’t he?” Gingko pointed at me.

Isa peered in like I was a crystal ball. “Hey there, Grass,” he chirped. His eyes were glacier-blue and far too awake. He bent down to examine me, his face a magnifying glass. Then he sprang back, clapped, and giggled—a helium cackle, pure joy straight from whatever dimension runs on moonbeams and fermented figs.

“Well,” he declared, rocking heel to toe, “looks like you learned something tonight!”

He winked at Gingko. She flicked her wrist like an annoyed feline and gave a side-eye to Paul, now slouched back on the bottom step like a demon post-nap.

I made the universal sign for ‘give me something to write with before my brain explodes.’ Gingko, ever ready, handed me a light blue marker and a torn brown paper bag. I scrawled with the urgency of a prophet under duress:

IT’S ALL RELATIVE TO THE SIZE OF THE PENIS.

Underlined. Thrice.

I held it up like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Isa howled. Clapped like a child at a puppet show.

“Well of course it is,” he beamed, as if I’d discovered gravity by tripping over my own libido. He rested a hand on my shoulder like a priest blessing a madman, then burst into laughter again.

Gingko, however, was not thrilled. I doubt my sacred insight was what she had in mind when she’d asked about revelations from the abyss.

“God, get over yourself,” Paul muttered with a groan. “Everybody’s trying to party, not listen to your download on your Freudian unhung hand-up.”

With his eyes rolling open like window shades on a Monday morning, Paul gave a half-hearted wave to Gingko and led her up the stairs—back to the rave, to the sweat and strobe and sanctified forgetting—leaving me alone with my buzzkill musings and cosmic flaccidity.

Isa leaned in, eyes twinkling. “But what else, Grass?” he asked. “Anthony said you ate at least a pound of flesh—is that true?”

***

Under the stairwell, I came to with bells in my head. Not metaphorical ones—literal cathedral bells, clanging like an apocalypse wedding in my frontal lobe. Behind them? A full-ass symphony. Violins, brass, timpani, and a choir belting out harmonies so euphoric they’d give Bach a boner in the grave. The clouds above were flushed Pepto-pink, the birds were screaming like cracked-out street preachers: “TODAY IS GONNA BE AMAZING!”

No thank you. I cinched my bandana over my eyes tighter. One more layer between me and their deranged optimism.

“All right, Dipshit,” said a voice—raspy, smug, familiar as my own failure.

Gabriel. Of course.

Only it wasn’t a dream, not really. It should have been. It had all the trappings—absurd orchestration, flying cartoon butterflies doing choreographed nonsense around my third eye. But I could tell I was halfway out of REM and toe-dipping into another day of consciousness.

“Stop faking it, Dipshit,” he said again.

I stayed statue-still. Maybe if I played dead, he’d piss off and leave me alone.

No such luck. The butterflies multiplied. Choir soared into operatic orgasm. Silhouettes—human-shaped, probably angels on molly—arched back on their tiptoes and belted cosmic joy into the technicolor void.

No. Just no. This was some Teletubby rapture bullshit, and I refused to be reborn.

“Come on,” Gabriel urged, sweet as an ulcer. “Time to rise and shine.”

I groaned internally. Last night was a demon orgy of chemical introspection and social disaster. I’d crawled under the stairwell around 3am licking my wounds and hoping for amnesia. Isa had wandered off upstairs like a stoned meerkat, and now this fuckery?

“Nevertheless, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day…” crooned some jazzy lounge singer from the depths of my auditory cortex.

Kill me.

Then—bam—Bradley Nowell. Sublime. ‘Early in the morning, risin’ to the street…’ singing it note-for-note inside the choir. I almost smiled. Then the butterflies kamikazed into my third eye like confetti, and I yanked off the bandana.

“Not cool,” I whispered.

And just like that, SKRRRTCH!—the needle came off the mental record. Silence. Well, outside my skull there were birds. Inside: just the echo of too many truths too fast.

Sunlight stretched through the coconut trees like lazy tentacles. The world had the nerve to look serene.

I sat up. Dazed. 

“Time to down some coffee and get after it,” Gabriel said. Too chipper. Way too chipper.

I froze mid-zip. What the hell was the agenda now?  Was I still high?

“Yep,” said Gabriel, unbothered. “You’re actually permafried, Dipshit.”

A grin slid onto my face like a banana peel. I didn’t feel high. But if a voice in your brain tells you you’re broken… who are you to argue?

I stumbled into the kitchen. Found a quarter pot of tar-black coffee on the counter, three moths doing the dead man’s float. The surface shimmered like a Valvoline oil spill.

“Protein,” Gabriel noted.

Fair enough. Probably Gingko’s batch from last night. I thought about heating it.

“Nah,” said Gabriel. “Down the hatch. Hilo awaits. Big day.”

Hilo? What?

My inner vision snapped into a fever reel—cars, hitchhiking, Pops’ marble pipe, all of us sitting in the jungle like sweaty prophets.

Then—static. Black screen.

“That’s it. No more spoilers,” Gabriel said, sounding smug.

Okay. I’d obviously lost my mind. Might be good to talk to a real, carbon-based human before letting a rogue sub-personality dictate my itinerary.

But Gabriel… Gabriel asked the kind of shit that mattered. Existential stuff. It wasn’t just “what are you doing today,” it was why, Grass, why.

I saw a vision. Me with Pops. The crew. The pipe. Laughter. Smoke. Time dilating like an accordion.

“That’s your plan?  Sit and smoke?  After last night, you really want that kind of awkward?”

“But who are you?” I asked.

Gabriel, again, said I didn’t even know who I was, and maybe he was here to help with that.

“Are you my ancestor, an angel, a ghost, or some kind of—”

“Dipshit,” he cut me off. “Does it matter? Let’s go to Hilo. You just confessed your master plan was to sit around and marinate in bongwater with people side-eyeing you. I’m telling you—big things are moving.”

I downed the coffee, jammed my sleeping bag into my pack and began my barefoot descent down the driveway, the sun doing its best blade-of-glory imitation through the canopy.

Shit. Forgot my Tivas.

I turned to go back.

“You don’t need them,” said Gabriel. “Get your feral on. This ain’t a sock hop, it’s destiny.”

He may have added a little MF spice to that comment—Magnetic Force—and it nudged me back toward the Red Road like a compass needle twitching toward fate. I didn’t argue. I didn’t know why I was going to Hilo, or what awaited. But the caffeine had kicked, and the birds were absolutely sure something wild was in store for me.

Out on the Red Road, I had a solid strut going. My pack was light, the air charged with ionized ocean spray, and the leftover moth-coffee had jazzed my bloodstream into forward motion. Every breath tasted like electricity. The jungle whispered secrets, the birds were all in cahoots, and I was damn near levitating from vibe alone.

A mile out, a boxy 80’s Ford truck groaned to a stop beside me. A monument to right angles and rust. The driver leaned across the bench seat, voice gravelly.

“I’m headed to Hilo.”

“Shoots,” I said, and hopped in shotgun.

The guy's name was Lance. AA veteran. Battle-scarred from the booze wars. Marriage casualty. His voice was a slow boil of remorse and grit.

“Thought Sheila and I would make it to the end,” he said. “But nope. Took her leaving to make me put the bottle down. Two years dry now. Doesn’t matter—she’s not buying it. Still thinks I’m full of shit.”

He eased the truck off the road to let a papaya-laden flatbed barrel past.

“Anyways,” he said, pulling us back onto the blacktop, “it’s probably for the best. Maybe she had to leave. Maybe I had to lose it all just to face the ugly bastard in the mirror.”

Gabriel perked up in my head like he’d been waiting in the wings.

“You follow, Dipshit? This truck’s a goddamn parable.”

Lance’s steering wheel confessional carried the weight of a thousand country songs, but under it was a slow, thrumming truth.

“Sometimes the answer’s in the doing,” Lance mused. “Not the stewing.”

“A quest is doing the question rather than asking it,” I blurted, unsure whether it made any sense or was just a clever-sounding word pancake. Still, it felt right. Gabriel nodded silently in my skull.

“Exactly,” Lance said, tapping the wheel like I’d passed a test I didn’t know I was taking. “For me, that meant accountability. Every damn decision. It’s work. But it’s the only way I can live now.”

Then he turned, one eye squinting at me like I was a funhouse mirror version of his younger self.

“So what about you, kid? Are you on a quest—or just hop-skipping around this rock for shits and giggles?”

In Hilo, Lance coasted to the shoulder near Walmart. He wished me luck and pulled slowly away. I stepped into the open, stunned by the daylight—blinking like I’d emerged from a sensory deprivation tank into a fire drill. The traffic screamed. The sun bounced off chrome and windshields like a thousand tiny interrogators. Civilization was a fluorescent crime scene.

Inside Walmart, the AC slapped me with industrial chill. Gabriel told me to buy a bag of Hershey’s Kisses with my EBT and start passing them out. No context. No pitch. Just Kisses for strangers.

I did.

And people did not know what to do with that. A few smiled. Most gave the look of someone being handed a ticking frog. Some recoiled, thinking I intended to ask for spare change.

But as the chocolate dwindled, something in my chest warmed. My heart was a soft-boiled egg, cracking open. Each Kiss was a key. Then came the woman—late fifties, aloha shirt, good aura—who pressed a twenty into my palm.

“Bless your heart, sweetie,” she said.

Gabriel told me to do a full-on prostration. I hit the blacktop, forehead to pavement, limbs spread in ecstatic submission.

She nodded, startled but honored, and hustled off. I sat up buzzing. Had I said anything? I hadn’t. Should I?

“It’s better not to speak,” said Gabriel, distant but crisp.

I looked at the twenty, considered it. Gabriel MF’d me—Magnetic Force full throttle—and I found myself across the lot, walking up to a Hawaiian guy stepping out of a monster Dodge.

He clocked me: stringy, glowing, barefoot haole with dilated pupils and a twenty.

I extended it. He took it like it might bite him. “Thanks,” he muttered, glancing for cameras.

“That’ll spin him,” said Gabriel. “We’re gonna spin you too, someday.”

“Spin me?”

Blue-and-white fireworks exploded behind my forehead. I snorted laughter.

Relativity. Money. A twenty to a man with a fifty-thousand-dollar truck. Didn’t matter. He wasn’t evil. But what was evil?

The word clanged in my mouth like a chipped tooth.

“Thou shalt not judge,” said someone, or something, or maybe it was just the parking lot tiles rearranging themselves into commandments.

I drifted toward Puainako Shopping Center. At the intersection, a cop was waving traffic like he was conducting Tchaikovsky.

Gabriel MF’d me across the street. Then again. Then back. On my third pass, the cop’s eyebrows furrowed. On the fourth, his eyes narrowed: a wild-eyed haole circling crosswalks like a busted Roomba.

“Jail,” whispered Gabriel, cool as shaved ice. “Wouldn’t that be an adventure?”

And then: salvation.

Jerry. Ford truck in a line of cars waiting for the white-gloved cops signal to pass. Window down. Eye contact locked.

Without hesitation, I stepped between cars, opened the door, slid in. Jerry gave the cop a look that said, “This one’s mine.” The cop nodded.

“Well, hello there, Grass,” Jerry said, glancing over. “You alright, bud? You look a bit piqued, if I’m being honest.”

"Jerry, I know you're gonna think I'm crazy... but have you ever heard voices before?"

"I don't think you're crazy, Grass," he said with the cool gravitas of a man who’s smoked a hundred thousand joints and seen everything twice. The decree landed with the patriarchal thump of a gavel in the backwoods court of cosmic reason.

Jerry, leathery and sunburnt in that island-wrenching, Dead-Head-way, wore a trucker’s cap and a ponytail that said I survived the 70s and still got my teeth. His jeans were oil-stained; his smile, papaya-sweet. We’d met my first week in Pahoa, when he was sipping coffee from Roger’s Meaner Weiner hotdog hole-in-the-wall, recruiting rainbow kids like a grizzled shepherd.

As he steered the old rig past the zoo turnoff, he handed me a green hit from his glass pipe like a peace offering from a dusty tribe of mechanical mystics. I passed.

“I’m too high,” I said. “Like, clinically.”

I broke down the past 24 hours like a psychiatric patient giving field notes. Cliffside threats. Magnetic Forces. Walmart evangelism via Hershey’s Kisses. And the part where Gabriel, the voice in my head, orchestrated my entire morning with the gentle tyranny of a celestial cruise director.

Jerry chuckled, but when I told him about the morning command to get up and get after it, his expression changed..

“You shouldn’t let them push you around like that,” he said.

“You know them?”

“I hear voices,” he said plainly, like he was talking about rust on a carburetor. “Mostly when I’m riding my bike. Flying down the road, a whisper will tell me to swerve into a tree. Just end it all.” He looked me dead-on. “You gotta be stronger than the voices, Grass. They'll fuck you sideways if you let ’em.”

“The first one told me I could jump off a cliff,” I confessed, “but only after I asked to get out of the Matrix.”

He gave a single sage nod. “That’s what you get for sassing the Almighty.”

Then, a pivot. “Where you headed?”

I shrugged, and he clocked my directionless drift.

“Well,” he said, “you can come to my place if you want. I’ve got another one of you rainbow kids crashing there. Know a blond dude, dreads, goes by Island?”

“I do. We wrestled on the beach once. Kelsie scolded us about keikis and violence.”

Jerry laughed. “Well, no wrestling tonight, alright? Just love.”

“You’re a good guy, Jerry.”

“Mahalo, Grass. But listen—I gotta pop by Pahoa, chat with Roger. You can hop out there, or roll on home with me. Up to you.”

Jerry pulled over at the Meaner Weiner and got snagged in conversation with Will—the local guru of disheveled delusions. A sinewy mystic with dolphin-belly skin and no shirt to speak of, Will had recently wrapped his greasy bangs in copper wire “to attune his crown chakra to lightning frequencies.” His jeans were filth-encrusted. His abs were Michelangelo-tier. He claimed to do zero pushups and lived primarily on chili cheese nachos from 7-Eleven, which he said contained “the full alchemical spectrum.”

He didn’t talk to people, he broadcasted at them. And he was mid-transmission at Jerry—rattling off stories about grappling with Steven Seagal in an Aikido dojo in Reno. Jerry gave him the occasional nod, but his eyes screamed hostage.

I wasn’t in the mood for the Will Show, nor did I have the funds for Roger’s 50-cent coffee. I loitered in the halo of the truck bed.

And then—across the street—Isa. A wild elf in human form. I waved. He glided over.

“Can’t have a tailgate party without a pickup truck,” he said.

“Jerry’s good for such things,” I replied.

“Jerry is a good guy,” said Isa.

He was 27, thin as a Frito, and dressed like a Himalayan hitchhiker on parole. His coat—a woolen beast from Kathmandu—hung off his lanky frame like armor for an entirely different climate.

“So, Grass,” Isa said, “everyone at the Monkey Temple was wondering where you vanished to this morning.”

“Yeah, I left at sunup because there’s a dude in my head—”

Jerry interrupted: “You staying or riding?”

Then to Isa: “You rolling too?”

Isa nodded, slung his pack, and hopped in the back like a Zen hitcher straight out of Kerouac’s fever dream.

“Ford trucks all day,” I told him as we pulled away from Will and the Meaner Weiner vortex.

I gave Isa the bullet-point version: the mystical hitch with Lance, the magnetic shove in the crosswalk, the twenty bucks, the Walmart chocolates, the MF mojo, and the police standoff that ended in divine intervention via Jerry.

“And aside from that, pretty chill day,” I concluded.

Isa giggled. Then his face got papal-serious.

“I was supposed to check in with Pops’ camp if I found you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Well, last night you ate enough mushrooms to canonize a goat, and then vanished like a ghost this morning. Everyone’s assuming the worst. There’s basically a full-blown APB out for you.”

“Tell them I didn’t jump off a cliff. But I know I can. That’s on the table now—part of the buffet. I’m a joke and I’ve made peace with that. But now there’s this voice in my head, chirping like Jiminy Cricket after a few too many nights without sleep. Real specific. Real opinionated. Like a pocket-sized uncle with boundary issues. So yeah—let ‘em know I’ve got company upstairs, but am okay.”

“I’m sure it’ll ease their worries,” Isa said with a straight face.

“And I gotta figure out what this voice wants. When I gave that twenty to the moke in the lifted truck—his face, man. Lit up like a broken vending machine getting power again. It was alive. I would’ve never done that without this thing in my head. Humility, service, connection—turns out you can buy all three at Walmart. Cheap.”

“Sounds like you’re on a quest,” said Isa.

“What do you think the voice is?”

“Well, you haven’t told me what he says.”

“He refuses to give me his name.”

“Call him Gabriel,” Isa said, “after the messenger.”

And just like that, it was official.

The sun had tucked itself behind Mauna Loa’s massive shoulder by the time Jerry pulled into his kingdom of rust and resurrection: a full acre of HPP yard dotted with gutted vehicles, warped engine blocks, and long-forgotten car guts sunbathing in the red dirt. It was less a junkyard than a mechanic’s dreamscape held together by hope, duct tape, and the stubborn refusal to give up on alternators.

My eyes locked onto a white limo rotting in the weeds like a bleached whale carcass.

“Yeah, I’ll get that one purring again,” Jerry said, catching my glance. “Just needs an alternator. You’ll ride in style next time you decide to play chicken with a cop.”

Isa snorted. “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“Why?” Jerry humored him.

“Because his ass was Grass!”

They both cracked up like it was new, like they hadn’t heard that exact punchline for the fifth time this week alone. I smiled like a hostage. The joke was older than my patience. I needed a new name. One that didn’t come with a baked-in punchline.

“Alright,” Jerry said, voice shifting gears. “Heads up—my mom’s a little... unconventional. But you’ve got your pads and bags? Good. She won’t mind you crashing on the floor.”

We followed him up the stairs onto a wraparound lanai that surveyed his automotive empire. A couple kids, dark-skinned and shrieking with laughter, ran circles around the deck playing what seemed like hide-and-seek-tag-marathon. Coconut-brown skin, obsidian hair—not Jerry’s DNA.

Island sat on the far corner of the deck, shirtless and waxy with sweat, a banana in one hand and a toddler in the other. His blonde dreadlocks reached the small of his back, and the toddler tugged them like a rope ladder, demanding to know why he only ate “healthy stuff.” Island gave some limp answer about it being good for him.

I gave him a squint and a small shake of the head. He saw it. Posture changed. Message received.

“Hey, Isa, Grass,” Jerry called. “Come in. Say hi to my mom.”

Inside, the kitchen had the sterile stillness of a place too clean to be truly lived in. Jerry’s mom sat at a plastic lawn table under a flickering light that glared off her thick glasses. Rosy cheeks, a squat pug nose, iron-gray curls that looked like they’d survived a few scuffles. Her breathing was a wheeze, like a bellows trying to stoke a reluctant fire.

She greeted us like old friends, told us to sit, and promised us soup—pork stew made from a pig her friend had personally put down.

Then she climbed the stairs. Isa and I traded a glance.

“She’s probably turning in,” Jerry offered. “Soup’s fair game. Eat what you want. Just… keep the volume low. If you wake her, well… just don’t.”

He smiled like someone who knew where the landmines were buried but wasn’t going to map them out.

We nodded. Got up. Served ourselves.

Jerry disappeared. No goodbyes. Just vapor.

“Maybe farewells are frowned upon in this house,” Isa murmured.

We sat and spooned pork soup in silence while above us, Jerry’s mom grunted and muttered. The house echoed like a giant seashell trying to tell secrets it didn’t want you to understand.

After second helpings of pig-soup diplomacy, Isa and I decided that was enough domestic tranquility for one night. We shoved the couch toward the far wall to clear out sleeping real estate. Its peg-legs squealed like a tortured guinea pig, and Isa, ever impatient, yanked his end before I had mine—causing it to screech in protest.

“Wait!” I whispered, arms outstretched in disaster-prevention mode.

Too late. Isa stepped full force on a Lego castle, unleashing a muffled yelp and dropping his end of the couch with a seismic thud. I smacked my forehead and hissed like a lizard.

We laid out our sleeping bags, and Isa, like some street-corner Willy Wonka, pulled out a box of Nerds. He poured a neon handful into my palm, and I tasted the tart watermelon crystals of childhood, my tongue puckering as if the day might end sweetly after all.

Then came the bellow.

It wasn’t a voice so much as a prehistoric battle cry—like a moose in labor. Heavy footsteps crashed down the stairs. And there she was.

Mama Bear.

Straight out of Grimm’s blooper reel, hair haloed like a detonated dandelion, white cotton gown floating ghostlike above her swollen ankles, and eyes—dear God, the eyes—black as 3AM and bulging like she’d seen the face of Truth and punched it.

"Alright, I heard you two faggots!" she roared. "Get outta my house!"

Silence. Isa and I blinked in unison like synchronized deer.

"I mean it!" she snarled. "I was just falling asleep when I heard you two bumpin’ butts and moanin’ like a couple o’ queers!”

I tried. I really did. “Oh no, you must’ve heard us moving the couch—"

“Bullshit!” she shrieked. “You were fuckin’! I know what I heard!”

Then Jerry padded up the stairs, rubbing his temples with the weary look of a man who’d wrestled this Minotaur before—and lost.

“No, Mom,” he sighed. “They’re my friends. They weren’t having sex. They were moving the couch like I told them.”

But Mama Bear was now a freight train of certainty barreling through reason. “They were fuckin’ and moanin’ and I want them gone!”

Jerry mouthed an apology as we packed our things in zombie silence. Isa’s face was blank as a monk in a bad dream. I rolled up my bag, quietly wondering if we should leave a note explaining the difference between fornication and furniture relocation. Probably not.

Out on the porch, Jerry whispered, “I’ll drive you guys back to Pahoa.”

“You’re a good man, Jerry,” I told him. Isa nodded.

We hefted the couch back into place like cursed archaeologists restoring a tomb, and tiptoed out to the truck.

“She’s been getting worse,” Jerry said, turning the key. “Yesterday she accused me and Island of bumping butts while working on the limo.”

“Well,” I said, “nothing’s more erotic than two men under the hood of a broken-down limo.”

Jerry chuckled, but it came out tired.

“I’m really sorry,” he said.

“No harm done,” Isa assured him, as we climbed into the back.

The wind had a sly bite, just sharp enough to raise goosebumps. I retrieved my sleeping bag in the back of Jerry’s truck and bundled up, telling Isa it wasn’t cold-cold, but brisk enough to pretend it was.

Above us, the stars were on strike—sky smeared in charcoal, clouds stretched thin like cheap insulation. The moon, swollen and shy, hung behind the gauze, throwing just enough glow to silver the roadside Ohia. 

As was custom, Jerry deposited us at the Meaner Weiner like a tired cabbie too polite to admit he’d regretted the fare. We climbed out like discharged cargo. Isa and I gave him the now-ritual blessings.

“Dugouts, Jerry,” I said, gesturing vaguely toward our cathedral of aluminum and grass. “It’s all good.”

He nodded, worn and quiet, as if his soul had just made a pit stop somewhere behind his eyeballs.

“You’re a good man,” I told him, and meant it.

“Such a good guy,” Isa added.

Jerry muttered something about “one love” and rolled away, pausing briefly in front of the 7/11 like he might go in and restock his weary heart, then drove on.

We took the pilgrimage route through sleepy Pahoa—under the shelter of the community center, past the ghost-sweating bleachers, up two sets of stairs into our sacred tabernacle: the dugouts. Two of them, both recently upgraded with aluminum roofs over concrete slabs. Not hurricane safe, sure. But if the rain came straight down—or only mildly sideways—we’d be dry as toast.

We chose the far dugout. The vibe was softer there. More whispered trauma, less vagrant snoring.

While pulling out our bedding, Isa froze and pointed to the field.  Something the size of a dog—dancing. Bounding. Trotting in moonlight like a four-legged satyr. Not canine. Not feline. It moved like mischief made flesh.

Did you know pigs dance in the moonlight?

We watched it caper across the silver field, not saying a word. When it vanished into the bushes, we unrolled our bags and crawled in.

I woke once, half-conscious, to Isa rustling with his things. “Off on a donut mission,” he whispered. I wished him luck and descended back into dreams.

By dawn, the clouds had slinked away and I was stiff but renewed.

Thumb out, I hitched toward the coast, heart set on clearing my name at Pops’ Camp. But when I reached the Monkey Temple, it was hollowed out. Everyone gone.

No Tivas under the stairwell either.  Bummer.

Then—thump, shuffle—Ewok appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Grass!” he called down, arms spread like the prodigal son had returned from a bender.

“Oh hey, where is everybody?”

“Everyone’s been wondering what happened to you.”

“Just bumping butts, out and about. Where is everyone?”

Ewok squinted like I’d handed him a riddle in Aramaic.

“No disrespect,” I added, maybe too late.

Ewok was a relic from the old guard. He had Pops’ accent but none of his gravity. Always ready to ‘help’—as long as help meant philosophizing from the shade and accusing people of stealing his rolling tobacco.

“We moved down to Malamaki,” he said, poking through debris. “I came back to see if I left my Top—did you see it?”

“No, but did you see a pair of sandals? Tivas?”

He shook his head. “Nope. But you should go to Malamaki and tell them you didn’t jump off the cliff. Might get your sandals back.”

“That’s actually… exactly what I was gonna do. Wait. Who told you about the cliff?”

“Grass,” he said with a crooked grin, “lay off the mushrooms for a while, would ya?”

Then came the cackle, the phlegm pouch, the cough, the lung fragment, the glob he spit into the trash.

Malamaki—better known to the barefoot locals as The Coconut Grove—was a sun-blasted lava shelf, clinging to the coastline like a black scab above the ocean’s snarling lip. Waves pummeled the cliff face with full open-palmed fury, detonating skyward like the sea itself was giving a standing ovation to chaos. Those same frothy hands then clawed inland, stretching across the rock like white-fingered trespassers, caressing a scattered chain of tidepools—pristine little chalices engineered for skinny-dipping idealists and the occasional crusty skillet. 

When I arrived, everyone but Gingko and Hatti were on a town mission.  The ladies were lounging on a downed ironwood log. They informed me with the calm authority of people who had seen too much and smoked even more, that the Monkey Temple was now on lockdown. Off-limits. Forbidden fruit. Only Pops, Scott, and Ewok were allowed in the fortress.

“Business,” said Gingko with a wink, like a lizard blinking sideways.

“You shouldn’t disappear like that,” Hatti said, not looking at me.  “What’s new?”

“There’s a dude in my head now,” I said. “So that’s new.”

“That’s you,” Hatti said, flat as a dead battery. “You meet you.”

“A dude?” Gingko leaned forward, eyebrows perked like radar dishes. “As in… a voice?”

I nodded. Hatti gave me that same bone-dry, seen-it-all stare she’d leveled at me when I’d wept like a soggy sitcom husband at the end of the Monkey Temple’s driveway over Erin—equal parts pity, disbelief, and psychic hangover.

“Yeah, it started after I devoured the fungal sacrament—”

“Jesus Christ,” Hatti groaned. “Is anyone gonna talk about anything besides mushrooms around here?”

“Like a spirit?” Gingko pressed on. “Or like… an entity?”

Hatti stood like she was preparing to evacuate.

“It’s just this raspy-voiced guy, sounds like Isa’s chain-smoking uncle who lives off burnt toast and resentment. He won’t give me his name—real coy like that—but Isa called him Gabriel, so I’m rolling with it. He’s got this weird blue-and-white shimmer, kind of like a gas leak in a church window…” I trailed off, shrugging, not eager to dissect the vision further while Hatti looked like she was already drafting my psychiatric intake form in her head.

“He just wants to collect crazy pay,” Hatti grunted, moving toward her tent.

“No, really,” I said, laughing because what else do you do when no one believes you're being haunted by a glittery mental hitchhiker?

Gingko saw it though. She didn’t blink. She was measuring the tremble in my voice and checking it against her own secret meter. She didn’t say so, but her silence leaned curious.

“I need a smoke,” Hatti said, relenting in that way people do when they know they’re in for more nonsense.

“I’ve got a pouch,” said Gingko, producing an American Spirit pouch.

“What does the guy say?” Hatti asked, pinching the tobacco.

So I told them everything—Jerry, the intersection, the way the MF moved me. And yeah, the saga of Jerry’s mother. That part got laughs. Hatti cracked a real one, deep and rumbling, but her eyes didn’t join in. They were still watching something behind me.

“Grass,” she finally said, “you gotta be careful. I know you’ve been... unraveling. But don’t let this dude steer the ship.”

“That’s what Jerry said,” I admitted. “But this feels like an adventure.”

“Let the boy have his quest,” Gingko nodded, threading a bead onto hemp with the slow reverence of someone conjuring meaning out of twine. She was always making something—amulets of care, intention woven into loops. The necklace she was working on hadn’t been meant for me. It was originally for Rob—red-haired Rob—chosen to match the deep ember stone at its center: red jasper for a red man. She’d even picked the name Jasper for him, said it came to her in a dream. But Rob had shrugged it off, said he didn’t want a name someone else picked, didn’t want a stone around his neck that implied he was anything but temporary. Gingko wouldn’t offer it to me—not until Rob had officially declined, which wouldn’t happen for another two weeks. But when he did, and she did, I’d accept the whole bundle—name, necklace, story—with open arms and no hesitation.

“I don’t like eavesdropping,” Hatti muttered, eyes narrowing on the air above me. “But I’m picturing a giant blue-and-white dude giving you a shoulder rub.”

“Creepy,” I said, truthfully.

We sat on a log in the communal kitchen, the jungle buzzing around us like static. Gingko kept braiding her beads, Hatti flicked the ashes of her cigarette like each one had a moral lesson, and I burst into laughter at something none of them could hear.

“Have you considered talking to a doctor?” Gingko asked, as polite as you can be when suggesting someone might be a few crayons short of a full box.

“I’ve only told a few people,” I said, “but it’s not like that. I don’t think I’m crazy. I know that’s what a crazy person would say—but it’s not like I’m imagining a pink elephant in a tutu. This is me. There’s you, and there’s you”—I pointed—“and then there’s Gabriel. Sparkly, smiling Gabriel. And I guess that’s just how it is.”

Hatti was still shaking her head, slowly, like her brain was trying to wring out the last bit of sanity from the damp rag of this conversation.

After the rollie smoke curled down to roaches and the talk of voices and quests settled into a shoulder shrug, I stood, stretched, and said I ought to do the dishes. Hatti gave me a wary glance, like she wasn’t sure if I meant the literal kind or if I was off to polish seashells while giggling at shadows. But Gingko nodded, approving, and went back to her beadwork. A man with a mission—however small—was a man still tethered.

I carried the crusty plates and bowls out toward the edge of the lava shelf where the lava cracked open into a network of tide pools—clear, salty basins tucked into the black rock, like nature’s own dish pit. The ocean was throwing its usual tantrum—slapping the cliff face with open palms and frothing up into sudden applause—but the pools sat a few feet back, calm and reflective, catching sky and spray like old gossip.  

I waded thigh-deep into a pool the size of the armor-gray van everyone had gone to town in and got to work. Used a handful of sand and a broken bit of coral like I was back in the monastery with a Brillo pad and a basin of tepid water—only now the basin was alive: darting fish, a lurking eel, and the scent of salt that felt cleaner than clean. At first, the fish had scattered, vanishing into shadows beneath the rock ledges, spooked by the sudden disturbance of my clumsy feet. But as I settled in and the rhythm of scrubbing took over—scrub and dip, scrub and dip—they returned. Thumb-sized residents, gray and hungry, swam in to peck at the floating scraps of oatmeal, eggs, and ramen noodles. They darted through the drifting debris like piranhas on a T-bone.. Every clink of silverware underwater sounded like a memory ringing from some other life. I scrubbed and dipped until the grease gave up and floated off like sin.

Once the dishes were rinsed and stacked on a sun-warmed boulder to dry, I scrubbed myself down with fistfuls of sand and coral—arms, legs, neck—until I felt scrubbed clean in the way that salt and abrasion can manage when soap isn’t available. Then I climbed up onto a fat lava rock that the ocean had molded into the shape of a bean bag and let the sun press its hands against me until I was relatively unmoistened.  

I gathered the dishes—mostly plastic plates and bowls, the kind you could buy in bulk at Wally World for a buck a pop—and brought them back to the kitchen. I stacked them near the camp stove. Gingko was still perched on the log, threading beads into a half-finished hemp necklace—the same red-stoned piece she’d originally intended for Rob, with his shock of matching red hair, until he’d rejected the name she’d given it: Jasper. She wouldn’t offer it to me until two weeks from now, after Rob had definitively passed on it with something close to a sneer. 

She had doted on Rob, and Rob was red—had been dubbed The Red Factor X by Isa after downing a fistful of woodrose seeds and proclaiming, with the cracked conviction of a peyote-wracked archangel, that there was a fifth element: both ether and dark matter, simultaneously everything and void. Nobody exactly disagreed—it sounded plausible—but Rob shouted it with such end-times ferocity that even Puna’s tolerance for ecstatic lunacy began to fray. Gingko, benevolent dealer of trinkets and meaning, had seen the red jasper stone as grounding, the name as fate, and Rob as the chosen neck and new name. When he waved it off with a bored shrug, she turned to me, question mark in her eyes. I answered with a nod and smile.

“Thank you,” I told Gingko as she tied the hemp necklace around the back of my neck. The stone rested right where my collarbones met, warm from her hands, heavier than it looked in its hemp woven basket.

“Just one last question before you officially change your name,” she said, fingers still fiddling with the final knot.

“Shoot.”

“Since your ass is Grass… do you have any grass, Grass?”

““And there it is,” I said, with feigned weariness. “The reason I need the name change. The straw that broke the cannabis pun’s back. And I like puns, but that one irks like a sticker burr in your sock on a long hike—mild at first, then maddening, then suddenly you’re screaming at God in the middle of the trail and throwing your shoe into the gulch.”

Gingko grinned like a fox. “Jasper suits you, I think.”

“The name rocks.”

“Stoned, for sure.”

But that part comes later—I’m jumping ahead, because stories have a habit of folding in on themselves, like lava tubes collapsing under their own weight.

Anyway, Gingko was macraméing that necklace, her fingers moving like little spiders in a trance, and Hatti was dozing in the tent, face turned to the wall, her breathing deep and steady like a drumbeat from the underworld. Gingko pressed a finger to her lips, not even looking up, and I understood—whispers were too loud for this moment. Even silence had to tiptoe. So I slipped away, barefoot and reverent, into the hush of the ironwoods for a stroll.

The park’s path pulled me under the ironwoods, their long, brittle fingers trailing down as if to comb through my hair or maybe tune into the low hum of Gabriel, who was quiet now, just a warm static at the edge of thought. He spoke occasionally, parables with a punchline I couldn’t hold onto—profound, I was sure, but fleeting. On the rusty floor of fallen needles, with the sunlight broken into flickers, I let the riddles drift. I didn’t need to understand them. I just walked.

I was gone for hours. Just letting the path carry me. No destination, no panic. The world tilted golden and then mauve. And only when dusk began to swaddle the grove did I make my way back.

I padded soft under the coconut palms, their trunks like ancient vertebrae reaching for the stars, toward the flicker and snap of campfire light. Ember-glow licked the underbellies of fronds, casting monstrous shadows that waved and whispered. I stepped from the darkness into the warmth of the circle—eight familiar faces lit in gold and flickering orange, gathered in a crescent moon around Pops.

There he sat, cross-legged in half-lotus at the yawning mouth of his tent, back straight as a staff, eyes half-lidded in story-mode. Beside him, Daeragan’s twenty twitchy fingers spidered up and down his guitar’s fretboard. The fire crackled in agreement. The big white marble monster—an impossibly clean pipe that looked carved from the tooth of an albino whale—was making the rounds with sacred slowness. Each person who held it seemed temporarily suspended in orbit.

I nodded at Paul, who met my gaze with pupils so dilated he looked like he’d been possessed by the night itself. A few others mirrored the same dilation—eyes blown wide open, as if trying to inhale the whole scene through their retinas. The vibe was electric and sticky, the kind of charged air that tells you something's either about to hatch or explode.

I made a pinching motion over my eye to Paul. Without words, he thumbed toward the folding table about fifteen feet behind the fire. On it, a psychedelic buffet: a full spread of mushrooms piled high, arranged almost reverently, like a birthday cake for the disembodied.

I felt a pang—not jealousy, exactly, but omission. A knowing nod from Paul, who clocked my vibe like a seasoned dealer spotting a first-time shoplifter.

"You can have some," he said, casual but pointed. "It’s not all about you, just... don’t freak out again."

"Big night.  Take three for the Trinity," said Gabriel. His voice was serious and certain.

So I did. Three firm caps. A tiny act of devotion. I crossed myself for old time's sake and chewed them down, tasting the sour bark of infinity. I wasn’t even finished swallowing before the doubts fluttered in: What exactly did Gabriel mean by big night?

To settle the argument, I ate five more. Not with rebellion. Not with desperation. Just because. The way some people crack their knuckles. The caps stared back at me, puckered and pallid like tiny skulls grinning with moldy gums. As I stepped back, I caught my foot on a gnarled root and stumbled sideways.

"You alright there, Grass?" Ewok rasped from the fire ring. "Them boomers might taste like bullshit, but I swear we made sure they only were grown in it." He cackled at his own joke and followed it up with three wet coughs and a ceremonial foot stomp.

"Feels like a red pill night," I muttered, which landed with a dull thud. Ewok looked away. I should’ve just laughed.

That old ache of misplacement returned—a longing for Frodo’s ring or some ancient artifact that could poof me out of every awkward moment I couldn’t quite finesse. But then the ground rumbled.

Not metaphorically. Not internally. The waves were slamming into the cliffs with such force that vibrations rolled to us and hummed under our asses, even from two hundred feet back.

Psilocybin giddiness fluttered up my spine like a deck of shuffled cards. I wandered from the table, away from the fire an off toward Mackenzie.

The coconut trees loomed overhead, their stalks so high and straight they felt like seaweed from a forgotten dream. I felt like a land-bound octopus, slinking across the ocean floor in search of something delightful.

"Ah, dipshit," Gabriel chimed in, dry as newspaper. "Should’ve listened. There was a reason I said three. Tonight’s not just any night."

"Then what is it?"

"Why don’t you walk your spongy little feet up that hill and have a seat?"

The moon was massive, but the ironwoods filtered its shine like old Venetian blinds. I flicked my squeeze-light every few paces, dodging rocks that jutted out like broken teeth.

The grove gave way to a knob of a hill about twenty feet above the water. I ascended it slowly and stretched at the top, marveling at how good it felt. 

I remembered how the hill had been introduced to Yosh and me as The Dojo by Panda's dad, Merlin—two spectral twigs of men who fasted and chanted and actually used the beads that most people wore as accessories. A proper pair of mystical yardsticks.  As I stretched my hamstrings, I smiled at the memory.

My first week on the island, Yosh and I had hitched to Mackenzie, all sunburned skin and starry-eyed idiocy. That’s where we met Panda—a walking exhale of a human, barefoot, beaded, radiating the kind of positivity that might make a lesser man homicidal. He smiled like it was his only muscle and led us on a trail skirting the cliff, up to a knoll topped by a quilt and a wizard.

His name, of course, was Merlin.

And yes, he looked exactly like the myth: long silver hair, beard like a river of spider silk, white linen clothing that fluttered with each breeze like his whole vibe had been stitched from clouds.  He may have been lighter than his son Panda—an achievement that defied both physics and protein.

“Welcome to The Dojo,” he said with the timbre of someone who hadn’t yelled since Atlantis fell.

A guitar rested beside him. “Would you like to chant with me?”

Now, I wasn’t yet versed in Sankirtans or Krishna-core, but when a wizard invites you to chant, you chant. Even if you’re haunted by the suspicion it’ll end in either transcendence or accidental nudity.

Yosh, thrilled, was all in. “Fuck yeah.”

Merlin smiled through the profanity like a monk who’d seen worse. “It’s call and repeat,” he said. “I’ll call it. You repeat with Panda.”

Panda, who was already clapping like he was trying to summon dolphins, beamed at us. “You guys are gonna love this!”

And off we went.

“Govinda Jaya Jaya, Gopala Jaya Jaya!”

It was catchy. In the way that commercial jingles about adult diapers are catchy. I half-suspected Merlin had made it up on the spot, possibly while microdosing sandalwood.

At first I mouthed the words like a reluctant extra in a cult-themed musical. But Yosh—God bless his inner Labrador—threw himself into it with closed eyes and rhythmic shoulder shimmies. Panda was vibrating. Merlin was practically levitating. And me? I was dying inside.

About ten minutes in, the chant became eternal. An ouroboros of joy. A sonic Mobius strip with no off-ramp. My soul began clawing at the edges of my skin like a cat in a burlap sack.

And still: “Govinda Jaya Jaya, Gopala Jaya Jaya!”

It was ecstasy for them. It was an ice water plunge for me.

Finally, mercifully, Merlin strummed the guitar like it was the last note in the universe and gave a long, extended “Jayaaaaa.” He pressed his palms together, bowed, and thanked us. It was, apparently, day three of a fast, so he excused himself to nap or astrally project or whatever wizards do when they’re fatigued.

“That shit was the dopest shit!” Yosh said, glowing like he’d just snorted a rainbow.

Merlin twitched. His right cheek spasmed like he’d just been poked by a ghost. His eyes darted. He offered me a half-nod and disappeared into the trees with the grace of a disappointed faun.

Panda, looking a bit paler, made a quick bow and followed.

“Way to go, Yosh,” I said.

“What?”

“Govinda Jaya is the dopest shit. Really?”

“It was dope!”

“Yosh, when you’re around people who eat light and chant light and dream in lavender, your language should be shantier than thou.”

“I don’t speak tea leaves.”

“Your shit fucked up his shit because you called it shit.”

“It was Sanskrit, man.  Dope shit, and I stand by it.”

I chuckled, remembering Yosh’s crackpot enthusiasm that first night on the hill—calling Sanskrit the “dope shit” like it was Wu-Tang for Hare Krishnas. Now, a month later, I was upside-down in the dark, doing a headstand on The Dojo’s flattop, my ankles against an ironwood’s trunk, when a voice—not Gabriel’s—cut through the memory like a scalpel through fog.

“Now, go.”

The tone wasn’t cruel, wasn’t kind—just certain. It wasn’t asking. I lowered myself from the headstand, heart jackhammering against my ribs. MF had its hand on my back, that quiet gravitational pressure that means this is not a suggestion. It guided me forward across the flat top of The Dojo—something between mentor and magnet, nudging me like a parent teaching a kid to ride a bike with a hand on the back of the seat.

The ocean was invisible, but present. The waves below were growling—snapping and snarling against the lava teeth of the shoreline. And though I couldn’t see them, I could feel the sea frothing like it wanted me.

The MF—the new presence—pushed me down the steep slope.

“Alright, easy there,” I muttered, leaning back against the nothing—some invisible palm pressed firm against my lower spine. “Far enough, buddy.” I tried to keep my voice casual, like I wasn’t one toe from full meltdown, but the truth was—I was already weighing whether Hatti’s worried look had been prophecy, paranoia, or just classic, gut-punched feminine intuition with centuries of men walking off cliffs to back it up.

A nudge. Not a shove. More like a breeze with an opinion. Gabriel was there—cool and cocky as ever—lingering beside whoever this ‘other’ presence was.

“Come on now, Dipshit,” he said, casual as a pool hustler. “You’re either in or you’re out.”

He said it like a tired uncle coaxing a squirrel from a toaster. Patient, but not that patient.

I remembered Hatti’s look—that surgical stare of a woman who’d already drafted my eulogy in her head, who saw the obituary before I even slipped, and would mourn me with clenched fists and an I-told-you-so carved deep into her chest.

But compelled, down the slope I went, palms braced against ironwood trunks slick with sea-sweat. The fallen needles slid beneath my feet like a trapdoor in a magician’s act, and I skidded, arms flailing, half-graceful, half-slapstick martyrdom. The magnetic pressure—whatever summoned me—had loosened its grip. Still present, but now more passive-aggressive than commanding. They were watching. Not judging. Just absorbing. The way dogs observe a man sobbing, alert and weirdly reverent, as if they can smell whatever wound’s leaking from the soul.

My legs shook—not from fear, but from that syrupy adrenaline that comes when you’re saying goodbye without saying goodbye. When every step feels pre-eulogized. I was walking toward something that had teeth and a sense of humor.

And then I stopped. Pressed back into the phantom pressure at my lower back. MF was still there—insistent, gentle, like a parent’s palm on a toddler’s spine—but I dug in my heels.

“No,” I said aloud.

Gabriel huffed. “Forget it, then. You gotta do it of your own free will. We’re not here to shove you. Trust, or stagnate. We’ve got others we could haunt, you know.”

I stood there, toeing the seam between hesitation and doom—the kind of ledge that only exists in fever dreams or bedtime stories that forget to end well. Was this it? My curtain call? Slippery, salt-soaked pratfall onto a stage of pink volcanic teeth and razor-shelled spectators?

The ocean didn’t offer comfort.

BOOM.

A wave exploded into the gulch below, cold mist clawing up the slope to slap me across the face like a debt collector.

“Go,” said Gabriel. 

The clouds had swallowed the moon whole. No light, no outline—just darkness pressed against more darkness. I crouched and groped my way forward, fingers skimming slick bark, matted needles, cold grit. I was feeling for what I’d seen in daylight: that pink slab the size of a refrigerator, jagged and unbothered by a century of surf. One of several boulders down in the gulch below The Dojo, each stoic and covered in shells. I moved toward the first, not crawling, just low and steady—palming the earth like a raccoon.

Another boom. Another soaking slap. But I crouched and withstood it.  Little wet, but no worse for the wear.

“Good. Keep going!” Gabriel cheered.

I climbed to the next boulder. It bit back—sharp with shells that almost sliced my palm. Then came a voice I hadn’t heard before. 

“Just a little further,” said the new voice—measured, patient, almost regal. 

My hands moved. My legs followed. Another jagged descent. Then—boom. Water slammed into the rocks. A towering wave, I could feel its height in my stomach, lifted itself to inspect me.

“Brace. Now duck!” shouted Gabriel.

I did, arms between two boulders, held fast while the sea exploded over me. It was a full-body dowsing that didn’t sting—it baptized.

“In the name of the Father,” came the calm voice again.

“See, Dipshit,” said Gabriel, now back to his usual snark, “we weren’t trying to kill you. Just wanted to give you a proper baptism. That’s why I told you to eat three. Trinity math, dumbass.”

The second wave came barreling in with messianic force—thicker, meaner than the first—but I held, wedged between two jagged boulders, shaking with the kind of thrill that bypasses language and bites straight into the soul. Then came the third, the name of the Spirit: slower, deeper, as if the ocean had paused to consider me before lunging. I bellowed into it—not from terror, but from a strange euphoria. The sea bellowed back. No holy smoke, no hymns—just salt in my teeth and sea lettuce clinging to my knees. Baptized!

I stayed there for two more waves, just for the hell of it. One kissed me. One tried to take my boardshorts.

When I was ready, I clambered back up, dripping and reborn. My limbs knew the path even when my eyes didn’t. The boulders were suddenly gentle, and the sea seemed content to let me go.

At the top, I retrieved my flashlight. My shirt clung to me like a remorseful ex. I was shivering, so I dropped and did push-ups until the wind felt warm.

Then, slipping back into the shadows of the coconut grove, I crept toward camp—barefoot, grinning, sopping wet.

The breeze nuzzled me like a puppy, sniffing to make sure I was still me.

And I was.

Only better.

Before I even reached the camp, I could tell something was off. Water was threading through the grove in rivulets, slick little veins of movement that hadn’t been there before. Not puddles—incipient streams. The kitchen was gone. Not disassembled, not packed up. Gone.

“Grass, where’s your tent?” Gingko asked, already shouldering her backpack like she’d been born with it.

“I sleep in a lava tube over in Mackenzie,” I said.

“Oh. Well, I’m leaving. Most of us are. All of us should. But people are crazy.”

Right on cue, from somewhere down-grove, Ewok’s voice came shrieking through the ironwoods: “The flood’s coming! I’m ready, Lord—take me!”

We turned to see him standing in ankle-deep water, arms to the sky.

“Some people ate a lot of mushrooms,” Gingko explained.

“Where’s your ark?” Hatti shouted, rolling up her tent.

Feet in a rivulet, Ewok just stomped and splashed and insisted that he needed no ark where he was going.

Hatti shouldered her pack after strapping the tent to it.  Her arms were full as she pivoted into a sloshy exit march. Gingko lingered.

“Pops said we can sleep at the Monkey Temple tonight,” Gingko said. “But no one’s allowed past the second floor. We’ll see who arrives soaked and shivering with second thoughts about meditating till dawn.” She tilted her chin toward Paul.

I followed her gaze. Paul was sitting exactly where their tent used to be—now just a soggy crater in the mud, like a memory too stubborn to evaporate. On a bucket, he was dry, technically, but there was a stillness to him, that eerie stillness of someone hoping to evaporate into concept. He wasn’t planning on moving. Not until the ocean made the decision for him.

“He took a ton of mushrooms,” Gingko said, reading my nod perfectly. “Thinks the ocean’s calling him home. He says God wants the waves to carry him.”

“A lot of people say they feel the ocean calling,” I said.

“I think it is,” I added.

She looked at me, squinting. “Did you go for a dip in a tidepool?”

“I got baptized by the dude in my head. Out in front of The Dojo. Full immersion, three waves.”

“The Dojo—that little hump between Malamaki and Mackenzie?”

I nodded and started helping her carry gear toward the Temple, telling the tale as we moved.

“That is not a safe place to get in the water,” Gingko snapped.

“But did I die?”

“You easily could have.”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“No, I know exactly whose idea it was. Grass, Hatti’s really worried about you, and if she hears—”

“There’s no reason to tell her.”

The next morning, we were politely but unmistakably exorcised from the Monkey Temple and hoofed it back to Malamaki, half-feral and sun-dazed. The tide had dragged its bloated corpse back to sea but left behind its fingerprints in the form of glistening pools, the biggest at the base of the access road. With the chaos-streams finally subdued, we assembled a jittery little fire on a begrudging spit of dry land and commenced the sacred caffeine ritual—scorching sacrificial grounds in a crusty percolator rescued from someone’s ex-girlfriend’s apocalypse kit. No one made eye contact. Not yet. We were still unpeeling the previous dimension. And then, slicing through the smoke like a bureaucratic ghost, came the silhouette—tan uniform, clip-on authority, and a wide-brim hat casting government-grade moral judgment.

The Park Ranger. José. Walking citation with a badge and a clipboard. His presence announced that the party was officially over.

Ranger José. Clipboard, frown, government-issue boots. He looked like a man who used to believe in things. “No permit, no stay,” he said, as if quoting the sacred script of Bureaucratica. Ora and Shon were in town, so no license plate to trace. We shrugged as one. No IDs. Invented names.

“This is just a warning,” Jose said. “Next time, cops.”

“We’re leaving, you fucking pig!” yelled Ewok, who was halfway through rolling a cigarette and resented being interrupted more than he feared arrest. His fury was caffeinated, righteous, and smelled like wet sock.

The Monkey Temple was no longer on offer—quietly retired from circulation for reasons that didn’t need repeating. So we scattered like stoners at a busted drum circle, blowing toward whatever high ground or low drama awaited.

Midmorning, I thumbed into Pahoa and ran into Isa on the boardwalk.

“Know where the full moon’s gonna be?” he asked.

“Heard this side. Dean likes to alternate. I’m not in the loop,” I said.

“You look extra shiny today,” he said.

“Baptized last night.”

“Oh, congratulations!”

You could tell Isa anything and he’d light up like you’d just told him his spirit animal won the lottery.

We wandered to the Natch and spotted the gang’s tank-gray van in the lot. Slide door open—Kelsie mid-story, Anthony half-awake, Gingko focused like a saint as she coaxed another hemp necklace into existence around a piece of quartz. Paul was inside with her EBT card. 

“We moved to Fox’s Landing,” she said, knotting with quiet precision. “It’s a lava-covered highway. One mile from where Pele’s forming feet.”

“Kaimu or Kalapana?” I asked.

She tilted her head. “They call it both, but I like Pele’s bubbly lava toes down there.  They’re adorbs.”

Kelsie looked down and asked, “You mean her bubbly magma piggies?”

“Yep,” said Gingko.

“So the party’s out where the lava is oozing up?” I said. “Copy that.”

Kelsie turned to me. “Where’s the grass, Grass?”

“No got,” I said, “and please no mas with that  question, por favor, Kelsie.”

She blinked at me like I’d just confessed to voting Republican. “Then why go by Grass?”

“That is fair.”

As far as my own game plan, I considered thumbing it downhill toward Fox’s Landing, but something in my gut staged a mutiny. Pops’ Camp—it hadn’t been pono since the night. There was a joke I wasn’t in on. Not just any joke, either. A sticky, running gag told too many times, with too much relish. I caught it in Hatti’s eye roll whenever Gingko dared bring up “the night.” And I could feel it hovering—like a stench that doesn’t know it’s overstayed.

But the offness went deeper than my bruised ego. It was Pops. That thousand-yard stare of his, jungle-scarred and flaring with the kind of spiritual static you don’t get from meditating in tie-dye. Eyes that had seen napalm baptisms and kept receipts. Isa was the only other one staying clear of camp, and when I asked him why, he just said, “Heavy dude.”

“He’s a kahuna,” Isa added later, “I stopped by for coffee in the morning, and again that evening—and he hadn’t moved. Still in half-lotus. Like a Buddha.

That week before the full moon, I drifted. Slept in the dugouts with Isa a couple nights. But Saturday morning, I hitchhiked to Mackenzie for some ironwood solitude and a lava-tube nap. Jose, the ranger, spotted me scribbling in the pavilion and asked if I was camping.

“I would never do such a terrible thing,” I said, looking up like a wrongfully accused Victorian orphan.

He blinked. I held the look. He walked away.

Dinner was oats and raisins, enough to clog the spiritual artery but not the literal one. After a panicked outhouse sprint in the morning, I stuffed my sleeping bag in my back and hiked toward Kehena beach for Sunday Funday.

At the base of Opihikao, rifling through my pack for what I swore was a Hershey’s Kiss (possibly hallucinated), a beat-up Toyota Tercel slowed to a stop in the middle of the road. Inside: a woman whose face was mahogany sunbeam and eyes neon blue lightning. Her hair was a crown of wild white, loosely swaddled in emerald cloth.

“Chocolate?” she asked, smiling at the foil in my hand.

I nodded, handed the Kiss to her.

She peeled it, popped it in her mouth. “You’re going to the beach.”

“Incredible,” I said. “My first ride is with a psychic.”

“The fae, child.”

As we rattled down the coast, she introduced herself as Kira—from Lithuania, now blissfully naturalized to the Big Island. She spoke of her homeland with the fond disdain of someone who’d escaped a wool-clad prison, where people had to armor themselves against the elements like reluctant knights of frost. “Too many layers,” she said. “Too much shame. Here, I am wind and skin and sea.”

“Wow, no shame.  I wish,” I muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Let’s just say I wear boardshorts for a reason.”

“Oh... is Pele testing you? Have you spoken to her?”

“I don’t think the voice in my head is Pele.”

“A voice?” Her smile tightened. “Child, I think that’s schizophrenia. When you talk to God, they call it prayer. When God talks back... mental hospital.”

“Fair. But I figured I’d hit the beach, then maybe the psych ward. Just gotta see some dolphins first.”

“Does this voice tell you to hurt yourself?”

She asked it so gently—so disarmingly gentle—that I told her about Gabriel.

Kira listened without flinching, her face unreadable but kind, the way a cliff might be kind just before you leap off it. Then, without a word, she eased the car over at the top of Kehena.

She turned to me with a glint in her vivid, blue eyes and said, “You remind me of that Jedi… the one who fights Darth Vader.”

“Luke Skywalker?”

“Yes, Luke. Sometimes on a quest, it’s best to keep quiet. Transformations are sacred. Better to hush than to narrate your cocoon.”

Then she winked.

We navigated our way down the cliff trail in silence, the black rock steps uneven, each one a gamble with gravity. Below, the drum circle was in full swing—congas pulsing, feet stomping in the center. About fifty people were scattered across the sand, half-naked and unbothered, torsos and thighs sun-slicked and slack on towels.

On the beach, feet touching down on the soft sand, Kira stopped. She let her sarong fall without ceremony. No tan lines. No surprise. Her skin was almond-toned, unbothered, the kind of body that had made peace with itself a long time ago. She didn’t say anything—just gave me that wink again. That knowing look.

I nodded goodbye. My birth name still hung in the air, like the tail of a dream I wasn’t supposed to catch. Those bright eyes. That offness. Was she even real?

Coconut King—shirtless, glistening, and carved like a Michelangelo fever dream—was leading the charge on the congas, commanding a sprawl of percussion gear like a war general of rhythm. Djembes, doumbeks, a trumpet guy with waist-length dreads bent backward like a reed in a trance. And then there was Oleg, hulking and jacked beyond cartoon logic, smashing some ceremonial bass drum that looked like it had been skinned off a Jurassic beast. He held twin mallets like caveman hammers, slamming out the thunder while veins bulged from his neck like snakes late to church.

Beyond the drum circle, I spotted Yosh.  He waved me over. 

“Full moon’s at Fox’s Landing,” he said.

“Count me out.”

The vibes at Pops’ Camp had gone from mildly awkward to outright Hitchcockian, so I bailed. Sure, the party would be legendary—DJ sets, fire dancers, psychotropic chocolate, and enough pheromones to fog up a satellite dish—but I was done being the punchline to a joke. My calling, I supposed. But still. Not my Tao.

After journaling under the dead ironwood like it was my therapist and pinning Island in our third wrestling match (poor kid still hadn’t figured out leverage), I decided to go the opposite way—toward Krishna pizza.

All-you-can-eat. Hare Krishna for Hare Pizza.

I was ripe. Not in the holy sense. More in the olfactory sense. I hadn’t bathed in a few days and the sea breeze at Kehena only did so much. Fortunately, I’d brought a stick of Tom’s deodorant—the lavender kind, faintly chemical but virtuous enough to mask the funk.

Pizza and what? An hour and a half boogie at sunset, Garuda crooning with his plugged-in acoustic guitar like a devotional jukebox, perched on a front car seat repurposed as a stage throne in the middle of the room. Around him: a dozen hungry hippies, a dozen clean-cut devotees, and a few resident Krishnoids from the Opihikao farm, all getting down to the Maha Mantra, some Govinda Jaya Jaya, some Radha Hare Bo! 

Juda on the congas, adding bounce to the bhakti. Michael rocking the merdonga like he was born with a tabla in the womb. They called it Rocking Rama—like classic Krishna-core with a funk lean. And Gabriel, my metaphysical backseat driver, fully concurred.

Back on the Red Road, I was feeling halfway holy and halfway feral. The clouds haloed the sky of Kalapana like a cracked crown covered in cotton. I tapped my water jug like a djembe. I had direction. I had Pizza in my near future.

I’d just walked past Seaview when a Sidekick rolled into frame. It blinked its lights. I squinted.

“Jasper, you’re going the wrong way,” said Dean, flat as a parable after pulling up to me.

Dean doesn’t joke. Dean installs full moons. He cocked his thumb like a shaman with a clipboard. I got in.

The backseat was a portable rave supply chain—generator, ten-gallon gas can, bundles of Christmas lights coiled like intestinal joy. Dean said Jeffry’s Mackie speakers were already out at Fox’s Landing, and he was behind schedule.

“People have been looking for you,” he added, like he was updating me on the weather.

“People?” I asked.

“Your friends. They told me to keep an eye out.”

As we crested the rise at Kehena, I spotted Kira’s Tercel glinting like a memory. I tapped the window. “Hey, could you let me out here?”

“Grass, stay put,” said Dean, eyes forward.

“You can tell them I’m okay. I’ve still got time to make it to Garuda’s.”

“I’m sure they’ll feed you at Fox’s Landing,” he said, monotone moxie commanding.

“So you’re not gonna let me out?”

“Will you really not do the right thing here?” His voice wasn’t harsh. It was just heavy—like a boot on my moral neck.

And just like that, I felt it: the slow swell of obligation that comes when you’ve been roped into fate’s group project. As if the universe had passed me a script I’d forgotten agreeing to.

“This feels prewritten,” I muttered. “Like I never had a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” said Dean. “But avoidance? That’s cowardice. And I think you and I both know—you’re not a coward.”

I didn’t answer. I was too busy picturing the cowardly lion in a rave vest.

We rumbled in silence across the lava flats, the truck jostling. The landscape looked like God had smashed black porcelain, scattered the shards, and called it a biome. Dean pulled up near a stubborn little copse of ironwoods—one of the last green survivors Pele hadn’t torched in her 94’ slow-motion eviction sweep.

From the black stone stage of the flats, a cry rose up: “Dean’s here!”

As if on cue, another cry went up. It was the moon.

Across the lava, she broke the ocean in half, breaching like a pearl in labor—first a pyramider, then an arc, then full glory, dripping light across the molten wasteland. She used a ragged cloud to dab herself dry. 

And even though I hadn’t eaten, I knew I was exactly where I wasn’t supposed to be. Which, by whatever cracked internal compass I’d been using lately, meant I was exactly where I needed to be.

Six strapping young lads materialized, half rave squad, half UPS dream team, marching up to the Sidekick to hoist the generator like it was the Ark of the Covenant. Bill and Tai pounced on Dean for clarification about the DJ lineup. Cookie was lobbying hard for the midnight slot, insisting Dean had promised it to him, pinky swear and everything.

Dean gave a diplomatic pause, eyebrows doing managerial yoga, then said the most equitable thing would be to wait until all relevant DJs—including Cookie and DJ Adam—were present. No promises had been made. But also, no promises hadn’t been made. Dean could speak in Schrödinger’s contract clauses when he wanted to.

As the rave-sherpas grabbed the generator, I offered to carry the gas can. Dean gave it a glance, gave my bare feet a longer glance, and shut that down.

“Grass, respect to you for making the right choice,” he said, “but now please tell everyone you’re okay.” He bowed like a bureaucratic Kahuna. I gave him prayer hands and he mirrored the motion.

I turned, feeling like an extra in someone else’s screenplay—my existence penciled in the margins of Dean’s master plan. My role? Reassure the flock. Play the part. Be the glue stick for someone else’s glitter parade.

As I took my own route across the lava, it sounded like I was walking across a field of Doritos—each step crunching against the brittle crust of new earth. The lava swirled in oil-slick rainbows, shimmering like bruised glass—terrain so fresh it still smelled like the fiery depths. 

Then, once across the black: ironwoods. A patch of green rising like a rumor, like someone forgot to tell this little grove that the apocalypse came and went. This was Fox’s Landing. A weird oasis of untouched pavement—like Pele missed a spot for this purpose.

The lava would swallow it whole in 2010, but back in March of 2001, it was destined to be sacred ground for Puna’s freak elite. This was the dancefloor. A smoothe slice of highway turned rave cathedral, where the barefoot and the blissed-out bounced and boogied till the briggidie break of dawn.

Through the branches, I saw them: familiar silhouettes on the highway. The full moon tribe, reassembled. Faces I hadn’t seen since the last gathering—unquestionably the best night of my life. 

On Kua Bay, the location of last month’s full moon party in February, I was given four baby woodrose seeds. The fairy handed me a pair of nail clippers and told me to use the file to sand off the dark coating. The seeds were about three times the size of a BB, and so I sat on the blonde sand and leaned against the frame of my Alice pack. Everything was perfect except for the waist-support padding which was slipping, and exposed the metal frame that bit at my hip. I got out my sleeping bag and put it in front of the pack. Perfect.

As the sky blushed burnt orange, the sound system was assembled. I looked up from my scraping job just in time to see a dolphin corkscrew out of the water, silhouetted against the sunset. Wow. Then back to scraping. Dean’s generator was stashed behind a lava shelf, and a 300-foot cord slithered like an electric umbilical to the PA system. 

A Toyota Tacoma had made it all the way out, and I glanced up as three djembes—big African drums—were lifted from the bed by three hippies in sarongs and wide eyes. Everyone cheered when the sun kissed the horizon—a hot pink ball—and the drummers began a heartbeat rhythm. The cheer got louder, and a dramatic roll of the drums sent the last of the sun below. 

As the first DJ dropped Daft Punk, the drummers adjusted their rhythm. Amberay graced me with an inspection of the seeds and gave me a nod. I tossed all four in my mouth. She winced.

"You were supposed to wait till midnight," she said.

I pulled two back out and pocketed them. “Midnight’s round two,” I said.

"That might work," she replied. "Or it might not. LSA isn't always friendly to redosing. Your brain might just say, 'Nah, bro.'"

"If I had two blindfolds, it would be a double-blind study."

"That is bad, Grass. Speaking of which, you got any grass Grass?”

"Nope, but Jerry's truck is blowing smoke rings."

She hesitated. "Also, Pops is tripping—he thinks someone stole weed from the Dahaitsu’s glovebox. Locked, but jimmied. Ounce gone. Had to be someone who saw him stash it."

"Fuck," I muttered.

"I’m not accusing anyone, but keep your ears open."

"It wasn’t me. You can check my pack."

She waved me off, half-smiling. “I know. Just… stay alert."

She wandered off into the growing crowd. The music lifted and a few bodies moved like kelp in the tide. All around me on the beach were nomadic twenty-somethings with island tans, winter refugees soaking in the equatorial paradise.

When the seeds hit, about an hour after sundown, I was being massaged by the ocean. The waves felt like lapping milk, and I let them cradle me. I looked up at fifty dancers glowing with neon sticks, backs arched, limbs loose to move in time to the thumping beat.

The moonlight was silver and soothing—the kind of light you write bad poetry under and mean every word. I swam deep, touched the bottom, and drew a smiley face on the blonde sand. How was I still holding my breath? I floated up, grinning like a loon.

From swimming I went to dancing, to cartwheeling back into the sea, a one-man circuit of kinetic worship. I was underwater when the sound changed—popped up to see people pointing.

"Whales!" someone yelled.

Sure enough, whales. A full pod. One let out a note so low and guttural it synced with the bass. I swear it harmonized with the track. People rushed into the surf.

About an hour before sunrise, the woodrose crew collapsed into a spasm of giggles—the kind that comes on like hiccups after too much revelation. Someone whispered “cuddle puddle,” and we all oozed into Yosh’s tent like psychedelic larvae. I’d thought it meant platonic pile-up, limbs tangled in warmth and post-peak giddiness. Nope. It meant full-throttle fuck pile.

I stayed clothed but horizontal—high, curious, and drowsy. The tent swayed with the rhythm of soft groans and wet percussion. The air thickened with sweat and funk, each breath a mouthful of heated pheromone stew. I lay still, eyes half-lidded, while the girl beside me—tiny, twitchy, smelled like dryer sheets and old incense—nuzzled my neck and giggled into my ear.

Then her hand slithered south, eager and not subtle.

I caught it mid-quest, pressed it back to neutral territory with a chuckle and a “nah.” She shrugged, barely phased, and wriggled toward Yosh, who was already deep in diplomatic relations with another damsel.

Around me: flesh-slaps, syrupy sighs, wet mouths finding purchase in the dark. Someone was sucking toes. Someone was narrating their thrusts. It was Dionysian chaos in a nylon womb, humid and primal.

Eventually, the funk hit critical mass. The tent became a sponge soaked in sex—hot, damp, stifling.

I peeled back the zipper and slipped out into the cool hush of predawn, grateful for moonlight and oxygen.

That morning, the access road back to the highway was a treacherous gauntlet of barely bullied lava—jagged, sunbaked, and smug about it. I trudged on, sun-roasted and sweat-salted, squinting into the heat mirage ahead, when behind me came the tortured shriek of undercarriage meeting volcanic geometry.  I glanced back to the poor sedan.

Relativity is a balm: at least I wasn’t the one dragging my guts across the rocks.

One moon-cycle later, the tribe gathered again—spilling out along the shoulder of Highway 132. The asphalt was pristine, black and flawless, slicing through the ironwood grove.

It looked welcoming and familiar, but still I lingered under the trees, barefoot on the rust-colored carpet, part observer, part holdout. There was a kink in the wavelength between us—a static I couldn’t smooth. I watched the glint and flutter of new arrivals like someone studying birdsong in a language they used to know.

"You abandon us!" Gingko said, from behind me.

I grinned and turned to her. "Is playing hooky a felony now?"

We hugged. She slipped me a little white tablet. "Pressed Happiness," she said.

"Is ecstasy safer than mushrooms?"

"For you? Absolutely. You won't be cliff-tempted. Not until morning."

"RIP serotonin," I said. "Poor little guys never make it home. Neurotransmitter genocide."

"They’re chemicals, Grass."

"Chemicals with purpose. Serotonin might be God."

"Your logic is a cat on mushrooms. But your hair's looking more antennae by the day. Maybe you'll download something cosmic."

She mussed my half-dreaded nest like I was a favored golden retriever.

"Did you know Dean abducted me here?"

"Yeah, rumor mill's spinning. Heard you were intercepted."

"Like... why? Why the fuck am I suddenly national news?"

"Grass, you left your note about everything being relative to the size of your issue.  Literally turned yourself into a dick joke. People talk.”

"Isa said it was a Freudian implosion."

"You are a diva. But everyone's over it. Mostly."

"Fuck my life."

“It's more playful than cruel. Like a roast for someone we actually love."

"The embarrassing cousin."

Moonlight painted the asphalt like spilled milk. A cheer went up as purple Christmas lights fired up across the road. Dean’s generator roared to life, thirty feet behind us, coughing like a grumpy groan. Then: music. Not beats yet, but the ambient hum of Alan Watts doing his best philosophical ASMR. The crowd moved like underwater grass.

Gingko handed me a sleeve of Ritz.

"Where’d this come from?"

"Dean said you were hungry."

I shoved three into my mouth like communion wafers. “Feel all boogie eating Ritz, but I do crave protein--”

"Hey Grass!" Hatti's voice. "Heard you baptized yourself then pulled a Houdini. Hiding in the shrubbery now?"

"Just communing with the ants," I said. Hugged her.

"You could've sent a telegram or something?”

"Didn’t realize my absence was grounds for a missing person report."

"You disappeared."

"I was never here."

Gingko chimed in, "He was playing hooky."

"Vibes got toxic. I bailed. Dean Shanghaied me."

"Tell Pops you're alive," Hatti ordered.

She led me through the ironwoods, past the DJ booth, to Pops—sitting half lotus on a sarong in front of his tent.

"Dean wants you to know he found me," I said.

Pops blinked. "Oh yeah. Someone told me."

"We good?"

He looked at me like I’d asked if the ocean was still wet. "Yeah. Sure."

"Cool. Just checking. Dean wanted credit. Hatti wanted closure. I’m just the message in the bottle."

"People thought you yeeted off a cliff."

"Nah, just a baptism.”

"We cool. Hey—watch out!" Pops said and did some sort of judo roll.

Two shirtless guys barreled past us mid-fistfight,  and tumbled to the floor under ironwood tree. Shouts flared. The music cut.

Kelsie bellowed: "CIRCLE!" which was echoed by many.

It took less than a minute for everyone to form a circle on the road. Everyone locked hands in ritual fashion, except for about seven local braddahs, shirtless and simmering, shoulders twitching like pit bulls just barely held on leashes made of resentment.

One of them stepped into the ring like it was a UFC weigh-in, veins bulging, spitting Pidgin like holy fire. “You haoles don’t respect da ‘āina!” he barked, over and over, five solid minutes of lava-hot indignation and territorial rage. 

He was mid-rant—top-volume outrage about haoles disrespecting the ‘āina—pacing in the middle of the circle. His three braddahs lingered behind him: smaller, unsure, watching their boy tell it how it was. The alpha’s shirt was off, his tribal ink twitching with every angry gesture.

Then a djembe cracked from the side of the road—one beat, then two, then a rhythm like hips remembering something sacred.

As if conjured from the skin of the drum itself, Felicity skipped into the center of the circle like she'd been born from rhythm and starlight. Neon-orange tail bouncing, bikini top glowing like a soft-lit mirage, purple booty shorts cut high enough to scandalize the moon. She didn’t strut—she shimmered. Gogo boots tapped the smooth asphalt, clicking like a prancing pony.

She took the alpha braddah’s hand, bowed like a courtier in some lost tropical monarchy, kissed his knuckles, and declared—full stage projection:

“We are respecting da ‘āina. Now dance with me, yeah?”

She moved beside him, hips tracing the djembe’s beat like she'd stitched her bones to the drum itself. Not grindy—graceful. 

The braddah flinched like he’d been handed a baby or a lawsuit. His boys—three of them, scruffy, smaller, riding shotgun on his vibes—exchanged glances that said, Let’s bounce.

Taking Felicity’s cue, a few other women floated in like moonlit priestesses—one with glitter in her braids, one in a flowered dress with a lei slung low, another wrapped in a flowing scarf that caught the breeze like a jellyfish. They didn’t interrogate; they celebrated.

“What a night!” one beamed. “The full moon back to bless us. Pele must be pleased.”

“Grateful for the rain holding off,” another chimed in. “Good night to give thanks.”

The braddahs muttered agreement.

“How’d you folks get out here?” one of the women asked, casual.

“Oh, we came in my boy’s Dodge,” said one of the braddahs, tipping his chin toward the dark beyond the ironwoods.

I didn’t even need to see it. The second he said “Dodge,” my brain conjured the jacked-up black truck, the chrome searing across the Safeway parking lot. The image slammed into me like déjà vu with teeth.

Gabriel, smug as ever, murmured from some velvet corner of my brain:

“That’s him. Told you. Twenty-dollar fate.”

And just then, as if following stage directions, the alpha braddah turned and locked eyes with me.

Recognition.

His brow furrowed, like he was trying to place a weird dream—and then it clicked.  The twenty I’d handed him, a strange moment for us both.

And then Dean.

Silent, graceful Dean, who moved like a diplomat in sandals, approached with a small, respectful bow. He leaned in close, said something we couldn’t hear—except one word:

“Respect.”

Dean came to some kind of gentleman’s handshake—silent diplomacy with island undertones—and the braddahs peeled off like war dogs who'd just remembered they had leftovers at home. Maybe it was Felicity’s sorcery. Maybe it was Dean’s word alchemy. Maybe the moon just got tired of tension.

Five minutes later, the speakers were trembling and the tribe was hopping again.

Cookie—shirtless, twitching in massive yellow parachute pants that caught wind like a gaff-rigged schooner—was holding court in front of the DJ booth, arms raised like he was channeling lightning.

Meanwhile, Johnny had drifted too close to a string of sagging Christmas lights, his third eye practically touching the tinsel. Satya glided in and redirected him back toward the dance floor.

And the moon—sweet voyeuristic bastard—cut through the ironwoods like silver razors on emu feathers, turning every shadow into a feathered omen.

“Time to go,” said Hatti.

“Where?” I asked.

“Come with me to make smores.”

She held up a Ziplock bag like it was a sacred relic—marshmallows, graham crackers, Hershey’s bars, all stacked with missionary precision. She had a mission, and apparently, I was her marshmallow sidekick.

“Ironwood smoke is toxic, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“So… propane? Driftwood?”

“Where we’re going,” said Hatti, eyes gleaming, “we don’t need firewood. But we do need long sticks. Or we’ll be the ones getting roasted.”

We sang The Little Mermaid as we hiked the cinder road, our voices crescendoing--mine cracked but heartfelt. The lava was a little over a mile, just enough to blister your thoughts. It was oozing from crusty pahoehoe, folding like cinnamon dough or the forehead of a sleepy shar pei, occasionally belching out bulbous magma toes that sizzled and fizzed almost sounding like soda on a hot sidewalk.

The road vanished beneath it, swallowed inch by inch—slow, hissing tide, like a freezer birthing ice in hell. Every few feet we stopped and blinked hard at the moving glow, heat warping the air until everything looked like it was underwater and melting. Our eyes were redder than an LA sunset, and even with our long ironwood sticks, we were getting cooked.

We watched one of the s’mores go up in flame as Pele ate our offering without comment.

Then we just stood there, marveling at the new earth—miles and miles of glossy blackness, virgin land still steaming like a freshly baked pie, with thin threads of orange drizzle unraveling down the flanks of Kilauea,

When we returned—sweaty, singed, sugar-high—we were greeted like cult heroes. Pops performed the sacred division of lava s’mores. They were cold, but no one cared. The fusion of marshmallow and chocolate hit the sweet spot, and everyone was buzzing with gooey praise.

“It’s 9 p.m.,” said Gingko, flashing her Pressed Happiness.

“Is it now?” I asked, clicking my pill to hers.

“Kyrie Isu Xriste eleison mas,” I murmured, letting the syllables fall like Greek raindrops.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it’d lose its magic if I translated it. It’s better like this—mysterious, slippery.”

She made me teach her anyway. Her tongue stumbled through the syllables, but she smiled when she got it. When I finally translated, she blinked.

“That’s not bad,” she said. “If there is someone out there handing out mercy, and they’re cool being called Jesus? Then yeah—cool beans.”

“Pressed Happiness—communion for the disenchanted, shaped like beans, chasing mercy with molar grit.”

“But you’re right,” she added. “Way better in Greek.”

An hour later, I was dancing with an irrepressible smile—limbs loose, head rolling in slow delight, eyes half-lidded in bliss. The music thumped through the soles of my feet and into the bones of my grin. My arms moved in strange, fluid gestures, as if I were organizing a tarot deck made of wind—juggling feelings like ethereal cards, arranging moods in midair.

But then—just like in Mackenzie Park—that creeping sensation slithered back in. A pressure on the edge of the atmosphere. An unnameable darkness began to intrude on my chemically-induced joy, coiling in from the left like a bruise blooming through the night. It wasn’t visual, not exactly, but I felt it. An energetic cloud, heavy with dread, hovering just beyond the periphery of the light show. The drumbeat no longer carried me—I was carrying it, dragging it like a cross through molasses. And still, I danced. Because movement felt like the only way to hold back whatever was coming.

As I danced, something off-axis snagged my attention—Pops, perched like a desert Buddha across the road, seated in half-lotus on a frayed blanket, still as stone. His head was swaddled in a sequined black turban with glittering sequins under four tiki torches, each staked precisely at the corners of an invisible square. A square. Not random, not for light—this was ritual geometry, cartography for unseen currents.

Clustered around him like a tableau of planetary moons were the regulars: Ewok, Hatti, Ora, and Paul—facing outward toward the road like sentinels, unmoving, unspeaking, absorbed in whatever trance Pops was emitting.  Couldn’t we all feel it? He looked like Herod, some tyrant-mystic presiding over the . Only instead of a royal scepter, he held his marble pipe—the giant white beast he passed with solemn reverence, like it contained ancestral smoke or planetary fate.

Then—eye contact.

Just a blink. Less than a second. But it scorched me. He looked startled, too. Not surprised. Jolted. Like we’d both just been slapped by an invisible palm.

I danced away. Quick, jagged movements, like a man trying to shake glass shards off his skin. I tried to bury the rising dread with motion, to pound on the pavement with my feet. But the spiders started crawling—not real ones, not exactly—up my spine, along my neck. Shadow legs. I whispered, pleaded almost, between clenched teeth:

“Positive vibes. Positive vibes. Positive vibes.”

Then Pops’ voice, slithering not through the air, but into the cathedral of my skull:

“Now Grass... just calm down.”

I stopped dancing. My breath caught mid-inhale. How? He had said it inside my head. Just like Gabriel.

I stepped behind the last ring of dancers, eyes locked on him. And that’s when I saw it: his eyes. No whites. Just black. Solid black—glassy and deep, like the sequins on his turban had leaked into his skull. The tiki torches cast no illusion. They glinted right off those voids like light on obsidian. I couldn’t tell where he was looking, which somehow made it worse. I looked away.

“Is that… I mean, can you hear me?” I asked—thought—into the ether.

He shifted. Didn’t look up. Just stared at his foot, which jerked rhythmically like he was keeping time with some drum I couldn’t hear.

Then: “What are you doing?” Same voice. Lazy Texas drawl, as if dipped in sweet tea, but sharp underneath. Steel wrapped in molasses. I panicked. Zigzagged through the dancers like a cartoon fugitive. Was this what all the omens had been leading to? Could Pops swim into minds like Gabriel, or was this the Pressed Happiness twisting my perception into Möbius strips?

And where the hell was Gabriel?

I remembered Isa’s words from earlier in the week: He’s not just a dude, he’s a reincarnated master. A rinpoche.

“Like Rumpelstiltskin?” I’d asked.

“No, like enlightened. An ascended soul.”

Tonight, Pops seemed both. A cursed fairy-tale sorcerer and a desert ascetic channeling cosmic radio waves through his turban. But he was too much. Too charged. Too archetypal. He was glowing with something—either madness or ancient power, or both.

I saw his face again, in my mind’s eye. He could hear me thinking. That was it. My dread flared. I bolted into the ironwoods.

Between tree trunks and shadows, reality cracked. I couldn’t tell anymore what was drug, what was delusion, what was truth vibrating beneath the surface. My paranoia peaked like a second pill, and I started laughing. Cackling. Of course. Pressed Happiness had done this before—shattered my senses just to rebuild them sideways. Maybe Pops was harmless. Maybe he was just tuned in.

But still—“Gabriel, where are you, buddy?”

Silence. Static. The gates were unguarded.

An ant crawled across my arm. I flicked it. “Sorry,” I said aloud. And I meant it. The drug had made every feeling operatic—guilt, awe, fear, tenderness.

I ducked through the last fringe of forest where ironwoods met the lava flats. The moon had drifted west, silvering the pahoehoe in waves. Dawn wasn’t far. After circling back to grab my pack, I scouted a spot to crash out.  

I may have snatched an hour of near-sleep, but even with my bandana over my face, the flies were relentless—tiny agents of chaos, obsessed with my sweat-slicked flesh, in the morning’s light. I sat up into a dismal blue morning, sky bleached and insincere, the ironwoods drooping like hungover peacocks.

Shon and Kelsie moved like zombies, slow and spectral, scooping bits of trash from the roads.  I wanted to help, but I was heavier than gravity. They said they had it. I nodded like a man forgiven for a sin he didn’t remember committing.

I shuffled toward the kitchen—or what passed for one—the tiny pantry tent, two-burner propane stove, and the sacred blue kettle. Sometimes Ewok filtered coffee through coconut cloth. Other times it was cowboy sludge. This morning I wanted it like life itself: unfiltered and mean.

Ewok stood silent as a cryptid, mirroring my vibe exactly. Purple flame blazing, no words passed. We were brothers in post-bliss purgatory. The kettle trembled. I did too.

Down the road, Hatti was crumpled like a doll in disrepair, knees pulled in, crying into the space between her patalas. Gingko gave her a one-handed shoulder rub with the listless grace of a ghost. Hatti looked up at me. Her eyes screamed something awful. I looked away. In that kind of headspace, eye contact is war.

I lay on my pack and watched the last stragglers dance, their bodies twitching like reeds in the wind. I started to judge them, then caught myself. We were all just waves, transmitting signals, bleeding frequencies. I averted my gaze to keep my malaise from infecting the pond.

As soon as the kettle burbled enough to satisfy Ewok, and the brew scalded my throat, I felt mildly less damned. I wrote a note: This is Grass. I didn’t kill myself. Aloha. I stabbed it into the base of a tree with an ironwood twig and walked past the ice chest, direction: anywhere but here.

A quarter mile down the road in Kalapana Gardens, which was a bit ironically named as it was nothing but black lava, I took off my back and sat on it, dog tired. Except for skirts of green in the distance, there was nothing but black lava for miles. Above was a blue sky which was so scalding that I kept my eyes down. 

And that’s when I saw it.

At first I thought it was a floater in my eye—normal, biological flotsam. But this one didn’t drift with my gaze. It hung, seven feet off the ground, the size of a frisbee: a spiral of translucent wires, thick and writhing, outlined in neon purple. Ethereal, yes. But present. It had geometry. Intent.

I blinked. Still there. I shook my head. Still there.

"What do you want?" I muttered to it.

A voice responded, low and malevolent, like a serpent dreaming in binary:

"I want you to come with me."

Not Gabriel. Nowhere near Gabriel. Gabriel had been AWOL since the Pressed Happiness. I felt abandoned.

"I’m all set," I said aloud, like that would help.

"Open your mouth," the voice said.

And because I was cooked, scrambled, and salt-baked, I did. I opened my fucking mouth.

Immediately, I felt the spiral snake its ether-tentacle down my throat. Not physically. Psychically. It hooked something inside me—something ballooned and delicate, snagged behind my ribs. My breath caught. My soul lurched.

I gasped and snapped my jaw shut. Gagged. Choked. Bent over and heaved. After a minute of shuddering, I looked up and saw the spiral rising. It didn’t drift away. It cloaked itself—gone in a blink.

"Not cool!" I yelled at the sky. Something inside me was gone, absconded.  WTF?

I needed Gabriel. I needed a lobotomy. I needed sleep.

Mid-morning. Not hot, not yet, but my tongue was a strip of felt and my water jug was bone dry. The cowboy coffee Eewok coaxed from scorched beans had sucked every last drop of hydration from my tissues. My brain felt like a mummy. The wind was a thief, stealing the last beads of moisture from my pores. At last three miles to the spigot at the end of Highway 132. I wasn’t gonna die, but I was walking like a man made of drywall.

Stupid. Should’ve curled up in my lava tube with Krishna Pizza in my belly and skipped the Pressed Happiness roulette. Now my serotonin was a garden rake left in the rain.

I glanced back at Fox's Landing and caught a glimpse of something hanging above the ironwoods—a mess of translucent mesh like cassette tape guts caught in a breeze, a webbing of black with that damn neon purple hue again. Ominous. Forbidden. The second I squinted at it, I felt a stabbing pain behind my eye. Blinked. Pain faded. Looked again—another jab.  Well, I didn’t need to look, then.

I pressed on. Zombie-legged. About ten minutes later, a long, wood-paneled 80s station wagon came crawling over the lava, floating like a trash barge in a sea of black. I stuck out my thumb.

The driver—Kyle, bearded and bleary—rolled down his window. "We’re full up, sorry brother. Got a passed-out bro in the back. On some trash."

"Water?" I croaked.

Kyle handed me a Nalgene, and I chugged it like I was being baptized. Bless this bearded Samaritan.

"Yeah," Kyle said, "we almost left Cookie. But what if the birds started peckin' him, you know? He was drunk, someone gave him GHB. He got real belligerent, so someone made the decision to take him out.”

"That's not nice," I said, wiping my mouth.  “GHB is what those date-rapers use, right?”

"Yeah, it is fucked up," added Jenny, the girlfriend, from shotgun. Raccoon-eye makeup, glitter smudges, voice like a dry leaves crushing. "But someone’s gotta take care of him. We didn’t think he’d fit with all the trash, but he did. You could maybe squeeze in with him?"

"Babe, I don’t think so," Kyle said, but curiosity had already pried them both out of the vehicle.

In the rear: a mountain of trash bags. On top: Cookie. Sprawled, his head lolling backward at an awkward angle.

Kyle scratched his beard. "Honestly, you could pile on Cookie. He’s not gonna notice."

"There’s room in the back seat," Jenny said. "Push the bags, and Grass can fit if I pile these two bags on Cookie.”

"Shoots," Kyle agreed.

I climbed in, compressing the trash into a throne of funk. The door shut. I had a seat. How had this much garbage come from one night? Jenny read my face: "Pops' Camp hadn't taken the trash out in days, so… yeah.”

"You know Pops and them?" she asked.

"Yeah."

Kyle perked up. "Did you take one of those pressies?"

"Uh-huh," I muttered, allergic to discourse.

"People were crying and tripping hard this morning," Kyle said. "We did shrooms and crashed at two. Everyone was weird this morning."

"Not chill," Jenny said solemnly.

I thought about telling them about the neon floater spiral, the psychic siphon, the void-tentacle pulling joy from my throat, but all I could muster was a single head nod.

If only I were Cookie, unconscious in his trash nest. But I’m a light sleeper and the flies would never let me nap.

At the Kalapana transfer station, we rolled in beside a maroon minivan. A local woman and her two kids were tossing recyclables and watching the station wagon approach like a UFO.

Kyle waved. The woman stared back, deadpan.

He nosed the wagon against the curb in front of the bin.

"Hey Grass," Kyle said. "Give me a hand, yeah?"

Uh-huh," I said, opening the door and stepping out into the hideously bright day. The light hit me like a cop’s flashlight. Every motion, every sound, scraped across the raw skin of my psyche. My mouth felt like a dishrag in the Mojave. Eewok’s cowboy coffee had scorched the inside of my skull and evaporated all joy. The air reeked of something feral and forgotten, and the smell wafting from the trash bin was unmistakably pork-based death.

"Yuck," said Kyle, peering over the bin’s lip. "Someone threw a pig in there." He yanked open the backseat, started hauling out trash bags. I mirrored him, grabbing the ones on my side. All was well until I gave a mighty pull and Cookie flopped against the rear window like a forgotten meat puppet.

I glanced over at the local woman and her two kids, the only other souls at the transfer station. The kids were doing a makeshift rodeo around the cardboard bin, while she stood motionless beside her maroon minivan, watching us with the expression of tired apathy.

"Okay," Kyle muttered. But the moment he opened the trunk, Cookie rolled out with a thud like a sack of wet laundry, landing shoulder-first.

"Fuck dude, why didn’t you catch him?"

"Uh," I replied, limbs lagging like I was underwater. No warnings. Just flop.

"He’s fine,” Kyle surmised. “Got those dreads to cushion him. Shoulder hit first. But still. Fuck, dude. He looks dead."

I peered at the kids. Now their game was on hold. Eyes wide. Cookie the corpse had become the main event.

"He’s fine!" Kyle yelled, performing a very unconvincing pantomime of normalcy. Then turned to me. "Should we load him first or finish the trash?"

I shrugged, slogging through the rest of the bags with the existential enthusiasm of a man bailing water off a sinking dream. When it came time to heave Cookie back in, Kyle tagged Jenny for backup. She grabbed an arm like a champ.

"All good!" Kyle shouted to the woman and her kids, all still staring like we'd staged a midmorning community theater production.

I climbed into the back seat. Our eyes met—mine and the woman’s. Her fatigue met mine like two ghosts nodding across a veil.

"You can nap while we shop," Kyle said.

I was out before the tires hit the highway.

An hour and a half later, Kyle woke me up in the Natch parking lot. My throat felt like I'd swallowed glass. I croaked out a thanks.

"Cookie’s still out. Jenny says ditch him, but that seems messed up. Hospital might rack up a bill, but… maybe he needs it. What do you think?"

I fist-bumped Kyle and shrugged. He gave me a puzzled look.

"Where you off to?"

I pointed to my throat and whispered, "Just need a change of scenery."

"You sound like a frog. You need a lozenge?"

"Dark spiral got me," I whispered.

"Right on. Save your voice."

I made my way to the highway, limbs still heavy but not leaden, and caught a few rides to Hilo. Last lift dropped me at Walmart which meant I’d have to walk over three miles before anyone would pick me up. 

And that’s when I saw Raven—skin like aged oak, ponytail, cheekbones laser-cut diamonds. He looked like Anthony Keidis' haunted cousin.

"You getting out too?" Raven asked.

“Kona,” I whispered.  Even that hurt.

"Yeah. Pops’ camp got weird. Real dark vortex energy. Wasting their lives out there."

I nodded. ‘Weird’ was underselling it.

"So what’s up, Grass? Word fast?"

"My throat," I whispered.

"Cool. You can still travel with me. People talk too damn much anyway."

And we were off.

The sun was high, my voice was shot, and my body was a glitching husk. But I wasn’t alone. And that counted for something.

We trudged that bright white two-mile gauntlet of sidewalk between Walmart and Ken’s House of Pancakes, the sun blasting off the concrete like snow. Blinding. Repetitive. Bleached monotony. The roadside sameness droned in tune with the static inside my skull. Hilo needed a new coat of soul. Murals. Primaries. Something to match the hibiscus and macaws. These buildings? Nevada-dreary, beige without imagination. So I beat on my jug. Tip-tap, tappidy-tip. If the world wouldn’t color itself, I’d paint it with sound.

"Nice beat," Raven muttered. Said it helped ground him. He was always slipping backwards in his mind. Reservation-born in South Dakota. Bullied by his brothers. Assaulted by their friends when he was five. Trauma makes a time machine of the skull.

"If you feel it going sideways," Raven said, voice rasping through something thick and invisible, "you fly. Don’t fluff feathers. Don’t peck. Just go."

So I drummed, and we walked, a duo of existential castaways—one tapping rhythms, the other exorcising ghosts. Truth is, I was stoked for the jug. Wide range of tones. Big ups to the old-school Menehune who molded it. The finger thrumming was adding some pep to my step when Raven stopped in front of HPM for a smoke.

Traffic hummed by. Sun beat down. Cement blazed but held no heat. Raven unshouldered his tiny pack. No bedding. No tarp. I raised an eyebrow, pointed to his gear, then mine. His blank stare said nothing. I pulled my big, fat wallet, which had a folded paper torn out of my journal, and scribbled:

No sleeping bag?

He chuckled. "Been doing this for years. Churches provide everything. Blanket, food. Let go and let God."

We shared an American Spirit. Raven’s eyes scanned the road, flickering with old blood.

"Dad called me the runt. Said I had to toughen up. My brother came at me once. I had Dad’s hunting knife. Thought I wouldn’t use it. I did. Shoulder, arm. Aimed for kidney, missed. He tackled me. Held it to my throat. Bled all over me. I called 911. Did two years."

Triplet drumroll. I coaxed more.

"Grass, if someone wants you gone—leave. Don’t fight fate. Don’t wait for miracles. Just go."  He flicked the butt to punctuate the advice, and then we were back up and marching to my pitter-pat.

We were almost to Ken’s when yelling and a prolonged honk split the air. I looked across the highway—Pops and Scott in their Daihatsu Rocky. Raven vanished. Bolted like a deer. I followed. Spooked. The spiral. The cassette-web. My spine trembled.

We dodged alleys, skirted warehouses, made it to the pond park by Ben Franklin’s. There, Raven collapsed against a slab of concrete. Rolled a smoke, fingers trembling.

Why’d you run? I scrawled.

"Those fuckers want me to work for free. Slavery with coconut smiles. I walk off, and I’m the problem? Hell no. Pops ain’t even local. From Oregon. Vet checks and delusions of feudalism."

Who is Pops to you?

"Power junkie with a cult itch. Wants land. Wants workers but not to pay them. No thanks."

We cut through side streets to a downtown church. Free food: pudding, granola bars, yams, salmon. Raven scored a blanket and a sweater.

"Let go and let God," he beamed. The church woman nodded. "God bless."

Back out on the street, the bottleneck loomed. The singing bridge. If Pops had posted sentries, this was the ambush. But instead, a truck pulled over for us. Took us to Waimea.

Waimea was Disneyland for ranchers. Cartoon hills. Green scoops of land. Dolly Parton tits of topography. Wind sharp enough to snap open your psyche. Hoodies up. No laundromats allowed—they liked it bougie.

Caught a ride in the back of a truck with girls headed to Hapuna. In the lot, Raven asked to speak to them privately. He returned minutes later with a fifty and a grin.

"Easy money," he shrugged.

No questions. High five.

Next: a massive truck, Bob Marley vibrating the windows, blunt blazing. Driver was a Polynesian linebacker with tribal tattoos and a warning:

"Brah, you no stick around too long. Kona PD cleaning house. Riff raff out like rubbish.”

We nodded like riff raff that knew what it was. In Kona, Raven said we should part ways so he could get his hustle on. Said he worked better alone. So I headed uphill toward Borders Books and Music, an almost-empty jug of sun-thickened water that was warm as goat pee.

The water in Kona always tasted like bleach and farts—some mix of sulfur and chlorine—but I filled my jug and chugged a quarter of it anyway. As I twisted the cap, I caught a warped reflection in the drinking fountain: my purple aloha shirt, my dreads spurting out from beneath a green bandana. Yeah, riff raff, but Border’s didn’t discriminate. 

Once hydrated, I scavenged a pencil nub and a stack of paper slips from the end of an aisle. Then I stepped out onto the sun-blasted balcony. It was ninety degrees and empty, thank God, except for a wilting umbrella whose canvas offered some thin patch of shade above a wobbly little table. I sat. I scribbled.

For the first few minutes, there were meaningless metaphors, and limericks that weren’t giving me direction. And then: ‘LEAVE YOU LOATHSOME WORM______’. The pencil drew a line off the paper.

The pencil bolted off the page, dragging a tail like lightning. My hand was no longer mine. I'd been through this before. It was back: the Magnetic Force. MF. It was as if the pencil stub were a tiny pole and I’d caught a fish which was pulling me to the door.

With my free hand, I scooped up the paper slips and tucked them into my big, fat wallet, and then snapped it shut and zipped it up in the top of my pack. Despite the oppressive impatience of this MF--this huge being whose presence was palpable--I didn’t want to lose my shit, entirely. I shouldered my pack, and would have slipped my other arm under the other strap, but the pencil in my right hand felt like it would fly to the door handle if I let it go.

This immense being felt about as patient as Sauran waiting for The Ring--not friendly. It dwarfed me, like an inverted city over my head. I felt that disobeying, or anything but compliance, might result in me being flicked off the balcony. 

  I nearly stumbled on my way through the bookstore. I had to squeeze the slippery-feeling pencil, which was extended in front of me. And now all the employees and customers milling about looked at me, mildly alarmed and the sound of my slapping bare feet. I had one zombie-arm holding a pencil stub, and I leaned back as I was pulled across the floor. I palmed my way through the door with my free hand with a bang.

Out the glass door and into the blast furnace of Kona mid-morning. Tourists gawked from air-conditioned rentals as I lurched and sweated and jerked down the road like riff raff being led out of town by a big dog invisible hound on a leash. 

I’d been barefoot since the night I ate the mushrooms, and I was thankful for the calluses on my feet as the MF didn’t seem to care about my footing as it pulled the pencil. Half an hour later, I was pulled off the busy road, and led into the Old Airport Park. I was sweating, nervous, but feeling extremely apologetic for existing and inconveniencing my unseen custodian. I slid onto the bench of a picnic table. 

The entity turned off the Magnetic Force and released the pencil stub. After a half hour of being reeled through hell like bait, I was yanked into Old Airport Park. At a picnic table, MF finally cut the current. My hand unclenched. The pencil stub clattered to the wood.

I sat in the sweat-stained silence. Unzipped my pack. Pulled out the fat wallet. Slipped out a blank square. I wrote.

This is Michael the Archangel. I will, from this day forward, remain mute and write.

My spine straightened. The name burned like hot iron across my mind. Michael. Not a vibe. Not a hunch. A declaration. His penmanship was heavy, angular, like a signature carved into stone with a bone.

He slid out from behind my eyes with imperial disgust. Gabriel appeared behind him, casual, familiar.

"He wants to know if you like us better than the humans," Gabriel said, a little too chipper. "If you do, you go mute. Forever. You already talk too damn much, Dipshit."

"Gabriel, where the hell have you been?"

"They told me to back off until this was done."

"This contract?"

"Bingo."

Silence? For good? That was the trade?

Mute? I thought about it. What a request. I could do that. It’s interesting how ‘losing my mind’ was what needed to happen to meet these disincarnate beings. Gabriel had been the only one to stick around, but he’d dipped out since the night of the full moon. I’d missed him. Perhaps an ancestor, a guide, a guardian angel, an alien, a disorder--it’s a panchreston of possibilities, but Gabriel was good people.

“I like you better than the humans,” I told Gabriel, “but I’m not so sure about some of the others.”

“But I’m a good gatekeeper.”

“True, but…”

The pressure mounted. Michael wanted closure. I signed the paper slip with my name and the tiniest flourish.

My signature sealed the deal, and just like that, Michael was gone—not in a puff or with a flourish, but simply absent. No parting benediction, no fiery wingspan retreating into the veil. Just the profound absence of something cosmic and cold that had briefly tolerated my existence. I wasn’t left shattered or smote, just quietly stunned, my bones humming with residual voltage. I was the same as before, but slightly more atomic. The sky was leaking citrus as orange clouds slipped between the fingers of periwinkle twilight. I blinked up at them and decided to walk.

Down the cracked black ribbon of the old airport runway I drifted, past thorny Kiawe, bleached grass, BBQ pits, and warped pavilions still warm with ghostly picnics. 

As I wandered, Michael's greeting echoed in my head like a chant from a cruel god: "Loathsome worm." It was less of a nickname and more a diagnosis. Being in his presence had been like standing nude under a spotlight before an audience of silent jurors. He didn’t hate me, exactly—I was simply beneath notice. This was, after all, a contract. The upstairs brass had dispatched a celestial notary to oversee my vow of muteness, and clearly he had better things to do. No small talk. No smiting. Just paperwork.

"So you’ve agreed," Gabriel confirmed breezily, his voice sliding in with raspy-casualness, "Never to speak again."

"This is how I communicate now?" I asked in my mind.

"Yeah, but stick to pen and paper for the big stuff. This channel’s for guidance, not gossip."

Unlike his militarized counterpart, Gabriel was shaggy and elusive, more jazz than hierarchy. Michael had a vibe like thunder behind closed doors; Gabriel was wind chimes in a junkyard. I didn't know what this quest was about, but I knew Gabriel was the reason I hadn’t completely unraveled yet.

I thought about the cops. About being stopped, interrogated. I still had my ID and my plane ticket to Seatac in my big, fat wallet, but being mute might tip the scales toward psych eval. I could already hear the questions. Gabriel, naturally, mocked my projections.

"Jail might be fun," he mused.

"I’m more worried about psychiatric commitment," I muttered mentally.

Planets blinked awake in the twilight, and an orange streetlamp hummed into life over a lonely picnic table. I perched myself there, wrote a note explaining my condition in crisp block letters, folded it neatly, and tucked it into the coin pocket of my big, fat wallet. A talisman. A Boy Scout badge for the mad.

After all the ecstatic madness of Fox's Landing—the glowing lava, the Pressed Happiness, the trance-dancing, the black vortex of that demonic spiral that tried to yank my soul out through my teeth—after all that, it was this orange hour, this quiet park, this moment of bureaucratic preparation that made me feel human again.

"Dipshit," Gabriel said kindly.

The heat lifted, the air cooled, and my skull throbbed with fatigue. Michael’s presence had fried my circuitry. “Loathsome worm” had been harsh, hadn’t it?

What a day.  I wondered if Cookie had woken up to see any of it.

I thought again of the dark spiral that had hovered above Fox’s Landing that morning—a floaty hell-vortex, like the unspooled guts of a cassette tape tangled in spider silk and threaded with flickering neon filament. When I looked at it, it stabbed my eye like a psychic needle. A glitch in the veil. I suspected it was the mothership—whatever that means—of the thing that had reached down my throat and done... something. Scorched it, cinched it, rerouted the plumbing. Gabriel hadn’t been there to intervene.

“Where were you this morning?” I asked in my head.

There was a flicker—blue and white—Gabriel’s laugh twinkling like a mischievous dismissal.

But instead of pressing him, instead of riding the wave into some kind of clairvoyant conversation, I felt the tired. Spent. Over it. The whole day—what a goddamned day.

"I'm gonna hit the hay," I told Gabriel.

The park grass gave under my feet as I made for the baseball diamond. The moon, fat and jaundiced behind Mauna Kea, rose like a wound. Was this the beginning of Revelation? Was I living footnote theology? I hadn't read the Book, but I knew Michael had beef with Lucifer. I knew I’d signed something cosmic.

And if the angels needed a mouthless scribe? Fine. I'd be their worm. I'd write. I'd crawl forward.

A joke? Sure. But I had punchlines to deliver, and now, God help me, an audience.

At the base of the staircase that led to the rickety announcer’s tower—an unpainted plywood box hoisted above the blood-orange hush of Old Airport Park—I glanced both ways like a raccoon casing a dumpster. A handful of high school kids were loitering near the runway, their silhouettes angular and shadows faint in the distance. Otherwise, the world was a soft smear of moonlight and shadows. I bolted up the steps, two at a time.

There was no door on the tower, just a yawning rectangle. Perfect. The kind of hideout a fugitive prophet might crash in between visions. I took off my pack, unfurled my spine with a groan, and pulled out my sleeping bag.

“Before you pass out, use your paper slips from Borders,” Gabriel said.

“In the morning, buddy. Nite nite,” I whispered with the defiance of a toddler learning boundaries.

“You signed a contract, Dipshit.”

“I’ll write in the morning.” I cocooned myself like a resentful burrito, pulled my hoodie into position, and allowed sleep to tiptoe in—until it didn’t.

The whine came first. Not metaphorical whining, but the surgical shriek of mosquitoes warming up their syringes. Then pinpricks. My cheeks. My neck. My back. I twisted tighter into my bag but the shrill choir crescendoed—and then the fucking goblin appeared. A gnarled, banshee thing barreling out of the wood grain toward my face.

I exploded upright, heart jackhammering, arms flailing like a man electrocuted mid-prayer. But nothing was there. Not a bug. Not a bite. No demon, no blood, no marks.

“You need to write,” Gabriel repeated, as if this were just a normal part of the job.

Tears? Maybe. Shut up.

“This isn’t what I signed up for.”

“It absolutely is.”

Was I in some kind of angelic bootcamp? The phantom mosquitoes were worse than real ones—more like spectral hornets. And if this was the job, then I needed a different contract. Maybe an exorcist. Maybe a lawyer. Or just a giant needle of Thorazine to cancel my subscription to invisible tormentors. But deep down, I knew the scariest truth: even if I had proof—a flying pencil, a hovering MF, a signed note from the archangels themselves—my mind would still double-cross me. It always did.

So I gave up.

Stuffed my sleeping bag back into my pack like a sulking teen. Slunk down the stairs and shuffled toward the nearest picnic table, ready to give myself over to the absurdity.

And there, glistening under the jaundiced glow of an overhead light, sat a black plastic bakery box with a clear lid. Four carrot cake cupcakes inside, each wearing a swirl of cream cheese frosting like a proud little hat.

“Those are for you,” said Gabriel, smug as ever.

Carrot cake. My favorite. I bit into one and the flavor exploded—moist, spiced, flecked with shredded carrot and pineapple. I may have cried again, this time in reverent gratitude.  

“Thanks,” I whispered upward, to the bureaucracy of divine absurdity above.

“Sure,” said Gabriel. “Now write.”

I pulled out my big, fat wallet. Snapped it open. Michael had ground my pencil stub to a miserable nub, so I freed the pen holstered in the spine and stacked the blank paper slips like communion wafers.

Then it began.

The first spirit slid behind my eyes with a sigh, like warm molasses in my occipital lobe. My hand moved as if guided by sonar, the pen carving cursive verses without my say-so. When the message was complete, I felt a flush of love bloom in my chest—then the presence floated away.

Before I could catch my breath, another arrived. Different vibe. All caps. A terse, rhyming couplet with cryptic flourish. Then love again, radiant and surprising, like being kissed by an idea. Gone.

And another. And another. My hand barely kept up. They didn’t just write—they thanked me. Some audibly. Others wordlessly. Some left riddles. Some nonsense. Some drew tiny spirals. One quoted Rumi. One mentioned my dad. All of them dosed me with something warm and wild and uplifting.

I was a goddamn slipstream. A human drive-thru for souls with poems and secrets and synaptic graffiti. I filled every square inch of those slips. My grin wouldn’t shut off. And somewhere, high above or deep within or in the seams between the two, I swear I heard Gabriel say:

“Now that’s a dipshit worth keeping.”

All these years later, only one message from that divine scribble-fest stuck like a burr in my frontal lobe: ‘If someone crashes their car, does that mean I have to crash my car? YES!’ It lodged in my brainpan because the next day, just as I was contemplating my own irrelevance and dehydration, someone handed me a cigarette and zap--neural fireworks. A dot connected. Not that it made any rational sense, but in that beat-up metaphor junkyard I call my mind, I realized: receiving and sharing that tobacco was a kind of crash. A delicious, defiant, carcinogenic crash. Crash the car in togetherness. Total it in communion. If we're gonna spiral, might as well hold hands and do donuts.

That exact thought spiked just as my driver slammed the brakes and veered like a wounded beast, narrowly dodging two sedans that had just bumped bumpers in some banal automotive mating ritual.

“Hey fuck-o!” my driver screamed out my side of the window, voice sharp as a roofing nail. “Just 'cause you clowns wreck your cars don’t mean I gotta wreck mine!”

And I lost it. Cackled like a mad preacher on mescaline.

“What? Oh, right. You no talk.”

I fished out the slip of paper from the gospel according to my big, fat wallet. Handed it to him like it was Exhibit A in the cosmic courtroom.

“If someone crashes their car,” he read aloud, “does that mean I have to crash my car? YES!”

He looked at me sideways. Shrugged like Atlas with a hernia. “Figures. My luck I pick up a mute prophet with cryptic koans and apocalypse coupons.” Then he got real quiet. Got real weird. Told me about impulses. The kind of impulses that had him avoiding playgrounds and nieces and churches. Said he didn’t want to be like that. Asked why God wired him that way. Like I’d know. Like the scribbler of bizarre holy riddles had a FAQ for that.

But rewind the tape. Go back to the night before. I’m still at that picnic table, high off the God-squad juice, scribbling like a possessed monkey in a lightning storm. Grinning like a looney saint, floating two inches above the bench. In love with everything. In love with you, dear reader. Wishing for an empty Bible to fill with my channelings. Wanting to keep riding that psychic jetstream into the weird forever.

“You get it, Dipshit?” Gabriel asked from his theater seat behind my eyes. I’d paused to giggle into the crook of my elbow and shake out my cramped writing claw. Fireworks of sacred geometry pinged behind my lids. I could hear the audience now--bleacher ghosts stomping, clapping, throwing cosmic popcorn.

“I got it,” I said.

“Then you may go to sleep,” Gabriel decreed.

The moon happy in the west, like a glowing yolk cracked on heaven’s countertop. I gathered my slips, tucked them into the bloated folds of my big, fat wallet. Pen into its holster. Zip. Snap. Ritual complete.

My face was a ruin--tears dried in streaks, cheeks sore from hours of maniacal joy-smiling. I rubbed under my eyes, feeling the swollen flesh like dough. My jaw ached. I massaged my temples and jaw hinge, working out the divine kink.

Then--a long, victorious piss into the tall, glowing grass. That piss deserved a soundtrack. Maybe a trumpet.

With bladder empty and bones aching good, I lunged my way back toward the announcer’s booth like a stoned ballerina in slow motion. Crawled into my sleeping bag with a smile.  And then--gone. Sleep took me like a velvet hammer.

No more scribbles. Just the holy hum of blackout bliss.

Sunlight slapped my face like an impatient lover the next morning. I cracked open one bleary eye and heard the walkie-talkie crackle of some terrestrial authority below the tower. Instead of rolling into the fetal camouflage of the far corner, I popped my head up like a guilty meerkat. Mistake.

“Ho brah, wut you doing up dea?” The voice belonged to a maintenance man—local, square-built, and clearly not amused.

I smiled with all the nonchalance of a busted mime and crammed my sleeping bag into my pack like it was contraband. 

When I descended the steps, I caught the lava-magma glint in his eyes—an annoyance that simmered more than boiled.

“You can not sleep up dea,” he said, stern as a hula priest.

I was just grateful he wasn’t the park ranger. I dropped into a full prostration—forehead to earth, divine apology-style.

“Brah, do not bow to me,” he snapped, but I saw it—the corners of his mouth curling like palm fronds in the tradewind. My performance had tickled his soul in some recess he hadn’t counted on.

I rose, palms pressed like a temple beggar. He shooed me again with exasperation, muttered something about “haole hippie fakas,” and looked off toward the park entrance, pretending I wasn’t there.

I offered a final bow—unacknowledged—and strode away with a spring in my step. Being mute was going to be a riot. Maybe I didn’t have to scribble essays every time someone talked at me. Mime it out. Dance the language.

Still, where was I headed? Border’s again, maybe, but my spine winced at the thought. The aftertaste of Michael’s “loathsome worm” still clung to my brainstem. Shake it off, worm-boy.

“We know, we know,” came the phantom chorus—Byzantine monk meets jazz harmony. “We know that we know we know…”

A mantra so strange it reprogrammed me mid-stride. I realized I had been rerunning mental loops of former intrigue. No need to confirm confirmations.

I stopped by the public pool to suck from civilization’s teat. A jug fill, a look for the lifeguard, no eyes watching. Good. I showered like a fugitive in a dream. Sink soap, powdered, squeaked my skin into a sterile rubber

Cleansed, I trotted down to the boardwalk, sweating, shining, and ripe for divine shenanigans. Gabriel piped up with a game.

“You forgot your wallet in the bathroom.”

Like hell I did. Panic yanked my chest cavity open. I unzipped my pack like it contained plutonium. There it was: my big, fat wallet.

“You’re too attached,” Gabriel twinkled. “Like a child to a wet blanket.”

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered internally. “It’s got my EBT, my ID, my golden ticket home.”

“You’ll learn trust,” he whispered, and I saw it—Sisyphus pushing his boulder with a weary eye-roll.

“That wallet is light,” I said. “Let me carry my symbolic boulder like a good little Atlas.”

Then, the vision: toilet water swirling, a flush. “Attachment,” Gabriel said, “drags you into the spin.”

“Spin, then,” I declared—and I did. Right there on the side of the road. Whirling like a cosmic dreidel. I danced toward Ali’i with orchestral telepathy in my ears.

An invisible hand spun me toward certain windshields, certain mailboxes. I left my paper slips like spirit grenades. Boom: parable. Boom: proverb. Some stranger, somewhere, might find a coded love note from one of Gabriel’s cohorts in their wiper blade.

The clouds capstoned Mauna Kea like a floaty bishop’s mitre. Everything pulsed with revelation, from stop signs to birdsong. The world was a giant game of peekaboo.

Then, Raven. Just standing there on the boardwalk.

We’d hitched across the island yesterday. He knew I wasn’t talking, and I had a novella’s worth to scrawl for him. But he seemed jumpy.

“You seen Pops?” he asked.

Cue the universe: Pops and Scott in the Daihatsu, crawling past us like a doom parade.

“There he is!” Pops screamed, blood-eyed and hollering through the open window.

Raven bolted. I bolted. But I ran the opposite direction—past gift shops, tourists, some guy handing out cult pamphlets. I ducked into an alley, panting like a winded prophet.

Leaning against the sun-warmed bricks of the alley, lungs still heaving from the sprint, I tried to steady myself, but my brain kept looping the surreal image of Pops—eyes coal-black, face swollen with prophetic rage—screaming from the Daihatsu like some televangelist of doom. Why the hell was he chasing me? What chord had been struck between us that night at Fox’s Landing under the bloated moon, when our eyes met across the rave and a hot current of something—ESP, psychic, a shared delusion—crackled between us? He had looked at me like he knew my number, like my soul had sent him a telegram without my consent. Had I been broadcasting too loud? Had my dancing, my slip-delivering, my mushroom-laced martyrdom flipped some spiritual switch in him? Or was he always like this—hunting the next conduit, the next fool with an open channel and no filter? I pressed the back of my head to the wall and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to be prey, not again. But part of me knew: I’d already been seen.

But then—behind my closed eyelids—a glow bloomed, intrusive and insistent. When I cracked them open, the sun had crept across the alley just enough to hurl a golden javelin of light that ricocheted off the glossy white cover of a book teetering on the rim of a dumpster, as if heaven itself had bookmarked the trash.

“What is it, Dipshit?” Gabriel whispered. 

It was a book—Buddhism meets Christ consciousness. The cover didn’t just speak—it roared.

Of course. That monk I saw at Walmart. The orange robe, the knowing eyes. The breadcrumbs were laid.

Now I had a quest.

Border’s smelled like stale coffee, synthetic enlightenment, and that humid musk of capitalized wisdom. I breezed in like a mute prophet on pilgrimage, raided the discount journals, and fed my big, fat wallet a new stack of blank destinies. I passed a note to the clerk—Do you know where the Buddhist monastery is? She looked baffled. The register beeped. Then, from behind me, the sunburnt specter of Destiny herself:

“Wood Valley,” croaked a man with the leathery neck of a Galápagos tortoise and eyes like he’d gazed too long into the sun and found it underwhelming. He wore the face of a man who’d once seen God in a puddle and shook his head, unimpressed. “You on a quest?” he grinned. I nodded, mute and aglow with purpose. The man—Kyle—appreciated the silence. It titillated him in.

He gave me a ride out of Kona, his truck rattling with aluminum cans on the floorboards and clove cigarette stubs in a jar in the center console. He told me about his buddy who over-LSDed and wandered into silence until a psych ward cocktail straightjacketed him back into consensus reality.

“He said he felt more sane as a crazy person than as he was now that he’d come down, if that makes any sense,” Kyle mused.

I nodded and scribbled: Reality would overwhelm us if we could perceive it entirely.

Kyle’s pupils dilated in approval. “Exactly. There’s this antenna in your brain, see? Most folks got theirs down. Trauma or psychedelics spring it up, tune you to the alien stations.”

We climbed up out of the heat into South Kona, a thousand feet above sea level, where the clouds wear leis and the breeze is drunk on guava. Kyle dropped me under a flamboyant tree that arched like Shiva doing yoga, and I thumbed with the nonchalance of a holy fool.

My next chauffeur was a minivan oracle who advised me to carry a Basics Sheet—a full-page explainer to shortcut the slip-shuffle: Where from. Where to. What planet. Bless her pragmatic soul.

But then she wanted dessert.

“Write me something,” she said. “A little fortune cookie. Message from beyond.”

So I did. I handed her a slip that said: Joey didn’t mean it.

Which, apparently, Joey very much did mean it, because the woman’s entire chakra system seized up. Her hands gripped the wheel like it owed her child support.

“What the fuck do you know about what Joey meant? WHO SENT YOU?”

I was ejected from the minivan. Taillights. Gabriel laughed, of course—an azure giggle like wind through stained glass.

“You enjoying the ride, Dipshit?”

I was. It felt good to be a scapegoat of synchronicity.

“Might as well ditch the backpack,” Gabriel said, casual as a cult leader suggesting you try Kool-Aid.

“Let’s compromise. I write, I shut up, I keep the damn bag,” I muttered internally.

“For now.”  Again, I glimpsed Sisyphus struggling up the hill pushing his boulder--my pack.  Whatever, Gabriel. 

I started thumping my water jug, tribal and triumphant, as Gabriel composed a symphony in the background—a cross between a Bollywood overture and a Gregorian chant recorded underwater. My thumb shot out between beats, and we fished for the next ride through rhythmic hitchhiking.

Cue: the cougar in the chariot. Somewhere past Ocean View, a high-cheekboned enchantress with a steering wheel picked me up, fed me a sandwich, and parked us in a secluded grove of fleshy trees, where the ocean flirted through the leaves like a high school boyfriend.

She said she talked too much. Now, she wanted to express herself in other ways.

I smiled, sadly. Drew out my pen. Wrote:
Proud as a shaved lion, humble as a naked monk.

Her eyes dilated, cheeks reddened. “Oh,” she gasped. “You’re on a spiritual journey.”

She apologized for tempting a holy man, and I laughed, showing her the slip I’d hand-lettered in a font made of tiny mushrooms:

I Am a Joke, and if I don’t like it, I can jump off a cliff and die.

“Well, it sounds like your on a quest.  And your other note said you were a monk?”

Interlude, five months later… Spokane County Jail.

Chris was peering through the half-inch slit of transparent glass in our sandblasted window. Two stories down, a stop sign stood lonely and motionless on the street corner, sun-glared and ignored by all but Chris.  He’d scoffed

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head like he’d just tasted something bitter in his own thoughts. “I don’t get it,” he muttered. “If you hadn’t said anything at all, I’d have pegged you as a lobotomized stoner. Not some enlightened mime on a quest.”

I leaned back against the cinderblock wall and smiled. “You’d be surprised how many people believe you’re spiritual when you shut the fuck up, but I agree.  I was batshit but I--”

“Speaking of, does your stomach feel okay?” he cut in, eyes squinting as he turned to me like something sharp had poked his insides.

“Why do you ask, sweetpea?  Widoh tum-tum hurt?”

He rubbed his ribs and frowned. “I feel... not great, but what supposedly happened at that Buddhist place in Wood Valley?”

I put a finger to my chin and looked at the bunk above, as if consulting the archives. “What do you mean by supposedly, Chris?”

He turned back to face the window.  “You really expect me to believe you were talking to angels?”

“I never said Gabriel was an angel,” I said. 

“That dude Isa told you to name the voice in your head after the angel Gabriel, the one that knocked up Mary, right?”

“More or less, but Gabriel’s a homie.”

Chris stared like I’d sprouted a second nose. “Is? You mean he’s still in there? Are you sure your stomach’s okay? Like, 100%?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep, meditative breath. “Mmmhmm. Right as rain.”

“God,” he muttered, clutching his gut. “I feel sharp stuff. Like, jabs and barbs and shit. Like maybe it’s stress. Or maybe it’s you. But keep going.”

“It’s gas, but you gon’ be okay, hon-bun?” I purred.

“Yeah,” he growled. “The fuck happened with this bitch driving you to the monastery if you didn’t fuck her because you’re a naked lion or whatever the fuck?”

I tilted my head and laced my fingers behind it. “Chris, if you’ll chill—like really chill—you’ll find that where I was going was quite chilly. Cold even. Big pines. Might’ve been Douglas firs, maybe some spruce, but you don’t wanna rush the forest details now, do you?”

He exhaled through his nose, slow and hard. “So she’s driving you up, and then…?”

I grinned and stretched my legs out like I was sunbathing on a cloud. “Oh, then it gets interesting.”

March 2001: Wood Valley Tibetan Monastery Spin 

The woman who’d tried to seduce me—apologizing profusely, like she’d accidentally offered a glass of red wine to a recovering alcoholic monk—dropped me at the base of a temple that whispered words like Shinto, Kung Fu, and Ninja. The architecture was a visual haiku: tiled roof, sloped grace, some prayerful geometry plagiarized up by a wood sprite with a knack for feng shui.

Wood Valley sat cradled 2,000 feet above the Pacific’s blue plate shimmer. The air was cool, crisp, the kind of air that made your lungs feel like they’d just ate a curiously strong mint. I climbed grass-covered steps with the solemn curiosity of a cartoon deer approaching an empty campground for a marshmallow that fell in the fire last night.

I spun around like a character in a badly dubbed martial arts film. There stood a bald monk, looking exactly—exactly—like the Dalai Lama’s Costco clone. Wire-framed glasses. Red robe with one shoulder bare.  He was maybe a head shorter than me, standing there with his fingers templed, grinning.

And I knew him! Well, I at least recognized him.  First day on the island, Hilo Walmart: cart full of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. I’d asked about the haul, and he’d blinked, startled by my abruptness, mumbling something about “guests.” I told him I was glad he supported the industry of chocolate nuts.  I winked. He didn’t reply, just blinked and stared at a shelf of Spam.

Now here we were again—two months later, and he looked about just as unsure of what to do with the riff raff. That was okay.  I could clear that up, and I handed him a note I’d prepared, a letter asking to apprentice, help with chores, observe something sacred or at least useful. He glanced at the page, then looked up, gently shaking his head.

“I only read Tibetan,” he said, and folded his hands behind his back. “Please. Tell me.”

I blinked. The contract. Michael the Archangel. I frowned. My mouth did not move. Instead, I pointed to the paper like a mime trying to renew his driver’s license.

“I only read Tibetan,” he repeated, and turned as a peacock shrieked from somewhere near the Keep of the Grass sign I’d seen on the way in. A cardinal flitted past, perched briefly on the roof, then thought better of it.  The vibe, or gestalt, between the monk and me was not pono.

Gabriel broke the stillness. “Dipshit,” he whispered, “you ready to spin?”

I ignored him, trying instead to pantomime “washing dishes” or “digging ditches” to the monk, who responded with a look normally reserved for malfunctioning vending machines.

“Please,” said the monk, “be still.”

Gabriel cackled like a clown unzipping a body bag. “We’re gonna SPIN you! Ready?! READY?!”

I wanted to slap his voice with a shovel.

“Well,” the monk murmured, looking down to observe his big toe wiggling in the whitest of socks, “feel free to observe the grounds before leaving. I have... things.” He looked down, tugged a finger like it had misbehaved. “Be well.”

He disappeared into a path behind the ferns, swallowed by pines like a dream that decides to ghost you mid-sentence.

Gabriel was still rattling around in my skull. “Spin, spin, spin!” Like a cracked wind-up toy. I tried to block him out. Cold was already creeping into my spine. My sleeping bag wasn’t rated for theological rejection at elevation.

Why am I here, Gabriel?

“SPIN!” he sang. “Ooooh, we’re gonna spin you.

I didn’t care for it, to be frank. 

I walked around to the front of the temple and halfway down the terraced steps. The peacock was still there, fanning its tail behind the Keep of the Grass sign. I chose a step to sit down on which was about twenty feet from the annoyed-looking bird. 

I sighed and unzipped my pack. The peacock stared daggers—judgmental, fabulous daggers—and it was squawking a profanity-laced mantra: fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.

“I’m working on it,” I mimed, and tugged out my big, fat wallet.

I needed resolution. Spin, spin, spin didn’t cut it. I needed specifics. Blueprints. Recipes. A user manual. Gabriel’s tone had a carnival nightmare edge now, like kids were about to chant a nursery rhyme and push me into an industrial fan.

“Not cool, Gabriel,” I said to Gabriel after he’d told me to spin again.

My pen got snagged on the faux leather loop inside my big, fat wallet because I was trembling, and a dozen little slips of paper from Border’s fell out of the bill fold, some floating down a terraced step onto perfectly manicured grass. 

The peacock told me to fuck off. 

Gabriel told me to spin.

My hand was trembling. Everything was watching. I mean everything. Trees leaned in with breathless anticipation. Blades of grass sharpened like razors. The rocks put down their millennia-long brooding to place bets on what I’d write. But the most impatient of all—the one itching for climax—was the goddamn peacock. It was not a fan.

I balanced a slip of paper on my big, fat wallet, which was perched precariously on my knee. I inhaled. I let the breath curl around my organs like a salve. I put ballpoint to pulp.

Immediate motherfucker. I thought the pen would slip off, that I’d draw a broken squiggle and call it art. But no. I wrote one word. Spin. Then again. Spin. Spin spin spin spin spin… Over and over, like a scratched record.

Gabriel chimed in with a cheerleader’s lilt and a game show host’s cadence. “Are you ready now? Ready now? Spin! Ready? Ready now?”

I dropped the pen like it had bit me. A gust of wind kicked up and snatched one of the paper slips like a kidnapper in a convertible. It began to tumble across the grass, and the last thing I wanted to do was annoy the monk who’d have to clean up after me.

I scrambled to collect the slips, like a priest chasing down confessions in a hurricane. Paper, pen—check. I headed back to the step I’d been seated on to grab the last stray slip.

I froze. Did a slow 360, scanning every goddamn pixel of gray.

The big, fat wallet was gone.

Not under the pack. Not behind the pack. Not in the folds of my sleeping bag. Not in my other dimension of dignity.

Gabriel insisted. “Spin! Spin! SPIN!” And suddenly I wasn’t on a temple lawn anymore—I was the red dot in the center of the planet’s roulette wheel. A manic axis of centrifugal delusion. I turned in place, searching, spinning.

Inside, something snapped. A mental gear, a gasket, a hymen of logic. And it hurt—but it hurt good, like honey poured on a third-degree burn.

“There you go, Dipshit!” Gabriel beamed. “Spin! Where’d it go? Huh?”

I stopped my rotations and ran up the steps to where I’d handed the monk my note, irrationally hopeful. Maybe I left it there? Maybe gravity had reversed? But no—the paper slips had spilled out on the lawn. The pen had snagged on the wallet. I still had the pen. Still had the slips. My mind was the only thing evaporating.

I laughed. It cracked out of me like a crowbar splitting open a piñata. I couldn’t stop smiling. My face hurt. I grinned like a lunatic in a dentist chair.

Gabriel sang again. “Spin, spin, spin!”

And I knew. I knew. Insane people don’t feel insane. They feel chosen. They feel correct. I had joined the blessed brigade of the brain-fucked, and deep down, I knew it was all in my head—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

The wind of fate had tempted me. The slip of paper had baited me, just so I’d get up. Just so I’d chase it. Just so I’d leave the wallet behind. It was an inside job, a setup, a heist by Gabriel, that bastard.

I got up to get my shit together—and he took everything.

That’s the riddle, isn’t it?

What do you do when you get up to collect yourself—and you vanish?

I tossed my backpack again.   I went up the steps, down the steps, around again. At one point, I spun like a figure skater possessed by Nietzsche. The peacock screamed: “Fuck off!”

I wanted to scream back. Fuck off, bird! You smug dinosaur with anxiety feathers! But I didn’t. I just kept spinning. Maybe the monk stole it. Maybe he ninja’d it out of my life. It was the only logical answer. Literally the only one. LITERALLY.

“Okay, I give up,” I whispered to Gabriel. “You win. Puppet me.”

“Remember when I told you the more you willingly parted with, the less it would hurt?”

I felt Gabriel reach under my arms and gently hoist me with MF. My feet didn’t leave the ground, but suddenly, I was in the pose of a scarecrow, standing on my toes. He spun me around, and I let him. I let go. 

My face had split open into a grin wider than my skull. Gabriel was in the cockpit now, co-pilot no more, and we were flying blind through the windshield of reality.

He danced me down the steps. My toes barely brushed the ground. A sign said Watch Your Step, and I nearly pissed myself laughing.

Watching was all I could do.

“I surrender.”.

Gabriel grinned inside me. “Are you not entertained?”

Oh, I was. I was fucking entertained.

So far, my mute odyssey had been a buffet of the uncanny—visions, vanishings, psychic bird beef—but this? This was next-level absurd. My return ticket, my ID, my Social Security card—all gone. Gone. Like they’d never existed. Like they were props in a play that ended when the actor forgot his lines and wandered into a different theater.

I stood barefoot on gravel, laughing like a man who’d just realized he was the punchline of the universe. Again. And wouldn’t it be deliciously pointless to flit back up for my pack? As if I could backtrack into sanity.

Let go and let Gabe, I thought.

“Is it tinkle time, Dipshit?” Gabriel chimed with the soft tact of a kindergarten janitor addressing a deranged raccoon. “Come on then, this way.”

And what else could I do but follow? He twirled me like a ballerina having a psychotic break. Across the road we pirouetted, past the temple’s judgmental ferns, down toward a little stream. The lava rock was water-polished and black and iridescent with algae. The eddy beckoned—a pool just wide enough for a man to relieve his doubts into.

As I added to the eddy, Gabriel groaned. “Dipshit, what did you just do? Now the poor thing thinks it’s a piss puddle. You pissed in its face. Apologize.”

I bowed to the pool, lips twitching, shame and glee doing a tap dance on my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I whispered inside.

“Bowing? That’s not an apology. That’s performance art. Wash your face in it, ya looney egret. Let the water forgive you. Restore balance.”

I got on my hands and knees like a wet noodle saint and baptized myself in my own piss ghost’s forgiveness. The water hit my cheeks and I felt it—elation. Not bliss. Not peace. But elation, like God doing poppers in the back row of a school play.

“Now do you get it, Dipshit?” Gabriel whispered. “Do you finally get it?”

And then I was up and he spun me. 

I was a dervish on gravel, the soles of my feet peppered with rocks, but I felt only the lightest of footsteps. I was carried. Gabriel’s fingers were locked under my armpits like I was a sack of cosmic garbage he wasn’t quite ready to throw out. He tiptoed me down the mountain, one elegant, lunatic step at a time.

Backpack? Gone. Sleeping bag? Bye. Snooty peacock could inspect it, but I had nothing but the clothes on my back.  Like a propper apostle, finally, in one pair of clothes carrying neither gold nor silver.

I was free. Empty. Lighter than a hallucination. And everything—the moss, the gravel, the chirping beyond-the-hill future—it all looked like a miracle, because nothing anchors you to hell like having something to rely upon.

“Half a mile more,” Gabriel hummed, conducting with his invisible wand.

Then the road split like a trick deck and we veered off. A path. A whisper in the woods. We went with it. Gabriel guided me like I was strapped to a shopping cart full of explosives and he wanted to see where the hill ended.

Through the trees. And there—a house. Three stories of brown wood and reality.

And then things got weird.

I walked across the deck with a maniacal grin, my shoulders up from where Gabriel was lifting me. Up to a glass door. Inside, a woman with a cordless phone was mid-sentence, probably talking to a friend about yogurt or blood pressure or how her pantry talks to her when no one’s looking.

She saw me. Dreadlocked scarecrow. Grinning. Shoulders hunched like a goblin puppet. Did she scream? No. Did she call the cops? No. She held up a finger like, Just a sec, sweetie, and walked off screen.

Part of me was shaking my head. This isn’t real. But another part—Gabriel’s part—was nodding. Why not?

She came back with a brown paper bag full of dream fuel. Manna bread, bananas, granola, dried mangoes and a bag of almonds. She handed it to me like I was a postal worker and she’d been waiting to offload it all day.

I bowed. Gabriel spun me for my bobbling exodus back up the path. I heard the glass door slide shut behind me like the last sound before a dream ends.

Back on the road. Cue: truck.

Waiting like it had been summoned by my subconscious. Passenger door open. White-haired driver behind the wheel, face turned toward the road ahead. No glance, no greeting. I climbed in, still grinning, arms like noodles.

Down the hill we rolled, into Pāhala, into the next chapter.

At a stop sign near a school, the man finally spoke.

“Wait.”

He didn’t look at me. Just pointed with his chin toward the rearview mirror. In the bed of the truck: my backpack. Plump and smug, like it had never abandoned me. Like it hadn’t sunbathed on the lawn of a Buddhist temple while I danced barefoot with madness.

I retrieved it, slung it over one shoulder, and bowed to the man. He didn’t nod. He didn’t wave.

He just drove off.

And I stood there, paper bag in one arm, my forsaken backpack back, barefoot, and quite high off of what had happened.  All had to happen.

August 2001: Spokane County Jail

"Had to happen," said Chris, echoing my thesis. "Because everything is real and must unfold as it was written by who, exactly?"

"No clue, bud. Let’s do pushups or something," I said, peeling myself off the polyester mattress. "Hundred for me if you can pull off ten."

"Not a chance."

A few hours later, Chris declared that it was time to sponge-bathe himself with his own socks. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a man try to reclaim dignity with dirty socks, powdered soap, and a sink that had the water pressure of one of those squirt guns you buy for three bucks that leaks immediately.  

"And on the ninth day," I said, stretching my hamstrings on my bunk, "Chris did bless himself with a sock bath."

"My balls itch," he snapped. "This place is inhumane. I need water. Water and soap. I need a shower, but all we have is the goddam sink, so could you please look away now?” 

“Dude, I’m stretching, and I’ll close my eyes.”

“Please? Would you please just--” 

“Turning, I’m turning.” And I faced the wall, decided to use it to see how far I could do the splits. But the sock bath was long, and after stretching, I grabbed the Bible and flipped to the book of Job. Chris was shivering violently and complaining about how the soap burned his balls as I read about the old testament prophet that the devil had covered with boils and blisters, killed his entire family, all his animals, and he still wouldn’t curse God, which was the entire game the devil and God were playing, a bet to on Job’s spiritual mettle.   

“This sink water ain’t coming fast enough,” Chris said.  “I wasn’t going to, but I’m gonna use the toilet.  I gotta get this fucking soap off me, so I know you want to say how I’m disgusting but--”

“I won’t give you any shit for it.  Wouldn’t have attempted a bath with the soap--”

“That’s what I mean; shut the fuck up with your told-you-so’s and shit.”

And I almost made a ‘shit pun’ but muttered something about Job being a righteous man and said ‘nothing’ when Chris thought I might have been talking shit.  Took him about ten minutes to rag-rinse off when he started using toilet water.  

"I wish we had a deck of cards," he said from his post-bath perch on the top bunk.

"Or chess."

"I don’t play chess."

"You don’t read, don’t exercise, don’t play chess. Damn, Chris."

Chris slid off his bunk to resume observing his slice of the outer-world.  The stop sign.  And, he’d seen heels, blue heels but not the legs.  Still, he’d gotten so excited that I couldn’t fault him for his post. He had his calling and I had mine.

"I just did a hundred pushups," I announced.

"Oh joy," he muttered.

"Gotta get after it!"

"You got here somehow," Chris said suddenly. "If Gabriel stole your wallet, how’d you get back to Washington?"

"Snuck on the plane."

"No ID?"

"Lost it. Printed boarding pass. Last in line. She said, 'Just go.'"

"No fucking way."

"Way. Got to Oahu, told them I lost it in transit."

"And now you’re in Spokane County Jail. Mazel tov."

"Don’t disparage the amenities."

"Just one question. The lady gave you food, sure. The guy drove you down from the temple. Then what?"

March 2001: Big Island

The silent driver might well have descended from the sky itself to escort me to Pahala. When I lifted my pack from the back of his truck, I could tell it contained my hoodie and sleeping bag—proof enough that I was taking a walk on the wild side.

"And there you go," Gabriel said.

I gave a wave to the driver, but not even a side glance. His mission was complete.

I considered hitchhiking, but the highway was empty. The few cars that passed howled down the slope of Kilauea at 70 miles per hour. Only the brightest planets and a handful of aircraft blinked in the sky, but it was dark enough for headlights, which meant night.  Seemed early, and I was surprisingly spry for having hardly slept the night before at the Old Airport with entities writing their blurbs till the wee hours.  And tonight, there would be no rain—that much I gathered from the brittle, yellow grass along the roadside. But the wind was alive, battering a flagpole that clanked like a distant bell over the school grounds nearby.

Behind the school, I discovered a low retaining wall encircling the air conditioning unit. In the corner of that enclosure, I unrolled my sleeping bag. Then, almost not believing it, I reached into the brown paper bag I’d been handed earlier and pulled out a bag of dried mango slices. Sweet and leathery with a citrus bite, I mentally thanked the woman for her strange generosity.

What had she seen? A barefoot scarecrow, possessed by some wild grin, grinning at her as if floating on puppet strings. And without missing a beat, she’d handed me groceries like I was the mailman.

Her gesture had baffled me. Not just for its calmness, but for how seamlessly it fit into the day's impossible arc. After Gabriel vanished my big, fat wallet, I’d surrendered—past bewilderment, past resistance. There was freedom in the absurdity. And still, her matter-of-fact kindness hung in the air like incense as I ate three mango ears.

The wind circled above the wall, kicking up grit. One of the AC units kicked on, humming with a low frequency that felt comforting. I lay down, pulled my bandana over my eyes.

"We got you, Dipshit," said Gabriel.

Sleep was fragmented. The wind came in gusts, and another unit groaned like a metallic beast, about every 20 minutes it would lurch to life. In the hours not long before dawn, I woke to the sound of rats. They chased each other with gleeful squeals, darting over my sleeping bag. One ran across my feet, paused, sensed the wrongness of my presence, and bolted—its friend close behind.

I dozed again, only to wake at the rumble of a white utility truck pulling into the lot. A janitor emerged and walked toward me, oblivious. He stopped at the maintenance closet just twenty feet from where I lay, hidden in the shadows. Without noticing the man curled up beside the AC unit, he unlocked the door, fetched a yellow bucket and mop, locked up, and wheeled his tools toward the gym.

It was all motion. Routine. The mop handle guided the bucket. The bucket rolled forward. The man walked without looking. The gym door opened, swallowed him, and swung shut.

A moment later, the AC unit sighed and powered down—as if watching. The birds were already chattering, excited about the coming light. They sang to the dew clinging to the grass: rise, rise, your time on earth is brief and beautiful.

I took it as my cue. I packed up quickly and checked the top zipper of my bag—just in case, just to be sure I’d imagined the rest.

No wallet.

On the shoulder of highway 11, I arranged my groceries in my pack so I wouldn’t have to carry the paper bag. Then I propped the pack against the guardrail and did a few handstands, hallelujah and good morning! I did some pushups, some arches and limbered myself up before marching southbound toward Naalehu. 

And, say what you will about having attachments, but once you lose them all, there’s a lightness that is instantly felt and recognized. My big, fat wallet had been an energetic weight, an albatross around my neck that had been putting quotes around the word ‘faith’ when it came to what I believed. 

“Go into the world carrying neither gold nor silver,” said Christ, and I figured He meant EBT too. Maybe even my plane ticket. I’d been prepared to part with my pack, ready to let it tumble off the truck bed like a cartoon bundle of burden. But someone—Gabriel, fate, the sly whisper of Providence—must’ve made arrangements with that driver.

So there I was, no safety net but my hoodie and my sleeping bag, tapping my water jug like a rhythm stick as I walked. I found a pen on the roadside. It had been pancaked by God knows how many tires, but the ink still flowed when I tested it on my palm. A little miracle.

About a mile down the line, a glint caught my eye beneath a reflective post. A playing card. I picked it up: the two of clubs. That humble little gatekeeper of the card game Hearts—the one that always opens the round. It was a signal. This was a fresh deal. New hand, new rules. I grinned and slid it into my cargo shorts.  

When I looked up, I saw that a truck which had flown past me had pulled off a few hundred feet down the highway.

Ferris had ocean eyes, bright and glassy like someone had juiced a wave and poured it into his skull. His yellow surfboard was sunbaked in the bed of his truck, already dappled with salt scars. A subwoofer behind the seat was blasting Sublime with such fervor it could’ve shaken the devil out of a demon. When I climbed in, the cab smelled like coconut oil, weed, and something vaguely resembling teenage rebellion.

He took a drag off a joint and turned the music down just enough to speak.

 “You don’t toke, brah?” he said, blinking at me like I’d just declared war on breakfast. “Come on, I see dem baby dreads. I ain’t never met one Rasta who didn’t puff, braddah.”
He chuckled, extended the joint like it was communion.

I shook my head again.

Ferris squinted, like maybe I was bluffing, just waiting for a third offer to break my spiritual fast. When he held it out again, expectantly, I pulled out my janky little pen and scribbled on a crumpled slip: ‘I only smoke on Sundays.

“Ooohh, my bad!” he said, “You one real Rasta then. Got that discipline. Mad respect, cousin.”

Then, trying to atone, he popped open his center console and pulled out a tangerine-orange pill bottle. Inside was a glistening little God-nugget—crystally, citrusy, dense as a black hole.

Eyebrows raised.

“My boy got cancer,” Ferris explained. “Terminal kine. He no smoke, but he get the hookup. Legal kine. Some government crip, brah.” He said it like it had been blessed by the Surgeon General himself.  “But I need the bottle for refill em’.”

I nodded gratefully, folded the nug in my “Only Sundays” note and tucked it in the cargo pocket.

Ferris nodded back. “Maybe I need mo’ discipline, do uttah kine tings—like medicine, but I know nahting, brah. You get ‘em, we smoke ‘em. You know.”

His pidgin thickened by the minute, like he was rolling backward into his true self. Either he’d been masking it when he picked me up, or the weed was kicking his accent into overdrive.

We hit 80 mph and careened down the highway like we were late to a funeral. When he learned I liked his mix, he cranked it. Then Jane’s Addiction came on, and suddenly he was yowling “Been Caught Stealing” like a cat in heat while I thumped along on my jug. He begged me to drum louder. I tried, but his sound system drowned it out.

When we reached Na‘alehu, Ferris whipped into a stall in front of a convenience store. “I let you out hea, but that nug gon’ bless your Sunday, watch,” he said.  His Tacoma was halfway to the next town before I remembered the cancer—how weed sometimes opens the door to hunger when everything else is slammed shut.

My stomach growled like a feral dog. Message received.

Na‘alehu was basically a hiccup of a town. Not much but a park with a fair sized pagoda. I filled my jug, chewed some mana bread, and used the rafters for pull-ups until my arms buzzed like power lines. It felt good—alive—the kind of burn that says your blood hasn’t given up yet.

Charged with all that delicious fatigue, I sprinted back to the highway.  The road kinked and curled through switchbacks, zigzagging up westward. I marched along, jug-drum thumping, thumb out, not even facing the traffic—just trusting in blind momentum. Another truck finally stopped and carried me five miles further before veering off toward South Point.

I thanked the driver with a wave, hopped out, and hit the asphalt again, still thumping, still going, no destination, just a beat in my chest and the road unspooling like a prayer I hadn’t finished yet.

Although I could’ve kept marching, whistling hymns to the asphalt gods, something pulled my eyes off the road and into a dirt lot. A tractor sat dead center in a freshly plowed plot, the only splash of yellow on a canvas of rich brown. It didn’t just sit—it posed, radiant and absurd, like a throne misplaced in a potato field. It wasn’t just waiting; it had been waiting for me.

The colors were wrong for real life—too vivid, too cinematic. Bright yolk yellow and chocolate earth with a shadow that looked poured from a paint can. The tractor practically raised its hand and waved. So I crossed the field, climbed aboard, and dropped my pack by my feet.

Its metal canopy split the noonday blaze like a divine scalpel. The seat cradled me better than it should’ve. My spine melted against the backrest. My hand reached for the flattened pen and I fished out a slip of paper from my cargo pocket: ‘The cat must fall asleep, and the kernel of corn must not pop.’

The pen froze. My hands dropped to my knees. My spine straightened. Something was about to happen.  I closed my eyes, but instead of darker, it grew bright.

“Steady, steady,” came Gabriel’s voice, warm and amused.

The light inflated, bloomed, devoured. My lungs locked. Eyes squeezed shut like vault doors.

“Steady… the cat must not wake.”

The brightness slammed against the dark of my shuttered lids, hard enough to rip the concept of color apart. My breath became a whisper inside me. Then—too much. My eyes burst open with a gasp, and I gripped the steering wheel of the tractor.

“Awe, dipshit,” Gabriel sighed. “You almost had it.”

I knew what he meant: the light, the sleep, the popping kernel. There was an art to letting go without falling apart.

Second attempt. Breath in. Spine straight. Eyes closed. Sleep, kitty. Don’t pop, kernel. The light returned, but I stayed soft and still through the intensity of the light.

I exploded upward.

Gabriel was behind me, unseen but unmistakable. A propulsion, a gravity in reverse. Below, my body stayed in the tractor, a sleeping cat below.  But I was up—out—skybound.

“Don’t marvel too hard,” Gabriel said. “Not yet.”

I wanted to look back. Couldn’t. Against the rules.

Clouds parted. A green lawn. A perfect hologram of Eden designed to put me at ease. Icons came to life like a greatest hits playlist of saints and ascetics.

St. Ephraim the Syrian strolled across the grass like he’d just finished tea. Beaming. “So glad to see you,” he said, as if we had plans. I told him I liked his prayers. He promised to help me write. Bowed. Departed.

St. Anthony the Great appeared next, glowing inside a red robe that shouldn’t have been clean. He bowed. I protested.

“I’m not worthy,” I began.

He waved it off. “You and I are the same.”

“You wrestled demons in a tomb.”

He smiled. “Laugh more. The devil can’t stand laughter.”

Then came St. Seraphim of Sarov, white robes, white hair, kneeling by a pond like an oracle. He waved. Said nothing. I glimpsed my big, fat wallet glimmering on the far shore.

Then Her.

In the courtyard, on a throne the color of dried blood, the Virgin Mary sat—enormous, luminous, beyond iconography. She was wrapped in blue and gold, but the gold wasn’t ornamental. It was living.

I ran to her. Jumped into her lap like a lost child reunited with their everything.

“Oh mom,” I whispered, “I missed you.”

That almost snapped me out. The shock of it. The child in me saying ‘mom’ to her. Then tears. My eyes twitched, ready to blow the lid off this trance.

Gabriel jabbed me with the etheric morphine.

“It’s okay,” Mary said. “You don’t have to be mute if you don’t want to.”

“I like it,” I said. “But can I stay?”

She shook her head. “Too much to do. But I’ll be watching.”

Gabriel chimed in, chipper: “Time to say buy-bye.”

I clung to her like a toddler. Then off the lap, a bow to the saints, a wave goodbye.

The descent was instant. Eyes open. Sunlight real. I was back in my body.

The front of my shirt was soaked. Not with sweat. With tears. My goatee dripped. I was drenched in something like awe. The whole world shimmered like a better version of itself. 

And I didn’t care if it sounded dumb—I had no fear of hell anymore. It was gone. Erased. I knew where I was going.

Roadside again, a truck pulled over, I rode in the bed, flat on my back, staring at trees like old friends. Gabriel said nothing, but I knew he was up there, flapping invisible wings above the truck.

In Kealia, I was dropped by a kayak-rental store.  Gabriel used MF to guide me straight across the highway, barely missing traffic, but no honks or shouts. 

Across the highway stood a Jacaranda tree, flowering with indigo fire. The branches stretched like cathedral ribs, hosting violet blooms that danced in the trades like a thousand butterflies, stunned mid-flight. Beneath it, the slope of the volcano spilled down in hues of chlorophyll and ash, the coastline a white slash—like a fingernail on a dark drum.

Then MF veered me down a winding road toward Ho‘okena Beach, but a quarter mile in, it yanked me up a driveway—no explanation, just vector.

I stopped after a couple feet and felt the call to write something. I was suddenly shaking with adrenaline and stressed, but I couldn't see any reason for anxiety as I wrote in big bold letters: The cowardly Lion must not fear. Then in a more curved and feminine style: I haven't had a shower in weeks.

I got up and walked up the driveway, smiling at the MF on my back. It was a long, black asphalt driveway, but I’d only walked a bit of it when a shaggy dog came running towards me. I still had the little note in my hand, and held it out at the dog. My upper lip curled into a snarl not my own, some primal anti-bark invocation. The dog faltered, then lunged I walked by it—bad move. My heel snapped up and caught its jaw mid-chomp. Clack. A yelp. Then a whimpering retreat. 

The canopy of trees opened into manicured absurdity—a sprawling, emerald-green lawn swallowing two acres, anchored by a three-story plantation house with white columns that screamed post-colonial delusion. The dog, now demoted to watchdog emeritus, barked dutifully when I approached the steps.

A pastel-clad woman stepped through a crack in the door like she’d been waiting for me in every previous life. We locked eyes. Smile met smile.

"Can I help you… are you lost?" she asked, voice gentle as quilted clouds.

I handed her my note. She read it, nodded slowly. Then, from within the house, a thunderous male voice erupted:

“Tell that bastard to leave! Get him out of here!”

She rolled her eyes.

“You’ll have to excuse him. He’s not well.”

Then, softer: “Is your name… Grass?”

I nodded. The lights in her brain clicked on like runway lamps.

“I thought so.”

“Tell that motherfucker to leave!” came the echo from upstairs, a banshee in boxers.

“Grass… they told me—hold on just a sec.”

She vanished behind the door like she’d been cued offstage, and I stood blinking in the soft light of paradise. The shaggy dog, now rebranded as chill concierge, was panting like a smiling drunk uncle. I scratched behind its ears, half-expecting it to speak in riddles. Inside, the unwell man’s fury surged—furniture-splitting rage echoing down the columned halls. It sounded like his spleen was drafting a manifesto.

Their immaculate lawn yawned out in all directions like a golf course dreamt up by Gatsby. After a minute of muffled bickering, she returned, opening the door just wide enough to feed me the next plot point.

“I’m sorry you can’t shower, Grass,” she said, handing me two twenties like contraband from a divine casino. “But I was told to give you this. God bless. We work for the same team.”

Click.

Door shut. Curtain drop. And then—whoosh—the MF whirled me around and shoved so hard I nearly cartwheeled off the marble steps. A divine boot to the ass. Side quest: complete.

I was ushered back down the driveway, half-expecting the dog to trot beside me like a loyal sidekick. But when I looked back, he was back on the porch, chin resting between his paws, disinterested.

At the end of the driveway, I bounced to a halt like I’d hit an invisible trampoline. A tidy row of mailboxes stood at attention.

“She did very well,” Gabriel said. “So well she earned that.”

The MF took the wheel and marched me to the nearest box. I popped it open and slid the cash inside—no return address, no receipt. Just cosmic bookkeeping.

As I walked back toward the Jacaranda tree, the whole scene began to shimmer like a parable melting in the sun. Was I even real? Or just a living riddle placed in someone else’s screenplay?

Next ride was the backseat of a sedan, behind two shirtless Hawaiian guys whose pidgin was so thick it felt like another weather system. They chuckled when they realized I couldn’t talk—laughed harder when one declared, “More haoles need to learn for shut the fuck up.” Fair enough. The windows were down, trade winds in our teeth, and I just smiled like a penitent mime while they carried on their preexisting convo.

And while they laughed and jabbered, my mind veered off the road entirely—past their talk story and into apocalypse weather. The world wasn’t ending; it was folding in. Everything felt exponential, coded, cosmically accelerated. My breath, my pulse, the lava fields outside—all part of a geometry tightening around me like a fractal noose. I thought about the lady who knew my name. I thought about the dark spiral out on the lava flats near Fox’s Landing. What if it had entered me, sucked something essential out my mouth and was now swimming down my guts, threading itself into the base of my spine like a demonic tapeworm with missionary ambitions?

That had been the day Gabriel pulled back, gone radio silent under orders from Michael. My handler was furloughed until I signed the mute contract. And I had. I was now, officially, the Archangel’s parable.

I was in the bed of a maroon truck riding steady past the cracked crust of old lava flows, Mauna Kea hulking off to the east like God’s knuckle, ringed with telescopes like cartoon zits. 

In my periphery, they came slithering—three dark spirals unfurling from the ribs of Mauna Kea itself, as if the mountain had exhaled a curse. They descended slow and smooth across the lava plain like malevolent dandelion seeds on invisible threads, each one pulsing with a cold intelligence. Loosely woven coils of black wire, rimmed in dim, flickering violet—the color of bruised light. They looked like someone had built a cartoon tornado out of ghost-metal and bad dreams.

They weren't flying. They were floating with purpose. Tracking. Adjusting. Like surveillance tech from another dimension or the byproduct of a forgotten ritual. They didn’t rush—they didn’t need to. They glided over the hardened magma, matching the speed of the truck as if we were on some conveyor belt of fate.

I tried to pretend I didn’t see them. Turned to face the ocean and stared at the horizon like it had answers, like saltwater could save me. But the spirals were playful in their menace. They circled wide, repositioning to meet my gaze head-on. I dropped my eyes to my foot, tried to get small, anonymous, invisible. But invisibility is an empty wish when you're being watched by things that aren’t quite matter.

They hovered maybe twenty feet off—close enough to assert dominance, but far enough to not provoke open panic. I don’t think they needed to touch me to do their work. Just hovering, just watching, just whispering with their geometry. My breath became precious. I protected it like a flame in the wind. I wouldn’t let them down my throat. Wouldn’t let them nest in my belly and lay eggs in my soul.

They didn’t speak—not with words. They didn’t need to. Their presence was a hum in the bones, a tightening in the jaw, an itch in the spirit.

The truck rolled on through the scorched nothingness, past the Kona airport and into the cratered silence of the wasteland. I was riding shotgun in the apocalypse and the apocalypse wasn’t in a hurry.

When we hit the T in the road, I leapt out. The spirals didn’t follow me. They kept their vigil on the vehicle, like they'd marked it instead. Or maybe they’d gotten what they came for. Or maybe—just maybe—I wasn’t their target after all.

At sunset I caught another ride—another open-bed truck—and let the wind slap the tension off my face. The higher we climbed, the colder it got. Warmth drained from the coast as we rose into Waimea, and the sky shifted from pastel to bruised. I hoped my hoodie and sleeping bag would hold up.

It was dark by the time I hopped out of the bed of the truck in the town that boasted of the largest cattle ranch in America. It had hills the shape of halved bowling balls which rose up to the north and a flat grassy land extended for miles and miles to the base of Mauna Kea to the south. I was heading east along the northern coast, and the town of Waimea always felt like a gateway. 

Where I was dropped under a marmalade street light, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hitchhike, so I walked through the night-cloaked town. Midtown, I sensed someone who’d greeted me by the moniker, Loathsome Worm. Michael the Archangel was present, and once again, he really didn’t want to be dealing with me or be in a city. It was cold, so I decided to jog through town. Although I doubted anyone would stop, I trotted with my thumb out, Michael looming but not using MF to push me. 

At the far end of town, there was a small church that looked as if it were built half a century ago but had recently been painted white. As I crossed the highway, I noticed that the parking lot was full of big trucks, deluxe sedans, and a Honda Goldwing leaning on the bottom of a small flight of stairs that led up to the church’s porch. Its front facing windows looked dark, and the double doors were closed. Then I noticed a faint light that flickered through the windows. I tiptoed up the stairs. On the porch, I heard an amplified voice through a speaker that I suspected belonged to the pastor. I decided to quietly let myself in and took a seat on the back pew. 

About forty congregants. The pastor was click-clicking through poverty porn slides—barefoot kids in rice paddies, bloated bellies, waterless wells. The ask was coming. Empty your wallet.

They filed past me at the end, one by one, all polished and well-fed and spiritually gluten-free. Not one made eye contact. I was the poverty they didn’t recognize—the wrong kind of brown, the wrong kind of poor, and entirely too corporeal.

Then came Samantha.

Chubby teen. Hawaiian. Brave enough to break the social quarantine, she asked if she could help me in any way.

I smiled and wrote that I was hungry. She invited me to McDonalds, bought me a value meal and laughed when I wrote, ‘I’m lovin’ it.’ After asking me a couple questions, which I had on my folded go-to sheet, she asked me what I was, like, really doing. I wrote that tonight I was testing people’s conviction. It was harder to hand a dollar to a homeless man than to donate a hundred dollars in the form of a check to a fund to help ‘the homeless’ because people prefer the abstraction. I wrote that I was a living parable, here to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. 

Samantha wasn’t impressed. “You didn’t look friendly,” she said. “That’s probably why they passed you by. Do you have a Bible?”

I shook my head.  

“Can I give you mine?  I really think you should have one.  It’s the King’s James version, and so the wording is kind of hard for me to understand.  I actually prefer the New International, but can you understand, like, old English from the way back?”

I nodded, and from her tote bag, she withdrew a white and worn Bible.  I accepted it with solemnity and tucked it in my pack.

“The whole thing, not just the New Testament, and it’s got red letters when Jesus is saying something.  It’s just kind of hard to tell what anyone is saying compared to my new one that talks like normal people nowadays, but maybe you can understand it better.”

After fries and spiritual diagnostics, she offered me a lift. I declined. Bowed low, forehead to cold tile, then walked back into the night, full of processed grace and McMystery meat.

  I was full and now the church was empty. On the porch, there was a triangular patch of light in the corner where I unfurled my sleeping bag, inch-wormed into it, and then pulled out the King James.

“Are you ready?” Gabriel asked, and he was quite enthusiastic.  “Remember spinning.”

And I opened the book.  My finger, influenced by a pure Magnetic Force so powerful that my fingertip hurt when it stab-landed on the passage that changed my entire conception of Christianity.  Ezekiel 4:15:

15 Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.

16 Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment:

17 That they may want bread and water, and be astonished one with another, and consume away for their iniquity.

As I read the words “cow dung” in Ezekiel 4:15, my breath hitched. Not from disgust—but from recognition. “Lo, I have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.”

And there it was. The voice of the Lord—God, Logos, the living link to heaven—telling Ezekiel to do exactly what we had done without knowing: to gather our sustenance from the ruins of the bovine beast. Gingko, Hatti and I had crawled the pastures like children seeking treasure, and we found it in the form of wafer-sized, purple-bruised manna, risen from the cracked backs of old cow pies. We weren’t baking loaves in an oven. We were plucking sacramental bread prepared in cow pies. Bread of astonishment. And the bread was a mushroom.

And the mushroom was Christ.

It hit me like thunder in my marrow. The Bread of Life.  The cross, the crown, the tomb, the third day—all of it a living metaphor. The mushroom is the cross. Rising slender and white from the dungheap of the world. A column of sacrificial flesh piercing the firmament. Haloed cap outstretched, veiled and breaking. The image of a dying God resurrected in spores and ecstasy. Not carved in stained glass, but pressed into the loam of life.

And I saw it—the real eucharist. Not wheat and wine, but psychedelic flesh offered to the poor in spirit. My eyes streamed with tears I didn’t remember permitting. I was wrecked by the beauty of it.

I curled up in my sleeping bag, alone with a symphony of meaning.  And while it was true that no human poked or prodded, the wind cut right through my bag and hoodie, and I wound up shivering all night with a smile.  The Way the Truth and the Light had been revealed, and what was a little cold if not a reminder of what it was to be alive?

But I must have fallen asleep before dawn because when I woke up, a smartly dressed couple was thumping up the stairs.  The woman wore a white hat, red lipstick, the exact hue of her nails. The man had that Protestant banker energy—straight spine, suspicion in the eyes.

They didn’t ask what I was doing. Just unlocked the church like I was part of the scenery.

But the woman turned. Walked over. Regal. Sad. Like a queen visiting a leper. She eyed the white Bible next to me and started to speak—but something was broken. Her words were reversed. Inside out. Like someone pressed the B-side of language.

I couldn’t understand a thing.

She cocked her head, smiled gently, said something I couldn’t parse, and I just started laughing. It was so absurd. The universe had downgraded my firmware overnight.

She probably asked if I was deaf. She pointed at her ear. I mimed confusion. She smiled wider. Her husband did not.

He barked something unfriendly in Managerial English, and I got the hint.

I slung my pack, skipped down the steps, and crossed the gravel lot to the side of Highway 19, confused and amused.

When a Mazda coupe pulled over and I reached for my go-to sheet, the lines had turned to squiggles and scribbles—illegible gibberish. For a split second, my own thoughts echoed in some ancient tongue I couldn’t place. But the moment I recognized it as a Middle Eastern dialect—something vaguely Semitic—everything snapped into place. Like warm water draining from the ear canal, clarity returned. The letters reassembled themselves, and I could read again.

“Dude, are you fucking Grass?” the driver said as I opened the door and passed him the page.

I nodded.

He pulled back onto the road.

“You know Kyle, right? Dirty hippie from Baltimore? That dude’s my homie. Showed me your picture once—said you traveled together after some rainbow gathering where people drowned on gypsum seeds. I think he’s in jail now. You can’t talk?”

I pointed to the sheet again. He barely glanced.

“There’s a bear claw in the back,” he said. “Help yourself. I’m fat already.”

He reminded me of Mark. Had me take the wheel while he fished behind my seat for the donut. We split it for breakfast.

He dropped me a few miles east of Waimea—had to help his grandma.

Surrounded by grazing cows on both sides of the road, I watched them chew slowly through paradise. Best cow lives. Then a truck pulled over, and the driver signaled for me to ride up front. In the cab was a chubby, baby-faced local who immediately launched into a stream of questions. But when I held up my sheet, he waved it off like a bad smell.

"I'd take you further," he said as we reached Honokaa, "but you must be some sort of weirdo. The only reason I picked you up is because I'm tired and wanted some company to keep me awake.”

I nodded, hopped out, and the sullen driver pulled away, still eastbound toward Hilo. Across the highway was the Kick Ass Café, proudly crowned with a cartoon donkey mid-kick. I stood on the shoulder where cars were flying too fast to assess me. Kicked a couple pebbles, then noticed something white in the grass. An egg? No. Even better.

A golf ball.

And then, what’s this? An egg? No, even better! Count my lucky stars, I found a golf ball in the grass. After bouncing the ball a couple times, a surreal sense of ‘not really being there’ swept over me. 

"You are the ball, and we will treat you accordingly," Gabriel said in a lulling tone. He said this as I was bouncing the ball. I stopped, clutched the ball. I definitely didn’t want to be bounced off the road. I cradled the ball.

But then, after a few trucks breezed by, I mindlessly bounced the golf ball on the pavement two or three times before realizing what I was doing. Sorry. I pet the ball and kissed it. 

“So be it, Dipshit,” said Gabriel, a grave sadness in his voice.

I rolled my eyes and tucked it into my pocket. But over the next hour, I kept retrieving it. Bouncing it. Oops.

"You see," Gabriel said, "we're gonna bounce you. What good are you if we can't bounce you off the road? Like spinning, we can put off the bouncing for a while, but some things are just meant to be bounced."

I slammed the golf ball on the pavement as hard as I could and watched it fly high into the clear, blue sky. I tried to catch it as it came down on the second bounce, but it hit a pebble and sprang out into the highway just as a minivan came speeding down the road. My adrenaline pumped—not in fear of the minivan, but afraid that I might lose the ball, lose myself.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death," Gabriel intoned as I crossed the highway.

After searching, pawing, and swiping through spider webs in the tall grass, I was still searching for the ball when I heard a honk. It was a dark red Civic, low riding with tinted windows and bright chrome rims. But what about the golf ball? I laughed. Game over. As I ran back across the road and behind the Civic, I saw that the trunk was ratting from a serious subwoofer. The passenger side door swung open as I lifted my pack from the roadside.

"Hey brah, if you like ride, I go Hilo,” yelled the too-white driver, after turning down his whumping system, momentarily. Skeleton white, he was also skeletal in build, gaunt cheeks and I suspected to be sunk-in eyes, but they were hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses.

The driver may have been white as San Francisco fog, but he had a sort of cooped up energy, a colorful flare to his method of being. He introduced himself as Daniel. Unlike the sullen trucker, Daniel was thrilled to read my go-to sheet. He read the whole thing before pulling out on the road. 

"Brah, you one kine monk or sumting li’ dat?" he asked, glancing at the kicking jackass receding in his side mirror. 

I shrugged and nodded, because ‘something like that’ was exactly what I was.

He turned up the stereo for a moment, and my vision went blurry from the bass, but then Daniel dialed it back and raised his index finger.

"Maybe you got advice. You see, I got dis problem, brah. For long, I been smoking ice and no can quit. I start lose weight, and now I so thin I get new clothes. My boss, he know, but he no give a fuck, brah. He smoke the shit too. And the devil, brah. He got both of u

He lowered his glasses. His eyes were sunken but pleading.

“This morning I dream I rape this pregnant wahine. I smile in da dream. Like—smile. Devil kine smile.”

He shook his head, skin nearly translucent.

“I no like sleep no more. Dreams too gnarly. I used to smoke weed, was chill. Now? I only like stay awake, brah.”

"What I do? Shit, you no can talk, but I no can quit that shit, brah. I need it for work. I like need stay awake 20 hours, brah, so my boss no care. I used to be like you hippies—well not you—but you know, smokin’ da kine, but I no like sleep because the devil make me see all kine gnarly shit, brah.”

And Daniel liked to tailgate and flash his lights before careening around vehicles on double yellows. After confessing his sins, he cranked his stereo so that the music was clipping in the cab, but the subwoofer in his trunk made everything warbly as if we were speeding underwater. 

Daniel flew around everyone until we got behind an 18 wheeler going into the V of a ravine. As Daniel went to pass, another 18 wheeler came around the bend. Daniel stomped his brakes, momentarily screeching before he tucked the Civic behind the semi we were following. He yelled obscenities as the 18 wheeler that would have squished us like a pop can blared its horn.

"Sorry for make you feel bad," he said to me as he pulled over next to Hilo’s bayfront bus station. “I just no can talk about dis kine stuff with nobody else.” 

I made the sign of the cross over him before closing the door.

"Thank you, father” replied Daniel. “Wait brah, take dis, I nevah use em,” He reached behind my seat and lifted up a Mead Composition Notebook. My favorite. He also gave me a few pens he had in the glove box. 

“Brah, you no got umbrella?” He popped his trunk, and I was thrilled. A brand new big umbrella, red and white with a wooden handle. I thought of how it is always the poor who think to help the poor.

The Civic’s window tint was coffee black, but I knew Daniel could see me, so I waved at my own reflection before he headed up Waianuenue Street. 

I strapped the umbrella to the side of my pack and walked down the sidewalk in front of the shops on Kamehameha Avenue. It was good to see the bright colors of social class stratification. Greens and blacks and purples and other brazen colors--everyone more cartoon-like on the east side. Unlike the plastic feeling of the tourist industrial complex--the beige of Kona--Hilo felt organic although also a bit funky. 

I thought of Kona and all the silver foxes, straight faced as their wives carouse the trinkets of a gift shop. These retired men are shifting their weight from foot to foot in white ankle socks, tennis shoes and polo shirts. They’re huddled in twos or threes, hands in hip pockets, nodding to the ocean and then back to one another before being summoned by their wives to come in to take a closer look at what they’ve done to a coconut: carved it like a gorilla. Isn’t that cute, and wouldn’t so-and-so love it? Credit card, thanks, hon. Nevermind that the coconuts are imported from the Philippines. We can just take that sticker off.

Imagine this old couple’s dream vacation in Kona. At sunset they’re sipping a tropical cocktail and watching for the green flash across the ocean on their hotel suite’s balcony when they’re distracted by some hobo passing on the sidewalk below who is carrying a backpack and tapping a rhythm on the bottom of a water jug. 

“Honey, didn’t we hear that Kona was trying to do something about the riff raff?”

But not on the Hilo side. The beige invasion only happens when a cruise ship pulls up in the bay. For the most part, the locals and colonesean residents are commercializing together. Also, the water doesn’t taste as if its been piped in from a wishing well in the mall. You might need an umbrella, but in Hilo, the riff raff is plentiful and greets itself with an aloha.

And so I was smiling, happy to be back where I belonged as I walked by the farmer’s market. Then I spotted Isa under the big banyan tree across the street. I waved and ran over with my new umbrella thumping my pack. When he saw me running toward him, I saw a shadow cross his face. He looked at me almost sadly, as if something tragic had happened.

“Hey Grass,” Isa said, “everyone has been looking for you.”

I pulled out my go-to sheet, and Isa heaved a sigh.

“Don’t give me that,” Isa said, not taking it.

He pulled a pouch of American Spirits out of his cargo pocket. 

“So,” he said, “I suppose you’re not going to tell me what happened.” He sounded almost depressed. The usual twinkle in his blue eyes was replaced with an uneasiness that was so uncharacteristic. 

I made a motion with my hand: I went over the mountain.

“I know you were seen in Kona—with Raven. But you’re really not gonna talk?”

He refused the notebook like the monk in Wood Valley.

“Have you talked to Pops?” 

I shook my head, but hearing the name ‘Pops’ made my stomach clench. Frowning, I unshouldered my backpack and took a seat. Isa passed me the pouch of tobacco.

“You need to ground out,” he said. 

I rolled one. As I puffed, the head of Pops hung like an enormous effigy, suspended in my mind, like the head of the Wizard of Oz.

Pops was the patriarch of wayward children, a puppet of the dark spiral’s mothership. Was that it? Why had he and Scott been after Raven and me and yelling when they drove by? And here I was with Isa, and Pops was, once again, looking for me. 

As I passed the rollie to Isa, I wondered if Pops were also guided by voices. I wrote this proposition to Isa, but again, like the monk in Wood Valley, he would not read what I’d written.

“Are you pleading the fifth? What is this no-talking thing about?” Isa asked.

I shook my head, dismayed that he wouldn’t read my explanations.

“All I know is Pops is looking for you, and I don’t know what to believe. You better talk to him. Clear this shit up.”

I motioned to him that my lips were sealed. 

“If that’s the path you choose to take,” Isa said, glumly, “but that won’t end well for you.”

Then I saw it, felt it, knew it. In the End Days, Michael the Archangel and Lucifer would have a final battle, and Lucifer would be cast into hell. My eyes went wide with this realization.

“Listen,” Isa said, his tone like distant thunder, “I don’t know what happened, but as your friend, I’m telling you—watch your back.”

The hairs on my arms stood on end. It was something about his tone, the gravity. What was going on? But if he wouldn’t read…

“Where are you headed?”

I shrugged.

“Then go back to Puna. Settle this.”

He was right. Somehow, I knew he was right. I gave him a shoulder hug and walked off toward Pahoa. I had to face Pops. One last showdown.

I caught a ride with an enormous local in a tiny car who barked aggressive questions, inquiring if I had any buds, did I know where to get any, did I want to buy buds. I shook my head. Beads of sweat dripped down his face, and the last thing I guessed him to be on was marijuana. Tweaker vibes, and he was swerving all over the road, then hitting his brakes and cussing before he gave up on his hustle and let me off in front of HPM. 

After walking a few miles under a heavy cloud of omen, I caught a ride in the bed of a truck. Pahoa appeared like a haunted version of itself. Familiar faces, off-kilter. Randy was selling incense in front of the bank. The usual riff-raff huddled by the Cash N’ Carry bulletin board. I wandered down to the Natch to write.

I was sitting at the picnic table in the front when my pen wrote, Watch Your Back, in dark scrawling letters. My heart began to gallop. Something wasn’t right, and I felt powerfully inclined to get up and leave although there was no MF influencing the pen. I felt the walls had eyes. I was being watched. Before I got up, the pen began to write something else.

‘The Good Shepherd will lay down his life for his flock.’ The instant the passage was written, I knew that, somehow, this meant that I was going to die. More specifically, I knew that my head would roll like a golf ball into the tall grass. Everything clicked, symbolic and resonant. Head on a platter, so it could all happen again.

Off with his head!

Earlier, I’d seen squiggles on paper resolve into words. This was the same thing. A sudden knowing. 

I walked quickly out of the Natch’s parking lot and crossed the street. As I passed Rasta Randy, he called out to me.

“Hey Grass, Pops is looking for you!”

I looked down and picked up my pace as I headed up to the dugouts. I walked across the field of soggy grass and thought of the dancing pig I’d seen with Isa. That had been about a week ago, and we’d been laughing and having a good time as we camped in the dugout I was headed to. Headed.

Mark Twain said that history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Over and over, a fractal with a twist to replicate the redemption we all need. Christ would come again, incarnate. I was to play the role of John the Baptist and herald this second coming. Herod beheaded John for his step-daughter, Salome, after she danced for him. Was Ora like Pops’ step-daughter? 

Clicks and snaps and puzzle pieces, all arrows pointing to the fact that my head would roll and bounce into the tall grass. That’s what the golf ball had meant.

It was an, ‘Oh fuck,’ moment as I knew, somehow that Pops had to kill me. He might not even want to, just as Herod had not wanted to kill John. Salome’s mom was Herod’s wife and had been pissed off that John had talked shit about her marrying Herod because she’d been married to Herod’s brother. She convinced Salome to ask Herod for the head of the baptist after she’d danced for him. 

It wasn’t just a thought. It was a certainty. A plot already written. Pops had to kill me.

I sat down on the bench and opened my brand spanking new notebook. Thanks, Daniel. But my parables and tidbits were all dark, and unlike that blissful night in the Old Airport Park, where souls would float in, all well wishing, it seemed my hand was only subtly guided, and there was a conspiratorial, if not foreboding, vibe as my pen scrawled about a hero being a mouse who bravely walks into the mouth of a snake. As the stories didn’t inspire confidence: spiders, cliffs, fires, I closed the pen in the spine of the notebook and tucked it in my pack.

But then I realized that I needed to warn people. As if into the mouth of a snake, I walked down to the Natural Food Store. 

There were maybe six of them slouched out front of the Natch, and to my surprise, each one read my note with the solemn concern usually reserved for war memorial plaques or missing dog flyers. When Another Jaba—a skater from Eugene pushing thirty, all scabs and sunburn—squinted at my scrawl and said he’d also gotten a “bad vibe” from Pops, I snapped my fingers and traced a spiral in the air.

“Totally,” he nodded, but then he looked at me again, really looked, and must’ve seen the deranged silence gnawing at my edges. He made a face like I was smeared in invisible shit and ducked into the store.

I drifted out of town like a haunted balloon and thumbed it to Mackenzie Park, where I crawled into the lava tube like a hobbit seeking apocalypse shelter and stashed my pack. I wrote all the next day in pavilion until the sun limped down, then I slid into the belly of the earth and passed out like a stone tossed into hell. Sometime before dawn, I woke with The Doors echoing in Dolby surround inside my skull. “This is the end…” sang Jim Morrison, and for a moment, I swore the cave was rigged with speakers and sadness.

The lyrics held a deeper meaning, and I understood that the Roman Wilderness of Pain was the state of the world and how we’ve reverted back to the mundane pursuits of materialism, and all the children are insane.

‘Kill. Kill. Kill.’

At the end of the song, it was silent, but images created by words were what the universe seemed made of.  My sleep was deep and dark, but when I climbed out of the cave at dawn, I felt rested.  I sucked down the last of my water and made it to the road just in time for Rasta Nate to swing around the bend.

He talked. Oh, how he talked. Apparently, he’d recently defiled the dugouts with Kelsie.

“Dawg, she heard I had a big dick and asked to see it,” he beamed.

I gave him faces: amazed, intrigued, amused—whatever matched his pornographic beat poem. But the minute I showed him my warning about Pops, the man clammed up like a frat boy at a feminism conference.

“Whoa man,” Nate said, “listen I don’t want to get caught up in this drama shit, yo. You gotta not involve me, but I know there’s a lot of cats looking for you. People talkin’ like they want your head, for real. I got no beef, but don’t bring that heat on me.”

Nate looked away as he handed my petition back. I nodded, but could tell that he was no longer comfortable. I sensed that he somehow felt cheated as if I weren’t interested in his story of Kelsie, just waiting for an opportunity to drag me into my bullshit. I looked ahead, pretending not to notice the way he clenched the wheel. 

Nate dropped me off in the center of town, and I spotted old-man Tim. His blood shot eyes were friendly, and he asked me if I had a cigarette. I did not, but I decided to show him my note.

“Oh, well, I’ll be sure to stay clear of him,” Tim said with innocent confusion. He gave me a look that I had never seen before, as if for the first time he was wondering who I was. It was a look that echoed the sadness I’d seen in Isa’s eyes—like maybe I was already dead and just hadn’t figured it out yet.

So I warned people. Like a Jehovah's Witness on bath salts, I evangelized the end until noon, when Slow-eyed Steve glided by like a wasted telescope.

“Hey Grass, got any grass?” he droned, not looking at me but through me.

As his pale blue eyes drifted, I took out my notice and was about to hand it to him, but he swatted it away.

“I’m not gonna read that Nazi, Gestapo shit, man! Why the fuck are you writing manifestos? I already know what it says, and it’s bullshit!” 

Which was funny. Because if this story was born of anything, it was bullshit. Glorious, sacramental bullshit.

He grinned, but there was venom in it. He told me to fuck off and ghosted toward Rafael’s.

After evangelizing to the bus stop crowd like a raving apocalypse mime, I wandered past the community center and climbed to the dugouts. I was in alignment—body, blood, and cosmic syntax—all tuned to Archangel Michael’s war frequency. This was performance art for the divine. My martyrdom had been scripted.

After evangelizing to the bus stop crowd that Pops was evil with my notes, I headed past the community center and up the stairs to do some writing in the dugouts.I was in alignment—body, blood, and cosmic syntax—all tuned to Archangel Michael’s war frequency. This was performance art for the divine. My martyrdom had been scripted.

In my notebook, I drew a mushroom growing out of bullshit which represented the world. The stem was the straight and narrow path to the halo of heaven, the cap. Most would fall off the path and back into the bullshit of fear, shame and regret. But if you let go of judgment, you can see it is all perfect and you are back in Eden.

I descended the stairs, ready to post this gospel, and ran into Yuka—the human pit bull of Puna. He was flanked by two hyenas who laughed like broken windshield wipers.

“Where’s the grass, Grass?” Yuka asked, fist to palm.

I kept moving, barefoot, heartbeat sharp as glass.

“Too cool to say ‘howzit’? Fuck off, punk-ass n_____!” he shouted.

I knew he’d heard I wasn’t speaking. He wanted to provoke me, bait me into slipping. And I imagined my head bouncing down the concrete steps like a golf ball from God’s driver.

In town, I waved to Roger at the Meaner Wiener and climbed the boardwalk stairs to Jo Mamma’s, where I tacked up my diagram on the bulletin board. A mushroom cross: stem narrow, bullshit thick, Pops the Antichrist slithering below the roots.

I imagined Punatics passing by, glancing, their inner pineal organs twitching at the subconscious payload. Priming them for revelation.

The pavement was still wet as I walked to the end of town. The road gleamed. The black cloud was hovering over Nanawale like a cobra’s hood. Waiting.

It was the mouth of the snake.

Don Quixote would die fighting that windmill.

And me? My head would bounce into the tall grass like a bounced golf ball.

The End.

As I was walking past the Pahoa Dagger’s High School, locked deep in my doom-loop reverie, a Sentra rolled to a stop up ahead of me. An arm extended from the driver’s window, beckoning me. I jogged up to the passenger side, and the driver tilted his face out like he was auditioning for a gay Top Gun remake—aviators lifted, sun-kissed smile gleaming, silver necklace glinting against his vintage button-up.

“Well hi there,” he purred, flashing that unmistakable head-tilt—half invitation, half diagnosis.

He was tanned, crisp, maybe thirty-five if he moisturized, with a black swoosh of hair and a fresh fade sharp enough to slice tofu. Khaki shorts. Clean. The kind of man whose flirtation hits you before his sentence ends.

“I saw you walking all smiley and figured I had to stop and offer you a ride. Headed to Kapoho, or is it a Pohoiki kind of day?”

I gave him a mute nod. That made him frown.

So I pointed to my mouth and shook my head.

“Oh. Oh—sorry. Didn’t realize.” The tone shifted. “Are you okay, honey?”

I shrugged, and he softened like butter in a hot pan.  There’s a certain type of concerned maternal energy that some gay men have, and this guy exuded it, changing from coquettish to intuitive and sincere.

He nodded slowly when I waved my hand in dismissal. 

“Okay, but I see you walking all over the place. Just the other day I was driving through Hilo and saw you walking toward the Walmart and I said to myself, ‘that boy sure does have a positive outlook on life’ and I almost pulled over then, but I was late—are you sure you’re alright?” 

Again, a nod.

“Tell you what,” he said, and moved his grocery bag off the passenger seat, “I haven’t had my dinner yet and I bought a snack—are you hungry? Good, because I hate eating alone.”

He produced two tofu sandwiches from the Natch. Tofu—not exactly what you'd call gourmet street fare—but at that moment it tasted like God’s own hoagie. I devoured mine in three grateful bites.

“My God,” he said. “When’s the last time you ate something?”

I smiled and waved it off.

“It’s been a while, has it? Well, I’ll tell you what. I can drive you back to the Natch because I don’t think I can really take you to Quin’s place, but trust me, he’d love you if he knew you, but do you know Quin? Oh, that’s right, you don’t talk, well. But anyways, would you like the other sandwich? You’ll never believe it, but I’m only doing this so I can tell Quin about doing my good deed. He always says I do things for myself and never do anything for anyone else, and now I’ll be like, Quin, I gave this beautiful little raggamuffin that can’t even talk my sandwiches. But knowing him, he’ll say that I did it so I could tell him the story, which would be true, but I’ll say that I’m offended and then ask him to feed me as a penance for making fun of my virtuosity--is that that a word? He always says I don’t bring my own food, so this must be like, karma, even if it is all for bragging rights, but like, if you’re not living your life for the story, you should change it up, right? Oh my God, I am talking, and… Here.” He extended the sandwich, and a ten dollar bill.

“For the story, right? Here, why don’t I take you back to the Natch so you can buy yourself more sandwiches; how’s that sound?”

Before I exited, he reached out—not for a handshake, but a grasp of the forearm. I mirrored him, and our eyes locked. His were older than I’d thought. Wrinkled at the corners, like parchment that had seen too many midnight confessions.

“You are beautiful,” he whispered, with a tremor in his voice. “This… was a blessing.”

He didn’t want to read my note about Pops. “No time,” he said, brushing me off.

So I slipped out of the Sentra and nodded goodbye to The Tofu Samaritan.  And then he backed away and was off to Quin’s, empty handed but triumphant.

Inside the Natch, I bartered my ten dollars into oats, peanuts, and raisins—cheapest raggamuffin trail-mix. When I emerged, I caught the stares of those seated outside. Their eyes said, “We saw your message.” Their postures said, “Brah.”

The sun was ducking behind the volcano like a prima donna at curtain call—one last golden wink before slipping into the shadows. I was hoofing it toward Mackenzie, hoping to make it before the dark sealed the island shut. My squeeze-light was down to her last gasp of juice, but I prayed she'd wheeze out enough photons to light the lava tube once I got there.

First, I hitched a ride with a silent mother-daughter duo, their car thick with unspoken tension and fruity shampoo. They dropped me off like a forgotten chore.

Then came the Buick Electra. Familiar and rolling slowly to a stop a hundred feet up.

Same pale-blue hulk of Detroit metal. Same wizard at the wheel with a beard that shimmered silver and a stare that could parse prophecy from pedestrian bullshit. He didn’t say a word, but his presence said it all.

This was the same Buick that’d creaked into my life weeks ago to deliver a warning about storm waves, the day of the girl in the red bathing suit being pulled out to sea. He'd been the punctuation mark that convinced me of the fate to save the girl—the omen that made it feel carved in stone, as he spoke of the storm, the danger.

Today, the wizard behind the wheel didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. He drove his vessel like a boat, slow and smooth under the Albizia’s with their elephant-leg-sized limbs stretched out a hundred feet above. When we reached the Y, he veered left toward Pohoiki. No questions. No consultation.

The road was cracked like the skull of a forgotten titan, split by time, lava, and bureaucratic neglect. Somewhere beyond the trees, something was groaning—metal grinding against metal, a mechanical beast seizing and shrieking in the bowels of the Geothermal plant. Hell’s espresso machine churning out electric juice.

At the bottom of Leilani, a Tacoma nosed onto the road like it owned the place. A couple of local kids rode high in the bed, boogie boards beside them like shields. The wizard—still mute, still gliding that sepulchral Buick Electra like a funeral canoe—slowed down out of reverence or resignation, letting the pickup disappear down the mango corridor.

Then we had the road to ourselves—just us and the void. The wizard flicked on the high beams and the mango trees burst into brightness, thick and old, their trunks swollen with gossip and bark smudged with exhaust fumes. The frogs began to greet the night, coqui coqui coqui, an endless loop of amphibian lust. 

It was dark by the time we reached Pohoiki’ beach park.  The wizard drifted on toward Green Lake, but I filled my water jug under the moon’s lukewarm grin. The red road stretched ahead—empty, flawless, and still warm from the sun. No cars. No voices. Just the symphony of horny frogs. The canopy thickened until the ironwoods shut out the sky. Every hundred feet I gave my squeeze-light a pump, like milking a firefly until I reached my lava tube.

The next day, I journaled in the pavilion, scrubbed myself down in a tide pool, and was stoked to find a working lighter in Malamaki. I kept my food intake to a minimum, only allowing myself to savor a handful of oats, a few peanuts and raisins for lunch. Trying to process that my time here was short, that I would leave this world, I tried to absorb the beauty of life and went wandering along the cliffs.  I gathered bits of white choral from the tidepools and set them atop the black lava boulders which had been rounded by the waves. 

“Tonight is the night,” said Gabriel. “Leave everything but your water jug.” And then I saw a top-down aerial view of Green Lake which zoomed out to show Four Corners where Highway 137 crossed Highway 132.

After a sigh and a nod of recognition, Gabriel crumpled the vision like a ball of tinfoil. I stashed my pack in the lava tube and started walking down the red road.

I was passing the warm ponds when I waved off an Impreza that I mistook as stopping for me. My bad—it was just parking. The family inside, pale and mainland-soft, watched me with the kind of guarded curiosity people reserve for roadside animals. Eyes wide, unblinking, uninviting. I offered a friendly wave anyway, then pitter-pattered on past.

By the time the first stars began their slow reveal, I was walking the cracked artery of red cinder asphalt that cuts like a scar toward Kapoho. The two lanes were warped and weary, but someone in the state had apparently lobbied to keep the road red. 

The final four-mile stretch was straight and stark, laid like a sacrifice over the lava fields. Daylight’s heat still radiated from the black lava field the road ran through.  The evening breeze rose like an argument from the sea. I didn’t know where Gabriel was taking me, only that I was following—faithfully, resentfully, with a gutful of oats and a heart that felt like a tired sponge.

At Four Corners, I took a left onto Highway 132 and climbed the gentle slope past Green Mountain, its shadow now a memory against the darkening sky. After about a mile, he spoke.

“This is it.”

I frowned. There was no sign. Just night and asphalt.

“Between these two road markers.”

Clouds smeared the stars. Rain crossed my mind with a quiet dread, the way regret creeps in just before a great act. But I reminded myself I could do pushups to stay warm. Burpees even. If this was to be my last night alive, let it come with soaked skin and sore muscles. I wouldn’t back out just because of weather. I had bigger storms to walk into. I looked at the vines, the flowers and coconut trees above the red cinder that lined the strip of smooth pavement that I padded along. This truly was paradise, and there was no better place to walk. One last time. Goodbye. I pitter pattered on my jug.

Although the sun had vanished behind the folds of the volcano, its ghost light still clung to the roadside—just enough to make out the faint white line. I crouched to confirm my coordinates, fingers brushing the asphalt like a cartographer of twilight. The road markers rose from the shoulder like clenched fists—mute, stubborn, indifferent sentinels. Clouds smeared the stars. Rain crossed my mind with a quiet dread, the way regret creeps in just before a great act. But I reminded myself I could do pushups to stay warm. Burpees even. If this was to be my last night on Earth, let it come with soaked skin and sore muscles. I wouldn’t back out just because of weather.

Gabriel said there would be trials. “There will be temptations,” he warned. “Sit in full lotus to resist.”  He knew my knees were biologically opposed to that shape. My bones screamed about their limits, but bones screaming was an act of asceticism which would work. 

So I bent myself into it, knotted my ankles, grinding shinbone to shinbone like flint and steel, and the pain bloomed like a psychotropic flower. Just as I locked myself in, the real test arrived—not fire, not wrath, not serpents—but the tender, suffocating lure of sleep. It draped itself over me like a morphine quilt. My eyes fluttered, my head drooped. The longing for sleep was more like an external pull, a soft finger beckoning me into oblivion. 

A kaleidoscope of dreamy images would have pulled me under like anesthesia.  But no. I held. I sat in that agony. The crucifixion of the knees. A martyrdom of ligaments. My legs became a war between wakefulness and surrender. I did not move. I did not yield.

When the drowsiness finally relented, it left a psychic residue, but the pain—oh, the pain—flared into a new octave as I unlocked my posture. I yelped, then slapped my own mouth like I’d broken my vow of silence. I lay on my back, sucking air through my teeth. Stars overhead. Grass brushing my cheek. And then—of course—a car crested the bend, high beams turning me into a roadside cryptid. I rolled off the pavement like a wounded animal. Just a ghost in the ditch.

The strange thing is that after battling this ‘temptation’ and defeating sleep, I had no trouble at all staying awake the rest of the night. It was a warm night. The moon gave a sideways smile as it rose in the east, and I hopped and danced between the road markers, shaking out my poor legs. For a moment, I wondered if I’d injured them but then remembered that it wouldn’t matter. Last night.

Of course. That was when it would happen. Pops would come. Or someone he sent. To take me out. Old Testament style.

But then—a new voice. Female. Urgent.

“Brace yourself,” she said. “Lucifer is coming.”

Although my knees hadn’t recovered, I understood that I’d need to fold up again. The night had been overcast with patches of starlight, but the temperature suddenly dropped when pretzeled my legs, but all was nothing compared to the searing protest of my ankles and knees.

Then, a voice—Lucifer’s voice—spoke to me. Calm. Casual. Disarmingly reasonable.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked. “Waiting to be killed? No one’s coming to kill you. Pops thinks you’re weird, but he’s not a murderer.”

 It wasn’t much different from Gabriel’s in that it was specific. While it was lower in register, it was a candid voice. As was the question. Unlike the loathing that Michael the Archangel had treated me with, this voice seemed jovial and good natured.

“Leave him alone, Lucifer!” said the female voice, emphatically, on my behalf.

“Okay,” replied Lucifer. And then to me, he asked, “but you’re out here waiting for people to kill you, and guess what? No one is going to kill you. They’re worried about you. Pops might be wondering what kind of shenanigans you’re up to, but that’s all. You are being ridiculous.”

I sat and tried to breathe through the pain which would shut off as Lucifer spoke.  

“And you’re hurting yourself? You could just go grab a blanket, get some sleep, but you think you’re on a quest. You’re literally Gonzo; you know that, right?”

It was almost funny, The Prince of Darkness doubling as a concerned uncle.

“You’re literally insane,” he added. “You think you’re on some hero’s journey, but you’re just some barefoot freak sitting on the side of a highway.  Is that the way you want to do this, young blood?”

“He’s not listening to you, Lucifer!” Again, it was that female voice.

“Whatever, dude,” Lucifer said, and vanished.

My body, tangled in the pretzel of pain, was screaming as I unknotted myself from full lotus and whimpered silently as I sprawled out on the road. But then—impossibly—a bird chirped. A single note. The moon was still above, but to my surprise, the eastern sky was blushing.  Could it be morning already?

The moment the sun’s light reddened the horizon, galloping down from the clouds came a cartoon horse with a hooded rider and a scimitar. It sliced through my neck like butter. My head fell off my body. Rolled. For a split-second, everything was frozen. Then: “Okay. You’re dead,” said Gabriel, deadpan.

I balked.  Then frowned.  As dawn came, it dawned on me what had happened.

And Gabriel—smirking like a punk kid who just ding-dong ditched me—said, “You did it, Dipshit. Your last night. And you’re dead. Congrats.”

I stood up, shell-shocked. Betrayed. Furious. So this was the punchline? The cosmic joke? All that pain, all that resolve, just to be punked by an angel with a smug grin? And then I became nearly furious as Gabriel shimmered and snickered. I started walking.

“Hey now, don’t go beyond that road marker,” Gabriel warned, but I huffed beyond his bullshit parameter.

“Well, now you’re seriously not going to get into heaven,” he said.

I scoffed. So angry. So confused and angry at myself for the way I’d fallen for his bullshit. Walked right into it. It was a balmy morning, and I was sweating as I walked to Pahoa in a serious funk. I wanted to be done.

Be me. You take these mushrooms, you meet an invisible troll that only lets cool souls in, and then he punks you. Just for the lols?

Gabriel shimmered like a goddamn disco ball of schadenfreude. You didn’t need divine discernment to see he was having a laugh at my expense. Cars zipped past like metallic hornets, but I didn’t stick out my thumb. I just walked. One foot, then the other.

Then, without ceremony, someone pulled over. No wave, no words. I climbed into the back of their truck like the deluded riff raff I was. Whatever. They dropped me off between the two banks in the stale heart of town. No headache, but a deep, arterial despondency boiled inside me—the kind that buzzes in your spine and makes your teeth feel long. I hadn’t been this exhausted and angry in a long time. And sure, I knew anger was a poison and all that, but I was too tired to be Zen, too tired to laugh at myself for being, once again, a gullible, wide-eyed spiritual tourist who got punked by an ethereal prankster.  

I’d beaten sleep the night before with lotus, but I wasn’t about to ride that lotus dragon again. I was thrashed. Time was a rubber band around my temples, and my eyes were hot as coal but also gelatinous and soggy, and my eyelids permitted only the smallest view, a sliver that was a blur.

I passed under the community roof and up the two flights of stairs, one eye open, the world tilting.  But after a zombie march across the agonizingly long field, I went behind the furthest dugout. I suppose I was fortunate because there was a rolled up sleeping bag someone had stashed behind it. It was heavy and to use as a blanket on this hot day, so I unrolled it for a crash site. I could’ve died there—legs jelly, brain fried, stomach hollow—but then came the flies. Little bastards found my face and began their feast of barf-kiss probings. I couldn’t abide, so I rolled up the sleeping bag and thought about coffee.  Two bucks for a wake-me-up, and Gabriel seemed to encourage me to get over myself for my delusions of last night. 

“As you know,” Gabriel said, “what you believe is a story that you tell yourself to understand what you can’t comprehend or experience time instead of seeing an outside shot of what is without gravity in a space…”  

And thus and such from Gabriel, little Ted Talks, but I really dismissed him as some sort of authority or even a ‘trustworthy’ when it came to rabbit holes of sheer insanity for a lark.

A penniless pilgrim like me thanked providence and divinity, a synchronistic reward.  

“Hey Grass, this is crazy,” said Slow Eye Steve, “but Shanti ordered a pizza from that place across the street from Luquin’s and they put meat on it, and she says that even if she picks the meat off, she’d be disgusted knowing it’d been on there, so she said she felt called to pass it on to some hungry hippie, and that’s you to a T, Grass, and I take it you ain’t got any grass?”

His lazy eye went all whirlie as Slow Eye Steve laughed, and then I went in for the sinful meat atop a medium thin crust that I inhaled.  But when I added water to my belly, there was a swelling of melancholy that stuck to me like damp laundry.  I slouched at a picnic table, folded my arms, but as I lowered my head down to see the world sideways, the Pops’ camp van turned into the Natch parking lot. Armor gray and dangerous.

Yay, but a listless ‘yay’ because I just didn’t have the cognition to muster a fear beyond a slight quickening of my heart.

Yay. But a faint, sarcastic yay, like a balloon filled with soup. My cognition was shot—no space for fear, just a dull throb of premonition.  The Natch felt like a church, neutral and safe territory.  

Ora was driving, Hatti shotgun. I didn’t see any of the translucent black spirals around the van, but I did wonder if whoever was in the back would nab me, bring me down to Fox’s Landing for some old fashion decapitation.  It all seemed so delusional, but my heart picked up and I stood up, wondering if I should bolt; and then Isa was waving to me as he came down the sidewalk.  Friendly vibes.

“Bet it feels good to be in the clear,” he called, his smile bright, the shadow gone.

I pointed to the van, and then slit my throat with my index finger.

“Did no one tell you?” asked Isa.

I drew a question mark in the air.

“No one told you! Where were you, Grass Monkey?”

It all went down last night,” Isa said. He explained that Pops had been arrested for a warrant from Texas when Raven reported assault.  Scott and Pops cleared my name when Pops and Scott beat the shit out of him..

“It was during the beating that Raven cleared your name.  Said you were just some spunout hippie-kid that he felt like he should watch out for, but it sucks that they got Pops and are thinking of extraditing him back to Texas for some drug shit bullshit.”

I’d tried to follow what Isa was saying, but all I heard was that Raven had been beaten up and cleared my name.  But why?  I raised my eyebrow.

“So no worries!” Isa concluded, “and I told everyone that even if you had been in on it, you weren’t in your right mind.”

I made a motion with my hand for him to continue. 

“Raven, the guy you ran away from Pops with? I know you know him. They spotted you with him twice--it’s all anyone talks about, but it’s over.”

I frowned and twirled my hand in a circle for him to say something of substance.

“As I’m sure you know, when Raven stole the plants, but--”

I shook my head, frowned.  I made a motion with my finger to rewind. And I guess they think that they had more than two pounds of bud, but were going to be harvested the next day, but the night of the full moon on Fox’s Landing was when Raven went in, and Eewok didn’t leave the kitchen. Like, everyone is telling people to stop talking about what everyone knows because that would put the Monkey Temple on the map. But Grass,” Isa slapped my back, “no one is going to chop off your head, but why’d you run? You gotta understand why Pops was under the impression that you were in on Raven’s heist. Why else would you be running? But I guess when they found Raven and beat the shit out of him, he said you didn’t know shit about shit, that you were crazy and mute, so you’re free!”

Everything seemed to fall into place: Raven’s small pack that puffed out with what I assumed was a hoodie. Nope. Two pounds of bud. Wow. No wonder he was running, and yeah, I understood why Pops would think I was in on it. I ran. I began to laugh. The vibe that he wanted to kill me? Probably wanted to, ha! 

“I know you don’t talk, but why are you going around warning people about Pops? Saying he’s the Antichrist or Herod or something? Can you cool it now that he’s in jail? You don’t want to be tethered to that kind of energy.”

I couldn’t argue. Delusion layered on delusion—a comedy of cosmic errors that landed me here.

Isa offered to buy me a cup of coffee, which I took him up on, and it was one of those coffees that was appreciated like an antidote to everything that ailed me.   

I tapped my cargo pockets, searching for my pen. Empty. A guy at the next picnic table clocked the gesture and seemed to get the picture.

“Here,” said the blonde-haired dude, surfer/skater-esque rising and handing me a pen and pad. “You can keep it. You write to talk?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, I had this friend who did a word fast. Annoying as hell. But honestly, most folks don’t say anything when they talk anyway, so I respect it. Even if it feels like watching someone load a musket on a battlefield where everyone has automatic rifles.”

Isa made a spiraling motion with his finger next to his head and whispered, “Grass ate too many mushrooms and went coo-coo.”

“Oh, like Rob?” Blonde asked.

“Yes, kind of like that,” Isa confirmed, “but he lost his mind on woodrose seed and can’t stop talking about the fifth element, and Jasper at shrooms and got some sort of weird Mushroomjesus download.”

“Ah,” Blonde said.

With my pen, I drew a hill, and then wrote, ‘Bullshit,’ on the hill and underlined it 3 times.

“It’s all bullshit?” asked Blonde.

“Oh, for Chrissake,” Isa groaned, “is this going to be your thing now?”

I silently chuckled and then drew three crosses on the bullshit. Then I drew a stick figure crucified on the central cross and turned that cross into a mushroom. I scratched an X on the bullshit and wrote, ‘We are here.’ Then I made an X in the cap of the mushroom of the crucified Savior and drew a question mark.

Blonde nodded, but Isa had checked out.

So I drew for Blonde a zig-zagging staircase climbing up the mushroom stem, dotted like a constellation trail, with a few dots falling off and tumbling back into the bullshit, the dots heavier as they approached the cap.

But Isa wasn’t having it. He’d already seen the original drawing on the bulletin board outside Joe Mama’s. I’d posted a whole manifesto there—one of my many breakdown-artifacts. Hatti, who worked there, had taken it down in horror.

“She told me,” Isa said, “When Grass said he had a voice in his head and you guys acted like it was nothing, well guess what? Now he’s calling Pops the Antichrist, and y’all acted like I was overreacting.”

“She took the sheet down, but she showed everyone,” Isa said. “She showed Slow-eye Steve when I was at Joe Mama’s, and he said you were Gestapo Grass and so full of bullshit that you might need it beaten out of you.”

I looked toward the van and gave a little wave.

Hatti met me with a flat, unreadable face. Still, I walked over.

“Hey Grass,” Gingko said.  “You know how Rob and me dated?”

I nodded.

“Well, with his red hair, I told him he should go by Jasper, but he laughed at me, and I was thinking about how you didn’t like your moniker and, um…”

I smiled as she tied the hemp necklace around my neck.

“So, you’re Jasper now?” Hatti said.  She only gave me a fleeting glance in the rearview mirror.

I nodded, and I handed her a note: Sorry.

“Okay,” she said, “and you should be, but you’re still not talking because a dude in your head told you not to?”

I wrote, ‘Michael the Archangel.’ 

“Christ almighty,” scoffed Hatti, “but you know Pops ain’t the Antichrist, right?”

I wrote, ‘Delusional fractals happen, but was it all just bad vibes?’

“Vibes, brah,” Hatti confirmed. “Next time, don’t run from someone who thinks you stole his weed. Definitely don’t do it twice--that’s a shame on you.”

I simply sighed, shrugged.  I shook my head.  What even was anything? 

“You look haggard. Rough night?”

I nodded, slowly.

“If you want to curl up in the back, I’m gonna park Betsy in the back of Joe Mama’s. It’s shady back there, but in a good way.” 

‘Betsy?’ I wrote.

“Just came to me. Good name for the van, I think. And as for Jasper, I think that name suits you.”

“Jasper, that name rocks!” shouted Ewok from behind the curtain of beads. Then he laughed and broke into a coughing fit where it sounded as if he’d keel over and die, which he always said couldn’t happen soon enough.

Although I was able to dismiss the idea of Pops’ being the Antichrist, I still didn’t know what to make of the dark spirals, the mothership of twisted, translucent tape. Couldn’t chock it up to the Pressed Happiness after seeing the spirals in Kona. 

That Sunday, I dared a glance toward Fox’s Landing. Nothing. No translucent terror. No evil geometry clawing at my eyes.

Kehena Beach played on loop—and people came for that. If you weren’t looping, maybe you were on a quest. Mine felt like it was winding down. But Gabriel remained. I remained mute. I spent the next couple of weeks in the lava tube, living light, foraging what I could. Guava. Papaya. A few avocado trees going off on the side of Opihikao.  

One afternoon, I was walking back to Mackenzie after refilling my jug at Pohoiki, and a new Jeep Wrangler pulled up.

Before even asking where I was going, the woman said, “Are you looking for work?”

I nodded and scribbled ‘Yes and hungry’ in my notebook.

“Oh, you poor thing. Can’t talk?”

I nodded again.

And just like that, I found myself working for Justin Hillton, a Texas real estate mogul building a Buddhist retreat above Kehena and flipping properties in Puna Palisades. Mara, the woman from the Jeep, was his right-hand.

When Justin learned I was sleeping in a cave, he insisted I stay in the renovated house—his headquarters with Mara.

My room, bottom floor, sliding glass door, no weeds in the yard. Perfect grass, perfect rocks, perfect plants. My job was to keep it that way. The room had one twin bed, and something in the sterile austerity reminded me of my cell at St. Anthony’s.

Mara gifted me a stack of Mead notebooks, and most nights I’d fill one in a fevered vigil—page after page of ink-fueled unraveling. In the morning, I’d hand her the latest volume, and she’d always promise to give it a read. I don’t think she ever made it past a few lines. Anytime I tried to point out a passage of particular intrigue, her eyes would glaze and dart like a cornered animal.

I told Mara I could work more hours for food and housing, but Justin insisted that six hours a day was optimal—for psychological reasons. Apparently, some research said that’s how to maximize contentment. I wasn’t sure that was true, but I certainly appreciated the smoked salmon and rice his chef whipped up. The portobello and goat cheese sandwich? Divine. And I was always encouraged to raid the fridge.

“Poor thing,” Mara would say as she watched me eat. She was fascinated by my muteness—like I was a mute monk dropped from the sky to inspire her juice cleanse. She didn’t read what I wrote, but she’d always tilt her head and murmur how she wondered what I was thinking. She spoke to me in that voice people use for pets or half-wits—equal parts reverence and insult. She nibbled politely on the chef’s salad at the dinner table, mostly surviving on juice and smoothies.  She may have eaten rabbit food, but Mara was no prey animal.  In the kitchen hung a black-and-white photo of her, naked with a python coiled around her body which spoke volumes of her character.  It was one thing to have the photo, but to have it on the kitchen wall?  

Mara and Justin were always mid-contest, always veiled hostility as they jousted with carefully measured language if I was within earshot.  The strain in their tones suggested that all was not Gucci between them.  But that was none of my business. I heard everything, sure, but I was just a worker bee.

Justin gave me a pair of his shoes, two sizes too big.  He kept forgetting to grab me a pair that would fit me, but insisted that I keep my feet clad lest they get flayed by a’a rock. My clown-footed gait had me high-stepping like a vaudeville act, so he told Mara to grab me boots on her next run into town. But she also forgot. Although she’d written it down, she’d left the list in the Escalade.

Most of my work was moving rocks—lining the future pond or trailblazing into the state land abutting Justin’s property. On day three, Chad showed up. Lanky, around my age, he’d been hired to construct stone steps down to a grotto Justin had seen in a vision. He was given the room above mine.

The next day, I was pushing a wheelbarrow full of lava rock when Justin strolled across the lawn. Sunglasses lowered. Swagger dialed in. Tall, black wavy hair, shark-white teeth, blue eyes that knew their power. He said he needed the house for a few days.

“Here’s a hundred bucks to get a room,” he said, handing Chad a bill. “And Mara can square up whatever she’s got you down for, fellas, but come on back in a day or two, alright?”

Upstairs, Mara was perched on a barstool, bronze legs crossed, toe tracing figure-eights in the air as she glanced between two columns in her notebook.

Chad said he’d worked seven hours at $15/hour, so $105 total.

“That’s about right,” Mara said, handing him a $100 bill. “I don’t have a five, but you took a very long lunch break.”

“What? I clocked out at 2 and was back by 2:30.”

“More like 1:50 to 2:40,” she said.

“I checked my watch. What are you talking about?”

“I went by the microwave clock. Also, about the meat you cooked in the kitchen—there was grease on the pan. I don’t want to be anywhere near animal products, let alone clean up after one of my workers, and until we get a new chef, you need to be on your game a little more.”

“Mara,” Chad said, his tone dropping, “you’re stiffing me five bucks? Justin’s still here. If you don’t pay me what you owe, I’ll get him.”

“I don’t care. I only have twenties.”

“Then give me $120 and dock me an hour next time.”

He looked at me like, Can you believe this shit? and rolled his eyes.

Mara grumbled but gave him the extra twenty, then turned to me. “Jasper, can I just give you a hundred?”

I nodded.

“Are you kidding?” Chad said. “He’s worked four days. At six hours a day, even at $8 an hour, that’s nearly two hundred.”

“Jasper, do you think a hundred’s fair?” Mara asked, sweet-voiced.

“Don’t agree, Jasper,” Chad said. “I’m getting Justin.”

“Oh my God, you’re such a little shit!” Mara snapped.

Chad smiled—he had that Woody Harrelson smirk, amused and fed-up all at once. Mara yanked another hundred from her pouch and threw it at me.

“Hey Jasper,” Chad said. “We should split that. She wouldn’t have given it to you if I hadn’t been here.”

I handed him both hundreds.

“Oh my God!” Mara gasped. “Jasper, sweetie, don’t give him those. You earned that!”

“You sound so patronizing and condescending,” Chad said—and I cracked. Laughed out loud. Because he was absolutely right.

“Just kidding,” Chad grinned, handing the bills back to me. “I’m not a manipulative asshole. You earned that, my guy.”

“Well, you two be safe,” Mara sang, all sugar and denial.

“Pleasure,” Chad said. “Don’t let the man get you down.”

“Fuck you, Chad,” Mara chirped.

Chad nodded, pressed his hands together in prayer, and bowed.

Outside, in the driveway, he turned to me.

“Wanna hitchhike to Waipio? I’ve always wanted to hike to Waimanu.”

Sounded peachy to me.

The first night in Waipio Valley, Chad pitched his tent a bit back from the shoreline under a copse of ironwoods. We collected driftwood for a fire, and Chad insisted that I roast one of his sausages. 

“C’mon,” Chad grunted, thrusting the sausage at me like a man offering proof of civilization.“Roast this.I can’t watch you eat horse food; I can’t believe you can just eat oats and peanut butter like that.Your dinner looks like something an ascetic squirrel would pack for a silent retreat.”

“Just two dudes roasting weenies,” Chad declared, applying a mustard squiggle like a flourish from Jackson Pollock. “But seriously, Mara stiffed you and you took a vow of silence? You’re not, like, mentally defunct, right? Just… don’t talk?”

I shrugged as the fat from my skewered sausage beaded up and dropped into the flames

with a hiss as if disapproving the topic.

“It’s literally the way my aunt talks to my baby niece, and you’re a grown-ass man. I would say speak up, but you could have written in all caps or something.

“Not bad, eh?” he asked as  I took my first bite.

I nodded, doing the ‘hassafassa’ because it was piping hot.

“Beats horse food, don’t it?  Peanut butter and oats, get the fuck out of here.”

Chad took a bite of his, and as he chewed he said, “Fucking good, but I was thinking that talking to you is kind of like talking to a dog. Like, you don’t talk back, but I can see you’re paying attention. You can understand every word. Ever have a dog like that?”

I smiled. Indeed.

Night fell like a velvet hood, and the fire disappeared into stars. We slept early, though sleep was a loose word. 

That night was a carnival of what was contained in my head spilling out of my mouth.  All the characters and spirits that had written with my pen appeared in the helm in my consciousness, night fits of yelling myself, and poor Chad awake.

I kept waking up mid-exorcism, shouting the same apocalyptic phrase—“It’s over”. I’d slap my hand over my mouth each time, too late, the phrase already having escaped into the tent.

And I only wanted to sleep.  It was going to be a long hike, but every time I’d drift off, I’d blast out my declaration.  Talking in one’s sleep is one thing, but shouting?  Not cool.

Chad, bless his meat-fed patience, sat up the third time I’d done this and growled from his sleeping bag, “Dude. Shut the actual fuck up.” He clicked on his flash light, saw me with my hand over my mouth, shaking my head.  

“Like, you gotta not… do that?”

He’d never heard me speak—only emote through dramatic shrugs and spiritual flatulence. Now here I was, bleating. “It’s over.” I’d always stifle what I could when I was fully awake and back in the driver’s seat of my head.  

And every time I clawed my way out of the dreamscape, soaked in sleep-sweat and ghost-saliva after another utterance, I’d cover my mouth and mentally mutter, “Not my fault, Michael!”  

Chad, bless his meat-fed patience, groaned the fourth time I barked. “Jesus Christ, dude, shut the fuck up.”

You have to understand—Chad had never heard me speak. To him, I was the silent, but sentient, sidekick, the off-brand oracle in a hoodie. And now I was hissing apocalyptic koans in my sleep like a possessed auctioneer.

Around the fifth time I rasped “It’s over,” he sat up like Nosferatu with heartburn.

“You better not be summoning anything, man,” he muttered, eyes wide and spooked. “This some fuckin’ tongue of Babylon shit?”

I shrugged apologetically, still half-dreaming. “Not my fault, Michael,” I said to the archangel—and then back into the dream spiral I went.

But dawn, the coward’s redemption, began to smear across the sky. I must’ve dozed for a moment, but my dreams weren’t dreams. They were cosmic board meetings. Souls crowding my bone dome like they were late for a casting call. Every single one of them were trying to squeeze their final lines through my mouth, using me as a drive-thru speaker to deliver farewells to the veil.

By the time I wriggled out of my sleeping bag—more like molting—I was speaking in five different voices in five conflicting accents. Brooklyn cabbie, Midwestern mom, Mongolian throat-singer, Shakespearean understudy, and what I can only describe as “robotic squirrel channeling Alvin and the Chipmuks.”

Chad came out of the tent behind me, squinting with the look of a man who suspects his camping buddy is either:

1. Experiencing a full-blown psychotic break, or
   
   

2. Hosting a séance for the damned.

“What the fuck is happening right now,” he said, slack-jawed.

But I began booking it toward the ocean, barefoot and babbling that it was over.

“Hey bro, hold up!” Chad called, running behind me.

Between characters possessing my mouth like it was a microphone at a karaoke bar in purgatory, I managed to yell back, “I’m okay!” Which, coming from someone with a dozen dialects ricocheting around his skull and out of his mouth, was a pretty fucking optimistic claim.

As the sun rose behind stringy clouds, I paced the shoreline muttering, croaking, whispering. Chad strode beside watching with the baffled amusement of a man trying to decide if he’s improv or creative schizophrenia.

Finally, the last act. My old pal Gabriel, my original celestial life coach, took the mic.

“It’s over, Dipshit,” he said through me, perfectly. Raspy. Smug. Familiar.

One eye winked involuntarily. 

Chad made a face like I was a walrus in lingerie.

“You did it, good job, but you can talk.” Gabriel said through me.

“You better not be fucking with me,” I replied.

“What the fuck?” said Chad, grinning.

“It’s over, alright, you can talk.”

“Okay,” I said and nodded.

“All good,” Chad said, eyeing me like a man watching a vending machine give birth. Then, like nothing had happened, he headed back to the tent.

“Might was well get an early start,” he said.  “Can you help me pack up while you babble?” 

I helped him collapse the poles, but it was like playing charades with poltergeists. The voices kept bubbling up, some rich in tone, each with its own cadence, its own agenda. One moment I was a lisping Cockney child, the next a jaded Vegas lounge act doing a farewell tour through my larynx.

“I’ve always been good at impressions,” I said sheepishly between possessions.

“Fuckin’ missed your calling, Jasper,” Chad said. “Jesus. Some people do accents. You’ve got—what is this, a range audition for the afterlife?”

“They’re doing me,” I said. “Like—”

But before I could explain, a squeaky falsetto hijacked my uvula: “That time in the tractor, I was at the gate in the sky—”

That one cut off, and was followed by a baritone like warm molasses: “Such a fun ride. Thank you for the access pass.”

Chad froze mid-fold with a tent pole in one hand. “Fan-fuckingtastic,” he said.

And so, with everything stowed, me carrying the poles and him the tent, I hoisted my pack and we headed across the beach. I was now a haunted megaphone with a good pair of legs. We sloshed through what Slow Eye Steve had called Staph River, and I winced, praying my feet had no open wounds.

As we trudged toward Waimea, I kept issuing awkward little “sorrys” in between voices. Chad waved them off, amused.

“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “I’ve always wondered what you sound like. Still not sure.”

He scratched his chin, half-grinning. “I wish I had a tape recorder. Who’s that one guy who did Bugs Bunny? Mel something? Dude, you’re like a psychedelic Mel Blanc.”

By the time the sun was straight overhead and the salt-crusted clouds looked like smeared whipped cream, the spirits were beginning to trail off, like the end of a party.

Even Gabriel started to fade. His voice, once booming and certain, now sounded like it was trying to shout through a pillow across dimensions.

“Don’t go!” I pleaded.

His response was a whisper wrapped in a smirk: “I’ll be here, Dipshit. But stick to writing.”

Then—click. Silence. The open circuit slammed shut. Curtain down. Possession recess.

Just me again. Flesh. Bone. And Chad, shaking his head.  

“That it?”

“Maybe, um,” I said, my voice quavering.  

“Bro, are you crying?”

“Man, you just can’t understand.”

“Yeah. Actually, you kind of said the quiet part out loud with whoever those fuckers were, but it over being over yet?”

“Sucks, but I suppose eternity was another joke.  Oh, I’m a joke, by the way.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.”

The trail wove to Waimanu like a jagged thought. We crossed streams, scrambled down mud-slick switchbacks, and reached the valley just as the sky opened up and rinsed our sins in fat warm drops.

In the back of the valley was a hundred foot waterfall roaring down a cliff. We stood under it. Let it wash away all the residue and grime of the day. 

August 2001: Spokane County Jail

“I feel sick,” Chris groaned, his forehead mashed against the mesh grate like he was trying to escape through osmosis.

“Me too,” I said. “I was just pushing through with that story, but my stomach is in knots, like some gnarly twisting going on in there.” 

Chris clutched his stomach. “It was those eggs.”

“It wasn’t the eggs,” I objected. That was hours ago. It must have been those sandwiches.”

“What if we have to shit at the same time?”

But just as fate cocked its twisted sense of humor, boots echoed down the hallway. The bolt clanked. In stomped a mustached meat-wall of a guard, all sinew and scowl, flanked by a clipboard-hugging bureaucrat whose glasses framed a face carved by decades of spiritual constipation. Her whole aura whispered, I didn’t get into grad school, but I still get to judge you.

I stood, bowed ever so slightly, and said to Chris, “Well, I’ll be seein’ ya, brother. And remember—Jesus is the psilocybin mushroom.”

Chris squinted at me like I’d just coughed up Sanskrit. I shrugged, unsure myself what was happening. He should’ve been the one leaving, not me. Something was off.

Something in my belly was plotting its escape. Violently.

They sat me on a metal bench in the lobby, wrists cuffed, guts twisting. I hunched forward, sweat droplets popping on my brow as I thought about my life.  Since leaving the Big Island, the mainland had been a rollercoaster.

I’d flown back to my mom’s place in July, but after a couple weeks on Fox Island, the road started whispering again. I felt it in my spine, that itch to drift, so I stuck out my thumb and hitched east toward Spokane to visit my dad. After that? Maybe Montana. Maybe the East Coast. I wasn’t sure—only that I’d grown fond of aimless ambling.

By late morning on a muggy August day, I was posted up on the onramp outside the SuperMall in Auburn, Washington. Thumb out, pack resting on the guardrail behind me. I traveled light: just a sleeping bag, a pair of socks, white sneakers, deodorant, a hoodie, toothbrush and paste, floss, two razors, and a tube of Neosporin. The deodorant stick was wrapped in duct tape, which I used as a makeshift first-aid kit—a surprisingly handy detail, especially at that particular moment.

As on the Big Island, I was hitching barefoot—Jesus of the Highway. I hadn’t even noticed the slice of glass till my heel started leaking red. One squishy, sticky step and there it was: divine stigmata, Big G’s own road rash. Mainland hitching, I realized, was a shoes-on sport. I popped my pack, unearthed my sneakers, and was just about to baptize the gash with Nalgene water, scrub it with a sock, swaddle it in Neosporin and duct tape, when salvation arrived in the form of a clean, cobalt-blue Nissan Sentra.

Terrific timing. My foot was still wet, which might make me look rabid and unrideable. I corked the Nalgene, stuffed it and my humble hygiene kit back into my rucksack, tied my shoes with a wince, and limped toward the blinking blinker and the waving sock-puppet hand of the driver, who seemed to be in some kind of hurry—anxious but grinning.

I clocked them quick: Filipino maybe, but possibly Laotian, Cambodian, or brewed somewhere in that Southeast Asia cradle of golden-skinned, short-statured sass. Together, they looked like a caramel macchiato in human form—one part butterscotch, one part chocolate, both frothy and eager. Mid-30s. Gleaming. Manicured. Mall-fresh. The driver had a white ball cap with an unbent bill (always a sign of premeditated style), a crucifix hanging over his sternum, and a wrist wrapped in silver. His jet-black hair peeked out from beneath the cap, black as tar.

I guessed that these two would be about 5’7” if they wore heels, but the passenger was particularly short and diminutive. He was more of a butterscotch than the chocolate tones of the driver. Both looked to be in their mid-30s, no facial hair. Prim and proper, they were dressed in what I’m guessing they’d just picked up at the SuperMall. 

The driver had a white ball cap and the flat bill hadn’t been curved. It suited him, the style he was going for. He had a golden necklace with a small cross on his chest and a silver bracelet around his left wrist. The hair that I could see beneath his hat was trimmed, jet black and thick.

But the passenger—oh lord, the passenger—had eyes. Eyes with agendas. Eyes that wanted to photograph me from the inside.

Three seconds in and it was clear: they were lovers, they were giddy, and I was the cowboy candy they’d picked up to ogle. In the rearview mirror, the passenger gave me a long, lusty look that could fog glass, until the driver tilted the mirror back to reality.

We were merging onto highway 18, headed towards I-90, and I hoped to get over Snoqualmie Pass, to at least the east side of the Cascades before nightfall. But these two were headed home to Isaquah. They begged me to come home with them. Just for an hour, and then they would take me anywhere. 

Their names were Ronnie and Stevie. Ronnie said his name was "Lonnie"—twice—but insisted that no one else say it wrong. Go figure. He had that tightly-wound, polished-professional vibe. Stevie, on the other hand, was a frilly firecracker of pure histrionic need.

“Take off your shirt,” Stevie begged, like a little boy at the ice cream truck screaming for sprinkles.

I laughed. What can I say—I worked out. I was pushup-pretty, parkour-toned, call-me-Calisthenes. I peeled off my shirt, and Stevie’s eyes blew open like a cartoon rabbit spotting a carrot with cleavage. 

But then he made another face.

“Oh, you stinky,” Stevie squealed. “You need shower.”

This from a man whose hair resembled a gelled otter pelt, slicked back into an architectural marvel of aquatic engineering. He wore a powder-blue polo and a six-pointed star necklace like a K-pop rabbi. He moved to reach for me—God bless him—but Ronnie intercepted, like a Secret Service agent trained in twink control.

Stevie sat back down, but still looked at me.

“Are you a sun bunny?” I asked, deciding to flirt.

“A what?” Stevie asked, frowning, cocking his head, blinking.

“A sun bunny, you know, lay in the sun and tan your buns?”

“I no understand,” Stevie kvetched, but Ronnie understood my joke and laughed.

He slapped Stevie’s thigh and said, “He talking bout your behind in sunshine, you being naked, and he right!” Then he asked me, “How you know we tan naked?”

“Maybe I’m psychic,” I said, “but I’ll bet it’s more than just the two of you in the sun when you tan naked; am I right?”

“I no understand him,” Stevie said again, looking across the console at his partner.

Ronnie tilted the rearview mirror to look at me. We were on I-90 headed west, and I could tell he felt much more comfortable on the freeway than the two lanes of highway 18.

“You like tan naked?” Ronnie asked.

“No. I’m not endowed as such. Would be embarrassing.”

“I no understand him,” Stevie huffed. He turned to face forward and looked out the windshield with his arms folded across his chest.

“He say he no have big dick,” Ronnie helpfully clarified.

Stevie gasped. Whipped his head around and goose-necked like he was trying to peer into the future through my gym shorts.

“Let me seeeee!” 

“Nope,” I said, laughing, crossing my legs as Stevie mentally undressed me with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball in heat.

The thing about this situation? I wasn’t at all afraid. They were no threat. At the same time, I really needed them to reiterate our arrangement. We were headed in the wrong direction, and I’d already told them I wasn’t gay. 

“Spokane is on the other side of Snoqualmie Pass,” I reminded Ronnie, “and I really need to make sure you’ll take me if I hang out at your place for just one hour. It’s ten now, so can you promise to get back on the road at noon?”

“Yes, now lemme seeeeee!” Stevie said, nearly breathless.

“Ronnie, is that the deal?” I asked because Stevie would say anything, would push any red button, to hell with the consequences, as long as he could get whatever it was now, now, now.

“Yes,” Ronnie said, “Stevie will take you. I need take nap. Wrong day.”

“Long day?”

“Yes, very wrong,” said Ronnie.

I frowned. So he could pronounce the letter ‘r’ but not when it was called for, as in saying his own name? 

Ronnie’s condo on Lake Sammamish was a fever dream of feng shui fornication. The living room was dominated by a king-sized waterbed under a long fish tank that was lit up from beneath so that it cast warbly scenes of watery shadows on the ceiling, a bluish hue to everything that complimented the big, bright yellow and pink fish that floated in segregated pockets on opposite sides. 

As we walked through his pad, which had dragons and tigers rendered in puffy velvet, vivid colors in ornate frames on mahogany walls, I saw Ronnie’s refrigerator and washing machine were both black and gleamed like polished onyx. And then there were the mirrors. So many. They were beveled in the corners, and fanned out on the ceiling like reflective rays which extended from a large circular mirror above the water bed. In a corner stood a four foot pyramid of glass blocks, and while I had questions, Ronnie insisted that it was nothing compared to the lake and led me through the sliding glass door to their fourth-floor patio that overlooked Sammamish. 

Stevie had insisted on walking behind me. He blew on my back when I told him not to touch. Neither drank alcohol, but Ronnie offered me sparkling water once I was kicked back on a white, vinyl lawn chair. The sun was blasting off the lake, warmth radiating from reflected photons was very nice.

“Yeah, I’ll take a cold drink,” I said, “but do you have any hydrogen peroxide?”

“Yes, why?”

When I took off my shoe, Stevie took one look at my foot, lept out of his lawn chair and ran inside.

“He scared of blood,” explained Ronnie. 

Of the two, Stevie was definitely the bottom, but he was also so over-the-top that I suspected he wouldn’t be able to hold a job. I had an inkling that Ronnie took care of him. Ronnie was calm, cool and collected, the eye of the tornado which was Stevie. 

After disinfecting my foot, I let Ronnie swab the wound with a Q-tip that he’d squirted orange/brown betadine on. Then he wrapped my foot in gauze. He seemed to take great pride in his work, his movements both slow and deliberate. He said he’d give me a pair of shoes, but his shoes would never fit my big feet.

“But you got small dinky?” He extended his pinky.

“No, not that small,” I said, “but maybe like Shaq’s thumb.”

“Who’s thumb?”

“Shaquile O’neil, the basketball player. His thumb.”

“Oh,” said Ronnie, and then his eyes went up, and I could see him trying to remember if he’d ever seen Shaq’s thumb. Shaq had just taken the Lakers to their second consecutive championship and was on the cover of a magazine palming a basketball with his fingers splayed.

And then, because he insisted, I let Ronnie tie my shoe. He gave me a suggestive smile, looking up at me. I might have giggled. I’m man enough to admit that now. 

“It’s hot, but look at the lake!” said Ronnie, looking back over his shoulders but still holding my shoe.

Then he said we should probably tell Stevie everything was okay and that it was time to take me to where I needed to go. He was tired (pronounced ‘tiled’). Stevie had been a challenge in the SuperMall, had wanted everything, and Ronnie told him not to spend his hundred dollars in the first store, but he did, and then he threw a tantrum when he couldn’t get the six-sided star.

“The one he’s wearing?” I asked.

“I’m exhausted,” Ronnie said, looking at my generic, white tennis shoes with concern. He wasn’t a fan of these shoes for my style. I needed dark colors or moccasins, said Ronnie. Hadn’t I been barefoot when they pulled me over? That had been one of the reasons he stopped for me. Stevie especially, but Ronnie also had a thing about worshiping feet. Just for fun, but what was life about if not having fun?

In the kitchen, knowing about his foot fetish, the way Stevie side-eyed me as if I’d betrayed him, made a little more sense. I saw that there was a copper three-tiered wire basket hanging next to the refrigerator with a bunch of bananas.

I made a show of it. Reached slow. Peeled slower. Made eye contact. Dropped my tongue on that Chiquita like I was auditioning for a sacred porno about potassium.

Stevie stood on his toes with noiseless claps. Ronnie let out a shaky laugh, the kind that said, I didn’t know this was on the menu, but I’m not sending it back. 

Then came the bite, a savage chomp as I tore the tip off like a jungle beast.  Stevie, at first horrified, asked me to do it again. but I said, “Nah, let’s get rolling.”

Both men groaned. Different notes, same key.

Stevie’s face contorted—first horror, then a flicker of dark delight. His eyes went wide, like he’d just seen a demon do a cartwheel and wanted to see it again.

“Nah, let’s roll,” I said and looked to Ronnie.

“Okay, now you take him.” Ronnie rubbed his forehead like he was either trying to crush a migraine with sheer will or coax a third eye open. 

“But where I take him?” Stevie asked Ronnie. 

“Spokane,” I said. “It’s on the other side of Snoqualmie Pass, about five hours.”

Stevie turned to Ronnie, face scrunched into a confused pout. “What’s five hour? Like… movie?”

Ronnie sighed. “It’s not that long.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “On the map, it’s only as long as a piece of string.”

Stevie’s brain visibly tried to wrap around it. He looked at me, then down at the floor, then back at Ronnie.

“You say just a string?” 

“Go,” Ronnie said, waving toward the door. “Just take him. Drop him off. Come back.”

They exchanged something in what might have been Vietnamese or Cambodian, almost whiny, or maybe that was just Stevie, as Ronnie seemed to almost whisper.

Back in the Sentra, riding shotgun, I found that Stevie was not a man governed by impulse control. For about thirty minutes he took ‘no’ for an answer, but as we rolled passed North Bend and up between the ribs of the mountains, a swat on his arm didn’t dissuade his reaching hand. So I escalated.

The Snake Bite.

Not a metaphor. A move. My move. A vicious, calculated pinch delivered at lightning speed from the narrow point between the knuckle of my forefinger and middle finger. It's like flicking a bear trap onto soft flesh—brutal, swift, and refined in the fourth grade. He yelped, withdrew, but a half minute later, he reached again.

“Ouch, you no nice!” 

By the fifth or sixth bite, Stevie’s forearm looked like a pastel crime scene. Welts and bruises, some faint pink, others veering into eggplant.

“You mean,” he pouted, clutching his arm like a martyr. “We almost there yet?”

“Just a string on a map, like Ronnie said.”

“Lemme see, you show me map,” he said and pointed.

So I opened the glove box. And there it was—an old fold-out highway map of Washington State, the kind with permanent creases, small tears. I spread it across my lap, traced with my finger from us—twenty miles east of North Bend—up over Snoqualmie Pass, across the belly of the state, and to Spokane.

“That too long!” cried Stevie. He went to pull over, but I explained that he couldn’t do a U-turn on the freeway.

“At least take me to the other side of the pass.”

“No, you go now. You no fun. Next stop, you get out.”

Outside, the sky mirrored him.

Dark nimbus clouds churned above the pines, heavy and swollen like a bruise about to burst. The wind bullied the Sentra in rhythmic shoves, rattling the frame like it was coughing up its last breath. Stevie’s tantrum had settled into a bitter pout, and somehow the mountain picked up on it—his mood projected outward, polluting the air with tension and impending collapse.

I looked at the road, the sky, the ridgeline ahead. Calculating.

Being dropped at the pass wouldn’t kill me. But it wouldn’t be pretty. I had a sleeping bag and a will to survive, sure—but no rain gear, no food, no fire, and nothing but increasingly psychotic cloud formations above me. Could I crawl under the eaves of the ski lodge without getting arrested or frozen stiff?

Unclear.

The freeway curved upward like a thong sliding between the granite cheeks of the Cascades. Towering cliffs loomed on both sides, their flanks slick with mist. Pine trees lined the slopes like watchmen, unmoved, unhelpful. The air grew thinner, meaner.

Inside the Sentra, Stevie was wordless now, his energy simmering like milk about to boil. Every so often, his eyes flicked toward me, accusatory and unblinking, as if I had asked for this storm. As if I were the architect of mountains and weather and string.

A fat raindrop slammed into the windshield—splat—and smeared down slowly like blood down a mirror. Then another. Sporadic at first, but then nothing as they gathered.

The clouds above weren’t just dark. They were conspiring.

They hung low, heavy with violence, whispering to each other above the ski slopes in some ancient dialect of rain and rupture. You could feel the fusillade assembling—raindrops marching into position, lightning cracking its knuckles, thunder licking its lips. It wasn’t just weather. It was judgment.

Stevie clutched the wheel like it had betrayed him.

I clutched my breath.

Moment of truth.

Before Stevie could veer onto the offramp at the summit—his blinker ticking like a laughing gecko—I played my trump card. The nuclear option. If there was one thing I knew about Stevie, it was that his brain was less a stable organ and more a mood-swing carousel powered by impulses. He was capricious—half cherub, half menace, full chaos.

I closed my eyes, took a breath, and said it flat.

“If you drive me all the way to Spokane, I’ll let you suck my dick.”

Then Stevie—who only moments ago had struggled to grasp basic highway geography—suddenly understood everything. Like I’d just whispered the true name of God into his ear. His whole body twitched. He yanked the wheel back on course so hard the Sentra fishtailed a little on the wet blacktop, tires squealing their own embarrassed gasp.

We were back on I-90, just like that.

He squealed with delight. “You let me touch?”

“Stevie, look at the road,” I pointed to the speedometer, “at least got fifty, come on now.”

As his hand darted toward my lap—fast, like a gecko going for a fly—I pushed it back.

Not violently. Just enough to hold space.

“Stevie,” I said, calm and clear, the way you speak to a dog that's learned how to open the fridge. “I need to say this plainly. I’ll only let you… if you promise to take me all the way to Spokane.”

He blinked, stunned—as if the candy store he’d been handed was suddenly demanding terms. His lip began to tremble into that familiar tragic arc, a pout blooming like a spoiled orchid.

“You lie to me!” Stevie said and went to pull over.

“You lie to me!” he cried, hands jerking toward the blinker. The car veered to the right.

“Don’t pull over on the freeway! They’ll arrest you!” I barked, matching his tempo, echoing his exasperation. “There’s always cops waiting in mountain passes!”

“There is?” Stevie asked, his eyebrows going up. His eyes ballooned. A gasp. He clicked off the blinker like it was a detonator. Crisis averted.

“Of course,” I said. “Everyone knows. Pull over and they’ll have you in cuffs before your hazard lights finish blinking.”

Stevie scanned the shadows. Tilted the rearview mirror. Bit his lip. His world recalibrated around this new reality. 

“So… you can suck… but first,” I said, tone flat and lawyerly, “you have to promise, Stevie. No games. You take me all the way to Spokane.”

“Okay, okay okay!” he squeaked, practically clapping. “I take you! Now lemme seeeee! Next exit I pull over!”

“No.” My voice dropped like a manhole cover. “We’re not stopping.”

“What?! I no understand you!”

“You want to do this,” I said, adjusting my posture like a field commander coordinating air support, “then you lean over, and I steer. That’s the only way this happens.”

He blinked, confused, processing. Then, slowly, he began to understand. His brow furrowed. He entered a state of monk-like concentration, his neurons fusing desire with logistics.

It took a few attempts—hand gestures, air diagrams—but eventually my proposal clicked. Stevie nodded solemnly.

“Okay,” I said, “and I’ll tell you when to press the gas or ease off.”

“Now you… you show me… you—” Stevie was suppressing his excitement, stammering, fevered, unfastening his seatbelt like he was slipping out of a wedding dress.

“No!” I snapped. “Cops will arrest you. Stay buckled. Just—just slip the shoulder strap off. Stay in the system, Stevie.”

And he understood, nodding, shoulder strap off and leaning toward me.

“Wait,” I said, sensing his eagerness surging like an oncoming freight train. “You wait.”

He nodded, vibrating, stealing glances at me—eyes wide, mouth parted. I could feel the pressure building in the cabin. An image flashed in my mind: a dominatrix with a riding crop.

He eyed me hungrily, as I reached into my waistband, not seductively but mechanically, like a man checking a bandage. My expression said it all: This is not a gift. This is a bribe.

Stevie, trembling, looked down. Froze. Tilted his head.

“That no small,” he whispered, awestruck. “You same size as me.”

And before I could stop him, he was tugging at his waistband with the urgency of a child showing off a found pebble.

I glanced. Sighed.

There it was—upright, punctual, absurd. His flesh-flag raised. Identical, nearly, to my own.

Unlike him, I was not thrilled by the symmetry. There was no fraternal awe, no flash of vanity. Just that creeping resignation of what was about to transpire.

“Perfect sucking size,” Stevie beamed.

I sat there, willing myself to be a thousand miles from the moment—mentally vanished, spiritually evaporated—while he hovered beside me like a lapdog balancing a liver snap on its snout, trembling for the signal. His eyes locked on the prize with devotional hunger, lips parted, breath shallow, practically panting. He was salivating in stereo—mouth and mind both slick with anticipation. All he needed was the word, the smallest nod, and he’d lunge.

And then, as I grabbed the wheel, my eyes went wide and my breath caught as his wet, hot, little mouth, as if toothless, went too work. His tongue made the infinity sign as he folded it. Not so much as the edge of a tooth was detectable, and I gasped. More at the newness of this particular pressure than anything.

Stevie giggled, and looked up at me. “You like it?”

After glancing down at him, something ancient and blood-red flared up in me—a heat that wasn’t lust but something nearer to betrayal. My fingers clamped the wheel like I was hanging from a rooftop. Every nerve screamed pleasure, but my spine went rigid with a silent no that roared in my soul. My nostrils flared. Jaw twitched. I stared dead ahead at the dotted white lines flanking the Sentra, trying to remember who I was before this moment—before my dignity had been hijacked by biology. I wasn’t here. I was floating a few feet above myself, watching the absurd choreography of the situation: one hand on the wheel, one on my temple, eyes wide with the stunned disbelief of a man watching his own farce unravel in real-time. 

For some strange reason, I recalled the monastery—the dish pit where I scrubbed pots and pans, and that single moment of ecstasy when the roses and honey seemed to bloom on my tongue with every repetition of The Prayer. Back then, I’d floated, beatific, sure I’d been kissed by Grace itself—until the abbot crushed it with his quiet verdict: a delusion of the devil. After that, I’d tried to numb myself to the sweetness, to doubt the bliss.  I tried to detach, to remove myself from the joy The Prayer was instilling.

But now, here I was—far removed from both my heart and the mercy of Christ—trying to tune out the expert tongue of Stevie, whose devotion was causing an all-to-different kind of pleasure. The irony of the correlation, obscene and perfect, wrung something like laughter from my chest. In place of roses and honey there was saliva and suction. My hands gripped the wheel as a manic giddiness overtook me and I began to laugh.

“You okay,” Stevie asked, speaking into the head of my dick as if it were a microphone.

“Just… go.”

But when he went back to it, something short-circuited. I couldn’t breathe right—my nose refused to cooperate, and each inhale came jagged, betrayed by the hitch in my throat. The sensation bloomed upward, unsolicited, vile in its delight—rising like static along the edges of a dream I wanted no part of. Stevie had zero hesitation, going all in at the base like a man licking the rim of forbidden fruit, and when I sucked in another breath, he made a noise—affirming, eager, grotesquely proud.

I wanted to cave in his face with my knuckles, just to make the absurdity snap into a different shape, something I could understand. Instead, I bit my own fist—hard—while my free hand twisted the wheel like I was cranking up a winch from hell. I stared forward, eyes hot, neck locked, the road ahead a filmstrip of what seemed cartoonish. Somewhere between rage and release, the Sentra whined, the mountains lurched around us, and I kept thinking—God have mercy, what am I doing here?

The rain didn’t wait for theatrics. It just came—hard and sudden. A dense, pelting torrent that dropped like gravel from a dump truck in the clouds. One moment mist, the next: windshield smeared with silver punches, visibility collapsing to a foggy tunnel of smeared reds and whites, tail lights blurring into bloody ghosts

Stevie was oblivious, so I clicked a lever, and the wipers launched into a desperate rhythm, flapping like panicked birds against the glass, barely keeping up. Every swipe just moved the flood around.

“More gas,” I said, loud over the rising hiss of rain and rubber on water. I was gripping the wheel again from the passenger side, a white-knuckled co-pilot with no brakes and a stomach full of something sour.

Stevie jolted upright like a prairie dog. “What wrong?”

“Just saying speed up,” I muttered. “We dropped below fifty.”

“Oh,” he said, pressing the gas before dropping back down to his own whirlwind.

Outside, the Cascades were nothing but looming shadows, mountains wearing war paint made of cloud. The road carved between them like a wet blade. Gusts slammed the Sentra from the left, the kind that hit with a thunk you feel in your molars.

“Oh, look out!” I said.

Stevie jolted upright like a spooked meerkat. “What? Police?” His eyes darted to every mirror at once, fingers twitching as he took the wheel.

Some part of me had surrendered to a circuit, and I ejaculated as he looked in all his mirrors. I wasn’t about to cum in his mouth, and I wiped the semen on the chest harness.

Realizing what I’d done, Stevie was appalled. He tried to get his lips back around me, but I was ticklish and covered myself.

“That best part!” he complained. He scooped the jizz off the seatbelt strap with his fingers and sucked them. 

Again, the rage. What if I had him pull over at the next stop to choke him unconscious, stuff him in the trunk and drive myself the rest of the way?

It wasn’t quite regret—regret implies nobility, a pang tied to conscience. No, what I felt was something fouler: a visceral disdain, a crawling revulsion blooming from somewhere behind the sternum. I wanted to unzip my skin and step out of myself.

And yet—God help me—that little mouth-ninja could swirl like a holy dervish. The contradiction made it worse. That something so wretched could also be… skillful. Precise. Almost transcendent. It pissed me off to admit it, even privately, even in the screaming amphitheater of my skull.

So angry. So confused. And… offended.

Then I laughed—at my pride, my posturing, the way it squirmed against acceptance like a child forced to apologize. I laughed at my ego, bruised and spitting, how it clung to some last shred of hetero sanctity like a toddler clutches a filthy security blanket. My gold-star badge was dangling in the rearview mirror now. Oh no. LOL.

In Ellensburg, college town on the dry lip of the Cascades, Stevie asked if I wanted to split a footlong sandwich from Subway.

“Can I have my own?” I asked.

He grinned and told me to sit tight. Said he’d get triple meat, a foot long, and that he wanted to spoil me. Said we should run away together.

“But Ronnie needs you,” I said, because I knew the inverse was true.

“He say he need me,” Stevie replied, “but he no fun. He no laugh. I need laugh like you.”

“No,” I said gently. “We can’t do that to Ronnie. We love him.”

And somewhere past the Columbia River, under the pale cathedral of the sky, because I simply didn’t believe him when he said he could get me hard again—I let him try. Surprise, surprise. Guess what else Stevie was good at?

So for the next two hours, with Stevie whispering in his plush little language—half lullaby, half spell—I stared out the window and stayed casually hard. No longer angry. No longer resentful. Just riding it out, quietly absorbing the emptiness of Eastern Washington: fence posts flicking past like a beige rosary, squares of plowed earth stitched with green, buttes and mesas in the distance.

Beyond Moses Lake, Ponderosa pines rose like punctuation. I had him take the exit for Medical Lake, fifteen miles shy of Spokane. The road wound through warm pine-shadowed curves, soft and golden in the late-day light.

Stevie complained when I zipped up, pouting like I’d just confiscated dessert.

“I no know where we are,” he said.

“Medical Lake.”

We’d parked in the town’s center. The whole place felt like an old photograph curling at the edges.

“Now where we go?” he asked. “We swimming? It hot.”

“Now, you go home. Muchos gracias, but adios.”

“I no understand you,” Stevie said. “But I no going home. Too far. Too hot. Let’s go swimming in lake.”

“This is it, Stevie.  It’s been… something.”

He pouted again, lip out like a kid denied a prize. I pointed back toward the road we’d come in on.

“I no understand,” he said again. “I stay here.”

“Lonnie needs you,” I told him.

“His name Ronnie, not Lonnie,” Stevie said, grinning at the inside-joke.

“At least you can say it.”

“Everyone making fun of him for that.”

“Alrighty,” I said. “You should get some coffee, so you don’t fall asleep on the way back.”

“Let’s go swimming,” he tried again.

“You can go jump in the lake,” I said. “But this is where we part ways, Stevie.”

He backed the car out without another word. No eye contact. No wave. Just turned toward his benefactor and drove.

I stood there in the pine-soaked heat, watching the Sentra disappear.

My dad wasn’t in his second-story apartment so I went around to the back, climbed up his balcony and let myself in. Same old carpet smell made me think of the morning talk-shows he’d listen to as he got ready for work. He must have been out of town because he didn’t show up that night. After raiding his fridge, I watched ‘The 60’s’ which he had on a VHS until it was dark. There wasn’t any wine, but I played his two guitars, found nearly a dollar in change under his couch cushions and then crashed until the morning sun blasted through the sliding glass door. After setting the coffee maker—one heaping scoop of grounds for courage, another for survival—I made some raisin cinnamon toast and slathered it in butter. Then I scrambled three eggs that clung to the skillet like they knew what was coming.

The air on the balcony smelled of agriculture and yellow grass, and the sun massaged the scalps of the round hills that were lined up according to height, each a host to a wheat, barley, legume or lentils, all so high and tight, a militaristic swath of vegetation that stood tall, uniform ready to be mowed down. 

I saw red blotches on the inside of my eyelids as I sipped coffee. After I drained a second mug, I poured the rest into my Nalgene bottle and headed toward Spokane. 

On the walk through the Ponderosa’s toward I-90, a commuter in a brand new Volkswagen Beetle picked me up. The driver looked like a Mormon accountant and spoke with only passive curiosity. He told me that they didn’t get many travelers in Medical Lake, and I explained that I’d just popped over to say hello to my old man. The rest of the ride was innocuous as the driver asked me about my travels and nodded with what I could only judge as disinterested

He dropped me downtown, and I walked happily through the streets to see what I could see. The buildings were tall enough to cast shade on my side of the street, and the windows and cars reflected the sun like disco balls of glass and metal. 

Outside a cafe, someone had set a white styrofoam box on the ashtray/lid of a trash receptacle. *Yoink. 

“Hello, what’s this?” I said with my terrible English accent. “A lih-le BLT just for me?”  Not even a bite taken out of the sandwich? Cut diagonally, the triangular halves were held in place with frilly toothpicks.  

I held the box above my head in thanks. Penniless and Providence go hand in hand. Maybe it was intended to be brunch for Stan but then Shelly saw Stan riding with Sharon, and Shelly leaned on the lamp post.  She placed the box on the ashtray of a trash bin, quite dizzy after the sour gut-punch of betrayal.  Not only would she not deliver Stan breakfast, but he’d come home to a closet of shredded suits. Box cutter, scissors, and Shelly decided that she should really pull the trigger and finally say it.  

She got her little cassette tape recorder and spoke into it.  She’d leave the tape on his desk.  Clear out. Although she’d look mad to the passers by, the traffic, Shelly pressed record to deliver her message to Stan. 

“One and only? I caught you with Sharon, and I’m going public with all the shit I know about Stan McMurphy and his entourage of… I swear to God, Stan, I will burn you to the ground after I caught you with her, Stan, in Sharon’s car? And don’t say that I never warned you. Remember when you said that you’d call the cops, and I said, ‘do it’ because we both knew that you’re the criminal, Stan, and I am so thankful that you finally went and did it. You screwed the pooch, that Sharon, in broad daylight, just riding in her car, are you serious? You didn’t figure on me being downtown Spokane, did ya? I don’t think you even saw me, all smiling and talking to her. And I saw your face, all lit up like Christmas morning and chatting away. And Stan, she looked bored.  I mean, she was in sunglasses, but you bored her, Stan.  And so that’s two women you’ve disappointed, and I’m going to burn you.  I think one of your Bitcoin would be fair compensation, but if not, remember that Kyle guy that you made fun of for his little white shorts and head band when he showed up to play racket ball with you, the Kyle dude that stomped your ass in the game, that Kyle is my lawyer, Stan. I’ve been talking to him, and he’s told me that I can totally burn you. He can’t say shit because he’s a lawyer, but Stan. It’s over.  Your empire and I’d love those seven little accounts to be looked at.  I got the number Stan.  I got it all, honey.  One Bitcoin will amend, but you with Sharon, in broad daylight, we are done, Stan.  At the very least, you don’t deserve that BLT.”

But then Shelly, overcome with emotion, pressed stop.  She ejected the tape and tried to snap it with her fingers, but it was too solid.  It was impossible to pinch the tape.  She stomped it several times, but it wouldn’t break.  Frustrated, she got her tweezers out to pinch the tape and was able to unwind and slice it. 

As she walked, she felt numb. Twelve blocks of numb, while behind her, a human sized cockroach with human dreadlocks, dirty cargo shorts and a greasy aloha shirt, scuttled along the sidewalk and scavenged the BLT.  

I strolled with Stan’s breakfast through the vascular system of Spokane. The city flexed her municipal muscles until I entered Riverfront Park, that urban relief. Green grass stitched around the Spokane River. A back path, and lo, across The Red Wagon. Monolithic, child-sized irony. A staircase up its plastic posterior beckoned juvenile pilgrims to ascend, sprint across its colossal bowl, and hurl themselves down the handle-slide with screams that tore at the wallpaper of heaven. Beneath it, parents loitered with caffeinated apathy, jawing yarns while their spawn frolicked around that wagon.

Down the green-grass slope from me was a pedestrian path and a bike lane. 

Slipping my pack off and sitting cross legged, I opened the to-go box, lifted the boomerang of bread and bacon, bit in, and the bacon might not have been hot, but when the salt mixed in with the tomato and mayo zing--delectable perfection! What a perfect morning, and as I watched the familial scene across the river, I thought about how the moms must be hopeful that their kids would fall asleep when they got home and not in the car on the way back.    

After my BLT, I ambled aimlessly about the city, and found a bush along the side of a corporate building with big windows which were curtained off, to stash my pack. With sparse reserves, the pack wasn’t as much of an encumbrance as it was a give away to my station as a hobo.  

Arms swinging by my side, I strolled, keeping an eye out for discarded cigarettes, boxes of leftovers, or anything that might be a comforting consumable. Lord knew I could use some new kicks.  When I came across other hobos, I asked where to get free food and if they knew of any magical dumpsters worth a rumaging, the usual questions of a man of my ilk. 

A few hours later, I’m being treated to dinner inside. The diner had mahogany paneling, but it was more Greasy Spoon than Gatsby. Our host was a thin, black man in a denim jacket named James. He had very intense energies, a phlegmy laugh, and rheumy eyes that seemed to be coated in a film as thick as Saran wrap. Other than me, Esme and Juniper had accepted the invite. James led us to a booth in the back saying it’d be cooler away from the door. 

Once seated, he waved the waitress over, which she did not appreciate as she was already on her way.  Wordlessly, she set our ice waters on the table and passed us laminated menus.  Silent as she was, James was thanking her, blessing her. The waitress only glared at him, and then us, before turning to saunter back into the kitchen.

“What are my options?” I asked. “I’m sure it’s all good, but I just want to make sure.”

James, with an ear to ear grin, his squinting eyes, said, “Anything you like, now, don’t you worry none. I got this.”

“I’ll get whatever you’re getting.”

 “Oh yes, yes, let’s see what’s good,” he nodded, looking over the menu. “A steak for me. Yes indeed.” He turned to me, and added, “I hear they’s got good ones here.” 

“Perfect,” I said and set my menu down. I raised my glass of water for a toast. “Here’s to James: May the kindness of strangers never leave room for doubt about the goodness of the universe.” 

“Alright then,” James affirmed, but the ladies were much more reluctant as we clinked our glasses. 

Afterwards, they held their menus like riot shields, peeking over the tops and exchanging silent glances—trying to figure out how they’d ended up seated across from us. James, beside me on the red vinyl bench, leaned forward with theatrical interest.

“Ladies, don’t be shy now,” James crooned, reaching across the table like a stage magician unveiling a trick. He gently tugged down Juniper’s menu with two fingers, revealing her startled eyes. Peering at her over the laminate like it was a crystal ball, he let loose a high-pitched cackle that twisted into a wheezing whistle, as if the punchline had knocked the air out of him.

Then, with equal ceremony, he lowered Esme’s shield. “How about you, kitten? Don’t hide behind the curtain. It’s on me. Let’s drop the wall—there we are.”

Juniper blinked once, lips barely moving. “Steak, I guess.” She offered the words like a hostage reading a ransom note, glancing sideways for Esme’s co-sign. Esme gave a faint nod, just enough to conjure her own reluctant “Steak.”

After he made sure that they were sure about the steaks, James gathered the menus. He exuded a contagious zeal for life, but both Juniper and Esme sensed that his generosity was more than suspicious. I sought to ameliorate their fears, help smooth things over so we could enjoy the free dinner.

“So, whaddya do for work? Construction?” I inquired.

James barked a laugh, elbowed me like we were old teammates. “I work, son!” he declared with preacherly flair. “Steak dinners all around. On me, son.” Then, eyes back on the girls, he leaned forward. “Y’all live here?”

Their laminated walls of defense had been dismantled. There was no refuge now from James' campaign of congeniality.

“Yes, Spokane,” snapped Juniper. Her eyes shot up and fixed on James. 

Esme fidgeted, pulled her finger. She looked like she might yawn. 

“Spokane, what a beautiful city,” James mused, nodding. “Your friend too? Y’all both live here?” His smile widened. 

Esme began to stir her black straw in the ice water. She didn’t want to say a word.

“We both live in Spokane,” Juniper snapped, slicing the air with syllables sharp enough to cut steak tartare. Final answer. Her tone came gift-wrapped in barbed wire, the kind of delivery that made men twice her size take inventory of their teeth. 

She’d told me earlier at the bus stop—absently, like she was handing out receipts—that she was a chemistry major. But now, sitting across from her, I began to suspect her real major might be gravitational distortion. Because the hollows beneath her cheekbones? They were crime scenes of shadowplay. Noir geometry. 

The lips? Too plush to be accidental. The kind of feline pout that should come with a warning label: “Do not operate heavy machinery while under the influence of this mouth.” The nose? Aquiline. Regal. And across its bridge, a constellation of seven freckles—little inkblots of stardust—perfectly spaced like they’d been plotted to shame the constellation of Pleadies for disorderly conduct.

But it was the eyes. Christ, the eyes. Two starbursts weaponized with intent, all molten golds and greens swirling into a chaos of blues along the outer rim. Twin galaxies that didn’t just look at James—they issued cease and desist orders. Her pupils became the black holes around which his entire swagger collapsed.

Whatever charm he thought he had melted like an ice cube on a skillet under her glare.

She didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch. She simply made it known—cosmically, chemically, carnivorously—that he was out of orbit from even the most avuncular of inquiries.  

“Alright then. Don’t mind me,” James said, both palms raised in surrender. The apology came wrapped in velvet, but the grin never left his face—an easy lean back into the booth, a chuckle low and tempered. He wasn’t looking at Juniper anymore. She'd won that standoff, so he scanned the restaurant, empty except for the heavy-set guy on the bar stool, and said that they were lucky for our business.

Esme was still stirring with her black straw, and Juniper reached to the wall and grabbed the ketchup, and asked, “Can you please be quiet while I read this?”

I laughed and Juniper shot me a look. It was accusatory: this fiasco was my fault.

I raised my brows, shrugged. A nonverbal memo: You’re autonomous, sweetheart. I’m not your handler. I’d only met her an hour ago by the bus stop. If she wanted to assign blame, she could spread it around like ketchup on steak, a silly thing to do, and an even more silly way to feel. She held both James and me in contempt, and James shifted and looked about the place, nodding and ‘uh-huhing’ after a spell.

But the silence lasted—what? Thirty seconds, maybe? That was an eternity in James-time. The man was a conversational shark—stop swimming, and he’d drown.

“You eat today, miss, um?” he asked, pivoting toward Esme. His tone was soft, coaxing, maybe even sincere if you squinted. He had to keep the ball in the air.

“I’m Juniper, and she’s Esme,” Juniper snapped as Esme stirred.

I added, “Juniper is studying chemistry.”

James laughed like I’d just dropped the punchline of the century—a full belly howl with head tilt, teeth flash, the works. Then he tried to lean his shoulder into mine, but I evaded. He pulled himself upright before falling on my lap.

“I ate a little this morning,” volunteered Esme, still not looking up from her straw driven whirlpool. Then, perhaps because of the intensity of James' attention, she picked up the butter knife. She polished off a few watermarks with her napkin and looked at her reflection. 

“A little, huh?” James probed. “I didn’t eat much myself. But I’ll tell you what,” and he launched into a story. If he had heard the aggravated sigh of Juniper, he didn’t let on. She immediately, and pointedly, gazed past us both out the bay window.

Juniper’s silent protest might as well have been applause. James barreled on, undeterred, plowing through the fog of contempt like a party clown on a unicycle with a boom mic. The story he was telling? A patchwork of half-mumbled names, unclear timelines, and the kind of inside joke that made everyone outside the punchline feel like they were being slowly hazed.

“Know what I’m sayin’?” he’d ask, like punctuation—never expecting an answer. Esme, bless her, tried once. “No clue,” she said flatly, but James treated it like a yes and kept on rolling.

Juniper had gone full escape pod—eyes locked on the window like it was a portal to a dimension without bullshit. I didn’t blame her.

When I met Juniper and Esme, they were wilting like limp orchids under the bus stop awning, waiting for the 45 to Manito Park. A Thursday drum circle was in their future—promised to erupt like pagan karaoke just before sundown. But now, in the midday melt, they just wanted the green grass in the shade.

“It’s not far,” said Esme, blotting her brow with the sleeve of a thrift-store tee. “You should just walk if you don’t have bus money. We’ve got passes.”

“Want to walk with me?”

“It’s way too hot,” she sighed. “And neither one of us has eaten.”

“We’re hoping someone brings snacks,” Juniper added, eyes squinting into the heat haze.

“Did you eat today?” Esme asked.

I was mid-story, trying to sell them on the gospel of the dumpster-dive-deity, old 3D, the god behind my BLT, when James, who’d been walking down the sidewalk in our direction, called out with something unintelligible but sharp enough to make our heads turn.

Skinny. Twitchy. Grinning. “Y’all hungry?” he blurted, fifteen feet away, arms flung open like he was welcoming us to a revival tent. “Just got paid, baby—I’m finna buy a cow tonight! Ain’t no fun if I’m eatin’ alone, right? Come feast with me! Lemme do my good deed and treat y’all to something special.” 

His voice cracked on feast as he drew it out, signifying enormity.

The girls blinked. Drenched in sunscreen and discomfort.

I shrugged. “Hey, no reason to stop a man from doing his good deed of the day.”

That phrasing—“good deed”—gave them pause. You could see the synapses firing behind their sunglasses. A twitch of the jaw here, a side-glance there. Silent conversation in a dialect only best friends speak.

A beat. Two.

Then Juniper exhaled hard through her nose and muttered, “Sure. Free meal.”

Esme nodded, just once. They were broke, same as me. And James, whatever he was, looked like he’d explode if we said no.

We stepped into the blast furnace and followed him toward the diner, hoping—foolishly—that it had air-conditioning.

“Just got paid!” James declared like it was Mardi Gras and he was the only one who’d caught the beads. “Come on now, I finna buy a whole damn cow tonight and I want y’all to feast with me! What good is money if you can’t treat some fine folk you meet on the street to dinner? Help me celebrate, y’all!”

“Just got paid! Come on, because I finna buy a cow tonight and I want y’all to feast with me. What good is money if you can’t treat some fine folk that you meet on the street to dinner? Help me celebrate.

The girls stood there, stunned and blinking. I shrugged, and told James that I couldn’t see any reason to stop him from doing his good deed of the day. Framing it like that seemed to give the ladies pause instead of flatly rejecting. They silently deliberated by shooting one another meaningful glances. After a few shrugs, hesitant, they consented to being taken out. They could always take a bus to the park after dinner. Other than a bus pass, they were flat broke, like me. 

As hungry as they were, without me there was no chance they’d have gone anywhere with that gaunt, jaunty black man in faded denim, late forties by the look of him, standing there like a question mark they weren’t ready to answer.

Their suspicion, perhaps justifiable, could also have roots in the culture—Northern Idaho wasn’t far, and the Aryan Nations had their fingerprints all over the region. But, if I had to bet, I’d say it wasn’t James’ skin that had the girls twitching, it was his overconfident moxie.

After we caved and let ourselves be treated, James led the parade across the street, riffing about how good the food would be, how good the weather was, how good life itself could taste if you took the time to count your blessings. I let the current carry me, nodding, tossing out little “amens” like coins into his collection plate. But the girls stayed untouched, dragging their feet a few paces back, immune to the attitude of gratitude James was trying to transmit.

Now, inside the diner, they were buying none of it but looked as though they couldn’t be paid enough to endure the ludicrous James. Especially Juniper, whereas Esme was more resignedly unhappy but without the fire or fury. She had her whirlpool to maintain, whereas Juniper looked at him with disdain.

Inside the restaurant, our host had only further-irked the ladies. They sat like unwilling parishioners, faces tight, as if the house couldn’t print enough money to pay them to endure James’ carnival act. Juniper’s eyes were sharp with open disdain, cutting him down with every glance, while Esme wore the weary look of someone resigned to unhappiness, her orbit too busy maintaining its private whirlpool, as she stirred her straw, to muster resentment. James grinned and blustered forward until he clapped, and told us we might have had to be there and laughed. 

James launched into another story—names, half-formed sentences, and muttered tangents stitched together with gritty chuckles. The girls were out, but Juniper’s was thick with judgment. I sat there wishing he’d just stop, but we were up in Michigan now.

Detroit, an apartment building, a guy named Clarence getting roughed up, someone else tripping but no harm done—James’ laughter cracked out like an empty lighter sputtering sparks. End of story. Another swing, another miss.

All I could manage was a wordless nod of acknowledgment.

Impervious as James liked to pretend, somewhere in the middle of his ramble he broke—eyes skittering anywhere but into Juniper’s blazing stare. She’d weaponized her silence into something heavy and ominous.  

“You eat today?” James asked, looking at me, turning sideways and away from Juniper.

“I scored a BLT and an abandoned mocha.”

“What do you mean by an abandon a mocha?” James queried, looking at me with his eyebrows raised. 

“Someone knew I’d rescue it. It was three quarters of a grande, still hot but maybe too sweet for whoever bought it. So she left it for me, a little chocolate orphan to house in my belly.” 

Juniper cracked a reluctant laugh, but Esme stayed welded to her straw, twirling water now stripped of ice. James, though, looked like he’d swallowed a roll of nickels. 

“You can’t mean outta trash?” His face pinched tight. “Lawd, that is disgraceful.” He flicked his eyes at Juniper, clucked his tongue, like I’d let down the whole congregation with my trash talk.

“It was set on top of the trash can, not in. You know, next to the ashtray?”

“That’s just disgusting, and you’re fixin’ to be sick from putting garbage in your body, son.”

In an English accent, replied, “Yes, I’m a parsimonious cad, when it comes down to it.”

“A what?”

“A cheap bastard,” I translated, clearing my throat. The accent fell flat—no one laughed.

“I’m stoned,” I told Juniper. “Thanks for the tokes.”

“Yeah, no problem,” she replied. “What’s taking the waitress so long?” 

“You can’t just go around eating out of the trash. Mercy!” cried James, still hung up on my mocha.

“But it was still hot,” I said. “Somebody set it carefully on top of the bin. I’m not bougie like you, James.”

He shook his head, and I could see it wasn’t really about the mocha—it was theater, an appeal to Juniper. He was angling for gentleman points, trying to paint himself as the one with standards to the queen of contempt across from him.

“Ladies,” James proclaimed, “would you approve of a man after watching him root through garbage? He kisses you like nothing’s wrong, and next thing you know you got mouth sores you can’t hide under no makeup, lawd help ya! Filthy is what it is.”

Esme flicked her copper eyes up from the whirlpool in her glass just long enough to throw me a spark of reproach before retreating back to her straw. Juniper, meanwhile, had abandoned us completely, staring daggers at the kitchen doors like she might burn them down.

“Where’s your dignity, son?” James pressed.

“Sorely lacking, I fear.”

“Who raised you? Yo mama never slap you for grabbing things out the trash?”

“Are you suggesting my mother didn’t raise me right, James? What are you insinuating about my rearing?” I couldn’t resist delivering it in my English accent.

James burst into a fit of raucous laughter that sent both girls blushing and shifting in their seats.

That’s when our waitress finally returned, heavy-jawed and grim, her face carved into a scowl that made James’ laughter sound obscene in the hollowed-out quiet. She all but growled as she spoke.

“Made up your minds?” Plastered on her face was a thick application of foundation which did nothing to conceal the coarseness of her bristly demeanor. 

“Yes indeed, we’s all ready,” James responded. To confirm, he looked to the girls who both nodded. “We’s all getting steaks,” he declared. “And I don’t know about them, but I want mine well done. Burn it up; that’s how I like it.”

“Medium rare and juicy,” I said.

“Medium,” requested Juniper and Esme nodded, same.

“Fries or salad?” carped the waitress. Were we somehow testing her patience? 

“I’d like a big old mess of fries with mine,” James requested.

“Me too,” I said, feeling suddenly sheepish beneath the inhospitable matron. 

The girls concurred. The way in which the waitress scribbled our orders seemed more than aggressive. It was hostile. Without inquiring if there’d be anything else, she closed her pad with a snap.

Back to his attitude of imperturbability, James was smiling, veritably glowing. Was this a kind of bigotry he’d become accustomed to putting up with? Was the waitress a bigot? Whatever the issue, her darkness hadn’t dimmed James one iota. 

As she walked away, it occurred to me, all at once, like a veil being lifted, what the waitress saw. There was James, obnoxious, knees blown out of the holes in his jeans. The white vinyl coating on the top of his hightops was peeling off to reveal a dishwater nylon which clashed with the bright white socks gathered around his ankle. Our waitress might peg him as a crackhead, not understanding that he’d just got paid, was jazzed and feeling good about himself, his success, and wanted to share. 

So hard to believe?

As for me—my mop of dreadlocks stuck out from beneath a dark green bandana Gingko had stitched together from the leg of some torn pants. However the waitress profiled me, she probably wasn’t far off. And across from us sat the two college girls, looking thoroughly unhappy to have landed here with us.

College girls? I looked closer. That didn’t necessarily mean eighteen. I’d figured they were around my age—I’d just turned twenty-two—but something in the waitress’s disapproving glare made me reconsider. For all I knew, she could’ve been a mother with daughters their age, watching this whole scene with protective contempt. Whatever the case, it was plain: in her eyes, we had no business sitting together, no business dining at the same table at all.

Until our meal arrived, James held a one sided conversation with the table. Any question for the ladies was leveled with monosyllabic mumbles. Despite Juniper’s recalcitrant eyes, if James avoided them, he never faltered in his maddeningly incomprehensible anecdotes. He refused to let silence settle, and I thought that this is what he meant by celebrating, delivering an ear beating. 

No wonder he had to take strangers out.

Deciding that the waitress was off base in whatever it was she was thinking about the table, I began to admire the tenacity of James. We were strangers, but he didn’t appear intent on seduction. If he was a predator, his methods weren’t at all correlated to anything he said. Not once did he make a personal comment about how the girls looked. He might have come off as obnoxious, but none of his cajoling could have been interpreted as perverse. Between his stories, he asked about bus routes, parks, and kept reiterating what a beautiful day it was. He reminded us over and over about what a wonderful time he was having--what fun we were all having. As he laughed, he might elbow my arm for concurrence, or drum on the table with his fingers for emphasis, but then he’d be back into stories about Pittsburgh Pyrone, and some fight, a misunderstanding, and I noticed that the thread through James’s stories was always that: A misunderstanding. One person reacts violently, but it’s always some big misunderstanding and no one gets hurt.

When the waitress returned, she uttered not a single platitude as she set our plates down so roughly that a few fries fell onto the table. 

“Really?” I asked, shaking my head as I gathered three french fries which had bounced off my plate.

“Oh my, oh my,” exclaimed James, rubbing his hands together. “Look at this. Will you just take a look at this? Thank you kindly, why thank you indeed.” 

The waitress gave a ‘harumph’ in response and before stalking away. 

“James, you da man,” I proclaimed, “but what is up with the service?”

“Oh don’t let the clouds make you forget the sunshine,” he replied with a wave of dismissal. “My pleasure, my pleasure. Now you don’t need to find your dinner--” he leaned into me and cupped a hand to the corner of his mouth, and whispered, “--in the trash.” 

Then he laughed, looked at Juniper who rolled her eyes. James slapped the table and did another finger roll. “Now let’s enjoy our blessings. These steaks won’t eat themselves. We’s got work to do.”

The steak was mediocre, but James ate like it was holy flesh. One bite and his eyes rolled back, as if he were being kissed by God on the tongue, and then he went rabid—sawing, shoveling, cheeks ballooning, noises somewhere between ravenous walrus and sex tape. Esme’s eyebrow climbed halfway up her forehead as she watched in disbelief. 

Esme shot me another accusatory glance as she sawed through the gristle of her second bite. Was she really supposed to eat across from James while he made those noises and performed… whatever that was? But after hiking the city all afternoon, tracing its beautiful streets in a near-perfect grid, the half-BLT I’d supped upon in the park had long since burned away. Juniper looked even less enthused than Esme, barely glancing at her plate as she stirred her water. Hadn’t they both said they were hungry? I was—though not at James’s fever-pitch of hunger—but maybe, four bites in when I finally nodded at Juniper.

“If you’re not gonna touch that, I’ll take it for later. I’ll ask for a to-go box.”

Esme reached for the ketchup and lined her fries with criss-crossing lines.

James let out a noise of wonder, but it came out strangled—like a hostage trying to scream for help through a sock jammed in their mouth.

Reluctant, Juniper had finally stopped stirring her water and reached for a french fry. It happened to be the moment when James had finished his meal.

“Now that hit the spot,” he declared, rubbing his stomach. “Yes it did, it surely did.” He wiped his lips with a napkin and sighed.

“Thanks,” muttered Esme, dripping with sarcasm.

“My pleasure, you know?” said James. “It makes me happy to be able to take y’all out, know what I’m sayin? Y’all remind me the world still has honest company.” James slapped his stomach twice for emphasis. “Now y’all excuse me, but I feel nature calling and need to wash up. I ain’t no filthy trash, so I likes to wash up unlike your hobo chaperone.

He laughed and elbowed me in the ribs as he slid out of the booth.

As he headed toward the bathroom in the back of the restaurant, Juniper looked at me and said, “Seriously?”

“What?” I asked. 

“Did you see him eating? That was fucking disgusting.”

“Totally,” drawled the Esme. She ate another fry. 

“Hey,” I objected, “if he’s covering the tab, then he can eat however the hell he wants—” I stopped mid-sentence. My jaw froze, fork halfway to my mouth.

“Oh my God,” Juniper hissed, following my eyes. “Was that James?” Esme turned too, both of them catching the blur outside the window.

“No,” I said quickly. “A doppelgänger. Had to be.” The words felt cheap, tin-foil. I prayed they hadn’t seen more than a denim sleeve ghosting past the glass. But they had.

“Yes it was. That was fucking James,” Esme whispered, voice sharp.

“Maybe he left his wallet in the car,” Juniper said, her tone oddly charitable, like she was defending the man she’d clearly loathed.

But the table knew. We all knew. James had exited the stage, leaving behind only the echo of his steak-fed moans and a check fattening in the shadows.

“Holy shit,” Juniper said, a thought detonating in her head. “My mom is going to kill me.”

“Your mom?” I blinked, but she’d already turned to Esme.

They faced each other and began whispering, frantic and fast, their words collapsing into one long rope of sound with no spaces, their voices uncanny—two halves of the same brain trying to comfort itself with noise. 

My own mind reeling, I soundlessly breathed fuck, fuck, fuck into restaurant air.

James had hustled us. As I clocked what had happened, I realized half of this place was a restaurant, and the other half was a bar. It was partitioned down the middle by a kitchen with a bathroom in the back, and James had simply gone from the bathroom through the bar and out the front door.

“Damn, now I need to pee,” I said, and slid across the booth.

“Don’t you dare leave us here!” Esme snapped, catching my wrist like a handcuff.

“Well, I’m not peeing under the table,” I shot back, shaking free. “I’ll be right back.”

“What? No, wait!” Juniper’s voice cracked, but I didn’t wait.

No plan, no strategy—I just followed the path James had vanished down. Through the bar, twenty feet from the front door, the bartender barked, “Hey, no one underage!”

“I’m twenty-two,” I let him know smoothly, casual as I could.

“Not you. Them.” He pointed.

I glanced over my shoulder. The girls were right behind me, trailing close, little chicks shadowing a mama hen. My heart plummeted straight through the floorboards. I shrugged, trying to wear indifference like a disguise—never seen these girls in my life, pal.

But before I could touch the door, a thin man in a white apron and hat stepped in front of me.

“Where do you think you’re going?” barked the cook.

“I forgot my wallet in the car,” I replied. Keeping momentum, I tried to sidestep him, but he grabbed my sleeve before I could reach the door and swung me around. As if on the edges of a merry-go-round, a centrifugal force was pulling us apart, but he had a good grip. Without any conscious volition, I performed a wrist lock I’d learned in an Aikido class at the YMCA. And miracle of miracles, it actually worked. The poor bastard went sprawling headfirst into a line of barstools, collapsing two in a clattering heap.

In the scramble, Juniper and Esme slipped out the front door like ghosts. I turned to bolt after them, but a heavy hand clamped my shoulder. Before I could blink, my legs were swept out and I was flat on the sticky floor, a mountain of a man materializing out of nowhere. He straddled me and dropped a sledgehammer fist onto my forehead. My skull rang, but the thought that crossed my mind was almost comic: I bet that hurt his hand worse than my head.

“You stay down!” he thundered.

Behind him, the thin cook I’d Seagal’d into the furniture rose up slow, face twisted with vengeance. He jabbed a finger in my direction and snarled, “I told Doris there was no way in hell you were gonna pay for them steaks. Should’ve kicked you out the second you walked in. I told her not to serve your table without seeing the cash first.”

The big guy on top of me got up with a satisfied smirk. 

“It’s all been a big misunderstanding,” I protested. “James, the black dude we were with, said he’d pay for dinner. He said he’d be back, but I gotta get him.” 

“Well, that just means you ain’t too bright,” concluded the cook. “You coulda washed dishes, or did something to do right by us, but now, we gotta go and get the law involved.”

“Dishes? For a tab of eighty dollars? How long would I be washing dishes?”

“Don’t get smart with me,” the cook warned.

“Just saying,” I murmured, “seems like a lot of dishes.”

The man who had pulled me to the floor was well over six feet. 

“Larry, do you want me to hold him down while you call the cops?” 

“No Jim, but if you stand by the door, maybe you can beat his ass if he makes a break for it.” 

Jim posted up like a sentry. Wearing a red and black flannel shirt, he looked more like a lumberjack than a guard, or maybe it was just his black beard that reminded me of Paul Bunyan. Something in his eyes told me he wished a motherfucker would. I barely suppressed the urge to wink at him, but the odds of getting a boot to the face--my oh my what a predicament!

I crossed my arms behind my head.. 

Ten minutes later, the door swung open, and in lumbered an officer, a man carved out of contradictions. He didn’t enter so much as arrive, pausing just to take off his aviator sunglasses and spot me and assess—eyes that made me feel like a rotten sandwich left too long in the Arizona sun. His face twisted, not in anger, not in pity, but in sheer gastric revolt, as if the sight of me had fermented something unspeakable in his gut.

The man had managed a feat of evolutionary betrayal: skin so pale it could’ve been peeled from a birch tree, untouched by daylight, as though he carried an exclusive treaty with the sun to remain unscorched. His jawline, a jagged cliff face, guaranteed that sagging jowls would never drape his profile—death would have to get there first. And yet, despite this gladiator’s jaw, he had the physique of a linebacker forced into early retirement and sentenced to life with a deep fryer. He stood before me like a cholesterol cautionary tale, a couple degrees north of obese, but charged to keep the peace, meaning deal with me.

“Do you want to press assault charges?” the cop asked, taking out his pad.

“No,” Larry sighed.

“You sure?”

The cook noticed my expression of alarm. I couldn’t believe the cop would bait him like that right in front of me.

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Larry looked away from me and explained, “He didn’t hit me; he just tripped me up, was all.”

“If you say so,” the cop said in a tone that implied he could change his mind at any time.

“Well good,” I said, emboldened for no good reason, “I’m the only one who got hit. Not that you’re asking me, but I’m not pressing assault charges either, but thanks so very much for asking me, officer.”

“Shut your mouth,” Larry said. 

“Alright,” I said, and looked at the scruffy little fella with empathy. Even from down here, I could see how tossing him into the barstools was not something to be proud of. “And just so you know, I’m sorry about tripping you. To think, this could have all come down to me washing dishes, but I want you to know that I apologize.”

Larry heaved a sigh and shook his head, and said, “I told Dorris y’all was trouble.”

“And you were right as sunshine is bright,” I said to Larry, shrugged, and then I indicated the cop with a nod. “If Dorris was here, I’d tell her myself.”  I could see it.  I’d won him over with my allegiance against Dorris. 

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Went after them girls, but she’ll be back.”

“I’ll tell her myself; I’ll say ‘Dorris, Larry was right about us, and you were wrong if you didn’t listen to him. He’s probably right about most things around here, if you’d just listen.”

Larry had a mesmerized look on his face, his lip curling into a dreamy smile.

“You done?” the cop asked. 

“I’ll shut up now.” 

I felt a release of tension having cleared the air between myself and Larry. The cop wasn’t playing fair. He straight-up told Larry that if I threw him, it was battery, even attempted murder.

My heart was pounding, but Larry looked at me and told the cop that he just got a little tripped up, was all.

The cop led Larry to the end of the bar and out of earshot, as he spoke softly. As Larry shook his head, I noticed that the cop was tapping on the pad, as if demanding.

“Stay strong, buddy,” I mentalized to Larry.

Laying there on the floor, I couldn’t account for my contentment. I felt that I could lay there forever without any complaints as if on a soft cloud and not a gritty board. Must be the chemicals, the fight or flight, the rush of a fight, and then this cop who wants me locked up, yikes!

“Alright then,” adjourned the cop. Larry nodded and walked behind the bar. The cop came over to me and asked, “Are you gonna try and run again?”

“No point. Not with big Jim there to sack me,” I said, nodding to Jim.

It seemed he appreciated the compliment as he rolled his shoulders back. 

“Do you want to get up and explain yourself?”

“No, I’m good down here,” I said, “and laying down, I’m less of a threat.”

“Don’t be a smart Aleck,” recommended Larry. He was polishing a shot glass behind the bar.

“Let me handle this,” the cop insisted. 

Seeing something change in the officer’s eye, I got to my feet and took a seat at the nearest table. This big boy tottered before sitting across from me, and let me know, “All this could have been avoided if you would have been honest.”

“Honest, huh? I’m guessing it’s time for you to read me my rights and whatnot.”

“Yes it is. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, can, and will be held against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney…” 

I had seen enough movies to have memorized my Moranda rights and mouthed them along with the officer.

When he finished, I chuckled. 

“Something funny?”

I shrugged. “Mornada was a girl that moaned, all disabled and disfigured. She used to scare me when I was four, and I’d scream and hide behind my mom when her mom came up with her in that wheelchair.”

“How is this relevant to anything?”

“Moranda rights, I dunno.”

The cop drilled me with eyes like two steel ball bearings greased in contempt.

“So, what’s your name?” His gray eyes bored into mine, his pen hovering over his pad.

I gave him the blank face of a department store mannequin. Seconds bled out like wounded flies.

He snapped: “What? You suddenly lose the ability to speak?”

“You said I had the right to remain silent. If I tell you my name, won’t you use it against me? Isn’t the Fifth Amendment my golden ticket to lockjaw until a lawyer parachutes in?”

“Not when you’re under arrest. You need to provide a name.”

“Right to remain silent. I totally have it, so I’m invoking it.”

His eyes—bullet-gray, cold as a morgue drawer—flashed a warning: legal acrobatics be damned. I thought my position might be correct, but it was quite obvious that he wouldn’t be tolerating anything but compliance. 

“You’re not going to tell me your name.” His voice dropped into the gravel pit. 

“Well,” I said brightly, “what good is a right to remain silent if Moranda said I can have it and you say I can’t?”

“Can you believe that little shit?” Larry asked his lumberjack friend. 

Jim shook his head.

“This doesn’t need to go easy,” cautioned the cop. “That’s up to you.”

“Alright,” I chirped. “Do you really want to know who I am?”

“Yes, that is what I’m asking.”

I dropped my voice to a whisper, leaned into the cinematic hush, scanning Larry, scanning Jim, scanning the trembling air. I nodded slowly, theatrically.

“Please cut the bullshit,” the cop hissed.

I let the silence stretch until the seconds formed a noose. Then I said it:
“I am Jesus Christ.

The whole room froze. Even the buzzing fluorescent lights stopped to consider the blasphemy. Time itself flopped onto a cross and nailed its wrists to pause. I held my eyebrows aloft like two begging seagulls, lips trembling with messianic sincerity, and dropped the hammer:

“I’m back.”

That did it. The cop bolted up and out of his seat. An instant later he had jerked my right arm behind my back to slam me onto the table. Unresisting, I this former line backer’s rag doll.

“Not resisting!” I shouted.

The man had the density of a dying star—two-forty, maybe two-fifty if you counted the breakfast burrito—and every ounce was doing origami with my shoulder blade. The table top formica was cool, I noted, and cleaner than the floor. It smelled of bleach. Steel cuffs ratcheted around my wrists, clicking several more times than was necessary. 

“Alright you little prick,” the cop hissed through clenched teeth. “I was going to let you off with a ticket, but now you’re going downtown.”

“Downtown? Aren’t we downtown now?”

“Don’t you know when to shut up?” Jim barked. No longer needed by the door, he took a seat on a bar stool

My neck was craned, cheek squashed, but I was looking directly at him. “I wasn’t gonna say shit,” I smiled. “But no one liked me using my right to remain silent. Nothing I do seems to make you guys--ouch!”

But the pain only stoked something unholy in me. Maniacal giddiness flooded my bloodstream, a cocktail of adrenaline and divine absurdity. I hacked out a laugh that turned into a cough, a cough that turned into the soundtrack of my heresy.

This deranged joy enraged him further. He twisted my arm higher, higher, until my vertebrae sang in Morse code. 

Although my shoulder tweaked, a crowbar prying my arm from its socket, the pain stoked something feral in me.  Maniacal giddiness flooded my bloodstream, a cocktail of adrenaline and absurdity and I hacked a laugh.  

“Forgive them father, for they know not what they do!” I chortled. The pain was searing enough to make my eyes leak.

“You just don’t know when to quit, do you?” the cop snarled. With tears stinging my eyes, my shoulder sang its requiem. And then, with cuffed wrists grinding bone against bone, I was marched out the door like a turkey with a dislocated wing.

With the windows up in the back of the police cruiser, I felt a kinship with all the dogs left baking in Walmart parking lots across the country. 

The sun was a merciless interrogator, searing through glass and frying my skull until beads of sweat erupted like liquid pimples on my forehead. They tickled and itched, streaming down my temples and nose like mischievous insects. I couldn’t scratch. My hands were fixed in steel bracelets, so I mashed my face against the glass where it itched.

My right shoulder was like a blown speaker and pulsing in time with my heart, but I had been stretching it on the roadside.

But oh, I needed the delusion. That was the joke, the Zen punchline. The paradox is that you accept pain and pleasure with equal gratitude, two wings of the same bird shitting on your head as it flaps toward some neutral river delta where every drop rushes out to meet the sea. Balance, equilibrium, the whole cosmic burrito. And if you can’t laugh while your shoulder detonates, what’s the point?

 The delusion, which I had embraced as truth, was getting me chucked in the can, but I needed it. The paradox of Zen is that everything must balance out, the perceived negatives accepted with equal gratitude as the positives to eventuate in a neutral balance like a river flowing to a delta where the waves rush forward at the same rate the river rushes out.

The path is always smooth when the gods are smiling and the serotonin is flowing, but I needed to kick the tires on my existential hypothesis. No more Sunday strolls—I wanted to belly-flop straight into the sewage lagoon of fucksville. Trip over a psychedelic mushroom, face-first into the cow pie, a holy hell, this backseat was a hell hole.

The Big Bang, that blind drunk uncle of creation, couldn’t screw up its own explosion. Every black hole, every road rash, every hangnail—all just part of the unraveling. So why not tune myself to entropy, become a feedback loop in the cosmic static? Lean in and fully accept my lot, but fuck me sideways—it was hot!

The second the cop slammed that car door, the cruiser became a microwave, and I was the burrito. He wandered back into the restaurant, probably to finish his coleslaw, leaving me to marinate in the backseat oven. My punishment wasn’t just for the dine-and-dash—no, this was holy retribution. I’d dropped the Lord’s name in vain, cracked wise about the Lamb of God, and now I was being slow-roasted like one. The officer, I imagined, was a deacon of some crankshaft church where hellfire was literal and sarcasm was a capital crime.

After about half hour of broiling in the back seat, the cop walked out of the restaurant, pausing at the door for goodbyes to Larry and Jim, lingering purposefully. 

“You know we’re going to find out who you are,” he said as he got in the car. “Oh, are you hot back there?” 

My shirt was drenched. The air from the front didn’t reach me through the little spherical

holes in the safety glass.  I guessed that this cop knew exactly my circumstance. The hot box was maybe his go-to move to punish the riff raff like me that is scooped off the street.

“Love a good sweat,” I replied. “Heat shock proteins help boost norepinephrine, so thanks.”

A bitter kind of indignance was all over his face when he glanced at me in the rearview mirror. He gave me a look that conveyed that he was not to be fucked with, and then he asked, “You think this is all a joke?”

“No, certainly not, officer. This is serious stuff. I’m a disgrace to society and will pay for my crime.”

“Weeks until your court date, and you better bet you’re ass that I’ll be there to see if they can extend your stay.”

“But officer, is it wrong to feel excited? I love prison movies and have always wondered what it’d be like to be on the inside. Is dropping the soap a thing?”

He shook his head, “They’re gonna eat you up.”

Without any wallet or ID, I knew they’d have their work cut out at the station. 

I pressed my forehead to the glass, scanning the sidewalks, praying for a glimpse of James, that sly bastard who’d Houdini’d out of the diner. Of course, even if I spotted him, the cop wasn’t about to peel out and give chase. And I had nothing against James. He’d played me fair and square in the eternal casino of hustlers versus suckers.

When we arrived, the 85 degree air felt cool and refreshing as the back door was opened at the station. I was led through the drab building and locked in a small holding cell. It was no bigger than a broom closet, but brightly lit, with white walls and a thick wooden bench. All was quiet, except for some disturbing muffled noises coming through the wall. A moaning, something close to a wail. It made me think that a junkie was in need of a fix. 

I tried to picture the emaciated junky, his dirty fingernails and hair with leaves and pigeon feathers. His bleak eyes now panic stricken as he misses his daily dose of that sweet flowery juice he shoots in his vein. I decided to help him out and amuse myself by drumming on the bench and found that with open palmed slaps I could produce a crisp snare crack. With a closed fist, the bench resounded with a rumbling boom of rich bass. Boom boom smack. My, oh my--the acoustics in the room were phenomenal! So, already things were looking up although the moaning junkie might have disagreed. Even if I couldn’t catch the drum circle in Manito Park, I could groove in my little box with a bassy bench all night. 

Lost in my rhythm, I hadn’t noticed the face in the window. How long had the cop been watching? Carrying on with my beat, I listened to the clinking keys as he unlocked the door. 

“Alright Heysoos,” said the new officer. Using the Spanish pronunciation, he had swapped the ‘J’ for an ‘H’ sound. 

“It’s Jesus,” I corrected.

His flat-eyed gaze didn’t change. Although not as big as the line-backer, who’d wrenched my arm out of its socket, he was a large man. His uniform was taut as it stretched over his belly, and it appeared a size too small, fit like a leotard. I imagined two snaps at the tail end of his shirt fastening around his crotch to keep it tucked and tight like that. 

He retrieved a pair of blue latex gloves and slid them over his hotdog fingers. 

“Yikes,” I said. “I suppose there’s no way to stop what’s coming next.” 

His eyebrow raised for a moment, and then he asked, “Do you have any needles, knives or sharp objects on your person?”

“No,” I said, a tad nervously, eyeing his hands. They sure didn’t look like kid gloves.

“You sure? Because if I prick myself, it’ll be your ass,” he warned. He wasn’t nearly as big as my arresting officer, but his thick fingers made me apprehensive. Then it dawned on me that what he had said might have been an idiom, not literal. 

“Wait,” I said, with a trace of hope, and asked for procedural clarification. “Are you telling me that it won’t be my ass if there aren’t any sharp objects in my pocket?” 

“What?”

“Oh, thank God,” I exhaled. “For a second there, I thought you were going to spelunk where the photons don’t tread. You know—like that scene at the end of Wayne’s World?”

He shifted, as if my words had tugged something tender. “Be straight with me,” he said. “You don’t have anything that’s going to poke me, right? If you do, now’s the time to confess.”

“No needles, knives, tacks, or nails,” I said. “No rabbits hiding where the light refuses to go, either.”

He looked uneasy at the mention of any subterranean search. Whatever might or might not be stored in shadow wasn’t his problem. The pat-down was tolerable until he pulled a folded paper from my pocket—a list of phone numbers I’d forgotten about. A breadcrumb trail.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Just some of my apostles,” I shrugged. “Many are called, but only a few answer the damn phone.”

He muttered something about idiots and began rifling through my dreadlocks.

When he left with the list, I drummed on the bench. The acoustic reverberation was so sublime that I thought I wouldn’t mind spending a week or two in the small room. If not for the smell of disinfectant, I could’ve stayed a week just to chase rhythm. Between beats, I heard the man next door moaning through his wall—one long, miserable droning note. I matched his pitch in a free flow and called it ugh minor.

After he left the room with my list, I resumed drumming on the bench. Free flowing, I tried to come up with rhymes. The acoustic reverberation was so sublime that I thought I wouldn’t mind spending a week or two in the small room. Every time I stopped, I could hear the groans of the man in the next room. His monotone complaint was like a drone, so I rapped in the same key as him and spit some bars in ugh minor. 

Time loped along at a mule’s pace until a soft tapping came from the window.

“Hey,” said a woman’s voice, syrupy through the glass. “I like your music.”

She had a regulation ponytail and predatory green eyes framed by brows so precise they might’ve been rendered by an architect. Her face was all right angles—Juniper’s kind of geometry.

“Thanks,” I said, suspicious of flattery from behind reinforced glass.

“Tell you what,” she purred. “You want to get out of here?”

“Um, maybe later,” I said, feigning a yawn.

“Well,” she said and paused, “we’re willing to let you go and give you a hundred bucks if you tell us your real name. How’s that sound?” She held up a hundred dollar bill, and pressed it to the glass.

“That’s repulsive,” I said, “Please keep it in your pants.”

She kept it there, smiling over the green rectangle. “Come on now. Your name’s not Heysoos. You’re not fooling anyone.”
She pronounced it with an H—Hay-soos—the way Hotdog Fingers had.

“It’s Jesus,” I corrected. “You know, like ‘geez’ with an ‘us.’ Do I look Mexican? You’ve got the complexion for confusion, not me.”

“You’re funny,” she said, tilting her head in what I assume was a rehearsal for empathy. Her flirtation had all the grace of a tax audit. Her eyes had the shine of cardboard.

“I’m not as funny as you, doll face.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, batting her eyelashes like a dying moth.

“I’ll bet you that hundred bucks you were never going to give me that hundred bucks.” I raised an eyebrow, inviting her to level with me.

“You don’t trust me?” she said, pretending to be wounded.
I couldn’t believe Spokane PD had sunk to such desperate theater.

“Let me get this straight,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “You’re offering freedom and cash in exchange for a name?”

“I said I would.”

“Okay then. Burn it. Light the bill on fire, and I’ll tell you anything you want.”

Her brows dipped like drawbridges. “It’s a federal offense to deface legal tender.”

“But you and me—we transcend all that.” I winked. “Come on, make it our little secret.”

“No,” she said slowly, “but I’ll give it to you. After that, it’s your problem what happens to it. Wouldn’t you rather buy something nice?”

“I promise”—I made air quotes—“to tell you the name on my birth certificate. Just burn that corpse of currency. The green rag of debt, the emblem of empire. A hundred tiny wars in one rectangle of ink. You think I’m joking, but that paper’s got blood baked into its fibers—the mother in Vietnam holding her bullet-riddled baby, collateral—”

“Are you done?”

“Not quite. Because that’s the economy of ghosts, sweetheart. So go ahead, cremate your dollar. Then I’ll sing. I’ll give you my mother’s maiden name, and maybe we’ll trade a little tit for tat.”

Her mouth twitched. A tiny fracture in the mask before it reset. “Come on,” she said. “You can tell me your name.”

Something in her tone had shifted—suddenly intimate, conspiratorial. That fake friendliness made me laugh. The sheer lack of finesse.

“Oh, you’re just precious,” I said.

“Thank you,” she replied, undeterred. “So, do you want out? You can burn this later. We’ll let you walk with it. I won’t tell.”

Could she have pulled this trick off before? I pictured a row of cops outside, listening, making gestures like sports commentators.

So I gave them a show. I dropped my voice into a suave, mock-Latino accent. “Listen, chica. First things first. Burn that for Heysoos. Come now, mi amor.”

For a second, her mask slipped. The beast blinked through. She squinted, shook her head, and walked away.

Yikes.

Alone again, I shivered off the residue of her stare. Inside or out, that woman was venom. So I went back to drumming—lyrics all about the bribery, the deceit—until my arresting officer reappeared in the window.

“Alright, Heysoos,” he announced, after opening the door. “We called your dad, and he told us your name. Your other friends weren’t as forthcoming, but your dad was straight with us.” He sounded triumphant, but also condescending and smug.

“Go fish,” I grunted, noncommittally. It was a bummer, and I was a bit disappointed in my old man. I had penciled him in as GB53 on my list, but he must have cleared that up before snitching. 

“You really let him down,” the cop gloated.

“Two way street and we both think that of one another,” I said. I pictured him on the phone at his counter, shaking his head in dismay, confirming my identity.

“So he’s a scraggly-looking white guy that said he was Jesus Christ? Let me guess, around 5’8” and doesn’t have a penny to his name?” 

And then he probably just gave it to them, unloyal as fuck, a total Judas kiss-on-the-cheek move. The thought of dad bailing me out made me smirk. That wouldn’t happen, even if hell froze over with pigs flying above. How would I learn my lesson? You can’t run from the consequences you incur. But now that I was on my way to jail, I would settle for nothing less than the full tour. God forbid that I be bailed out by anyone. How would the system test my mettle? Maybe I could get a story out of it. 

As the officer wrapped the handcuffs back around my wrists, I asked his name.

“Sergeant Mitchell.” 

 “Well, Sergeant Mitchell, do you need to cut off my circulation? Does that tight fit do something for you, seeing my hands turn purple?” 

“They’ll be off soon enough. Too soon, if you ask me.” 

He led me out of the cell, and I looked in the next room to behold a horrific figure. The man who had been moaning was silent now. Through the window, I caught sight of an emaciated wreck. He was rocking back and forth, skin and bones. With gnarled hands, all black with grime, he had bits of debris lodged in his unkempt hair. My imagination had conjured about that, but he was even more grimey than what I’d pictured.

“Where’d the zombie come from?”

Mitchell didn’t answer or say anything more until we stopped by a water cooler. 

“We’ll see who’s making jokes after a couple weeks,” he goaded. He filled a paper cup and tilted it for me to drink. 

“Thanks, bro.”

His chin tilted upward. “I’m not your bro.”

“What do I have? Like a month?”

“You’ll be sentenced in a couple weeks,” he said.

“A few weeks,” I considered. “Could be a lot worse.”

“I agree, and I’ll make sure to let the judge know what kind of shit you pulled. Don’t think I won’t show up for court if you try to claim you were wrongly accused.”

Mitchelle was definitely not my bro, and he was making that abundantly clear.

“Oh I’m guilty,” I conceded. 

It was no accident that the cuffs were biting into my wrists. Both of my hands were numb by the time we arrived at the processing center of the station. I was passed off to an older officer with a sizable paunch hanging over his belt. Sporting a bushy white mustache, I saw a walrus in a cop outfit. He had large drooping eyes, a bulbous nose, and seemed indifferent about having to deal with me. After work, I imagined him disrobing and jumping into a giant water tank to float and dream of mermaids.

As he took my prints, I looked around at the small cubicles partitioned by gray dividers. There were a handful of officers milling about under the low ceiling. The metal desks and filing cabinets looked cheap and the word ‘industrial’ came to mind. The lights cast a dismal blue hue from the ceiling which was marked up with rusty islands of water damage. The entire place looked abysmal until I noticed the cop who had tried to bribe me with the hundred. Her attempt at seduction may have been laughable, but in contrast with the rest of the place, she was worthy of a protracted glance. She was a dime on any scale of relativity, but in here, the contrast made her a twelve. She was gorgeous. It was no wonder they had sent her to at least flex on me. She glanced over with a haughty look. It quickly changed when I mouthed the words, ‘I love you.’ But I thought I detected a smile at the end of her eye roll.

For my mugshot, I stuck out my bottom lip, like a clown, but the photographer said no games, straight face, or there will be consequences. I thought of Hotdog Fingers. And so I tried to get my eyes to glimmer for the next flash, but I wound up looking like a psycho, and laughed when the photographer showed it to me and said the judges were going to take pleasure in sentencing street scum like me. 

And then I was passed off.

Not once did the next cop, who had dark circles under his bleak eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks, look at me. His jelly-like gaze would drift around the room coming to rest on different computer monitors. He first brought me to a desk where he was handed a clipboard with forms for me to sign.

I thought about not signing them, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do something that would make this poor guy’s day any worse. His breathing was hoarse, and his face was bluish and seemed to grow longer, as if he were lowering his jaw with his lips closed. After passing me off to another officer, he listlessly turned. I thought about his job, his insomnia, and who he had to deal with all day. I might be going to jail, but he’d be dealing with assholes like me all day. How many would put up resistance or crack stupid jokes as he rolled their fingers in the ink? All day, and whatever they’re paying him, it wasn’t enough. 

My next attendant officer had some sympathy when he noticed my bruised wrists. He reattached the cuffs like loose fitting bangles. He didn’t appear much older than me, was in shape, and I guessed him to be half white and half something else like Mayan. Nice cheekbones--maybe the Andes? He told me that he would report what they’d done to my wrist.

“Thanks, bro,” I said and he nodded. 

“So, you’re Jesus?” he asked

“At least you said it right,” I shrugged. He had pronounced ‘Jesus’ in the gringo dialect, geez us. 

“Was it worth it?”

“What?” 

“Joe told me that he wouldn’t have brought you in if you wouldn’t have been an asshole.” 

“All I know is that I’m going to jail for being Jesus.”

“So this is you doing you? You wanted to get locked up and eat green bologna for a couple weeks?”

“Weeks?”

“Yeah, the courts are all backlogged.”

***

Four days later, sitting with my hands cuffed in front of me on a bench in the foyer of the Spokane City Jail, I was waiting for the next phase of retribution. After telling my story to Chris, I wondered what lay in store for me next. 

As several men in shackles filed out the door, my stomach was a bubble of gas, and I wasn’t sure the lady at the counter could be relied on, should I need to be rushed to the bathroom. Those eggs and sandwiches were having a disagreement inside me. Then I was beckoned by a surly guard. Instead of being led out, I was brought back through the green bars and into the elevator. I thought they might be taking me back to my cell with Chris, but the guard pushed a button on the bottom row. We were going all the way up.

The hall of the penthouse floor was identical to the one on the fourth, except for the yellow paint. The cells were brighter and much more vibrant than the seasick green. I was ushered all the way down the hall to the furthest cell on the left southwest corner of the building. 

There were staccato clicks as the cuffs were removed, and then I was alone. Or so I presumed. Even after the guards had gone, I hadn’t noticed him in the room. I walked to the window, and just as I tried to see if there was a slit in the murky glass that I could peer through, my new roommate announced himself from behind me.

“Hello.”

“Whoa!” I bleated, spinning around. He was sitting cross legged, smiling down at me from the top bunk. Even sitting, I could tell that he was tall and lanky. He had the biggest beard I’d seen since leaving Hawaii; I wondered if he was a yogi, although he was obviously not from the far east. His beard was yellow, bushy, and completely concealed his mouth. Although a shadow obscured the rest of his face, I saw that his eyes were alight with something agreeably amused by the way I’d jumped. 

“Oh, my bad.”.

 “No, I needed that,” I replied. “Hard to get any adrenalin going in this place.”

“I’m Sven.”

“Jasper or Jesus, whichever you prefer.”

Sven’s humor faltered, and then he said, “Alright, Jasper. What brings you to this lovely establishment?”

As I explained the way I’d been an easy mark for James, he nodded, appearing thoughtful. He seemed to find my imagery of James amusing, but when I came to the part where I told the cop I was Jesus, Sven looked away and frowned.

“What, too much?” 

“I believe in God, Jasper,” he said with a note of conviction. There’s a certain tone that true believers use when they declare their faith, an unmatched conviction. Would die for Him who died for us, kind of vibe.

“So do I,” I said. “I believe in God.”

“Well I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

“Me too.”

“No you don’t.” There was a firmness in the way he said it. His voice wasn’t biting or particularly hard, but it was reprimanding. Waiting for me to relinquish my claim on his faith, he quite obviously wanted to hear that I was joking. 

“Listen, I can tell that I’ve already offended you, so sorry.”

“What you said is blasphemy. Any true Christain would know that.”

After looking at him, his confidence in his assertion, I only frowned. Being as this was America, I wanted to tell Sven that I had a right to be Jesus, as a matter of free speech, or at least by way of religious freedom. The first amendment, and I was about to say something to that end, when it dawned on me where I was. Freedom was not mine to enjoy. For all I knew, Sven could be psychotic. He didn’t sound like a psycho. Not yet, but then again, I’d been wrong about people’s characters enough to know I couldn’t be trusted. Who was hiding under the beard? 

Sven looked about twice my size, and we were locked in here. Remembering Chris’s nightmare experience with the Nazi cellmate, I decided against declaring my rights. There was no good that could come of yanking a mental wedgie between our paradigms, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to be loose-lipped in these tight quarters. But at the same time, it would be good to lay the foundation for a discussion. It seemed that we’d dispensed with the pleasantries and hit an insurmountable wall, prematurely. So, I tried to use a measured tone and diffuse the situation.

“Sven, let’s acknowledge our varying perspectives,” I said. “You and me. Well, we might have different takes on life. So let’s get that out of the way, and move on from there. Agreed?”

“Just don’t tell me that you’re a Christian. You know, even better, let’s just drop it.”

“Alright, squashed,” I agreed, and then unsquashed it by adding, “I’m not trying to convince you I’m Jesus. But, if I think that I’m Jesus, and happen to understand Christianity differently than you, please try not to take it personally, as an affront, even if you feel it to be blasphemy."

“St. Paul explained that no one should joke about God like that.”

“You mean Moses?” I offered. “I’ve read the New Testament several times, but it was Moses who said not to take the Lord’s name in vain. That was before Paul.”

“But you believe Jesus is the Son of God, who is part of God, if you’re Christian like you say you are.”

“Sure.”

“Then you’d know that joking about being Jesus is blasphemy. If you have Jedi mind tricks, cool, but don’t say you’re Jesus. That shits not funny. Not to me.”

“Hey, I’ll do you one better. I’ll avoid making that mouth noise. I won’t even say the name J-E-S-U-S. I’ll say Jacob, and we’ll both know who I’m talking about.” 

Sven squinted, and said, “Just know that I don’t appreciate hearing the name of the lord in vain.”

“In vain?” I said, and then decided not pursue this divergence. This was a negotiation. “Okay, I won’t use the name in vain or any other way. Like I said, I’ll say Jacob. Cool beans?”

“Hmmm,” Sven grunted.

“Or not? Were you raised in a church, or did you have a coming to Jacob moment on your own as an adult?”

“It’s getting late,” Sven said.

“Look, I just got here, and I just want you to know where the lines are for you. Some people have lines, and while I don’t, I can dial it back. Hopefully.”

“No, I mean, you’re right. I won’t talk about anything that I don’t want to, but look, man.” Sven uncrossed his legs and flopped his ankles over the side of the bunk. He hopped down, a tower of a man, on the north side of the six and a half mark.

“Jasper, let’s have a redo. I’m Sven; it’s nice to meet you.”

As we shook hands, his long fingers reminded me of an alien, encircling my little badger paws. His eyes were the same color as his hair and beard, like yellow bales of hay. There was still a trace of mistrust.

“Sven the Christian, I’m Jasper. I’ll bet you have an awesome story when it comes to he who shall not be named.” His denim overalls said hillbilly, but the vintage plaid shirt underneath made me think he was more of a hipster. Perhaps he was a couple years older than me, but with all the hair on his face, I couldn’t be sure.

“Long story, but the short of it is, yes, I’m Christian.” 

“Okay,” I considered. “And the long of it?”

“Jasper, I don’t know if I want to get into that. My other cellmate talked non stop about banging hookers until I was nauseated. I was kind of enjoying a moment of peace, you know?”

“I get it. Actually, I think I saw your cellmate ushered out the front door five minutes ago. Was he part of that chain gang? A bunch of guys, all shackled up together, were marched out downstairs.”

“Yeah. Maybe, but I know he’s on his way to Geiger.”

“Geiger?”

“The minimal correctional facility.”

“Suppose it’s sometimes best to not over-correct us criminals,” I nodded. 

I didn’t know anything about Spokane’s penal system, but by its name, I imagined Geiger to be much grimier than this waxy and polished county jailhouse. I pictured an overcrowded, sticky floored and festering place with big holding cells overstuffed with people awaiting trial. A place that smelled of sweat and shit and bleach. Geiger: the name exuded radiation, poison, cancer.

“Well, you and I have the penthouse of this place,” I said. “Your former bunky might have talked your ear off, and I totally understand if you want me to shut up.” 

“You can’t see out,” Sven explained when I turned to try and look through the glass.

“That’s a bummer,” I said. “The room on the fourth floor had a little slot we could see through.”

“You were on the fourth floor?”

“Yeah, this will be my fourth night in the fortress.”

“Oh. Did you have an issue with your cellmate?”

“We argued, but no. Nothing but verbal duels. He was a bit of a pessimist, but I suppose he had reason to be.”

“Nothing physical?” 

“No, no fighting or… anything,” I shrugged. “You could say that I was coerced into looking away when Chris wanted a sock bath.”

“A sock bath?”

“Yeah, a sock rub-down with sink water.”

“What do you mean he coerced you into looking away?”

“Hmmm, I guess that didn’t come out right. I was trying to be funny, but I guess Chris didn’t coerce me. He was kind of insistent that I face the wall, but anyways.”

Sven looked at me curiously. 

“So anyways, I have no clue why they moved me up here. I have a couple of weeks left. I think. I haven’t seen anything in writing. No one tells me anything, and I don’t ask questions. I’m just on tour.” 

“Yeah, they don’t let you know what’s going on in here. This place is the devil’s asshole.”

“What? No. I’m not complaining--well not yet. Those neon eggs are still doing something funky in my stomach, but the walk over settled it down a bit.”

“You too? I haven’t felt right since breakfast. I thought it might have been the sandwich the night before, but those eggs were suspect,” Sven concurred. 

“They’re probably drugging us. I wouldn’t be surprised if they slipped in some experimental medication that isn’t quite approved by the FDA. Run some trials, you know? Like, why not experiment on us jailbirds? We’re in their cage, and they probably don’t want us singing.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Maybe antipsychotic medication? They have us on film, so they can review the footage later. Maybe we’re test-monkeys of the state.” 

I waved.

“Yeah, I know about the cameras,” said Sven, “but I don’t know about your antipsychotic medication conspiracy theory. I was thinking more like some fake cheese, something the FDA was on the fence about passing, and then it didn’t sell when it squeaked through because of the side effect of gut-pain and the fact that it isn’t food.”

“Was that food or a plethora of many-lettered additives? I remember a time before trans fats.”

“Anything can be anything these days,” Sven permitted, “but I’ve got some bad gut rot. But believe it or not, what you were saying kind of ties into why I got upset when you said you were Jesus.”

“Really? Some wanna-be egg substance ties into Jesus?”

Sven told me about his bipolar trials and tribulations. He had been on and off psych medication, like lithium and risperdal, from eleven to fifteen years old.”

“Rispal,” I said and shuttered, “I know da kine.”

“Lithium, depakote, quetiapine,” Sven listed, “I could go on, but then I was saved. I was healed.”

“Well, good to hear, but don’t hold out. Come on Sven, testify. How’d you get saved and healed?”

“Listen, if I’m going to continue, can you please drop the sarcasm?”

“Alright, I’ll just listen,” I acquiesced. 

Pacing Capitol Hill in Seattle, a hipster avenue known for its heroin and homosexuals, Sven was trying to have the distraction of people and hustle and bustle keep him from his dark ruminations about ending it all. He was there so he wouldn’t feel so alone, but he was utterly confused about his life. 

He knew that he was perhaps manic, a month off his meds, but was determined to put things together out of that chemical fog. Everything was out of control as things cleared, but it was better than the dominance he’d face if he went home. And so he couldn’t go home to Issaquah, to his mom’s sister, his aunt, who was a tyrant and a sadist and had the entire police wrapped around her finger as well as the psychiatrist who so badly, and quite obviously, wanted to fuck her. She’d say she did a little research on this or that drug, and he’d write a script. 

Some of these incapacitated Sven to the point where he couldn’t go to school, but she’d always say that it was an adjustment period, and then switch the meds.

But Sven began to sprout, perhaps a bit late at the age of 14, but when he stretched a foot in a year. The psychiatrist said something about Sven trying me out for basketball.

“I remember that simp telling my aunt that I might benefit from adderall which would help me focus, but my aunt wasn’t about to take that route with me. She locked the doors at night from the inside, and other than chores, I was to stay in my room. I was homeschooled by three different people she brought in, and she must have paid them enough to keep their mouths shut about the listless haze I was in, help me on the tests and assignments. My aunt wanted me to attend the best college.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman.”

Sven was not amused.

One night, when Sven was about to turn 16, his aunt left the key to the door on the table, and he palmed it without her noticing. He knew where she kept $330 stashed in a vase, and so he grabbed that, and with a small backpack and a blanket, he snuck out into the night, walked five miles to a bus station, and took a bus to Seattle. 

And so there he was a month later, pacing back and forth along the ridge of Capitol Hill, the boulevard and then side streets to creep on avenues that striped the side of the hill. It was late, and only the hissing white noise of rubber on pavement jostled the air. Seattle was asleep, so Sven thought he might be hallucinating when he first heard the happy noises, the cheering and, was it singing? He walked a half block further, the jubilation louder, and then found a midnight service, an open door that bled warm light under a big oak tree.

As Sven peaked in from the sidewalk, he saw that the preacher was the primary cause of all the ruckus. He was stirring up the congregation, and people were giving ‘amens’ like Sven had heard others say, ‘hell yeah’. Sven had never been to church and, deciding there was nothing better to do, he took a seat in the back. He had intended on observing the service as a fly on the wall, but what he saw made him worry that he was dreaming. There was golden dust in the air.

“Golden dust?” I asked. 

“I shit you not,” he assured me. “It was in the air, but at first I thought that only I could see it. But then I realized that they could see it too, but it wasn’t something you could touch.”

“The congregation saw it too? I’m picturing holographic stuff, almost like cartoon particles of digital dust; is that right?”

“Something like that, yeah. Golden and floating up and down the aisles. This little girl kept pointing at it. Her mom would look and nod, but everyone was praising God and caught up in what the pastor was preaching. But to make a long story short, I was baptized by the Holy Spirit that night. That’s how I became a Christian.”

“A long story short? We’ve got nothing but time in here. Are you tired?”

“No, but you… nevermind.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure if any of it was… Well no, I’m sure that it really happened, but apparently it sounds like a crock of shit to everyone else that knows me.” Sven laughed, but it rang out hollow and thin.

“Look man, you don’t need to worry about me being all judgmental. Whatever you saw, or whatever it is that turned you to Jesus, I bet my Jesus story is just as bonkers.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“Well, let’s go!”

Sven relented, telling me how he’d been brought up to the altar that night where the dust was amongst them.

“I was a little embarrassed,” he said. “I didn’t know what to make of any of it, but when Pastor Mike touched my head…” he paused, and I watched a grin raise the hair on his cheeks. “Jasper, have you ever felt the Holy Spirit?”

“Most definitely.” 

“And so you’ve spoken in tongues?”

“What? No.”

He didn’t understand how I could have felt the Holy Spirit if I hadn’t ever spoken in tongues. 

We both had confused expressions, and I asked, “You mean the kind of stuff in Pentecostal churches where they pass around snakes?”

“You see, that dismissive tone you used? If you want me to talk, then quit.” 

“Sorry, I’ll stop. So, you’re Pentecostal?”

“The church was Christian. I’m not sure about what sect it was, or whatever, but we might have been Pentecostal. We didn’t pass around snakes, and I seriously doubt anyone actually does that shit anymore.”

“Hmmm, maybe I’m confusing Pentecostal with Baptist. I’m not too sure who passes around snakes, but it’s definitely a thing down south. But at any rate, you spoke in tongues?”

“When I was baptized by the Holy Spirit, yes. But you said you’ve felt the presence of the Holy Spirit?”

“Yes, the voices of the mushroom. But somehow, I don’t think that’s what you’re talking about.”

“Voices? So you did speak in tongues?”

“No, but tongues spoke to me. Invisible ones. And then through me in Waipio Valley, but this isn’t about me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You first, is what I mean. So, you’re in that church in Seattle, and Pastor Mike touches you on the head, and then what happened?”

“Other than the most transformative moment of my entire life, I guess you could say I became happy. I was saved. From then on, I was a different person. Pastor Mike learned about my situation and found a home for me with this lady named Susan. All I ever did was talk about Jesus, and I kept trying to bring kids that were my age, in the school I was enrolled in, to church.” 

“The gold dust--did you tell them about it?”

“Huge mistake. This kid that welcomed me as a new kid turned into a real dick and gave me the nickname Dusty. But back then, all I did was pray for everyone who made fun of me.”

“Like ‘turn the other cheek’ instead of getting angry?”

“Right.”

“Hey, I’m gonna lay down, but could you keep going?”

“Sure. It’s probably good for me. This feels therapeutic.”

“I’m all ears,” I said, and stretched out on the bottom bunk. The bed mat felt the same as on the fourth floor. In fact, the room itself, minus the missing transparent slit of glass, was identical. 

“The new school in Seattle was pretty lonely,” Sven continued, as he pressed onto the top bunk. “But, I had the church. With the Holy Spirit, I didn’t need meds. Of course, I’m not sure I ever did. And then, because pastor Mike told me I needed to confront my past, make peace and forgive, I called Judy.” 

“Who’s Judy?”

“My aunt.”

“Oh, the wonderful woman.”

“I will seriously stop right here if you don’t--”

“Sorry, so sorry, but you’re not on psych meds, and you’re part of the church, and nobody likes you in school: I think I get the picture. And then you call your aunt?”

“Yeah, it had been two months, and she said that it was for the best. I found out she made no missing-person report--nothing.”

“Strange, and then what?”

“Let’s see. I spent a lot of time ministering to the homeless in Seattle, handing out food and blessing everyone. Even if I didn’t have any friends, everything in my life felt sanctified. It was the only time I ever brought home straight A's. That made Susan and Mike proud. And then when school got out at the end of my sophomore year, Pastor Mike invited me to come along on a healing crusade in Africa.”

“A crusade? That doesn’t have a very good ring to it. When I hear ‘crusade’ I think of The Inquisition and burning witches.”

“No, they just called it that. Susan thought I was too young, but Pastor Mike said he’d pay for my ticket and make sure I got all the shots.”

“Wow, Africa!”

Sven let out a long sigh and said, “This is where no one believes me.”

“No one believes you went to Africa?”

“No, not that. Jasper, I’ve been called delusional so many times that I just don’t talk about what I saw, what I was witness to.”

“Hey, I might not believe you either, but so far, I’m digging it. Even the gold dust.”

“Thanks. So, in Africa we would go around to different villages and heal people. I saw broken limbs set and all sorts of wounds heal up in seconds.

“So, you were working with a medical team?”

“Yes. Well, wait. What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard of churches working alongside Doctors Without Borders.”

“Oh, no. You don’t get it. There weren’t any doctors. It was just the church. No medicine, just our faith and Pastor Mike.

“In a big circus tent?”

“We had a tent, but most of the time we didn’t set it up. We would use the village centers, or go out into a field and heal people on the edge of town.”

“You’re talking miracles,” I said, trying to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

“Yes, miracles. By the power of the Holy Spirit. Pastor Mike would call everyone forward, heal them, and pretty soon people from all around heard about us. Some were hauled to us on stretchers, walking on crutches, or hobbling along to get to us. People came from huts in the jungle that were more than a week away, and they came on foot. The faith in Africa isn’t like it is in the states.”

“I see.” I was glad Sven couldn’t see my dubious expression. “So, you actually saw some legit miracles?”

“Saw them? I called upon the Holy Spirit to enact them in Jesus name! We all did. I remember this one old guy; his eyes were completely white from all kinds of cataracts, but after we prayed, and Pastor Mike laid hands on him, I watched his eyes clear up. You should have seen his face when he could see again.”

“That’s um. Yeah, that’s pretty unbelievable,” I said.

“So, you don’t believe me.”

“Well, it’s hard for me to believe anything outside of what I know to be true, which isn’t much. I’m in here because I got conned, and I haven’t seen any miracles or aliens, and so I just don’t know. Well, at least not the healing kind of miracles. Or speaking in tongues, for that matter.”

“You’ve never even heard people speak in tongues?”

“Yeah, but it didn’t sound… I don’t know, real.”

“Well, that’s what I don’t understand. You said you felt the Holy Spirit, but it sounds like you might be confusing that with the grace of God.”

“Ah, so we’re getting into the nitty gritty?” I asked, never having heard of such a division.

“The Holy Spirit gives the gift of tongues and the grace of God is more like the warm fuzzies? You know: love, joy, peace, patience and kindness.”

“Aren’t those the gifts of the Holy Spirit?”

“No. Those are the gifts of the spirit, meaning the human spirit. There’s the trinity, but there’s also the human spirit which can receive gifts.”

“Does each member of the trinity give different gifts? I’m not sure that I follow.”

“The power of the Holy Spirit--well, it’s like trying to explain a new color that no one’s ever seen before.”

“Holy Spirit versus human spirit--interesting distinction.”

“It’s real.”

“I still have yet to be slain in the spirit and speak in tongues, but I’d be down.”

“You can. If you can let someone with the gift of tongues lay their hands on you; it’s never too late. If you’re ready and willing to--”

“Could you do it?”

“Well I…” In the following silence, I could tell that Sven was holding his breath. Then I realized I might not want him to lay his hands on me.

“Nevermind. So, back to your story. What’s the craziest thing that happened in Africa?”

“The most miraculous thing? Let me think. Alright, this is probably it. One night, we were camping on the side of a hill above a creek. It had rained so much in the night that the road had been washed out. The day before, we could have forded the little stream, but there was no way the next morning. Where once there was hardly more than a trickle of a stream, there was now a full on river, like a flash flood. You know, like all brown water rapids with trees floating in it. Then Pastor Mike said that with God, all things are possible.”

Sven took a moment to collect his thoughts before asking, “Do you know how internal combustion engines work?”

“You mean gasoline combustion and pistons doing the… not really. Why do you ask?”

“What happened next was physically impossible, but it did happen.” Sven jumped down from the top bunk, and squatted down next to my bed. I’d been listening with my eyes closed, and when I opened them, there he was. Sven’s face was within my three foot bubble, and he looked manic, a touch deranged. 

“Um,” I muttered, my heart thudding.

“I don’t know,” he said, grinning at me with dark and dilated pupils. Only the dim light above the door lit the cell, and it was hard to read his shadowed expression. “I’ve been getting stoked up just talking about this and wanted to read your face, you know?

“Um…”

“I mean, I’m not a pervert or creep, I just wanted to tell you the rest, face to face.”

“Alrighty,” I exhaled. “It might just be the light, but you got up all close, looking demented, a little too close.”

“What? You thought I was--” and Sven burst into laughter. “Oh, I’m sorry man, but that’s funny.”

“Well, this is jail, right? You’re a giant that could easily have his way with me.”

“No, man. Too funny, but I’m not gay, and even if I was--wait, why would you think that?”

“Movies, maybe?”

“So when you saw me, you thought I was looking at you funny or something?”

“No, it wasn’t until you were in front of me that I had flashes of Shawshank Redemption. But picture you with your beard, all bug eyed and freakish looking, and then with the dim lights and all. The lights played into it, for sure, but you said you’re bipolar, off medication and--”

“Oh, so that’s what you’ve heard?”

“What?”

“I’m off my meds. That’s what you’ve heard so far?”

“Among other things, yes, that’s what you told me. But that’s not my point. My point was… damn, what was my point?”

“You think I’m crazy, and my story is bullshit because I’m bipolar and off my medication.”

“No, that wasn’t my point. Oh, it’s that I was scared when you jumped down because you’re friggin huge.”

“Okay, but I’m not gay.”

“Cool bro. Got it.”

“And listen, I didn’t mean to come off antagonistic, and now I don’t even remember what we were talking about.”

“You were explaining that you weren’t gay, but that’s because you hopped out of bed to tell me about Africa. Face to face. You woke up to a river, and Pastor Mike said that in God all things are possible.”

“Oh, that’s right. Did you know it’s been at least three years since I even thought about Africa? It’s something I’ve been blocking. So many people have told me that what I remember couldn’t have been the way it went down.”

“We’ve all got skeletons in our closets,” I said.

“Do you know where that idiom comes from?”

“Not really. I assume it means we have secrets.”

“Secrets are one thing, but skeletons? Like we’re all murderers with the bones of people we killed in our closets. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have skeletons in my closet.”

“Huh, I never thought of it. But speaking of skeletons, let’s rattle some bones, as it were.”

“What?” Sven's eyes took on a haunted look, and he sat back on the floor and crossed his legs. 

“Flash flood,” I reminded him, “you were saying.”

“Oh yeah, that river was no joke,” he nodded. “It must have been dry for months, but we’d only arrived in Kenya a week earlier, so I don’t know. I had seen a few miracles, like two days earlier. A woman that looked like she’d been speared or stabbed with some large knife had a wound that closed up when Pastor Mike put a cloth over it, and we all put our hands on the woman and prayed. Everyone was crying when the scab was healed. Her eyes were full of light, and she understood that it wasn’t us, but the Holy Spirit, that healed her.”

“What, like a gash closed up?”

“Oh, much worse than that. I’m surprised she made it to us alive, but Pastor Mike and the Holy Spirit and the power… I’m sorry.” Sven trailed off, choked up.

“This is good. This is some powerful energy, just hearing you talk. Or testify, as you might call it. Notice, I said it without sarcasm?”

“We should have been swept away,” he said, sounding whimsical. “There were logs, whole trees uprooted and floating in the floodwater, but Pastor Mike says we can go through it without any problem because the Holy Spirit was calling us to the other side.”

“And there’s some plant debris floating past?”

“Whole trees! But it was only fifty feet across, and I figured we were going to use the winch on the front of the Land Cruiser. I didn’t know how Pastor Mike was planning to get across to hook the cable onto the opposite shore, but then he says we don’t have time for that. We’re going to drive.”

“Fifty feet is a long way,” I speculated.

“We should have floated away,” Sven said, and chuckled. “I don’t know what it was in Pastor Mike’s voice, but I had absolute confidence that the Holy Spirit would Spirit us along. And it did.”

“So how deep was it?”

“I’m getting to that. I don’t know why, but when Pastor Mike said we were going to drive through the water like Moses crossing The Red Sea, I had faith that felt like fire, like the golden dust was in me…” Sven trailed off, and itched one of his feet. Then he looked up at me and asked, “How does the world work? Do you believe in physics?”

“Interesting tangent, but that’s a good question. As a rule, I’d say yes. But as a constant, definitely not. But then there’s quantum physics, which breaks all the rules, and it’s a part of physics, so I guess--”

“No, I mean Newtonian physics. For instance, if water goes up and over the top of a Land Cruiser, it should bob up, right? And that would be in still water, like a lake, but in a raging river it would tumble and be swept away.”

“Water up past the doors?” I asked, lifting my arm from my side, but unable to demonstrate the height from where I was laying.

“Yes,” Sven said, and stood up to indicate water at his shoulder level.

“That’s, well that's....” but I had no words that weren’t skeptical to choose from. I shrugged and said, “Go on.” 

“I’m trying to get you to feel how I should have felt, but I didn’t. I couldn’t feel afraid. There was a presence, and something much more powerful than I’d ever felt was with us. It was this pure white light, all around and coursing through us.”

“White light?”

“Yes. Well no, and it’s hard to explain because it wasn’t made of photons or anything material.” He sat back down into a pretzel and began pulling on his beard. “It wasn’t something we could see with our eyes, but the Holy Spirit was fully present with a white energy that could--”

“Are you sure the river was that deep?”

“Fuck man!” Sven looked betrayed, disgusted. “You think I haven’t heard that? I’ve been told that I’m exaggerating or must have remembered wrong. What are you going to say next? I must have ‘drunk the Kool Aid’ right?”

“Hey now, hold up,” I said, as he scowled. He walked to the window, though we both knew there was no way to see through the glass. I thought about his exasperation. It had been so Chris-like. Was I an asshole? It seemed like I kept encountering the sensitive types, or maybe I was just a button pusher. Once again, I had to consider the stress others might feel in here. Not everyone was as thrilled to be in jail as me. Other than some indigestion, and a numb arm from my jacked up shoulder, I was happy as a frog in mud.

“Hey Sven, I’m just trying to see it, but okay. I’ll save my questions till the end. You say that you should have been swept away, but how would I know? I wasn’t there. You saw it, and I mean no disrespect.”

Still looking at the window, Sven’s shoulders rose as he took a deep breath. The glass was faint pink from the street lights nine stories below.

“At the very least, the engine should have stalled,” he went on in a soft voice. “The Land Cruiser didn’t have a custom built air-intake, and even if it did, the water was completely up and over the side of Pastor Mike’s door. It was a little bit lower, as it swirled around my side, but definitely too deep for what we did.”

“Like splashing over the hood?”

“Over the hood? Over the top of the cab, at times, but the hood was completely submerged. The current was moving so fast and strong that there were trees--whole fucking uprooted trees, and not the small kind. Can you even understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” I said, not mentioning that he’d spoken of the trees a few times already.

“Okay, but do you believe me?” He had turned from the window to ask. There was a new vulnerability in his tone. In a way, I saw that he was putting himself out there. 

“I believe you,” I offered. “I don’t necessarily believe what I constructed in my head about what you said, but I believe you. What you were part of could be something different from what I see.”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, for example, I see Pastor Mike as a Collin Feral- looking guy with kind eyes and--”

“But the Land Cruiser!” Sven cut me off. “Forget about what Pastor Mike looks like; forget all that! Just for a minute, think of this river, easily fifty feet across, maybe more.”

“More? The river got bigger?”

“Forget it.” He gave another dramatic shrug.

“Hey man! Why is it so important that I believe you?” I asked, sitting up.

“It’s not,” he said, and then pushed himself back up onto the top bunk. “Good night.”

The silence was heavy, so I explained, “Listen Sven, I’ve heard of quacks pulling off all kinds of hanky shit. I’m not saying that you’re a quack, or deluded, or anything like that. But I’ve never seen someone healed like you have. It’s hard for me to visualize the river, and yes, I’m guilty of leaning toward Newtonian physics more than what I picture in my head. Maybe I just can’t see it, but from what you described, your Land Cruiser should have been washed away or flipped over. It sounds like a tall tale, like a big fish story, but I’ve got a bag of those.”

“Miracles don’t happen in America.”

“What do you mean?”

“Long story, aren’t you tired?”

“No, and stop saying ‘long story’ or are you just over it?”

“Yeah, at this point, I’m pretty much over it. I’ve been over it since getting back to the US.”

“Because no one believes you?”

“When I got back to the states, I joined Pastor Mike on a few other healing crusades, but it didn’t work. No one got healed. There were a few people with small things, like headaches that dissipated after prayer, but nothing like in Africa. I know the river--whatever you pictured--sounds wacky crackers. And you already heard I was bipolar and probably don’t believe I was healed. A lot of people say it’s because I was off my meds. So yes. You could say, I’m over it.”

“Understandable, but if it really happened…”

“It’s just been so long. That was twelve years ago. I haven’t talked about it in forever, but when you came in and said to call you Jesus--”

“But then I offered to be called Jacob.”

“You see, right there. What you said right there,” Sven complained, and then fell silent.

“Sven, for you, I’ll stick with Jasper.” As we fell silent, I could tell Sven was laying above me with his eyes open, thinking of that river.

“Did you tell anyone about Africa?”

“I told the high school counselor, and he told me it was a collective hallucination, a case of mass hysteria, or something like that, and then told me all about a time when people danced until they died in France. That dude always brought up other anecdotes and historical allegories when we talked, and I realized that as he’s listening, he’s being reminded of things he knows, and by the time I ask him for his take, he nods a few times, almost as if counting to three. The last time that we talked, and I’d told Mr. Larrington about witch doctors howling, the noises coming out of them being inhuman, he asked me if I knew about Jim Jones or Charles Manson. Can you believe that bullshit?”

“Probably an atheist who thinks that Jesus was, if he did exist, perhaps misunderstood and then crucified but didn’t rise. Other than the New Testament, which was compiled hundreds of years later, only two historians wrote of Jesus, but wrote of him almost in passing, as many claimed to be prophets of God amongst the Israelites around that time.”

“You sound like my counselor, but you said you believe, right?”

“Sure, but that was the last time you talked to your counselor?”

“Yeah, I told him all about the demons getting cast out of witch doctors, and all kinds of puss filled sores that I witnessed heal up in seconds, but I could tell he thought I was full of shit when he brought up the cult leaders. And, to this day, Susan always changes the subject when I bring it what happened in Africa, and says in this sing-song voice, as if she’s Mary Poppins: ‘Could we please talk about other things now?’” 

“For what it’s worth, I believe you.”

“I appreciate that, Jasper.”

“Cool, and I really appreciate you not raping me.”

“Bro!” he exclaimed.

During the night, we both exploded, our bowels heaving. It was all we could do to wait for one another to finish before switching off on the toilet. The intestinal purging left us ragged, and went on for over an hour, and the next morning, still feeling shooting pains in our lower abdomens, we frowned as two more trays of fluorescent “eggs” slid through the slot in the bottom of the door. 

“This isn’t right,” I said. “Two days in a row? What happened to the oatmeal? We’re guessing it was these eggs that poisoned us, right?”

“Not sure. Maybe they cooked the eggs wrong yesterday. It could have been the sandwiches. I don’t trust their meat. I opened the sandwich up to examine the bologna, and it was gray in places, green in others. It might not have been the eggs.”

“Hmmm,” I said, poking at the glowing rubbery stuff. “Eggs. We shouldn’t even assume this stuff has anything to do with eggs. Is it just me, or is it brighter than yesterday?”

“I wouldn’t give it glowing reviews, but I bet we could see in the dark with this stuff,” Sven said, and lifted a spoonful through his mustache. “They did nail the taste, though.”

“Well, I’m completely empty,” I said. “Look, my hand is shaking.”

“Bro. Maybe they’re killing us, but I’m ready.”

“Here’s to that,” I said, and we bumped our plastic forkfuls.

“They really weren’t skimping on the salt,” Sven said, “Tastes almost like the ocean, which reminds me, you said you lived in Hawaii?”

“January to June, but the ocean was a lot saltier than this.”

After hearing Sven’s story with the Holy Spirit, I steered clear of my encounter, and ensuing cohabitation, with Gabriel under my bone dome. No need to bring up the night I ate a pound of mushrooms in the Monkey Temple. Instead, I told Sven about the black sand beach which was clothing optional, about the lava tube I lived in, and then all about the full moon tribe dancing on the platinum blonde sand of Kua Bay with a DJ spinning and whales off the coast singing back to us as we swam in the salty ocean watching our moonshadows dance on the ocean floor, our perceptions enhanced by baby woodrose seeds which made everything more razzle dazzle, exquisite and delicious, what with the whale and DJ harmonizing, everything synced to the shaker of crashing and retreating waves on the shoreline that luna had painted silver.

“That sounds rad,” Sven said, “When I get out, it’ll be all snowy and cold, most likely, so I’ll scrape together enough for a plane ticket there. If I’m gonna be broke either way, that sounds like the place.”

“When are you getting out?”

“Not sure, but I have court next week. They might sentence me to a couple months, but I should be out by winter.”

“That is more than a slap on the wrist. Mind if I ask…”

“Do you know what DMT is?” Sven asked.

“DMT, as in the spirit molecule? As in the tryptamine produced in the pineal gland, the seat of the soul?”

“Oh, so you’ve heard of it,” Sven smiled.

I took the final bite of my “eggs”, and asked, “So if you know about DMT, then what do you think about psilocybin mushrooms?”

“I love shrooms,” James said. “and I wish they would have caught me for those, but I got busted for extracting DMT.”

“Well, then I--” but I faltered. I wanted to get his take on psychedelics, but I didn’t want to get him ‘riled up’ as he put it when I connected it to Christ.

“Whoa, my stomach,” Sven groaned. “Is your stomach alright?”

“What, you feel sick? I’m okay.”

“Not me; I think I need to lay down.”

As Sven crawled onto his bunk, a guard opened the door.

“Jasper,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“You’re on your way to Geiger.” The lurch in my stomach let me know that something wasn’t right--something other than the eggs. After I turned my back to the door so the guard could cuff me, I watched Sven curl into a fetal position. Then I was instructed to face forward and step into the hall. 

Before the door swung closed, Sven said, “Good luck.”

The two guards, my rather-large escorts, were not at all interested in gracing me with any details of where I was headed when I asked, in the elevator, what Geiger was. 

And so down the waxy halls, we walked in silence. I signed some form, and then was led out of the building and found myself standing handcuffed on the street outside the fortress. 

The morning air was cool, but I was hot, sweaty, and felt as if I were on a heavy dose of cold medicine. My abdomen was swollen and tight in a way that made it seem to cram against the base of my lungs, making my breathing shallow. I looked over at the stop sign across the street and wondered if Chris was looking through his slit of glass. Had he eaten the flubbery, gut-busting eggs? Did he have another cell mate?

I was ushered to a seat aboard a bus bound for Geiger. The name sounded like a torture device. Almost worried by the claws in my stomach from the eggs, I smirked at a gay tiger in my head named Geiger. With my head against the window, I watched the city of Spokane smear across my hot brain. Hypnotic with its rumbling, the bus lulled me until I closed my eyes and observed pixelated caricatures swim upon the black backdrop of my eggy delirium. Trying to focus on the visions and ignore my belly, the jolt when the bus stopped made me groan. 

Geiger Cheeto

Upon arriving, the six of us aboard the bus were ushered out and went single file into a building flanked by a twenty foot tall chain link fence topped with spiraling razor wire. As I was last aboard, I was first off and in a line which a new security guard was leading, a doughy man with a big red skin tag on his nose, who begrudgingly obliged, when I explained that it would be helpful, for us both, if I could use the toilet. I didn’t know how much time I had, but unless he wanted to smell a real horror show, he should not have me wait on the bench in cuffs, as was apparently custom. Mmmkay? As it was, I barely made it in time. After I let loose the flubbery nightmare, I was sweating and light headed. Drugged. I didn’t think it was a mistake, those eggs. When I stepped back into the hall, men in green jumpsuits were busy with various administration jobs, some carrying folders and others looking through filing cabinets, and I wondered if the inmates ran the place. 

I received slip-on shoes, a tiny bar of soap, a three inch long tooth brush, a comb, and an orange jumpsuit. It reminded me of when Dyako handed me my monk’s robe in the monster, except this was bright orange. And tighty-whities, a new pair. After carrying this plastic wrapped bundle into a room, I was given privacy to change out of my clothes. I wasn’t a fan of the tighty-whities that came with the bundle and asked if I could wear my boxers. 

No. 

Like other holy garments, the jumpsuit fit loose and comfortably, and it was refreshing to be out of my shorts and shirt I’d been funking up for a week. My stick of deodorant worked wonders for giving my shirt a fresh scent, but it was getting heavy with grime from the roadside with traffic kicking up particles of rubber, oil, brake dust, and dirt for that distinctive hobo hitchhiker sheen, that glossy look for all the humanity flashing by with snap decisions of denial. A hard pass, except for the one percent that usually wanted to talk. And I was not only thankful, but after hours on the roadside, I was happy to conversate. Although I was grimey, I was a gregarious guy. But Geiger wanted me in fresh orange? So be it. 

I wasn’t sure if I cared for the brightness of the jumpsuit, but I did like the fit of it. I also liked the small, black slip-on shoes that reminded me of Bruce Lee, as a surly guard led me up two flights of stairs to the third floor. The crowd inside my cell, which was midway down the hall, had a big window that overlooked the courtyard. It was spacious, and the seven inmates didn’t register my arrival. They were gathered around the table. Three were standing and looking at the hands of the four men seated at the table. And then noticed an eighth person in the room on the top bunk reading a book through thick glasses, his ankles crossed. 

“He’s trucking!” barked one of the inmates at the table. He had a mullet running down his thick neck, and it swished as he put a card down on the table.

To his left, a pale faced guy with a head shaped like a lightbulb smirked, then helicoptered a card onto the table. Everyone burst into laughter except the man with the mullet who shook his head and groaned at the Queen of Spades.

Minimal correctional facility. The system doesn’t want to overcorrect, so perhaps it’s better to think of Geiger as a hostel for travelers that like games and don’t mind sharing a room, sleeping on bunk beds, four guys to the room, as long as they can play their game. Boys only, and everyone wears orange. 

The guard who’d led me into this boisterous room nodded to the lower bunk beneath the guy who was reading. He didn’t look at me. Instead of a mat, I noted that I’d have a four inch mattress. It was bare, but folded sheets and a patchwork quilt were at the foot of the bed. Various church ladies liked to make quilts for the prisoners, the guard told me. He said that if I treat others with respect, I’d be treated likewise. 

I told him that the golden rule was a great one, that Jesus had talked about tit for tat like he had, and the guard seemed to appreciate my comparison. He smiled before he left, his keys jangling as he ambled out the open door and down the hall. 

I tossed my toothbrush, soap and comb on the quilt and walked to the window. What a view. The boys behind me were all caught up in their card game and still hadn’t acknowledged my presence. That was fine. 

In the courtyard below the window was a basketball court and a few acres of paved space with a volleyball net. It was the size of a well-funded playground in the suburbs, and then over the lacey loops of razor wire, beyond the compound’s perimeter, I could see the rolling hills, some blue because of the distance. Nice.

After nodding at my good fortune, I popped out of the room for a walk about. As I suspected, the inmates wandered about from room to room as they pleased. Most rooms were dedicated to card games, but there were chess rooms as well as rooms dedicated to dice, dominoes, Risk, Scrabble and all the board games between. In the center of the third floor, the hub of the hallways, there was a small library with even more game options next to a TV room with seven rows of seats.

This is how correction is done, minimally. By the healing power of games, the errant member of society will have learned their lesson. It almost reminded me of being a Boy Scout, but scouts were encouraged to earn merit badges and further themselves, whereas Cheetohs lounged about like the lads who corrupted Pinocchio before morphing into donkeys on Pleasure Island. 

Other than coffee, inmates could get tobacco if they had money. Broke as I was, I was truly thankful to be provided a pen and paper. I discovered that no one used a table between the TV room and library, so I brought it into my room and put it in front of the window. As the boys laughed and joked, playing spades behind me, I wrote about hitchhiking with Yosh. He and I lapped the Big Island three times at the beginning of February, danced for Krishna Pizza on Opihikao road, and drummed at Kehena beach on Sundays. 

I couldn’t have asked for a better atmosphere to write of our adventures, and unlike Spokane city jail, with its wicked, experimental-drug flubber, Geiger provided gourmet meals that you wouldn’t believe. Let’s just say that with so many rich calories, I was glad for the yard. Every two hours, we had a fifteen minute break to go outside. I’d run laps and lift weights and then feel all rejuvenated to get back to writing. 

On my third day, I was grinning as I sprinted around the yard and wondered how to write about the night Yosh and I ventured out onto the lava with nothing but water jugs. We’d kept ourselves warm in front of the 1800 degree orange magma. It oozed down the slope of Kilauea and fanned out when it hit the nearly flatland of Kaimu. It fanned out and crept quite slowly as it tumbled over itself, cracking and crinkling, but we had to get up every five to ten minutes to scoot down the pahoehoe in front of blazing new earth that reached towards, like the hot hands of a goddess. Didn’t sleep much, and although we’d each brought a gallon of water, they were tapped by morning. We were parched and sleepy as we walked seven miles toward the spigots at the end of the highway but Yosh said we should do it again. Epic, I agreed.

The cardio in the yard at Geiger cleared the cobwebs, and in six and a half pages, I captured the crescent moon, wrote that it was grinning down as the lava crackled up from the nethers of the goddess. 

‘Orange as my jumpsuit,’ I penned. 

Of the three buildings which overlooked the courtyard, I was housed in the West Wing which was designated for the Cheetos. I could have just as easily been designated a Smurf, wearing a blue jumpsuit on the Eastern Wing. But I’ve never been a fan of blue. It’s a bummer color. And while I at first found the orange to be a bit abrasive, it grew on me.

Dennis, the more charismatic of my two roommates, the one with the mullet who’d guessed Kyle had been trucking when I first walked it, occupied the top bunk opposite me. He was first to introduce himself and explained that both the Cheetos and Smurfs were the low-men on Geiger's pole. I took it to mean that of the incarcerated social stratum, the blue and the orange were oppressed, somehow. Dennis explained that the Northern Wing was the apex, the upper echelon of Geiger’s inmates, the envy of Cheetos and Smurfs alike. 

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“We got us that TV room,” said Dennis, “but the Greenbacks have a private TV at the end of their bunks, and they get a T-shirt underneath green jumpsuits that are made of cotton and not this polyester bullshit.”

“I don’t mind this polyester bullshit,” I said, and pulled at the chest of my jumpsuit.

“Come on, boy,” said Dennis, “don’t truck with me.” 

“Breathable and loose fitting,” I said. “I’d give them a four out of five stars when it comes to comfort.”

“Well, these itchy suits are garbage compared to the cotton ones that the Greenbacks get, and they get to work.”

“Get to work?” 

“To help pass the time, they basically run this place and are out before they know it.” 

Dennis explained that time would pass by in a flash if I were busy, and when I told him that I was intent on dragging my feet, if anything, he told me I’d soon see how things work.

“Unless you trucking, boy, you get snacks and are making things happen.”

“But with no pay?” I asked. I didn’t really understand his reasoning and told him that my days couldn’t be better with the table, pen and paper, that I couldn’t ask for a better stimulant than him and the boys yucking it up behind me, all the trucking going on--whatever that was. 

“The days are going by too quickly as is,” I said.

“How much longer for you?”

“They said I only get two weeks here.”

“Trust me Jasper,” Dennis maintained, “you can ask anyone in here, and they’d move up north if they could. Greenbacks got it better than the Smurfs or us Cheetos.”

“I wouldn’t mind trading in orange for green,” I conceded, “but that’s just a stylistic thing. I like the view from this room. The sun sets behind us, and you guys call each other peckerheads as insults, not exactly the Nazis that I could have had to bunk with.”

Dennis’ eyes went wide, and he waved for me to stop and looked back to the door, his mullet swishing like a squirrel tail.

“Do not say that in here,” he whispered. “That is the n-word to Sterling because he’s with the Aryan Nation and says he’s been in brawls where a Nazi beat his best friend to death.”

“The Aryan Nations don’t like the Nazis?” I asked.

“Don’t!” Dennis yelped, “say the n-word. All you need to know is that Sterling will lose his shit if you say it.” 

“Got it,” I said.

“Anyone with half a brain knows not to mention nothing about nothing in here.”

“Dennis,” said Harry from the bunk above me, “we can’t fault the boy for his ignorance.” 

I knew he was most likely reading a blue jacketed novel by Faulkner. Where Dennis was somewhere near 40 and large in every way, Harry looked closer to 50. He had a salt and pepper beard and a thin frame. He was much more reserved and flat in his mode of communication, but spoke with a gravelly voice which reminded me of a politician.

“It might take a minute to get yourself oriented,” Dennis went on, “but being a Cheetoh gets old real quick.” 

Doug, my fourth roommate, was on the bunk below Dennis. He never said a word. He came back to the room at 9:30 pm, but was out all day playing Dungeons and Dragons on the second floor. 

Whereas Harry, Doug and I shared the space, it was undoubtedly Dennis’ room. He was the captain of the spades game. So while Harry, with his bad back, read on his bunk most of the day, I wrote by the window, but Dennis, and the half-dozen others would play hand after hand, breaking for meals and smokes or because someone was trucking too much for Dennis. 

After a strongly-worded disagreement concerning the way someone had trucked, one day, Dennis ordered everyone out. He paced back and forth for a moment and then left the room with Kyle. 

It was silent, and I thought that I was alone, but then I heard Harry clear his throat.

“What are you writing?” he asked.

“My memoirs,” I said.

“How old are you?”

“Turned twenty-two last week.”

“And you figure it’s time?”

“If you want to know the truth, I once made a pact with Michael the Archangel where I promised to be mute and stick to writing, and I sometimes channel spirits that take over the pen, although not recently.”

“Is that in your memoir yet?”

“It isn’t time. Almost. Right now I’m writing about Saturday morning cartoons in 1985.”

“Mind reading me a page?”

The morning was cold, and it would be until dad got a fire going. I knew this, but the cold didn’t stop Aurelia from insisting that I get out of my warm bed. It was midwinter in Northern Montana, and the sky was black out my window. I grumbled that it was too early, but she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. She was seven, like the number of letters in her name. I was five and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I wrapped my blanket around my shoulders, and we went to wake up Shiloh, who was three. We found her lying in bed with her eyes open, waiting. Creepy. We padded upstairs, Aurelia instructing us to tiptoe so we didn’t wake up our parents whose room was next to the top of the stairs. In the living room, Aurelia let Shiloh turn on the TV, instructing her to make sure the knob was all the way down before gently pulling it. If Shiloh pulled it too hard, it would make a pop. There was nothing but snow on the screen. Too early, I knew it. Shiloh had her ‘gunk’, her binkie, plugged in her mouth. She took it out to ask Aurelia how long. Aurelia knew how to communicate the time to Shiloh in a way that didn’t involve minutes, but she wanted me to figure out how many minutes, exactly, for myself by using the clock. I complained that it was dark and hard to count the dots. The big arm was just past the four. Aurelia told me to count by fives from the twelve, but I didn’t know what that meant. She started explaining. I immediately lost interest, and Shiloh pointed at the screen. That weird underwater show was on. It was a cartoon which came on at random intervals with poorly drawn sea creatures. Fortunately, it was only on for a small number of minutes before the comic book cartoon. That was followed by The Smurfs, Shiloh’s favorite. I knew there were five fingers on one of my hands. Is that how Aurelia could count by fives? Next up was The Gummy Bears. They sometimes ate magic berries that gave them the ability to bounce like fleas. I wished there was something magic like that for people. I wished the world was a trampoline. If I used both my hands, I could count to twenty with four handfuls of fingers. Fifteen was three handfuls. I looked at the clock. I counted my fingers. I looked at the clock. I counted my fingers. Almost time.

Harry said he had a bad back and couldn’t sit for any extended amount of time. He never cared for games, but the library had some books he’d always wanted to read. He told me that Geiger was no place for intellectuals like us, but I disagreed. Geiger was for everyone. 

The other inmates who hung out in my room were a boisterous bunch. Whereas Harry was a man of few words, spending the bulk of his time lost in the pages of a classic, the others played, or watched, endless rounds of spades. The half dozen usual suspects would alternate, four players per round. They’d modified the game so that there were teams, and had a strange month-long ticker sheet that this guy everyone called Shubert, liked to analyze. 

And what brought them all to Geiger? Everyone talked about missing their court dates or something equally innocuous. All were perpetrators of victimless crimes, and there wasn’t a guilty conscience in the place. All were innocent of everything but forgetfulness.

“So what made them decide that you needed to be corrected by this facility?” Dennis asked me one evening.

“I’m just a mark for a con,” I said, and then gave him the highlights, skipping over the part about the young girls who accompanied James and me in the restaurant.

“Well, you told them you were Jesus; what’d you expect?” Dennis asked. “I wouldn’t call myself a mark after the little number you tried to pull. No, I think you had this one coming. Jesus, wow, you must have pissed them off.”

“My arm is still numb,” I said. 

“My old lady called the cops on me,” Dennis explained. “She let them know what rock I crawled under. Suckers flipped it up, and tossed me up in here. Ain’t that a peach?”

“Old ladies,” I said, “gotta love em.”

“Oh, she ain’t that old, it’s just that--”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know, just messing with your idioms.”

“Oh, right. I knew you were trucking.”

From the bunk above me, I heard Harry sigh.

Dennis had a positive outlook, and although I couldn’t tell exactly how intelligent he was, he often spoke in enigmatic metaphors or phrases which took me a moment to interpret. But when it came to being in the luxury-time-out, like everyone else, his chief concerns were financial. They were all caught up in bureaucratic tape, stuck in the saddle of some horse with trumped up charges riding all the way to the poor house. Dennis had said something like that. His lawyer would see to it that every red penny was extracted, like an octopus sucks meat out of a shell, and he’d be a husk, a tumbleweed.

On my fifth day, Dennis convinced me to play a game of Spades. He said that because Kyle wasn’t here it wouldn’t be official.

“All work and no play makes Jesus a dull boy,” he said.

“Oh, alright,” I said and stood up. I stretched and turned my back on the window.

“Your smile reminds me of a coyote,” I told Dennis as he shuffled the deck. I took a seat to his left. 

“I lost all my real teeth years ago,” he explained. “Ladies don’t need to know that though!” His laughter at the table was always a full bellied thumping, a series of uh-uh-uhs, each one louder than the last before dying back, so effortless and natural. It drew others in, the tourists who wandered from room to room, sometimes playing, but sometimes congregating, a peanut gallery of murmurs. 

But Dennis wasn’t the only outspoken inmate in Geiger. From dawn till dusk, laughter and shouting echoed into the halls. Every game has amazing moments, and the sober and anxious population would howl and clap their hands in disbelief at someone’s luck. Almost everyone was hyped up. Everyone was trying to distract themselves from the way their lives on the outside were falling apart. Their girlfriends and wives and kids and mortgages and employers and whatever else they had been juggling was in freefall somewhere beyond their control and influence. Their cars were impounded, their wives cheating, their kids were skipping school to smoke meth, and as for the jobs they’d once hand, others had undoubtedly taken up the slack. 

Sometimes I’d take walks and duck my head in various rooms. I never pulled up a seat at any of the tables, most of which were reserved for people with money in their commissary or cigarettes they could place bets with, but my mind was never far from the stack of blank pages on my table. 

I did mention that the meals were gourmet. I said you wouldn’t believe me because to speak of lunch and dinner, which ranged from lasagna to burgers to pizza, all with a limitless salad bar, would make you question your tax dollars. As far as breakfast, I decided to sleep through the 6am call when the doors were opened for the day. Sometimes, I regretted missing out on the french toast, bacon and eggs, which Dennis said were the bee’s knees, but lunch and dinner were more than enough. With the weight rack in the yard, I was putting on muscle. 

On my second night, after lights-out at 10pm, Dennis made a complaint from the bunk on the other side of the room. “Shit boy, your feet stink like expensive cheese.” 

From above me, Harry grunted an agreement. The aroma, as I slipped my feet out of the flimsy Bob Barker shoes, was noxious. 

“I used to go barefoot in Hawaii. My calluses are coming off, sorry about that.” 

“Don’t say you’re sorry; take a fucking shower. I wasn’t going to say anything last night, but please, I can’t go on like this,” Dennis said, and laughed.

“Amen to that,” seconded Harry.

“Will do,” I said.

The next day, mustering the courage to enter the shower room didn’t come easy. It was a big, tiled room with a dozen shower heads on opposing walls. There were no stalls, and the air was steamy. There was just one inmate showering, and even though he didn’t look all rapey, I couldn’t be sure of anything. Although I hadn’t offended anyone--all my interactions ranging from polite to innocuous--the shower room seemed particularly fearsome.

“What are you looking at?” The hoarse voice startled me, and I spun around to see a beast of an inmate with a big swastika tattooed on his neck, glaring down at me.

“Nothing,” I said, cornered. I had nothing but a towel around my waist. “My roommates said my feet stink, so I need to take a shower.”

“Well there’s someone in there,” he pointed. “You a fag?” 

“What? Oh, no,” I insisted. “I’m not gay.”

“Then what’re looking at?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I said, and stepped away from the shower room’s doorway.

“One at a time,” cautioned the extra large n-word.

“Fine by me.” 

As his eyes narrowed, I felt the need to say more.

“Honestly, that is the way it should be,” I said.

Still suspicious of my orientation, he nodded and said he wished they had a different shower room. He meant the black guys but didn’t say black guys. He used a word they redacted in Mark Twain’s books. 

“Right,” I said. Although I felt his lines to be out of a poorly written movie, I’d have been a bobblehead, nodding to anything he had to say about anything. If he hated the sun, then so did I. 

“You a Jew?” he demanded, peering down with a jagged eye.

“Nope, not a semitic drop of blood in me.”

“What’s semitic? 

“Jewish.”

“Why you got your hair in them black-guy locks?” Again, he said ‘black guy’ with a hard r.

“My hair? It just got tangled up in the ocean,” I explained. “I spent half the year in Hawaii, and this will be the first shower I’ve taken in a long time.”

“Yeah, well you should cut that shit off. You look like a fucking black guy or a Jewish slur.”

“You’re absolutely right. I just need to find some scissors.”

He seemed to decide that I wasn’t the enemy. With a final grunt, reminding me about the one-at-a-time policy of the shower room, he lumbered off down the hall. 

After the inmate in the shower had wrapped himself up and modestly exited, I was relieved to have the big room to myself knowing that there was a homophobic n-word (nazi) that forbade anything which might offend his sensitivities. After a vigorous scrubbing, my hobo sheen was removed. But although I raked my fingernails over my feet, the callouses wouldn’t give. 

If we’d been allowed to go barefoot, the smell wouldn’t have been an issue, but wearing slip-on shoes was mandatory. The price must not have been right for Bob Barker to shell out socks for the inmates, and without socks, my feet would sweat, my callouses would slowly sluff off, and I knew Dennis would never tire of letting me know I was stinking up the room. 

Sure enough, that very night Dennis whined, “Hey Jesus, didn’t you say you were going to take a shower? It smells like cheese again.” 

“Yeah, I did, but the callouses won’t scrub off.”

“Well you’re cheesing up the place. It smells worse than last night.” Then he laughed his uh-uh-uhs, and said, “I don’t think you’re the savior of the world. You just came here to cheese us, didn’t you? Cheese Us, Cheeses Feet, that’s what I’ll call you.”

“If you must.”

“Cheesy Cheeses, the stinkiest Cheeto around,” Dennis pronounced. Every night he had a new line about my rank feet. 

As the days passed, the stack of pages I’d penned thickened, as did my biceps and pecs. Not only did I do pushups and situps and my road-side regiment, the table was about 40 pounds, perfect for curling. Of course, Dennis gave me shit for working out bare-chested, my jumpsuit’s sleeves tied around my waist, but I told him to avert his eyes or I’d tell the n-word (nazi) he was straying from the straight and narrow, tempted by my sweet guns. 

Dennis began calling me Young Gun and said the ladies would love my bulges. They were getting round. When the Spades Boys took a bathroom break, Dennis explained how Cupid’s arrows really worked.

“We all love circles,” he insisted. “It’s in our DNA. A half circle is a perfect ass cheek or tit.”

“Heart shaped booties and teardrop titties for me,” I said, thinking of Jessica Rabbit.

“But round, basically, and you wouldn’t turn down a sculpted half circle, right?”

“Personality pending, probably not.”

“Okay, but how batshit would she need to be if she had perfect geometry, I’m talking nice globes of meat under her soft skin for you to squeeze and bite and slap and grip and press your face up against?”

“Dennis, I enjoy a gander at a beautiful woman as much as the next straight shooter, but it’s like dreaming of a yacht while rowing a canoe. Just gotta enjoy pond life if you’re a salamander. I can’t start wondering what it’s like to tear into the meat of a goat as a Komodo Dragon if I’m destined to live in this bit of muck for a bit. Geiger is a pond, and I’m just a salamander.”

“Jasper, you spent too much time in your head and forgot how to talk, but I bet once them bicep apples of yours become round as a grapefruit, you won’t be able to fight the ladies off even if you stink like the armpits of Jabba the Hut.

“That bad?”

“That bad,” he said. 

The Spades Boys laughed, but fortunately for them, they didn’t smell my feet which were contained in the shoes during the day. Which was the problem. 

After being trolled by Dennis, I did another round of table-curls and looked out at the blue hills and hazy, gray sky. The distance gave me a sense of expansive peace, especially during sunset when the sky was full of glorious, pastel flames. Before the blue, golden fields dotted with sporadic swatches of Ponderosa pines were nearly circular--so beautiful. If only Chris were here to see it. The view was definitely preferred to his little slit of transparency, his stop sign on the corner. But then again, there was no chance of seeing a cosmetically enhanced female from Geiger. 

Unlike the county jailhouse, with its little stub of a pencil and napkins, I had pens and as much paper as I wanted. Most of the time, I was so deeply engrossed that the din of the room seemed distant, as if drifting across a vast space and dissipating into unintelligible garble by the time it reached my ears. 

It was a challenge as I strove to accurately portray the experience of my two-month mushroom journey. Describing the auditory hallucination of an unseen companion was difficult to convey, and I kept falling short as I tried to capture the profundity of the moment when I realized that I was Jesus. Much like in the book Alice and Wonderland, the psilocybin savior came with a tag that dared the world to eat him. ‘After I partook, Jesus was in me, and I was in him, but no homo,’ I wrote. But the phrase I’d borrowed from the Gospel seemed hacky and not nearly as impactful as I’d felt. What did it mean to be united to the mushroom consciousness of Christ? My epiphanies came out sounding fantastical and unconvincing. Pages were wasted, crumpled and tossed out, but the ink continued to flow. 

One afternoon, I was lost in thought about the chapter I’d butchered about my big, fat wallet disappearing. I made my way down the three flights of stairs and trotted out in the courtyard to do some laps, passing by a ten foot high rectangular monolith equipped with inset electric coils for lighting cigarettes. In its shade stood Cori, a husky guy who had a magnanimous way of speaking, his scratchy voice piped through something abrasive. Inside, he shot dice on the first floor, but often nodded to me as I walked by his smoke tower. 

“If you’re gonna run,” said Cori, “you should raise money for the cancer I’m giving myself, do us both a favor.”

And so I stopped for a chat. It was actually a one-sided ordeal. Having been chucked in Geiger for Grand Theft Auto, some months prior to my arrival, Cori knew everyone in the place. He was a trove of information, telling me all sorts of ways to rectify my financial situation on the outside. To make a buck, there were more than a few ways to cook a batch of methamphetamine that would ‘get you all kinds of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,’ but cars were Cori’s forte. The smokers around the tower agreed that there was nothing like carjacking for a rush, but all deferred to Cori when it came to the various ways to pull it off.

“Most car alarms are attached with wires you need to yank,” he explained. “You can rip all of 'em out of the front door when you get it open. But if that don’t shut off the beeping, just pop the hood, disconnect the battery cable; done.”

“And then GTA gets you how long in here?” I asked.

“Worth it,” said Cori.

Nods of agreement from the others, but I knew they were bobbleheads because three to five years would not be worth it. Or did everyone secretly like it here? It was summer, so I couldn’t complain about the weather. The bedsprings were squeaky, but my mattress was better than any bridge I’d be sleeping under on the way to Montana. 

The next yard break, Cori wanted to talk shop again.

“You want a drag?” he said, extending a just-lit Camel. I saw the faces of nicotine fiends follow the movement of his hand.

“Nah,” I said, and was about to jog some laps, but Cori had a question.

“You ever use a shatter rock?”

“A what?”

“What, you ain’t never heard of a shatter rock?” 

“No, can’t say that I have.”

“Shit, hippie, you’re missing out. You take a spark plug and tie it to a piece of dental floss and then pop”--he made a throwing motion with his hand--“the porcelain goes right through the glass. It don’t even make a sound if you do it right, and then you pull it back real quick. Easy money.”

“Hmmm, until you're busted.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he shrugged. “I still have more laundry to wash in this shit hole, but I’ll be back in the game.”

“You’re washing laundry, now? I thought you were playing dominoes and shooting dice.”

“Washing laundry means just going through the days like cycles in the machine. No meth or booze, and you get so clean in here that you’ll go crazy if you don’t have something to pass the time with. Wish I was a Greenback, but they might move me up some day. For now, I have nicotine, and these fools wish they were me, just here to smell that sweet aroma, ain’t that right Darrel?”

Darrel nodded.

“Yeah,” I said, “they smell better than they feel, but I usually never pass them up. It’s just that in here, an Aryan said ‘don’t accept any gifts.’ He seemed to know what was up.”

“Maybe,” allowed Cori and looked over at two uncomfortable looking guys who’d both nodded about how great car thievery was. The first was Darrel, a thickish giant with hunched shoulders and a doughy face which was offset by his shadow, Pete, who was slight and frail and had craters on his face bigger that the moon’s. Petey had one of those faces that gets shiny the moment after it’s washed, a face that he probably medicated on the outside. But in Geiger it was as red as Rudolf’s nose.

With money on his books, Cori could afford cigarettes. He didn’t like to trade them, but occasionally, if someone were to listen to him long enough, someone like Darrel or Pete, he might pass the butt with a drag or two remaining. Cori had a transitory audience, some of them blatantly following the cherry of his cigarette like a dog following a treat. It didn’t strike me that either Darrel or Pete were criminal masterminds, if you know what I mean. 

“But you said you’re broke as a joke?” Cori asked me

“I am a joke, but I’m also flat broke, walking around like Jesus instructed his apostles. 

“Nothing to lose,” Cori said. By his account, he’d stolen over twenty rides, so it was ironic that he’d been popped in a vehicle that he owned outright.

“When the cop went back to his car, I shoulda split. If I woulda run into the woods, I wouldn’t be here now. I was stupid. Got greedy. I had a half pound of meth stashed in the seat lining. Thought I could sweet talk the pig into letting me go. Nope. I had warrants, so he took me in. The fucker.”

“A half pound of meth?”

“Yep. Still there, or at least I reckon it should be. The car’s probably been auctioned off by now, but I’ll hunt it down. It was a piece of shit, but that crystal is worth five grand. Maybe more if I can cut it. It’s pure glass. You ever done some pure chard?”

“I’ve tried meth once,” I said. “It made me feel like superman, but the next day was hell. My head felt like shit, and the word ‘depressed’ doesn’t even come close to how horrendous it was.”

“Superman, hell yeah. Not bad, right? You must have had some good shit, but you probably wasted your high walking around all night. Shoulda been focused on comeuppance. If you want to have a good think about something, there’s nothing like the shit to crank you up. The next day, just take a Xanny bar for a soft landing. You might be groggy for a few days, but that’s because you’re agreeing to grease up the cogs before grinding ‘em dry. Some people clean or walk or draw, but I like to diagram, spitball with the boys.” 

“Get some crystal clarity?”

“Good one,” Cori said. 

We were silent as a crow landed on a Ponderosa across the street. It was hollering out to its buddies on the power line. They were all looking down into the yard, cackling.

“Think they’re laughing at us?” I asked. 

“Sounds like they be laughing,” Tony said, and if I hadn’t seen him say it, I would have been looking around for someone who looked like Tupac.

Tony was everywhere. He wandered the yard and ambled the West Wing from floor to floor, stopping in all the game rooms, quite slow in his pace. This approach was rare as everyone else, myself included, had their routines on lock. We could be found in certain places, based on the time, but Tony was a floater. And now he’d paused to hear Cori talk about crystal meth, but when I asked about the crows, I was a bit surprised at his voice. He looked half Asian and half white, but he had a distinctly black voice. Something about the timbre and resonance was a surprise. And sure, he spoke in ebonics, but where I expected a trumpet, Tony was an alto-sax.

“Cackling crows,” I said, nodding. 

“They’re jokers,” Cori said, and took a drag. He looked at the tip of his cigarette and then at the crows. “I wish they were orange, and we got to wear black jumpsuits.”

Cori nodded and said, “Cheeto to a ninja.”

I thought of the Nazis in the Eastern wing looking down on us. Surely they knew the Aryans called them n-words, and I wondered what they called the Aryans. Near the fence, about 25 feet down from the crows stood the six black inmates, Geiger’s only African American population. They were clustered, much like the crows, and when one of them laughed, I almost expected Cori to say something. But it was Darrell who drew the correlation.

“Ever seen the cartoon, Dumbo?”

“The fuck?” asked Tony, and faced Darrell. “You lookin’ to get smacked, you fat fuck?”

Darrell shrugged, quite oafishly, and murmured an apology. 

The crows began yelling, and Cori cawed back. 

It did feel awkward when the group of black 

Petey, who seemed to step out of the shadow of Darrel, tried to squawk, but it came out a squeak. He began tapping his comb on the palm of his hand, as Cori laughed, saying, “Damn Petey, make that noise again? You sounded like a car alarm after I yank the wires; I swear to God!” 

“Yeah, well…” Petey said, and continued his tapping of unease but didn’t squeak again.

“So,” Cori said, turning to me. “Let me guess; you like weed.”

“I’d give up weed. I don’t even miss it in here. Caffeine is my drug of choice. I mean, there’s nothing like a steaming cup of coffee with a bong hit before writing, but if the gauntlet were tossed, and I had to either choose between a cup of joe and ganja, I’m going with Joe all day.”

“To me, that means you like to be awake. You know, awake? Being all woke the fuck up. Well, shit, Jasper.” Cori looked up at the crows, shaking his head. “If you can’t fly like them fucking birds, you can at least try to get as high. There’s nothing to light a fire up under your ass like some pure--and I mean pure--shit. Melt that shit down, and then bang!” 

He rolled up the sleeve of his left arm and slapped on some track marks on his forearm. Darrell bent for a look, but Tony pointedly rolled his eyes and his entire being away.

“Get yourself awake, get some wheels, and it’s on, son!” 

“I’m more of a sit down and write a poem type of guy,” I said, but Cori was all lit up with reverie.

“Damn, I done it near a couple dozen times, gacked out of my mind, flying down the highway to the chop shop.” Cori shuddered, jubilant. “You’re missing out, and unless you’re locked up, life is too short for caffeine and scribbling on some notebook paper; fuck man!”

“Different strokes,” I maintained, “You like a joy ride, and I like to joy write.”

Petey snickered at my pun, but Tony walked towards the door, shaking his head. I wondered if it was a coincidence or if his internal clock was synched to Geiger’s because right then the buzzer sounded. The Cheetos went in so the Smurfs could come out to play and teach each other the finer points of a life of criminality. And perhaps call the Aryans a-words? 

As we walked back inside, Cori explaining how to make meth with Sudafed and lithium batteries, we were interrupted by a yell from the top of the stairs.

“Hey Cori, Jason's up in your crib!” 

Cori sprinted ahead, taking the steps three at a time, and then ran down the hall toward the backgammon room. A new transfer, his friend Jason, had just come over from county. When I topped the stairs, the reunion reminded me of the crows, all cackles and laughter.

Around my seventh day, I was at a tricky point in my story. I’d written about how I was about to get a visit from Michael the Archangel. He had somehow grabbed the pen with a magnetic lasso. Was that what to call it? I felt that if I let it go, the pen would fly out of my hand. So, I held on, like a fish on a line, and let it drag me to the Old Airport in Kona. Under an orange street light, I sat at a table in an empty playground. I was ‘sat down’, rather, but this was the part that was difficult to elucidate. Nothing outside the pen was pushed, which is to say that Michael didn’t do anything but insinuate that I should sit the fuck down. After complying with the angel, the pen was put to paper again. I was puppeted? That’s the word I came up with to describe how it felt to be manipulated, but wasn’t there something better? Maybe not possessed, but more like-- 

“Jasper Mushroomjesus, please report to the office,” said the gargantuan guard through the intercom. 

But I didn’t want to report to the office. Not now. I needed to write about Michael’s contract, my decision to sign and be mute, the carrot cupcakes, but what now?

“Whoa, Jasper. What’d you do? You didn’t go cheese all over the guards, did you?” Dennis cajoled.

“No,” I frowned, “at least I don’t think I did anything wrong. Maybe this is about when I tried to sun tan?” I stacked my pages together and looked down at the Smurfs. One looked up at me, but I doubted he could see me through the wire mesh.

At the downstairs office, a silver haired guard, who looked to be nearing retirement, explained that I was being transferred.

“Where to?”

“Moving up in the world,” he congratulated. Unlike the gargantuan guard that patrolled our halls, the old timer didn’t look down at me as if I were a bug he wished to squish. 

Fate had smiled upon me. That was the sentiment of the moment. I was led over to the North Wing to join the Greenbacks. A promotion. The guard handed me a plastic bag containing a green jumpsuit and the much coveted white T-shirt. Not only this, but socks; Greenbacks got socks! I was lucky, the guard explained. Any Cheeto would gladly switch places with me, but they’d determined that I was more industrious than the others.

But it seemed like a false advertisement the moment I entered the Northern Wing. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t quite the utopia I’d been expecting. We’d just walked down a Greenback hall, which was narrower than that of the Cheetos. It was also free of all but two inmates who passed in silence, looking straight ahead. So serious here. As I glanced in the rooms, I noticed that each bed had a TV, true, but the screens were the size of my hand. 

The cell that the guard showed me to was half the size, the bunks closer to one another. The only window was up too high to see anything but sky. And, worst of all, there was no desk.

While it was supposedly a privilege to have a T-shirt to wear under the jumpsuit, I wasn’t sure that I agreed. It may have been nice in the winter, but August was hot, and the extra layer of fabric held in the heat. After I donned my new duds, the guard explained that I was to report for kitchen duty at five the next morning.

“Cooking?” I asked.

“Dishes, but if you mind your P’s and Q’s, you can work your way up to cook. You seem friendly enough. The boys in the kitchen don’t like anyone giving them lip, and they run a tight ship. But, if you prove yourself to be a good hand in the kitchen, they might permit you to assist them. Make some new friends, and after you finish up with your dishes, maybe they’ll let you pitch in and help.”

“Really? Do you honestly think I could make some friends?” But he didn’t detect the sarcasm in my voice.

“I’m sure that you’ll make a few,” he said with an assuring smile and indicated the lower bunk. My cell mates seemed withdrawn into private thoughts. The guy across from me was watching his TV with the volume off. I considered turning my set on, but thought the noise would probably irritate the others. Without subtitles or captions, what would be the point? 

The following morning, I decided to rebel. This “promotion” was bullshit, and there was no mushroom to be had. It was like morphing from a butterfly into an ant. This room was meant for recuperation and rest before serving the colony. So, like every other day, I slept through breakfast, not even thinking about showing up for my shift in the kitchen. Three times I heard my name on the intercom, and three times I rolled over, pillow over my head.

“Jasper,” said an unfamiliar guard, as he entered my room. The sun was up and shining through the high window, but it had been easy enough to sleep in with everyone out working.

“Yeah?” I asked, sitting up in bed and rubbing my eyes.

“Follow me.” 

I was just waking up as he escorted me back over to the West Wing. The reason for my demotion was obvious enough. Playing hookie from dish duty wouldn’t be tolerated. Not for the few, the proud, the Greenbacks.

Back among the Cheetos, my cellmates told me I was a fool. Dennis seemed particularly put off by my act of rebellion.

“What were you thinking?” he asked. “The kitchen is where the food is at!”

“Are you not getting enough?”

“Well,” he reasoned, “you could have been stuffing your face with cake. Or pizza. Cheeses, you coulda had cheese over there!” He always laughed at his own jokes, a contagious laugh, but I was unmoved and tried to justify my truancy.

“You can have that cake and eat it too. Same with the cheese. Washing dishes at five in the morning isn’t my idea of a good time. To drag myself out of bed when the sun hasn’t even come up--not fun. It’s gotta be something good, and I mean real good, whatever it is, to get me up at that hideous hour, and dishes aren’t it.”

“The percs, though!” he exclaimed.

“Food?”

“Come on, Jasper. Getting up early wouldn’t be that bad. You can sleep all day.”

“Hold up, let me play this thing through. Let me paint the picture. So, I drag myself out of bed, and now I got that sick feeling in my stomach. You know, that sour feeling from the early hour, and, Oh look, there’s cake and cheese and God knows everything you can dream of eating, which would be an awesome proposal if this were Auschwitz.”

At the mention of the concentration camp, Dennis’ looked at me with caution, shook his head, just slightly. I took it to mean that anything n-word related should never be uttered. 

“Cheeses, what crawled up your butt and died?” he asked.

“I love being a Cheeto,” I said. 

Dennis howled and accused me of truckin’.

“Working helps pass the time,” Harry said from where he was stretched out on his bunk.

“The time?” I said. “Are you fucking kidding me? The games, the outdoor breaks, the hangouts. Is this really some hard time in here? Do the Cheetos have anything to complain about? No! Man, you guys want to go wash dishes before the sun rises?” I was all worked up and looking from Dennis to Harry who still had his eyes in the blue book he was reading. There were three other Spades players at Dennis’ table who didn’t seem to appear to think I had much of a point. Only Gary blinked. I could tell he was resisting the urge to nod, but he wasn’t going to publicly decry any consensus of the boys. That would be truckin’.

Dennis grew serious. 

“I know you like to sit and write all day, but the time would fly by if you could hang with the guys in the kitchen. They have it good in there. That’s all I’m saying, Cheeses.” The way he lowered his voice was very compelling. Gary and the others nodded.

“Well, to use the war veteran’s idiom,” I said, “‘You don’t know, ‘cause you weren’t there’.”

“Greenbacks got it best,” Dennis concluded. 

Harry sighed and gave an ‘amen’. 

“Y’all drank the Koolaid, but whatever,” I said and went back to my table. Instead of writing, I set the pages on the side of the table to do some curls. Gary and the others wandered out for a break, so it was only Harry, Dennis and I in the little room. 

I was looking down in the courtyard at the Smurfs as I curled the table, and I decided to probe a little. Dennis seemed so content, a veritable laughing Buddha, and I wanted to know what made him tick. What programming scripts were bugging his software? What sort of malware glitches would make washing dishes appealing? Was it simply group-think, a sort of mass hypnosis? I just couldn’t let it go.

“But preferable, Dennis?” I asked. 

He was shuffling cards at his table and intuited what I meant.

“Yep.”

“Dishes? Come on now.”

“No question.”

I set down the table, adjusted it, and then put my stack of pages back on top. I was going to let it go. Made no sense, but I needed to get back to writing anyway. And I would have. I would have just sat back down, but then he just had to insist on furthering pure insanity.

“And you just threw it away.” He shuffled, and Harry shifted on the top bunk, but I thought I heard a murmuring of assent. 

I turned and walked to his table, sat in Gary’s at an angle from Dennis with a contemplative twist of my goatee. “Tomorrow morning, would you be washing dishes? I mean, if you could. Do you really have wishes for doing dishes before sunup?” 

Harry didn’t approve of me continuing the debate and muttered something, shifted uncomfortably. I could see that he wished to read undisturbed and for me to go back to my writing table. We all had our stations, but he’d given an ‘amen’ and so I figured he needed to get to the nuts and bolts of the machine that had convinced it that maintenance is better than chillaxing and games. Was it institutional propaganda that made every Cheeto and Smurf want to move north, or was I missing something? It had to be groupthink, and I almost wondered if someone like Dennis, with his charisma, were incentivised for endorsing the lie. 

“Out of all the times I’ve been here,” Dennis said, “you’re the only sucker to ever voluntarily come back. You’ve got something wrong in your head, Cheeses.”

“Amen,” said Harry. “Now, could you ladies please let me read in peace?”

“Harry, the boys are out,” Dennis objected. “Don’t go tweeting no orders from up there in your nest, little bird. You can let Cheeses Feet and myself have a conversation until they get back.”

With his nose still in the pages, Harry acquiesced with a head shake. 

“Other little birdies are tweeting all kinds of things,” Dennis said, turning to me. “I’ll tell you, some of these boys really think you should shave that mop off.”

“The Aryans?” I asked. I had a sinking feeling, but Dennis brushed it aside.

“No,” he chuckled. “I don’t know what the a-words think, but Gary don’t like them nappy dreadlocks. He says you look like Bob Marley.” 

“Just to be clear, we’re talking about Gary, not the Aryans? And why did you say the a-words? Is that a thing now?”

“Yeah Cheeses, Gary. Never call an a-word an a-word.”

“You can say Aryan,” objected Harry. 

“But what if we called them the A-team--remember that show?”

“So you were truckin’ telling me to say a-word.”

“You’re truckin’, Cheeses, I never told you to say a tweet about what I say. I say a-word.”

“But you won’t say the n-word, meaning the Smurfs with the swastikas.”

“That is a thing,” confirmed Harry, as Dennis nodded and shuffled the deck. I noticed the black edges of the deck and how Dennis was sitting with his back straight. 

“But Gary and them thinks you should cut that mop off.”

“Who is ‘them’? Anyone I should actually be worried about? Some Aryan told me I looked like a kyke, and I got interrogated about being a n-word, but--”

“Whoa, unless you are jewish, why are you throwing that word around?”

“Dennis, I honestly need you to stop truckin’,” I insisted. “For real.”

“We’ll loop back, but are you talkin’ ‘bout Magnus Killbeat?”

“Not sure, but I heard someone call him Major. He’s the six and a half feet, bald white--”

“Black square block on his neck? You know that’s where a swastika used to be until he converted to Aryanism.”

“Oh, that adds up. He asked if I was an n-word or a… k-word?” 

“Well, I’m a kyke,” Denise said. 

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, and when Magnus found out, how do you think that went?”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, fuck is right. He was headed down the hall, looking at me all mean, and I just knew he wasn’t gonna let me pass. Imagine him coming at you.”

“He could probably touch each wall if he had his arms out,” I said. 

“And then I just--I don’t know, it’s like this trembling piss-your-pants fear came over me, this quaking that made me trip and then I was almost against the wall, so I just sorta scooted back, but the fact that I tripped made him laugh, and I guess it was kind of funny because he didn’t even have to touch me and I was down and cowering.”

“And you pissed your pants?”

“No, that was like a metaphor for how terrifying it was to have this giant antisemite looming over me like an albino gorilla.”

“He was benching stacks in the yard. He’s on roids, right?”

“Gotta be,” Dennis agreed.

“But like a Gorilla, maybe he was truckin’ and rushing up to get you to get all tripped up.”

“Could have King Konged my ass, a boss-level end, a few broken ribs and a hospital trip,

but I reckon you’s right, Cheeses. Magnus is one truckin’ a-word!” Dennis said, and began to laugh. 

I glanced up at the top bunk and watched Harry smile.

“Just like an albino gorilla,” Dennis said, after he recovered. “You’re onto something about wanting to see the fear. If they see it, they know, and so they don’t have to. Is that right.”

“Or something,” I said. 

“Exactly, and to think, you were a Greenback, getting to pitch in and have some fun mixing it up and scrubbing dishes in the kitchen for a bit, and then you get food around the clock, and you have your own TV, you get better shoes and T-shirts, and all for a couple hours where you’d just be dreaming about nonsense? And you gave that up to write poetry in these scratchy-ass jumpsuits?”

“They’re scratchy to you?”

“Not too bad,” Dennis conceded, “but you know, I’d trade up to be a bit more comfortable for a couple of hours of dishes, why not? I’m just wasting my time in here with these games.”

“And you’re saying that you’d be a dishwasher at five in the morning tomorrow for two hours for a T-shirt, basically?”

“Absolutely. You working like that, the time flies by.” 

“Why does everyone say that?”

“It’s true. Even the Greenbacks say it be like that, and when you move up and do a little work and chop things up in the kitchen, a month goes by like a week, and you’re all comfortable with your own TV and don’t have to put up with any bullshit, chilling, snacks whenever you want, you know?”

“You sound insane. Are you telling me you’d rather be watching TV than playing Spades with the boys in here? Like, if you only had a tiny TV at the end of your bed to zone out in, that’s where’d you be because that’s worth three hours of scrubbing. And you’re absolutely batshit if you’re thinking of some cartoon, festive environment with kitchen workers yucking it up with laughs and merriment, like, you’re truckin’.”

“Cheeses, that dishpit thing was entry level, and then you move up. You know, you get to know how things work, and see how it all operates, who’s the boss’ boss in the kitchen, the head chef or cook or whatever, see the ladder, climb that shit, do the game, stop truckin’ on what it’s really about in here.”

I laughed although Dennis looked serious. 

“I wonder about the world, like, are you for real, Dennis? How long are you in for?”

“Like three more months, but my ex old lady knows all the judges and has inside connections, and everyone knows that but say they can’t report on it, so what was supposed to be a two week nothing turned into a nine month this. So I’m six months in, and I’ve seen a few people that are picked to be a Greenback, but they’re out in a week or so.”

“Yeah, that’s about how much time I have left.”

“No shit? I thought you said you had two months.”

“Weeks.”

“Well,” maintained Dennis, “when you’re working, old father time shuffles across the street a little bit quicker to his friend, Freedom, waiting on the other side. And it’s not like you have to wash dishes all day. You know, two years ago, I was a Greenback in the kitchen. And guess what? Jasper, you would have had a ball. I had a ball. I wasn’t truckin’ about the kitchen.”

I began to laugh again. The propaganda was really over-the-top. He had to be a plant, right? This had to be some sort of state experiment. 

“You think I’m funny? Well, those Greenbacks in the kitchen are a real hoot. Hilarious, Cheeses. Could be barefoot, slip-sliding on that soap, getting your feet sorted as you and the fellas are all clanging around and running the ship. You would have had a ball.”

“Maybe next time,” I said, but I felt as if I were talking to an Orewllian agent. 

“Nah, that was probably a one shot opportunity for you. I was on the road crew back in 97, and getting outside of the gates was something that only a few of us Greenbacks could enjoy. We were lucky, and we knew it. Everyone else is cooped up in these smelly, Cheeto burrito rooms--”

“How many times you been here?”

“Nope,” said Harry.

“Cheeses,” Dennis said, “that’s more inappropriate than the n-word in here. Worse than your feet at night.”

“You said the smell wasn’t bad if I wrapped my feet, though.”

“That pugency is still there, Cheeses, but I remember as a Greenback, we were out walking the highway, pretty girls waving at us from their cars. Jasper, it was… Jasper, why are you looking at me like that? Did you just get a whiff of your feet?”

“Well Dennis, here’s the thing. You’re picking up trash on the side of the highway, a spector. I mean, you’re picking up trash, paraded in public as someone who is truly paying for their crimes. For anyone with an ounce of self respect, say an upstanding member of the community, would be mortified to pick up trash in an orange jumpsuit on the side of the road for all to see. Shame!”

“Green jumpsuit,” Dennis amended, calmly, “but they did have us wear those orange reflector vests. But it was May, and picture yourself out there in the sun, and actually pitching in, cleaning our highway up. People talk about being good people and giving a damn, but I had the privilege of actually doing the work that does make a difference. Every piece of trash I picked up was one less objectionable thing that a person would store in the attic. Cleaning the road would help purify the mind of all who passed, and I’m telling you, those pretty women that were waving at us? They weren’t exactly spitting or giving us anything but their love. Women love bad boys.

And listen, Cheeses I don’t give a gorilla shit about what society thinks about me. I’m telling you that it surely was a privilege to get out, and I have fond memories, when I recall some of those lovely faces just giving me energy, filling me up. 

And Hell, even the kitchen’s an upgrade. Stuck in this building with nothing happening but a card game… Cheeses, I’m not a writer, so maybe I don’t have the words. You just came back a little too quick is all I’m getting at. You didn’t even step one foot in the kitchen, and you’re talkin’ like you know what you’re talking about.” 

“Can’t you see that the myth about time flying by is perpetuated because Greenbacks probably are chosen because they only have a short time left?”

 “Jesus H. Christ, Mr. Cheeses Feet! I’ve been a Greenback!” He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Jasper, it’s not about the TV. It’s not about the T-shirts, and getting beyond the gate is only the smallest part of it. Those things are great too, but if you don’t see it, that’s okay.”

“Don’t patronize me,” I said, frowning. 

“Quit while you’re behind,” said Harry. 

“Hey Harry,” I asked, “are you saying that, given the opportunity, you’d move north to the dishpit?”

“That’s right,” Harry said.

“Unbelievable.”

“You ever play sports?” Dennis asked.

“Martial arts, and I sucked at soccer.”

“Okay, but even if you sucked… Let me see how to put this. Do you remember what it felt like to be a part of that soccer team.”

“Yes. It sucked because my contribution sucked. I have two left feet and they’re both backwards on the soccer field. The darndest thing.”

“Well, I’m sorry soccer sucked for you.” Dennis looked up to the ceiling, set down the deck of cards, and tented his fingers. “Okay, let me think about how to phrase this. Have you ever bonded with people working toward a similar goal?”

“I used to be a monk in a monastery,” I noted. “But that’s about it.” 

“A monk?”

“Yeah.”

“Like some sort of cult, or was it more like a Buddhist thingy?”

“It was a Greek Orthodox Christian monastery in Arizona.”

“So, you had a team of monks. You were on a team then?”

“Kind of. We didn’t talk to each other; we just prayed all day.”

“You didn’t talk together? Was it a silent monastery?”

“No, what’s up with the interview, Dennis?”

“Well I’m trying to get a sense of the team. Whw you talked to, your friends, you know, things along those lines.” 

 “We were all supposed to say a Greek mantra all day. I did it--said the mantra with every waking breath--but the other monks talked to each other in Greek. I don’t know Greek, except for the mantra, so I wasn’t privy to what was said. Just the mantra, for me, and even though I nodded to the other monks, we didn’t fraternize.”

“Oh, well then that’s not really what I’m talking about. I was trying to find out if you ever had worked toward something where there was camaraderie. But, if you say that monastery was the only time… But then you say you didn’t even talk to nobody there, and so… hmmm.” Dennis had a rare frown as he thought, and then looked out the window and scratched the back of his head. He stood up, stretched and said, “A monastery, did they have Cheeses for Jesus?”

“You could say that. They made feta.”

“And you just walked around saying a mantra all day? Well that sounds duller than all.” He walked over to the window. There had been a few outbursts and yells. The Smurfs were playing basketball.”

“What did they have you doing in that monastery?” Dennis asked with his back to me as he observed the game. 

“The mantra, Dennis. The mantra, and the rest of it was Greek to me. But they had services from midnight till dawn. Brutal vigils every night.”

“Yeah, but what about during the day? Did you sleep all day, or were you whittling crosses and writing on parchment paper with a quill? I mean geez, Cheeses! What the fuck you do all day as you go about mumbling your Greek mantra?”

“I gardened for a while and did a bit of carpentry. Oh Dennis, you’re going to love this. Kind of funny. I think you’ll appreciate the irony.” I paused until he turned from the window, and then I smiled and said, “Nearly the entire time I was a monk, I was washing dishes.”

“Dishes, are you serious?” Then Dennis howled until his uh-uh-uhs broke off into a phlegmy hacking that reminded me of Ewok. After he recovered, he explained how much he enjoyed his job on the outside. He drove an eighteen wheeler for SWIFT and joked that it meant, ‘Sure Wish I had a Faster Truck.’

“Swift, get it?” Dennis was all laughter. 

I thought of St. Anthony’s and the dishpit where I’d dropped the spatula and experienced Theoria. A broom of nostalgia whisked me away. I was in my black robe, happier than ever, mumbling my mantra and washing the dishes. Times had changed. I had changed.

Then I thought about this room with its two sets of bunk beds, the hand-made quilts and the bubbling atmosphere. It was hard to imagine Spades continuing without a laughing Dennis. 

It was hard to imagine this room without its storyline. Everyone who played had racked up all sorts of debts to one another, betting ridiculous things like their houses, cars and wives. Debt was their on-going joke. They’d talk about paying one another off--swearing to do so, and then laugh about how that would, of course, be after settling up with their other debts and making peace with their old ladies, you know, when hell freezes over and after the devil takes his cut.

“After I pay my lawyer off, I’ll give you everything that’s left.”

“You mean jack shit? You gotta give me something. You ain't’ truckin on me, so come up with something.” 

The use of this mysterious ‘truckin’ expletive was new to my ears, but I saw it meant ‘fronting on the real’.

“How bout my old lady then?”

“She won’t be around neither when you’re broke.”

I thought the joke had been told too many times, in every conceivable way, but the Spades fellas always laughed uproariously. The joke continued, the bets growing to absurd proportions, until one day when Gary took it too far and wagered his daughter. I didn’t understand why the room went silent until Dennis told me later on.

“It’s really a shame, Jasper. No one knows for sure, but there’s a rumor going around that Gary is a pedo,” Dennis whispered. We were walking to the TV room to watch Family Guy.

“Whoa! Gary is definitely a racist, and that kind of thing flies in here, but you’re saying he’s a Chester?” 

“Keep your voice down. It’s unsubstantiated, but that joke he made about betting his daughter was messed up. For Chrissakes, I think he forgot he told us she was just entering middle school and that he was in here because some therapist had convinced her to accuse him of touching her while she was growing up, and it’s all a bunch of bullshit, he said, but then we get to see how creepy he is, just by being greasy enough to expose himself, maybe pee himself a little, so scared.”

“What is it with you and peeing Dennis?”

“Listen, it’s just a little birdie that told somebody something. It tweeted on somebody’s shoulder, and it’s probably been hopping around a little while, you know? We didn’t think nothing of it till he talked about his daughter like that. Now, I says it could still have been Gary joking around, but...” Dennis looked at me for a nod. 

“Explains why it got so quiet. I knew something had to be up. Terrible joke.”

 “It was in poor taste. It definitely wasn’t funny, but my issue is, Jasper, Harry doesn’t want him coming around to play Spades, and he has a point because of his story.”

“Yeah,” I said, “a little too close to home.” 

Harry’s daughter had been raped. He’d told us, getting choked up and falling silent when the lights were out a few nights ago. Neither Dennis or I asked him to extrapolate.

“A lil’ bit,” Dennis agreed. “The thing is, Jasper, Harry wants me to tell Gary to leave. He says it’s my job, or it should be.”

“Well, Gary plays Spades with you, and it’s not like anyone else is gonna be able to bounce him. You’re the pack leader, the alpha at the table.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he chuckled.

“You got this.”

“But Gary is my friend, Jasper. So, I was wondering if you could do me a solid. Jasper, I swear on my truck that I’ll give you my house. Jasper, I’ll give you my house, if you do me this one small favor.”

“I heard that one before, but no. Whatever it is, I’m good. Ten foot pole, that’s me over there writing at the table.”

“For Chrissakes! You cheese me with your feet every night. Just do me this one tiny--”

“Don’t,” I stopped him. “I can guess what you want, and I’m saying no. It’s not my place.”

“Jasper, what about a brownie? I’ll sneak you one after dinner. I’ll do it for a week. All you need to do is say a few words to Gary. Just some noises with your mouth to let him know he needs to kick rocks. You can do that, can’t you? Whaddaya say, Jasper? That would really, really, help me out. You’d be a life saver, my brotha.”

“I keep my nose down and outa everything to keep my karma clear in here, so I’m giving that a hard pass. You just need to alpha up, Dennis.”

“What if I edit your book? Well, not me, but I bet I could get Harry to read it. I could tell him to write some stuff in the margins.”

“You’re a silly goose,” I said because he was now cranking his charm up.

“Jasper, I can’t tell my friend to never come back. Gary--just imagining how hurt he’d look at me.”

“You’ve got to. I have no truck with Gary. It was a stupid joke, but I’m not going to cast any stones or be the offended one. You told me that his daughter’s thing is unsubstantiated, and it’s innocent until proven guilty, right? You guys are always harping on and on about how being innocent until proven guilty is a myth. Habeas Corpus hocus pocus, right? But you seem to think it’s a good idea to give people the benefit of doubt, and so do I.”

“What about a month’s worth of brownies?”

“Dennis, you’re a silly goose with a noose, but you won’t rope me into this. And begging, now, are we? Not a good look, sir. I believe you’re truckin’.”

“I’m not begging; we’re bargaining, here.”

“Well, whatever you want to call it, I’m calling not-it. You kind of remind me of the cop that tried to bribe me.”

“The cute one with the hundred dollar bill you were talking about?”

“She was definitely easy on the eyes, but she kept pleading in the same tone you’re using.”

“Jasper, was she really all that good looking? I’ve been around Spokane and met every cop on the force, one way or another. Are you telling me she was literally a looker and not just not completely beat down like the others in that soul-sucking station?”

“She was cute. At least an eight.”

“Seriously?” Dennis was dubious.

“Yeah.”

“Well, maybe they took on someone new. Cheeses Feet,” Dennis said, and paused, grinned, and pronounced “You shoulda taken the deal! A hundred bucks and she’d have let you go; what a deal! Of course, I’da never met you, so I’m glad you didn’t leave with your lady-cop friend. You’re good people, even if your feet stink like the bottom of a deep belly button, cheeses of a dirty ass Jesus belly button, godaamit.” He cackled, clapped his hands, coughed.

“Thanks, chief. And because you’re the alpha that can, and will, handle things for Harry, that means a lot.”

“I love you even though you’re truckin’ right now,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder. “I just wish I didn’t have to be the one to tell my friend that he can’t be coming around. But Harry, you know?”

“Too close to home.” 

In the TV room, Jerry Springer could draw in a crowd, but it was never so packed as when Family Guy aired. All the seats were taken, so Dennis and I headed over to a couple of his Spades buddies leaning against the rear wall. 

The room was segregated like a patchwork quilt. A handful of Aryans sat in the left flank of the fifty plastic chairs. They primarily played checkers but would take breaks and compete to see who could walk up and down the most steps on their hands. They were all burly, but none so much as Magnus. However, Big Ben, who was on the smaller side--didn’t have an ounce of fat on his wiry frame, held the record having climbed up a total of forty six steps on his hands while a red-faced Aryan with garden hoses for veins running up his neck held Big Ben’s ankles and screamed for him to fucking push it. 

Sitting to the far right was a group of inmates that Dennis said were treading on thin ice. They were a mix of chicano and whites, which was ballsy enough, but it was the fact that they played dominoes which pissed off the Aryans. Apparently, dominoes was a game for the blacks which made the white boys race traders. Dennis heard rumors of the a-words planning on stepping in to break up their game and maybe crack some heads together in the process. It hadn’t happened, but there was an underlying tension with a rumor like that having floated the circuit. If I’d heard it, everyone else had. That discord was nearly palpable as a discordant note when the groups glanced at one another across the room.

The six black Cheetos stood together near the window. Tony often was with them, but because he was mixed, partially Asian, the Aryans let it slide. Other than the cafeteria, Family Guy was the only draw strong enough to pull everyone together. But the guards also liked Family Guy, and stood around making sure that things didn’t get physical. It never escalated to anything more than looks. And despite the aggressive posturing, everyone seemed to have the same sense of humor. When Stewie spoke of planning to kill Lois, there were cheers.

After the show, there was an outdoor break before dinner. Near the end of my sentence, as per usual, Cori was posted by the smoking tower. 

“First thing I’m gonna do on the outside is go to Home Depot,” Cori was explaining to Darrell, as I walked over. 

“Oh yeah? I thought you said you were gonna bang your old lady,” Darrell replied, with an oafish grin. 

“Darrell, of course that will be the first, first thing I do. She’s picking me up, so of course we’ll fuck first,” Cori said, flicking ash off the end of his cigarette. “But papa gotta get me some cash, so we can go out after I make mama come. Ain’t that right? Papa ain’t gonna let his old lady pay for dinner.”

“Are you going to steal shit at Home Depot?” Petey asked.

“Petey, did the hamster spinning the wheel in that head of yours go on strike?” Cori looked disappointed, but only so he could educate the two. And me. It was the first time I’d not been offered a drag, but he did turn to me, for Darrell and Petey’s benefit.

“Do you ever keep your receipts, Jasper?” he asked.

“You’re talking to a penniless hitchhiker, remember? You need to be able to buy things to get receipts.”

“‘No, you don’t,’ is your answer. You most certainly do not, but I’m still glad you said that, Jasper. That is not the only way you get receipts--buying shit--and I want to talk about that,” Cori turned to Darrell and Petey. “You guys may or may not keep your receipts, but most folks don’t give a damn. They throw those receipts in the trash the moment they’re out the door. You follow me?”

Darrell nodded. Petey blinked. Tony wandered over.

“Now,” Cori said, acknowledging Tony with a nod, “some of those customers use credit cards, debit cards--you know, cards. In fact, most use cards, but once in a while someone will use cash. See where I’m going? Anyone?”

“Oh!” Darrell exclaimed, “So you can steal the things on the receipt, and then return them, right? I think I’ve heard of that.”

Cori nodded. “You ever try it?”

“No, but I would,” said Darrell, nodding about the good sense of the operation.

“I always buy something at the counter,” said Cori. “You show the cashier the receipt for the things in your cart, and say you just needed this screwdriver, or whatever it is you have, and then you walk out, so that everyone upstairs and on the camera sees you go through that register and receive clearance. You don’t just walk out; know what I’m sayin’? God, I’m getting sick of this cage.” 

Cori looked to the sky, and then asked me, “So, when did you say you’re getting out? The date’s coming up, right? You’re gonna have some skills to put to work. After all I taught you, you better be driving a Mazda to Montana. Drive it and ditch it on the side of I-90. Leave the hazard lights on and whoever owns it will get it back.”

“You jack cars; I raid dumpsters. Gotta stay in my lane.”

Petey squeaked at this and Darrell frowned.

“You gotta at least try to get a ride,” Cori insisted. “Remember what I said: All you need is a screwdriver and something to pound that sucker right in the ignition, twerk it with a pair of vice grips. Be sure to thank Mazda for being lazy as fuck, and my homie Tyrece who showed me. Passing the knowledge.”

“That is key,” I said.

Again Petey emitted a mousey chirp, a single yelp of a laugh. 

“Oooh,” Darrell said, “I get it. Like a key.”

“I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if I ended up back in Geiger with y’all,” I admitted.

“Right?” said Cori. “Ain’t no thang for a happy-go-lucky hippie like you. But don’t look at it that way. First, you gotta believe that the pigs will never hear of you before you’re already over and done with your ride. Visualize that. It’s a secret that all successful people use.”

“Hmmm, I don’t think meditation is a secret anymore, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what is, and is not, preferable. Two weeks here was awesome, but I don’t think wintering in Geiger sounds like the preferable way to do it. I’m thinking of Venice Beach, or maybe back to Hawaii. I’m not saying I won’t be back. I could try and steal a car, and then there’d be a 50/50 chance that I could hang out here with you all winter long. So I gotta ask myself: what is preferable? Geiger or Hawaii. Honestly, that’s a hard call to make. Then again, winter in Spokane is all snowy and cold.”

“You still got another week, right?”

“A few more days is all.”

“Then what? I probably won’t see you on the outside.”

“Probably not. It’s the road that awaits. I must go further with my thumb as a hook. I’m a fisher of men.”

“Hitchhiking? After everything I done taught you?”

“To be honest, yeah. I like hitchhiking.”

“What a waste,” said Cori, stamping out his cigarette. 

Then he passed it to Darrell who was quick about lighting it on the tower. Petey shifted from foot to foot after it was lit, and taking only a half puff, Darrell passed it to his shadow. 

Back inside, I looked out at the contrast of the crepuscular colors before dusk. Nearly two weeks, and I’d grown accustomed to the panoramic view. Orange cirrus clouds and “contrails” turning gold before the purpling. If only it were as easy a way to describe the chaotic turn of events in my story. 

I looked at the blank page while tapping the pen on my front tooth. How could I possibly explain my foreboding premonition? Pops, the antichrist, was going to kill me. I wasn’t sure how to begin until the pen hit the paper, and then the ink fell into words with the force of a waterfall. 

As the lights went out, Dennis told me that I should share the Adventures of Cheeses Feet with Harry before leaving. 

“You’ll cheese Harry into a trance. Whaddaya wanna bet, Harry? You won’t be able to put it down,” Dennis said. He was squirmier than usual on the bunk across from me. Below him, Doug said nothing.

“I’ll read your story tomorrow, if you want, Jasper.” Harry replied from above me.

“It’s not coherent at this point,” I said.

“Is it too cheesy for Harry? Come on now Cheeses, he’ll understand that it’s a rough draft,” Dennis encouraged.

“Well, if you can grock it after the first couple of pages, but it skips around and--”

“Like you,” Dennis interjected, “You’re such a little girl, sometimes, skipping around down on the courtyard.” 

“I’d be happy to read your work,” Harry assured me. “I’m not expecting a masterpiece. Even if I think it stinks, I’ll keep negative opinions to myself.” 

“No, you gotta give me your honest opinion.”

“Well, I can be pretty harsh.” 

“Harry,” Dennis said, “All you read is smut. We’ve got a real author in the room.”

“No,” I said. “This is just a journal. Yes, it’s also a story, but I’m not an author. You have to publish something first.”

“Oh, listen to the modesty,” Dennis said. “Do you hear that, Harry?”

“It might be shit,” Harry contended.

“Might be,” I agreed.

“You two!” Dennis said, shifting about restlessly on his bunk. “It deserves a chance before you toss it on the dung heap.”

“I’ll give it a read, but Jasper, if you want my honest opinion, you better have some thick skin.

It was quiet in the room, and I was in my bed and facing the wall, thinking about the feline gleam of the starlight in Puna. The vision of walking down the road, barefoot on the moonless night, as I made my way to Green Lake, began to turn into a dream. 

“Hey Jasper.” The voice of Dennis brought me back around.

“Yeah?”

“Did you say you were walking around barefoot in the middle east?”

“No. I was in Hawaii.” It was almost as if he’d peeked into my dream.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Why?”

“Because,” Dennis giggled, “your feet smell like the Cheeses of Nazareth!”

“Dennis, would you please…” Harry sounded annoyed, but he knew there was no use. It would be pointless to ask him to pipe down before he finished with his uh-uh-uhs. 

It was well after midnight when our cell door opened. The gargantuan guard must have been working later than usual. He didn’t sound happy as he said my name. I got up, wiped the crust from the corners of my eye, and followed him down the hall. 

Having just come back from the Greenbacks, I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe they had another transfer lined up? Maybe I was to become a Smurf? I hoped not, but I wasn’t about to make an inquiry to my usher. The gargantuan guard was known to have a fuse the length of a clipped fingernail, easily ignited.

On the first floor, I was locked inside a holding cell under the stairwell. It wasn’t much bigger than the first room I’d been in at the police station. There was a dim yellow light on the ceiling, a toilet in the corner, and a sink on the wall. There wasn’t a bench or anything to sit on, and so I sat cross legged. But, after what seemed like ten minutes, I lay down on the floor. It wasn’t the most comfortable way to spend the night, but having spent a few years hitchhiking, I had grown accustomed to sleeping on all sorts of surfaces. As long as I wasn’t going to get rained on, I couldn’t complain. 

Without a window to let in daylight, I wondered if it was morning. This holding cell wouldn’t have been so bad if there’d been a bench to drum on, but without one, I was bored. The toilet didn’t give much of a sound when I slapped it, and the walls gave me nothing in the realm of tone worth the sting of my palms. Better to drum on my body, but that got tiresome. Restless, I hoped someone would stop by soon so I could ask for a pen and paper. The story was just getting to the good part. My angel was giving me a pep talk, as I headed into Lucifer’s lair for a night of temptation. It all seemed so delusional, and hadn’t it been? Or was this all a dream in the afterlife? I tried to remember how it had been when I met the devil.

Though I had been standing on the roadside all night, I had banished the demon of lethargy. All weariness and sleepy lulls were behind me, vanquished. 

In that warm room under the stairwell, as time drizzled by, I thought of different ways to describe the cocksure voice of the devil. Unlike the muffled sounds of the people on the floor above me, I had heard Lucifer loud and clear. But in my head, he wanted nothing more than for me to be comfortable as I spent the night on the roadside.

The cool floor wasn’t bad. It must be morning, or was it closer to noon? There was no window on the door. Had the guards forgotten where they put me? But then a breakfast tray slid through the slot in the bottom of the door, and I realized that of course they knew where I was. I wolfed down the bacon, eggs and toast and then realized I should have really taken my time. 

Time? 

After breakfast I was puzzled. If I hadn’t been forgotten, then what was the holdup? Perhaps there’d been some sort of a hiccup in the paperwork, or they were waiting for a room to open up. But why would they want to move me again? There was no one to answer my queries, and the room became stuffy as the day drew on. I slurped water from the sink and stripped down to my underwear. I lay back on the floor with my jumpsuit as a pillow. Then on my side, I found that the slip on shoes were useful as knee and hip buffers. The cement almost seemed soft, and soon my eyelids grew heavy. Sleep hovered like a net of sedation, and time passed by with the dream riddled clouds of realms between unconsciousness and memory. 

And then, 24 hours from when the gargantuan guard dropped me here, I woke up out of a dead sleep to the clang of my door being opened. Without a word, the gargantuan guard led me back up to my room on the third floor.

Dennis and Harry gave me a hero's welcome. 

“Harry saved your book,” Dennis said. “They were going to throw it away.”

The gargantuan guard yawned and said, “Maybe we should have. People in the hole don’t have rights.”

“The hole?” I asked.

“Yeah, didn’t anyone tell you? You did 24 hours for not showing up to your job as a Greenback.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” I said.

“Why didn’t you just say that you didn’t want to be transferred?”

“Everyone said the grass was greener, that the time would fly.”

“It would have,” insisted the guard.

Dennis chuckled and said, “The boy still doesn’t know how it works in here.”

The guard harrumphed and left us. 

Harry got off his bunk and handed me a plastic bag full of my loose-leaf pages.

“I had to look up that verse in Ezekiel to see if you were onto anything.”

“Ezekiel 4:15?” I asked.

“I believe it was referring to ordinary bread cooked over cow dung,” Harry said.

“Why would you need to prepare ‘bread’ by weight and be astonished?”

“Well, after all the translations and edits of the original text, you could be onto something.”

“The eucharist, the transubstantiation, the Bread of Life who is Christ--”

“Cheeses,” Dennis said, “you definitely don’t need to be eating magic mushrooms to blab words that nobody knows.”

“The short of it is, the Christ consciousness is in the psilocybin mushroom. Bread and wine is a lie.”

“Wait,” Harry said, “I didn’t get that out of your story. Your manuscript is some sort of manifesto?” 

“It’s just the story of what happened to me.”

“And look where it got you!” Dennis said.

“No ragrets,” I said, then turned to Harry, “and thanks for saving my book.”

Two days later, I was shackled and taken to the courthouse. The judge, who obviously wanted to speed through the cases, advised me, along with my public defender, to plead guilty. 

“It would have just been a ticket,” said the judge, “if you didn’t claim to be Heysoos.”

“Jesus, actually,” I said. “Not one single person has pronounced it correctly.” My public defender seemed to tense up, but the judge only rolled his eyes.

After court, I was issued a hundred dollar ticket for city theft which I tucked into my plastic bag of pages. It was the gargantuan guard who processed me, seeming to take his time as I sat shackled in Geiger's foyer. After passing through three locked doors, the gargantuan guard uncuffed me as a chain link gate on wheels rolled open. 

I said that I would miss him.

“Do you want to stay another night?” 

“Sure,” I said, cheerily. “Just give me one more night!”

He grimaced, turned and closed the chain link gate. 

I was back in my filthy street clothes, but Geiger had provided me with a bus ticket to downtown Spokane. And, after all my working out, and after Cori’s many lessons on how to jack a Mazda, I boarded the bus feeling I had a new lease on life.

On the bus, I noted it was Thursday. Would there be a drum circle in the park? Perhaps I’d run into Esme and Juniper. As the yellow grass and ponderosa pines blurred by, I wondered if life could be any better. No. Everything was perfect.