Vox Mentis

Don't lose your cool.

Make them lose their cool.

You still remember those words that were given to you, right? Have you still been practicing them every day?
Do you think they'll work on them?

Well, this is it. This is what control buys you.

Guess it's time to lose it. They didn't deserve what they had.

Don't lose your cool.

"Okay," you say. "Can we talk this over, please?" You draw out the word please, make it sound like police, to remind everybody that shit like this can get you arrested. "Oh. I know you. I know your mom." This isn't true, but totally believable in a town this size. The point is to bring moms into the picture, to join police.

"You came on to my boyfriend," says the girl.

This you recognize as a speculative assertion, what they called test balloons in class. When people make speculative assertions, they hope to be disproved. It means the girl isn't going to hit you with the chain. If she had said, I'm going to fuck you up for what you did to my boyfriend, you would have been in trouble. But she's just standing there, waiting for you to respond and explain how it's all a crazy misunderstanding. You almost feel disappointed, because it had been an interesting mental challenge there for a minute.

Make them lose their cool.

Well, this is it. This is what control buys you.

Guess it's time to lose it. They didn't deserve what they had.

"Actually, he came on to me," you say, and you must want to be hurt; it's the only explanation. The girl stares at you, trying to believe her ears, and another girl says, "Oh, it's on, bitch," and you run. You almost get through a girl with bad acne and scared eyes but someone grabs your collar and drags you to the ground. The girl with the chain comes at you in pure rage, and despite the imminent ass whipping you feel a mild pleasure at successfully pushing her beyond pre-cortex control. That's not easy. You really have to sock a person in the core of what they believe to do that. You throw your arms around your head and curl into a ball.

Pain explodes on your back. You try to roll over, and the chain catches you across the face. Your mouth disappears. You find your knees and try to crawl away. Something bright and bloody lies in the dirt. A tooth. You feel sad and stupid and want to go back in time and not be such a dick.

Lights flare. You can't see where they're coming from but apparently they're relevant because the girls fall away. Shoes slap concrete. There are no new blows. That's an improvement.

Someone takes you by the shoulders. You flinch. He says, "It's all right, relax, I'm helping."

"Moof," you say, which is supposed to be My tooth. The man's fingers invade your ribs. He goes away and you feel lost. He comes back and snaps something around your neck. You try to rise but he says, "No, no," restraining you with one hand. All you can see is his hair, which is long and the color of sand. He slides something beneath your butt, which turns out to be a trolley. "Muh toof," you say. He ratchets you up and sails you across the parking lot to a white van that you know passes for an ambulance out here. Before he closes the doors on you, his eyes scan you in a quick, professional way.

By the time the vehicle stops and hands begin to unload you, you're not sure where you are. "Pub brawl?" someone asks, and the man says, "Girl fight out back of Tangled Threads."

A woman bends over your face. "She's lost a tooth."

"It's in my mouth," says your rescuer. This sounds funny to you, and you smile, and after that you don't remember anything. Time must have passed, though, because you're sitting in a hospital bed in an open ward with morning light streaming in. You're wearing a thin gown and your neck is encased in a brace. Your back is full of golf balls. You have a loose tooth in your mouth and probe it with your tongue but then think you probably shouldn't do that. Your head is glass but otherwise you feel pretty okay.

A nurse stops by. You've seen her buy soy milk at the local supermarket sometimes. "Morning, darling. How are you feeling?"

"Good," you say.

The nurse puts her hands on your face. "Open up. Good. You're leaving that tooth alone?"

"Yeth."

She releases your mouth. "What happened?"

I lost control. I proved that I belong here. "Nothing."

"Gary wants to talk to you."

"Whoth Gary?"

"The police sergeant."

You try to shake your head. Pressing charges would be a bad idea. You have no identity. "How long do I wear this?"

"Six weeks. And count yourself lucky."

You do. It could easily have been worse. "Who picked me up?"

"The para?"

You don't know what this means. "The man with the ambulanth van."

"Paramedic. That's Danny. He kept that tooth viable."

"Can I thank him?"

"He's off duty," says the nurse. "But I'm sure you'll see him around. It's a small town, if you've noticed."

"Yeth," you say.

~

You've seen that van around. White with yellow and orange stripes; you must have seen it twice weekly since you got here. But, of course, now that you're released from the hospital, leading with your chin because of the brace, it's nowhere to be found. Sometimes you catch a flash of white and turn to see if it's him, pain spiking through your neck, and when you're too slow, you think, I bet it was.

It's very junior high, being attracted to an ambulance driver. Falling for a man who had rescued you. You feel stupid. But your thoughts keep returning to how he carried your tooth in his mouth. Also his hair in the ambulance headlights. You feel hot and restless, and go for lots of walks, during which you might encounter a white van with yellow and orange stripes.

Should you even bother with this guy? Do you want to thank him? Or should you just keep to yourself and go back to your usual routine? Or what? You don't know. Bah. You feel stupid.

Go get 'im, girl!

You know what they say; it's counter-productive to wait for ambulances at the bottom of cliffs. Or something.

Go find yourself a nice cliff, preferably with a nice sea view and good beach access, and find yourself some daredevil-aspirant with shitty footing.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. It's not like there's any beaches in this blasted hellscape, but at least getting another look at the car might alleviate your stir-crazy. Make you know it wasn't a dream.

Well, so far all the boys you've fucked with have led to Jeremy dying and you getting beat up. Even though it's not entirely your fault, but maybe you should relax on the sexy stuff until you're sure no one will get hurt.

SpoilerShow

Am I victim blaming?? I... don't know :(

I had a dream about Vox Mentis last night! That bareword was SO strong that it was turning people into straight up monsters!!!! wow! The bareword got released in like some USA city and created like a nuclear explosion and it infected all the objects around it. If you wanted to evacuate, you better change clothes! Cause if people like, saw your shirt (or you saw your own shirt) the bareword would make you A SCARY MONSTER!!! OH NO!

SpoilerShow

Wow, it's been a while, huh? So sorry for disappearing. A number of very dramatic changes happened rather quickly in my life, and just when those were wrapping up, my daughter was born, and she has been a wonderful focus of my life since then. But I haven't forgotten this story, and I kept my notes, which I was able to track down today.

I debated whether or not to bring this back, because I feel like I had something good going creatively two years ago that I'm not sure I'll be able to recapture, but, after hearing from a few of you that you still talk about Vox Mentis and that you liked what was going on with it, I figured, what the hell, I'll give it a shot.

Without further ado... back to Elise and her romantic entanglements!

Go get 'im, girl!

maybe you should relax on the sexy stuff until you're sure no one will get hurt.

Okay, okay, no sexy stuff. Something innocuous, maybe. You decide to buy him flowers. You'll just buy flowers and a card and if he's not at the hospital when you drop them off, that's fine. You'll just leave them.

You sweat over what to write, settle on THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY TOOTH, stare at it in horror, and go back to the store for a new card. On the second attempt, you go dignified.

THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME.
ELISE JACKSON.

Maybe it's not completely dignified. Because you can't resist writing saving me. Or supplying your full name. But you don’t include a phone number. You manage that.

You drive to the hospital, the flowers on the passenger seat with air blasting at them to fend off the heat. The woman at the front desk thinks you're there for an appointment, which you guess is logical, given the brace, and once that's straightened out, says, “Did you want to see him or just leave these?” You panic and say, “Just leave them.”

You get as far as the doors. “Is he here, though?”

The woman looks at you like she's seen it all a million times before and says, “I’ll see.” She picks up the phone. You wait and try not to feel fourteen years old. The woman replaces the receiver. “I’m sorry.”

In the car, you grip the wheel and berate yourself. What would Eliot think? He would be ashamed. He’d tell you to get used to Broken Hill, because the way you're acting, you're never coming home. You might as well buy a house and get a couple of dogs and marry Danny the paramedic and live here forever.

“Oh, Jesus,” you say, because that is atrocious.

You know what they say; it's counter-productive to wait for ambulances at the bottom of cliffs. Or something.

Go find yourself a nice cliff, preferably with a nice sea view and good beach access, and find yourself some daredevil-aspirant with shitty footing.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. It's not like there's any beaches in this blasted hellscape, but at least getting another look at the car might alleviate your stir-crazy. Make you know it wasn't a dream.

You become Pavlovian to the bell that jangles whenever someone opens the Tangled Threads door but it's never him, and after a few days you understand that it never will be. He saw the flowers for exactly what they were: an awkward, juvenile attempt at romance. You feel angry at yourself, and him for making you act like that. Because, to be fair, he caught you in the middle of a trauma. You hadn’t been yourself. Who is he to judge? He's a nobody in a dinky, nothing town and he doesn't even have a proper ambulance. And his hair is old-fashioned. The only reason you’d even looked at him twice was he had no competition. You itch for a boy to walk in, someone young and cute and stupid. You stew behind the counter and tidy racks until everything is the same.

At noon, you walk to the local burger place and stand in line behind the miners - not muscular guys in sleeveless shirts with picks and sexy soot stains, like you might expect, but fat truck drivers and crane operators who smell like oil. Hardly anyone actually goes into the mines anymore. That part is automated. And there's hardly anything to go into: For the most part, the mines are great open-cut quarries that look like meteorite craters. The town surrounds a huge one, separated from it by a towering wall of mullock, which is the stuff they dragged out of the ground that wasn’t worth anything but had to be put somewhere. No one seems to find this strange, living in a town shaped like a doughnut, slowly filling the edges of the hole with crap. You want to ask why they didn’t move the town about five miles north, or south or east or west, for that matter, any random direction. But you can predict the response: They would say, Because this is where it is. Australians are very practical, you've found. They do things quickly and purposefully and to the absolute minimum standard required. It's refreshing and genuine but sometimes leads to situations like building a town around a hole. Originally you'd thought the name Broken Hill was a joke, part of the perverse humor that leads them to nickname people with red hair Bluey. Because besides the mullock, the place is as flat as a mirror. But apparently there was a hill once. It had been mined away.

You inhale stale sweat and cigarettes until you reach the counter, then eat your burger at a table outside, watching traffic. Everything that passes you've seen before. You turn your head, testing your neck, and your eyes catch something.

The paramedic van. Parked across the road.

Hang on a sec. You're thinking in the moment too much.

Remember, the poets sent you out here. Now, if they were doing that, wouldn't they want someone keeping tabs on you?

Imagine this scenario. Your unseen watcher learns about what you've been doing. They decide to use it for a test, or maybe a punishment for squandering your talents. Exact reason doesn't matter right now.

What matters is that a mystery poet riled up a bunch of angry girlfriends and sent them after you.

Or maybe he's not such a mystery, considering someone showed up right afterwards and saved your life, and now you can't stop thinking about him. Yeah, that can happen on its own, but you were also just kicked out of an organization of people who spend a lot of time learning how to make that kind of thing happen.

Maybe this is what this whole Broken Hill mess is about. It's one big test to see if you can persuade "Danny" to let you leave. Or maybe he's just tormenting you for kicks, wouldn't be the first time someone in this organization has tried to play around with you.

...or, maybe you're getting paranoid. But it fits with what you know enough to be worth a little test.

Go to the van, and try to lead the conversation towards poetry.

no way that's the correct paramedic van

Hang on a sec. You're thinking in the moment too much.

Remember, the poets sent you out here. Now, if they were doing that, wouldn't they want someone keeping tabs on you?

Imagine this scenario. Your unseen watcher learns about what you've been doing. They decide to use it for a test, or maybe a punishment for squandering your talents. Exact reason doesn't matter right now.

What matters is that a mystery poet riled up a bunch of angry girlfriends and sent them after you.

Or maybe he's not such a mystery, considering someone showed up right afterwards and saved your life, and now you can't stop thinking about him. Yeah, that can happen on its own, but you were also just kicked out of an organization of people who spend a lot of time learning how to make that kind of thing happen.

Maybe this is what this whole Broken Hill mess is about. It's one big test to see if you can persuade "Danny" to let you leave. Or maybe he's just tormenting you for kicks, wouldn't be the first time someone in this organization has tried to play around with you.

...or, maybe you're getting paranoid. But it fits with what you know enough to be worth a little test.

Go to the van, and try to lead the conversation towards poetry.

no way that's the correct paramedic van

You feel panic. Is this all part of some sort of test? Is Danny some sort of poet plant, here to make sure you never leave? And you're falling for him... but, no, you're over him, remember? You forgot that for a second. You relax. You begin to look for him, casually. Besides, there's probably no way that's his paramedic van.

You hope you do see him, so you can discover exactly how plain and boring he is when he's not carrying your tooth in his mouth. So you can see if he really is just a poet fucking with you, or just some backwoods Australian bimbo in a wifebeater. You eat your burger.

You see him. It might be him. He's coming down the sidewalk, talking to a woman. He shakes his head and it definitely is him. He's cute. You might have been suffering from head trauma but you do have taste. He's broad shouldered. His arms are incredible. He's not wearing a wifebeater. As he draws closer, you peg his age at maybe twenty-five. The woman is an attractive brunette you've seen featured in real estate advertisements. She laughs at something Danny says, tossing her hair, and you're totally fine with that. You wish Ms. Real Estate the very best of luck with her handsome Australian paramedic/possibly poet.

You almost let them walk by. Then you decide what the hell. If he's not a poet, there's no problem, so why not? If he's a poet, you'll know. “Hello.”

He stops. His eyes: You'd forgotten those. “You’re . . .”

“Toothless.”

“Right.” You see him thinking about the flowers. He had found that awkward. The awkwardness is genuine. If he was faking it, you'd know. Chances of him being a poet decrease.

“Just wanted to say thanks,” you say. “Don’t let me hold you up.”

The real estate woman smiles and snakes a hand into Danny’s. He seems relieved that you're not turning on the crazy. “No problem.” The real estate woman begins to lead him away. Suddenly he skips back to your table and sticks out his hand. “I’m Danny.”

You take his hand, surprised, and he grins.

"Hey," you say, "Are you into poetry?" Fishing for a reaction. Any reaction.

He gives you one. Genuine confusion. "Sorry, not much into poetry." He turns, and looks back. "Though you make a good case!" He smiles, and returns to the real estate woman.

You feel unsettled. You watch him walk away. What was that? He's not a poet. Not with that look he gave. A poet would lock that shit down. Did he just try to pick you up though? That's outrageous. You pick up your Coke and look after him again. No way is this guy a plant. You were just being paranoid; of course he was there right away, somebody probably called as soon as they saw the fight happen. This guy is the genuine article. Your heart is jumping. You think, Ah, fuck.

~

You decide to sleep with him and get it over with. It's the only way. He's become an annoying jingle, striking in the shower, or at work, or just as you're falling asleep. You have to at least kiss him deeply and completely, in a way that leaves nothing behind. So you can move on. So you can stop imagining it. You can't keep losing yourself to the jingle. It's impairing your ability to function. Once you turn him into a toy, like those boys in Tangled Threads, it'll be all right. You'll be back in control.

You buy a dress, a little black scrap from Tangled Threads that you'd talked away from three potential customers in case of an occasion like this. You do your hair, going for volume. You detonate mascara. Friday night, you push into a smoke-filled sweat tank in the main bar, the pub, and look for him. The place is full of bright-eyed teenagers and crusted-on miners, opposing demographics, normally, united by their passion for beer and angry guitars. A boy screams, “Vince!” in your ear. These are reasons you don't normally come here. You do a lap and begin to feel discouraged. Then you spy him at the bar with a few other young men in collared shirts. You walk up and yell, “Hi!”

Danny smiles at you.

“Buy me a drink!” you say.

~

Four hours later, your head buzzing, you're in the passenger seat of his paramedic van, being driven home. Not to your home. To his. You've unsnapped your seat belt and draped yourself across him, kissing his neck, nibbling his ear, which is an excellent way to die in a car accident, if you'd thought about that. But you didn't. You thought only of getting him alone in a room and doing terrible things. He drives and drives and finally stops. A dog slobbers on your legs and you scream and he picks you up. You like that. It reminds you of how you met.

His house is dark but there's a bed and a moon outside. You try to unbutton his pants and he says no, and you say, Yes, putting some emphasis behind it, a little lower frequency that sounds commanding, but it doesn’t work. On the bed he touches your neck and this is what you've been missing, you realize: All of your predatory behavior included no reciprocity. And that's important. You'd forgotten. You go after him again and this time he takes your wrists in one hand and traps them on the pillow above your head. “I want you,” you say. “Let me touch you.”

“No,” he says, and you find this even more arousing, for some reason. You do enjoy a challenge. But his hands move down your body and you lose the will to argue. “Yes,” you say, “yes, yes.” You see glittering eyes in the darkness outside, his dog, watching you, but you don't care. You're going somewhere else. His touch is careful and you realize you hadn’t really known what it was like to be cared for. It's a night of newness. He holds you and his fingers move and then your climax moves through you like a thunderclap, like a force of nature, something you can't control at all, and you have to lie still until you can find yourself. He lets go of your wrists. He's still wearing pants. You need to address that. “Now,” you say, and finally he nods, and says, “Now,” and you basically attack him.

~

In the morning you wake and he's not there. You sit up. The bedroom has no curtains. Beyond the window is flat earth as far as the horizon. The bedroom is a crime scene of twisted sheets and scattered clothes. Aside from the bed, there's no furniture. No paintings. No photos.

On the kitchen table you find a note:

Gone for a ride. Help yourself to brekky.

wow it's amazing how quick you can get over someone. don't even take the breakfast just jet

Remember back to your schooling, to Maslow. You've been sitting at fulfillment of basic needs ever since you got established in Broken Hill, and you've been flailing about for some fulfillment of psychological needs. You don't care about Danny any more than you cared about those boys in the shop, you're just trying to fill a hole that the Academy left. Wildly, without purpose.

What did Thoreau say, that you're all offense and no defense? It's because you have no control, no mastery of the self. And there's probably no expectation that you ever will. This isn't more training, this is an armory. You've been put in a dark locker to gather dust until a weapon is needed. You might be pulled out now and again to destroy something, but you'll always go back in the locker at the end of the day.

Use this brief moment on the next tier of the pyramid to center yourself and figure out a god-damned plan. You are never going to be an agent of the Organization. What is your goal?

Edit: Some fan art under the spoiler.

SpoilerShow

SpoilerShow

Thanks so much for the fanart, Akumu! I'm going to put it in the initial post :)

wow it's amazing how quick you can get over someone. don't even take the breakfast just jet

A ride, you think. He's gone for a ride. He departed on some mode of transport to an unnamed destination for unknown reasons for an indeterminate length of time. You're glad he explained that.

You look around the room while deciding what to do. There's a photo of the dog on the TV. It's the only really personal thing you can see, so you pick it up. A big dog. A man’s dog.

You have a sudden, appalling flash of perspective. He's waiting for you to leave. That's what the note means. You drop the photo and go to look for your clothes.

Remember back to your schooling, to Maslow. You've been sitting at fulfillment of basic needs ever since you got established in Broken Hill, and you've been flailing about for some fulfillment of psychological needs. You don't care about Danny any more than you cared about those boys in the shop, you're just trying to fill a hole that the Academy left. Wildly, without purpose.

What did Thoreau say, that you're all offense and no defense? It's because you have no control, no mastery of the self. And there's probably no expectation that you ever will. This isn't more training, this is an armory. You've been put in a dark locker to gather dust until a weapon is needed. You might be pulled out now and again to destroy something, but you'll always go back in the locker at the end of the day.

Use this brief moment on the next tier of the pyramid to center yourself and figure out a god-damned plan. You are never going to be an agent of the Organization. What is your goal?

What is your goal? What do you want? What do [you want? The Organization obviously couldn't give two fucks about you and your goals. Nobody ever really cared about what you want.

But hell, it seems like you've been cut loose. Now there's just you, and you alone. Just you and your goal. And what is your goal?

You think you might have had a taste of that goal last night.

Maybe last night was just about trying to fill a hole the Academy left. Maybe it was just reckless and without purpose. But while fulfilling that basic need, you discovered something more; something you never had before. Just because it didn't have purpose doesn't mean it couldn't have purpose. Something real. And you want that.

You want that.

Fuck Danny's ride. You get what you want.

~

There's a joke, or riddle, that goes like this: A woman meets a man at her mother’s funeral. They hit it off, but the woman never gets the man’s name, and after, she can’t find him. A few days later, she murders her sister. You're supposed to figure out why. But if you do, it means you're a psychopath, because the reason is that the woman wants to meet the man again. You think about this a few times over the next few days, when you find yourself fantasizing about staging a medical emergency.

You finally drive out to his house. It's dark and you get lost on the dusty roads and you almost go home a dozen times. Because it's one thing to sleep with him. It's another to go back. What you're doing feels dangerous. Like sailing off the edge of the world. But sometimes that's what it takes to achieve goals, you think.

Eventually, you trundle up the long driveway. The house lights are on but you leave the engine idling, because you still aren’t sure you should be here. Or, rather, you know, but want to anyway. The front door opens. He comes out, shielding his eyes. When he sees you, he smiles. That decides it. You get out of the car. “Is this a bad time?” You're being polite.

“Nope,” he says.

“I thought I’d come see you.”

“Glad you did.”

You hang by the car.

“Come in,” he says, and you do.

~

Three months later you move in. You're effectively living there anyway. You suggest it during the credits for an Australian comedy that he loves and you're starting to hate less and less. “I should move in,” you say. Maybe it's not a suggestion. But that's how you mean it. You use persuasion techniques on Danny sometimes, but nothing he can’t break. You like it that way; trying to manipulate him and failing. If you had his words, it'd be different. There'd be no challenge at all.

You cook for him. You actually crack eggs and fry them up and carry them to him on a tray. When you lie in the crook of his arm, you feel safe. He takes you riding. He has dirt bikes, a garage full of them, and the two of you go bouncing across the countryside. He teaches you how to hold a rifle so it doesn’t bruise your shoulder, how much to allow for the tug of gravity on a bullet over distance. When the night is clear, you and Danny sit on the back porch, drinking and talking as the sun dissolves into earth. Before this, you'd only ever viewed the sky as hostile. He makes you notice the raw beauty in it, the power in the blasted earth and skeletal trees. How it's all there for a reason. Even the snakes, which you'll never stop being terrified about - they're everywhere you leas expect them, like deadly ropes - you come to see less as belligerent and more as aggressively protective, like you. You'd lived in Broken Hill for two years and never understood it.

The first time he shoots a kangaroo, you cry. You know he hunts them, that they're vermin, but the sight of the brown fur in the dust, the oddly human lips peeled back from small teeth, is too much. “They’re pests,” he says. “Eat anything that grows.”

“Still,” you say.

He sets the rifle against the bike. “You know the story about the kangaroo?”

“What story?”

“The aboriginals' story.” He looks out over the desert. “There was a girl, Kyeema. She was clever, good with a spear. Eyes that could spot a kookaburra a kilometer away. One day, she stole a sling. The sling was supposed to belong to the whole tribe, but Kyeema hid it in a pouch. When the tribe discovered the sling was missing, they became very angry, and the elder asked Kyeema if she’d taken it. And she said no. So the elder put magic on the ground, and the ground began to get hot. The elder said, ‘Are your feet warm, Kyeema?’ That was the magic. Only someone who lied would feel the heat. She said no, her feet were fine. But soon she couldn’t stand it, so she began to hop from one foot to the other. And then she jumped. The elder said, ‘Why are you jumping, Kyeema?’ and she said, ‘I like to jump. I will always jump.’ And she did; she jumped everywhere for the rest of her days, because she was too stubborn to give up the sling. Her feet grew long and tough, and she was the first kangaroo.”

“That makes it worse,” you say. “Now it feels personal.” You look at poor Kyeema.

“But she’s a thief,” says Danny.

~

He doesn’t talk. That is, he doesn’t talk without a specific purpose. You find this unnerving. It makes you wonder what he's not saying. At first you probe him relentlessly, asking about politics, putting unlikely hypotheticals to him about your relationship over dinner. One night, just as he's drifting off, you say, “Who do you think is smarter, you or me?”

You are a person who needs to know things. You don't want to guess what's in his head. You want to hear him say it. This is how you avoid surprises. One day you find an odd contraption in his shed, a tangle of frayed rope and petrified wood, and march it to him where he's repairing a fence post, three hundred yards away. “What’s this?”

He glances at it. “Mobile.”

“What does that mean?” You shake it. Dust falls. It looks about a million years old. Each section of petrified wood has a dark mark on it, and some of the marks look strange.

“It’s a mobile,” he says. “For babies.”

You sit in the dirt. “You need to talk more. This, ‘it’s a mobile,’ isn’t enough for me. Understand?” No, you see. “Why do you have a mobile? Where did it come from? What are these marks? What do you think about it?”

He sits up.

“I’m not used to people who don’t talk,” you say. “It’s honestly freaking me out.”

He pulls you toward him, which you resist, for a moment. His arms around you, the smell of his sweat spoiling your judgment, he says, “You think I need to say something to make it real.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I think.”

He composes his thoughts, taking his time. “My father was a miner. Back when the mines were bigger. When he found something interesting down there, he brought it home. He made that mobile for me before I was born. I found it when I went through his stuff after he died. Decided to keep it in case I ever need it. I think it’s a good mobile.”

“Okay,” you say. “Thank you, that’s all I needed, was that so hard?”

He begins to kiss you. Things deteriorate. But later you think about what he said. About not needing to say something to make it real. This contradicts what you've been taught. The brain uses language to frame concepts: it employs words to identify and organize its own chemical soup. A person’s tongue even determines how they think, to a degree, due to the subtle logical pathways that are created between concepts represented by similar-looking or -sounding words. So, yes, words do make things real, in at least one important way. But they're also just symbols. They're labels, not the things they label. You don’t need words to feel. You decide he has a point. But it feels so strange.

~

He's a catch, of course. Women stop you in the street to congratulate you. They cackle and wish you all the best. You're going down in Broken Hill folklore as the Girl Who Tamed Danny. There's a history, obviously. A procession of Girls Who Had Not Tamed Danny. But you don't ask about that. Not even when you run into the real estate woman who had been with Danny before, you approaching each other down a grocery store aisle like reluctant jousters. The whole time you're talking, the woman telling you about the benefits of freshly squeezed orange juice versus concentrate, you're thinking: What happened? Because this woman had been with Danny and now she's not, so how had that happened, exactly? How did Danny handle a relationship breakup? Is he cruel? Deceitful? Indifferent? These are questions you want answered. But you don't ask them. You know not to go snooping around for an ending unless you want one.

That's because you've realized what your goal was. You know what is was, and you think you might have accomplished it, maybe. You realize now that until you came to Broken Hill, until now, you've never been happy.

~

You adjust the shade for the millionth time, trying to block the sun that sits low over the road, bellowing anger. “It’s so hot.” You look at Eliot. Eliot doesn’t care. Eliot's been near-silent since Minneapolis, when you accused him of being the same as Woolf. You presume Eliot is stewing, although of course you'll never know, because Eliot is as readable as a brick.

The car jolts over a pothole. You're taking the back way to Broken Hill, riding in a ridiculous purple Valiant, wide and loud, easily thirty years old. No air, of course. Many years ago, the dash had split under the merciless pounding of the sun and begun to ooze yellow foam. The speedometer reads in miles. It's a miracle it has seat belts. You're probably getting three miles to the gallon. You watch leafless trees drift by. After eight hours in an oven made of metal and glass, heat has penetrated every pore of your body. You just want to get out of the car. You just want Eliot to say something. “Have you been out here before?”

No reply. You look out at the baked earth that rolls all the way to the horizon, flat as a plate. You've been out here before. You lived in Broken Hill. Apparently. You don't remember. It's hard to believe you could have forgotten this heat.

“Yes,” says Eliot. It takes you a moment to remember the question.

“Before or after?” Eliot doesn’t respond. “You know. Before or after?” Still nothing. “Or both?” You sigh and began to fiddle with the vents.

“Stop that. You’re not making it better.”

You look at him. “I’m just-”

“Leave the vents alone.”

You sit back. Eliot is definitely pissed. A sign blows by the window, announcing a turnoff for Menindee. “We should get some fuel.” The intersection crawls toward you. “Eliot? Only thirty kilometers. Menindee. Eliot? Do you know how far apart the gas stations are? Seriously, you run out of petrol on a road like this, you die. It happens.”

The intersection slides past. You slouch. You understand that Eliot doesn’t want to stop. The airport was hairy. You made it through Immigration, then a short, grumpy official had emerged from nowhere, asking you both to please step out of the line. You were deposited in a small, windowless room and left for twenty minutes, staring at a security camera. It had seemed increasingly obvious to you that you’d been recognized, but you weren't sure what you should do about that. So you waited. Eventually, the door opened. It was Eliot. People were arguing in the corridor, loud Australian voices. “Are we okay?” you asked, and Eliot didn’t say anything, but the answer was clearly no. You found a cab. You could hear rising police sirens. But then there was nothing since then but a lot of uneventful driving.

Your eyes are closing when there's a flat bang and the car lurches. “What,” you say, thinking pursuit, death. Eliot steers the car onto the shoulder. Dust billows.

“A flat,” says Eliot. He pops open the door.

You sit for a moment before remembering the promise of fresh air and heave yourself from the seat. Your knees pop violently. The air is like fire, but at least it's moving. You stride around the car, swinging your arms. “Oh, yeah,” you say. It feels good to do something.

Eliot drags a spare tire from the trunk. You shield your eyes to study the landscape. There's nothing. Just a vast canyon of air. Your eyes grow restless for something to latch on to.

You hear Eliot grunting with the tire behind the car.

What do you do?

consider running again; then don't

Hum a little tune to yourself to distract from all the nothing you're seeing.

Maybe focus on the sky in case there's an incoming helicopter or something.

SpoilerShow

I set up a discussion thread for those who are interested in talking about goings-on in the story.

Hum a little tune to yourself to distract from all the nothing you're seeing.

You hum whatever comes to mind. Something by the Beatles. You're blanking on the name of the song, but it's one of those earworm ones that never really leave you.

"Stop it." Clanging from the wheel well.

consider running again; then don't

You stop. You briefly visualize running away across the desert, a trail of dust in your wake. Eliot would be really screwed then. Maybe then he'd wish he was nicer to you.

You sigh.

"Fuck!" The tire iron thuds into the dirt.

“Need a hand?”

Eliot's head appears, his face flushed. “They’re rusted on.”

“The lug nuts?”

“Doesn’t matter. We can drive on it.” Eliot stands.

“Did you pull hard enough?”

“Yes,” says Eliot. “I pulled hard enough.”

“Give me a try.”

Eliot rolls the tire back to the trunk. “Forget it.”

“For fuck's sake. I’m not useless.”

“This isn’t one of those games where everybody gets a turn. Get in the car.”

“I will be two fucking minutes.”

“Get in the car.”

“No.”

Eliot looks at you expressionlessly. “Fine.” He tosses you the wrench.

You pull off your T-shirt and kneel before the jacked-up wheel. There's a lot of rust here. You wiggle the wrench onto the top nut and test it.

“Well?” says Eliot.

You swipe your arm across your forehead. “Just warming up.”

“We have a time issue.”

“Jesus, you don’t even think I can change a tire.” You strain against the wrench. “I can do this.”

Some time passes. “Okay,” Eliot says. “Enough.”

“I’ve almost got it.”

“You don't. You’re just wasting time.”

You strain. Something goes crack.

“You’re going to strip it.”

The lug nut squeals. You force it through a revolution, and then it gets easy. You unscrew the nut and drop it to the ground. You have a tremendous urge to glance at Eliot’s face and can’t resist.

“Congratulations,” says Eliot. “Unfortunately, there are three more.”

You brace your foot against the tire well. “You want me to be useless. You love being in control of everything while I stumble around with no idea what I’m doing.”

“No, that’s the opposite of what I want. What I want is to get to Broken Hill as soon as possible, and for you to make a net positive contribution to that goal.”

You release the wrench and bend to inspect the next lug nut. It looks very corroded. You heft the wrench and begin to bang at it.

“This has moved into farce,” Eliot says. “Get into the car.”

The lug nut spits rust. You get the wrench around it and force it around. “That’s two.”

“Great,” says Eliot.

“You need to loosen up,” you say. “You seriously need to take a fucking breath and consider that you’re not the only guy who can do everything.”

“Did you tell me to loosen up?”

You wiggle the wrench onto the third nut. “Is that funny for some reason?”

“When I experience base physiological needs for food, water, air, sleep, and sex, I follow protocols in order to satisfy them without experiencing desire. Yes, it’s funny.”

“You fucking what?”

“It’s required to maintain a defense against compromise. Desire is weakness. I’m sure I explained this.”

“Well, that sounds awesome. That sounds like a terrific life you have there, Eliot.” The nut loosens. “Got you!” you say.

“You want to see what happens when desire overpowers discipline? Get in the car. We’ll be there in about two hours.”

“And you didn’t stop it.” The final lug nut is so rusted you have trouble getting the wrench around it. “You and your protocols weren’t good enough to save my town.” You find traction and pull. “Watch me budge this lug nut, despite my complete lack of discipline.” Your muscles burn. Sweat courses down your back.

“Stop that. You’re going to pull the whole car off the jack.”

“And what about Austen? Twenty years and you never made a move, did you? I bet you never even held her hand.”

“Get in the car.”

You grunt but the nut is immovable. You release the wrench, panting. “You know I’m right.”

“You’re not right,” Eliot says. “You’ve been wrong about everything you’ve opened your mouth to opine upon, up to and including your belief in your ability to change this tire. Get in the car.”

You reposition your feet and grip the wrench. “I am budging... this... lug nut!” You pull with everything you have. Your body shakes. You yell. The nut twists with a squeal and you land in the dust. You scramble back to the tire. “Fuck! Yes!” You brandish the nut. “I was right! I was right!”

Eliot walks around the car and climbs into the driver’s seat.

“Ha,” you say. You pull at the tire and it slides off easily. You change it, collect your shirt, and return to the passenger seat. Eliot starts the engine. He doesn’t say anything. Neither do you, because this time the silence is fine.

~

Maybe focus on the sky in case there's an incoming helicopter or something.

“I don’t like that chopper,” Eliot says. It's an hour later. Maybe two. It's hard to tell because nothing's changed. You're driving on a strip of road that folds around on itself, trapped in an endless loop of blistered blacktop.

You lean forward and peer through the windshield. A black speck hangs in the sky ahead and to the right. “That’s a crop duster. They use helicopters for that out here.”

“Where are the crops?”

A good point. The black speck grows. “I don’t know.”

“Bag on the backseat. Get that.”

You twist in your seat, find an old green and black gym bag, and drag it into your lap. It clanks. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Yes.”

“When did you get a gun?” But you know: It was when Eliot acquired the car. You emerged from a restroom to find a bearded guy showing Eliot something in the trunk. They shook hands. Then Eliot had taken his Valiant.

“Take it out of the bag.”

“I’m not going to shoot some crop-dusting farmer.”

“I’m not asking you to shoot anyone. I’m asking you to be prepared.”

“See those poles sticking out the sides? Those are for spraying. Spraying crops.” The helicopter drifts over the road and hovers there. The door pops open. Sun glints on metal. “Or maybe he’s roo hunting,” you say. Eliot hits the gas. The roof barks out a flat impact. Hot air tickles your hair and you look up to see a small, neat blue hole. Blue, because of the sky. You turn and find a second hole in the backseat. “Christ!”

The engine roars. You see the needle tip past ninety miles per hour. The road is cracked and potholed, strewn with sand. One bump and you could roll. You could easily become airborne. The chopper flashes overhead and you glimpse a grizzled man in an Akubra with a rifle. When you turn the chopper is rising in the rear window, peeling after you.

“Okay,” says Eliot. “Now I want you to shoot someone.”

successfully shoot the guy in one, but then drop the gun out the window by accident, AGAIN

> Miss the man twice, and shoot the gun itself on the third shot.

This is stupid. How are you supposed to aim

When I experience base physiological needs for food, water, air, sleep, and sex, I follow protocols in order to satisfy them without experiencing desire. Yes, it’s funny.

That sounds like a great way to accumulate it, re: 1984. You know what made everyone so insane in that book? It wasn't constant surveillance, or propaganda, or threat of torture, although those certainly helped. It was chastity. Chastity, and bad food.

SpoilerShow

When I experience base physiological needs for food, water, air, sleep, and sex, I follow protocols in order to satisfy them without experiencing desire. Yes, it’s funny.

That sounds like a great way to accumulate it, re: 1984. You know what made everyone so insane in that book? It wasn't constant surveillance, or propaganda, or threat of torture, although those certainly helped. It was chastity. Chastity, and bad food.

Hold that thought, we'll come back to it. ;)

This is stupid. How are you supposed to aim

You pull the shotgun from the bag, brown plastic molded around double barrels, the kind you have to break open between rounds. You heft it awkwardly. “This is a shotgun, Eliot. How am I supposed to shoot a guy in a crop duster with a shotgun?”

“You point and pull the trigger. Get the ammunition.”

“Right.” You find loose boxes of shells in the bag and tear one open. The car hits a pothole and begins to slide. Shells spill into the footwell. The car finds traction and you steady and break open the shotgun and force a shell into each barrel. You crank the window. Furious wind blasts at your face. You stick out your head to see the chopper skimming low over the road behind you. The pilot is behind the plastic bubble, hands on the controls.

> Miss the man twice, and shoot the gun itself on the third shot.

You fire, and a puff of smoke plumes out of the road in front of the chopper. It seems to you that the pilot won’t be able to steer and shoot simultaneously. You withdraw your head and reload. “Is this guy a poet?”

“Good question.”

“I think he’s just some guy!” The car bounces. “They’re controlling him!”

“Seems likely.”

“So what do I do?”

“Shoot him. Right now.”

“He’s not shooting! He’s just chasing us!”

“Still. Shoot him.”

“He can’t use the fucking gun while he’s flying, Eliot!”

“I realize! Shoot him!”

“If he can’t use the gun, and he’s not a poet, why do I have to shoot him?”

“Because he’s going to fly into us!”

“Oh,” you say. “Oh!”

successfully shoot the guy in one, but then drop the gun out the window by accident, AGAIN

You stick your head out the window. The helicopter is rushing toward you, blades thundering. You raise the gun and fire. You see a flash of red in the cockpit and think you got the guy, but it's already too late, and you fall back into the car, dropping the gun in the process. Eliot brakes. The Valiant skids, going off the road. Dirt fountains. The world darkens. A rotor blade passes by, a great and terrible force you feel in your bones. Everything becomes noise and dust. Then quiet.

“Stay down,” says Eliot, after a while.

You look at him. Eliot is unbuckling. “What?”

“Don’t move.” He opens the door, and disappears.

You hunker down. Time passes. There's a sharp bang. Moments later, the louder, deeper boom of the shotgun. You started to rise, and stop.

The door opens. The shotgun comes in, butt first. You realize Eliot found it and you're meant to take it. Eliot climbs inside and turns the key.

You sit up. “Are you okay?”

Eliot takes the Valiant back to the road and steers around the helicopter, which no longer looks like an aircraft so much as a randomly distributed collection of scrap metal. There's no sign of the pilot. The car reaches sixty-five and then ninety and then 110, a speed that makes the windows howl like wolves and every pothole a bomb. The tires slip and mutter, treacherous. You don’t want to say anything, but the fourth time you think you're going to die, you can't keep silent.

“What are you doing?”

“Hurrying.” Eliot’s voice is odd.

“What’s the matter?”

“A lot depends on you now.” Eliot shakes his head. “Fuck.”

“What?”

Eliot shakes his head. “This was a stupid idea. A stupid fucking idea.”

Through Eliot’s side window, you notice a thin plume of dust. “Hey. Another car out there.”

“You think I like shooting people? I don’t. I do it because it needs to be done. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do you realize what happens if we fail? If there’s no one left to stop them?”

“No. You haven’t told me.”

“Christ,” says Eliot. “This is ridiculous.”

You look out the window. “That car is going fast. Really fast.”

“It’s trying to intercept us.”

“Is it?”

“That’s a surprise, is it? You didn’t think there might be more?”

“Why are you so pissed at me?”

Eliot stares straight ahead. You stare at Eliot’s shirt. There's a patch. A darker area. Red.

Ask if he's dying but try to be chill about it