The Altonevers (30 page)

Her toes teetering over the
edge, fearless in facing the revolving steel flashes. The spraying
sparks and amber glowing rails are now rapidly spiraling in split
second long revolutions around each other. Sometimes getting a
glimpse of the passengers rolling past on the other rail,
carelessly sitting sipping drinks and reading papers. Some even
gawking at her as though she's odd when catching a glimpse of her
bemused face. Her internal organs are whirling around like they’re
inside a laundry machine, as he stands impressed of her delight in
the winding, that even he thought was frightful on his first ride
on a pantime freight.
This continues until
another glowing orange streaking behemoth soars past them from
above. The velocity of it passing sends a soul reverberating wave
of turbulence outward disturbing the two trains tightly wound
binary path. Quickly unraveling into wider spirals and longer
revolutions until the trains are released from each other’s
gravitational grasp. The train they’re on is thrown into a forty
five degree spinning descent, falling out of open space, plashing
through several inch thick sheets of water separating the layers of
sky in this Alto, into the billowing white pillowing silk looking
clouds. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, holding her tightly
as they careen screaming mindlessly in the delight of their fear as
they fall.

The train pulls up sharply, just
before crashing into an ocean of flat glass like water that hisses
and boils to steam in meeting the radiating heat of the shining
behemoths long belly. Throwing the two to thud against the wooden
wall behind them, then straightening out with a thunderous jolt
that sends their heads to the roof then back to the floor. The
train stabilizes to smoothly sail only feet over a nearly invisible
plane of clear blue water that’s almost indistinguishable from the
atmospheric sky all around them.

Of the clouds

After a while of swinging up and down
sailing faster than the meaning of speed and laughing at the
thought of it. The two settle enough to dangle their bare feet over
the edge of the boxcar, to feel the cool mist of the still watered
surface passing a hundred feet under foot. Seeing the passing of
time as the ever bright sunlight rolling slowly over their backs,
casting shadows over each of their faces. Sitting, swaying shoulder
to shoulder while gently gliding along to the repetetive mechanical
clicking rhythm of riding the InterAlto rails. Staring out to
millions of miles of flat motionless crystalline clear water,
walled forever away by swelling scattered silk white billowing
silver lined clouds.

click click click clack , clickclick
click clack, click clickclick clack, clickclickclick clack,
clickclickclickclack, clicklickickack...

A second, rival sun, radiantly rises
with sundogs straddling either of its sides. It’s beaming so
brightly it hollows even the thickest clouds it's light touches
while passing behind them from forever away. Rendering them into a
veil of scattered thin white nacreous wisps glowing through as the
second sun passes behind them. The eye has a way of seeing that
makes the mind think the sun or moon is following them, but the sun
in front is actually following her eye. She feels a swirling warm
sensation spiraling and widening from her forehead, forming into a
prismatic vapor vortex spilling outward from between her eyes.
Reaching one foot in length, then two, then ten, then two
hundred.

Cliclicliclac, clicliclicac
cliclicliclic, ciclicliclic...clicliclicliclicliclcic.

Images of her own thoughts
in motion start projecting from her head as splashing fragments of
scenes spiraling outward spreading across the broken wall of
shredded silk white clouds. Scenes of her childhood play out across
the scattered blank white wisps, splayed over different depths and
heights. Once she sees that what she's seeing on the nacreous is
her memories miles tall and wide before her, through her own eyes,
slowly the tattered images collect and begin enlarging and
coalescing. Eventually coming into clearly printed technicolor
images in motion of herself as a child playing as home videos. One
being of her in the school assembly room timidly sitting still,
staring into space. Thinking of how much it looked as though she’s
watching her life like it is a home movie. Then seeing herself
crying and not remembering why, though the emotions resurface with
the sight of her young face tearing up.
The still standing flat water surface reflects the vast scene
splayed across the tattered screen of a scattered clouds almost
perfectly. Though inverse, reaching toward the sailing train head
first. The sun passes along the horizon before them, still in
pursuit of her honey hued eyes. She continues to cycle through
memories accentuated by seeing animations of whatever passes
through her mind. She begins feeling as though the mind itself as
being conjured through the perspective lens of the present minded
beholder.

Losing herself in the past presented
to her, she begins gazing to other scenes of her liking. The sun
now passing behind a precipitous patch of rainbow resonating
atmosphere that's amplifying the colors of her mind, getting lost
in the thought of the first time she's rode a bicycle. The clouds
start chilling into creeping sheets of ice freezing over the flat
water's surface. Coming to look like an ice skating rink lit up by
spotlight at night. The crowds of people and her middle school
classmates appear, faceless and fading, but for one. The boy she'd
shared her first kiss with skating toward her in a navy green
jacket, his face fades as he nears. All the students vanish and she
sees only the curving lines left by their skates continuing on the
ice without them. The navy green jacketed boy returns though a foot
taller, his jacket becoming a blue purple and smoking, with Cider’s
face, inebriated on his skates though skating smoothly. The two
encircle each other laughing then racing each other around the
track with her pink plaid scarf flapping in the wind.

He falls, a lot, mostly to
her imagined drunkenness of his, though many she supposes are to
make her laugh. To see her smile as he always says. They dance
terribly, chopping the ice with the blades of their skates. He tips
over trying to pick up his drink and she falls pulling him up, him
pulling her to the ice. They lay face up watching stars in the
night sky through their rising cold fogged breath.
The clouds break apart, and her mind fills with
the sight of a bayou city of swamp docks and cobblestone. A Cajun
port city crowned by a multitude of spectral figures marching the
streets in brass band celebration. Lead by a beautiful ebony voodoo
priestess with a crown of bat bones, wickedly smiling wolves teeth
between black painted pointy lips, waving a silver scepter to lead
the boisterous marching and the blaring band wind instruments
rising and bending a carousel top of the atmosphere. Anna trembles
to this thought, unsure where it came from, though knows it’s a
place she’s pretty sure she'd never been to remember. Uncertain of
what to make of its dreary seeming cheer that's unsettling her as
harshly as someone suddenly slamming on piano keys.

clicliclicliclicliclicliclic....

“
Uhh, did see your mind
through your own eyes?” he asks.

“
Did that happen to you
too?” she asks.

“
Yeah.”

“
What did you see?” she
asks.

“
Sex and violence,” he
answers proudly.

“
You’re terrible.” she
says.

“
Hey, don’t be mad, you
were there after all,” he says.

“
Oh shut up!” she says. The
two sit shoulder to shoulder as stowaways swaying gently in one of
many empty boxcars, of a sunlight stippled string of silver gliding
effortlessly through the ether on gilded amber glowing InterAlto
rails. With a sudden shift of weight they swoop into a steep
sloping incline. Within a second they're hundreds of miles from the
sun drenched still water surface, the wheels squeal and splash
sparks when sliding ever onward on their eternity intertwining
amber rails.

Clicliclic clicclicclicc
clickclickclick clickclickclick clack click clickclick clack click
click click...

In the trunk

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!...repeats as
her heart beats faster, hardly able to breathe in the total
darkness and dampness of trapped breath. Laying close to him, and a
ham juice sweating fat man in the trunk of the car with burlap bags
over half their bodies. BEEP BEEP BEEP...and so on as one of the
goons that bound their hands has left the car door open.

They’d washed up after splashing
through a few Altos, to an extravagantly large perpetually self
illuminated techno-metropolis. With technologies seamlessly
interwoven with physical reality, so immersive they seem to be as
seamless as the bioluminescent light this Alto is dressed in. She
likes being in an Alto that's futuristic compared to her own
standard and this place gives her a feeling that resembles the
wonder of watching a magician. Everything is flowing and moving
effortlessly without anyone ever touching a thing. The whole
society has a sinful attraction to the chirping of gambling chips
changing hands. Every structure large and small is constructed
after the sense stimulating grandeur of Las Vegas
casinos.

The two were aimless, and getting by
honey potting disgusting old men and holding up hookers to set up
their pimps, so Anna won't feel used when attracting the ugly old
men. Making a lucrative living just to ride stacks of clicking
chips and flitter them away, left to the lint in their pockets
before each time they sleep. Numbers, blackjack, dice, roulette,
any table, anywhere they can carelessly lose their money for a
cheap quick thrill. Even at the tracks, which are always brimming
with degenerates shouting at deadbeats drinking from the moment
they wake. Who waken without purpose but to poach the purses of the
winning losers next to them.

Anna, not usually liking to see
animals made to dance by people, is enamored with the sinewy
strides of the galloping horses and beating rhythms of their hooves
gliding around the track. Having a favorite too, a large black mare
with a patch of white between piercing red brown eyes. She was
surprised to find they're all entirely synthetic animals, down to
the shape of their manes and eyelashes. That they're biochemically
conjured creations formed by atomically aligning the raw elements
that comprise them into the anatomical recreation of living
creatures, without it ever actually being born. To which Anna was
open jawed in awe when hearing, and Cider was shocked, slurring and
shouting about it as artwork of an animal.

“
I mean it was so
subjectively avant garde post modern scum it was laughable, that's
why I laughed, like the biochem animator laughed to the bank not
believing you believed it was a horse,” he laughed.

“
It looks a lot like a
horse to me” she says enjoying an ice cream. Through a stroke of
luck his shouts drew the attention of a repugnant mouth breathing
sweat oozing fat man looking accustomed to luxury of never wanting
for long. The two were both instantly on their game of lightening
the heavy man’s heavy pockets. She was revolted by his drool,
especially when he gargles his gross snorting breaths, even more so
by him trying to purchase her affections, for what would have been
a very traumatic experience if she were actually a call girl. She
was especially happy they were to hold him up, seeing it as a drop
of justice to a vile man otherwise out of its grasp.

She got into his waiting
limousine and he whined and groveled when she drew her gun on his
gut. Cider took the wheel, they thought they'd gotten away clean
when six headlights they thought were police became clear in the
rear view. Speeding to get beside them and waving for them to pull
over. Each vehicle filled with black suited goons armed with mini
automatic weapons, who surrounded the limousine before yanking all
three of them from it, then putting bags over their heads and
throwing them into the trunk of another car.
Driving for sometime before turning down what Anna and Cider,
who had come to an agreement after learning to decipher the muffled
mumbles of the other, seemed like a dirt road. A dirt road is
usually a bad sign when you're tied up with a sack on your head in
the trunk of a car. The car abruptly skids, it's tires digging into
the dirt to stop, and for a while at least one door of the car has
been left open.

Beep Beep Beep...the sound seems to
make it harder to breathe through the canvas sacks around half
their bodies. A large trunk, but the other guy is a large man, and
he smells. Spurring Cider to knee and kick him repeatedly until
tiring himself out. The trunk door swings open letting a gust of
cool air across her back. They’re pulled out and pushed to stumble
around like blind mice, then lined up in front of a blood stained
cement wall. Cider takes an intentional flop that gives her a
giggle, because of his shouting, “Oweee,” well before the thud of
him actually hitting the dirt ground. The sacks are pulled from
their bodies one by one. The fat man first then Cider, leaving Anna
the last to see the group of well dressed monotone goons of Asiatic
descent surrounding them. Leering stoically in a way that’s
terrifying to her, while Cider seems to be reading them with his
eyes, scanning each of their blankly staring face. She's figuring
he’s figuring their odds of making it out of this alive.