Speaker 1: Whole Zone Media.
Speaker 2: It's a book club. It's a Cool Zone book club.
Speaker 2: That's that's our jingle. Now it'll definitely take to the.
Speaker 1: Cool Zone book Club. Our motto is the stories are
Speaker 1: better than the jingle.
Speaker 2: That is our motto. We both got a tattooed. It
Speaker 2: was it's our friendship tattoo.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I got mine tattooed directly on my face. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is weird.
Speaker 2: It's actually you got a tattooed before we agreed to
Speaker 2: do the book club.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, yeah, I I yeah, there were there were
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons for that, but at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, I just wanted to be impossible to
Speaker 1: hire again for like a straight job.
Speaker 2: That was actually that was part of my decision when
Speaker 2: I got hand tattooed.
Speaker 1: That's actually that is why I got hand tattoos. It's
Speaker 1: like I finally, I had always told myself at some point,
Speaker 1: if I ever feel secure in my career, I want
Speaker 1: to get a tattoo that makes me unable to like
Speaker 1: work a straight job again. And the irony is that, like,
Speaker 1: over the course of time that it took me to
Speaker 1: reach that point in my career, we hit a period
Speaker 1: a level of tattoo acceptance in society where it's like
Speaker 1: I actually don't think any degree of tattoos makes you
Speaker 1: ue hirable now as long as they're not like Nazis shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, because like I see people I go, I
Speaker 1: can go into a fucking bank to like starting to
Speaker 1: count and see somebody with a hand tattooed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally, totally. Well, it's like I used to
Speaker 2: tell people that I would get a face tattoo once
Speaker 2: I was a New York Times bestselling author, because at
Speaker 2: that point I had reached all of the level of
Speaker 2: clout that society has to offer a writer, So what
Speaker 2: do I have to lose? But since then, what face
Speaker 2: tattoos mean have changed dramatically in terms of their level
Speaker 2: of acceptance. Maybe it's for the best. I don't know
Speaker 2: what I would get, that's the real thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's it's one of those like we
Speaker 3: spend so much time, for good reasons, focusing on, like
Speaker 3: you know, the shit that reactionaries are constantly trying to
Speaker 3: push back against, but like low key, Like when I
Speaker 3: was like nineteen or twenty, one of my good friends
Speaker 3: was like a tattoo acceptance activist, Like she she was
Speaker 3: like the first really heavily tattooed person and was like
Speaker 3: fighting like legal cases against like wrongful dismissal for getting tattooed,
Speaker 3: and like that's just not a social issue anymore. Like no,
Speaker 3: like there, I can't imagine anyone being like I'm standing
Speaker 3: up for the rights of the tattooed because it just
Speaker 3: has become like I'll walk across like seventy year olds
Speaker 3: who have like fucking sleeves and shit these days, like
Speaker 3: it's wild how it happened in like five years, just
Speaker 3: like went from I don't know, some sometimes shit like
Speaker 3: that hits a tipping point. Pot was kind of the
Speaker 3: same way where like one day all of the adults
Speaker 3: in my life were like I remember when I got
Speaker 3: my first tattoo, and my mom was like, you know,
Speaker 3: that's closing down some options for you. And then you
Speaker 3: know the same thing with pot where it used to
Speaker 3: be such a serious thing, and then like all of
Speaker 3: the old people I know are like buying weed and
Speaker 3: smuggling it into Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know what else is wild is fiction
Speaker 2: is stories is so this is the cool Zone book
Speaker 2: club and every week if you're just tuning in now,
Speaker 2: I recommend going back and listening to last weeks, although
Speaker 2: you're not going to always have to do this, but
Speaker 2: we're going to do some series. Every Sunday, I'm going
Speaker 2: to read a story or someone's going to read a
Speaker 2: story to me, and it'll mostly be speculative fiction. It'll
Speaker 2: mostly be stuff that relates to the themes of it
Speaker 2: could happen here show. But it's just stories that we
Speaker 2: think that you all would enjoy or that you all
Speaker 2: ought to hear. And the first one that we're opening
Speaker 2: with is my novella, a novella called The Lamos Slaughter
Speaker 2: or The Lion, which is a it's technically horror, which
Speaker 2: I didn't realize when I wrote it that I was
Speaker 2: a horror book. And I say this sometimes on the
Speaker 2: Internet and people are like, chapter two begins with a
Speaker 2: deer killing a man and ripping his heart out in
Speaker 2: front of a crowd of undead animals. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I didn't think about it as horror. Anyway. That's
Speaker 2: the story we're starting with, and I've just spoiled part
Speaker 2: of it because this is going to be chapters three
Speaker 2: and four that you're hearing today. It's going to be
Speaker 2: four episodes as an eight chapter book because it's a novella,
Speaker 2: which is shorter than a novel. And where we last
Speaker 2: left our heroes, Danielle Caine had just come to Freedom,
Speaker 2: Iowa looking for information about why her friend Clay, who
Speaker 2: had lived in Freedom, Iowa, had later killed himself, only
Speaker 2: to discover that magic is real, and it is very,
Speaker 2: very scary, and a man named Anchor has now died.
Speaker 2: Chapter three. I zipped up my hoodie when I stepped outside.
Speaker 2: It's amazing how fast a hot June day gets chilly
Speaker 2: with the sun gone. One hundred people or more overflowed
Speaker 2: the patio and onto the grass, bearing torches or stabs,
Speaker 2: or holding empty hands at their sides. A few faces
Speaker 2: were bare, others bore ski masks or bandana masks, or
Speaker 2: homemade bird masks or bank robbing style bright plastic animal masks.
Speaker 2: It was so quiet. I could hear the toads from
Speaker 2: the river. It was so quiet. I could hear the
Speaker 2: oil and the torches burning. It was so quiet I
Speaker 2: couldn't help but mistake every shuffled foot for the lungless
Speaker 2: rasp of one of those demon creatures I knew were
Speaker 2: lurking somewhere. None of that could shock me. Nothing could
Speaker 2: shock me. Six ski masked figures hoisted a pine coffin
Speaker 2: to their shoulders, because apparently I was in the kind
Speaker 2: of squatted town where people have pine coffins lying around
Speaker 2: in case someone gets murdered by the local pet demon.
Speaker 2: I recognized Doomsday by her tattooed hands. She was a pallbearer.
Speaker 2: A hand touched the center of my back and startled.
Speaker 2: I jumped for a moment. All those strange hidden faces
Speaker 2: turned to look at me, and some gazes lingered for
Speaker 2: far too long. Sorry, Vulture, whispered in my ear. He
Speaker 2: was unmasked, as was Britn. When the pallbearers left for
Speaker 2: the street and the crowd followed, those two walked with
Speaker 2: me alongside me, flanking me like guards escorting a prisoner,
Speaker 2: or you know, like friends trying to comfort someone. In
Speaker 2: that strange procession, I got a chance to see more
Speaker 2: of both the town and its denizens. Though the landscape
Speaker 2: was masked by darkness and the people were just masked.
Speaker 2: Torchlight and the realization that magic exists in the world
Speaker 2: lent a beauty even to those mass manufactured Midwest houses.
Speaker 2: Every single one might be holding mysteries beyond imagining, most
Speaker 2: presumably just housed the punks and hippies and widows who
Speaker 2: surrounded me. A handsome small man in overalls and a
Speaker 2: ball cap joined us at the back of the march,
Speaker 2: and Vulture whispered in introduction, Danielle, meet Kestrel, my partner.
Speaker 2: But Kestrel, after shaking my hand and holding Vulture for
Speaker 2: a moment, ducked back into the crowd. I didn't have
Speaker 2: a chance to really get a first impression of him.
Speaker 2: We wound our way up the hillside, passed a half
Speaker 2: collapsed school and its attendance sport field and a rusted
Speaker 2: hulk of a yellow school bus. Passed a burnt out
Speaker 2: post office, passed a fire station that was clearly lived in.
Speaker 2: The only electric light I saw shown inside a small grocery,
Speaker 2: which was lit up by its bank of fluorescence. The
Speaker 2: place was filled with furniture, tools, and food, well lettered
Speaker 2: and red and yellow. Along the facade were the words
Speaker 2: everything for everyone. A folding sidewalk sign out front read
Speaker 2: a free market shouldn't mean everything is free. We continued
Speaker 2: past the coffin leading the way, A few of us
Speaker 2: straggling behind the crowd just after the market, a few
Speaker 2: abandoned lots were filled with spires and mounds and bare saplings.
Speaker 2: When the procession turned off the main road and we
Speaker 2: wound our way along c plywood paths, I recognized a
Speaker 2: permaculture garden. The spires were stacked tires, presumably packed with
Speaker 2: dirt and growing potatoes. The mounds were like long barrow graves,
Speaker 2: but they were likely hugeo monds, each built around dead
Speaker 2: logs designed to break down into raised beds for gardens.
Speaker 2: Several vegetable beds were marked off and showed a wide
Speaker 2: variety to harvest in the coming months, spinach and beans,
Speaker 2: cauliflower and spring onion, penelin peas. The spinly young trees
Speaker 2: were newly transplanted and likely had yet to bear fruit.
Speaker 2: We kept walking, and as the path turned back over
Speaker 2: on to itself and spiraled through the field, it left
Speaker 2: me dizzy with the fire in the air and the
Speaker 2: magic I'd seen, and the strangeness of the place. The
Speaker 2: garden went on forever. I was walking forever, trying as
Speaker 2: hard as I could to keep myself grounded, keep myself
Speaker 2: focused the ground beneath my feet. At last we reached
Speaker 2: the tree line. The trees were my agor younger, still
Speaker 2: threatened by their undergrowth, between us and the forest, and
Speaker 2: the liminal space at the edge of the garden. Four
Speaker 2: wooden posts marked four graves. A fifth grave sat empty.
Speaker 2: Whispers began to break the ceremonial silence. I made my
Speaker 2: way to the grave posts ornately carved and oiled stakes
Speaker 2: about as high as my waist, with lettering running down
Speaker 2: their lengths. Daniel Rojas, Benjamin, Philth Simmons, Danielle Keeler, Desmond Smith.
Speaker 2: Daniel's name was followed by what I presumed was his
Speaker 2: name in Mayan pictographic script, Benjamin's by Norse ruins, Danielle's
Speaker 2: by Irish ogum Daniel and Danielle. Half the graves in
Speaker 2: Freedom Iowa bore a version of my name. What a
Speaker 2: fun coincidence, What a great evening I was having A hush,
Speaker 2: went over the crowd once more, and the pallbearers set
Speaker 2: the coffin upright in front of the empty grave. There
Speaker 2: was no lid an the anchor's naked corpse faced the crowd.
Speaker 2: Loving hands had cleaned and stitched his wounds, and while
Speaker 2: his chest was mangled and his ribs were broken, He
Speaker 2: was not so horrific to look at as I would
Speaker 2: have expected. Four pallbearers climbed down into the grave. One
Speaker 2: masked man was tall enough that his head was still visible,
Speaker 2: but Doomsday and the others were lost to sight. The
Speaker 2: remaining pallbearers eased Anchor from the coffin and into the
Speaker 2: waiting hands of those below, and he was set gingerly
Speaker 2: into the grave. He was to be buried naked, without
Speaker 2: chemicals or fiberglass or steel, or even the pine box,
Speaker 2: but not without ceremony, not without love. The crowd helped
Speaker 2: the four grave attendants climb out, and townspeople lined up
Speaker 2: to put handfuls of soil into the grave. Still no
Speaker 2: word had been spoken. Wildflowers had taken over the oldest
Speaker 2: grave nearby. Clay was buried somewhere outside Denver and a
Speaker 2: mind anecured field adorned only with cut flowers slowly rotting
Speaker 2: in a fiberglass box. Maybe he belonged here where the
Speaker 2: weeds in the wild could grow over his body, where
Speaker 2: he could feed the soil that fed the people who'd
Speaker 2: known him. Or maybe he was better off where his
Speaker 2: mother could visit. Anchor named himself better than anyone I've
Speaker 2: ever met, Thursday said, standing at the foot of the grave,
Speaker 2: alongside the now empty coffin. I know he picked the
Speaker 2: name because he'd spent so long as a sailor, but
Speaker 2: he kept us grounded into the bedrock of both the
Speaker 2: land and our collectivist ideals. I don't know that there's
Speaker 2: one person here who would live in freedom right now
Speaker 2: if it weren't for Anchor's work as a mediator, A facilitator. Sure,
Speaker 2: more than that, his work is a friend. No one
Speaker 2: is perfect, but as far as I can tell, Anchor
Speaker 2: got all that being imperfect out of his system when
Speaker 2: he was younger, before half of us were born. The
Speaker 2: world is darker for me now, and it will be
Speaker 2: from now until someday when I join him buried here
Speaker 2: in the black earth of freedom. The masks were off
Speaker 2: and I saw faces hung down in silent prayer. Anchor's
Speaker 2: death was needless, and there's no ignoring that what he
Speaker 2: made we should unmake. What he summoned, we should unsummon.
Speaker 2: We'll get by on our own. Thursday shuffled back into
Speaker 2: the crowd and into Doomsday's embrace, and he started sobbing.
Speaker 2: A stranger went up one of the tallest men I'd
Speaker 2: ever seen, the pallbearer who had stood head and shoulders
Speaker 2: above the edge of the grave. His arms were freckled
Speaker 2: from the sun, and torchlight glittered on the studs of
Speaker 2: his punk vest. He had an easy charm to him,
Speaker 2: the kind of easy charm that raises red flags and
Speaker 2: anyone who's known a lot of handsome, entitled men, Anchor
Speaker 2: was more a father to me than my pops was.
Speaker 2: He said, I guess that's not saying much as it.
Speaker 2: A few people chuckled at that, but I don't I
Speaker 2: think it's right to sugarcoat any of this. People ain't perfect.
Speaker 2: I'm not perfect. None of you all is perfect. We
Speaker 2: do bad things, people do bad things. We do good
Speaker 2: things too, but you don't get props for not hurting people.
Speaker 2: It's the bad things we do that define us. I
Speaker 2: don't know what bad thing Anchor did, but I know
Speaker 2: it was something beside me. Vulter's jaw had dropped as
Speaker 2: far open as it could without falling right off, and
Speaker 2: he kept breathing in short little breaths, like he was
Speaker 2: about to speak about to interrupt the man. Instead, he
Speaker 2: started walking toward him. People ain't perfect. But Anchor and
Speaker 2: Clay and Rebecca and Doomsday they found something that is.
Speaker 2: They pulled Ulyxe right out of the river, and Eulyxe
Speaker 2: knows right from wrong. Eulyixe hurts. Predator's end of story
Speaker 2: hurts people who prey on people. Anchor knew that when
Speaker 2: he cut open his palm to bring an endless spirit
Speaker 2: up from the river, and we know it now. If
Speaker 2: we want to respect Anchor, then let's respect the best
Speaker 2: thing he ever did for the world, even if it
Speaker 2: killed him. Chaos reigned for a moment as everyone jostled
Speaker 2: to replace the tall man. As he left the head
Speaker 2: of the grave, an elderly Chicano woman raised her hands
Speaker 2: and let out a short, wordless shout, and order was restored.
Speaker 2: She looked at the line and pointed to Vulture as
Speaker 2: next to speak. A year ago, there were only three
Speaker 2: people in this town. Who do you have even heard of?
Speaker 2: Endless spirits? Vulture said, Two of them are dead, and
Speaker 2: the third one Rebecca. She's off living in the woods,
Speaker 2: and I bet she doesn't even know what's happened yet.
Speaker 2: Eric Talis, Fuck, You're my partner's best friend, and I've
Speaker 2: got nothing for respect for you, and the best way
Speaker 2: I can think right now to show you that respect
Speaker 2: is to tell you that you're a terrible person and
Speaker 2: you deserve to die. The hell Eric Talis fuck knew
Speaker 2: how to roar what It doesn't feel nice when someone
Speaker 2: feigns respect for you while telling you that you should
Speaker 2: be dead. Then shut the fuck up about Anchor. Vulture
Speaker 2: then looked at the grave. Anchor, I loved you, You're
Speaker 2: great and will stop the evil demon. That probably wasn't
Speaker 2: an evil demon when you summoned it, but maybe it was,
Speaker 2: and it definitely is now, and maybe you shouldn't have
Speaker 2: summoned it. What the hell is going on, I asked, Bryn.
Speaker 2: Everything's about to go to shit, she said. She strode
Speaker 2: into the crowd to join the argument, leaving me alone
Speaker 2: at the edge of the forest. She was right, Everything
Speaker 2: went to shit In the end. Both sides or and
Speaker 2: against the murder of a man by an immortal deer
Speaker 2: fell to accusing the other of disrupting the funeral, and
Speaker 2: the small faction of would be mediators managed to interject.
Speaker 2: They proposed the problem should be addressed in the morning
Speaker 2: at a general assembly, and the town agreed. It almost
Speaker 2: came to blows. It wouldn't have been my fight, but
Speaker 2: I probably would have acted to protect at least Vulture
Speaker 2: in Bryn, if not the days I fingered the armament
Speaker 2: on my belt, glad I didn't need to use it.
Speaker 2: With nothing left to say, half the crowd dispersed, while
Speaker 2: some people stayed to pay their respects to anchor of
Speaker 2: women in paper mache masks took turns with sledgehammers, driving
Speaker 2: a memorial stake into the earth like railroad workers setting
Speaker 2: a tie. I didn't notice Eric until he was right
Speaker 2: next to me, looming over me. You must be Danny Kane,
Speaker 2: he said. I didn't correct him. How'd you know Clay
Speaker 2: used to talk about you, he said. I nodded. Listen, Danny,
Speaker 2: you showed up on a pretty weird day. This isn't
Speaker 2: exactly us at our best. He was doing that thing
Speaker 2: where he used my name in sentences to try to
Speaker 2: charm me. Since I hated the name Danny. It wasn't working.
Speaker 2: Clay trusted you, so I'm going to trust you. If
Speaker 2: you want to know what's really going on, Let's go
Speaker 2: for a walk or something. I looked around for Vulture
Speaker 2: and Brin, but they were gone. Even the days were
Speaker 2: nowhere to be seen. I could find my way back
Speaker 2: to the house, sure, but it was hard to imagine
Speaker 2: someone so callous as to leave a newcomer alone on
Speaker 2: a night like that. On a whim, I went with him.
Speaker 2: I could always stab him if he tried anything. After all,
Speaker 2: we stopped in the everything for everyone. A few townspeople
Speaker 2: were there, filling baskets with potatoes and carrots and greens
Speaker 2: breakfast foods. Mostly the place was a bizarre mix of
Speaker 2: grocery and thrift store, without cash registers or clerks. Near
Speaker 2: the front, a refrigerated stand held fresh bottled juice and
Speaker 2: homemade sandwiches. Someone had written take one if you're hungry,
Speaker 2: with sharpie on the shelf. I took a bottle of
Speaker 2: green juice. The same person, with the same handwriting had
Speaker 2: carved returned me when empty, asshole into the glass. Eric,
Speaker 2: for his part, grabbed a juice box from a stand nearby,
Speaker 2: labeled prepackaged snacks. Please don't hoard. Simple as that. We
Speaker 2: walked out the door. No money, no accounting, no ration cards, nothing,
Speaker 2: trust alone. I'd found a town that worked on trust alone.
Speaker 2: We walked another two blocks to the school yard, and
Speaker 2: Eric strode off towards the playground. I followed him. I
Speaker 2: didn't open my juice because that took both hands, and
Speaker 2: I don't follow strange men as the darkness without at
Speaker 2: least one hand free for fighting. We sat at a
Speaker 2: picnic table lit only by the moon, and Eric sensed
Speaker 2: my discomfort and set several feet away on the opposite bench.
Speaker 2: I opened the juice and the smell of celery and
Speaker 2: apple and ginger rose up. I took a sip. It
Speaker 2: was delicious. You know why we get to have things
Speaker 2: like this, he asked, poking the plastic straw through the
Speaker 2: top of his juice box. A combination of dumpster diving,
Speaker 2: farming and food bank handouts, I asked, Because no one
Speaker 2: has any authority over anyone else, he said, ignoring my
Speaker 2: literal answer, Because no one is trying to accumulate material goods,
Speaker 2: political sway, or even social capital a wheeled against anyone else.
Speaker 2: All right, I said, it was, I admit the world
Speaker 2: I wanted to see. People always say anarchy can't work
Speaker 2: because you can't trust people to rule themselves, to which
Speaker 2: I've always said, if people are as untrustworthy as that,
Speaker 2: how do you trust them? To rule one another. You can't.
Speaker 2: I had already figured I was older than the fellow,
Speaker 2: but I realized by now just by how much. It
Speaker 2: Wasn't that I disagreed with what he just said, but
Speaker 2: there was something in the way that he said it,
Speaker 2: something in his tone or his uncynical platitudes. I believed
Speaker 2: in anarchism, Eric, he believed you, Lyxe. We can trust
Speaker 2: you Lyxe. I know this sounds crazy, but he doesn't
Speaker 2: crave power. He doesn't have wants or needs. He just is.
Speaker 2: He is the power of the people to strike down
Speaker 2: anyone who takes power over the defenseless. He is that power, manifest,
Speaker 2: that power incarnate in the flesh. A figure was crossing
Speaker 2: the field toward us, and I've shifted in my seat
Speaker 2: so I could see it and Eric both. So your argument,
Speaker 2: I said, is that man Anchor, the one whose heart
Speaker 2: I just saw ripped out of his chest, did something terrible.
Speaker 2: He had it coming. Is that so hard to believe it?
Speaker 2: It wasn't. Not really. I'd lost track of the people
Speaker 2: in my life who'd committed horrible acts, of people who'd
Speaker 2: stolen from the hungry and desperate, of the men who
Speaker 2: fine in company were monsters to me when alone Anchor,
Speaker 2: I didn't know him at all. What do you think
Speaker 2: he did? I asked, I don't know. Eric said, I've
Speaker 2: got my suspicions, the silhouette said as it approached the table.
Speaker 2: Close up it was Kestrel, Falter's partner. He sat down
Speaker 2: on my side of the bench, much closer to me
Speaker 2: than Eric Clay's gone, been gone. He said before that
Speaker 2: he was fighting with Anchor. They broke up on rough terms.
Speaker 2: Neither one would talk about it. Anchor spent more time
Speaker 2: with the days after that, with Doomsday. I don't trust her.
Speaker 2: Kestrel lit a cigarette, took dramatic pauses to suck in
Speaker 2: smoke like he thought he was in a movie. They
Speaker 2: were both ridiculous, which didn't mean they were wrong, but
Speaker 2: they were both ridiculous. We know Eulixe only has power
Speaker 2: when the sun's up, Kestrel continued, He's comatose or whatever
Speaker 2: at night. We also know he was summoned on summer solstice,
Speaker 2: and I'd bet Freedom Iowa on it that he can
Speaker 2: only be dismissed on the solstice too. You think Eulixe
Speaker 2: is killing his summoners and self defense Eulixe doesn't act
Speaker 2: in self defense. Eric said, no, Kestrel said, taking a drag.
Speaker 2: I think Eulixe killed Anchor because I think Anchor and
Speaker 2: Doomsday were going to dismiss him in order to summon
Speaker 2: something worse, something that would let them take power. All right,
Speaker 2: I said, why are you talking to me? Then? What
Speaker 2: do you want from me? I'm not gonna say that.
Speaker 2: I can't think of ways you can help. Eric said,
Speaker 2: but I'm talking to you because I saw you talking
Speaker 2: with them, and I wanted to warn you. You're new
Speaker 2: in town. Everyone loves fresh meat. More than that. Everyone
Speaker 2: knows you knew Clay. For someone who's trying to take
Speaker 2: some like Doomsday, that means your social capital. Aren't you
Speaker 2: Vulture's partner? I asked Kestrel. It's been rough since Clay left.
Speaker 2: Kestrel said that house clicked up tight, got more secretive.
Speaker 2: Vulture has been more distant and after tonight, after tonight,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 2: with me and him. He lit a second cigarette at
Speaker 2: the end of the first one. He wasn't smoking as
Speaker 2: an affectation. He was smoking because he was scared. As
Speaker 2: hell and trying to keep his cool. What's your plan,
Speaker 2: I asked, I don't know, Eric said, then he thought
Speaker 2: that over, no, I know what my plan is. I'm
Speaker 2: just not going to tell you right now. I don't
Speaker 2: know that I can trust you, but I'll tell you
Speaker 2: what I hope happens. What do you hope happens. I
Speaker 2: hope everyone wakes up tomorrow morning with a clear head
Speaker 2: and we get together and realize you Lxie is the
Speaker 2: reason we have nice things, and that any talk of
Speaker 2: trying to get rid of him is bullshit. I hope
Speaker 2: that Doomsday and Rebecca leave town and never come back.
Speaker 2: And while I want those things for my own reasons,
Speaker 2: I also think they're the only way that Doomsday or
Speaker 2: Rebecca will get out of this alive. Tiredness came over me. Suddenly.
Speaker 2: All I wanted was to be in my sleeping bag,
Speaker 2: somewhere alone, with headphones on, ignoring the world. I hope Danny.
Speaker 2: Eric said that you're able to convince Doomsday she should leave,
Speaker 2: And there it was the least it was all out
Speaker 2: on the table. I didn't like it, whether he was
Speaker 2: right or whether he was wrong. I didn't like him
Speaker 2: trying to use me, or maybe Doomsday was too, and
Speaker 2: Eric was the one who was actually being upfront about it.
Speaker 2: I'd heard enough. I got up to leave. My name
Speaker 2: is Danielle. The walk back to the house, it was
Speaker 2: getting downright cold. A few people lingered on the street,
Speaker 2: a few people sat on stoops. The farther down the
Speaker 2: hill I got, and thereby, the closer to the river,
Speaker 2: the fewer people I saw. A block from the house,
Speaker 2: I saw those devil birds on power lines, silent, just
Speaker 2: watching by the front door. I saw Thursday, silent, just watching.
Speaker 2: The house so invitingly Gothic by the light of day.
Speaker 2: When I just walked into town was a monolith of
Speaker 2: black and glass and evil magic by night, which, to
Speaker 2: be honest, I would have expected to be more attractive
Speaker 2: to me, considering my usual temperament. Was wondering where you'd
Speaker 2: gotten off to, Thursday said. As I mounted the steps,
Speaker 2: y'all left before me. I wasn't looking to argue, but
Speaker 2: I was pissed. Went off really quick to talk some
Speaker 2: shit over. Thursday said. We decided someone needs to head
Speaker 2: out to the woods to Rebecca's place warn her about everything.
Speaker 2: Vulture went off to do that. The rest of us
Speaker 2: came back to the graveyard. You were gone by the
Speaker 2: time we got back. I didn't say anything. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: he said, it was a dick move to leave you there. Thanks,
Speaker 2: Brent's still up, I think, worried about you. I opened
Speaker 2: the door and walked in, following the tiny led lamps
Speaker 2: that vaguely lit the damask wallpaper the entry. In the
Speaker 2: living room, Brynn sat cross legged, worrying her way through
Speaker 2: a cup of tea. The room was lit only by
Speaker 2: candles and jars squatters no candles. Safety you leaving in
Speaker 2: the morning, she asked, I don't know, I said, My
Speaker 2: safety insanity insisted I should go. My curiosity and stubbornness
Speaker 2: insisted I stick around. Wouldn't blame you? Yeah, do you
Speaker 2: want tea? She asked. I sat next to her on
Speaker 2: the couch, and she poured me a cup from a
Speaker 2: silver teapot. I took it and drank some nettle. By
Speaker 2: the taste had been made at least half an hour ago.
Speaker 2: By the tipidity still, the act of drinking it was enough,
Speaker 2: and I calmed down some. I showed up in December.
Speaker 2: Brynn said, I was traveling with this guy I used
Speaker 2: to date and he'd known. Ben said he wanted to
Speaker 2: see where they'd buried him. We didn't know the whole story,
Speaker 2: of course, but we showed up right after a storm,
Speaker 2: got his truck stuck in the snow by the high way,
Speaker 2: hiked in, We go see Ben's grave, and everyone is
Speaker 2: so nice to us. I think there must have been
Speaker 2: sixty people who helped dig out our truck. The next day,
Speaker 2: my partner took off. I stuck around. Did you know
Speaker 2: about Eulyxey?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I stuck around because look at this place. No cops,
Speaker 2: no bosses, no landlords, no poverty, no laws, hard work
Speaker 2: in community and freedom and all that shit we ought
Speaker 2: to have. I think it was the work part that
Speaker 2: scared my partner off. But it's not enforced, and there's
Speaker 2: a couple of people who just skate by. Mostly we
Speaker 2: just all figure out ways to contribute. How'd you find
Speaker 2: out about Ulyxe? On our way back from digging out
Speaker 2: the truck, I saw some of the geese down by
Speaker 2: the river. People told me the whole story. It's strange
Speaker 2: how quickly it's normal. They're being magic in the world.
Speaker 2: It's strange how little changes about who we are as people.
Speaker 2: Maybe I said, I didn't really believe her though. If
Speaker 2: magic was real, everything had changed. My room's in the attic.
Speaker 2: She said, if you want, you could sleep next to me,
Speaker 2: maybe cuddle. If you'd rather not, I'm good to sleep
Speaker 2: on the floor, or you could take one of the
Speaker 2: couches down here. Cuddling sounds nice, I said, it should
Speaker 2: have been nice. The moonlight came in through the circular
Speaker 2: window and she laid on her back as I nuzzled
Speaker 2: up with my head on her. It had been months
Speaker 2: at least since I'd been with anyone, even slept next
Speaker 2: to anyone, and my skin was alive at her touch.
Speaker 2: I could hear her steady breath, smell her pheromones. For
Speaker 2: a moment, just a short, peaceful moment, I was able
Speaker 2: to revel in that simple pleasure. Then my mind went
Speaker 2: back to racing through the day. Why didn't they shoot it?
Speaker 2: I asked what she was halfway to sleep, Doomsday Thursday.
Speaker 2: Why didn't they shoot the deer? It's immortal? She said,
Speaker 2: like that was just a natural logical thing. How does
Speaker 2: it work, then, what's the deal? It's only active during
Speaker 2: the day, kills predator animals by ripping out their hearts,
Speaker 2: those stay dead. Any prey animal that dies around here,
Speaker 2: it raises from the dead or whatever by well ripping
Speaker 2: out their hearts. Those aren't immortal. Though a friend of
Speaker 2: mine ran over an undead goosen Er truck. It stayed
Speaker 2: dead that time. That's fucking crazy, I said, yeah, Brynn said,
Speaker 2: I thought the whole thing was kind of cool until tonight,
Speaker 2: though I could see that the conversation drifted off because
Speaker 2: Brynn was half asleep. I closed my eyes, but it
Speaker 2: was all too much, the town, Elixie, Brynn all too
Speaker 2: much to take in. My heart rate increased, my breathing
Speaker 2: got a little shallow. What's wrong? Brinn asked? Panic attack?
Speaker 2: Are you okay? Not really, I told her, because I wasn't.
Speaker 2: It hit like a fever or drugs or something, and
Speaker 2: a panic attack just drops you through the ice into
Speaker 2: freezing water. Even when you drag yourself out of that water,
Speaker 2: you're left with the memory that forever and always you're
Speaker 2: walking on ice. It's worse than anything. It's worse than
Speaker 2: watching a demony a stranger's heart. Is there anything I
Speaker 2: can do? She asked, No, I said, talking about it
Speaker 2: makes it worse. If she were someone I knew if
Speaker 2: she were someone my body trusted, she might have been
Speaker 2: able to help a little bit, distract me with words
Speaker 2: or touch. But she was just another alien thing in
Speaker 2: this alien world I'd landed in. I'm sorry, she said.
Speaker 2: She squeezed me for a moment, then her body jerked
Speaker 2: as she fell into sleep. I wasn't going to be
Speaker 2: joining her for a while. After the worst of it,
Speaker 2: the paralyzing fear passed, I slipped from the bed and
Speaker 2: down to the front porch. Thursday still stood there just
Speaker 2: outside the door, sentinel, his pistol held in his hand.
Speaker 2: I couldn't sleep, I said me either. He nodded at
Speaker 2: the power lines. The gould birds were still there, their
Speaker 2: little chests still splayed open, their eyes boring down on us.
Speaker 2: The fresh air wasn't fresh enough, and I wasn't looking
Speaker 2: for conversation. I went back inside and made my way
Speaker 2: to the attic. Brynn was sleeping in the bed, bliss full.
Speaker 2: I curled up in the corner of the room, hugging
Speaker 2: my knees. I would leave in the morning. No answers
Speaker 2: were worth this. Slowly, over the course of another hour,
Speaker 2: I fell into a restless slumber. That's the end of
Speaker 2: chapter three.
Speaker 4: Woo woo, which means which means now it's time for
Speaker 4: chapter four ads. Oh right, yes, not as chapter four
Speaker 4: maybe ads.
Speaker 2: Maybe the ADS came earlier in the middle of it,
Speaker 2: because yeah, it's chaos, no.
Speaker 1: Way of knowing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally beyond any uh any control?
Speaker 1: Like uh yeah, like like a spectral deer that raises
Speaker 1: the dead. Uh when and what ads show up on
Speaker 1: this series? As is beyond the kin of man.
Speaker 2: I've had several nightmares about Ulixei after writing this book.
Speaker 1: Oh only after huh, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it uh just chased me into some houses
Speaker 2: a couple times. It was chapter four, A few hours
Speaker 2: after Dawn. I walked up the street with Brynn. The
Speaker 2: sentinel birds were gone, replaced with real birds that still
Speaker 2: had all their bones, birds that sang normal bird songs.
Speaker 2: I broke open a tangerine, and I scarcely noticed the
Speaker 2: juice running thick down my hands. I scarcely noticed anything.
Speaker 2: Morning hadn't brought me clarity or peace of mind. But
Speaker 2: with the fog of panic cleared from my thoughts, I
Speaker 2: realized I wasn't going to leave, not yet. I'd never
Speaker 2: lived with myself. Brynn was relaxed, and I tried my
Speaker 2: best to mimic that I hadn't slept well enough for
Speaker 2: long enough, but I had slept and that mattered. I
Speaker 2: tried asking about banalities. How does this work? You've got
Speaker 2: meetings every morning pretty much, yeah, Brent said. We get together,
Speaker 2: hash out the kind of stuff that needs doing, update
Speaker 2: everyone on news once every couple of months. We make decisions.
Speaker 2: Mostly we just kind of share information and bicker. But
Speaker 2: it turned out that I didn't care. I should have cared.
Speaker 2: The functioning of a leaderless and formal commune on land
Speaker 2: stolen from the bank should have mattered to me a
Speaker 2: great deal. Like I was watching the video on Falter's phone,
Speaker 2: I saw Anchor die again and again. That took up
Speaker 2: too much of my mind. The Assembly Hall was the
Speaker 2: school's auditorium. Half the building was collapsed, which didn't really
Speaker 2: bode well for the rest, but Brent assured me that
Speaker 2: the auditorium was, you know, more or less structurally sound.
Speaker 2: We walked through the doors and took seats near the back.
Speaker 2: One hundred people at least were in that room, and
Speaker 2: half as many more filtered in after us Vulture was
Speaker 2: already there, nocturnal by choice. He hadn't slept yet and
Speaker 2: had gone out the door at dawn after stacking the
Speaker 2: table high with pancakes and taking a picture of the
Speaker 2: result for Instagram. A middle aged black man climbed up
Speaker 2: to the empty stage, and someone closed the doors to
Speaker 2: keep down the sounds of the kid's plane tag out front.
Speaker 2: We're not doing a normal meeting this morning. Y'all know that, right,
Speaker 2: he paused. No one objected. I've been asked to facilitate
Speaker 2: today because apparently I'm one of the only folks on
Speaker 2: the facilitator's council that isn't pissed as hell at one
Speaker 2: half of you or the other. If anyone has objections
Speaker 2: to my process, just let me know now or at
Speaker 2: any point. You're great, Mike. Someone shouted, I'm pissed at
Speaker 2: both halves. Another person chimed in. Last night, things got
Speaker 2: pretty heated in the graveyard. The facilitator continued. We buried
Speaker 2: a man a lot of us loved. A lot of
Speaker 2: us are worried about secrets the man might have been keeping,
Speaker 2: bad things he might have done. A lot of us
Speaker 2: are worried about Ulixe, about him going rogue. Most of
Speaker 2: us are worried about this fight tearing us apart. We've
Speaker 2: put a hell of a lot of work in a
Speaker 2: free tom Iowa. However, sure you are that your side
Speaker 2: is right, keep in mind that the other side is
Speaker 2: just as sure, and both sides are so stubborn because
Speaker 2: they're convinced their way is the only thing that can
Speaker 2: save this town. You're fighting because you all want the
Speaker 2: same thing. You all want to save this town. That's
Speaker 2: what I'm going to ask you to keep in mind
Speaker 2: as you're thinking over what you're going to say. I'm
Speaker 2: going to ask one person from each side to frame
Speaker 2: the debate. We're going to hear from the room, and
Speaker 2: then we're going to settle this reasonably and come up
Speaker 2: with a plan of action. Eric Eric stood up strode
Speaker 2: on to the stage. He was an imposing figure with
Speaker 2: his smile and his punk jacket. In a clear, loud
Speaker 2: voice and at moderate length, he told the town that
Speaker 2: Ulixie was benevolent to those deserving of benevolence and vengeful
Speaker 2: to those who weren't. I sympathized. I saw myself as
Speaker 2: someone who is the same. Vulture spoke next, hopping up
Speaker 2: on stage full of his manic, nervous energy. We're big kids,
Speaker 2: and we can handle our own problems. That was all
Speaker 2: he said. He hopped back down and took his seat.
Speaker 2: The crowd erupted after that, and the facilitator did a
Speaker 2: magnificent job of keeping people focused on the issues at hand,
Speaker 2: ruthlessly cutting down ad hominem attacks and preventing the conversation
Speaker 2: from descending into a symbol back and forth between two people.
Speaker 2: But it stayed a pitch debate between entrenched sides, and
Speaker 2: the core of each faction had no interest in listening.
Speaker 2: Can I get a quick show of hands, the facilitator asked,
Speaker 2: after half an hour, just a temperature check of the
Speaker 2: room to see what people are thinking. Raise your hand
Speaker 2: one hand only if you think we should give Doomsday
Speaker 2: and Rebecca are blessing to dismiss Eulyxe. More than three
Speaker 2: quarters of the room raised their hands. No, it counted.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a vote. Now, raise your hand one hand
Speaker 2: only if you think we shouldn't let Doomsday and Rebecca
Speaker 2: dismiss Youulyxe. Ten hands went up. When they went down,
Speaker 2: Brynn rose to her feet to speak. There's a part
Speaker 2: of me that just wants to agree with what some
Speaker 2: people are saying about how great it is new Laxi around.
Speaker 2: There's a part of me that always wants is going
Speaker 2: to be sympathetic, because holy shit, there's magic here, and
Speaker 2: isn't that what we've always wanted all our lives. There's
Speaker 2: a part of me, the greater part of me, yeah,
Speaker 2: that thinks we've got to get rid of it because
Speaker 2: it fucking murdered someone last night. But that's not what
Speaker 2: I'm going to go on about right now. Instead, I
Speaker 2: want to say something about process. She took a deep breath.
Speaker 2: Public speaking clearly wasn't her favorite thing. What are we
Speaker 2: going to do right now? Are we trying to reach
Speaker 2: consensus about what we today can do as a community?
Speaker 2: Consensus decision making isn't supposed to be one side against
Speaker 2: the other. It's not some masochistic form of voting in
Speaker 2: which you have to try to convince everyone to have
Speaker 2: the same desires and goals. It's a tool for finding
Speaker 2: out where people agree and where people disagree, a tool
Speaker 2: for finding out what we can do together and what
Speaker 2: we can't do. You have any suggestions about what we
Speaker 2: might be doing instead, the facilitator asked the man seemed
Speaker 2: to have no ego attached to his work. No, Brennan admitted,
Speaker 2: I guess, and I'm sad to say it. We're at
Speaker 2: an impasse. We the whole town assembly can't officially encourage
Speaker 2: Doomsday and Rebecca, but three quarters of us can and
Speaker 2: will Eric stood up that we can't solve this. Here
Speaker 2: is the first thing you all have said that I
Speaker 2: agree with her and her Lot would have us just talk,
Speaker 2: just talk, talk until it's solstice and it's too late
Speaker 2: to stop them. When someone's doing something wrong and talking
Speaker 2: won't do any good, you don't just keep talking about it.
Speaker 2: You fight. He stormed out. Kestrel in his wake, Vulture
Speaker 2: watched them go, his eyes full of sorrow. Well, Brynn said,
Speaker 2: as much to her self as to me, I think
Speaker 2: I just fucked that up. After the assembly, Brene and
Speaker 2: I joined a lunch que at the Everything for Everyone
Speaker 2: and sat at a table on the patio between the
Speaker 2: store and the garden. My plate was piled high with
Speaker 2: Tamali's in fresh picked salad. I could get used to
Speaker 2: this place. Everyone was in a sort of collective days,
Speaker 2: unable to process everything that had just transpired. On the
Speaker 2: edge about Eulixe on the edge about Eric, but trying
Speaker 2: their hardest to make it through the day, like everything
Speaker 2: hadn't just gone to shit. So is it everything you
Speaker 2: dreamed it would be, Berne asked, sweeping her arms open.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is the best demon infested town I've
Speaker 2: ever been to. As a matter of fact, Brynn put
Speaker 2: down her fork and looked me in the eyes. A family,
Speaker 2: three punks, two kids, two dogs walked past our table,
Speaker 2: and the adults waved he low, and a little kid
Speaker 2: not more than four, darted out to wrap his arms
Speaker 2: around Bryn's leg. She patted him on the head, and
Speaker 2: he ran back to his family. Here's the thing, Miss Kane,
Speaker 2: Brynn said, this place, this is the best place most
Speaker 2: of us have ever had. Even when Desmond was at
Speaker 2: his worst, he wasn't half as bad as most cops.
Speaker 2: No one I've ever known has ever been as free
Speaker 2: as we are standing right here. That family had just
Speaker 2: walked past us, homeless in Chicago, they'd been homeless. We
Speaker 2: grow most of our food, We generate our own power,
Speaker 2: We make our own rules. We ignore our own rules
Speaker 2: when we feel like we've got to. We are the
Speaker 2: kings of the fucking earth and freedom. Iowa no evictions here.
Speaker 2: You paint a pretty picture, I said. And I know
Speaker 2: this just sounds like I'm being all salty, but that
Speaker 2: picture doesn't look like what I saw last night. No,
Speaker 2: Brenda agreed. We went back to eating. It doesn't look
Speaker 2: like what I saw either. If we can't stop that thing,
Speaker 2: well I guess we're all going to have to run.
Speaker 2: No more freedom. She took a few more bites than
Speaker 2: put her sandwich down again. And you know what really
Speaker 2: gets me about Eric, Besides that we were friends, what
Speaker 2: gets me is that I don't know what he's going
Speaker 2: to do. I don't know if he's going to hurt someone.
Speaker 2: And his whole goddamn point is that he's the one
Speaker 2: who thinks we need an outside arbiter of justice. If
Speaker 2: he hurts someone, as likely as not, EULIXE will get
Speaker 2: him too. How Daniel and Danielle die, You've got five graves,
Speaker 2: EULIXI kill them all. Daniel fell through the roof of
Speaker 2: the school doing some repair work. No, it had been
Speaker 2: here for longer than a week. His family came for
Speaker 2: the funeral, then stuck around. They still live here, and
Speaker 2: Danielle overdose no one knew her family. People tried, vultures,
Speaker 2: spent a month trying to track down her, pass checked
Speaker 2: every missing person's report. We had two suicides too, just
Speaker 2: the spring. Lover's packed, their families came for their bodies.
Speaker 2: That's a shockingly high death rate for a town of
Speaker 2: two hundred, I said, it is, Brynn said, but it's
Speaker 2: not because of Eulyxe. He only killed Desmond and now Anchor.
Speaker 2: That's it. He's never needed to kill anyone else because
Speaker 2: no one else sacks up. They're too afraid. People should
Speaker 2: be afraid to prey on others. Brynn said, she wasn't wrong.
Speaker 2: So what's the plan, I asked, Doom is going through
Speaker 2: her books trying to figure out how to dismiss Ulyxe.
Speaker 2: The rest of us were just trying to keep her safe.
Speaker 2: A few more days until Solstice Thursay's guard in the house,
Speaker 2: vultures up on the lookout rock. We should probably swap
Speaker 2: out with him, let him get to bed. We'll talk
Speaker 2: about it all at dinner, probably figure out the next step.
Speaker 2: Maybe Doomsday was doing more than researching how to dismiss you, Ulixy.
Speaker 2: Maybe she was researching summoning something worse. Maybe I should
Speaker 2: convince Doomsday to leave. The thought came unbidd into my mind.
Speaker 2: I had no reason to believe a word Eric had said.
Speaker 2: All right, I took the last bite of my Tamali,
Speaker 2: show me this lookout rock. We left the patio and
Speaker 2: made our way up to the top of town. A
Speaker 2: few people, I realized, were packing up into pickup trucks
Speaker 2: and station wagons and vans. It didn't look like they
Speaker 2: were in a hurry. Just in case, you know. We
Speaker 2: took a stone path through a yard almost entirely carpeted
Speaker 2: in flowers. The gray stone was laid artfully, the yellow
Speaker 2: and white blossoms sending up heavy scents past the yards
Speaker 2: comparatively lackluster house. The path turned to dirt, with stairs
Speaker 2: reinforced by logs staked into the earth. I was proud
Speaker 2: of myself. At the top, a couple hundred feet higher,
Speaker 2: I was barely out of breath. Brinn she was still
Speaker 2: breathing through her nose. Vulture was up there, sitting on
Speaker 2: a finger of a rock that jutted out from the
Speaker 2: cliff side. That had to be the lookout rock. He
Speaker 2: was shirtless in the heat, his back covered in black
Speaker 2: work tattoos. Wearing only blue jean short shorts. He stood
Speaker 2: and turned when he heard us. Huge on his chest,
Speaker 2: black ink against black skin was a Satanic goat's head.
Speaker 2: At least it only had two horns. Amongst the line
Speaker 2: work was thin surgical scarring under his pectoral muscles where
Speaker 2: his breasts had been seen anything, I asked a couple
Speaker 2: hundred people shouldn't be so happy going on about their lives,
Speaker 2: vulture said, But everyone I've seen has had his or
Speaker 2: her or their ribs attached to his or her or
Speaker 2: their spines. But it's not all bad. What do we
Speaker 2: do if you see anything? I asked, Oh right, vulture said.
Speaker 2: He unslung a hunting horn from his belt, and, honest
Speaker 2: to God, hunting horn like the kind that comes off
Speaker 2: an animal with the tip cut off, so you can
Speaker 2: blow through it. Blow this, or you know, call someone
Speaker 2: there's decent. I'll signal everywhere in town and on the
Speaker 2: side of the hill. Maybe do both. I would do both, okay,
Speaker 2: I said, you're looking for cops on the highway, large
Speaker 2: gatherings of undead animals, or I guess in this case,
Speaker 2: very tall figures running around with my no good ex boyfriend,
Speaker 2: or especially making their way toward the house. Got it,
Speaker 2: I said. Vulture put his arm around my shoulders. Did
Speaker 2: you floss? He asked? What flossing is super important? Some
Speaker 2: people say it's more important than brushing your teeth. It's
Speaker 2: easy to forget to floss at times like this, but
Speaker 2: you've got to live today, like you'll survive till tomorrow.
Speaker 2: He was being serious, kind of scarily. So yeah, I said,
Speaker 2: I floss good, Vulter said, then turned and started skipping
Speaker 2: down the hill. You never really answered my question last night,
Speaker 2: Brynn said. An hour or so had gone by and
Speaker 2: the sun was on us. She was sweating from the heat,
Speaker 2: and her odor was good, like animal instincts. Good. What
Speaker 2: brings you here? You heard what happened to Clay right,
Speaker 2: I asked, Not really? Brynn said, just that he's dead.
Speaker 2: It should have been easier between her and me. We
Speaker 2: both liked one another. That much was obvious, but for
Speaker 2: some reason everything felt off, like we were actors reading
Speaker 2: from different scripts. Still, I needed someone to talk to.
Speaker 2: Clay was my best friend, I said. About a month ago,
Speaker 2: he slid his own throat. Fuck. Brynn said, that's hardcore. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he didn't fuck around, I said, But he also taught
Speaker 2: me everything I know about traveling, squatting, politics, all of it.
Speaker 2: What happened. That's why I'm here, That's what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to find out. I said. We used to travel together,
Speaker 2: starting back when I was a runaway, and he was
Speaker 2: risking some serious felonies by helping me out. He wasn't
Speaker 2: into girls, and he wouldn't have creeped on me anyway.
Speaker 2: But I'm I'm glad we never had to try and
Speaker 2: explain that to a judge. Our lives kept intersecting as
Speaker 2: I got older. Eventually we were some of the only
Speaker 2: dumb bastards still living out of backpacks. He hit his
Speaker 2: thirties and I think he was kind of in crisis
Speaker 2: for a while. Then he ended up at this place.
Speaker 2: He'd write me, say, you gotta come here, Danny. It's
Speaker 2: our dream. He'd say, it's the revolution, the real revolution,
Speaker 2: the one where we take power away from our pressors,
Speaker 2: not become them ourselves. I was always planning on it,
Speaker 2: but I always had something else going on. No, that's
Speaker 2: not it. I was always putting it off because Clay,
Speaker 2: he was traveling to try to find home, I was traveling,
Speaker 2: because traveling was home. He wanted something like this. I
Speaker 2: was afraid of something like this, someplace that would lure
Speaker 2: me away from the road. I'm more afraid of growing
Speaker 2: roots than I am afraid of anything. Brinn put her
Speaker 2: arm around me. I let her. A year ago. We
Speaker 2: fell out of touch. He didn't get back to my
Speaker 2: text much, didn't call. Then he left Freedom and slashed
Speaker 2: his throat in Denver. Did it in a hotel room
Speaker 2: on some class stick shooting he pulled from the trash.
Speaker 2: He left two notes. One was for whoever found him,
Speaker 2: saying he was sorry about the mess. He left a tip.
Speaker 2: The other note had my number on it and two sentences.
Speaker 2: These are the winds that cast us together. These are
Speaker 2: the winds that cast us apart. They cast as they wish,
Speaker 2: and we have naught but to follow. I put my
Speaker 2: head between my knees for a moment, just a moment.
Speaker 2: Took a few deep breaths. So yeah, I said, I
Speaker 2: only just left Denver, like a week ago. Some of
Speaker 2: the old gang made it out to the funeral, most didn't.
Speaker 2: I called around, reached some people, not everyone. Most people
Speaker 2: I reached had some excuse or another of the ten
Speaker 2: of us who were there, everyone was too drunk to
Speaker 2: process with a few days after the funeral, it was
Speaker 2: just me and Clay's mom shooting the shit for a
Speaker 2: week until there was no shit left to shoot, looking
Speaker 2: around for scraps of him, journals, notebooks, anything. There was nothing.
Speaker 2: You angry, I'm BURNE asked, Nah, I said, I'm angry,
Speaker 2: but I'm not angry at him, angry at the world.
Speaker 2: Maybe I might have shown up here looking for someone
Speaker 2: to take it out on. Find out who's to blame.
Speaker 2: You know, the answer is no one, right, Yeah, I said,
Speaker 2: I know, but it's something I feel like I've got
Speaker 2: to do for him and for his mom. I skipped
Speaker 2: a rock down the hill. Listen to it hit other
Speaker 2: rocks on its way down. Why are you all being
Speaker 2: so nice to me? I asked, With everything going on,
Speaker 2: Clay used to talk about you, did you know that? Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what people have been saying. He talked about you
Speaker 2: like you were one of the endless spirits yourself. You
Speaker 2: weren't a traveler. You were the traveler in his eyes.
Speaker 2: And I can't speak for everyone else here. I was
Speaker 2: being nice to you because I thought you were kind
Speaker 2: of cute, I laughed a little. I have this wicked
Speaker 2: crush on you, Brennan continued, But also I'm celibate at
Speaker 2: least now, so I guess I just want to get
Speaker 2: both of those things out there before I get too
Speaker 2: hung up on you or lead you on. Also, there's
Speaker 2: a non zero chance we're both going to get eaten
Speaker 2: by a demon sometime soon. I haven't let anyone in
Speaker 2: for a while, I said. After thinking about it, you're
Speaker 2: a total badass and you're a babe. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: everything I should want. But yeah, walls, lots of walls.
Speaker 2: I probably can't be with anyone on like this a
Speaker 2: perfect match, she said. Indeed, I want to keep hanging out,
Speaker 2: she asked, until we got eaten by a deer. D duh.
Speaker 2: That's chapter four, Chapter four, which means now you have
Speaker 2: to wait.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so suffer through another week, or by the
Speaker 1: text version of Margaret's book and then use the AI
Speaker 1: voice generator in your head to create her reading it
Speaker 1: or yeah, I don't know that those are your options.
Speaker 2: Yep, and yeah, we'll see you next Sunday for I
Speaker 2: already forgot the jingle cool Zone Club.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why we should never have gone with a jingle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: assumed from the start.
Speaker 2: No, but I just you had the tattoo and I
Speaker 2: just wanted to honor it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's okay too. That tattoo was to commemorate
Speaker 1: several things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. There's a lot of things that
Speaker 2: are jingle related. All right, that's it, see you all soon.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 3: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.