kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"Spirit.0"

words

Amil and Jessa shared a strange connection. Of course it could all just be tossed to coincidence, but it was an uncanny one. Their friends would even remark on it, sometimes -- how they seemed to share an energy source. "One soul between them" was the joke. If Amil was active, chances were about one in five that Jessa was tired, and about one in three vice versa. You could sometimes watch alertness phase back and forth between them during the course of a two hour conversation.

Life had been good for them. They'd been together for three years and that bond had helped them through hard times and had greatly enhanced the good ones, making just about every moment spent together something special.

That spark was gone.

That spark had been gone for three months, give or take. It was hard to place the exact moment because it wasn't always there. They both missed it. But there wasn't anything they could do, it seemed.



Yozatem was bored. When Yozatem was bored, well, he didn't know what he did when he was bored. Something. Usually Gurlincrack came by. Gurly always had something happening, but he hadn't seen him in ages. Which wasn't too odd -- Gurly was probably doing quintupletime down in meatspace. But even then, he tended to stop by between wakes now and again.

Yozatem hadn't meated for half a dozen years -- maybe it was time to.

Maybe it was.

He contemplated his navel and silently *thwirped* out of the Out Of.



Jack liked life. He didn't need, money, power, glory, women, drugs... they were fine and dandy, really, but more than anything else Jack liked life. He liked it a lot. He'd been doing his best to collect as much life as possible, lately; spirits, that is -- beings of the underworld. He fed on them. It was amusing what you could do when you put your mind to it. Amusing? Amazing.

He was a math major who had dabbled in the occult -- never really believing in it, but always happy to play with ideas. A logic puzzle like any other, only less defined. Numerology, the Kabbalah, Tarot, Astrology -- they were all horribly, wonderfully, intertwinable. He did "psychic readings" as a hobby -- a paying hobby.

Jackie had been a large part of his life back then. They were inseparable, the Jay and Jay. She'd been a computer science major, riding the sugar highs, caffeine highs, and in times of extreme stress speed highs. He'd liked speed too. In fact, he'd introduced her to it. That's how they'd met. But he didn't do it anymore. He didn't need it.



Yozatem's essence fleemed meatward, splitting four ways.



Amil had been avoiding the problem. He'd been delving deeply into his projects, separating himself from the pain of a troubled relationship without consciously recognizing anything was wrong. When he did go out, he picked friends that never talked about anything important and just got smashed with them on microbrews.

Jessa... had other friends. And other things to do, as well.

Amil hadn't noticed that most of Jessa's friends were male. But it nagged at his subconscious while he worked on his projects. He wondered where she was, who she was with, whether she was having fun. The thought of her having fun without him bugged him. He missed her. And... he was jealous. He wasn't sure if he was jealous of her, or them, or both. But he wasn't happy.

One night after she'd been hanging out with a friend, working on homework together, he approached her with his feelings.



Yozatem fleemed faster. He had no control over the ride once he started it, all he could do was enjoy it. It was what he presumed meaties felt like when they were approaching death. Only he was suffering four of them at once. There was pain, or something that could be considered pain, but that could be ignored. Savored, even. Yozatem was coming...



Gurlincrack sat and moped. He was trapped in a fucking coke can. Life was ... dark, sweet, sticky. Hot and kinda musty. There were ants crawling around, cleaning out his new home for him. He could almost feel their thoughts... almost. Most of the time he was too tired to even remember he existed. His tendrils were tied in a bundle and were being sucked to the point of exhaustion, constantly. He was afraid he might be going crazy. Can Eths die? He'd never heard such a thing, never contemplated such a thing. Loss of consciousness, though, with nowhere else to go... sublimation... it was a scary thought. But he was too tired to really be scared.



Yozatem was a gang of four boys. They were all about twelve years old, and nobody would seriously take them for a gang, but that's how they thought of themselves. They were roaming the neighborhood after school, looking for a little trouble: not trouble for themselves, they wouldn't dream of doing anything they might get caught at -- just looking to cause a little mischief.

They were walking past an office building when Chris, their lead instigator, got a splurge of energy. It reverbrated through the other three and then faded, but all of their hearts were pumping a little faster. He nodded his head towards a bunch of granite chips lining the ground around a bush. He nodded his head towards the office building.

"Last one to break a window gets two licks apiece!"



Jack admired his office: an oak coffeetable that someonehad tossed out on collection day, oriental motifs spread across the walls, Kabbalistic imagery interspersed -- the tree of life stained into the brown carpet with bleach, an astrological calendar that he had to update manually every dawn taking up one wall. And in the window, a two dimensional pyramid, five cans high, of emptied cokes. That many souls. Spirits were life. They were his. If he squinted his eyes just right, he could see the tendrils pulsing from all the cans, feeding into his veins. If he closed his eyes, he could feel his heart pumping that much faster, feel his body working like a perfectly greased machine, feel his synapses firing, twitching, firing, exploding with life.

He squinted his eyes and made out a line of ants traipsing up the coke cans and down in. They were trying to take his life. His temple pulsed. He made sure his wallet was in his pants, verified mentally he had no clients due, and rushed out the door to get some Raid spray at the corner store.

He hardly noticed the four children standing outside.



Jessa had just started crying, and saying it wasn't fair. He knew the feeling. They screamed, not at eachother, not trying to wound, but that's how it came out. They were expelling the poison that had been festering within them for months. All they could say was they weren't happy. They were least happy together.

It was probably the memories of how it had been, the gaping chasm of what was, but she couldn't stand to be around him. And as much as he wanted to be around her, he hated it when he was.

They hugged, feeling sorry for themselves, feeling sorry for eachother, wishing it were otherwise, crying their hearts out.



Chris had to throw the first stone to really get them riled. He missed, but that was okay. John picked up the next stone and took out a window on the bottom story. They laughed at him for taking such an easy window and each gave him one punch on the arm, in the same spot, for it. They didn't hit him too hard, though. He had broken the first window, after all. Chris picked up another rock and took out a window on the third floor. They hooted and hollered. Fred missed. Tod missed. Chris took out another window on the third floor. John missed, trying for one on the fourth -- he couldn't toss it hard enough. Someone stuck a head out the first window on the third floor and shouted that they were calling the cops.

The four boys broke into a run. Cops were bad. They couldn't stop laughing and hooting and hollering as they ran, though -- that had been a great rush.



Jack whistled as he walked, calming himself. It was allright. Really, the ants couldn't do any harm, not as he understood things. So long as the cans remained in their form, the lines of force he'd woven through them would hold the spirits solidly. But he didn't like the thought of the ants walking around on them. He could almost feel them traipsing around under his skin, twanging his soul lines.

Jackie had always liked ants -- she'd never let him kill them. She put piles of offerings for them near the holes they'd chew in the wall -- it kept them out of the way, but... it had bugged him.

Jackie: his salvation, his catalyst. It had been a case of love at first sight -- perhaps lust at first sight, but they were one and the same, at least largely. It was a lust that went beyond the physical. There was an instant comraderie. He was walking around a party at a friend's, handing out bumps of speed. Their eyes locked and he handed her one -- very surreal, almost like a dream. She giggled, not knowing what to do. He explained it to her. He'd helped her find her vein, showed her how to make sure she'd hit it.

Later, he figured it out. They'd shared a soul. With that much knowledge, other things began to click into place.

It wasn't love, he reasoned, other than for love of self. He didn't need the rest of her, he just needed that part of her that was also his. He'd figured out how to capture it, and they'd broken up. No hard feelings. She was a little less alive, but didn't understand any of it. She did speed more often.



Something rattled Gurlincrack's thoughts. He wriggled around, and noticed that the bonds were gone. He stretched, long and far, slipped out the can kicking the rest as he flew. Not a moment too soon, he thought to himself, and disappeared.



Jessa felt a surge of love pulse through her. She squeezed harder. Amil returned it and they looked at eachother, tears drying. Their eyes said, "Maybe we can work this out. Maybe not all is lost. Maybe we can forget the pain." The spark was back.



Jack picked up a can of Raid and read its use directions. His eyes fuzzed out as he tried to make out the fine print. He shook his head.

Exhaustion hit Jack like a freight train. He hadn't slept in four years. He hadn't had to -- his souls kept him going. When they fizzled out, he just got more. They had all just fizzled out at once. His last conscious thought was overriden by fear. A great deal of fear.