BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

CHAPTER 31-SOULS

LEO BROWN’S POV


the house that Jack built

They don’t roll out the red carpet for you when you die; it’s far less spectacular. They send someone to get you, and in your case, when you died, you wondered if perhaps God was having a rough year because your pick up was a bloody, mangled guy--practically a kid--who had no fucking clue who you were. He was just there and you were just there and it was just time to go. You never think that the first words you utter in the afterlife will be, “What the fuck happened to you?”

“I fell. You know, splat.” He slapped his hands together emphasis. “Forty fucking feet, straight down.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” the guy replied, “They keep telling me he’s around here somewhere. Fuck if I’ve ever seen him. Your name’s Leo, right?”

“Yeah, how’d you know that?”

“No clue. I’m Chris. I’d shake your hand, but—"

He extended his right hand, and you finished his sentence, “But yours is broken.”

“Yep. So how’d you kick it?”

“Kick it? Congestive heart failure.”

“In your sleep?” he wanted to know.

“Yeah.”

“You lucky bastard.”

After walking for a while, you asked him how much farther and he told you that he didn’t know, “We just walk ‘till we get there.”

“Get where?” you asked.

“Wherever we’re going.”

And so you, a man who was once in control of so much, were at the mercy of something you couldn’t explain and someone you didn’t really want to know. At some point on this short-long journey, he stopped, turning his bruised face in your direction, “I know who you are. I know now. You’re Leo Brown.”

“That I am.”

“Of Brown Athletics.”

“Right, again.”

……

“God, I miss playing football,” he told you. “Think I could have a sweatshirt?”

You looked around wondering if one was just going to magically appear, and it didn’t, but you were unable to refuse him, “Sure. Anything you want.”

“You rock for an old, fat guy.”

“As do you,” and then you paused, trying to formulate your thoughts, “For an ex-football playing, all-American, accident prone kinda kid.”

……

Time passed and you got where you were going, wherever that was, and your arrival pissed off an old man standing in front of a wall of televisions. There was every type of TV you could imagine: color, black and white, high definition, picture-in-picture…even one showing a montage of Brown Athletics commercials over the years. Chris’s entire demeanor changed as he approached the man who was standing in front of the television screens and cursing. He introduced you, “Jack, this is Leo. Leo, Jack Kinney.”

“You mother fucking asshole. Look what you did,” Jack demanded.

You were taken aback, “Fuck you.”

“No, fuck you,” he reiterated. “You just turned off my fucking channel.”

……

The passing of the remote was an honored ceremony, and Chris performed it with the enthusiasm of dryer lint:

“Leo Brown. Welcome to the AfterDeath. We’re all so glad to have you.” Jack snorted. Chris laughed and then made himself get serious again, “We hereby officially inform you that you are dead. In recognition that I have dutifully informed you that you’ve kicked the bucket, please accept this remote control.” And then he turned to Jack, “How’d I do?”

“Just get on with it, you wise ass.”

So Chris continued in a manner befitting Vanna White of Wheel of Fortune (only on Thorazine), taking his place in front of the televisions, “This remote control activates all nine televisions. There may be things that you want to see and things you don’t want to see, but, regardless, you will only see what you need to see.”

“That made no sense,” you told him.

Chris pressed the remote into your hand, and began walking away with Jack, leaving you all alone. You overheard Jack talking to the kid right as you were turning on the sets, “Hey, where’d you get that sweatshirt?”

*********************


when you’re sure you’ve had too much of this life

The worst thing about the AfterDeath was that there were no chairs. So you had to stand and watch in brilliant Technicolor as Nate fired Kyle, your assistant whose tears would soon dry up once the estate was settled, as your funeral was attended by so many, but few who really cared, and how your company, your sentimental cash machine, would fare in your absence. And then the screens went blank as quickly as they’d come to life and you were left all alone in an eerie quiet.

And then you heard a voice from somewhere behind you. When you turned around, there was a woman standing there. Her appearance made you think she was in her mid-thirties, but the sadness in her eyes added decades to her face. She introduced herself as Ruth Harper and took your hand, and then you felt that urge again, that come on, let’s go tug in your chest. You had no idea who this woman was or why she’d now come for you, and when you asked her, she confessed, “I don’t know either. I’m just supposed to be here.” It seemed like enough of an answer; death didn’t lend itself well to tenacious curiosity.

Soon, though, you could tell that she wasn’t just holding your hand, she was clinging to you as she led the way. “Watch out for Jack,” she told you.

“Why?”

He wasn’t liked by the women, she told you. “He was the one that came to get me.” She squeezed your hand, “And I didn’t want to go with him, but I had no choice.”

“No choice?”

“You get one chance. If you don’t take it, you stay in that windy limbo-place forever.”

“Did you know him?” you asked.

“No. We have a connection of some sort.”

Death was beginning to feel more like the bonus round of twenty questions, “What connection?”

She whispered to you, “I think it’s because we were both terrible parents.”

“That’s not true, Ruth. You know that’s not true.”

“That has to be it. Why else would they send him?”

You’d discover later that Ruth was in death the same way she was in life—horribly insecure, depressed, stained with the curse of unworthiness. And Jack, she told you, well, he was worse. He was hollow--no, wait—worse than hollow. He was a black hole constantly trying to suck everything in his direction.

……

If you’re lucky when you die, the only thing left when you shed your physical form is a pure stillness. Those left behind on the other side refer to it as ‘peace,’ but that’s not quite it. Peace was something you desired; this stillness didn’t originate inside you—it just was. And yet sometimes there were disturbances, especially when someone new was crossing over.

*********************
ALAN HARPER’S POV


the unbearable lightness of being

They say that when you die your hair and nails keep growing for a while, but they don’t tell you that your view of the world will grow as well, that your own decomposition will become meaningless to you as you watch what else unravels. Watching it happen reminded you of the Super Bowl, of those freezing cold January days when you and Stitch would stand outside an electronics store watching the game on one of its many televisions in the window. There were always a least ten televisions in the window on that night, all showing the same thing. And death was like that, except that there were nine different channels all playing at once, so you watched your life like the Super Bowl, standing with your arms crossed in front of you, your knees locked, your gaze straight ahead.

Harper.

You’d watched Sam walk out the door that morning, watched him leave her behind and wished that the dead had special privileges or magic powers or something that would’ve allowed you to take his place. Death wasn’t so much banishment from living as it was just paralysis of everything but your emotions. You’d cried more in the first twenty four hours of your death that you’d ever cried in your entire life. But the crying felt different than it used to because the tears you were shedding weren’t yours. They belonged to your sister and your friends.

The tightness in Harper’s chest kept you wide awake as she slept. But then that sensation morphed into remorse, into anger that you’d let this happen to you, that you couldn’t be there for her. Your passing left a gaping hole inside her; she needed you to be there, to be needy, vulnerable, and grateful. She needed to take care of you, and you’d robbed her of that. And somewhere between before and now, your mother had left your side, taking Madeline and Nurse Tate and everything you knew in this nebulous place with her, leaving you there to overdose on grief.

Well, it couldn’t kill you.

Gone was the part of you that could distinguish your thoughts and feelings from someone else’s; your mind became a repository for everyone else’s reactions as if your body was just a vessel, the channel that every response has to pass through to reach fruition.

Things were starting to feel different now than they had at first; that sense of incomprehensible loss was fading away inside her. You were no longer the missing piece of the puzzle, the one that nobody could find, because the puzzle was being revised. A new picture was forming--one without you in it--and Harper was trying almost manically to make those pieces fit. You wanted to help her but you had no voice, wanted to reach out but you had no hands.

The decay had begun.

*********************


leaves behind a tragic world

The weirdest thing you’d encounter in this purgatory would be the sense that something that you’d perceived as so difficult and complicated, namely life, would seem so simple from on high. You could see Stitch underground, leading your friends, people who’d never seen where or how you lived, and you weren’t exactly sure what to think about it. You friends were learning what you already knew—that Stitch was a veteran of more than just conflict. He was an artist, a scholar, a father, a teacher, and sometimes when he was drinking, a philosopher, too…

According to Stitch, if society was an hourglass, then the fourth level underneath the city streets was the point of constriction. Above it, the higher you went, the better things got. The exact opposite was true if you went below it. What determined where any given person would live would be his ability to strong-arm his vices.

The existential pinch people felt when they got down that far was an intangible reality. It was the place where life decisions were made, where people decided if life in the tubes was right for them. It was the point at which the claustrophobics and the paranoid returned to the less enclosed tunnels above. Those who wanted to press on had to wait in the ‘lobby’ for a formal invitation. That could take days, months, or years, so those still waiting to be chosen made homes in the crevices chiseled into the walls decades ago. And then there were some who’d long ago abandoned being invited downstairs and made the waiting area their home, charging anybody for passage to a place they weren’t allowed.

You were lucky. You’d been chosen.

But sooner rather than later, someone would take your place.

*********************
JUSTIN’S POV


here we are now,
entertain us

Ten feet on the ground produced the echo for your journey, reminding you that you weren’t going alone. You panned your flashlight to your left and right illuminating graffiti-covered walls. Stitch was moving on, though, so you followed him, falling into step with Sam. You’d hear many voices as that day went on, the tunnel architecture carrying every one of them right to your ear. Near or far away, it wouldn’t matter, because you were in the thick of it.

As you walked, you could distinguish Brian’s footsteps from Zeek’s, he’s taller than Zeek, his legs are longer. And you could hear him bitching about the imminent demise of his favorite black boots to which Zeek reminded him that he had enough money to buy up every pair of boots ever made. And then you felt something pop you in the butt, and when you turned around Brian was pointing to Zeek, “He just shot a rubber band at your ass.”

“Yeah, right, Brian,” you said, shining your flashlight right in his face, “Like you don’t have more practice aiming for my ass.”

“Well, I’d like to think I do…presently company excluded.”

You rolled your eyes and started walking again, their laughter bouncing off the walls all around you:

”So, which linen closet did you fuck Justin in? Upstairs or downstairs?” Of all the things in the world that Brian could talk about, and that’s what he picked.

“Downstairs.”

”Did you notice that the good doctor remodeled it?”

”So?”

”So, I guess he doesn’t want you boning anyone else in it. It’s got shelves in it now.”

Zeek laughed, ”Promise me you won’t remodel the pool house, okay?”

”Or the sauna, right?”

”Yeah, and, uh, maybe keep your study the same way, too.”

……

”You fucker.”

……

”It’s not my fault you own ninety percent of the world’s fuck pads, Boss Man.”

……

”Good point.”

……

……

You all got quiet again and then something scurried between your legs, and you screamed like a girl. “What the fuck was that?” you demanded, trying to push your heart back in your chest. “Sewer rat,” Stitch answered. “Holy fuck, I almost shit in my pants,” you responded.

“You might as well; it already smells like you did,” Brian said.

“I’d smack you with my flashlight, Brian, if I wasn’t scared to turn around.”

“All right, ladies,” Zeek broke in, and then he came right up behind you, pretending like Brian couldn’t hear him, “Say the word, and I’ll clock him for you.”

“I heard that, Brutus.”

*********************


the terror of knowing what the world is about

Sam was much more somber than the three of you, worried about Harper, so you tried to shift the subject to something less emotional, more intellectual. He was a soft spoken guy, his passion filtered through the lens of a camera before anyone ever saw it. You suspected that the only person who ever witnessed it in its pure form was Harper. He struck you as a person who absorbs everything and returns only what he feels someone can tolerate. You noticed this mostly with Amelia, the way he was able to calm her, to redirect her, without ever raising his voice. Stitch walked alone for much of the journey, but he seemed completely suited for it as if he never expected company. Sometimes you swore you could feel people staring at you, but when your flashlight would try to follow the hunch, there was never anyone there—that you could see.

If there was one thing you learned from being on your own in the city that never sleeps, it was that a man’s life is a blank canvas. You can be nobody or you can be somebody, the choice is yours. But, ultimately, it’s a blind choice because you won’t know when you’ve made it. True to form, you’d unwittingly made yours one evening almost three years prior on a Greyhound. Your bite of the Big Apple was being handed to you that night as you sat sketching on a dark, sparsely populated bus, the reading light above your head shining as brightly as it could on your penciling hand. Your fate would leave you wondering: what’s the greater accomplishment, to be known for your creations or to be consistently inspired to create?

As your flashlight roamed the walls enclosing the five of you, it became harder and harder to focus on anything anyone was saying. And then you saw flashes of something you recognized:

You called to Stitch, and he doubled back. Brian ran into you when you stopped, his flashlight poking you in the ass because that was probably what he was shining it on.

“Brian, watch where you’re going.”

“I was.”

(He wasn’t lying.)

You turned your attention back to Stitch, “That’s Tom Slaughter’s New York City.”

He smiled, “That was the first piece Al and I ever did together. That was before he could burn.”

“Burn?”

“He was still learning.”

The beam of your flashlight was far too miniscule to truly appreciate the scale of the piece. Not only had they recreated it almost perfectly, they’d quadrupled it in size. “That’s amazing,” you told him.

“It’s fun, too,” Stitch added.

As the five of you began to walk again, you found yourself next to Stitch, asking him where you were because, “This isn’t a subway tunnel.” You tried not to dwell on the fact that you were becoming more and more confused about where you were.

“It’s an old utility pipe. These tunnels are filled with half-completed construction projects. This is one of them.” And then it was his turn to stop, “Come here. Look at this:”

“Did you do this one, too?” you asked.

“Yeah, only that was a long time ago. Before I’d even met Alan.” Stitch knocked on the concrete wall, “City came through here a few years ago and started sealing some of these tubes. When they sealed this one, one of my friends was still inside.” Sam was standing very quietly behind you; you could hear him breathing as you asked Stitch,

“Was he--?”

“She,” he corrected you.

“Was she-?”

“Alive? Yeah.” He tapped on the wall again, as if it was Morse code for the dead. “Couple of us camped out in front of the mayor’s office for a week afterward; they stopped fucking around down here after that.” He shook for a moment as if he was trying to shed the memory like a snake sheds its skin.

…….

As you got closer to what was the passage way to the fifth level down, you could hear a roar again. Stitch pointed to a hole knocked in a wall about four feet high, “Other side of this wall, tracks are live again. Stay right behind me; you won’t be able to hear me.”

……

The noise announcing the impending train was deafening. You stood still when Stitch told you to, your back and palms pressed against Monet’s Water Lilies. Your hand bumped into Brian’s, swimming in the cinder-block water; he grabbed it, riding out the vibrations with you.

*********************
ALAN HARPER’S POV


we are spirits in the material world

One of the first things Stitch taught you when he invited you to live with him was that man has lived underground for centuries—as a slave, as a prisoner, as invisible manual labor. He has lived among the aqueducts, among entombed royalty, as a soldier waiting for orders, as an order of monks who believed that any source of light tainted their faith. Underground life, he told you, was textbook survival proven through the ages. “You and me, we’re part of history, Al,” he’d always remind you. You began to wonder if you’d meet Stitch again, if you’d be the one to usher him into a life much higher than he’d ever known.

……

Your legs were beginning to tire when a woman you’d never met before came and stood beside you. You ignored her at first because what you were watching was far more interesting—Justin was discovering your world. It had never really occurred to you to invite him over. At first it felt like an invasion of your privacy for him to see how you lived, and then you remembered that you were dead.

The woman sitting next to you put her hand on your thigh. You looked down at it; it was an old woman’s hand wearing a silver diamond wedding ring. You didn’t recognize her voice either, but you listened when she spoke, “Your mother asked me to come over here and sit with you, Alan.”

“I don’t know who you are,” you told her, still staring at Justin. The only thing you could feel was his sadness soaking you to the bone.

“My name is Emma Cartwright,” she said. “Daniel is my son.”

And then you looked at her face and saw the resemblance immediately, realized that the cadence of her voice was exactly like his—calm and purposeful.

“Are you dead, too?” you asked her. (Being dead doesn't automatically make you a genius.)

“Have been for quite a while.”

‘I think I remember that, remember you dying.” She put her arm around you, and you leaned on her shoulder, suddenly wanting to be comforted. “How can you be here with me?” you asked her. “How come you can see what I’m seeing?”

“I think it’s because something that I thought was resolved really isn’t.”

“Because of me?”

“I think so."

*********************
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV


was her childhood filled with rhymes,
stolen hooks, impassioned crimes?

Downstairs that morning, you and Amelia sat at your dining room table and drew and drew and drew. (Talent-wise it was an even match.) Amelia worked--just like her mother--with an intensity beyond her years. The two of you played a game that had been blossoming between you: Amelia would command you to draw a specific thing, and (hiding your paper from her) you would draw something completely different. When you revealed your creation, she’d bust out laughing at the crocodile you drew instead of the prescribed frog. You’d insist, however, that it was a frog, just to entertain her.

“It’s not a frog, Dr. Car-ride.”

“How do you know?”

“Because a frog says fribbit.”

“Well, then what does a crocodile say?” you asked.

She stretched her arms out in front of her slapping them together, “Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.”

And then it was on to the next request and the next and the next until she said, “Now, draw your mommy.”

“I’ll draw mine if you draw yours.”

“Okay.”

So you both drew your mothers and portrait-wise Harper fared better than your mother, and then Amelia stopped suddenly and stared at you.

“What’s wrong?” you asked. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

She shook her head, “Mommy’s phone; it’s ringing.”

“I’ll be right back.”

……

You dug through Harper’s always wide open purse on your kitchen counter and answered her cell; it was Sam.

“How are you getting reception in the tunnels?” you asked.

“There’s a break,” he told you. ”We’re getting some much needed fresh air—just for a minute.”

“Oh, okay.”

”How is she? How’s Harper?”

“She’s fine. She’s asleep.”

”Is Amelia driving you crazy?”

“Not at all; we’re coloring. How’s it going?”

”It’s like everything I expected and everything I didn’t.”

……

When you returned to the dining room, Amelia had covered her sheet of paper in front of her and there was a black crayon on the floor next to her chair. You picked it up, sat down again, and asked, “What are you working on?”

“These are my peoples,” she said, beginning to point to each separate scribble on the page, “I made Mommy, and I made Daddy. See? And then I made Uncle Alan.” There was a fourth scribble on the page that she was still diligently working on. When she finished, she held her picture up, looking at it the exact same way you’d seen Harper study photographs in her studio. “And then I made Brime Kinney.”

*********************
JUSTIN’S POV


life’s rich pageant

Before re-entering the tunnel six levels down and at Stitch’s insistence, the four of you had donned face masks, replaced the batteries in your flashlights, and split up the rest of the cash. Zeek took the thousand Brian handed him and split it between he and Sam. Brian pocketed the rest. All of you walked closer together now, for safety reasons and so you could hear Stitch.

According to him, the sixth level was best place to paint. It had long stretches of uninterrupted walls, and over the years, he and Alan had painted nearly every square inch of it. The five of you were no longer alone. You were flanked on both sides by Monet, Matisse, Van Gogh, and Kandinsky, and then turned a corner to find Picasso…

and a memory of a heated conversation on the eve of a haircut...

“You know 'Guernica'? People say it's the most powerful anti-war statement ever made. I say bullshit. It hangs in a fucking museum, collecting dust. And this is all bullshit. It doesn't do a mother fucking thing.”

*********************


I’ve been there
I know the way

At the entrance to the seventh and final level of your journey, Zeek stopped all of you, called Stitch back, and began to instruct the three of you:

“Okay, first of all, the four of us, we stay in one straight line, four across.”

“Why?” you asked.

“There are trip wires the rest of the way down now,” Zeek answered, turning and shining his flashlight along the ground in front of him. “It’s razor wire; it will slice you and you will bleed like a mother fucker, so Kinney, I want you on one end, and I’ll be on the other.” Brian nodded. “Now, the way you spot these things is not by looking at the ground in front you, you look along the walls.” And with that, he shone his flashlight about three feet high on the walls. “They’re marked, just not where you’d expect them to be. See those white flags every few feet? That’s the end of a wire. So, we take it step by step, wire by wire, and you step when I tell you to, got it?”

“Doesn’t Stitch know where they are?” you asked. “Shouldn’t we just watch him?”

“Stitch knows this terrain so well, he could walk it blindfolded. The only reason these things are even flagged is because he flagged them. He’ll lead, but I want you to stay behind with me…just in case he missed one.”

Zeek flanked the left side and Brian flanked the right. It proved much trickier than it sounded; it was antithetical to look at the wall before you took a step. It reminded you of trying to rub your head and pat your stomach at the same time. Brian held your hand, his arm stiffening, holding you back until he was ready to step. Zeek noticed and told Sam, “Nothing personal, pretty boy, but I’m not holding your hand.”

“I’m crushed,” he told Zeek, and soon enough the four of you developed a routine. The closer you got to where Alan lived, the closer together the wires became.

*********************


we can reach our destination

Although walking through the equivalent of an underground art gallery had been breathtaking, nothing prepared you for what you’d see when you arrived safely inside the seventh level. It was nothing like you expected. It wasn’t a dank, disgusting place where junkies hung out in between fixes, it was an actual community of men, women, and children who cared about one another and their home. Stitch unlocked the door to his room, three padlocks with three different keys, and when he swung the metal door open, the light was on in the room. A man who looked like he was not-quite thirty was sitting on the perfectly made bed. Stitch spoke to him, “Go on. I’m back. Get out.” The man hesitated as if he wanted to say something, but then changed his mind, walking out the door.

“Who was that?” you asked.

“Lewis. He watches the place when I’m not here.”

“But he was locked inside here,” you continued.

“You think padlocks will stop a man from taking something he wants?” Stitch said, raising his voice.

“Cut it out, Stitch,” Zeek interrupted, and then turned to you, “Stitch doesn’t go upstairs much. When he does, somebody has to watch the place.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to piss you off,” you conceded.

Stitch sat down on the bed, his fingers wrapping around the foot board, “You didn’t. I just want Al to be there, you know? Not him.”

……

In all the years you’d known Alan, you’d always pictured him sleeping out in the cold, digging through trash for food, doing cliche homeless people things, but this room was nicer than some dorm rooms you’d seen. Stitch even had a nineteen inch television hooked to a multi-disc DVD player. “You watch movies down here?” you asked.

“Netflix.”

“Netflix?”

“Yeah, people mail tons of movies everyday; sometimes I intercept them,” Stitch said with a mischievous grin on his face.

“You steal people’s movies?” you asked.

“No, I don’t steal them. I just watch them that day and then put them back in the mail.”

You opened the DVD player and watched three discs spin into place: Blackhawk Down, A Clockwork Orange, and Batman Forever.

“Batman Forever? Art imitating life?”

Stitch laughed, “All we need is a butler.”

You sat down on the bed next to Stitch while Zeek stood in the doorway and while Brian and Sam walked around the room. “What is this place exactly?” you asked him.

“It’s the infrastructure of a subway line that was retired over thirty years ago. City got the basics done, got water pumped in, got the structure built, and then politics got in the way or something and the plans were abandoned. The tunnel we were walking in, it’s a tunnel to nowhere.”

“One way in, one way out, right?” Sam asked.

“Yeah. That’s the only way to have a safe place underground.”

Sam turned the sink on, smiling when the water ran clear, “They forgot to kill the water, right?”

“And the electricity,” Brian added.

But while Brian and Sam were examining the bizarre amenities, your eyes were fixated on the wall in front of you. It was covered with a mural that read ‘Security’ in the bottom right corner. “Did Alan do this?” you asked, as your sketch of he and Harper stared back at you, literally bigger than life.

Stitch smiled, “Yeah, took him fucking forever. He’s a goddamn perfectionist.”

“It’s unbelievable; I don’t even know what to say.”

“Some artists find self-portraits really difficult, and Al was one of them. When he saw your work, your sketches of him, he liked your version of him better, so he adopted it. He always said that you made him look more human than he ever felt.”

Sam asked if he could take a picture of it and the room, “For Harper. I want her to see this.” Stitch agreed. Brian sat down on a trunk, and Zeek stepped outside the bunker door.

*********************
ALAN HARPER’S POV


I can see the destiny you sold

It became impossible to separate your thoughts about Justin seeing your work for the very first time from what was happening inside of him. Zeek and Justin had put a barrier between themselves, but that mattered little because emotions were soaking right through it. And then Justin removed the obstacle, stepping outside the door. Zeek responded when Justin tried to comfort him, “I was there when you drew that. I saw that. I know what that picture means. Jesus Christ.”

“I know.”

……

Death, you were soon figuring out, was little more than an abdication of responsibility, of surrendering the right to care for the people you love to those who are still living. And you wanted to scream that you were sorry, that you wanted to be there with them and not trapped in some kind of omniscient heaven-hell, but the only voice you had was a paintbrush.

……

Harper always said that art was about subjective balance. Subjective because what felt like equilibrium to one, might feel like chaos to another. That through the ages, art had meant different things to different societies; in some societies, art was proof of existence; it was the way men communicated with one another, explained to one another their common experience. In other societies, it was divisive and threatening because that which could be accurately represented was real. You’d grown up in the shadows of your father’s temper, your mother’s death, and your sister’s talent, and now the shadows were falling away, revealing you to people who, although they’d never see you again, were actually seeing you for the first time.

But even in death, you were still naïve, for it was much more than you they were going to see. They were going to see themselves.

*********************
JUSTIN’S POV


you consider me a young apprentice

Lewis returned when Stitch called for him, “I’m going to show them around a little. Stay here.” Lewis asked if he could watch television, and Stitch agreed, pulling the door closed behind him as the five of you stepped back into the tunnel. He didn’t lock the door that time, so you assumed you weren’t going very far. You could smell smoke, and when you asked Stitch about it, he led you to the kitchen. There were two women and a man in there, a refrigerator, a sink, a microwave, and a fire pit in the middle of the floor. The men were sitting beside it. “What are they doing?” you asked.

“Skinning squirrels.”

You backed out of the doorway, feeling sick, ignoring Stitch when he said they taste just like chicken. “Come on,” he told you, pulling you by the arm. The next doorway you saw bothered you as well, but in a completely different way. It was filled with women and about ten children, sitting together around a table. One of the women was reading to the children. They turned and looked at you in the doorway, and one of the women got up and came to the door. “What the fuck are you doing, Stitch?” she asked.

“These are Alan’s friends. It’s okay.”

“Whose children are these?” you asked. They were so pale, almost gray.

The woman responded with a sharp defense, “They belong to all of us, and you’re interrupting their lessons.”

Stitch changed the subject, and the woman walked back to the table and sat down again. “See that?” he said, pointing to a mural on the wall. “Al did that for the women.”

It was Gustav Klimt, but the resemblance to Harper and Amelia was overwhelming. Sam took a picture of it and then walked away, shaking his head.

“He was brilliant, Stitch. Did he know that? Did he know how good he was?” you asked him.

“He saw himself as more of a copy cat than an artist.”

“That’s not the work of a copy cat,” you told him, “That’s fucking unbelievable.”

……

As you followed Stitch for the rest of the tour, you felt yourself getting angry at Alan for hiding more than just himself underground. You were fairly sure that Harper knew little of his talent because you couldn’t imagine her knowing and not encouraging him to get out there. There was no need for somebody with his ability to live like that. And then you were pissed at yourself for thinking you had a right to revise someone’s life, especially now that it was over.

But for all the things you’d shared with Alan over the years—food, clothing, conversation, he would ultimately share something with you that was far more valuable—his legacy.

And the first leg of that journey was literally just around the corner…

*********************
BRIAN’S POV


maybe six feet
ain’t so far down

Halfway through the journey and half the money had been spent, given to anyone who seemed even remotely interested in hindering your progress. Halfway through the journey, and you were quite sure that the stench was going to make your eyebrows fall out. You couldn’t wait to burn the clothes you had on, couldn’t wait to get the sting of ammonia out of your eyes. Zeek had abandoned you at one point to verify that his exit strategy from this bizarre netherworld was foolproof, and when he returned, you were glad to hear his conclusion, “I found it. We can get outside pretty fast, won’t have to retrace our steps.” You didn’t care if you had to walk all the way back to the hotel as long as you were breathing fresh air.

The seventh level was sort of like a cul-de-sac, so the tour that each of you had embarked on would lead back to Stitch’s room, one way or another. As you got closer to it, you could hear a hiss and then Justin’s laughter and then his voice, “Oh shit, wait. Wait. I fucked it up.” You and Zeek turned the corner following the sound, and then you saw Stitch standing behind Justin, his right hand over Justin’s which was wrapped around a can of spray paint. “It’s all in the angle, Justin,” Stitch said, and Justin pushed on the nozzle sending a huge splatter of red paint over the wall in front of him. The two of you were several feet behind Sam, who was filming everything.

“What angle?” Justin asked. “There’s ‘on’ or ‘off.’” Stitch took the can from him and did what Justin had just done but produced a much different result: a perfectly pure red line that didn’t even bleed. “Okay, let me try again,” Justin said, a nervous excitement in his voice. Stitch held his hand again, “Okay, relax your hand, let me do it so you can feel it.”

“Okay.”

"It took Al over a year to get it down to a science. It's tricky."

It took a few tries, but eventually Stitch was able to make it work. Justin had a look of wide-eyed wonderment on his face as he looked at what he’d done. “That’s fucking amazing. And really hard to do.” When he handed the can back to Stitch, his hand was shaking. He shoved it in his pocket. He hadn’t seen you watching him, none of them had, and you watched them walk away toward Stitch’s room, listening to Justin peppering Stitch with questions about that technique. When they’d turned the corner, they took the light with them, so you switched on your flashlight. Zeek was a few feet ahead of you when he stopped suddenly, pointing his beam at the wall in front of him, “Check it out, Kinney.”

There was a childish enthusiasm in his voice as if he’d just finished a box of cereal only to find the glow-in-the-dark prize at the very bottom.

……

……


The beam of your flashlight joined his as the two of you stood together in humid silence.

……

……

But then Zeek spoke, moving his light from the wall to your face, “So, who the fuck is Hobbs?"


The final image in this chapter was created by briannahai for BYBR. I asked her for a flower, and, instead, she planted a garden for me. You’ll see more of her wonderful talent as BYBR progresses.

Lyrics taken from Aretha Franklin’s The House that Jack Built, REM’s Everybody Hurts, movie title The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Paul McCartney & Wings’s Listen to What the Man Said, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, David Bowie’s (featuring Queen) Under Pressure, Sting’s Spirits in the Material World, REM’s Photograph with Natalie Merchant, album title Life’s Rich Pageant, Can’t Get There from Here, and Driver 8, Sting’s Wrapped Around Your Finger twice and Creed’s One Last Breath.

Icon bases used throughout this story came from basicbases, basebeat, khushi_icons, obsessiveicons, graphical_love, anithradia, simplybases, randomicons, bases_by_maggie, and foryourhead.