Radical Love

Grace McGregor looked at the journal that’d washed up by her feet. It was partially waterlogged from the lake, with frayed edges and a warped spine. She sat down on a crumbling slab of concrete, cracked it open. Some of it was blank, but there were scattered bits of prose and other things. Most of it appeared to be someone’s desperate attempt to solve something unsolvable. At least, from what she could tell. The words “love,” “radical,” and “action” appeared frequently alongside sketches of buildings falling, stick figures screaming, fragmented lists, small grids with what looked like coordinates, codes, numbers, and symbols.

None of it made sense. But as Grace held it up, the pages catching the moonlight, she couldn’t help but feel an earnestness reverberating from it. The handwriting drifted up in some sections and down in others. Sometimes the writing was neat and other times it was nearly illegible. She tucked her black hair behind her ear and flipped her bangs.

“Excuse me, miss?”

Grace turned to see a man wearing a bathrobe, stained shirt, shorts, and sandals with tall, white socks. His circular glasses refracted some light as he smiled, his grey hair unkempt and swaying with the breeze.

“Back the fuck up, motherfucker!” Grace dropped the journal and pulled out her bear mace canister, aiming it at his eyes. “Back. Up!”

The man held his hands up. He moved almost too slowly—as if just outside of time. Grace blinked, getting into a stable stance. She was ready to run. Or fight.

“Oh shit, uh, hey now, my bad, my bad… I just… uh, you have my—”

“This?” she asked, kicking the journal halfway between them.

“Yeah, that…” he began, “I just have to double check something.”

“What were you working on anyway? It’s all gibberish. Nonsense.”

The man paused. “Well… I was seeking a perfect, theoretically sound, properly footnoted, rigorously reviewed argument for, uh… the concept of love, I guess. Radical love, specifically.”

Grace looked at him. His shirt under the robe was wet and red down the front, damp with something thicker than water. “You okay?”

“Oh, this? Eh… not really but, what can you do, you know?”

“Not really…” Grace replied, trailing off. She steadied her aim. “Did you prove it?”

The man stepped toward the journal, keeping his hands up. “Look, I totally get why you’re on edge… but can you, like, put the mace down? I just need to check something.”

“For what?” Grace lowered the canister, finger still on the trigger. The man nodded, picked up the journal, then looked to her.

“I don’t have a lot of time. Please.”

Grace hesitated for just a moment, then finally put the canister back on her belt. The man’s face softened. He knelt to the ground, his shirt clinging to his skin, and flipped pages rapidly. He stopped on one page in particular.

“Okay… yes, great…” he muttered, his eyes scanning. Grace sat back on her concrete slab, her shoulders relaxing a bit. She watched the man read for a few seconds.

“Dude, what are you doing?”

“Please. Just one sec.”

Grace scoffed and lit a cigarette. After a minute or two, the man closed the book and tossed it back to her.

“Here. Maybe you’ll get something out of it,” he said, brushing off his robe as he stood. Grace exhaled, the smoke curling around her pale face.

“You smoke?”

“Yes,” the man replied. Grace threw him a cigarette, then the lighter. The man lit it with easy motions. Practiced. He tossed the lighter back.

“How much time do you have?” Grace asked, gesturing to his wound.

“A few minutes. Then I need to go back.”

“Where?”

The man exhaled. Grace squinted. The smoke cradled his face in a way that the wind would never allow it to and it was blueish. “The end.”

“The end… of?”

“Everything.”

Silence for a moment. The wind gusted, carrying the smell of rotting debris and the sourness of the lake. Grace shifted on her slab and kicked a rock.

“Sounds, uh—bleak.”

“It is. But I don’t think Mr. Commodity anticipated me finding my old notes,” he said, letting out a scoff of his own. “I’m really, really lucky you’d already found it. I was gonna have to swim all over that motherfucker and hope for the best.”

Grace raised an eyebrow. “Everything you say makes very little sense.”

The man shrugged. “Yeah. I guess so.” He stamped out the cigarette, half finished, then turned to walk away.

“Wait, real quick.”

The man turned back. “Yeah?”

“Can you prove it? Radical love?”

“I have to try.”

The man disappeared. Grace smoked, then picked up the journal and headed toward Quiet Meadow.

Grace approached her usual liquor store and followed her routine: walk in, say hi to Jerry, bullshit for a second like she wasn’t in a hurry to chase oblivion, wander to the vodka section and select a handle of Twilly Nilly, pay for it, then leave before Jerry caught her in another conversation about nothing.

The man she encountered at the lake crossed her mind.

Who was that guy? Did Prophy send him? What the actual fuck? Whatever…

She sauntered toward home, taking what she called the “scenic” route—back alleys, train tracks, a pool of polluted water reflecting the moonlight in the shimmery way that only oil could. Little rainbow halos. She lit another cigarette, then popped open the handle and took a glug.

Aha! There it is. Warm.

She rounded the corner and Quiet Meadow Avenue came into view. It was a dump. Garbage, gatherings of people around burning barrels, a few cat calls she didn’t even really hear anymore—she flipped off some guy and he retreated back into the alley doing whatever guys like him did in the dark. She stepped up to the door of her building, pressed in the code, then entered the crumbling entryway and mail area. A sign read: Palm Spring Apartments.

Apartment manager Kevin McDubie sat at his post. He had a little desk and a computer set up between the mailboxes and vending machines. A light flickered above him, casting a pale glow on the mustard-yellow polo shirt he always wore. He looked up and glanced at his watch. On his desk sat a very fragrant sub smothered in vinegar. The bread was sopping and it leaked a bit on the floor.

“Hey, Grace.”

“Kev—what’s up.”

Kevin shrugged. “Living the dream.”

Grace took a swig from the bottle as she walked by him. Kevin was used to it.

“Hey, uh, Grace…”

She paused. “What?”

“I think Sammy’s on the roof again. He can’t be up there. I know you’re not his mom or whatever but every time I ask him to get down he throws a bottle at me. Can you do me a solid? Please? I’m sorry—”

“It’s fine, Kev. Sure. Did he threaten to jump?”

Kevin nodded. “He also called me a pig. I’m not a fuckin’ cop. I just don’t want the kid to kill himself.”

“Okay, fair. For fuck’s sake…”

“I left the access door open. I usually keep it locked but I think he broke it or something.”

She turned toward the elevator and pressed the button, leaning on the wall and dangling her vodka lazily. Kevin picked up his sandwich and took a bite. It fell apart and he clumsily grasped at it as it doused him in vinegar, salami—whatever else. Grace laughed, then stepped in the elevator. Kevin’s frustrated grumbles faded as the door closed. She pressed the rooftop access button and the elevator lurched up. Sounds of grinding metal. Smells of old cigarette smoke and something a little chemical underneath. In the corner she saw some broken glass that could have been a discarded crack pipe but she wasn’t sure, nor did she particularly care. She took a long pull of the vodka. As she wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her dark coat, the elevator door opened to a small hallway leading to the rooftop. Her combat boots echoed off the concrete. She shoved the door open and was met with the sour smell of Downtown’s air.

The night was cold and damp. Sitting on the far ledge was a slumped figure, barely visible in the pale light of the moon. Grace glanced up.

Prophy… please, help me talk him down.

“Hey Sammy,” Grace said, approaching gently. “How you doin?”

Sammy looked back, scoffed, then resumed looking down at the city. “It’s all fucked, Grace. All fucked.” Sammy sniffled and took a drink of whatever he had, then tossed the bottle off the roof. It crashed somewhere and someone shouted incoherently.

“Mind if I sit?” Grace asked, now behind him. She could see his dirty blond hair now and his puffy winter coat. In his hand was a glass pipe that was burned black on the bottom of the bowl.

“Whatever. Sure. Did Kevin send you?”

Grace sat, passing him a cigarette she’d lit for him. He took it, setting the pipe he was holding down on the ledge. Both Grace and Sammy let their legs dangle over the side. Somewhere below there was more shouting, a gunshot or two, then nothing but the endless churning of Downtown’s dangerous nightlife.

“Yeah, but you know I was probably gonna come up here anyway,” she replied, exhaling a cloud of smoke at Sammy’s face. He laughed, then did the same back to her. “You gotta stop throwing shit at him, dude. Not cool.”

Sammy looked down. “He was pissing me off. I just wanted to smoke in peace. I wasn’t bothering anyone.”

“You’ve also got to stop threatening that you’ll jump off, man. You’re lucky Kevin is like, kinda okay, cause if the fuckin’ cops came you’d be fucked. Straight up.” Grace flicked her cigarette, the ashes drifting away in the dank wind.

“I’m sorry. You know how I get when people get all, Oh lookie here, I’m a big man and you do what I say, blah blah blah.”

“I get it, Sammy. But Kevin was more worried you were gonna kill yourself. I don’t think he gives a shit if people smoke or whatever.”

Sammy sighed. “I’ll apologize on the way down. Fuck.”

Grace and him sat together quietly for a little while. She lit fresh cigarettes and offered him a pull of vodka, which he happily took, then passed it back.

Grace spat. “Did Prophy talk to you tonight?”

Sammy nodded, glancing up at the moon. “Yeah. Shit’s getting weird. Something big’s coming. [REDACTED]’s in full on planning mode. I haven’t even seen them in their apartment in a day or two. Oh and fuckin’ seminar starts tomorrow. Goddamn it…”

“What?”

“I didn’t do the reading. Shit…”

“You’ll be fine. You know more than any of us. You’ve lived what we study. We need you.”

Grace gently held his hand. Sammy squeezed back.

“Okay, okay. I’ll go. But Reina’s gonna give me a lot of shit, I just know it.”

“Well, you won’t be alone. Now,” she began, passing him the bottle, “Here’s to us, the drunkards we are, for tomorrow’s worries mean nothing tonight.”

“Hell yeah. Fuckin’ cheers to that.”

Grace unlocked her apartment door and stepped in, knocking over a glass bottle. It rolled across the room and clanged against the opposite wall. She sighed and locked the door behind her.

Kicking off her boots, she took another long pull of her vodka. The warmth was finally starting to spread in her body. It was like someone had given her a weighted blanket and was gently holding her legs. She laid back, staring at the popcorn ceiling that had visible water damage.

Without sitting up she reached for her bag and got out the journal. She turned it around in her hands, taking a closer look. The cover was made of a faux leather that was peeling. On the inside cover were anarchy symbols, quotes from authors, names, partial phone numbers. She traced the page with her thumb. Something dropped from the inside cover that’d been stashed between where the lining of the cover met the warped cardboard—a Polaroid picture. Stranger yet, it was in perfect condition. Not even wet.

She reached over to turn on her lamp, the room spinning slightly as the vodka slithered its way through her insides. In the picture were three people: a man, a woman, and a young girl, maybe ten or twelve or something. Classic background. Two story house, green grass, blue sky, a sprinkler, and the girl smiling without reservation. The man had short hair, circular glasses, and he was paired next to a woman with flowing dark hair and a dress with a square neckline. Grace checked the back of the photo. She discovered three names, hand written, and a date: James, Susan, and Sophie Ackerson, 2036.

2036? Could’ve fuckin’ fooled me… looks like goddamn 1950.

Her eyes kept returning to the man’s glasses. It was the only aspect of him that matched who she’d seen earlier. The fact she was able to link him to an actual photo made her almost nauseous. She’d been half-tempted to write off her whole experience at the lake as a hallucination, like it was leftover trip from some pill she’d popped or some shit she’d smoked with Sammy. But now, there he was. James was his name.

Theoretical proof of love. Radical love, no less. Huh. Literally what is the point of doing that? Also why the fuck did he look like a fuckin’ specter or some shit? Dude was all floaty and slo-mo.

She opened the front and found a page with a heading and short introduction:

On and on it went. Her eyes glazed over—she was too far gone for cloistered, academic jargon. She marked the page with the photograph then set it aside for now, covering it with her pillow.

A few more drinks from the bottle invited the comforting darkness of sleep.

Grace was first to class as usual. She entered the room and immediately dimmed the lights, her head throbbing, then found her usual chair and slumped into it. The class was so small it was held in a conference room with a projector instead of a classroom or lecture hall. She reached for the remote on the table and clicked the power button. The old projector whirred to life, casting a blue glow on the screen at the front of the room. Grace sighed, then got out the journal from her bag to reread what she’d started in her drunken stupor the night before.

The door opened again and Dr. Reina entered, dressed in a black suit with her hair tied up. Her square glasses glowed blue as she looked toward Grace. “Morning.”

“It is morning indeed, Dr. Reina,” Grace replied, avoiding her gaze.

Dr. Reina grinned, then set her bag down on the table. She went over to the console and turned on the ancient, dusty computer that admin refused to replace. On the screen appeared: Welcome to Media Analysis 700: The “isms” of Modernity.

“The ‘isms’ of modernity… oh, what a party,” Grace said, glancing back down at the journal.

“Oh yes—because grad school is supposed to just be a party, right? My bad.”

Grace scoffed, as did Dr. Reina. The door opened again and in came [REDACTED] and Marcus, together as usual, already discussing something.

“—right, right, no, Marcus—I hear what you're saying, I’m just questioning the relationship between—”

“—sure you are, you’re white, so it’s natural you’d—”

“—I’m not arguing against intersectional considerations, not at all, I just think ‘there is no war but class war’ creates a playing field where the poor unite—”

“—see, you’d think that, but—”

[REDACTED] sat next to Grace, nodded to her while listening to Marcus’ thought. They had their hood up and wore a long, flowing cloak of sorts. Marcus sat across from her, did a similar gesture with his eyes flickering to her then back to [REDACTED]. He had long braids and wore a hoodie with jeans, as he always did. A couple of his rings glinted in the light of the projector, which contrasted against his dark brown skin. His nails were painted ruby red.

As their discussion continued, Sammy came in, opening the door with agitation. He shut it behind him and sat on the other side of Grace. He didn’t say anything to anyone and kept his sunglasses on. Grace couldn’t help but notice he was in the same clothes he’d been in the night before.

Day one. Here we go.

“Okay, here we go. Welcome everyone. I trust that you all had a restful winter break?”

Silence.

“Right. So, welcome to your degree-culminating seminar. The structure of the class is simple. We meet once a week for five hours with one break. You are to participate in discussions and produce original research as part of the requirements. Pretty straight ahead. Any questions?”

Silence, again. Sammy cleared his throat. Dr. Reina nodded, then pressed to the next slide of her presentation.

“Today we are discussing several works, but our first portion will primarily cover Sophie Star’s Yahweh’s Bush—specifically the first interlude from You Were Always In My Hands by Jak Marshall. Middle fingers up if you read it.”

Grace, Marcus, and [REDACTED] all raised their middle fingers up. Sammy held his up sideways.

“Good enough. So, I’ll start us off. [REDACTED], what about the work did you find—”

The conference room door slammed open. A woman with platinum blonde hair, a pink dress, full sleeves of tattoos, large sunglasses, and a briefcase walked in.

“Hiiiiii! Happy new semester, my lovelies!”

Smiles from everyone, even Dr. Reina. “Ah, Dr. Martello, we were just discussing—”

“Yahweh’s fuckin’ Bush!! Hell yeah, this is some of Star’s best shit.” Dr. Martello sat down by Sammy, who couldn’t help looking at her and smiling like an idiot. Dr. Martello was barely older than the students were. Grace side-eyed him. He looked mildly embarrassed as he turned back to the front.

“Right. Well, of course. You know I’m fond of interdisciplinary analysis. To have a composer in the room may be very enlightening,” Dr. Reina said, reorienting herself. “As I was saying, I’d like to start with [REDACTED]. Be concise and summarize the story into its primary narrative beats, give us a bit on characterization, and finally a theoretically-based interpretation—whichever method you find appropriate.”

[REDACTED] pulled their hands back into the cloak. Sat with it a second.

“Okay, um... Let’s see… I mean, asking a Marxist to be concise. Sheesh.” They cleared their throat. The class quietly chuckled. “Okay, so—Yahweh narrates. She tells us she’s God’s older sister, and the God we know, her little brother, is a, well—her words—a ‘petty little cunt.’ Then the girl’s introduced. Girl gets raped by the guy who’d already killed her dad over, like, a dick-measuring thing, literally. Mom doesn’t know she’s pregnant, then goes to get a man in a white robe. He ‘checks’ her on the floor. Mom helps hold her down. Finds out she’s been—‘defiled,’ the story says—so the village stones her in the town square. They make the mom throw stones as well. Brother-God keeps her head alive because he’s bored, has it cut off, then thrown in a ravine. Her head wakes up under a bush. The bush says it’s God and taunts her. Then a guy comes over the hill and the bush just—drops her mid-conversation and turns into the burning bush, does the whole Moses thing, the shoes, the holy ground, all that, while the girl’s lying there filling up with flies. Nobody looks at her. Then we’re back with Yahweh. Wine, drugs, sex...etc. And then it just kind of falls apart at the end. Sentences stop. I don’t… Who… Please dance with me… Like that. End interlude.”

Grace saw everyone nod. Sammy looked like he was being told the story for the first time.

“Characterization?” Dr. Reina asked.

“There basically isn’t any, which seems to be intentional, so…” they shrugged inside the cloak. “Yahweh’s the only one who gets any interiority, and she spends it the whole time proving she’s above all of it. She’s an omniscient narrator. The brother reads cartoonish, not like a person—he’s an apparatus with a face glued on so you’ve got somebody to hate. White-robed guy doesn’t have interiority because functionaries don’t need it. Moses does his whatever and doesn’t even really clock the dead kid by his feet. The girl’s got the realest voice in the thing, yet no name. She’s the one who’s actually there and she’s written so you can’t keep hold of her.”

Grace had caught that too and almost added on. It doesn’t say her name was Mary—she stayed quiet for now.

“Okay, now—theory.”

[REDACTED] checked their notes. “The ‘Sin Tax,’ to me, is the whole engine, and it’s a pun—that’s the subtlety we’re at—and I mean that in a nice way. You pay a guy in a robe to make your sin go away. That’s obviously looping in class and morality. I read the stoning as a broadcast of sorts. Public—everybody throws, they conscript the mom specifically so nobody gets to stand off to the side and call it barbaric, because now they’ve all got a rock in their hand. They’re all in it. That’s how the regime manufactures the consent. The body’s just where they carve the order so the village can enact it.” Their hand came out, made one small motion, went back. “To me, this story’s already theorized. It isn’t ‘raw’ in the same way, like, free improvisation is. It shows up knowing every reading we’d give it. Yahweh lectures, the bush lectures, it’s made of lectures—and now we’re in a lecture about it, which both Sophie Star and Jak Marshall already knew would happen, right. Funny…”

Quiet. The computer’s fan ground away on the console. Grace chewed the inside of her cheek.

Marcus reviewed his notes quickly, then spoke up. “Right, but that read leaves out the stylistic genealogy, and genealogy is the whole thing, at least to me. It’s what tells you if the recursion’s a trope or a tool.” He leaned in. The rings clicked on the table. Marcus had read more than the rest of them put together and Grace could always hear it when he opened up, the sources coming in synthesized. “The self-aware move isn’t, like, new—it runs out of the sixties black humorists straight into Burroughs and Acker—splice, collage, plagiarism, you know... the King James stuff is kinda political theft—she’s doing the exact Ackerian thing: you steal a sacred text whole because it’s already like a zeitgeist document, so stealing it back is an honest thing you can do with it. Also, the falling-apart at the end—I read that as metamodern sensibility. I read it as ‘New Sincerity’ entering into a space to fight against irony tooth and nail. It makes new stuff out of the friction between knowing better and meaning it anyway…”

“—yeah,” [REDACTED] nodded, “…and that’s how it gets you.” [REDACTED] said. Marcus looked over, his eyes narrowed. [REDACTED] shifted. “You just did it, though. That was the best defense of the recursion anybody’s gonna give in here and you proved my point doing it. Pointing out that friction isn’t enough. This is meta-fiction with autobiographical symbolism. You can trace that kind of dissolution back through Acker to the black humorists and that historically situates it in terms of aesthetic, style, and general philosophy, but… the girl’s still in the ravine. Your read’s right, it’s complete—it changes nothing, and the story knew it wouldn’t. I’m… not sure how I feel about that.”

Marcus opened his mouth, then shut it. He thought for a moment. “That’s literally my nightmare, though,” Marcus said. “I’m not saying we stop making political art. Some say all art is political, so… I can hold the whole apparatus in my head—sourced, footnoted—but the Big Red Thing crosses the map at the exact same speed it would if I didn’t know shit. Star did in three pages what we haven’t done in a semester. I love her for it but I don’t trust the love. You can have the whole horror and then close the file and—”

“Move on to brunch,” Grace said.

“—move on to brunch, yeah.” He smiled. “At least I’m consistent.”

“You’re all obsessed with the language.” Dr. Martello had her shades up. Sammy turned toward her too fast, then made himself face front. She continued. “Which, like, gorgeous—allegory, metamodernism, the interlude, mwah—gold stars. But it was a MediaBlog post first. People read it out loud from their phones. Don’t forget about modality. I read her stuff as noise before it was model of textual subversion.” She found the spot on the screen, pointed to it with a laser pointer she always seemed to have. “Read the beginning part out loud and feel the tempo. It’s one speed the whole way down, run-on, no breaths, she won’t let you up for air, she’s holding you under—and then, boom. King James. Put off thy shoes. Cadence totally changes—slow, big, churchy, the rhythm of authority dropped right in the middle of the girl drowning, heavy—and phallic. She doesn’t clean up the dissonance after, the scripture and the ‘go fuck your neck hole’ sit in the same bar, because if she were to have resolved that it would have been too perfect, too authentic of a cadence.”

“That’s—” Sammy started, with feeling, “—the bar, yeah, like a measure, that’s—” and lost it, the morning catching up to him. He just nodded at her a few times.

“He gets it,” Martello said, pleased.

“I get it,” Sammy said to everyone.

Grace looked at him until he faced front again.

Oh give me a break, Sammy.

“Sammy,” Reina said. She hadn’t moved. “You’re quiet. Unusual for you. You read it live, supposedly. Go.”

He approached it sideways, like always. “Everybody’s interpreting the girl so far. The dead one.” He thumbed his shades down. “I wanna talk about Yahweh. She does the whole vicious bit, coolest one in the room, doing God’s job better than God, and then at the end she comes apart in the exact spot she left the girl. ‘I don’t want to dance. Alone.’ She wrote the whole thing to prove she’s not the girl and she’s the girl. That’s spiraling of somebody coming apart, and I know what that looks like from inside—so does anybody up there holding too much.”

The fan whirred. Martello had stopped messing with the pen.

“Ironic or sincere,” Reina said. “The whole thing. What’s y’all’s take?”

“Both,” Grace said, “obviously, you’re fishing, it’s the oscillation, you taught us oscillation.”

“But is the oscillation a praxis?” Reina let the silence sit for a moment. “Or is it just a performance to cope? I’ll ask again at your defense.” She didn’t wait for an answer. She tapped the keyboard and the slide didn’t advance, tapped it again, and it went. “Let’s take five. See y’all in a sec.”

Nobody moved to fix the lights. Nobody in the room liked the big lights anyway, as far as Grace could tell. The journal sat in her lap, Polaroid still in the cover, dry, perfect—Sophie Ackerson, 2036.

Everybody in this place is writing theory at the end of the world. Yahweh lecturing. The bush lecturing. James in his journal, properly footnoted, rigorously reviewed. All of it folded into all of it.

She thought there was something there but was too tired to have it sorted out right then.

Grace spoke more in the later discussions. The class had looped back to some classics—Lacey’s Biography of X, Krasznahorkai’s Chasing Homer, Cooper’s Closer—the last of which Sammy had a lot to say about. Dr. Reina excused them around 7:00 PM. Grace picked up her stuff and walked toward the door, too tired to say an individual goodbye to each of them.

Right as Grace was about to escape, Dr. Reina turned toward her from the console. “Grace? A moment, please…”

Everyone else in the room seemed to take that as a cue to leave. [REDACTED] nodded to Grace as they left, which usually meant that they’d wait for her outside. Sammy too. Marcus gave her a quick hug on the way out. Dr. Martello said a few parting words to Dr. Reina—something about collaboration, co-authorship, some film score thing—then left. She shut the door behind her, leaving Dr. Reina and Grace alone with nothing but dim lights and the sound of the old air-conditioning system.

“Grace, thanks for staying a moment. I wanted to confirm: tomorrow morning, 8 AM—thesis proposal? Is it ready?”

Grace’s stomach dropped. “Oh, uh, tomorrow, um… sure, yes, that’s fine. I have a few edits left, but should be good, yeah.” She realized she was scratching the back of her neck and stopped. Dr. Reina’s face was stoic. Unreadable.

Dr. Reina paused, leaned back against the whiteboard. “Okay, then. 8:00 AM it is. My office as usual.” She began to pack up. “That’s all, Grace. Have a good night.”

Grace nodded, leaving ahead of her. They parted ways. She saw [REDACTED] and Sammy smoking outside through the windowed doors that led into the alley. Marcus had left. Probably for the library, Grace thought.

The smell of American Spirit tobacco made her smile as she went outside. [REDACTED] passed her one and she happily obliged. They were sitting on a ledge while Sammy stood.

“So what—you get detention, or…?” Sammy asked, exhaling through his nose.

“Fuck off, Sammy,” she said, taking a deep drag.

“I know your thesis proposal is due soon, girlie,” [REDACTED] began, “—it’s been a while since you sent me a draft to review. You good?”

“It’ll be… it’ll be fine. I think. Fuck…”

Sammy spat, lit a new cigarette. “Just do some theory shit you know or whatever it’ll be fine.”

[REDACTED] looked up. “Dude, she wants to be more than fine. She wants to be, like, actually legit.”

Grace shrugged. Sammy looked like he didn’t know what to say. [REDACTED] stood up, fixing their cloak and stomping out their cigarette butt. “Let’s do coffee tomorrow. After your 8:00 AM reaming,” they said, a hint of sarcasm in their voice. “Just do your thing, Grace. It’ll be good.”

The three of them parted ways. Grace did her usual liquor store stop then detoured on the way back to Quiet Meadow. She stashed the handle in her bag, veering toward her favorite spot—The Grove.

The Grove’s sign flickered neon greens and blues. Grace pushed open the old wooden door and took in the usual scene. Cracked leather booths, scratched tables, a small stage in the corner, and an old school bar being tended by a duo of punks—Josie and Joey. Music played from a jukebox exclusively loaded with obscure music from throughout punk history—loud and violent. Josie saw Grace first and waved her over to an open seat at the bar.

A few nods came her way as she weaved through the crowd. When Grace made it to her stool, Josie had already lined up three shots of vodka. Her head was shaved and she had a nose ring that could’ve been for a bull. “What’s up Grace! Glad you decided to come out.”

Grace smiled, took a shot. She placed her boots up on the rail, her elbows on the bar. “Me too, J. Fuck. Who’s playing tonight?”

“The Asslights bailed on us last minute, so we called Refrigerated Children’s management line and booked them for a couple hours.”

Joey looked over. He had a black eye that was healing to a sickly, yellowish green. “Yeah, RC doesn’t go on until like 10:00 PM, but I hear it’s gonna be a killer show. They’re experimenting with theatrics or some shit like that.” His mullet was swishing back and forth as he scrubbed at a stubborn spill on the bar.

Grace nodded, slammed two more shots. Josie was already refilling them. “Hey, uh, maybe take it easy tonight? We had to haul you out of the bathroom last time, babe, and it was… gross.”

“As fuck… but we love you, so whatever. But seriously. Ten’s your hard limit,” Joey said, handing a pint to a liberty spiked guy with intense eye shadow.

“Fine, fine. Sure. Ten is—that’ll work,” Grace said after slamming her fourth.

Actually, that’s about six shots too few. But this is the only joint in town that’ll run me a tab so… fuck it.

Josie and Joey took turns exchanging stories with Grace. This band touring through, that plug dried up, districts with aggressive Klickian Enforcer presence—that kind of thing. Apparently the University District was on Klick’s latest surveillance agenda. Grace slammed another shot, grimacing until the warmth settled.

[REDACTED] will have some kind of solution. They always seem to…

Refrigerated Children’s gear went up while Grace was somewhere around seven shots deep. The room filled in. More liberty spikes, crust punks splitting a cigarette down to the filter. Even the fanny-pack guy who was nice enough to carry Narcan and first-aid showed up.

RC went on at 10:00 PM on the dot, which for a punk band felt almost ironic. There were four of them. The singer had a bedsheet toga, a crown of hemp leaves, and a sign on a string around her neck that said GOVERNOR in marker. Two of them carried her out as she held a Christ pose. The drummer stood at the kit holding an enormous dildo and a puppet of Governor Klick.

“We’re Refrigerated Children. I’m Klick. Kill me!” the singer screamed, and they played. The first song had no words Grace could understand. The singer climbed off the stage mid-shriek and let the room hold her up sideways, pass her around, screaming and convulsing—drums slamming, guitar wailing. Somebody was putting a cigarette out on the GOVERNOR sign and she went limp to let them.

When the song ended, the drummer put his sticks up in the air. “For Jasper Corno!”

“JASPER FUCKIN’ CORNO!” shouted the crowd.

Grace held up her ninth shot. “Jasper,” she said, then shot it.

She cleared her throat.

Things got a little messy.

The edges of reality blurred a bit. She got up to dance, occasionally exchanging words she wouldn’t remember with faces that floated in and out of her field of vision. RC continued, loud and deranged. Around midnight, Grace took her tenth shot and waved goodbye to Josie and Joey, who waved back before quickly returning to managing the wild show. A beer bottle flew over the bar and Joey started screaming.

Grace weaved her way through the sweaty clusters of the crowd until she reached the front door. She pushed and the perpetually dank air of the Downtown Party District enveloped her once again. She was sweaty and drunk, laughing at everything. Her legs carried her in a random direction.

Using parking meters as walking sticks! Ha! Like that one Bukowski-esque guy said or something… fuckin’… the beatnik guy the, uh…

She stumbled, spilled a little from her handle. Her hand reached out and braced on a brick wall.

Fuck, what was the guy’s name? Come on, Grace… he had a fuckin’ jazz kinda vibe like—

She rounded a corner. It was dark, trash everywhere—only the flickering guidance of a streetlight showed her where to step. Needles, cardboard, wrappers, and dumpsters.

Oh! Oh! Fuckin’ uh, ah, I almost have it…

She took a swig, leaning against the wall again. She let herself slide down and landed on an overturned cargo crate.

Tom! Fuckin’, of course, Tom W—uh—Waits! Tom Waits right, “Step right up!” Ha, like the uh—ya know… the…

Calm. Warmth, calm, and a gloriously bright moon.

Then nothing.

Grace’s phone let out an alarm that set waves of agony into motion. Without lifting her head from her pillow, she swiped at it with her thumb until it stopped. The corners of her mouth down-tuned into a grimace as pain washed over her from seemingly all directions—her head, neck, back, legs, and ribs. She coughed and cried out. Black spots floated in her vision and her immediate past was a blur.

The apartment was a disaster. Bottles, pizza boxes, pieces of paper she’d scribbled on—books left open at the foot of her bed. She managed to turn over and saw she was still in her disgusting clothes from last night. Sweat and dirt and—

What the fuck…?

Blood. A fair amount of it—all over her shirt, pants, shoes, and hands. Dried and crusty. Her heart raced and she reached for the trash can by her bed, vomiting hard several times, then heaving dry. The room spun a little, then settled.

Oh fuck. Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck… what the… oh God…

She sat up and waited it out, eyes shut, then put a foot down into something soft. She was too disgusted to look. The other foot found the wood floor. Standing wasn’t going to happen, so she went to her knees and crawled.

A bottle rolled off somewhere. Her hand came down on a ketchup-soaked wrapper and dragged it a foot or two before she flicked it off. The old wood floors were sticky and covered in little hairs and other grime. The bathroom doorway loomed over her as she crawled through her kitchenette.

Up. Up! Sink… Come on, Grace…

The tile was cold. She pulled herself up to the sink in stages, both hands on the porcelain. Three cigarette butts floated in the toilet and the water was the color of weak tea. Her arms shook holding her own weight. She gagged, leaned over, and the heave lit a fire in her left side—searing pain. A string of bile came up, but nothing else. She hung onto the sink through it, then spat. Spat again. Her spit was pink.

She looked up to the mirror.

Lip split at the corner, scabbed black. The left eye half shut, its lid fat and shining, the white of it gone red in one corner where a vessel had burst. Her left earring was gone. The lobe was split where it used to be, and a flaking trail of dried blood ran from it down her jaw and neck.

Somebody… some fucker ripped it out… Jesus…

Her tongue did a lap around her chalky mouth and found a chip in her front tooth. Small. It was sharp on the inside edge and there was an iron-like taste when she sucked at it.

She got the shirt off. It took a while. Her arms wouldn’t stop shaking so she dragged it over her head and her ribs ached and she stood bent over the sink, gasping until they settled. She unclasped her bra. Her jeans were next. Her underwear had blood dried into the waistband, which she checked closer. They were soaked through from the jeans, from outside—just that. She stood naked in the bathroom shaking.

Her eyes found a lump above her right ear, and beside it a patch where hair had come out at the root—a little clearing the size of a dime. There were bruises on her throat. Two marks on the left side, one on the right. Her left ribs were an inky splotch, near-black in the middle with reddish-purple spreading out from it, and when she pressed it something clicked in a way that made her gasp. Her right knuckles were split and a couple of the cuts were shaped like half-moons—like the shape of somebody’s tooth. The nail on her ring finger was torn down and bent back, brown underneath. Both knees were skinned and stuck with grit and dents from gravel.

The crate. Was I on the crate when… no. After. Before? This is rock bottom, Grace. Rock fuckin’ bottom…

She gave up on the order of things.

The clothes sat in a pile and she looked down at them. The blood had stiffened the shirt into a sickly, contorted shape. She ran the bath as hot as the tap would go. The water came out rust-colored for the first few seconds. Like always.

Kevin… for fuck’s sake, dude.

Four pills were left in the bottle in the cabinet. She chewed two, gagged at the taste of them, then chased it with a pull off the handle of Twilly Nilly that—for some reason—was on the back of the toilet waiting for her.

Steam rose and she leaned back, trying as hard as she could to get ready. It was around 7:00 AM.

One hour… one hour… you can do this, Grace. Let’s go. Get it together.

Right now.

“Ah, Grace, good morn—holy shit! What happened?!”

Grace entered Dr. Reina’s office at 8:03 AM. Not her usual punctuality, but given the circumstances she’d hoped Dr. Reina would understand—and, hopefully, not ask too many questions. Dr. Reina almost stood, but when Grace sat down like nothing had happened, she hesitated.

“Oh, this?” Grace asked, pointing to her eye. She’d covered her neck with a scarf and wore her baggiest set of all black, gloves included. “Refrigerated Children had a crazy show last night at Grove. Fuckin’ wild. Got a little too deep in the pit, you know?”

“I thought that kind of violence was discouraged in pits?”

Grace winced, shifting in the seat. “Like I said… it was a, um—particularly energetic show. I’m sorry I was a little late on forwarding you a copy of the proposal—”

Dr. Reina passed Grace a tissue and a bottle of water from one of her desk drawers. Her office was floor to ceiling books. “Here, have this, at least. My goodness. Are you sure you feel well enough to converse?”

Grace nodded. She dabbed at her swollen eye with the tissue and sipped the water.

“Oh… okay, then. Well, let’s begin, I suppose…” Dr. Reina said, trailing off as she clicked rapidly. Grace’s document appeared on her screen. She watched Dr. Reina read it, her eyes darting back and forth, slightly widening as she got further into it.

“Twilight Indigo: Retribution. An exploration of radical love, violence, and resistance. I see… okay. So it’s a film. Perfectly fine. But the concept—”

“I know it’s extreme, but I think there’s a demand for this kind of work out there. People need catharsis so badly.”

“You’ll have to find an actor who’d willingly put themselves through absolute hell on screen for you.”

“So, can I do it? Does it pass?”

Dr. Reina looked over her glasses. “Your sources are appropriate. Formatting is fine. The theory you’re using to justify this term you use, ‘retribution snuff,’ is a little, uh—it isn’t incorrect, per se, but it’s an unconventional read. Which I suppose is not too surprising for you, but still…” she paused. “I tell you what—I’ll approve it on the condition that you edit this draft again, engage with the anti-natalism and absurdism with a little more depth, and deliver me an initial synopsis by the end of the month.”

Grace agreed. Dr. Reina looked at her face again. “And go see a doctor, Grace. That eye looks angry.”

Me? An angry eye? What else is new…