1

Justin Bongi
Writing Clips for Wooga

A note about the contents:

It’s difficult to choose just three clips to illustrate my moxie as a writer, but alas.
Unfortunately I do not have a clip of game writing, as requested in the ad for
employment. And so, rather than hastily cobble one together in an effort to weave some
illusion of experience in the field, I’ve opted here to instead just be flat-out honest about
my history of fictional genres. I consider myself a qualified writer, but will not try to
hide the fact that, on the chance I’m employed, I will need some form of guidance in the
realm of game writing formats and styles. The clips I’ve included here have been chosen
instead to display a firm grasp of narrative structure, pacing, realistic dialogue, etc.
Further samples can be provided upon request.

Many thanks for reading! Enjoy.

Windowsill Eyes: A History of the Dark Net and the Story of a Local
User……………………………………………………………………………………………….2-8
A long-form piece detailing the lives of both the founder of an online drug
marketplace and one of its local (anonymous) users. Published in the Daily
Pennsylvanian.

Excerpt: The Meeting of Angel and the Clown…………….……………………………9-20

An excerpt from my current novel. Details the chance-meeting of two primary
protagonists, the first who busks in the courtyard of a small Ohio town, the other
who burgles a home and later ends up escaping into the woods in evasion from
the police. The clown enters the woods to retrieve a large balloon used in his act.
The two meet by such fate. Included to illustrate proficiency in pacing via parallel
narrative structures and suspense-driven plot.

Excerpt: Love and Loathing in a Junkyard……………………………………….21-28

An excerpt from my first novel. Overarching plot details the difficult life of a mute
child whose disability is wielded by the parents in an effort to win a class-action
lawsuit. This chapter depicts his brief running away from home and first
romantic experience in a junkyard.
 2

Windowsill Eyes: A History of the Dark Net and the Story of a Local User
Justin Bongi

November 2015, Philadelphia: Michael1 peers between the blinds he has spread
with two fingers. His eyes are narrow and locked on the rainy street below. Now it’s just
a waiting game. He cracks his knuckles ceaselessly, and with good reason: if something
goes wrong in these next few minutes, he will have to be extremely swift and extremely
lucky to avoid jail time. If all goes according to plan, however, Michael will make over
$2500 by the week’s end.

He has perched himself atop the windowsill, where he can observe the street in
sustained silence. It’s a foggy day; the roads are slick and bare. From the third story
windowsill, Michael studies the roofs of cars, waiting with bated breath for a red white
and blue logo: the United States Postal Service.

“There are two possible scenarios,” he explains. “Polar opposites. Scenario one: the
mailman drives up, parks, and approaches the door with a package in his hand. Nothing
but the package and a standard handheld scanner. He scans the package, drops it , then
leaves, and we retrieve it after an hour or so. Everything’s fine. Scenario two: he drives
up, parks, and we see a little blue slip attached to a clipboard and a pen in his other
hand. If we see that, you’re going to help me and you’re going to move as fast as you
can.” He gestures to a set of cupboard doors. “Grab everything you find in there and
flush it. Seriously. Down the toilet, down the drain -- destroy it all. Nobody answers the
door, nobody looks out the blinds.”

These blue slips, lucky for Michael, have been long exposed on internet forums as clever
police tricks. “Sign your name and within seconds they’re kicking down your door and
tightening the cuffs,” one reddit user comments. By signing for and opening a package,
the receiver acknowledges that he was waiting for it. This, of course, poses a number of
legal consequences if the package were to contain, say, an ounce of cocaine.

If, however, an unsigned package were to arrive at one’s door and find itself accidentally
opened by a virtuous citizen who is just baffled to find copious amounts of cocaine (an
ounce, to be exact), he could easily plead innocent in court. Perhaps the drugs were sent
with malice, intended to frame the receiver! Perhaps the name and address were entered
wrong!

But there is no malice and no mistake here; Michael is waiting for $2080 worth of
cocaine that he deliberately ordered here, to his University-owned apartment. All he

1
for the sake of discretion, Michael is an invented alias
 3

needed was an internet connection and some bitcoins, a new online currency, to place
an order on the anonymous online marketplace known as “Abraxas”. In less than 24
hours, the cocaine was wrapped in smell-proof packaging, sealed in the soles of a pair of
men’s loafers, and shipped from a discrete town in the Netherlands. The package was
then delivered to an equally forgettable town in Oregon for reshipment directly to
Michael’s door in Philadelphia. It will arrive labeled with the return address of a
reputable and established clothing company.

And here comes the white truck with our box now. Here comes the blue uniform and
here comes the decisive moment; Michael strains his neck and squints, but the mailman
dons an oversized poncho as he steps from the vehicle and slips some items beneath it.
He leans into the wind and clutches the bulge beneath his jacket, protected from the
rain. He approaches the steps.

Michael curses and steps away from the window. It is too late now to determine if the
package is real. He holds a finger over his lips, demanding silence. Two sharp raps on
the door below.

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

Spanish Fork, Utah: Curtis Green did not sign for the package that arrived at his
modest home in 2011. He knew the protocol: he waited patiently by his window, much
like Michael. He watched the mailman’s hands closely and they held only his expected
package, no pen or clipboard or menacing blue slip.

Unfortunately, he would soon learn a hard lesson: the safety of hiding behind unsigned
packages and pleas of innocence was mere illusion in the face of the DEA’s more
stringent (and legally questionable2) enforcement tactics of recent years.

Curtis thought nothing of the van lurking across the street. He waited for the sound of
the mailman’s approach, knock, and departure before opening the door and beaming at
the special delivery. He did not hear or notice the car door slams from around the block
and the pounding of heavy boots on sidewalk. He’d only just begun to cut the package
open when the SWAT team shattered the doorframe and deadbolt with a powerful kick
and pounded in with an array of raised guns and shouts. Before he could even see the
intruders, he was face to face with kitchen tiling and could feel the knee of an officer
resting on his back, as well as the cold steel of cuffs tightening about his wrists.

2
https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/index.htm
 4

Although ostensibly arrested for the shipment of cocaine3, the DEA’s interest in Curtis
delved far deeper than that4. In fact, Curtis had served as a head customer service
representative for the very anonymous marketplace he had bought the drugs from: The
Silk Road. And the moment he was arrested, he knew he was in more than just legal
trouble.

Curtis understood well that his boss, known by the screenname of “Dread Pirate
Roberts” and owner of the website, had no qualms with killing his employees if he held
any suspicion that they were planning to break their vows of discretion. Just as easily as
Curtis was able to click a few buttons and have $27,000 worth of cocaine shipped to his
door, so to could Dread Pirate Roberts click a few buttons and have a professional
hitman seek, find, and terminate Curtis.

It would cost about $10,000 -- an amount that was sheer pennies for the owner of the
site, which had gained over a billion dollars in profits within its second year of
operation.

The Silk Road operated on an anonymous computer browser known as Tor. Tor allows
users to sidestep surveillance tactics through a proxy system: all information sent or
received from a Tor browser is sent around the world to multiple servers to prevent any
conclusive evidence of a sender or a receiver. All typical websites are accessible through
a Tor browser, but domain names ending in a .onion site can only be accessed with a Tor
browser, to ensure all information that flows through the sites are untraceable. Users
also have the options to download software that will assign them a fake IP address or to
download entirely new operating systems (due to a paranoia around the fact that some
of Windows and Apple source code is inaccessible to users; there is the possibility of a
backdoor through with government agencies can track activity on the device). All
messages sent or received are encrypted in such a way that only the intended receiver’s
device holds the code necessary to decypher it. All money is transferred through
bitcoins, which also can be wiped of all identifying data. With a promise of complete
anonymity from government agencies, the Tor network became a perfect medium for
illicit virtual marketplaces. In the eyes of Dread Pirate Roberts, the opportunity was
perfect. So he founded the Silk Road, and somewhere along the line Curtis was swept up
into the flurry of it all.

Although business was slow at first, with Dread Pirate Roberts as the owner and only
vendor, selling homegrown mushrooms, word went viral among internet forums where

3
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/07/vendor-administrator-plead-guilty-in-silk-road-
case/3469751/
4
http://www.dailydot.com/news/dread-pirate-roberts-curtis-green-silk-road-killing/
 5

Dread Pirate Roberts advertised the site as a haven from the government’s war on
privacy and personal freedoms. Vendors and buyers alike flocked with interest, and
within a year one could find any illicit good or service imaginable on the Silk Road:
marijuana, cocaine, fake credit cards, prostitutes, passports, body parts.

Excerpts from Dread Pirate Roberts’ personal journal5 bring to light the immediate
challenges that come with such instantaneous viral power. He began the project as a
bright eyed, idealistic kid: “Silk Road is supposed to be about giving people the freedom
to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness...What we’re doing isn’t about
scoring drugs or sticking it to the man, it’s about standing up for our rights as human
beings and refusing to submit when we’ve done no wrong. Silk Road is a vehicle for that
message.”

Quickly, however, idealism was felled by the reality of the situation, and the reality was
that Ulbricht was being attacked. His journal chronicles daily ddos attacks (massive
amounts of spam that can shut down a website), death threats, blackmail, and curious
prods from government agencies that came far too close for Ulbricht’s comfort. Instead
of admitting defeat, he appended to the end of it: “All else is secondary.” And early in the
project he was tested as to what exactly “all else” constituted:

“03/28/2013
being blackmailed with user info.
talking with large distributor (hell's angels).

03/29/2013
commissioned hit on blackmailer with angels

04/01/2013
got word that blackmailer was excuted (sic)
created file upload
scriptstarted to fix problem with bond refunds over 3 months old…

04/07/2013
moved storage wallet to local machine
refactored mm page

04/08/2013
sent payment to angels for hit on tony76 and his 3 associates

5
https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/253551316?access_key=key-
bduXS1o79f9xzqGJmTnf&allow_share=true&escape=false&view_mode=scroll
 6

began setting up hecho as standbyvery high load (300/16)

took site offline and refactored main and category pages to be more efficient”

Before long, this became a pattern in the journal -- general site troubleshooting
punctuated by casual notes of ordered executions. He hired a small handful of
employees that were just trustworthy or terrified enough to keep their mouths shut.
Curtis had become his right hand man, handling large amounts of the finances and
working to improve the site’s coding according to complaints from vendors and users.
They had become close, after spending months of working together. Surely they had
bonded over their silent, overwhelming secret. But the second he was arrested, Curtis
knew far too well: all else is secondary.

It didn’t matter if Curtis would speak to the DEA investigators or not; what mattered
was whether Dread Pirate Roberts could risk the possibility. The answer: of course not.
Within hours of Curtis’ arrest, Dread Pirate Roberts had arranged for his death. He
messaged a recent accomplice and associate -- a user named Nob, who had offered to
buy the site. The negotiations had settled somewhere around a billion dollars. With such
high stakes in the site’s success, Nob was the only person Dread Pirate Roberts could
trust. But even this proved to be folly; in the mixed up world of the dark net, identities
are nothing more than meaningless contrivances. One would think Dread Pirate Roberts
of all people would know this well.

Nob, in reality, was a DEA agent deeply embedded as an undercover investor in the site,
who suddenly had a brilliant idea. Now that they had arrested Green, they could gain the
site owner’s trust by verifying their loyalty to the site. They faked the murder of Curtis.
This consisted of a sloppily edited video of two masked men half pretending to beat, half
actually beating the body of Curtis until he faked dead. Ultimately, this gained the favor
of Nob in the eyes of Dread Pirate Roberts, and led to the demise of the site.

As Nob gained more trust and permissions on the website, the DEA gained information
(again, controversially6) on the Silk Road’s servers, and eventually on Dread Pirate
Roberts’ true geographical location. He was arrested7 on a sunny summer day, in a San
Francisco library. The moment he logged in to the site, he was tackled by a pair
masquerading as library patrons. The DEA had full access to this man -- real name: Ross
Ulbricht -- and his supremely powerful computer. The site was shut down within a day.
Not a single trace remained.

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

6
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/30/silk-road-agents-accused-fraud
7
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/04/world/americas/silk-road-ross-ulbricht/index.html
 7

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: All is still and silent in Michael’s house. The silence
lingers before another knock, more aggressive this time, disrupts it. By the looks of it,
this has never happened before. All other deliveries have run smoothly and without a
single hiccup, but now Michael paces, distressed and manic.

After the mailman leaves, Michael spends a long time watching the street below. He is
suspicious and obsessed with a green minivan, parked two doors down. He claims to
have seen someone enter, but the car never left its parking space. Three hours pass
before he descends the stairs and approaches the door. Even after he has picked up the
package, he leaves it unopened on the kitchen counter.

He stands awkwardly in the kitchen’s empty space. He’s been buttoned up since birth,
and today looks as though his mother has dressed him up for Sunday mass: a polo shirt
layered with a polo quarter-zip, as well as an uncomfortable hybrid of skinny jeans and
khaki pants. And an unassuming cardboard box containing a pair of shoes that could
cost him his entire future. He lets it sit on his counter, “just in case.” But impatience gets
the best of him, and before long the shoes are gutted and the packaging is everywhere
and his hands are cupped ever so gently around two tiny plastic bags, backlit by the
kitchen ceiling spotlights.

It is hard to imagine Michael ever conducting such business on the street -- realistically,
he would be eaten alive. Yet, here he is, a 20 year old bedheaded kingpin operating from
the safety of his cozy apartment. His criminal record is squeaky clean, and he is passing
all of his classes. His parents pay his tuition and his rent. He only does this for the “extra
cash on weekends,” which, he notes later, “is really just spent on more drugs.”

New marketplaces appeared almost immediately in the place of the fallen Silk Road. The
moment one was shut down, another appeared, like a sustained and demented Whac-a-
Mole game. Only instead of moles, these hold faceless purveyors and transient
customers. No identity in the virtual realm is real. They all disintegrate upon the
slightest of touches. Virtual veils once lifted reveal nothing at all, merely empty space a
user may choose to fill, or evacuate, at a moment’s notice. And from this they derive
both beauty and menace.

What risks do we take behind the keyboard of a computer? Perhaps they are negligible,
without consequential ripples in the “real” world. Perhaps Michael will sell the cocaine
and it will all be used without a hiccup. But what if it’s not? What if this was Michael’s
final scare? What if he sells to someone irresponsible?
 8

The most likely scenario plays out something like this: Michael will sell his drugs by the
week’s end. He will walk down to the bank, wire the money to an anonymous receiver in
exchange for more bitcoins. With the reinvestment, he will increase the quantity he buys
and the profit he gains. Upon graduation, he will clean himself up: “I’ll quit selling. I’m
pretty sure medical schools drug test.” He will complete medical school, “only smoking
weed… nothing else,” then he will perform routine procedures on hundreds of
Americans as a microsurgeon of the hands and feet. That will be the end of it. If all goes
according to plan, nobody important will ever have to know about this little transaction.

Five years ago and just a couple towns over, Ross Ulbricht was studying towards a
master’s degree in materials science and engineering at Penn State. All was going
according to plan. He had intended to move to San Francisco after graduation and apply
for a quiet 9-5 just outside the city, but he got carried away with other business. He told
his roommates he was a day trader, a viable excuse for his days spent huddled beside the
windowsill, coding and coding and watching the cars outside.
 9

Excerpt: The Meeting of Angel and the Clown

Justin Bongi

Angel finds Johnny rummaging in the mail slot of the Watson's Five-and-Dime.
It's stuck, is how he greets her, gesturing with his free hand.
Johnny looks just about as bad off as her. She's got her frayed orange backpack
on, with everything she owns in it, having been kicked out of her apartment just four
days prior (Miss rent twice, shame on me… the landlord had said); and Johnny's got his
tote filled with purloined newspapers and phone books, which he resells at the farmer's
market each Sunday. Everyone knows where they came from. Still, Johnny's so
gregarious that his little side gig only pisses off a fourth or so of the people who come
across him there. Sometimes he lasts a whole hour at the market before some shop
owner starts taking swings at him.
Postman must've tossed it. He winces as he jostles his forearm around in the slot.
Damn!
Maybe the postman's onto you.
Yeah, or maybe Watson's gone and bought a smaller mail slot, just to screw with
me.
Seems like a reasonable explanation.
Well, hell, I don't know. He returns his attention to his arm. A twist-and-tug
motion somehow gets him swallowed up to his bicep. Aw, hell, he goes. I've really done
it. I really have. He's on his knees now, eye to eye with the slot. Don't have any butter, do
ya?
Angel informs him that, no, she isn't carrying any butter.
Johnny's shadow, made long by the far-side's streetlight, shimmies and wags
around as he struggles. He turns to face Angel and his eyes defocus somewhere over her
shoulder. Every muscle in his face pulls into a pucker. There's a pop and a rap as his arm
slides free and the slot's door slams. Jesus, he says, rubbing where the skin is bloodless
and creased.
Want me to give it a go?
Don't call ya slender arms Angel for nothing.
She shucks her bag and slides her arm in up to the shoulder, fishes around for a
bit. Slides back out. Here you go. She slaps the newspaper into Johnny's hands. He
mimes tipping his hat. I expect half of the profits, she adds.
Sure thing. He fishes around in his pockets, not realizing it's a joke. He hands her
a dime. She takes it; the world has not treated either of them kindly as of late.
Somebody's over yelling in the town hall. There's a crowd forming around the
person. Standard for a night like tonight. Everyone over the age of 17 seems to be
hammered. Johnny included, Angel realizes. He wobbles on his feet and squints his eyes
to read a headline. We're gonna get bombed. He slaps the newspaper with the back of
his hand. We're gonna get bombed, I'm telling ya now.
 10

Angel knows better than to engage with Johnny when he gets started like this.
Bahh, she says, waving her hands and readjusting the straps of her backpack.
I'm just saying. When you see a mushroom cloud off in the direction of Los
Angeles, expect a text from me. I told you so, it'll say. I warned you about Korea.
An old woman approaches on the sidewalk. Midwestern sensibilities demand a
nod and hullo from each. We're not going to get bombed, calls the woman over her
shoulder as she passes.
You don't know what you're talking about, Doris.
We're not.
Alright.
Or, Angel thinks, maybe he's not drunk. Maybe…
That's it. There's a new dealer in town, see. Angel got the run-down from a friend
of hers named Celia. It goes: approach Renaldi's Pizzeria. Claim you weren't satisfied
with your pizza. Too few pepperonis or some shit like that. They'll hand you, the
pestilent customer, off to their least favorite employee. That's Elliot. Ask Elliot for some
napkins and pepper, for spicing your disgrace of a pizza pie. Napkins are right here, he'll
say, indicating one of those little rectangular dispensers. Pluck a few and drop a ten.
Twenty if you're trying to load up. He'll hand you some packets of pepper. One of them
will have your xanax inside (oxy if it's a particularly good week). You'll know which
packet it is by the scotch tape holding it shut.
By the looks of it, it's been a particularly good week. Johnny's head is now craned
backward so it's nearly connecting with his spine. This is his support for standing—it's
leaned up against the brickwork of the store behind him. All the signatures of a clinical-
grade painkilling stupor are written on his face. Namely, it's all loose. His eyes roll back.
His mouth hangs slightly parted.
Angel can't believe she ever dated this trainwreck.
See, she's been meaning to get the hell out of this town for some time. It's one of
those quiet towns where one of your friends can be six days in on a benzo binge, and the
best that the rest of you can come up with is, Well, whatever they've gotta do to get
through the day. And they say the same about you behind your back. It happens all the
time. You cycle through your weeks. There's the same old festivals like this one, year
after year. All the holidays start to feel the same. All your friend spiral in the same sad
fashion. Wellington's a place where déjà vu becomes daily life.
Johnny. Have you seen Celia around?
Johnnys' lungs rasps like the breath of a sleeping man, bordering on a snore or a
snort. That's how you know he's thinking when he's in a state like this. Celia... Johnny
says this to the starless sky. The drag races. That's it.
That was last week. Johnny. She taps his forehead. I was there. Remember?
Johnny can catch a drift. He can't follow words, but he can catch a drift. You
really have to remind yourself that he's trying his best.
You want a tip, he observes.
 11

Yes.
Okay. Okay, I remember. She told me at the drag races. When you were off with Harold.
And you remember what she said? Tell me. Please?
You know what, fuck Harold by the way. Johnny holds out two finger guns,
mimes them going off.
Nothing happened with Harold. C'mon.
I'm just saying. Fuck Harold. I don't like the guy. His stupid little retirement
home mustache.
What did Celia say. Please, Johnny.
Yes. Celia.
Yes.
Elmwood. She told me there's a place on Elmwood. Family of…four. I think.
Vacation to Mills Hollow. Camping trip. He gasps for breath like he's just run a mile.
Cheering comes from the courtyard over by city hall. Oh shutup, won't you? he yells at
the crowd, but they're too far to hear.
Elmwood… Angel taps her chin, trying to imagine where that is. It's up north.
That's all she can remember. You got an address?
The county sheriff drives slowly by on his roll-through. He slows for the hardware
store. Both Angel and Johnny stare back into his spotlight. He speeds off after his show
of presence.
Not that I… Yes. Forty-two is the address.
Forty two. Okay.
No. Twenty four. Sorry. I meant twenty-four.
Angel sighs. Twenty-four. Sure of it? She gives her pack a little heave,
reconditions herself to move.
Johnny's brow furrows into mental math. He flips the two digits back and forth,
back and forth. Yes, he finally says with all the surety he can muster. Twenty-four. That's
what she told me. The dad asked Celia to keep an eye on the mail and to water the
plants. Money's supposed to be tucked into left-side underwear drawer. Bedroom
dresser. Apparently there's a book of coupons in there too.
C'mon Johnny, I don't want to know something like that. Coupons…
Hey. I'm just saying what I'm told.
Johnny eases himself down to the concrete, as if to nap. It's always Celia, isn't it.
She's a good one.
Alright Johnnyboy. I'm off.
And with that she departs him, turning north on the alley behind the cable co-op.
There are two men on either wall in there. One of them shields his lighter from the
gathering wind, cigarette clenched in his teeth. They both move to let Angel pass, a
newfound gust picking up tin cans and grocery bags and throwing them against the
brick beside her. Angel has to hold herself tight against the cold. Twenty-four Elmwood.
She remembers now where that is.
 12

It's by no means her first rodeo, the house on Elmwood. Just last month there'd
been a party at Jeebs' old sublet. Jeebs had texted each of them asking them to bring a
song from their childhood. About three drinks in, after all seven of their crew (eight in
the interims of Johnny falling down stairs or wandering about, then returning), that was
when Jeebs had led her to a dais made of eleven uneven milk cartons gathered in the
corner of the room. Song? he'd asked her. She told him. On came Blue Moon by the king
of rock and roll. Realizing what was happening, she demanded another drink. Only after
downing it did the words flow. But only silently, at that. At the far side of the room,
standing behind the half-circle of couches, Jeebs stood, head upturned and eyes closed
as though cooing at the moon himself, and swaying. About halfway through, Angel
began to belt it out. It took closing her own eyes, but she did it. She'd always wanted to
perform—Jeebs knew this—but she'd never had the courage. The party, she realized, was
a gift to her. That one was for you, she said once it was over. Jeebs smiled. Who's next!
I'll miss this town, Angel says into the night. She's walking down the centerline of
a sidestreet down by the schoolyard. No one else is around. Just the distant scurrying of
racoons lit by the white circles of streetlamps. It's then she knows that her mind is made
up. It's been made up for some time. How else can you miss the very place you're
standing in, except when you've already mustered the resolve to leave it?
But that wasn't the point of the story. The point was that Jeebs' landlord forbade
smoking in the house. In protest their little crew had constructed a makeshift but
remarkably sturdy balcony that they'd bolted on the outside of the half-sized bathroom
window. It was almost undoubtedly against regulations. But then again the landlord
only came once a year, and so they just deconstructed it around Easter time, when he
came around to do inspections.
So the balcony is quite small. Meaning, when you're joined by someone else who
wants to smoke, as Angel was on that night by Celia, you're put shoulder to shoulder
with that person. It makes for audacious conversations, the fact that you don't need to
look at each other. Maybe this was it, or maybe it was the seventh drink Angel had
knocked back, but when Celia laid out her plan, and Angel ran the numbers in her head
and thought about rent and booze and meals and the price of getting a bus ticket out of
here, she didn't hesitate, just said yes.
Celia wanted to climb down the gutter to get out of there. She called it the Irish
acrobat's goodbye. Angel said she would if only she could walk straight.
So they walked back through the party and said, We'll be back in a bit.
Everyone knew what that meant.
Twenty minutes later and two towns over—you had to go where your faces aren't
recognized—and they were staring into the beady red eye of a Mexican restaurant's
cornice. They'd gotten in through the back. Celia's an ace at lockpicking.
What the hell is that thing? whispered Angel. It was a tiny device, plastic, which
blinked on and off. It came to life, she realized, whenever they moved. A motion sensor?
 13

Celia shook her head and laughed. What is this, Ocean's Eleven? Here, she said.
She went and got a broom from the back closet. With its handle she began to beat the
plastic thing to bits. Mustachioed statuettes shook on their little ledges that lined the
place. Shards of the thing rang down on copper colored tabletops. Eventually Celia
succeeded in dislodging the thing from the putty holding it up. It fell flat on the floor
beside them, blinking furiously at the beige tiling beneath it. See? Celia prodded it with
her broom like a dead snake. Never any cords coming out the back. An illusion.
So they made their way to the register. Angel swears she started salivating when
she saw the thing. It pulled free from the counter by little more than their combined
strength. The thing itself was stalwart, but had been bolted down into stucco. A fatal
error on the part of the shopowner. It took both of them to lug the big mess of steel back
out to their car, which they'd parked across the street.
Later, in the lot behind the Mickey Mart gas station they took turns hacking at it
with Celia's hammer. Eventually it popped open, the drawer lolling out like a tongue.
They split the profits—seventy for Celia, fifty for Angel, plus change. Celia
considered it a service, all her ear-to-the-ground sleuthing that made such fortuities
possible. No one complained that she took more. Without her, after all, where would
they be? Angel wedged open the gum of her boot and jammed in the bills before
slapping it back shut with the heel of her hand. There was a sizable wad of cashing
growing in there. It made her right boot stand a half inch or so taller than the left. Her
awkward gait became a constant reminder that she was this close to getting the hell out
of this town.
And now here she is again, a month later, to the day, her right boot snapping at
the concrete like some insatiable beast. These things happen in cycles. And those cycles
will ruin you.

********

A lonesome man in a trucker's cap is the first to form the crowd for the show. He
emerges from the din of Mamma Ray's and makes his way over to leaning on a flagpole
by the clown. Such characters are indispensable. It's not unheard of for a street
performer to conduct an entire show with the crowd no closer than the bounds of a
twenty foot radius, scared as they are that they'll be invited to participate. But once an
intrepid soul steps close, they have no choice. It's always for the better. After all, up close
is where the magic happens.
The clown gives a tip of an invisible hat to the man. It is reciprocated.
Emboldened by example, the others begin to conglomerate at his sides, spreading out
into a half-ring that is two heads deep. A family joins the man on the front line—a father
and two little girls, each clinging to the sides of his jeans and peering out from behind
his thighs. The clown gives them a wave. They hide.
 14

The clown steps to the point where the four portable lights converge. Only on the
stage can he muster the strength to stand all the way straight. The grandeur shucks
years from his back.
The show begins.
Three inflatable balls are procured from his suitcase, striped both red and the
same yellow as his head-to-toe suit. They seem to be inflating themselves as, stepping
lightly, lowering himself gently from toe to heel, the clown parades them before the front
line. Each has a light within it, which ebbs and flows like a firefly. The clown, with
wondrous eyes, bathes his face in the fiery glow. Already the children are clapping. The
small orbs grow perfectly round, buoyant at moments, like balloons, and at others like
soccer balls. Atop a flat palm, he stacks one on the other, then another on top. He jostles
his hand, allowing them to dribble up against one another, but they never fall.
He tosses them, still stacked, to the crown of his head, not lightly, but with a
bounce that sends the top one flying after they've all stacked up. It whistles as it arcs
through the gusting wind. Mouths hang open in that weightless second. He kicks it with
his foot when it falls, aiming for a target above his head that isn't any larger than a
quarter, possibly even a dime.
This is the science of wonder. It is the defiance of belief, and the accumulation of
faith. You must orient yourselves towards the feats which humans deem impossible.
And then you must do those very things.
Do the math. The astronauts in the lunar module, those who run marathons, the
man who balances on a tightrope dangling between skyscrapers—these are whom the
clown considers competition, and inspiration.
His old age, he realizes, probably helps. It's one thing for a man to juggle like this,
making a show out of teetering on the brink of catastrophe; but it's another thing
entirely when the litheness of youth is taken out of the equation. The clown's sunspotted
head catches swathes from the spotlights. The clown waddles, in a way, rather than
runs.
He garnishes his catch with a flourish, centering himself beneath the trajectory of
the pulsing ball. He bows deep at the waist, prolonging the fall of it. And the ball, of
course, lands there, on the quarter-sized target: perfectly atop the others, where it spins,
wobbling, and then settles itself into stillness. The clown completes his forehead-to-floor
bow with them still stacked above him like a maniac's crown, his eyes shut and his arms
outstretched, fingers upturned towards the sky.
He beckons the girl once more. She trusts him now. She understands this game,
perhaps more intuitively than anyone else in the crowd. She steps out from the fortress
of her father's legs. With care—because the father tilts forward, protective—the clown
tugs her another step forward. Those in the back ranks of the crowd stand on the tips of
their toes to see her.
The clocktower behind the clown strikes ten. The bells sound out their hours. The
clown places one of the balloons atop the girl's head.
 15

He invites the father to place the second.

Here is the second science of wonder.
It's spectacular achieving the impossible yourself, sure. But capital-W Wonder is
concocted only by including others. There's breaking the third wall by acknowledging
the show, but behind that there's the fourth…
And could there be a better candidate than a child?
The girl's eyes turn up into her skull, but she cannot see the balloons. She has no
way to know if she's balancing the short stack or on the edge of letting them topple,
except by the murmurs or moans of the crowd. Her back arches like a feral animal. She
is afraid to move even a single muscle.
The clown holds out his fingers as numbers (one… two…) as he motions that he
will be lobbing the ball to the girl, for catching on top of the others. By his stance she can
tell that it will be a high toss. He throws it as high as his rickety strength can send it.
Crowd members throw their hands to their eyes as visors even though there is no sun to
shield them from.
The girl is far off her mark. Everyone can see this. The clown maneuvers her,
directing her by the shoulders, but the ball is throws a curve in the wind and is off—
That's the true ingredient of magic: magnets.
The clown gives the girl a grin. For all, by magic, the balloon has landed where it
should.
He leaves to retrieve something from his suitcase. When the child sees it, her eyes
go wide.

********

Night, full night, has now fallen. Cicadas and milkweed fill the cool air with their
sound and scent. Somewhere to the east, an engine purrs into living, and its echo fills
the forest with life.
The road is empty, save for Angel. With a furtive glance over the shoulder of her
pack, she turns sharply onto a side street. The streetsign, shot through by BB guns, says
Elmwood.
There are only six houses on the street, three on either side, then a cul-de-sac.
They are cookie cutter houses. The only thing that distinguishes one from the next is the
color of blinds—some are blue, some red—and the littering of bikes or inflatable pools in
the front yards. The numbers go go four, fourteen, twenty-four.
Twenty-four. Angel repeats it aloud, staring at a mailbox which looks to have
been hit by numerous cars. She has to get down on her knees and under the thing just to
read its numbering.
This is it.
There's space enough for two cars in the driveway, including the canopy garage.
Only one is there. No lights are on, except for the one above the front door. A front of
 16

warm wind howls through the street, kicking up a racket of leaves, and then dies down.
She takes the silence to listen. Nothing.
And so she approaches the house on a path of stepping stones, which lead past
the garage and onto a patio out back. Her feet evade the dry leave and gravel so that she
is silent. At the patio's edge is a sliding glass door. She tugs. It gives. A breath of cool air
emerges, alongside the whirr of air conditioning. She steps inside, slides the door shut
with a click behind her. It rattles in its frame when the wind picks up. Then comes the
tic…tic tic of summer rain beginning to fall.
On the blades of her feet, which she curls and stances wide, she makes her way
around a bar top scattered with newspapers and letters, and enters the kitchen. All she
can make out in the dark, soft glow of a rectangle cast by distant moonlight, are the
vague shapes of appliances and gray arch of a doorway. The microwave clock reads
10:07.
Angel's heart leaps with a blade of lightning. Thwack! comes the thunder.
Outlines of everything have burned into the girl's retinas. She moves by way of this
single image, arms outstretched, through the doorway and into the foyer. A sound
pushes its way through all, aimed uncannily at her head. She gazes into the mouth of a
hallway, whose throat is black. The sound is rhythmic—a clock. It sounds to sit at the
end of the hall, though her mind tricks her into believing that it's all around her. It ticks
through the sound of rain.
Intuition tells her to check the garage—that's where most families seem to keep a
safe, if they have one, and that's where you find bonds and cash and even guns
sometimes—but she remembers Johnny mentioning the underwear drawer. There
should be a stack of cash in there, or something. She makes her way down the hall.
Evenly spaced along the walls are black frames containing vague shadows of
portraits. A figure here, a group there, a headshot. Her eyes adjust, causing the shadows
to lighten. There is a door to her right. She turns its curved handle and it opens without
a creak. There is an orb of light, a distant streetlamp seen through the shutters, from
which she averts her eyes, to preserve their sensitivity. Two desks and a circular wooden
table crowd the nearest corner. Impeccable reams of receipts and bank statements grid
their surfaces. She checks one of the bank statements and immediately regrets doing so,
the number is so low. There is a closet with sliding mirrors as doors. Her figure becomes
large and distorted as she approaches it. She swipes away the image of herself. The
mirror slides to reveal shelves heaped with piles of matte plastic and metal. Flashlights,
hard drives, batteries and cameras. Bingo.
Angel takes off her pack and begins to stuff the devices where she can find room.
She is indiscriminate about it. A flip phone goes in among her socks, a portable speaker
beside her sleeping bag. She leaves the ziploc full of triple-a batteries. Hefts a dusty old
baseball cap to see the team—Indians—then tosses it to the side. There's a stack of
cardstock documents there, too, which she examines in the light. Birth certificates. With
a shudder she throws them back.
 17

This is a rule of theft—never look the victims in the eyes. Never learn their names.
Minimize all the images which could come back to haunt you.
In the dark she makes out a rectangle with a stout cylinder on it's front. It takes
turning it over and holding it up to the streetlight to see it's a camera. The thing blazes
to life. It goes phwoom! and then gives a flash that for a moment she mistakes as
lightning. When she flips it over, the LCD screen offers an explanation: an image of her.
It's an unflattering angle, and her eyes look wide and guilty in it, blown red by the
flashbulb. She tries not to look at it long. It's like the house is conspiring to stir up guilt
in her. In goes the camera, stuffed alongside all the other loot, its screen pressing a
white-wash glow against the fabric of her pack until it shuts off.
She makes her way back out to the hallway, blind again, turning in the direction
of the clock's now-amplified ticking. It grows louder until she sees it's an ancient
mahogany grandfather clock, looming at the hall's end like a guard. A pendulum swings
from its great white face, where the numbers of hours are set in a tall gothic font. There
are two doors beside it. She checks one; it reveals a ladder leading up to a lofted bed, the
bed itself nothing more than a heaping mass of gawdily-tassled pillows in pink and
yellow. A child's room. She shuts the door behind her. She checks the other one. It
swings wide into a master bedroom of generous size. Most of the bedroom is empty
space, the only objects present being a wide mattress seated low on a florid and wrought
iron frame, a bedstand, the door for the bathroom, and the dresser. Yes. The dresser is
just inside the door, and reaches all the way up to Angel's shoulders. Seated atop it,
meaning eye to eye with Angel, is a mammoth of a teddy bear. It holds a fabric heart to
its chest. She turns it face down so she doesn't have to be watched by the thing. Angel
gives the top drawer a tug, opening it, then sighs and begins tossing heaps of silk boxers
and shapeless wire messes of bras over her shoulders. She digs and digs until she comes
across what feel like strings, and frills. There are hearts imprinted on one of the fishing-
line thin strands of fabric. All of a sudden realizing it to be well-worn and Walmart-
bought lingerie, Angel throws it to the ground with greater force, as if plagued by the
intimacy of it all, which she'd been doing her best to sidestep (what worse, after all, than
birth certificates and bank statements but sliptops and garters—not even symbols of
familial life, but agents of it, branded by intimate touch) and they slap down onto the
hardwood and splay in the doorway, neutralized.
Then comes the snore. It's more than a snore, though; it's the sound of a
mammoth waking from a slumber, a raw and disturbed Ruuuuh…
Turning with spasming heart, hand frozen where it let loose the rain of intimates,
Angel's mind scrambles then settles only on Johnny. That dumb motherfucker. That
stupid, dumb, dumb motherfucker.
Twenty-four, my ass.
Then there's a second snore, interrupted, and a deep sigh.
There's a man in the bed.
 18

Angel makes out the shape of the him among the tangle of sheets. Her veins begin
to pump and push against her skin, her ears rushing with blood and giving a high and
constant whine. The man stirs, and sits up. His eyes give audible cracks as they open to
slits and a meaty forearm rises to rub them clear. Angel stays still through all this,
though the man appears to be staring straight at her.
What are you doing here, Laura? he gets out through a cough. One of his hands
runs through hair hair, which is slicked-back. Then it insistently pats the bed. Come
here, says the man.
The whole of him crashes back sideways again. He grabs a pillow and pulls it over
his head. There is a pause. Then, from beneath it, he says, You always make like you're
gonna.
Angel goes Mmm… though she doesn't know why, or what she's trying to say. Her
mind's still a mess of flashes and alarms.
Of course, the first thing that crosses her mind to say is, I'm not Laura. But the
likelihood of that conversation going well were close zero, considering it would be
followed up by a Who the hell are you then? So all she gets out is an Mmm, as she sort of
staggers back a few steps.
The drawer is spring-assisted. The bump of her shoulder sends the thing goes
rolling back into its nook, giving a thorough clack when it's situated. That clack activates
the clack of the drawer below it, which also goes flying back into its nook with a clack, et
cetera. The three drawers shut like dominos.
Of course, this wakes the man. But he doesn't say anything. He sits up again,
looks Angel in the eyes, and goes No.
Just that.
It's the most terrifying choice of words he could have used. Just No.
His next sigh is deeper. Then it's a snore again.
This has never happened to Angel before. Never before has she had to look
someone in the eyes during one of her petty thefts, not even a cop. Now she has, and
even though the man didn't seem to fully see her, Angel had still been dream-mistaken
for a woman that apparently has left the man, while meanwhile carrying a backpack full
of old cell phones and speakers belonging to the poor man—and on top of that she'd
flung the entirety of his ex's lingerie all over the floor and hallway.
Angel sits in silence, stunned. With her mouth and hands she mimes What the
fuck? and gives a faux stomp that doesn't land. She can't take her eyes off him. Head
cocked to one side, expression forlorn, she sidesteps into the hall.
Halfway down it, she begins running like mad.
She tumbles over a doormat in the foyer, goes careening into the kitchen. It only
gets worse. There's a girl there, the daughter, in the kitchen, perched at the counter with
a go-gurt in her mouth, her eyes saucer-wide like Angel's about to slap her. Everything
feels like a nightmare. Angel's about to pass out.
 19

Goddammit, goes Angel. Goddamn Johnny, Goddamn this. She rips off her pack
and begins unloading all of the family's devices in front of the girl. Angel almost falls
over in the process. She feels drunk. The girl doesn't scream. She just sits there, her hair
blown back like she's seated just inches from a jet engine. It looks like she's just as
astonished by the situation as Angel is.
The headphones and speakers and cameras and USB sticks pile up on the counter
in front of her.
And then Angel storms off through the back door, escaping before the father has
time to emerge, or the daughter has time to ask what the hell is going on. It's pouring
rain outside. She takes off running into a field.

********

The child's eyes go wide because the clown is holding the saber.
It's dangerous to hold a sword when you're a clown, pretty much exclusively
because of John Waynce Gacy Jr. At one point in time you could stroll around Brooklyn
with a saber hilted at your denim jeans and no one would bat an eye. The 70's were
overwhelmingly kind to the likes of Ellis and his outrageous entourage. Now, though, in
the modern political climate, the clown has to hold his hands out when he carries a
sword (and in some places even get a permit), and keep it in his scabbard in case anyone
gets antsy. His task of assuring them No, I won't stab you, is made infinitely more
difficult by the fact that he's a mime and therefore cannot speak. Also, it's Ohio, so he
has to sort of blend in a Don't shoot me, with the No, I won't stab you. He puts on his
biggest darling face and smile and make like he's calming a dog who's just heard
fireworks. Easy there, folks.
He unsheathes the sword, lifting it high above his head.
Down it comes, strumming his outstretched forearm like an air guitar. It's
spectacular, and leaves tracers of silver in the sky. After this, the thing is set in motion
like a gyroscope. It doesn't stop swinging.
There are hints of Bruce Lee inspiration in the way the clown flips his sword
beneath his armpits and up into the air, only to catch it on his toe.
And there's no science of wonder here. It's just cool to see an elderly man
swinging a sword around like a show-of-force Samurai. Simple as that.
The sword slows only to pluck a balloon from the little girl's head. He covers his
eyes as he does so, peeking only through a crack in his fingers. The little girl holds out
her hands to protect her face.
The fabric on the balloons is soft, and the blade glints sharp in the moonlight, but
somehow the balloon does not pop when he nicks it, just gently wafts into the air above
the clown. He holds the hilt directly beneath the balloon and keeps it aloft by making
tiny circles with his wrist. The blade swishes around and around the balloon, even
grazing it with an edge, but the clown's touch is so light that it does not pop. He comes
 20

out from hiding behind his hand and gives the crowd an Are you seeing this? expression,
pointing in amazement. Eventually the balloon gets spinning, its own inertia suspending
it in the air. Then the clown catches another one off the girl's head, and sets it in the sky
like he's placing a star. Soon he's placed a constellation.
It's Ellis's magnum opus, this routine. When historians have written about him,
they have focused on this very move.
 21

Excerpt: Love and Loathing in a Junkyard

Justin Bongi

"Our houses are hot," she whispered over the crest of her shoulder.
He mouthed something back. She smiled. Everybody knew that when he did
that, he was doing nothing. But he was trying. That was the important part. Or, at least,
that was what Ms. Probert said.
Ms. Probert's marker squeaked a circle onto the board, then a center dot, then a
line from the center.

(x - h) 2 + (y - k) 2 = r 2

Nobody knew what this meant, nor offered any explanation when called upon;
well, all except Edward, who erupted with “not that!”, but that was okay because Edward
said that after every question. Edward had something like tourettes, but worse, because
he didn’t have any variety, or funny swears when he burst. Just, “Not that!”, any time
anything happened. Even the parents needed psychiatrists now, people said, because
any moving thing set Edward off, even in the night, from a passing cloud to a closing
door. “Not that!” forever.
Alyssa’s hand was on Matthew’s desk, as was her elbow. Matthew wasn’t quite
sure what to do with them. He tried to look only up and to their right. But that brought
him to her spine, to a line of mounds tenting up her sweater, and this seemed equally
scandalous. He stared into the fluorescents overhead, and they were like the sun.
Throbbed his temples. He could hear it, and didn’t like hearing it.
"Too hot to bare," Alyssa continued, covering her mouth with her other hand. She
completed this action with the utmost self-assurance, as if doing so really the fact that
they were talking from the teacher. With her other hand she mimed burning her finger
on something hot, as if his desk were a stove. He placed his hand where hers had been,
and it was warm. He let out an "ah!", which surprised and galvanized her, making her
twist all the way around and take his jagged, fragile wrist in her palms, as if it were some
toppled, tiny creature, like a bird who’d hit a window.
That had happened, once, to Matthew. He’d been watching Naruto and then all of
a sudden, bam. Bluebird on the window, bluebird on the patio. All sideways, it’s legs
stuck stick-straight out. His mom put it in a box and shipped it to an animal hospital
place.
Alyssa’s fingernails, he noticed, were the color of a beak. A toucan's, maybe, or a
blackbird's.
Uh oh. He'd already had to shit. And now this. His whole body clenched up at her
touch, a persistaltic convulsion. Push!, it said. Out! Anything! A word, a shit—anything
goes! It was hard enough to get Ms. Probert's attention over here in the behavioral
probation corner, where she'd seated him not because he'd ever done anything wrong
but because it made sense—place the kid's you don't want to hear with the kids you
can't. When he thought about it that way, it made less sense. Alyssa was over here
because she'd set something on fire. Nobody knew what her "syndrome" or "-ism" was.
She just did things that normal kids didn't, and her parents had the money to send her
to a special care school. Things like sticking her arm shoulder-deep in Matthew's shirt
and pressing against his stomach, like this, making him nearly explode. He groaned it
 22

back in, and Ms. Probert, of course, noticed. Any sound from his side of the classroom
alarmed her. She turned, one authoritative finger raised, ready to reprimand a
behavioral case. "Alyssa!" she crowed, "would it be so tricky to not bother Matthew?" As
she pulled her head from his desk, Alyssa's cheek suctioned a pop. She slithered her
hand from his shirt and shook her head. "Matthew, you may be excused," said Ms.
Probert, daintily waving her marker. "Please be excused, you look like you're about to—
my, my..."
On the toilet, Matthew resolved to research and catalog the beak colors of every bird
known to the internet, until he found the one most like her nails. He would never lose
that moment, if he could only preserve that color, that perfect canary blonde, that
honey... He pretended the toilet paper dispenser was a stove and then touched it, but no
sound came out of him.
The rest of the plans were laid out on a purple index card, waiting for him when
he returned, wedged in the crease of his desk where metal met wood.
Steal away. Her words, not his. A proposition. He'd never heard of it.
For the next three days, until the Saturday they were scheduled to meet, "steal away"
brought to his attention the presence of two veins, previously unknown, and which ran
lengthwise down the side of his belly button. He stomped up the stairs that Thursday
night and ran his fingers down them, pressing down on the flesh as though he'd find
something solid below, some ropy energy. Whatever they were, they converged
somewhere below, intertwining like a knot in a marionette's strings. Kinetic was the
word that came to mind. They made him kinetic—made him want to run thirty miles in
the vague direction of uphill, and later that night when again those veins sputtered their
hot diesel downward in him, they turned him over like a piston and thrashed up his
sheets.
Why, he couldn't say.
Steal away. The words hung above his bed like a guillotine, glinted in the
sidesweeping light of cars on the road. Raised up from the dark of his ceiling. He made
an attempt at them, but his tongue disagreed with the "s". "Te-, te-, te-," he went, and he
was proud of that, at least. Probably a bit more than he wanted to admit. "Kinetic" was
word he felt he could say, but what was the point of that? "Te-, te-, te-," he went instead,
and it counted for the whole somehow, until, ecstatic, he was yelling it up into his ceiling
where his mom had plastered glow-in-the-dark stars and where tiny wooden birds from
Mexico hung on tacked strings. And he just kept on going until his parents came
rushing, and then he was quiet again, before they could open the door or understand.
The sounds were his. He ignored their requests, staring instead up into the eyes of his
Iron Man poster.
Kinetic. Kinetic, as in movement. The counterpart of potential. He could run fifty
miles. Sixty.
He tried instead to speak it with his action figures after the room was his again,
and his parents' footsteps had faded completely. Maybe in seeing them he could know
what Alyssa had meant, but the figures only ran away from the others, Wonderwoman
(her) and Black Bolt (him), into the dark. To go away. There were words for this already,
which he had. This was something more.
What more?
Tip-toed, one foot easing out before the other, he stepped, palming most of his
weight on the banister so as not to creak the floorboards. His parents would ask what he
 23

was doing, then feel guilty for asking. Sixteen years. Sixteen years of that. Their door
was cracked, and out came the huffing of breath. One, maybe two voices. Down the
staircase he spiraled, slowly.
In the living room the sliding door shuddered open, but only after a yank. In
came the sound of cicadas, a baying dog, the sound of oaks nodding in their sleep, all
carried on a breath of night air. He paused there, listening for steps from inside, then
went. As he waded out into the yard, the coast came into view over the lip of the hill.
Cars streamed the city's bridge like luminescent ants. The bay swallowed their light.
Matthew pulled off his shirt and kicked his pajama pants onto the arm of a nearby
lounge chair. When his underwear came off, the marionette strings unknotted. Pool
water swallowed him whole, along with the sounds of night and all the urges to join
them. To howl with all the dogs and coyotes and cars. Show me what you do when
you're drowning.
He awoke to a damp bed, late. Steal away at eleven, the note had said. Meet me
at the grove's pink post. Te-, te-. Out of bed, still half undressed, into the hallway—
"And what has us in such a hurry?" asked his mother, who had her head half-buried
behind the living room armoir. Two flaccid cables, one tan and the other orange, hung
from each of her palms. Both prongs were male—incompatible—but that didn't stop her
from trying to fit them together as she studied Matthew. He was breaststroking into an
uncharacteristically-kempt little league t-shirt. When he emerged through the head
hole, she was three feet closer. Her lips were pursed, and painted the color of a northern
cardinal. "Run?" She jogged in place. "Work?" Air-pencil on palm. He winced. She
jammed together the cords again. "We don't have wifi," she muttered. "Why?"
Miraculously within earshot, Mark called from the other room, "You must have
misheard!" She scowled. "It has nothing to do with the cords!" he cried. Margarette
mouthed his words with a sneer. "Meh, meh, meh," she went. "Matthew. Don't forget the
Oak Street incident."
Three years ago a schoolgirl had been mugged and then knifed to death on a
Saturday somewhat like this one. News of it had dominated the papers, and the vague
topic of "safety" had occupied parent-teacher associations for weeks. But Oak Street was
in Vacaville, some forty miles away, and in Vacaville schoolgirls practically died by the
dozen. This particular incident just happened to occur on a slow news day, and well…
Matthew drew his finger across his throat and stuck his tongue out to say that he
understood, but his mother didn't seem to have the same interpretation. He found
himself wedged inside the envelope of her arm fat, where all he could see was her neck,
chin, and nostrils. Her eyes were elsewhere. When Mark walked in, she shoved him
away as if she'd never seen him. Son? Whose son?
"Out?" asked Mark. Matthew didn't respond. "Okay." His father looked the victim
of an equally restless night. He was scraping cold butter across the top of a piece of
toast. On the back of his head, a lick of his hair stuck up like a rooster's.
"I reminded him about Oak Street."
Mark drew a thumb across his throat and winked at Matthew.
"No!" Margarette cried. "If you joke about it, he will too."
"How?"
"Really?! Really, Mark? He can joke!"
"I meant ethically. Not abilit-ally." Mark turned to Matthew. "Are you going to
joke about murder? You wouldn't would you?" He patted Matthew's head. Outside, one
 24

of the neighbors was calling for something. It sounded like the name of a lost pet.
Stepping out from his father's hand, Matthew shook his head, which was beginning to
buzz with worry. "See?" said his father.
"He did the thing—" she made the motion "—that you always do!" Their voices
were rising.
"This?" asked Mark, doing it. Matthew did it too, though he wasn't exactly sure
why. All their hands were on their necks. Matthew jiggled the doorknob. Mark said "One
moment, Matty." Margarette gaped up and asked the ceiling, "You see what I have to
deal with?!" The pet-searcher was right outside. "Willy! Willy!" it said, clapping between
each call. Margarette wailed. "I hope Willy dies!"
"Who the fuck is Willy?"
"Listen!"
From the driveway, once he'd slipped away, Matthew could still see her looking
up, searching for answers in the spackled ceiling. Mark on the other hand was looking
down at his feet and spinning in circles, like he'd dropped something tiny and
devastatingly expensive. It wasn't clear whether they'd seen him go.
Steal away.
The road depressed and climbed again, up the incline of which Matthew was able
to kick the same pebble for two blocks. Nobody was out. He found himself looking for
Willy and staring at himself in the warped reflections of dark windows. The sun moved
in and out of clouds, and all sounds seemed to muffle when the world went dark and
return with the light. Matthew walked a curb like a tightrope.
Around a corner, she was right there waiting for him. Right where the slatted
fences of his neighbors gave way to the cliffside expanse of Grizzly Peak Boulevard.
Across the street a grove of tunneled willows loomed, most of them weeping. Her dress
had tiny white flowers all over. Even at a moment's glance—how the school had
embedded itself in his mind—it was clear that it violated the Edgar Allen High knee-
length mandates by a solid three inches. It was robin's egg blue and tugged sideways at
her figure in the wind.
He hadn't realized he could unknot anymore.
She waved nervously, swaying as she did. He ran to her without looking for cars;
she took his hand and did not ask any questions. He helped her unsnarl the cattlegate's
rope. It eventually tugged free, swung, and shut behind them with a clatter. Together
they carried on up the trail and into the mesh of overhanging trees, the roots of which
caused him to jump and her to skip, sending her dress ballooning and her hair puffing in
little breathes. Like a weft in the valley's side, trees with vines wove themselves around
the trail, snarling like some ancient beasts of Tolkien. Occasionally big fans of branches
became a curtain through which the two children pushed and emerged into new worlds,
over and over and over again. They saw a hawk scouring the ground for food, and
Matthew imitated its call. Alyssa scrambled up a walnut tree and hung from its branch
by her knees.
They made their own little languages there, in their own little world.
She did the same with him.
Not a word was spoken for a mile of trail. The hawk spun figure-eights overhead.
Occasionally it dove. Rocks crunched beneath her sneakers. She spoke languages he
knew, tugging back on his hand—he slowed. Again— he stopped.
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She stepped a few feet off the trail and studied a hunched and weather-beat
sycamore, circling it and running her hand up and down its bark. "There," she said
eventually, wiping its little brown fibers on the thigh of her dress. Her finger pointed to
a two-inch notch, painted pink. An arrow. Shooting somewhat upward, and into the
wood.
Her hand did not return to his. They crashed through the underbrush.
The plants with thorned stalks—he knew none of their names, and didn't care to
learn them—had painted themselves with white as a warning to all with heavy treads. To
make themselves seen, heard. It was a white that seemed almost dusted on, covering all
but the thorns themselves. He, after she, learned this fact only through the pluming red
prick of one, after which all he could see was the white of the land. It got him right on
the side of his wrist, making his blood run down his fingers and collect on their nails.
The white of them came to occupy his mind, almost eking out her. In an odd way he was
grateful for this courtesy—that he was told, and in terms that he could understand—
whenever his actions threatened to hurt the things around him. And how easy it was to
respond. It took no words. Simply see, and tread where needed.
She sent a pebble careening—he kicked it too. It was all so simple—simple as that.
They were following the faint memory of a deer trail, stepping cautiously and
lithely across its trail of stomped-down grass stalks so as not to lose or interrupt its
continuity. Soon the ground came to be moguled with irregular objects, all caked with an
inch or so of mud. Fossilized, but from a recent past. He sloughed off some of this dirt
with his toe, and silvery-chrome shone through.
She lifted a pine branch for him to duck under and, abiding, he collided with a
chainlink fence. It danced in its stakes, jangling. She ducked up from behind him and
abruptly stopped, hanging her fingers in one of the fence's diamond gaps. The steel drew
a white line beneath her knuckles. "Came faster than I thought," she said, looking in.
Mounds of disfigured metal shining a thousand different times in the sun, bulged
against the fence. There were barbs up above them, military-like, and growling. It was
impossible to look at them without imagining his stomach getting caught, sliced…
"No," she said, and took his hand again, leading him to a divot that reached rock
beneath the fence. It was just big enough for a body to fit through. "Under." When they
came out on the other side of it, their bellies were dusted brown.
It was a junkyard. The objects cobbling the ground, he realized, were the buried
remains of wrecks—bumpers, carburetors, fuel injectors as well as an abundance of
other strange shapes for which he had no names. "It's not like the movies. No dog. But
sometimes they are here, so…" She held a finger to pursed lips. He knew what she
meant. Carefully, lightly, he returned a fistful of oil-stained debris he'd been examining
and began to watch his step. She wove him through the towers of cars as if through a
vale. Occasionally they crunched glass, but for the most part all was silent. Most of the
cars had been crushed, accordioned into rudimentary, dangerous cubes spattered with
bird shit and gasoline, their chassis jutting like roadkill ribs. Dead headlights peered
down from above as if from a pantheon of dead gods, the highest of which stood four or
five times the height of Matthew.
A beastly purr rose up, as if out of the ground. Something ancient, massive.
Alyssa clutched Matthew by the waist. He was too scared to savor it. Quickly, he stepped
them into the crumpled innards of a wrecked VW, the windshield of which faced the sky.
A miniature disco ball still hung from its rearview mirror, slowly spinning. The mirror
 26

itself was missing, showing just black plastic. Matthew tried not to imagine the sheer
amount of weight piled up over their heads. There was the squeal of metal on rock, then
the clamor of a closing gate somewhere to their left. The whole perimeter fence shook.
The purring became a roar and seemed to come from all around them then, growing
louder so that both of them had to palm their ears and flinch from the sound and bury
their heads against metal. The evil sound doubled by echoes of the surrounding wood.
Matthew could have screamed and not even heard himself. All became it. It shook them,
and all the earth. Then, the roaring began to subside. It sputtered and dampened around
a bend. The disco ball eased its helical twistings, and settled. First peering both ways,
Matthew peeked his head out from the van's cab. He caught a glimpse of the culprit: a
gargantuan flatbed now rumbling down a distant corridor of wreckage, spewing diesel
smoke and kicking up dust. Its cargo was something larger than itself, and grey and
contorted.
"Come," she said. He did. They chased a better look at the thing.
On all fours, they scrambled the face of a corroded aluminum crag. Side mirrors
became hand-holds, and windshields, platforms. Alyssa stomped down some stubborn
fragments in a broken window and used its frame as a step. She was nimble and clearly
experienced in this, appearing to act by the rote memory of her muscles alone. And so
with emasculating ease she clawed her way ahead of Matthew, and her tense thigh came
lunging into view, mesmerizingly, culminating in the leg bands of her tangerine
spandex. Matthew's balance wavered. He caught himself just barely on a flimsy handle,
returned his gaze to his own limbs, and breathed.
They emerged onto the thin, jagged crown of a pickup. After traversing its lip,
they huddled in its bed, side by side.
Sparse pools of rainwater had gathered in the bed's corrugated plastic floor and
caught mud, dead leaves, and mildew. The two seated themselves in it, regardless. At
their feet the trunk's levered door lay open, giving it the air of a throne for them, and
perching them high and mighty as if above their fiefdom of battered wares.
The great beastly thing was idling by a trailer-type office. Its engine cut and a
man stepped out. He yawned, stretching his back, then huddled over a cigarette and
puffed it while looking around. When his eyes swept near, the two of them ducked low.
A few seconds later they were back, though this time with trepidation.
A hatted woman emerged from the office and shook the driver's hands. From just
her looks, she was old as hell. A green-brimmed trucker's hat held the wild and whitened
puff of her hair, and she played with it often, pushing it left and then down across her
brow. Mouth moving, her voice could be heard, but no words made out. She gestured at
the man's cargo, like, how the hell did they manage that?
The mess of metal she was referring to, the perched up, evil-looking thing on the
tow truck, looked like it had been hit at least by a semi if not something much larger—all
sagged in the shoulders and caved in on the side. Bam! Seeing it, you could almost hear
the crash.
It was a cattle hauler. The side of it read "Benedict's Beef!" in red, cursive
lettering, and the rest of it was a matte silver.
With crude, awkward flourish, the driver held his hands far to his side, like a
game show host. Hands that threw glitter, in a way. He wanted to sell it. But drip stains
of red hung beneath each of the windows, right where mules were supposed to rest their
snouts. Crash, again, came the imagination. The realization: it had been loaded up when
 27

it got hit. Six heads of cattle. And judging by how severely it had mangled, none of them
could have survived, or at least not miserably so. Alyssa leaned in for a better look.
Matthew's stomach curled up like a flytrap. He laid down a second and spent some time
counting clouds, but all of them had gone gray in their centers with rain.
When his stomach settled and he managed to sit up again, the old lady was
rubbing her cheek on the hauler's aluminum and smiling really big, and humming. The
driver gave its side a big slap, and the frame rang out like a wounded gong. Cash passed
hands. The beast roared to life, and the man scrammed. Then it was just the woman and
the dead thing.
She stared at it a while, sizing it up. It was a look accompanied by the light,
tender touch of her palm. Matthew had no words for it, but it made him think of
Alyssa—unfurled something like a tapestry in the still-raisined pit of his stomach.
Having appraised it, the woman disappeared from sight and returned in a few
minutes beep-beeping around in a winch-wielding forklift. Its great barbed tongue lolled
between its fork. She attached this cable to the cattle hauler's hitch and turned on the
winch. Slowly, the big steel spool on the front of the cab began to spin, snapping its
cable taut. The hauler lurched then banshee shrieked its way up onto its fork. When it
had settled into its place, the woman climbed up into the cab and raised it from the
ground. "We need to go," Alyssa said, but she was unable to take her eyes off the
process. Only after a few tries was Matthew able to pull her away, and together they
leapt their way back to the bottom again.
Once there, Matthew beelined for the fence. He was already on his belly and
halfway out when Alyssa began to laugh. "Oh, come on," she said, pointing with urgency
in the direction the woman had gone off to. "Please?" Obediently, he slithered back out
of the divot and followed.
The blue crusher yawned, baring its toothless mouth. You could fit a schoolbus in
there easy, or twenty people lined shoulder to shoulder. Matthew and Alyssa had found
a new perch, only halfway up a pile this time—no throne. They hung from the side of it
as if from a ladder, leaning for a better view. They were on the far side of the yard now,
by the trailer, with a fence to their backs which had wisps of plastic bags caught in it,
and something like hair in its razors. The woman and her crusher were some thirty feet
away. She didn't look much in their direction; all of her attention was occupied by the
feeding. She commanded a series of levers in the forklift. Up went the hauler, then in.
The lift's fork tilted and let the hauler slide into the back of the crusher's mouth. The
woman unhooked the cable, and the forklift received its tongue again. From one mouth
to another. The woman looked scared to be anywhere near the thing. It reminded
Matthew of the crocodile tamers he'd seen on TV, the way she flinched her hand from its
mouth.
The crusher had two hydraulic cylinders on either side of it. Between these was
the mouth, consisting of the set floor and the roof, which slid on parallel steel rails.
When the woman pulled a lever, the roof began to sink. Alyssa swung back a bit, maybe
scared. Her body eased into the nook of Matthew's, filling the arc from his left thigh to
his neck. His heart, already jarred by the crusher engine's palpable beat, went furious
against his chest. He was convinced it shook her, and the thought that she could feel it
made it go even more. The next move was intuitive by either some deep ancestral
knowledge, or the examples he'd seen in movies, but his will faltered. Finally, though, he
struggled his right arm out and crooked it around her, hovering first before her side,
 28

then cupping her hip and pressing in on the softness beneath. The crusher's racket was
unbelievable. Alyssa's belly was warm. She adjusted her posture some, a bit more
forcefully clasping her shape into his, filling out the curve of him completely. The
hauler's roof buckled. The frame of the car clattered in on itself. Alyssa pulled him closer
by the front pocket of his pants. By the end of it, the hauler had deflated fully, coming
out around a foot or so tall. Hot breath met Matthew's ear, then made its way to his lips.
The hatted woman continued to bump her hand up and down on the lever, slamming
the roof down on the flattened disk of metal, squeezing out the last few inches and
creases and Matthew's hand rose the length of Alyssa's belly as his own lips parted;
there wasn't any room for words with all the noise. Everyone was perfectly understood.