You Enter the Mines
Inter-7 A is sitting on the roof of a tenement. His eyes are fixed on the western hills. Beyond them, the evening sun stains a long, low bank of clouds the colour of an open wound. On the ledge next to him is a rough, canvas sack, half-filled with birds.
He leans back, supporting himself with the flat of his palms on the rough concrete. Although the day is cold, he isn't wearing gloves, and the skin on the back of his hands and his fingers is pink, his knuckles bone white. He's dressed in the same tattered suit as always, but today he's also wearing a woolen scarf and a pair of dark, thick-rimmed sunglasses.
You aren't sure where he got these items: since he arrived things have been confused. There are gaps in your memory now, empty stretches of time in which you have no idea where you were or what might have been going on in your absence. One moment you are with Inter-7 A in the bedroom of an abandoned apartment, and the next you are here, hours, or even days later. Time is fracturing, and in the face of that what difference does a scarf or a pair of glasses make? He must simply have stolen them, and the fact that you can't remember where or how is no longer relevant. After all, you've seen him steal before, lifting fruit from the stalls in Northside's markets or pocketing sandwiches and drinks from convenience stores; he has no money, or none you've ever seen him use. If he wants to eat he must steal or forage, rooting through trash cans and dumpsters for whatever scraps he can find. He exists on the town's leftovers, in its margins, unwanted and for the most part unnoticed. Most often he sleeps in an alley not far from 4th Bridge, curling up on a flattened stretch of cardboard. He has some things stored there, stuffed into an alcove next to the building's fire-escape, a few soiled blankets as well as the canvas sack for the birds, and from time to time the exhaust vent of the neighbouring building will flood the space with a little warm air. Once you watched him as he slept, his face taut and weary, his limbs drawn in from the cold. Passing through dreams, he muttered to himself, and for a moment he could have been any homeless man, addled by drugs or a chemical imbalance, the long, pitiless stretch of years spent on the streets. When dawn came however, he reached for the sack of birds, taking one and breaking its neck like another man might scratch himself, waking. These memories remain to you, but whenever it was that he acquired the scarf and glasses is gone; you tell yourself that it's a small detail, and likely unimportant, but you've learned by now that the world depends on such things, that they are the foundation all the rest is built upon.
As if aware of what you're thinking, he turns in your direction, smiling faintly.
"It's nice isn't it?" he says. "The sunset. But that's all it's ever going to be, just this. It will never be any other colour, any other shade. It's locked in itself now, forever. There's something horrific about that, something disgusting. Everything gets locked in, layer after layer, all of them perfectly rendered, perfectly still. We call that reality. Reality is a cancer, one moment piled on the next, expanding without remorse or justification. There's no cure for cancer. Reality simply is, and I am and there's no changing me, or you, not once we've been."
He speaks quickly, one word stumbling over the next. His breath comes steaming from his mouth and there is a spasm in his cheek, just below his right eye. All at once he gets up and climbs onto the roof edge, looking down on the street more than 100 feet below. His hand is shaking, the fingers spread wide, and straining against the joints.
"The other way out is right here," he mutters softly. "But death is only the illusion of escape."
He spits and watches the drop until it disappears. He stays this way for some time, long enough for the sun to sink behind the horizon, and then he turns around.
"Well, we'd better start out," he says, taking the sack and slinging it over his shoulder. He exits the roof, making his way down a dim stairwell to the 10th floor. Two young children are playing in the hall, a boy and girl who might be brother and sister. They are both small, with pale skin and wide eyes. Neither of them is wearing shoes. As you pass, the boy over-throws the ball and the girl chases after it, her bare, dirty feet padding swiftly over the carpet. She ignores Inter-7 A completely, as does the boy, the two of them so intent on their game that he may as well be invisible.
He takes the elevator to a deserted lobby and exits the building. Outside, a faded, middle-aged man is smoking, half-hidden in the gloom beneath a row of pine trees. Inter-7 A glances at him, and the man flicks the end of his cigarette into the snow.
Turning right at the first corner, Inter-7 A passes quickly down a narrow alley. From time to time he glances over his shoulder, scowling. His mouth is set in a tight line, and despite the cold there is a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. He is afraid, you realize; lately he has grown convinced that someone is following him. This paranoia blossoms daily, and you understand that it is close to breaking him. Scrawling the rings and symbols about the town, he passes from one alley to another, one deserted roof to the next, and you are dragged along in his wake, a pair of hungry, restless ghosts.
Leaving the tenements behind, he approaches the foot of the northern hills, coming at last to a narrow, brick building with a corrugated roof. Stemming from the building's back end, a cable track stretches up the side of the nearest hill. The tracks are blocked-off from the road by a chain-link fence, but in two short motions Inter-7 A is up and over it, dragging the sack of birds along with him. He sets out, climbing the tracks with the bag slung over his shoulder. A light wind is at play in the branches of the neighbouring pines, the sound merging smoothly with the crunch of the man's boots over the gravel and the snow.
Halfway up the hill the tracks fork to the right, snaking along a cliff edge on their way to the capital. Following the left-hand tracks, Inter-7 A is soon brought short by a heavy iron gate. He sets the sack of birds on the ground and stares at it, examining the lock. At length he removes a bird from the sack. It struggles violently, tearing the skin at his wrist and drawing blood. The man hisses in pain, and with a sudden, sharp jerk, he rends the bird's head from its neck. Shuddering, the bird falls still.
Inter-7 A presses the bird's neck to the gate, drawing a ring over the bars and bending down to scrawl a few rough symbols on the ground. The sound of the wind falls away, as does the gate and the ground before you. Eventually only the symbols and the ring are left, a series of brands on the night, and then they too are gone.
"It's coming easier now, isn't it?" Inter-7 A remarks, standing next to you on the opposite side of the gates. "Quicker, with less blood. Unfortunately we'll never be able to cut that part out completely. Not until it's done. The blood is a necessity. "
Starting off again, he sniffs, and wipes the blood from his injured wrist on the lapel of his jacket. Shortly the ground begins to level out, and you approach a broad, unpaved square. Surrounding you are a number of concrete structures, administrative offices, or perhaps storage facilities. Beyond these, a gaping, semi-circular hole has been blasted into the side of the hill.
"It's down there," mutters Inter-7 A. "The source."
Hefting the sack onto his opposite shoulder, he passes into the mines. Gradually, his body loses definition, his features blurring, until he is nothing more than a vague shadow at your side.
"It's close," he says, and you can hear him setting the bag on the ground. He bends down, and a sudden torrent of wings shatters the dry silence. The escaping bird careens madly in the direction of the entrance. Inter-7 A curses, reaching for another. With the bird in hand, he moves to the nearest wall, his motions slow and halting, like those of a drugged man, or a sleep-walker.
"Sometimes I think the other world is only a dream."
His voice comes in a whisper, oddly muted, as if the close darkness of the place has the effect of stifling noise.
"It might all be in my head, and Inter-7 A is just a fantasy, a scapegoat, someone I made up to blame for the mess I've made of my life. But then how do you explain the rings? How do you explain us getting in here? Burning a hole in the wall, or stepp
ing through the gates?"
Slowly, with a calmness that approaches delicacy, he twists the bird's head from its neck and starts to paint.
"Of course," he says. "Of course, of course, of course: it could all just be in my head. Of course it could. Maybe, but not all of it. Not this, now – this is happening. Probably. I can feel the bird in my hand. I can feel that. The details are clear. This is, if anything is. And I'm not prepared to admit that everything is fantasy. Not yet. Some things are real. This is. But I know how it looks. The magic blood on the walls might just be the blood of a dead pigeon, and the rings may be meaningless. That's possible. The details aren't clear. We went through the fence – how? I didn't see that, didn't feel it. Not like I can feel the rock in front of me now. And back in the apartment, maybe I put that hole in the wall myself, with a hammer, or just by kicking it down. It's possible I climbed over the gate back there just like I did earlier at the fence. Maybe the whole idea that you're even here listening to me is completely insane."
He stops his work long enough to look at you.
"Who are you anyway?"
You can just make out his head shaking in the dimness.
"It could be a dream," he goes on. "It could be. You might just be in my head. But I think you're there."
He pulls back from the wall, and allows the bird to fall from his hand.
"I know you're there," he says, after a time. "I know it because I saw you from the other side. Sometimes that other one appears, that's all, and then I doubt. The one from before I was Inter-7 A, the one who remembers his wife, as if he ever had a wife. As if that wasn't just a dream. Sometimes he surfaces, but in the end it's always me. And I'm not going to stand around waiting to be snuffed out along with everything else like a deer in some damn headlights. I have to get out. I'm going to get out. You'll see, because now we have a way to get in."
Dimly you perceive him smiling, the ring's fresh blood dripping in soft pools at his feet.