Topic: To the Center of the World

Bones

Date: 2016-09-26 11:55 EST
Day One: Saturday, October 1st

Bones found a remains of an old, rusty Cadillac DeVille that may have been black at one point in its life. It had been sitting alone amidst towers of scrap metal and junk, completely separated from the rest of the, perhaps poorly named, Boneyard. He found it just after he and Roach had talked about going on their road trip to see the tree at the center of the world, almost as if it had been waiting to be found for that very purpose. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Bones started fixing the old car up. He wasn?t an expert, though, and in fact, he knew next to nothing about cars aside from where you put the gas and the key, but through some miracle of luck, he got the old bastard running. It rumbled and sputtered and groaned and he worried that it might die on him if he took it too far, but, a voice in the back of his head said:

?Hey, man. It?s alright. Just be chill. You can trust me.?

And because Bones was usually fucked up on some kind of pill or drug, he assumed that the voice was his own, and if there was anyone in this world he trusted, it was definitely himself. So, he took it out for a spin.

He was idling outside the Red Dragon Inn one night with his old rust bucket of a car and tapping away at his phone, muttering at how small the buttons were. He finally, successfully, fired of a text to Roach.

Hey kid, I?m outside the inn. Get your ass out here. We?re going on a road trip.

Then, he waited, listening to the engine rumble and shudder occasionally, and smiled. He liked the car, he decided that he?d keep it when all was said and done. If it didn?t blow up on him halfway to the tree.

?You?ll be good to me though, won?t you?? he asked, patting the dash affectionately. ?We only just started this relationship of ours, it?d be a shame if you were to cut out on me before we reached the end.?

And then, waiting, he took out his notepad and started to write about doors.

Roach Lee

Date: 2016-10-03 21:06 EST
There's no mistaking a vintage Cadillac. Once she hears the growl pull up out front, girl's out the door like the wind and in the car. "Where's the boy?" She dumps herself down, gets comfortable, lights up two cigarettes and hands Bones one as she peers beyond the glare that touches the windscreen. "Figured he'd be lates." She cuts a smirk at him and then sinks down. But they're sitting there too long. Twenty five minutes and Bones has had enough. He crawls the car onto the road with a shake of his head.

"Crazy kid. Guy's probably high, off his fucking face somewhere."

"Maybe." But Roach isn't having it, as she peers over the dashboard, her eyes appearing only just above it she's sunk so far down in the seat. "Gots an idea. Roll us onto Paper Street." She goes to punch the address into the Navman equivalent but Bones is swatting her hand away gently.

"Think I need a map, kid?" He taps his temple and then drives them onwards leaving her to be the one shaking her head around a draw from the cigarette.


420 Paper Street was a sight that stunned them both. They both anticipated Johnny to be strung out somewhere in or outside the house, or hung over in only the way he knew how, and which usually involved more alcohol and some sort of outfit. Why? Only Johny Lagos knew.

The house was no longer a house but a pit of embers and ash. It's a sight that razes through her mind and by sheer surprise sets other things alight inside her. It inflames her own guilt and sadness around the boy, around what had happened only the day before.

"You do this, Lizzie?"

Only a shake of the head as she flicked her cigarette past the open window and sat up a bit in the seat. But then she thought about it, really. "Yeah... I did."

Bones reached for her arm and jostled it so that she'd face him. She did. Her face stony, her eyes cold.

"You set his house on fucking fire? He's dangerous. Are you fucking nuts?"

"I didn't do it, do it, old man. I broke it off..." she put a hand to her forehead and then pushed it back over her crown. "It was getting too reals. Evidently, boy didnt's takes it too well." She looked over towards the remains and shook her head. "Fuck. Know boy is.... he's something, but fuck."

He took his hand from her arm and placed it back on the wheel. "Well, I had to ask, kid. You can be crazy."

"Not like that, Bones. And oi, this comings from a man who talks to fucking feathers?"

They laughed, if awkwardly. He idled there for a moment, letting her absorb the scene before driving away, before she whisper that he hold on so she could lean out the window and enquire of one of the firemen leaning on what was left of the gate.

"What happened with you kids then?"

"Likes I said. Had to cut that string. I love Grey, Bones. And he only wants me and expects the same. It's not fairs on either of them, to like, divide myself." She looked out the window. To some distant point. "I didn't's expect Johnny and I to vibe like fuck. I didn'ts expect Grey... like..." she smiled a bit. "I've never been wanted the ways he wants-wants me, yeah? Like, he legit, only wants me. Giving that over is.... " it was the stomach drop on the roller coaster. "I didn'ts 'pect he would, like, he uh.. he likes the ladies, you know? But shiz has changed. And as for Johnny, he deserves a whole girl. A whole heart in turn."

Bones nodded, barely, and sat a moment to ruminate on what she said before peeling them closer to the fireman.

"Anyone dead?"

"No body."

"Be a sec." Roach got out of the car and walked over to one section of what had been the front yard to bend down. A few pages sat in the muck, the edges burning with candle flames. She reached down to draw the pages free from the dirt and snuff the small, itinerant fire and then sighed as she looked over the words.

And I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Fucking Johnny.

Folding up the pages, she walked back over to the car and got in. The car growled loudly and took off.

"What's that you got?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

And she pulled on her shades, lit up another cigarette and sunk down, the pages fluttering in the breeze on the dash.

Roach Lee

Date: 2016-10-06 09:13 EST
"You ever loved anyone Bones? Never talk about that stuff."

The car soared beneath an abandoned bridge as a flock of Starlings dove and whirled above and they both shared a smile, as confetti-shadows of distant wings reflected on the bonnet of the car and their faces. Daylight dwindled ahead and while she waited for an answer that might never come, she went through some of the books he had stacked at her feet for the ride.

Somewhere between Austin and Chicago is the center of the world, Birdy.

There's an underground city beneath Death Valley.

Dinosaur footprints in Arizona.

The Carter Brothers still roaming the Vieux Carre, haunting balconies at midnight in mystery.

The Lady of the Lake by Fort Phantom, Texas.

El Chupacabra.

Disappearing farmers in 1800s Alabama and other men who sold their soul on Highway 61.

But nothing about a tree

"Old man, I'm seeing a lot of mumbo jumbo in here's. And this map is from seventy five. You do's realise that?" Shaking it in her hand. Roach tossed it aside with a sigh and snapped open a can of Pepsi from the back, passing him one which she lid into the drink holder. "You don't have it, I will." Out the window, she caught her face in the rearview. Her hair in the breeze, her eyes tired, her soul fatigued. Too much drink, too much fighting, not enough rest. Behind them, a house burned to the ground and a missing punk boy. What other myths would rise from those ashes? What could rise anew between Grey and her, as they began again?

One fire ended, another started in its place somewhere else.

She thought about Jimmie, about how he'd send her to kill all the demons she could, so that eventually, she'd find and kill Robert. Because Jimmie knew, all along, about the prophecy. That she would eventually seek him out, but he had thought it would all go so different.

"You ever miss the Crez?"

She wondered if he did. If he ever craved the food or the music or the fragrant air, the electric magic that raced along the streets and could be felt in a breath. The way it embraced and the way it spat a person back out, all so you would crawl back and do it all over again. But beyond the portal, on the road north and to somewhere she, for the first time in a long time, didn't miss New Orleans. It was a thought that dawned on her as she wound the screen down further to allow more wind into the car, shutting her eyes against it, smiling.

They were hurtling forward to something unknown, into a world of more phenomena, of more questions than answers. It wasn't the underworld, it wasn't the Crez, it wasn't Rhy'Din, and it was nice, even for a few days, to leave all of it behind. Part of her longed for the flat expanse of nothing in Kansas, of Missouri fields, of itching afternoons on hot pavement in Arkansas, of the October country that began, Bradbury's country, as the world turned orange and gold, as it was all set on fire in hues that made her fingers twitch in her lap.

Roach looked over and watched the profile of the man driving and grinned. "Sometimes... sometimes I think getting lost is the only way you find wheres you're meant to be."

Bones

Date: 2016-10-29 09:20 EST
He had his long white hair tied behind his head and the window rolled down. Even so, thin strands of it were flicked and thrashed about in the violent gusts of wind that came in through the opening. He'd occasionally push them out of his face but gave up that losing battle. After an hour or so he rolled the window back up, his cheeks were cold from the wind, and he glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

"We've all loved someone before, kid. Most of us just ain't aware of it at the time we're doin' it."

The world was all black around them. Shops and buildings that were just dark silhouettes, shadows of the lives they hold and represent. The city was gone in a flash and all around them was just flat, empty nothing. Just the paved road and their headlights and a fickle moon to see by. He smirked.

"All roads are the the same, birdie. Don't matter how old the map is. Some shit don't ever change, you dig?"

The white skeletal knuckles of his hands were squeezed tight around the thin steering wheel. They would have shone even whiter for all the pressure he put them under, but the rest of him was already bale as bone. He licked his lips and ignored the sounds on the wind he could still hear sneaking in through the cracks in the weather sealing of the window. The rumble of the engine was saying his name and issuing an ominous warning to turn back, that the center of all things is the last place he should be. He's not meant for something like that.

Bones has been ignoring voices his whole life, though.

"The Crez?" he shrugged. "I don't miss nothin', Roach. I try to keep my head outta the past. Only thing you find in there is pain and loss."

He reached down with one hand to crack open the can she'd put in the drink holder, then he guzzled it down greedily with one eye on the road.

"We're all lost. No one is ever where they're meant to be. Life don't work that way."