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i. storm
After the fish and the drinks and some pick me up weed post-Copperpot's Cove, they get clean (ish) and agree on the meetup time with Holst for the day to come.
Well, Em does the agreeing. They just chill on the couch.
It should be quiet, he muses, like things tend to get before the cloudburst.
And yet, inside the apartment, something's always humming. In the room, in the adjacent kitchen, in the bedroom (where Em's out cold by now and pumped full of indica), in the corner where Angel's desktop sits idle. It's the building itself.
They light up with a shared match cos Angel's out of lighters, then proceed to zone out in the not quite dark. You can never get any true dark here.
Angel's talking about whistleblowers and UAPs, that navy shit with Nimitz and Roosevelt, then about some farm in Utah. Paranormal activity sounding nonsense.
There's a low, soft drone trickling from the bedroom. Em's ten-hour meditation headache relief 174 Hz music videos, most likely. She's gotta be blasting that on full from a pill speaker if his brain can catch that darkwave shit through the wall.
“But listen, all that supernatural ghost shit aside,” Angel continues, “it all makes sense now. Kinda.”
“What?”
“See, when they declassified all that stuff about the sightings, guess what all of them had in common?”
OJ waits, not guessing.
“You got witness testimonies, you got government documents, you got all this real fucking evidence, and all of it points to UFO incursions that,” he adds drama by pointing both index fingers at the ceiling, “are centered specifically around nuclear weapon sites. And I'm talking all the way back, when all this shit began in New Mexico. You have these things showing up at top security facilities, like decade after decade, but it's all to do with like, nuclear weapon development, or, or, or it's just silos and shit. Roswell, Malmstrom, Bentwaters, a bunch of sites overseas.”
“And… the government's saying all this?”
“That's what's crazy, man! Like it's not just some conspiracy nut psycho drama bullshit on reddit. Now get this, there was this program, AATIP, it stands for Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification—”
Angel's real animated when he gets into it, which is difficult to accomplish with his weed-lax puddle of a body currently concentrated in the couch corner. So at the moment, it's giving less 'invigorated lecturer' and more 'overly excited neonate',
“—and they poured millions into that shit, bro. Anyway, this guy, Luis Elizondo—he was the head back then, check him out sometime—and he just couldn't take it there anymore, like the way their research got handled just pissed him off. So he resigned and then shit got leaked, and so he was going around and telling people what's up. But then bam, DIA started saying shit like, nah, he's never led this program, he's never worked for us, blablabla.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What's this got to do with our boy out there.”
“I mean, our boy is clearly not the first. I don't know if they're playing at some kind of Predator jungle hunting cruise shit here, but—”
“They're not.”
“—but it's obvious that these… floating… fucking mutant mushroom eggos have been doing this for a while. And! And. We got Livermore in our backyard.”
“Three hundred miles west, you mean.”
“Man, whatever, you've seen the speed of that thing.”
“So, what are you saying? They been trying to teach us nuclear fusion ethics?”
“Well, maybe they have. Like, what if they're biologically drawn to that shit. You know, like bees to honey.”
“Nectar.”
“Whatever.”
Angel's foot pushes at his thigh in mock irritation. For some reason, OJ catches his ankle, and they stay like that for a bit, smoking and eyebrow-talking at each other through the thick dank.
“You know,” OJ looks away but keeps his hand in place, thumb tracing around the ankle bone which he doesn't register in full, “bees can actually feel electric fields around flowers.”
“See, that's what I'm talking about. We've been baiting these flying freaks for decades, and it should've been enough of a sign, right? It's like you have these giant space Gods flocking to nuclear missile silos, saying hey, what's up with this shit? What're you folks doing with all these weapons? But nobody's paying attention.” He wiggles a little. “I'll be honest, though… Like, there's no way in hell I'm going near one of those things once we get our shot, but like, I wish we had more of them to study. Theoretically. It would be useful to learn what's the fucking point of it all.”
Come on now, OJ thinks, fighting back a smile that confuses only in half. He squints at the night light—shaped like a peach, pink, plugged low on the wall next to a soldering iron lying dormant. Fuck is he soldiering?
“We don't matter to them. All this cosmic shit, it ain't concerned with our rules. There's no point. No human point. That's the point.”
We want to matter, we want to never see the end of it. Alienation, that's the real horror.
“Fuck, man,” says Angel, and curls in a tighter ball, ready to float deep into his brain. His other foot touches OJ's thigh beneath the blanket. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
“Happy to.”
Angel snorts. OJ finishes the joint. He clears his throat, “In a way,” hears Angel sigh at his touch, “that's better.”
“How come?”
Few things can be called good in a place like theirs, but…
“We had this groom once. Knew his horses. Dude lived through some rough shit. I never pried, though. But when the sky was clear? Yeah, he didn't like that too hot.”
This weather, the groom would say, what kinda foolishness, and he'd mutter on and shuffle about. He'd look down a lot then, avoid looking at it direct.
“Told me the fear was still in him. When you doing a supply run, as long as you don't look up, them missiles ain't gonna catch you out. Stupid, that's what he said, but now I'm thinking.”
“Think he was onto something?”
“Mm hmm. Except we can actually work with this animal.”
“That's fucked up. When you think about it.”
Soon, Angel's breath evens out. Damn. He needs to drag his ass to bed.
It's all there laid out sweet and cozy in front of the couch, clean sheets and a patchy duvet atop the self-inflating camping mattress, one of those thin ones for bivouacking in the mountains and shit. As if this nerd ever goes camping or hiking or canyon scaling for alien footprints, honest to God.
Honest to God, like their mother would say, going on and on about the senile old lady wandering over from the camper van parked near the serpentine dirt road two miles south, honest to God, she'd say, hand on chest, and dear Jesus, Mrs Washington, scaring the living shit out of me with your ghosts-of-the-old-frontier-ass sleep gown and your shiny bonnet in the dead of night.
He needs to go to bed.
But to be in a strange room and attempt to train your mind into accepting the alien geometry of furniture, these angles, the air and all the rest of it.
It's a heavy something. Stuck at the center of him, so unwieldy and coarse, but most of all— full of acid and cold.
Fucking robbed. To be robbed of everything. To be that and to have nothing and to miss everyone— well. He glances at the bedroom door and Em's silence beyond it.
Is dying difficult? Is it hard, to die?
It don't look it. Don't look much of anything except for the hurt.
Within the moment, however stretched and torn up, it might be all about the hurt, and then about the hurting of those that remain who pick at the leftover growths on their soft, yielding insides; nothing but scabs or sores gone hard-skinned twice over.
Needing pumice to stone it well away.
OJ's too aware sometimes. Awareness is one of OJ's definitions.
But to be aware of death, of some sure conclusion awaiting all, is meaningless when it's family. When it's dad. He is immovable and constant. He is infinite. There. He is there.
And when he was there, and OJ was with him also, back then the mind had notions you never fully knew existed, like thinking, now this is mine and this is always. And dad will never die.
Thinking without allowing his hidden lucid self to know that he's thinking it— dad will never die. I will never die. We might just go on.
OJ blinks at the wall. No nickel there.
He's slumped all the way down and to the side, with his cheek squashed by the couch cushion. His hand is wrapped around Angel's ankle.
Angel's whisper cuts through the inside buzz: “You okay?”
“Gonna lie down.”
When OJ settles in his blankets on the floor—nose fast to start itching from the cheap pillow puff, and facial skin feeling like too much oil from polyester—there is a break in the clouds to welcome the moon and get their little box lit blue.
He blinks at the peach and at the sleeping form across.
“OJ, man. Do you need a lullaby or something?”
“Fuck off.”
ii. static
He's in the middle of sticking their names to the walkie-talkies when Angel blasts through the kitchen with a cackling Em in tow.
Hard to tell what kind of issue they're untangling with all the clatter and Angel whisper-shrieking something at her, throwing in a “tell her, OJ, just please fucking tell her,” and then disappearing.
The dust settles, and it's only him and his sister.
She laughs, “Yeah, tell me OJ.”
“What'd you do?”
Em plops in the other chair, body-shoving it next to his with a screech, and, fully satisfied, folds her evil little hands over her stomach.
“Nothing.” She shrugs, still smiling wide. Cat, canary, etcetera. “He's funny.”
“If you say so.”
She gives him The Eye.
He doesn't budge, “You seen to Lucky?”
“Bruh.”
Saying like he's the one who's out of his mind for getting shocked by the lack of precedent. Or too much of it.
“He's been doing well with the dancers,” she adds.
That he has. OJ's not sure if he's picking up on the human urgency or just gets that air flow or what.
Em informs him she's finished with the chute. Good job, he thinks, moving onto the next radio. They still need a couple of more batteries, though, and Angel's been on his ass about the look-out.
Last time, dude got spooked by a stray EMS siren and, like a man possessed, tried to hilariously hide the two of them in the bed of the truck, and then cussed OJ's laughing ass off all the way home, but in a weirdly restrained way, like a well-tempered neighborhood geriatric who's got that 'not in front of the lil uns' consciousness about him and a lot of tweed.
“Almost there,” Em concludes, though he's missed most of her preceding three-act speech. She kicks at his shin. “OJ.”
“Yeah.”
“We feeling good about this?”
We. Meaning you and me, with all the troubles and all the good glue in between.
“I mean,” she pulls out her vape, “are we really?”
And maybe it's crazy, what they're planning to sentence themselves to, and even somewhat sick in ways that force uncomfortable reflections upon you and your real drive, the true force behind it. All that thread-thin reasoning.
But they don't have shit. If not this, they won't have anything. Or maybe it's easier to go on lying like this.
“We'll do our best,” he tells her, and takes the last radio. “Just execute.”
Her mouth forms a frown at the words. Yeah, just do that.
“Lemme do mine,” she plucks the radio out of his hold and smiles at the handle.
Thimble.
Like when she was little and had a handful of 'em on her tiny fingers. Shiny stainless strawberries. Shiny raw shaped Emerald.
Counting pearl-like buttons in an old tin box that mamaw kept in that cupboard under the plastic ivy and the heavy old clock that would clang out lunchtime, deep and metallic, and make the noon feel just as empty, just as stale. Old wood smells like that, and wallpaper.
Em would drop one task and switch to the next curious thing, and OJ would be picking all those buttons off the carpeted expanse, patting from corner to corner, to put them away and close the tin and slide it back on the shelf in the cupboard.
He'd do that and look over the shoulder, and there Em would be again, this time playing with the old checkers board, one of pop's camping sets.
It was a little heavy in your child hands on the account of magnetized squares—silver and off-black and framed in sea-foam green plastic. And the pieces were that same green and silver, each with a magnet at the bottom—you could see it was a tiny cylinder—with a line-work image of a tall ship stamped on the flat metallic top.
Holding them, cool and shaped all weird, seemed to fascinate Em better than the mismatched candy buttons.
She'd press the little magnet chunks together, feel how they repel—an invisible force preventing them from ever fully coming together—and then flip one over and feel the pieces stick in an instant. Ships, silver and green, coming in. Emerald smiling.
Thimble fits her right enough.
“That night, when you looked at Jean Jacket,” Em pauses to blow out the vapor. “What'd you see?”
Nothing. Too much of nothing. He shrugs. “I didn't look for long. Don't fuck with that shit.”
Her eyes focus. And the voice does that thing where it drops to the quality of home, low and safe, “What's that?”
Something. It's time-symmetric. Can't really put words to the entropy.
But something about looking into that deep dark ancient nothing. Not known, impossible to ever know, its maw primordial and the blackness within so completely elemental.
Seeing that makes you forget everything, in a second. It's what gets you numb under the surface layer of skin. It's lead in his temples. Like being at the edge of time. Or looking at the world as it once was.
So, what's that?
“I dunno. Like being afraid of life. Like,” he takes some time to pinpoint it, “forgetting you're a person.”
“Shit.” She inhales deep and fast, doing that funny cartoon-like puff puff puff. “Fuck. Goddamn.” Opens her mouth to draw a thick cloud. “I don't wanna feel like that. Not ever.”
“I know.”
Her bare shoulder brushes his for a moment, not too brief nor overly sentimental.
“Man.” Her smile is sad. “This moment.”
“Mmm?”
She sighs. Smokes some more, then nods and gets up. “You gonna sleep or what?”
“Maybe.”
“Alright, just don't start bitching about your own damn alarm in the morning.”
“I'm not the one who can't get up without a shove up their ass.”
Em slaps his arm with the back of her hand, rings a cool touchpoint through fabric, and struts away. OJ gives it a moment. No need to strain his ears long, though. Somewhere on the second floor, Angel starts yelling.
Alright, he nods to himself. She might have a point this once. It is kinda funny.
iii. sleep
He can tell all three of them are still stuck on the words. All that purple people eater shit tumbling in their heads, stubborn and morbid.
But the living room is warm with color and the vinyl fuzz of Billie's voice.
They'll need to get up early. None of them seem too ready to be alone in the dark, not yet. In a minute, but not yet.
Angel decides to be the first, “What was that all about?”
Em clicks her tongue, saying, “Movie people,” then vapes in silence.
Waiting for fuck knows what. She's scrolling through Instagram to bookmark thirst traps and seascape pictures by the looks of it, then pauses. “Okay.” Clears her throat. “Even in the round of birth and death, from nothingness to nothingness, a mystery here abides, a Something is there for us to know.”
They stare at her. “Em,” Angel chuckles, “what the hell?”
“I know, right?”
Then she engages Angel in a game of let's slap each other with bare feet until one of us gets a tooth knocked out, all of which leaves OJ with a mild ache running behind his eyelids.
“Alright now,” Em groans, standing up, and stretches, “Imma leave you fellas to it. Don't stay up long though! I'm gonna check on you, don't think I won't, cos I will, so none of that hiding with flashlights under your blankets, children.”
OJ flips her off. She flips him back. Angel waves an awkward finger wave, “See ya.”
The pair of them zone out into the night.
Always something of another time, OJ muses, another sense you had of the world, to be held by this room and its near tangerine light; to be touched by the soothing haze of mom's records. Even with the sorrier state that the night attack left the whole house in. Somehow, safety's still found here.
He's not sure how long he glides through the moment until Angel's jitters come to the forefront. Still in the armchair across from the couch, but now with both feet on the floor and fidgeting all over.
OJ studies him for a minute or two. Nothing changes, so he's gotta ask, right?
“Something wrong?”
“Well, um,” Angel rubs his palms, “kinda scared to be alone, to be honest.”
“I get you.”
This seems to help somehow. Angel looks at him for a long time. Shit turns intense after a while. But they keep on watching each other, not really moving but getting deep into something else, and Angel's swallowing over and over like he's drying up inside. He then moves to the edge of the seat with a quiet fuck on the exhale. Louder: “Fuck, OJ.”
“You'll be alright, man.”
“You can't know that.”
There's another swallow, a bit too extreme if you ask him.
OJ tilts his head, “Know something else though.”
“What?”
Really, now? He raises his eyebrows. Angel begins to smile cos it all appears to be gradually dawning on him.
Angel laughs, “You're fucking kidding me. For real?” OJ shrugs, so he goes on, “I thought I was being all low-key— Okay, no need to make that face. Stop laughing, man, come on.”
“Or what? You gonna do something?”
Who's to say is written all over Angel's expressive face which means yeah, for sure. He gets to his feet, still smiling, then crosses the narrow space to climb into OJ's lap. That's something, alright. He's fucking heavy. He's also real sweet about it all, and his thighs feel way too good to grope all over.
“Okay.” OJ waits. “That all?”
“Depends.”
Angel holds onto his shoulders, suddenly quiet, pouring the rest of himself into OJ's hands that never stop moving. They follow the small shifts in Angel's limbs, his back, and back to his legs. Something's shaking there in between. OJ pinches a little at his waist through the shirt.
“Hey. You stressin?”
“Kinda. Not about this. But can we just, like, chill or something.”
He means cuddle. Cuddle and pillow talk and sleep a fitful five hours. OJ rolls his head to the side, watching the door. “Not here.”
“Obviously. I'm not that stressed.”
In the bedroom, the air seems sweeter, not quite sugar but candied anyway, and the light is dim. They don't touch that much, but Angel gets under his arm and hides his feet between OJ's legs. Says his sweatpants are so soft, man, where'd you get those. At a Goodwill, Angel, in twenty twelve. Cool, remember when? In October, it was close to Halloween.
“Shit, man. I never remember shit like that. You remember the shop?”
“Palmdale.”
“Sick.”
“It's normal.”
“For you, maybe.”
They don't talk about the nickel. Angel doesn't stick to him, choosing to hold onto the arm wrapped around his waist, drifting in and out.
OJ thinks that his room's now changed on some structural level. He'd never really had anyone warming up his bed, not in this place. Too private, not for others to invade, but all things shift this close to the storm. When you feel like you're touching the end of all things.
“I'd forget a lot actually,” Angel whispers out of nowhere, “but then I'd remember the weirdest shit. Useless stuff, you know.”
“Not really useless, then.”
“No it was. It is.” He searches for OJ's open hand, to take it into his and trace the callouses in the quiet. “I used to draw a lot. All the time, actually, I mean I wasn't good at it, but it worked for me when my head got stuck. But then I'd stuck doing that too, like I'd forget to eat, I'd forget everything, where I was… but hey, time doesn't exist anyway, you know? It's a human construct, man. And you know how weird it is, that we insist on using it as a dimension cos it's just an indicator of change! And, like, out there, if you're advanced enough species, it could just be part of the landscape for you, like it could be a space cliff for all we know—”
OJ sighs, “Angel…”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, whatever.”
“You can tell me after.”
His reply comes much later: “You really think we'll be fine?”
OJ closes his eyes. “Yeah.” Even though for them, all of them, the future can't really exist. Not today anyway.
iv. baby-o
After, they manage to salvage one of Holst's reels that he's shot on the ridge and not his freaky suicide tape, which thank fuck for that, but at least it's the one that caught the run and the chute.
OJ wants nothing to do with the aftermath, but he's got no choice when it comes to the men in black, as Angel calls them. They wear civvies, though, and look very normal. Mostly white.
There are no NDAs, not this time, but he's relieved that the routine don't change much after the first few weeks. Short news cycle, other witnesses and figureheads. Em out there, doing her bit but shaping it into something that won't damage her too much in the long run. At least he hopes so, hopes she'll be pacing it well.
Angel comes over once or twice a week, but they haven't brought up the thing yet. Not since that night.
OJ's talking to the new groom (well, is a month new?) about picking up the feed when Angel's pretentious Infiniti rolls onto the grounds. He parks the monstrous thing, salutes them both in greeting, and waits for OJ to invite him which OJ does with a barely-there nod.
Customs, they have them now.
They don't stay in the kitchen long because Angel wants to show him the security system update he's been working on, just in case, you know, and so they do the new setup, test it for an hour too long for his liking, and then mercifully get a drink.
Afterwards they stand on the porch with their eyes on the clouds. Sparse and moving slow. OJ leans on the door frame, waiting for the other shoe. He's not sure which shoe or who's supposed to be dropping what.
Angel's talking about his History channel interview. He's only done it once and didn't, doesn't, feel like doing any TV in the future. Twitter's his thing now, but, like, more low-key, you know. I'm waiting for the right balance, watching the ratios.
“The what?”
“Nevermind.”
“Okay.”
Angel takes a step towards him. It's a funny game of shuffling to his goal until OJ has no choice but to turn his head and fully take in the glory of this mysterious mating dance. He takes it in with a good type of feeling. Cos Angel's standing there, buzzing at the edges, and moving his hand to trace at the cuff of OJ's sleeve shirt. Just two fingers tugging at the fabric.
“Mm?” OJ wonders and reaches for that neat space on Angel's neck, the entire span between the ear and shoulder.
Angel sighs, looking blessed, and moves closer, though with a lot of hesitance in his limbs. He's nudging into him a bit, going for something… that's a kiss thing, he's doing a kiss thing. OJ tilts his head to move gently away from it.
Even though he's a little embarrassed, Angel seems to get what it means. He says gotcha, and sorry, and then laughs.
“Sorry.”
OJ touches under his ear. “It's okay.”
“Uh…”
OJ's fingers find a way around Angel's neck. He rubs at the nape and the fine hair there, so Angel follows it, pushing his forehead into OJ's shoulder.
Getting it or not, OJ needs to clarify, “Everywhere else is fine.”
“You mean?…”
“Yeah.”
It's nice that he doesn't check around before he falls into it and noses at OJ's throat. It's a bit cold, going down and over to his shoulder, and it's warm where his mouth is, even through cotton. Then the warmth moves up again, sending shivers both ways.
That's nice, OJ thinks, and gets his focus back to Angel's lips on his neck, not dry in the slightest. Focuses on Angel breathing, taking a whole mouthful.
“Fuck,” Angel tastes and angles his body away, save for hands that are now settled on OJ's waist.
Light touch. Angel's into it like this, and he's getting plenty. It gets way too tactile eventually, neither of them shy but also not in any hurry to do much else— well, until Angel gets tired of trying not to hump his hip.
“Alright, alright, let's go.”
“Going. I'm going.”
They go.
Later, naked and melted and glowing with sweat, cheek pressing into the fold of his arms and body dipped into a relaxed arch, Angel pretends to sleep. The sheet is tangled around his ankles. Angel’s pill speaker (cos of course he’s got a few of them lying about the house at this point) croons something mellow with a beat that hits deep. She’s talking about nothing. It’s a nothing.
OJ doesn't listen to her and doesn't look up from the book. “I know you're awake.”
“Yeah, yeah, genius.”
Angel hip-checks his leg, then stretches a little. Got good lines on him. Leaning against the headboard, OJ closes the book over his lap and watches all of Angel exist in layers, like in a picture, between the magic violet of the room and the orange peel glow of the afternoon.
“So,” Angel mumbles into the crook of his arm, “more sex or should I be going?”
“You feeling like it?”
“I feel like a nap, to be honest.”
“Okay.”
Angel does a small wiggle and squints up at him. “Touch my neck?”
OJ does, and soon goes back to his book while his hand is occupied with the texture of Angel's hair and skin. It's easy to do it like this, and it feels good, too, especially when Angel melts under his petting palm. Something silly but very essential about doing this kind of thing.
And this right here is surely the brain gap Angel told him about once. Forgetting the when and the where and all the little things. Yeah, they must've fallen into that stretchy space.
“So tell me about time then.”
Angel doesn't move, “What?”
“Human construct. Not a dimension. Could be a cliff.”
“Space cliff.”
“Is that right?”
Angel talks about all of that and dimensionality and something about the numerical order of change despite slowly slipping into a doze. OJ's probably doing the same cos he finds this whole thing, this honeyed state, pleasantly safe. Like drawing up a warm silhouette with your body and folding yourself into it. To keep it that way. And to not think or remember, but to sleep into the night.