The evening was hot, the rain-soaked asphalt melting into a humid daze. The further down the road Linus stared, the more dense the shimmer grew. Down the winding asphalt, trees began to collapse in, almost leaning with anticipation, creating a sinister overhang. He knew that they'd eventually engulf the shoulders, leaving only a few feet of grass and rocks, little left for breath. But for now, old houses and a chainlink fence, signs of life and oft-tread worlds, where folk settled, following desire paths.
Above, the sun sat embedded in the clouds, turning their crests a sweetened red. A burning harbinger of the night to come. Until then, the sky seemed perfectly content to quietly smolder.
He walked slowly, taking deep breaths of the warm, soaked air— somewhere between savoring it and ignoring it as best he could. His white button-up's back was unceremoniously soaked with sweat, sleeves rolled to his elbows, his tie loose. He quietly hummed a tune to himself, one he knew well. A comforting familiarity amidst the uncomfortable one.
New steps on the pavement sounded out next to Linus, shoes nearly on the yellow dashes. Click, click, click, click… "What happened to the coat?" the man now walking abreast interrupted, hands in his elegantly-creased chino's pockets. His eyes flicked about Linus' body, as if searching for the ugly green thing Linus adored so much, usually kept on his person.
"Too hot," Linus responded with a sigh, closing his eyes for a second, refusing to look. He ran his hand through his thin, equally-sweaty hair. "Humid as hell, too." He finally broke, eyeing the new, familiar, dreadful man next to him, taking in the purple sweater, the well-kept hair, the smile.
"Doubt Hell's all that humid," he retorted with a smile.
"Shut up, Lorenzen." Linus stared down at the cracking road, his old, worn out leather slip-ons lying in contrast to Lorenzen's dress ones, their color still rich, nearly shining. They'd only just started walking and already he felt annoyance creeping up whenever he spoke, a sudden need to clench his jaw and grind his teeth taking hold.
To his left, the sharp crack of a metal bat connecting sounded out, heavily echoed. Across the road, over a yard of grass and mud, and past an old chainlink fence— metal dull, grass winding about the bottom— a baseball game ran its course. Kids— divided between red and blue— ran in various flurries. Red jerseys sprinted for the cascading ball as blues moved bases, encouraging shouting emanating from the dugouts and bleachers. The massive floodlights overlooking the field swarmed with gnats.
Linus scratched by his chin, covered in a ratty stubble. "Y'know, at one point, I thought I wanted to play baseball," Linus muttered, turning back to the distance ahead of them.
"Mm."
"Played a lotta trash baseball with buddies when I was a kid, so come time I was a teen looking for my place in the world, I thought it might be fun."
"What happened?"
Linus glanced at Lorenzen. "My dad talked me out of it, thankfully. I woulda hated it."
"Thank God for fathers, huh?"
“Suppose I lucked out with mine."
"Surely. How was the dinner, by the way?"
Linus scowled, barely, a corner of his lips pulled back for just a moment. "Shrink. It was good, really good. Been a hot minute since I saw the two of 'em. Felt nice to hug someone."
"As if you're lacking in people you could hug."
"You know I don't like contact like that with people—"
"Except them," Lorenzen finished.
"Except them. But yeah, good. Momma's doing well, Pops too. Couldn't ask for more."
"You tell them about the Library?"
Linus snickered, "No. Still working out of state."
"Technically true."
"Don't patronize me."
"So when will you tell them?"
Linus shrugged. "Dunno. Besides, can't imagine what my poor mother would think if she read what I wrote. But I told my brother, ain't that progress?"
"A year ago."
"What day is today?"
"September third."
"Thanks," Linus said with a sigh. He glanced at his right wrist. It's what people seemed to do in books and movies, but he never wore a watch. "Y'know, after twenty-one, I started having trouble keeping track of how old I was some days."
"Lost that last milestone."
"At least until fifty."
"Well, can you at least remember right now?"
Linus pulled his well-worn calculator out of his left pocket, fingers popping out one by one, hand cycling back to null after five, all while he silently counted out, lips still moving. "Twenty-six. Minus three, plus this year. So…" more fingers, "twenty-four. Maybe twenty-three, two of them are technically halves."
"Same difference, or so I hear."
"Think I'm just gonna call it twenty-three."
The two walked in silence, minutes passing by with the houses on the street, growing more decrepit and distressed the further they went. It still unnerved him. Cicadas sung in the rapidly encroaching trees, a distant bird harmonizing as best it could, some semblance of comfort, nostalgia. Linus wrapped his arms around himself, something akin to an empty embrace, collapsed. Tight.
In the trees, Linus thought he saw them watching. Perpetually staring. He turned away as quick as he could. So long as he didn't look at them, so long as he ignored them, they'd slink back into the forest, even if only for a moment.
Lorenzen broke the interpersonal silence. "Speaking of. How's the writing going?" He'd noticed them too, surely. They were his kin.
Linus took a deep breath. "It's going well enough. Wrote a decent one recently, apparently. People who read it seemed to like it."
"How do you feel about it?"
"I'm proud of it. But I've been wondering if it's a reflection of the crowd, y'know? Like if them liking it is what makes me like it. I feel pretty awful about a whole lot of my stuff sometimes."
"Still on the self-doubt train, I see."
"Had that little breakdown or something a year or so ago." It'd permanently scarred his Library Card, the face on it shifting constantly, reminding him evermore. No one seemed to be able to fix it.
"Right. Thought that ended well enough?"
"Easier to lie and present an ideal. Still haven't reached the summit."
"It still haunt you?"
Linus side-eyed Lorenzen. "Your being here certainly ain't a salve. 'But I am better now. Word of honor: I am better now.'"
Lorenzen lightly smiled. "Breakfast of Champions."
"But I really am better." Linus defended himself.
"Comparatively."
Linus nodded, acquiescing the truth. "Comparatively. Y'know, it bothers me sometimes how I so frequently fail to express myself with my own words."
"Nothing wrong with quotations, idioms."
"Surely."
“So what’s the problem this time around? I know that's not it.”
“Nothing,” Linus weakly hesitated.
“Denial’ll get you nowhere.”
“You know, you pulled me out here, so why bother?”
“You’ve indulged me up till now. We're both here, walking.”
“Just starting to fail to see the point.”
"Talking's good for you. That's mostly what therapy is."
"I dunno if that's true."
"You thought the same thing when the counselor told you that body language makes up— what was it, ninety percent?— of communication. But you know she wasn't wrong."
"Don't like thinking I'm missing out on so much, I guess. I don't like not knowing." Linus quickly backtracked, muscular instinct following admission, ad nauseam, self-flagellation. "Besides, she's all degree'd up about that, you don't know jack."
"You know talking through stuff's good for you. It's good for everyone."
Linus kicked a stray chunk of asphalt laying on the rapidly deteriorating road. It bounced about the road for a few feet, each hit eliciting a satisfying clack!, before bounding off into the grass shoulder. Linus stared at it as they walked by, lingering for a moment after passing, craning his neck. "Y'know, I kinda wish I'd appreciated my brother's soccer games more when I was a kid. He probably woulda liked my support. I know I want his."
"You're digressing."
"Meandering."
"I'm not against going at your pace, I just know when you're avoiding."
"And I appreciate that, you're better than it was." Linus looked to his right, taking a sharp breath in. Panic? Shock? It was hard to tell. Lying completely still despite seemingly leaping out and grabbing his eyes was the burned-down remains of a house he recognized all too well despite its condition, almost on instinct. He thought he could even smell the smoke and feel the heat despite the ashes having been cold for a while. He remembered it being on a small, clear hill with a long driveway. Now it sat in a nook of pathetic trees, right by the road.
"Is that—?" Linus began to ask, stopping and staring at the blackened remains.
"Never noticed it before?" Lorenzen asked.
"I guess not." Curiosity and nostalgia prodded at him. His tongue was dry. "Hold on, heat's getting to me." Stepping off the road, Linus started walking up to the house, Lorenzen close behind him.
The front door was missing, the screen one too. Linus quietly stepped into what had once been the mudroom, or the foyer, or whatever it was supposed to be. He'd never quite figured it out. He stared down the long hallway, past the remains of the livingroom, where a window used to be. The walls were all gone, trees sat where a descent and the neighbor's house should have been. Each step forward shook up the old soot, small disasters at his footfalls.
Through the kitchen, through the dining room— separated only by a counter— past the vague shape of what had once been the large, round table. Into the small room that led to the back porch. Linus could still smell the old tackle boxes. The door out had fallen free of its place in the frame, lying on the partially burned out porch, scarred with scorch marks. He stepped over it, avoiding holes in the wood floor as he made his way to the stairs, quickly leaving the raised porch behind.
Sitting against the house, tucked away in a corner between it and the remains of the porch, Linus reached through ratty bushes and pulled an old hose out. He twisted the freezing metal knob embedded into the brick foundation next to the dirty spool, cool water soon pouring out of the end he held, splashing onto the sooty, dying grass. Linus quietly slurped from the stream, savoring the familiar taste, listening to the windchime hanging from the remains of the porch's framework as a breeze gently rolled through. Suddenly, he felt something rub against his leg, making him jump. When he looked down, he found a fat tabby cat, its belly dragging in the grass.
"Hey Tom-cat," Linus cooed as he knelt down, scratching its back. "Haven't seen you in a while. Abby-cat around here?"
Tom didn't meow, only watched Linus for a moment before scampering off into the trees. Lorenzen walked down the porch stairs.
Linus sighed, wiping the errant hair off his hands. "Always was skittish. Y'know, that's where the ranch's horse pasture was," he said, pointing to the treeline Tom had fled into.
"I know."
"Now it's gone."
"I know."
"I can still smell the paint on the fence, how it peeled and bubbled in the summer." Linus took another drink of water before leaning back down into the shrubbery and closing the faucet, tossing the hose to the side. He quietly sat down in the grass, taking a deep breath.
"You ready now?" Lorenzen asked.
A hound bayed in the distance. Linus looked over to where the sound came from. "I guess."
Lorenzen sat next to him, both crisscross. He watched Linus in silence, waiting.
"Been thinking a lot about my stories. Where they come from, what they say about me," Linus began, avoiding making eye contact with Lorenzen.
"How'd you get there?"
"It's been on my mind for a while, but really got kicked into gear recently. Was talking to a friend and they said something that kinda socked me in the jaw a few days later."
"Which was?"
"'The Linus I talk to and the Linus that writes your stories cannot possibly be one and the same.'"
"Hm."
"I just kinda laughed 'cause, yeah, I can definitely not come across as the kind to write what I do. But, I dunno, it's kinda grown on me, like a tumor. Festers. How can there be such a dichotomy?"
"And you think it starts here?"
"Hell if I know. Can trace a lot back here, why not this too?"
"A lot?"
"Not the greatest place to grow up sometimes. A lotta the foster kids tended to not like the biological kid, big surprise."
"Mm."
"One of my brothers here was my hero when I was a kid. Big, strong guy, really liked me. Went and joined the Marines. I thought he was gonna save the world. Got older and saw the cracks. Didn't treat his wife right, ended up divorcing. I think he was an alcoholic. Might still be. PTSD. Pops told me how before the military, he'd beat kids up just to prove he was strong, that he was a man. Probably why he joined the Marines, had to go kill to prove his manliness.
"Years later, I find myself with a complete draft about some poor fool who joins the military hoping to be a hero, but comes to despise herself and her weapon. Hell, she becomes an alcoholic herself. Start to wonder to myself if I'm trying to reconcile with that brother and my feelings towards him, make some sympathetic, propaganda-guzzling soldier, story chock-full of sadness and pity. 'Cause that's what I feel nowadays towards him: sadness and pity. I hated him for a brief time after the walls fell, but it didn't stick. Of course, it was also how I felt about those wars, but I got stuck on the brother stuff.
"Wonder if other brothers are hiding somewhere. Can't really remember many of them all that well, in and out of my life so frequently.
"But I dunno, that's all just my stupid self-hypothesis. Don't mean much, don't all add up."
"Does it have to?" Lorenzen asked.
Linus finally looked back at Lorenzen. "I'd hope so. You're usually emphatic on making sense."
Silence again. Linus turned away and looked back at the side of the porch, staring between the slats of wood, into the dark space underneath. Spiders, cockroaches, worms. Eyes, too.
Always silence after silence. There'd be more to come, always was.
"Come on, Linus," Lorenzen sighed as he stood up, "let's get back on the road. The sooner we get to making tracks, the sooner we get to where we're going."
The phantom echoes of a tornado siren sounded out, filling Linus with old dread. "Yeah, yeah. Ain't keen on sticking around. Kinda hate it here."
They quickly fled the burned-out wreckage of the house— circumventing it instead— and stepped back onto the road. The road beneath them degraded into gravel, the asphalt ground by some unseen hand. The rocks, pebbles, and dust sat in a heavy black for nearly ten yards before turning to quarry grey in a gradient.
"That dichotomy," Lorenzen said once the quiet between them had begun to rot and smell, "is there a solution?"
Linus shrugged. "Whole point of this ain't it? Finding one?"
"And in order to make progress, we gotta talk it through, you and I. Tell me what you've been thinking."
Linus was silent for a moment, flexing his jaw as he stared off the shoulder of the road. The houses were gone, his old home the last before trees had completely taken over. "Maybe that I'm hiding it from people."
"Hiding what?"
"That I'm a messed up person? I dunno."
"Are you?"
"Definitely got issues, who doesn't? Maybe the writing's just indicative of the kind of person I am, deep inside. Art is expression of the self, ultimately. Maybe even I don't know it yet."
"There's plenty of people who write rougher stuff who're sweethearts."
"And plenty who aren't, I'm sure."
"Two sides to every coin."
"That feels like a simplification."
"Turn of phrase."
"Whatever."
Ahead of them, a railroad ran across the road, the wood ties dark and rotting. As they were about to walk over them, the tracks began to rumble, a horn blaring out as the crossing guards began to lower, lights flashing behind red plastic, forcing them to back off.
"Always when you wanna cross," Linus muttered, kicking at the ground, rocks scattering.
"Such is life," Lorenzen said with a smile, lightly sighing. "Nothing to do now but wait."
"Always when we try to cross," Linus added, scowling.
The train began rushing by, fast enough to cool them with the wind it dragged along, but slow enough for them to briefly take in the old cars. Linus found himself making note of the colors of the metal, his eyes following each car for a second before snapping back to the next. A group of white, a group of red and blue, then silver, black, yellow, pink, and red and yellow. They'd all been faded by sun and time, spotted with graffiti, coated with dust and dirt.
"So, what was the second part of your concern? What you told me back at your old place?" Lorenzen asked, lightly tapping Linus' shoulder with a loose fist, snapping him back to the present.
"Y'know, I've always wanted to tag a train. Just put something on one. Wish I'd tagged the Emma Sansom statue too."
"Linus."
"What?"
"What was the second concern you had?"
"Oh." Linus shoved his hands into his pockets, turning his eyes back to the train as it ran by, clicking along the weary tracks. "That I've been wondering what my characters say about me."
"What do you think?"
Linus grimaced, squinting at the setting sun. "Same difference as the whole dichotomy thing. That I'm a sad person? Maybe that I revel in misery?"
He could barely hear Lorenzen whistle above the train. "Heavy stuff." He only nodded in response. "You think that's true?"
"No. Just something a friend said once. Jokingly."
"Same friend who said you can't be the person who writes your stories?"
"No, another. They've never actually read any of my things."
"Why's that?"
"They don't read or watch 'sad stuff,' basically on principle. We've argued about it before. Their avoidance, not my stories."
"So they called your stories sad?"
"Not exactly, more along the lines of asking 'Why do you only write sad stuff?'"
"And what'd you tell them?"
"That I didn't know why. That it was just what my ideas were."
"Not all of them are sad."
Linus started biting his lip. "Yeah, but when I argued that, they pointed out the ratio. And they weren't wrong, it's dismal."
"Does that bother you?"
"It didn't before, but then they pointed it out, questioned it."
"Then you questioned it."
"Yeah."
The last car whizzed by, leaving the area in a sudden silence as the idle sound of the train chased its master in an echo. There was a ringing in Linus' ears, supplemented by the still-buzzing cicadas. They were always there. He started walking again, leaning down beneath the slowly rising crossing guard, a bit faster than before. Lorenzen was quickly behind him, following Linus' sudden rushed pace.
"So what do you think?" Lorenzen asked as he caught up.
"That I'm enthralled by their stories."
"Why?" Lorenzen pressed.
Linus stopped suddenly and spun on his heel. "I don't know, okay? Why can't it just be as simple as that?" Some poise lost. Earlier and earlier, each and every time.
Lorenzen didn't flinch. They stared at each other for a moment. Lorenzen was completely stonefaced. Linus licked his lips and rapidly blinked, avoiding looking into Lorenzen's eyes, staring at the space just above his nose, between his eyebrows. Eyes wigged him out. Which were you supposed to look at? Why did they shine like that?
"What about your brother, what did he say about them?" Lorenzen asked, still staring, though his face had become more gentle, relaxed.
"He hasn't said anything. I don't know if he's read them. He said he would."
"Mm."
Linus was the first to break as he looked away, turning back to the path ahead, dragging his soles as he slumped forward, hands back in his pockets. "Sometimes I get around to wondering what my characters would think of me. I'm sure they'd hate me."
"Would you talk to them if you could?"
"This is a stupid hypothetical."
"Would you?"
"Probably not, no."
"Because they'd hate you?"
"Because that would mean I'm responsible for their misery. I can't face that. I don't wanna hurt people."
"And then you'd have to answer their inevitable 'Why?', too."
"Which just leads us back to where we already are, so why bother. Been circling this drain for a while now."
"Sometimes it just takes a while."
"Y'know, I've only ever been in one physical fight my whole life. When I was a kid. I cried right after, was so upset I'd done it. Probably during too."
In his periphery, faint glowing, still greatly obscured by the sludgy rays of the sun that crawled downwards. He rubbed his eyes, blinked. Gone.
A small rat scampered across the gravel road in front of Linus, snatching away his attention. He watched as it dashed into a small trail that broke through the treeline on the other side. Had the little thing not run into it, Linus would have been hard-pressed to notice it. It was far from established or official in any way, seemingly a footpath that'd been abandoned, the brush slowly creeping back in on itself, closing the gap. Without much thought, Linus stepped off the gravel and walked towards it, the next willing distraction.
"Linus!" Lorenzen called. "We're not done!"
"I am." Linus stared down the trail, thinking of how he used to dredge through the woods as a kid, take any path he hadn't seen before.
"We're making good pace, let's keep going!"
"I'm sure it's worthwhile," Linus called back before stepping into the brush, taking a deep breath, savoring the smell of the woods, already so present. Pine needles, mulching leaves, wet dirt. He picked a gumball up off the ground and spun it around by its stem before letting it fly, like a sling.
Lorenzen begrudgingly followed.
"Reminds me a lot of when I used to go hunting as a kid," Linus said as he high-stepped through the foliage, keeping his eyes locked tightly onto the faint trail. "Half expecting to stumble into a blind."
"Surely."
"Y'know, there was a time where I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger on a buck."
"That so?"
"Yeah. Told Pops I felt bad about shooting it. Honest truth was that I was just scared of the kick. Never much bothered me, the actual killing. Guess I was afraid he'd think less of me if he knew I was just scared of the recoil."
"Do you think he would have?"
"Definitely not. Just felt like I had a lot to prove, I suppose. I dunno, that was a while ago." A door sat leaning on a tree, Linus staring as he passed it by. It was eerily similar to the door from a house he used to live in, "STAY OUT" written on it with white spraypaint, seemingly fresh, running.
Still thinking about the door, Linus barely noticed he'd broken through the trees and he tripped on a bike's handlebars, separated from the body and stuck into the ground, rusting. His arms came out instinctively, trying to catch himself, palms crashing into the damp grass, narrowly missing a few shards of broken glass.
"You good?" Lorenzen asked, also emerging from the treeline.
"Yeah, yeah," Linus said as he stood up and brushed himself off. Looking around, he found that the entire clearing was littered with junk, the center filled with multiple piles, some reaching above the trees. "Sick."
"It's just a junkyard."
Linus turned to Lorenzen. "You don't think they're kinda cool?"
Lorenzen only shrugged.
"Well I wanna look around." Linus hurried off towards the nearest pile. Near it, a kitchen sink sat on the ground, its metal corroded, stained in places. Despite no longer being connected to any piping, its faucet still dripped. Linus knelt in front of it, his head tilted. "Crazy stuff." He stood up and continued on his way, scanning the ground, taking in all the scattered items. Some of them struck him as familiar. It took him until touching distance of the pile to realize, as he spotted a very fond memory, what it all was.
"I think this is a bunch of old stuff of mine," he said as he picked up an old blue teddy bear, its color faded with time, nose made up of tough, black thread. "Momma had to sew up his nose 'cause I kept gnawing on it," he laughed.
"What?" Lorenzen called out, in some other part of the junkyard.
"Nothing!" Linus gently set the old comfort down before looking around more. It wasn't just old possessions, but memories too, ideas. He wandered around, eyes wide, taking it all in, feet thoughtlessly moving him from pile to pile.
At a smaller heap, he picked up a standless globe of some foreign planet, its continents painted white, oceans a pale, icy blue. He rolled it around in his hands, reading the names of territories he'd once conjured up in excitement, a new frustration rising like bile. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," he muttered to himself before tossing it into the air and kicking it as far away as he could. The pain in his foot was well worth it, watching it soar off into some unseen corner of the junkyard, crashing into other pieces of abandoned miscellanea.
After staring at the pile it'd landed behind, Linus called out to Lorenzen again. "Y'know, found myself a part of a talk a bit back about unfinished art."
"That so?" Lorenzen called back from somewhere else in the junkyard, his echo finding Linus.
"Yeah. Started in part because I was talking about how frustrated I was with a series I'd been working on." Linus picked a small, rotted action figure up from the pile. It was seemingly a lady made up entirely of ice, a fractal where her face should have been. "Ended up throwing it all away after someone there encouraged me to write what I actually enjoyed. And they were right about that."
"But?"
"But they talked a lot about the beauty of unfinished art, how agonizing over what could have been was what made it so good." Linus winded back and threw the action figure as far into the woods as he could.
"And you don't agree?"
"Yes and no. I get where they're coming from, just have a hard time applying it to my stuff."
"That's the self-doubt talking again."
"Look, I already told you my 'getting over it' was a happy ending to cap off a story better. Sue me." Linus stared down into the pile, recognizing more and more of the individual items. "I think it all ended up here," he muttered to himself.
"Well there's a hell of a lotta abandoned art out here," Lorenzen commented.
"Yeah. Kinda makes the heart ache, don't it." Linus walked away from the pile, approaching another. He started sifting through it, looking at old ideas he'd dropped in frustration, confusion, pessimism. Heavy, dirty. Rusting.
"I suppose," Lorenzen said after a moment of thought.
"Not your field, I get it." But it wasn't all old drafts or drawings, ideas otherwise discarded. Memories, interests, passions, dreams. Fears. Rotting, natal, alive and well, and whatever could possibly lay in between. "Hard to call it abandoned, though." Linus moved onto another pile, a compulsion to frankness suffocating the reticence he'd been clutching to. Lorenzen knew what it all was. "Maybe just… in the back. Waiting for someone to come and pick through it."
"That's awfully positive of you."
"I see some things I still like the gist of. Just still don't know what to do with 'em. Someone else should get to trawl through it all, better them than me." He picked a small, framed photograph up off the new pile, the glass broken. It showed him and Lorenzen talking to one another in a nice restaurant, their table lit only by a small oil lamp.
Some junk fell over next to Linus, taking his focus away from the photo. Lorenzen had walked around the pile, knocking some stuff over. "There you are. You satisfied?"
Linus tossed the frame back into the pile. "Not really."
"Look, we should—"
A loud bark cut Lorenzen off, both men jumping in surprise. The sound of scampering and junk being disturbed broke out, followed by more barking. Linus whipped his head around and found that running towards them was a large, black labrador. Without a word, the two booked it, trying their best to avoid tripping over the garbage strewn about. Even after they'd leapt back into the brush, thin, awry branches whipping at their faces, the hound's barking fading into the distance, they kept sprinting until they broke through again and were back on the gravel pathway.
Linus collapsed onto the road and Lorenzen hunched over, leaning on his knees, both trying to catch their breath.
"Was that—?" Lorenzen started.
"Lucy?"
"Yeah, old neighbor's dog."
"Never liked her."
"Justified."
Once they'd both recovered, they started back down the road. The sun had long begun to set, the path forward growing dark. Unfamiliar.
"Have you given it any more thought?" Lorenzen asked, looking at Linus.
"Given what thought?"
"Don't play dumb."
"Not really," Linus admitted. "Kinda started hoping I'd find something in the junkyard that said something or another, but weren't nothing new there."
"I don't think you need to be looking for anything new."
The road beneath them sharply turned to dirt, lacking any of the path's previously smooth transitions. "That so?"
"I think we've come onto some compelling potentials."
Linus shook his head, beginning to chew on his lip again, peeling skin.
"Come on, Linus. Think about it," Lorenzen pressed, walking closer to Linus.
"As if I haven't spent who knows how long thinking about it," Linus spat, speeding up, trying to make some distance between him and Lorenzen.
"Don't you wanna know the why of it?"
"Of course I do!"
"Then think! Think about what we've talked about!"
Linus' lip started bleeding. "I don't think any of them add up to much of anything. The puzzle pieces don't fit perfectly. Pick any one of them and try and slot them in, don't work. We've been down this road how many times now?"
"Why do you insist on it working like a puzzle? You're a human being, Linus. Not everything is one plus one. Not everything makes sense. You can't expect one of them to be the answer, so why not a bit of everything? Why not even just a piece of each."
"I'm sick and tired of trying to solve myself! I just want to understand! Is that so wrong?"
"Maybe there just isn't an answer, Linus."
"Y'know, I thought you were better than the last bastard who jerked me around, but you're just as bad, if not worse. This whole thing is always so confusing, always so convoluted. Why can't things just be simple? Why can't I just leave myself alone?!"
"Do you even want an answer, Linus? How many times have we been down this path?"
"I don't know, I stopped keeping track! I don't even want to be here anymore, you're the one who keeps dragging me out here!"
"Because you're the one who keeps looking for an answer!"
"Don't pin this on me," Linus hissed as he turned around, stepping up to Lorenzen.
"If it's my fault, it's your fault, that's how this works, logically. Think for once in your life you—"
Linus grabbed Lorenzen's sweater at the collar and wrenched him to the side, throwing him to the ground. He wasn't a strong man, but had the advantage of sudden movement and being driven by irrationality. "You're a contradictory, wishy-washy prick, you know that? One second it's 'There's an answer! Think about the possibilities!' then suddenly it's 'Maybe there isn't one answer!' 'Maybe there isn't an answer!'"
Lorenzen's cool had completely slipped alongside Linus', spilled out on the dirt, shattered. "It's because of you, and you know that well. I'm only as good at this as you are. I'm sorry for trying to help, asshole."
Linus dug into his pocket, pulling out a beaten up pack of cigarettes and a small blue lighter.
Lorenzen breathed deep as he picked himself up, glaring at Linus. "Thought you kicked that."
"I'm addicted to a lot of things, I'm beginning to think," Linus muttered as he pulled a cigarette out, walking off the dirt road and onto the raised shoulder, sitting on the rocky grass. He stuck it between his lips and carefully lit it, gently pulling on it to coax it alive, hands shaking. When the smoke finally came, the end shining red, he leaned into the trained response of relaxation, a preemptive of the oncoming nicotine, chemical memory shaking the dust off.
Lorenzen sighed. "You're done, aren't you."
Linus nodded.
"Alright." Lorenzen stared down the road, a frown just barely visible. Disappointment. "We'll reach our destination one day." It almost sounded like assurance. Almost like an iron press, Linus' ribcage caught between.
"Right," Linus muttered, his hands quivering. He stared at the ground, desperate to avoid Lorenzen's eyes.
"See you around, Linus." Lorenzen stepped off the road and walked past Linus, disappearing into the trees behind him.
Linus sat in silence, cigarette limply hanging from his lips. He didn't want it anymore, but couldn't bring himself to snuff it out.
All around him, incandescent notions of eyes sank into the scenery, hiding in the trees, one by one. Stepping forward, leaning from behind trunks, burning through the foliage. Lorenzen was back with his brethren. Somewhere in the group was the one who'd thrown him around only a year ago.
They watched him as he fought back tears of frustration, of anger, confusion. How many times had he walked that path now? How much was still undiscovered, waiting for him to stumble into them, lying in predatory wait? The junkyard, the home, those had been new.
Where did it all end?
The glowing eyes never blinked, only stared. Linus wished they'd all go away, fingers running through his hair, massaging his scalp as he flexed his jaw. In the past, he'd screamed at them. Now he just sat and smoked. Shivered under their gaze.
When the build up became too hard to bear, his chest at the point of bursting, Linus quietly hummed to himself— to the eyes. The sound came out warbled, distorted by the emotions he still tried to hold back. It was a song they all knew.
The eyes watched the strange creature— stranger than when he'd begun twenty-three years ago. They'd seen it all.
And they knew— as sure as the sun would rise come morning— that Linus would be at the head of the road again. That Lorenzen would meet him there in form and shape. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week. But they would, eventually, stand next to one another again as evening settled into night.
And they'd walk.