G.R. Nanda

2200 Blues Chapter 62

Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

The closer Nickel got to the side of the cliff, the better he could see that there were runnels and pathways carved into its side. Though many were worn down and caked with obstructive material, certain parts of the land had been cleared for travelers like himself to walk through. He found his way along a steep, winding path running through the side of the cliff. Walking up it, he lugged his bag of supplies and food that he had been given and made his way, step by step, up the steep pathway. He stopped once his stomach started to rumble with a gnawing hunger, reminding him of the mild stitches of ache leftover in his body from the ordeal with the Death Riders. He was surprised at how relatively mended his body felt. The aches, while an unpleasant surprise, were vastly improved from when he was last conscious during the encounter with the Death Riders. Whatever Rishi had treated him with or fed him—conscious or unconscious—he couldn’t recall. He plopped himself down, sitting against the incline of the sharply curving wall of the dirt and pebble-bound pathway, and dropped his bag of supplies next to him, reaching inside to see what extraordinary food and supplies Rishi had given him.

He rummaged through, finding a bag of wrapped food among other things. Opening it up inside the supply bag, he pulled out a small mushy object wrapped in tin foil. As he pulled it out and began to chew at what revealed itself to be a small sandwich, he took a whiff of the musty scent of the sour material wedged inside the sandwich and the dried, sweet-smelling scent of the bread. It was a stark contrast to the scents of burnt rock, gassy humid steam from below, and the earthy metal scent of the cliff. As he moved the sandwich toward his mouth to take a bite, a cry and a series of footsteps from just above stopped him. Nickel dragged his foot back through the dirt, instinctively moving back to flee, but stopped just short, ceasing the movement of his foot.

“Load coming through,” came a loud voice from above. It was immediately followed by the loud grating of mechanical machinery that sounded like a crane. It whined, a high-pitched sound in the air, followed by the movement of a large rectangular metal arm slowly rising above the cliff face. It was rusted and silvery, lifting itself high into the air. At its top was a large square-shaped container, ringed by a large fence that concealed whatever—if anything—was inside it. Footsteps crunched against the earth in swift motions, interrupting the low whine of the crane.

“Get ‘im up,” a man said.

“Hold on, now,” another said.

“What? It’s already up!”

“There’s someone coming through.”

The voices quieted, and the footsteps ceased. Eventually, the crane stopped moving as well, jerking to a halt in the air, clanging gently to a stop. Nickel stayed still, frozen. His heart pounded as he debated whether or not he was willing to climb out of the hole and talk to these men, ask them for the directions he couldn’t ask the homeless beggar. They sounded like Farrul or Steve, but more lucid than when Nickel had first met Steve and Farrul.

“Over there!” shouted the first man. The footsteps resumed, and other voices joined in the renewed din of conversation.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” shouted a new voice, agitated. “We have a load waiting up on you dipshits—”

“No, not there! Who is that?”

More feet started stamping on the ground.

“For fuck’s sake! We get a visitor coming through every thirty minutes!”

“Visitor’s putting it a little too kindly.”

The crane started moving again.

“No, shut it off! Stop moving!”

“Stop moving? It’s in the air!”

“I prefer the word ‘tourist.’ And this ain’t an amusement park.”

“Ain’t an amusement park? That’s why we got those damn pilgrims to Hedonim coming in every time we manage to get a load up!”

Pilgrims to Hedonim? The Thraíha? Had they gotten here? Nickel felt the urge to look up, step up the last bit of the pathway, and peer over the edge to see who was there. Were they talking about him? Or a Thraíha walking another way toward them? Would they be able to tell the difference between an actual Thraíha and him?

“Then whaddya’ doing? Go and get him! Stop him from getting here! This ain’t an Ether chat! He could fuck up our load.”

“There’s somebody else! Down there coming up the side of the cliff!”

The voices began mixing together in a loud, agitated din.

If a Thraíha was up there, Nickel wanted to see that person. As the voices intermingled in a loud cacophony, Nickel put his sandwich back in his bag and slung it over his back as he continued climbing up the pathway. He slowly slid his fingers along the hard-crusted edge of the runnel rim and raised his head until his eyes could just barely see the men whose voices he’d heard first. They were walking away, as he had expected from their dimming voices. The crane was rolling away with them as well, on dusted track pads that trembled over the bumpy surface of the cliff. In the wake of the complaining workers, there were throngs of people in strange multi-colored clothing. Some groups of people were in uniform colors, others not. Some wore long clothes of dull army green, overalls meant for anonymity and tactical use. Others—large, reflective, and bright. Bulky. Flat. Extravagant. Minimalist. Nickel had encroached upon a strange replica of an underworld city district, an unknown place bustling with strange foreign outfits, strolling through the area that Merrix Depot belonged to, busy and undeterred by one another. Strange blue and green lights washed over the crowd from a distant vantage point Nickel couldn’t see. Many of the people paused, moved around the space where the workers had been, then resumed once the noise of the workers and the cranes faded to a dull sound.

Nickel slowly raised his head even higher, seeing more of what appeared to be a street of moving pedestrians, walking around signs and through terminals of steel entranceways. Had he made it back to civilization as Rishi said? After all this time, had he finally made it?

“Oy, look!” shouted a man from around the bend of the cliff street. “Look! It’s one of ‘em nomads!”

Nickel’s eyes widened, then he squatted back down immediately, letting his feet slide down the dirt of the pathway.

“Did you see his clothes?”

“What’s he doing here?” shouted a woman with a shrill voice. “Is he climbing up the cliff?”

“I haven’t seen one in a long time, but nowhere close here,” the man said.

“Take a look at him!” shouted the woman. Their footsteps neared Nickel, and they walked closer to him at the edge of the runnel.

Panicked, Nickel decided he had to run for it and brace whatever path and people awaited him along the cliff surface and through its terminals. As the footsteps of the man and the woman who had spotted him neared the edge of the cliff, Nickel tugged on the straps of his backpack and dug his fingers into the earth, clawing at the dirt that spilled out from the wall of the runnel, clasping for the top of the runnel edge. He pulled his body up, pulling dirt out of the edge alongside it, and stepped up, heaving himself onto the top, dragging his stomach over the surface before dragging his legs up alongside them.

The man and the woman were wearing strange sunglasses with golden-tinted visors and bright reflective clothing—his green and blue, hers purple and blue. He jumped off before he could see more of them and ran off into the crowd of moving people.

“Hey!” shouted the woman. “Where you going, brat?”

Nickel ignored them and the strange expressions he got from the people around him within the crowd, running around a group of men in large protruding ponchos with bulbous green vessels sticking out from the front of their torsos. He darted around others, accidentally jostling a few to their chagrin, some of whom shouted back at him. He ran through the terminal, bypassing someone who was checking in with a screentube. Running through the opening, he realized that he had run through the wide entrance opened by someone who had checked in. He had run through someone else’s accessed checkpoint.

He ran into an even larger square of more people, darting through and around a kaleidoscope of strange attires and colors. He ducked and darted, moving so quickly to escape the man and the woman that he found himself carried by the sway of the large knots of people moving in the same direction. The experience befuddled him, and he found himself disoriented by being in large crowds for the first time since leaving his hovercraft.

Where is Merrix Depot?

“Excuse me, can you tell me where Merrix Depot is?” Nickel called to a group of men in camo outfits, who ignored him. As they passed him, Nickel saw the audio-visual transmitters embedded into the sides of their temples, shaven and engraved by the circular blue-black metal device implanted into their skulls, filtering the audio-visual cortexes of their brains, rendering Nickel mute.

“Excuse me, sir, can you tell me where—”

“Get lost, kid!” shouted a woman he passed. Soon, there were so many people in the square, carrying Nickel’s footsteps in their currents, that he couldn’t see the boundaries of the street or where it ended. Nickel spun around, trying to re-center himself, get his bearings straight, but found himself endlessly disoriented.

How am I going to get home?

A wave of frenetic travelers, moving as a horde, swept by Nickel, pushing him aside into their ranks of onrushing yellow-robed men. Nickel found himself getting jostled around by the rushing people before he could better make out what they looked like. The yellow robes were glittering, soft, yet carrying gently enameled scales that were smooth to the touch. The robes were open at the neck to the chest in a long V-shape, showing the chests of men of varying complexions, their skin and hair often grazing Nickel.

Their voices were mutters and grunts, exasperated by Nickel, alarmed at his sudden introduction and interruption to the mix. Nickel shouted and tried to move out of the wave of men, pushing at their bodies and trying to run out of the crowd, only to find himself smacking back into other yellow-robed men whose bodies hurtled into him, sending him hurtling through the crowd.

“Get off me!” he screamed, pushing and kicking to no avail. He just kept getting tossed around, back and forth. The voices of the men got louder, more particular. The hard press of the men’s bodies against Nickel continued, an incessant pressing force of flapping robes and skin. The hard and often rough, blubbery skin of their chests skidded across Nickel’s face and his clothing. Often, bristling hair cut across his cheeks or his sides, disappearing as soon as it appeared. Nickel was getting smothered by the pressure of these men, and soon, by their touch. Their voices softened somewhat from agitation to curiosity as they grabbed at him, reached for him, and gently caressed him. The forces around Nickel started to engulf him. He was alarmed initially. But as the forces around him continued, the smothering he received began to take effect on him, causing him to become subdued by them. The men around him included young men, adolescent men around his age. They were caught in a strange trance, and their eyes were slightly bloodshot.

“Hi there,” many of them whispered in his ears. “Hi there. Hi there—” Adding on top of one another like layers upon layers of sonorant, husky voices, rasping with the timbre and baritone of manliness, but with a soft delicacy, a vulnerable invitation opening into a pleasurable ecstasy of embrace and feeling. The hands were no longer forceful but soft and caressing, a massage over his skin that made him feel warm and tingly. The bodies seemed to slow down. A pungent scent of sweet-sourness emanated from the men’s nostrils and open mouths. The smell wafted over Nickel, into and through him. The bodies slowed down, but they were all still moving. Nickel felt like he was being passed through and around the crowd, of his own volition and of others. They whispered in his ears, spreading rumors of a place called Hedonim and a new world where all boundaries would disappear.

Nickel reached out with his hands, caressing the men back. His fingers groped over their torsos, fingering their chest hair and massaging their skin. The scent of wafting minerals coming out of their mouths and nostrils was growing stronger, thicker. As Nickel inhaled the scents, the world became slower, and the people he was with came into sharper focus, even as they continued to walk. Nickel felt calmer every second. Freer than he’d felt in his hovercraft and freer than even when he was with the Thraíha. This wasn’t another vision, at least Nickel thought to himself, but he felt the boundaries closing on him in a way that was calming and introspective. For so much of his life, he had felt the stringent pressure of boundaries closing in on him—of prejudices and norms he’d felt at odds with, getting cut by. Here, he could be free. As the fumes entered his lungs, he felt the pressure of his life take a back seat in his consciousness. A lifting movement took hold of him, causing his head and mind to feel as if they were bobbing up in the air.

“Come with me,” whispered the voices.

“Come with us.”

“Be free of the Ether Wars.”

Nickel’s eyes widened, and for a moment, he felt a pinch of alarm rise through the ocean of calm he was wading through, like an object bobbing to the surface of the waters. What wars were they talking about? Nickel giggled, confused at the pinch of alarm now folding into his calm for a moment. How long had he been outside of the hovercraft? How long had it been? The men swept him away toward a giant altar that loomed over them from the right. Nickel watched the humongous statue emerge out of his drugged state of mind, out of his drug-addled vision to the left.

It was a giant statue of a series of balls, glued at each other’s sides.

“Be free of the Ether Wars,” came a loud baritone voice from audio speakers embedded into the sides of the giant balls. Out of the slight orange haze that covered the balls, Nickel came closer to them, spotting their pink marble statues. “Be free of the wars that plague your heart and soul.”

2200 Blues Chapter 61

This is a re-upload of a previously published chapter that was mistakenly published before Chapter 60 instead of after it.

The sounds of a bustling city emerged to Nickel, but in broken fragments. Of a city in disrepair and abandonment maintaining itself. Coarse voices of maintenance workers appeared from afar, around the rim of the cliff and the Merrix Depot building high above. Clanking machinery echoed from disparate locations around the cliffs and canyons, interrupted or concealed by the bubbling geysers.

Nickel had walked over the land from Rishi’s fireplace, warily looking out for hot springs of water, many of which he had to walk around, keeping a wide perimeter to protect himself out of fear. The land coalesced together the closer he got to the cliff. He had no idea how he would reach above toward the cliff, at least not yet. The clumps of earth folded and stitched together in rising folds ahead of him the further he moved. The lines of people walking across the valley between two rising mounds of rock beyond the Depot’s cliff remained enigmatic, a broken haze. The closer he moved, the more details he could make out—clothes, colors, the occasional facial appearance and marker—but all fleeting, and many hard to distinguish in the ever-luminescent sheen of the steam that coated the earth, especially the farther ahead Nickel could see. He was separated from them by a hot spring of steaming water, among a long stretch of earth that rose and fell in many bumps and rises of rock and dried grass.

It was the grass that confused him the most. The first he had really seen in the Atalantia Canyons since crashing here. He warily, but eagerly, moved toward it, looking for more markers of civilization, of the U.R. He didn’t know where, what country had created Hedonim and the settlements around it, but this area he traversed was the closest he could find to the world he had left behind on his hovercraft. But it was incomplete, stranded in many different locations and situations across the rock, separated by what appeared to be miles of squares of nuclear blast zones.

The closer he walked, the harder it became for him to tell whether or not the land and the apparent city or town—or remnants of one—he was walking through had been ruined by a nuclear power plant accident or a series of fiery hot springs, rupturing the world in water, steam, and heat. What buildings remained appeared to be insulated from the hot springs and their gaseous eruptions. The pinpricks and occasional blobs of buildings appeared broken in clumps, cleaved and shaved, but insulated by withered blocks of walls and granite, set up like blocks or dominoes.

“Excuse me, sir,” croaked a strange old voice.

Nickel whirled around, startled. He jumped back a few feet from a hobbling old man, stooped over, who was walking around a series of chopped-off cinder blocks from around the bend of a cave that was inset into a larger wall of rock.

“Excuse me, don’t mean to bother you, sir,” the man croaked out of dried, chapping lips that stretched wide over his mouth. His dark, seamed face was worn with what looked like burn marks and patches of dried, withered skin or blisters. He was covered in a tattered, stained winter coat and waddled in broken, shuffling steps toward Nickel in long, baggy brown pants. Nickel could barely see the old man’s feet through the long fringes of his pants that dragged against the ground, like he was dragging his feet across the earth. “Don’t mean to bother you, sir,” he repeated, keeping his head stooped, only his kinky gray hair facing Nickel’s eyes.

Nickel clasped the bag of food and supplies he carried on his back from Rishi’s fireplace. He watched the old man, a mixture of sympathy and fear intermingling in him. He was afraid of this stranger trying to hurt him or steal from him, but he also felt slightly ashamed that this was his initial reaction.

“Can you spare some digits, young man, sir?” the old man said, hobbling over to him, raising his head to peer into Nickel’s eyes with his own. His eyes were a glassy gray, his irises barely visible through the film. He was a digi-hit junkie. His eye-film was that of those so addicted to Ether Installations that they bought eye-films to withstand the strain of the screens’ glare. The old man came closer, pulling a money transceiver out of his pocket. “I can pay you back… I-I-I, I just need to buy some food and a blanket to sleep. I haven’t eaten today.”

Nickel watched the man, unnerved by him and the situation he had put himself in. The man watched Nickel with a pleading, dried expression. It was a ritual for him. His expression and his motions seemed ritualistic to Nickel, like he was following motions set forth by habit and desperation, yielding nothing more than the potential for fruit.

Nickel inched backward, afraid of him. After the Death Riders, Nickel was increasingly wary of strangers. The man hovered by for a while, whispering something.

“If not today, then tomorrow for Hedonim… if I can find it,” the old man husked before he hobbled off, turning around and walking back toward the cave and the hobbled pavement of a street that used to exist there.

Nickel watched him disappear, shaken. He suddenly had the desire to ask the man if he knew a way to Hedonim or people who might, but by then it was too late. And Nickel didn’t know if he would have done so anyway.

Nickel watched for him a while after the old homeless man disappeared, not seeing him. He turned around, feeling a greater weight of apprehension, fear, and uncertainty as he continued his trek into this lost city. He was afraid of what others he would meet would expect of him and why—or whether they would be accepting of him. More desperate homeless people Nickel was too desperate himself to be able to help? More thugs? Or people who mistook him for an artificial human? Or suspected him of being one? He had no idea where he was and no idea whether or not the people he met believed in the same eugenicist ideas he’d run into on his U.R. colony.

Oh, how he wished Steve was here with him. A great sadness filled Nickel’s chest, unsure of himself and his whereabouts. If only he hadn’t fought with him. For all his faults, Steve was a nice person who did take care of Nickel when they were together. A large metal structure sticking out of the ground interrupted Nickel’s slow walk, capturing his attention out of the corner of his eye.

Looking up, he saw that it was a lopsided, dilapidated sign sticking out of a mound of dried earth filled with inlets of grass and plant life. The sign was half-buried in the ground, and it looked like grass, dirt, scarce plant life, and mounds of rock had grown around it. The rim of the sign was filled with electronic lights and colors that were dead—just sacs of liquid color held together along the rim with no lights to flash. The sign had words on them, with the last few letters buried, but Nickel could easily make out the whole picture:

THIS WAY TO HEDONIM

Along the bottom of the sign, Nickel could make out a few more words:

Escape and Amusements ©, see each other like never before!

Unnerved, Nickel walked up the rising earth to the side of his path, looking around at the sign, finding nothing more than rust and pocketed holes inlaid into the surface. His heart beat fast, and he jogged down the side of the earth, continuing his walk, breaking his slow strut into a brisk run, toward the side of the cliff where Merrix Depot lay.

Maple Tree

Embalmed and enameled

By a century of fissures,

Snaking tendrils reaching up

To the sky, uprooting the earth

A chainmail of ridges

Encrusted by bark like veins,

Frozen by time,

Contours of tentacles,

Revealed by sun-shine,

Planting “samaras” by the waves of palmakes,

Shaped like maple

For a century at a time,

A nation underfoot,

The city swarming ahead,

Unperturbed the ancient tree speaks,

In silent, sullen whispers of

Rustling leaves, and imaginary

Bulbs, budding with each breath, coming to life

At the touch of the rough-hewn, and

Coursed, tree-bark, racing to the sky

2200 Blues Chapter 60

Nickel stared up at a wide open space. His eyes closed again. Red. Blue. A sun. He saw them wide open before his eyes, splayed out like clumps of cotton candy smushed together in a trash can after a carnival.

But now his eyes were closed. He was livid, waiting for someone to say something to him.

Instead, he only heard a soft, gentle smoldering—unrelenting, undisturbed. It was so soft, it didn’t seem to withhold the air that was gently crackling near him.

Nickel gently groaned, turning over to the side, his eyes opening a crack before he closed them again. He sighed, feeling his chest heave like it was relieving a stitch. With every inhale and exhale, his chest rose and fell, loosening the knot of weight inside it.

Oracle. Where was she? Was it her pot of stew that he could hear? What time was it? Were the Thraíha back from their hunting yet? It was too soon in the day to be cooking stew—unless it was the Oracle’s for another acht-chi meditation.

Nickel breathed sharply again, inhaling deeply, smelling embers like none he’d ever interacted with before. He exhaled sharply, opening his eyes, embracing the release. Opposite him, opposite the fire, was Rishi, standing as still as a tree, observing the long, shocking white flames in a still trance. Nickel was far away from the Thraíha, but he was also far away from Steve and Farrul. How far away from Hedonim?

He wanted to leave the canyons. He was now in a new part of the canyons. The rock expanding around him was flatter than what he’d experienced before. The fog was lighter and more distant, a shroud on the horizon encircling the rock basin they were in. The rock below the fire was smoother, but of an encrusted pale-brown surface. It expanded in rings, growing into encrusted circlets of peach and pink and tans. Nickel closed his eyes again, shifting his weight. Blankets slid over him.

He craned his neck and opened his eyes again, looking at Rishi.

“Where am I?” Nickel croaked.

The fire crackled, and Rishi continued looking into its flames. He slowly craned his neck to look at Nickel.

“You are where you were seeking, a place closer to civilization,” Rishi muttered, still standing still over the fire.

“What?” Nickel exclaimed, getting up from the ground. The stretch of bandages over his limbs alerted him to their presence. He slipped out of the blankets covering him, looking down at his body. The bandages were expertly wrapped over his limbs, protecting the areas of injury.

“Slow down,” Rishi muttered. “You’ve been gashed across your right arm, and any sharp, sudden movements could slow the healing process.”

Nickel scoffed in exasperation, looking at his right arm and remaining seated up. He opened his mouth to the new scenery before him. The land looked like the canyons of Atalantia where Nickel had crashed and met the Thraíha, but the fog was lessened and farther away in the distance, wrapping around rising cliffs, grazing the edges of the horizon. Inward, the land was flatter, with clumps of dried earth and multicolored granite rock, all stitched together in rising formations, intersected by pockets of rising steam clouding into the sky—a warm yellow ochre haze, colored by the molding of the horizon’s orange fog and a pale sunlight.

“Civilization?” Nickel scoffed, rubbing his face with his left hand. “This isn’t civilization.”

“There’s a depot station just around the bend,” Rishi said, motioning behind him.

“Wh-where?” Nickel exclaimed, shaking his head in frustration.

“Just around the bend of the first cliff closest to us,” Rishi said. Nickel watched Rishi’s hand point toward the nearest rise in rock elevation behind him, where the protrusions of the granite folded across the earth, growing to an encrusted fold so high that it formed a steep cliff, rising like a city building.

In the haze of the steam was a dark building over the surface of the cliff, almost unnoticed, mistaken for another boulder in the landscape.

Civilization? That wouldn’t take Nickel home. This wasn’t Hedonim; the city was nowhere to be seen on the horizon.

“Where am I?” Nickel said, turning around swiftly, looking for more buildings across the land and seeing none.

“You are where you have been seeking,” Rishi said.

Nickel looked at him, about to say something, then scoffed again.

“Why did you help me?” Nickel asked. “Who are you, Rishi?”

“I am where all Rishi have been and gone,” Rishi said, smiling gently and looking into the fire. “I travel the forgotten lands, bringing harmony to the nature of things.”

His eyes suddenly turned stony, as if he was looking somewhere Nickel couldn’t, beyond the flames he was focused on. Rishi grunted and grabbed a long wooden stick, pushing the coals at the bottom of the fire. The flames sputtered, crackling sparks at the bottom and elongating above. “You’re lucky you found the Thraíha, or else I probably would not have found you.”

“And the Death Riders would have,” Nickel muttered, sighing a shaky breath. Voices came from afar, close to the cliffside he was looking at. “Well, can you at least take me to Hedonim?” Nickel asked, looking up at Rishi.

“I take people nowhere,” Rishi said.

“You took me here,” Nickel said, scratching his head. “You brought me here.”

“I brought you here out of no other accord than my goodwill, boy,” Rishi said, poking the embers of the fire again. “I rescued you to harmonize the lands. That is the purpose of a Rishi.”

Nickel waited for more, but hearing none, sighed. He wanted to stand up but felt confused, looking around at the alien landscape. He was still unsure of where to go. This man would give him no further clues, but Nickel couldn’t have been more confused about where he lay in the order of his life. He didn’t know how he would return to civilization if he did. Which is why Hedonim was on his mind all this time. But the path to Hedonim was proving itself to be more difficult, dangerous, and confusing than he had wanted it to be—or had thought it to be in the first place.

Nickel sighed, looking down at his lap. His silence was interrupted by a loud clanging of tools from far away. He looked up, seeing a large crane-like vehicle moving around over the cliff high ahead. It bumped and clanged around the rock and earth before it until it bumped into a geyser, which showered it with an uproar of steam that clouded it completely. A line of moving figures diverted his attention to the far right. They were far ahead of the cliff, toward the rising mountains of the North—a line of people walking across the ground toward the right end of the city. Now that Nickel paid more attention, more people emerged into view, small vehicles and flashing lights interspersed around the landscape. This was a far less desolate place than Nickel had first imagined. But that wasn’t saying much for Atalantia.

2200 Blues Chapter 59

Nickel shuddered violently as Rishi approached him. Nickel had stopped moving, stopped walking toward Rishi, letting the apparition of the man move toward him. He was suddenly distrustful. He didn’t know if he wanted to meet with this new stranger anymore. He was done with strangers. They’d brought him to this place, to being kidnapped and dragged by the Death Riders. In that moment, Nickel decided that he was finished with Atalantia. He would leave for Hedonim as soon as he could, whether or not this man could help him.

“Stay still,” Rishi said, now even closer to Nickel, close enough that he could see his features in greater definition. As the dust settled and he neared Nickel, the man looked more worn and wearied, slowly losing the vigor of the visage of the strong warrior he had maintained when he was summoning his powers.

Nickel began breathing heavily, faster than before. His heartbeat had been accelerating and slowing with every new turn he’d been taken on. He was tired of the constant metronome shifting that he had to deal with.

“Can you hear me?” Rishi asked.

Nickel’s breathing became even more frantic, and he began making loud wheezing noises involuntarily. His vision doubled into blurriness, and his chest flared with a painful constriction like none he’d ever felt before. His whole body went slack in the span of an eye-blink, the sting of the earth falling into him emanating over his face. But it was soon eclipsed by the feeling of fire lacing his whole body.

“Nickel!” Rishi called, though his voice felt like an echo, and his running footsteps that followed like the ticking of a clock that was fading away, about to die like an electronic battery. Nickel’s mind was the battery. It went blank. He couldn’t perceive anything else except for the flaring pain all over him. His own hyperventilating became too loud for him to hear clearly before all gave way to darkness.

“Come for me, Father Hawk,” Nickel thought, the thought clearer than anything else that he could hear around him. It was so clear that it sounded like a voice speaking in his head. “Give me your strength. Bless me with the aid of the Huntsman as he aided you on your journey.”

Everything blacked out.

“Show me the wisdom of the stars.”

In the darkness, Nickel saw the pinpricks of many stars upon stars glow to life and coalesce into a ghostly blue man with a flowing white beard, rippling muscles, and a bow and arrow. He grabbed at a star, and it dragged down, turning into a shooting star, clasping it to his bow and arrow. He strung it back and let loose, letting the universe explode into light, all the stars following the shooting star from his bow and arrow, into a blinding flash of light.

2200 Blues Chapter 58: Part Two

The footsteps grew louder, clanking against the metal surface Nickel ran across. Two large poles confronted Nickel, staggering his run. He turned around, watching the two Death Riders clamber clunkily over the winding surface. Dust rose in a flickering wave over the land below and behind, where Rishi was fighting the rest of the Death Riders.

Nickel whirled around, ducking between the poles and running past their intersection. He found himself on a new platform, hurtling to a stop, nearly falling forward from his momentum but wobbling backward on his feet to steady himself. He was bordered by a crooked edge with large gaps and spaces, irregular and appearing difficult to walk on. Large, crooked, blade-like protrusions stuck out at the ends of the border, protruding outward toward the inner parts of the platform, up in the air, and at various angles between them. Nickel felt that if he moved too far, he would impale himself on any of these susurrated protrusions.

But the clambering of the Death Riders behind him, alongside their jangling armor, propelled him to act. He quickly darted a few feet to the nearest protruding edge, bringing his tied fists down to cut the ropes binding him. He sawed quickly, finding that the rope withered into many loose fibers upon contact in four strokes.

The Death Riders clambered onto the platform just as Nickel’s fists were freed. The blade-like protrusion on the roof fell apart, crashing to the ground. Nickel jerked his feet forward, finding himself facing a Death Rider on the platform, followed by another.

The spear in the Death Rider’s hand came down, but fear and Thraíha instincts took over. Nickel ducked and slid to the side, pulling down on the shaft of the spear before the Death Rider could raise it. As the second Death Rider came down with a fist to strike, Nickel grabbed at the fallen cone on the ground and swung it at his leg. The Death Rider’s knees buckled, and he screamed, reaching for his knee.

Nickel ducked again as the first Death Rider’s grip on his spear propelled downward toward him. Nickel scrambled back a few steps. As the spear came swinging again, he sidestepped, remembering his training from the Thraíha. He darted right and let the Death Rider swing down, then stepped left, grabbing the spear and thrusting the rear end toward his attacker.

The Death Rider swatted at Nickel with his arm, careening into Nickel’s cheek, but Nickel was ready, slipping under the Death Rider’s legs, the nimble movements of Thraíha hunting patterns returning to him.

He never got to use them on a hunt—not in the way the Thraíha had intended. He did get to use them in a hunt, but this time, he was the one being hunted.

Nickel used the opportunity of the Death Rider’s imbalance and vertigo to scramble forward, disappearing behind them once again. He darted off the platform, lurching to steer clear of the bordering protrusions. He ran down, his chest cramping with exertion and stress, despite the endless supply of adrenaline coursing through him like a wheezer.

Nickel dashed madly, searching for a place to hide. He had to run first—run before the Thraíha could come to his aid. Except there were no Thraíha to come to his aid.

The Death Riders’ footsteps soon crunched the ground behind him anyway. Nickel turned around to see the Death Rider he had befuddled now surging ahead, gaining ground on him. And somehow, even the Death Rider Nickel had wounded was trailing behind, limping slightly but advancing in heavy, aggressive stomps—a boar of the canyons, galloping after Nickel, practically charging like a warhorse despite his gaping injury.

Nickel gasped and turned forward again, the painful burning in his legs suddenly coming into focus as his demise became apparent.

Still, he ran, despite the growing awareness of his stitching muscles and burning body, wanting to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. He would run as far as he could, as long as he could, to slow his demise for as long as he could.

Charred walls rose around him, siphoning into a structure that caved inward, dark and grotesque. This place was nothing like the Thraíha settlement at the abandoned nuclear power plant—expansive, its skeletal features eroded by generations of care, adornment, and spiritual attention to the land.

This place, the Death Riders’ hideout, was a grotesque conflagration of metal and steel, twisted—not just as the remnant of a nuclear fallout, but stitched together into a hideous architecture, a filthy and corrosive conglomeration of scavenged metal objects, fused into a den of horrors.

As Nickel ran deeper and deeper into the concave of the walls, deeper into a corner, he felt that this place was designed to horrify him, to corrode his soul.

As he ran, he almost didn’t notice the loud barrage of dust and rock crashing against the land outside.

The alarmed cries of fallen men were a distant din, muffled and saturated into the winds whistling through the canyons of Atalanta—ever present, a fundamental feature of the world.

“We’ve got you now,” rasped the Death Rider immediately behind Nickel.

Nickel wanted to keep running, but his body collapsed against the walls, sending him down to the ground.

A loud crack erupted from far off, rumbling through the earth.

Nickel just barely saw the Death Rider behind him whirl around in surprise before Nickel collapsed inward, slumping against the corner. He felt the corroded bumps and rough surfaces of the metal scrape against his skin.

“It’s him!” hissed one of the Death Riders, nearly whispering.

Nickel couldn’t see him through his hands covering his face, through his head buried in his lap.

He curled into a ball, wrapping his arms around his legs, shivering.

He wanted to stave off the pain, brace for the blows that were sure to come, the spikes tearing into his flesh bit by bit. By curling up, he hoped they would be quick, that they would disappear, or that the exterior of his body would bear the brunt of the pain.

The blows didn’t come—at least not as quickly as Nickel had anticipated.

“No, it isn’t!” barked a Death Rider from behind.

Footsteps moved away from Nickel.

“Don’t let the boy get away!” the voice commanded after a pause, now farther from Nickel.

Nickel opened his eyes a crack, lifting his head just barely above his knees.

The howling wind grew louder, but it sounded strange—unlike the normal winds of the canyons, long and eternal across the depths.

It roared like an ocean wave, rushing down toward the recess of metal Nickel had been cornered in.

Nickel lifted his head higher.

A cloud of dust and rock surged toward him and the Death Riders, trailing through the halls of twisted metal like a phantom of the canyons. Tiny cyclones spun outward from a wave of dust and rock that rumbled behind the structure, billowing into the channels of twisted metal Nickel and his pursuers had run into.

Suddenly, the light shifted, and a gaping darkness emerged from the sky.

The sun glowed a bright white, its normal color fading, revealing the cosmos behind—just like the last time Nickel had seen Rishi channel the elements of the atmosphere before the Thraíha guardsmen.

Before the Death Riders could react, the trails of dust and rock shot out like torpedoes, wrapping around them, flinging them back through the metal channels they had come through, slamming them against the surfaces. They yelped and screamed in pain and horror before the trails funneled them out of the metal architecture entirely.

Nickel slowly stood, his wide eyes fixed on the scene before him.

He stood still at the corner where he had been curled up.

As he slowly walked forward, he saw the wave of dust and rock settling, dissipating.

And under the dimming canvas of the black sky and white sun, as the fog rose to fill the air, stood the silhouette of Rishi, slowly walking toward him, his beard and robes flowing.

O L E D

2200 Blues: Major Update for the New Year

Hello! Here we are, five years and 104 blog posts later! Last week, I finally reached the end of the first draft of 2200 Blues. The whole draft is 161,988 words, typical for an epic length novel in the science fiction/fantasy genres. I’ve handwritten the last chapters, which are far ahead of what is published on my blog. I’ve published the first part of Chapter 58, while I ended at around Chapter 78 (I’ve lost track of the exact order since I omitted a previous Chapter 58 from publication).

This has been a major milestone and marks the first completion of a draft of 2200 Blues. This is officially the first novel I have written. I’ve had this story in my system for years (since the fall of 2019), and I’ve finally reached the end. From the age of 15 to 21, even with a nearly two-year break from this project, 2200 Blues has carried me through a formative writing journey.

I will be pausing the regular weekly publication of 2200 Blues chapters for some time, as I need to take a break from this story before typing up my final handwritten chapters.

However, I would love to thank all of you in my small but loyal audience who have braved the bogged-down, murky, and rambling canyons and far reaches of my early draft. What you’ve seen in my published chapters has been edited mainly for grammar and clarity, without any substantial streamlining. It’s been a long and significant investment for those of you who have committed to reading every single chapter I’ve published.

Firstly, I want to thank Jennifer Boorman, who has been my biggest writing mentor. She took great interest in 2200 Blues back when it had just begun and has provided immense encouragement and constructive feedback from the start. Your mentorship during COVID was an amazing source of meaningful social connection and growth. Most of what I have learned about the mechanics of writing a scene, action, and character interactions has come from our one-on-one feedback loop with each chapter I wrote. I am incredibly lucky to have had a reader and mentor like you in my life, especially at such a young age for me. Your compassion, sharp attention to detail, encouragement, and engagement in my story have been an illuminating and wonderful part of my life.

Secondly, I want to thank the WordPress blogger who goes by the name DirtySciFiBuddha. You’ve been pressing “like” on every single one of my chapter posts all the way back to COVID, when I first started the blog at the age of 16. I appreciate your investment in my story. I encourage everyone to check out his writings on his blog—he has his own novels available for purchase on Amazon. Also, Kent, I’d love it if you left a comment on this post! I’d love to finally hear from my longest and most loyal reader!

The tiny group of regular readers has expanded since I began engaging with the arts scene in Gloucester, Massachusetts, this past year. I want to thank Bing McGilvray for reading all the chapters I’ve posted since resuming publication at the start of this year and for putting me on the radar of other interested Gloucester creatives who’ve joined the readership. Your comments and feedback have been an invaluable source of motivation for me. Check out Bing’s works in the Cape Ann Cosmos, a publication he helps run. Here’s a Cosmos piece about Bing as an artist and a fascinating and witty Cosmos piece he wrote about AI. From our lengthy conversations, I can tell you he has a wonderfully creative and perceptive mind.

Fourthly, I want to send a big thank-you to ANYONE who has read my work on my blog and/or offered me feedback and encouragement. Anyone who has perused my blog has given me motivation. I want to thank Eve Kerrigan and Maryann Ullman, my first creative writing teachers in high school, who provided immense inspiration and practice that got my wheels turning fast enough to roar into the accidental beginnings of 2200 Blues with full confidence. You both gave useful feedback on my early writings and were the first test audience for the name 2200 Blues. I greatly appreciate your contributions to my process and for facilitating spaces at school for me to work on this novel, including Maryann letting me focus on 2200 Blues for an entire trimester-length class. To anyone who has chosen to participate in the readership of what is a very intimidatingly long and winding first draft, thank you.

Lastly, I want to give a big thank-you to Reverend Richard Emmanuel of the experimental church in Gloucester, Massachusetts, for his spiritual musings and the conversations we’ve shared this past year as I got to know him. Your investment in me as a fellow human being on the “walkabout of life,” as you would say, and as a creative, has been invaluable to my relationship with art and the human experience. Together, we’ve explored science fiction, the narrative act, consciousness and the human condition—an exploration that seeped into 2200 Blues as I resumed work on it this past year. I am so grateful to have known you and to call you a friend. May you rest in peace.

What an incredible journey and a final wrap to the year 2024! 2200 Blues has seen me through thick and thin—navigating life and high school during the pandemic, readjusting from post-COVID maladjustment—it has been the lifeline I clung to in order to find purpose, stay on track, or get off the wrong track and onto the right one. Being able to share my work online has been tremendously valuable to me as a writer. It’s gotten me comfortable with sharing my work and exposed me to the vulnerabilities of showcasing incomplete and flawed work. Thus, I’ve become very comfortable seeing through and finishing incomplete and flawed work—the only way to bring creativity to fruition.

Phew! That was a lot, and the list of people to thank could go on endlessly. No creation manifests from a vacuum. The truly hard work for 2200 Blues will commence when I return to the project, with many more drafts to come—surely much harder and more arduous than the first. However, a primary project of this blog was to support the completion of my first novel draft. It’s surreal and indescribably fulfilling to have accomplished that.

A second primary project has been fulfilled by all of you reading this blog post and many more: the sharing and engagement of a story. Storytelling is a cycle, moving from the outside world through the creative act, back into the outside world, and right back into the creative act. Life itself is a creative act, influenced by and influencing many more. The storytelling process and phenomenon is never truly brought to fruition until the story has been shared, only for it to begin again, in countless individuals.

During this weird science fiction story we call the 2020s, you have all helped me to tell my own.

Writing this blog post has been incredibly humbling, enabling me to reflect on just how fortunate I’ve been to engage with and receive support from so many people in so many meaningful ways. You have all made this writer.

The last chapters of 2200 Blues will eventually go up here on the blog, but until then, you can expect different works.

Here’s to 2025! Happy New Year! 🎉 🚀 ✨

Early concept art for the lower level of Nickel’s American Eagle hovercraft that I doodled when I was 16

2200 Blues Chapter 58: Part One

Nickel was tossed aside in the tumult of the fight. Tipped over alongside the cot he was tied to, the noise of the frenzied battle took over around him, partly muffled by the surface of the cot sticking up on one side in the air.

The Death Riders screamed into battle with Rishi. Their cries turned desperate and flailing. A storm of swords clanged against unseen surfaces. The whirling of rock and earth tossed into the air rained down like crumbling sand, gushing from above.

Nickel groaned, trying to free himself from his bonds. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to bring the calm he had found with the Oracle before. Instead, he found little to distract him from the stabbing unease and fear percolating in his chest. He grunted in exasperation, opening his eyes again.

When he did, he jerked his head to the side, writhing. The blindfold slid an inch off his face, slipping upward. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted an appendage sticking out of a frame embedded into the earth.

He was certainly far from home—the Thraíha. He would have to reckon later with the fact that he now thought of the Thraíha as home.

“Find him!” roared the voice of the Death Rider in charge.

Nickel froze, lying limp against the ground, letting his head fall slack.

“The Rishi is here somewhere!” the voice shrieked. “Get up!”

Angry footsteps sounded amidst the tossing and turning of the Death Riders, rattling their chains against each other and the ground. Nickel started squirming again, writhing on the ground and butting his head through the dirt to reach the metal appendage sticking up in the air.

“Now! Or I’ll feed you to the Motherboard! Keep swinging your spikes—he’ll reappear into them!”

Nickel inched forward desperately, dragging his head against the ground and shimmying his legs across the earth. The blindfold loosened from his head as he moved. The squirming surrendered to the earth as a welt of cuts on his cheek started to sting with warmth. Nickel winced.

A string of screams pierced the air, and a series of toppling Death Riders fell to the ground. Shouts of alarm followed, and Nickel decided to keep moving amidst the chaos. He could now see better, the blindfold only covering the top half of his left eye, with the cloth skewed to the side, covering a little more than half of his right eye. The warmth of his right cheek grew hotter, so he tipped his head to the left, scraping the left side of his temple against the ground instead of his cheek.

He made it to the metal hook protruding from the ground and bucked his head over it, hovering slightly, his nose just above the hook. He attempted to position the edge of his blindfold over the hook so it would catch under the cloth and over his skin, removing the blindfold entirely.

His head shivered over the hook, shuddering violently with effort. It took the stomping of the Death Riders nearing him for him to gradually, but swiftly, lower his head so the hook could enter the narrow space between the bridge of his nose and the cloth of the blindfold.

A loud burst of force erupted from the earth, sending rubble crashing to the ground and more Death Riders screaming.

The edge of the hook drew a sharp gash over the skin of Nickel’s nose, causing him to wince even more, squeezing his eyes shut. The tumult became a muffled cacophony around him, and Nickel tried lifting his head back to avoid the sharp edge of the hook, only causing the blindfold to tug at his face, wedging the hook slightly forward. Nickel immediately stopped moving, not wanting to drive the hook deeper into his skin.

“Hey!” barked a Death Rider. “It looks like the cub’s loose!”

A series of sharp footsteps sounded against the earth, closing in on Nickel. His heart seemed to stop and leap out of his chest at the same time.

“Get him! How’d he get out?” the voice snarled as the footsteps drew nearer. “He’s raw meat. Gnash him—”

“With a spike?” asked another Death Rider.

“Yes!” barked the first. “Don’t let him on his feet—we’re already at the Motherboard. As long as they see him, it doesn’t matter if he’s dead or alive.”

Nickel immediately drove his head down, letting the edge of the hook cut into his forehead, but the blindfold slipped off completely. The fiery world of grotesque, skeletal metal structures arose around him as his vision cleared.

Gasping, he tried standing, remembering that his hands and feet were tied. He rolled over, bending his body and shifting his legs back to scoot them nearer to the hook. He lifted his feet together into the air, over the hook, and pushed them far to the sides. He grunted and brought his feet down, only chafing the rope binding them slightly. The nail was just in between the rope and in the middle of his two feet. He was now bound, not only to the rope tied around his feet, but also to the hook sticking out of the ground.

The Death Riders stomping their way to Nickel roared with venom now that he was more in their field of vision. Their torsos were visible over the tipped-over cot, marching together toward Nickel. Nickel reached his feet, pushing them against the rope. He shook his feet back and forth, driving the binding rope against the edge of the metal hook. He dug his heels into the ground, rocking his feet back and forth, withering the fibers and strands of the rope away.

The Death Riders stormed around the cot toward Nickel. Nickel’s limbs moved before his mind did, his legs striking out against the earth. He slid his left foot across the ground, driving his soles over and through the gravel. He spasmed, trying to get his body off the ground, rolling over and onto his side.

He started up as the first Death Rider lunged for him, tripping over the hook as Nickel struggled to remove his feet from the bindings of the rope. His sudden rolling over and the Death Rider’s momentum caused the attacker to fall over himself, landing where Nickel had been lying. He reached for Nickel’s feet, shifting his weight as he fell forward.

The heel of Nickel’s left foot grazed his chest as Nickel staggered away, holding his bound hands out behind him. The Death Rider let out a high-pitched wailing scream, interrupting Nickel’s escape. Turning around, he saw the Death Rider writhing, face-down on the ground. In trying to reach for Nickel’s feet, he had impaled his arm on the hook, most of which was buried in the flesh of his arm.

Three other Death Riders ran past their fallen comrade, running after Nickel. Nickel whirled around, running through the arrays of metal workings splayed out on the ground in front of him. Strange glowing objects were embedded into the structure of the metal. Nickel barely paid them any mind as he ran past them, weaving through the open ports laid into the labyrinthine structure hulking around him.

“Come back here!” roared a Death Rider, his voice moving in and out of the noise of the tumult.

Nickel kept running, nearly tripping over the protrusions sticking out of the labyrinthine metal structure. The noises of the Death Riders fighting Rishi and the few chasing Nickel rose and fell like waves crashing onto a shore, roaring onto the sands and dissolving, retreating before surging into another crashing wave.

Nickel ran and ran, knowing the Death Riders behind him were in close pursuit, gradually closing the distance between them. Nickel could imagine running forever, constantly on the move, running as far as he could and disappearing from everywhere else and everyone else in these canyons. To disappear completely into the depths of Atalanta, never to be seen again.

The Thraíha had taught him enough. He could hunt on his own, maybe make a bow and spear out of the woodlands their hunters traveled to but which had always remained unseen to Nickel—places he had never ventured to.

He had gotten himself into the hellhole of Atalanta by letting his hovercraft drift aimlessly through the atmosphere while he mindlessly consumed endless entertainment on the Eagle’s screens. Now he was here, having undergone immense stress, learned a better way of seeing things from a foreign culture, only to find himself running away from the most terrifying experience of his life. If only he could remove the rope bindings chafing at his wrists and leave the Death Riders behind.

A loud jangling of chains jolted him out of the muffled blur of tumultuous fighting. Nickel winced, anticipating the strike of the spiked ball as he jolted to the side, staggering as he whirled around, just in time to see the weapon hurtling toward his shoulder.

He spun away in a scattered smattering of footsteps, dodging the strike and slithering out of its path. Nickel had become more nimble and athletic since living with the Thraíha and training in their ways, but he didn’t know if his training would be enough to out-run the marauding Death Rider in front of him. The attacker turned to face Nickel, lurching to his feet and dragging his weapon away.

The weapon clanged against the arm of the metal structure it struck instead of Nickel’s shoulder. The Death Rider yanked at his weapon, grunting and lurching backward.

As he continued to pull at it with both arms this time, heaving even harder to dislodge the spiked metal ball, his back was now fully turned to Nickel. Nickel spun away, running from him, moving back in the direction he had come from but angling to find a better vantage point, away from the fighting Death Riders and especially from those chasing after him.

He spotted the rest of the pursuing Death Riders coming from his far right, staring and moving, confused, toward the Death Rider still trying to pull his weapon free from the metal structure.

Nickel darted into a narrow recess that climbed upward. He was soon followed by the footsteps of the Death Riders searching for their comrade. Nickel whirled around, finding that two of the Death Riders were pursuing him while two stayed behind to help their comrade free his weapon.

Short Story – Woodland’s Heart

Please leave a comment for feedback! What you liked or didn’t like is greatly appreciated.

Out of the whole campsite, it was the log cabin that I hated the most. It reminded me of the reason I was at the campsite in the first place, to do the terrible work my dad wanted me to do. He’d got me like a fish on a hook with promises of— doing just that, fishing and also hiking up the Adirondack. But the dripping carcasses of freshly killed animals inside that cabin was really why I was here. I’d rather do anything than skin those animals, but my old man always said it was what I was meant to do in life.

I dragged my feet around the trees surrounding the campsite, procrastinating on the work I didn’t want to do. The trees were giants then, protecting me from being seen, creatures I could trust in their stillness as they stood tall and silent out of the endless carpet of dried foliage, frozen snow, twigs and sticks, creating little walls I could hide behind. I wanted to find one big enough to hide me as I ran away, only to return when the sun began to dip as my dad finished the day’s work. After some slow and quiet wandering, I found one, stopping behind a tall oak with a wide waist of bark, tracing the endless ridges in the wood with my eyes as they raced to the sky.

“Patrick!”

The boom of his voice made me quiver. It boomed whenever he was irritated with me. I could still hear the fireplace flames licking the air in fluttering motions. There were animals hanging over those flames, and I wasn’t ready to skin them. My chest tightened with anxiety, freezing me. Ever since my mom started chemo, the animals he skinned were his favorite pastime. He was so sure it would make the money he said it would—as long as I helped him, of course. It was his way of guilting me, of punishing me. He hadn’t mentioned it before we came, but I knew he’d bring it up by the end, to twist the knife either way. I didn’t like doing it, he knew I didn’t like doing it— he wanted me to like it, but he’d criticize me regardless.

Before I could move, something else did, crunching the leaves next to me. Breaking through a clump of drying, dying leaves hanging from the branches of a bush near the oak tree, was a small furry paw. My head buzzed, and I leapt backwards, my feet jostling more leaves than it. As its legs reached out, and dug into the earth, he turned his head around the bush. Peering at me with small beady eyes, he almost looked cute, except for the sharp claws that tore holes in the leaves as his paws sank through the foliage.

“Patrick!” roared my father. “Don’t make me come there and drag you! You’re old enough to know when you have to work.” The wolf slowly creeped around what was left of the bush. It opened its mouth as if to yawn but bared its sharp fangs at me— like a snake. I wanted to run and run like I was trying to impress the girl I liked in my gym class. But I couldn’t. I was frozen. As long as I stayed still, I could imagine the wolf walking about, a part of the world, like in a game of Pokémon Go, instead of my mind. I heard my dad’s footsteps behind me, a constant thunder, pounding on the earth, breaking the foliage, trampling the snow. His trampling was when I knew for sure I would get hit. Usually, it was down the staircase back in the shack we called home. There weren’t so many trees back there. Hiding in the trees here, I felt like an animal. At school and home, there were so many expectations— how to sit still, who to talk to, who not to talk to, how to play on the baseball field, how to be a good boy. With the trees— and the wolf, I felt like more than just a boy, but free— wild like an animal.

As I waited for the lightning strike of my dad’s body, I wanted nothing more than the wolf to bite me. I see that a lot clearer now. In the moment, I just wanted to stop slaving away for my dad. I wanted the wolf to jump on me and tear through my skin with its fangs. To hurt so bad that my dad would finally see me. Care for my wounds. Care for me. That as my dad’s footsteps grew louder and his ragged breath more imminent, I’d gasp and collapse to the ground, unable to stand up, a fetal animal in the throes of death or worse, lamentation.

“You’re still standing there!” my dad grunted. “Turn around and face me! I’ve called you six times now—” The wolf skidded its feet at the sound of my dad, turning around and looking me dead in the eye. “—but you have the nerve to stand with your back to me!” It took a long step forward. It’s happening. The outstretched claws stabbed the leaves, sinking its paw. Dad’s breath was like a snowblower, a spitting exhaust, behind me. I could hear it against the roof of his mouth and the insides of his nostrils. “What in God’s name is into you-”

The wolf opened its mouth wider, showing me its pale pink gums, the length of its long gray teeth, and snarled a hissing snarl. I remember thinking I’d rather feel them cut into me than whatever it was my dad was going to make me feel, in my body or my mind.

“Patrick! You lost all your chances!” my dad roared. The wolf’s paw almost disappeared in the leaves. My dad’s footsteps crushed the leaves and sticks behind me, snapping, crunching with no thought. With none of the quiet and gentle of the wolf. The wolf stepped forth with its hind leg, this time wobbling it. The wolf was stuck. It was taking too long to turn around, its hind and front legs stuck together. “Just when I thought you were good for something,” breathed my father.

The wolf collapsed, shivering on the way down. Instead of jumping on me, it limped around the bush before it fell on a pile of snow. Blood dripped out of its stomach, a pool of red bigger than I’ve ever seen before. Its head crashed, its eyes staring into mine as life escaped them. It went completely still. Its limbs curled up, eyes still staring into mine.

A painful blow struck the side of my head, burning across my ear and the side of my face. The sound of crashing skin came first. Then my exploding cry. Then the ringing in my ear, louder than everything. The burning grew over the side of my head. My blood rushed to the side and then it rushed up. Cold hard leaves and dirt met the other side of my face, prickling my skin, burning as hot as my dad. I grunted, tasting bits of dirt in my mouth, feeling hot tears grow in my eyes. I blinked them away in a hurry, seeing the top of the dead wolf, me curled over him.

To this day, I wonder how different a man I’d be if the wolf had bitten me.