Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

whoop whoop. Two little girls played hopscotch in front of a small, basement-level dry cleaner’s. The little girls disappeared, as did the dry cleaner’s, replaced by what appeared to be some kind of restaurant; Vietnamese, of all things. As we crossed Park, heading toward Broadway, I remembered the vision I’d had months earlier, of a New York that looked neither like mine nor like Eulie’s, and began to think that I’d caught a premonition of what was to be: Fortean phenomena, once more working its wiles upon the unexpecting. She put her arm around my waist as we walked, and I returned the favour. This was about the most remarkable high I’d ever enjoyed. At Broadway there was still a newsstand; now it was freestanding, at the curb, and not attached to the side of the cafeteria. There was no Sun, or Mirror, or Trib; the Times and News and Post remained. A red and blue mailbox attached to a streetlight post at the corner disappeared; the post itself changed from green metal to matte aluminium. The cars in the street changed, turning into the small coupes and oversized station wagons I’d seen so briefly earlier. A piece of paper blew across the curb, coming to rest at my feet. Hot dog stand, it read.
    Just before we reached Fifth Avenue, we both came to a stop; while I remained the same inside, I could feel something beginning to happen on the exterior. I’d never seen Eulie look as calm as she now did. »Where are we going?« I asked.
    »I don’t know,« she said. »We’ll be there, wherever it is.«
    She began to fade from the sidewalk up. Although I didn’t feel myself disappearing, I knew without looking that the same was happening to me. She looked no more scared than I felt. I can’t remember, precisely, what was going through my mind; it was as if my memories were being replaced as well, although the new ones were mine all the same as my old ones. I remembered different teachers, back in Seattle; different friends, different houses. No one noticed our transformations; they were changing as well, into a third world, one we always seemed to have known, even as we discovered it. I’m not sure what there was left to see of us after a few moments more; at that point, my brothers, with smiles on our faces, we were going, going, go
     
    When I opened my eyes she was there, lying next to me.
    Rain drummed against the window with child’s fingers, and as I lay in bed I listened to the soothing swuussbbb of cars as they slowly swung down Southern Street’s hill. Tankers’ foghorns echoed through the air across Puget Sound.
    Then I heard Eulie say, »Love you.« She slid her arm under my neck, and shifted her weight until she pressed directly against me, pulling up the covers until we were buried wholly beneath them. We kissed. After a few minutes of kissing, we made love.
    »It’s Saturday,« she said as I stood up, stretching out a hand, letting it drop back down on the bed. »Where’re you going?«
    »Got to write,« I said. »Woke up with something in my head.«
    »Jeez Louise,« she said, closing her eyes and smiling as she repositioned herself into her pillow. »Get it out, for God’s sake. You know what happens when you don’t.«
    I made myself coffee, good and strong. Then I walked into the front room, sat down at my computer, turned it on and for a minute or two looked at the screen, thinking of what should be there; of what would be there, when I was done. Once a very good friend of mine – another writer, needless to say – talked about how he thought we went about writing the things we wrote. It was, he said, like finding a magic place in childhood, somewhere in dark woods. But there is no map, and no sure way of reaching it the same way the next time, or of reaching it at all. The path is always there, no question about that; but until you come to it again you won’t know for certain if you’ll find your way in, much less find your way out. All you could do was head out every morning and see what turns up.
    That morning I closed my eyes as I sat in my chair, and evoked anew what I had seen. The woods, the path, and what lay on the other side, were all there in front of me. Having seen this time what I needed to see, I started writing; and in time, wrote all that you have read.
     

IN THE NEW WORLD
     
    James Fitzgerald Kennedy, an egg well left unseeded. Expelled, unnoticed, in September, 1932.
     
    Chloe Josefyn Kugelberg, whose spikes at the net are wonders to behold, guarantees