He reached for her again, but this time she was ready. She hit him across the face, once, then once again, as hard as she could muster. Shock at the blows made him give up his hold on her for a moment and she started away from him, kicking the churning sea up in his face. He threw his arms in front of him to shield himself and she was gone out of his reach, vaguely aware that her body was not so sleek as it had been, but not taking time to discover why. All that was important now was to be as far from him as she could be; to keep him from touching her ever again; ever. She struck out strongly, ignoring his sobs. This time she didn’t look behind her, at least until his din had faded. Then she slowed her pace, and glanced back. He wasn’t in sight. Grief filled her up—agonized her—but a more immediate horror was upon her before the full consequences of Momma’s death could touch her. Her limbs felt heavy as she pulled them from the ether. Tears half blinding her she raised her hands in front of her face. Through the blur she saw that her fingers were encrusted, as though she’d dipped her hands in oil and oatmeal; her arms were misshapen with some similar filth.
She started to sob, knowing all too clearly what this horror signified. Quiddity was at work on her. Somehow it was making her fury solid. The sea had made her flesh a fertile mud. Forms were springing from it as ugly as the rage which inspired them.
Her sobs became a yell. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to unleash a shout like this, tamed as she’d been by so many years being Momma’s domesticated daughter, smiling for the Grove on Monday mornings. Now Momma was dead, and the Grove was probably in ruins. And Monday? What was Monday? Just a name arbitrarily attached to a day and a night in the long history of days and nights which were the life of the world. They meant nothing now: days, nights, names, towns or dead mothers. All that made sense to her was Howie. He was all she had left.
She tried to picture him, desperate to hold on to something in this insanity. His image slipped from her at first— all she could see was Tommy-Ray’s wretched face—but she persevered, conjuring him by particulars. His spectacles, his pale skin, his odd gait. His eyes, full of love. His face, flushed with blood the way it was when he spoke with passion, which was often. His blood and love, in one hot thought.
“Save me,” she sobbed, hoping against hope that Quiddity’s strange waters carried her despair to him. “Save me, or it’s over.”
II
“Abernethy?”
It was an hour before dawn in Palomo Grove, and Grillo had quite a report to file.
“I’m surprised you’re still in the land of the living,” Abernethy growled.
“Disappointed?”
“You’re an asshole, Grillo. I don’t hear from you for days then you call up at six o’clock in the fucking morning.”
“I’ve got a story, Abernethy.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m going to tell it the way it happened. But I don’t think you’re going to print it.”
“Let me be the judge of that. Spit it out.”
“Piece begins. Last night in the quiet residential town of Palomo Grove, Ventura County, a community set in the secure hills of the Simi Valley, our reality, known to those who juggle such concepts as the Cosm, was torn open by a power that proved to this reporter that all life is a movie—”
“What the fuck?”
“Shut up, Abernethy. I’m only going to tell you this once. Where was I? Oh yeah…a movie. This force, wielded by one Randolph Jaffe, broke the confines of what most of our species believed to be the only and absolute reality, and opened a door to another state of being: a sea called Quiddity—”
“Is this a resignation letter, Grillo?”
“You wanted the story nobody else would dare print, right?” Grillo said. “The real dirt. This is it. This is the great revelation.”