The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

the first one showed up, but she stopped noticing when they were everywhere. Carrie knew there was a time it hadn’t been there, and she could remember how odd it was seeing it the first time, a patch of black flowers in the Bishop kids’ Hivelounge. Then it was everywhere, and she stopped noticing it, like a smell she’d gotten so used to that she’d be surprised if someone pointed it out.

“A guy I know, his cousin licked some of it,” Hong says. “Drove her totally batshit.” Hong makes a wild-eyed face and waves his hands in the air. He always has a guy he knows: a hookup for parts on an import or evidence Resonants are the result of millennium-old alien conspiracies to tamper with human DNA.

“I’ll stay away from the black coral,” she says.

“Stay out of the Hive altogether,” he says.

“You don’t answer your phone either,” says Carrie.

Hong looks at her like she’s said something blitheringly obvious. “Brain cancer,” he says. He roots in drawers of papers and work bins of loose auto parts before coming up with a kid’s backpack. “I tweaked the psilocybin levels a little,” he says. “It might take longer to come on. But it’s the stuff.”

“Thanks,” Carrie says. She hands him an envelope. Hong opens it and counts the bills in front of her.

“This isn’t paranoia,” he says. “It’s best practice.” Satisfied, he puts the envelope in a drawer. “You seen any white vans out there?”

“Florists?” Carrie asks.

Hong shakes his head. “Unmarked,” he says. “No plates. They snatch people up. People like us. A girl I know, her boyfriend got disappeared. Guys he works with say they saw a white van in the neighborhood.”

“Who’s driving?” Sometimes it’s fun to let Hong spin out his webs.

“Scientists, grabbing test subjects,” Hong says. “They’re working on a plague that will take us all out. They have labs up in Canada, working with a department in the Canadian government.”

Carrie smirks and puts in her earbuds, flooding her head with an early Prince album. “I’ll stay away from the white vans,” she shouts.

—

The apartment is rife with the smell of sautéed garlic. Everything Miquel knows how to cook starts with garlic simmering in olive oil. Carrie wishes he’d serve her plates of garlic cloves brown and shiny with oil, nothing else. She hears a sizzle, and the coppery tang of tomatoes joins the smell.

“Pasta?” she asks. She pulls out her earbuds and kisses him on the cheek.

“Pasta,” Miquel says.

“You should start the water.”

“I know,” he says. “I forgot.”

“Timing, babe,” Carrie says. A fat white bulb floats like an eyeball in the sea of diced tomatoes. She snatches it and pops it in her mouth.

“How was work?” he asks.

Carrie shrugs. “Same old,” she says. “You?”

“Remember Doug Shaw?” he says. “Worked in the office at Bishop.”

“Downer Doug,” says Carrie.

“Downer Doug,” Miquel says. “Shit, now I’m worried I’m going to call him that next session.”

“He’s in Chicago?”

“Lives up the block,” says Miquel.

“I guess the moment of North Avenue’s cool has passed.”

“If our session today was any indication, he’ll be paying our grocery bills the next couple months.”

“He’s a basket case?” Carrie asks.

“I don’t like to use that term,” Miquel says. “Public Day messed him up bad. He’s got some stuff to work through.” He hefts a pot of water onto the back burner.

“Salt it,” Carrie says. Miquel throws a palmful of salt into the pot.

“I talked with Hayden,” Miquel says.

“They stop by?”

“Hive,” says Miquel.

“Is that what you do all day?” Carrie asks. “You hang around the Hive talking to your old flames?”

“Hayden was never a flame,” says Miquel, lighting the stove. “Anyway, what do you do all day?” He makes it sound like a joke, but there’s an edge in the question. There are so many holes in the story she’s fed him about her employment, such a gap between what an office temp ought to make and the cash she brings home daily. Part of her wants to get caught. Care enough to come find me, she thinks. If Miquel has suspicions, he keeps them to himself. “Are we going to their thing tonight?” he asks. “They really want us there.”

“It’s at Vibration,” says Carrie. “It’ll be crowded.”

“It’s cute you worry about me,” he says, kissing her on the forehead, his hands resting on her hips. “Go put a record on for us?”

Carrie goes to the living room and stares blankly at the shelves full of her records. Last week, Miquel asked how she could afford so many. Carrie claimed that most of them were her dad’s rather than admit the bulk of them were purchased with drug money. She smiles, imagining her dad listening to A Tribe Called Quest, the Pixies. She’s in the mood for something slow, but Hayden’s thing this evening looms. She finds Patti Smith’s Horses and hovers the needle over the platter. There is a tiny space, a silence where confession could fit. She wonders how their relationship would change if rather than starting the record, she went into the kitchen and told Miquel how they pay their rent. Every few days, she tells herself she intends to. She’s not lying but temporarily withholding, waiting for a moment. But moments are cheap and frequent between them. There are silences like this she could fill, moments she’s sure he knows but won’t call her on it. If she spoke, a spell could be broken and they would wake. But she’s not sure anymore who they’d be once they woke up. She can’t remember a version of herself that wasn’t made of secrets.

Carrie hears the pasta splash into the boiling water and sets the needle into the groove.

—

In the middle of the dance floor, two beer bottles orbit each other, six feet in the air. Beneath them, invisible, Carrie dances like a live wire, attached to the ground and flailing with current. Hayden grins at her from across the room. In the air above the crowd, two iridescent horses made of light collide. They shatter