The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

LOOKING! And there is the further thought behind that one: if something as strange as consciousness is real, what else is real? Couldn’t then God be real? How can a universe brought into existence randomly have such a spectacular property?

To Kierk the city has become a dream machine, the consciousness of cars and people and dogs and pigeons and the on/off binary thoughts of streetlights—Fuck, I am so drunk . . .

Carmen is slowly twirling in place. “Alex, fuck, we’re drunk,” Kierk says.

Alex puts his arm around Kierk’s shoulders, sways with him. Kierk looks over at him, his solemn face barely containing itself.

“No homo.”

Alex collapses on the steps laughing, steadies himself on the railing. Kierk thinks about finding a place to piss, dismisses the idea.

Mike and Jessica grab the next passing cab, and Alex has another immature laughing fit with himself as he watches them get into the cab together.

“Carmen!” Alex yells, hugging his knees while sitting on the concrete steps. “We’re getting rained on! Carmen! Do something!” A gust of wind nearly bowls Alex over and Kierk comes out of a nearby alley zipping up his pants. The city inhales and exhales in great whooping winds. Kierk watches a trash barrel go clattering down the sidewalk, a sight he finds inexpressibly beautiful. Leon stands by the curb, a solid statue of drunkenness.

Carmen, giggling in the street, her shirt clinging in the wind, hails down another cab. Atif has been standing in the same spot looking skyward, and now he turns to get in the cab with them but the other four are already piling in.

“Whoever is going north or northeast!” It is unclear to any of them, even the speaker, who says this.

Leon is in the front seat and Kierk, Carmen, and Alex have all piled into the back.

“No room?” Atif calls from outside.

“Hey driver, room for one more?” Carmen says, leaning forward. The driver shakes his head, so Carmen scoots up on Kierk’s lap—“Come on, I’ll sit on a lap, pleeaaasse.” The driver shakes his head again, so Carmen leans out the window.

“I’m sorry!”

“No, no, it’s not going to be a problem,” Atif says, before he waves to everyone, then moves off into the storm, a tall stumbling hood of rain.

The interior of the cab spins like a washing machine. Kierk rubs his eyes. The three of them sit with knees brushing in the back seat of the cab, watching the lights blur by, driving past reaching trees. Kierk runs his hands through his hair and realizes he is far drunker than he thought—those trees really look like they’re reaching out toward the cab to grab it. He rolls his window down so it all becomes summer air. Droplets of rain spurt in and Carmen reaches over him and splays her hands out to catch them.

Then her hands go to his face—“I didn’t want to say anything but I noticed this.” Hands at a tender place above his eye, cold and wet fingers, small, against heat. “How? Why?”

The cabdriver tells them to roll up the window.

Kierk suddenly knocks on the cabbie window from the back and leans forward under the gaze of Carmen and Alex and the driver. Kierk smiles a half-smile, a wry smile he smiles when he knows he is being charming as fuck.

“Hey buddy, you know the ducks here in Central Park. I was wondering if you knew just where those damn ducks go in a storm like this?”

There is a pause.

“Kierk, that’s not Central Park.”

SATURDAY

Kierk wakes up with an awareness that something is present, some source sitting at the center, warping everything like the Great Attractor, but his minimal consciousness cannot distinguish between modalities so he can only make out that there is a thing attending the stage, a giant object of unidentifiable geometry, and then as the buzzing of the phone drives him open more fully he realizes that this great central thing is pain, that there is an ice pick being driven out from behind his eyes, that everything is exploding and this pain is omnipresent, a brute fact, irreducible. He is hungover. Groping and groaning, he tries to find the buzzing sound somewhere in his bed.

It had been Carmen but he hadn’t gotten to it in time. Kierk considers going back to sleep but he knows that he can’t under this siege, his head is full of marching orders, of things going off everywhere, watercolors splashing against the bone walls.

Before calling Carmen back he’s got to do something about his head. On the way down in the elevator he’s leaning against the back of it like it’s the only solid plane in the entire universe. Then, three donuts and two coffees later and a close incident in the restroom where he ran the water and stood by the sink and debated making himself vomit just to end the nausea, he staggers out not feeling any better, and now on top of everything else he’s full of greasy donuts. Crossing through Union Square Park, Athena and her chisel go to work again. He nearly screams aloud at the sudden tap-tap burst and sits down clutching at his head on a still-wet park bench.

An old lady covered in pigeons on the opposite bench watches him as he fumbles out his buzzing phone and answers.

“What? Sorry. Hello.”

“. . .”

“Are you as hungover as I am? What the hell happened at the end of last night? You and Alex got home okay, right?”

“. . .”

“Is this a joke?”

“. . .”

“How? Where?”

“. . . . . .”

“Yeah I’m here, I’m just—fuck. Are you sure? They reported his name?”

“. . .”

“No, I don’t, I’m in a fucking, I’m in a park. How did it—”

“. . .”

“He fell onto the tracks?”

“. . .”

“Because I have the worst hangover of my life and I’m not really processing this. Are you sure this is true?”

“. . .”

“Well, yeah, okay, that’s pretty sure. And there’s not some other—”

“. . .”

“Point taken. Fuck. That’s just—”

“. . .”

“Do you need anything,