Proud Music After The Storm, by Kelcey Wells

My frayed militia jacket and the dropping a few high ranking names get me through the checkpoints and across McCarren Park. Even in the dead of night the deserted lawns and play fields are lit up like noonday by massive overhead lights. It’s an insane amount of electricity and man power to secure an uninhabited patch of grass and dirt but it’s the only open green from here to Prospect Park and The Counsels intend to protect it. The uneasy silence hurries my steps and it’s not long before I’m exiting the park and crossing Bedford Avenue and what was the high water mark during the last wave of flooding. The stifling scent of the river clings to everything and even though the water has receded there is still the sense that every surface is still damp and rotting below the surface.

The most recent hurricane swamped the neighborhood several blocks in from the shore. The streets are dark and still even though the electricity has been restored. The basements have been bilged and essential systems are up and running but the lower floors, tainted by horrifying memories and water damage, have been abandoned to rot. Occupants now crowd in upper stories, in some cases using fire escapes to get in and out to avoid the toxic mold. One can only assume that eventually these buildings will crumble beneath their higher upper inhabitants, but these are desperate times and the long view isn’t a luxury that many have.

Before the storms this neighborhood was a home to serious nightlife. In the early days of the Bushwick uprising, slumming Manhattanites fled back to the island, rents dropped and some buildings sat vacant. An influx of the young, broke and rebellious filled the vacancies. It wasn’t long before these quiet blocks became the social brine in which the borough’s independence movement formed and flourished. Now it is damp, dark and silent, though you still sense, in a stray hint of distant music or a glimmer of light through a curtained window, that the party continues. Folks may not be reveling out in the streets as they had in the past but they find ways to celebrate life in dark times, whether in high story lofts, rooftop dance clubs or the water tight beer cellar that is my destination.

The level of silt and mud rises in the streets with every step. Initially tucked into masonry corners and eroded potholes, by the time I cross Wythe river sand fills the street even with the sidewalk. I switch my lens’ optics down through the light spectrum and scan the silent warehouses, each identical in its weathered and abandoned appearance, until I spot a deep neon glow above an otherwise unmarked door that reads “Evergreen”. I lay my thumb on the unassuming door’s metal handle and wait impatiently to hear the welcoming click of the latch. The door opens with a creak and a shutter and I duck in to a lightless corridor. I make my way blindly on, through another heavy metal door and then into an ersatz air lock.

On my left is a serious countertop fashioned from iron rods and diamond plating. Behind it sits a young girl with gorgeous tattoos making a show of being as impenetrable as the counter. She deducts my door fee and nonchalantly requests that I surrender my weapons. She takes my two boot knives and my Browning and places them in an re-purposed school gym locker and hands me an encrypted key fob on an elastic wristband that stirs memories of swimming at the YMCA as a kid. I’m then buzzed in to a dark metallic hallway in which my systems, tech & flesh, are screened for pathogens and my connection with the wide web is severed. All the high rez imagery and toggling stats disappear and the grit of unfiltered reality drops the floor down a few feet. A moment’s pause and then a final door opens leading to the lounge.

Stepping in to the lounge my systems boot up onto the clubs local network. Lists of patrons, mostly l337 gibberish and randy screen names of course, scroll by along with drink specials and DJ and performance lineups. I shake off the information swarm and toss it in the background to be sorted and packed for access. The place is pretty standard. Dark wood and black walls furnished with a scattering of mismatched tables, chairs and couches, everything drenched in filthy red light. I garner very little attention from the scattered groups of talkers, drinkers and well healed slummers on the make as I cross the room to the well worn bar and order up a double tequila with a mandrake infusion.

I try hard not to scowl at the pack of trust fund revolutionaries at the corner table but as I catch the attention of one of their number my countenance betrays me. I’m instantly locked in a bar length staring match. He and his friends are decked out in overly tailored uniforms trimmed out with a hapless clutter of meaningless medals and patches like a pack of arrogant eagle scouts. They have completed the look with bandannas and berets lifted from school videos of third world freedom fighters nearly a century old. The three of these dudes are talking up a storm of shit to a gaggle of cheap, vacant girls with low cut tops and big hairdos. The presence of the girls confirms my suspicions that absolutely nothing will be gained by a confrontation. I try out the casual head nod at the glaring prick but too much time and cold air has passed between us. So before he can push his chair back and make his way over I throw my drink back and make a calm but efficient exit from the lounge and into the clubs main atrium.

As I slip through the black leaden curtains the stale warmth of the lounge gives way to an uneasy chill, unexpected for a large room packed beyond capacity with gyrating bodies. The dance floor is pitch black with the exception of a few brilliant geometric swathes of clean white light that hover about the ceiling subtly illuminating the massive brick lined dimensions of the re-purposed beer vault. The sidewalls and vaulted ceiling still posses their ancient hand masoned brick facade. However, the walls at each end of the long cavern have been replaced with thirty foot sheets of unblemished obsidian so flawless they act more as windows than mirrors.

As my eyes adjust to the dark I can make out the subtle silhouettes of ethereal humanoid shapes on the other side of the dark glass. Some just hang suspended above the floor while others float gently upward and yet others appear to be dancing with the same lazy abandon as their flesh and blood counterparts.

The music is an uneasy mix of scattershot eastern percussion cut through with a pulsing kick drum. Eerie synths channel the atmosphere of ancient harpsichords minus the cheesy Vincent Price allusions while a distant rumbling bass line rises from deep below the cement floor. It’s this distant but steadily approaching low end rumble that draws me in. It grows subtly, mutating and increasing its momentum, moving in closer and laying flesh on to the erratic percussion that is dancing about my skull. It’s not long before my chest tightens and my breath goes shallow. I can feel the mandrake and alcohol radiating heat in my cheeks now. By the time the sub-bass fully materializes, the entire masonry cellar is vibrating and my eyes are struggling to focus.

I surrender my eyesight to the darkness and the engulfing low end rush. As my focus fades my gaze is locked deep within one of the dark obsidian walls. All definition of the world around me dissipates and the ethereal beings beyond the dark glass gain detail and distinction. Eventually I can make out each digit on each hand and the subtlest nuance of each facial expression. A nervous energy runs through the crowd as the music reaches a physical and emotional peak and one by one the ethereal spirits glide across the dark glass plane and into the three dimensional world of flesh and stone. They glide just overhead of the revelers, deftly criss-crossing the room and then dive downward into the crowd, their vaporous forms passing effortlessly through the bodies of the dancers. I am struck by an electric chill and turn suddenly to catch a fleeting glimpse of a female spirit emerging from my chest and continuing on gracefully through a sea of bodies. I am overcome with a fleeting series of foreign emotions and unfamiliar thoughts that sit unintelligibly just out of my mental grasp. My unconscious mind yearns after these intangible experiences as a solidly throbbing kick drum rises through the murky sub-bass and carries my near limp body into a gently nodding, skanking motion.

The revelers around me are also merging elation with motion, dancing their way ever so effortlessly through the confusion and anxiety and toward a more focused yet fluid state of being. I begin to remember why I used to come here so often and why I have been so eager to return. But just as quickly as the cathartic moment had come on it fades out again. The energy lowers slightly. The rushing bass line retreats into the distance and the whirling spirits reluctantly retreat to their place across the smooth black rift. I try to keep dancing, to carry the moment forward but I’ve been reminded of the real reason I’ve come here tonight and it carries serious weight. I give in to the increasing and let my limbs fall limp. I take a series of sharp breathes to gather myself and then make my way across the crowded dance floor toward a set of unassuming doors in the opposing wall of brick.

The huge oak doors close silently behind me extinguishing all sound from the main room. The gentle hum of hushed voices fills the space with reassuring white noise. A flickering candle chandelier reveals, in shadowed glimpses, the circumference of the large round chamber. A faint glow rises off of table tops that double as touch screen monitors, radiating from each of a dozen or so alcoves along the outer wall. The light of each altar outlines a silhouette engaged in conversation with another figure that remains unseen within each recess. A few seats sit empty but I instinctively know to wait in the shadows until a particular medium is free. Eventually a young man rises and leaves by the same door I’d come in. Drawn across the echoing stone floor I take a seat across a gently pulsing table from and a tall slender woman wrapped in a shear shroud of deep cobalt blue.

The smooth glass table monitor separates us. I feebly attempt to dry my hand on my pants and place my fingers, print side down, on the cool surface. A soft swirling pulse of geometric patterns appears as my systems synch with hers and the proper sum is transferred from my bank account.

“It’s been a long time.” Her voice is low and hushed yet every word is perfectly enunciated and delivered directly to my ears. “I was wondering if I would ever see you again on this side of the glass.”

“I didn’t think that you’d re-open so soon”

“Re-open?” she laughs gently, “this place is air tight when it needs to be, we barely closed at all after the last one. The curfews are a bit of an inconvenience but as you can see the more suffering is wrought in the world the more people need to be social, to release their anxiety and to reach out into the beyond.”

An uneasy pause draws out as I try and make out her eyes in the dim monitor glow but they are lost to fabric and darkness.

“She has been asking about you frequently.” She nudges the conversation gently toward the business at hand. “I hardy know what to tell her.”

“Is she alright?” I try to sound calm and detached but my voice betrays me. “Is something wrong?”

“She’s fine, what problems can there be for her now? She is just a bit lonely is all, and a bit concerned for her older brother’s welfare”

Her words, while laced with well practiced nonchalance, are of no comfort.

“Can I speak with her now?”

I can feel her staring at me through the veil, as if sizing up my fitness.

“Lay your other hand down and give me a moment to see if I can draw her out.”

I place my palms down on opposite ends of the glass. The heat of my hands reacts with the touch sensitive surface. A series of vibrant hues radiate out from my fingers towards the darkness. I can hear her heavy yet measured breathing from across the table as she prepares herself. After a few moments she exhales and lays her hands authoritatively down across from mine. Her long slender fingers bring a blue and purple reaction from the screen in contrast to my oranges and reds. I can sense her eyes closing and her focus increasing as her steady breaths become more shallow and percussive Her lips move quickly but no sounds emerge from them. A cold chill rises up from the darkness, swirls around my legs and climbs until it raises the hair at the base of my neck. Candles flicker above me. My vision strobes out gently into the shadows and then there is a voice.

“Javee? Javier is that you?” the stern confidence of the older woman’s voice has been unnervingly replaced by another. High pitched, unsteady and glorious, it’s the voice of my kid sister, Sarah.

“It’s me baby girl” a reflexive grin spreads across my face.

“Javee it’s so good to hear your voice, I was worried for you”

“I’m sorry Sarah, there was another storm and the curfews have tightened, and things have just been a bit mad really, but I’m here now. Is everything alright? Are you OK?”

“Oh Javee, it’s gotten worse here. I knew something had happened ’cause the emptiness, it suddenly filled with voices screaming and crying a lot like when I … first came over. But things haven’t settled since then really, it’s loud and hot always and there is never a moments peace.”

“Don’t you fret baby girl. It will be alright Things will calm down again, you’ll see.”

“I don’t think so Javee. I don’t think things will ever be OK here. Javee, I think… no I know, though I don’t know how, that it’s time for me to pass on, to leave this stale emptiness behind and step out into the cool wind beyond.”

I’m struck dumb, a series of desperate arguments and entreaties race through my head but I can tell in the unwavering tone of her voice that she has decided.

She breaks the silence, “Big brother there is something else, something I’ve been holding on so I could tell you…”

The words are scrambled and distorted through my sinking loss

“What’s that Sarah?”

“Javier I have heard your name, I’ve heard your name whispered over here, repeated and it’s growing more frequent. Big brother, I’m afraid that your time, like my time, is coming soon”

My ears fill with the pulsing of blood and my eyes swim with liquid as my quivering lips stammer.

“Thank you Sarah, I love you baby girl and I’ll miss you.”

“I love you too Javee”, her response disintegrates in to a dissonant glitchy hiss and then disappears into the darkness, lost to my ears forever.

My head fills with white noise as emotion threatens to tear me apart. I rise up quickly and awkwardly sending the chair skittering across the cement floor and shattering the chamber’s oppressive silence. I lunge forward through the heavy doors and out into the frantic crowd filled atrium. I can’t breathe as I struggle my way through the packed room, walls and bodies closing in on me. The music I had enjoyed moments before is now only a series of grating noises flying at me through space. It seems like hours pass before I cross the floor. I throw myself through the heavy curtains only to hit something so solid that I have to lunge forward to keep from ending up on the floor. I push back through the curtains into the poisonous red light of the lounge and find myself looking straight in to the affected stare of the asshole from earlier in the night. “Watch where you’re going private dirtbag” his words, all carelessness and bravado, don’t even register. Only his smug look and well laundered uniform make an impression. The hiss and crackle in my ears drowns out the tense silence of the room and my vision narrows down at the edges. I try to breath but the exhale never comes. I’m on the guy in an instant. My fists raise a dull wet sound from his face as we fall. A deep primal shriek rises from my chest as horrified onlookers keep their curious distance. The dude falls almost lifeless, trying limply to shield himself from my blows. I have him by the jacket collar and have proceeded to bang his head against the concrete floor when suddenly my vision shorts out with the white hot spark of the tazer. Two giant bouncers each grab one of my arms, lift my slack body off of the asshole and smoothly escort me, without my feet touching the floor, out of the club and back out onto the cold dark street.

I exhale with a painful spasm and the taste of blood as my systems attempt to reboot onto the wide web casting my world into the drab gray and muffled silence of unfiltered reality. As I lay splayed out on my back across the crumbling sidewalk, I watch the moon hover low and luminous just above Manhattan’s distant buildings. I shudder a bit from the cold as the adrenaline dissipates. Though the subway hasn’t run for years, I swear I hear a train in the distance. There are phantom trains running through the black night as I lie alone in the street trying to decide whether I should close my eyes and wait here for death or pick myself up and go looking for it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelcey Wells is a Brooklyn based writer of poetry and fiction.

His most recent project, Music for End Times, is a chapbook of experimental poetry and  prose that examines society’s millenarian tendencies through the glass of the final days of  the twentieth century.

He shakes out his demons on the blog Night Thief Confessional and is currently at work  on his first novel, tentatively titled Time Stretched.