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Donna J.W. Munro
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The East Ridge culvert bridge doesn’t cut the cold blowing off the wastewater tunnel into my face. It mostly keeps rain off though. I've scavenged lots of broken things from dumpsters to make it more comfortable. Old quilts that folks don't recognize as works of art, tiny stitches and worn fabric windows into the lives of women gone for years. Toddler mattresses piled end to end as beds for my dog herd. The stones set in concrete walls brightened by swirled tagged offerings left by the damned seeking solace around the Basket Wraith, a holy fire I tend in the crevasse. They leave their marks hoping for whatever they hope to gain.
It’s none of my concern.
I feed the fire to keep it vital with orange and blue light. Twigs and wadded newspaper dropped on dwindling sparks breathe in the cold air and press out the heat and the dreams for seekers. When it tires, I bank it low to let it rest. When errant fools threaten it, I roll it away into hiding. It's what I’m here for. What I’m made for.
“Keeper?” Old June. Her nasal voice I know in any crowd. Smokes too much when she sits, shaking the cup for the stiffs. “I need the wraith's blessing.”
What Old June really needs is to head to the Sister of Mercy shelter for a shower, a new coat, and hot soup. Her creped skin bares itself to the bright chill of a late winter snap of bluster. Too much skin. Ankles and wrists and neck. Blue now, but soon it might be black with frostbite.
“Fine.” I wave her to the sanctum through the crevasse, an inner cave hung with moss of ages gone and sparkling crystal soul lights hung by keepers before me on bright ribbons. I'll hang mine there too, before I die. As she makes her way back to the wraith, I dig in the pile of thrown-off offerings looking for gloves and socks to warm Old June's bones. They'd be there; I just had to dig.
From the sanctum, soft whispers spilled out like a prayer. Words warmed by the heat of the wraith flowed liquid in the silence. Real fire burns too loud, with crackling sizzles announcing the impotence of the trapped flame. This was no true fire. The burning wraith listened quietly, heaped in its wire basket throne which I’d found in a pile of trash behind a grocery store.
The wraith loved her words, buffeting them in the velvet heat until they imploded, consumed in the wraiths’ whispering answers. Too many creatures of the street fed it their dreams and yearned for the glimpses of the wrath's reality–what they saw, they couldn’t describe to me, but like addicts they came sucking down the puffs of smoke the creature fed them.
Some got greedy. Tried to steal the wraith for their own, but the wraith wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen. It wasn’t a thing to be owned or possessed by a wraith junkie.
* * *
I'd never been wraith-high myself. That's how they knew I was a keeper, when I was just a dumb kid. Out on the streets, everyone visited the wraith. I tried it a bunch of times, sucking in the mist and holding it there the way I’d seen the crackheads do in the alleys. But it never clouded up my eyes and made me forget how bad things were. The keeper before me watched and once she knew, she kept me, feeding me better, giving me gloves, singing to me. It was almost like having a home only with a monster feeding on people’s weakness in the background.
I lived with the keeper and the wraith for years. Sometimes, cops follow and chase us out. Old Keepers used to scatter the wraith when cops came, saving a lick of flame to carry until home was safe again. Took years to build its potency back. I solved that, lining the bottom of my cart with metal sheets from the backs of dumpsters. Made it a wheeled altar.
The last keeper never told me her name before the wraith fell on her and ended her. The wraith never told me why it killed her.
Doesn’t matter that the wraith kills its disciples. The power of the wraith, its inevitability, brought all the street prophets running. All the beggars. All the taggers. All the pimps and the whores. All the lost and stolen bowed before the wraith flame to see their future or some gift of hope in the embrace of smoke.
The future they see?
Nonsense and bullshit. The smoke lulls them to accept the place they hold on the streets, as if being born here was a gift. Some could get away, but they come back desperate for the wraith's blessing, whatever pictures it put behind the swimming eyes of the addicted. Promises only meaningful in their own minds. A blessing and curse.
* * *
Old June stumbles out of the sanctum, eyes bleary from her visions. Muttering. She's crazy in the way of the street. Been huffing the wraith too long and it’s shaped her mind. Bent her to its will. She’ll be a great missionary among the new ones who’ve landed
“Be careful out there, Old June,” I say, handing her the socks and gloves, but they slip from her hand and tumble into the bristling stream that runs under the bridge. Her eyes don’t focus on me as she brushes past like a ghost. She's not much more than a shell anymore. Wraith will end her soon.
At least I hope that for her.
I should take the wraith out of its temple, dump it into the storm wash where water always flows. Drown that parasite until the smoke is dead. But it won't let me. We feed all its parts. And I'm just one keeper. There's parts all over this world, sitting on altars in every city. Me killing this one wouldn't change a thing.
It tugs at me. Our connection locked me here when I was nothing but a rat baby of a street hoe, gave it limbs and muscles when it needed them. It doesn’t bother with my mind, but sometimes I feel how big it was. It presses its thoughts on me until it blocks out the air and the light. I fall to the floor like a broken doll and it laughs. It picks me up and flops and shudders my limbs in a jittering dance while it waits for the next fool to stumble in, aching for a fix.
So many wraiths. I wish it didn't read my emotions. I wish I could fool it and get away, but when it grabs my bones and jerks me around I know its vastness. I feel it, everywhere. Every city, every nation; and then, somehow there's more of it above and below and through and even inside me. I can't run.
How do you run from a universe?
So, I dance.