“What were you thinking?” Harold asks, pulling me away from the buttons. “You know the consequence for insubordination!”
“Harold, subordination doesn’t lead to the steadiness.” As soon as I say it, I know it’s true. A lump rises in my throat, and I’m overcome with emotion. “I want to feel my feet on the ground, forever. I want to be a standard human person with a place to belong. How can I ever become permanent if I don’t travel through some moral clouds?”
Harold smiles. “There’s the barnacle I used to know,” he says, but I haven’t the faintest idea what kind of barnacle I used to be, or what kind of barnacle I’ve become. What does he know about me? What does anyone know? That’s the point.
“You,” the supervisor says, running toward us. “What were you thinking?”
“I was just thinking differently.”
“Who said you get to think differently?”
“No one.”
“And who is this no one?”
“Not anyone. Not you.”
“That’s right,” she seethes. “I didn’t say anything about thinking. I didn’t say anything at all! How does this all work, without me? Without me!” the supervisor yells.
The other fugitive temps sit silently at their button stations.
“You think you can hit just any old button, whenever you want?” She slams her palm down on several buttons at a time as a demonstration, dropping bombs all over.
“Is that absolutely necessary?” Harold asks, barely audible.
“Oh, it’s necessary. It’s necessary. I’m proving a point!”
The supervisor is losing control. She shoves Harold out of the way and heads straight for me.
“Thank you for the opportunity,” I say, “but it’s time to submit my notice.”
I unlock the hatch.
I remember how to fall, and so, I jump.
The clouds, one by one, lift toward me and race away, as though the sky moves while I stay perfectly still. Faster and faster into the air, I feel the world rushing ahead, speeding into motion, deadly as concrete.
The Chairman was smart to suggest a parachute, and when the moment arrives, I pull it and it blossoms.
Now I float easily, carried by the wind. In the distance, rubble everywhere. The supervisor’s tantrum has released bombs here and there, all over. There, the murder shack, gone. There, the bank, blown to smithereens. The safe looks so tiny from this height, like a toy, sprung loose and unlocked. I make out the smallest figurine version of Laurette, masked and ready, loading sacks of money into larger sacks.
“Laurette!” I yell.
Maybe it’s the altitude, the lack of oxygen, but Laurette sees me and waves. “Oh, honey! Where will you go now?” she calls.
“I never know!” I say.
Laurette nods with a deep swing of chin to chest. I’m a double fugitive, a fugitive twice removed. “Good luck to you forever!” she says, and she waves with her whole arm, finger to shoulder.
I fall in parallel to buildings as high as the sky. Through the windows, people looking out windows, looking at me, looking at the decimation of the city. Through the windows, other windows, doorways flanked with office plants and leather furniture. Boardrooms, boardrooms, boardrooms.
There, the prison—I’ve hit my mark. The gates are thrown open, prisoners running out and through the forest, over the bridge, into town. I see Carl’s buddy, running for the hills. I see Carl, standing near the fractured fence, his eyes brimming with recognition. Again, the altitude.
“Hey buddy!” I yell in Carl’s direction.
He doesn’t respond. Am I talking to myself? I’m still awfully high up.
“You’re not my buddy,” he says. “You’re no buddy of mine.”
“Carl! I did this for you! This loving, solitary thing!”
“Solitary? What do you know about solitary? You left me here to rot in solitary.”
The closer the parachute brings me to Carl, the farther away he seems. I can’t help but feel angry with him and the way he shows his appreciation for my hard work, my dedication. I’m shocked to realize I expected more, more than what I was promised, more than something short term. I feel silly for expecting anything at all.
“We’re better at doing time,” I say, “when we do it together.”
Carl looks at me once more, then runs off with the other prisoners. He doesn’t look back.
I see them race forward together, trailing through the city, fugitives, all of us.
My parachute hovers over a hole in the ground, perhaps the bomb’s crater, and I allow the drop to continue down, my heart still broken, down, I hope, to the center of the earth. The flower of the parachute deflates and leaves me stuck at the bottom of the hole, which opens into a hidden tunnel.
I scramble like a rodent, elbows greased with mud. The tunnel widens and shrinks and widens and squeezes and widens to reveal strings of lights, brightening the path.
I crawl.
I’ve gone from cloud dweller to subterranean creature.
The tunnel is soft, wet. The pulp of the earth seeps under my nails. Does earth under a nail make the nail a claw? And then a rockier passage, then I journey to the right and the mud changes, sewage puddles under knees, the grout of swirling oils and fibers, measureless caverns, a different trail of knee marks, of claw marks, a different smell, no, a stench, and I understand, of course, this is a detour, a false tunnel, a carpal tunnel, a corporeal tunnel, not the true tunnel, probably a dead end, and what will I do, where will I go, how will I survive, especially if the lights go out?
The lights go out.
In the perfect darkness I feel calm, maybe even happy. I feel the floating joy of a world without walls, without bodies, without days, without a single worldly thing. I feel my face and I don’t know how it’s positioned in relation to the sun. This lack of perspective somehow makes me hopeful. I’m a seed unsprouted. I think I even smile. I think I even sleep.
Time moves and then does not move. The darkness schedules an illusion of motion, an illusion of stopping, could be backward, could be forward, timecards punching and unpunching. Time travel is my newest skill, in the wormhole with the mud and the muck and the worms, the silent, earthen company I keep.
I think I even sleep, then I go ahead and sleep some more.
It might be minutes, months.
From just above my head, or perhaps from just below, a hand pulls at my collar and yanks until my knees respond, my cramped joints unravel, and I see that I can stand up perfectly straight. A clearing. I shake off the animal I’ve become and roll my spine until I’m walking tall, shuffling with half steps. The hand adjusts my shoulders, lifts my wrist to grab a ladder, and, holding mostly steady, with a bit of guidance, I raise my leg and my chin. I climb into the cave of the witch.