He stayed there for a long time, staring at the waterfall, walking along its rocks, and letting his feet sink into the reflective pools of water that swirled and stagnated before moving on to join the current. He stayed so long that he could see the sky begin to lighten in fractions, going from an inky night with white pinpricks of light to a navy expanse with lighter dots that were only just visible.
It sent fear through him.
This place did not exist in the daytime. It wasn’t part of reality but sat on a thin spider web that stretched delicately over the canvas of harsh existence. He saw the sky lighten only a fraction and he ran. He pulled his shoes on without his socks and he sprinted for the path. He marched through the deer trail, unwilling to look up from the ground. Unwilling to see it be so different.
He reached where the deer trail met the path and almost snuck up the same way he used to when he was younger, behind the shower building so he wouldn’t be noticed by his mother at the bonfire. He took the path normally. He reached his lean-to in time to hear shrieks of shock and fear. Three people, teenagers judging by their size, all grabbed various shopping bags they’d left on the ground and sprinted off into the morning, yelling at each other as they went. Albert only had a moment to be confused by this before he approached far enough to see what they were doing. The lean-to was marked, tagged sloppily with names and profane symbols. Brown, broken shards of bottles littered the ground, and cigarette butts were thrown haphazardly into the grass.
There was no litter in the commune if he remembered correctly.
Luckily, Albert had taken his backpack with him. Experience and habit bid him never leave it unattended. By the time he’d gotten most of the trash out of the way and out of the weeds and laid back down to sleep, the morning had progressed enough that the sun rose yellow and gold in a harsh angle on the east horizon. Albert was exhausted and slept without issue.
Albert had taken a couple of days to establish himself in the town of Elsewhere. He didn’t take to his old hobbies of selling less than legal goods from his backpack, instead opting for a less lucrative but more legal line of work. He collected recyclables. It was a bit of a worn-out concept, but he wasn’t a creative guy. He collected them and returned them for their meager PA five cents, and that was what he lived off. He could make a good twenty bucks a day if he got lucky. The only hiccup was the absence of dedicated return centers in Elsewhere. Luckily, the first place he found was a pharmacy called Wingdings.
The employees didn’t like Albert. He looked like death and he wouldn't leave his backpack by the door. He must’ve been the only person in town who knew they were legally required to honor the bottle deposit as a retailer that charged a bottle deposit. He saw how they scattered as he wandered in the accordion doors of the building, not bothering to look ashamed. They found places in the office or stockrooms to hide, leaving a lone cashier with the short straw. He was a smaller guy, maybe eighteen, and he usually worked the evening shift when Albert was in the forest and the ruins of the old commune. Albert hadn’t seen him much. The cashier was marginally unimpressed as he took the three garbage bags of cans and bottles over the counter one by one to count them.
Albert waited patiently, in no hurry as the cashier counted every can and occasionally threw out the odd one that Albert had mistaken for returnable. He picked up the magazine on the rack for sale and absently pretended to read it as he waited. The cashier had to put the project down several times as he was pulled away by customers attempting to ring out overpriced sodas and beers. Things they should have bought at an actual grocery store. Albert didn’t judge this too harshly, it just meant more cans tomorrow. Still, it was odd that the cashier's coworkers didn’t come out of hiding as he switched awkwardly between counting bottles and ringing out old lady’s scratch cards.
Finally, he stood from where he was crouched down counting cans. The bags Albert had come in with were handed back to him and the containers now lived in larger, white Wingdings trash bags.
“Three hundred twenty-three gives you sixteen dollars and fifteen cents.” He declared, typing what seemed like too many buttons on the register and handing him a few bills and some coins from the drawer that popped out suddenly.
“Thanks,” Albert turned around to head for the door. He turned back for a second to try and catch the employee’s name tag but he’d retreated with his coworkers now that the pharmacy was empty. Albert pocketed his earnings and stepped out onto the sidewalk. It was the first time in a while he’d jumped out of his skin as he almost stepped on a rat scurrying underfoot. Elsewhere never changed.
He made his way up the road to his final destination that evening. He’d spent a few days establishing himself in the town of Elsewhere and he had to admit he could no longer procrastinate just talking to the woman, no matter how afraid he was. He was more paranoid than afraid as he approached the worn door of the complex. It was a horizontal apartment complex instead of a vertical one, which was just as well since Albert never liked elevators. He’d had paranoid thoughts back then before a girl had convinced him he’d never find his Locust. When Tori was still alive to convince him of anything. He’d had thoughts of what he’d do if his Locust had gone somewhere he couldn’t follow. What would he do if she was no longer anywhere for him to find? He was paranoid of such things again now that his hope sat in his hands, resurrected with clues and paper clips to keep it from collapsing. He was afraid of what Raven would tell him, of where his quest would take him next.
He knocked anyway, swallowing the fear and hope and paranoia as he waited for someone to respond. After a few minutes, he knocked again, slightly louder. It occurred to him that it might not have been the right door. With a deep breath, he lightly turned the handle, and it was unlocked. Albert pushed the old flimsy door open and peered inside the dark hall. It was, in fact, the correct door. He quickly shut it, knocking a third time as if he hadn’t just done that. He sweated a little as he finally heard movement inside. It got closer and closer until the door swung open.
A woman with dark eyes and dark hair tied in a bandana greeted him with a curious look. She was dressed in a long dress with a garish cat-print and a necklace with a green gemstone pendant the size of a fist.
“Can I help you?”
“Uh…” Albert blanked momentarily, he hadn’t prepared what he was going to ask. “Are you Raven?”
“Yeah, and you are?” She smiled and Albert once again panicked too much to say anything. He didn’t know what name to give the woman for her to recognize him. He’d gone as Albert for a long time, but Locust only called him Felix, and consequently so had her mom. A small part of Albert still held the name close, as if to protect it from what had been battering every other part of his identity through everything. He didn’t want to call himself Felix in front of her. A thought occurred to him as he stood there floundering, one brought to mind by his first encounter with Eleanor after so long.
“I’m Roberta’s kid.” He tried. This seemed to work as Raven’s face became confused at first and then understanding.
“From the commune,” She drew the connection. “Wow, that place was great, huh?” She shook her head.
“Yeah.”
“Shame what happened, but you all moved to the west coast I thought.” She leaned on her door frame, not intending to let him in but not moving to make him leave.
“Nevada.” He confirmed.
“Right, right, you were that little twerpy one, right? Fred?” She asked, and Albert felt his whole stomach flip at the name. It had been a long time since he’d thought about his brother, and the last time they’d been mistaken for each other was when their mother would blurt the wrong name by accident.
“No, I’m…Albert.” He finally decided. “Fred died.”
“Oh…” She cringed apologetically. “My condolences.” Albert nodded, not sure what to say. “So you were the oldest then? Funny, I always thought your name was Felix.” She said these things so casually like they didn’t tear at him to hear. Maybe he was the weird one.
“Locust called me that, it’s my last name.” He explained, hoping she wouldn’t ask him anything else.
“Yeah, you two were mates huh? always sneaking off…”
“So everyone did know?” He threw his arms up without thinking, raising his voice in indignation before quickly getting ahold of himself.
“Of course we knew! Sneaking off without shoes, she got Lyme disease that summer.” Raven just laughed, and it made Albert feel nice, in a distant way. It was strange to talk to someone about Locust without having to explain who she was first. To learn new things about her that proved she did exist.
“That’s actually why I’m here.” He said finally getting to his point.
“Why?” Raven stood up straight again, attentive.
“I wanna know where she is.”
To Raven’s credit, she listened to the disheveled and clearly homeless man who found her house without invitation asking for her daughter's whereabouts, and she did not slam the door in his face. She closed her eyes, maybe thinking, maybe bracing herself, and she stepped aside.
“You should come in, Albert.” She said softly. It was all it took for his heart to break.
He knew it.
She wasn’t there, she wasn’t anywhere. Call it paranoia or call it experience, but Albert had learned to expect disappointment. Locust was…she wasn’t…He followed Raven through the narrow hallway and passed the coat racks with despondency. After everyone else…why would she have survived when they all didn't? He followed Raven into her messy living room she didn’t seem ashamed of. He took a seat on the couch at her invitation as she left for the kitchen for a moment. She returned, emerging from behind where he sat to hand him something.
“Drink?” She asked simply, holding out a can for him with light condensation on the outside. He reached to take it, cringing back when he realized it was a beer.
“Uh…no thanks actually. I quit.” He mumbled the last part as if he was ashamed to admit it even though he wasn’t. She gave him a strange look before taking both hers and the one she’d gotten for him to her armchair where she took a seat. She opened one with a satisfying hiss before downing probably half of it in one go. Albert watched her patiently, not pressing her to speak before she was ready. Eventually, she broke the silence.
“Locust is gone.” She said heavily, and Albert felt himself empty again. He’d been so full and so empty and so full and so empty… repeating until he thought he’d crack like a frozen sidewalk. He nodded once, not trusting himself to say anything. She didn’t see the nod, looking instead at the ceiling in exasperation. “I don’t know where she is.” She said in anguish.
What?
“What?” He asked aloud as well. He had no other thoughts, no deeper similes for the question.
“I don’t know what happened man, she just stopped going to her classes one day and I didn’t take it well cause she had a grant for it and…” Raven took another egregious sip of her beer, leaving the empty can on the table beside her and opening the other one with a crack.
“What?” Albert was a broken record, completely uncomprehending. She wasn’t… Locust was…
Alive.
“We got into a fight.” Her mom revealed finally, sounding more collected and willing to tell the story comprehensively. “She wanted to drop out of school and I told her…I said some things I regret… and she just left.” She lamented, resting her forehead on the back of her fingers, swirling her can gently in her other hand. “She didn’t tell me where she was going and said she’d figure it out on her own.”
Albert’s empty feeling swelled with hope again, then just as quickly drained like an arid desert where an ocean once was. She was alive, but his only lead to finding her was a dead end. It was confirmed when Raven said her final piece.
“That was three years ago." Three years. "She’s a tough girl and she always wanted to leave this town, she’s probably made it to the other side of the country by now.”
Albert thought he’d die right there.
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