[FICTION][10/24/25]Map 256
by Vasilios Moschouris
So get this: Rand drops me off at the Atlanta airport with a bag full of nothing n a ticket goin nowhere n says Call me when you’ve learned something, n I think Fucking prick as his taillights cut a streak through what blotches of shadow are still allowed to swallow in the way-affirming light, because he is, n I’m tired of the thought, the having of it, the way it’s already worn a pathway through my grey matter like so many errant footfalls, because it’s not fun, being an apprentice, in this age when no one wants to teach n no one wants to learn, not really, but we still do, cause we have to, cause what else is there, cause Sorcery’s a changed art now, Rand told me once; no more candles n incense n pentagrams, he said, no more wands n cloaks n intoned tongues; not for folks who’re serious, because the etymology, the literal meaning, is “one who alters fate,” and consider, if our tools have changed n our clothes have changed n the rhythm n pace of our lives have changed n the old ways just don’t work anymore—just can’t keep up—same way a tin pail can’t hold the ocean or a dream can’t hold R’thyl’thon, why should we assume that “fate” as we change it cannot, itself, be changed? n that was where the world went wrong, I think: someone else, someone worse, realized that before we did n got to the Real Work while we were none the wiser, distracted by all the engineered distractions, n isn’t that the fundament of illusion, redirection? pulling someone’s attention with one hand n their good sense with the other? n now everything’s all silver n light n flash flash flash n look at me look over here don’t stop don’t think don’t wonder n we’ve all brought knives to the nuke fight—n anyway, I’m gettin ahead of myself—so, I’m at the airport, goin nowhere, n I’m looking for somethin to learn, which has been the general candor of Rand’s pedagogy so far, n let me tell you, linger in an airport long enough n it’ll just start singing—your ears’ll learn to listen, your body’ll attune—example: the lights all speak; in silent photo-tongues they cast empires of sonnets through the thrumming air, just hopin to be heard—they can’t help it—cause a secret’s not a lock, it’s a maze, n knowledge is like light or water; its nature is to be let out, not kept in, but it’s the nature of the keeping to make it hard for it to move, to see, to find, n airports are tricky motherfuckers—see, the thing no one tells you about airports, cause it’s in their best interest not to, is that they are places of power, n I don’t mean in the economic or infrastructural sense, although this is also true, but in the old school, Capital-P lowercase-o kind of way: P-laces o-f P-ower, invisipalpable nodes where the currents of the old world converge—I mean, it’s just obvious—we thought the railway gods were dead, but they were not; they were but sleeping, ‘neath the earth, n in their dreaming someone plucked the ley lines off the ground n strung them thru the sky—what for?—who knows?—I mean, I sure didn’t when I walked in, when the smell of cheap-spensive pretzels n the eye-scalding ever-burning sight of gold-plated sigilic arches slammed into me on a king’s fluorescent tide, but even though Rand was still a prick, I had to hand it to him, most things about sorcery are hard to teach n hard to learn cause they’re crazy, or at least made out to be by the same folks who sorc’d the ry in the first place, that nebulous, nemesis Them, like the whole world’s one big group therapy session n They won’t share the talking-stick, so the best way to learn really is just to find a spot to jump in, n once I realized that, the true prompt I had been given, I started finding god round every shining corner: in the concrete n the glass, in the metal n the wire, in the sky n in the orange juice n the plastic n the black pits of sun-dried gum, n man, once you see it, you really can’t un-see it: the economized shuffling of the crowd, the walking back n forth n back n forth as spinning signs n talking heads n unwavering voices say look here, stand here, stop, go, run, walk, n how, n why n when, direct your attention here, there, here again; the funneling of life n mystery into one of some-odd lines, I mean fuck, They really did it, with just a little rubber n porcelain n a couple plastic towers spittin labyrinthine seatbelts, They spun a web to hold the world n said Don’t worry, you’ll be safe, n bit down paralytic to melt our insides into goo for later slurping, n the very instant that thought crosses my mind, I see him: the Suit-n-Glasses, Agent Smith type, at the end of the motorized walkway that carves the southern quadrant of the ritual circle, heading my direction—his face is a hammer, round at one end n sharp at the other, n he’s marching towards me with about a hammer’s depth of purpose, n the crowd just parts around him, or more like he splits ‘em, driving the invisible force-wedge of his occult authority ‘tween Elmo-patterned pajama pants n grease stained college hoodies n bulletproof suitcases shining with a plastic diamond’s slick-sheen, n shit, I think, I’m made, but ah, the airport is my friend now;—stay calm, it blinks, stay frosty; you’re just another head; keep thinking n keep shrinking or you’ll probably be dead—n I follow its advice n start moving slightly faster, moving and a’grooving to it, you know, the pulse—double-countless feet pounding arrythmic against the linoleum chestplate of the place, n conversations cast into senseless info-static—n I dissolve into the shifting floor n the grey walls n the smudges n snores piling up against the windows, n the jet engines screaming in the out-there, n Agent Smith walks right past me—the insistence of him hot against me as he passes—n now I feel like the shit, using Their own work against them, wrap’t in the mind-fuzz of the throbbing world—n really, half the battle’s just that thought, that you’re the shit n fuck all else—n so I wonder how deep I can go, so I go deeper, cause another secret you pick up with enough considered time in an airport is that behind all those doors They keep shut there’s just one long Hall, a back-of-the-back-room, an under-n-interplace; the same space, or a cousin of it, that you move through in your dreams, just under a coat of beige n cracked tile—pretty clever, really, how They did it, cutting it off from the Source while preserving its motion, its flow, its strength of purpose; might need to try that myself some time—n I think maybe I should call it here, y’know, at the mouth of madness—lesson learned, right? danger avoided—but I can hear Rand now: You turned around? fuck good are you then? curiosity only kills cats who aren’t clever enough—n all that, n truth be told I really do need to push myself a little bit more, like it’s a bit too easy to give up sometimes, y’know? n I guess the best teachers are the ones you hear in your head—so I keep going down the inframation highway, which extends long n deep down n in n out into the bowels of the pocket-underworld, n it’s in here you can really see the circuitry, the How-They-Made-It-Work—I’m talking ceaseless psycho-spiri-syntactical bombardment coupled with panoptic urge-repression runes, really scary shit, but fuck, I mean, it’s genius, how They just strap your soul to the table n wrench its eyes open for the all the screenèd horrors; how they chuck you in the rock tumbler until you come out smooth n ready-made to wait—but it’s delicate, the apparatus, fragile, teetering on the taut edge of contradiction, n that’s the other secret: anyone anywhere at any given time, but especially in airports, are only ever just a few inches from disaster; just one missed step from a mass pedestrian collision, or a new burning tragedy to zap out along the airwaves, n They-n-We all know this—n there’s the rub; there’s the bull we bring to slaughter for safe travel; the necessary alchemy; I mean, it’s written right there in black n white n gold n cobalt blue, electrovenous under the skin of the world: somehow, They convinced us all to offer up our reason for impossibility—to forget we could fly for the privilege of flying—cause if we could keep these thoughts, we’d have no need for airplanes, would we?—n now I’m thinking, where does it all go? all that everything they take in the exchange—n what do they do with it? so of course I push a little deeper, n then something goes wrong, because what kind of story would it be if nothing did, right? So I’m getting the hang of the place’s syntax now, n in the runes clawed into the walls of the endless ductwork Hall I can at last divine their structure, their intent: where-they’re-going, where-they’ve-been—n I know exactly where to go n what to do to find the circle’s center, but as I see it, it sees me, n now the whole system’s on my back—in an instant, ultracrimson alarms sound out on suprasonic freakuencies throughout the folded spheres; n more Smith-like Scrabble squares spill in leukocytic, n if you blink you can see Their face behind the faces, Their body through the bodies: that mass of flesh n teeth n eyes n nylon belts n stanchion towers, the ancient name of ordered consumption echoing up through the screaming ages—n now, I think, I’m cooked, I mean barbeque chicken dripping seasoned grease onto the fire kinda cooked—but fear is only useful for a second, then it’s all just information, n once it’s information it’s easy to control if you keep your wits about you, n that’s what Rand saw in me in the first place, really, I think; how hard I am to spook—so I turn around n just start haulin, I mean just booking the fuck, n the Hallway bends n turns n tries to trip me up, making of itself a Pac-Man cross-screen warp-tunnel, recurrent n recumbent, leading back into itself n to that mouthing horror in Dior, but I’m close to the core of it now, edging the event horizon; easy enough to Map 256 that shit—a simple incantation, at this point, just a variation of Maupin’s Litany of Dissolution—n the walls crack n the arcane letters blur into neon smudges of Kubrickian apotheosis—n then I’m in, I’m through, n for the first time in 9 hours the air is quiet n wide n still n cool, n I close the way behind me with a few circumspective chaolithic fallacies—that should keep Them busy; so easy to bewilder since They’ve turned to automation—n there it is: the Room—there’s one in every airport, must be, for the force of Them—the Room of Lost Ideas, housin every smokescreened dream of half-sleeping minds wrenched from the ecstasy of clarity by a timely overhead announcement, in cages made of sunshine n of sky—cages of reality—n holy shit, I think, this is it, so delicately strung, the vacuum-heart of capital, right before my eyes, eating dreams that once were more than dreams,—meanwhile just behind me there’s a knocking on the door, a heavy slamming terror that says They’ve made it through the maze—like I said, just a few inches from disaster—so I take the bars in the hand of my tongue n leap out n through the illusory wall of the hall, back out into the hiding world, the mask-world, the surface quadrant-crowd of people-clogged circuitry, n pull the pillars down, n all the lights blink in silent cheers, spilling out their sensored bonds and into the air together, just one big mass of illoveination, screaming FREE, no rhyme, no meter, n behind me, something screams the scream of dying; something shriveling n small—n the people feel it too, n taste it, the honeyed sprig of memory, washing down the sour darkness, n one by one, no shit, they all start flying—a thousand thousand Buddhas under unseen bodhi-leaves, hanging haloes of enlightenment—n when I walk out, the concrete charnel collapsing underneath the silver motes of spirit, the shadows of free bodies swimming in the air, Rand is waiting for me, an end-of-movie star leaning up against his shit-green car—Way to show your work, he says, n makes a cross across his chest, I dub thee sorcerer. Like I need to hear it. n fuck me, maybe I do.
VASILIOS MOSCHOURIS is a homosexual sorcerer and Best of the Net nominee from Wilmington, North Carolina, where he earned his MFA in Creative Writing at UNCW, and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Underway Review, a regional publication dedicated to uplifting the LGBTQ+ voices of the Cape Fear. His serial occultpunk novel, The Haus of Burning Hearts, is available for free at Patreon.com/THOBH. You can find more publications at vasiliosmoschouris.com.