We speak in our indoor voices. Words pass by with their halos, floating bright with the blurred edges of lamplight. I lie on the bed, my hand resting where you rest, the size of a mango. You turn inside my nothingness, which had threatened to stretch out indefinitely until you punctuated it with the fact of your being. We’re on the sixth floor, in the box bedroom, and the city is worn away outside like an old rug.
The creek lay a hundred or so yards beyond the tear in the chainlink fence that separated an expanse of tallow farmland from a row of battered-siding swathed mobile homes. Backs turned, we stripped down to nothing, then slid into the cold rush of the water, one at a time, while the other pretended not to look. J submerged, then broke for air. Water dripped from his chin length bleached blond hair and beaded on the gooseflesh of his lean shoulders.
“Have you ever heard of Witch House?”
“No, I haven’t actually.”
“Oh, you’re missing out. Really big in the early 2010s. Combining Rave with Trap and Shoegaze—all with a dark little witchy aesthetic. They were chopping their bangs straight and shaving the sides of their heads before it was reminiscent of the 80s. I was really into Kaiju films at the time too. Was a nerd, obviously. So I would splice up Kaiju clips with Witch House drops playing behind it and post them to YouTube.