“ At the threshold. ”

A typical late evening on a typical summer Saturday. Anon was spending his time at his apartment, playing games. From a part-time job to a full-time one, at least for that little period of summer, he has enough money to fulfill his minimalistic way of living. The exams came and went, and Anon barely remembers the day of the exams and the days of thorough preparation that came before it. For this summer, the band decided to take a huge break before anything could be done, to focus on doing their own things. Curtis returned to filming gun videos, Trent was making a weekly sound technology thing, Abby was just out there.

And Nick couldn’t find herself a place to be. That’s why she was always either at Trent’s, Abby’s, Curtis’s or, like today, Anon’s place. She, as she says herself, felt confined in her huge apartment, like in a prison cell. Cooking didn’t cut it, playing alone didn’t cut it either. Traversing the street brought boredom instead of motivation and joy. Long story short – she was more tense in this summer break than the entirety of the first year at the university. Strangely enough. – Anon thought.

— And that’s how you spend your weekend? – she asks.

— Yeah. – Anon answered, not disrupted from the gameplay.

— And you’re fine with that? – she asks again.

The first question was fine; the second one made Anon pause and turn to her.

— Are you telling me you have an idea?

Nick thought, and after a second a cheeky smile appeared on her face.

— I do. – she said with malicious intent.

Anon didn’t like the tone of her voice. He felt that whatever she would suggest would be something dangerous, but he trusted her. Besides, playing videogames can also get boring, even with friends to accompany.

Nick stood up from the bed.

— How about we go for a walk? – she asked.

— Why not? – Anon said and turned back.

— No, it’s not any simple walk. – Nick added, quickly. – I want to show you something.

That was interesting, and sinister.

— Alright then, makes it ten thousand times better. – Anon said.

Anon turned off the PC and stood from the table, with Nick he walked over to the hallway and got their shoes on. Nick left without hesitation, but Anon was stopped with his usual paranoia – what if something goes bad? I need to take something with myself. To defend and other shit. Anon walked off back into the living room, opened his wardrobe, searched around and soon found his own pistol that he bought back in May with Curtis overseeing his choice. He checked the mag, the chamber, the passive safeties, and soon put the gun behind his back, covering it with the bottom of his grass green jacket. But even then the paranoia couldn’t let go, and so Anon entered the bathroom, searched around the cabinet behind the mirror and took a bandage with himself. With all the preparations done, he could finally leave his apartments.

On the streets, when Anon was leaving the stairwell through that gigantic metal door and Nick was waiting for him, passively passing time in her phone, she asked him:

— What took you so long?

— Had to drain my snake. – Anon replied, nonchalantly.

— Groovy… – Nick muttered, unimpressed.

They soon began walking down the streets, roaming around the city like two nomads searching for a new place to be. To make the walk seem shorter, they began talking, and talking they did – they couldn’t stop. And didn’t even want to stop. After what seemed like fifteen minutes (or fifty?) of endless talking, it was a hard question to answer whether they talked voluntarily or mechanically. Besides that, the talk made a rather opposite effect – it didn’t shorten any footstep, it elongated it to the absolute limits, making the walk seem practically endless.

And in this walk, Anon found himself in an interesting position. He finally realized, that all this time, despite seeming like not progressing at all, he continued walking no matter what. This little walk to the place that Nick wants to show to him – is just a projection of Anon’s endless wandering through the endless marble wasteland of his soul. He could stop walking around this palace of inside – like he could stop at the local shop to buy some booze with him (since he finally got twenty one), but the only stop he did was rather miniscule, pointless, completely unnecessary, and yet that allowed him to continue forward with a clearer vision – just like he stopped on the streets to enter a little convenience store and buy a couple of water bottles.

Soon, they left the peaceful districts, entering a place that can only be described with a simple and known adage – horrors beyond human comprehension. This place was completely abandoned, discarded like a toy and broken on the streets like a cheap porcelain set in a crusher. Stains of blood told the story of endless wars that were happening on these streets. No electricity, no water, no natural gas. Absolute destruction and utter desolation. For his entire life Anon thought that there could be no place worse than Skin Row – well, he was proven wrong.

The feeling of taking his gun, beautifully sitting behind his back, began to itch nonstop. He wanted to reach in, to feel the safety of the murderous plastic, but he couldn’t. He didn’t feel like he would drop in her eyes, be considered as a “pussy” – she would understand his fear. But the sinister silence, as sinister as it is, is a bit calming. In the end, the district is absolutely abandoned – what kind of fear could await them? That little logical question that Anon asked to himself soon removed any type of craving to take his pistol.

— And we’re here! – Nick said, solemnly.

Anon looked up and saw a grand building of what was previously a school building. It looked like an absolute travesty. On the background of a clean sky and tall rich green grass, a devastated building with plaster falling out like hair on an ill person, broken windows shining with crystal teeth and the ominous darkness seen in them… Anon had a thousand and one question for Nick, and the first was:

— What the actual fuck?

— Oh, shit… Sorry, my bad, forgot to tell you. – Nick said it with calmness.

— Forgot to tell me what? – Anon was confused and afraid, not for the fetish for desolation Nick has, but for their lives.

Nick walked forward and turned around to face Anon in the background of that building.

— Look, it’s not what it looks like! – Nick said, trying to reassure his loving buddy as much as she could. – And, besides, do I look like a carfe craving junkie?

Anon remembered one carfe craving person, but he was not necessarily a junkie – that raptor was fit, and by (at that time) Anon’s measurements he could twist someone’s head with an ease. And yes, Nick didn’t even remotely look like a junkie – if Nick looked like someone, she would’ve looked like an unfinished punk or those “not like others” young nonconformists, with that outwear, tattoos and her typical cheeky and carnivorous look.

— I know that looks weird, – Nick said, – but don’t make any assumptions. I just enjoy wandering around those things, nothing more. The only friends I have is the band, and I haven't visited that place in almost a year. So give me a break.

Anon barely believed her words, and his face told her so.

— Anon, please, – Nick said. – It’s safe. No fucking junkie ever entered that building since it got abandoned. We’ll be in and out, for barely twenty minutes.

Yeah, and end up in a different dimension called the fucking hospital. – Anon thought. Still, he trusted Nick, as Nick trusted him, and despite the sinister and ominous look, Nick, with how little she could say, managed to reassure him. Anon sighed and walked with Nick to the building.

The closer he got, the more fear Anon felt inside him crawl like bugs under his skin. He shivered with every step, and he felt like the world shivered with him. He wanted to leave, but didn’t want to abandon Nick to wander on her own. Besides, those words did switch his automatic fear off, and that was a win for her.

— Why do you like wandering around these places anyway? – Anon asked, looking down the darkness of the hall from outside.

— Because, when we were making grindcore and not dissonant death metal, – Nick said, – those buildings served as additional fuel for my texts. I… how do I put it…

— Felt those places?

— Yeah, felt them. Like, why do people abandon this? What drives them to trash these kinds of places?

— Why are people violent…

— That too.

— And you wandered around, all alone?

— Not necessarily. – Nick said. – Curtis and Trent joined me on this. They understood why I did this, and sometimes it even worked for them. Like when we began, Trent got an idea for the demo because of the ambience and the feel of this place. Weird, I know. But it worked.

— Well, everyone has their own way to make things.

— That’s true.

With nothing holding them back, they’ve entered. The first step Anon took, he crushed bits of weak concrete and glass under his foot. Anon didn’t like it – he thought he alerted anyone Nick didn’t mention existed in this place. And even if he didn’t alert anything, if this place is really abandoned like Nick tells him, still – he thought that this step was the first one to tell him that this is going to be a moment he wouldn’t like to remember.

The hallways and classrooms were depressing, just like Anon thought they would be. Discarded tables from the past century, basic math and words scribbled with chalk on broken boards, bits of plaster, dying concrete and glass everywhere. This is a perfect place for a junkie or a creator. Anon felt the vibe Nick told him about; looking around the classrooms, he found himself questioning the story of this school. Before it was flourishing, now it is nothing more than a concrete coffin – why did it become like this?

Soon, they made it to the second floor. It looked much more abandoned, with the presence of sprayed words onto the cracked walls and notepads with illegible text written inside, left to mold, rot and collect dust. Anon felt much more alien on the second floor – not exactly he felt a presence across the hallway, but just felt like he didn’t belong here, like this is not his tragedy to witness, not for him to say anything about it. He wanted to leave, but Nick was so damn interested in wandering around, amazed by typical mankind violence.

Suddenly, they both heard a crack of glass across. Whatever it was, an illusion or an actual presence of a junkie, they need to run. Their entire body and mind were screaming in static. Anon, with a bit of volition he had untouched by this torpor, grabbed Nick by her hand and began running away into the other side of the hallway and into the classroom. They could run downstairs, but whatever was outside this place was slowly taking more and more ground, closing in on those unlucky poets. As Anon barricaded the door, he wanted to yell at Nick, – something like “And you said no one was here!”, – but decided to keep his mouth shut, because he was afraid too.

Nick looked like she was about to have a panic attack. She didn’t want to be here anymore. Looking at Anon with endless fear in her eyes, she made an impulsive decision and jumped outside through the broken window near her. Hearing the thump outside, Anon looked around, only to see her absence. He ran to the windows and noticed her lying on the concrete. Fear and adrenaline kicked in, half-light. Everything in his body yelled for him to act.

He jumped down from the other window, near Nick. She looked awake, feeling pain from this jump. That was a relief. The sinister presence didn’t go away. Whatever there was inside, it was slowly making its way downstairs, to meet them face to face. Anon took out his pistol and aimed it down the entrance and the dark hallway, prepared to meet any horror. Soon, the feeling slowly was wiped away.

Nick got up from the concrete and felt enormous pain in her right hand. She looked down on her palm, and noticed several bleeding lacerations.

— Fuck! – she said through her teeth.

Anon turned his gaze to her and noticed the bleeding wounds. He quickly turned to her, squatted down, put his gun aside and took her hand, looking down onto the wounded palm. With little water he had left in his bottle, he cleaned the wound. (It was painful, but Nick didn’t pay attention, she remained calm and steady.) Then, he took out the bandage he brought with himself to this place and slowly wrapped the tissue around the hand, covering the wound entirely.

— How long ago did you have your shots? – Anon asked, wrapping the hand in a bandage.

— Not really long ago… – Nick answered.

The bandage was spent, the hand was wrapped, the wound was cleaned and covered. The bare minimum was reached. Anon took his gun, got Nick up on her feet, and they began to quickly move away from the school, through the desolated district, back into the populated side of town.

 

***

 

When they returned to Anon’s apartment, the first thing Nick did was to go to the bathroom to clean the wound again and replace the bandage. It hurt, but the blood was not leaking like crazy, baked over on the lacerations, closing them. After taking a light painkiller the pain went away almost entirely. Anon was sitting in the kitchen, making some food for them to eat, following the recipe Nick gave him some days ago.

Nick slowly entered the kitchen and took a seat, looking down at her bandaged arm.

— Fuck… How would I explain this to my friends? – she muttered.

— Simple and straightforward. – Anon said. – Honesty is the best policy. And they would understand.

Nick didn’t respond. Soon, the meal was done, and they sat down to eat after a long walk outside. She enjoyed the meal, but not because of the taste (it was good, as she had anticipated) – because it was made by someone who cares about her the same way she cares about that someone. Nick understood that, and her understanding opened a pit inside her – the same pit she opened whenever she questioned things like this.

Soon, the streets were met by rain, which soon turned into a really heavy downpour. Nick decided to stay, because she didn’t want to get cold. Slowly, the evening turned into night, but Anon and Nick didn’t even try to change their poses – Anon was sitting at the table, reading some really well made fanfiction, while Nick was just messaging her friends. Everything was going fine, according to the plan even. Until Anon involuntarily muttered:

— If I told you that I like you, would you like me back?

Nick heard the muttering, loud and clear, as if her mind was ready to hear something like this. She heard and was surprised by his words. She got up and sat down onto the bed, settled her phone aside, her surprised eyes locked onto him, nonchalantly reading away into sleep.

— What? – Nick asked; that is the only question that she could come up with.

— Nothing. – Anon said, not disturbed from the reading. – Saying out loud.

— No, no, no. – Nick pushed onwards. – You can't just drop this shit on me out of nowhere. What do you mean by this? What are you implying?

— I said, nothing. – Anon said, turning his head aside and looking at Nick at the edge of his eyes. – I'm just saying things out loud. You know how it is. Some people are thinking before talking. And I am talking before thinking. Simple as.

Nick didn’t respond. Anon looked at her for a bit, then returned to reading. The silence continued for a fair bit, and he managed to read quite a lot; he was reaching the end of this long chapter, only to hear Nick say:

— Yes. Yes, I would.

Anon turned to her, completely forgetting about the chapter. Nick looked worried, constantly thinking about what to say. Her gaze was focused onto the floor, but he knew she felt his gaze on her – not an accusatory, just confused, surprised, requiring answers.

— And, to be fair... I'm tired of pretending I wouldn't. – Nick finished.

She finally got the courage to look at Anon, straight into his eyes and deeper into his cornea.

— You know how they want me to be, Anon. – Nick said, on the edge of something reminiscent of a panic attack. –They want me to be this... edgy as fuck gal who doesn't care about anyone beside herself, her band and her buddies. It's tiring. And... I tried to keep this attitude with you... Because I... I thought that this... wouldn't happen! But now we're here... And I realize, that... that I brought too much pain for you, while you cared. Actually fucking cared. And I... I just don't know how to repay you for everything you've done for me...

Nick looked like she was about to cry. Anon sat beside her on the bed and put his hand onto her shoulder.

— You don't need to. – he said.

Nick looked at him with a bit of surprise, and in her eyes Anon saw a forming veil of tears.

— There is no debt. – Anon said. –There is nothing to pay for. You're here – and that's enough.

The first tear streamed down her light-blue cheek. She fell into his chest, clasping onto him with her hands. Anon heard her sobbing, and felt pain. He brushed his hand through her silky hair.

— I love you so much. – Anon finally said.

— I... I love you too... – Nick finally responded.

Anon closed his eyes, and in the darkness he saw a silvery negative of a familiar person. Giving him a tired smile of acceptance.

“ Finally. ”