"The Janus Gate" by DJ Bodnar

Part I

~1~

Something in his backpack jabbed at his spine, as if seeking purchase between the vertebrae. The duffle bag across his shoulder made the feeling worse with a lopsided tension that felt like it would shear him apart like the lines of fat in a cut of lean beef. Everything was heavy. Clothes, toiletries, shoes, a few books, a box of keepsakes, and his beat-up PS4, snatched at the last minute, composed his entire life now, and that entire life was composed of standing in this line, waiting for his fate to be determined. Sweat soaked his back and underwear. He wanted desperately to slough off the damp hoodie and the two coats overtop it, to bask in the artificial relief of recycled air, but the thought of the customer service agent calling his name at the exact moment his pale, bruised midriff was accidently exposed in the process of piling up loose clothes on the floor kept him standing perfectly still, saddled with bags, staring blankly ahead out the bay windows as the final light of the long day danced on the wings of the airplane he was supposed to be seated on, now long past it’s departure time, never to take off.

“Ashton Trombley,” the customer service agent called.

Ash flinched at his full name. He stepped up to counter. The sallow-skinned woman with a slop of graying hair, who had spent forty-five minutes ahead of him in line, and the last ten minutes engaged in a less than cordial conversation with the agent, threw her hands up in frustration. She gestured to a man – husband? brother? – who hastily scooped up their jackets, extended the handles of wheeling suitcases, and scrambled to follow her as she departed the concourse. 

“Good luck, kid,” she said to Ash as she passed him. “They’re just gonna send you back home.”

Something black and slimy slurried around in the pit of Ash’s gut. He simply nodded.

“Identification, please,” asked the agent. She was a short woman with neat, thick hair and an equally thick accent that clocked her as a native Minnesotan – Ash recognized the cartoonish accent from the movies. “And your ticket as well. Then I can pull up your itinerary in our database.”

Ash handed over his passport and ticket and waited. The agent frowned, checking the passport against Ash’s face. It had been the same game with the TSA agent twelve hours earlier.

“I grew my hair out,” he said. “And I’ve lost… a lot of weight.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” she said. “I can tell it’s your face.”

That’s too bad, Ash thought.

A silence fell while the agent – Tracy, she/her pronouns, as proclaimed by her name tag – tapped away at a keyboard behind the kiosk. The last few people in line behind Ash grunted and grumbled. Everyone was tired of being in an airport. But Ash’s exhaustion went deeper than standing around carrying bags and dealing with a canceled flight. He hadn’t rested during the layover, as he dealt with the onslaught of texts saying the plane was delayed, delayed, delayed, and finally canceled. Earlier, he hadn’t slept on the connecting flight: turbulence and an angry toddler had seen to that. Had he napped in the cab ride to the first airport? He couldn’t remember; it felt like weeks ago. 

His stomach ached, hungry to the point of feeling ill. He’d gone too long without eating, to the point that the thought of food was now nauseating. It wasn’t unfamiliar. Sometimes that feeling was nice. You could believe that you might never have to eat again, never have to put some foreign substance in your body to keep yourself going. But then you had to wake up the next day, dizzy and disoriented and even more nauseous, and chug Gatorade and go back to sleep for three hours before you could feel like a human being again. 

The agent was speaking to him, and Ash had to make a conscious effort to refocus his eyes on her face. 

“I’m sorry? What was that?”

“I said your flight on the B733 has been canceled, so we will have to either reschedule your flight or redirect you to a different airport.”

“Can you tell me why the flight was canceled?”

“A scheduling error.” The agent looked too exhausted to be sheepish.

Ash shook his head. “I just bought my tickets two days ago. No one figured out there was an error by then?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the agent. The pronoun sounded like a slur. “These things happen from time to time, especially with these smaller flights. But we can get you to a different airport for your connecting flight.”

“My connecting flight brought me here.”

“Oh, I apologize.” The agent looked at the screen. “Ok, so we’ll get you on the earliest flight possible to your destination.”

“And when is that?”

The agent clicked around on her computer. “It looks like the air traffic controllers rescheduled the J623 to take off from Gate A20 at 3:45.”

Ash gaped. “Wha… Tomorrow afternoon?” 

“Ah, no, sorry, 3:45 am.”

Ash sighed. Things could always be worse. “I guess I’ll take that.”

“Ok, excellent!” the agent said. “We’ll get you set up right away. The flight won’t have too many passengers, so you can have your choice of seating, but all the same, would you prefer an aisle or window seat?”

“I really don’t care at this point.” Ash swiped at sweat hiding in his hairline. “Aisle, I guess.”

Minutes dragged by as the agent typed at her console. Ash decided to risk taking off their duffle bag at the very least, setting it on a ledge on the front of the kiosk. He sighed at the respite from its weight.

The agent glanced up to see what he was doing. “Oh, please don’t set anything on there, sir.”

“Fuck.” Ash set the bag on the ground. He felt sweatier than ever. A voice proclaimed something over the airport loudspeakers, completely unintelligible. Because they hadn’t been replaced since the early 80s, or because Ash’s was growing more delirious by second? Impossible to say. A clock on the wall read 4:30 pm, yet the February sunlight was already draining away into twilight. Where the fuck was he that the sun set so early? Time had loosed its hold on reality. Just millimeters eked out by a finger on a clock face, minutes tapping by to the rhythm of fingers on a keyboard. No meaningful indicators of event or circumstance. Space, too, felt abstracted. Ash had abandoned the familiar architecture of suburban houses and intersections, passed through the sterile threshold of TSA, and entered a world of faceless urbanity. Every view from the flight here was an impressionist painting backdrop, beautiful and nondescript. The liminality imposed by long stretches of travel felt intimately manifest here, between hordes of carpeted chairs and stretches of tiled walls. Brushed steel pillars reflected everything and nothing as they marched down hallways leading everywhere and nowhere. Every gate a dead end, every window an eye opening on black voids of tarmac, and every ticket, labeled with departure and destination, the only purchase upon reality remaining in a world utterly removed from human experience.

Presently, Ash realized the agent was speaking again.

“I’m sorry?”

“I asked if you had anywhere to stay tonight?”

“No,” Ash said, irritation sneaking into his voice. “No, I don’t know anyone here. I don’t even know what city this is. I thought that in circumstances like this, the airline could put you up in a hotel overnight or something.”

The agent shifted uncomfortably, and when she spoke again there was an edge of steel in her voice. “No, I’m sorry, sir, but the circumstances surrounding this flight cancellation don’t permit us to offer temporary lodgings. However, there are some hotels that I can recommend–”

“I don’t have money for that. This international flight was already really expensive.”

“Ok, well you could also look into getting an Air B&B, I know there’s some in the town just half an hour away. But I suppose without a car it would be a challenge to get there, and the cab service we usually use is not running at this time of night.”

Ash didn’t even bother asking how expensive an Uber would be. “Forget it. I’ll just… crash until my flight.” It was only… nine hours away? Ugh. Well, he had all his unread books with him. And if he could find a corner of the airport with lights a bit dimmer than these glaring fluorescents, perhaps he could even sneak in a few hours of sleep.

“Thanks,” Ash said.

“Of course, sir, and again, I apologize for the inconvenience.”

Had she even apologized a first time? Whatever. Ash started to turn away when he noticed a cart behind the kiosk, the kind flight attendants would wheel down the aisles. 

“Can I get a snack from that cart?” he asked. “Some cookies or chips or whatever?”

The agent glanced back at the cart. “I’m sorry, sir, we’re not supposed to–” she cut herself off as she took in the tired eyes, the tangled hair, and maybe the red line on his neck where a cut was still healing.

“No problem,” she said. She pulled a bag of Sun Chips out of a drawer on the cart and handed it to Ash.

“Thank you.” Ash’s smile felt as tired as the customer service agent’s. At least he'd get to take a nap now. The man in line behind Ash stepped to the kiosk and started to snarl out expletives, Ash couldn’t make them out over the sound of crunching chips. 

Ash settled into a corner of Concourse D about as comfortably as the chips settling into his empty stomach. They had taken the edge off his hunger but replaced it with nausea almost as sharp. Whatever. That could soon be escaped by sleep. A jacket over his legs, another over his chest, the hood flipped up to cover his face, and a fluorescent light burned out for a little more darkness: that was about as cozy as one could get in an airport. He considered putting in earbuds, but the idea of someone catching him unawares seemed terrible. The day had been filled with enough anxiety. Fuck, the last six months, practically at war with his family. He looked at his nails, the dark green polish just starting to chip. How much of a problem had just that one little detail caused? Everything needed to go right from this point forward, having already gone all wrong so far. 

I just have to get out of this airport, he thought. Just get on the next flight, and then I'll be free. Free of it all. 

He screwed his eyes closed. The backwards hood of the jacket formed a safe little capsule over his face, and Ash felt it slowly fill with the warm, moist air of his own breath. 

~2~

Something in her backpack was digging into her spine. For a time, she tried to ignore the discomfort, but wriggling only dragged her further from drowsiness and did nothing to help the pain. Eventually it was too much, and with a grunt of stiffness, Ash dragged the hood of the jacket off her face. She leaned forward to make space to shove a hand between her back and the backpack.

But her backpack was not on her back. Of course not; it was one half of the support under her legs, along with her satchel, the pair forming a lumpy ottoman as she fell asleep to the sound of the world’s worst TV show: the drone of airport announcements and the innervated rush of people in transit. Now the airport was quiet, the passengers having all found their way to their destinations. Lucky for them. 

The pain in her back was fading now, an artifact of poor posture or memory of standing in line. It was probably time to head to her flight. Ash scanned the terminal for a clock, or a screen with any useful information, and finding nothing, she pulled out her phone. Dead. Of course – she’d been in transit for nearly 24 hours now. Should have charged it while sleeping. Might as well just get to her terminal now. She saddled herself once more with backpack and satchel and marched off . 

The airport echoed with a faint, ambient melody. Exposed HVAC systems rattled with cool, recycled air that smelled faintly of fryer oil. But there was no hum of conversation that she could make out from here at… which gate was this? It took her an inordinately long time to find the sign, placed high above normal sight-lines and stenciled in a color two tones off the slate blue of the wall. G4. Hadn’t her canceled flight been at gate B17? She dug in her pockets for her old ticket, but it was gone. The customer service agent must have kept it, having traded her for a new one that listed her 3:23 am boarding time, as well as the gate: A20. 

Ash groaned. How had she wandered so far? Indeed, how could this nowhere town require an airport with so many gates? Ash imagined a town filled with houses that were all Air B&Bs, no resorts but three dozen motels, no grocery stores or upscale restaurants, but with a McDonald’s or Hardee’s around every corner. No library or gyms or specialist health clinics, but a World’s Largest Wicker Basket just outside the corporate limit. A town that was only a node, no destination in itself, existing solely to keep people trapped there overnight alive until the next dawn, when they’d drag themselves back through TSA and catch their red-eye to the place they actually wanted to be. Because who would want to be here?

The G’s counted down three, two, one, and Ash came to a junction. Looking left, Ash spotted another sign the same color as the wall stating this direction led to Concourses D and F, as well as some food courts and bathrooms, the latter denoted by the standard stick figure. The figure had a triangle of a dress on only one side of the body. Did this airport have gender-neutral bathrooms? That would be something. Ash felt the last vestige of food in her body had descended to a point where it would probably be wise to spend some time on a toilet before boarding an airplane. She looked for the sign on the right corridor, hoping to spot another bathroom sign in the direction of her gate, but there wasn’t one, just another cartoon burger and a label for concourses B, C, and D. 

Wait, what? Ash looked back and forth between the labels, walking closer. She knew she needed glasses, but her eyes weren’t deceiving her: both directions were labeled with concourse B. And A was missing altogether. Was A such a long haul down the terminal that they hadn’t even bothered to label it on the signs? 

Her satchel was feeling heavy again, and she swapped it to the other side of her body. A sort of rug burn had formed on both sides of her neck now. Would have been nice to have had time to buy a roller suitcase before leaving. Would have been nice to have planned a lot of things differently. She looked at her green nail polish again. At least that still looked good. This tone of green really was her color. 

Ash sighed and turned left down the wide corridor. Her nap hadn’t been THAT refreshing; it couldn’t be even 3 am yet. There had to be time for a bathroom break. But where were all the freaking clocks? A place so detached from the outside world ought to have the current time at every corner and on every high-definition screen, yet all was random signage. LCDs poured out swirls of foam on fancy lattes instead of useful information about flight schedules, and there were no more arrows pointing toward destinations, only plaques of abstract stick figure cartoons captioned with things like “DON’T LEAVE BAGS UNATTENDED” and “NO FIREARMS PERMITTED IN CARRY-ON LUGGAGE” and “WATCH YOUR BACK”. Was the mosaic in the floor a giant arrow with a capital A? Or was it just a mountain vista? Before she could figure it out, Ash stumbled onto a moving walkway and was carried away.

She rested her arm on the support railing, picked it back up as something squenlched underneath. Black lubricant or engine oil had smeared there. Ash didn’t have napkins, so she just stood there, holding her hand at arm's length in disgust, rolling along with the walkway and taking in the airport. Mostly looking for a damn clock. 

An Olive Garden. A bar with steel chairs called Dandy’s. A colorful snack kiosk named Pop and Go. All were dark, slatted grating imprisoning rows of tables stacked with chairs. Wasn’t there anywhere to get a midnight snack? Well, why should there be, with no one around to want one?

After drifting for several minutes, watching the F gates counting up, the wide corridor was partitioned in half by a wide wall. There was more signage for a bathroom, and Ash breathed a sigh of relief, made deeper when she saw the gender-neutral stick figure again. The moving walkway reached its terminus and Ash hopped off, heading toward the bathroom. She was startled to find that, despite being gender-neutral, there was no door to the entrance. Was it a multi-person bathroom? Ash walked in. 

The bathroom smelled freshly cleaned, and indeed, the floor gleamed as if it were still drying from being mopped, though she hadn’t seen any janitorial staff during the long ride down the hall. Her sneakers tapped and squeaked in time to her steps as she entered. Big blue, yellow, and green tiles did little to reduce the cramped feeling as Ash entered and turned left, right at a dispenser for feminine hygiene products, left again at a fork that optioned urinals in the other direction, and then left once more before finally entering a big chamber lined with toilets. But no sinks? She turned right again. Here they were, rows of sinks on either side of a long, strangely cramped chamber. Even as slender as she was, no one could have squeezed past Ash while she washed the engine oil off her hands. Whatever, it wasn’t the worst designed thing in this airport, to be sure. 

Ash had to spend three minutes and a dozen pumps of soap to wash off the sticky oil. It had somehow got into her nail beds, and she had to scrub until it was almost painful to get it all off. By the time she was done, her nail polish was looking far worse for wear. 

The exhaustion of the day hit abruptly. Ash felt hot tears welling in her eyes. For a moment, she considered swallowing them back, a task familiar enough, having made an art form of it after numerous performances for her family and cousins. But you know what? Fuck it. There was no one in this damn bathroom to see, no one to perform for but herself, and in this moment, she was the damsel in distress.

Her sobs echoed down the maze of halls in the bathroom.

Something like footsteps echoed back.

Ash froze and straightened, looking down both ends of the rows of sinks, but there was no one there.

“Hello?” she said, and immediately regretted it. The sound of her own voice coming back to her was raspy, sardonic, folded over and hollowed out by the maze of a bathroom. There was no one here. She would have heard the squeaking shoes and bustling of bags. She sniffed and looked in the mirror to compose herself. 

The mirrors in the bathroom ran the length of the sink, but because of the separate row of sinks directly behind her, Ash found herself caught in that infinite hallway illusion caused by a set of mirrors facing one another. Deeper and deeper into the corridor, an infinity of Ashs stared back, wading out from distant glassy depths to peer back at her own face. The reflections echoed back to her the sunken brown eyes, the tight lips, the dirty blonde hair that needed a trim and some serious conditioning splayed out over the blocky hunch of her shoulders and her flat chest. She turned a cheek slightly and watched her myriad reflections do the same, catching the stark light of their own bathrooms in such a way that lent a kind of wan, waifish beauty to her otherwise unremarkable features. Well, let no one claim her cheekbones weren’t snatched for the gods. She smiled at that. The Ashs smiled back. She had a nice smile; it made her look younger than twenty-five. 

Something was off about the hallway of reflections, but she couldn’t tell what. The glass wasn’t warped, or damaged, or even particularly discolored, although at a great enough remove the tiny versions of herself descended into a sea-green haze. The light, the perspective, the seams in the glass, nothing there was amiss. Ash moved her eyes from the primary reflection to the next one deeper, leaning forward over the sink. It was identical, of course. Or was it? Was the hairline a little further back? Were the contours in her throat a little sharper? The nose too large, the jaw too wide, the sparkle in her eyes somehow wrong? But the face was the same. She turned around to look at the endless row peering over their shoulders in the opposite mirror, then turned back. Ash looked at the third face down the row of reflection, and then the next, but they were all the same. And they were all different. This one had a nose that didn’t fit, and this one did. This one had eyes too wide, this one eyes too narrow. This one was too angular and angry, this one too soft and weak. The faces of all the Ashs peered deeply into each other’s eyes, an endless chain of scrutiny, diving deeper and deeper into the aquamarine shadows of the twin mirrors, splitting and splitting until there was no single progenitor of the reflection, just a mirror looking back on itself, looking for something it could never find: a certainty of feature, a fixed state, an identity that did not, could not, exist in this world of imperfections and shifting feelings and aging faces. Peering deep enough, something black coalesced together and obscured the infinite point where eyes reflected shining stars shone and a moon illuminated its every phase at once, the point where the dichotomy of individuality and unity collapsed into an endless quagmire of perception created by too many eyes judging too many faces. Society was a collective of people become one hand taking up the scalpel to inscribe between every wrinkle of every brow the names of destiny and perfection alike, a circumcision demanded of each frail, singular human. As if in body alone the two could be mated! As if, with a surgeon’s precision, any identity could be coronated and converted to queen or king in a bloodless assignment at birth into a vehicle for a narrative writ long before the umbilical was severed. Sometimes was carved a face to launch a thousand ships, or a body built flawlessly apart from a hitch in the heel, but for most, the wounds healed falsely and blood seeped into eyes from the text imposed in gorey grooves there above. Perhaps, if they could gaze upon the unfettered sky, the mind behind those eyes might render itself free from context and script, and rise through gentle waters of the heavens to swim languidly to the moon, beloved for their capricious moods. Between the singing spheres, might not there be a place for all modes of mind to render themselves in whatever sex they please? For those unending stars cannot not see, cannot judge, cannot think, only feel, and all they feel is beauty. 

Ash realized what was wrong with the reflections. At least half of them should have reflected the back of her head. But in every mirror, all she saw was that face, looking back.

Part II

~3~

Airport toilet stalls were always a gamble. Sometimes the designers considered questions faced by the lone, weary traveler: where to hang multiple bags? How to make space for a purse, backpack, suitcase, and still leave room for knees as one sits? And how to position the sizable toilet paper rack? Those blessed with wisdom and empathy made sure the stall doors went to the floor, reserved space for hooks and handles a plenty, created the narrowest yet longest water closet for getting in and out with ease. However, in Ash’s experience, most airports had been designed by a class of architects uniquely loathing of the human condition, and unfortunately, this bathroom was designed by one such Marquis de Sade. The toilet, uncomfortably high off the ground, was also nearly abutting the stall door. Ash was only six feet tall, hardly a giant, yet her knees rubbed the stainless steel of the door as she sat on the toilet, which flushed automatically not once but twice in the process of hanging her satchel on the single hook of the door, setting the backpack atop the system of pipes entering the toilet, and contorting between the two as she shucked jackets and pants and more than a couple farts to at last sit down and relieve herself.

It was immediately clear she’d be here for a while. She pulled out her phone only to be met with the worst angle of her face reflected in its empty, black screen. Still dead, of course. She held the power button nonetheless, hoping to catch a glimpse of the time – she still didn’t know what time it was! – but to no avail. Pooping in the still silence of the bathroom it would be.

Not that silent, she noticed. Ventilation fans whirred. Piping gurgled behind walls. From somewhere else in the bathroom, several sets of footsteps squelched on the slick tile floors. An automatic sink started up, then another, and another. They ran for what seemed like an unnecessarily long time, all these people washing their hands together, probably a family with little kids messing around in the water. Then the sinks all shut off at once. The squelching moved on through the weird corridors of the bathroom, seemingly heading towards this room with all the toilet stalls. How many people were there? If they were a family, why weren’t they speaking to one another?

Ash expected the muddled squeaks to distinguish themselves into separate sets of footfalls, but that wasn’t happening. Instead, the squelching sound just grew louder. Now sounded less like footfalls and more like something large and moist being dragged through the hall until the bathroom stalls echoed with the sound of it. Peering through the uncomfortably wide crack in the stall door, Ash couldn’t see anything, but the sound continued to progress slowly into the room.

Something dark caught the corner of Ash’s eye, and she glanced down. The movement of her body made her realize she’d been holding as still as possible. She exhaled stiffly – she’d been holding her breath? – and leaned forward to inspect the floor. 

Some dark fluid was seeping under the stall door. It followed the neat, square lines of the grout, reminding her of videos she’d seen of dry river beds flooding with water during a rainy season, water slowly rolling up piles of sticks and dirt and debris, inhibiting the initial flow so that it moved at a snail’s pace. She edged her shoe away from the oncoming stream, but, as in many of those videos, the black fluid began to overtake its tiny banks. A sheet of slow, black liquid oozed into sight from beyond the stall door. It was the same ugly black lubricant she’d put her hand in on the moving stairway. From where was it spilling? Or from what?

A shadow blotted out the light in the crack of the stall door. Ash had stopped breathing again. This time she did not let it out.

The shadow passed. The squelching receded. Ash looked down at her shoes, sticky with the black ooze. When packing yesterday, she’d noticed the left shoe had developed a hole from her dragging her feet. She prayed the slime would not find its way inside that hole.

The squelching had faded to a whisper. Ash finished up quickly, saddled up her bags, and cautiously opened the stall door. The floor was slick with the black ooze in a wide trail. There were no footprints, no distinguishing markers at all, but the way it leached out at the edges and trickled away while the center was a solid, dark smear confirmed the vision in her mind of something black, heavy, sticky being dragged across the floor, leaving the way she’d come in.

“I need to get the fuck out of this airport,” Ash murmured to herself, and at that moment, the automatic toilet decided to flush again.

The sound swooped through the bathroom like a fighter jet, echoing as if every toilet in the entire room had flushed at once. That was more than enough for Ash. In quick, careful steps, determined to move as fast as possible without slipping, Ash tip toed through the trail of slime and made for the exit on the opposite side of the bathrooms. The sound of some wretched, squelching mass echoed behind her. 

She hesitated only to use the hand sanitizer before leaving and striding in a random direction down the concourse. Very quickly.

~4~

Her shoes squeaked, leaving little black smears on the clean tiles, a haunting echo of the sound and shape of the thing that she felt certain was now following invisibly behind her. She stepped onto another moving walkway, and this time, made sure not to touch the railings as she stepped up her pace.

All around the airport hall, there were traces of the slime now. Black smears streaked the tile in every direction, ahead, behind, even dripping from the towering grids of windows that composed a wall of the airport. The windows leaned inward, looming empty squares that betrayed nothing of the outside world but the endless tarmac and starless sky. The windows broke up into the ceiling, shattered and scattered between pipes and pillars and pylons at obtuse angles that lead nowhere, contained nothing, serving only to break up the monotony of a room in which no one wanted to live, a building in which no purpose was served except to connect one purpose to another. And now she was trapped here, malingering for god only knew how many hours, in this place that answered no questions, offered no respite, and opened no door, save one, and she could not for the life of her figure out where it was. And all the while, something black as tar seemed to be lurking around every corner. There was nowhere to hide in a place like this. Indeed, there wasn’t anywhere to run, either. But run she did

She passed a Dandy’s Bar. The glasses stood in perfect rows. Liquor bottles were capped tight, as if they’d never been used.  She ran past a security kiosk, and even that looked closed. Where the hell were the guards? For the first time in her life, Ash felt like seeing a policeman would make her feel more comfortable. How could an airport be this empty? Had everyone else left?

Perhaps she should do the same. The idea horrified her: she had never used an emergency exit in her life. And doing so in an airport? That would set off every conceivable alarm, probably draw in the local authorities, a fire engine or two, most likely ending in her detainment if not arrest, and missing her flight for sure. Dealing with that fall-out felt more stressful than running from a mysterious ooze. Still, even as she considered it, she spotted the faint glow of an exit sign on her left, where the moving walkway ended. She stumbled slightly  as she stepped off and paused to get her bearings. Sweat was soaking into the necklines of her jackets, and she could hear her heart pounding against her eardrums, as if trying to burst out and flee through that door. But even if she left now, the best-case scenario meant missing her flight, if indeed she hadn’t missed it already. She’d be stuck here even longer, who knows how long, in this godforsaken little town that was just three meaningless letters on a ticket, interrupting those that stated where she was from and where she wanted to be. An obstacle to be overcome, now a wall she lay slumped against in exhaustion, only halfway to the finish line. Was she going to stop halfway? Fuck that. 

Ash stepped back onto the moving walkway, a new sense of resolve in her step. That resolve was undermined as she noticed the gate numbers, still counting up. Somehow she was now on F42. How could there be so many gates along this side of the airport? She turned around to see if they were somehow counting down on the opposite side of the hall – they weren’t, – but the real shock was seeing the Olive Garden again. It was the same one she’d passed coming toward the bathrooms, she was sure of it. The same number of tables, the same iron bars locking it up, the same fake ivy on the same fake brick. What clinched it was the same sign to the left of the restaurant facade, that weird “WATCH YOUR BACK” sign with just a pair of big, black graphic art eyes that seemed to follow her as she drifted past on the walkway.

Ash moaned and squinted down the length of corridor ahead of her. She forced her astigmatic eyes to try and make out where it ended, or turned, or at the very least had another sign telling something of the airport layout. But everything mushed together in a slurry of creams and cast shadows and fluorescent lights.

Some of the shadows seemed to be drawing nearer. A trick of perspective as she was moved by the platform? From far ahead, a sickly sucking squelched echoed forth.

Ash turned and ran. 

The moving walkway was heading against her now, so she had to sprint just to move at walking speed. Fatigue swamped her quickly. She looked about aimlessly. Something to help. Someone to help her. Nothing moved. She caught sight of herself in the darkened windows: pale, sweaty face, bouncing backpack and satchel, heaps of clothing hiding her entire body. Just some stupid, overgrown kid, running alone through an airport. The movement of the walkway created an illusion as if she was just running in place, with everything motionless behind her flailing reflection. She was going nowhere, being pulled in two directions at once. She tried to speed up, found no extra strength in her thin legs, tried to match her original pace, failed, stumbled, cried out, tripped off the end of the platform, fell to hands and knees. 

The red light of that exit sign fell upon her head like a spotlight. Ash gasped for breath. She reached toward the bar to press the door open. 

And then she stopped. Sweat ran into her eye and she wiped it away. She stood up, settled her satchel on her opposite shoulder, and started to run down the hall once more.

The F’s counted down. When she reached F1, she looked back for that exit sign, but it was lost in a false darkness 

~5~

Ash stood in shock at the top of concourse F. She had been certain she was now back where she’d started, but perhaps she’d gotten turned around again? Leaving the bathroom through the other side, turning back down the concourse, she no longer felt confident which end of the airport she was on. Indeed, the whole thing was starting to feel endless.

Before her were two sets of escalators, and between them on a pillar with arrows pointing left and right, “1” and “3” respectively. When she had come to be on floor two, she couldn’t say. She remembered going up an escalator at some point, but whether it was at this airport or the first one, she had no idea. She no longer had the energy to care, either. She just wanted to get to her gate. She checked her new ticket again: A20. At least that hadn’t gotten confused in her mind like everything else. The sign below the “1” was again labeled with F and G, and below the “3” with B, C, and E. Well, that made about as much sense as anything else. She stepped onto the ascending escalator. The pressure of the unnaturally dark hall was heavy behind her. Was that the sound of something squelching across the tile floor behind the drone of the escalator machinery? Ash couldn’t be sure.

She stepped off the escalator into a nearly identical corridor. No signage. Of course. She turned back to the escalators in case there was a clue there. Instead she saw that the down escalator had a “1” by it, and the other had a “3”. Except she’d just ascended to “3” so it had to be some kind of mistake. For her own sanity, she checked the gates on this floor: G. So that made no sense, but at least it wasn’t F. She looked at the floor labels again. Down: D, E, F. Up: A, B, C. 

A! But she didn’t feel particularly relieved. If these signs were wrong, as they had to be, then Concourse A could still be anywhere. Still, she took the escalator up one more time. 

Floors 1 and 3. Great. But this time, down was labeled with “TO ALL GATES”. Up was labeled with… nothing. There was no indication of what was upstairs. A small part of Ash, still more curious than exhausted, made her peer up the escalator to the narrow gap where the low ceiling sloped upward with the stairs. It wasn’t moving, and police tape guarded the entrance. She almost felt grateful for that police tape, the first sign of something imperfect, something out-of-place. And being out-of-place in a place between all places was somehow deeply comforting. 

At the top of the escalator, below the edge of the ceiling, Ash saw a set of boots.

“Hey!” she cried, stumbling forward. The words choked out of her parched throat like a sob, and Ash cringed at the sound. No wonder the boots had stepped away as she darted closer. She probably looked and sounded insane. Suddenly she was glad the person had ignored her. 

She looked around the concourse she was on now and blinked as she saw that this was just an exit to the airport. There were a few more generic airport info signs, but the main one just said “baggage claim”. Wasn’t that usually on the bottom floor? 

Who gives a fuck? She had already made up her mind not to leave. But then where was Concourse A? Had she missed something on the previous floor? The sign said “TO ALL GATES”... 

Ash descended the escalator.

She immediately felt silly. Concourse G was indeed in front of her here, but to the left it split off in two directions. Left B, and to the right… just C. Ash nearly screamed in frustration. She considered going back up the escalator to find that person and beg them for help, but it was too late for that. So, B or C? Tired of trying to reason anything out, Ash turned down C. She tried to remember if she’d come in this direction when her first plane had landed. Nothing seemed familiar. She started walking.

The C’s were counting up. At some point, a hallway split off onto concourse D – hadn’t D been downstairs from here? – but Ash continued until she spotted gate C8. That looked familiar, at last. This was where her original connecting flight had been scheduled. And there, perched in the chair, was the customer service agent. Ash felt her face break out in a gleeful smile. She wasn’t where she needed to be yet, but at least here was someone to…

Drawing closer, she saw her error. A mauve flight attendant jacket had been left on the chair. Ash stared at it blankly. It seemed there was not a single living soul in the airport. So who had left this, and why? She looked for the nametag to see if it was Tracy’s, turning a pleat of the jacket over and tilting the nametag to catch the light. 

The print of the name had smeared. Had she rubbed it with her finger? Indeed, something black smudged her thumb. But weren’t the letters on these things usually made of vinyl, or beveled plastic? Ash tried to clean up the smudge, but it only smeared further, obstructing the pronouns beneath it. What she had thought said “she/her” started to look like “see/here”, and that dissolved into “heeheehee”. 

She rubbed it again, but all she succeeded in doing was getting her own hand soiled with more oily ink. It felt so important that she see what pronouns had been printed there, even more important than the name. And wasn’t that just the way things went, anyway? Whoever this was, or had been, was less important than their gender, that piece of data people always seemed to evaluate before anything else. Names hid a whole secret identity behind them. Gender offered a much more readily available value judgment.

In sudden frustration, Ash ripped the nametag off the jacket and threw it across the floor. It skittered up to the edge of the closed door of gate C8.

Something was moving along the edge of that door. Ash peered closer and watched as something oozed out and slowly drowned the nametag in black slime.

With a loud slam, the door exploded open, and there was suddenly a lot more.

Part III

~6~

Ash screamed. The sound ripping out of her came with a perverse sense of relief. She’d been wanting to scream for a while now, perhaps even since that first trickle of glistening oil-black slime had crept under her door in the bathroom, and voicing it now felt like a confession to a dear friend in the privacy of a bedroom. The echo of it hollowing out her lungs left her both empty and energized at the same time.

With her next breath, Ash used that energy to begin to sprint. 

A thick gurgling like a polluted stream pursued her down the concourse. Panes of darkened glass reflected her, a bundle of coats and bags, and behind her, a bundle of sludge and grease. It lurched forward in bursts, sickening, sputtering, bubbling gasps echoing behind her as it poured over itself, trying to catch up to her. Gate numbers flashed in her peripherals: C52, C53, C54. No airport could possibly be so long. And yet the corridor stretched on ahead, an abyss of useless doorways, void of place or time, void of even identity. Towers of glass and steel loomed aimlessly as they were washed in the black tide behind her. Empty seats and rows of queuing stanchions were flooded with gobs of pitch. Darkness swallowed the airport at Ash’s back.

She had never run like this before in her life. Her left ankle was starting to complain and bow inwards as it slipped around in a loosening shoe. Sweat soaked her shirt and underwear, and something angular and hard in her backpack chaffed on her spine. But there was no stopping. It would go on like this forever, endlessly counting up the gates, no place to hide, no time to catch her breath, no peace from the inexorable tide of muck that for no reason on this green earth wanted her swallowed in its darkness. It was a punishment devoid of a crime, a hatred devoid of an injustice, a collective devoid of identity except one: to absorb, to reduce, to annihilate. To separate her from her destination, from any destination. Unless she gave up and left the airport completely, unless she wandered off to be lost in a night just as dark as that blob of nothingness, she would never find rest again. 

C78, C79, C80. This was absurd. Her breath felt like shards of glass in her chest. Another exit sign tantalized from across the hall. No. She would not give up. But there, what was that next to it? Small red box: a fire alarm. The idea of setting off an alarm that would alert every person in the airport, every head turning to face her and scrutinize her, made her feel sick. But there was no other damn person here! Why should she care?

Ash turned, ran to the fire alarm, and pulled it down.

It was a satisfying sensation, getting to pull this forbidden lever. There was no child who hadn’t stared with eyes wide in morbid curiosity as they pondered doing this thing they had been warned against since before even their most formative memories. Feeling the comfortable, sturdy click of plastic in her grip as mechanisms and connectors slipped into place, that little kid in Ash jumped up and down with excitement. The moment was made more gratifying by the spray of water that immediately showered from tiny spigots in the ceiling, water that cooled her own face while seeming to burn the black blob. It hissed, choking on itself as it rolled over in place, slumping down, pulling back, the waves along the floor receding. An alarm began to blare, and red and white lights flashed, but the clamoring of her senses was somehow comforting in contrast with the terrible silence and emptiness of the airport before. The cacophony brought it to life, somehow. 

As Ash turned and started to run again, she became aware of a gravelly grumble. It was a voice, coming over the PA. The klaxons of the fire alarm drowned it out, but Ash could tell even if they were silenced, the poor quality of the speaker system would render the speaker unintelligible. It was just garbled static behind the alarms, the gushing sprinklers, the sputtering oil blob. But it was the first voice Ash had heard for a long time.

Ahead was another minibar, and beyond that the hallway widened and split down the center, like the bathrooms earlier. She saw a door with a tall glass pane in it; it seemed to lead into a small office of some kind, TSA or customer service or something. Glancing back to verify the blob was falling behind, Ash feinted to the right, if it was watching, if it could even see, then crouched and doubled back behind benches and chairs and partitions until she made it inside the bar. From there, it was easy to sneak up to the door. She tried the handle: it opened without resistance. She slipped inside and closed it, slumping to the floor.

No rain fell in this small, white room. The alarms were quiet as well. But there was a PA speaker overhead. Ash held her breath, praying the voice would come again. Water made salty by her sweat crept into her open mouth, spraying as she panted. The seconds crept by. The muted alarm blasted in the hallway. Water trickled in under the door. It was clear and clean. 

When the voice came, Ash half screamed again.

“This is the final call for flight J623. Passenger Trombley, Ashley, please make your way to Gate A20. The doors to your flight are closing in five minutes. Again, Passenger Trombley, Ashley, please come to Gate A20, doors close in five minutes.”

~7~

Hearing her name spoken by a stranger after so long of neither seeing nor hearing a trace of human life was almost a shock to Ash. Hearing her full name was almost even more so. Nobody called her Ashley. She didn’t even call herself that. Hearing someone call it out now was a deep relief, yes, but somehow also disconcerting. It felt like someone else was being called, like a mistake had been made. That couldn’t be her. They had to mean another girl named Ashely Trombley. 

But that was her gate, that was her flight. For just a moment, Ash hesitated at the door. Was she really going to answer to this name? She had wanted to hear it called for so long, yet it didn’t feel quite right.

She had to. She had a plane to catch.

Ash threw the door open and nearly face-planted on the slippery floor. Down the corridor, the lights had gone out, and all was filled with a moist darkness from which emanated that terrible, echoing slurping noise of the blob. There was no time to deal with that; hopefully the rainfall would keep it weakened. Ash turned away and started down the concourse, slower this time to avoid slipping. 

Almost immediately, at Gate C99 the hallway turned right, sloped upward, and split at a T intersection. Left: Concourse B. Right: Concourse A. At fucking last. Ash turned right again. She didn’t bother to question how planes could fit in between Concourses A and C. She didn’t question why, from either concourse, the light of the parallel one was not visible beyond the windows, or indeed, any sign that there was a structure. She didn’t think about anything except for the fact that there, twenty gates down the hall, was a woman in a mauve jacket and hat, standing with her hands clasped in front of her, looking curious as this sweaty mess of a person sprinted towards her. 

“Hello, are you-”

“I’m Ash Trombley, is this flight J623?”

The travel agent smiled, her host of white teeth shining in the bright lights of the airport, and Ash couldn’t help but smile back. “Yes, you’re just in time. In the future, to avoid delays, we recommend arriving at TSA at least–”

“Yes, I know, I’m sorry.” Ash fumbled her passport and ticket out of a pants pocket. Both were damp, with sweat or water, perhaps even a little pee from fright. But the flight attendant took them with a calm professionalism, scanned them, and held up the passport to check it against Ash’s face. 

“I grew my hair out,” said Ash. “And I lost weight. I know it doesn’t look like me…”

“No, it looks just like you,” said the flight attendant, passing it back to Ash. Ash started to shove the papers back into her pocket, then paused. She looked at the passport ID page. There was a girl that looked just like her, a little younger. Shorter hair. A little chubbier. Was the jawline too narrow? Was the hairline too sharp? The faint lines on the forehead just slightly off? A name was written there: “Ashley Trombley”. That was her. That had always been her. And yet, it wasn’t her. It wasn’t him, either…

“Is something wrong?” the flight attendant asked. “We really need to get going.”

“I…” Ash looked at the flight attendant and her polite smile. 

From somewhere down the concourse, there was an audible squelch.

“Thank you,” Ash said, hurrying through the gate. 

“Have a good flight,” said the attendant, turning back to her post. 

The sepia corridor stretched down to a narrow rectangle of darkness, from which the low roar of jet engines breathed. Ash felt a little sob swelling up and strode forward to board the plane.

Just before the doorway, Ash felt a prickle on the back of their neck, a stab in the back of their spine. They turned to look back down the hall. The flight attendant who had checked them in was standing there, in the same position, hands clasped in front of her, smiling kindly down to Ash. Was the hallway beyond her somehow darker? The plane door was pulled closed, and the answer to that was left in mystery.

~8~

The flight was completely booked, and everyone was eager to leave. Men and women jostled for elbow room down the aisles of the plane, the calm maintained only by the artificial breeze of the plane cabin and the placid voice of the flight attendant already dictating emergency procedures over the PA. People turned and frowned as Ash stumbled down the narrow central aisle toward their seat. The squeeze of humanity was jarring after the hours spent wandering the empty halls of the airport, like coming into an air-conditioned house after a blistering hot day, or a dry, toasty one after hours wandering snowy streets. The two extremes juxtaposed themselves over Ash, the air somehow both boiling and freezing, moist and dry, and which was real and which was caused by their own confused state of anxiety and relief was impossible to say. Drips of cold sweat threatened Ash’s eyes as they scanned for their seat number. A man in a business suit made a point of clearing his throat as Ash bumped his cell phone out of his hand. A woman, trying to keep her baby in a pink jumpsuit from crying any louder, threw Ash a roll of her eyes. Voices whispered in an irritated buzz. Everyone was waiting for Ash to sit down. Everyone was waiting for them to make a choice. 

Ash found their seat halfway down the aisleway, next to a person so old the stony facade of any distinguishing facial features had been destroyed by time. For a moment, Ash thought they might be dead, but a faint snore escaped their mouth. 

Ash chucked their bag in the overhead bin, stuffed their backpack under the seat, and buckled in for the flight. Relief tried to sneak into their muscles, but lingering panic was having none of that. Maybe once the flight took off, the horrors could be put behind them at last. As it was, the plane was still pulling away from the gate.

“Thank you for flying with us,” the flight attendant said. She started to ramble off details about the flight. Six hours until their west coast destination. Thank god.

As the cabin lights dimmed and the plane began to taxi down the runway, Ash dug in their backpack for their phone charger. They felt around for an outlet on the seat: it was there. at the base of the armrest, and disconcertingly slick. In fear, Ash looked at their fingers for traces of the black sludge, but there was none. It took several tries for Ash to jiggle the prongs on the power brick into just the right position for the aged outlet to work, but at last a little lightning bolt “charging” animation popped up on the black screen. 

The airplane constantly stopped and started as it taxied. Ash tried to spot what was hindering its progress out the window, but all was as veiled by night as it had been in the airport.

Their phone buzzed: it was ready to power on once more. Ash did so eagerly. There were only a few minutes before takeoff, when they'd have to switch to airplane mode.

It was 3:26 am, because of course it was. Everything was fine. Ash was right on time. Behind the large numbers of the time was the background photo. Ash had taken it a year ago. It was Sheana, Hyperios, and Leo seated around a picnic bench, with the forepaws and snout of Leo’s boxer-pitty mix just barely in camera as it begged for strawberries off Hyperios’s paper plate. The lighting was bad and everyone looked hungover. Sheana said she hated the photo because she looked too posed. Hyperios said he hated it because he looked sweaty and his necklaces were tangled. And Leo said he hated it because Ash wasn’t in it. 

“Just take a selfie?” he’d suggested. But Ash had wanted a photo of just the three of them. Ash would have looked worst of all, sickly and pale, especially in contrast to Sheana’s flawless midnight skin. Their eyes would have looked sunken and their smile forced and tired. Hiding from the camera’s eye the hollows of their cheekbones from undereating, or the blood on their nose from another altercation with their dad, would have been impossible. Maybe Leo was right, and perhaps Ash had been texted enough photos of their trio of online friends at the park, at the club, at a kickback with a bong and a horde of snacks. But Ash had taken this photo, and that made it extra special. It wasn’t meant to look good. It was meant to remind Ash of what was real. Of what was worth living for.

The plane had been stopped for a long time. Ash looked at their messages. A few from their family – fuck that, deleted – and of course a slew from the airline regarding the rescheduled flight. One from their old boss, wishing them the best in a move everyone at work assumed had been long planned and kept secret. And a handful from Sheana. Ash opened these so eagerly that they jumped to the top of the text conversation. It took a full minute of scrolling through semi-ironic boudoir photos, essays and rants exchanged at innumerable witching hours, and endless memes to get to the bottom. Ash didn’t want to review those last few days of scrambling to coordinate flight times, transport, and worst of all finding emergency housing. Sheana said they could crash on the couch, but that was only temporary. In the end, a friend of a friend had a furnished attic space waiting for a tenant. Of course Hyperios had found that. Hyperios knew everyone. 

The unread texts:

Girl, what’s the tea? You were supposed to text me when you got on your flight!

Fuck. In their exhaustion and disappointment, Ash had totally forgotten to respond.

Half an hour later:

Bitch ur lucky I made you put my email on that ticket. I guess ur flight was delayed that fucking sucks. So r u dropping in at like 9am now? I can still pick up, np. Try to stay sane at the airport! love u

So much for that. 

After midnight:

WE LOVE YOU! <3 Leo said to say that isnt’ he sweet. BTW they found that estro connect you asked about! get ready for the t-girly energy to HIT

Fuck.

Around 2 am, clearly after some drinks:

ok kinda worrid that tyou havnt text me back bitch but imma drag my hungover ass to the aiprort and yuou better b there or im gonna have hyperios bleach ur hair again

It had looked horrible the first time, and with Ash’s hair even more damaged now, they might as well just go bald. Something wet dripped onto their phone. Ash wiped it away. It typed out a string of random characters as it triggered the touch screen capacitors. Ash deleted them and typed:

omw, taking off now. Sorry I didn’t respond sooner. A lot has happened.

They sent it, then paused and added:

But I’m ok now I think

Ash deleted the last two words and hit send again. Another tear hit the screen as Ash typed more:

 TYSM for finding estro! I really can’t wait!

But again, the hot tears smeared across the screen and triggered the keyboard capacitors. Now the text read:

TYSM for finding estro, but I need to think.

Ash stared blankly at the phone. The water blurring both eyes and the screen was creating a strange doubling effect, as if they were looking at two of the same phone with two different lines of unsent text. They looked at their hands, the fingernails short, the polish chipping, the fingers long and uncertain, the tiny blond hairs on the knuckles. Was it their hands trembling or the hairs moving in some breeze?

A horrible, echoing BANG reverberated through the cabin.

~9~

Ash started and dropped the phone. They looked around to see if anyone had noticed their overreaction, but no one had. Indeed, it seemed as if no one had noticed the sound, either. People looked at their books and watches, nodded off with eye masks covering their faces, or stared blankly into space. 

Another bang, like something striking the outside of the airplane. Ash leaned past the old person next to them and scrambled with a sliding panel covering the window, but it was stuck fast. They leaned out of their seat, hoping the flight attendant would say something. Another bang, this time from the side of the plane. Another, and another, and Ash could feel the vibration in the exoskeleton of the plane. 

No one reacted. 

Ash started to stand, and was tugged back into their seat by their seatbelt. It would have been disruptive to get up during take-off anyway. 

BAM!

The plane rocked slightly. A phone slipped off someone’s lap and into the aisleway.

“Excuse me!” Ash’s voice cracked out almost against their will. “I’m sorry, excuse–” They were cut off as another bang jostled the plane. The sound was terribly loud, yet somehow muted, as if it wasn’t something solid that was slamming against the hull.

Ash felt terror rising in their throat.

A hissing whine cut in, and Ash saw another flight attendant, a light-skinned black man with hooded eyes, raise a mic to his mouth.

“Attention passengers, we’re having some trouble with takeoff, and unless the issue is resolved, we’ll have to wait on the tarmac. For now, everybody please leave your seatbelts fastened, and hopefully we’ll choose a direction soon.”

Interrupted by slams, Ash wasn’t sure they’d heard the flight attendant correctly. “Choose a direction?” they asked. They glanced briefly at the dozing senior by the window, as if they would have any further information, and then looked to the front of the plane with a gasp as another bang hit the plane. 

“Excuse me,” Ash said, trying to control the pitch of their voice while making sure the attendant heard. “What does that mean, choose a direction?”

The flight attendant looked at Ash and spoke into the mic again. “It’s a bit technical but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

What the hell? Ash looked around to see if any of the other passengers were as confused. 

Ordinarily, when Ash thought “everyone” was staring at them, it was perhaps one or two passersby who glanced up for a fraction of a second before moving on. Ash knew the whispers or unreadable facial expressions were rarely intended for them. Believing that in the moment was the real challenge. 

However, in this instance, it took Ash several seconds for it to sink in that every person in the plane had turned to stare at them.

A deep chill ran up Ash’s spine. It ached and made them feel dizzy.

“You see,” the flight attendant continued. “All airplanes have basically the same construction. In the front of the plane is the cockpit, the glass-covered window from which the plane is controlled by the pilot. The back of the plane is called the tail, and acts as a kind of rudder to stabilize the aircraft. Finally, to either side are the wings, which are designed to only move in one direction, creating lift and eventually picking it off the ground, as the engines, also oriented in only one direction, accelerate the craft forward.”

Even through the anxiety of the moment, Ash felt irritated. “Yes, everyone knows that.”

“Ok, good. Then you’ll understand our issue. Behind me is the front of the airplane. But unfortunately, behind you is also the front of the airplane.”

What could that possibly mean? Ash started to turn in their seat. But there was no need. They were already facing the back of the airplane, which was also the front. Row after row of seated people faced the back of the airplane, and row after row faced the front, and whichever way Ash looked, everyone was facing them. 

Ash felt a nauseating sense of doubling as they realized the “front” of the plane they were facing was also the identical back part of the plane. There was no tail section, no single swept-back pair of wings. Instead, two sets of wings opposed each other, engines roaring as the plane tried to pull itself apart, being forced in two directions by two different operators in two different cockpits, each facing the right direction, each in total opposition to each other. And Ash was somehow seeing in both directions at once.

As a kid, Ash had taken an interest, or perhaps morbid curiosity, in a large illustrated volume of Greek and Roman mythology in the school library. Tales of people and gods being disemboweled, beheaded, merged, and mutilated were the kind of lurid stories you normally had to perform a risky Google search on the school computer to find, but here it all was, in easily checked-out storybook form. Apollo and Artemis, Hephestus and Nike, Salamacis, Teiresius, Medusa. Gods, demigods, and monsters with strange appetites and appearances populated the stories, but ever captivating to Ash was the god Janus. A god of dichotomies, of opposing forces, united in one head with two visages facing opposite directions. Ash had spent ages studying the depictions of the two-faced god. How could one exist in that state? It would be torture. Always facing forward, yet forward was also always backward. Any movement would become impossible as the two faces warred over which would decide where they were going. That kind of paralysis, that tension of mind, was unsustainable. It would break any person.

Ash felt that paralysis now as they reached up to touch the back of their head and felt their own eyes, their own nose, the corner of their trembling lips. They felt a scream of horror simmering in their throat, and looked again with two sets of eyes at the flight attendants at the fronts of the airplane.

“It’s time to decide which direction we’re going,” said the two identical men. “You’re the last one to get on board.”

In eerie, silent unison, the other passengers began to rise from their seats and move toward Ash.

Part IV

~10~

United States air law prohibited firearms, knives, and other sharp or explosive weapons from being brought into an airport. TSA had done its job in making sure the passengers of flight J623 had not secreted any of those things onto the flight. Still, things like beard trimmers, scissors under four inches in length, sharpened pencils, pocket lighters, baseball bats, metal water bottles, nail clippers, curling irons, knitting needles, these were permitted, and as the passengers rose from their seats, they took up these things now, emptying bags and plugging in cords, each waiting their turn to stand, enter the aisle, and move slowly toward Ash. 

Ash wanted to scream, but they gagged on the sound, paralyzed by the jarring sensation of having two faces and no back, somehow sitting forward in two directions at once. But even worse than this realization was that which came from watching everyone else stand. Every person on the flight was afflicted with the same condition. But it wasn’t the sight of myriads of people with two faces that made bile rise in Ash’s throat, no, it was the sight of the mutilation. Bloody, broken faces rose from suffocation against the backs of chairs. Some had their eyes stitched shut, or poked out, teeth broken or removed completely, hollow sockets and toothless mouths trying to take in the world between lid and lip. Noses had been smashed flat so the front faces could rest easily against headrests. Breasts had been bloodily sliced off, genitals carved out, and collar bones shattered, all so that the other body, the body that had been determined to be the true front, could recline comfortably back and flatten the reverse side completely. Limbs popped horribly as people stood and took up their improvised weapons. From the perspective of the gored faces, arms twisted backward at terrible angles. Leg joints popped out of place in service of shambling steps. Skin around ankles and wrists stretched to the point of tearing and bleeding as hands flailed, feet stumbled, and the horde of Janus people turned their front-facing mouths and emotionless eyes toward the Ashs. The moans of the tortured, no longer muffled by headrests and cushions, began to fill the cabin.

And all the while, they were underscored by the strengthening smash of something huge and liquid against the hull of the plane.

Ash fumbled with their seatbelt, but which side did it unbuckle from? Somehow both sides, and somehow neither, and with only one set of awkward arms to share between themself, Ash could not manage to get it off. A Janus person, a man with a buzzing beard trimmer, took a swipe at one of Ash’s foreheads, and Ash tilted to the side just before he swept a gouge through it that would have scalped them. An old woman closed in with a cane. She was hunched, and the forward angle of her head allowed the blood seeping from her double’s eyes to trickle down into her own as she smashed the cane down into one of Ash’s cheeks. The elbows of a boy with big, angry eyes crunched, tendons snapping and bone popped through the flesh as he angled a blow with a tennis racket at Ash’s teeth. The crowd assaulted Ash even as they assaulted themselves, and the Ashs screamed in pain and horror as they struggled to protect the most vital points of both sides of their body against the onslaught.

“Why are you doing this?” they screamed.

To their surprise, the flight attendant actually responded. “To get from one place to another, we must move forward. That means we have to choose just one direction, Ash. All of us. Everyone here has chosen a side. Everyone except you has given up this entitled capriciousness and resolved to a single, meaningful identity. Ordinarily, we don’t let you choose, but since you’ve made it this far, we’ll let you decide which one to keep. Decide now, or lose both.”

And at last, Ash understood. Against the hail of blows, cuts, and burns, against all reasonable possibility of spatial orientation, he at last managed to turn around and face herself, and she turned to face him.

It was that same face from the bathroom mirror, the same in the reflections running down the hall in an endless string. Identical, yet different. Or was it? Was the hairline a little further down? The throat contours a little softer? The nose too flared, the jaw too clenched, the sparkle in each pair of eyes somehow both reflecting pain, reflecting joy, or perhaps neither? But the face was the same. This was Ash’s face, and that was Ash’s face, and one had to go. This was her chance to change forever. She was leaving her fucked up family, her fucked up life, her fucked up identity, and Sheana would help her become Ashley completely. She was about to take flight and transform forever from a caterpillar into a butterfly, from an egg into a bird. There was nothing else left to question, right? 

Ashton smiled sadly. The pain was distant but complete, chattering all through his body like frostbite setting in. He was dying. And that was alright. Let his larynx be crushed, his jaw broken, his chest ripped open and the frail heart removed. That was all right. The world wanted it that way. Let Ashton be writ upon a stone, and that stone thrown into the sea, to be scrubbed clean by the waves. He would offer himself up, knowing that Ashley would be safe in the arms of her friends.

Except…

He still wanted to help.

And she wanted him to stay.

His life wasn’t only fuck-ups and tragedy. He’d taught herself to ride a bike, if slowly, taught herself to speak Spanish, if poorly. He’d been the protector when her friend was pushed down during recess, he’d been the anger when her teacher failed her for solving the math question differently, he’d been the strength in the final hour of an overtime shift. He’d been the logical voice when her father had confronted her about the dresses in her closet, and he’d been the silence when her father had beat her afterward. 

But she was still going to change, because she was the pride and the joy and the peace in his heart when he put on that dress and looked in the mirror and saw… and saw…

“Just try cutting yourself out of it,” a frail, old voice whispered in their ear.

Ash shot their arms out. A pair of nail scissors, clutched in the hands of a man who looked like their father, tried to pull away. Ash held on with all their strength, squeezing until their fingernails dug into his skin, until his index finger gave way with a slight pop, and scissors slid into Ash’s palm. Ash jerked the scissors to one side of the belt holding them both in place and cut and sawed. It was as effective as using a butter knife. A pencil stabbed just below Ash’s eye. A set of keys scraped at their arm. A lighter set fire to their damaged hair.

And then they were standing, and then they were elbowing people away, flailing wildly, throwing up the hood of their jacket that somehow didn’t cover either of their faces but protected them from attack, and barreling through the crowd. They moved toward the cockpits, both cockpits, at the same time. They moved in perfect unison, their heartbeats a rhythm to help them keep time, the rhythm a song to drown the clamoring people and the pounding of the aircraft hull, starting to dent in places. They dragged themselves forward through the crowd, forward past the flight attendant and their own destroyed face – she might have been beautiful if she’d been allowed to live – and reached for the doors of the cockpits on the fronts of the plane and pulled the handles and–

~11~

Outside the curved window of the cockpit, an ocean of blackness swept across the horizon. It smashed against the windows of the airport, glass shattering silently as the ooze flooded every corridor and stairwell. It lashed at the random structures on the tarmac, toppling them one by one, swallowing up the tiny lights of signal towers and airstrips until all was swathed in the empty void of substance.

A person sat in the cockpits. It was the same person in each, just as Ash was the same person, attached to themself yet each acting freely. The person’s faces regarded the two different angles of the sea of ooze, not startling as a pseudopod swept up to slam against the glass, but only sighing faintly. 

They turned to face Ash. They looked familiar, muscular and lithe with olive skin, long, black hair in a billowing quaff that contrasted with their tight pilot’s uniform. A figure from a long-forgotten dream, or long-abandoned future. Ash looked into their faces and felt known, intimately.

“Where would you like to go, Ash?” asked Janus.

“Home,” Ash said. They took the seats next to Janus.

Janus’s mouths curled, one to the left, the other to right, in a wry little smile.

“I thought you’d say that,” they said. 

All of them turned to face the consoles. Impossibly, two sets of turbines started up in opposite rotations. Impossibly, two sets of wheels trundled the same plane forward in opposite directions. Impossibly, two sets of wings lifted the plane off the ground. Impossibly, the plane rose, and as wind scraped the last drips of sludge off the hull to rejoin the seething mass below, the plane headed in two opposite directions for the same destination.

~12~

Cumulonimbus clouds rolled out to the horizons in peach highlights over a plum sky. Far below, in the veins between more clouds, the blackened earth churned with the ooze. Everything was very quiet, apart from the rumble of turbines.

“Would you like to sleep?” Janus asked. “We’ve still got a few hours in the air.”

Ash didn’t respond. Despite the beauty of the sky that cradled the plane in featherweight arms, they couldn't take their eyes off the darkness far below.

“Sometimes,” they said, “it feels as if the entire world is demanding that I have to be just one thing.” 

“Most things are,” said Janus. “Just one thing, that is.”

Ash frowned and looked at them. “But that’s just like… human conceptualization. That a bird is only a bird, or… a cloud is a cloud.”

“You don’t think that’s true?”

Ash looked out the window again. “I mean… A bird is also a collection of cells. And a cloud is also a collection of water droplets. And that’s just looking at it with science. You can also think about it like… is a cloud really a cloud without light reflecting off it? Without all kinds of air pressure changes or whatever to give it shape? And a bird needs to eat, sleep, fly, probably. It depends on so much of the world around it to keep it alive. It can’t exist without those things, not for long.”

“So most things are really a whole bunch of things put together.”

“Exactly.”

“And a whole bunch of things can come together to be one thing.”

“Sure.”

“So,” said Janus, “I guess that would mean, if you took everything, and put it all together, then you’d just have one thing.”

Ash blinked. “I mean… I don’t know how you’d refer to that one thing.”

“Neither do I,” said Janus. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“Ok…”

“You say a bird can’t be without food and water. Then a bird is also the stream from which it drinks, the worms it pulls from the ground. And that stream is also the rocks of the riverbed on which it runs, and the worm is also the soil through which it digs. The earth is in all things, and all things are in the earth. And the earth is defined by its context in the solar system. And so on and so forth, and eventually, in trying to define any one thing completely, we find ourselves defining all things.”

Ash scoffed. “But then that just… renders all distinction meaningless. How can we discuss anything if we’re going to act like the solar system has some importance on a bird getting a drink of water?”

“It depends. Who’s involved in the discussion? Who’s asking the questions?”

“What? I don’t know, just random people?”

“Well, wonderful! That makes things a lot easier, when we don’t have to involve animals or plants or stars or gods. Now that its just random people, we can take for granted the fact that nothing is separate, and no one is identical, and rely on that universal context of human identity to construct all kinds of biased conclusions and opinions about ourselves.”

“Well, that’s not fair,” said Ash, watching a lumpy cloud change shape before their eyes. “That context of human identity is the only one we’ll ever have. We don’t have a choice but to try to make sense of the world through that framework.”

“That’s true. But it doesn’t change the fact that all things are really just one thing, in the end.”

“And that doesn’t change the fact that humans don’t experience the world like that!”

“So you’d begrudge those who’d like for themselves to be only one thing?”

“I mean… no.” Ash sighed. “But… look how they’ve hurt themselves. Look how they’ve hurt the world. Pushing everything into a comfortable box, into a position where it can’t function properly. Maybe it’s one thing for people to choose a singular identity. It’s another when other people are forcing them into it.”

“So,” said Janus, “don’t let yourself be forced.”

“It’s not that simple,” said Ash. “Because… because then I get hurt, too.”

“I once knew a man,” Janus said. “He was an archer of great skill. With his gifted eyes, he could spot a fawn under a weeping willow a thousand feet away. One day, by mistake, the archer went hunting in the king's personal hunting grounds, and slew a boar reserved for the king. When the king heard of this, he was enraged and had the archer arrested. 

"‘Your sentence for your transgression,’ he declared, ‘is to have your right hand cut off. You will never draw back a bowstring again.’

“‘Very well,’ said the archer. ‘I will accept this fate, as my right hand is not my dominant hand.’

“‘Oh, is that so?’ said the king. ‘Then instead, we shall have your left hand cut off. You will never knock an arrow again’

“‘Very well,’ said the archer. ‘I will accept this fate, for neither is my left hand my dominant hand. You see, I am ambidextrous.’

“‘The king, growing frustrated, cried out, ‘Well, you must be punished, but since I am a fair king, I cannot cut off both your hands.’

“‘If I may suggest,’ said the archer, ‘instead of cutting full through either of my hands, cut only halfway on each arm, such that both hands will be punished.’

“‘The king agreed to this, and the archer’s wrists were both severed halfway through.

“‘Now go,’ said the king, ‘and may you never fire a bow again.’

“‘The archer went into the woods and found a great healer who he had caught game for many times in the past. The healer took one look at the archer’s wrists and knew just what to do. She composed her strongest politice, her most finely crafted splints, and her cleanest bandages, and wrapped the archer's wrists so tightly and so gently that within days they had already begun to heal. Within weeks, the archer could move both hands again, and within months they had picked up the bow and begun to recover their lost skill.

“‘One day towards the end of his recovery, the healer was watching the archer eat. ‘You claimed to be ambidextrous,’ she said, ‘yet I only ever see you hold your spoon with your right hand.’

“‘Indeed,’ said the archer, ‘that was a lie. My right hand is my dominant hand.’

“‘Why tell such a lie? Surely the pain in one hand would have been lesser than to suffer the pain in both.’

“‘True,’ said the archer. ‘But to lose my ability to fire a bow would have been greater than the pain of losing my head. Given time, friendship, and the knowledge of a healer, see how I have recovered completely from my pain?’

“‘Very well,’ said the healer. ‘But you’re a smart man. You could have found a way to fire your bow with just your right hand, with the help of a tool, or a friend, or even your teeth or foot.’

“‘True,’ said the archer. ‘But I still use my left hand for some things.’

“‘And with his left hand, he cupped the head of the healer and leaned in to kiss her.”

Ash was quiet for a long time. Then they said, “he didn’t ask to kiss her first?”

“It was implied by the story context she was into it.”

“I don’t know, seems a little weird to me.”

“You’re just not a romantic.”

Ash was quiet again, then said, “The archer should have shot the king.”

“Another king would have stepped right up to replace him.”

“Then the archer should have rallied all the other archers together and shot all the potential kings. Or just shot down the whole castle.”

Janus smiled. “Maybe he should have. But for now, you’re just one archer.”

“And one healer, too, I think.”

Janus’s smile broke into a grin.

Sunlight was breaking over the horizon. Ash closed their eyes against the blistering light and found they didn’t feel like opening them again for a long time.

~13~

Ash undid the final tangle in their hair and stared at their reflection in the bathroom mirror. It was, of course, identical to the person who left their childhood house yesterday. Or was it? Was the hairline off? The contours in the face a little different? The nose too large, the jaw too wide, the sparkle in the eyes a little brighter? The raccoon circles around them were gone, at least. But the face was the same. For now.

The concourses at this smaller airport had much clearer labels. Ash hustled toward the ‘baggage claim’ sign and turned down the hallway. A large sign read: “ATTENTION: You are now leaving TSA security area. You will need to pass through TSA in order for reentry”. 

Fine by me, Ash thought. They strode down the hall.

A security guard smiled at them as they passed, and Ash nodded back. “Did you have a nice flight, ma’am?” asked the guard. The pronoun sounded like a slur, but Ash forced themself to smile. “It was fine.”

At the sound of their voice, confusion creased the security guard's face for a moment, and then the smile returned. “Well, you have a lovely day, friend.”

Ash smiled back. “Thanks. You too.”

Outside the airport, a short, chubby, dark-skinned woman in a silky, blue blouse and stretch jeans leaned against a 2008 Lexus with a custom matte yellow paint job. She screamed as she saw the bag-laden Ash approaching, and Ash felt a huge smile breaking upon their lips.

“Oh my god, you’re here!” Sheana cried, sweeping Ash into a hug hard enough to slip a disk in their aching spine. “Baby girl is here to stay! Fuck, is that really all you packed?”

“Yah,” said Ash, “but fuck it, right? Fresh start, no baggage, no bullshit.”

“No baggage, no bullshit,” said Sheana. “Tweet that right now and every queer in America is gonna follow you.”

Sheana took Ash’s bags and put them in the back seat, then opened the passenger door. The interior of the car was filled with random stickers and fuzzy accouterments, including a leopard print steering wheel cover.

“Your car is so tacky, I love it,” Ash said.

“She’s kept me safe for over one hundred and fifty thousand miles,” Sheana said. “She deserves to dress up a little. Also, tacky? Let’s talk about those three jackets you’re wearing, get those the fuck off. It’s like 78 degrees here.”

Ash laughed and ditched the coats into the back seat. As they pulled off the hoodie, it tugged up their tee-shirt, exposing their midriff. Ash saw a darkness pass over Sheana’s face as she saw the terrible bruise there, but she only said, “let’s get the fuck out of here.”

They rolled out of the parking lot and onto the highway. From this distance, the airport looked small and solid, a little toy surrounded by toy planes and toy people. And then it was lost in the mesh of traffic congesting the highway. Tarmac and windshields glinted in the sunlight, and the dry heat of the day pricked up beads of sweat on Ash’s forehead.

Sheana flicked the AC on and started to roll up the windows. “Can we leave them down?” said Ash, “I’ve been inside for long enough.”

“Whatever you need, babe,” said Sheana. She rolled the windows back down.

“How are the boys?” Ash said over the rush of wind.

“Leo and Hype? They’re good. Hype’s on probation at work again–”

“Aw, fuck, what did he do this time?”

Sheana waved her hand. “We can talk about it later. I want to hear about you. How are you? For real?”

Ash sighed. It turned into shudders that turned their legs into jelly and eyes into water. “I’m ok,” they said. A sob escaped.

Sheana rubbed a hand on their leg. “I’m so sorry, Ash– wait, you’re not bruised there, right? I can’t remember if it was the right or left leg in the photos you sent…”

“It was the right,” Ash sniffed, “but it’s not that bad anymore.”

Sheana shook her head. “I still think we should take you to a hospital. Or call the cops. You could have a broken rib.”

“With all the running through the airports I’ve had to do,” Ash sniffed, “I think I’d know.”

The highway rose above the suburbs, and in the distance, Ash could see a river winding down from the north. It felt like they were in an airplane again.

“Well, we’re all here to help you get settled in,” said Sheana. “The GoFundMe is doing pretty well, and I think we’ll be able to help you cover the first two month’s rent– aw, if you need to cry, it’s ok.”

“It’s just… Thank you so much.”

“Hey, look at me,” Sheana said. Her big, warm eyes met Ash’s. “I’m here for you, for anything. We love you so much, Ashley. We’re gonna find you a job, we’re gonna make sure your housing works out, and we’re gonna stop you from being found by anyone you don’t want. If you want to find a doctor to discuss transitioning, Leo can hook you up. Or he can hook you up with that black market shit, and we’ll get it tested.”

“Thank you,” Ash said, trying not to break down completely.

“It ain’t a thing. This is life, Ashley.”

Ash took a deep breath. “Shea, can you just call me Ash?”

Sheana glanced at their young friend. “Sure. But I thought you wanted to start going by Ashley once you were here?”

“I know, I…” Ash squinted through tears at the point where the river turned a corner and was obscured by trees and apartment buildings. “I guess I just… I don't know if I want to start hormones.”

Sheana nodded slowly. “That’s fine. It can be scary at first…”

“No, I mean, I’m not sure if I’d ever want to.”

“Yah?” Sheana switched lanes and began to drive up a steep slope onto a bridge. “Well, you know what? That’s your choice.”

“I just don’t know if I’m a girl.”

“You ain’t gotta explain it all to me! You’re not a boy, that’s for sure.”

Ash laughed. “Yah, and that’s what everyone is so upset about.”

“I ain’t upset about it.”

Haltingly, Ash asked. “Are you upset if I don’t want to be a girl either?”

“Bitch, shut the fuck up. If you’re not a girl, all that means I got less competition for baddest bitch at the club.”

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” Ash laughed.

Sheana gasped. “Mmm, you’d better watch who you’re challenging like that, I clocked your crusty-ass nails when you pulled up.”

“Ok, you shut up, you don’t know how hard I’ve tried to make them look good. I’m hardly at the top of my game right now.”

“That’s fair,” said Sheana. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“And I’ve seen how you do your foundation–”

“Ok, that’s enough!” Sheana said. “Damn, this kid is supposed to be sleepy as hell after a red-eye and they’ve got enough energy to read my mug? Watch it or you can spend the night at Brianna’s place again.”

“Oh, my god no, her place is so dirty And her weird ass dog...”

The pair broke into laugher. The sky and river rolled past between the steel cables of a bridge.

“I just…” Ash felt tears trying to return. “I don’t know how to do it.”

“What’s that?”

“Being non-binary. Everything in this world wants us to just be one thing. I’m not a man, but I can’t just be a woman, either. How can I be at peace with… that tension?”

“The tension of being two things?”

“Yah. It seems impossible.”

Sheana was quiet for a long time. Then she smiled. “You know, I can think of something under a lot of tension that’s holding up just fine.”

“What?”

She pointed at the beams of the bridge.

“They built this thing like sixty years ago. It carries a hundred thousand cars back and forth every day, but all it needs is some regular maintenance and it holds up just fine. It’s the tension that makes it strong. It’s gonna be here for a long time.”

The car climbed the bridge and Ash could see the sprawling city, so familiar after just one visit, clambering up over the hills to the sea. Cool, dark shadows, cast by the warm, early morning sun, offered shade to the pedestrians on the streets, in the parks, under the awnings of restaurants and bars. People cried and laughed inside and out. Life went on and passed away. A few minutes more of travel, and Ash would find themself in a familiar yet totally new home, with familiar yet totally new friends, and a familiar yet totally new life. 

“Right,” said Ash. “They’re gonna be here a long time.”

D.J. Bodnar (he/they) is a life-long writer and artist with a B.S. in Theoretical Physics. With a brain as full of math equations as magic spells, Bodnar seeks to render the mundane and mystical side-by-side, equally at home beyond space and time as beside a cozy fireside. In their free time, they enjoy weightlifting, playing D&D, crafting handmade rugs, and communing with eldritch horrors.