When Kid saw the ziggurats, his first thought wasn’t of how long they’d been there or who built them but a clot of words, which he prayed: palace, corona, aura, aureola. “I Did Not Understand,” he said, even though he’d been hearing the rayguns for days now. We all had and nothing made sense. Nobody mentioned the flashes of afternoon or the coyote bark, chasing us just around the corners. Slamming doors so they couldn’t get inside. Kid was a stuttering DSM-V by this point & even he refused to talk about the murmur of alien tongues we heard sometimes when alone, which attacked the lymphatic system rather than the ears. Like his brain came and then rolled over on him asleep, is how he explained the absence inside after the Four Words materialized. They were his skeleton key, his sun & stars, his ugliness, combat, treasure. His epitaph even. Convinced, we headed to where he saw the ziggurats. On the way thru Dinkytown Kid suggested we get some snacks to boost morale in the ranks. His brain had digressed somewhere beyond the Kuiper Belt from all the stuff he did. I looked at girls who walked by, when Kid was in the convenience store: wing rib dyejob pumpkin hieroglyphs cryptology lying hard sciences toothbrush spearmint Camels lighter gloves Durex soda cowboy Doritos. Kid bought Cooler Ranch but I wasn’t hungry. One walked by that hurt my gums. Continuing on, suspicions rose that Kid had availed himself of more Navel Store, shit you not kiddo, heavy stuff huh, down on our way to the river. He tapped my Not Totally Coca-Cola. We talked:

KID: When I meet Old Scratch, leaning toward sooner, I’m going to do a good thing for you. A real fine eyefucking extraordinary new-sheriff-in-jail thing.

ME: ?

KID: I’m gonna get a card for that library they have, the one the cocksucker started to keep all the books to himself, the books Little Horn gets when he successfully steals them from brains with instruments of his own persuasion and invention. Your Not One Hundred Percent Coca-Cola, for example. OR the Navel Stone.

ME: Is there also an art gallery in that vein? Or an entire city?

KID: How should I know? But in this brief instant of lunar clarity, cause the N.S. is starting to make my skull glow, let me tell you, I’m gonna steal your books and flip the ol’ Jackson to the Spooky Man. O SHIT THE RAYGUNS----

KID: I’ll mail them to you. Do you think Hell’s spread past Earth? Your books, I can bribe a minor demon, Ronwe or Astarix or Steven, to load them onto a rocket on its way back to Earth. I doubt they’re written in blood or anything that space travel could fuck up. If the planet’s too far away, and you die by the time the hellship arrives, I’ll just parachute them down right over here.

ME: Do the rayguns shoot faster than light?

Kid continued etc until we reached the ziggurats. I could barely see them in the dark. Maybe Kid saw them in the deadlights of his own, private moon. I Just Don’t Know. I finished my Actually Not In Any Way A Coca-Cola while he tried every possible permutation of the Four Words. Kid yelled poems, speeches, stories, invectives, jokes clean and dirty, finally the Words were profanaties as he convulsed in the dirt. I left him there, soundtracked by the moaning of the rayguns. A lot of time went by, at various speeds, sez the Voice. Listen: Time passes. Much later in life I found a box, far after Kid had finished his talks with the Navel Lady and died. I forgot what his Four Words are, exactly. The ones I said were invocations. I heard my own Four that night. I looked through the pages in the box, from before I’d even met Kid. Stuffed them back in. Closed the box up real tight. On the box there was the distinct purple thumbprint of a serious Letheylphenemine addict. The return address was:

The worst thing about being
here is that you have to
remember everything