Prose

Agony in the Garden (2025)

‘You should have something to drink,’ said Gabe, motioning to Olivia’s untouched glass on the coffee table.

‘I’m not really thirsty,’ she replied.

‘Come on. When’s the last time you had something to drink?’

‘I don’t know. Couple hours ago,’ she lied.

‘So…’ said Gabe, beckoning an answer. ‘Drink something.’

‘I told you, I’m not thirsty.’

‘Yeah, you did,’ he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘I just… don’t really feel like it. Not now.’

‘Suit yourself.’ Gabe turned his attention back to his phone, a projection of endless content scrolling along his face.

‘Anything good on?’ taunted Olivia.

‘Nihil sub sole novum,’ retorted Gabe.

‘Not wrong there,’ sighed Olivia. ‘You are not wrong there,’ she repeated, mulling over each syllable in her mouth. ‘I mean, even the phrase itself isn’t original, it’s a calque of—’

Gabe stared at her, unimpressed.

‘Alright. Point taken,’ said Olivia, dejected.

Gabe went back to scrolling. Olivia contemplated, fidgeting just as much with the pilling of the couch as with her bandages.

‘Look, I appreciate you being here,’ she said.

Gabe turned to Olivia. ‘And I’m here as long as you need me. If you decide you’d prefer space, I’m still good to drive home; if you want me to stay, I can crash on the couch. And honestly, I’m not even that tired so I could stay up pretty easy.’

‘Thanks, Gabe. You’re an angel.’

✝ ✝ ✝

‘I know what I need to do. I just… I don’t know if I have what it takes. I mean, was this how he felt? The self-loathing? I just… Gabe, why do they hate me so much? I’m not trying to hurt anyone, I’m just tryna do the right thing.’ Olivia sighed. ‘Whatever. At the end of the day… I am what I am.’

Silence.

‘Gabe?’ she called, suddenly unsure of herself.

Olivia rolled herself off the couch and walked over to Gabe, then gently slapped his leg with the back of her hand. He jolted awake, inhaling sharply. His eyes darted around the room but settled quickly on Olivia, who was leaning over him, her hands somewhat awkwardly held between her knees. Gabe eased his clawed grip on the armchair.

‘Hey buddy,’ she lilted as she grinned and cocked her head slightly. ‘Welcome back to the land of the living.’

‘Oh, very funny,’ murmured Gabe, groggily and entirely unamused. ‘I see you’re still getting some last licks in.’

‘Well,’ she lamented, throwing her hands up as she wended away. ‘Might as well make the most of the situation.’

‘By all means,’ Gabe said, slyly. ‘It’s your funeral.’

Olivia turned back to Gabe, smirking and waggling her eyebrows, as if to say ‘touché’. Her expression quickly faded as she saw Gabe shuddering and stretching.

‘C’mon dude, I thought you were fine to stay up.’

‘I am,’ Gabe said confidently while cracking his knuckles. ‘I just… might need the occasional reminder of that fact.’

Olivia traipsed back over to Gabe.

‘Alright, Van Winkle, up you get, c’mon,’ said Olivia, offering her good hand to Gabe.

‘What’s the occasion?’ asked Gabe as Olivia hoisted him from the chair.

‘Taking you for a walk. Fresh air and all that,’ she said as she walked down the short hallway to her bedroom.

‘Where to?’ Gabe called down the hall. ‘There’s nothing nearby and besides, it’d all be closed. What time is it anyway?’

Olivia, returning with a thick down jacket bundled up in her arms, picked up her phone from the coffee table, turning it on just long enough to see the lock screen.

‘Nearly five, and there’s a playground not too far from here. You want a sweater?’ She motioned back down the hall with her head, then quirked her brow sarcastically at Gabe’s hooded denim jacket. ‘Something that might actually keep you warm?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Gabe with a single, assuring nod. ‘It’ll warm up.’

Averting Olivia’s gaze, he brought his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

✝ ✝ ✝

Olivia and Gabe were sitting on a worn park bench that looked over a rusted playground, its bold paint scheme faded and chipped, lit in silver and gold by the moon and street light. The grass beneath their feet was patchy and yellowed but still trimmed short, and the swings, with their plastic seats scratched and scarred, still swung gently in the cold breeze.

The bench creaked and splintered as Olivia stood up and began to pace about the skeletal structures. Gabe was hunched over, his interlocked fingers pressed to his lips. The two hadn’t talked since they left the house.

‘What do you want me to say?’ Gabe’s words put an end to the moratorium.

Olivia kicked her leg out and swung around, pivoting about her other foot. She opened her mouth and raised her arm in preparation for some impassioned plea, but she stopped, frozen. She exhaled. She brought her arm back inside her jacket pocket. She just looked at Gabe, her brow furrowed.

‘I don’t know.’ She paused, then resolved herself. ‘Is this what you want?’

‘I don’t want anything. I’m just the messenger.’

‘Well, you’re sure as hell no deliverer,’ remarked Olivia, returning to Gabe’s side.

For a moment, they were silent.

‘You know I can’t do it for you. It has to be you,’ said Gabe, staring straight ahead.

‘Yeah.’ Olivia wet her lips. ‘Yeah… I know,’ she whispered.

They waited there awhile. The night was starry, painted in swirling blues and greys.

Olivia turned to Gabe, mustering a smile.

‘You still keep that flask on you?’ she croaked, her voice shaking.

Gabe smirked, satisfied. He reached into his interior jacket pocket and produced a silver flask. Engraved in a plain serif font were the letters J and J, glinting in the moonlight.

‘J. J.?’ inquired Olivia.

‘My dad,’ said Gabe, unenthused.

‘Anything you wanna talk about?’ she pried, as if to distract herself.

‘Nothing at all,’ hummed Gabe through his teeth, ending that line of inquiry.

Olivia smiled knowingly as she undid the cap and brought the flask to her lips. The liquid was bitter and uncomforting and brought tears to her eyes. Gabe sat motionless, elbows resting on his knees, fingers interlocked and brought up to his chin. He stared out at the horizon and didn’t even see her cry.

And when dawn slowly crept across the starry night, OLIVIA arose and took her first steps towards the horizon. And she met the final sunrise.

‘Olivia?’ said Gabriel.

‘Yeah?’ she called back.

‘Be not afraid.’

She smiled. ‘I will be what I will be.’

And she was.

Snowfall (2021)

Muddy slush crunched beneath Anya’s boots as she strode through the labyrinthian laneways of the city. Shrouded by catwalks and overhanging platforms, the narrow alleyways were lit only by the occasional neon sign. Snowmelt dripped from every surface, icicles creeping down the walls. Wind howled through the narrow tunnels, flakes of snow fluttering about.

Anya’s face was almost entirely obscured, with only a few wisps of dark brown hair escaping from under her oversized hood. A thin scarf was wrapped around her neck and mouth, pinned to her nose by a set of opaque welder’s goggles. Beneath the layers of polar fleece and synthwool, she wore an heatcoiled undersuit. Bandoliers and pouches were slung about her person, holding everything from bare copper wire to a bottle of pills.

A second set of footprints followed Anya’s. Ursa was a mountain of a man, nearly 7 feet tall, arms like tree trunks. Snow clung to the shaggy grey-brown beard that wrapped around his chiselled jaw. His clothes were grey and worn out, patched together with towels and blankets.

A sheet of blue tarpaulin hung from the wall of the alley, held in place by two bolts of rebar. Behind it sat a still-intact portion of a collapsed building. It had been demolished to make room for a new highway, but the company responsible went bankrupt before construction started. Lacking the funds to complete the demolition or clear the debris, another company constructed a building above the remains of the first, leaving some rooms intact. Pushing the tarpaulin aside, the pair stepped into a small room, the far end of which had collapsed. An elevator was built into the left wall, partly buried by debris.

Ursa stepped forward, brandishing a crowbar, plunging it between the elevator doors. Metal creaking, he wedged open a gap large enough to force his fingers in. Grabbing a door in each hand, he pulled the two halves apart with inhuman strength, about two feet wide. Catching the crowbar as it fell from between the doors, Anya slipped through the doors and inside the near pitch-black elevator. Inside, Anya stood up, pressing the ‘open doors’ button on the elevator panel. A moment passed. She pressed it again, to no avail. Anya smacked her fist against the elevator wall and the panel lit up. The doors opened and the elevator’s emergency lighting flickered to life. Anya handed the crowbar back to Ursa as he stepped inside, the elevator groaning slightly under his weight. Anya pressed a second button on the panel and the doors shuddered closed. With a thump, the elevator breaks dislodged, and the elevator began its descent.

Ten seconds later, the elevator slowed and the doors groaned open, shining dim light into a large concrete room. As soon as Anya stepped out of the elevator, the power kicked in and the room lit up. It was roughly six metres by six metres, made entirely of cold grey concrete, with a single lightbulb hanging from to the vaulted ceiling.

A camping stove sat in the centre of the room, atop a frayed and worn ottoman carpet. Two sets of steel shelves were placed in one corner, holding both supplies and various electronics. A pile of old takeaway containers poured out of a bin, right next to a curtained-off area containing a five-gallon drum that fed into a showerhead suspended above a steel tub. In another corner, two desks had been pushed together, now covered in a mess of wires and blinking lights. Five bulky CRT monitors were stacked atop a pile of hardware, all connected to a server rack under the desk. The bare walls were made slightly less so by the inclusion of a few posters, displaying a map of the world, a picture of Red Square, and a photo of a cat hanging from a rope with the caption ‘hang in there’ in Cyrillic script.

Two bunk beds, each consisting solely of a mattress and a sleeping bag, were placed opposite the elevator. Ursa took a bottle of vodka from one of the shelves and poured it into a coffee mug. He sat down on the bottom bunk, groaning under his weight, cupping his drink in both hands.

Stepping further into the room, Anya pulled back her hood, rustling snow from her hair. The sides of her head were shaved, leaving a messy pixie cut to flop over her right eye. Anya slung her backpack off her shoulder, collapsing in the office chair by the computer array, basking in the warm green glow. She unzipped her jacket, taking out a floppy disk from inside, inserting it into one of the drives in the computer array. A click could be heard, followed by a droning hum. An ascii hourglass appeared on one of the monitors, rotating every few seconds. Anya kicked back in the chair, spinning a few times.

The computer dinged, and Anya pulled her chair back to the desk. The directory had been formatted, containing a single path, titled “porosha.exe”. Anya hesitated, then double-tapped the enter key.

A window appeared on the monitor, then dozens more appeared on the others, layered atop each other. Strings of characters began to appear, typing faster than Anya could process. One window began rendering a fractal, spiralling on and on. Words flashed on screen, disappearing instantly. Everything else seemed to darken and fade away, Anya’s attention focused squarely on the display. All at once, the screens suddenly went blank. Only one window remained open, displaying an ascii snowflake. Anya stared at the image, completely transfixed. She blinked, shaking herself from the trance. A sudden stab of pain appeared in Anya’s right temple, causing her to grimace. At that moment, all the electricity in the room shut off.

Anya jolted awake, standing in the middle of a snowstorm. The wind howled around her with deafening ferocity, obscuring anything more than a few feet in front of her. She pulled her hood back on, bundling up to conserve warmth. She staggered forward, feet plunging through at least six inches of snow. She kept moving, she needed to, she needed to find something.

Slowly, things began to come into focus. The skeletal remains of broken skyscrapers loomed over Anya, disappearing into clouds of ice. Anya’s foot caught on something. She tried to pull it free, to no avail. She dug at the snow around her leg. Something metallic was wrapped around her ankle. She twisted her leg, attempted to shake it off, but it kept an iron hold. Inspecting it closer, it looked like a bare cyberskeleton arm.

A faint red light glowed from under the snow. Fingers trembling, Anya reached out, brushing away the snow, revealing a glowing red eye. Anya jumped to her feet, terrified. The android beside her released its grip on her leg, slowly standing up beside her. All around her, thousands of androids began to rise from beneath the snow, each in differing states of disrepair. They all turned to face Anya, a sea of red orbs staring into her soul.

Something flew towards her, flapping about in the wind. Anya extended her hand, her freezing fingers just barely managing to grab hold. She brushed the sleet off, revealing a postcard with an illustration of the Golden Gate Bridge and the tagline ‘Begin Again’. Anya turned the postcard over. Something was written on it, in Anya’s handwriting: Installation complete.

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