deep sea secrets
It was the back seat. Six friends whose faces I couldn’t see. They should be my friends. I didn’t feel uncomfortable in the car. I would feel awkward sharing such a narrow space with six strangers. I wouldn’t jump into a sedan with strangers. Would I? I wondered how my 2005 black Honda Civic could now fit six people. Or did I wonder at all?
I was behind the driver’s seat. Typical California road—treeless, endless, dusty. There was no clue about morning or afternoon, day or night. California sun is flat white, straight into your eyes. Millions of silver needles rushing into your central vision, so bright, so overwhelming that your peripheral vision doesn’t exist anymore.
Sitting in the car, looking straight ahead, the only direction is north. I wanted it to be the north. Ocean was on the driver’s side. The sky was bluer, and the grass was greener. Why not south? The near south was chaos, the farther south would be paradise, but we could never go farther. The road trip to paradise would be long enough to turn itself into misery.
The car stopped at a crossroads. I didn’t notice the car had stopped until I saw one of those friends filling it up. Good timing for a pit stop, I thought. I got out of the car. Where would the restroom be then? I looked at the road east—a large restaurant at the corner. They probably wouldn’t let me just use the restroom. I looked down the road—someone who looked like my dad was walking toward me, 200 feet away.
I bypassed the restaurant, walking toward him. There were mom-and-pop stores along the street, never like California. It was the small-town style—that kind of small town you could only find in China: loud and crowded. Walking, walking. I blinked. Suddenly, everyone on the street was holding something. What was that? A gun? Everyone? The whole street was being robbed. On your knees, head down, hands on your back. I could feel the gun close to my right ear.
Please don’t fight back, dad. In sixth grade, I saw him fighting a bike thief one day when I came back from school. Even younger, he told me stories about how he caught criminals and showed me the deep knife-like scar on his wrist. Don’t fight, dad. You always taught me not to fight when the chance of winning is low. Please don’t fight them. There are too many of them.
150 feet.
A gunshot.
I can’t die. I have to get back to the car. I kept telling myself. I managed to move back to the entrance of the road when everyone was looking toward the gunshot. I trapped the hand holding the gun and ran away.
There was no car. No four-seat sedan. No black Honda Civic. Only tables. Put all those tables together now! I yelled at friends. A different group of friends, I guess. I could never see their faces. We got back in the car, even more crowded. Drive! Now! We needed to go north. There was the red traffic light, right on time. A wave of people stopped in front of us, like Pacific Ocean waves freezing.
I looked at the road east again. Someone was there. Was that mom? Should I stay or should I go? I asked myself the same question ten years ago on a summer day, around my birthday. Mom cried. I lay in bed in her room, looking at the ceiling, purely white; should I stay or should I go?
The green light was on. We drove through. Our car was surrounded by zombies. We were escaping The Walking Dead.
Driving, driving, till all people were gone, inside and outside of the car. The car was gone, too.
Now I was standing at the top of the stairs. Stairs extended into the sea. A thousand steps. Thousand Steps Beach. I used to drive there—20 minutes—to watch the sunset. At night, walking downstairs toward the ocean feels like walking into a dark blue hole. Let the dark blue swallow you.
I was standing with two girlfriends, and we decided to march toward the sea. As we were marching, the stairs opened themselves as if opening the underground.
As we were approaching the ocean, we heard helicopters, tanks, alarms, and the radio warning of a declaration of war. Hide! Hide behind the pier! I didn’t. I jumped into the ocean. Something hulking was standing on the deep ocean bed.
I came back to the bottom stair. One friend was gone. We had to go back to the ground, me and the friend who was left decided.
Tower. White tower. Not very tall—just like the tallest building you could find in a California town, mid-Cali.
The other buildings around were warehouse-like. A few tanks were moving around, which we had to hide from. We barely saw any people on the ground. We had to get to the tower. It might be a command center.
We climbed the stairs as quietly as we could. Surprisingly, we didn’t see anyone or get seen by anyone. The tower was small, as if it could only hold two people shoulder to shoulder. How could it be a command center? There were some doors, each narrow enough to let only one person through. For some reason, I believed there was huge space hiding behind those doors in a different dimension. Small outside, infinite inside. Someone was about to come out of one of those doors. We heard talking approaching. My friend found a mezzanine where she slid herself in perfectly. I had a backpack, glaringly orange. I went to the balcony, trying hard to squeeze myself into the corner—but still, like an orange in an open drawer hanging on the tower.
The sliding door opened—unsurprisingly, two middle-aged white males. One poked his head out. My friend came to the balcony, prepared for anything potentially horrible to come. The guy said nothing, handed her a roll of red paper, then walked away.
We sneaked back into the tower. I looked up—we were at the top floor. My friend stood in front of the attic door, an iron door, holding a bouquet of yellow roses, looking at me. We went into the attic. There was an electronic keyboard. I sat there and started playing. War music, so loud. I wondered why we weren’t even worried about being found through the music. The war music was waving like the sea.
The music was gone in a moment. Was this a dream? Are we supposed to hear anything in a dream? We went outside. The seawater had reached halfway up the tower. No electricity anymore. Booms everywhere. A boy from the lower stairs, standing near a window, vanished into the blast, right in front of us.
It was already the top of the tower. Water came in, touched our feet. We looked at each other and everything else underneath the water.
