This rough draft doesn’t make complete sense, but it’s the most vital scene of The ArtIC Circle I’ve written so far, and I’m too impatient to revise it right now. I’m just very excited that my process is working so I’m posting it unedited now because I want to feel it hit the world and see what happens.

So Graylyn’s having a party, it’s Construction Time. We have to construct something while listening to Depeche Mode.
“There are other things to be working on.”
“I need to be writing, but instead I’m taking drugs and fucking.”

“We need to do something interesting.”
“Let’s run the car off the road.”

No, everyone will be dressed, but we won’t put that on the invitations. Don’t invite Brad, he just wants to get laid.
“I have no life, and I can never have a life. Just you assholes.”
Graylyn’s head snapped around and she stared at him. Was there a tear in her eye? Then she looked away.

But you want to possess me completely. To do that you’d have to marry me.
“I don’t even know if I could do that. We’re all just here.”
“So if we did that we’d have to wait.”

The beach was cool, it was heaven. The waves were mild. There was a pile of rocks out a few dozen yards from the shore. It was warm, it was the best fourth of July. The music was good, and they had beers.

“I hate beer,” said Alvin. “Don’t we have any wine? We need wine coolers.”
“Don’t be a fag,” said Andrews.
“I am a fag,” said Alvin. “What the hell is wrong with you, that you all have to drink beer? It tastes like piss. If I want to drink piss I’ll go to a gang bang.”
“I don’t know, it’s a guy thing.”

“I want to go further than anyone’s ever gone,” said Graylyn, “But there’s nowhere to go.”
“No, you have to stay here,” said Angela, drunk.
“We can’t just be these shells,” said Alvin. “Somewhere out beyond us there has to be some other part of us. I can feel it. I don’t belong here. None of us do.”
“I thought you said we belonged together,” said Graylyn.
“We do, but I don’t belong here in this world. We’re all connected but not to this world. I think we’re from somewhere else.”
“It certainly feels like it,” said Dustin.
“That’s so complicated,” said Trish, “I mean, if we were from other worlds, why would we come here?”
“I have no idea,” said Drake, “Maybe we came here to kill them all. I certainly feel like it.”

Graylyn rolled her eyes, “Come on, this is supposed to be fun.” She smiled mysteriously, “I have a surprise for you!”

Her face comes alive when she smiles, thought Drake. When she’s still she’s like a statue of a goddess, but when she smiles she makes me feel alive.
“Well, there had to be some reason it was so fucked up,” said Angela. “I mean, how could we get this fucked up if it didn’t come from another world somehow? Why else would all the priests be gay?”

There was a soft look on Graylyn’s face, glowing in the firelight, time seemed to slow down while he waited for her to say something. “Yes, I love you.”
Something about the night, the heat of the flames. These were her only friends, gathered around in the flickering light, with the waves breaking on the beach just beyond the light. The horizon was moving in the shadows, silvery under the moon on the water. These are my friends, but I can’t tell if they’re really my friends or just pretend friends because I’m having sex with them. This is my life, and this is all I get. My parents locked me into this when I was 13 and now it’s done. This is my grave.

“I’m glad, but why do you sound so distant?”
“I’m just thinking. Thinking about the future.”
Gently, he took her hand and she felt tears in her eyes. Could this be it? she wondered, this pain? This sense of the world caving in on me? Can it be over already? Part of her was thrilled, rushing headlong toward him in her dreams, another part of her felt as though she were dying. It can’t be over. I didn’t go anywhere or do anything. And yet I can’t get away from him, from them, the Sicky Souse Club. Always the darkness was brooding over her.
“I need to sketch something. I’m going to sketch everyone.” she pulled her hand sharply away from Drake and got up, brushing the sand off of her dress, heading back to the car. He watched her dress swaying in the breeze, trying to discern the pattern as the sand fell away.
“Let’s go get wine coolers,” said Alvin, suddenly enthusiastic.
“Okay!” said Angela, springing to her feet, drunkenly oblivious to what she’d agreed to. Graylyn’s little lesbian echo.
Drake didn’t get it. He felt numb. He’d been expecting a kiss or something. That bitch, he thought. What the fuck is this? He looked around and saw Dustin sitting opposite him, shirtless, lazy and droopy-lidded, smug from all the beer, glowing with a kind of contentment that could only remind Drake that he was nobody. He half-crawled, half-leapt around the flames to land beside Dustin with a crash. “Dude, are we gonna make out, or what?” and so they did. Drake was slipping his trunks off as he heard the car pulling away in the lot.