Layto: The First Act
Prelude
Holly sat stuffed in the back of a bright, multicolored van. One painted with acrylics to be every color of the rainbow in the most anti-brutalist design possible. From the driver's seat to the doors in the back, it was lined with neon orange shag carpeting. The windows tinted pale pink and red rose and it made the light glitter off hundreds of hanging plastic beads look magical. The haze that filled the back of the van came in waves every few minutes from the passengers blowing thick columns of smoke and the tiny window in the back was only able to suck out so much at one time.
A man in his mid-twenties with long ginger hair, dressed in hemp clothing and wearing tiny green sunglasses sat across from Holly speaking to the group of five in the back, "... to experience ourselves as isolated awareness and action, placed in a world that is not us. That is foreign, alien, other; which we confront. Whereas in fact, the way an ecologist describes human behavior is as, an action what you do, is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now," he was staring thoughtfully at his open palms as one of the girls snuggled up against him, "you are something the whole universe is doing, in the same way that a wave is something that a whole ocean is doing."
"Oh my god... like a wave." Another woman next to Holly spoke up while a waft of bitter-sweet haze flowed from her mouth, "That's so, deep. Like the ocean."
The man that had been speaking - she thought he introduced himself as Arlo the Wizard when they met - folded his hands together and fell into a silent kind of deep thought. Holly did not mind listening to the philosopher when he occasionally decided to speak up during this journey, though she did not feel intellectually able to hold a meaningful conversation with him.
The van was on its way far upstate, they had begun their journey from the Pacific Ocean and were going wherever they were needed. Which was wherever the wind told them to go. Which was likely from West to East as that is typically how wind currents flowed. It had not mattered to Holly. She hitched a ride with the first set of people who did not look like they'd try to axe murder her. She had no destination in mind and supposed she'd go from coast to coast with them. Holly would end up someplace that was hopefully not dead in a ditch and figure it out from there. She was freshly eighteen graduated and her entire life was now in a backpack at her feet but it was not as if she was the first person to ever run away.
Her hands fiddled with an unopened pack of cigarettes as she thought. If she had a choice though, she'd like it to be a bigger city. A small town where everyone knew each other was just inconvenient when the gossip started and she did not want to be a part of that kind of drama any longer. Though small towns had their charm and maybe she would find a cottage in the woods to be called a hermit or a witch by the locals; it was a cute idea that involved a lot of garden plants... or in truth at least a place that did not involve nights under the stars with the hippies in this van that could just sleep on rocks. She was so young, but her bones were already aching from the lack of cushioning the last couple of days.
The moment she tried to lean back to rest up a bit more the van POPPED a tire loudly exploding and they swerved to the side of the highway. Everyone in the back was tossed around due to a lack of seatbelts and seats in general. She vaguely remembered swearing an, "Oh fuck!" that was muddled in with other swears and screams. It was over in a flash, and no one was injured. Somehow the van had stayed upright but the five in the back ended up in a bigger cuddle puddle than anyone had wanted. They were all too hyped up on sudden adrenaline to care that someone in the group probably peed themselves and smelled mildly of urine.
The van sat at the edge of the highway while they all piled out and not just one but the second back tire had exploded too, likely after the first one while they served. Holly stared at the bent metal rim blankly once out of the wagon, then her eyes flickered over to the chain link fence with a bit of a wider expression. The realization that the low concrete barrier and flimsy metal that connected to it would have never held them from being hurdled into the bay at fifty miles an hour washed over her. Finally, a breath was released from her as if it had been waiting for the watery plunge that was not going to come.
Once against the metal fence, she propped her backpack against the barrier and then rummaged through it. Packed safely between clothes was a cheap TwoStep Bolaroid brand camera. Giving it once over she held it to her eye and lined up a shot through the chain link fence. Snap. 11:32 and the sun was still trying to rise over the tall city beyond that fence. She lowered the camera as it was already pushing out the image from the front.
"That's Gotham City." Arlo spoke up next to Holly as she waved the photo around to develop it faster in a more serious way than he did when talking about oceans and waves, "We were going to avoid it." A blast of wind from a semi-truck rushing by whipped both his loose clothing and Holly's long hair toward the city.
- 'Arlo the Wizard' is using an Alan Watts quote.
Hello all! My author's notes will be far and few between if at all, but I wanted to say welcome to Layto: The First Act – a revision of my story Latyo (and the others that follow it.) This prelude is subject to change as I begin reworking the entire story, but is vastly more in line with the idea I was originally attempting to write. I hope to finish several chapters before I begin posting them here.
As a warning this story is rated M for: coarse language, adult themes, and suggestions. Including violence, suicide, non-explicit suggestive adult themes, dark humor, and other general anxiety-inducing topics. If you are sensitive to any of this, I advise against reading as I do not give trigger warnings at the start of my chapters.
[Full Summary: Holly Kingsley finally ships off to a new city, Gotham. Two years later and with several scholarship applications she has funded herself into Gotham University. Joining a deadbeat sorority her roommates either just want to party or make it through the year without failing classes. An inner sense of self-mediocrity that has instilled itself in her begins to get tested when she meets Johnthan Crane. The young genius finds himself unable to avoid Holly and decides to not waste an opportunity to use her for a research paper. The start of a not-so-innocent friendship.]