CHAPTER 1
“THE MYSTERIES”
ELSEWHERE
The rising sun, impossibly large, paints the sky a blinding vermilion behind a Mayan pyramid. It sits at the edge of a massive cenote hollowed out like a wound into the lush Yucatan vegetation. A sea of native worshipers surrounds the temple, spilling out around the giant hole in the earth. They gaze up at the temple as they chant expectantly. From a darkened tomb at the base of the pyramid emerges a beautiful young MAIDEN followed by a strange trio: a gilded KING, a wizened SHAMAN, and a massive WARRIOR in a horned animal headdress. All three shimmer with dark, metallic halos.
At the base of the steps, the maiden disrobes, naked and supplicant. The Shaman hands her a ceremonial bowl filled with a thick, golden liquid, which she raises to her lips and drinks. The crowd cheers. She is dressed by the elder women of the tribe, painted with intricate red scales and covered in a thick cloak of ebony feathers. Her transformation complete, the four march up a set of stairs to the pinnacle, just as the sun emerges from the horizon.
The crowd chants, louder and louder. Drums beat a pounding rhythm, louder and louder. Walking to the precipice of the dais, the Maiden stares into the abyss of the cavern below. An otherworldly glow gazes back, a dark red light in the darkness that calls to her from the depths. She spreads her arms and the cloak of feathers extends with them. The chanting stops.
She jumps.
WINTER
GR€€D
Theo is working his photography gig at GR€€D, a glitzy bottle service club dedicated to all things avarice. It’s decked out like a capitalist fever dream: lush couches upholstered in a green money pattern, champagne on every gilded table, and a pulsing LED stock ticker wrapping around the room.
Theo is miserable. Cheesy EDM and hip hop blast from the chrome, triangular speakers all around him. He was a rock kid, always has been. All the customers and the two lookalike cocktail waitresses treat him like the help, his Latino complexion standing out in a sea of white faces. He’s searching the crowd for a friendly face, but he keeps getting burned by bottle sparklers, jostled by finance bros, and utterly ignored by aspiring models. Finally, he catches the eye of an impossibly attractive gazelle of a woman, who approaches him, looks at the tag inside his shirt, and walks away, disgusted.
He’s trying to get some great crowd shots with his analog LOMO camera, but everyone is on their phones, all duckface selfies and social media scrolling. So many phones. He looks around, dizzy and head throbbing, as all the cell signals and electricity in the air seem to close in on him.
BATHROOM
Theo rushes to the men’s room, barely making it into a stall before puking up bile and Red Bull. He emerges from the stall, pale and sweaty, to find his boss CYRUS waiting for him. His huge frame, wrapped in an expensive three-piece suit, blocks the exit.
CYRUS
You a fag, Theo?
THEO
Excuse me?
CYRUS
You spend so much time in here, I’d think you were cruising for a date.
THEO
I got sick, man. You know about my… condition.
CYRUS
Only I would hire a photographer who’s allergic to cell phones. I already got a photo booth, what I need is shit for my socials. Get out there and do your job. With a real camera this time!
GR€€D
Theo goes back out into the tiny club, using the club’s DSLR hanging off his camera sling. Even this makes him wince, each photo he takes of the “The Charging Bull” sending a tiny stab of pain into his brainstem. The golden statue, a glitzed up replica of the Wall Street original, looks down approvingly over the small, square room.
The music shifts dramatically— it was a cool indie track he knew, but it had been remixed with weird electronic components, and was vastly superior to the stuff normally played here. “You’re all chrome!” the singer’s voice looped, getting louder and more metallic. Swapping cameras, Theo snaps a pic of the DJ booth with the LOMO. A single bass note reverberates, and he’s gripped by a wave of dizziness. This is unlike his normal episodes, more intense and paralyzing. Golden waves appear to spill from the speakers, as time slows to a crawl. A stack of bar napkins is thrown in the air by someone in the DJ booth, printed to look like $100 bills. His vision shifts into stark black and white, and the room seems to fall away.
The napkins drift down in slow motion, becoming thick jungle leaves.
He’s in his childhood backyard, a square plot of bland, suburban safety. But as the leaves fall, they collect into lush trees, transforming his backyard into jungle and his jungle gym into large stone blocks with intricate Mayan carvings.
The strobe lights burned into his eyes become fireflies. His headache, both a memory and something bigger than anything, makes the boy double over.
VOICE (off screen)
I know it hurts. Focus on the lights. Not on all the other stuff. You can do it. Focus!
The little boy raises his little red toy camera and squints, framing the insects inside the square viewfinder. He clicks the button, making the square flash cube twirl. Little cartoons of each season scroll by: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter again.
The fireflies leave trails of light in the air behind them as they dance. His breathing calms. His headache seems manageable.
He points his camera up at the older boy. Tori Amos is trapped in a box on his shirt, filling the frame. Little Earthquakes. But the boy can’t get the camera to see his face, and desperately needs to tell him something. Warn him, in that weird dream way that seems realer than the actual memory. But he can’t make the words happen…
Theo blinks away the memory, as the last napkins flutter down. But a single firefly remains, a bright cherry on a lit cigarette in the DJ booth. Its owner is bathed in a dark, metallic shadow. Another blink and they’re gone.
Shaking it off, Theo stumbles over to the DJ booth, but it’s empty. A full red reel to reel tape spins lazily on an old player, song over. When the usual DJ gets back from his break, Theo grabs a Redbull off someone’s table and goes out back to the alley for fresh air.
ALLEYWAY
VOICE (O.S.)
That stuff’ll kill you.
A lighter flicks to life, illuminating a lanky Asian kid in a thick black hoodie. He’s sitting on the high alley wall, his legs dangling off the other side like he’s about to jump. He takes a smooth drag from a gold one-hitter, and exhales a plume of thick red smoke.
SMOKER
You ok?
THEO
Yeah, thanks. I’ve got a condition, and this place keeps making it worse.
SMOKER
Yeah, I figured it was something like that. This place sucks. You want some of this? It’ll help.
The smoker offers him a drag.
THEO
No thanks, man. Not my thing.
The smoker raises an eyebrow in surprise, looking at Theo more closely.
RUSS
Suit yourself. I’m Russ. So what’s keeping you from flying on out of here?
THEO
Theo. It’s a gig, I guess. I was looking for something, but this isn’t it.
RUSS
hahah. Aren’t we all.
THEO
Are all the clubs around here this shitty?
RUSS
On this side of town they are. You should try New Brooklyn, there’s always something going on there. Better music, better crowd, less -
He waves his hands in the air, and gestures to the gold bull logo on the club’s sign.
- bullshit, ya know?
THEO
You talking about the earthquake zone? People actually go over there?
RUSS
You’d be surpri-
Russ’ expression goes blank, then just as quickly is jerked back to attention.
RUSS
Uh oh, that’s my cue to leave! Hope to see ya over there.
Russ leaps down from the wall and out of view just as CYRUS bursts out the alley door. He swears up a storm, berating Theo and grabbing the DSLR to see what he’s been up to. All artistic shots, the last one a shadowy pic of the Bull.
CYRUS
Less ghosts, more glam, I told you. If they don’t look like they want to fuck themselves in the photo, you’re doing it wrong! Give me my camera back and get the fuck out of here. You’re fired.
Theo unhooks the camera, goes to hand it to Cyrus, and drops it.
THEO (smiling)
Clumsy sick kid, sorry!
Theo steps over the broken camera, ignoring Cyrus’ yelling as he walks out of the ally and towards his future. The photo of the looming bull glares up at him, past the cracked spiderweb of the screen.
FADE OUT
MANHATTAN
A few weeks later Theo walks through the streets of Manhattan, heading east across the island. He passes the closed and boarded-up Brooklyn-bound subway stops before getting to the East River. Looking out across the water, it was all crumbling bridges, abandoned buildings, graffiti, and overgrowth. It’s been a few years since the earthquake, but that part of Brooklyn still seemed like a disaster area to Theo. With no bridges, boats unable to navigate all the wreckage in the river, and the roads cracked behind repair, the best way in was a single, hastily-erected air tram across the river.
Theo boards the tram, a rickety old school bus repurposed as a cable car, wheels connected to cables that propel it up and across the river. The tram’s movement is slow and spastic in its ascent. From up here, Theo sees the effects of the earthquake more clearly: a ring of utter devastation encircling the northern part of Brooklyn, effectively walling it off from the rest of the borough. But this vantage point also shows that the inner part of the circle is much less damaged. Buildings are still standing, if a bit worse for wear. In the center of it all, perched atop the skeletal remains of a crumbling building, sits an old wooden water tower. On the side of the tower, a red “BKLN” stencil has been tagged with black cursive “BroKen LaNd” graffiti, the letters of BKLN all lining up.
NEW BROOKLYN
The tram deposits him at the edge of the devastation, the ruins forming a wall around the area now called New Brooklyn. A solitary passage leads him East through the crumbled buildings, with a Japanese Torii gate forming an entrance. Its charred wood beams support a flowing white curtain that spans the thoroughfare, and when Theo steps though it, he’s greeted by the sight of New Brooklyn laid out before him in all its decrepit glory.
Lifting his red LOMO Sprocket Rocket camera off its bandolier, he takes photos of the crumbled buildings and abandoned cars as he walks east, leaving the worst of it behind him. Sure, there's still cracked facades and uneven streets, but further in it’s been cleared away, with more people and a jagged beauty. He heads towards a bustling street fair in front of him. The Brooklyn Bizarre is the main center of commerce in New Brooklyn, a third-world marketplace that has sprung up to meet the needs of the post-earthquake community. Vendors and artists hawk their wares from carts, blankets, and broken-down vehicles. Intricate graffiti, wheat paste murals, and yarn bombing add color to the ruins. He wanders, snapping pics as he goes. Street musicians bang on buckets, a random dog nuzzles his leg, and someone just gives him a breakfast taco. Theo smiles.
Without a screen in sight, it’s no wonder Theo’s head is free of it’s normally painful buzzing. His EMF sensitivity has been responsible for frequent migraines and blurry vision since childhood. Here, electricity and cell phones were sparse. After a lifetime of missing out, of being the weird, sick kid at school, Theo finally feels free. He knows the magnetic field-sensitive film he’s loaded into his LOMO will prove this out. The dark shadows around modern “conveniences,” a trademark of his photographic style, won’t be there.
Theo’s wandering eventually takes him onto a deserted side street, strewn with trash and poetry-covered hand bills. At the end of the alley, crowded around a deserted subway station, stand a crowd of black-clad hipsters. A swarthy, grimacing BOUNCER lets them in a few at a time. Strange sounds escape each time the door opens, beats and bleeps that he hears in his head more than his ears.
He stays out of sight, taking pictures of the scene with the LOMO, until the Bouncer parts the crowd to allow three late arrivals to enter: a short dark-skinned MUSCLE BOY, a lanky RAVER in winged sneakers and mirrored hoodie, and a cute GOTH PIXIE. He photographs them all from his vantage point behind a dumpster, but his camera lingers on her. The girl with the blood red hair knows everyone, it seems, taking her time going in. As she finally goes to enter, she stops before, turns directly to Theo’s, and playfully sticks out her pierced tongue.
What the hell? The subways here have all been shut down post-quake. What was going on at noon on a Sunday? And how did that girl seem to know he was here?
He gets an idea. And waits. Once the alley is deserted, he sets his camera on the dumpster and hides just to the side of the subway entrance. When the Bouncer re-emerges, he remotely triggers the camera flash, using a button in the lens cap (thanks LOMO!). A sharp pain makes Theo wince; he usually hates that feature. But as the Bouncer stalks over to investigate the source of the flash, Theo slips inside.
SUBWAY STATION
Down the stairs of the abandoned station he heads. Below, the crowd files toward subway turnstiles manned by an intimidating GUARDIAN— androgynous, black and statuesque. Her face is obscured by the shadow of a hooded cloak, save for a glowing red tattoo over one eye in the shape of a curvy, crosshatched “h.”
When the trio of late arrivals gets to her, the Guardian greets them with showy hugs and air kisses, then pulls aside a black curtain. Beyond, moving lights, smoke and droning bass spill out as the three step inside before the curtain is swept closed.
Theo joins the throng behind them, but when he arrives at the front of the line, the Guardian stops, eyes him up and down, and wags a disapproving finger. He’s suddenly flanked by two identical spectral figures. Both identical twins of the Bouncer outside. The Guardian flips the curtain open again in one fluid motion, as Theo is forcibly pushed through. There is a sudden FLASH of light, and then—
BREAKING MEMORIAL
The collapsed Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, its asphalt angled down to the ground, frames a Zen garden made in tribute to the 2012 earthquake, known to the locals as The Breaking. A large black stone covered in carved names sits in a field of red sand, raked into a maze-like pattern. Another Torii gate, this one on the Eastern side of the quake damage, sits nearby.
Suddenly, light flares behind the Torii’s curtain and Theo stumbles through, landing on his face in the sand. He sits up, dazed, bewildered, and filled with questions. Even though he’s been rudely rejected, the idea of that place already has its hooks in him. He stands up, brushes himself off and walks away. What he doesn’t see is the sand slowly shift back into the raked maze pattern as he leaves.
SUBWAY STATION
Perplexed and obsessed, Theo heads back to the subway station the next day, but it’s deserted, the doorway bricked up completely. He fishes his camera out of the dumpster and goes looking for a place to develop his photos.
WERK!
Theo sets up inside the rented dark room of Werk!, a print shop and cafe that New Brooklyn creatives call home. The prints hang in the red light: dreamy, wide angled, exposed-sprocket shots of the entire tableau outside the subway station. He examines photos of the surly bouncer, the raver, and the muscle boy, his gaze lingering on the pixie. It’s some of his best work, but somethings off. They are all surrounded by inexplicably shiny afterimages, dark halos that are a product of his special film. Present around magnetic fields, they are Theo’s way of showing the things that torment him in the real world.
He blows the photos up onto massive mimeographed sheets, saying hi to ERYN at the counter. The sweet barista is tending to her little post-it note mural on the wall. She’s all about paper craft. He loves that everyone around here has a “thing,” an artsy pastime that isn’t just about making money.
SUBWAY STATION
Theo wheat pastes the enlarged photos all over the entrance of the subway station. As he steps back from the wall, the low-res prints come together to recreate the scene from the day before, grainy closeups making sense when seen from afar. The seeming defect in his film that added a glow to some of his subjects becomes a striking visual at the heart of the giant mural. The piece takes him a few visits to finish, eventually taking up an entire wall at the end of the alley.
Finally done, he steps back to admire his work, when he’s suddenly shoved to the ground. He knocks over, and lands in, his wheat paste. Looming over him is a crowd of stylish hipsters, uniformly dressed in black. They surround him, faces slack, eyes unfocused.
Their apparent LEADER steps out from the crowd. The smirking, well-dressed preppie looks down at Theo. Even more obnoxious than his expression was his ornate, gold spoon necklace, and the glowing red pitchfork tattoo on his neck. Theo hates this douchebag instantly.
LEADER
Your little art project is drawing way too much attention to this entrance, fucko. Not from the cops, mind you. It’s the squares ya gotta worry about. We really don’t need you advertising Broken Land to any old tourist slumming it in New Brooklyn. You’ve ruined this entrance, and made my job harder, so here’s what’s gonna happen—
He looks on with a shit eating grin as his followers, in unison, converge on Theo, kicking him repeatedly.
You’re gonna stay the fuck out of our business, and stay the fuck away from Broken Land. Got it? Get lost, you fuckin’ square!
The Leader stomps on Theo’s camera, shattering it into flying, plastic chunks. He strolls away, the crowd following silently. Groaning in pain, Theo sits up, a dirty flyer stuck to his cheek with wheat paste. He pulls it off and looks at it. This subway stop and a date from last week have been stamped in glowing red ink over a typed haiku, titled “The Mysteries,” printed in the telltale purple ink of a mimeograph machine. This was a flyer for that secret club. And Theo knows where it was made.
WERK!
THEO is back at WERK!, bruised and nursing a water cooler beer out of an “I Hate Mondays” mug. He’s become quite the regular this week, watching all the other customers come and go. When a lanky figure, face obscured by a mirrored hoodie, walks in on winged sneakers, Theo sits up and pays attention. He can’t make out their face, but he knows them— it’s the Raver from outside the subway station. He watches intently as the figure makes a bunch of copies on the mimeograph machine, stamps them with a glowing ink stamp, and folds one into an origami crane before handing it to an amused ERIN at the counter. Theo intercepts the figure at the door on their way out, grabbing them and spinning them around to find a familiar face: the smoker from the GR€€D alley.
RUSS
Oh, hey man! You made it.
THEO
You! You’re the one who’s been giving out these flyers?
RUSS
Like my haikus? There’s the soul of a poet behind these movie star looks.
THEO
I’m a little more interested in what you stamped on them.
Theo looks down at this new flyer, at a different Brooklyn subway stop, and a date in the spring, radiating off the stack of flyers.
THEO
Let me guess…the entrance for the Bacchanalia party is the Lorimer stop? On the twelfth?
RUSS
Wait, you can read that? Life’s a Bitch! Just like you could feel the broken record at GR€€D. I knew it!
He starts laughing.
That’s infrared ink, my friend. You kid, are a little “in the red”. Wait! That was you with the sick mural after our last gig? Minus told me someone had been sniffing around. Man, you pissed him off good with that stunt.
THEO
Yeah, that was me. That guy is an asshole.
RUSS
Well, you found the right guy this time. You’re talking to Broken Land’s resident promoter. And light guy. I have a lot of jobs. So what is it you want?
THEO
I want in.
RUSS
Nice! I like your style! I told you this was the spot.
Russ gestures wildly while he talks, sending flyers everywhere, much to the annoyance of their fellow customers. Theo realizes Russ must’ve been the one throwing throwing napkins at GR€€D. Was he the one who played that strange record? Russ produces another origami crane from the recesses of his reversible hoodie and hands it to Theo with a flourish.
RUSS
Take this. You’re gonna need it to get in. But DO NOT open it till you get there. And try to work a look if you want to stay on Sharon’s good side.
THEO
Work a look? Like a costume?
RUSS
Haha, man! You’re the first person that’s made me smile in forever. No, work a look. Like A Boss! Put some effort in. And I’ll see you at Broken Land…you’re in for one wild ride.
Theo watches him disappear out the door and looks down at the party flyer. He didn’t know it yet, but this was gonna be the wildest year of his life.
Russ’ Journal
There’s an apocryphal story that Brooklyn is Dutch for “Broken Land.” If it wasn’t true then, it sure is now. After the Breaking, that is.
New Brooklyn is now the epicenter (no pun intended) of all that is cool in underground techno, and outsider art, and off-grid living. And we owe it all to that damn earthquake. A lot of New Yorkers were sound asleep when the big one hit Brooklyn in 2012. But some of us were right in the middle of it all, dancing our asses off.
It’s kinda surprising how few people died, all things considered. The ring of devastation that it caused destroyed a lot of empty industrial buildings in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Bushwick, but left the middle part broken yet standing. Kinda like us.
Sure, a lot of new gentrification projects got destroyed, but fuck those guys. Who wanted a Whole Foods here, anyway? So we repurposed those broken and abandoned vestiges of conformity for our own ends. Some start up office suite becomes Werk!, an old school is used as cheap loft apartments, and a bougie new art museum gets used as very our own danger room. And the subway? That symbol of dead-eyed commuters everywhere? It’s now ground zero for every freak, weirdo, misfit and outcast in New Brooklyn.
But the biggest effect of the Breaking was to cut us off from the rest of the world. Cracked roads, crumbled bridges, wreckage in the river, and a circular wall of devastation made New Brooklyn its own little world. And with power lines and cell towers destroyed, this place became an analog paradise. A cheap place to live, make art, do drugs, and party all night.
The powers that be talk about rebuilding, but like the Big Easy after Katrina, you realize theres’s too much infighting, and not enough money, to make us a priority. So we’ve been left to fend for ourselves, in our own little hipster paradise. Just the way we like it.
