BELL'S WHEEL


Short Fiction
07-10-02024

In 2023 every trailer in Periwinkle Trailer Park was destroyed, but mine. The dev firm that bought the park would’ve destroyed mine too, but I was spared by the bureaucratic grace of a property line discrepancy. Turns out I was never living at Periwinkle Trailer Park. Turns out my trailer rests on land belonging to Wall Assemblies Drywall & Sheetrock next door.

There were a few weeks of eviction will-they-won’t-they; automated calls demanding that I be out blah-blah date. I even got a few house visits from a portly firm rep. His name was Brian, I think.

I enjoyed these visits. It was summer’s dead-center and Tucson was 110° degrees by 10 AM. I liked to see how long Brian could keep his billboard face composed in that — to watch the sweat stains bloom under his arms while I asked the same questions in different ways. I’m a pretty young thing, edged with the erotic exotic of Goth aesthetics. Brian liked the combo of explaining things and looking at my body. I wanted to see how much he like it. If he made it an hour in that heat, I'd have invited him in. His top score stood at 48 minutes.



Beyond that bit of sadistic validation, I ignored the whole affair. I knew I wouldn’t be evicted. I had it on Bell’s authority. The night before I first got the news I’d dreamt that I was rollerblading along the paved path that paralleled the canal behind the trailer park. I looked over and there’s Bell. She swimming in its mud-green waters, staring up at the sky while her arms fly out in a relaxed backstroke. She looked over at me with the face she’d had in high school, red hair and freckles — pretty, in a puckish way. She say . . .

“You look very happy here.”

I reply, “thank you, I am.”

Then she has rollerblades too, and together we streamed across the surface of the canal which has become crystal clear. We trace a double helix as rooster tails of white mist explode behind us.

I trust my Bell dreams. Her and I weren't close long, but we had that one formative year together that changed everything for us both — drifting our lives forever toward the mystic.

We met in 2017, in Intro to Painting. It was our Junior year at Red Rock High in Sedona. She’d grown up in there and I’d just moved there from San Diego. Long story short, we noticed each other — recognized our blooming witchy commonality. So, we joined forces, forming a two member Tumblr coven. We poured through Crowley, Starhawk, the Sutras, and Gnostic texts, passing each other our distillations and editing the best quotes into memes. We spent a hundred evenings seated at Sedona’s sites of sacred power, attempting to astral project, expand our Auric fields, and divine Akashic records. Anything we thought might help us leave this world together.

Most of the time these efforts left us with nothing but content to post, as we did our part to fractalize the subcults of #witchcore. But, a handful of times, we really did leave.

Trip stories are always a bore. I don’t feel like any of mine break that rule. I remember this one time though, at Devil’s Sinkhole, near sunset. I was sitting with my eyes shut, following my breath. My body began to feel huge, like a mountain. As I sat in this hugeness, enjoying the buzz of my mountain body, an hour passed like a minute. I opened my eyes, and everything was as it should be, but that hugeness stayed. The world felt the same size, and small enough to feel all at once.

I stared at Bell, at her closed eyes. For a moment, all I wanted was to see behind those thin pink shutters, into her universe. For a moment, she was the only mystery left. The only thing that felt bigger than me.



When Senior year started, Bell and I drifted apart. There was no falling out, we just drifted. That year was such a maelstrom of futures — my own, others, my own according to others. The frenzy swept me away, and I lost that quiet I’d found with Bell. Everything was fast, too fast for mysticism.

Bell kept at it though, and got swept up in a different acceleration. By December she’d left school all together.

I didn’t see her much in person, but she was posting to Tiktok sporadically. Sometimes it was a wordless video of her practicing intense Kundalini breathing. Other times she’d post rants on Atlantis, Lumeria, alternate realities, timeline hopping, etc. Each time I saw her, she looked thinner and paler, like a drum skin stretched too tight for the beat it needed to keep.

People knew we’d been close. I got asked about her a lot . . .

“Is she smoking meth? Dabbing? Tweaking? Schizo’d out? Burning blues?”

. . . asked by pricks salivating at the chance to use the slang they’d heard on podcasts, or read on clickbait headlines. I hated them. They treated Bell like an exotic, dangerous animal. I told them all to fuck right off, and they did, because they were cowards.

I had a loyalty to Bell’s path, or have one, I mean. I believe she’s caught the scent of a something, and is doing everything possible to keep pace with its runaway trajectory. Delirium is what mysticism looks like beyond our limits, and at a certain speed you have to stop being human. Truth is I felt like a coward too. I didn’t have the courage to go along.

By graduation I’d abandoned all my lofty futures, and the frenzy dispersed like mist in morning. I micro-dosed LSD almost everyday that Summer, and by Fall I’d cultivated a modest Tarot Twitch Stream. I'd reached my spiritual cruising speed. It carried out of Sedona and down to the plummeting pandemic rents of Tucson. There, I spread out on the soil of a quiet little life lived well.

The verdict came via email a week after Brian’s last sweaty visit. My trailer was safe. It and the land it rested now belonged to Darnell Vallis, owner of Wall Assemblies. Darnell was fine with letting me live on his new patch of property. He was 65 and drifting into retirement. He was selling off old inventory as the land accrued value. A good half of his ‘work’ day was spent meandering around the stockyard tossing a tennis ball for his Cattle Dog, Charlie Hong Kong. I was just a passive income windfall, and a captive friend.

Over the next few weeks the residents of Peri-Winkle adios’d one-by-one, then the tear down began. Each trailer became a pile of debris, and I remembered something Bell said that day we held ritual at Devil’s Sinkhole . . .

“A place of destruction consecrates a place of spiritual intensity.”

To block the carnage, Darnell and I build cinder block wall around the trailer. He did the lion’s share of the work, while I stirred cement and listened to him talk and talk. He’d lived in Tucson all his life, married twice, divorced twice. The first divorce he chalked up to a third miscarriage, a tragedy he and his wife, “couldn’t love their way through.” The second divorce came after the purchase of his third Ford Mustang . . .

“She says to me, ‘Darnell, either you drive that piece-a-shit right back to where it came from, or I’m leaving,’ and I thought for a second, I thought reeeal hard, then revved the engine loud as I could and shouted, ‘SORRY HUN, CAN’T HEAR YA OVER ALL THE FUN I’M HAVIN!’”

He puffed out his chest as he dropped this punchline, and I laughed on que. I’ve learned to enjoy the little revelations old men hide in their punchlines.

When my Tarot practice came up, Darnell said, “I’ve never donna Tarot, why don’t you give me one. We’ll call it your security deposit.”

We scheduled his reading for tomorrow at sunset.

That night I had another Bell dream, one that played out like my memory of the last time I saw her alive.

The first part of the dream is all replay. I run into Bell at the QuikTrip a little outside of Sedona. She was at the counter, shouting at the cashier about these packets of caffeine-laced TURBO DUST QuikTrip used to have at the coffee station. They’d been free, but people were going overboard. QT started keeping them behind the counter and charging a buck a pop. This new policy pissed Bell off royally.

In my memory, I stop just inside the glass doors, frozen and gaping. Bell’s wearing this ratty straw hat and knots of red hair rolled out from it, halfway to dreads. She is skinny and fierce. She looks the same in the dream, except the hat is gold; gold, sort of lit up from the inside.

At that point, I’d ignored more than a few strange texts from Bell. It’d been half a year since we’d talked. A mix of fear and shame kept me from approaching her. I rush out before she sees me, in the memory I mean. I told myself she wouldn’t want me to see her desperate and arguing over dollar caffeine packets. This is a lie though, a protective rationalization. I could see she needed me then, perhaps more than ever. But caved. I treated her like the other pricks, like a dangerous animal, like something contagious. I betrayed Bell. I’ll regret it forever.

In the dream though, Bell notices me. All her anger melts away and she starts walking towards me. I’m scared but am glued to the spot in that way that happens in dreams. Bell raises her hand, two fingers pointing skyward — the prana mudra, the mudra of lifeforce. She places those fingers on the space between my brows like she’s planting a kiss. I hear her say . . .

“The little wheel, spin and spin, nothing ever changes, big wheel, turn around and around, while everything rearranges.”

. . . and I feel our bigness return.

She traces a circle on my forehead and I wake up.



At sunset Darnell makes his way across the stockyard, Charlie Hong Kong orbiting him like a moon. They joined me at the patio set I’d snagged from the debris heaps next door. I’ve arranged my Tarot mise en place, opting for the timeless Rider-Waite-Coleman deck.

“For first timers, I like to do a three card reading on a single question or issue. The center card represents the essence of the question. The second card to its left, addresses how you’ve been trying to approach your question. The third card, to the right, invites a new perspective on your question.”

Darnell crosses his eyes in mock-confusion.

“It’ll be clear once we get going. So, bring a question or problem to your mind.”

“I gotta tell you the question?”

“Not if you don’t want to. It actually, it's better that I don’t know until the end. It keeps me unbiased.”

“Okay, I got something.’”

“Lovely, so knock on the top of the deck three times.”

Darnell raps his knuckles like he’s ordering another.

“Lovely.”

I close my eyes . . .

“I invoke the spirits and guides assigned to Darnell to consecrate these cards of the art so that he may gain secret wisdom from the ineffable realms. I invoke my guides to open my field of perception and help me give Darnell the wisdom he seeks. In the name of all things, named and unnamed, amen.”

I shuffled, and turn the first card. The 10 of Pentacles.



“Don’t look too bad, happy ol’ man, couple of dogs, some gold coins.”

“The 10 of Pentacles. Not bad at all. You’ve reached a material completion, time to enjoy the wealth of your labor, and maybe, also time to address your legacy. That’s usually the work this card implies.”

Darnell pauses, a sign of resonation I’ve learned to spot. He says, “like, write a will or something?”

“Or ‘take that trip’, make peace with your family, figure out who’s taking care of Charlie Hong Kong if you keel over next week. That type of stuff.”

Darnell pats his gut.

“Overdue I guess. The family part’s easy, none left alive to apologize to.”

“Your ex?”

“Psh, alimony is a monthly apology.”

“Alright, alright next card.”

“How to deal with the, uh, question?”

“No, how you’ve been dealing with it.”

I flip the card. The 9 of Swords. The background is a wall of weapons, and in the foreground a figure sits upright in bed. Their palms are pressed against their face, as if jolted awake by a nightmare.

“Well that can’t be good.” Darnell said.

“It’s not so much a question of good or bad with tarot, but your response implies this card is confronting.”

“It’s a man crying next to a wall of swords!?”

“A place of destruction consecrates a place of spiritual intensity.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, something a friend used to say . . . the quick and dirty is that the suit of Swords deals in the realm of logic and mind. This card suggested that logic has been pushed as far as it can go, but refuses stand down. Your emotional field is starting to buck — trying to jolt you out of your mind by pulling the fire alarm. Whatever is on your mind, it’s time to . . . ”

“Shit or get off the pot?”

“More like shit or shit your pants. In any case, ruminating about it, whatever it is, isn’t serving. Might be time to go with that ample gut of yours.”

“Yeah, yeah. Next.”

I flip the final card, the Wheel of Fortune, but reversed, facing me. I hear Bell’s voice . . .

“Big wheel, turn around and around, while everything rearranges.”

“Well? Is it good?”

“Whether this card, um . . . this is the Wheel of Fortune, so it could be good. But really, it's beyond good and bad . . . like, how a life is beyond good and bad. No matter what happens to you, it's you who chooses how to meet it. We’re all dice rolled on the Earth and we’re free when we can love every roll.”

“Yeah, yeah, wise beyond your years. So what’s it got to say about this thing I’ve been putting off?”

I looked down at the gold wheel, then to the Angel reading above it in the clouds. She watches it turn forever, watches it the like the best and only show. Charlie barks and I snap back the reading.

“The cards are telling me that life has brought you to a good place, Darnell. You’ve earned the right to trust your intuition, and give some things over to chance.”

From there, the reading wound down. I never did learn Darnell’s question.

I tossed the tennis ball for Charlie Hong Kong, while Darnell beats my willing ears. I produce a pair of Modelos, and we watched the sunset turn the northern mountains red, then purple, then black.

In the weeks that follow the Wheel of Fortune was often on my mind. I closed my eyes and see it shimmering as it revolves in shifting fields of fuchsia and teal. The wheel feel like a breath, or a heartbeat . . . a constant that meant life is living. It pained me a bit, too. It felt connected to Bell’s last day.

That day is a small Sedona’s Love-n-Light persona, all the more so because it is well documented. Bell live-streamed it on her Twitch Channel from her living room. I was one of the few watching in real time.

Bell’s mother had left on a short errand, returning home not ten minutes later. We hear the door open in the first seconds of the stream. Bell has framed the shot well. We see her swinging from the timber rafters of the living room’s vaulted ceiling. I know how this sounds, but Bell didn’t hang herself. She’s no cliche that way. Somehow, in the minutes her mother was gone, Bell had hung a truck tire eight feet in the air. She’s sitting in its center, holding the rope with one loose hand, swinging her legs out and back, tracing huge arches across the room. No one had heard from Bell in months, and here she is swinging in a tire like she’s popped in from another reality.

She’s singing too. She’s swinging and singing. The lyrics seem improvised, but her voice is confident, ethereal. She used to hate it when I told her her voice was ethereal.

The song is about ‘realm hopping’, about how each swing flings her into a new universe . . . 

♪flicker through selves, infinite♪

♪like a fluorescent bulb, infinite♪

♪on-off-on-off, too fast but I see♪

The song does have a chorus. It's stuck in my head in a way that feels permanent.

♪No one in the world♪

♪will ever see me twice♪

♪Nooo oooone in the world♪
♪knows more of me then moments♪

♪No one in the world
♪will ever I see twice♪

♪Nooo oooone in the world

♪knows more than a moments fill♪

Her Mom is leaves for several minutes. When she returns, her voice hopping between a panic urgency with the emergency response she’s call, and the calm assertiveness of a mother trying to talk a toddler off a third story window sill.

Then – mid-chorus – Bell loses her grip, or maybe lets go. It's hard to tell. She falls back at the peak of a forward swing. Her head hits the hearth of their huge stone fireplace. You hear her mother scream. The phone falls from its perch, landing face down. The rest of the stream black.

Her mother’s voice is shrieking at whoever's on the phone, but calms down enough to say, “Okay, Okay. I won’t touch her, I won’t touch her,” like someone is telling her Bell shouldn’t be moved. That part is so sad part. I knew Bell’s Mom well. She loved Bell more than anything.

She say, “Please hurry, please hurry. Bell, wake up, wake up baby, you’re safe, I’m here.” Then the stream cuts out, shut off by Twitch moderator I guess.

Bell dies, and become a regular in my dreams.



After Darnell became my new landlord, he and I became inter-gen pals. I guess I was starved for some father-fig energy. Anyway, when he said he was taking a road trip to Vegas, I was happy to look after Charlie Hong Kong.

Darnell never reached Vegas. He was on a hair-pin heavy highway somewhere in Death Valley and took a turn too fast. He drove off a cliff in that sky blue Mustang he’d choose over his own wife. I couldn’t imagine a better coffin for him.

I found all this out from a lawyer a week after it happened. I also found out that he’d left it all to me — Charlie HK, Wall Assemblies, the two remaining Mustangs, and a house I’d never even seen. His whole dusty empire belonged to me now.

The only explanation was a one sentence letter attached to the will . . .

I went with my gut sweetheart.

- Dar

That night I had another Bell dream. We are sitting across from each other at Devil's Sinkhole again. She looks as she did in high school, red hair and freckles — pretty, in a puckish way. Her eyes are closed, her face is like a flipbook, flickery and charmed. She’s smiling.

She opens her eyes. We feel very big.

I think it's the last Bell dream I’ll have for a while.

I’m working on this crazy plan to open a trailer park. One right next to the one that dev-firm tore down — I want to give those pricks a nice view. I want to make it into an artist’s collective, or a co-op, or something. I’ll have to learn how all that works.

It’s got a name though. Bell’s Wheel.