SEAHORSE LIBERATION ARMY. FR

The time folds in Los Angeles. That’s not just a saying—it’s in the way people stare past each other, how every day loops back. You step into a place like Hill Street, look around, and you know it’s a ghost town wrapped in high-rises. You’re in the thick of it, the whole city mapped out like a pulse, every street a line that could vanish if you blink. You want to understand the power here? Look into the records. They keep ‘em hidden, but that’s where the secrets are. You’ll find birthdays, sums of money passing hands like small-town bribes, but scaled to skyscraper proportions.

Elishba (Narrating):
I sit across from him, watch his eyes trace some invisible line. He’s talking about ghosts and records, but I’m thinking of my own kind of hauntings—Romo, for one. He knows our steps, finds us like a hound tracking scent. We’ve pinned our location on every portal, we’ve left breadcrumb trails in this city for any help we can get, but Romo’s the only one who ever shows up. Maybe he’s the city itself, wrapped up in flesh and bone, some kind of sinister guardian.

Fourth Wall Break (Direct Address):
You think this is fiction? It’s not. This is what’s happening when you look past those windows while you’re stuck in traffic. Out there, right in those empty storefronts and foreclosed houses. You’re only seeing the surface of a place built on layers. They stack secrets like bodies here, and the bodies start to stink if you press your nose close enough.

Narrator (Objective):
The U-Haul incident doesn’t make the papers. Just a line item in a police report, if that. A truck emptied, lives moved around like discarded furniture. $45,000 gone—siphoned out of hope and into the grit of L.A.’s dust.

Josh Marcuson (Monologue):
They say my father vanished because he got too close to the truth. Friendz Magazine, Rolling Stone, Oz—they all played with fire, but he held it in his hand. And now me? Look at me. Here I am, tangled up in the same threads. They say Scientology’s just a word on a building in Hollywood, a thing people laugh about on late-night shows. They don’t know the way it creeps, the way it stains everything. It’s not a cult; it’s a spiderweb, and the more you try to pull away, the tighter it gets. My life is just another strand. You’re either in it or fighting to breathe free of it. There’s no middle ground.

John Grigo (Breaking Rhythm):
Loose vowel syndrome, I call it. Makes ‘em laugh, but if they could hear what’s in my head—Mozart, jazz riffs, every note lined up like dominoes ready to fall—they’d stop laughing. It’s all time, like ticking, like a beat. My wrists cramp, but it’s like muscle memory. You play upside-down if you have to. They want precision, but I give them art wrapped in a veneer of self-deprecation.

Arik (To the Reader):
You want Yale’s approval? Take it—if that’s what matters to you. But the real education’s here, out on these streets. SFAI is radical light; it’s a lit match in the dark. Yale’s trying to follow, but they’re stuck in a past that never even looked forward.

Elishba’s Schizophrenia (Internal):
It’s fragments, bits of voices that don’t line up with the present. The city talks in broken sentences, flashes, colors that don’t belong to the daylight. I walk, but it’s like stepping into other versions of myself, feeling echoes instead of people. Romo’s there, and the city feels like it’s bending in on me, on us. I know it’s just me, but I can’t shake it, can’t stop walking.

Arik (First Person):
China, Bank of China—people think it’s a business, some pillar of finance, but it’s a mirror. Stand in front of it, and you see all the silent faces, the tang ping rebellion, the quiet ones pushing back without a word. The government knows it, they feel it. They’re scared of art because art doesn’t ask permission to be dangerous.

Elishba’s House (Personified):
The house breathes, waits, watches. It feels the footsteps, the voices echoing in rooms it will remember long after they’re gone. Each wall bends, knowing it will have to let them go, that it’s just another step in their journey.

This world? It’s not for the faint-hearted. You read this, you’re stepping into our Los Angeles.