Edge of Infinity

About

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ: ᴄʜɪʟᴅ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ, ᴄʜɪʟᴅ ᴛʀᴀғғɪᴄᴋɪɴɢ/sᴇxᴜᴀʟ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ, ᴏᴠᴇʀᴅᴏsᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴜsᴇ/ᴀᴅᴅɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ〛

Anarchy was born “Anthony Arland Keystone” in Fresno, California;
the second son to his American father and mail-order bride mother—who immigrated from her home country of South Korea in order to marry Anarchy’s dad, who used her distance from her family and her déraciné position to control her. He was an explosive man at the best of times, and a monster when drunk—but between her broken English and her submissive personality; her fear and the brief “honeymoon” phases where he acted remorseful and kind, Anarchy’s mother failed to leave her husband.
Anarchy’s older brother, Hunter Michael Keystone, was born 4 years before Anarchy and took his duties as an older brother very seriously. From a young age, Hunter protected Anarchy as best he could from their father: Took punches and punishments, tried to calm or appease him, even tried to encourage their mother to leave. Anarchy and Hunter weren’t just brothers, but best friends. Both ended up being “home-schooled” after Anarchy hit fourth grade, to put a stop to increased nosiness from the school administration, which resulted in the majority of their education being limited to whatever their mother could teach them at home while their father worked.
The abuse escalated as the boys got older, and as soon as he was able to do so, Hunter joined the military: Partially to escape his father, partially because of the promise of pay and benefits enough that he might be able to come back and save his little brother from the household. Anarchy dealt with the ever-worsening abuse, blaming and understanding his brother in equal parts. Just a week after Anarchy’s fourteenth birthday, however, Hunter was fatally injured by an IED. Anarchy was devastated, his mother broken, his father angry. And if it was bad before, the abuse became intolerable. It was just three months after Hunter’s death when the breaking point was reached: Anarchy’s father, blind-drunk and enraged, broke his empty bottle and slashed Anarchy across his neck and face, leaving him with a permanent scar. Anarchy, feeling scared for his life and that he had nothing left to lose, finally found it in himself to fight back. He grabbed the nearest heavy object—a counter stool—and swung it into his father’s side hard enough to knock him off-balance. Just fourteen, with nothing but the clothes on his back and his brother’s dog tags around his neck, Anarchy sprinted out the front door and became a runaway.

He couldn’t stand being in his state anymore, not with the memories it held, and decided to head for the place his mother had described so many times of what she thought life in America would be: New York City. Times Square, bright city lights, skyscrapers, Central Park. He’d never been, but his mother made it sound utopian. It was his first time catching freight when he met Chey, a boy a few months younger than him with bright eyes and a smile too big for his face. Chey was riding back to NYC, having made a long-haul and well paid “delivery” for someone he called “the Boss.” Chey was experienced and friendly and sunlit: He gave Anarchy his new name, and it was impossible for the two of them not to become close after the winding, exhilarating, cross-country ride in boxcars and grainers; hopping off and catching out, sleeping and eating together. It was the last leg of their trip, laughing together in a boxcar somewhere in Pennsylvania, when Chey offered to ask his "Boss" to “hire” Anarchy.
...Which The Boss did. And for a while, it was as fine as fine could get for a kid living on the streets. Sure, he was a drug courier, he had to watch out for cops, had to be on the look-out for other criminals—but he was fed. Had a bed to sleep in sometimes if the ‘host’ of whatever drug party was being thrown was feeling generous. Had Chey, who had given him a new name and a new life, who he loved like a brother...or maybe even more than that. Chey, who he let pierce his ears with safety pins and who he exchanged ill-advised and unhygienic stick-n-poke tattoos with. Chey, who after Anarchy first got ‘paid’ in oxycodone and asked if it was worth them trying it, just shrugged and said “Probably won’t get any other chance, right? I’m only ever paid in cash.”

And maybe it would’ve been okay if it was an anomaly; if child traffickers weren’t nefarious, weren’t evil and cunning and manipulative. They are, though, and people—including the ‘Boss’—started “paying” Anarchy and Chey in oxy more often. And then more often. And boy, was it starting to get hard to go without it for very long... And then suddenly the Boss was saying not as many people wanted “goods” delivered, that mule jobs were drying up—but there was a different market that was booming. And they’d be paid really well for it. Sure, it might be a little uncomfortable but it wasn’t like it was difficult, the Boss said; as a matter of fact, it was downright easy—you just had to lay there. Anarchy thought it would be just once, you know, just once or twice until the Boss said there were mule jobs again, because of course he’d tell them, of course he would. But when it’s been fourteen hours since your last dose and your hands are shaking and you feel nauseous and you’re sore all over and you get handed a stamp bag of China White, well...The argument against just doing it on the side, maybe, goes out the window.
Addiction makes people malleable: When desperate for a fix or threatened by the hell of withdrawal, boundaries and “hard no”s seemed to fade—and like marionettes pulled by syringes rather than strings, Anarchy and Chey both fell to heroin’s control. They’d grit their teeth and bear it: Get tied up, tied down, whipped or called slurs or whatever the sick fucks paying out wanted. And even as Anarchy watched the other junkies, tweakers, and trafficked kids around him fight and lie and steal from one another—? He and Chey somehow stuck together. Trusted one another with money, with dope, with making sure they didn’t OD and die.
Overdose was the constant threat: Interacting with other addicts often didn’t last long; give it a couple months and you’d be hearing about whoever didn’t get Narcan in time and stunk up some abandoned warehouse. There was a hard summer at the squat where it seemed like someone was dying every week. Death was familiar and ever-looming, so when Chey vanished...To draw conclusions necessitated no jumping. Even if his heart broke with the reason of it, though, Anarchy refused to give up on his friend. People kept telling him to face it, that Chey was gone and wouldn’t be coming back. Some would try to appease the anger that followed with ‘-or he skipped town!’, but Anarchy wouldn’t let himself believe anything except that Chey was just on a long errand, and took John after John after John to save money for his return. Resisted spending the excess cash on himself. And waited. Alone.

It was a year after Chey vanished that he wasn’t careful enough, or maybe he was just being reckless, but he was seventeen and shaking and he needed a dose and the squat was still six blocks away—so he just collapsed in a backstreet doorway and shot up. And when he woke up he was surrounded by strangers in a hospital and told that these people he’d never seen before had saved his life. And, well..? Walking out on a life debt wasn’t something Anarchy wanted to do. Sethfire offered him a place to stay—to recover, he’d said, and Anarchy thought ‘from my near death experience’ but when he started shaking and gagging and sweating and tried to tell them he needed a dose, he was met with an “Absolutely not.”
They had saved his life, but once withdrawal hit, Anarchy felt like he was dying. It was almost the third day out since his last dose when reached his lowest: In between vomiting and shaking, he offered to do anything, let them do anything, please just let him get some dope. When he got to the point of offering sexual favors, Sethfire was the one who broke. But they didn’t get him heroin: They took him to a clinic, got him on methadone. And it helped. He didn’t feel like he was dying any longer. The clinic gave him a group therapy setting, somewhere to talk to people who understood, who could tell him what to expect, how hard he’d have to fight. Recovery was long and difficult; getting off methadone was excruciating and took him two years. But his friends—when had they become friends instead of rescuers?—were there the whole time. And it was bizarre, the way these three just accepted him into their lives, their apartment, their hearts. But that's just how it was, right from the beginning, they'd accepted him as one of them.
When Anarchy told Kato and Sethfire about his father, Kato's expression had been one of bitter empathy and he’d said that he couldn’t totally understand but that his dad had hated him too—and in those words and Sethfire's protective eyes was this sense of belonging that Anarchy hadn’t felt since Chey. And when he confided in Sethfire about being trafficked for sexual exploitation and Sethfire made a choking noise in the back of his throat and hugged him and said “I’d kill them if I trusted my hands enough” Anarchy cried: Because having someone to protect him was so much like having his brother again. And when Athena and Kato started teaching him to read music and how a bass works and told him “Sing if you want, scream if you want, if it has emotion people will dig it” Anarchy couldn’t help but grin because it felt like when he was thirteen and Hunter was trying to show him how to drive: All warmth and excitement and encouragement. So he started songwriting and strumming with Kato, started hitting the gym and got joined by Athena, and he teamed up with both of them to persuade Sethfire to start singing and really make a go of this whole “band thing.”

And they did it: They started making music, for real. Edge of Infinity’s not a worldwide sensation—Anarchy still has a "normal" job as a bouncer and occasional bartender at a local bar called The Aspen—but they're recording songs and publishing albums. Anarchy plays the bass and does unclean vocals for the most part (but sometimes goes clean), and has contributed a decent amount of lyrical work.
It’s not just his job and his bandmates, either, now: Over the years, Anarchy’s world has gotten bigger and friendships have piled up. In 2014, he and the rest of EoI connected with the band Nightshrike, where Anarchy found kindred spirits, especially in Coahoma and Bayer. That same year he went to Fawkes of Cinnabar Ink for his wing tattoo, and discovered that he had a staggering number of similarities to the tattoo artist; it wasn’t hard for a friendship to begin to blossom there, too. And, finally—in 2018, after so long—Chey resurfaced and rejoined his life. After dancing around it for a while, they finally managed to address the fact that the bond between them had always been more than best-friendship or brotherhood, and started dating. They’ve since gotten engaged. Now, in Anarchy’s mind, things couldn’t be better. He would likely benefit from more therapy—he's struggled pretty intensely with his sexuality, his past, with the impact of toxic masculinity. Although it’s rare, he can sometimes be triggered into flashbacks and he still experiences frequent nightmares. He’s a little bit obsessive with his workout routine, and sure...he could do with less of the stress Kato causes him. But in day-to-day life, especially now, with Chey? He’s functional—and, more importantly—happy.