Chapter 1
THE PHOTOGRAPH

WHETHER BEAUTIFUL OR TERRIBLE, THE PAST IS ALWAYS A RUIN.

When I look back on my childhood, my earliest memories seemlike artifacts from a lost civilization: half-understood fragments behind museum glass. I remember the spherical alcohol lamp that glowed like a tiny ghost, ringed with dancing blue flames, which hung over the dining room table of the house where I grew up. I remember the sweet, oily smell of coal smoke, and the creaking of horse-drawn carriages on the dirt road outside. Most of all I remember
the summer twilight over the mountains and how, on certain evenings, just before the sun sank below the horizon, it cast rays so luminous and golden that they felt like a solid, enveloping close into which a small boy could simply disappear. An intensity no light today seems to match.

When I think about marijuana, I think about district attorney Steve Cooley. Bongs, inner clarity, and cancer patients simply don’t exert the same visceral pull as the man who wants to be the next state attorney general. Steve Cooley is my personal figurehead of dope.

The fastest growing criminal enterprise in the 21st century is human trafficking. Surprised? So was I. Even more of a surprise is the role played by the United States. Each year, 50 thousand people are trafficked into this country, making America a main destinations for modern-day slaves. The top city through which these victims enter the US is the glitz-and-glamorous city of dreams, our very own Los Angeles.
But in the words of Tzighe, a victim of trafficking here in LA, “there is hope.” Hope, which sometimes comes from rather curious places.

A collaborative preview of the stories and characters in this issue of FORTH.

In his dusty office turned makeshift crime lab in downtown LA, amateur crime detective Morton Forthston squints to read the fine print through his grandfather’s magnifying glass in a room too dimly lit. Anonymously delivered by carrier pigeons through his apartment window on 7th and Grand, the three white, origami-folded notes that lie in his hands are sealed with the acronym, ACNAIB. He opens each to find a clue: the first written in magic marker, “Billy.” The second had come a few days later: “Bianca;” the last, “Noah.” Believing in circumstance over coincidence, he knows he is on to something, although he’s not quite sure what.

“Once, without realizing it, they spent ten minutes 
conversing about two entirely separate topics. 
Alex was talking about S/M lifestyles, and Patrick 
was talking about living in New York, and they didn’t 
realize their error until Alex said, with an air of finality, 
‘Well, it’s a lot to go through just for an orgasm.’”

—Fool’s Errand, Louis Bayard