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Just You and Me

The bell rang and class 4G scrambled from their seats. “Excuse me, class! Excuse me!” shouted Miss Rodney. Lara caught her eye and hovered over her seat, but half the class were at the door already. She grabbed her bag. On the clock it read three thirty. Home time.

In the playground shouts and laughter filled the air as the junior school piled from the building. Lara slipped from her classmates to find the toilet. If Miss Rodney saw her, she wouldn’t be allowed. She’d been afraid to ask so near to the end of the day, now she was desperate. The outbuilding was empty, echoey. Through the cement walls the playground sounds were muted, and Lara had the strange sense that it would be dark when she went back out. She rushed to wash her hands in the icy water and go out to join the others.

Her class were gathered round Miss Rodney by the gate. Ethan was walking off with his mum. He waved a pack of crisps, wiggling from foot to foot. When he reached the gate he leapt up to touch the top of the fence and landed facing Lara, stumbling backwards. She waved and he stuck his tongue out at her. Then she found a space to wait out of the way of the families and nannies and pushchairs and in sight of the gate. She couldn’t go back to her class. The teacher would want to know where she’d been.

The playground grew emptier. The remaining children were huddled around parents and childminders, siblings and sports coaches, grappling to receive crisps or sandwiches in their greasy, inky hands. A girl in Lara’s class, Rina, spotted Lara standing alone by the water fountain and skipped over. “Do you want some?” she asked, holding out a bag of Cheesy Whatsits.

Lara stuck her hand into the crinkly bag.

“Where’s your mum?” said Rina.

Lara placed the bright orange Whatsit on her tongue. “My dad’s picking me up,” she said.

Rina screwed up her face. “Your dad?” she said.

“Rina!”

Over by the climbing frame, a man with white hair waved a thin arm and Rina bolted off towards him. “In a while crocodile,” she said.

By now, the teachers had gone inside, though the playground was still busy with  adults chatting and children eating snacks and chasing each other. Lara trailed over to the largest group. Maybe her dad was talking to the other parents. He didn’t know them. He hadn’t met any before. Maybe he’d want to say hello. But then her mum always said he didn’t like Small Talk.

“Hello Lara,” said Joe’s mum, a spherical woman with so many scarves Lara thought her head might roll off.

Lara blinked at her, then at the floor, shoving her hands into the pockets of her bomber jacket.

“Who’s picking you up today then? Rumpelstiltskin?”

The woman peered down at Lara, rolling her eyes at another mum beside them. Lara glared back. She knew there was a joke but she couldn’t find it. Rumpelstiltskin was a liar — small and wrinkled, a hunchback. Her dad didn’t look like that. She kicked the asphalt. “No.”

The mum Lara didn’t recognise frowned and bent down towards her. “Shall we wait with you?” she said.

Lara swung her rucksack around and started to look through it. “I think I forgot something,” she called over her shoulder as she ran back towards the building.

Lara stopped around the corner when she couldn’t see them anymore. She pressed her back against the wall and listened for the sound of the gate. She waited there, tracing the edges of the bricks with her fingers, until the playground was quiet. She tried to think what her dad would be wearing. He’d have on blue jeans, maybe, and a hat. Last time he was wearing a hat.

Lara smoothed her hair and peaked around the edge of the wall. The playground was empty. The only child in sight was trailing her lunchbox behind her mum beyond the fence. Lara walked back towards the gate. He must’ve forgot the time. Her brother sometimes did that.

Maybe he came early and left. Maybe when she was in the toilet.

She bit the nail of her right forefinger. That seemed right. She’d spent too long in there, trying not to let anyone hear her, wasting time testing the soap. He must have come and gone away again. Maybe he went to get her some chocolate.

She hooked her fingers through the wire fence and leant back, heavy on her arms, and tried to walk her feet up the wire. But the flat soles of her trainers slipped on the damp wire and she fell backwards, landed on her hip and cried out.

Scrambling up, she looked around but it was okay — there was no one. She decided to go and wait on the bench.  

Carved into the back was the message In Memory of Joan Rogers 1924-1990. She hadn’t noticed that before. It must’ve been there, but she hadn’t noticed, so how could she be sure? The world moved around, rearranging itself when she wasn’t looking. It wasn’t supposed to, but it did. She realised her legs were cold and then that water had soaked through her tracksuit bottoms.She couldn’t see the gate from here either. He’d miss her. She decided to go back.

Two buses passed. A man in a wheelchair skidded on the pavement. Lara stared through the wire. A broad man with a leather jacket walked passed, but he didn’t look this way. Then another man passed, surely him, with wavy dark hair tucked into a wide-brimmed hat. He smiled at Lara. Lara smiled back, began to wave, but the man kept walking. She pushed her waving hand into her mouth and bit down on her first finger.

Then the foamy drizzle turned to a pummelling of fat raindrops and it was hard to hear anything over the noise of it. The rain was cold and went straight to her skin. She put her hood up. That was better. Then she cursed herself and tugged it off again. He might not recognise her with it up.

By four fifteen the ground was streaming with runoff. Lara’s face was slippy. She had to keep scooping the water from her eyes. She kept thinking she should go inside and then thinking he would turn up right then and staying another minute, in case he thought she’d left without him. She would’ve got a teacher to ring him but she couldn’t remember if he had a phone or what his number was. Her mum always said if you get lost, stay where you are, but she wasn’t lost, but still she didn’t know what else to do. She was afraid that if she moved nobody would ever find her. And anyway, her knees ached. Her feet squelched in her trainers.

“Ah hem!”

Lara jumped, turning around to see where the noise was coming from. It was a man — a man in a hat! A black hat with a narrow peak. Lara ran over and then froze. She did recognise him — he took some children for work in the Blue Room. He was called… something. “What are you doing?” he said. “Bit late isn’t it?”

Lara shook her head. Her face hurt.

“What?” the something shouted. “Speak up.”

Lara dug her hands into her pockets, making tight fists and kneading them into her stomach.

“Why are you still here? Who’s picking you up? What class are you in?”

He had so many questions. They were heavier than rain. Lara tried to unravel them in her head.

“Andy Brecknock,” she said, “my dad.”

“And is he coming now?” said the something man. “Is he late?”

Lara watched her shoes. They were grey with rain. She shrugged.

“Fine. Well wait under the shelter or something. Don’t get too wet.”

Lara shrugged again and continued to watch her feet. Water was climbing her laces. Like they’re drinking, she thought, splashing her toes in a puddle. She heard the gate and let herself breathe.

She didn’t know the punishment for being here so late, but she imagined it must be severe.

At quarter to five Lara realised she couldn’t feel her toes. She rocked back and forth, thinking about her mum. She was working, a new job, something with old people. She’d explained it, but Lara didn’t get it. It annoyed her when Lara asked the same question again. It would annoy her if she got home and Lara wasn’t there. She’d be tired from work. She’d be angry. With Dad, probably, but with Lara too. Then she’d ring him. Then they’d argue. Then he wouldn’t bother ringing again for months. He hated arguments. Lara could understand that. Maybe she should try to get home by herself. She knew which bus to take.

But the bus driver would ask for money and she didn’t have any.

Hot tears poured down her cheeks then, rolling into her mouth. They were warm on her face and she caught them on her tongue, the sweet saltiness a relief from the metallic rain.

He wasn’t coming. She knew that.

Maybe he never had been.

Maybe nobody had.

Then a worse thought, harder, sharp beneath the lungs: maybe nobody ever would.

Lara pictured her mum arriving home. It was late now, getting dark. She would have dinner and sit on the orange sofa, flick the TV on. She would watch the news or that series with the good but angry man, one episode after another, until her eyes hurt. Then she’d start her nightly staring from the window. She’d never tell what she was staring at. She’d stare and stare and think all her secret thoughts and then it would be late and she’d be tired and she’d go to bed and put on her green nighty, glad of all the space and quiet in the room.

And in the morning she would’ve forgotten Lara completely.

Lara grabbed the fence, clinging to it, tugging it and pushing it, rattling it, biting her cheek until the blood came, mixing with the tears and the hotness inside her and she didn’t care anymore, she didn’t care, she’d lie down here and have the puddles for a blanket. In the morning people would come back. Miss Rodney, or Rina. They’d see her, they’d find her. They wouldn’t be happy, but they’d come.

Lara sat down on the asphalt, not caring anymore when the water soaked through her clothes, hugging her knees to her chest. They lost Blake, her brother, once, and now they’d lost Lara too. She banged her head against her knees. Her teeth ached.

“Eh! Who’s that? What are you doing out here?”

A deep voice cut through the rain. Lara looked around and froze. Someone was coming. It was too late to hide. She tucked her head into her knees and held her breath.

Footsteps spattered towards her. A shadow enveloped her. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Hey, kiddo, what are you doing out here?”

She shrugged, not looking up.

“You’re soaked. Come on up here. What’s your name?”

A hand grasped her elbow. She whimpered. She was tugged up. The grip was firm. She yanked her arm away but the hand held on.

“All right, girl. You’re freezing.”

Lara looked up and saw his face. It was square, pock-marked, thick hair covered by a round grey cap. He looked mean. She glared at him.

The man laughed. “I need to lock up,” he said. “You’ll have to come with me.”

She shook her head and he smiled.

“Let’s go inside. Get you dry at least, eh?”

Lara shook her head again but allowed the man to lead her by the wrist across the playground. Her ears were ringing, making it hard to hear or think. But when she saw which entrance they were headed to she stopped, turning her legs to bolts in the ground. She shook her head.

“What’s wrong?”

She’d been through that door before. Too many times. When she got into fights or shouted out in class or the time Nicky Dobson made her so angry that she called him a p-r-i-k. “I’m fine,” she said.

He crouched beside her. “We need to get you picked up,” he said.

Lara’s face burned. The man took her hand and she gripped it, though it was hard to feel anything in her hands.

“Geoff,” he said, pointing at himself. “I’m sure we’ve met before.”

Geoff pushed open the door and ushered Lara inside. The hallway was dark. He flicked a switch and the light buzzed on. Lara followed him down the empty hall, the sugar-paper displays eery in the quiet. Lara trailed her fingers across the paper, soothed by the familiar texture. They stopped at the head teacher’s office and Geoff knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Mrs. Sampson’s thin voice called from within.

Geoff opened the door and pushed Lara through. Mrs. Sampson’s beige hair was knotted above her left shoulder. Her cardigan was buttoned all the way up.

“I found this one outside,” said Geoff. “Nobody’s come for her.”

Mrs. Sampson nodded, gazing down at Lara. “Your name?” she said. “Miss Rodney’s class, isn’t it?”

Lara looked up at Mrs. Sampson and her ears buzzed. She wiped her dripping nose, then clenched her hands into tight fists at her sides. She could not feel her toes. She opened her mouth to speak but her tongue just hung there, lolling. She tried to think, tried to find it in her head. She moaned, as if the right sounds would come out of their own accord. She coughed. But it was no use — she’d forgotten who she was.

“Ahmm,” she said.

“Pardon?” said Mrs. Sampson. “Speak up, please.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling into the dull space inside her.

Nothing.

At last she said, “I don’t know,” and her breath caught, and it seemed to her that she never had done.

Geoff rocked her by the shoulder and she screwed her face up, trying not to cry.

“Right,” said Mrs. Sampson, pursing her lips so her chin puckered. “Let’s have a look, shall we? Can I have your bag?”

Stiffly, Lara unhooked herself from her SpongeBob rucksack and passed it over the table. Mrs. Sampson took it, grimacing as it dripped on her papers. She held it over the bin. Lara watched Mrs. Sampson’s flickering eyes and felt the blood rush to her head. She leant against Geoff’s side. The room was blurring. Lara gulped.

“Lara Winter,” announced Mrs. Sampson. “Oh, of course. I didn’t recognise you with your hair all hung in rat’s tails. You’re a sight.” Mrs. Sampson sighed. “Well what were you doing out there, all on your own? Why didn’t you come and find someone? Why didn’t you tell Miss Rodney? You’ve got yourself into a state. It’s the middle of winter. Really. What a sight.”

Mrs. Sampson laughed, flashing grey teeth and Lara pushed herself away from the desk, staggering backwards. She shook her head. There were so many questions. So many questions, and she didn’t know any of them. The air turned yellow and she thought she would hiccup. She tried to open her mouth but her jaw was clamped shut. There was nothing in her head now but her name. The strange sound of it echoed around the office. Lara Winter, Lara Winter, Lara Winter.  

Then everything went black.

Lara opened her eyes to see Geoff sitting opposite her. She moved and something crunched beneath her. A beanbag. They were in the reception classroom. Lara had a blanket wrapped around her, a towel under her head. She sat up, her lip quivering, frowning at Geoff.

“All right, miss,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

He held out a purple block and Lara took it. She brought it up to her face to see what it was. Dairy Milk. She blinked at the nodding man. With his hat off, he looked very old. He was sitting on the teacher’s chair, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. “Go on,” he said, “open it.”

Lara nodded, put the corner between her teeth and pulled, tearing the wrapper. The smooth brown chocolate poked out, its curly writing the same as it always was. She put it in her mouth and bit into the solid sweetness.

“I knew it,” said Geoff. “My kids love that.”

Lara sucked the chocolate. She sat up straighter and pushed her hair out of her mouth. “Everyone likes chocolate,” she said. She tugged at her laces. They were still soaked and stung her fingers. “Do they go to this school?” she said.

Geoff laughed. “I knew you were a chatty one,” he said. “No, they don’t. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”     

Geoff sighed. “They live with their mum.”

Lara took another bite of chocolate.

“Lara!”

The door burst open and a blonde woman in a dripping green raincoat stepped into the room.

“Oh God, Lara” she said, “Oh dear. Mummy’s here now, come on, it’s all right. You poor little thing.”

Lara wriggled from the blanket and ran over to her, wrapping her arms around her mum’s hips. She slipped beneath the raincoat and pressed her face into the silky material, gulping the familiar scent.

Ms. Winter turned to Geoff, who had risen from his seat. “Thanks for waiting with her,” she said.

Geoff knelt to retrieve the chocolate Lara had dropped and handed it to the woman. “Take this,” he said. “It’s good for shock.”

Lara reached a hand out to take it but her mum batted it away. “She’s fine, thank you,” she said, pulling Lara to the door.

Outside the rain was still falling and Ms. Winter tugged Lara’s hood up. “Your father,” she said. “Christ. He could’ve called. I had to leave work. I can’t just leave work like that. I’ll be fired. It’s not professional. Christ, he could’ve called earlier. Let the school know at least. He could’ve — it’s nearly seven o’clock.”

Lara shrugged and the rain from inside her hood ran down her neck.

“Not even a call! Just buggers off. As though he doesn’t give a damn about his own daughter. I don’t know. Why didn’t you go and find someone, Lara? What’s wrong with you? Waiting outside for two hours — two hours! In this rain? It’s freezing. You’ll catch your death. What were you thinking? Eh?”

Lara tried to pull her hand from her mum’s but it was gripped tight.

“What will they think of me? I mean, what kind of mother? Standing in the rain like that. Christ.”

Ms. Winter’s spiky monologue went on and Lara pushed her hood down, dropping her head back to taste the rain again. She turned around and saw a man leaving the building — Geoff. She waved at him and he waved back.

Ms. Winter tugged Lara’s arm. “Come on, Lara, please.”

Lara tripped and Ms. Winter swore and tugged her up. Lara yelped. Her arm had been twisted. She started to shudder with tiny, jerking sobs. Finally, just before the gate, Ms. Winter stopped. She crouched down so their faces were level, almost touching.

“Lara,” she said, “oh baby. I’m sorry.”

Her voice cracked and her words choked. She stood up and held Lara close against her side, stroking her daughter’s matted hair.

“It’s okay now, baby. Mama’s here. Let’s go home now. We’ll have a hot chocolate and a cuddle, won’t we? Just you and me.”

**

Xanthi Barker is a writer and primary school mentor in London. Her stories have appeared in Bare Fiction, Mslexia and Litro. She was recently highly commended in Spread the Word’s Life Writing Prize 2018. Her ‘novellette’ One Thing will be published next year by Open Pen. Find her on Twitter @xanthibarker.

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Image: Flickr / Brian Crawford

Green-Skinned Handsome Man

I sat in the bar of the Sunrise Diner, nursing a key lime pie milkshake and watching the beginning of the Space Age. As Sputnik flashed on the television over the bar, the holo-characters murmured among themselves, sounding, as far the Historion knew, just like the ancient Americans who had seen the event in reality.

Ganymede’s new Federal Party government had decided that the kids of our colony world needed to learn more Earth history, so they’d voted to establish the Historion in the old Harakhtes water plant, as the hyperloop infrastructure to the major arcologies was already there. The plan was to maintain seven “period rooms” that used a mix of holograms and props to create a replica of a typical scene in a past civilization. Between the different rooms, the Historion offered the colony’s kids and anyone else who cared to visit a condensed world history lesson, from the rise of agriculture at Gobekli Tepe around 9000 BCE to the Colonial Revolutions of the 2290s CE, just over a hundred years ago. I was a local history buff, so I was now on the Historion’s payroll as an antiquarian, a fixer, looking for continuity errors in the displays. Today, I was beta-testing the fifth of the seven period rooms: an Iowa diner on October 4th, 1957 CE. The heyday of the American Empire.

I sucked more of the milkshake into my mouth, then tipped my head back and let it run down my throat. This wasn’t the way most people drank, in 1957 or today, but I didn’t have a choice. I was a lóng rén, a dragon man, one of the gengineered soldier races created by the Chinese in World War Four. My ancestors had been modified in utero with DNA from Komodo dragons and the Malagasy giant chameleon. As a result of that, I stood 2.5 meters tall, had green scaly skin (armored like a monitor’s but with a chameleon’s lattice of guanine nanocrystals that allowed me to change color) a long prehensile tail, and a Komodo dragon’s heavy-jawed head with a chameleon’s projectable tongue. The Chinese lost the war, but the peoples they created were still around.  Most lóng rén today lived inside Themis, the asteroid that an international commission had assigned as my people’s homeland after WWIV. Much of the my soldier ancestors’ culture was still dominant there. Even my name, Epaminondas Liú, followed their naming practice, with the first name of a great warrior of history and the family name of one of China’s imperial families. When I’d left Themis on an ice freighter, I’d learned quickly that a pretentious-sounding name didn’t go well with looking like a V-game monster. I mostly went by Ep now, as it was suitably gruff and dull-sounding for a being that everyone thought should be stupid.

But I was getting maudlin. It was time to get to work. The food was good, so I needed to test the conversational parameters. I clicked my fingers, a signal that I was ready to interact with the holo-characters. Within a few seconds, one leaned over to talk to me. The character was a Caucasian male wearing the clothing of the time: blue jeans and an AFL T-shirt. “Whaddya think about that, huh? The Reds have finally done it! Put a machine up into space, just like in Amazing Stories.”

“Hold it,” I said. The holographic components of the room froze: the customers, the TV, and the scene out the window. The chairs and most of the food-preparation equipment remained, and the cook’s hologram flickered off to reveal a kitchenbot. I tapped my datagoggles to activate my edit authority: they were a historical relic themselves in this age of datalenses, but I hadn’t been able to find lenses that fit my reptilian eyes. “Historion, replace all references to American Football League with National Football League-no, better, Major League Baseball. The AFL didn’t exist at this time. Also, new entry for the visitors’ lenses glossary overlay: ‘Reds’ as a synonym for ‘Soviet Empire,’ with tabs to the Vpedia entries on ‘Soviet Empire,’ ‘propaganda,’  and ‘Cold War One.’”

I looked around the still diner. Something else was missing, something I’d read about as an important part of the culture of this era. I snapped my fingers, my stubby claws scraping against each other. “Music! That’s it! Historion, add a jukebox in the corner. Red vinyl, coin-operated. Add an interactive feature so that kids can use it.”

The low-level AI running the facility complied immediately with my request, a jukebox shimmering into existence in a millisecond. “What should the music library be, Ep?”

I hesitated for a moment, then realized there could only be one choice. “Chuck Berry, the greatest musician of this or any age. Upload all of his records that were available at this point in time. Add the B sides as well. And…restart.”

The holocharacters unfroze, and “Maybellene” began to play from microspeakers in the room’s walls. By some trick of holographic ventriloquism, it sounded exactly as if it was coming from the jukebox. I shook my head back and forth in delight: this was my favorite song. When I’d heard it as a youngster in Themis, it had sparked my curiosity about both other ways of living and history. I wanted to know what a V8 Ford was, and what it felt like to drive one up a hill. Or what it felt like to drive anything. Or what a hill was like: the hollowed interior of Themis was almost entirely flat. As I swayed to the beat, I reflected that things could be worse. I had a decent job here, a nice apartment in the Lakhmu Arcology, and enough free time to do my own research and create new educational modules for Vpedia. If only I had a social life…

Then the doors burst open, and I remembered why I didn’t want one.

“What the hell are you doing, Ep?” Nasir Melnyk, prop director for the Historion, was standing in the doorway at the head of a group of visitors. He snapped his fingers angrily, and the holo-characters froze again, the five citizens behind him looking around the room curiously. Oh, gods. People. And Melnyk hated my guts, he’d never liked having one of my people working here. Still, I couldn’t respond angrily to him. If there was one thing I’d learned in my life after leaving Thetis, it was that the giant lizard man was always the bad guy in a conflict.

“What’s the problem, Nasir?” I responded evenly.

“It’s Mister Melnyk to you!” the little man shouted. “And what do you mean, what’s the problem? You’re the problem, dragon man! You call yourself an antiquarian and you sit at a bar in fifties America looking like the period’s conception of an alien while I’m trying to show these good people what their  history looked like? How unrealistic is that? You’re completely breaking period immersion!”

I tried to ignore the anger building up inside me, putting on my fake smile. The one that didn’t show any of my teeth, so as not to alarm bigots like Nasir. “I was beta-testing this bar, Mr. Melnyk. I reprogrammed a few characters, tried the milkshakes, and added a jukebox with some Chuck Berry records-”

Nasir snorted, cutting me off. “Like the opinions of one of your kind matter when it comes to food. And if Chuck Berry is that noise I heard coming in, wipe it from the system immediately. This exhibit focuses on the Space Age, we don’t need trash like that clouding the message.”

Something inside me snapped. The prejudice I was used to, but criticizing Chuck Berry was over the line. “Shut up, Melnyk!” I said. The little man was so shocked that he actually obeyed. “These exhibits aren’t infoslides about one thing, they’re alive, pieces of what the period would actually have been like. Time periods aren’t defined by just one event. At the start of the Space Age, Chuck Berry’s music was taking America by storm. His music sparked rock and roll, and was danced to by generations of teenagers. It belongs here.” Nasir tried to say something, but I rolled right over him. “And another thing that was happening in this period: the beginning of the end of American segregation. In September 1957, one month before Sputnik, the governor of Arkansas deployed the state National Guard to prevent black students from entering a high school. It became such a big deal that the American president at the time-that First Atomic War general, Eisenhower-nationalized the state guard and sent federal troops to make sure the black students could go to school. If you’re going for complete accuracy, non-white people probably wouldn’t even be allowed in a typical American diner of this time period. Which would make all of us here, and most people on Ganymede, be breaking period immersion.” I paused for a moment, taking in the stunned look on Nasir’s face and the interest from the spectactors. Most of them had probably never heard a dragon man speak before. “Chuck Berry’s music was about that, too. He was a minority breaking into mainstream music. He was turned out of concerts booked for him when the organizers realized he wasn’t white.” I stepped forward, looming over Nasir. I wanted this message to sink in. “Just because you’re working on an American Empire exhibit doesn’t mean you have to import that era’s prejudice and hate. Plus, only incompetent historians try to simplify an era down to one ‘message.’ So the Chuck Berry music stays. Okay?”

Nasir only nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.

“Good. Just wanted to make sure we were clear on that, Nasir.” I stressed his first name.

“Yes, Ep,” he squeaked. He left the room at a pace just short of a jog, the visitors following him.

I turned back to the bar and ordered another milkshake, trying to shake off the sense that my words had fallen on deaf ears. Suddenly, I heard a cough from behind me and turned around.

One of Nasir’s tour group remained, a slight woman wearing the blue jumpsuit of a Ganymede Power Consortium engineer. “I’m Saanvi Cissé,” she said. “I just wanted to say…that was really brave, standing up to him like that. We know what it’s like to be a member of one of the more unusual offshoots of humanity, on a small colony like this.” I noted the slim metal band around her forehead: Saanvi was a Multitude, one carrying the recorded memories of others. “It was also…kind of hot,” she said, smiling. “I was thinking, would you like to go out sometime?”

I smiled back, for real this time. “I know a great nightclub in Ninlil Crater. How about tomorrow at twenty-one hundred?”
“That would be great,” she said. “See you then!” She strolled out of the room.

I snapped my fingers and the holograms restarted. As Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” began to play, my grin widened. Maybe, just for tomorrow, I could be a green-skinned handsome man.

**

Sam Matey is a 17-year old Environmental Science major at the University of Southern Maine, and loves thinking and writing about the future of humanity and its biosphere. He runs a newsletter about our current epoch, The Weekly Anthropocene, where you can learn more about the hopes for humanity’s future.

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Image: Flickr / belpo

“Musk” is the first chapter in Polis Loizou’s novel Disbanded Kingdom, published on 05 June 2018 by Cloud Lodge Books. Reproduced with the kind permission of permission of Cloud Lodge Books. Copyright ©Polis Loizou 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Musk

Maybe God is the man he needs.

Midnight’s been and gone, left him stranded in a part of the city his feet have never tramped before. An odour with a tang, like the remaining salt in a tub of popcorn, hangs between the blocks of flats. Then there’s the scent of the man himself, tossed back and laid out to guide him, a leather road through the dark. It’s a shaky need taking hold of Oscar, for the stranger to turn around and notice him. One look, then the guy can carry on walking.

The noise of boys ricochets around the streets. A droning rap and a dancehall rhythm, pumping from about the wheels. It comes back to him, that story glimpsed in strangers’ Metros on the tube. A man got stabbed to death in Croydon, waiting for a bus with his kid. Same could go for him tonight — could be scraped off the curb tomorrow with the dog turds and phonecards for Zimbabwe. The thought propels him along.

The stranger’s legs vanish down a side street. They blinked grey in the streetlight and then they were gone. It was those legs that spurred Oscar on in the first place. Caught his eye in Caffè Nero, when the man stood up in his sharp grey suit, tailored to fit, and dragged his eye further up it ‘til Oscar was in Heaven. All other noise in the place had ebbed. That loungy cover of Nobody’s Fault but Mine coming out of the speakers, sung by some chick far from Nina. Woman sang like she was hosting a suburban barbecue, not mourning her soul in a Baptist church. (Water and fire — faith is elemental, essential.) Back in the café, the man in the grey suit looked to his left, his lime eye trapping the sun. Cut Oscar’s breath in half. The guy was hunting, or angry, or horny. Man on a mission. And when he stepped out of the place, Oscar was three steps behind him.

But that was hours ago. The sun has set, the streets have emptied. The stranger’s gone from coffee alone to beer in a pub with friends, and somewhere along the way there was the Central line. Bodies pressed together in the rush-hour clash, a guy with sweat patches in Oscar’s face and a stout woman with fake nails clipping her iPad. A Nigerian voice in the platform speakers, Do not obstruct the doors. There was Charing Cross Road, people with placards decrying something, Tories or terrorists, then Chandos Place and then the Strand, and an old woman with a shawl playing Strauss on a violin as pedestrians passed by. A strand of her hair caught in the breeze, or maybe it was gelled, or so filthy it stood starched and erect in the night.

Now they’re in the post-midnight streets, a far cry from Kensington. Far from Charlotte.

She’ll be in bed already. She’ll’ve checked her watch and turned in. Straightened his duvet and patted it down in lieu of his thigh. The thought of Charlotte, of going back home to her, makes his stomach go cold. It’s not as if anything has happened, other than they forgot how to talk to each other. It used to be easy to play Mother and Son, now it’s an endurance test. The time has come to fly the nest.

Grey-suited man has turned a corner. He’s been prowling all night, an old-world lycanthrope. The Wolf-Man. Leather shoes on his feet, pointed at the ends and pricking the air. Sharp white teeth, flashed once when he answered his phone on the Strand (the noise of buses drowned his voice out). If only Oscar could touch, and be touched, by this body that won’t even glance behind it. There was a moment at the pub earlier, one of those joints made of polished wood and stained glass, where the man turned to his friends and looked in Oscar’s direction. The only time he looked at the boy, and didn’t even see him. Guys used to, before whatever lever was pulled and their dicks fell limp. Should’ve landed a daddy when he had his pick of them. Too late now. The sell-by date sailed by without his even noticing it.

Wolf-Man stood up from his table of buddies. He was going to come over, to flash a grin, punch him, have his way.

Instead, he took his grey-suited self over to the bar to buy another round. His jacket was off, a waistcoat hugged his back. Man was a moving statue, put him on the fourth plinth. Not like his Cityboy buddies back at the table, swigging beers as their shirts cradled man-boobs and bunched at the shoulders.

Wolf-Man’s the sort of man who’ll turn his back and walk away.

Walk away.

Walk away.

What time is it? What day? The Cityboy friends were wearing pink, so it must be a Friday. Or it was, in any case. Saturday’s crept up on them, wherever they are.

No text from Charlotte. She’ll imagine he’s out with friends, Chelsea girls, sipping bubbly in the backs of cars.

The man’s strutting along, who knows where or to whom. Some wench with a beauty vlog, probably. A stylish young bitch in a scarf who’d take it standing up. It makes him cringe. Feminists would slap him, Bella would slap him. But it’s too late. The lust has taken hold, parted Oscar from his mind. A man has got into his head again, an untouchable, and he’s stepping out of his sharp grey suit.

He’s everything Terry wasn’t. Pecs like seat cushions, thick hairy arms. He’ll wear plain black shorts beneath the trousers, not those ironic-pop-art trunks from H&M. He could grow a full beard if he wanted to. His socks are a single colour and they match. His lips are full. He knows you want him. He doesn’t like Shoreditch and he’s never heard of Mumford & Sons. He’ll never write you a song and he’ll never kiss your cheek on the tube. He knows what he’s looking for.

When Oscar’s thoughts turn to Terry, the boy is always cool in a cloud of smoke, on a red leather sofa. He stares at Oscar, like that first time, and he smiles as he sips his G&T. Mother’s Ruin. Then they’re walking along South Bank, hand-in-hand, weaving their way through the crowds and marvelling at the German Christmas markets. The chocolate-covered fruit and coils of bratwurst. Beer in the air, grilled meat. Terry’s black-and-white scarf. His surprisingly deep voice, like a late-night DJ’s. That voice hardening as he stands with a taut back across the room, packing his bags and laying their romance to rest.

Unreal as it sometimes seems, it happened. It was, and then it wasn’t.

There’s nothing in Oscar’s room to remind him of Terry now. All that remained were the parting gifts of Bella, Maya and Lukas, former friends of Terry’s who switched allegiance in the split. But each of them holds a dozen memories, flashbacks to that old romance, spring-loaded to attack at any given moment. Filmstrips loop in Oscar’s head. They play and repeat, and cut, and pause.

Terry in a cloud of smoke on a red leather sofa, smiling as he sips his G&T.

Terry on a red leather sofa.

Terry and his G&T.

A dull ache grinds its way around Oscar’s sternum, feels like a spiral or an opening hand. This must be what a tapeworm is like, slithering through your body, munching you skinny as a cokehead model. Or maybe the hunger’s more basic. Maybe he should stop at a Subway.

Something in the air says the Thames is nearby, but surely they travelled North? Maybe they’ve ended up in Camden, Islington, Little Venice   somewhere with canals. In any case, a territory untouched by Charlotte’s radar. Graffiti on the walls, FUCK THE SYSTEM and YES, as if in conversation. It would scare her.

Oscar’s thoughts must have stayed his pace, ‘cause Wolf-Man is far ahead now.

A voice is drifting through the maze of dim-lit blocks. His. The Wolf-Man’s.

He’s on the phone to someone. Oscar’s whole body tenses, his every hair stands to attention — the thousands, the millions…

‘Yeah, mate, just getting home.’

And with that, the old sadness descends. Wolf-Man’s voice is from a different being. It’s too high, too London for those teeth, and those arms, those legs. Throwing words like awesome and pissed around like an undergrad, when he should’ve had the gruff voice of a fairytale woodcutter. Bark and musk. Terry wins that round.

A car screeches in the distance, makes them both turn around. It’ll be a gang, jumpy-edgy boys with knives. Or Charlotte in a cab, come to take him home.

Neither. It’s gone. The quiet takes hold once more.

And the man is facing his way.

Everything goes still. Oscar’s been caught by those lime eyes. The stranger’s face is hidden in shadows, its expression unclear, but he’s undoubtedly looking in Oscar’s direction. Now’s a time to pray, for faith to do some good.

Oscar’s heart freezes. His body goes into autopilot, leans against a lamp-post, without his having planned it. A body made of fumes, pigeon shit and discount porn. The filth of the city. It’s lucky he looks so down-and-out, faded T-shirt and well-fucked Converse. Lucky that the dye-job has rusted to pastiche. The man will think him a tramp, or a really shit rent boy. He ponders Oscar. He knows. He’s going to come over and slap him, rent him, push him into a canal. Instead he turns his back.

Walks away.

Walks away.

Oscar can’t follow. It’s so much easier to lean against this wall in the dead of night, to feel like a whore rather than to be in love.

**

Polis Loizou is a co-founder of London’s Off-Off-Off Broadway Company, which primarily performs his plays, and has had a series of successes since their first hit at the Buxton Fringe in 2009. His short stories have been featured in The Stockholm Review of Literature and Liars’ League NYC, and he is a frequent contributor to Litro Magazine. Born and raised in Cyprus, Polis is currently based in South London. Disbanded Kingdom is his first published novel.

Doves on Trafalgar Square

I was standing in front of the Bodleian Library when she trotted down the stairs of the Radcliffe Camera, brown leather bag hanging on her shoulder, a stack of paper under her arm. She was wearing a camel wool coat that reached to an inch above her ankles, exposing green sneakers with yellow laces, and a trim of gym socks. The mismatch of seasons between the coat and the shoes was so striking, I almost didn’t notice her perfectly straight hair with the fringe cut evenly along the midline of her forehead. She walked quickly, with a sense of purpose, now holding the papers against her chest, her frame slightly bent forward, protective of the notes, ready to confront the obstacles head-first. Suddenly she tripped, and all those pages whirled in the air like a flock of doves circling over Trafalgar Square.

She shook her head, looking up as thousands of pages – covered with her dainty yet perfectly legible handwriting – hit the air, attempting to escape the fate of becoming inconsequential. She struggled to catch them. It was a foggy Oxford day and the Rad Cam behind her looked like a long-awaited sailboat emerging from a cloud. I could hear the crowds cheering and chanting as they welcomed sailors triumphantly returning, and as she squatted to pull the sheets together, I wanted to scream to warn her about the approaching ship that would crush her on the cobblestone path.

She stacked all the sheets into a pile and pressed it down with her bag, as if locking the doves in a cage. She stood over it, hands on hips, as if saying, ‘If you try this again, guys, it will not end well for you.’ She took her coat off and licked her lips. I could tell there was a thin, salty film covering her skin, and if I kissed her neck at that point and then tried to kiss her mouth, she would blush. She wiped her face with her palms and looked in my direction. I thought she smiled at me, or at least acknowledged my presence, and I started moving toward her, rehearsing what I would say under my breath, my wheels making a disconcerting sound against the ground. Someone cut in front of me, but I was too focused on her to notice whether he apologized, or checked if I were all right, and the only thing I could hear was him saying: ‘I’m sorry I’m late. Have you been waiting long?’ He helped her put on her coat before grabbing her cage with the doves, and the two of them passed by me on their way toward Broad Street.

The next time I saw her was at graduation. For three years, I had wondered whether she was still around. She never came to any of the Union events, although I knew she was a member. She never showed up to any of the very few Oxford-sanctioned social events accessible to people in wheelchairs. She wasn’t there for plays, debates, or poetry recitals. I moved around the city looking for green sneakers with yellow laces, refusing to accept that she may have worn them off and moved on to a pair in a different color. She told me later that the only time she ever wore a different pair of shoes was with academic dress. She walked down the aisle in green sneakers, too, and her laces that day were made of the fabric leftover from the bridesmaids’ dresses.

She recognized me in the queue to the Sheldonian. There were two other students in wheelchairs, so I don’t suppose this was a particular feat, but still, she recognized me, and after the ceremony, she waited outside of the theater and asked me for a drink. We went to The Bear.

‘Are you sure you want to stay here?’ she asked before we ordered a glass of pear cider each.

‘Yes, I’m fine, don’t worry about me,’ I said defensively, navigating the minuscule space of the pub. It was quiz night and we found ourselves joining one of the seven teams, thinking that we would get our Oxford degrees’ worth of money in the free chips they served during the game, and in drink tickets, which were the first prize. By round four we were second from the bottom, and when they brought out round five, themed ‘Sworn Enemies’ – in which one had to identify characters from classic films and cartoons – we looked at each other and laughed, disillusioned.

‘Sam,’ she said when the pub deserted, ‘I’m going to ask you one question and depending on your answer, I may ask you to marry me or decide never to speak to you again. Do you agree?’

I nodded.

‘Would you like to live on a sailboat and only own a hundred items?’

My palms went cold as I prayed for her to be serious.

We married within a month, and when we started grad school, we rented a room in a crappy house on Iffley Road, put both of our diplomas on the wall, and spent our days working on our dissertations, limiting our purchases to the essentials, dreaming of one day living on a boat off the coast of Australia. We subscribed to two copies of The Guardian and read a week’s worth of newspapers over full English breakfast on Sundays, always sharing with our eight housemates, who loved our discussions about the cultural nuances of dismemberment of human remains. Eight years later we bought a house in South London and adopted a cat. We talked once about having kids.

Each morning of the eighteen years we spent together – the most frustrating, the most vexing, the most challenging period of my life – I asked her to look into my eyes before she left for work. She knew how much I needed that image of her, with her ink-colored hair in place, a pile of papers under her arm – pretty much the same as the first time I saw her, albeit more in control – she wiggled her head, but let me have it, and sometimes I wondered whether she did that out of love for me, or out of pity for her handicapped husband.

It’s been ten years since she left the house in her dark gray suit matched with her signature sneakers. She didn’t want to go to work that day. Her hair was out of place, she explained, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t feel comfortable with it. She looked at me for reassurance. ‘You’re right,’ she continued before I could say anything. ‘I should not miss work. I love my work. And my work loves me, so I suppose my clients will have to deal with a crabby, poorly groomed attorney.’

‘You look lovely,’ I threw in.

‘You know that your saying this doesn’t make it true?’

I resisted replying, because if we got into a debate about what made something true, she would have never gone to work again. Ready to leave, she stood at the threshold of the house, put the tips of her fingers to her temples, as if she had a headache.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It is really nothing.’ She gazed at me. ‘We’ll nail that truth thing when I get back.’

I never changed The Guardian subscription and I always set the table for two. For the first three years, I continued making conversation with her, but I only ever tackled casual things, too stricken for anything else. I’d tell her what I wrote on a given day, what the cat brought home, and what part of the house needed fixing. I made up her side of the conversation: she admired my concentration, she hated when the cat brought things home, and she was outraged that something in the house was broken again.

‘Before you say that I should have known better than to buy a house without having it inspected,’ she’d say, ‘let me remind you that we can always fix the house, but we could never get ourselves a view of a park, could we, now?’ And before I could respond, she would add: ‘Yes, I know, I should have negotiated a better price, but look at the view! Isn’t it gorgeous?’ She would ask this standing by the window, arms raised high, as if she were addressing a crowd of faithful supporters cheering in her honor.

‘There goes an Oxford-educated lawyer,’ I’d tease, and she would look at me over her shoulder, as if trying to remind me that, unlike me, an expert in Tudor history, she spent her university years reading something useful. She would then throw herself on the kitchen chair, in a dramatic gesture of reconciliation, and I would pour her a large glass of red wine, while she rested her elbows on the table and massaged the nook of her neck.

Through all that I knew she was not there, but the realization of this fact always took me by surprise. I would stop mid-bite and spit out the food that was already in my mouth. I would clench my fingers around the knife and fork and I would pray under my breath that this wasn’t true, that she wasn’t gone, that there was still something that hadn’t been tried. But saying it didn’t make it true.

For some reason, at moments like that, I always pictured her hunching over those thick volumes of legal theory, collecting her hair in her fist on the top of her head. She said it kept her focused.

It was a gentle winter afternoon when they called me from the hospital telling me to come as soon as I could but not to worry, not to worry at all, they were running some tests, too soon to tell, they would explain everything when I got there. I thought she’d broken a hip. Her mother had brittle bones, and she was never careful when seasons changed. She used to joke that if she ever needed hip replacement, I would have to take a course on how to make love to a barely mobile person, just as she had taken a class in the technicalities of intimacy with a paraplegic man.

That comment upset me.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Sam, you know I don’t mean it like that.’ She tilted her head, realizing that being paralyzed from waist down and getting a platinum hip was not the same thing. Rolling through the A&E, I was dreading that she might have met with either fate.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ a nurse asked before I got to her station. Hospitals are the only place where strangers are not afraid to speak to people in wheelchairs.

‘My wife is here. I was called to come.’

‘Name?’

‘Sam Melville.’

She leaned toward a computer screen.

‘I’m sorry, Mr. Melville, I don’t see anyone with that name here.’

‘Oh that’s right. My wife didn’t take my name. It’s Sarah, Sarah Cowen. Sorry about that… They told me to come as soon as I could.’

She scanned the list again.

‘Oh,’ she hesitated. ‘Yes, that’s right. Sarah Cowen. She was brought in earlier today. She’s Dr Supra’s patient.’ She reached for the phone. ‘He will be right with you.’

‘Where is my wife? Can I see her?’

‘She’s been moved to the surgical unit, but you can’t see her right now, I’m afraid. She’s getting some tests done at the moment. You can go to the fifth floor and wait for Dr Supra there…’

I wheeled away without thanking her.

Dr Supra turned out to be a young Indian gentleman with an air of confidence and authority that I had never ascribed to anyone. He confessed to me later that he was top of his class at each of the schools he’d ever attended and that he finished his doctorate in clinical neuroscience at King’s College two terms ahead of schedule. It wasn’t bragging. It was an unusual admission of defeat.

‘Miss Cowen was unconscious when they brought her in…’

‘Sarah. Her name is Sarah. Please call her Sarah,’ I pleaded, as if what he called her made any difference.

He nodded.

‘Sarah was unconscious when they brought her in, and she hasn’t woken up yet. We ran a few tests to see what’s going on and there seems to be bleeding in her brain.’ He was sitting in front of me, resting his forearms on his thighs, looking me in the eyes. He didn’t hesitate or flinch once when he spoke. I envied everything about him. He had the skills and the knowledge to save Sarah, and he didn’t have a wife of his own whose life he would have to relinquish to the expertise of a stranger.

‘We’re going to operate right away, and there are some forms I’d like you to fill in,’ he said without pretending I could give an informed consent. By the time I signed the last form, Sarah was being taken into an operating room, safeguarded from me by a key-card-operated door with a bright sign that read Authorised Personnel Only.

The surgery took nine hours. An intern – Jack or Jon or Jerry – came out every forty-five minutes to give me a vague update and to reassure: ‘It’s good when they take their time; that means they’re being thorough,’ he would say, impatient to go back, his eyes straying toward the door he had just come through.

It’s astounding how little one can do waiting for a ruling on the rest of one’s life. I tried to read, but my ability to see letters as meaningful symbols had vanished. I tried to write, but I had nothing to say. I tried to pray, but I couldn’t turn thoughts into words, and deprived of the privileged refuge of language, I imagined her growing emaciated.

When they brought her out, I stared at her from the opposite side of the room. She was not that vexing person I’d let out of the house the day before. She was not the girl I saw catching paper doves in front of the Rad Cam. She was not the person who made everybody play Woolf on my fortieth birthday, who built a totem of Sesame Street characters in the corner of her office, and who refused to eat anything out of a can. This thing in the hospital bed was a bundle of flesh, covered in bandages, attached to tubes with fluids and cables connected to machines that were making beeping noises at regular intervals, muffled by the shuffling of a respirator. She was strange, foreign, undiscovered.

‘People make mistakes. You could have made a mistake!’ I said to the nurses. But they haven’t made a mistake. It was her, Sarah Cowen –my Sarah! –of 49 Hill Top Road, born on 12 March 1967, a solicitor at Dawson Cornwell, a wife to Sam Melville, who was also her emergency contact.

‘You should go home, sir,’ the nurse said. ‘You need rest. We’ll call you if anything changes, but for now you really do not need to be here.’

I stayed. In the morning, Dr Supra invited me into his office. He shut the door and asked if I wanted a glass of water. I declined. He asked if we had any children. I told him how Sarah didn’t care for being a mother, and how, having done some research, we felt discouraged by the tricks of the fertility trade developed for couples like us.

‘I see. Is there anyone else you’d like to call? A friend? A relative?’

‘No relatives to speak of, I’m afraid. And our friends are scattered all over the world.’

I never realized how restricted my world was to her.

He didn’t have good news. He said that she had come in with bleeding, that they operated and that it went well, that they stopped the bleeding and limited the damage, but by the time they got to it, much of her brain had become a death field.

‘When can I take Sarah home?’ I asked. I guess he thought I didn’t hear him, or that I ignored him, or that I just didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me.

‘I’m afraid Sarah won’t be going home with you, sir. She should have woken up by now, but she hasn’t.’

‘That’s all right, I’ll wait…’

He looked away.

‘It is allowed, isn’t it? I am allowed to sit by her side until she wakes up, right?’

‘Sir…’

‘It’s Sam; please call me Sam,’ I heard myself say, as if informality was a magic spell that could change the fact that I let her out of the house that day, when she had a headache, and when her hair didn’t sit right.

Dr Supra told me she had signed a donor card. I knew that. Of course I knew that; we signed those cards together, in vain hope that it would give us good karma in case we ever needed an organ ourselves. But I objected, and asked him if, now that my wife was unconscious, I could have a final say. He looked at me with a head tilt, as if an immense load of pity for a middle-aged man in a wheelchair with a comatose wife had been dropped upon him all of a sudden.

I knew she hated the idea of being on life support. We had talked about it on the way back from The Bear to her place that night after graduation. At the time she lived in Heddington, but she wanted to take a detour before climbing up the hill to take the last look at the Rad Cam.

‘Don’t you find it odd that it’s not lit at night?’ she’d asked.

‘None of the Oxford landmarks are,’ I remarked, pointing out that the only well-lit University property was the Magdalen bell tower.

‘It’s like they lose their charisma when the sun goes down. They don’t need to impress anyone when it’s dark, so there’s no point illuminating them. Smart, don’t you think? A frugal way of using resources, turning the light off where it’s not needed…’

I said nothing. I should have realized at the time that what she was saying was morbid, but I was too happy, too impressed with myself for being with her to realize that she was being serious. She made me promise that when the time was right, I would let her go. I did. She joked that first-date declarations were binding, and I said, of course they are, foolishly convinced that this could never happen.

I got home that day from the hospital to find that the cat had brought home a squirrel. She dragged the poor creature across the floor, spilling out its viscera. My lack of interest must have thrown her off because out of the blue she froze and stared at me, as if confused by my under-appreciation, and then she left me alone in the room looking over the frosted park, with a totem of Sesame Street characters in one corner, and a stack of unopened, double copies of the past-week’s Guardian in the other.

One of her kidneys went to a 14-year-old boy from the top of the transplant list. Her heart went to a fifty-year-old father of four, and her liver was given to an alcoholic on his hundredth day of sobriety.

Not a day goes by that I don’t hear the shuffling of that respirator slowing down and eventually fading away. It was that final stroke of wings, the last plea for relevance, before the doves deserted Trafalgar Square.

**

Zuzanna Fimińska is a writer aiming to fill the world with great conversations and many points of view. Her work was published in Mslexia, eyeforpharma, Time Out Amsterdam, Polish Express, TRANSITION, Cadaverine, Hospital Drive, Prick of the Spindle, Examined Lifeand others. She’s the creator of Project Neighbours, a series of interviews with people from around the world about how to live together the 21st century.

**

Image: Flickr / neiljs

Red Moon

He takes the job in the summer, while enrolled in classes at the university, two semesters shy of graduating. Babysitting. Three kids, twice a week, all under eight, the oldest bedridden with juvenile psoriasis so severe it knocks him out, lying in a hospital bed, a tube stretching from his left arm to a blood bag over a shelf used to gather the flakes of dead skin that peel off him like bark from a tree. He empties it once a night. The rest of the time he watches movies with the other kids – Disney and Pixar – and always orders pizza.

“Pizza’s here!”

One night there’s a power outage, and the two younger ones ask to be put to bed with a story. “A th-cary one!”

He nods, checks on the oldest, and comes back. He decides to tell them about the red-eyed children. “They show up on nights of the red moon. Three knocks on the door, and they’re there. With their eyes like tomatoes. A chorus of high-pitched voices whispering, ‘Let us in, let us in. Our flesh needs blood to keep us thin.’”

The kids giggle, until he gets up and opens the window shade. Raspberry light shines in from the blood red moon. “Oh no. Was that tonight?”

Three knocks sound on the door, but the kids don’t see his knuckles on the wall. They scream.

“If the red-eyed children come, please, please, don’t give them blood. I can’t stress that enough. Good night.”

The kids are shaking with fright as he leaves. He checks on the oldest, his eyes stopping on the bag of blood above the bed. He goes down to the living room. A beautiful night. A beautiful red-mooned night. He works in silence until he hears three knocks.

He rises slowly, walks over, and opens the door.

“Pizza’s here!”

He brings it inside, takes out a slice, plates it. He goes upstairs to the bedridden one’s room, but instead of fiddling with the blood bag, he leans over the shelf and gathers up the skin. He goes back down and pauses in front of a mirror. He sees the red, much fainter these days, in both of his eyes.

“No, not blood. Never blood.”

He picks up his pizza, sprinkles his topping on it, and takes a bite. He swallows and chants, “Let us in, let us in. Our fat needs blood, our blood needs skin.”

**

Elie Lichtschein is a writer and producer based in New York. He’s the creator of Middle Grade Horror, a scripted podcast of scary stories for kids. His fiction is forthcoming in a YA anthology set to be published by Knopf in 2019.

**

Image: Flickr / Imtiaz Ahmed

The End of All Things Sounds Like Rainfall

Mama closes all the curtains tight, but I still see the faint red glow. She yells when I try to pull the fabric back. It has sunflowers on it. She picks up the laundry basket, the one for toys, and starts collecting. She takes little cars from the carpet and drops them in with the stuffed animals and building blocks. I hear an explosion and then police sirens, but those fade away.

“You want chocolate?” Mama says. She reaches on top of the china cabinet, the one full of picture frames. I don’t know anyone in the photos, never met a single one. I ask Mama how come, and she just says that all those people died a long time ago. Mama brings down a hidden candy bar and hands it to me.

I watch her disappear down the hall. She steps into the closet, the one with the washer and dryer, and reemerges, arms loaded with sheets, only to disappear again into her bedroom. I wait, making sure she doesn’t come right back out.

I walk to the sunflower curtains and hold the fabric for a moment. It feels rough and scratchy. People are screaming outside. Earlier, when there was more than just buzzing static on the TV, Mama started crying as the news anchor said goodbye. Then it cut to footage of the sky on fire. I asked Mama where that was, where did they have clouds that looked like they were boiling. She just turned the TV off and hushed me. But I think she was hushing herself.

I pull the curtains apart only so far to leave a crack big enough for one eye. Outside there is so much smoke in the air that it’s like a foggy morning. The red glow looks far away, but I can’t be sure because of the smoke. The light bleeds around all the edges of everything, like sunset. It pulses. Maybe it’s growing. Maybe it’s not sunset but more like sunrise. It’s going to keep coming until all the city is red, until all the houses on the block are red. Maybe it’s coming for me and Mama.

Someone runs across our lawn, just a shadow in the smoke. It turns and looks at the window so I pull the curtain closed, tight. I hope the shadow doesn’t try to come through the door. Mama installed extra locks when we moved in, and we’re all closed up now, latches and bolts and chains. But the shadow could still try to break it down. It could punch right through the glass and drag me out into the smoke.

I find Mama in her room putting new sheets on her bed. I don’t disturb her, just stay in the hallway, peeping in. She doesn’t notice I’m there. She pulls on the last corner of the fresh sheets and then lies face down on the bed. Mama likes the way warm, clean sheets smell. It is probably one her most favorite things ever.

She’s crying again. I want to rush over to her and hold her hand and smooth her hair like she does to me when I feel bad. If I feel sick, she’ll give me ginger ale and popsicles and chicken soup, but it doesn’t really work until she sits on my bed and wipes my face with a wet washcloth and rubs my stomach. I did this for her once when she was upset, crying when she broke Grandma’s old baking dish. I petted her hand and told her it was all right and that we could fix it, but she just kept crying.

I back away from her bedroom door, tip-toeing to the living room so she won’t hear me. No one has broken in through the window or door. The red glow is brighter around the curtains. I eat the candy bar while sitting on the couch. The chocolate is pale in spots and tastes chalky. I don’t finish it, instead tucking the wrapper around what remains, and then I throw it back on top of the china cabinet.

Most of the photos inside the cabinet are of Grandma. Grandma on the beach in a big hat. Grandma leaning against an old truck with her arm around a young Mama. Mama says that she died way before I was born, and the sound in her voice makes it seem like it was life times ago. That’s how Mama usually likes to divide all things. From the moment of my birth, time is all years and months and days and minutes. But before I’m born, time stretches back infinite and unending.

A siren starts to wail. It’s the disaster siren at the fire station. The wailing breaks, sputters for a second, until it comes back on, and at the same time, the lights in the house flicker. Mama appears in the hallway just as the lights die completely. She disappears into darkness. Then the siren dies, too.

“Buddy?” Mama says. She sounds frightened.

So many people start screaming. It’s like every person on the block screaming at once. All their voices together sound like some kind of monster, screeching and bloodthirsty.

Before Mama can stop me, I run over and rip the curtains open. I pull too hard, and the rod jumps up off the supports. The sunflowers tumble to the carpet. The smoke has thinned. Other houses on the block are like ghosts, hazy, almost there. The glow is red and orange and yellow now, a strange rippling, pulsing blur of lights. Streaks of fire rain down from the sky. A house catches ablaze across from us. Black smoke reaches from the roof like a column. A person on fire dashes out the front door and collapses into the street.

I start screaming, but Mama grabs me. She tries to pick me up, like when she used to cradle me, but I’m too big now. I’ve been too big for a while. Instead she kneels, holding me, petting my back. I stop screaming but still shake. Wet nose, wet face. I wipe with my shirtsleeve.

A glowing red rock flies through the window, shattering the glass. It rolls across the carpet, steaming, leaving a trail of charcoal dust. The smoke pours into the living room, and it tastes like burning rubber. We both start choking. Mama pulls me along to the hall closet. She shuts us inside and stuffs sheets under the gap. We have very little room, but she sits on the floor and pulls me into her lap.

“What do we do, Mama?” I say.

She smoothes the back of my hair. “What do you like?” she asks.

“I like you.”

“But what makes you so giddy-happy it makes you dizzy?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. I try to think about something that makes me feel that way, what Mama calls giddy-happy, but it’s like when she said it all happy thoughts went right out of my head. It’s like I can’t remember what happy is. “What’s yours, Mama?”

She makes a little sigh. Happy-sad. “Helping my mama shuck ears of corn,” she says.

“Why that?” I start to taste the burning rubber.

“Because I love corn,” Mama says. “And I like the way the silk feels between my fingers, so soft. And we always did it together, on the porch, putting the scraps into a plastic bag. And it meant it must have been summer time. That way when I remember it, no matter when, it is always a little bit summer.”

My chest is tight. It feels hard to breath now. Mama stops rubbing my back. With my ear to her chest, I hear her short little breaths. But then they are not there anymore. I’m just lying in her limp arms. The chorus of screaming almost seems like it’s ready to break through the closet door. Like the house is being torn apart by wild creatures.

I close up my eyes and try not to listen to the screaming or to Mama’s silent chest. Mama had asked me what my favorite thing was. She loved remembering ears of corn because it reminded her of summer. My favorite part of summer is thunderstorms with really heavy rain. Rain that falls so fast it’s blinding. I like rain so heavy that the ground can’t absorb the water fast enough, and the lawn turns into a lake. I like to lie on my back in the water. It’s warm like a bath. I let the rain wash over me, open my mouth and let it fill me up.

The rain is so deafening, pounding the ground around my head. It pounds and pounds until it’s like static, like white noise. My ears are full of rain hitting the ground, the roof, the street, the window. It’s so constant and loud it’s like I can’t hear it anymore. The rain is so heavy it’s like it’s not even there. It’s almost like silence.

**
Thomas Price is a writer living in New Orleans, where he obtained an MFA from the Creative Writing Workshop at UNO. His fiction has appeared in The Chattahoochee Review, The Barcelona Review, and The Los Angeles Review, where he was a finalist for their 2017 Flash Fiction Award. Find him on Twitter.

**

Image: Flickr / Geoff Sloan

“Pieces of String Too Short to Be of Any Use” by Mary J. Breen was originally published in Fiction365

Pieces of String Too Short to Be of Any Use

Euchre always ends early in the summer because all of us have to be up by five. That night, Gord was tired so he just dropped me off. I knew Donny would drive me home as our place wasn’t far out of his way. I guess it’s high time Gord and I admitted that we’re getting too old for farming, but neither of us can bear the thought of giving it up. Not just yet.

I remember the sweetness of the night air after that fusty old church hall. The moon was almost full, and as I walked down the driveway, I could see Donny leaning on his old truck, ankles crossed, smoking a cigarette just like a gorgeous old James Dean. As I got closer, he signalled for me to follow him over to a ditch where a scattering of lightning bugs drifted over the long grass. A tiny galaxy of their own. Ever so slowly, he caught some between his hands and held them close for me to peek at before he let them go. Then he put his arm through mine, and walked me back to the truck.

“So where’s your new truck?” I asked. “I hear you bought one of those big ones with air conditioning and everything.”

“I’d have brought it if I’d’ve known I was driving you, Beth. I guess the truth is I’m kinda saving it. Foolish really, but I never had a brand-new one before. Kinda afraid I’ll break it.”

“You could get some of that plastic bubble stuff and wrap it all up safe. That wouldn’t look too silly.”

He chuckled as he held the door for me. “Ah, Beth,” he said, “you could always make me laugh.” He was still smiling when he got in on the driver’s side.

“You realize that kind of crazy-mad saving is a sign of old age,” I said. “You with a lovely new truck you don’t dare drive, and me with I-don’t-know-how-many sweaters and blouses and scarves still wrapped in tissue paper in my bottom drawer. Never wearing them, saving them, just in case.”

“Blame it on the Depression,” he said. “Our parents really learned how to save, and they taught us too.”

“And one day we’re going to wake up dead, and our kids will find out how foolish we were. That reminds me: remember my Aunt Ida out in Calgary? Well she died last month, and when I was cleaning out her place I found a box labelled “Pieces Of String Too Short To Be Of Any Use”! I’m not kidding. All of them really, really short but still she’d kept them! Why do we do this?”

He laughed again, shaking his head as he turned the key. The truck started up with a shudder and a lurch. “Here we are again, Donny. You and me in an old pickup with a bad clutch.”

“Right. Here we are,” he said.

“You know,” I went on, “just the other day I was thinking about those shoes I dyed blue to match my bridesmaid dress for Norma’s wedding. Remember how that damned truck broke down, and we had to walk in the pouring rain, and my feet ended up turquoise for weeks!”

We turned onto the County Line and drove along in what they always call “companionable silence” in books, letting the warm wind push back our hair like kids again, kids without a care in the world.

“So,” I said, “tell me how Eileen’s feeling. I hear she’s back home, and Tracy’s home to visit too. Must be lovely having her around again.”

The truck slowed to a crawl and Donny pulled over onto the shoulder, and turned off the ignition. “What’s wrong, Donny?” I asked. “Don’t tell me your truck—that we’re having another breakdown!”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s—well—you see, Beth—” He stopped and took a deep breath. “It’s not good. Not good at all. We just heard Monday that the tests—Eileen had a bunch more done last week—and, well, the cancer’s spread. Bone. Brain too. They’ve let her come home, and they’re gonna try some more drugs, but the truth of the matter is—” he kept shaking his head, “—she’s not, she’s not gonna—”

“Oh, Donny!” I reached over to his arm. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea! Poor Eileen. And poor you too.”

Right away I thought of Gord and how scared I was last year when we weren’t sure what was wrong with him. He and the doctor thought it was his heart, but it turned out to be just a combination of terrible heartburn and terrible fatigue.

Donny half-turned towards me, and then quickly turned back. There were tears in his eyes. “Beth,” he said, staring at the dark road ahead, “do you remember how we always said we were meant for each other?”

I didn’t want to tell him that I don’t remember ever saying those exact words, but I do know that everyone—especially me—thought I was the luckiest girl in the county to be Donny Walsh’s girlfriend. He didn’t drink like most of them, and he was cute and funny and smart, and a big local hockey star. I went to all his games. “Gee, Donny,” I said, “that was, let’s see . . . almost forty years ago! We were just kids.” He didn’t answer. “What I remember is that I was going to be a missionary in darkest, deepest Africa while you learned to be a famous horse trainer, and when I got home, we were going to get married. God, we were so young!”

“Never mind that we were young, Beth. We knew. I did, anyway. And, well, you see, it’s never changed for me. I’ve never felt any different, that is, any different about you.” He took a deep breath. “I—I decided I would just come out and tell you.”

The engine kept ticking, and an owl cried suddenly out in the woods. I could feel my heart pounding as I tried to think of something good to say.

Donny went on. “Well, Beth, I’ve always known that if anything happened to Eileen, I’d come to you. I made a terrible mistake back then. You’re the one I should have married. But, you know, Eileen was pregnant, and you were already going out with Gord, and—”

Did he think all those years that my sweet, quiet, homely Gord was just a runner-up? That I missed first prize? Donny was a lovely boy, but Gord was already a man, even back then. And a very good man.

Donny sat there, perfectly still, his hands on the wheel, still staring at the road ahead.

I tried to pick my words. “I think you’re just feeling a bit scared, Donny, with the stress of looking after Eileen, seeing her in so much pain, not knowing what’s coming next.” Suddenly it was like forty years ago, me and Donny in his pickup, him staring straight out the windshield. I was astonished that I could still read from the set of his shoulders and the clenching of his jaw just how upset he was.

He reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. Then he stopped and looked at me. “Still hate these things?”

“Yeah,” I said, unable to lie, “but maybe with the windows open it won’t be so—”

“I can wait,” he said and he threw the pack onto the dash. “I’m supposed to cut down anyways.”

After several minutes, I finally said, “Donny, it’s late. We should be getting home. Eileen and Tracy, they’ll be worrying.”

He started to apologize, but I wouldn’t let him. “No, no,” I said, “I’m glad you told me. I’m flattered.” And then my babbling nature took over, and I started saying corny, useless things about how we can’t turn back the clock, can’t second-guess our lives. He just shook himself, started up the truck, and drove off as if we were being chased by demons.

We didn’t speak the rest of the way down the Fourth Concession, and up the lane to our house, all dark except for the side porch light and the one on the stove. I leaned over and kissed Donny on the cheek and told him that we were still old friends, good friends, and nothing would ever change that. He just nodded. As soon as I got out, he slammed the truck into gear, and drove off without another word.

I only saw Donny twice more—once at the Co-Op where I was picking up some special feed for a sick foal, and another at the IGA. Both times, I know he saw me, but when I went looking for him he’d gone.

Eileen died that fall, and then Donny just four weeks later. Heart. Apparently he’d been due for bypass surgery for the end of November, but none of us knew that. The Friday before he died, Tracy called and said her dad was hoping I’d drop in sometime. We were off to see the grandkids that weekend, so I promised I’d stop by the first of the week. He died that Sunday morning.

Tracy wrote in the obituary, “Without Mom, Dad’s heart couldn’t go on.” And whenever anyone repeats that to me, I make sure I agree.

**

Mary J. Breen lives in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in national newspapers, essay collections, travel magazines, health journals, and literary magazines including Brick, The Christian Science Monitor, Ars Medica, The Windsor Review, and Dropped Threads II; she was a regular contributor to The Toast. She has been an ESL and literacy teacher in Canada and overseas, a health worker, and a writer of easy-to-read health information including two books about women’s health. Now, among other things, she teaches memoir classes while trying to complete her own memoir.

**

Image: Flickr / dominocat

Cage Body

If you often find yourself awake in the middle of the night wishing you weren’t alone, I know of a place you can go where you won’t be. There’s air conditioning, always turned up too high, and a television set, on mute. The vinyl chairs are arranged in a square so everyone can look at each other, and a vending machine stands off to the side. You’ll probably leave with a complicated illness of some kind and have to come straight back, but at least it doesn’t cost anything to sit in the square and look at the other people. I go often, to the sliding door under the lit-up Emergency sign. I’m always amazed at how many people are there in the middle of the night. I’m never alone. It’s where I wait for Megan.

Megan and I are regulars at the hospital the way some people are regulars at bars or coffee shops. We arrive together and split up at the triage desk—her to the doctors and nurses and me to my chair in the waiting room under the silent TV. They never make her wait very long, just wrap a paper bracelet around her wrist, tip her back and rush her down the hall. I’m never asked if I want to come; my primary job is to fill out her paperwork. I do that until I can get someone’s attention and ask where they took her this time and when I can go in. Sometimes I don’t get to go in.

It’s busy tonight; the nurse at the desk keeps shushing me and directing me to the chairs with her pen. It bothers me, and it doesn’t—Meg’s probably unconscious by now anyway. Tonight will pass like a blink for her from here on in, and I’ll take on her time along with my own, like I always do. I’ll survive an agonizing minute only to have to live it again. I feel guilty for wishing away any of my minutes, considering.

A girl with coffee-coloured hair interrupts my thoughts, poking me in the shoulder. “Is someone sitting here?” She motions to the chair beside me, the only vacant one in the room. I shake my head and let it come to rest once again in the palms of my hands, which are cold and wet with hospital sweat. This is how you sit in an emergency room if you don’t want to make conversation.

“Thanks,” she says, silently folding into the chair, legs under, arms in, hood up. Compact. Her voice is sad, and something in it causes me to glance up again. She catches me staring. “What?”

“Nothing. Sorry.” She’s rude, but she looks like she’s about 17, so I forgive her. I was 17 once; I’d hated it too.

She starts examining her fingernails, which are covered in chipped black nail polish. She frowns at them, as though they’re her problem. As though she’s come to the emergency room at 3 AM for nail polish remover. “What?”

I realize I’m staring again. “Nothing. Sorry.”

She turns her critical gaze to my face, to the hard lines in my forehead and around my mouth chiseled out by ever-present worry and too many 3 AM emergency room visits. I look haggard, and it makes me self-conscious. I used to be pretty. Like her. “Why are you here?”

“In this chair?” Does she expect me to move? I was here first.

“No. Here. In the ER. Why are you in the ER?”

For all of the nights I’ve spent here, I’ve never been asked this before. “I’m waiting for someone. You?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re waiting for someone too?”

“Yeah.” She slides her fingernail under a piece of polish and scratches it off. It makes a horrible sound. Her eyes flick over at me. “My friend broke her leg.”

“Oh.” I nod. “How’d she do that?”

Her mouth cracks open. She’s looking everywhere. I’ve stumped her. “None of your business,” she says at last.

“Emily.” A woman appears at the girl’s side. She looks tired; she’s not wearing any makeup and her hair is piled up on top of her head, held there by a large black butterfly clip. She’s holding out a hospital bracelet like it’s a stick of gum. “Put this on. I’m going to grab a coffee from the cafeteria.”

Emily’s eyes are closed.

“Emily.” The woman’s voice is ragged. She’s been yelling. She’s been awake for hours. Her face sags but her eyes flash; she’s a confusing mix of intense sadness and fierce anger, already defeated but still fighting. “Emily,” she repeats, reaching out in one swift motion, grabbing the girl’s hand and stuffing the bracelet into it. “Put,” she steadies herself, glancing at me, “this,” she catches her breath again, “on.”

Emily’s eyes don’t open. “Whatever.”

“Not whatever.” The woman presses her lips together in between every sentence, biting them hard and turning them white. “Put it on. Now.”

Emily pushes her sleeve up, scowling in my direction without looking at me, like she knows I’m watching. She’s clearly done this before; she completes the task with one hand. She thrusts her bony wrist out, displaying the paper jewelry for the woman to inspect.

Her arm is covered in lines, some of them angry and fresh and some faded to chalk-white. The woman nods, turns, and takes off down the hallway toward the cafeteria. She walks like someone who’s used to wearing high heels; she’s unsteady in her ballet flats.

I’ve never been to the cafeteria in this hospital. I’ve never been to the bathroom here either. I sometimes get hungry, and I sometimes get uncomfortable, but I don’t want to be unavailable for even a second. Some doctors urge me to walk around or even leave the building. They say Megan would wait for me. “Go out for a bit! Go grab a coffee!” they say. Their smiles are sad. She’ll be fine. She’ll know you’re not here; she won’t go without you. We’ve seen it a thousand times. They wait.

All nice thoughts, but I always want to say something snarky about how if she can’t dress herself or control the spastic flailing of her hands, if she can’t keep herself from calling out gibberish in the middle of a church service, I highly doubt she’s going to know how to keep her body from dying at an inopportune time. I want to scream these words at the doctors. I’m not angry at them; I’m angry at the situation and the doctors are the ones standing between me and it right now. The situation is a physical being, an invader from another country; it speaks a foreign language and the doctors are its interpreters, impartial middlemen relaying its messages to me from the body of my sister.

She and I were born on the same day of the same year. Our faces and hair and skin are the same. We ate all the same things growing up and played the same games and had the same friends. We had the same parents and graduated from the same high school and waitressed at the same restaurant while we worked through similar programs at the same community college.

Then one day, her body turned on her, quit working the way it always had, shut up like a steel trap with her inside it. Snap. It was like hugging someone as they were struck by lightning, having them crumble into ash in your arms. I can’t understand how I was untouched by something that big and that close. How it could claim all of her and none of me.

So now I take care of her; I carry her cage body around and poke food into it and talk to it, hoping she’s still alive in there, that my voice is soothing and comforting. Sometimes I say to her, “I’ll get you out of there, Megs,” or, “This doctor looks like he knows what he’s doing. He’ll get you out.” Sometimes her body smiles at me, but her eyes loll off into the corners of the room. Sometimes her eyes look at me but her mouth droops open and the rest of her hangs limp in her wheelchair. Maybe, I think sometimes, she escaped long ago and I’m just lugging an empty cage around.

Emily pokes me again. “Hey, sorry. Do me a favor, okay? When my mom comes back, tell her I’m in with the doctor. Tell her they’re keeping me overnight and she can go home.”

I frown. “And you’re just going to leave?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And your mother’s not going to want to say goodnight or talk to the doctor?”

Emily scoffs at this. “No.”

I gape at her. “I don’t…I don’t think you should…leave.” I expect my reaction to elicit some level of rage from her, thinking back to when I was that age and how I acted when my dad told me I couldn’t do something, but I’ve clearly overestimated her interest in my opinion. She shrugs and turns to the man reading a magazine on the other side of her, repeating her request to him. He nods and she stands up. She doesn’t even glance at the triage nurse on her way past.

I stand too. I’m not a brave person, and I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it doesn’t feel right to do nothing.

I catch up to her just outside the hospital doors, reach out my hand and jab her in the shoulder the way she’d done to me. She spins around; I can tell she’s expecting her mother. When she sees me, she relaxes. I tense. She doesn’t say anything at first, and I don’t either. Then, “What?”

“I,” I begin. I what? “I’m not going to make you go back inside or anything.”

“Okay.”

“But I think you should come anyway.”

The girl smirks. “No. I don’t think so.” She starts walking away again.

That was all I had. I can’t tackle her. Can I? I call after her. “What about your friend? With the broken leg?”

She snorts at me over her shoulder, but stops walking. “Pretty sure you’re not that stupid.” She looks me up and down with disdain and raises her chin. “Who are you, even? I don’t need another person who doesn’t care pretending like they do. If it would make you feel better, you can tell my mom you tried to stop me.”

I sputter as she walks away, knowing I should say something more but not knowing what, and then I start to cry. It surprises me because I’m not sad; I’m something else. Something that burns a little. Something like seething rage.

I’m blisteringly mad.

I’m mad at all the cages.

“What’re you trying to save her from?” The voice comes from behind me; it belongs to a grey-haired woman with a wrinkled face, hunched over a walker, dragging on a cigarette. “Dying? Is that it? You trying to save her from dying?” She looks obstinate; her tone is haughty and mocking but her mouth is lazy. Her words stick together. The sign above her left shoulder politely asks those in its vicinity not to smoke. “Everyone here is obsessed with keeping everyone else from dying. Why? Why is everyone so worried about saving each other? We’re all going to die, even them doctors. Let the ones who want to go, let them go. That’s what I say. People been trying to keep me alive since I was born. Not ‘cause they want me around, just ‘cause people are obsessed with keeping other people alive. Obsessed.” She spits this word at me. I still say nothing. She doesn’t want me to, I can see that.

Does Meg want to go?

I’ve often wondered. The doctors say it will happen soon, any day now. They’ve been saying this for years. When we’re rushing into the ER with her lips blue and her body convulsing, the only thing I can think is that I’m losing her, that I need to get her and bring her back. I always get her in on time, barely on time. The doctors save her life, what’s left of her life. I sit on her bed after it’s all over and say, “That was close, Megs. You were almost taken again.” But what’s trying to take her? Maybe she’s running away. Maybe she wants to go and I’m nothing but a glorified prison guard, on high alert, day and night, watching the door of her cage for the slightest movement, for the earliest sniff of an escape attempt.

How could I know, one way or the other? As soon as these thoughts come, I think, but maybe she’s like a baby again, just the slightest glimmer of consciousness stuffed into this big old body, and maybe the only thing she’s aware of is my existence, my love, and my earnest care for her. Maybe she’s happy in this life, like a baby’s happy when it has all the basic things. I can’t know, and it drives me crazy.

There’s a hand on my shoulder; it’s a nurse I’m familiar with, and she wants me to come with her to Meg’s room, where Meg is stable and breathing and recovering. She spends most of her time doing these things, the rest of it listening to me read her a book or push her wheelchair by the lake.

I follow the nurse to Meg’s room and sit on Meg’s bed and hold Meg’s face with both of my hands and try to see into her eyes and ask her, “You in there, Megs?” Holding the rungs of her darkened cage, calling into the corners, trying to detect movement. Are you in there? Do you want me to pick this rusty lock and let you out? Come up to the bars, here.

She doesn’t answer, but her cheeks are warm, and I imagine the twitching I feel in the facial muscles is her trying to smile. I smile back. “Megs,” I say. “You look beautiful.” She doesn’t have stress lines on her face like I do. I crawl into the hospital bed beside my sister and wrap my arms around her like a softer cage. I close my eyes and lay perfectly still. She can’t come out, but I often imagine I can go in.

I squeeze between the bars and find my sister huddled in the corner. She’s not a baby, and she’s not a prisoner. She’s just my sister. She wants to go abroad for summer vacation, she wants to become an architect and have three babies. Her favourite song is a classical piano piece called Spring and she hates asparagus. I sit down beside her and lean against her. I tell her the things I know about her. I feel her push back into me. I say, “I’m here.”

And she says, “I know.”

**

Suzy Krause is a writer from Regina, Saskatchewan, where she lives with her husband and two children. Her debut novel, Valencia & Valentine, is forthcoming from Lake Union Publishing in the summer of 2019, and she was also a contributing writer for The Magic of Motherhood, published in 2017 by HarperCollins.

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Image: Flickr / Radek Bet