The house sat atop a hill in a golden pasture. I’d spent plenty of time there as a child, tagging along with my mother when she went to clean it two days a week. It was beautiful, hardly looked lived in, and being from a cramped, two-bedroom, glorified shed that we shared with my 4 siblings, I resented that. I didn’t resent much else about that place.
It was the fault of the old woman who lived there. I heard the way she spoke to her girls, ordering the hunches out of their backs, the local slang out of their vocabulary. She wouldn’t let them play with me, not even when we were very small. Perhaps she worried that my poor would rub off on them.
Anger at this woman I didn’t even really know welled up inside me year after year. I kept it down to appease my mother – our family did need the money, and I was able to let some of that go when I accompanied her less and less as my studies took more of my time.
But as it goes in life tragedy struck and long story short I left my dreams of a different life behind and went to clean that beautiful house in my mother’s stead. Those girls were still there, tethered like the story of the circus animal who, though untied, could not leave the ring. I wanted to talk to them, but now I was trapped, my mouth sewn shut like my mother’s, and wasn’t the damage already done?
One evening, working late, I was struck by the quiet in the house. I’d heard the old woman earlier, grousing to herself in the sitting room, broken up by screams at her girls. In all the time I’d spent here, it had never been quiet. Something felt wrong.
I found myself tiptoeing, checking the rooms around the house. When a metallic smell rolled over me, I knew that I was about to see something ugly. There were those diabetic ankles lying on the tile in the kitchen. I slowly moved to see around the kitchen island for the full scene to unfold. The old woman lay on her back, not breathing for the hole carved into her chest. Her daughter, the eldest, sat by her head, knees drawn up to her chest, rocking back and forth, and her hands covered in blood.
When she looked up at me, her eyes were red, but she didn’t look startled or scared. She just looked…resigned. I came to my knees beside her as she watched, likely expecting more anger or condemnation. She was stiff when I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, but eventually hugged me back and started crying.
After a moment I pulled away. “Where’s your sister?”
“Upstairs,” she answered, voice cracked.
“Does she know?”
She nodded. I scanned the old woman.
“We can hide the body, we can make sure nobody ever finds out, but I need to know if you both can keep the secret.”
“You’re going to help us?”
“If I can. Are we going to do this?”
She hesitated only a moment before jerking her head in a nod.
We buried her in the garden. Her daughters fed a story to the authorities about how she had been struggling with undiagnosed dementia. She had wandered off and they couldn’t find her. It was eventually determined that she fell into one of the nearby mine shafts, or was torn apart by wild animals. It wasn’t a hard story to sell, she was a well-known kook who hated all and was in turn hated by all. Nobody wanted to take any longer to consider the situation than they had to.
Her daughters moved. I can’t imagine I would like to stay in a house with so much pain anymore they did. I don’t know where they are now, but I do hope they are well. And me? Well, I still go back to see that house from time to time. I admire its golden grass, and the view from the hill. But most of all I go to see the old woman, screaming soundlessly from the windows.
“I told you two was enough,” Lena said, pushing Percy back upright.
“You’re hardly one to talk, you had three!” he said, slinging an arm around her neck.
“Clearly I can handle it better than you.”
“Are you sure? I don’t think that this is the parlor on the way to our room.”
Lena looked around and cursed. “Goddamn it. Percy!” she yelped as he pulled her with him to the fancy carpet.
He put his hands up, framing the painted ceiling. “I’d say this is a better view than our room, wouldn’t you?”
“Percy, come on, what are we going to do if the host or one of the staff finds us here? We may not have the most reputation to defend but sleeping on the floor when we have a perfectly good bed will do us in.”
He could be dead weight when he wanted to be, so Lena’s efforts to pull him up were useless. “Stop pushing,” he said. “It’s comfortable down here, you should join me.”
Lena put a defeated hand atop his chest. “You should at least take me to dinner first.”
He groaned. “If I ate right now I would vomit.”
“Wow, that makes the situation even more enticing,” she said as she laid down next to him, head cushioned by his arm.
He pointed at the ceiling, decorated in the renaissance style with nude figures all over the place. “That one looks like Geoffrey.”
“Oh god, why would you say that, that’s not an image I ever wanted to have in my head.”
“What, you never wanted to see him naked?”
“Ew, god, stop it.”
“It’s because I’m the only man for you, is that right?” he whispered in her ear in a caricature of sensuality.
Lena squirmed away. “That tickles, stop it.”
“Okay, then you take a look at the selection here. Who among these fancy painted people reminds you of someone from real life?”
She considered it for a moment. “That one.”
“Which one, the one with the strategically draped cloth?”
“No, the one next to him draped across the rock in dramatic agony.”
“Okay yes, I see. Who does he remind you of?”
“He’s what you’re going to look like in the morning.”
Percy scoffed. “This carpet is much more comfortable than that rock. Who would do that to themselves?”
Lena squinted. It was hard to see in the low light. “Oh, maybe he’s dead.”
“Ah yes, the dead don’t need comfort,” he said knowingly.
They considered the ceiling a little longer.
“Are we really going to stay here all night?” Lena asked.
“You tell me, do you think you can get off this floor? I’m telling you, this rug is nicer than our mattress.”
Lena kissed him on the cheek. “We should see if our host would be willing to part with it as an early anniversary gift.”
Percy waited a beat. “Or we could steal it.”
“How, pray tell do you plan on getting a twelve foot rug out of the house without anyone noticing?
He shrugged a little. “Dunno. Tell ‘em we’re cleaning it or something.”
She lifted her head. “You’d better not puke on it.”
Percy raised a hand. “I have a stomach of steel. Nothing’s getting past me.”
“That’s what you said on your birthday, and what did you do?”
“Shh…” he slurred, sloppily putting a finger across her lips. “We don’t talk about that.”
Lena rolled onto her side to put an arm around his middle. “Alright, just go to sleep. If you have to throw up do it on the tile. If you get it on me I’ll kill you.”
He patted her shoulder. “You wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Perhaps not, I couldn’t get away with it here. But once we’re home…”
“How despicable.”
“Your vomit don’t smell like flowers, sweetheart. It’s a fitting punishment.”
“Ugh, why did I have to marry a hardass? I am in no position to endure such treatment, I tell you.”
“Go to sleep, Percy. I won’t be able to until you shut your face.”
“But you like my face.”
“I do like your face, and right now I like it closed. Especially since you’re the reason we’re sleeping on the floor tonight.”
“Hey, hey, you’re the one who brought us to the wrong parlor.”
“And then you decided to lay down, it’s not on me.”
“Agree to disagree.”
“Agree that you’re wrong.”
“Alright, fine, fine, just let me sleep, god.”
Lena reached up just enough to give him another kiss, and then they fell asleep.
Sat on the edge of the parapet as I smoked, Graham didn’t notice me when he came out. I watched his back for a moment as he stared out into the dark. Rubbing his hand on the back of his neck, he looked exhausted. I started to feel bad for spying on him.
I cleared my throat, and he turned around. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
I offered the cigarette, and after a moment’s hesitation he came over and sat next to me, accepting it. As he puffed, I wanted to say, “So it all ends tomorrow, huh?” I wanted to say, “This might be the last time we see each other alive.” I wanted to say, “Evil wizard, right? Who would have thought.” It was all pointless, anyway, redundant by now. It wouldn’t make anything better, and it reminded me how much I wanted to talk to someone, how much I needed to know that there was someone else breathing beside me. Would he see it as weakness?
Lightning flashed in the distance. The thunder came later, rolling through the silence between us.
“You want to say something,” Graham said, leaning his head against the wall behind us. “You’d better say it now.”
I shouldn’t say this. He wouldn’t appreciate it, I knew. But he was right, this was my last chance, and if he got pissed, well then I wouldn’t have to deal with it for very long.
“You and Abby should leave tonight, while there’s still time. You have a baby on the way, no one expects you to fight when you, more than the rest of us, have something to live for.”
He returned the cigarette, and after a moment I started to wonder if he wasn’t going to answer.
“We talked about it,” he said finally. “Neither of us will be able to live with ourselves if we run, if we abandon the rest of you. And how can we raise a child to be honorable, to be true to their values if we can’t ourselves? We’ve managed to make it this far in life with few regrets. This will not be among them. Thank you, Siv, but we’re staying right here.”
I closed my eyes briefly. “I would have liked to meet the child.”
He smiled a little. “We would have made you godmother, you know. Abby wouldn’t hear of anyone else.”
I felt tears unexpectedly spring to my eyes, but I wouldn’t let him see. “An honorary title, then.”
“For tonight,” he said wistfully. “I’ll be a father. You’ll be a godmother.”
I couldn’t muster a smile. I nudged him with my shoulder. “You should go be with your wife.”
He nodded, and stood with some effort. “Goodnight, Siv.”
“Goodnight, Graham.”
She rested her till in the dirt, pulling her gloves off to open her canteen and taking a swig. At a sound in the distance she lowered her water and shielded her eyes from the sun, squinting into the distance. All was still except for the flock of birds taking off from the trees. She dropped her things and started across the uneven dirt.
The forest started not far from her little farm, turning into a sea of green just beyond that. She took a look back at her house, smoke curling up from the chimney, and the animals in the pens unconcernedly going about their business. She dusted her hands off and entered the wood.
It was darker here, almost as though it wasn’t the early, cloudless afternoon she’d entered on. Her mother’s voice in her head told her to turn back, girls who lived long enough to see the next harvest didn’t enter these woods chasing after strange sounds. She pushed her out of her mind with a broom. She wasn’t here anymore. Besides, she could hardly follow the advice of someone who didn’t follow it herself.
The voices of the trees surrounded her, carried her on light feet up the side of the mountain. Here they became deeper, the vibrations carrying deep in her chest threatening – no, gently beckoning – for her to give in, to let the sound flow completely through her. What she wanted most was to lay down in the protective roots of the trees. If she went to sleep here she would wake up as one of them, would share in their song.
Their voices wound through her hair, through her fingers, and caressed her neck with the intimacy of a lover. Though she new this place would take her over if she let it, this wasn’t her first time in the wood. Intoxicating though it was, she had come in here for a reason – she had to remember it. Maybe someday she would decide that she had enough of tending to animals and working the rocky dirt, then she could wander into the green’s loving embrace to become forever more than herself, a part of the tribe.
She shook her head, repeating to herself, “I have a purpose, I have a purpose.”
When the twilight was settling in and the whispers grew louder, she came to a halt where the roots of a great tree began. She recognized this one. Reverently she stepped forward, minding the roots until she came to the trunk. Placing her hands on the bark she closed her eyes, hearing her mother’s voice louder now inside her head. She reached out to the winds, tempting fate, her mother whispered. Testing her will, taking deeper drinks of the forest, perhaps giving it the chance to convince her this was where she belonged.
She stepped out of the trees into her garden, looking back once. She already knew the forest was her fate. Just…not yet.
“Mama!” a little girl yelled excitedly, running out of the house.
Mama smiled, catching her up and spinning her around before hoisting her onto her hip.
“Daddy said to come get you for dinner,” the girl said.
Mama brushed her hair off her forehead before setting her down. “I’m sure you were a big helper in the kitchen.”
The little girl ran back to the house, bumping into her father coming out at the same time.
“Hands off the bread until dinner,” he called after her.
He watched her with uncertainty when Mama met him at the door. He gave her a quick kiss as they paused at the threshold.
“Still with us?” he asked quietly.
She smiled, placing her hand on his cheek. “Still here.”
Accordion Content
My studio was what I had always wanted. Big windows letting in light to feed my plants on the sill. The panes looked into the pasture, skylight giving the impression of being outside, even when the windows weren’t open. Three different easels, a workbench, and a minifridge by the door. My little niece even had a corner where she worked on her loom quietly, feeling
important for toiling alongside me.
Tonight it was dark. Dusk had fallen, and the shadows seemed somehow ominous in this place usually so full of life. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, the only thing I wanted to do was leave this room, but there had to be a reason I felt like this. If there was an intruder or something then I had to know – it would not remain in my workroom for long.
I grabbed up the walking stick by the door and moved carefully inside. There weren’t a lot of hiding places – I almost hoped there was an intruder, because somehow an unexplained shiver down my back was worse than a dangerous explained shiver. The studio was empty. I turned around and around with the stick, at a loss. I started at movement in my peripheral vision. Jerking toward it, I looked with heart racing to no avail. That is – until I saw that the movement was coming from the canvas on my easel.
It was just a splattering of different colors of paint, practice during a time of little inspiration, but somehow it had sprouted a mouth, and pools of darkness I recognized as eyes. I crept closer, drawn in as though by a car wreck.
“Do you know me?” it said in a voice like tearing paper.
I swallowed, wondering if I was going crazy. “I’ve seen you before. In the lake.”
“So you haven’t blocked me out of your mind, I see. Haven’t convinced yourself it was all in your head.”
“What are you?”
“An old friend,” it said. “Or – will be. Just give it a few years. We’re trapped in the same realm, you and I. I’m just…checking in on you.”
“What do you- what does that mean?”
Its voice faded out as the eyes filled in with canvas. “You’ll see…”
I was alone once more. After a moment of blind fear I snatched the canvas up and ran out into the yard. The wood chipper was still there. I switched it on, the roar of the blades doing their best to drown out the blood pounding in my ears. I threw the canvas inside and it rent just like one would expect it to. I stood there for a moment, the motor running, feeling somewhat silly now.
I jumped when someone yelled my name. Turning, it was my sister, bleary-eyed and wrapped tight in her nightgown.
“What are you doing?” she yelled to be heard.
I flipped the switch and the machinery wound down. “I had something I needed to get rid of,” I said.
“In the middle of the night?”
I furrowed my brows. “But it only just got…” The position of the stars in the sky, the dew on the grass… “Dark,” I said finally.
“It’s three in the morning, dumbass,” she said. “Go to bed.”
She trudged back toward the house, leaving me to look between her and the wood chipper. There was nothing else to be done tonight. I went to bed.
I keep plants. All sorts: in gardens, in pots, on the walls, in terrariums; I’m especially proud of the moss colony I’ve encouraged to take root in my roof. Some of them whisper, some of them sigh, some of them speak in voices that could only be heard if, at the end of the world, the audio of their lives were to be sped.
They are not solitary creatures, though each of them have their preference. The ferns like the shade of the shrubs and the trees. The trees don’t like anything taller than them nearby, although they enjoy the company of the mushrooms that grow on their bark and the Spanish moss holding loosely to their branches. I think they like the cats too, because the cats like some of them, purring as they push their itchy faces against the stalks, or rest in their forks.
So I make sure to bring home new plants often as I can, introducing them to the rest as I make a space for them. One plant I brought in particular…didn’t get along with the others. Plants understand the interrelatedness of all organisms better than people ever could, which is why I have no explanation for this one.
There was an old woman who went by “M” I bought many plants from, or traded, or took off her hands when she believed were too sick for her healing abilities. When I passed her home shop that morning, I was surprised to find the contents spread out on the lawn, and people milling in and out of the place.
Concerned, I went inside with some of the others, looking for M. Instead, I ran into her daughter.
“Elle,” I greeted as she hugged me. “What’s going on here?”
“Haven’t you heard?” she sniffled. “Mama left us last week.”
That took me aback. Hadn’t I seen M only a week ago? “How?”
She spread her hands. “Her heart gave out, I guess. She was 103, so it was coming, and she never wanted to live if she didn’t have her independence, but still, a surprise.” She sighed. “We’re on something of a timetable to sell the house. That’s why we’re doing the sale now instead of waiting. Do you want to stay, look around?”
“I’ve got some errands I need to run, but maybe I can stop by on my way back?”
“That’ll be fine, if there’s anything left,” she said, and put her hands on her hips. “Look at them, the scavengers.” She looked at me guiltily. “I’m sorry. It’s just, you know they weren’t very kind to her, the many years she lived here. But they all want a piece of her. She considered you a friend though, I hope you know that.”
“I did too,” I said.
I hugged her again and began weaving my way through the shoppers. I had only just made it to the front steps when I heard her calling after me.
“Excuse me, excuse me – move!” she said, squeezing between some particularly obtuse shoppers. “Dani, I almost forgot. She has something for you, in the cellar.”
“For me?” I asked, bewildered.
“It’s got your name on it,” she said, taking my hand and hauling me back inside.
There were fewer people in the back of the house, and the cellar was taped off from shoppers. We ducked underneath and the overhead lights buzzed on when she flipped the switch. Some of her plants remained under the grow-lamps around the perimeter, but there was a new plant, sitting on a stool removed from all the others and encased in glass without a top. A strip of paper on which was scrawled “Dani Edison” was taped to the bottom.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Elle said. “And I know a little more about plants than your average bear, having grown up with my mother. My daughter set me up with this app on my phone that identifies plants, but it didn’t know either. Do you?”
I looked closer. What I before took to be a wide stem was instead many twisted together, each topped with fuzzy purple and black flowers that formed a solid bouquet in the middle. It smelled somewhat musty, but maybe that was the cellar.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “She had a few people she got specimens from from time to time, but nothing too crazy. I’ve not seen anything like it.”
She sighed. “Well, it’s yours,” she said. “And if you ever do figure out what it is, let me know. I’d be curious where it came from, too.”
After my errands I returned and picked up the plant. It gave me a strange feeling, even in its glass casing. I wasn’t sure if the growing numbness in my arms was from the weight, or something else.
“We’ll find you a good place to sit,” I told it. “M had you in the dark so I take it you’re not much for the sun? Or maybe she meant to move you and never had the chance. Any help you can provide would be helpful.”
I waited. The plant was silent.
I placed the newcomer on my dining table where I kept the ones I wanted to keep an eye on, carefully removing the glass casing. I checked again around the base to see if there was any labeling or care notes.
“You couldn’t have left any instructions, M?” I muttered, running my fingers over a long leaf.
I looked at my hand. It wasn’t quite a sting I felt, but almost a buzzing; the discomfort of nausea only in my fingers.
“You’re a little feisty, aren’t you,” I said, and wiped my hand on my apron, making a note not to touch that one again. “Be welcoming,” I told the others around it sternly before going to my bookshelf. I pulled down the ones about flowering plants. I’d been through these many times, but maybe there was something I missed. I followed the indices to no avail. My rare flora books and exotic flower books also came up with nothing.
Stumped, I leaned back in my chair.
“I could call up the college,” I mused. I hated to do that; I took pride in never having to ask an academic for help, but now I might have been more curious than principled. “I’ll think on it,” I said, rising, and waved a finger at it. “If you stay healthy I may not have to.”
The following morning, heading into the kitchen bleary-eyed for coffee, I stopped short. On the dining table a couple of my plants were turning gray. I moved closer and squinted. One small succulent was completely brown, and I knew for a fact it had been perfectly fine the day previous. A few larger plants around it had darkened leaves on one side, all surrounding the newcomer. It remained with no offer of explanation, as vibrant purple as ever.
“Hm.”
I continued into the kitchen. I wasn’t going to get anything done without coffee.
“So you didn’t like it here,” I said as I rehomed M’s mystery plant. “What do you think of a window seat? Now, this is very special seating, and very limited, so I’m going to ask that you play nice with the others here. See? I’ve given you some space, too. No need to hurt anyone else.”
I returned to the dining room to tend to my patients. I cut a piece of the smallest succulent. Completely dead.
“That was fast,” I said, taking the plant and pot to the burn pile. There was no point in reusing the pot on the chance it was some sort of spreadable illness. I would have to see what happened with the others the mystery plant neighbored. I pruned the graying plants of their darkened leaves, and gave them a little fertilizer of their preferred types. “I hope you all come back,” I said quietly.
The following morning those ones were mostly back to normal. One that had a piece of gray I hadn’t removed was doing considerably worse, but the others seemed to have recovered just fine. And then the moment of truth, in the sunshine by the window…the mystery plant seemed to like the light, and all the other plants, sitting apart, seemed none the worse for wear.
“A fluke, then,” I said. “I’m glad you like this spot a little better.”
Two days later though, the entirety of the window shelves was dead. I stared in horror. Many of these had been friends. My gaze moved slowly down to the mystery plant, still purple, still living. I picked it up, and for a brief flash I considered putting it in the burn pile. No, I didn’t kill plants, not if I could help it. And besides, this was a gift from a friend, a friend who was no longer with me. Even though right now, it didn’t feel like much of a gift.
“You don’t like it here at all,” I said. “What do you like?”
Immediately through my skull flashed cool dirt, worms feasting and roots spreading. I recoiled, and stared at it a moment.
“Okay.”
I went out away from my house, out to a field that nobody knew, or at least that I never saw anyone else go to. I took the mystery plant with me and dug a hole in the center of the field. I felt like I was abandoning a dog miles from home, but in this case the dog didn’t want to be kept. In this case, the dog told me where it wanted to go. Was that alarming? Maybe, but I figured stranger things had happened.
I loosened the roots from the shape of the pot and placed it carefully in its new home. I covered it with dirt and packed it in before standing back to inspect my work. Did it pulse, or was that my imagination?
“Alright, I hope this is where you wanted to be,” I said. “I’ll…be going now.”
And for awhile, that was the end of it. I cleaned up the dead by the window and I mourned, but new plants took their place and I kept busy as I normally did. Until one night I dreamed of that field, of rot and decay and of a bright purple flower.
I stood over the kitchen sink that morning, unable to swallow my coffee. I’d never thought a plant could be capable of malice, but what I felt in that one, and what I felt when it reached into my mind…maybe I should have put it on the burn pile.
I drove out the way I had done that day and parked on the side of the road. When I opened the car door I was smacked in the face with the smell of rot. I grabbed a bandana from the back and covered my face, heart racing.
The ground was spongey, grabbing for my feet at each step before I ever left the trees. I caught myself on one, only for my hand to sink into it and centipedes and maggots to swarm. I stumbled into the field like I might stumble into another world. The fumes were noxious. The ground was not only dead, but bare and rotting, gray and moist like the flesh of a dead beast. Even the trees on the perimeter were dead or dying. Even as I watched, one buckled under its own weight, falling not with a crash but with the sound of meat hitting mud.
In the middle, as before but with so much greater consequences, thrived the purple flower, the only color in the entire field. It did pulsate, with raised roots underneath the surface like veins. I wasn’t sure what I felt rolling off of it, if it was malice or if it was exultation.
And underneath, worms writhed.
Hands jammed in my pockets as I walked along the downtown square, my fingers moved stiffly, numb from the wind. Shop windows stood empty, if not broken and trashed. Paper and styrofoam cups spun in miniature tornados in the street. By habit alone I checked both ways before crossing the street. The fountain in the center was silent, muddy puddles rippling within its confines a poor memory of the water that used to flow here.
One figure sat alone on a bench, casting bread crusts to nonexistent birds, though I thought I might have seen a rat or two peeking from the overgrown bushes.
“Didn’t know if you would be here,” I said, sitting on a neighboring bench.
“Nowhere else to go,” she remarked.
Over the tops of the buildings loomed a wasteland, growing darker and darker by the
moment.
“You wanted to see it?” I asked.
“Not really,” she sighed, looking up for the first time, not overjoyed at what she saw in me. “Do you ever start going somewhere and don’t realize where it was until you get there?”
“Used to.”
“This is where it all started. Poetic this is the last place left. Why are you here?”
I paused. “To ask the universe for forgiveness, maybe.”
She nodded to the rolling black cloud encroaching. “I have a name, you know.”
“You never told it to me.”
“I had more important things. Is this what you wanted?”
“No.” My voice was almost inaudible, but she heard me anyway. “Never.”
“It rarely is.” She looked over at me. “It won’t be, anymore.”
My heart raced, but there was nowhere else to run. Wringing my hands would be a waste of energy. Regardless, I felt the first hot stream of tears escape the corner of my eye.
“You promise?”
The corner of her mouth quirked up in something like sympathy. “I promise.”
The diner hums. It’s not conversation; Lord knows I’m one of the few people, if not the only one left here this late at night. Maybe it’s the fridges in the kitchen. I look down at the pecan pie on my plate and black coffee. Barely nibbled, barely sipped, because once I finish, then I
have to leave, right?
“Didn’t like the pie?” my server asks, materializing out of nowhere.
“No, I’m – I’m still working on it,” I say.
The lightning casts shadows over his eyes, over his mouth in a more sinister way than I think the builder of the diner intended when setting up the lights. That’s if, in fact, they had anything else in mind at the time than getting the box checked off their list of normal fixtures to install in normal places of business. Maybe this is a place better frequented during times when the sunlight helps out from those big windows that right now, show nothing but a warbled reflection of the diner.
My server, Adam, according to his little name tag with a gold star sticker on the side, stands there a little longer. I swallow hard; his hooded eyes seem to stare right through my soul with nothing but apathy. I wonder if this is how people think of whatever they perceive to be God. Knowing everything about them, knowing their thoughts and dreams and fears – yet caring nothing for them, feeling only a sort of bored disdain for this creature. Perhaps that’s why they hate with such vitriol the Being they claim not to believe in.
Or maybe Adam’s on drugs to get him through the night shift and I’m keeping him from napping in the corner booth until the next customer comes inside to stare at their coffee and pick at their stale pie. Maybe I’m just paranoid the way only a late night in the middle of nowhere
can make me.
After staring at me for God-knows-how-long (the God who cares at least a little for this little person He created), after staring at each other so long we must have some sort of connection by now, Adam turns without another word and disappears behind the counter. The kitchen door doesn’t swing; I know I haven’t missed him going back there. I imagine him sat on the floor, knees drawn to his chest under the counter, maybe shivering a little for the cold air that permeates this place. AC meant to combat the humid heat outside now turns the place into a fridge.
I put my hands around my coffee cup. It’s cold.
A leaf in the road. A leaf in the road!
I slammed on the brakes hard enough for the contents of my backseat to go flying. I put the car into park and flung open the door. A breeze was picking up and I had to chase it onto the barren side of the road and through skeletal trees to catch up with it. I halted its progress with my foot, and then, as though I hadn’t just stomped on it, I picked it up delicately by the stem. It was still green.
Was it an oak? Elm? I didn’t know trees. I thought it was a tree, but for all I knew it was from a bush or some other flowering plant. Either way, I hadn’t seen anything green in a long time. How long? Well, the ground beneath my feet in a heavily wooded space where no canopy hid the sky was devoid of crunch or rot. That long.
I returned to the road, removing my key from the ignition. Leaving it in the street, I followed the breeze in the direction it hailed from. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. I wanted to see as much of the world as I could before it – or more imminently, me – inevitably decayed. If there was a chance to see a real, live plant though, that might change things. No one thought they would come back, and I was living on borrowed oxygen – oxygen from a tank I unintentionally overused in my quick run after the leaf. God, what had I come to?
One nice thing about the decline of the plants and therefore the animals and people was that when I slept the night under the stars – those that remained – I didn’t worry about anything harming me.
I rubbed the leaf between my fingers and, removing my cannula, lifted it to my nose. Chlorophyll. Dim, but unmistakable. God, I had forgotten what that was like.
I did begin to wonder if I was on the wrong track. I’d covered plenty of ground and there was no sign of the flora it came from. Maybe it was a fluke. Or maybe I’d missed something. Surely not, the leaf was too big, too mature to have come from a plant small enough for me to miss. I kept going.
A stone wall ahead blended in with the gray of the trees. When I came upon it, there was no question but to climb it. One leg on the outside and one inside, I had to catch my breath.
Green. As far as the eye could see.
Maybe my oxygen tube had kinked. Maybe I was hallucinating.
I dropped to the other side of the wall, the grass softening my fall. I hesitated, running my hands through it and wanting never to stop, but there was more here, and birds chirping.
Maybe I’d died and gone to heaven.
Maybe I should stop here before I found the catch.
I opened the door to my friend’s house. I was only there to feed her cats and scoop the litter, but the change of scenery was nice and she didn’t mind me crashing on her couch. So it was supposed to be empty, but as I entered to the cats’ disinterested notice, someone sat at the dining table. Back straight, head level, hands on the checkered tablecloth. He didn’t turn around when I opened the door, or shut it.
It wasn’t until I walked in and came around to his front that I understood. I hung my backpack over the chair and sat across the table from him.
“You found me,” I said at last.
“I never lost you,” he intoned in a voice from beyond the grave. Except he’d never died. He was always there, just over my shoulder. He spoke in the voice of a woman sometimes, but he knew, I supposed, that there’s nothing that can chill a woman more than a man.
His eyes were clouded, and yet they seemed to stare straight through my skull.
“I guess not.” I sighed and reached into my pack and brought out a ziploc bag of cut apples and a tupperware of pretzels. I divided these up on paper towels and passed one across to him.
“Bon appetit,” I said wryly.
For awhile the sound of my crunching was all that passed between us.
“Maybe I’ll clear the box out of the front seat for you this time,” I said. “That way you don’t have to scare the shit out of me every time you appear.”
“Loneliness isn’t supposed to be companionable.”
“Yeah, but think about it, how badass would it be? For me, at least. Loneliness as my passenger princess. Officially, I mean. You’re here anyway, obviously.”
He didn’t answer, enjoying his apple after sucking the salt off the pretzels.
I leaned forward. “Does Loneliness feel lonely?”
“Can a personification feel anything?” he countered.
“You’re the only one who can answer that. So what is it?” And when he again remained silent: “You know, this would be a lot easier if you weren’t so dramatic.”
“I’m not meant to be easy.”
“I know,” I said, slumping back. “Okay, but will you answer me this? Why are you? If I conjured you up, I certainly didn’t mean to.”
“Nobody means to conjure me.”
Suddenly, I wanted to cry. Instead, I straightened up and tried to hide it, as though there was anything I could hide from his blind eyes. “So you are a conjuring, after some manner.”
“Human emotions tend to be stronger than they think. Others have seen me. You see me because you have few enough distractions that you feel my presence.”
“That has to be the most I’ve ever heard you speak. So what you’re telling me is I need to find more distractions?”
Silence.
“I guess that could be interpreted as offensive. I guess I don’t really mind that you’re here – your physical aspect, I mean – not after I got over you watching me while I sleep. Do you take offense?”
“Yours is a sentiment I know well.”
“If you know that, then does that make you an amalgamation of everyone’s loneliness? Can you tell me about them?”
“Given the bodies of work they have created for my presence, I believe the individuals prefer to speak of me in their own words and arts.”
“So you won’t work with me, here?”
“And so be my own undoing?”
I looked at the ceiling, pretending to admire the cobwebs instead of trying to do away with the prickling behind my eyes. “You can be undone?”
“You know this. And you know the cure to the affliction you see in me.”
I looked at him this time, as steady a gaze as he gave me. “Do I?”
His blank face was answer enough.
“I guess I do. I guess…I’m not ready. No, maybe that’s not it. I haven’t found it yet, the cure I mean. I mean – there are so, so many. But what if I’m caught? What if…what if I only think I find a way for you to…for you to rest. And it’s not the salvation I think it is. And then I’m trapped, trapped in a way that now I can’t run from.”
“The way you run now.”
I waved a hand. “Yeah. The way I run now.”
“If you observe the art, you might find that there is nothing definite but a lack of assurance to that regard.”
I nodded slowly. “I guess you’re not meant to be comforting.”
If he was the smiling type, I imagined he would smile at that.
I sighed again, and then pulled out my laptop, holding it up to him. “So then, Loneliness. What movie are we feeling like tonight?”
The water was a red-brown. Not the clear streams I’d grown used to in the past weeks of travel. But it was all the water available for the gouge in my companion’s side.
He hissed when I scooped a handful over the wound. Questioning the cleanliness of my hands while washing apples, I expected him to ask about the purity of the water. But his face was white and his teeth were clenched. If he hadn’t the energy to worry maybe I should be a little more concerned.
I sucked in a breath when repeated rinses exposed white. Bone.
“What?” he demanded. “Is it bad?”
“It ain’t good,” I said, and rummaged around in my pack.
The salves were for small cuts and scrapes – but for this? I didn’t have enough at home, let alone in my pack.
“How’s the bleeding?” he asked. “Is it too much?”
“Look at it yourself!”
Ma had bemoaned my bedside manner. I only thought treating a patient as I would normally was basic respect.
“I can’t,” he said through clenched teeth, and I realized it wasn’t an issue of mechanics.
“I don’t know how to tell you,” I said. “But will it kill you? I think not. The potential for infection, on the other hand…”
He wanted to say something else, but the effort to not scream was too much. I looked around for something to place over the wound, for more bandage material, and stopped when I realized all that was left was my skirt. The last, mildly undamaged skirt I had left, and certainly the only one I had at the moment. I looked around. I didn’t even like the guy. He was dead weight. The only reason I kept him around was because it was my mother’s voice in my head saying that we never turn away a person in need.
That’s how she died. Though to be fair, those men killed her. This one couldn’t even skin a rabbit – that already had been killed.
“What?” he asked, panting. “What is it?”
I stood up, heart pounding. Could I really do this? Would the guilt eat me alive the way people said it would?
“Meg?” he said, voice cracking.
He was a child in a grown man’s body. A child had an excuse. He didn’t. He disgusted me. The thought of him languishing by the water for days, weak from blood loss and then dying from fever – if the wild animals didn’t get him first – didn’t feel as awful as I thought it might. When had I become so apathetic?
“Meg, please don’t go!”
Mouth pressed together, I grabbed up my bag, my water skin (I left his, I couldn’t stomach that) and retreated a few more steps, waiting for my conscience to kick in, waiting for that voice to say I couldn’t do it. But instead I felt lighter. One person traveling alone was less likely to be noticed, and I had every intention.
“Meg,” his voice came out feebly this time as I turned.
“Good luck,” was all I said.
He wailed, but I didn’t look back.
An RV pulled into the sandy space next to my car. The window rolled down, and an old man leaned out.
“Got space for two more?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m just starting up a fire.”
“Fantastic.”
He and his wife soon joined me with their slow moving dog, setting their camp chairs on the other side of the fire.
“I brought marshmallows,” she told me, raising the bag. “I’m Linda.”
“Jerry,” the man said, shaking my hand with his meaty one.
“Mickey,” I answered.
“Mickey,” he repeated, sitting down heavily. “That a nickname or somethin’?”
“Short for Michelle.”
“I like it. So how long you been here, Mickey?”
“At the campground? A couple days.”
“And around the sun?” Linda asked.
I paused at the odd phrasing. “I’m almost 30.”
“Very good,” she said. “Traveling while you’re young, very good. You can do it when you’re old, as you see, but opportunities abound when you do it young.”
“Linda and me traveled the first time we were young,” he said. “Met people in one year who gave us jobs for the rest of that life.”
I pressed my lips together in a polite smile. I had just invited wackos to my campfire. Maybe best to find out what kind. “The first time?”
“Reincarnation is a fascinating thing,” Linda said. “But to remember your past lives? That’s the true gift.”
“How do you manage that?” Shrooms, or ritual sacrifice of women who were stupid enough to let you share their camp?
Linda looked at Jerry. “I’m not sure, dear. How do we find each other?”
“It’s a pull,” he said. “Primal, deep. Our second time we found each other we didn’t leave our marriage bed for a week, isn’t that right, Linda?”
“Dear,” she said with a delicate blush. “She doesn’t need to know that.”
“Ah, sorry Mickey. You understand. This woman is the love of my life.”
“Are you in tune with your past lives?” Linda asked.
“I can’t say I am.”
They glanced at each other. “Would you like some help?” Linda asked. “If you don’t mind my saying, you seem unconnected, untethered, and with your past memories we may be able to sort you out.”
“I thought you said you don’t know how you find each other.”
“Not each other,” Jerry said. “We find each other like breathing, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways for other folk.”
I gazed longingly at the marshmallows still sitting in Linda’s lap.
“Let us help you,” Linda said excitedly. “We’ve helped others find their soulmates, we can help you find yours.”
“What if I don’t believe in soulmates?” I asked.
She shrugged. “You don’t have to. But who doesn’t want a little direction? Your past can provide that.”
They seemed harmless enough. I’m sure many of the women I was always being told about thought the same about their murderers. But what was I out here for if not for something new?
“Alright,” I relented.
“Wonderful!” she clapped a little too enthusiastically for my taste, but she was already approaching, marshmallows forgotten next to her chair.
She knelt down in front of me, remarkably spry for a woman of her age, and she gripped my hands. She closed her eyes, concentrating, and feeling awkward to have my own open, I reluctantly did the same.
I peeked a couple times, the silence stretching on, but they were closed when she broke contact with a cry. I opened my eyes to her on her back, staring at me in horror.
“Linda?” Jerry asked, immediately on her, gathering her up.
She couldn’t take her eyes off me, frightened.
“What?” I asked, askance.
“I’m afraid – I’m afraid we have to go,” she stammered, tripping backward over her chair, which she didn’t bother to pick up, fairly running for the RV. Jerry too, looked at me with alarmed eyes.
“What is it?” I asked again, stepping forward just to be heard. “What’s so bad?”
“It was nice to meet you,” she said in a manner I certainly didn’t believe, flapping her hand weakly as Jerry helped her in.
He didn’t say a word when he climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and drove away. I stared after them a moment, wondering what had just happened. My eyes alighted on the marshmallows they’d left beside their chairs. I swooped it up and returned to my seat, glancing the way they left. Still gone. I opened the bag and tossed one back.
I stirred from sleep as he got into bed behind me. Eyes closed as he settled in behind me, I accepted his hand on my waist and leaned back into his chest so he cradled me.
“I missed you,” he said, softer than a whisper that needed no answer.
I tightened my hold on his hand, leaning my head so his kisses landed easier on my neck. “Missed you,” I slurred. “Waited for you.”
“Yeah?”
I burrowed my head back into the pillows, wanting to stay in that sweet spot between asleep and awake. Asleep enough that he stayed, awake enough that I could be aware of his presence.
Morning broke and I was alone. I couldn’t help but put my hand in the space behind me, where he had been. Cold. I sat there for a moment, willing the fog of tiredness to leave my brain. The last thing I wanted to do was pull myself from the warmth of my blankets into the cold house. But my feet landed on the cold floor and and I padded to the kitchen where I started the coffee pot.
I leaned my back on the counter, staring at the window blinds I hadn’t opened yet. He used to do that.
He entered like he’d been awake for hours, kissing me on the side of the head and dropping his mug in the sink before double taking at the coffee pot. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I forgot to turn it back on after the power went out.”
“The power went out?” I asked.
“Storm dropped tree limbs on the lines. But the generator is on now.”
“Will you be staying home from work?” I asked, memory echoing in my head.
“Nah, Jones still wants us out there. I don’t mind showing up a little late, though.” He sidled closer to me, hands on my hips and lowering his head to catch my lips.
I went to the window now, opened the blinds. The thaw had come weeks ago. The first shoots of green were coming through.
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” I heard myself saying in the background. “My cousin said it’s a given, you can go work for him whenever you want. It’s less dangerous, it’s closer…”
“I know,” he said. “And I’m going to take it. But I can’t leave Jones in the lurch, he’s been good to me, not to mention…we can use the extra cash right now.”
“I don’t mind waiting to have a family if it means I get to keep what I have now.” Words I didn’t say. Words should have said. Words I wish I’d said.
“And I love that about you,” he might have said. “I love every time I come home from work and you’re waiting right here with that smile for me. But I want to provide for you. These last couple of years have been rough. I want to make it better.”
At the sound of car doors slamming out front I squeezed my eyes shut. Funny how that sound made it among the ones that haunted me. I willed my attention to go back to the kitchen, to the cozy morning, but the inevitable played before my eyes.
The knock on the door.
The news.
My knees hitting the floor.
The wailing. Couldn’t have been anyone but me.
His hand touched my chin, turned my face toward him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The last thing I wanted to do was bring you pain.”
“But you did. And you’re not here to fix it,” I said aloud, in the present, tears spilling down my cheeks.
His eyes followed them down, and he took my face in both his hands, wiping them away with his thumbs even while they kept coming. He didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say.
“Gabby?”
I turned hastily, swiping the tears away. “Hey, Kells. Sorry, did I wake you?”
I returned back to her, affecting a smile as though it would disguise the shining of my eyes.
“You didn’t wake me,” my sister said. “I was just about to make breakfast, I didn’t think you’d be up already.”
“Yeah, I thought I’d try it,” I said. “But I think I will go back to bed.”
“Okay, well, I’ll bring it to you when it’s ready, how does that sound?”
I nodded wanly, and made my escape.
He grinned back at me from an earlier time. I followed his ghost down the hall, but stopped in one of the guest rooms while he continued on down to our room. He was gone where I could not follow. Not yet.
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