Midnight Man

Katherine Strine

Bachelor of Science in Education

Bowling Green State University

May 2005

submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree

MASTER OF ARTS in English

at the

CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY

December 2016

We hereby approve this thesis

For

Katherine Strine

Candidate for the Master of Arts degree in English

for the Department of

ENGLISH

and

CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERISTY’S

College of Graduate Studies

______

Thesis Chairperson, Imad Rahman, MFA

______

Department and Date

______

Committee Member, Michael Geither

______

Department and Date

______

Committee Member, Ted Lardner, PhD

______

Department and Date

Student’s Date of Defense

December 8, 2016

Midnight Man

Katherine Strine

Abstract

Darkness and violence grace the five stories written in this collection, the culmination of my graduate studies at Cleveland State University. Entitled

Midnight Man, this collection encompasses the eccentricities of the human race which inspire the characters and their bizarre worlds. Over the course of two years, I have developed an aesthetic akin to my inspirations (for whom I am thankful to have read): Julia Elliott, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link and Dan Chaon.

The memory of images and scenes from any story remains crucial to the reader’s experience. This becomes a way to replay the story in the mind without the printed word: the smell of pencil shavings, a black figure of the night or an orange-spotted mirror may visit the mind after reading this collection.

These stories invite readers to relate to characters’ core needs: searching for an unknown, attempting to restore the past or evaluating the worth of one’s own life.

In this attempt, I hope readers connect to themes and ideas such as these that relate to canonical writing, and that those themes and ideas remain alive in contemporary writing such as these stories.

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Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………...iii

Introduction………………………………………………………………………….1

Meditate and Wait…………………………………………………………………...5

Euphemism for a Murderer………………………………………………………….15

Black Tie…………………………………………………………………………….20

Twin Life…………………………………………………………………………….31

Midnight Man………………………………………………………………………..47

iv

Introduction

By the end of this two year process, I wrote to emulate a combination of Dan

Chaon and Kelly Link or Julia Elliott: an emotional pull with a twist of eccentric. It took rewriting drafts, reading short story collections and working through edits to find my aesthetic. Writing the first story in a workshop meant writing the first story I had ever finished. Receiving feedback meant returning to words I had labored over only to evaluate them (and toil over them) yet again. Through workshops I have learned how to write a short story and I have concluded what a short story means to me: from maybe seven to roughly fifteen pages of scene reflection, imagery and sound, a story communicates with readers beyond the page. The five stories collected here, “Meditate and Wait”, “Euphemism for a Murderer”, “Black Tie”, “Twin Life”, and “Midnight

Man”, represent five communicated experiences that I hope readers will think and rethink long after each read.

In workshops we discussed the components of a short story. We discussed how to write effective dialogue, scenes, structure, point of view, and whose story to tell. What I had to learn in writing a short story is that the story is not only for me. I worked through drafts - stories I had become close to because the story was mine - and fought to make cuts. I shifted my perspective and read stories as the reader. If I could not adjust the story enough, I had to let it go from this portfolio. I am still refining how to make the necessary edits to save a draft; however, I am comfortable leaving stories in my drive for when I can return to them.

1

Ultimately I learned a short story is a shared experience crafted with just enough figurative language that speaks to an audience because of common themes and experiences. Dan Chaon’s short story collections include the reader through memorable moods and observations on human nature. His control of the situation - to tell a story while reminding the reader they are not far removed from the situation themselves - showed me the need not just to micro-manage language but to also steer readers’ emotions. Reading one of his stories from Stay Awake moved me to tears. That is the type of writing, I realized, I needed to focus on. I had spent many of my first drafts laboring over language - stopping for each word - only to hear in workshops that the writing was too tight, not natural enough.

Another author I found who suspends the story line in convincing ways is Jess

Walter, in particular, one of his short stories, “Virgo” from the collection We Live in

Water. The unreliable narrator stalks an ex-girlfriend and by the end, he runs this woman over (along with her new boyfriend). But right before the final scene, Walters steps away from the situation to relate to the reader by asking them rhetorical questions: Who hasn’t been in love? Who hasn’t done anything for love? Who hasn’t driven to extremes to obtain love? And for just long enough, the reader relates to a psychotic character who runs over two people. I started to employ this technique in my writing as well: you can see examples of this in each draft. This discussion with the reader – hopefully – pulls the drafts together as a collection.

When I read stories by Julia Elliott and Kelly Link, scenes came alive through a similar trait of Dan Chaon’s: the handling of one distinct image. One Link story involves dolls, boys with specific characteristics, but through a kinesthetic quality, Link livens the

2 dolls, so that after reading the story, I continued to think about that image. It was a fulfilling way to read, and I tried to reproduce that in my own writing. I worked to combine the admirable traits I found in my inspirations and hone an aesthetic for the short story, one for a reader and not me, the writer; after all, to provide a shareable experience, a short story must not exclude the reader.

Another inspiration of mine - Donna Tartt - writes long novels; I couldn’t return to her books to study the short story, despite loving her craft. However, The Wilds, by

Julia Elliott gives me a Donna Tartt feeling (believable characters caught in suspenseful but strange situations with an acute attention to detail and dialogue). “The Whipping” evokes a weird feeling of Southern Gothic, which I kept finding I was drawn to. The pairing of a father frying up robins and a daughter awaiting a whipping (who ends up donning a diaper to lessen the blow) sets up a strange world where the story is not plot- driven but atmosphere-driven with lines like “...the dog breath of summer pants through the windows (198).” The structure of the story counts down time as the girl awaits her punishment - a structure discussed in class with other stories. The collection opens with

“Rapture” which twists religion and southern charm into a gritty setting. The opening line, “Brunell Hair lived in a lopsided mill house with her mama and her uncle and her little wither-up critter of a grandmaw” (11) plays well with nouns and crafts a character in one lines. Her creativity sparked in me another writer realization.

I learned that I needed to work through drafts for other purposes than plot. I had spent time moving characters from one place to another within fictional settings and was bored, which meant my reader would be bored. I needed to take an element of weird and twist the characters around it in order to interest the reader. I worked with this

3 juxtaposition of bizarre and emotional first through “Twin Life”. Over the summer I pushed the boundaries further with “Midnight Man” and again with “Meditate and Wait”.

Even though I have always written fiction, my first drafts were too close to non-fiction: true stories suspended in a fictional setting. I finally spent time creating an entire story with less real life inspirations.

Once I worked through finding my aesthetic, I worked to find literary magazines that might accept my work. I thumbed through the Poets and Writers website, opened numerous browsers, and scanned through magazines’ websites, submission guidelines and then leafed through authors’ stories to decide ‘yay’ or ‘nay’. Black Heart, Furious

Gazelle, Ghost Ocean, Gone Lawn, Keyhole, The Lascaux Review all felt realistic with a twist. I cancelled out magazines that wrote for specific niche audiences (some cater to the

LGBQT community, communities of mothers, some are location oriented, etc.); I worked to find magazines that spoke not to small groups, but a universal group. Because ultimately in my own writing, I want themes that relate to the widest spectrum of people possible, which I believe is a tradition of literature not to be dismissed.

From finishing my first story to writing a novella to completing this thesis, I have pushed through personal challenges in my writing. This art of creating will continue to adjust and adapt with time; however, I am proud of the aesthetic I have accomplished within this thesis. Studying short stories and reading authors’ collections allowed me to define what a short story experience should look like. In the end, I hope the shared experiences communicate long after the initial reading, and that traditional themes found in the literary canon remain alive through contemporary writing such as these.

4

Meditate and Wait

They smoke in the garage, four of them, five of them. Can’t see through the haze of sun into the shadowed room. From the street neighbors hear their sounds: laughter coated with emphysema. Rotting lungs and dogs that howl at subtle movements. A grandma, a grandpa, an uncle, and one older niece: the remains of a larger family that has dwindled by death and decay (all smokers, all drinkers, and all self-proclaimed

Catholics).

Three dogs guard the garage at the edge - a baby gate corrals them. Una walks by and the chorus of howls arrange like limp notes and soar into the air. The smell of dead tree seeps from the soil. Their house, the first one built on this street, is the last one before the road dips to the left and opens to a cemetery. Originally a family grave, but years and community planners and the sway of money rearranged the rights. Now it’s public property. A gothic iron gate surrounds the land; doors eek open on aged hinges.

Una loves to hear them whine.

She walks down just to walk down and visit no one in particular. Her long, brown hair whips behind her shoulders. Their eyes, as well as the eyes of the yard statues, follow her. She can’t be sure of what they’ve erected between the overgrown pine shrubs, and they’ve planted plastic flowers in plastic planters, but she ascertains Catholic saints

(none of whom she knows), a fox (with cold, beady, cement eyes) and a rooster

5

(garnished with a red and white checkered apron). A harsh “Shut up you damn dogs” echoes forth and maybe a whimper but then a grotesque cough tumbles forth. The sounds spill over one another.

***

She reads the names, the large ones printed in all capital letters, last names sprawled, the family honor. She shuffles leaves to the side and searches for smaller headstones. Children, maybe. Small adults. Women from the 1800s who have since shriveled like dead bugs: heads craning toward bodies, arms tucked at their chests. She’s searching for a way to connect to the past or a way for the past to connect to her. Voodoo magic, Ouija boards, séances: she’s sick of pretending.

***

They burned each other’s skin with hot lighters, the metal sank into the flesh and years later scars talk to strangers, stories of their odd behavior. Imprints on the back of hands. Signals coded only for each other. Scar tissue signs - personal tattoos - created before members departed to the other side. Rumors circulate the town. People whisper.

But the members of the house have crafted a system all of their own, separate from the community, and the symbols remain embedded in their history and their family.

They pull back their baby gates and open the garage that weekend for an estate sale. She wonders, and maybe even hopes, if they might move. She saunters through their belongings. A lamp with a broken bulb - the glass shards visible through the shade; a box of used ashtrays gray and soot stained; a box of run-down toys featuring a doll with a loose eyeball. The black button swings and wobbles as Una roots through the box. Finally her hand emerges holding a magic eight ball. She palms the prize and pokes further.

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Suddenly the feeling of a ghost catches in her throat. She stands within inches of the garage and fingers rotten pots and stained lace. A framed picture of a church (a jagged crack running through its surface) props against a table. She runs her finger down the glass and lets the slit of its cut dig into her skin. A small streak of blood remains on the glass, a dull red hue painted on the steeple. She bends toward the picture and seeks to speak to the spirit she feels hovering from the house but knows she needs closer. So this is where it hides, she thinks and buys her eight ball. A boy tucked behind the bushes and the beady fox watch her desperately.

***

She leans against her front porch steps and watches families retire as the day’s water-painted clash of colors darkens. The leaves rustle against each other. It calms and stirs harder and the wind chimes collapse into a song. She waits for midnight black, the lunar phase on her side, a tiny rat’s nail of white in the sky.

Their garage door is closed. The baby gates rest on the outside of the door ready for another day. She crosses to their side of the street, the cemetery entrance within view but the graves tucked into a small valley of swirling fog.

Una creeps through their uneven grass. The unkempt yard crunches below her feet: a slew of leaves and twigs and mushrooms. Against the house she smells standing water. A deep stench of mud or mold. She walks with her back flat against the exterior and finds herself in the backyard where an unexpected scene develops.

In place of a standard backyard flush with grass and peppered with flowers, here lies an entire pond. The water covers the expanse of space, with a back porch that extends above the water approximately ten feet from the house. At the far end of the watered yard

7 stands a large stone - not shaped into an obelisk or other tomb - looming over the abyss.

She has no way of making it to the stone unless she plunges into the water.

Overhead an explosion claps in the sky - fireworks - but she imagines the uncle with a gun, his face another shadow, and turns from the pond and toward the street.

***

There’s a knock on the door the next day, late afternoon. The air smells like fire and burned leaves. A hint of smoke hangs over shingled roofs.

A younger man, maybe even a boy, stands on the other side of Una’s door. His toes hang over the front edges of his flip flops. His toenails visible, curled and yellowed.

She doesn’t recognize him and he knows she won’t.

“I’m Zeek, short for Ezekiel - your neighbor.” He cranes his neck toward the house with the garage. She’s never seen him there. She doesn’t respond. “If you want to get in that pond, if you want to find that spirit you’re after, I’m willing to help you out.”

“What spirit?”

“You don’t believe all of a sudden?” He sticks a toothpick into his mouth and swirls it around with his tongue. “I’ve seen you. You hang around at the cemetery, poking around at strangers’ graves. I know you don’t have family in this town - new blood - so you go looking around at the old blood. Old souls. Whatcha looking for?”

Una stares into his eyes wondering how much he knows.

“Forget about it, Una. Wanna see a trick?” From the other pocket of his sweatpants he pulls out a stack of cards. He shuffles and pushes the cards back together again. He waves his hands. The right hand, she notices, is scabbed from scratched bug

8 bites or some kind of poison ivy. He catches her looking and moves his hand quicker.

“Okay, pick a card - go ahead, Ain’t gonna bite you.”

She inches a card from the cluster. A Jack of Hearts. He nods to her to slide it back into the deck.

“Good, good. Okay, now, watch closely - I didn’t see it, right? But you gotta remember what card it is.” He holds his eyes steady into hers. An answer dances behind his gaze. She shivers away a question and shakes her mind into vacancy. After a few more sleight of hand tricks, he procures the Jack of Hearts and flashes it in front of her.

She looks into the face of the card and notices its menacing features that either weren’t there before or ones she overlooked. His hand appears freckled like Zeek’s. Warped skin.

“I don’t really like card tricks,” she says and shuts the door.

***

It’s cold when the ghost enters your body. A halo of chill surrounds the exterior.

When it’s gone, a familiar heat returns, and you’re alone again.

She doesn’t ask for them to visit but she returns in case they do.

She weaves through tombstones and waits for one to call to her. Her skirt hangs low and drapes through the leaves. A few hang at the edge and she pulls them along unknowingly. She carries a book of poetry, a dilapidated copy handed to her from other people in another world: her past. It’s a relic she can live without, so she tugs at the pages. Each papery feather pulled from its binding. A light rip. The glue lets go. The page frees. She tucks one after one against these permanent headrests and weighs each to the earth with a rock.

9

A harsh whistle blows through the surrounding trees. Her skirt tugs against her legs, and her head flings toward the sound. A black shape of a bird flutters behind tree trunks. She wonders if Zeek is there, too: his lanky body against a tree, the bark rough against his spine. Beady eyes like the cold, cement fox.

Then, movement. Low to the ground, a shadow forms and creeps from the woods.

It hovers on all fours. She imagines Zeek on all fours - preternatural, foam at the mouth - and on the hunt for her. His toenails dig through the grass, soil ripe under his nails, as he lunges toward her.

“Clyde?” She asks the animal, a large beast with a head like a shoebox: one from the garage dog gang. He ambles to her side. “Why are you down here?” He nudges into her, and she rubs his broad back. A faint smell of cigarette smoke lingers on his fur. “Do you want to hear a poem, Clyde?” To which he responds by settling in and shutting his eyes. His gentle body collapses. She reads aloud each word, the syllables unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed. A whoosh of air - the trees breathing from her left - carries and cools her neck.

Una meditates and waits.

***

She wakes to the uncle standing above her, the graves below her. She feels the warmth of Clyde’s back on hers.

“That’s my dog,” the uncle growls and yanks at Clyde’s collar. The man’s mouth clenches as he talks. She wonders how the words escape. “And what’s all this litter?” He waves a sinewy arm through the air. Una sees her poems scattered, some swooped and

10 soaring with the wind. “No respect,” he whistles and hobbles away. He tugs at Clyde, who he’s wrangled with a rope.

She watches them circle through the headstones. The uncle precariously places each step, and Clyde hunches toward the smells of earth. Their bodies bumble back toward the street.

She collects rocks. Smooth, cold rocks: minute minerals miraculously compounded into handheld objects. She rubs at each testing its smoothness, handling its weight before placing them into the folds of her skirt she’s lifted for a temporary carrier.

Stooping toward the graves, she weighs the poems again.

“Are you a witch?” She hears Zeek’s voice before she sees his face. A bouquet of fake flowers dangles at his side, their heads facing downward.

“What?”

“Those dresses, all long, covered, heaven-like but hellish altogether. Pagan, I guess is what I mean to say.”

“Your family doesn’t own this property, Zeek. First your uncle. Now you. I’m allowed to be here.”

“Allowed?” He suppresses a smile, then steals a whiff from the bouquet before dropping the bunch by his side again. A collection of vibrant blue, red, orange, yellow - abnormal colors for flowers. “Did you think more about the pond? My offer? I know what you’re chasing, Una. I get it. Why are you hesitant?”

Una considers his proposition. His words form like steam within a swirling fog already constant in her mind. Intangible and abstract. She knows she’s unable to sneak into the water without him knowing. She forces her mind backwards to distant memories.

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A train crash. Her parents thrown from a bridge. Her parents drowned in water. Her parents plummeted off cliffs. She surmises these details - all daydreams and fabricated realities - but understands they died without her and after years of foster care, miscellaneous homes, and empty emotions from town to town, this street, this city, this cemetery, that spirit, finally feels fulfilling.

“What do you chase?” She asks through the mindful fog.

Again, a sly smile breaks and his pointers show. “I don’t chase. Do you think that’s what you want? An end to an unknown? Some realize it’s over before they begin.

You, I think, can’t settle. Others, like me, come naturally into this world.” He pauses to pick up a poem, one she missed as it skids between them. It crinkles against the plastic as he tucks it within the flowers. “Tell you what. Nine o’clock, tonight.” He answers for her because he knows she’ll come.

***

“We call her Mother because she’s been here before any of us.” Zeek and Una stand ankle deep in water, their feet mingled with moss and algae. “Inexplicable, maybe, that after hundreds of years, she remains. Her bones, her grave is here. Or it was. Before one of our generations made this pond.” The bottom three inches of Una’s dress swirls in and on the water’s surface. She thinks of the cold - the water as an aquarium of spirits - and she pictures faces, their bodies trailing behind them, as they swim through the murky water. Standing here now with Zeek she worries she misjudged him. She had thought he was uneducated, misguided. She thought she could distract him and have the pond to herself. “You’ll have to wade through to the center where’s there’s a drop-off. An underwater cliff of sorts.” Una, who has long since memorized the phases of the moon,

12 knows only a fragment hangs above them. A waning crescent. She predicted the darkness and the unknown, but she miscalculated the power dynamic brought on by the property’s effect.

She steps forward unwilling to step backward. Her dress darkens as the water deepens. The coldness of the water forces her to take a breath. She sucks in the nighttime air, the clouds beginning to descend into fog, and the temperature trickles down her spine.

Zeek stays with her but a few paces behind. Her toes curl at the precipice. She stares into the stone. A woman’s features materialize within the rock formation. The earth’s minerals mold into cold eyes, silver hair and a taut expression.

“We wade and meditate. Do you meditate, Una? Sit and think thoughtless thoughts, as you breathe in, breath out the wide world around you? A mindless yet mind- centered activity, don’t you agree?” She answers by centering her diaphragm. Like the poetry, she thinks, unstressed, stressed; her breath fills and releases. Fills and releases.

“You’ll have to go under water now.” Una thinks to question Zeek’s instructions, but reminds herself to move forward, not backward. She recalls the refreshing chill alighted in her the day of the garage sale. The pull of the house from a larger-than-life spirit. A distant hovering that’s beckoned her to this town, this street, this moment.

She descends, her eyes on the stone. A reflection of the stone appears on the water just as she’s eye level with the pond.

The black water engulfs her as a slight splash sounds beside her. Zeek.

He too stares into the stone. He too feels his toes on the precipice. He palms her head, a thick wave of hair sweeps his arm, and he holds her under water. The struggle

13 doesn’t startle him. The muffled screams don’t deter him. He holds on, his toes curling at the edge, pieces of moss caught on a toenail.

Her dress will weigh her down. Gravity and water will push, push, push.

He feels satisfied in the sacrifice. He thinks to swim to the stone, to stroke his hand along its surface. But he feels someone behind him and turns to see his uncle on the porch. Clyde saunters from the house and stands at his side.

The way to family - bonds, secrets, scars - is a dark portal. A moonless sky, an unguided guide, an underwater spirit drenched pond. The calling to unite with our departed generations carries in a cold breeze, whispers on crinkling leaves. It’s a constant chase to collect, maintain and reincarnate.

He eyes his uncle, whose pride forms in the shadowed, hard lines of age. His face weathered artwork.

Zeek moves toward the edge of the water. Inch by inch his soaked pants emerge and he squeezes at the water, fists slippery and cold.

He pulls the graveyard poem from his pocket, handles a rock, and places a makeshift headrest in the small crescent of earth beside the water. Una’s only marker.

Tomorrow he’ll toss the fake flowers down from the porch, the vibrant hues garish against the earthy moss and mud.

14

Euphemism for a Murderer

You and him think of Death differently. To you it’s foreign - you’ve never died before - you picture funeral homes and stiff bodies and polite apologies over an open casket. You think people don’t deserve to die. You don’t deserve to die.

But he pictures revenge and blood. Bodies as numbers.

He handles the gun and it vibrates in his palm. He feels the jolt from fingertips to elbow to shoulder. His back stands straight, chest puffed and his eyes resonate malice. He could be anywhere but here he is: the cliché. The white gunned man (a boy at age sixteen) - the euphemism for a murderer, the school shooter.

He fits the profile.

You fit the list of deserved.

Names inked in black and scribbled with doodles in between class notes. Black

Friday, 1869, Jin Fisk, Jay Gould...Regina Anderson, Adam Covolt, Martin

McPhearson…

The ellipses show gaps in his thinking and the list dangles from Mr. Miller’s

American History lecture to the current news’ evidence of the school-should-have- known.

On the other side of the school a brief lecture on ‘what-to-do-in-the-event-of-an- armed-intruder’ rattles from your nervous system. Your lungs tighten. Your skin frosts.

You taste your throat on your tongue. You lift a glass paperweight, the bulbous object

15 smooths in your hand, and you explain you’d sooner throw this at a shooter’s skull than die in this classroom by gun violence. You advise your students to do the same.

The PA crackles. Static and voice above: "This is a level three lockdown, I repeat, a level three lockdown with an armed intruder at the north end of the library."

He enters the library and the librarian notices first. He’s there before the announcement. He holds his gun to his side and at first he’s just another student who needs to print his homework, compile English research, read in a quiet atmosphere. He’s just another student until he’s not.

One librarian stands at the circulation desk ready to check his ID and another stands further back in an office. The phone, she thinks, and she dials the main office. Her fear travels through the receiver and the cord and into the office where walkie talkies buzz and phones ring and the principal picks up the microphone and announces it’s a level three lockdown.

The librarian who stood at the circulation desk now lies across the carpeted floor.

Students’ bodies who sat nearest the library door have fallen over their books as if asleep during a midnight cram session. Bodies slain haphazardly - whoever sat nearest the entrance instead of nearest the window on this particular day at this particular time - no one person saved in place of another. Blood oozes off the tables and the carpet bubbles red. It’s like a haunted house. Gore. Screams. A gratifying scare.

Behind stacks of books bodies scuffle like rats to claim another breath.

He doesn’t see them. He doesn’t see a face on the librarian. Her smile. He doesn't render his classmates as peers or friends. He counts. He shoots and he counts and a hard grimace breaks through the pale outline of his jaw.

16

Meanwhile you barricade the classroom door. You yell to the others, instruct them how to save their lives. Your heart pumps a thousand lives in three seconds. The room vibrates. A cluster of activity erupts. You carry a desk, accidentally jab a student’s calf with its metal leg, and slam it into the construction of other desks. The lifting weakens you. The adrenaline suffocates you. Bodies in the classroom scuffle, yell out messages and search for objects to use as weapons (a hole-punch, a computer, a stapler); the echo of their footsteps pounds in your head and pounds with your heart rate. In the whirl of motion - a tragic, hallucinatory version of a Merry-Go-Round - you watch these students interact and you know you’re in charge: you are responsible for their safety. An acidic gurgle recoils in your mouth.

A sound, like the popping of a bag over and over again, erupts. The smell of gun smoke familiar to him. Calming. Classrooms line the left wall. Classrooms line the right wall. He walks the middle stretch between the doors. An odd formation of a daydream formulates. It’s hazy, faces without faces. The way dreams work when the people are familiar but their features belong to someone else. He thinks I know I’m in the school but it’s not a school. It’s another place. Another world. Dreams are funny like that, he thinks.

The tip of his nose points toward the air. The shag of his hair lays like any teenager who has fought the urge to stay in bed and woke up later than expected and dressed just to arrive to class on time.

He jiggles door knob after locked door knob. Numbers ruminate against his daydream. Names hover above the faceless faces. The scribbled list. They jumble and

17 letters blur like his own handwriting. Ts that hang below the line. Os smashed onto each other. The doodles swirl, swirl, swirl into long untraceable lines. The deserved ones could be anyone. The deserved ones are everyone.

You begin to pray for someone to save your life. It’s unexpected, you aren’t religious, but you’ve never died before and you don't know what else to do. You murmur under your breath, please, please, please, please. Not me. Not now. Please, God, save me.

But you haven't been to church since you were sixteen, sitting there with a hangover.

That was ten years ago? Twenty years ago? How old are you now, anyway? How many years have accumulated, each birthday or New Year, another line to yourself: this will be the year you don’t fuck it all up. The year you become a better person, teacher, humanitarian. You swear you’ll stop phoning it in.

The other bodies in the room, you figure, make their own offers. Their own prayers. You wager and offer anything just to save your skin. Like Hell, you try.

Don't. No one's listening. Just wait. Wait for the flash of life. The white wash of your existence. And just as it’s all about to go before your eyes, blink it away. Don't follow the flash of memories. It’ll only disappoint you.

He stands in your hallway now. He points his gun to the left. To the right. He shoots into the thin walls and listens to the screams. People living without living, he thinks. Mouth breathers. Day to day routined monotone drones. Robots determined to please authority by getting into college and paying bills and feeding society with more babies in order to repeat the cycle. He’s doing you all a favor.

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And, really, be honest with yourself: what are you asking to save?

Accept your death. In the moment of darkness, lights out forever, kicking the can

- be ready to say you accept the life you lived and you accept the death you died. Because you only get to do this once. And it was an epic death, wasn’t it? You dedicated yourself to the classroom and you died with your kids. You died trying to save these kids. Your stomach sinks a little - you know the truth. You pushed at the students to get through to the window but you had to let them out first and you hated them for it and when most of the students were free you stood there in the classroom listening to the gunshots and the screams with the smell of pencil shavings still crisp in the classroom.

You can’t control this situation. No. It isn’t yours to control. Today the school shooter, the should-have-been-expected gunned man standing outside of your classroom slanging his armor at your door: he’s in control.

But if you could watch the replay, you’d be impressed. The amount of students saved. The absolute collapse of your body. A real ‘made-for-TV’ moment.

Too bad you aren’t a stunt double.

19

Black Tie

The lock clicked at nine. The sun set against the clustered houses, suburbs of the city, houses lined shoulder to shoulder. Mary entered light-footed; her insides buzzed as her skin hit the air of their shared dwelling. A cold whoosh. A shock.

Behind her the broken screen door smacked.

Tad jolted from the couch as her car crushed at the gravel driveway. He watched the blue blur pass the windows. In its wake he straightened up the room, uprighting pillows. He slicked back his hair.

He bolted toward the kitchen when the door banged. She stood framed in the doorway. Her hair curled and twisted along her slender face. Only a day apart but he’d waited for her return. He felt compelled to move toward her and scoop her into his arms, yet the awkwardness of the space stopped him: the square of the kitchen enclosed them, each facing the other across an unforgiving diagonal.

“Hi,” Tad’s voice hung in the air. Mary adjusted her balance and pushed strands of hair behind her ear.

Silver flashed from her earring in the light and jarred Tad’s memory. Pain in her unforgiving eyes hit him, an uppercut. He broke the distance to embrace her. He hugged her harder than her body language indicated she wanted. His face sunk into her hair, and he inhaled the lavender scent before he let out a brief sob. The wetness crept unto a few strands of hair and clung to his face. When it’s easy he loves her without reservation.

He’ll apologize and she’ll allow it. When it’s complicated – when the alter ego of addiction consumes his body – he builds barriers against her.

20

Living Conditions

The 1800s Tudor home lurked on the corner under sheltering Oaks. Stylistic yet antiquated details had charmed the newlyweds to purchase the home a year ago: push- button light switches, curving floor planks, and a lack of modern updates (locks, windows, et al).

They shared a nest-like space in the upstairs room. Windows faced west toward

Belfast Street.

“Mary, these are your friends, your co-workers. I mean, I know the couple well enough, but I hate dressing up for these things. Do you even know where my dress clothes are?” Tad’s body slumped in bed. The hand-me-down TV flashed from channel to channel at his command.

Mary’s body wedged in the small closet. A scratch of wire hanger on rod reverberated into the room. She flung a shirt and pants onto the bed. An array of ties followed and collapsed on and around the lump of Tad’s body.

She sauntered out in a pair of heels testing her ankles. Four months pregnant, only a bump to show, but the new weight of baby strained her balance. She frowned, tore them off and tossed them into the growing pile of ‘No’s’.

His attention alternated between the TV and her. He watched a few minutes of a college football game, the sound of helmets thrashing against each other, then switched to the news. A description of a man, age seventy, all white attire, orthopedic shoes and his name, William, flashed onto the screen. He had wandered out of the dementia wing from

21 a local nursing home. Tad’s voice carried over the newscaster who pleaded area residents for help.

“Hey, babe? Will you get me a beer?”

Mary answered with stern eyes, a glare she’d refined especially for him. She always joked to his friends about his awkwardness, his introverted personality. Unless he has four beers, she’d laugh, and then he doesn’t shut up. In college he socialized because everyone else was; in adulthood he saw no reason to leave the house now that he had

Mary. “Tad, I’m pregnant. Grab it yourself. I’m showering – here are your clothes,” she swung her arms over the bed, “Be ready in an hour.”

Her bare feet pattered on the wood floor leaving Tad amongst the strewn clothing.

He fingered a tie then pushed away from the bed. The bedding tore up and tossed ties and shirts to the dust-bunnied floor.

The Love of a Wedding

At five, a tasteful wine. Tad and Mary mingled among guests. The tall ceilings opened the room; evening’s hues flushed the walls pink and orange. Black suits, an array of ties, clattering heels on the floor and a myriad of colorful dresses: a mosaic of wedding.

“I didn’t know this was black tie,” he hissed into her ear. She blushed and said excuse me to her co-worker. She escorted him to the sidelines of the party hoping for invisibility.

“I look like a fucking moron. I don’t even have a tie. Geoff Crystal has a tie and he’s a fucking hippie.” By seven, he had murdered five ‘tasteful wines’. The whites of his

22 eyes shifted into pink – his own sun setting within his mind, turning to black, to darkness, to a haunted night.

Against the harshness of his voice, hers was a timid squeak: “I told you in the car…you look fine.”

Tad scowled at the crowd – their ties and suit coats swelled his anger and discomfort. “Did you read the invite? I never even saw the invite. Did the invite say

‘Black tie’?”

It had. She remembered reading through the ornate stationery: invite, reception card, direction card, registry card.

“I mean…I…”

“Fucking right you read the invite, Mary.”

Her eyes followed him from their unfinished argument as he stomped his ‘too informal’ shoes back to the bar. The eyes of her friend - a peer named Andi who had supported Mary through their other fights - met hers apologetically, and the two navigated toward each other. They moved toward the guest book where images of a betrothed couple decorated the table. A picture of the two in high school, both with plastered smiles, posed in Homecoming attire. A picture of the two in Argentina where they lived and taught the year after college. Mary formed a picture of her own unhappiness in contrast with these pictures. She hated herself for comparing the relationships, and she hated herself for self-wallowing.

“We’re at the same table, so you know, just ignore him. I heard Nick is coming tonight, do you remember him? He left shortly after we met in orientation - some kind of emergency - but apparently he’s in good with the bride. I always suspected he liked you,

23 though.” Mary considered this distant person and laughed away her friend’s comments.

“I’m only kidding,” Andi softened, “I know you love Tad – he means well, he really does

– but at least distract yourself enough to have a good time tonight, okay?”

Rows of narrow windows draped light over the guest book. Mary followed the beams up and out - autumnal hues splashed over the city. Her eyes fixed on a blur of white on a bench, a figure of age who rested with a solemn expression draped on his face.

He peered blanklessly through the windows and at guests who sauntered in front of the hall. She turned toward her friend, “I heard there’s a man missing from a nursing home –

” but glancing through the window again, saw only the draped trees, the blank bench, the wanton leaves.

“We should go sit for dinner. They’re corralling us like cattle into the dining room. Let’s go. C’mon.” Tad’s voice careened the conversation. The girlish mood dissipated as they followed Tad toward the grand staircase. Pink shame hovered vibrant on Mary’s cheeks.

When I’m Without You

The thickness of night hung heavy in the air. Mary tiptoed along the staircase, avoiding certain culprits of creakiness. The living room smelled like stale beer, the smell emanating from Tad and permeating the room. She ducked away from his line of vision even though she knew he was passed out. Her nervous system jolted like a trickster skeleton at a haunted house. She shivered and grabbed at her oversized purse where she had shoved clothes and a toothbrush. She stole from the house.

24

A mother’s drive to protect begins the moment the pink positive appears on the pregnancy test. Life changes. Choices alter. Habits adapt. Mary hadn’t asked Tad to give her a baby; Tad had asked her. He had listed reason after reason: think of a baby, swaddled, its loving eyes adoring you; think of a kid, learning, relying on us to navigate the world; think of a family, the three of us, a picture of happiness.

Spring gave way to summer and she relented. Refreshing bouts of warm summer air streamed into their room and they made love and they invited another human into their world. The orgasms subsided, their bodies settled, and they relished in futuristic daydreams.

Now Mary, tears bubbling in her eyes, steering the car through tight curves, cursed that memory of optimism masking deceit. She had trusted Tad – the sober version of him who loved her. The version who surprised her with dinner, framed her favorite art, and massaged her feet at night. But now she felt betrayed. How had she fallen prey to such an archaic trap? And how would she raise a baby in such a horrible world full of manipulating people like Tad? And could she do it alone?

Lost in Wedding Music

The music cut from fast song to slow song. Tad stepped on a pair of toes and flopped backward into a stranger. He watched his feet with precision in order to escape the dance floor; a guideline echoed from an announcer somewhere in his head, ‘Right foot forward, now left, one in front of the other, yes, you can do it, a few more steps, hooray! We did it, we did it…no more dancers, no more…’

25

A cackle interrupted his attention. Tad jerked his eyes from feet to faces where he found Mary and Nick laughing violently, he assumed, at his expense. Without a word of warning he lunged an arm at her. His thumb dug into the sharp bone of her elbow as he jerked her away from the joke.

“That hurts,” she whispered into his ear avoiding attention of onlookers.

“Whure you talkin’ ‘bout me? Laughin’ at me cause I don’t have a tie?” His eyes warbled out of place. He punctuated his phrases with spittle. His body swayed. In the following moments Mary tried to steady Tad and Tad tried to unsteady Mary. He couldn’t follow her words. He blamed her for ruining their evening, for laughing at him and for throwing him into a party without the proper attire. Mary walked away without warning, but it took him a couple of minutes to recognize he was alone mumbling in a dark corridor. Other guests eyed him – round white circles in a black tunnel. A kaleidoscope of shapes shifted in and out of view.

Tad stumbled into the ballroom, the music vibrating his chest. He bumped down the grand staircase hanging heavily on the railing. The dining booth, empty and without judgment, received him.

Mary returned to Nick’s side. Condolences of sympathy lurked within his eyes but she swatted away the unstated sentiments. “It’s nothing,” she uttered even though a palpable sorrow batted at her nervous system. It swatted and stung but she buried the emotions and carried on with this forgotten friend.

26

‘Till Death Do Us Part

The trees drooped and obstructed the streetlights. The headlights from the car penetrated the road alerting the driver of potholes or other hazards. Mary drove with one hand on the wheel and one hand on her stomach, caressing her unborn cradled within the womb. The argument, at first only simmering during the cocktail hour, had begun to boil after the dinner. By the time the reception music hit, their argument was no longer self- contained to their own cooking-pot.

Mary marched from the building leaving Tad to search the room with his lopsided vision. Hard spikes of rain fell upon her. She stood stubbornly, head up toward the menacing storm, and willed herself to vanish - to simply wash away with the rain and into the nearby drain which swallowed the gushing water.

“Excuse me, do you work here? Are you one of the teachers here?” The white figure from the TV talked against the storm. Fat droplets of water clung to his fuzzy beard of straggling hair. She grabbed his hand and, without explanation, led him to her car. He sat quiet and still. Windshield wipers bated noisily - a harsh whoosh he followed with his eyes. She wondered about who this person was before today. Before nursing homes and cruel life and altering decisions. She transferred his age and cast it to her own.

His white hair became hers. His forgotten life became hers. She lived out her years, Tad’s years and her child’s years driving from Sunview Nursing Home. Then her mind’s eye thrust her back in time to their wedding day: the guests, the flowers, the vows. They had each written their own, promises of tomorrow, reassurances of the right words for each right and wrong time to come. Apologies laid out for unwalked in mistakes. But each

27 time she remembered their wedding, her white gown and yellow roses paled against his urgent plea, ‘I give you my life to keep’.

Threats of tears tugged at her, but she swallowed and shook her head and continued home.

At Belfast, the staircase shifted under her feet; the floor boards moaned. She felt the house moving, but not in her direction. She reached the bedroom where the floor tilted as a boat in water. Their shared Queen lay before her – she jumped in and wound the covers around her head. She held her breath. She had left Tad at the party but knew someone would return him here to where he belonged. She drove the lost man to the nursing home, his family huddled in wait, thankful to have him back.

Now her body stirred with adrenaline and ‘what if’ scenarios. She glanced at the clock in between mashed eyes. The digital numbers screamed and rotated the minutes.

She shut her eyes against its noise and breathed in, breathed out, a Lamaze activity, until she felt at peace.

But then the brass knob of their bedroom door hammered against the ancient wall.

“Whut’re you doin’,” the words slurred like a cocktail mix, the ice banging against glass.

Could she feign sleep?

“I shaid,” in the vacated space of words his feet pounded the boards, “I shaid whut’re you doin’!” He hovered above her and swayed in the stagnant air while his words remained unanswered.

28

Under the covers Mary felt a loss of oxygen. She attempted to consume all available air without issuing a sound. The length of her hair covered half of her face like bondage, like duct tape over her mouth.

He snatched the duvet cover; her vulnerable skin trembled within his blurred vision. Her eyes snapped closed.

“Oh, you’re asheep. Shhh. Quiet for the wittle baby.” He wiped his mouth with thumb and pointer at each side. Then in a fluid motion he brought his hand from his own head unto hers. His fingers wrapped within the tendrils and he yanked.

A child-like yelp escaped her throat. Within the startled moment her eyes met his: dead, thick with film, he looked beyond her.

“Tad…please…”

Even though the trees had begun to shed, their leaves piled in pockets around the city, the humidity from the recent storm hung like late summer. This moment immobilized in the air. Dense. Thick. Pleading.

“Tad…?”

Drunk and incoherent, Tad convinced himself Mary had done him wrong. She had lied about the black tie. She had lied about the joke with Nick. She had embarrassed him all evening. She was a lying, manipulative cunt.

“What? What are you saying?” Mary’s face contorted. Her mind bumbled on broken memories. Words attempted to tumble from his mouth but were caught in cotton balls. She threw her hands up to his arm and held fast.

“Shut up! Jhust shtop.” He jerked her head again despite the grip she placed on him; she collapsed from the bed onto the floor.

29

“Tad…Tad…the baby…” Her words fumbled from a dry cry. She shut her eyes against a languid pain throbbing in her hip from the fall. The sharp sting under his pull penetrated her skull. She hadn’t felt his release but heard his heavy steps echo against the white walls of the hallway. She followed the sound until an explosion of thuds and thumps erupted as his body flogged the stairs.

Mary sat in shock. She dragged her knees toward her chest, barricading her baby from the world.

Their vows returned like a cadence. This version of Tad – hard exterior, drinking problem, temper – isn’t who she married. Remember him, remember him, she told herself.

Moonlight crept through the blinds – slanted strands of light tattooed her body. A black shade, a yellow shade. She stared mesmerized at the hues and listened for him to collect himself at the base of the landing. She pictured him there as a robot – an automaton. Remember him, the version who isn’t here, the one I love. Remember him.

Standing at the base of the stairs, Tad’s mind worked forward only – the moments before in the bedroom were already lost. The wedding, a distant memory. Out of habit his body turned toward the fridge. A harsh clack ricocheted in the late-night kitchen as he opened a beer, where the fluorescent lighting contrasted against the steel slick of night.

The room turned under the final minutes of the day. Upstairs Mary climbed into bed. Downstairs Tad collapsed on the couch.

30

Twin Life

Twice a year I fly to California to visit Aaron. I’m not tied to anyone at home like he is here, where he moved in with a younger girl. She has short, blond hair and perky breasts. She likes yoga, says it makes her backend tight. I feel old and dated around her.

Around Aaron, too, who always appears freshly showered. As if Western air purifies him.

We drink wine on his back porch and stare into the settling orange haze. “Is this from your vineyard?” I start the conversation light before it darkens. He nods yes. His wife dawdles with plates of fresh fruit and tapas. I watch her skinny waist, hip bones showing, as she pivots around the table. She leans over Aaron, her hands press onto his shoulders, her mouth close to his ear. They laugh, and she rolls her eyes before she regards me. “Stephanie, you’ll stay the night?”

“I always do, don’t I?”

She squeezes Aaron’s shoulders again and excuses herself. She thinks of twins as one person who separates and reconfigures time and time again. We reconnect, and she fades into the backdrop of our companionship. We’re a yin and yang of sorts: he grew up and moved to the West coast, preferring sun, fresh seafood and wine. I stayed east, near our childhood home.

Once night blackens the sky, he asks, “Have you seen her?” He means Carrie.

“I have. A few days ago. She asked about you. She always does.” Wine splashes into his glass. We stare through stars. A dimmed kitchen light behind us. Our figures shadows and sounds. “Have you talked to her?” He looks at me with a glare. “Childhood

31 was a long time ago, Aaron. You put an entire country between you and her. Between us.”

“I don’t need her in my life. And mom calls to make me feel guilty. She says she’s changed now. She’s not the same. But she is. She’s the same monster who tortured us as kids.”

***

“There’s an old man who lives in the mirror. He lives there. But he’ll come out.

He’ll come for you.” My ten-year-old sister, brother and I stand breathing in basement mustiness. Carrie, older than us by four years, points to the closet at the back of the rec room. We know that mirror. Orangish brown spots rust at its corners. The reflection of you distorts in that your image isn’t yours anymore. It hangs with cobwebs and dad’s antiquated gun rack - unused rifles stand at attention and lurk behind glass.

“Go on - look.” Carrie shoves Aaron into the windowless room. Her body pushes against his until he’s cornered into the closet. I watch from the bottom of the stairs. I yell her name into the room, “Carrie, Carrie, Stop, Carrie, Enough” but I don’t move. His body disappears. She stands blocking his exit.

This is her scare tactic. Her way to control us. Look into the mirror, she says.

Stare and wait for the man. As a child the unknown lurks behind our ears in our sleep in the neighborhood everywhere. She must have known it was all fiction. She must have believed in our naivety.

He bursts from the closet, from the corner, from the basement. We grasp at each other’s hands and tear up the stairs and through the house and into his room. We dip into his large walk-in closet - our safe place - catch our breath and hide.

32

We lay on our backs with our feet up in the air resting on closet shelves. Aaron’s adrenaline rescinds and his mind wanders. “Carrie told me he’ll come tonight. A midnight man. She’s taken me to the mirror and shown him my face and tonight he’ll come for me.”

“She’s just messing with us, Aaron.”

He closes his eyes and thinks. An image forms in his mind. He blinks his eyes open, “I bet he looks like blackness. A black blob that’ll suck me into the mirror and take me away.”

Aaron shudders and the closet stills. His thoughts circle away from the basement.

“Last night I heard something weird. I woke up to pee but then I heard something in mom and dad’s room.” I think about the house at night: its stillness, its quiet slumber, the way it sleeps like the rest of us. I try to imagine voices sneaking into that space. “I walked down the hallway on my tip toes and stood at their door. I heard like a slap? Like one time at school some boy teased Torrie Moore and she turned around and smacked his arm. It sounded like that.” His story drifts into the air, walled into the closet with us. I look into his face as he regards the shelves of toys - wide eyed teddy bears and lanky dinosaurs stare back. He searches for an answer. He resembles my dad, and not me. We aren’t identical twins, but still I expect my features on his face. A matching earlobe. A freckle.

“Well - what do you think it was?”

“I don’t know, Steph. Mom was yelling. Dad was mumbling. I felt guilty eavesdropping.”

“Don’t tell Carrie.”

33

He scoffs, but then adds, “I’m not entirely sure she doesn’t already know.”

***

We often sleep in the same bed. I steal away from the bunk I share with Carrie - she’s fourteen and has undergone the metamorphosis of puberty. I prefer to crawl into the single bed with Aaron in his room across the hall. I nudge his aging one-eyed stuffed dog to the edge. We talk through the night and whisper about Carrie and her antics or mom and dad and their increasingly loud fights. Two nights ago Carrie sneaks out. I lay on the top bunk and pretend to sleep when mom comes in to check on her. She pads into the room, her robe pulled tight over her fading sleeping gown, and pushes her hands into

Carrie’s sheets. She flips the pillow and looks for a hidden daughter - as if she shrunk herself and curled up under the cushion. She mutters ‘damn it’ and leaves the room. I hear her tell dad and the phone tumbles from its cradle to make calls.

She wants to control Carrie and keep her safe, but she can’t. I see defeat in her eyes in the morning. She nibbles on buttered toast, her eyes fixed in a distant gaze like a corpse. Carrie is her first born, the one who survived after mom suffered two miscarriages. Once Carrie was born, mom lived with one eye on her and one eye on the rest of the world.

To have twins later after the premature deaths, mom attributed the conception to

Carrie: she had cured mom of her uninhabitable womb.

But the older Carrie grew, the further she unglued from mom and dad. Her formative years of hand-holding and training wheels - all that time mom and dad spent fussing over her with Band-Aids and story time - couldn’t prevent Carrie from spiraling out of control. Mom and dad play ‘what ifs’ in their arguments, but what could have

34 changed? Carrie’s character, her red wine and vinegar spirit, that’s just Carrie. She’ll spit in your eye and take your shoes and make it feel like your fault.

I vow to never have kids. Too much hassle. Too much work for little in return.

The disrespect. The sleepless nights. The fighting. I can’t understand any of it - the cycle of reproduction - it feels too weary to be worth any real payoff.

Aaron agrees. Curled against each other, the heat of summer pulsating in the night, we promise that’ll never be us: we won’t marry and have kids and ruin our lives.

We swear, hugging our pinkies tight against each other. Then we pin-prick our fingers and touch the blood together. A lifetime guarantee: As long as we have each other, we don’t need this miserable facade of a life.

***

From sunset to stars to utter blackness, Aaron and I’s reunion has transformed.

We move into his kitchen where he fumbles with drawers and clangs cabinet doors. A shelf of Native American dolls, like an audience, with black eyes, braids, decaying leather, watch us and I think of Janet going to flea markets, totting Aaron at her side and picking out these archaic dolls.

We rinse wine glasses and bump into each other in the darkness. I’ve had too much to drink - that last glass, always, just the last one pushes me too far - and Aaron has had his usual amount, which is also (always) too much. We twist and circle each other until Aaron jokingly pulls me onto the floor with him and we prop up our feet like we used to in the closet. From this angle, a menacing Janet peers down from a framed wedding photo.

“You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?”

35

“For?”

“Breaking our pinky promise. Marrying Janet.” The fridge hums in our ears and echoes the vibrating drunk sensation I feel. Aaron twists his head and in his milky gaze, he searches to lock eyes with me.

“I’m not mad.”

“Don’t be like Carrie. She was always so jealous of us. She couldn’t just let us be.”

“That’s not true! We had our hide-outs.”

“A-ha! That’s what I mean! We spent our childhood hiding, creeping through trees, talking into make-believe stars and cowering in closets. We should have just been invisible.”

I stretch an arm across his stomach and shift my weight against him. He has a boyish scent of sweat and outdoors. Like strawberries in summer. He lays stiff, his youthful rage refreshed. He drops a hand on my arm. The world around me spins, and I concentrate on the buzzing fridge. “You were never invisible to me.”

“No, Steph, no. I was too visible. Even when Carrie consumed that house. Even when she consumed us.” He talks of her like a bigger-than-life beast. I envision her as

King Kong holding him while she scales a Midwestern skyscraper. “And that’s why you’re still mad. And now Janet’s pregnant after we made a promise on blood.” The drunk talk in him bubbles. “She - she’s a bad memory - she should just die.”

“What if she is dying?”

“Is she dying?” His voice is dry static.

“Aren’t we all dying?”

36

He mumbles and rocks a bit, his head flopping finally to one side. I look again to

Wedding Janet and cross my eyes and watch her stomach protrude. A heap of nausea envelopes under my tongue and I look away. My eyes seesaw. The room fuzzes but then an antique mirror crystallizes. It sits in a heavy wood frame over a dry bar. I concentrate and search for faded orange spots. I search for a man. A cloud. I fade into blackness convinced I find him, happy to have him there, a recognizable nightmare from the past.

***

Mom and dad work through our summer days. By default, Carrie’s in charge. One day she invites friends over and they sit on the back porch smoking cigarettes and maybe something else. Someone brought beer. She wears tight, denim shorts and a crop top. She looks older than sixteen when she laughs and inhales a Parliament.

Aaron and I hide at the far edge of the lawn. We meander at the tree line and climb into one of the tall trees with branches wide and long enough for us to shimmy up.

The branches feel rough in my sweaty palms, and the tree bark scratches against my shins as I position each foot. I inch higher and higher toward the leafy green and separate myself from the pine-sprinkled soil below.

Aaron’s silhouette climbs above me. He’s taller than me now. His limbs stretch farther, faster. He calls for a rest, so I go two more just to be even with him. Dad’s bulky binoculars rest around his neck. His bangs - too long since his last school cut - fall into his face. He brushes them aside and peers into the lenses.

“What are they doing?”

“Not much - sitting around. Oh - ew, that guy Brandon is touching her stomach.

Gross.” He drops the binoculars which tug at his neck. A breeze thrusts the treetops

37 above us and we hold on tighter. “I don’t know what she’s doing, Steph, but I’m sick of her. Mom and dad haven’t noticed us this entire summer.” A childish pout hangs on his lip. I hold out the finger we pricked and press it against his. He smiles, but it isn’t enough. One sister isn’t enough. Another harsh wind blows into the branches.

“Can I?” Aaron passes me the binoculars. I search into the sky and find it: a black storm cloud that will soon explode over us.

We bumble down the tree until we can jump. Thump. Thump. We hit the padded soil and run across the wide yard and into Carrie’s circle of friends.

“You better go - your friends, I mean. A storm’s coming.”

“So? Leave us alone, twerp.” The friends - mostly boys - stare down at us. I elbow at Aaron’s side. We should just leave them, I communicate through my nudge.

“You guys twins?”

“Yea - twin girls. Aren’t they cute?” Carrie says and Aaron’s face blushes. “Two little girl babies. She doesn't know it yet - mom and dad insist on telling her that she’s a boy. It’s a whole thing,” she laughs at the ridiculousness of the joke, but she clamors on.

“Mom showed me pictures,” she points between his legs, “where your dick should be.

But you don’t have one.”

“Yes I do!” The red of his face darkens and anger heats his body.

“Then show us.”

“No! Don’t be stupid, Carrie. You’re so dumb!” He starts to break through the group and move toward the house, but Carrie - taller, older, stronger - grabs him and yanks down his pants and underwear. Her friends avert their eyes. Aaron covers himself and spins to hit her; he knocks a fist against her eye. She shows shock but then laughs. A

38 friend says, “He has a dick and balls, Carrie!” They break up and move toward their cars.

Carrie follows them to the front, but first turns to Aaron and me on the porch.

“Thanks a lot, Aaron, you dickless twerp.” Her eye has a small red blemish.

“Forget her,” I say close to him and squeeze into the house. I grab cookies from the kitchen and we move to the front to watch the storm and wait for our parents. Carrie must have left with her friends. We plop onto the porch swing. A gentle E sound whistles from the chains. The skin of our knees slides against each other as we rock. He picks apart his cookie piece by piece, taking off the top then licking the cream and so on.

“She shouldn’t have done that. She took it too far.”

“I know.”

“She thought she’d look cool in front of her friends - she’s embarrassing. Who wants to act like that? Did you see her smoking? She looked like a lizard.” I force a laugh which he ignores. He looks where the wind thrashes sheets of rain across the street. The smell of caution alert in our sensations.

***

Drunken sleep makes my body anxious. I stir awake shortly after passing out on the floor with Aaron. I watch him - the up and down sway of his chest pulls me into a trance. I comb his hair with my fingers. My stomach gurgles unpleasant movement. I press my palms into the floor to boost up. The darkness of the house throbs. I stumble with my eyes shut as I maneuver toward the stairs. I crack my shin on a table.

Upstairs I easily navigate the single hallway - I find the bathroom but am not ready to lie down again.

39

A dull light creeps from the cracked door of the master bedroom. I slide my fingers on the hollow wood of the door and intrude on their space. A bedside lamp casts yellow on Janet’s face. She sleeps in the glow, nestled onto her side of the bed. Her head props against a pillow.

Her dresser is neatly organized with jewelry boxes and trinkets. A series of rings, like a totem pole of jewelry, line up in a glass tree. I pull one off, and a light clink-clank sounds. I swivel my head to check Janet. A sliver of movement shifts under the sheets and she settles again. I jerk the ring onto my finger but my skin catches. I leave it where it sits midway between my knuckles.

I open a drawer and finger through her underwear. Cotton briefs. Lacy thongs.

Above the dresser is a large mirror, and I glimpse her helpless reflection. I trace her features on the mirror, the curves of her nose, the soft sockets of her eyes. I picture Aaron on top of her then her on top of him. Their bare selves selflessly giving to one another.

The moment he climaxes and she smiles and they hope this is it - this will be the time that makes a baby. What does that - willing another human into this world - feel like?

I saunter toward Aaron’s dresser, his belongings piled on top. He must come home at night, yank into his pockets, and leave it all here to grab the next day. Crumpled receipts and gum wrappers. A faded baseball cap that I’ve never seen him wear. His wallet. I find a couple dollars and various plastic cards and memberships. Nudged in the heart of the folds is a photo - the two of us, roughly age four, perched on a stool in front of a Christmas tree. Our eyes sparkle a reflection of the camera’s flash. Holiday anticipation visible on our countenance. Matching outfits. Red velvet dress. Red velvet tie. He holds the stuffed dog that once sat on his bed and I hold the dog’s twin that I had

40 forgotten about. I’m happy he’s kept it after all these years, and I notice there’s no picture of Janet.

***

The tight breakfast nook holds a table with enough space for two chairs, although we sometimes can wedge in a third. Aaron and I catch mom and dad after work coming into the kitchen from the garage. We corner them into the chairs and explain what happened in the yard. Dad’s head reddens and his fists tighten and mom tells him to calm down before he has a heart attack. I watch the veins twist around his hands. I watch

Aaron’s anger from today mirrored on dad’s face.

“I’m gonna kill her,” he says through a mouth of clenched teeth. Mom sighs. She pulls Aaron onto her lap even though he’s too big for that.

“I’m sorry, little man,” she says into his ear, her face against his skull. She inhales the sun and dirt smell of summer in his hair. “She was wrong to do that. Your body belongs to you, and nobody else.” He’s a year away from puberty. A boyish need for his mom lingers. They remain at the kitchen table. Dad storms into Carrie’s room.

I let go of Aaron’s hand and move outside. I breathe in the world at large and remind myself that I won’t always live in this crazy, convoluted house, but the world presses against me and I feel suffocated. My surroundings tip. I wobble along the edge of the flower bed where loose mulch stings my bare feet. The tingle of pain brings me back a little. I’m not so vulnerable. I’m a little more real again. I trace my eyes into the brown bed and spot a toad. I sneak up on it, down on my haunches. He blinks at me but keeps everything else still. I’ve intruded his space, and he tries to blend in with the mulch. Go unnoticed. I finger his scaly head.

41

I realize I’m below our bedroom window. I poke up to the screen to spy and there’s dad and Carrie. She sits on the bottom bunk and tells her version of the story.

Their voices hush but her hands move around. Dad knows she lies. His voice booms in the room. I feel it against the screen. I tuck my head down hoping not to be caught. I pop up again. It looks physical. She stands in defense of dad. The bunk beds block my view.

Their bodies scuffle. He backs her against the wall. I see bodies between the bunks, their faces lost behind my mattress. A thud vibrates and it’s Carrie against the wall and dad’s voice explodes again. A mass of scolding. Then I hear the dagger of it all - she should have been the third miscarriage. We’d all be better off.

Mom bolts into the room and Carrie unfolds like paper to the floor. She lunges toward her but Carrie recoils. The yelling starts again: it’s mom at dad and dad at mom.

Nerves erupt from my stomach into my throat. I replay the scene in my head. Dad.

Hands. Carrie. Wall. I unravel from my position and away from the window.

That night I press against Aaron’s back and stare into glow-in-the-dark stars, ones that we shaped into make-believe constellations. He ignores most of my questions, and I sense he wants to be alone. I put his stuffed dog in my usual place and saunter across the hallway. A night light extends my shadow down the hall and the tip of my head touches a wall.

I climb onto the bunk and feel the mattress sink over her space. I wait a few minutes until I ask her why she has to be so terrible to him.

“He’s not so innocent, Stephanie. He listens to my phone calls. It’s embarrassing.

I can hear him breathing when I talk to my friends. And last time? I talked to Hunter, the most popular guy in my grade. But he heard Aaron’s frog breath and made an excuse to

42 hang up. Aaron needs his own life.” I know she’s lying. Aaron wouldn’t do that because

Aaron doesn't care what Carrie and her friends talk about. She must feel wronged by him or by us. She makes up lies to pacify her own guilt. As long as she can convince herself her actions and her words are okay, then they are. She could be a good person if she tried, but she doesn’t try. She’s more content with her lousy friends. “It’s pathetic. And so are you - really, I should have this room to myself since you share a bed with your brother most nights. Don’t you - at all - think that’s weird?”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Of?”

“No one wants to sleep in your bed with you.”

She’s silent a minute. I know this has crossed her mind before. She pushes Aaron away more than me because we’re sisters. She wants the closeness of family that she assumes she deserves. Like that type of relationship should be natural between us. It’s sad, and I know it. My allegiance to Aaron pulls on me, and I’m a bit torn. “I’m sorry for what dad did to you.” My words flutter - maybe she can’t hear me above the whirling ceiling fan.

“What about what dad did?”

“Earlier - when he - ” My words fall away because maybe I didn’t see the whole scene or hear what I think I heard. “I just wish we could all get along.” It’s a childish sentiment, but I am a child.

“Have a little more pessimism, Stephanie. You’ll survive longer.” She shuffles underneath me on her bunk. I stare at the ceiling and look for the stars, but remember they’re in Aaron’s room. I think to climb back into bed with him and comfort him. I feel

43 alone in between Carrie and Aaron. I feel like maybe I’ll be pushed away from both of them after this. But we have a pact, I remind myself. Aaron and I. He won’t desert that.

***

Downstairs away from Janet and away from Aaron, I call Carrie. The time zone is against me. Sleep laces her voice. I tell her Janet’s expecting.

“Expecting her life to end?” She quips.

“We aren’t that lucky.”

“Jesus, Stephanie.”

“It’s not about her, Carrie. It’s Aaron. I miss my twin. He never comes home, think what’ll happen after a baby.” I remember the day Aaron leaves after he graduates high school. He packs the boxy Ford Escort he bought from mom and dad, and says he’s sorry.

“You’ll survive without me.”

“I’m already dying with you.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“Aren’t we all dying?” I loop my pinky into his while his eyes search the horizon.

He’s beside me but he’s already gone.

“Being at this house kinda fucked me up, Steph. Carrie - her torments - the way she manipulated mom and dad.” Then, an afterthought he can’t finish, “How dad - .” He shakes it away. The memories of it all. Family’s forced relations. The fights.

Then he leaves, and the anticlimactic moment moves into my body and thickens in my gut. I listen to his car for as long as I can, but I know it’s four streets away and I only imagine its mechanical purr.

44

Carrie’s voice wavers into my recollection: “Are you still holding out for him to come home?”

“As much as you hold a grudge against dad, I guess.” The statement’s not a fair one. Our dad passed away over a year ago.

“Right, Stephanie. You’re right. I harbor anger at dad for not loving me enough.”

Her tone darkens. “I guess we’re the same, anyway. Aaron doesn’t love you as much as you love him. Isn’t that why you’re there? To make him your buddy again. Like before you started bleeding and he realized what it’s really like to have a twin sister.”

“Bleeding? Carrie, you’re ridiculous. He drifted off after everything you did to our family.”

“You can’t be mad at me because Aaron moved to California.”

“Whatever, Carrie.”

She fumbles with the phone. I hear knocks against the receiver. Her heavy breath.

“The two of you have always been fucked up. I tried to warn you. Sleeping in his bed.

Following him around. We remember our childhood differently. You think it was normal, twin life. You need to move on, Stephanie. You need to come home and move on.” She hangs up, and I listen to the drone from the phone line.

I consider her words ‘move on’ but can’t fathom its true meaning. I think about

Aaron’s round face from the Christmas photo - the optimism of ‘what’s under the tree’ pressed into his youthful grin. That might’ve been the year Carrie found coal in her stocking, the year she materialized the man in the mirror. I bring a blanket back to the kitchen and throw myself under it with Aaron. His body responds to my presence, nudges

45 a leg toward me. It’s not always like this anymore - like when we still had our innocence.

He won’t let me stay in his bed. The make-believe constellations have long peeled away.

But I return and return.

46

Midnight Man

Rune pulled the scabs off his flesh. He saved the tiny, scratched pieces of skin in an Altoids tin. He presented them to his girlfriend - a look what I have - and when she wasn’t repulsed, he knew he had met someone special.

He liked to aim his BB gun at the closet wall and shoot, shoot, shoot. He counted the holes. He poked his fingers into the drywall, felt the hum of air on the other side. He licked his lips and scratched his hips. Skin exposed. Shirt on the floor.

Magena lay in bed behind him and watched his pants drop below his waist. She eyed his underwear line, a graying hue that didn’t make her feel sexy but made her want sex at the same time. It must be the gun, she thought, and she dug her hand between her legs.

***

She worked at a dry cleaner’s. The small shop pushed in around her and she considered the customers to be just like the circulating hanging clothes: wrapped in plastic, unemotional, protected.

She removed stains of varying colors and speculated their origins. She pretended the scenes in which they transpired - a deep red reminded her of the obvious and she listed all the reasons people bleed.

He worked, too, across town at a machine shop and came home smelling like sultry oil. Like a human robot, she thought, when she dug her nose into his body and rooted for his smell.

47

They clanked together their odd formations of life and tried to weld it into one.

***

He opened his finger one day on a machine and, wanting to avoid a hospital fee, had another guy from the shop stitch it up (A retired paramedic, he told Mag later that night, he knew what he was doing. See? It’s sealed up. Closed. Nothing hanging out, right?). But days later, puss bubbled at the raw edge of the black thread. Like an oozing worm on a hook, she noted. She joked about amputation. The number nine making its way into punchlines. He reported back to the retired paramedic but the gray bearded man, clad in an Allman Brother’s peach t-shirt, shrugged his shoulders and suggested he try the pharmacy’s minute clinic.

She tried to ignore it. Wedged onto a single mattress, the box springs loud and decayed underneath them, she pushed his hands over his head and focused on other things, but she had wild buck teeth and he wouldn’t let her give him head.

***

They adopted a dog named Adolf. They asked about the name and the young girl behind the desk pointed at the dog’s snout - sure enough, a rectangular patch of darker fur hung like a mustache and that was that. They took him home to Rune’s efficiency apartment they had started to share. Mag moved in after admitting she lived with her parents, and he invited her to stay. Only a week had passed since the laceration of the boy’s finger, and now he had two roommates.

In the middle of one night Adolf stuck his wet nose with the dark patch of fur into

Mag’s face. She tugged herself from sleep and dragged him down the one floor and out to

48 the small yard of grass in front of the complex. She kept her eyes closed while he sniffed and lifted his leg. She raised one crusted eyelid to check on him and turned to her left.

You scared me, she said to a man who appeared there on the lawn, the moon’s light behind him. His blackened silhouette stood still. She tugged at Adolf. Bark, you damn dog. But she felt no weight on his side of the leash. She looked toward where he had been, but he was gone. She looked again to her left and the man was gone, too.

What the fuck, she said under her breath. A cloud drifted over the moon and the lawn disappeared.

She climbed the stairs, glanced at Rune, grabbed her keys and clambered back to her car. The steering wheel pressed against her grip, her pointed knuckles at one and eleven. She’d sauntered into the oily night in her pajamas: a second-hand nightgown, white with a lace edge - a minor hole on the side. It could pass for a summer dress if only the hours belonged to the sun.

She drove slower than the other cars and darted her eyes from the road ahead to the road’s brim, the tree line, but spotted only a dead deer. Its body sliced open. Organs exposed. Red, pink, raw remnants of life. Eyes open and staring, a permanent rheumy gaze.

She squinted against traffic’s headlights until she felt a migraine. A hot, black bulb buried behind her left eye. She blinked at a water mark, a waving sliver, in front of her right eye.

She’d driven and driven without attention to the roads. She thought she stayed northeast, the shoreline to her left. The vast blackness of water competing with the blackness of night.

49

Her eyesight worsened, and she pulled into a marina. No trespassing. She parked and shut her eyes. She strained her ears to hear the water hit land and strained her ears to hear the dog bark, both of which she swore she heard. Should she get out and check? Not now - not with the black pain. She shut her eyes curled into a fancy Q.

***

A hard-boiled finger tapped on the window. Rune’s finger. She jumped back for fear of mangled flesh.

Excuse me, miss? You can’t be here. No trespassing, a man’s voice bounced on the car window and Rune’s finger pointed. Miss, can you hear me?

The keys rattled to life and started the car and she rolled down the window. His flashlight knocked at the interior, over her eyes, into her black pain. An echo of throbbing repeated and she blocked her eyes. I have a migraine, please, sir, your light. I have a migraine and needed to rest.

He let the light fall to his side. He asked other routine questions: Where are you driving from, where are you driving to, where do you live? She answered with some truth about Adolf and the efficiency. I can drive, she promised. I’ll get back home and hang flyers for the dog tomorrow.

Very well, then. See to it that you do.

She listened to him but stared through the window of her Sedan. A figure on the beach, the outline of a man. She asked, Do you see him? Out there? She warped a finger into the air. But the policeman was already behind his steering wheel, his lights reflecting on her rearview mirror. She started her car for appearances. She drove in idle speed, crossed the street, and parked her car out of view from the main road. On foot she crossed

50 back to the beach. A strand of light threatened to break her cover. She skidded quickly away from it.

Grains of sand worked into her shoes. The gritty, sandpaper feel rubbed at her soles. A crush of lake waves repeated. Constant. Soothing. She liked patterns and cycles.

Like the clothes circling around her at the dry cleaners. It kept her head in order. It felt sane.

She imagined what she would do if the man appeared again here. Holding her dog. Walking him on the beach in the middle of night. Bitter blackness hugging their sides. She faked conversations, asking him questions and hearing his responses or vice versa. What are you looking for? He asked of her. In this expanse, where could the search end? She felt trickery in the question. She felt riddles on his tongues. Still she wanted to provide answers. She wanted to obtain clarity in her own mind. She stepped her sand- covered feet through the beach back to her car and asked over and over again, where does the search end?

***

Back in the efficiency, the four walls like a shoebox, Rune stared at her. Where were you? I was worried. Do you know it’s six in the morning?

She explained about the dog and the migraine. She omitted the police. The man.

He grunted a reply and inched into his dull, gray work clothes. Mag, he said, stay home today. Take a day to rest. Your head isn’t right.

She slid into the bed after he left. Broken thoughts dripped in her head. What day did they bring Adolf home? She counted on her fingers. Nine. Just a little over a week.

What day did she start living here? She tried to use her fingers again, the dry pads heating

51 against each other as she struggled to count beyond nine. But it had been longer than the dog?

She felt around on the bed, moving her hands over the soft creases, the scrunched sheets, Rune’s warmth. She searched for a number of days - a secret of sorts - lost in the space.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Her head twisted toward the window. But I’m on the second floor? She scanned the ground - the same spot where she had stood with Adolf - and saw nothing. He had been there, she was certain. Adolf. The man. He was wearing a hat: a type of circular, wide brim that dipped close to his eyes. His face, only a shadow. His body, an overcoat.

She closed her eyes and pressed the image of him into her memory. He exists. She felt his shape in her mind. He exists and he has my fucking dog.

***

Rune returned from work to find her with a shaved head. She claimed she accidently walked into a cancer benefit. The gentle sound of a buzz stroking at strangers’ skulls interested her and there she was, just like that.

He stroked the top of her head. From the front to the back and felt the soft spikes of hair against his palm. He liked it. He licked behind her ear, the lobe stuck on his tongue, and he continued, wanting to lick her entire scalp.

Your finger, she said, and he pulled away. And aren’t you worried about Adolf?

Forget about him. He smoothed his hand over the expanse of her body. Ran fingers through the sliver of back, and her skin bubbled below his touch. Forget about him and think about me. Machine oil, dirt, and dust covered his work clothes. She fixated

52 on his smell. Sweat and heat worked into his folds. She counted oil spots, her head dipped toward his body while he caressed hers. She folded on him like a gentle bird.

He responded to her and let her go. His eyes assessed her. Your head any better?

Thought you’d sleep, but you went out? He pointed toward her scalp.

Yeah I went out and walked. Tried to clear my head. Looked around. Hung some flyers. I dipped into the laundry shop and watched the clothes spin. But my head’s on fire, Rune.

He put her to bed. He stayed awake and watched over her. He showered and washed the oil from his clothes, the black liquid swirling into the sink. He hung the grey coveralls on a line by the window. Let the night wind in to dry it. He pulled a chair close to the bed, propped one foot up beside her body - a bulk of lump worked into the sheets and pillows. His finger pulsed. He lightly touched the wound, looking for a scab, but it hadn’t healed enough to form one.

She twisted in the bed from the weight of his leg. Not enough to wake up but enough to peek out of her dream. The figure of Rune’s clothes hung behind him. It cast itself over him. Watching him investigate his finger. Amputate, she heard it say. She tried to warn him. The man. She shut her eyes again.

She dreamed of body bags. People waiting to let the zippers close over their bodies. People walking by, their faces still open to the air. Their eyes navigating their course. You have to get your body bag, a man told her. The air’s not right. You have to protect yourself.

***

53

At the end of the next day, Rune returned from work and she was better, she told him. The stingray of pain has dissipated. I’m better, I really am. I slept and slept - like a mummy - I swear. When I woke, layers of silken, worn gauze peeled from my skin. The bed had been my tomb and I woke ready to live again.

She didn’t tell him how death had lurked in her dreams, stalking over her shoulders in the abstract world.

I went out, she continued, a shrug of the shoulders to segue topics. Garage sales. I poked my fingers through people’s stuff. Their trash. Old clothes. Rusted tools. It’s wonderful to see what people have accumulated only to throw it all away. Life by numbers. Color it all in. Erase it. Color again.

He observed her idly. What’d you buy? The gray jumpsuit flopped toward the floor and hugged his ankles. His gray boxer-briefs hung loosely at his thighs. Mag responded to his skin. His vulnerability. His openness to stand in the room and discuss other people’s belongings while nearly naked. She wanted to sleep with him - to pull him to the bed and pull him over her and let him drive into her own vulnerability. She craved some attention to her weaknesses. Needed to hear, it’s okay. A whoosh of breath against her ear. But his finger hung like a dead slug at his side. Useless. Decaying. Rotten. She thought again about body bags and their power of invisibility. Hide the body. Cloak the death.

I think I’ll go back out. She held up a staple gun in one hand and flyers in the other. A dog’s helpless eyes magnetized on the flimsy paper.

But I thought we could, you know. He stood now in pajama pants. Old flannel. A

Christmas gift from the past. Another life, the one he existed in before he met her.

54

Rune, she started to explain and pointed mildly toward his finger but he knew the response and hid his hand behind his back.

Have it your way, then. He picked up the gun. A dribble of BBs jiggled into the chamber. He’d recently hung pictures from magazines on the closet wall. Celebrities.

Singers. Politicians. Blank faces to shoot at, really. The dings of BBs on paper foreheads fell behind her as she shut the door and descended the stairs. The sound of Adolf’s padded feet beside her.

***

He slept under a mound of covers and pillows. A fortress against night. He didn’t dream like she did. He slept in a colorless haze. She crept into the efficiency after midnight. She slid a cardboard box of misshapen tools - bought from the garage sales - out from under the bed. Rusted hinges. Craters in the blade lines. She pictured someone gardening. Someone under a summer sun, heat against the neck. Sweat rolling under the throat. The smell of dirt and flowers snuffed against a nose. Just a trim, she thought. Just a swift trim in the garden. Her nightgown swayed at her thighs.

She found a hat, too, and placed it delicately over her fuzzy scalp. The wide brim swung over her eye line. Keeps the sun out, she thought and smiled. Keeps the darkness in. She surveyed the cardboard box again. Picked up tool after tool until one fit against her ungloved hand. Some stranger’s time and work against her skin.

She picked up Rune’s finger. Pretty, dead flower. She sidled the shears in between his fingers. She clamped down hard and gritted her teeth and turned away and the heat of oily blood slid down her arm. The earth is cold and unforgiving and when we die, we

55 succumb to its chambers. Our heated bodies cool and become one with the soil. The heat of life, gone. She reveled in Rune’s heat, flowing against her flesh. Open and vulnerable.

He woke up screaming. His mouth like his gun, pellets of words through the air.

A hot hiss of fire bubbled at the blank space of his hand. Nine operating fingers fumbled in the air. A dead but living digit in the sheets. Rune watched the colors contrast. The sheets bleed. The finger white.

He howled like a dog but she operated like a machine. She tossed the rusted shears back into the box. She put his finger in a prepared jar of ice. She had no intentions of taking him to the hospital or allowing the finger back in its place. She’d seen bell jars lined up in museums. Seen works of Science concealed in clean, glass spaces. Now here was Rune’s finger, submerged in ice in an old jar, the smell of pickles faint until she twisted the jar’s lid and preserved this piece of Rune that had once been a part of his body. She nestled the jar in the corner of the kitchen, a nook by the window, tucked behind Rune’s coveralls.

She crept out from behind the hanging man and Rune watched her. His mangled hand held up in the air, blood thick on his arm.

What the fuck, Magena? That’s my finger. His head nodded toward the corner. A rapid wind pulsed night’s air into their space. Sent it swirling with the pungent thick coppery smell, and Rune’s coveralls snapped in place.

There was a man, she said and walked toward him. Her movement pushed his body toward the bed. He flopped backwards. She nodded behind her at the clothes dancing in the wind. There was a man, she continued, and he said amputate. Amputate.

Amputate. Amputate.

56

She repeated the word until it was no longer a word but just a sound. She straddled Rune’s body. He kept his hand raised. She grabbed the pillow, loosened it from its case, and wrapped the cloth around his hand. She cut and tied the cloth neatly and it held.

Do you still like the feel of my scalp, Rune? She dropped the weight of her body onto him, rubbing this way and that.

Outside a dog barked into the blackness, but Mag hadn’t heard.

57