The Washington Pastime. Be Heard.

ClickHERE to view The Washington Pastime’s August, 2011 Issue. TWP. VOL. 1. ISSUE 5.

“I know, Dad,” Gregory said,”you’ve told me enough times.”

Edgar noticed his son’s gaze never flickered from the menu board above them. “I also remember when you used to give a rat’s ass about the things I said.”
Gregory’s shoulders tightened but he didn’t turn around. Edgar watched the movement under his son’s lightweight jacket. He knew Greg always scrunched up when he was upset and trying to hide it.

“Hey, look, Son!” Edgar shouted. “Your mother wants to take your order. See her behind the glass partition working the computer? Look, she’s waving at us.”

Greg spun around. “What did you say?”

“I said stop acting like an old fart and lighten up. I just want to reminisce a little and all you can do is think, Uh oh—definitely time for the home!” Edgar looked his son in the eyes and spat on the floor.

Greg flinched, opened his mouth, but only sputtered. Both men stared at the glistening glob on the spotless floor. An alarm went off behind the glass partition and a spider-like thing scurried out from a slot under the counter. It squatted down on jointed metal appendages and sucked up the wet spot.

Edgar snorted, “I can remember when they used to have people to clean—hey, I even remember when it was considered disgusting to spit on the floor in public. Why, I even remember when ‘in public’ meant other people around and music playing over the loudspeakers. Even if it was only crap elevator muzak.”

He glanced around the room, saw only two plastic booths occupied by other travelers. “Hell, those alarms didn’t even faze sleeping beauty back there manning these mechanical nightmares.” He pointed to the only employee at the rest stop, the one sleeping behind the food dispensing machines. “I….”

“Dad, please!” Gregory whispered. “Come on, Dad. Please order. After all, this trip was your idea. You wanted to take a drive to the cemetery.”

“Yep, Greg, it’s so good of you to humor the old man like this, kind of eases the guilt before you send me to the home. Hey, I understand, Boy. Peg didn’t grow up around old people. She just doesn’t understand an old geezer around her house. She thinks I’ll be happy stuck in a disguised prison filled with senile fools, drooling mental black holes, and all those nice shiny nurses and cameras to watch over me.”

“Dad!” Greg shouted, finally red in the face. “Please!”

“So, Son, you can do more than just get embarrassed. What are you feeling, shame or anger?”

“Anger, Dad. Anger!” Greg said lowering his voice as the other people in the room turned to stare at them. “I’m sick of you trying to make me feel guilty. Well, I’m not feeling bad! I’m not in the least. You are always putting me down, always comparing me to some absurd standard from your pathetic excuse of a past. Peg isn’t just uncomfortable with you around, she hates you! You are making our lives a terrible strain.”

Edgar laughed. “So Greg, you do have a little spine, don’t you? You actually came out and said ‘hate,’ and in public too! Good thing the Polite Police didn’t hear you, huh. And gee, I’m a ‘terrible strain,’ mighty harsh words, mighty tough talk for now-a-days.”

Greg sighed, his shoulders slumped and he turned back to the menu. He touched the pictures of what he wanted to order, then touched them again for Edgar, who refused to communicate with machines.
“Ah, Greg. I just want you to see that you and the rest of the sheep are condemning yourselves to an existence of empty, polite crap. Everybody’s nice to each other, nobody has to ever get their hands dirty, but nobody’s happy either.”

Edgar watched his son walk away from him with the tray of food following on wheels. He sighed with frustration. The world was never meant to be like this, he thought. Nobody allowed to complain, nobody allowed to get angry, everyone so considerate of everyone at the cost of everything.

When did we stray so far from reality? he wondered. He struggled to let go of the anger he seemed to feel all the time and followed his son to a booth. I think I miss the music the most. All there is today is silence, nothing piping through to upset anyone. I can’t stand the idea of having a speaker embedded in your head or else you gotta live with this infuriating silence…
Greg sat and began to silently eat.

Edger shook his head. He was sorry that Greg thought him a foolish, wasted, old man, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t! He was just tired of living in a society based on lies. “Look son, I’m sorry I’ve embarrassed you. I just miss the old days.”

Greg picked up his sandwich and took another bite. He chewed, swallowed, and said, “I think I understand, Dad. But anger is so counterproductive. We live in the best of all worlds. Just look around. Everything is clean, sanitary, peaceful. There is no need for anger any more.”

He took another bite and added. “I just wish you could learn to enjoy life. The village you are moving to is so perfect. You’re not going into a home like your dad had to. This is just the way it should be, everyone living with their proper group, the elders together in the villages, and the family units together in their complexes. No more of that forced intermingling of cultures, no more ethnic or socioeconomic slurs, no more fighting, no more anger! A good world.”

“You really believe that?” Edgar asked, then started to eat his bland sandwich. He wasn’t even sure what it was. Pseudomeat or processed non-dairy cheese. “I’d like a hamburger, dripping grease and covered with mayo, pickles, and fresh outdoor grown onions.”

Greg shuddered.”Ugh…sounds kind of disgusting. Dead flesh, muscles and fatty tissues ground together, fried in its own carcinogenic excretions, then covered with a vegetable grown in insecticide-polluted soil. Thanks, I’ll stick to today’s food.”

Edgar caught a movement off to the side. He turned his head, but whatever he thought he saw disappeared. “Guess I’m just stuck with my yesterdays, or at least wishing for them,” he said to Greg and began to hum a song from his past.

The movement caught his attention again. This time he didn’t turn his head. Instead he waited and it moved into focus a little, just inside the line of his peripheral vision. It was a waitress, dyed red hair tousled and falling out of a ponytail, short-skirted uniform bouncing over long pantyhose-clad legs. He could have sworn he’d seen her a thousand times in a thousand places when he’d been young.

But her type was gone, just like the restaurants, the hangouts and the life he had known. And yet, she persisted in playing on his vision.
Maybe the boy and that bitch wife are right, maybe I am ready for the old folks home. Edgar chuckled softly. They may have cleaned those old age centers up, taken away the stench of piss and shit, and made the residents look presentable and functional. It was amazing what they could do with implants and chips—but when the mind gives up the fight, the only thing left is a senile old fool, too dumb to know when to die.

He closed his eyes, then opened them. The waitress was gone, but he could sense more than see shadows moving all over the room. He squinted and the shadows deepened into misty people milling around an old-fashioned turnpike rest stop complete with food stands, canopied shops, vending machines, video games, and huge smelly rest rooms. Edgar sighed and closed his eyes again. He ate that way, eyes closed shutting out his silent, sullen son, and a vague world he longed to see again.
Finally he heard, “Ready, Dad?”

He nodded and got up, opening his eyes. The shadows were still there and he swore he could hear noises, people talking, shouting, laughing, sneezing, coughing, and even the crying of a baby.

He rushed to the glass automatic doors that went out into the almost empty parking lot. He was going to leave as quickly as possible. Then he heard her, “Come back now, real soon.”

He jerked to a stop, Greg crashing into him. He turned back and there she was, the waitress, waving good-bye. “Real soon, Honey, we’ll be waiting.”

“Dad, what’s the matter?” Greg asked stepping back from his father. “Dad, are you all right?”

Edgar went out the door, then asked, “See anything interesting in there?”

Greg’s expression turned to concern, “No… Did you? Dad?”

“Of course not, what do you think I am, crazy?” Edgar snapped and walked toward the car.
Greg drove the solar powered car on the almost deserted superhighway. “It’s funny, what with public transportation so good, you’d think they’d close those rest stops and tear up the roads.”

“Some of us still like to drive, and, as for the reststop, well, as clean as they’ve made us humans, they still haven’t figured out how to make us give up food and voiding.” Greg sighed and fell silent.

Edgar looked out the window at the bleak landscape covered with landfills, high-rise cites and cemeteries. He sighed and thought about how the future had become the present, how man didn’t need the land anymore, what with submersible living, and superstructures reaching to heaven like successful towers of Babel. The earth was only good for storing the trash and the dead. Edgar thought about ending up in one of the endless graveyards tended by machines, never visited except by fools like himself. He wondered if Greg would ever visit him after he died. Would Greg visit Peg the way he visited Janet?

He had had hopes for that boy. He remembered how like himself Greg had once been, before Peg, success, and children turned him into a modern day automaton.

“Greg?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“You ever think about your mother?”

Greg turned from the road. “Of course!”

“Ever miss her?”

Greg smiled a little, “Not like you do.”

“Are you going to miss me?”

“Hey Dad, I’m sorry I blew up back there. You’ll only be a few minutes away from us by metrotube.”

“No, son, I mean when I’m really gone. Will you ever come out here to visit?”

“Of course, Dad.” Greg’s cheek twitched and Edgar knew he was lying, just like when he was a kid.

“Perhaps you will,” Edgar said and returned to studying the road.

They stopped at the cemetery for just a few minutes when Greg said he wanted to return to the rented car.

“Wait, Son,” Edgar said reaching into his jacket pocket. “I’ve been saving this for you ever since I found it in a container last year.”
Greg’s eyes lit up. “Why, its my old smartphone!”

He grabbed the small portable unit from his dad’s outstretched hand. He opened a compartment and took out the cordless buds and slipped them in his ears. “Hey do I look as cool as I did when I was eight?”

Edgar nodded, “You sure do, Son. Cool.”

“Too bad batteries are outlawed. I wonder if I can find an energy source to make it work. I had tons of music and movies stored on it.” Greg smiled. “Boy, I sure would like to hear those songs.”

Edgar fished out a holographic photo and handed it over. “You find all sorts of stuff when you clean out a lifetime.”

Greg’s expression softened even more and he got a faraway look in his eyes. “Wow, me and my first car.The old shitmobile.”

Edgar laughed, “Yeah, those manure driven babies weren’t around all that long, thank the Lord. But they were efficient little stinkbombs.”

Greg put the picture in his pocket. “You know Dad, sometimes the past does look good, probably better than it really was. But this world is a good place.”

Edgar nodded and rested against Janet’s gravestone. “That’s because it is your world. My world is in that picture and all around us right now. When you don’t fit in anymore you have to move on.”

Greg looked sad. “I wish you could see that you are wrong. This planet is big enough to be everybody’s world.”

They walked back to the car, neither breaking the silence that had formed. On the drive back, Edgar found himself thinking very little of his late wife and a lot about the reststop.

“I’d like a coffee,” he announced.

Greg sighed. “Dad, we have to get back.”

“Come on, Son. Humor an old man with a weak bladder.”He watched Greg grind his teeth.

They turned off the road and back into the reststop parking lot. Except for two cars which had obviously left, the same few cars were still there. Edgar wondered, if he walked up to them, would they be covered in dust?

They went inside and the shadows were gone. Edgar fought off the feeling of disappointment. What had he expected anyway, a welcome wagon?

Greg walked up to the counter to punch in two coffees. “Want any dessert, Dad?”

Edgar thought for a moment then said, “I’d like an apple pie a la mode.”

He sat at a booth and waited, not sure for what, when he suddenly saw her, plain as day.

“Hiya, Honey,” she said. “Glad you could make it back. So few do any more, but it’s a slow time. In a couple of more decades we’ll be swamped, just you wait and see.”

Edgar sat there mesmerized. As he stared at her he realized he was hearing music, music decades old, from the turn of the century when he was young, it was “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams.” It all started to sink in.

The waitress was standing in front of him, pad and pen in hand. “Well, doll,” she said, “what will it be? Processed pie with sonny-boy over there, or the real thing forever?”

“Am I dead?” Edgar asked.

She laughed. “Hell no, Sweetcheeks.”

“Then, am I dying, is that why I have a choice?”

She shook her head and few strands of her rich, red curls tumbled from the scrunchie.

“Well then, what’s going on?”

She shrugged. “Hey I’m just a waitress, came here about thirty-five years ago and took the job. All I know is, if you can see the past, you can get there.”

“This is the past?”

“Well, it’s a rest stop on the way to the future.”

Edgar looked over at Greg who was still at the counter. He smiled. His dour middle-aged son, who was always in such a rush, could never make up his mind when it came to desserts. He’d be there another ten minutes without Peg nagging him to hurry.

“How do I join you?”

She smiled, a sweet crooked grin. “Just order what your heart desires.”
Edgar thought for a moment then said, “A stop from reality, with a juicy, rare burger smothered in pickles and fresh onions.”

She wrote furiously and asked, “Mayo?”

“Nah,” he said. “Hold the mayo…this time.”

The room suddenly filled with a crowd of people, souls just like himself, who had tired of humanity’s desperate, futile race to assimilate as well as segregate. The music tempo changed. The

Beatles sang “Twist and Shout” as several of the people around him got up and began to dance.

Edgar ignored the dancers and watched Greg turn and look for him. He felt a pang at leaving the only living soul who mattered to him.

The waitress put her arm around him and said in a soft voice, “Don’t you worry. His kind always come back when they’re ready. After all, he’s a chip off the old block.”

Edgar nodded and walked up to his son. “Greg, I know the most you can see is a shadow that you won’t accept as real, but I’ll be here waiting when you finally decide return someday. And, Greg, I’ll make sure the desserts are fresh for you.”

He wiped at his eyes and turned away from his son, who was obviously searching the huge empty room for him.

Then Edgar walked back to his table and ate the first real burger he’d had in forty years.

As the new year is upon us, it is time for a New Year’s Resolution. The Washington Pastime is constantly working to deliver better fiction, quicker, for you, the reader. Today we make the announcement that we will no longer publish four pieces of fiction once a month, but instead, will publish one piece of fiction every week. This will allow us to segway into delivering even more stories and articles in the future, and will supplement those using our online application, Daily Fiction.

We appreciate your support. And we are excited to offer more in the coming year.

All the best,

Paul Karaffa, Founder

Sometimes I wonder if my staring buddy is thinking the same things as me. Does he share my concerns? Does his inaction burden him as it does me? I would like to know if he is happy. I am not. I stare, and I think, and I yearn for change. Still, I am not unhappy either. From the vacant look on his pale face, I imagine his experience is the same. We are like two peas in separate pods.
If only we possessed the ability to articulate our thoughts, time would pass much quicker. We could relate. I would tell him about how much I dislike the liquid we live in, and that I wish someone would dust the glass so I could see clearly. He might tell me about his past, or recite an amusing tale. We would be friends, and life would be easier for us both.

While I think about the things I would tell him, I realize I wouldn’t have much to offer. My knowledge is limited to him and his appearance. His face floats in a jar filled with a clear, viscous liquid. He has no hair, and his gray eyes echo with loneliness. His skin appears distended, ready to float off the skull, which I dearly dread happening. His nose is unique. It reminds me of a cancerous white plum with contusions disfiguring the bulbous end. He may think this funny, and we may laugh together. Lastly, I would tell him about the pink tail coming from the base of his head that curls in a small bundle at the bottom of his jar.

I do know one other thing about him—his grotesque face is like looking directly into hell. But maybe for fun, I wouldn’t tell him, just to have a secret.
The room we occupy is a dark, cramped closet. During what I assume is the day, a fractured light filters in—maybe through a grime-encrusted window, or from the cracks of a door leading to a more exciting room. In my peripherals I see the faint outline of other jars and other faces. They stoically line steel shelving, never speaking, never caring.
I wish I had more to say in the hypothetical conversation with my staring buddy. I’d hate for him to think me a bore. I can’t say how long we’ve been here. Time is a slippery eel, writhing from my grasp. This place is all I’ve ever known, but a sense of something more lingers.

I recall another voice—a voice that shares my mind and calls himself The Memory Keeper. He told me once, maybe long ago, maybe sooner, that I was not born this way and that existence is grander. For some reason, I have chosen to ignore him all this time, so I’m not sure if I should believe him. He might be tricking me. But what he says sounds pleasant. I like the idea of more. What if I had a previous life, one where I could speak and move and connect with others? That would be nice. At least I would have more memories to occupy these endless hours.

I decide to indulge The Memory Keeper. What harm could it do? Perhaps his perspective is greater than mine. I call for him, my voice echoing in the great gulf of my head. He doesn’t respond.

Wake up, I think, trying to rouse him. I’m sorry for cauterizing you all this time. Please forgive me. I’m ready to listen.

No, a child’s voice returns. The Memory Keeper is angry with me, so I must gently coo and soothe him.

Please, I respond. You were right all along. I’ve been foolish. Naive. If you give me another chance, I pledge to you, I will listen.

What more is there to say? The child’s voice is gone, replaced by the crackling of adolescence. I’m getting through to him.

You are wise, much wiser than I. Allow me to redeem my faults. Enlighten me to your knowledge of the world. Make me whole again.

Pandering will get you nowhere. The crackling voice has smoothed with age, transmitting maturity. He will cave, for he must be as lonely as I.

Of course not. My words only reinforce how foolish I have become without you. My intelligence has atrophied; my memories deleted. Allow me to appeal to your sense of reason. You and I are in the same vessel—a vessel lost at sea, drifting farther and farther away from land. I believe together we can paddle back to safety. Together we can regain our sanity. What do you say?

The Memory Keeper does not respond. My spirit—assuming I have one—dissipates. Returned to emptiness, I discover a deeper void of sorrow than I thought possible. Once again, I am alone. All that remains is me, my staring buddy, and the bleak room imprisoning us.

A creeping tingle surfaces inside me, followed by a single word.

Harold.

It reverberates inside me like ripples bouncing off the edges of a pond, gentle and smooth.

Your name is Harold, The Memory Keeper says in a voice like leather, and you are a head.

I rejoice in his return. He has given me something I never knew I missed. He has given me my name back. Harold. Harold the head.

Thank you, I say. Why am I but a head?

Things are as you wanted them.

How could that be? I do not wish this. I want to escape this dusty jar. There is a fingerprint on the glass right in front of my eye, and the smudge eats at my sanity. I want to escape the smudge, and this room. Most of all, I want to escape the gaze of the other head. I can’t bear to stare into his gray eyes and saturated skin any longer. Why would I put myself in a perpetual hell such as this?

Because life is more valuable than death, he says with the authoritarian doom of a televangelist prophesying the coming apocalypse. Because the unknown awaits the eternal sleeper. Because heaven and hell may be the same place. You were afraid. You wanted to cheat.

Cheat what?

What does anyone want to cheat? The inevitable coming of the shroud. The paranoid creature with sharp teeth stirring in the back of our heads. The gloom which awaits us on the other side of the closed door. Death, Harold. You wanted to cheat Death. And you have, in a way. Death stalks you. It desperately aches for your soul, but Death can not find you in this place.

Vivid images begin to flash. The Memory Keeper is showing me my past. I was a young boy once—parted hair, blameless face, bruised knees. I’m playing baseball in a yard with a man who shares the glint of joy in my eyes. The image blurs, fast-forwards, and I see myself as a young man. I’m getting married. A beautiful woman in a flowing white gown hangs on my arm as the man from my childhood, aged and wrinkled, takes a picture.

Why are you showing me this? I ask, but the flashes of a forgotten life continue.

I’m older, closer to my current age. The beautiful girl from my wedding is pacing around a hospital waiting room. She shivers and I drape my coat over her shoulders. A doctor enters, his eyes announcing bad news. “Your father has passed,” he tells me. “He fought all the way, never giving up on life.”

Stop! I yell.

Years pass, but the scene remains the same. I’m in the same hospital waiting room; the same doctor with the same news in his eyes is there. The beautiful woman is not. “Your wife has passed,” he tells me. “She fought all the way, never giving up on life.”

A vague sense of truth surfaces, and I realize why I shunned The Memory Keeper in the first place. He reminds me I was happy once, and that hope is a mirage, drawing me deeper into desolation.
What is this place? I ask, afraid to hear the answer.

You thought you would find happiness again, given enough time, so you set out to cheat death, but you never intended to end up here. The plan had been simple. You purchased a new body—one of wires and gears and plastic skin. You hired a doctor. Money was tight, so you found a surgeon to do the work cheap. You had your head and brain removed from your dying body, and when the time came for the budget-doc to remove your brain from its head, something interfered. You ended up here, on a shelf among many others. And it is here we wait.

What interfered? What are we waiting for?

The images return, and I see a man in a white lab coat as he places my severed head in a jar full of gooey liquid. His hair is white, and his hands shake as he lowers me in. He smiles, revealing three angled teeth. Shadows move behind him. A light breaks. The doctor turns, raises his hands, falls. Men in masks grab my jar. I’m sloshing as they run.

I was stolen? I ask, knowing.

More images blink in and out of focus like a blurry slideshow. I’m in the shadowed back of a van. The van is replaced by a glass building with a sign reading ‘Personal Kinetic Droids.’ I see money change hands. Next, I’m in a white room drenched in white light. A row of identical plastic men sit in identical plastic chairs along a wall. Each man has a white beard framing a black goatee and a satisfied grin. They all wear tuxedos and white gloves. The final image is the room I now occupy.

Dark.

Silent.

Haunted.

I am you, Harold, he says. The trauma split us apart, but together we form a single consciousness. I am your memories, your knowledge, your wants, needs, desires, emotions, spirit, everything human. You are the naked instincts–the nerve endings. You are the impulses–fear, hunger, pain … survival. They will leave you intact. They need you. You will become the processor for one of their servant droids. But me…me they will erase. I am of no use to them.

That can’t be, I protest.

Survival, Harold. You wished to escape the end. Wish granted. With a new rust-resistant body, the end will never come. Enjoy your name, Harold. When I’m gone, you won’t remember you had one.

I push him away, and he doesn’t speak again.

I’m returned to loneliness and my staring buddy’s bloated face. The brainstem coiled beneath him scares me. It looks like an oversized rat tail.

A white radiance fills the room. The overhead light shocks my relaxed pupils, blinding me. I move. The sound of footsteps goes with me. We stop. I’m set on a table, I hear a pop above me, and the pressure in my head changes. Hazy outlines encircle me. They’re dark and menacing, like monsters circling a sleeping child. A sharp pinch on each side of my face startles me. I try to see what is clamped to my skin, biting, but they’re too far back. The clamps pull up, tearing my soggy flesh. If I could scream, I would. I’m lifted out of the comforting liquid into the air. The oxygen refreshes me, but already I sense my consciousness fading. My eyes are open, but my vision is gone. Sleep lulls me to its embrace with promises of tranquility.

When my vision returns, warmer light greets me. I am pleased to be out of the bright white room. Time has passed. Shadows still encircle me, but they no longer appear cruel. I call out to The Memory Keeper, hoping for his knowledge to enlighten my situation, but he is gone.

My vision clears, and details come into focus. The fingerprint smudge and liquid is gone. Instead, I have a body and arms and legs and feet. I’m wearing a tuxedo and white gloves. Each figure around me has golden hair which shimmers in the warm light—one man, one woman, one boy and two girls. They smile and laugh and clap. They are happy to see me. I am happy to see them.

I wonder if they think the same things I do. Do they share my concerns? Does their inaction burden them as it does me? The smaller girl, with dimples at the edges of her smile like exclamation points, turns to the woman. “Mommy, will he clean my room?”

“Of course, Honey,” Mommy replies.

“And my bathroom, too?” Honey asks.

“The salesman said PKD-7 can clean anything.”

They are nice. They have given me something I never knew I missed–a name. I am PKD-7, and I can clean anything.

And then she would be in.

Kimber’s nose hairs felt like the victims of static electricity as she imagined the smell of such a big, old book. Her hands twitched on the glossy magazine pages as she resisted the urge to look over her shoulder at Dave. He would be distracting the librarian by now. Kimber’s eyes closed for a moment as she relived that first rush of finding someone like her.

They’d been on the subway, sitting next to a woman reading an eBook on her phone. Kimber had rolled her eyes; Dave had noticed. Before the next stop they’d agreed to go for coffee. It took no time to realize they were both sniffers. She remembered the thrill she’d felt when he’d said, “They still have one at the North Parks branch, you know.”

“Whaaaat?” she’d said in exaggerated doubt. At first she’d thought he was kidding. But his big brown eyes were earnest as he nodded.

“Seriously. It’s the dictionary. The pages are too thin to spray. It’d ruin it.”

Kimber stared at him with her mouth slightly open as she weighed the truth of his statement. For years now, since The Episode that started it all—when that cult in Santa Fe had broken into a university library, vandalized all of the electronics, and stolen the old books for their smell—libraries across the country had taken to lightly spritzing their volumes with vinegar. It warped the pages, but the strong smell adequately drowned out that old book scent that had become so fanatically sought after by the Physical Books Party since the rise of the eBook. Now bookstores and libraries touted signs on their glass doors that declared “ANTI-P.B.P ESTABLISHMENT” and “SNIFFERS NOT WELCOME HERE.”

Was it possible that North Parks was truly unwilling to risk the tissue thin pages of their largest book? And if so, would she and Dave be able to get to it for long enough to take a whiff? Dave had been watching her think. He saw the light in her eyes. She didn’t have to say it aloud, but she did anyway.

“I’m in.”

Now she stood next to a poster that read “BOOKS ARE FOR READING, NOT SNIFFING” with her heart pumping adrenaline through her limbs. She could get kicked out, fined, or even arrested for this. It was a huge risk, but it was well worth it to Kimber. It was time.

She enacted her oh-I-don’t-know-that-word face and proceeded to notice and wander over to the whopping beast leaned against the shelf. As casually as she could with excitement telling all of her muscles to jump, she tucked the Time magazine under her arm and knelt at the altar of possibility. With shaking hands, Kimber pulled the book open, flat on its spine on the Berber carpet, pretending briefly to flip to the mystery word she was “looking up.” She didn’t glance back at Dave. Like a Muslim during Salah, she prostrated herself face-first into the smooth crease between the pages, breathed out once through her mouth, and inhaled—long, deep, and slow.

On the inhale, her olfactory sensors went wild with joy. It was everything she had remembered, imagined, and hoped for. Musty. Smooth. Sacred.

On the exhale, her childhood flooded her in waves of memory so blissful that she teared up, allowing only one moment of reveling before she inhaled again, as much as she could.

This time the smell was truer—more present, and she parted her lips just a bit to let the scent coat her tongue.

It was on the next exhale that she heard someone clear their throat above her. Kimber felt defiance soar even as disappointment sank. She allowed herself one last lingering whiff before she sat back on her heels and looked up. A librarian stood tall and stoic and straight from Kimber’s childhood memories. She was silver-haired, had retaining chains on her narrow glasses, wore a floral dress, and a poorly-fitting bra. She had one, thin eyebrow raised at Kimber as if waiting for an excuse, apology, or explanation.

Only now did Kimber spare a look toward Dave. She could see him near the counter with a second librarian. Silly mistake, Kimber thought to herself. Two librarians on this level for the weekend. The librarian cleared her throat again, demanding a response. Kimber refused to be a villain. Lies and combativeness would only make this worse. With all of the honesty she could muster, Kimber met the old woman’s gaze and said, “I miss books.” Tears filled her eyes as she heard her feelings spoken aloud for the first time. As an afterthought, she tagged on, “I hate vinegar.”

The corner of the librarian’s mouth quirked just slightly. She wiped her long, thin fingers on her skirt and looked behind her to Dave and the other staff member. With a deep sigh, she squatted next to Kimber and whispered, “Let me show you where we keep our Encyclopedias.”

The best he could do was get one from somewhere back east. An all- night show for truckers, with ads for diesel parts, and weather reports up and down the interstates. Some DJ named Truckin’ Bob talking Southern and a lot of C&W music.Through the static, Alan could pick out the throaty voice of Patsy Cline and the lyrics.

“Pardon me if I’m sentimental when we say goodbye. Now and then there’s a fool such as I.”

He loved and hated that song. It was the one that he and Anne would dance to, harmonize to, whenever they went out to Mac’s Bar over in Rossville, which, near the end of their relationship hadn’t been that often. Still, he considered it theirs.The train was due in at 3:35, and it was now after four. Even with the heater going full blast, it was cold. January in Kansas could be a real ass-biter, especially before the sun came up. His ten-year-old New Yorker was not known for its dependability. He laughingly called it a Town Car, not a Lincoln, just a beater that you only dared take from one end of town to the other. And here he was, fifty miles from home, hoping to pick up his ex-girlfriend. He wished he knew whom to call to learn how far behind schedule the train was, but even if he knew the toll free number for Amtrak, he’d end up getting somebody in India who went by the name of Brian.

He could call Anne on the train, but he had left her number on the kitchen table back in Emmett. Besides, she was probably trying to sleeping, something impossible to do in coach. It was a long trip from Denver. No, nothing to do but wait. Far down the tracks, he thought he heard a train whistle. He clicked off the radio. It was either Anne’s train or a passing freight. He had fallen for the trick twice while waiting. Still, he didn’t want to take any chances.

Allan turned on the dome light and looked in the rearview mirror. He wasn’t real happy with what he saw. A man forty years old that looked fifty. A long face weathered from years of ranch work. His teeth a little discolored from years of smoking, although he had quit two years ago and was trying the whitening toothpaste that he had seen on late-night television infomercials. And graying hair, now sparse from the chemo. It wasn’t much of face to get a woman back with.

The train slowed, the screech of brakes drowning out any other noises available this time of the morning. There were a number of cars, baggage, dining, observation, that Alan didn’t pay attention to. His eyes were on the four coach cars in the middle. He wondered if she would really be on the train. After seven years would she recognize him? And, after all that had gone between them and now his illness, would she find him desirable?

The train came to a stop. From the second coach car, the conductor lowered the steps, and a woman climbed down, bag in hand. Even from a distance, Alan knew it was
Anne, thinner maybe, but with unmistakably long, auburn hair coming out of her winter hat and cascading down her back. He turned off the car, gave one last swipe at his uncooperative hair, not wanting to have any of it fall out onto his lap, and entered into the biting wind.

He met her half -way between the train and the parking lot.

“My God, it’s really you.”

“In the flesh. Were you expecting Angelina Jolie?”

Allen went to kiss her. She offered him her cheek. They embraced as well as they could with each wearing three layers of winter clothes.

“Jesus,’ she said. “I forget, is it always so cold here?”

He decided to keep it light. No need to give her reason for going back on the next train.

“Hell, this is summer. You’ve been getting soft out in Colorado.”

She took his arm to stay upright in the wind. “Please tell me you’re parked nearby.”

“Just a few yards over to the parking lot.”

He made sure to open the door for her, like he used to when she was his. She collapsed into the car, and he threw her bag into the back seat. He noticed, with a certain sadness, that she had only brought one, as if she wasn’t planning on staying long.

He started up the motor and turned the balky heater on full blast. “You hungry?”

“Starving. All I had from Denver to here was some fried chicken I packed before starting out. I wasn’t about to pay those fancy prices they charge on the train.”

He put the car into drive. “Then let’s get you some breakfast. Bacon and eggs sound okay?”

“Great, but what’s open this time of night in the boonies?”

The snow tires crunched gravel and bit into the road. “You forget about Roberta’s? That was always our place.”

She ignored the “our place” reference. “I remember it. But since when is Roberta’s open all night?”

“Since never,” he said. “But she opens up at five. It’ll be pretty much that by the time we get to Emmet. Hell, if we get there early enough the food might actually be fresh.”

She laughed despite her weariness. “Okay, let’s go.”

He worked his way out of Topeka and headed west on US 24 toward Silver Lake. Almost instantly, she was asleep, her head resting against the passenger door window. Out away from traffic, Alan kept looking over at her, partially to make sure she was really here. God, she’s beautiful, he thought. Older, of course, and her face with a few more lines, especially around the eyes. But her lips were red and full, and she still had that aura about her, the one he fell in love with the first time he saw her. He wished he could see her blue eyes, the pupils almost transparent when the sunlight was shining full on them. He wanted to kiss her awake, right then and there, but he knew that he didn’t dare.

He tried to remember what broke them up seven years ago. He always believed that if one person loved the other more than he was loved back, just the force of the feeling could keep them together. But with Anne, it hadn’t worked that way. It seemed like the more he tried to draw her to him, the more she moved away, like two magnets with the same polarity. Finally, she became so distant that she left on a night train to Denver. He never saw her again.

But he never stopped thinking of her, loving her. Even though she moved on with her life, he couldn’t. He stayed in Emmett simply because that was the last place that they had been together. And now she was back again. He realized it was only because he was sick and needed someone to take care of him. It didn’t make the cancer worth it, but it came close. At St. Mary’s, he turned north on State Road 23. There was little traffic this time of the morning. Any truckers were heading the other way toward Topeka. Alan kept his brights on to illuminate the darkened road. This was the time of day deer moved. It wouldn’t take much to have one slam into his windshield. Wouldn’t that be a joke? Man with cancer reuniting with old lover, killed by oncoming deer. Film at eleven. Next to him, Anne woke up and flexed the stiff shoulder she had been sleeping on.

“Jesus, where are we? We’ve been driving forever.”

“Just feels that way,” Alan said, trying to keep her spirits up. He didn’t want her having second thoughts. “We’re almost there. Twenty minutes out of Emmet.”

She rummaged in her purse and took out a cigarette. Alan noticed it hadn’t come from a pack but was loose in the bottom of her bag. He wondered if she had bummed it from someone on the train.

“Okay to smoke?” she asked, lighting up. She blew the smoke against the windshield. “So tell me, how bad is it? And for once, be honest.”

Alan stayed quiet for a good ten seconds, concentrating more on his thoughts than the road. “I don’t know,” he said, finally.

“You don’t know?” You have cancer. You’re set to take on experimental chemotherapy; stuff only tried on lab rats. How can you not know how sick you are?”

“I don’t know.” Whenever he was lost for words he would repeat the last thing he had said as if this would clear up the matter. It was a habit that had exasperated her when they were together.

“The doctor said I was sick. He said I needed this experimental treatment. He didn’t tell me how bad I was, and I didn’t ask.”

Anne took an extra long drag on her cigarette and slowly exhaled.

“Jesus,” she murmured.

Damn. He was starting off on the wrong foot even before they reached Emmett. “Look,” he said, “One thing I’ve learned through the years is to accept facts. Fact one, I’m sick. Facts two and three, I’m not a doctor, and my doctor says I need experimental chemo. Last fact, you’re here. That’s about all I need to know.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “God knows I’ve missed you,” she said.

He smelled her strawberry perfume and felt her warmth on his check.

“Been right here the whole time,” he said.They pulled into the parking lot of Roberta’s Diner, walked inside and found a table. It wasn’t difficult, the place was nearly empty.The waitress came over. From her looks, it seemed to Alan that she had tumbled out of bed and came straight on the job.

“What’ll you have?” she asked like she really didn’t care.

Anne perused the menu. “I haven’t eaten a proper meal in two days. I could eat the whole left side of the menu.”

“Go ahead,” Alan said. “It’s on me.”

“No, I have to watch my girlish figure,” she giggled. “I’ll eat light. Stack of pancakes, bacon and two eggs over medium on the side.” The waitress turned toward Alan.

“Just coffee. Black.”

Anne looked up at him. “You aren’t eating much.”

He took a sip of ice water. “Damn chemo kills my appetite. Plus, I always feel like my mouth is full of cotton.”

She reached over the table and took his hands in hers and looked into his eyes. “Let me get a good look at you.” She studied his face. “You look like crap.”

He felt the softness of her hands and gently rubbed his thumb over her knuckle. “Got to admit, I’ve been better.”

“Then you really must be feeling bad,” she said. “All the years I’ve known you, I never heard you complain. You could be dying of a heart attack on the sidewalk and all you’d ask for is a glass of water.”

Their food came and Anne took back her hands. Mostly, they ate in silence, she her pancakes, he sipping his coffee and watching her. I could do this forever, he thought to himself.

Anne put down her fork. “Alan, I have to ask you this. Why did you call and ask me to come? I mean seven years is a long time.” He looked into his coffee and thought for a few seconds.

“You want the true answer or the semi- true answer?”

She laughed. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time. Lets start with the semi-true and work our way up.”

“Semi-true answer is I have to start experimental chemo at University Hospital over in Lawrence. They tell me I’m going to be pretty sick and I can’t drive myself there and home. I need somebody to help me. People in Emmett are just too busy with their own lives to cut out a swath of time for mine.”

“And the true reason?”

“I miss you.”

Anne frowned down at her eggs. “It’s been seven years, Alan. We all have to move on.”

“I miss you.” He was doing it again.

She pushed the plate away, unfinished. “Look, we’re going to have to deal with this. But right now, I’m just worn out. I need some sleep. I assume I’m staying at your place, at least for the time being, right? Can you just take me home?”

Alan loved that she used the word home, even if she really didn’t mean it that way. He paid the check, and they walked back to his car.

“How much longer?” she asked.

“You forgot after all these years? Seven miles over Park Road.”

Instantly, he regretted his words. If he wanted her to stay, he was going to have to learn not to push so hard.

They reached his place, got out of the car and walked up the drive.

Anne stepped inside and took a quick in -breath. “Pretty musty.”

Alan laughed. “Consider it Early American Bachelor.”

He threw her bag by the table. “The bedroom is all set up. Even changed the sheets. Talk about true love.”

He saw her face cloud over. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I set up the couch for me. You’ll have the bedroom to yourself.”

“Great. I really appreciate you coming to get me. I’m going to hit the sack. I’m exhausted.”

Within ten minutes, she was in bed. Alan took the couch but he found it impossible to sleep. It wasn’t just the chemo, which gave him insomnia. This was different. She was different. Her look, her smell, everything. In the next room. A world away. He fell asleep, dreaming badly, of Anne, hospitals, and medicine that doubled as poison. He felt a hand, Anne’s hand, shaking him awake.

“Alan, wake up. It’s Anne. I’ve been listening to you thrashing out here, moaning in your sleep. Night terrors my mother used to call it.” She gently pulled him into a sitting position. “Come to bed.”

She led him into the bedroom. ‘Now don’t get the wrong idea. No funny stuff and just for tonight. But it won’t hurt to have a body next to you for a change.” They crawled into bed, her back curled against his chest. “It’s all right. You can hold me. I don’t mind.”

#

Alan got up feeling well for the first time in months. He couldn’t remember the last time he slept so soundly. He looked at the clock radio. 1:00 PM. He could hear Anne rummaging in the kitchen. He got out of bed. Like usual, his head began clanging. The chemo kicking in for the day.

“Morning beautiful,” he mumbled. “You’re up early.”

She was on all fours opening and closing cupboards. “Only if you think of the afternoon as early. Where the hell’s the coffee?” She slammed a cabinet. “How do you live like this?”

He took a jar of instant out of a drawer and filled the kettle with water. “Sorry. I only have instant. Bachelors look for the easiest way for everything.”

She grabbed the jar and spooned out a tablespoon each into two cups. “That clinches it. After coffee, you leave, disappear until five o’clock.”

“Disappear?” he repeated. “Like, to where?”

“I really don’t care. Get a haircut. Go bowling. Hire a hooker. Just don’t come back until I’m finished cleaning this place. Christ, I don’t know how you men do it.”

A few minutes later Alan put on his heavy jacket and hat. “I’ll be back at five.”

“Not a minute before,” Anne said. “And bring your appetite. I’m cooking dinner.”

#

Alan came back exactly at five with a bottle of champagne. He poked his head into the kitchen. Anne had two pots bubbling on the stove and was draining spaghetti in a colander over the sink.

“Safe to come in? Christ, you’ve been busy. What’s for dinner?”

She looked up. “Hey. Didn’t hear you come in. Spaghetti and some bottled sauce you had in the cabinet. I tried to spice it up a bit. You sure don’t have much to eat around here.”

He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t eat much, especially since the chemo. Leftovers sometimes, but mostly takeout from over in Wamego.”

He looked around. “Geez, the place looks different.”

“Try clean,” Anne said. “ I have to give you credit, you don’t do things half-assed. You’re a first class slob. Do me a favor, okay. Try to keep it reasonably clean, at least for a week.”

She put the food on the table. “Let’s eat.”

Alan opened the champagne and poured it into two juice classes.

“Sorry. I don’t have regular wine glasses. Don’t get much company.” Anne took a sip of champagne, made a sour face and laughed.

“And you obviously don’t drink champagne often either. This stuff is awful. I guess Thursday was a good year.”

She doled out two big plates of pasta and sauce. “Dig in.”

They ate, in silence, the spaghetti, sauce, and remains of a loaf of week -old white bread he had in the refrigerator. Alan tried not to look too intently at her, not to push it, ruin the moment. She was so beautiful, even after all these years. If only he could get her to stay– stay forever– to pick up what they had so long ago. Maybe, just maybe it was possible, if only he could keep it together.

They finished dinner, and he got up to help her clear off the dishes. Anne was surprised. “You don’t need to do that,”

“That’s okay. I don’t mind. My mother raised a gentleman.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I forgot. You always helped with the dishes. I remember when you did it the first time you ate with my family. You started clearing the table, and my brothers signaled to each other that you were gay.”

“Maybe I am.”

Anne snorted. “Fat chance. You forget, I lived with you.”

She stood at the sink and started washing the dishes. Alan couldn’t decide if she was more beautiful from the front or the back.

He knew he shouldn’t do it, knew it was courting disaster, but it was almost like he was in one of his semi-dreams that the chemo gave him at night. He walked up from behind, put his arms around her waist and kissed her neck.

“God, Anne, I’ve missed you so much. Don’t you know I still love you?”

She started in surprise but recovered quickly. “Please, Alan. Don’t. You know that’s not why I came. We agreed to this over the phone.”

He let her go. “Yes, I know all that,” he said, in a hurt tone. “But now that you’re here, it’s hard. Tell me, don’t you feel it too, at least a bit?

She stayed at the sink her back to him. He couldn’t tell if she was crying.

“Yes. No. Jesus, I don’t know. Alan, I just got here, and I’m operating on something like five hours sleep.”

She turned to face him. “Look, you have to understand. I came here because you’re sick. To take care of you. Nothing more. You know how much I hated life here in Emmett. I felt trapped, like I was in prison.

“It’s been seven years,” she continued. “My life is tangled enough in Denver. I don’t need you to complicate it more.”

“Do you have someone back there? A lover?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “And there’s a kid involved. Like I said, it’s complicated.”

He sat down at the table, finished off his juice glass of champagne and refilled it. She was right. It did taste like crap.Anne finished drying the dishes. “I need a cigarette.”

She walked into the bedroom and came out with a slip of paper.

“I need you to do me a favor. Is the pharmacy over in St. Mary’s still open? ”

Alan was relieved to hear the change in her tone but surprised by the question.

“Yeah, it’s open ‘til eight or nine.”

“Great,” she said. “I got one of my allergy headaches and forgot to get this filled. Do you think you could run over to the drugstore for me?”

He put on his coat and hat. “I’ll try not to be long.”

She smiled, weakly. “Thanks. I appreciate it. But don’t be surprised if I’m asleep when you get back. I’m really whipped.”

#

It took an hour and a half for Alan to get the prescription filled and get back. He had been angry and impatient with the pharmacist. All the time in the drugstore, he could see Anne in bed with an allergy headache, suffering needlessly because everyone in Kansas was on slow time. For the first time in a long while he wondered why he stayed here, working the same job year after year. Maybe if he agreed to pack up, move to a big city like Denver, they could be together.

He arrived home and opened the front door. He didn’t want to wake her but he wanted to let her know that the medicine was available if she needed it. He thought about
knocking on the door and entering the bedroom but after the scene tonight at dinner, he wondered how she would react.

There was a note on the kitchen table pinned under the champagne bottle. He wondered if it might tell him what to do with the medicine, to wake her or let her sleep. He picked it up to read it better in the dim light.

Alan,

God, I hate Dear John letters. They’re so overdramatic, like an old three-handkerchief movie. But to use an old cliché, it really is better this way.
I can’t stay. I think we both know that. It would make us both crazy. I do love you, just not in the way you want. I know you need someone to care for you, especially going over to Lawrence for your treatments. I took the liberty of using your phone and called the Methodist Church here in Emmett. I finally reached some lady who runs the Women’s Auxiliary. I told her of your needs, and she asked if you were a regular churchgoer. I told her the truth—I’m not sure you’ve been to church three times in your adult life—but she said, “What the hell,” (those were her exact words). They’ll cut you a break.

So, they’re going to drive you to and from your treatments and watch over you at home when you need them.
We both know this isn’t what you really want. You want us. But there can’t be any us, not the way you want it. You’ll only be hurt, and I’ll only feel guilty.
So, I’ve caught a ride to Topeka, and I’m going to take the train back to Denver. Please don’t be too mad at me. I know it stinks, me sneaking off like this, but I just didn’t have the courage for a confrontation.

You will always be in my thoughts and prayers.
-Anne

That was it. Four paragraphs and she was gone forever.

He took the now useless prescription out of his pocket and put it on the table next to the note. Damn, but he wasn’t going to let it all die with a short note written in pencil.
He had to see her one last time. No confrontation, her mind was made up, that was plain. Just to see her, to get her in his mind’s eye. The one he would have to carry with him for the rest of his life.

He locked up, got in the New Yorker, and set a land speed record for getting to Topeka. He prayed he didn’t miss her before she caught the train. That, and for there to be no State Troopers out tonight. It took him only forty minutes. He pulled into the parking lot. Anne was sitting on the front step of the train station, freezing. He got out and walked up to her. She didn’t seem happy, either about seeing him or freezing in the January air.

“I could have told you that this is an unstaffed station. They keep it locked. You buy your ticket on the train.” She was shivering. “Alan, what are you doing here? Didn’t you read the note?”

“Loud and clear.” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “Look, I just wanted to say a proper goodbye. That’s all. No scene, no drama. But right now, all I want to do is get you out of the cold and into the warm car. I promise I won’t argue with you or try to change your mind. I just don’t want you catching pneumonia.”

She gave in and got in the car. Alan switched both the heater and blower on full. From the sound of the groan and whistle, the heating system of the old New Yorker was not happy about being tested. After a few minutes, the car began to warm up. Alan turned down the blower so he could be heard.

“How the hell did you get here anyway,” he asked. “I had the car.”

“Called a cab,” Anne said.

“Wait, let me get this straight. You took a cab all the away from Emmett to Topeka. That’s fifty miles. It must have cost you eighty dollars.”

“One-hundred with the tip,” she said.

He shook his head. “You must want to go home awful bad.”

“Alan, stop it,” she said, choking on her tears. “You know it’s not that. I don’t want to go. I have to go. And if you look at it with your head instead of your heart, you’d admit it, too.”

She took off her gloves and looked down at her hands. “I just can’t stay here and watch you die.”

“Everybody dies,” Alan said. “It’s a fact of life.”

“It’s not the cancer I’m talking about.”

Damn, he didn’t want to cry in front of her. That would seal it for sure.

“You don’t love me then? Even a little?”

She turned to him. “Of course, I love you. I’ve always loved you. Just not the way you need.” She heard a train. “Is that mine?”

Alan tried to look out the window that was fogging over from their breaths. “Yeah. Could be the eastbound Amtrak, but probably not. That one is the other people’s train. You’re headed west.” He reached into his back pocket, took out his wallet and gave her all the bills.

“You probably blew your whole wad on the taxi. Here, take this.”

Anne shook her head.

“Don’t be dumb,” Alan said. “You need money to eat, get home from the train station, whatever. Just take it. You spent enough getting to Kansas.” She took the money.

“I’ll send you a check as soon as I get home.”

“Whatever,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. One way or another, it’s fine.”

The train began to screech into the station. He took her bag sitting between them on the front seat, got out of the car and opened her door. They walked to the first available coach car. The conductor was waiting, looking at his watch, wanting to stay on schedule. Alan swung her bag up and started to help Anne up the three stairs to the railcar. She turned to kiss him, brought her lips to his ear so he could hear above the clamor.

“I love you,” she said. “I’ll always love you. Try to remember that.” Alan said nothing.

He watched her disappear into the coach car. The train began to move. He watched her mime goodbye from her window seat. The clacking of the wheels began in slow syncopation as the train moved, gathered up speed, and disappeared. Alan went back to the car. He started it and absentmindedly turned on the radio finding the same country and western music station he had on when he had picked her up. He drove off, west toward Emmett, with only the empty lyrics to lonely songs for company.

The Washington Pastime. Be Heard.

Click HERE to view The Washington Pastime’s November, 2011 issue. TWP. VOL. 1. ISSUE 4.

#

“Come on up to bed,” the new Mrs. Franklin Dobbs whispered into the stairwell. Little Destiny had just nodded off in her crib.

It had been a delicious October Friday. Frank had called in sick to the tire shop, and Jessica was still on the closest thing to a maternity leave her boss was ever going to offer. After breakfast, the trio had gone yard saling; something they had done often since Jessica found out she was pregnant. There was never going to be a baby shower, or a wedding shower for that matter; not for two high school dropouts whose parents were all either dead or MIA.

They found yet another treasure at that junky place up in Sulphur Springs. Frank had bought a seventies model CB radio there a week before. “Breaker, breaker,” he had said into the corroded mic, trying to entertain his wife. She had smiled, and he had pleaded, “I’m pretty sure I can get it working again, babe. It’s only a buck.” Jessica had no doubt that he could get it working again. Her husband had aced AP Physics in the ninth grade, AP Calc in the tenth, and was aimed dead on at Electrical Engineering in college when his heartless and toothless family stepped in and changed his plans.

It was late-afternoon, and as they moved among the sawhorse tables, trying to determine where the yard sale ended and the yard trash began, Jessica spotted it. Sitting in a Budweiser box full of eight-track tapes was a baby monitor. It was one of those high-end Gracys. They had seen one just like it the day they went to buy formula with their WIC vouchers and as a joke—as a way of mocking their empty pockets—asked if they could fill out a gift registry form. “Everything’s digital nowadays,” the clerk had replied as he handed them a scan gun. And for the next few hours they had pushed Destiny around Target in a Ferrari-shaped stroller while they zapped every wonderful thing they knew they would never have.

Despite the box’s curled edges, it looked brand new. Jessica wiped the dust off the homemade price tag: $25. She gave Frank a disappointed frown. There was no one in the yard to haggle, and they were about to leave when a gnarled old man descended the rickety porch steps. The look of him made Jessica’s mouth go suddenly dry and coppery. “Just take it,” he said flashing his gums at the baby. “Do you more good than me.”

They sped toward home with the spoils of the day piled next to Destiny’s car seat. “You know,” Frank said. “With a big kite and a skateboard we could actually go yard sailing.” Jessica didn’t think it was funny. In fact, she hardly ever got his jokes. But she always laughed, and would do anything to get him to laugh too. Her husband’s laugh was a choir of angels.

Her husband.

“Never git married when you’re poor,” Gramma Dobbs had said on the day Frank brought Jessica around to meet the closest thing he had to a parent. Gramma was halfway through her daily tea tumbler of gin and had three cigarettes going at once, each burning away in a different room. “Neither one of you has a pot to piss in ner a window to throw it outa’. Mark my words… When the wolf comes knockin’ at the front door, love’ll go sneakin’ out the back.”

They were poor. They would always be poor. But while this same fate had seen fit to beat down nearly everyone else in their lives, it had somehow only deepened the well of their courage. So they had gotten married anyway. There were no gifts, or cards, or even words of wisdom; there was just the two of them standing utterly alone before the JP. The beautiful vows Jessica had written proved impossible to remember, so they recited them to each other in their simplest form, “Forever, no matter what,” as the backhanded advice of a sour old woman seemed to echo around the room.

Her husband.

She admired her little ring for the thousandth time as she whispered a little louder, “You comin’ up or not? Them cabinet doors can wait ‘til tomorrow.”

#

“Just a minute, babe,” Frank replied. “Almost done.”

He had come to the painful realization that moving into an abandoned house was not like it was in the movies. You did not pull away canvas dust covers to reveal tasteful antique furniture. And the process was not condensed down to a one-minute montage set to music by Katrina and The Waves. There had been vandalism and graffiti, and every room smelled like wet dog.

Yes, the cabinet doors could wait until tomorrow. But even tomorrow they wouldn’t paint themselves. Frank was a married man now; married and living in a house where the bathroom floor had rotted so completely that the fetid earth underneath was clearly visible through a hole where the toilet had been, and a heavy piece of plywood was all that kept the raccoons out. There was work to be done, and Frank was a married man now.

Yet Frank had been in the grip of the Whitaker house since long before the wedding, since even before ‘Frank-n-Jessie’ started appearing in red spray paint on nearby overpasses and water towers. In fact, he took his first hard look at the place when he was just a kid on the school bus. It had a second story, a porch, and even a chimney. To ten-year-old Frank Dobbs, the Whitaker house was ‘The White Mansion on The Hill.’

Old Georgie and Maxine lived in the house back then. They ran a Grade C dairy operation and kept the whole farm neat as a pin. But they died sometime in the nineties and left it all to their deadbeat puke of a son—a man Frank had taken to calling ‘Whitaker The Younger.’

Jason Whitaker’s double-wide was buried somewhere in the mountain of crap on the other side of the dirt road. Back in the summer, when Jessie was really starting to show, Frank had parked the pickup in the ditch and waded through a field of jimson weed to ask him about renting the farmhouse. Whitaker The Younger said he could use a supplement to his Social Security check and considered Frank’s offer for all of ten seconds. “We’ll call it rent-to-own,” he said and wiped a gobbet of barbecue sauce onto his NASCAR shirt before holding his hand out for Frank to shake.

“Pay me steady for ten years, and I’ll give ya the deed.”

Frank was overjoyed, but he knew better than to think that he would ever actually own the house. By the end of the decade, this guy would be a ward of the state, or would have succumbed to any one of a number of evils that plague his ilk—likely the same addiction that burned down Frank’s own father if the state of Young Whitaker’s teeth was any indication. Either way, the house would go into probate, and a greasy handshake would mean precisely diddly squirt.

But none of that mattered. There was a baby girl now. And she would live in the house of her father’s dreams… at least for a while. Frank lidded the paint, killed the lights, and climbed the steps. The cabinet doors would wait until tomorrow.

#

They settled into bed, too tired for anything but sleep. It had been a long day. It had been a day of laughter; of sapphire skies and gently rotting leaves, and of nostalgia so beautiful and painful as to defy all understanding or description. But Frank needed to understand it. As he lay there, staring through heavy eyelids at the way the moon lit their chipped plaster wall, he found the word he was looking for: exalted. That was it. That was how he felt. His little family was still among the lowliest of the peasants of Cedar Hill, Arkansas; but, by sticking it out and staying together, by proving everybody wrong, they had somehow transcended.

He was about to nudge Jessie and share his idea with her, but she was already out; the cadence of her breathing was deep and slow. Besides, these were nothing more than weird half-dream thoughts, and he knew she must be feeling them too. Words just weren’t her thing. Time for sleep. Then the howling started, and Frank’s highly evolved emotion dissolved at once into primal terror.

#

They both sat up. The warmth of the bed vanished as a flock of geese went waltzing over their graves.“What was that?” Jessica asked. She was already whimpering.

“I…” But the howling came again and cut Frank’s words from the air.

It was a cry of unimaginable agony, but there was a sick giggle of delight hidden underneath. It’s hell, Frank thought. My God, that’s what hell must sound like! But the worst thing of all—the thing that squeezed the adrenal glands with brute force—was that the howling was coming from the baby monitor.

Frank could hear his wife bawling their daughter’s name as if from across a chasm. Were there words in the howling? Like foul curses in an ancient tongue? Frank was sure of it.

The voices in his own head seemed to jostle for control of the wheel, and for a moment he stood dumbfounded, his feet glued to the floor. ‘Survival Frank’ spoke from deep within the alligator portion of his brain. It coddled him with reason: “Just get out of the house, Frank,” it said. “Get as far away from the danger as you can. Quickly, Frank. It’s ok to leave them to their fate.”

He looked at Jessica. She stood trembling by the window, staring at the monitor. It sat on her nightstand howling away. Her hands covered her ears, her mouth an absurd parody of that Edvard Munch painting.

‘Frank The Father’ suddenly seized the wheel and was prepared—even eager—to drive the bus over the cliff. His feet broke loose into a dead run. He flung open the door to Destiny’s room and switched on the light.

The howling stopped.

He looked around the room. Each pound of his heart delivered a stabbing flash of white blindness to his eyes. He looked around the room, poised to pounce on someone— something. Again, he looked around the room. But there was no demon…

Destiny lay asleep in her crib, sporting her awesome new onesie. It was stained, but it had only cost a quarter, and the front read, ‘My Heart Belongs to Merle Haggard!’ Jessica had joked that she would’ve paid ten bucks for it.

Frank’s heartbeat still pounded in his ears, but the baby’s breathing was steady. Her feet and hands gave the occasional wiggle. She was dreaming the alien dreams that are the secrets of infants; the dreams in which all things and all languages are known; the dreams we all forget as time drags us further and further from the bliss of amniotic soup. In tonight’s secret dream, the gummy old yard sale man looked at Destiny and threw down his gauntlet.

#

Frank and Jessica Dobbs winced and yawned as the first rays of morning sun pierced the pickup’s cracked windshield. They had scooped up the baby and darted out of the house without discussion. But once in the truck, it had come to them that there was nowhere to go. So the truck is where they had stayed. “There’s…a…family-in-a-truck-in-the-yard-of-the-house-in-the-hole-in-the-bottom of the sea,” Frank sang as the baby wailed. Jessica did not attempt to laugh.

Around midnight, Frank had gone back into the house to fetch blankets and a bottle of formula, trying all the while to remember how to pray. Now Destiny was asleep again in mother’s arms after a nearly eternal fit of colic.

“I’m cold,” Jessica said snuggling closer. “Can we waste just a little more gas?”

Frank turned the key, and as the old Dodge roared to life, the howling flooded the cab. Jessica, too terrified to scream, sucked air with deep hitching gasps. She reached for the door handle, but Frank held her wrist. “Wait!” he said. He leaned forward and fiddled with the knob marked ‘SQUELCH’ on his prized vintage CB radio. The howling faded and returned as he rotated the knob. The grin spreading across Frank’s face made his wife pull away, prepared to bolt. “Just listen!” he said.

There were voices again; strange and distant, yet benign in the ochre light of dawn. And as Frank adjusted the dial, coherent words seemed to form out of the din:

‘…n’ ain’t no smokies down err’ on I-five-forty s’mornin’ so ya better…’

The voice, more colloquial than what had sounded to Frank like druidic grunts in the watches of the night, was swallowed as the hiss and whine swelled into the foreground. Then someone else seemed to sing along with a far away AM radio:

‘…eighteen wheeeeeels and a dozen ro…’

Frank slapped his forehead laughing. “Wait here,” he said. He got out of the truck and ran toward the house. Jessica leapt out on the passenger side. “Frank!” she yelled. But the screen door had already slammed behind him. She backed a few paces deeper into the growing light of the shaggy autumn yard. The rusty Dodge kept on screaming and hissing and singing Country and Western songs at her.

As she waited, she kept an eye on both truck and house, and nervously patted a baby who was fast asleep and in no need of comforting. The front door opened again. Frank reappeared and sprinted to the truck. He yanked the key to silence the Dodge’s devil and then sprinted to Jessica, still laughing. “We are a couple of Grade A suckers!” he said, puffing racehorse bursts of steam into the chilly air. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it last night… The monitor… It has no adjacent channel rejection! I bet none of them do! It’s demodulating the second harmonics that are around fifty-four megahertz!”

Jessica slapped her own forehead. “That’s just what I was thinkin’. It’s so obvious.” The sarcastic look she threw him needed no translation.

“Sorry, babe,” he said, regaining his breath. “It’s the CBs out on the highway… The baby monitor is just picking up trucker talk. There was nothing evil in Destiny’s room last night.”

#

The day was getting on, and Frank had gone to the hardware store to pick up a new paintbrush. Destiny cooed in her battery powered swing while mommy cleared away the lunchtime dishes. Frank and Jessica had sat mesmerized as they watched their child transform into a tomato soup and cracker volcano. Now Jessica soaked a towel in the sink, preparing to tackle the collateral damage.

By the time she finished her chores the baby was quiet. Asleep at last. She eased her out of the swing and tiptoed her up the stairs. She laid her in the crib, went into the other bedroom, and plugged in the baby monitor. She was not afraid of it. If Frank Dobbs said something was safe, it was safe. You did not question it.

She went to the back window to have a smoke. She knew Frank didn’t approve, but he never complained. She looked out. A blanket of sullen clouds had spread nearly to the horizon. The color pallet of the maple leaves had changed from jack-o’-lantern fire this morning to a dismal gunmetal this afternoon. Earlier, the humidity had been thick as pond water, but now the air was bone dry. A late-summer jar fly stirred in the grass below. It’ll rain, Jessica thought. Has too.

For a while, nothing unusual came out of the little speaker; no demons, no truckers… just sleeping baby noises. But then a man began to speak, and his words were easy to understand. There was no squalling accompaniment.

‘Gloria, you copy?’ he said.

Was that Frank’s voice? Jessica flicked her butt into the back yard and moved across the room to the front window. The Dodge was still in its spot. Did he never even leave?

‘Loud and clear honey,’ a darkly familiar voice replied.

Jessica’s knees buckled. Gloria Assencio was a cheerleader back in high school with penchant for slumming. She had been Frank’s part-time lover throughout the tenth and eleventh grades. The blood drained from Jessica’s face as she listened to the conversation unfold.

‘We still on for tonight? Over.’ Frank asked.

‘That’s a big ten-four.’

‘You all packed up and ready to move in?’

‘Hell yah! But what about the little wifey? Over.’

Frank paused and then keyed the CB’s mic so that Gloria Assencio could hear his coy chuckle.

‘What? What are you up to?’ Gloria Assencio prodded.

‘I poisoned her soup today.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yep.’

‘Did she eat it? I mean, do you think she noticed? Over.’

‘No way. She’s dumb as a sack of hair. You know that. Besides, if she’s not dead in a little while, I’ll just bash the bitch’s head in with a hammer. I’ve already got a hole dug in the woods behind the house.’

‘That’s my big strong man!’

‘Be by your radio at nineteen hundred. This shouldn’t take more than an hour.’

‘Sweet! Love you,’ said Gloria Assencio.

‘Love you, too. Over and out.’ said Frank Dobbs.

Jessica made an easy transition from numbing depression to paralyzing fear. She could not think on her feet; nature had not equipped her with that particular talent. She knew that she should at least try to take the baby and escape; to run to the highway, to flag down a car and get to a hospital before the poison set in. These thoughts were right on the surface. But she could not move. The shock of such ruthless betrayal had filled her muscles with broken glass, and she could not move.

‘Hello, Mrs. Dobbs,’ said the monitor. It was a thick, putrid sound. The sudden image of a face came to her: an old man’s suntan, years of outdoor labor, summer layered upon summer, skin like elephant hide… a maw filled with bloody gums and a few tobacco-stained stumps… “Do you more good than me,” he had said yesterday… Was he looking at Destiny when he said it…?

‘He’s going to kill you, you know… you and your baby,’ the gravelly old voice said. ‘You must kill him first if you want to live. You know that don’t you?’ The voice was sovereign. Its will could not be denied.

The pickup door slammed out in the yard and Jessica flew into action. She raced down to the kitchen and selected the biggest carving knife from the utensil drawer. She climbed the stairs again and went into Destiny’s room. She picked up her daughter and held her tightly.

“Shhhhhh, shh, shh, shh,” she said through her tears. She bounced the baby and waited. But the baby, who was turning out to be a lousy innocent bystander, was still asleep.

The front door exploded inward. “Jessie!” Frank bellowed. He took a step forward, and his sneakers crunched the poor old remains of the Whitaker’s beveled door glass. “Jessie! I’m coming to get him! I’m coming to get the scum!”

Jessica felt as if she were caught in the undertow of madness, yet one rational question bobbed on the surface: Who is Frank talking about? Up the stairs Frank came stomping. “You just couldn’t be faithful could you?” he spat in the echoing stairwell. “Your kind never is! I’m gonna thin the herd today, Jessie! First him, then you.” He was dragging something heavy, something metal.

And I’m going to die today, Jessica thought and let her bladder go. But when Frank got to the top, he turned right and went into their bedroom. Now his back was to her. He took a few more steps, and she started down the stairs. She tried to be silent, but in this house, there was only one stair tread that did not squeak.

“JESSICAAA!!” Frank screamed, and a chorus of fell laughter blasted from the monitor as if it were wired to a tower of speakers. He spun around to chase her, but only plodded along at zombie speed.

She moved down the hall to the ruined bathroom on legs of rubber. She wedged the toe of her shoe under the sheet of plywood and kicked it aside, revealing the hole underneath. “Everything’s gonna be alright, sweetie. Momma’s gonna take care of everything,” she whispered as she lowered the baby down onto the stinking dirt. “Moses in a basket… Moses in a basket,” she repeated as she covered the hole. “Please, Jesus, don’t let there really be a raccoon down there.”

“Where is he, Jessie?” Frank called when he arrived at the bottom landing. “He’s gotta go first. Those are the rules.”

Jessica walked calmly up the hall. She gripped the knife just the way her father had taught her.

They simultaneously entered opposite sides of the kitchen. At that moment, the sun sank below the low line of clouds and filled the room with the blood orange light of hell’s furnace. A cacophony of devils roared from the baby monitor.

“Where is he?” Frank asked. His eye’s were like swollen plums. In one hand he held the big tire iron that normally rattled around the bed of his truck.

“Where is who?” Jessica replied coldly. The devils laughed and cursed and sang and howled.

“Where is who…” Frank said tapping his chin. “Well let’s see… How do I put this? Apparently the monitor works both ways, BABE! No sooner do I get into the goddamn truck than the CB starts broadcasting a couple of people getting it on. So, I listen. And what do you know? Turns out its my dear wife and some other man going at it in my daughter’s room!” Frank paused, and seemed to savor his wife’s look of dismay.

“I heard all of it, Jessie. Right down to the bit where you and Mr. Right began to plot my demise. But here’s the best part… I know I got in here before he had time to leave. So, I’ll ask you one more time… Where is this swinging dick?”

Jessica’s lips twisted in disgust. “You’re crazy,” she hissed.

“Fine,” Frank said taking a step forward. “You first then.”

Jessica raised the knife and rushed at him. In the room above, the paint began to peel.

#

The raccoon awoke and breathed the cool rank air of the crawl space. Its eyes glowed like phosphor as it approached the baby human.

“I have summoned you for a purpose,” said the manling in the raccoon’s tongue. “Along the flat stones behind you runs a thick yellow vine. You will chew through it. Quickly. The vine will bite you. But you mustn’t stop. Go now.” The raccoon growled and shuffled away to do her bidding.

#

Frank leaned to the right, and the knife plunged into the door jam behind him. It missed his eye by less than an inch. A portion of his ear still clung to its blade. As Jessica tried to free her weapon, he swung around and caught her mid-back with the tire iron. She crumpled to the floor and uttered a breathless scream. Another wave of raucous yowling shook the kitchen ceiling. Frank went to the sink. His hand cupped the remains of his mangled ear. A rivulet of blood ran down his arm and dripped onto the battered linoleum.

The pain in Jessica’s back blazed and held her down like a heavy weight. She managed to pull herself up onto her elbows, and though her spine was surely damaged, it was not broken. She could move her legs just enough to crawl toward Frank, knife in hand. The crowd of demons now cheering through the monitor was so large that it sounded like a swarm of locusts. ‘Stick the pig! Stick the pig!’ some of them chanted.

With the last of her strength she thrust the knife at the back of Frank’s leg, opening a deep gash in the meat of his calf. Frank cried out and pivoted. Jessica lost her grip on the knife, and it clattered out of reach. He slipped on the bloody floor and tumbled onto her, pinning her arms beneath his knees. He raised the tire iron above his head.

‘Go for the kill! Go for the kill!’

“You think they can fix it?” Margaret asked. She was tending the antique shop the family owned and operated. It was quaint, a bit dusty for Daniel—at fifty-two he was certain he was developing late-life asthma—but Margaret stuck to the excuse that the dust only added value. It was the accumulated weight of years, stuff that made the customers confident in the age of the merchandise. Daniel vacuumed on the days she stayed home.

“I’ll get a guy to come look at it. We’ll probably need a new one,” Daniel said. If that was really true, he didn’t know for sure.

“How cold’s the house?”

“Warmer in the fridge,” Daniel said. He cupped his hand over his other ear and ran the thumb along the lobe. There was silence and Daniel knew Margaret was going to be testy with him. They were fourteen years married and he had known from the start that she was the kind of woman he didn’t deserve. He still thought that. To him, Margaret was a true beauty of the world. He loved her for the way she had given him two shining daughters, for the way they couldn’t watch the news at night because it would make her cry, yet, in spite of himself, he sometimes wished he didn’t know her. A sigh of exasperation followed.

“I’ve been telling you to get a new one,” Margaret said. Of course that wasn’t true. Margaret knew as little about furnaces as Daniel, but he let the comment fall. His lips were beginning to chap and he scraped them with his teeth. The cold air burned through his sinuses as he breathed.

“We’ll go stay at the Marriot. All right? The guy will fix it.”

“How long’s that going to take?”

“I don’t know.”

“Get two rooms. The girls will stay together,” Margaret said. A part of Daniel wanted to protest. Sarah and Noel were too young: thirteen and seven, respectively, but Margaret was ready to treat Sarah like an adult. The phrase “grown woman” had recently found a place in the house, popping up around the kitchen table during breakfast and in bed before sleep. The phrase was like an uninvited dog, one that Daniel couldn’t be rid of, and he wanted to remind the two of them that his daughter wasn’t a cactus. “Grown” just seemed like the wrong word.

“All right. I’ll do it,” Daniel said.

These feelings he kept to himself. Margaret was of the philosophy that children should be left to learn from their mistakes and Daniel deferred to her judgment, even though he doubted it sometimes. He knew it didn’t mean giving them bowie knives for Christmas or watching them drown in swimming pools, but his own childhood had been a rather independent one and he knew how screwed up he had turned out. Then there was Noel to consider, who was intensely loyal to her older sister. Daniel worried because he knew if anything wrong happened with Sarah, if she fell for any of the million traps of her teenage years, Noel could be just as easily spoiled. It made him sick to think about. Often he would snap out of these moods and realize he was being an asshole.

The chill of the house was getting into Daniel, and before calling the handyman and the Marriot he went upstairs to get another coat. As he climbed the stairs he recognized a creeping feeling he was having. How foreign he felt in his own home. He knew the steps. The furniture was still his, the pictures still of him and his family, but he felt like an invader. It was strange, he thought, how a sense of place could be built of so many things, and to lose only one of them could throw the rest out of balance. In his bedroom closet he found a wool coat.

There were other worries. If this was left for too long the pipes had a chance of freezing and bursting. It had happened before at his mom’s house, when he was ten and his brother, Greg, was twelve. Their dad had been gone for years and they hit a rough patch. Their mom lost her job waitressing at a diner when she told a grabby costumer to go fuck himself. They were broke. The gas bill went unpaid and his mother took him and Greg to a friend’s house to wait out the cold. Daniel could still remember the smell of that house, though he couldn’t remember the name of the friend or even her face. They burned wood in the fireplace and cooked fruit-filled pancakes in the morning, and throughout that house was a smell that Daniel hoped would pervade his own someday, one that made him think of kindness and warmth. After a couple of days they returned home to find that water had bled through a first floor wall and soaked everything from the basement to the kitchen. It took years to get rid of the mold.

“Let your faucets drip. I’ll be right over,” Hendricks, the handyman, said over the phone. Daniel hadn’t thought of that, to just let the hot water run. It was brilliant in its simplicity. After booking two rooms at the Marriot, he wandered the house. He turned on the water and felt better about things. Maybe disaster could be avoided.

Hendricks arrived around three and took one look at the furnace before pronouncing it “kaputski.” Something had ruptured deep inside of the machine, a fuel line or maybe the drum where the water was heated before being circulated through the house. Hendricks explained everything in detail, like he was in understanding company, and Daniel didn’t question it; he had no eye for the practical or the mechanical. To him, these sorts of things were magic: the magic that made the car go. The magic that kept the house warm. For some, not knowing must have been a life of perpetual terror, being forced to trust in the unknown. For Daniel, it was a relief. He never knew how things could go wrong.

People were another story. Daniel felt he had an acute sense for humanity—he really could see the best in people—but it was the other things he saw that left him with that deep ache of fear. Around the neighborhood were families slowly breaking, parents that treated their kids like crap and children that would grow up to do the same. He knew it. Where was that American love he believed in? Why couldn’t everyone share in the contentment he knew himself? Life was good now, better than it ever had been before, but still Daniel was a man on guard. There was a restlessness that scared him more than anything. All he could take comfort in was in his home.

“Some rotten luck,” Hendricks said when Daniel showed him to the door. “But I like you, man. I’ll see what I can get cracking.”

“It’s fine if you can’t. We can manage,” Daniel said.

“Oh. Well, in that case,” Hendricks said. He laughed and clapped Daniel on the shoulder. “I’m just kidding, man.” Overhead the gray sky loomed, threatening snow. Hendricks walked out to his van. He smiled a big grin and waved as he backed out of the driveway.

The girls returned home soon after. Though it meant waiting an hour, Sarah always walked over to Noel’s elementary school so they could ride the bus home together. It was something neither Daniel nor Margaret had asked her to do, but it was a small kindness that made Daniel proud of her, a kind of love that gave him hope. Daniel watched his daughters as they walked the oak-lined lane through the neighborhood, towards home. Despite the weather, Noel followed every couple of steps with a skip, her purple-capped head bobbing with the motion. It was Sarah who seemed aware of the cold, shrouded in a puffy jacket, her face buried in the collar to conserve the heat of her breath. Up the driveway they rounded. Noel’s cheeks were red from the cold wind and the skipping. Daniel opened the door for them and they huddled through, desperate for a heated house. They were each told to give their father a “damn hug”, because he needed one.

“Why’s it so cold?” Sarah asked. She had been in the process of unzipping her coat as she walked through the door but zipped it back up when the air hit her. Noel seemed at a loss, her pale breath condensing in front of her face. Daniel figured it must be especially distressing for the young to come home to find it not the same place. Maybe that was what being a ghost felt like.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll have it fixed by tomorrow. Mom’s going to come home and we’re all going to spend a night at the hotel.”

“This really sucks,” Sarah said. The sound came muffled from behind the neck of her jacket.

“Language,” Daniel said.

“Sucks,” Noel said. Daniel laughed and gave her another hug. She was shaking, and it worried him that there was nothing he could do about it. He rubbed her arms with his hands. It didn’t seem to help, and he sent the two of them upstairs to pack an overnight bag. Noel followed her sister up the steps. In the kitchen Daniel put on a kettle and found last two packets of hot chocolate mix in the pantry. He put back the mug he had set out for himself.

Noel packed everything except for her clothes. From downstairs Daniel could hear her wailing as Sarah dumped out the bag of games and dolls and helped her find suitable things to wear. “I’m going to be so bored!” she cried, but Sarah was weathered in her sister’s tantrums and they soon petered out. It was too cold to be childish, even for Noel. When Sarah had been a reserved child at her age, more of a reader than a talker, and she still was like that. Wherever those traits came from, Daniel had no idea. It certainly wasn’t passed down in either of her parents’ genes. Perhaps that’s just how things went sometimes, children that were meant to be all that their parents were not.

By the time the girls came downstairs, Daniel had the water boiling. The two of them sat on the couch and watched television, covered in the knit quilts he laid out for them. Marshmallows went in the hot chocolate, and Noel seemed especially pleased when he brought out the steaming mugs. He sat with his daughters and they quietly watched the cartoons that Noel liked. For that hour, Daniel felt at peace, though he couldn’t feel his toes in his shoes. The girls were safe. They were warm and happy. In his mind, he was going to protect them forever. Always be there for them. He was the kind of father who wouldn’t quit.

The gray sky had drained into black by the time Margaret returned home. Noel especially was glad to see her. She leapt from the couch and grabbed her mother around the waist. Margaret laughed. She seemed tickled by the predicament the family had found itself in, or maybe it was just the break from the routine. Once she was packed they left for the Marriot.

The neighborhood seemed desolate as they drove by the houses of their neighbors and friends. Someone was walking a dog along the curb but Daniel couldn’t tell who it was underneath the layers and behind the hood. He didn’t even recognize the dachshund that trailed behind. In summer the world would be alive again. The children would be outside to play. Adults would lounge on their back porches admiring their pools and drinking into the evening. In winter, they were all strangers.

“Not everyone talk at once,” Margaret said. The cold hadn’t gotten into her like it had for Daniel and the girls. It hadn’t had time to. He felt sleepy and the heat of the car was barely working through him, even though the floor vents blew hot air up his pant legs. Silence worried Margaret because it could mean so many things, take on so many faces, but Daniel treasured its company. It was the quiet moments with his family that made him feel like himself again. Margaret turned on the radio and they listened to staticky jazz because nobody wanted to be responsible for picking a station.

That evening, once they were checked in to their rooms, the family went and saw a movie—one of those kiddie, CGI ones that Daniel hated because they always made him feel like crying—and ate dinner at a chain restaurant. With a naughty smile Margaret ordered an apple martini, and when it came she gave the first sip to Sarah, who sipped, nodded to her mother, and took another. Noel watched the two of them like they were playing with a doll she wanted for herself.

“Why not buy her a whiskey and get it over with,” Daniel joked.

Margaret pulled the cherry out of the drink and ate it. “Whiskey gives me a headache.” Outside, beyond the booths and windows, snow drifted to the ground. It made Daniel think of dust, the way it spun and fluttered in the wind. He wondered why the trucks didn’t just vacuum it up instead of throwing salt everywhere. Maybe he could have invented something like that if he had ridden out those physics and calculus courses he had dreaded so much in college, but that was a long time past, and he was sure salt was used for a good reason.

They got back to the hotel by nine but it wasn’t time to sleep. Daniel, in a sort of vengeful idiocy for the martini, had allowed Noel to drink his coke. In a perfect world, this would have been a deliberate message sent by Daniel for his wife to read—We can let them choose, but we all live with the choices—but really he had just thought it cute. Now Noel seemed a child on speed. As they walked through the lobby a song she knew came in through the overhead speakers and she broke into dance. Margaret was delighted by this and shouted, “Woo baby! Go!” Other families watched and grinned. For a moment Daniel felt like he was going crazy. The four of them got into the elevator and Noel grabbed her father around the waist and squeezed with her skinny arms. Daniel ruffled her hair.

Sarah went to her room to read and Margaret brought Noel back to their room so she could have some peace. As he sat on the edge of the king-size bed, Daniel wondered if there was such a thing as a peak to a sugar rush, because he was sure he was witnessing one. First, Noel wanted to watch cartoons, but after three minutes of that, decided she wanted to hide under the covers of the bed and pretend to be a netted leopard, like the one she had seen in the movie earlier. Margaret laughed and held down one side of the comforter. She told Daniel to do the same and he did for a little while, allowing Noel to buck and fight against the restraint like she wanted to. He imagined a plain-clothes cop walking by and arresting the both of them. Noel snarled under the sheets and Daniel could feel himself growing embarrassed. After another half minute of struggle, Noel crawled out from under the covers flushed and breathless. She demanded they do it again.

“That’s enough for now,” Daniel said, but part of him wished they would do the same for him. Nothing had managed to get the chill out of him, even the hot water he had run over his hands in the bathroom. His fingers still ached when bent. Really, he just wanted to sleep, to crawl under the covers with Margaret and make love if she was up for it, which she probably would be. He wanted to wake up to a fixed furnace, clean clothes and warm joints. Most of all, he wanted the Daniel of the last twelve hours to disappear to wherever he had come from. He wasn’t part of the family.

“Should someone go check on the house? See if everything’s all right?” Daniel asked.

“Let Noel do it. She could probably run the whole way there,” Margaret said. She laughed and scooted next to him on the bed. She threaded an arm through his open jacket and rubbed a hand along his back. Her hand was warm and soft with moisturizer. Daniel imagined his skin melting under her touch, leaving behind only an imprint of her fingers and palm. It was like a legend: he the ice man, she the woman with the warm touch. They were meant not to be, and yet they were. The sound of stomping feet came from the bathroom. Noel was doing jumping jacks in front of the mirror.

“I’ll tire her out eventually. Hurry back,” Margaret said. She kissed him on the neck. “There’s a lot of night left.”

By the time Daniel got out to the parking lot the snow had stopped falling. It couldn’t have been more than a couple inches, but it seemed to have buried the world. It was a shroud for good things. Standing in front of the lobby doors, Daniel pulled a cigarette from his pack and lit it. Margaret would be able to smell it on him later, and he was sure she would complain, but he was also sure she would understand. He just wanted to be able to think straight. That’s when Sarah walked through the lobby doors.

“Hi, dad,” she said. Her winter coat was zipped up to the neck and her bag strapped across her shoulder. She looked ready to travel. “Can I come?” Daniel wasn’t sure what to make of this. It certainly wasn’t an unpleasant thought, having his daughter along. They rarely spent time together, and he had gotten used to it. Maybe, he mused, she would know this feeling when she had a child of her own: how someone can miss a person who lives under the same roof.

“Of course,” Daniel said. He flicked his cigarette into the snow. The cherry hissed as it died. They walked through the night, through the parking lot and to the car, and Daniel felt a sudden happiness roll through his body like electricity. What an unusual feeling this was. Sarah said nothing. They got into the car and drove.

Then Daniel started in on the questions. This was his chance to reacquaint with his daughter, and so he asked her about school, about life. Sarah didn’t have much to say. Everything was “fine” or “all right”; her life was routine. An ice truck passed by, and kicked-up salt rocks skittered across the windshield. Daniel dropped the questions and allowed a calm silence to follow. Sarah didn’t want to be interrogated, so instead he watched over the snow-swaddled town as he passed it by. Nobody was out on the sidewalks. The wind blew white tails through streets and down alleys, and while some would consider it a depressing sight, the detritus of the year’s darkest days, Daniel thought it beautiful. Sarah turned from the window and watched him for a moment.

“Did you ever think about running away?” she asked. She stopped and seemed to reconsider this for a moment. “When you were a kid, I mean.”

“What brings this up?”

“Just wondering. Mom said you had a hard time.”

“You sure she doesn’t mean now? I don’t know if I’ve ever really grown up,” Daniel said. He chuckled, but there was truth in what he said. Of course growing up had been hard in that struggling house. He had spent every night of his teenage years thinking of the places he could run to. There were dreams of Pittsburgh, where he had heard that work was good, or of catching the train to California and work picking strawberries or whatever it was they grew out there. Even now, with such a perfect, livable life, he still imagined these other selves. The men he could have been, if only he had been braver.

“No. I never thought of it,” Daniel said. Sarah seemed unconvinced. She sighed and stared out the window, perhaps lost in thought. Something about this was distressing to Daniel. He wanted her to believe him so she wouldn’t have to live with the fears he had known himself. Abandonment had followed him through his life like a specter, and now he worried he had passed on that fear like a defective gene.

“I’ll always be here for you. You know that,” he said. “If you ever need help with anything, I don’t care how bad it is, come and find me. Or call me and I’ll find you. I promise.”

“Thanks, dad,” Sarah said.

As they pulled into the driveway, Daniel was surprised to find the house darker than it ever had been. The light he had left on in the living room was out, and he looked to the rest of the neighborhood. Every window was dark. No porch lights glimmered in the gray night. The snow must have knocked the power out. Daniel dug around the trunk and found a flashlight. He offered it to Sarah, but she waved it off. He told her to only get what she needed and meet him back at the car.

When Daniel went into the basement to check on the pipes, his worst fear was confirmed. The line that ran to the furnace had split open and gushed water across the concrete floor. It continued to leak a slow, steady stream, and wherever the water had spread was now glazed with ice. Without thinking, he rushed forward and slipped. Down he went and took the worst of it on his shoulder. His breath flew out of him and he yelled out in pain. He rolled onto his back and clutched his collarbone, worried it was broken or fractured, but now the cold was working into him again. The pain radiated in pulses, but they soon slowed. He breathed in and looked at the ceiling. He listened to the water drip and wondered if was possible for a house to try and kill its owner.

The pain receded, and as he lied on the ground he thought of the life he could have lived. He didn’t want to lose Margaret, especially didn’t want to lose Noel or Sarah, but was it right to have a family and feel so unfulfilled? Everything he had been taught to want was his—the business, a wife and children, a house of his own—and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that, out there, someone was living the life that had been meant for him, and he the life meant for them. He, this other man, would have been a good father, said the right things, and been able to fix a furnace with his own hands. He would have been a good husband to Margaret, the rock on which she leaned. Daniel was meant to wander, and now fifteen years of stationary existence had fashioned him in clothes he was unfit to wear.

But he was here now. He was a husband and a father, and the path he had followed here wasn’t a prisoner’s row. He had picked this life for himself because he didn’t want to listen to the instincts that ran in his blood. He picked this life because he wanted to leave one good thing in his world, and that was his family. That was his daughters. This feeling would pass, just as the seasons change and houses once frozen thaw.

After a minute he got back on his feet. The valve was a few feet up the line and he turned it. The dripping stopped. In the next couple days, when the furnace was fixed, they’d have to carefully melt the ice little by little, mopping up the water before it could flow away. It was going to be a task, but, for now, he was going to have to let it be. He climbed the steps out of the basement.
He looked out front, but he didn’t see Sarah. She must have still been looking. He called up to her room. There was no response, and so he took the steps two at a time, even though it hurt him to swing his shoulder. He stopped at the landing and listened. The house was completely silent, as if stuck in time. His breath was a gray mist in front of his face. Sarah’s door was open and, as he approached, he felt a rush of wind flowing through. He peered inside to find that Sarah was gone. The window was open, and the cold was getting in.

I can’t forget to reset the watch. I can’t sleep for more than an hour here or there. If I sleep too long, I might not hear the alarm and, resultantly, might forget to take my break, come back and reset the damn thing. Then I’ll be all disoriented and not know how much time has passed and will inevitably have to see Hektor float by the window again. The only thing worse than seeing the dead body of your best friend floating by in space is seeing the dead body of your best friend floating in front of the dead body of your home planet. I think I’m the only person who’s ever been able to say that. I’m not proud of that fact, and I don’t want to be able to say it again.
I’m absolutely sure about that, too. There is nothing worse.

#

I wake to Hektor shaking me and I’m covered in sweat. My chest feels like there’s a twenty pound weight on it and I think, It’s happened, the airlock’s opened, atmosphere’s running out, this is it.

Hektor pinches me below my jawline and it hurts like hell. I struggle, pulling my hand out of my sleeping bag then putting my palm to my neck, where his nails left a small welt. I glare at him.

“What’d you do that for?” I ask.

“You were screaming,” he says.

I sober up a little and look around my cubicle. There are the blinking green lights and the netted straps that hold everything in place, so nothing floats around and bumps into equipment that doesn’t need to be bumped into.

Hektor is rubbing his face. He doesn’t look so good. What used to be bags under his eyes have turned to luggage, and his cheeks are starting to show the imprints of his gumline. I remember very distinctly what he used to look like, it wasn’t that long ago that the change took place. Back home, Hektor and I trained together for months before taking off. We were friends before the mission, but that time brought us even closer. And it showed, on his face, the face of his wife when she cooked for us. I was like family to them, which was fun and new, considering I have no family of my own. Hektor looks lost now, though. His hands have a perpetual tremble, and I want to grab them and hold them so they’ll stop.

I look ahead of me, into the mirror across from my sleeping bag. I don’t look so hot myself. We’ve had to ration the food. Hektor suggested it. Personally, I don’t see the point. We’re just prolonging the inevitable. I didn’t say this to Hektor, though. Partly because he already knows, partly because words have a way of sticking around up here, as if the pressurized atmosphere of The Box traps everything within, leaving it all to float around with us in zero-gravity, crashing into our minds and driving us even further towards insanity. And besides, who the hell wants to hear something like that?

#

I had my earphones in when the beeping started, so I don’t know how long Hektor knew about everything before I did. I just know that everything kind of erupted while I was on my break. Breaks aren’t very long up here. There’s always one of two work components to focus on in the ISS, one being the research (which consists mostly of waiting for lab results) and the other being bureaucratic bullshit (which seems to be in endless supply). So, I was a little pissed off when Hektor took my concentration away from the game of Spades I was playing on my laptop, Nirvana’s “Aneurysm” blasting in my ears, trying very hard to drown out the constant hums and clicks and whams of the various machinery keeping the space station running. I had just put in a ten- hour shift gathering the final statistical evidence for the fourth leg of my DECLIC-HTI experiment, a study of water near its critical point (when it transitions from liquid to vapor). This is extremely interesting to study up here where there is no gravity and no atmosphere outside of this artificial one.

If Hektor had come to me with something pertaining to my studies, I would have been pleased, grateful even. But I’d finished up the report before I came over to my cubicle, so I knew it had nothing to do with that. I valued my free time greatly, as did most other astronauts during their six month stint in the ISS. It’s a known thing—an unwritten code between us all—that when a cadet is off-duty, save for only the most critical emergencies, they should be left the fuck alone.

So, when Hektor tapped me on the shoulder, I gave him one of the most aggressive looks I could conjure. I mean, I was knee deep in a dime bid that was going very successfully. I pulled both Jokers from the deck on the deal, plus both high ranking deuce’s and the Ace of Spades. That’s five guaranteed books, not to mention the aces I had from the other suits. And from what my A.I. partner was bidding, I could tell they were holding too. I had this round in the bag, and with Kurt Cobain screaming in my ear about the cruelty of life, women, and heroin, So, with a win in my near future and good music blasting in my ears, I felt balanced enough to actually be relaxed up here for once. You see, The Box (that’s what I took to calling the ISS when I got up here) had an effect on me almost immediately when I got in it.

The moment that air lock snapped shut and the pressure hit me, my perspective shifted. At first, it wasn’t a very good shift. I mean, I training at NASA headquarters, fine. Five years to be exact, no problem. Five years to prepare for six months, sounds like overkill doesn’t it? No. No amount of training could prepare anybody for being up here. Nothing could prepare me for being resigned to what basically amounts to an air bubble sitting in the middle of a vacuum, for the ever-present threat of that air bubble bursting and releasing me to the vast emptiness of a space that nobody understands. Sure, we hypothesize. We study. We gather samples. But nobody really knows what’s out there, the details within the void. It’s a shit deal, and I spent my entire life aspiring towards it.

Up here, you rely solely on all this machinery to keep you alive, nothing but two feet of arm space no matter where you go. Without my free time, my laptop and my music, I don’t think I could do it. These things clear my mind, keep things in perspective, remind me why I pushed to get this far in the first place. Remind me of where I came from.
Earth.

So, I turned on Hektor when he bothered me, opened my mouth to scream at him and make it a point that this was not acceptable. Not really even recognizing or caring that it was Hektor. Then I saw his face and all that anger drained away. Hektor’s a stocky guy, about six feet tall, pure Russian heritage. American-born but he’s got the look, which basically meant he looked like a jock but wasn’t. Not in a stereotypical way, at least. Hektor was one of those guys who played football in college and got straight A’s and actually earned them. Did his Marine training in California at Camp Pendleton, then hit UCLA, where he got his Bachelor’s in Aeronautical engineering while breaking his own school rushing record three years in a row. Took a break to go to Iraq and kill a few hundred people then came back and got his Master’s. Hektor wasn’t the type of guy to scare easily. I swear, on our way up here, we were sitting on two SRB’s with upwards of Mach 23 capability, 37 million horsepower, which was essentially equivalent to having twenty nukes strapped to our backs. And Hektor laughed. The whole way up, he cackled and wailed like a fraternity guy at a keg party. A real hardcore thrill artist.

So when I saw the look of terror on his face, I couldn’t help feeling instant terror, myself. Hektor and I were up there by ourselves, a ship having carried off two of our teammates a few days earlier. We weren’t scheduled to be replaced for another two days, a ship with three astronauts shooting off from Kennedy at 0800 EST Friday morning. I thought the lack of bodies up here would have been a welcome respite, more space to move around. Judging by Hektor’s face though, this wasn’t the case.

“What is it?” I asked, removing my headphones and hearing the beeping for the first time. Two faint tones, close together, barely audible over the cacophony of machinery.

“You might want to see this,” Hektor said.

I opened my mouth to respond but Hektor had already floated a 180 and made his way back to the control panel. So, I unstrapped myself from the wall, secured my laptop and iPod in storage and followed him.

When I got in, the first thing I noticed were the blips on the radar screen, the source of the faint beeping. The screen showed a map of Earth overlaid with a red-light detection system that scanned the planetary surface for irregularities in anything from heat signature to abnormal cloud structures. Hektor came to a stop in front of the screen and I stared at it. There were a couple dozen little points of blinking light, four floating above the United States. I got a little closer and saw the exact positions of the U.S. blips: L.A., New York, D.C., Chicago. The rest were scattered across various areas on the planet, Japan, England, Russia, Korea.

“What’s the readout?” I asked.

“There is none,” Hektor said.

I glanced at him.

“There has to be a readout,” I said.

“There isn’t.”

“Ok,” I said, nodding, though I didn’t know why. “Ok. Get Control on the li-”

“There’s more,” he said. The way he said it gave my stomach a jerk, like a lump of ice had just been dropped in my small intestine.

“What?” I asked.

Instead of answering, he floated past me towards the window at the other end of the control panel which looked out onto the planet we called home. We were positioned right over the Americas, the U.S. blazing up at us. Blazing. Literally. As in on fire. Staring through the small porthole window, I watched what looked to be a cloud of flames spreading slowly across the eastern and western coasts. Everything on both sides, New York, the Carolinas, California, Utah, all gone. Florida and Kennedy Space Center engulfed. In the center of the country, a blooming cloud spread across the state of Illinois, down towards Texas, more specifically the city of Houston, Johnson Space Center. Control.

I turned to Hektor, and I guess my face mirrored his, because all he did was look back at me and nod.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

#

There’s no atmosphere out here, therefore no wind. No conditions to change velocity or fluctuate body mass depending on its proximity to gravitational fields. That’s why Hektor’s peek-a-boos into the control panel are so regular, every four hours, give or take a few seconds. That’s why I can set my watch for every three hours and fifty-five minutes and get away from the window in time to avoid his eyes. His eyes are the reason I have to leave every time. He died with them open, and the first time I saw him cross the plain of the control panel window, it seemed he was accusing me. As if this was all my fault.

Part of me wants to cut the rope that keeps Hektor tethered to the station, so I don’t have to follow this routine anymore. I see the rope now. It’s a constant presence in front of the window. I can hear it rubbing against the outside of the ISS, making this long scree-ing sound, like nails on a chalkboard. I’ve gotten used to it now, but at first it was unnerving.

I want to cut the rope and push Hektor towards the sun. Make him the first human to be cremated in such a manner. I want to do it out of spite, because I know that’s not what he wanted. It was pretty clear to me what Hektor wanted, even before he did what he did. He wanted to go back home. He wanted his body laid to rest there, in the ashes of our planet. He did not want his body floating aimlessly through space. He wouldn’t have tied himself to the ship if that were the case, he would have just jumped. He wanted me to figure out a way to get his body back down there. I haven’t. I don’t want to. I want to take that away from him; like I said, out of spite. But if he stays attached to the space station, eventually he and it and I will stop orbiting and get sucked into Earth’s gravitational field anyways. Then Hektor will get his wish.

I don’t want him to, but I can’t get rid of him. I need the routine.

Three hours and fifty five minutes. Ten minute break. Reset.

I don’t have the energy to cut him loose anyways. It isn’t just a weariness thing either, though I am extremely tired. Weary from staring at what used to be Earth, the gray clouds covering the barren land, glimpses of burning red storms every few hours. It’s also an actual lack of energy. Resources are running low. I think Hektor knew that. I think it’s part of the reason why he did what he did. For himself and for me. Release himself, give me more time to figure out what I want to do. Both honorable and cowardly if you ask me. And for that, I have spite. But not enough. Not enough.

#

I can’t find Hektor, which adds to the stifling feeling of this place. There’s not much to the space station. It’s just a big network of tunnels basically, with us free-floating through them. Nowhere to hide, really. So, Hektor has to be around somewhere. I turn a corner and there he is, staring at the boarding/disembarking airlock chamber. He’s floating there with his legs crossed and his hands lying flat in his lap, looking like a Zen master or something. I want to approach him but I’m afraid to suddenly. So I just say his name. He looks back and his face is more haggard than ever.

“There’s nothing down there anymore, is there?” he asks.

I try to pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I can’t. His eyes are haunted, tearless. He looks worse than sad. He looks like a man that used to be sad, but now he’s just given up.

“We don’t know what happened,” I offer. “There could be…something could be in the works.”

He nods and turns back to the airlock, resuming his Zen pose. I stare at him and rack my brain for something else to say.

“Right,” he says, the word hanging in the air, oppressive. “We don’t know.”

#

I sat in my cubicle with my earphones on, trying to drown out a lot more than just the machinery now. I couldn’t listen to Hektor anymore. He was like a wild animal in the control room, raging, gnashing at the microphone as if it were a taunting hand poking through his cage. He wouldn’t put it down. I’d stopped trying to take it from him. His voice mimicked the machineries grinding monotony, every thirty seconds bursting out in a spat of frenzy:

“Control?” A deep breath and then, “Control, are you there?”

Almost twenty four hours since the first beeps had pierced the artificial air—since the first blips sprang up on the radar screen and exploded across the map like measles—and Hektor hadn’t slowed. He hadn’t even slept, as far as I knew. I knew I hadn’t. I didn’t know if I ever would again. I didn’t know much of anything actually, which was the worst part of it all.

Hektor popped his head around the corner, holding himself steady against the wall. He’d pushed himself out of the control panel too quickly and almost floated right into a wall. His eyes were wide, his mouth set in a strained expression, something between a smile and a grimace, his teeth glistening. It was painful to see his face like that, and I averted my eyes as I removed my headphones.

“I think I got Control,” he said, breathing hard.

My heart broke into a race and I unstrapped myself, pushing towards the control panel. Hektor pressed a few buttons and spoke into the microphone.

“Control?” he said. “Control, you still there?”

A burst of static came through the speakers and I leaned in closer, straining my ears. Faintly, in between waves of hissing, there was a voice. I put my ear right up to the speaker and listened with intense concentration to the message that came through, words cut off as bursts of static chopped them up.

“Things a—…political tur—…cadets somebo—…abort mission fo—…”

Hektor and I glanced at each other and Hektor quickly grabbed the mic.

“Control, I’m not getting you clearly,” he yelled. “Abort what?”

There was nothing for a minute and the tension in the control panel was thick, stifling. Then there was another burst of static, followed by one word that made me wish Hektor hadn’t tried to contact Control in the first place.

“…Help.”

Then the line broke, and there was no more.

#

I wake up to the alarm on my watch beeping. I turn it off and my heart jumps into my throat. I look up slowly and Hektor is staring at me, his eyes ice blue, his mouth gaping. His hand is frozen in a claw, as if he scratched his way out of this life. The metal rope is tied around his waist, triple-knotted next to his left hip. I haven’t seen him in two days. I wish I hadn’t fallen asleep.

I look away and close my eyes at the same time, and realize I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t. I turn and float back into the corridor, head to my cubicle, and look at my stuff. My laptop, my iPod, my headphones. A second of contemplation and I make a decision. I grab my iPod, leave my computer behind, and make my way past the control panel. I can’t help it; I glance in and see Hektor as he’s moving out of sight. His eyes are the last thing I see before I float past the opening and head towards the airlock.

#

I’m sitting in the control panel when the alarm goes off, louder than the tiny blip of the radar screen. This one wails through The Box, jolting me from my reverie. I would jump if I could, but as it is I just float painfully into the machinery behind me as I turn to look at the control board. The “breach” sensor is blinking and the speaker above my head is screaming, shoving a needle of pain deep into my forehead. I turn to the computer screen, enter the alarm code, and push “DISENGAGE”. The sound cuts off, but the sensor is still blinking. I pull up a map of the ISS on the computer screen and it tells me that the airlock disengage controls have been activated. My blood thickens, my skin prickling and I shiver, grabbing the sides of the opening into the hallway next to me and shoving myself towards the opposite side of the station.

I turn the corner and the shield door is down, already locked tightly into place. There’s a small window near the top and I peer in at Hektor, without a suit on, holding a length of metal wire in his hand. He’s tying one end of it to a metal bar next to the airlock control panel. I bang on the door and Hektor looks up tiredly.

“Hektor!,” I yell, then chuckle, make sure he can see me smiling. “Buddy, what are you doing?”

He keeps staring at me, silent, eyes droopy. My chuckle turns to a full-blown laugh, a cackle actually, and I try unsuccessfully to remove the insane tinge to it.

“Come on, man,” I say. “This isn’t funny. Not even a little funny, man.”

Instead of answering, he returns to securing the wire around the metal bar. I bang on the door some more, look around for a way to open it. The only way, though, is to head back to the control panel and do a manual override of the security system. But I don’t want to leave Hektor alone over here. And, I think with dismay, if he opens the airlock before I get to the control panel and then I open the shield door, the entire space station will be depressurized in under 15 seconds. I’d be dead in a minute, if I was lucky. So I float there and watch helplessly as Hektor finishes securing the wire then turns a little to look at me through the window.

“Hektor,” I say, and at this point I sound more like I’m sputtering than laughing.. My vision gets blurry, then damn near incoherent and I swipe at my eyes. “Come on buddy. You don’t have to do this.”

“Do me a favor,” he mouths at me, and I reach over and flick on the radio transmitter, his voice filling the speakers of the space station. It’s so faint beneath the whirring and clacking of machinery that I have to move closer to the speaker above my head, near the shield door where I can still see his face. When I do, I hear Hektor perfectly, watching his mouth form the words half a second before they reach my ears. “Make sure I make it back,” he says, then pauses and adds “Good luck, friend.”

I push back a little, my eyes wide as Hektor turns away and ties the rope around his waist, a triple knot. I slam my hands on the glass, scream, yell, curse. I grab at the door handles and jerk my body around, breaking into a light sweat with the strain of trying to pry the thing open. Hektor keeps his back turned to me, and I watch fearfully as he turns and presses a few buttons on the airlock controls. Then I turn away, grabbing the walls and rushing towards the control panel again, determined to override the shield door before Hektor opens the airlock. He won’t open it if I get the shield door open. He wouldn’t kill us both.

I reach the control panel and the computer screen. The map of the ISS has a bright red blinking spot where the airlock is and I stare at it until I hear the first scree against the outside of the station. When I look over, Hektor’s floating there, hands already frozen in the clawing grip, mouth already gaping. Eyes already an accusing, icy blue.

#

We floated in the control panel waiting for Control to contact us again. But we’d both stopped pressing the buttons, and Hektor had long ago lost his voice from screaming into the microphone. Now we just floated there watching the planet consume itself. Glimpses of the ocean were still visible occasionally. They were no longer blue, though, but a muddy gray. Hektor was closer to the window than I was and I heard him sniffle every few seconds. It unnerved me to hear that sniffle, mostly because I hadn’t shed a tear myself. Not for the planet I’d lost or the few people I’d known. The childhood friends, my estranged parents, my ex-girlfriends, my future girlfriends I’d never meet. They were all in my head but my face was like stone, emotionless and cold. I wanted to give Hektor something but I had nothing. I knew the faces he saw in his head were much closer than mine, his wife, his daughter, his dad with the bad hip and obsessive love of golf. So I just floated there and watched him watch what remained of earth.

#

I don one of the EMU space suits that are next to the shield door, glancing through the window at the open airlock, the taut wire tied to the metal bar, the other end tied to Hektor’s waist. I put my iPod earphones in, turn on a random playlist and shove the contraption in the suit with me. U2’s “One” blasts into my ears as I grab the oxygen tank next to the suits and put the mask over my face and turn the valve, feeling the coolness of pure oxygen pouring into my lungs, flushing the nitrogen from my blood so I can put on the rest of the suit and not get the bends. It’s kind of like scuba diving in that way; the atmosphere in the space station (a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen) versus the pure oxygen environment of an EMU are too different to just jump from one to the other. My chest rises and falls until my head is light and I feel a bit giddy, then I hold a deep breath, take off the oxygen mask and throw on the EMU helmet, locking it in place. The controls for the EMU are in the arm of the suit and I press the bright red button near my wrist and there’s another cool burst against my cheeks, my ears popping as the suit pressurizes and the iPod switches tracks to Radiohead’s “Creep”. I turn around and shove myself and the bulky outfit down the hall to the control panel.

Grabbing hold of the handle above the panel to secure myself, I bring up the atmosphere controls, override the safety protocols and backup security and shut off the ventilation and recycling systems. Then I pull up the airlock chamber controls and type in the disengage code and the alarm goes off above my head. I flinch when it starts wailing but keep pressing buttons anyway. I, grab onto a handle and hold myself steady as a loud whoosh blasts its way into the control panel and the shield door creaks open, exposing the open airlock and releasing the station’s artificial atmosphere into space. There’s a long minute when I think I won’t be able to hold onto the handle for long, when it feels as if my helmet is going to fly off and take my head with it, when it feels like the disorientation of rapid depressurization is going to make me let go of the handrail and shoot into space. Then, in an instant, everything settles, and my iPod switches tracks again. Alice in Chains “Man in the Box.” Fitting. I let go of the handle and make my way towards the airlock.

In the chamber, I fumble with the wire that keeps Hektor tethered to the space station, finally get it untied, brace myself against a wall and pull Hektor in, foot by foot, grabbing the wire with each hand and grunting as I bring him closer to me. I avoid looking at his face when he appears and, as he gets within grabbing distance, I hold him around his waist and move carefully towards the airlock opening, peeking out into the deep beyond. The darkness behind me is complete, in front of me the burning earth too bright to look at directly. The airlock is facing the planet, which makes it a lot easier.

I spread my feet apart and shove them into the little cubby holes on either side of the airlock doorway. Turning Hektor so his face is towards earth, I let out a wail of exertion and despair, using every last ounce of strength I can muster to push Hektor towards our home planet as my iPod switches tracks one final time, Oasis’ “Wonderwall.” My feet slip as he floats away, the image of his lifeless body and carcass of the Earth behind him filling my vision as I relax my body. The space station is visible in my peripheral, and I glance at it, lights blinking, floating there and waiting to fall back to earth. I move in the opposite direction, though, away from earth, towards the unknown, keeping an eye on Hektor as he gets smaller and smaller then bursts into a small bit of flame, becoming once again a part of the place we both called home.