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unsettlingshortstories · 4 years

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Onion

Caitlin R. Kiernan (2005)

Frank was seven years old when he found the fields of red grass growing behind the basement wall. The building on St. Mark’s where his parents lived after his father took a job in Manhattan and moved them from the New Jersey suburbs across the wide, gray Hudson. And of course he’d been told to stay out of the basement, no place for a child to play because there were rats down there, his mother said, and rats could give you tetanus and rabies. Rats might even be carrying plague, she said, but the sooty blackness at the foot of the stairs was too much temptation for any seven-year old, the long, long hallway past the door to the super’s apartment and sometimes a single naked bulb burned way down at the end of that hall. Dirty, white-yellow stain that only seemed to emphasize the gloom, drawing attention to just how very dark dark could be, and after school Frank would stand at the bottom of the stairs for an hour at a time, peering into the hall that led down to the basement.

“Does your mama know you’re always hanging around down here?” Mr. Sweeney would ask whenever he came out and found Frank lurking in the shadows. Frank would squint at the flood of light from Mr. Sweeney’s open door, would shrug or mumble the most noncommittal response he could come up with. “I bet you she don’t,” Mr. Sweeney would say. “I bet she don’t know.” “Are there really rats down there?” Frank might ask and Mr. Sweeney would nod his head, point towards the long hall and say “You better believe there’s rats. Boy, there’s rats under this dump big as German shepherd puppies. They got eyes like acetylene blow torches and teeth like carving knives. Can chew straight through concrete, these rats we got.” “They why don’t you get a cat?” Frank asked once and Mr. Sweeney laughed, phlegmy old man laugh, and “Oh, we had some cats, boy,” he said. “We had whole goddamn cat armies, but when these rats get done, ain’t never anything left but some gnawed-up bones and whiskers.” “I don’t believe that,” Frank said. “Rats don’t get that big. Rats don’t eat cats.” “You better get your skinny rump back upstairs, or they’re gonna eat you too,” and then Mr. Sweeney laughed again and slammed his door, left Frank alone in the dark, his heart thumping loud and his head filled with visions of the voracious, giant rats that tunneled through masonry and dined on any cat unlucky enough to get in their way. And that’s the way it went, week after week, month after month, until one snowblind February afternoon, too cold and wet to go outside and his mother didn’t notice when he slipped quietly downstairs with the flashlight she kept in a kitchen drawer. Mr. Sweeney was busy with a busted radiator on the third floor, so nobody around this time to tell him scary stories and chase him home again, and Frank walked right on past the super’s door, stood shivering in the chilly, mildew-stinking air of the hallway. The unsteady beam of his flashlight to show narrow walls that might have been blue or green a long time ago, little black-and-white, six-sided ceramic tiles on the floor, but half of them missing and he could see the rotting boards underneath. There were doors along the length of the hall, some of them boarded up, nailed shut, one door frame without any door at all and he stepped very fast past that one. Indiana Jones wouldn’t be afraid, he thought, counting his footsteps in case that might be important later on, listening to the winter wind yowling raw along the street as it swept past the building on its way to Tompkins Square Park and the East River. Twenty steps, twenty-five, thirty-three and then he was standing below the dangling bulb and for the first time Frank stopped and looked back the way he’d come. And maybe he’d counted wrong, because it seemed a lot farther than only thirty-three steps back to the dim and postage-stamp-sized splotch of day at the other end of the hall. Only ten steps more down to the basement door, heavy, gray steel door with a rusted hasp and a Yale padlock, but standing wide open like it was waiting for him and maybe Mr. Sweeney only forgot to lock it the last time he came down to check the furnace or wrap the pipes. And later, Frank wouldn’t remember much about crossing the threshold into the deeper night of the basement, the soup-thick stench and taste of dust and rot and mushrooms, picking his way through the maze of sagging shelves and wooden crates, decaying heaps of rags and newspapers, past the ancient furnace crouched in one corner like a cast-iron octopus. Angry, orange-red glow from the furnace grate like the eyes of the super’s cat-eating rats—he would remember that—and then Frank heard the dry, rustling sound coming from one corner of the basement. Years later, through high school and college and the slow purgatory of this twenties, this is where the bad dreams would always begin, the moment that he lifted the flashlight and saw the wide and jagged crack in the concrete wall. A faint draft from that corner that smelled of cinnamon and ammonia, and he knew better than to look, knew he should turn and run all the way back because it wasn’t ever really rats that he was supposed to be afraid of. The rats just a silly grown-up lie to keep him safe, smaller, kinder nightmare for his own good, and Run, boy, Mr. Sweeney whispered inside his head. Run fast while you still can, while you still don’t know. But Frank didn’t run away, and when he pressed his face to the crack in the wall, he could see that the fields stretched away for miles and miles, crimson meadows beneath a sky the yellow-green of an old bruise. The white trees that writhed and rustled in the choking, spicy breeze, and far, far way, the black thing striding slowly through the grass on bandy, stilt-long legs.

Frank and Willa share the tiny apartment on Mott Street, roachy Chinatown hovel one floor above an apothecary so the place always stinks of ginseng and jasmine and the powdered husks of dried sea creatures. Four walls, a gas range, an ancient Frigidaire that only works when it feels like it, but together they can afford the rent, most of the time, and the month or two they’ve come up short Mrs. Wu has let them slide. His job at a copy shop and hers waiting tables and sometimes they talk about moving out of the city, packing up their raggedy-ass belongings and riding a Greyhound all the way to Florida, all the way to the Keys, and then it’ll be summer all year long. But not this sticky, sweltering new York summer, no, it would be clean ocean air and rum drinks, sun-warm sand and the lullaby roll and crash of waves at night. Frank is still in bed when Willa comes out of the closet that passes as their bathroom, naked and dripping from the shower, her hair wrapped up in a towel that used to be white and he stops staring at the tattered Cézanne print thumbtacked over the television and stares at her instead. Willa is tall and her skin so pale he thought she might be sick the first time they met, so skinny that he can see intimations of her skeleton beneath that skin like milk and pearls. Can trace the blue-green network of veins and capillaries in her throat, between her small breasts, winding like hesitant, watercolor brush strokes down her arms. He’s pretty sure that one day Willa will finally figure out she can do a hell of a lot better than him and move on, but he tries not to let that ruin whatever it is they have now. “It’s all yours,” she says, his turn even though the water won’t be hot again for at least half an hour, and Willa sits down in a chair near the foot of the bed. She leans forward and rubs vigorously at her hair trapped inside the dingy towel. “We could both play hooky,” Frank says hopefully, watching her, imagining how much better sex would be than the chugging, headache drone of Xerox machines, the endless dissatisfaction of clients. “You could come back to bed and we could lie here all day. We could just lie here and sweat and watch television.” “Jesus, Frank, how am I supposed to resist an offer like that?” “Okay, so we could screw and sweat and watch television.” She stops drying her hair and glares at him, shakes her head and frowns, but the sort of frown that says I wish I could more than it says anything else. “That new girl isn’t working out,” she says. “The fat chick from Kazakhstan?” Frank asks and he rolls over onto his back, easier to forget the fantasies of a lazy day alone with Willa if he isn’t looking at her sitting there naked. “Fucking Kazakhstan. I mean, what the hell were Ted and Daniel thinking? She can’t even speak enough English to tell someone where the toilet is, much less take an order.” “Maybe they felt sorry for her,” Frank says unhelpfully and now he’s staring up at his favorite crack on the water-stained ceiling, the one that always makes him think of a Viking orbiter photo of the Valles Marineris from one of his old astronomy books. “I’ve heard that people do that sometimes, feel sorry for people.” “Well, they’d probably lose less money if they just sent the bitch to college, the way she’s been pissing off customers.” ”Maybe you should suggest that today,” and a moment later Willa’s wet towel smacks him in the face, steamy-damp terry cloth that smells like her black hair dye and the cheap baby shampoo she uses. It covers his eyes, obscuring his view of the Martian rift valley overhead, but Frank doesn’t move the towel immediately, better to lie there a moment longer, breathing her in. “Is it supposed to rain today?” Willa asks and he mumbles through the wet towel that he doesn’t know. “They keep promising it’s going to rain and it keeps not raining.” Frank sits up and the towel slides off his face and into his lap, lies there as the dampness begins to soak through his boxers. ”I don’t know,” he says again; Willa has her back turned to him and she doesn’t reply or make any sign to show that she’s heard. She’s pulling a bright yellow T-shirt on over her head, the Curious George shirt he gave her for Christmas, has put on a pair of yellow panties, too. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s the heat. The heat’s driving me crazy.” Frank glances toward the window, the sash up but the chintzy curtains hanging limp and lifeless in the stagnant July air; he’d have to get out of bed, walk all the way across the room, lean over the sill and peer up past the walls and rooftops to see if there are any clouds. “It might rain today,” he says, instead. “I don’t think it’s ever going to rain again as long as I live,” Willa says and steps into her jeans. “I think we’ve broken this goddamn planet and it’s never going to rain anywhere ever again.” Frank rubs his fingers through his stiff, dirty hair and looks back at the Cézanne still life above the television—a tabletop, the absinthe bottle and a carafe of water, an empty glass, the fruit that might be peaches. “You’ll be at the meeting tonight?” he asks and Frank keeps his eyes on the print because he doesn’t like the sullen, secretive expression Willa gets whenever they have to talk about the meetings. “Yeah,” she says, sighs, and then there’s the cloth-metal sound of her zipper. “Of course I’ll be at the meeting. Where the hell else would I be?” And then she goes back into the bedroom and shuts the door behind her, leaves Frank alone with the Cézanne and the exotic reek of the apothecary downstairs, Valles Marineris and the bright day spilling uninvited through the window above Mott Street.

Half past two and Frank sits on a plastic milk crate in the stockroom of Gotham Kwick Kopy, trying to decide whether or not to eat the peanut butter and honey sandwich he brought for lunch. The air conditioning’s on the blink again and he thinks it might actually be hotter inside the shop than out on the street; a few merciful degrees cooler in the stockroom, though, shadowy refuge stacked high with cardboard boxes of copy paper in a dozen shades of white and all the colors of the rainbow. He peels back the top of his sandwich, the doughy Millbrook bread that Willa likes, and frowns at the mess underneath. So hot out front that the peanut butter has melted, oily mess to leak straight through wax paper and the brown bag and he’s trying to remember if peanut butter and honey can spoil. Both the stockroom doors swing open and Frank looks up, blinks and squints at the sun-framed silhouette, Joe Manske letting in the heat and “Hey, don’t do that,” Frank says as Joe switches on the lights. The fluorescents buzz and flicker uncertainly, chasing away the shadows, drenching the stockroom in their bland, indifferent glare. “Dude, why are you sitting back here in the dark?” Joe asks and for a moment Frank considers throwing the sandwich at him. “Why aren’t you working on that Mac?” Frank asks right back and “It’s fixed, good as new,” Joe says, grins his big, stupid grin, and sits down on a box of laser print paper near the door. “That fucker won’t ever be good as new again.” “Well, at least it’s stopped making that sound. That’s good enough for me,” and Joe takes out a pack of Camels, offers one to Frank and Frank shakes his head no. A month now since his last cigarette, quitting because Willa’s step-mother is dying of lung cancer, quitting because cigarettes cost too goddamn much, anyhow, and “Thanks, though,” he says. “Whatever,” Joe Manske mumbles around the filter of his Camel, thumb on the strike wheel of his silver lighter and in a moment the air is filled with the pungent aroma of burning tobacco. Frank gives up on the dubious sandwich, drops it back into the brown bag and crumples the bag into a greasy ball. “I fuckin’ hate this fuckin’ job,” Joe says, disgusted, smoky cloud of words about his head, and he points at the stockroom door with his cigarette. “You just missed a real peace of work, man.” “Yeah?” and Frank tosses the sandwich ball towards the big plastic garbage can sitting a few feet away, misses and it rolls behind the busted Canon 2400 color copier that’s been sitting in the same spot since he started this job a year ago. “Yeah,” Joe says. “I was trying to finish that pet store job and this dude comes in, little bitty old man looks like he just got off the boat from Poland or Armenia or some shit—“ “My grandmother was Polish,“ Frank says and Joe sighs loudly, long impatient sigh and he flicks ash onto the cement floor. “You know what I mean.” “So what’d he want anyway?” Frank asks, not because he cares but the shortest way through any conversation with Joe Manske is usually right down the middle, just be quiet and listen and sooner or later he’ll probably come to the end and shut up. “He had this old book with him. The damned thing must have been even older than him and was falling apart. I don’t think you could so much as look at it without the pages crumbling. Had it tied together with some string and he kept askin’ me all these questions, real technical shit about the machines, you know.” “Yeah? Like what?” “Dude, I don’t know. I can’t remember half of it, techie shit, like I was friggin’ Mr. Wizard or somethin’. I finally just told him we couldn’t be responsible if the copiers messed up his old book, but he still kept on askin’ these questions. Lucky for me, one of the self-service machines jammed and I told him I had to go fix it. By the time I was finished, he was gone.” “You live to serve,” Frank says, wondering if Willa would be able to tell if he had just one cigarette. “The customer is always right.” “Fuck that shit,” Joe Manske says. “I don’t get paid enough to have to listen to some senile old fart jabberin’ at me all day.” “Yes sir, helpful is your middle name.” “Fuck you.” Frank laughs and gets up, pushes the milk crate towards the wall with the toe of one shoe so no one’s going to come along later and trip over it, break their neck and have him to blame. “I better get back to work,” he says and “You do that,” Joe grumbles and puffs his Camel. Through the stockroom doors and back out into the stifling, noisy clutter of the shop, and it must be at least ten degrees warmer out here, he thinks. There’s a line at the register and the phone’s ringing, no one out front but Maggie and she glowers at him across the chaos. “I’m on it,” Frank says; she shakes her head doubtfully and turns to help a woman wearing a dark purple dress and matching beret. Frank’s reaching across the counter for the telephone receiver when he notices the business card lying near a display of Liquid Paper. Black sans serif print on an expensive, white cotton card stock and what appears to be an infinity symbol in the lower left-hand corner. FOUND: LOST WORLDS centered at the top, TERRAE NOVUM ET TERRA INDETERMINATA on the next line down in smaller letters. Then a name and an address—Dr. Solomon Monalisa, Ph.D., 43 W. 61st St., Manhattan—but no number or email, and Frank picks up the card, holds it so Maggie can see. “Where’d this come from?” he asks but she only shrugs, annoyed but still smiling her strained and weary smile for the woman in the purple beret. “Beats me. Ask Joe, if he ever comes back. Now will you please answer the phone?” He apologizes, lifts the receiver, “Gotham Kwick Kopy, Frank speaking. How may I help you?” and slips the white card into his back pocket.

The group meets in the basement of a synagogue on Eldridge Street. Once a month, eight o’clock until everyone who wants to talk has taken his or her turn, coffee and stale doughnuts before and afterwards. Metal folding chairs and a lectern down front, a microphone and crackly PA system even though the room isn’t really large enough to need one. Never more than fourteen or fifteen people, occasionally as few as six or seven, and Frank and Willa always sit at the very back, near the door. Sometimes Willa doesn’t make it all the way through a meeting and she says she hates the way they all watch her if she gets up to leave early, like she’s done something wrong, she says, like this is all her fault, somehow. So they sit by the door, which is fine with Frank; he’d rather not have everyone staring at the back of his head, anyway. He’s sipping at a styrofoam cup of the bitter, black coffee, three sugars and it’s still bitter, watching the others, all their familiar, telltale quirks and peculiarities, their equivocal glances, when Willa comes in. First the sound of her clunky motorcycle boots on the concrete steps and then she stands in the doorway a moment, that expression like it’s always the first time for her and it can never be any other way. “Hey,” Frank says quietly. “I made it,” she replies and sits down beside him. There’s a stain on the front of her Curious George T-shirt that looks like chocolate sauce. “How was your day?” he asks her, talking so she doesn’t lock up before things even get started. “Same as ever. It sucked. They didn’t fire Miss Kazakhstan.” “That’s good, dear. Would you like a martini?” and he jabs a thumb toward the free-coffee-and-stale-doughnut table. “I think I’ll pass,” Willa says humorlessly, rubs her hands together and stares at the floor between her feet. “I think my stomach hurts enough already.” “Would you rather just go home? We can miss one night. I sure as hell don’t care—“ “No,” she says, answering too fast, too emphatic, so he knows she means yes. “That would be silly. I’ll be fine when things get started.” And then Mr. Zaroba stands, stocky man with skin like tea-stained muslin, salt-and-pepper hair and beard and his bushy, gray eyebrows. Kindly blue grandfather eyes and he raises one hand to get everyone’s attention, as if they aren’t all looking at him already, as if they haven’t all been waiting for him to open his mouth and break the tense, uncertain silence. “Good evening, everyone,” he says, and Willa sits up a little straighter in her chair, expectant arch of her back as though she’s getting ready to run. “Before we begin,” Mr. Zaroba continues, “there’s something I wanted to share. I came across this last week,” and he takes a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolds it, and begins to read. An item from the New York Tribune, February 17th, 1901; reports by an Indian tribe in Alaska of a city in the sky that was seen sometimes, and a prospector named Willoughby who claimed to have witnessed the thing himself in 1897, claimed to have tried to photograph it on several occasions and succeeded, finally. “And now this,” Zaroba says and he pulls a second folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, presto, bottomless bag of tricks, that pocket, and this time he reads from a book, Alaska by Miner Bruce, page 107, he says. Someone else who saw the city suspended in the arctic sky, a Mr. C.W. Thornton of Seattle, and “’It required no effort of the imagination to liken it to a city,’” Mr. Zaroba reads, “’but was so distinct that it required, instead, faith to believe that it was not in reality a city.’” People shift nervously in their seats, scuff their feet, and someone whispers too loudly. “I have the prospector’s photograph,” Zaroba says. “It’s only a Xerox from the book, of course. It isn’t very clear, but I thought some of you might like to see it.” And he hands one of the sheets of paper to the person sitting nearest him. “Damn, I need a cigarette,” Willa whispers and “You and me both, Frank whispers back. It takes almost five minutes for the sheet of paper to make its way to the rear of the room, passed along from hand to hand while Zaroba stands patiently at the front, his head bowed solemn as if leading a prayer. Some hold onto it as long as they dare and others hardly seem to want to touch it. A man three rows in front of them gets up and brings it back to Willa. ”I don’t see nothing but clouds,” he says, sounding disappointed. And neither does Frank, fuzzy photograph of a mirage, deceit of sunlight in the collision of warm and freezing air high above a glacier, but Willa must see more. She holds the paper tight and chews at her lower lip, traces the distorted peaks and cumulonimbus towers with the tip of an index finger. “My god,” she whispers. In a moment Zaroba comes up the aisle and takes the picture away, leaves Willa staring at her empty hands, her eyes wet like she might start crying. Frank puts an arm around her bony shoulders, but she immediately wiggles free and scoots her chair a few inches farther away. “So, who wants to get us started tonight?” Mr. Zaroba asks when he gets back to the lectern. At first no one moves or speaks or raises a hand, each looking at the others or trying hard to look nowhere at all. And then a young woman stands up, younger than Willa, filthy clothes and bruise-dark circles under her eyes, hair that hasn’t been combed or washed in ages. Her name is Janice and Frank thinks that she’s a junky, probably a heroin addict because she always wears long sleeves. “Janice? Very good, then,” and Mr. Zaroba returns to his seat in the first row. Everyone watches Janice as she walks slowly to the front of the room, or they pretend not to watch her. There’s a small hole in the seat of her dirty, threadbare jeans and Frank can see that she isn’t wearing underwear. She stands behind the lectern, coughs once, twice, and brushes her shaggy bangs out of her face. She looks anxiously at Mr. Zaroba and “It’s all right, Janice,” he says. “Take all the time you need. No one’s going to rush you.” “Bullshit,” Willa mutters, loud enough that the man sitting three rows in front of them turns and scowls. “What the hell are you staring at,” she growls and he turns back towards the lectern. “It’s okay, baby,” Frank says and takes her hand, squeezes hard enough that she can’t shake him loose this time. “We can leave anytime you want.” Janice coughs again and there’s a faint feedback whine from the mike. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand and “I was only fourteen years old,” she begins. “I still lived with my foster parents in Trenton and there was this old cemetery near our house, Riverview Cemetery. Me and my sister, my foster sister, we used to go there to smoke and talk, you know, just to get away from the house.” Janice looks at the basement ceiling while she speaks, or down at the lectern, but never at the others. She pauses and wipes her nose again. “We went there all the time. Wasn’t anything out there to be afraid of, not like at home. Just dead people, and me and Nadine weren’t afraid of dead people. Dead people don’t hurt anyone, right? We could sit there under the trees in the summer and it was almost like things weren’t so bad. Nadine was a year older than me.” Willa tries to pull her hand free, digs her nails into Frank’s palm but he doesn’t let go. They both know where this is going, have both heard Janice’s story so many times that they could recite it backwards, same tired old horror story, and “It’s okay,” he says out loud, to Willa or to himself. “Mostly it was just regular headstones, but there were a few bigger crypts set way back near the water. I didn’t like being around them. I told her that, over and over, but Nadine said they were like little castles, like something out of fairy tales. “One day one of them was open, like maybe someone had busted into it, and Nadine had to see if there were still bones inside. I begged her not to, said whoever broke it open might still be hanging around somewhere and we ought to go home and come back later. But she wouldn’t listen to me. “I didn’t want to look inside. I swear to God, I didn’t.” “Liar.” Willa whispers, so low now that the man three rows in front of them doesn’t hear, but Frank does. Her nails are digging deeper into his palm, and his eyes are beginning to water from the pain. “You wanted to see,” she says. “Just like the rest of us, you wanted to see.” “I said, ‘What if someone’s still in there?’ but she wouldn’t listen. She wasn’t ever afraid of anything. She used to lay down on train tracks just to piss me off.” “What did you see in the crypt, Janice, when you and Nadine looked inside?” Mr. Zaroba asks, but no hint of impatience in his voice, not hurrying her or prompting, only helping her find a path across the words as though they were slippery rocks in a cold stream. “Can you tell us?” Janice takes a very deep breath, swallows, and “Stairs,” she says. “Stairs going down into the ground. There was a light way down at the bottom, a blue light, like a cop car light. Only it wasn’t flashing. And we could hear something moving around down there, and something else that sounded like a dog panting. I tried to get Nadine to come back to the house with me then, but she wouldn’t. She said ‘Those stairs might go anywhere, Jan. Don’t you want to see? Don’t you want to know?” Another pause and “I couldn’t stop her,” Janice says. Willa mutters something Frank doesn’t understand, then, something vicious, and he lets go of her hand, rubs at the four crescent-shaped wounds her nails leave behind. Blood drawn, crimson tattoos to mark the wild and irreparable tear in her soul by marking him, and he presses his palm to his black work pants, no matter if it stains, no one will ever notice. “I waited at the top of the stairs until dark,” Janice says. “I kept on calling her. I called her until my throat hurt.” When the sun started going down, the blue light at the bottom got brighter and brighter and once or twice I thought I could see someone moving around down there, someone standing between me and the light. Finally, yelled I was going to get the goddamn cops if she didn’t come back…” and Janice trails off, hugs herself like she’s cold and gazes straight ahead, but Frank knows she doesn’t see any of them sitting there, watching her, waiting for the next word, waiting for their turns at the lectern. “You don’t have to say any more tonight,” Zaroba says. “You know we’ll all understand if you can’t.” “No,” Janice says. “I can…I really need to,” and she squeezes her eyes shut tight. Mr. Zaroba stands, takes one reassuring step towards the lectern. “We’re all right here,” he says, and “We’re listening,” Willa mumbles mockingly. “We’re listening,” Zaroba says a second later. “I didn’t go to the police. I didn’t tell anyone anything until the next day. My foster parents, they just thought she’d run away again. No one would believe me when I told them about the crypt, when I told them where Nadine had really gone. Finally, they made me show them, though, the cops did, so I took them out to Riverview.” “Why do we always have to fucking start with her?” Willa whispers. “I can’t remember a single time she didn’t go first.” Someone sneezes and “It was sealed up again,” Janice says, her small and brittle voice made big and brittle by the PA speakers. “But they opened it.” The cemetery people didn’t want them to, but they did anyway. I swore I’d kill myself if they didn’t open it and get Nadine out of there.” “Can you remember a time she didn’t go first?” Willa asks and Frank looks at her, but he doesn’t answer. “All they found inside was a coffin. The cops even pulled up part of the marble floor, but there wasn’t anything under it, just dirt.” A few more minutes, a few more details, and Janice is done. Mr. Zaroba hugs her and she goes back to her seat. “Who wants to be next?” he asks them and it’s the man who calls himself Charlie Jones, though they all know that’s not his real name. Every month he apologizes because he can’t use his real name at the meetings, too afraid someone at work might find out, and then he tells them about the time he opened a bedroom door in his house in Hartford and there was nothing on the other side but stars. When he’s done, Zaroba shakes his hand, pats him on the back, and now it’s time for the woman who got lost once on the subway, two hours to get from South Ferry to the Houston Street Station, alone in an empty train that rushed along through a darkness filled with the sound of children crying. Then a timid Colombian woman named Juanita Lazarte, the night she watched two moons cross the sky above Peekskill, the morning the sun rose in the south. And all the others, each in his or her turn, as the big wall clock behind the lectern ticks and the night fills up with the weight and absurdity of their stories, glimpses of impossible geographies, entire worlds hidden in plain view if you’re unlucky enough to see them. “If you’re damned,” Juanita Lazarte once said and quickly crossed herself. Mr. Zaroba who was once an atmospheric scientist and pilot for the Navy. He’s seen something too, of course, the summer of 1969, flying supplies in a Hercules C-130 from Christchurch, New Zealand to McMurdo Station. A freak storm, whiteout conditions and instrument malfunction, and when they finally found a break in the clouds somewhere over the Transantarctic Mountains the entire crew saw the ruins of a vast city, glittering obsidian towers and shattered, crystal spires, crumbling walls carved from the mountains themselves. At least that’s what Zaroba says. He also says the Navy pressured the other men into signing papers agreeing never to talk about the flight and when he refused, he was pronounced mentally unsound by a military psychiatrist and discharged. When Willa’s turn comes, she glances at Frank, not a word but all the terrible things right there in her eyes for him to see, unspoken resignation, surrender, and then she goes down the aisle and stands behind the lectern.

Frank wakes up from a dream of rain and thunder and Willa’s sitting cross-legged at the foot of their bed, nothing on but her pajama bottoms, watching television with the sound off and smoking a cigarette. “Where the hell’d you get that?” he asks, blinks sleepily and points at the cigarette. “I bought a pack on my break today,” she replies, not taking her eyes off the screen. She takes a long drag and the smoke leaks slowly from her nostrils. “I thought we had an agreement.” ”I’m sorry,” but she doesn’t sound sorry at all, and Frank sits up and blinks at the TV screen, rubs his eyes, and now he can see it’s Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story. ”You can turn the sound up, if you want to,” he says. “It won’t bother me.” ”No, that’s okay. I know it by heart anyway.” And then neither of them says anything else for a few minutes, sit watching the televisions, and when Willa has smoked the cigarette down to the filter she stubs it out in a saucer. ”I don’t think I want to go to the meetings anymore,” she says. “I think they’re only making it worse for me.” Frank waits a moment before he replies, waiting to be sure that she’s finished, and then, “That’s your decision, Willa. If that’s what you want.” ”Of course it’s my decision.” ”You know what I meant.” ”I can’t keep reciting it over and over like the rest of you. There’s no fucking point. I could talk about it from now till doomsday and it still wouldn’t make sense and I’d still be afraid. Nothing Zaroba and that bunch of freaks has to say is going to change that, Frank.” Willa picks up the pack of Camels off the bed, lights another cigarette with a disposable lighter that looks pink by the flickering, grainy light from the TV screen. ”I’m sorry,” Frank says. ”Does it help you?” she asks and now there’s an angry-sharp edge in her voice, Willa’s switchblade mood swings, sullen to pissed in the space between heartbeats. “Has it ever helped you at all?” Frank doesn’t want to fight with her tonight, wants to close his eyes and slip back down to sleep, back to his raincool dreams. Too hot for an argument, and “I don’t know,” he says, and that’s almost not a lie. ”Yeah, well, whatever,” Willa mumbles and takes another drag off her cigarette. ”We’ll talk about it in the morning if you want,” Frank says and he lies back down, turns to face the open window and the noise of Mott Street at two A.M., the blinking orange neon from a noodle shop across the street. ”I’m not going to change my mind, if that’s what you mean,” Willa says. ”You can turn the sound up,” Frank tells her again and concentrates on the soothing rhythm of the noodle shop sign, orange pulse like campfire light, much, much better than counting imaginary sheep. In a moment he’s almost asleep again, scant inches from sleep and “Did you ever see Return to Oz?” Willa asks him. ”What?” ”Return to Oz, the one where Fairuza Balk plays Dorothy and Laurie Piper plays Auntie Em.” ”No,” Frank replies. “I never did,” and he rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling instead of the neon sign. In the dark and the gray light from the television, his favorite crack looks even more like the Valles Marineris. ”It wasn’t anything like The Wizard of Oz. I was just a little kid, but I remember it. It scared the hell out of me.” ”Your mother let you see scary movies when you were a little kid?” Willa ignores the question, her eyes still fixed on The Philadelphia Story if they’re fixed anywhere, and she exhales a cloud of smoke that swirls and drifts about above the bed. ”When the film begins, Auntie Em and Uncle Henry think Dorothy’s sick,” she says. “They think she’s crazy, because she talks about Oz all the time, because she won’t believe it was only a nightmare. They finally send her off to a sanitarium for electric shock treatment—“ ”Jesus,” Frank says, not entirely sure that Willa isn’t making all this up. “That’s horrible.” ”Yeah, but it’s true, isn’t it? It’s what really happens to little girls who see places that aren’t supposed to be there. People aren’t ever so glad you didn’t die in a twister that they want to listen to crazy shit about talking scarecrows and emerald cities.” And Frank doesn’t answer because he knows he isn’t supposed to, knows that she would rather he didn’t even try, so he sweats and stares at his surrogate, plaster Mars instead, at the shadow play from the television screen; she doesn’t say anything else, and in a little while more, he’s asleep.

In this dream there is still thunder, no rain from the other sky but the crack and rumble of thunder so loud that the air shimmers and could splinter like ice. The tall red grass almost as high as his waist, rippling gently in the wind, and Frank wishes that Willa wouldn’t get so close to the fleshy, white trees. She thinks they might have fruit, peaches and she’s never eaten a white peach before, she said. Giants fighting in the sky and Willa picking up windfall fruit from the rocky ground beneath the trees; Frank looks over his shoulder, back towards the fissure in the basement wall, back the way they came, but it’s vanished. I should be sacred, he thinks. No, I should be scared. And now Willa is coming back towards him through the crimson waves of grass, her skirt for a linen basket to hold all the pale fruit she’s gathered. She’s smiling and he tries to remember the last time he saw her smile, really smile, not just a smirk or sneer. She smiles and steps through the murmuring grass that seems to part to let her pass, her bare arms and legs safe from the blades grown sharp as straight razors. ”They are peaches,” she beams. But the fruit is the color of school-room chalk, it’s skin smooth and slick and glistening with tiny, pinhead beads of nectar seeping out through minute pores. “Take one,” she says, but his stomach lurches and rolls at the thought, loath to even touch one of the things and then she sighs and dumps them all into the grass at his feet. ”I used to know a story about peaches,” Willa says. “It was a Japanese story, I think. Or maybe it was Chinese.” ”I’m pretty sure those aren’t peaches,” Frank says, and he takes a step backwards, away from the pile of sweating, albino fruit. ”I heard the pits are poisonous,” she says. “Arsenic, or maybe it’s cyanide.” A brilliant flash of chartreuse lightning then and the sky sizzles and smells like charred meat. Willa bends and retrieves a piece of the fruit, takes a bite before he can stop her; the sound of her teeth sinking through its skin, tearing through the colorless pulp inside, is louder than the thunder, and milky juice rolls down her chin and stains her Curious George T-shirt. Something wriggles from between her lips, falls to the grass, and when Willa opens her jaws wide to take another bite Frank can see that her mouth is filled with wriggling things. ”They have to be careful you don’t swallow your tongue,” she says, mumbling around the white peach. “If you swallow your tongue you’ll choke to death.” Frank snatches the fruit away from her, grabs it quick before she puts any more of it in her belly, and she frowns and wipes the juice staining her hands off onto her skirt. The half-eaten thing feels warm and he tosses it away. ”Jesus, that was fucking silly, Frank. The harm’s already done, you know that. The harm was done the day you looked through that hole in the wall.” And then the sky booms its symphony of gangrene and sepsis and lightning stabs down with electric claws, thunder then lightning but that’s only the wrong way round if he pretends Willa isn’t right, if he pretends that he’s seven again and this time he doesn’t take the flashlight from the kitchen drawer. This time he does what his mother says and doesn’t go sneaking off the minute she turns her back. Frank stands alone beneath the restless trees, his aching, dizzy head too full of all the time that can’t be redeemed, now or then or ever, and he watches as Willa walks alone across the red fields towards the endless deserts of scrap iron and bone, towards the bloated, scarlet-purple sun. The black things have noticed her, and creep along close behind, stalking silent on ebony, mantis legs. This time he wakes up before they catch her.

The long weekend, then, hotter and drier, the sky more white than blue and the air on Mott Street and everywhere else that Frank has any reason to go has grown so ripe, so redolent, that sometimes he pulls the collars of his T-shirts up over his mouth and nose, breathes through the cotton like a surgeon or a wild west bandit, but the smell always gets through anyway. On the news there are people dying of heat stroke and dehydration, people dying in the streets and ERs, but fresh-faced weathermen still promise that it will rain very soon. He’s stopped believing them and maybe that means Willa’s right and it never will rain again. Frank hasn’t shown the white card—FOUND: LOST WORLDS—to Willa, keeps it hidden in his wallet, only taking it out when he’s alone and no one will see, no one to ask where or what or who. He’s read it over and over again, has each line committed to memory, and Monday morning he almost calls Mr. Zaroba about it. The half hour between Willa leaving for the café and the time that he has to leave for the copy shop if he isn’t going to be late, and he holds the telephone receiver and stares at Dr. Solomon Monalisa’s card lying there on the table in front of him. The sound of his heart, the dial-tone drone, and the traffic down on Mott Street, the spice-and-dried-fish odor of the apothecary leaking up through the floorboards, and a fat drop of sweat slides down his forehead and spreads itself painfully across his left eyeball. By the time he’s finished rubbing at his eye, calling Zaroba no longer seems like such a good idea after all, and Frank puts the white card back into his wallet, slips it in safe between his driver’s license and a dog-eared, expired MetroCard. Instead he calls in sick, gets Maggie and she doesn’t believe for one moment that there’s anything wrong with him. ”I fucking swear, I can’t even get up off the toilet long enough to make a phone call. I’m calling you from the head,” only half an effort at sounding sincere because they both know this is only going through the motions. ”As we speak—“ he starts, but Maggie cuts him off. ”That’s enough, Frank. But I’m telling you, man if you wanna keep this job, you better get your slacker ass down here tomorrow morning.” ”Right,” Frank says. “I hear you,” and she hangs up first And then Frank stares at the open window, the sun beating down like the Voice of God out there, and it takes him almost five minutes to remember where to find the next number he has to call.

Sidney McAvoy stopped coming to the meetings at the synagogue on Eldridge Street almost a year ago, not long after Frank’s first time. Small, hawk-nosed man with nervous, ferrety eyes, and he’s always reminded Frank a little of Dustin Hoffman in Papillon. Some sort of tension or wound between Sidney and Mr. Zaroba that Frank never fully understood, but he saw it from the start, the way their eyes never met and Sidney never took his turn at the lectern, sat silent, brooding, chewing at the stem of a cheap, unlit pipe. And then an argument after one of the meetings, the same night that Zaroba told Janice that she shouldn’t ever go back to the cemetery in Trenton, that she should never try to find the staircase and the blue light again. Both men speaking in urgent, angry whispers, Zaroba looking up occasionally to smile a sheepish, embarrassed, apologetic smile. Everyone pretending not to see or hear, talking among themselves, occupied with their stale doughnuts and tiny packets of non-dairy creamer, and then Sidney McAvoy left and never came back. Frank would’ve forgotten all about him, almost had forgotten, and then one night he and Willa were coming home late from a bar where they drink sometimes, whenever they’re feeling irresponsible enough to spend money on booze. Cheap vodka or cheaper beer, a few hours wasted just trying to feel like everyone else, the way they imagined other, normal people might feel, and they ran into Sidney McAvoy a few blocks from their apartment. He was wearing a ratty green raincoat, even though it wasn’t raining, and chewing on one of his pipes, carrying a large box wrapped in white butcher’s paper, tied up tight and neat with twine. ”Shit,” Willa whispered. “Make like you don’t see him,” but Sidney had already noticed them and he was busy clumsily trying to hide the big package behind his back. ”I know you two,” he declared, talking loudly, a suspicious, accusatory glint to his quavering voice. “You’re both with Zaroba, aren’t you? You still go to his meetings.” That last word a sneer and he pointed a short, grubby finger at the center of Frank’s chest. ”That’s really none of your goddamn business, is it?” Willa growled and Frank stepped quickly between them; she mumbled and spit curses behind his back and Sindey McAvoy glared up at Frank with his beady-dark eyes. A whole lifetime’s worth of bitterness and distrust trapped inside those eyes, eyes that have seen far too much or far too little, and “How have you been, Mr. McAvoy,” Frank said, straining to sound friendly, and he managed the sickly ghost of a smile. Sidney grunted and almost dropped his carefully-wrapped package. ”If you care about that girl there,” he said, speaking around the stem of the pipe clenched between his yellowed teeth, “you’ll keep her away from Zaroba. And you’ll both stop telling him things, if you know what’s good for you. There are more useful answers in a road atlas than you’re ever going to get out of that old phony.” ”What makes you say that?” Frank asked. “What were you guys fighting about?” but Sidney was already scuttling away down Canal Street, his white package hugged close to his chest. He turned a corner without looking back and was gone. ”Fucking nut job,” Willa mumbled. “What the hell’s his problem anyway?” ”Maybe the less we know about him the better,” Frank said and he put an arm around Willa’s small waist, holding her close to him, trying hard not to think about what could have been in the box but unable to think of anything else. And two weeks later, dim and snowy last day before Thanksgiving, Frank found Sidney McAvoy’s number in the phone book and called him.

A wet comb through his hair, cleaner shirt and socks, and Frank goes out into the sizzling day; across Columbus Park to the Canal Street Station and he takes the M to Grand Street, rides the B line all the way to the subway stop beneath the Museum of Natural History. Rumbling long through the honeycombed earth, the diesel and dust and garbage scented darkness and him swaddled inside steel and unsteady fluorescent light. Time to think that he’d rather not have, unwelcome luxury of second thoughts, and when the train finally reaches the museum he’s almost ready to turn right around and head back downtown. Almost, but Dr. Solomon Monalisa’s card is in his wallet to keep him moving, get him off the train and up the concrete steps to the museum entrance. Ten dollars he can’t spare to get inside, but Sidney McAvoy will never agree to meet him anywhere outside, too paranoid for a walk in Central Park or a quiet booth in a deli or a coffee shop somewhere. ”People are always listening,” he says, whenever Frank has suggested or asked that they meet somewhere without an entrance fee. “You never know what they might overhear.” So sometimes it’s the long marble bench in front of the Apatosaurus, or the abyssal, blue-black gloom of the Hall of Fishes, seats beneath a planetarium constellation sky, whichever spot happens to strike Sidney’s fancy that particular day. His fancy or his cabalistic fantasies, if there’s any difference, and today Frank finds him in the Hall of Asiatic Mammals, short and rumpled man in a threadbare tweed jacket and red tennis shoes standing alone before the Indian leopard diorama, gazing intently in at the pocket of counterfeit jungle and the taxidermied cats. Frank waits behind him for a minute or two, waiting to be noticed, and when Sidney looks up and speaks, he speaks to Frank’s reflection. ”I’m very busy today,” he says, brusque, impatient. “I hope this isn’t going to take long.” And no, Frank says, it won’t take long at all, I promise, but Sidney’s doubtful expression to show just how much he believes that. He sighs and looks back to the stuffed leopards, papier-mâché trees and wax leaves, a painted flock of peafowl rising to hang forever beneath a painted forest canopy. Snapshot moment of another world and the walls of the dimly-lit hall lined with a dozen or more such scenes. ”You want to know about Monalisa,” Sidney says. “That’s why you came here, because you think I can tell you who he is.” ”Yeah,” and Frank reaches into this pocket for his wallet. “He came into the place where I work last week and left this.” He takes out the card and Sidney turns around only long enough to get it from him. ”So, you talked to him?” ”No, I didn’t. I was eating my lunch in the stockroom. I didn’t actually see him for myself.” Sidney stares at the card, seems to read it carefully three or four times and then he hands it back to Frank, goes back to staring at the leopards. ”Why didn’t you show this to Zaroba?” he asks sarcastically, taunting, but Frank answers him anyway, not in the mood today for Sidney’s grudges and intrigues. ”Because I didn’t think he’d tell me anything. You know he’s more interested in the mysteries than ever finding answers.” And Frank pauses, silent for a moment and Sidney’s silent, too, both men watching the big cats now—glass eyes, freeze-frame talons, and taut, spectacled haunches—as though the leopards might suddenly spring towards them, all this stillness just a clever ruse for the tourists and the kiddies; maybe dead leopards know the nervous, wary faces of men who have seen things that they never should have seen. ”He knows the truth would swallow him whole,” Sidney says. The leopards don’t pounce and he adds, “He knows he’s a coward.” ”So who is Dr. Monalisa?” ”A bit of something the truth already swallowed and spat back up,” and Sidney chuckles sourly to himself and produces one of his pipes from a jacket pocket. “He’s a navigator, a pilot, a cartographer…” Frank notices that one of the two leopards has captured a stuffed peacock, holds it fast between velvet, razored paws, and he can’t remember if it was that way only a moment before. ”He draws maps,” Sidney says. “He catalogs doors and windows and culverts.” ”That’s bullshit,” Frank whispers, his voice low now so the old woman staring in at the giant panda exhibit won’t hear him. “You’re trying to tell me he can find places?” ”He isn’t a sane man, Frank,” Sidney says and now he holds up his left hand and presses his palm firmly against the glass, as if he’s testing the invisible barrier, gauging its integrity. “He has answers, but he has prices, too. You think this is Hell, you see how it feels to be in debt to Dr. Solomon Monalisa.” ”It isn’t me. It’s Willa. I think she’s starting to lose it.” ”We all lost ‘it’ a long time ago, Frank.” ”I’m afraid she’s going to do something. I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself.” And Sidney turns his back on the leopards then, takes the pipe from his mouth, and glares up at Frank. But some of the anger, some of the bitterness, has gone from his eyes, and “He might keep her alive,” he says, “but you wouldn’t want her back when he was done. If she’d even come back. No, Frank. You two stay away from Monalisa. Look for your own answers. You don’t think you found that card by accident, do you? You don’t really think there are such things as coincidences? That’s not even his real address—“ ”She can’t sleep anymore,” Frank says, but now Sidney McAvoy isn’t listening, glances back over his shoulder at the Indian rain forest, incandescent daylight, illusory distances, and “I have to go now,” he says. “I’m very busy today.” ”I think she’s fucking dying, man,” Frank says as Sidney straightens his tie and puts the pipe back into his pocket; the old woman looks up from the panda in its unreal bamboo thicket and frowns at them both. ”I’m very busy today, Frank. Call me next week. I think I can meet you at the Guggenheim next week.” And he walks quickly away towards the Roosevelt Rotunda, past the Siberian tiger and the Sumatran rhinoceros, leaving Frank alone with the frowning woman. When Sidney has vanished into the shadows behind a small herd of Indian elephants, Frank turns back to the leopards and the smudgy hand print Sidney McAvoy has left on their glass.

Hours and hours later, past sunset to the other side of the wasted day, the night that seems even hotter than the scorching afternoon, and Frank is dreaming that the crack in the basement wall on St. Mark’s place is much too narrow for him to squeeze through. Maybe the way it really happened after all, and then he hears a small, anguished sound from somewhere close behind him, something hurting or lost, and when he turns to see, Frank opens his eyes and there’s only the tangerine glow of the noodle shop sign outside the apartment window. He blinks once, twice, but this stubborn world doesn’t go away, doesn’t break apart into random kaleidoscopic shards to become some other place entirely. So he sits up, head full of the familiar disappointment, this incontestable solidity, and it takes him a moment to realize that Willa isn’t in bed. Faint outline of her body left in the wrinkled sheets and the bathroom light is burning, the door open, so she’s probably just taking a piss. ”You okay in there?” he asks, but no reply. The soft drip, drip, drip of the kitchenette faucet, tick of the wind-up alarm clock on the table next to Willa’s side of the bed, street noise, but no answer. “Did you fall in or something?” he shouts. “Did you drown?” And still no response, but his senses waking up, picking out more than the ordinary, every-night sounds, a trilling whine pitched so high he feels it more than hears it, and now he notices the way that the air in the apartment smells. Go back to sleep, he thinks, but both legs already over the edge of the bed, both feet already on the dusty floor. When you wake up again it’ll be over. The trill worming its way beneath his skin, soaking in, pricking gently at the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, and all the silver fillings in his teeth have begun to hum along sympathetically. Where he’s standing, Frank can see into the bathroom, just barely, a narrow slice of linoleum, slice of porcelain toilet tank, a mildew and polyurethane fold of shower curtain. And he thinks that the air has started to shimmer, an almost imperceptible warping of the light escaping from the open door, but that might only be his imagination. He takes one small step towards the foot of the bed and there’s Willa, standing naked before the tiny mirror above the bathroom sink. The jut of her shoulder blades and hip bones, the anorexic swell of her rib cage, all the minute details of her painful thinness seem even more pronounced in the harsh and curving light. ”Hey. Is something wrong? Are you sick?” and she turns her head slowly to look at him, or maybe only looking towards him because there’s nothing much like recognition on her face. Her wide, unblinking eyes, blind woman’s stare, and “Can’t you hear me, Willa?” he asks as she turns slowly back to the mirror. Her lips move, shaping rough, inaudible words. The trilling grows infinitesimally louder, climbs another half-octave, and there’s a warm, wet trickle across Frank’s lips and he realizes that his nose is bleeding. Behind Willa the bathroom wall, the shower, the low ceiling—everything—ripples and dissolves and there’s a sudden, staccato pop as the bulb above the sink blows. And after an instant of perfect darkness, perfect nothing, dull and yellow-green shafts of light from somewhere far, far above, flickering light from an alien sun shining down through the waters of an alien sea; dim, translucent shapes dart and flash through those depths, bodies more insubstantial than jellyfish, more sinuous than eels, and Willa rises to meet them, arms outstretched, her hair drifting about her face like a halo of seaweed and algae. In the ocean-filtered light, Willa’s pale skin seems sleek and smooth as dolphin-flesh. Air rushes from her lips, her nostrils, and flows eagerly away in a glassy swirl of bubbles. The trilling has filled Frank’s head so full, and his aching skull, his brain, seem only an instant from merciful explosion, fragile, eggshell bone collapsed by the terrible, lonely sound and the weight of all that water stacked above him. He staggers, takes a step backwards, and now Willa’s face is turned up to meet the sunlight streaming down, and she’s more beautiful than anyone or anything he’s ever seen or dreamt. Down on Mott Street, the screech of tires, the angry blat of a car horn and someone begins shouting very loudly in Chinese. And now the bathroom is only a bathroom again, and Willa lies in a limp, strangling heap on the floor, her wet hair and skin glistening in the light from the bulb above the sink. The water rolls off her back, her thighs, spreads across the floor in a widening puddle, and Frank realizes that the trilling has finally stopped, only the memory of it left in his ringing ears and bleeding nose. When the dizziness has passed, he goes to her, sits down on the wet floor and holds her while she coughs and pukes up gouts of salt water and snotty strands of something the color of verdigris. Her skin so cold it hurts to touch, cold coming off her like a fever, and something small and chitinous slips from her hair and scuttles behind the toilet on long, jointed legs. ”Did you see?” she asks him, desperate, rheumy words gurgling out with all the water that she’s swallowed. “Did you, Frank? Did you see it?” ”Yes,” he tells her, just like every time before. “Yes, baby. I did. I saw it all,” and Willa smiles, closes her eyes, and in a little while she’s asleep. He carries her, dripping, back to their bed and holds her until the sun rises and she’s warm again.

The next day neither of them goes to work, and some small, niggling part of Frank manages to worry about what will happen to them if he loses the shit job at Gotham Kwick Kopy, if Willa gets fired from the café, obstinate shred of himself still capable of caring about such things. How the rent will be paid, how they’ll eat, everything that hasn’t really seemed to matter in more years than he wants to count. Half the morning in bed and his nosebleed keeps coming back, a roll of toilet paper and then one of their towels stained all the shades of dried and drying blood; Willa wearing her winter coat despite the heat, and she keeps trying to get him to go to a doctor, but no, he says. That might lead to questions, and besides, it’ll stop sooner or later. It’s always stopped before. By twelve o’clock, Willa’s traded the coat for her pink cardigan, feels good enough that she makes them peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches, black coffee and stale potato chips, and after he eats Frank begins to feel better, too. But going to the park is Willa’s idea, because the apartment still smells faintly of silt and dead fish, muddy, low-tide stink that’ll take hours more to disappear completely. He knows the odor makes her nervous, so he agrees, even though he’d rather spend the afternoon sleeping off his headache. Maybe a cold shower, another cup of Willa’s bitter-strong coffee, and if he’s lucky he could doze for hours without dreaming They take the subway up to Fifth, follow the eastern edge of the park north, past the zoo and East Green all the way to Pilgrim Hill and the Conservatory Pond. It’s not so very hot that there aren’t a few model sailing ships on the pond, just enough breeze to keep their miniature Bermuda sails standing tall and taut as shark fins. Frank and Willa sit in the shade near the Alice in Wonderland statue, her favorite spot in all of Central Park, rocky place near the tea party, granite and rustling leaves, the clean laughter of children climbing about on the huge, bronze mushrooms. A little girl with frizzy black hair and red and white peppermint-striped tights is petting the kitten in Alice’s lap, stroking its metal fur and meowling loudly, and “I can’t ever remember her name,” Willa says. ”What?” Frank asks. “Whose name?” not sure if she means the little girl or the kitten or something else entirely. ”Alice’s kitten. I know it had a name, but I never can remember it.” Frank watches the little girl for a moment, and “Dinah,” he says. “I think the kitten’s name was Dinah.” ”Oh, yeah, Dinah. That’s it,” and he knows that she’s just thinking out loud, whatever comes to mind so that she won’t have to talk about last night, so the conversation won’t accidentally find its own way back to those few drowning moments of chartreuse light and eel shadows. Trying so hard to pretend and he almost decides they’re both better off if he plays along and doesn’t show her Dr. Solomon Monalisa’s white calling card. ”That’s a good name for a cat,” she says. “If we ever get a kitten, I think I’ll name it Dinah.” ”Mrs. Wu doesn’t like cats.” ”Well, we’re not going to spend the rest of our lives in that dump. Next time, we’ll get an apartment that allows cats.” Frank takes the card out and lays his wallet on the grass, but Willa hasn’t even noticed, too busy watching the children clambering about on Alice, too busy dreaming about kittens. The card is creased and smudged from a week riding around in his back pocket and all the handling it’s suffered, the edges beginning to fray, and he gives it to her without any explanation. ”What’s this?” she asks and he tells her to read it first, just read it, so she does. Reads it two or three times and then Willa returns the card, goes back to watching the children. But her expression has changed, the labored, make-believe smile gone now and she just looks like herself again, plain old Willa, the distance in her eyes, the hard angles at the corners of her mouth that aren’t quite a frown. ”Sidney says he’s for real,” half the truth, at best, and Frank glances down at the card, reading it again for the hundredth or two-hundredth time ”Sidney McAvoy’s a fucking lunatic.” ”He says this guy has maps—“ ”Christ, Frank. What do you want me to say? You want me to give you permission to go talk to some crackpot? You don’t need my permission.” ”I was hoping you’d come with me,” he says so softly that he’s almost whispering, and he puts the card back into his wallet where neither of them will have to look at it, stuffs the wallet back into his jeans pocket. ”Well, I won’t. I go to your goddamn meetings. I already have to listen to that asshole Zaroba. That’s enough for me, thank you very much. That’s more than enough.” The little girl petting Dinah slips, loses her footing and almost slides backwards off the edge of the sculpture, but her mother catches her and sets her safely on the ground. ””I see what it’s doing to you,” Frank says. “I have to watch. How much longer do you think you can go on like this?” She doesn’t answer him, opens her purse and takes out a pack of cigarettes, only one left and she crumbles the empty package and tosses it over her shoulder into the bushes. ”What if this guy really can help you? What if he can make it stop?” Willa is digging noisily around in her purse, trying to find her lighter or a book of matches, and she turns and stares at Frank, the cigarette hanging unlit from her lips. Her eyes shining bright as broken gemstones, shattered crystal eyes, furious, resentful, and he knows that she could hate him, that she could leave him here and never look back. She takes the cigarette from her mouth, licks her upper lip, and for a long moment Willa holds the tip of her tongue trapped tight between her teeth. ”What the hell makes you think I want it to stop?” And silence as what she’s said sinks in and he begins to understand that he’s never understood her at all. “It’s killing you,” he says, finally, the only thing he can think to say, and Willa’s eyes seem to flash and grow brighter, more broken, more eager to slice. ”No, Frank, it’s the only thing keeping me alive. Knowing that it’s out there, that I’ll see it again, and someday maybe it won’t make me come back here.” And then she gets up and walks quickly away towards the pond, brisk, determined steps to put more distance between them. She stops long enough to bum a light from an old black man with a dachshund, then ducks around one corner of the boathouse and he can’t see her anymore. Frank doesn’t follow, sits watching the tiny sailboats and yachts gliding gracefully across the moss-dark surface of the water, their silent choreography of wakes and ripples. He decides maybe it’s better not to worry about Willa for now, plenty of time for that later and he wonders what he’ll say to Monalisa when he finds him.

We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorn’d as well as our own. CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS (c. 1690)

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therake-1996-blog · 7 years

Text

Pure Chap 9

Chapter 9

The Heavens

“These goldfish are getting worse by the day,”

Scorpio, who is sitting across from Ichthys and I in the parlor, growls as he flips through work documents. I frown. There’s that nickname again.

“What does ‘goldfish’ mean?” I ask Ichthys.

“Hm? Oh. Well, ah…you know how humans take care of pets like fish?” He says. I nod. “Well, we gods think of humans in the way that you think of fish. Like…”

“Like tiny, insignificant little hindrances.” Scorpio completes, his voice like ice.

I stare at him. Hindrances, huh? I wonder if that’s how Zyglavis sees me. As a hindrance, an annoyance.

“Do all gods see us that way?” I mumble, more to myself than to either of them.

“Yup.” Scorpio answers curtly. I flinch.

“Hey, now,” Ichthys says. “I don’t see you that way. Dui doesn’t either. We think humans are very interesting.”

“But you two are weird.”

“Scorpio!”

Ichthys slaps his legs and shoots Scorpio a look, but he just rolls his eyes and goes back to his paperwork.

Sighing inwardly, I slump back against the couch, looking down at my hands.

“Eden, do you wanna do something?” Ichthys asks me, gently elbowing my side. I look at him.

“Like what?” He purses his lips for a moment, then looks off to the side, stumped. I sigh again. Zyglavis doesn’t want me to leave the mansion without him, and I doubt he’d feel any better if I were with the Problem Child.

“Let’s go ask Dui. Come on.”

He pulls me off the couch and leads me down to Dui’s room.

“Hey, Gemini!” Ichthys smacks open the door to Dui’s room, causing the poor god to jump half a foot into the air and drop the small package he was holding.

“Ah! Dammit, Ichthys, my cherries!”

Dui laments the loss of the pack of cherries he had been eating and kneels down on the floor, hurrying to pick them all up. “Oh…sorry, Dui,” Ichthys begins helping Dui.

“No you’re not, you butt-head.” I smile as I watch them go back and forth.

As Ichthys helps Dui pick up his cherries, he says, “I want to take Eden to do something fun today while Minister Uptight is doing the paperwork Altair sent down, but I can’t think of anything. Got any ideas?”

“Hm…” Dui drops the last cherry into the pack and closes its flimsy lid, cocking his head to the side. “Well…why don’t we take her to the Heavens?” Ichthys blinks.

“The Heavens? Is that allowed?”

“I don’t see why not. And if we get questioned we can just say we felt it was safer than Earth, especially since Zyglavis is too busy to watch her.”

“Stop talking like I’m a baby.” I grumble.

Dui smiles brightly at me. “Sorry. Well, what do you think? You want a tour of the Heavens? They’ve got lots of cherry groves.”

“We’re not going to go cherry-picking,” Ichthys says, bumping Dui. He rolls his eyes. “Besides that, there’s this cool forest that no one has ever fully explored. You wanna do that?” I look back from Dui to Ichthys, and the happy, bright looks on their faces leave me with no other option but to say,

“Let’s go.”

When I step through the door linking the mansion to the Heavens, a warm breeze washes over me, as if cleansing me of all Earthly impurities, and a bright wave of white light comes over me. When it passes…

“Wow!”

I can’t help but cry out at the sight I’m greeted with.

The ground under my feet is golden, as if the grass is made with pure gold, and the sky is a pure, impossible shade of blue, not a cloud marring it. The trees surrounding this area are a species I’ve never seen before, rising up higher than I have ever seen trees on Earth go. The air is sweet, but not unpleasantly so, and so…easy, to breathe in. Easier than the air on Earth.

“Come on, come on!” Ichthys grabs my hand and yanks me to the right, where a rather imposing, dark patch of forest is.

“Oh, wait, hold on. Those woods?” I gasp, yanking back.

“Oh, relax. Nothing bad can happen here. This is the Heavens, after all.”

“Yeah, Eden, don’t worry,” Dui laughs as he closes the door.

Even though I’m hesitant, Ichthys practically drags me into the mouth of the woods, Dui trailing behind us while laughing at my useless attempts at pulling back.

Once the entrance to the woods is well behind us, Ichthys loosens his grip on my wrist, but keeps ahold of it in case I freak out. Dui takes my other wrist.

“You know, Eden, if you were a little smaller, Ichthys and I could lift you off the ground and swing you like parents do with their children,” Dui says with a bright smile, contrasting the darkness of the woods. I try my best to return that smile, but this place is so…not necessarily scary, but…grim.

“So, do people not come in here because it’s so dark and dim?” I ask. Ichthys nods.

“Everyone says these woods are sad, too dark, and that means that most of it is largely unexplored. There could be species of animals and plants in here no one knows about! How cool is that?”

I don’t answer, and look around as best I can. The light of the sun that was seemingly endlessly bright barely breaks through the leaves of the trees, though small slivers of light somehow manage to reach the ground here and there. I take a deep breath. The air here is different than out in the bright, open space just a few yards away. It’s clean, but smells like wet soil after a heavy rain, not so sweet like before. I hear a bird call that I’m not familiar with; it sounds high but at the same time deep, and it’s not cheerful like most bird songs. It seems somehow melancholy, like a requiem. A few more birds join in, a chorus of sweet, high sounds like peeling bells, and low, brassy sounds like thunder. It’s strange. It seems as if they’re all singing the same song. I wonder if the animals in the Heavens are more intelligent than the animals on Earth.

“Hey, Dui, look over here!” Suddenly Ichthys lets go of my wrist and darts to the left, quickly disappearing from my view.

“Ichthys, wait! We can’t leave Eden!” Dui cries, but it seems like Ichthys can’t hear him. “Ugh…”

“It’s okay, Dui,” I say. “I’ll wait here. You go get him.” He looks down at me apologetically.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

And he hurries toward where Ichthys ran.

I stare uselessly in the direction my two tour guides are for a long time before I take a deep breath and look around me.

All around me, it’s dark and grey. I can tell there are shades of green, yellow, and brown, but they don’t appear as vivid to me as they might to a god. I wonder just how much more enhanced god’s senses are.

As I’m staring at nothing, a sliver of bright white light shoots down from the sky in front of me, making me jump. “Ha…” I gasp. I berate myself for being so jumpy, but then, several more thin rays of light appear a few paces from the first, seeming to go farther and farther into the forest. My eyebrows scrunch together as I stare at them, the tips of my fingers like ice. I curl them into my palms.

Something in my mind is telling me I need to follow these rays of light. I take a step, but then stop myself.

Wait. The rest of my mind says. This may be the Heavens, but bad things can still happen, especially when you’re in a strange, dark place and don’t know where you’re going.

I hesitate for a few moments, my body tensed and ready to start following the light as I have an internal battle with myself. Going back and forth for what feels like forever, I force the logical part of my mind to shut up, and my feet start moving.

The wind blows gently through the underbrush, rustling the leaves above my head and the tall grass and flowers at my feet. My hair sways around my head. The rays of light keep appearing, occasionally making me turn left then right, but only a few minutes after I started walking, I come to a small, brighter clearing.

My breath is thoroughly stolen from me when I see what is in this clearing.

A medium-sized pond sits at the center, and tiny lights of blue, pink, orange, and purple float about in the air, seeming to be alive, moving like jellyfish in the ocean. My feet move on their own, taking small, tentative steps further into the clearing.

Flowers I’ve never seen before grow in thick patches all around the perimeter of the clearing all the way to the mouth of the pond. Shades of gold, crimson, royal blue, champagne, and emerald painting the ground. I can smell their delicate scents as the air picks up and lets down.

The water of the pond glows a pretty pale blue, crystal clear, and I can see fish swimming around, even all the way down to the bottom, where colorful rocks are decorating it, glowing like those cheap bracelets you give little kids at birthday parties. The fish swirl gracefully around each other, almost like they’re playing. They all vary in size, from the size of a tube of chapstick to the size of my head, and are shades of scarlet, violet, indigo, and pure white.

A cool breeze, like that of an early autumn morning blows around me, dancing across my cheeks and making me shiver pleasantly.

When I lift my eyes, I can see that on the east side of the pond, there’s a path of sorts, made of grass, leading to a statue I hadn’t noticed until now. Curiously, I round the pond and look at the statue; it’s made not of granite or marble or onyx or any kind of stone I’ve seen, but a type of shiny, silver, crystal-like stone that reflects the rays of light that still shine down from the sky. I notice that clouds are thick over my head. The statue gives off the vibe of being a gravestone, intricate designs swirling up the sides and covering the top.

I cautiously approach the statue, and once I’m only a foot from it, I can see writing in the center of it. I squint my eyes and am able to make out,

Their absence is a silent grief; their lives a beautiful memory— Evgenís & Mala

At the front of the grave is a fresh bouquet of flowers, all marigolds, shades of red, yellow, and orange. Marigolds…isn’t that the flower of the month of October? And, October is the month of Libra…is this…

“Zyglavis’ parents…” I whisper.

I slowly sink to the ground in front of the grave, my eyes glued onto the words engraved into the stone. Zyglavis didn’t just let them go. He mourned them, just as humans mourn the deaths of their loved ones. Maybe even more so. It hits me again just how much he feels, just how sensitive he is when compared to other gods or even humans.

“I didn’t have any reason to mourn them.”

His words echo in my mind, but now I know he was lying through his teeth to me. Zyglavis loved his parents, and it’s clear to see from the flowers that he still does, and that he misses them. I reach out and run my fingers over their delicate petals, tears stinging in my eyes.

I don’t understand why he lies about his emotions, why he puts on the mask and acts like nothing bothers him. How many times has he sat alone in his room, thinking about what he could have done differently for the humans all those years ago and wondering about what it would be like if his parents were still alive? How many times has he cried, brushed it off, then went about his business like nothing happened?

I swallow, but my throat hurts.

“Eden…James?”

I jump, a wild gasp hitching in my throat, and I spin around to the voice I didn’t expect to hear.

“Zig…lavis…” I whisper, my voice hoarse. He stands at the line that divides the thick of the forest and the clearing, his eyes wide in shock at seeing me here.

“What are you…doing here?” He approaches me, eyeing me cautiously, and when he comes to be right in front of me, he cocks his head. “And why are you crying?”

“This is…your parent’s grave, isn’t it?” I ask him. His eyes widen just a bit, and silence falls heavy on us. All I can hear for a moment is my own heartbeat and the gentle rippling of the water surrounding us. Then, Zyglavis sighs.

“How is it you’re always find out things I don’t want you to know?” However irritated he looks, his voice is very soft as he lowers himself to the ground beside me, looking at the grave in front of us. “How did you even get here?”

“Ichthys and Dui wanted to explore this forest,” I reply. “And brought me with them.”

“Those two…” He sighs heavily and shakes his head. “Why did they drag you along with them?”

“Well…Dui and Ichthys are my friends. Is it bad to hang out together?” Zyglavis makes a noise in his throat and cocks his head.

“I suppose not.”

Two birds fly low to the ground a few feet away, twirling with each other and chirping merrily before shooting back into the trees.“You lied to me before,” I whisper, turning my gaze to look at him. He glances at me, then looks down at his knees.

“About what?”

“You know exactly what about. About…them,” I reach out my fingers and gently stroke the strange crystal in front of me. “You said you had no reason to mourn them. That you didn’t. But you lied.”

“Eden…”

“I want us to be honest with each other from now on,” I say, looking back at him. “I don’t want you to suffer in silence anymore, okay?”

Zyglavis winces. It’s just a tiny movement, but it doesn’t escape my gaze. Still, he insists, “I don’t suffer—”

“Zyglavis.”

I reach out to him and wrap my arms around his shoulders, leaning my head against him. His body tenses against me, and he doesn’t move to hug me back, but I don’t mind. “There’s nothing wrong with having emotions,” I whisper into his ear.

“There’s nothing wrong with feeling sad, or lost, or frustrated… there’s nothing wrong with any of it. So if you’re trying to be strong for the other gods or for the humans, or even for yourself, you don’t have to be. You don’t always have to be the rock. It’s okay, Zyglavis.”

He shakes his head, his hair blending with mine.

We remain like that in silence for a moment, until Zyglavis whispers, “It’s not okay. It’s my fault the dark king is after you.

#otome game #star crossed myth #zyglavis #leon #Karno #huedhaut #Teorus #aigonorous #tauxolouve #scorpio #dui #ichthys #partheno #krioff #fanfic

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planetcallisto · 7 years

Text

— palette

pairing: jungkook x reader

genre: angst and a tiny tiny tiny bit of fluff

warnings: swearing, just a day of bad luck

word count: 4831

A/N: this was a request from anon, I took a lot of artistic liberties with the “accident” part because I didn’t want it to turn out to be too typical, I hope you still enjoy it. Also there are quite a few perspective changes but hopefully they’re obvious enough, I tried to make them clear.

“Is there someone you need to tell us about?”

“No.”

"Thank you," you call out to the bus driver. They muster up a simple smile before shutting the doors and driving off. Even inside the warm, insulated bus, somehow the sharp fall breeze still made the people inside, lethargic.

Lethargic in the way that the petal of a shrivelling flower would snap and take it's time before hitting the ground to join the rest of it's discoloured colony. But to you it was anything but.

As it breezed by your uncovered legs and picked up bunches of your skirt, it also pulled back the edges of your lips. But you weren't cold. It almost felt like the wind was warming you, despite it being the complete opposite.

A smile washed over your face just as you saw the oh-so-familiar park bench. It was a little faded since the last time you saw it. It's usual coffee brown was now but a mere caramel. Though the nostalgia it held was as strong as ever.

"Hey, um, are you cold?"

"Yeah just a little though-"

"Why did you wear a skirt knowing it was chilly?"

"I thought you'd like it. You did buy it for me."

"Ah, you're right."

"Here take this back you're gonna get cold without it."

"No, please just keep it."

"But Jungkook-"

"If I kiss you will you stop complaining?"

"Mhm."

"Oh, how you play with my emotions."

"Just shut up, I'm taking you up on that offer right now."

"Only because I love you."

"Whatever you say Jeon."

The last few birds who could still withstand the cold chirped by and flew off with dizzying determination. And with that you were left alone in the city's only park. There were no children running around and throwing sand at each other. No older couples taking their daily walk. Nothing but the sound of leaves falling the cars speeding past you.

He sat on the edge if the couch, ready to jump up the second the phone rang. He'd been waiting for wait felt like hours but it had all been worth it when it's tones filled the small apartment.

"Hey." He breathed happily. His heart was pounding and he couldn't seem to wipe the smile off his face.

"Hey Jungkook. How've you been?"

Her voice was as soft as ever. Like if you had pulled apart a cone and watched the honey string between it. Or the stroke that the paint brush left on the canvas. Smooth and unforgettable.

"Are you free today?"

Hesitation ran through him. The only thing he could think of in that moment was you, sitting in your cute skirt, waiting for him on the familiar brown bench.

"Jungkook?"

"Ah, yeah sorry."

"So are you free today?"

A breath pushed past his lips.

"Yeah, I'm not busy."

You wouldn't mind, right?

‘Jungkook-ah, where are you?’

It was the third text you sent in the last 10 minutes. The sun was slowly descending painting the sky in oranges and yellows. Clouds were pushed out of the way, almost as if the sun wanted to be in the spotlight. November was a month of rain and cloudy days. It was the month of warm coffees and strolls in the park. The month of holding hands in pockets and sharing scarves.

Where was he?

Approaching the hour mark since the time you promised to meet him, it was probably best if you went home. According to your philosophy, if you have to call him to ask where he is then it's already too late.

The wind had picked up and it was no longer comforting. It was pinching at your skin, sure to leave it red and irritated. Whispers were laced throughout reminding you that 'hey he forgot about you'.

It was becoming hard the keep your tears from pouring over your cheeks, and especially so when the bus you'd taken to get here shows up with the same bus driver. He looked at you with sympathy and also some kind of judgement. The wind followed you into the bus but not before whisking your skirt well over your thighs, revealing only other layer you had underneath them.

Quickly you held the fabric down and ran to an empty seat near the front so that you wouldn't have to lock eyes with anyone there.

'Jungkook-ah are you okay?'

Another desperate text.

If someone had been looking over your shoulder they would've noticed the onslaught of texts you'd sent the man with a heart beside his name with absolutely no reply. It had been years since you've been to that park with him and in that time you moved from your previous studio, which happened to be very close, to somewhere much farther. The bus ride from the park back to the station alone was almost an hour on good days, but noticing the traffic and cars filled with those more distressed than you, it was going to be a long ride.

"It's been so long."

He couldn't help but break out into an uncontrollable smile. She was sat in front of him in her signature baggy sweater and large doey eyes. Since the time they'd been away from each other he'd moved on and found you, the absolute love of his life. But now, as he sat in her presence, it reminded him of the fire she lit inside him all those years ago.

"I've missed you."

Her lips were tinted a dark pink and they coaxed him.

"I missed you more."

11pm.

Back at the station.

The wind was significantly crisper and your mind had long ago been whisked away with it.

It wasn't a long walk to your car but it might as well have been. Your skirt was continuously caught in the wind but after the embarrassment you were through today, you did not care to fix it. And besides it was too dark for anyone to notice.

Never once did you think Jungkook would stand you up like he did. The bright red car finally made it's way into view and you pulled out the keys from your bag. Your body fell into the, unlock the car, open the door, get in routine. Although this time there was an extra step. It consisted of sitting in the seat with your stare set to somewhere outside the windshield as every decision you've made thus far comes into question.

'Jungkook-ah I'm going home. Don't wait for me.'

With the boiling anger slowly building in the pit of your stomach you twist the keys in the ignition and make your way home, dignity already trailing far behind you.

"It was nice seeing you again Jungkook." She smelled of roses.

Roses whom are beautiful from afar, but once you tried to pick them up their thorns would puncture your skin and send a deadly venom into your veins. Their beauty unmatched and hers alike.

His blood had finally cured itself of the toxic she had once set in his body. But it was fall and flowers were holding onto what little life they had left, sprouting seeds and wisps in hopes of living till the next spring.

The moment her voice shot through the phone in the morning he knew that she was taking her last chance to sink her thorns into him to try and coax him back to her. And it seems like she's succeeded.

"I can't believe you actually came out to see me today."

"I told you I was free didn't I?"

Free.

That he was not.

Because you'd been waiting for him.

And he did not show up.

Fuck.

"I'M GOING RELAX, THERE'S PEOPLE IN FRONT OF ME."

You shout out the window before quickly closing it and focusing on the road in front of you. The rain began to fall and everyone decided that right at this moment they needed to get home. Whether it was because it's 12am on a Friday or because the world had officially made the decision to work against you, no one had time for patience, certainly not you.

It's been 10 minutes since you put the car in park, probably amongst other people who've done the same. There seemed to be something going on ahead of the traffic leaving hundreds of people trapped in their cars and waiting. The worst combination one could produce.

The ringtone Jungkook had set for himself on your phone rang for the umpteenth time since you got into the car and there was no way you were going to answer it. He wanted to play this way? Then so be it.

Just as the streetlight shone green your foot tapped down on the gas. It wasn't until a few seconds too late that you realized that your car was still in park and it was the impact from the car behind which sent the thought through your head. The car jerked forward bringing you with it for sure to leave burn marks across your uncovered skin from the seat belt. Almost immediately the motor choked up and died down and every light inside the car dimmed to nothing.

All at once the cuts on your hand and your eyes poured. Blood from your palms and salted tears from the corners of your eyes. If no one had seen the accident they would have thought you’d just gotten into a fight, one you definitely did not win.

Right on cue lightning struck and thunder sounded. If you were to step outside it would become hard to distinguish your tears from the rain as both were falling in heavily now.

You were stuck alone with a middle aged man knocking on your window, asking you for an explanation on, "WHY THE FUCK DID YOU NOT GO," and how "IF YOU DIDN'T LOOK SO FEEBLE I WOULD'VE KICKED YOUR ASS."

Fuck you Jeon Jungkook.

No matter how much you love him, he still throws you through the depths of hell to come back out half dead begging for him to hold you in his arms.

But now it seemed like the only arms yearning for you were those of the middle aged man outside your car. And he was not looking for a kind confrontation.

The tow truck drove away with you car, the back end almost completely destroyed, scratched and the paint worn off. Metal shone through the large gauges revealing the interior body. How incidental. Today was the day that Jungkook had finally ripped his last scar in you. This ploy was what turned you transparent, into simply a bundle of bones.

For the third time you climbed onto the bus with what little energy you had left and luckily it was a different driver. The disparity must’ve been emanating off of you because the driver along with everyone else on the bus gave you the same pitying expression you’d seen at least 5 other times today. One filled with forced melancholy just to make it seem like ‘hey you aren’t the only one’.

Whether it was genuine or passive aggressive was besides you. You could use any empathy you could get.

Not even 5 minutes would go by without that familiar ringtone would climb through your pocket and startle all the passengers. You made it a mission not to answer, even if the screen on the phone read,

‘53 missed calls from: Jungkook♡’

A sigh was all that you could muster up, and apparently it had been so filled with wistful gloom that it even made the wind outside dismal, if that was even possible at this point.

You were this close to asking the driver to stop the bus and get off wherever here was. The scenery outside was much clearer than that near the park but was also terrifyingly unfamiliar,

Next stop: Port Hope.

Was this all a crazy dream that you couldn’t seem to wake up from? Because that’s what it was starting to feel like.

Immediately you turned to the woman next to you, dressed in a simple dress pant and a blouse, most likely a school teacher who had to stay after school a little too long for that special staff meeting.

“Excuse me ma’am?”

Her students must’ve been a handful today, younger children, because her reaction time was slower than you’d expect from an elementary school teacher, hypothetically anyways.

“Yes?”

“What bus number is this?”

When someone asks ‘what ____’ about anything automatically means that they are lost and did on accident. It was the universal signal for ‘help me because I’m already worried as it is’. Though it might also be bright green flashing go sing to whoever was feeling in the mood of kidnapping some stupidly hopeful youngster.

“89.”

Oh.

Not only did you get on the wrong bus but you also waited until it’s very last stop to ask. All the people rushed passed you and you envied the knowing look in their eyes. They knew what they were doing, where they were going and more importantly that they did not half to stand outside in the cold with a skirt on.

Your best option at this point? Ask the driver if you could ride all the way back to the station and just walk, or maybe if the earth wasn’t planning to turn it's ‘Satan mode’ on you, as if it hadn’t already, you’d find a taxi driver willing to take you back on what little change you had left.

‘67 Message from: don’t answer’

The wait at the edge of the road only grew longer and longer especially after seeing a dozens taxis with people already in them.

Though Jungkook was still just as persistent. And what you hated about yourself was that you knew the moment you saw his face you would descend into his oh-so-familiar embrace. No one knew that more than yourself; you were way to forgiving. His little stunt sent you on the wildest goose chase of your lifetime. Usually people would aspire to find something precious; love, money, gold, but you were in need of a trip home.

“Excuse me! EXCUSE ME?”

A man wearing a large winters hat ripped you from your thoughts. The bright light that sat atop his car read “TAXI” and then a string of number which, if you would have known them, could have been helpful.

“Did you hail a taxi or not?”

He was quite irritated and you were in no place to be offended. You stood there like the soles of your shoes had spiked that puncture through the solid cement.

“Yes.”

It sounded more desperate than you had hoped, but at this point anything would do.

Just as you bent to climb into the back seat of the car something in your knee cracked and shot electricity through your whole body. Once again your were frozen in your place.

How pathetic did you look? Ripped up, teary eyed, bleeding and with burn marks on your skin.

What a mess.

“Are you okay?”

Knowing that he couldn’t see you, you still nodded and flopped down onto the seat to try and alleviate the growing pain.

“Please sir, just drive me home.”

Even if it was the loud DING of the elevator and seeing such a familiar face on the other side of the doors that tore the breath from your lungs, it was something you were going to ignore. Anything that was remotely sudden startled you now. On the way home, the taxi driver had decided that It’s still beautiful was an appropriate song to play. The irony of seeing him smile and sing along really brought the painting to a finish. All you could see was colour and it overwhelmed you. Vibrant shades of greens and oranges emanated from him and wrapped themselves around you, passive aggressively. They yelled and shouted in delight, more than ready to pass it onto you, but the somber blue hues that seeped from your body was enough to scare them off. And you saw the same in him too.

Easily forgiving was something you were ready to rid yourself of, especially in a moment like this. Yet, Jungkook knew you too well. The words ‘don’t answer’ flashed on the screen of your phone and his stupidly cute picture accompanied it. Hesitantly you ran your finger over the red button.

‘The caller you are trying to reach is not available at this moment, please try again later.’

Shock was floating in the air, though in two very different forms.

“Y/N-”

“So now you want to give an explanation?”

Usually, people would say that the first person to cry in a fight was the loser, that you were weak and so emotionally driven that you couldn't even stay composed enough to have a civil conversation. Oddly enough, it empowered you. It was like a landed hit on the opposer, you were torn apart emotionally, physically and mentally, yet you still had enough in you to tear him apart. The personification of I fall, you’re coming with me’.

“I really didn’t think you’d mind. You’re always so nonchalant about everything, Y/N please I’m so sorry-”

“Jungkook, you need to move out of the way.”

“Will you listen to me?”

“No.”

For the second time in a matter of minutes you managed to fix his face into the same shocked expression, “Why not?”

“Do you not understand? It’s a only a matter of days before my parents marry me off to Mr.I’m-financially-stable-and-friends-of-your-parents. They’ve been planning this since the moment they met him. Free to make your own decision? Isn’t that such a joke?”

Who was Jungkook to them? A random boy with ‘long shot dreams of becoming a musician’. In the prime of company growth and the media playing such a large role in everything, something as ambitious as a musician was laughable. And after the way you’d seen the life with one was like, you began to attain the same suspicion.

“This is what’s best for you, we promise honey.”

Never have they been more wrong about something. You respected them, they raised you into who you are today, yet could they be this naive? More time in the world comes with intellect; isn’t that what you’ve been told your entire life?

“But what if I love someone else?”

A light scent of fear brushed over their faces but was quickly replaced with some form of pity, but not the kind some people seek. It was more of a ‘you really think that’s a choice?’ kind of expression.

Out of feigned interest they asked, “Is there someone else?”

Was this the earth’s way of giving you a second chance? Mother nature herself was begging you to tell the truth; the sky cleared of the rain and the sun shone straight through the glass of the apartment. All this time you felt like your parents hand been forcing your brush strokes. They let you choose the colours yet they ultimately decided what to do with them and this was the first time you felt in control. Baby blues were all you could see, the colour of wishful thinking. The tip of your brush was millimeters from the canvas but something held you back.

“Honey, we don’t want you to end up like us. Please, we’re trying to push you away from that. We want you to be successful and not under the thousands of dollars of debt. You want you to live a happy life.”

It was your dad who spoke up next, “Is there someone you need to tell us about?’

“No.”

He did not speak a word. From the time you’d been together he found that you fell into your own word a lot and it was best for him to sit back and wait it out.

“Y/N...just look at you, at least let us go inside and here take my jacket. You idiot, you’re skin is basically blue from the cold. I’ll help you with it-”

“Now I’m the idiot?”

“What?”

“Today was potentially the last day for us to relive the days where things were less complicated and yet you still choose to go out without me?”

“How many times do you want me to tell you I’m sorry? Huh?”

Your fingers wrap around the collar of the jacket he’d thrusted your way and shove it back to his chest, “That’s not going to cut it anymore.”

“ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? I. AM. SORRY. WHAT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?”

You wished it hadn’t taken you aback as much as it did, but his voice was loud enough to boom through the doors of the apartments nearby.

“I think you’re the one who doesn’t understand. Jungkook, after Sunday, this, is not something that can happen anymore. I’ve told you this a million times and you always brush it off like I’m joking. Why do you think that after the 2 years we’ve been together that you still haven't met my parents?”

This time, it was his turn to fall into realization, “I didn’t think you were serious.”

A scoff pushed it's way past your lips, “Why would I lie to you?”

You've never given him any reason to ever think that you were lying. In fact, he was the one who insisted on telling the truth no matter what.

“Move Jungkook, I’m tired and beat up and hungry. I don’t need this from you.”

“Let’s go eat. I’ll buy you something. What about some fries? Or maybe pizza, you were craving that earlier right? Or we could go to that new burger place you wanted to eat at-”

“NO. PLEASE I’M BEGGING JUST MOVE.”

The silence quickly grew as you caught yourself before you spoke any more.

“Why are you being so stubborn, I told you I was sorry. What the fuck do you want from me?”

“Nothing Jungkook, absolutely nothing.”

“So?”

The thought had been on your mind for a while now. Was this all really worth it anymore? Three nights from now you were probably gonna be in the bed of another man with a obscenely large ring on your finger, replacing the one there now. A simple silver band with a heart engraved into it.

“Ah...Uh...Y/N?”

“Mhm?”

“Are you busy?”

“Uh no just finishing my essay.”

He hadn’t even gotten up from his spot and his cheeks were already faded pink. Light from the lamp next to him cascaded over the silver ring; a cheesy hollow heart carved into it. No one had ever seen him so defeated and vulnerable but this is the way you made him feel. Weakly, he stands up and makes his way to the bar stool you sat on. Your hair was messy and lined papers scattered the table ahead of you.

“Y/N?”

“Yes Kook?”

Pet names. There to remind him that he meant something to someone. And he loved them.

“Give me your hand.”

It was almost a demand. You spun around on the chair and his trembling fingers gripped yours. Warmth radiated from him and his oversized red sweater, where he could hide all his nerves, though they were finally creeping up on him.

The ring slid onto your finger with ease and fit next to perfectly. Just as his lips turned up into a smile you leaned in and kissed him like it was the first time in years.

“I love you so much.”

Chocolate from the earlier cake pig-out lingered on his lips and it made you laugh, “You taste like chocolate.”

“You love chocolate.”

“I know.”

Just as easy as it sat around your finger, it slid off. Although it had worn down over the years and the heart was becoming shallower. Ironic isn’t it? As time went on the ring wore down until the heart was barely visible, yours alike. Each day the two of you were apart began to feel more normal than when you were together. It had become regular to not talk to him for a few days before reuniting for a whole week and back again. The metal around your finger was a physical reminder of your attachment to him. Everyday it stared back at you with it's luster and nostalgia, almost as if it was begging to return to that time. To the time when it was new and whole: unscratched and un-tattered. When your parents were to busy with their own lives to care about what you were doing with your time and if all that ‘homework’ was actually getting done. When the two of you went on midnight convenience store runs in the middle of the night because you were craving one of those spicy cups of ramen.

“I think you need to take this.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Jungkook just take it. I swear to fucking god-”

“WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE THIS? DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I FUCKING LOVE YOU? I WILL GET ON MY KNEES AND BEG YOUR PARENTS IF I HAVE TOO.”

Your fingers tightened around the ring and heat ran through your veins. There was absolutely no other action to be taken. None of this is exactly how you wanted it to be but did you have a choice? Not really.

“I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING CHOICE ANYMORE JUNGKOOK. JUST TAKE THE FUCKING RING BEFORE-” and you stop yourself.

Before? Before what exactly?

Before you fall in love with him all over again? Before you decide that your parents aren't allowed to dictate your major life choices? Before you say something you’re going to regret for the rest of your life?

“THERE I TOOK THE RING FROM YOU. IS THAT BETTER? WHAT. ARE YOU GOING TO TELL ME YOU DON’T LOVE ME ANYMORE AS THE ICING ON THE FUCKING CAKE? HUH?”

Definitely the latter. That was one thing you hated about yourself: saying things you didn’t mean just to cut the argument short because you hated confrontation.

“I’m sorry Jungkook,”

“I WAS KIDDING YOU DON'T HAVE TO ACTUALLY FUCKING DO IT.”

With that, you said the words that you desperately tried to hold back. Maybe it was the smell of iron from the dried blood on your lips. Or the fact that your knee was being impaled by satan’s actual spear. You regretted it before you even spoke; it hurt you just as much as it hurt him, maybe even more. But by the look on his face it was arrogant of you to even assume that.

“I don’t love you anymore.”

Everything around you might as well have faded into black and white. ‘Life was not single dimensioned’ they told you. ‘It was a multifaceted and full of colours everyone could see, but some would ignore’, they said. Though, from the way it’s been treating you was like an old painting: ready to cover you up with a clean layer of gesso and begin to paint the starts of someone else's life. You’ve done it before. A picture of a boy with the softest brown hair with an even softer pair of brown eyes hung itself on your wall and refused to be moved. In time, you began painting over him, creating a new story for him in which you were a part of. Where instead of his doe eyes fixated up they were stuck on you. And when you thought that all it needed was a few last strokes the familiar scent of gesso brought it’s way back into your life. Just like your parents had forced your hand with Jungkook before, it had happened again, but this time it was permanent.

“Do you, Y/N, take _____ as your lawfully wedded husband?”

The gesso has dried and once again you were painting the beginnings of a new life. One where your parents kept a firm grip on the brush and sent it only in straight clean lines. There was absolutely no experimentation with colour, leaving you with the dull greys they left in your palette. Even the tears it had collected over the many sleepless nights was not enough to wash away the white mask. If you tried to scrape it off the canvas would tear ruining the painting on the top and the other one you had covered.

What do they say? Beauty is in the eye if the beholder?

To you, it was an array of clouded skies with tears pouring down from the skies itself. But everyone else seemed to look at it through a completely different lens. Some with shades of purple as deep as envy itself and others with the blues of wishful thinking - thoughts that had come true - more specific to your parents.

Mother nature was not done with you either. If the letters that formed his name could be written in the sky as an obvious plead then they would have been there if you looked up. But instead you were met with drops of rain, greyer than you remember them to be.

“I do.”

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