Chapter Text
i.
He’s on his way out.
A few hours ago we existed in our bubble, only the two of us. What normalcy has become. We’ve been picking our way through an imposing assortment of board games. He promised me solemnly: we’ll set the dumb ones on fire. He threw the trivia cards to the table and I flipped the board for good measure.
We cussed and giggled like little kids.
I put my hands in the pockets of my (his) hoodie. I pull them out. They hang awkwardly at my sides; they form fists. I splay my fingers—I hook my thumbs in the pockets, and it’s a compromise to forcibly settle by. I am. Antsy - ants are running under my skin - and I think there are words I have to say but like usual, for the life of me, I can’t conjure up the right ones.
He’s not looking at me. He’s put on his shoes, he’s pulling on his jacket. Right arm, now left—in a minute he’ll be out the door, he’ll be gone. Pop! goes the bubble. I won’t know for how long. Maybe he won’t come back at all. Maybe I’ll wait until all the food’s run out and I’ve starved to death.
I haven’t so much acknowledged-
the sort of hopes I’ve been harboring, the sort of dreams. Here they seem lined up in soapy iridescence, the breezy violence of the outside world taking shots at each one. BB gun zeroing in. No, less than that. Easier. It only takes the tip of a finger.
It’s very clear all of a sudden: watching him get ready to leave, I realize I’ve been lulled into some semblance of safety. Like everyone’s forgotten about us until now. Reality’s lost its gritty edge - lost its hold on me - but here it comes. Swinging back around to hit me.
He doesn’t look at me.
A few hours ago I touched his sleeping, shaking form and he shot up with a gasp like I’d drenched him in water. He clutched at my shirt, he clawed at my ribcage. He gasped and sobbed. Took him longer than usual to pull himself together: I was afraid to move. I sat stock-still as he mashed his face into my chest.
I’m sorry, he said gathering his composure, once the panic was nearly over. I was stroking his hair. I told him to shut up.
But he made me promise.
I keep still. But not too still. I want him to hug me.
He lifts his head and looks at me, finally. His mouth is slightly open, like the words won’t come.
I’m thinking: don’t leave without touching me, don’t leave without touching me. And in canon: don’t leave, don’t leave.
He steps toward me, finally.
He says, quiet, just for me—even as there’s no one to overhear: I’ll be back before you know it.
Breath on my ear, cheek against mine.
And those aren’t the words but it’s good enough, as far as promises go.
It’s hard to get my arms to let go, but I manage to release him before he releases me.
I have a memory of going away. Of putting the last piece of my uniform on. I did it slowly, as though to subvert the inevitability. As though, it didn’t simply mean, I’d have to get to the station on the double. Lumbering and graceless. My freshly pressed shirt already sweated through. And he waited, he watched me. I felt his fixed stare on me. I wavered beneath it. Then, with that final piece in place and with my gaze lifted; then, with his voice as clear and quietly stormy as a whirlpool of water, he told me—I don’t want to be apart from you.
It’s only temporary, I’d tell him back then, lousy as ever. I’d say it more often than I ought’ve. I let my hand tell him in a letter. Because everything’s temporary, and so it was the best reassurance I had.
That everything passes.
I’m well-versed in making time pass me by, I’m good at waiting. I’ve done it a lot. I make a pattern for myself. I set up a rotating schedule: and in its circular path, I’ll come back around. Around and around
Activity, fuel replenishment, rest. Activity, fuel replenishment, rest. Activity, fuel replenishment, rest-
Inventory comes first. I put all the food on the table in neat rows and piles, I calculate the rations. This will get me by for a week, maybe—but it’ll drain me. I might have to go out before that if I want to maintain critical function.
The thought weighs me down; I sit down on the floor. I sit under the table and hold onto my knees. A few minutes go by but I don’t know how many exactly, before I reach a hand up and paw my way to a candy bar.
Replenishment: check.
Minus one item of supply. (Christ.)
The void laps at my feet, it shivers down my back. Tranquilizing. I’m eating, slowly, thinking about moss growing out of my eyes, my ears, my mouth. From all the pores in my body. It wants to cushion me, so that I might lie down. Not yet, I think. Don’t be pathetic, I think. This candy bar is dry, I think.
It’s light out: I get on with my wifely duties.
I choose the broom over the vacuum because I don't like the noise. I think he figured and that's the story of the broom. I get like the neighbor's dog, yapping away nervously whenever the roar of the machine comes on. Only I don't bark, I wrap my arms around my head and wait for it to be over, like a child. At least it got me this broom.
I move all the furniture out of the way, I take one room at a time. There are eleven food wrappers of various kinds under his bed, courtesy: me. There are sheets of paper or paper sheet-like things with sketches on them in various stages of almost started. Courtesy: not me.
It’s still light out and a large patch of the floor in the living room is sticky. It’s just as well. I’ll do this properly, for once.
I know to steer clear of the bleach and the ammonia: I’m intimately familiar. Makes me breathe funny just knowing they’re there. But I don’t tell him that so he doesn’t know, and they stay put in the cabinet. In any case, there’s the soft soap. a sticky, gelatinous concoction—a hybrid of Jell-O and molasses in consistency and color. I don’t mind that. No wonder it puts me in mind of dessert. But that’s mostly the smell; though I find the gloopy texture pleasing somehow, too.
Took me awhile to figure out. It's bitter almond. The smell.
I put a handful into a bucket, I fill the bucket with hot water.
I use the brush.
This sort of thing my mother did, and her mother before that. I know this, even if I can’t see it. But I can almost feel her small, chapped hands around mine. They get that way from all the scrubbing, from all the loving. I might’ve thought about that when I cleaned my rifle, way back when. Might’ve thought about how he insisted on helping her with the dishes in the tiny blue kitchen, whenever we had dinner there. Thought about how he folded my laundry.
The living room is the largest area. Second to last; I’ll finish with the vestibule. I’m halfway through and the thought comes into my head that I might turn the ceiling lights on. No reason doing things in the dark.
Somehow the yellow light makes the apartment even emptier. The windows are bricked up by the night-sky, light clings to all the flat surfaces, it won’t permeate the air. Nothing moves, not even the dust because I swept it all away.
I put my knees back on the floor. The sticky patch is resilient—I’m relentless and nothing happens. Nothing happens and nothing happens. There’s a noise at the back of my head, or by my head, circling me. A weak noise, like a fly. He might’ve hummed a song, once in a while. Only quietly. Only for me to overhear. Maybe in the kitchen, elbows deep in warm water. I wish I knew what it sounded like. What contentment sounds like, the noises made, under his breath—the real kind.
I wish I knew.
I listen to the bristles scratch against the wood. Streaks of bubbles appear, disappear. My hand comes in and out of view. White knuckles. Blue veins.
The noise buzzes and whines, inside and out. It sounds like a radio being tuned. Gloved fingers turning the dial.
And a voice says:
give me your coordinates.
Scratchy like the bristles against the floor. Faint at first, then louder: it addresses me by rank. Give me your coordinates. It breaks off into static, the heightening pitch of the whine. The promise of. Electricity.
I’ve stopped moving—my breath is caught. Halfway out
Suddenly
it booms in my head:
WHAT IS YOUR POSITION?
I look up at the loudspeakers in the bookcase and it stops—cut off by my glare. My heart is hammering like a woodpecker in my chest. My entire body has broken out in a sweat.
I tear my eyes away from the bookcase.
I finish up. I put the things in order. My legs feel wobbly as I walk with the bucket to the bathroom, the water in the bucket wobbles along with me. The porcelain glints malevolently; the water is grey and full of little maggots of dust as it goes down the drain. I put the things back. I don’t look at the bleach, I don’t look at the ammonia.
I pace the length of the room—entrance to window. The walls strain toward me, the darkness presses against the glass. I walk toward the door and turn. I walk to the window. I walk back. I can't break the circle. My breathing has gone funny, my chest is squeezed by the trouble.
I should've gone with him. I don't know. Where he is. I need to know where he is, I need to know right now - but the apartment is a sealed box - I can't get out. I should've gone with him. I should've, I should've, I should've...
I have to sit down. The air is too thin. The thoughts keep on coming without me thinking them, they turn my blood into water. My flesh is wriggling with worms: gives me chills.
I screw my eyes shut. My teeth clench against a cry.
There’s no air in this room.
There’s. There’s no.
We’re running away on gangly legs. Away from someone - enemy forces - sprinting as fast as he'll go, whistling past bodies in motion, bodies going the other direction. They all go curiously slow, while we whoosh past in a furious rush. The two of us, we’re tiny, we’re children. It’s easy to move around the crowd; we weave between them without touching. They stay out of range, like specters—faceless and absent. But it's fine, we're not scared.
We're grinning like maniacs as we run. In our schoolboy wonder, shellfire crackling like it's the Fourth of July.
We take cover behind a low wall. He’s catching his breath but it's hard when he’s laughing—we keep setting each other off; off like echoes, who knows which is which. Who's the start and who's the rebound. We burn and burst and start again. We press our backs against the bricks: it must be riddled with bullets. We press our shoulders together, like it's only the two of us here, no commotion at all. No bother.
I watch his Adam’s apple. I see the slight suggestion of stubble. On his chin. When he tilts his head back. He looks so different—somehow all grown up. To me, anyway. But you could barely tell.
He’s seventeen years old today so that must mean I'm,
that must make me
eighteen
I hear shouting, in-between the booms and the cracks. It’s all behind us. The ground shudders.
He’s looking at me with hooded eyes. His face is flushed. I know what’s about to happen as if I’m clairvoyant. I’m dizzy, pulled on by more than gravity, about to float away and sink at the same time.
But I can't tell who goes in first—I think it has to be him but then, I'm halfway there already, aren't I? He's still out of breath, can't manage more than pieces—a kiss interspersed with burning air. I remember everything about his mouth, the shapes, the textures, the heat. It's over in a matter of seconds, I know it is, but reality stretches. That press, pause, press, pause. It's endless in me.
I can’t hear him for all the clamor. I hear nothing. The ground won't stop shaking. It’s morning already, it’s the middle of the day.
I close my eyes. The image of him is bright under my eyelids, consumed in degrees by the sunlight.
I want more. I want to go back and lean in again.
The light has switched on. Someone’s standing in the doorway.
A girl with braided hair. I blink.
No, wait. It’s her.