Grey, Part Two
So, I've been gone for a while. Family issues, School finals, etc. My reasons for neglecting livejournal are neither original nor entertaining. But I do not return empty handed. I present to you the first eight chapters of Grey, heavily revised. This post renders all the previous chapter posts obsolete. Thanks, you're all wonderful, kisses for everyone, but don't touch me.
Because of posting limits, this post is broken into two parts.
The Fifth: Luminescent
The icy water has forced strength into my body, and painful clarity into my mind.
I don’t know myself well. I don’t know my mind or body or past. I can’t speak or write or lift heavy objects. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. What do I want? A jacket or sweater or long sleeve shirt to cover my arms and keep them warm. A book to read. I’m feeling greedy. I can’t do much. I can’t ask for much. But if this is a dream…I want to know someone who won’t pick me up with one hand. I want someone to ask me if I like their shoes. And… what monopoly piece do I want? Only I can’t pick the dog because that’s theirs. Red hotels and green houses. I see myself moving the thimble past boardwalk, past Go. I put a hand against the side of the tub to keep from losing my balance.
Soaked and shivering in the shower, I resolve that I do not want to be here any longer. This is an Important Mental Step. I frown at the thought, unsure of where it came from.
I shut off the shower. I climb from the tub, puddles of water forming on the floor. As I peel off my wet shirt, curiosity cements. I want to look at myself while I’m naked. Maybe I will realize I am beautiful, or that my eyes aren’t so different. I leave my clothes in a heap on the floor, and climb on top of the sink, to look in the mirror there.
The tattoo is so dark, it makes my skin seem to shine white. I try to be nice and call myself slender in my head, instead of skinny.
I look nineteen, or twenty. I…I think maybe I’m pretty. I look like I bathe in estrogen. I have nothing but curves.
I don’t meet my own eyes. I’m afraid I’ll see my secrets in them.
Since Alice has not left me any dry clothes, I wring out my wet ones as best as I can, and dry my hair with a towel.
The only door out of the room is locked, with a keypad. The only window has the same lock and keypad. The numbers on the keypad seem sized right for my fingers. I press “A”, and see I have space for ten letters. I finish “Alice”, and press “enter”. The words “Invalid password” scroll across the screen. I try “Penelope.” Invalid password. I try “Grey”. I try “Red”, “Purple”, “Hate”, “Love”, and “Anger.”
The window lock pops. Her password was “Anger”. Knowing that, I pray I will never face her again.
The window is heavy. I push against it in vain. I readjust my handhold, and press upwards, straining my arms. It lifts enough for me to slide a shoe under. I hook my fingers into the crack held open by my shoe, and heave the window up enough for me to slide through.
I land on hard dirt, jarring my knee, and run. It’s a moonless night. I push through tall grass, leap over rocks, and scale tree stumps before reaching a fence of iron bars. It takes me only seconds to squeeze through the gap between the bars.
I reach pavement. A road. The yellow dividing stripes of paint are faded and erratic. The trees lining the road feel possessive. I can’t run anymore. The pain in my side is a roar. I’ve got no stamina. I’ve got no strength. I won’t make it far before Alice finds the bathroom empty. The trees watch. They don’t want me to get far.
Alice has murdered your friends, trees! I’ve seen the stumps! Let me go, so I can bring Laurel a friend, so I can grow strong like you. Don’t let Alice have me.
Rain descends from the sky. The water on the road doesn’t sink in or trickle away. It thickens, clumping together, rising like bread. A bubble, and then a sphere rises from it. It’s transparent, with a purple center.
A screeching flash punches through the sphere. It takes a few seconds for the fireworks in my eyes to die off. A soft chiming reaches my ears.
A car has pulled off the side of the road, ahead of me. I make out two silhouettes against the car lights. I’ve taken a step backwards, when a man’s voice reaches my ears.
“-saying anything if you were hit.”
“I saw nothing. There would be blood and dents and screaming,” a female voice answers. Her words snap together like puzzle pieces, but she puts no pride in them. She is like a talented sculptor who daydreams of being an ice skater as she half-heartedly chips rocks into wonders.
“Not if…”
They’ve seen me. I shield my eyes against the light. The man is tall…or maybe he isn’t. Anyone I meet towers above me, on a separate plane I cannot reach.
He wears a leather jacket. He’s clean-shaven, and all hard lines.
Around the woman, light seems dimmer. The way she moves is not natural, not the way people are supposed to move. It’s like she has read the instruction manual that came with her body, but never used it before. She’s got dark hair, but not much of it, and her skin is nearly as white as mine.
“Are you alright? What are you doing out here?” asks the man. The woman is still studying me.
They’ve got a car. Please, let them take me away from here. I pull my hand from my pocket, to show I’m not hiding a gun or knife. My hand comes out holding a shred of paper.
The paper disappears, and it’s several seconds before I realize the woman has snatched it from my hand.
“Grey,” she reads aloud. Hurriedly, I point to myself.
“Can you speak?” asks the man. I shake my head, and point to myself again.
“It’s her name,” the woman announces. “If I told you my name was miss White and he was Mr. Black, we could rob a bank and if you were caught you wouldn’t be able to reveal my true identity.”
“I’m Randy,” says the man.
“I’m Lume,” says the woman, the paper back to me. I fold it away nicely, because it’s my name, and I can’t write it or say it. “We didn’t hit you with the car like Randy thought, but-“
I catch Lume’s hand, and wrap her arm around me. Her nails are painted black.
“Little one found by the side of the road in the dark of the night, I am not about to abandon you to the wolves, or whatever predators might stalk you. Cars, from the look of things.”
If another person had said the same words, it would have been a speech. Coming from Lume, it’s no different, except everything Lume says sounds like the start of speech.
“Your hair is wet. Your clothes are damp. Randy, it hasn’t been raining.”
“She’s not bleeding is she?”
“Not unless water runs through her veins.”
Lume inspects the scabs the handcuffs left on my wrists, but says nothing.
I pull her towards the car. She lets me drag her into the back seat with me. Randy climbs in front, and when I point out at the road, he starts driving. Heated air hums from the air conditioning vents. Lume snaps on a light.
Her eyes are like mine.
They’re grey and soft and a watery like she might start crying any moment now and they’re just like mine.
“The time you ate last is long past, yes?” I…I suppose it is. I cannot remember when I ate last. I’m handed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bottle of water.
“We are in a horror movie,” announces Lume.
“We are not,” says Randy.
“A girl stumbles from the woods, wet and starving, unable to speak of the atrocities she has witnessed.”
“I don’t know where I’m driving.”
“I do. She has my eyes.”
I watch Lume’s eyes over the top of my sandwich. There is something savage in her, something Alice had that Penelope didn’t. She moves like her body is just a tool or a puppet, not herself. Her eyes are always laughing, like life is a joke to her, even when the rest of her face is serious.
Randy hands back a pen and pad of paper. Lume sets them on my lap, and asks, “Did you recently witness a terrible atrocity, such as one might see in a Hollywood horror movie, and are now rendered mute from the trauma?”
I start the line for N, not sure when I should stop it. I panic, and wrench the line off course, then I swoop back to enclose the polygon. I add some adjustment lines to the top to clarify, and balance it with a series of zizags.
This isn’t the letter N. I scribble it out. Lume takes the pad from me, and sets it on her lap. I’m never given enough time.
With her own pen, Lume writes the letter “N” on the page. I duck under her arm, and try to copy her “N”. As I focus on her letter, my pen drifts through it, slicing it in half with my line. I’ve ruined her letter. Her pen descends, and adjusts the impaling line so that it curves back around. The letter looks like the start of jagged monster teeth to me, so I add a few more, completing a mouth of menacing fangs. Lume’s pen continues in an arc, showing me that this is going to be a sea serpent, so I start drawing in the scales.
When it’s time to work on the ocean, I climb into Lume’s lap and hold the paper steady for us. I feel the vibrations of her voice when she speaks.
“The serpent is old, and tired of chewing on shark skin. The oceans are overrun with human ships and he no longer has the strength to sink them. Bitter and alone, he hides in a storm.”
A ship appears under our pens.
“The captain is old, and tired of pulling in crab traps. The oceans are crowded, competition is fierce, and he doesn’t care to race against fiery captains and freshly painted boats. Bitter and alone, he hunts in a storm.”
A spear appears in the serpent’s side. The captain’s boat comes into focus, shattered and broken from the serpent’s tail.
I finish drawing the last bubble in a turbulent ocean.
The Sixth: Inertial
“A product of cooperative genius,” said Randy. I press my cheek into Lume, clutch at her shirt, and feel the vibrations of her voice mix with her heartbeat. Her hand plucks at strands of hair hanging down my back.
“…thousands of men, women, and children…starving children, helpless with wide innocent eyes and…” Lume looks down at me, “…tiny women with very long hair and pale skin. Trembling, they were scattered in the woods in picked off not by wild animals, not by psychotic cultists, but by a tongue-devouring monster. The monster made no sound, only ripping the tongues from those who spoke or cried out.”
I rise and fall with each breath Lume takes. Randy’s voice comes from the front of the car.
“What were a thousand starving children and…” I see his eyes watching me in the rearview mirror. “…women doing in the forest?”
“Dragged from their beds by the oily tentacles of the tongue devouring beast!” declares Lume.
“Was her tongue devoured?”
I lock eyes with Lume. Without looking away, she says “No.”
“She hasn’t opened her mouth.”
“She has my eyes.”
“And you’ve got her tongue?”
“No.” Lume’s confident voice hums through me. She twists strands of my hair into knots.
“Well…?”
“She cannot speak from the trauma of witnessing a thousand tongues torn from their mouths. The fear of the beast who did it, who still-“
“-not a stupid horror-“ interrupts Randy.
“-roams the land!” finishes Lume fiercely.
Silence with an edge cuts between them. The car speeds through the silent night. Thump. Thump.
“Is she asleep?” asks Randy, at last.
“No. She’s listening to my heartbeat.”
“Why?”
“Maybe it will stop beating. Pull over.”
Randy pulls the car over to the side of the road without protest. Lume hands me a black coat to put on. It’s long enough to reach past my knees.
“We’re going outside, where the cold will get you,” she says, pulling the coat around me. She’s only wearing a T-Shirt. I touch the jacket, and then touch her shoulder.
“I don’t need protection from the cold. I am the cold.”
Lume forces the car door open. I close my eyes against the stinging wind. It tosses my hair from my face and streams it out behind me. My hair gets caught in the car door when Lume shuts it. She has to open the door again, so I can pull long strands of hair out and hold them against myself to stop them from trailing out behind me like a kite.
Randy waits in the car while Lume leads me away from the road. She slides down a steep bank of loose rocks. She rides the growing wave of rocks like a surfer, until she reaches flat dirt and the rocks and dust spread in a pool around her.
It could be a sport. Slope surfing. Mountain surfing. That’s called skiing. Not if there isn’t any snow. Then it’s avalanche surfing.
“Grey! Focus!” Lume hollers up at me. I take my first step onto the slope. Some gravel is knocked loose, but my footing holds. I can’t surf like Lume, so I’ll take baby steps.
A rock to my left looks steady, but it rolls away when my foot touches it.
“To your right, Grey!”
I look around my right foot, but I see nowhere to put my it.
“It’s right there. Yes…no…a little to your right…there!”
I see only darkness there. There’s no moon tonight. I shake my head at Lume.
“There! Put your foot down!”
I put my foot down into nothing. I stumble, then tumble forward. Lume catches me under my arms, slowing my crash into a gentle touchdown.
“I appreciate your faith in me. As you’ve just proven, it is not unfounded.”
I follow Lume into the trees. She walks slowly so I can keep up. Crickets chirp, sticks snap underfoot, and bushes rustle. I feel clumsy and loud. I hold my hair clutched against me, for comfort as much as to stop it from catching on things.
I wonder if someone could pick me up by my hair alone. Would it support my weight? I have a lot of hair, and there’s not a lot of me. If I was a criminal, maybe they could hang me without a rope.
My lungs burn and my legs feel like they are made of rubber. The ground is at an incline. Lume has stopped further up, waiting for me. She watches my slow progress.
“May I carry you? We’re only about halfway there. Randy has fallen asleep listening to some talk show on the radio, but when he wakes up in a few hours he’ll be upset if we’re not back.”
I nod gratefully. As she lifts me up, she says, “You don’t need to be strong. I am your strength.” I lay my head against her shoulder and watch the trees fly past. I think of when I saw myself in the mirror two days ago, at Jack’s house. I had been confused, but…my mind seemed…clearer then. Things hadn’t been moving so quickly.
I’d been upset because I’d thought I was stronger than the person I saw in the mirror. Maybe the mirror defeated me. Maybe I hadn’t been the person in the mirror until I saw her. Maybe once I saw her, I gave up, and became her. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. But things hadn’t moved so quickly back then.
“We’re here.” Lume sets me down.
A wall of rocks squats in front of me. It’s taller than me but not as tall as Lume. It’s just big river rocks, stacked and balanced on one another. I don’t see any trees on the other side.
“This is your wall, Grey, and it’s the problem.” Lume paces in front of the wall. Again I notice how bizarre and erratic her movement is. I’ve seen it somewhere before.
“This wall is your obstacle. Every person who has ever lived desires what lies on the other side of this wall, though not every person will admit it. Few people have found this wall, and none have overcome it.
I’m lucky. I’ve just found this wall, and I believe I can overcome it. I think others have made the mistake of trying to destroy this wall.”
Lume pushes a rock off the top of the wall. I hear it hit the ground on the other side.
“If you destroy this wall, you will destroy what it protects. That is what I believe. But I know another way. May I show you?”
When I nod, Lume picks me up again. Using one of the rocks on the bottom of the wall for a foothold, she steps over the wall.
It’s a cliff. We’re standing on a ledge only a foot wide between the wall and a twenty-foot drop into a lake. The wall was there to protect us.
Lume sits down, legs dangling off the edge. In her lap, I lean backwards.
“It’s terrifying,” she says.
Lume picks a rock off the ground. It’s the one she pushed off the wall. She rolls it around her palm before throwing it. It arcs through the air into the lake. I remember the phrase “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”, and then someone who countered, saying, “The most beautiful distance between two points is a curve.”
What if thrown objects weren’t beautiful? Imagine if they went in a straight line, then suddenly went straight down at a ninety-degree angle, like they’d hit an invisible wall. You could play Tetris.
“A thousand times. I could throw that rock a thousand times. The thousandth time I threw it, my arm would ache, and I would not even bother to watch the rock splash in the water. But you would still watch it. You would watch it like it was the first step on the moon, like it was still amazing.
I shouldn’t be speaking of this. It’s something you need. You need to have that. I’ll need to have that.
That’s not what we should discuss. We should ask ourselves: What if the big bang theory of creation is true? The universe is essentially an explosion. And the earth, and life, and you and I, are just particles in this massive expanding fireball of a universe.
It would have to be just another cycle. Cycle of life, cycle of nature, cycle of the universe. There would be the great implosion one day, and then another big bang. And if the big bang happened exactly the same way, then planet earth would happen the same way, and you and I would be here again, doing the same thing. And we’d do it again the big bang after that.
We must choose our actions wisely, because we’ll be repeating them for all eternity. And that makes us immortal.”
Lume pushes us off the edge.
The Seventh: Relative
We arc towards the lake, beautiful, for a moment. Straight as a needle, Lume pierces the water first. But we fell together, how could she-
Hit the water like frozen steel pipe to the gut. I lose my air, and try not to choke on the liquid ice sliding through my teeth. It’s too dark to see which way is up. The tail of my jacket catches on something. I’m hauled upwards, sputtering and choking into the air.
Lume patiently treads water like she has hopped into a public pool. She’s laughing. She laughs until she can barely swim, as she pulls me to the shore. I crawl onto land, and press my forehead into the dirt, feeling ill.
“I’m so-“ Lume tries to apologize through her laughter. “I’m…I’m sorry, hahaha.”
I inhale slowly, afraid I’m going to throw up lake water. I roll onto my back and lay against the dirt, fighting nausea. A drop of water, one among many, slides down my arm, trying to gain enough weight to fall to the ground.
It doesn’t make it to the ground. Lume intercepts it with a towel. She lifts me into sitting position and drapes the towel around me. She sits next to me, soaking wet, grinning like a demon.
“Falling from that precipice, did you fear for your life? Were you expecting death, immortal?”
I press my face into her bare, cold, wet arm. She puts her arm around me.
“You would say I shouldn’t force you through such a trial. Consider the alternative: walking all the way back down the mountain trail. Tiresome. Mundane.”
She sighs. “But not for you, I suppose. It would be better for you. I will make a confession. I’m not immortal. Not even if the universe explodes infinitely. I would live infinite times, but I would also die infinitely. What does that make me? Not immortal, but infinitely mortal.”
Infinitely mortal and Immortal, I repeat in my mind. Infinitely mortal would be essentially immortal if only you got to keep your memory. If everyone could remember their past lives, how would the world be? Would there be more crime, because the death penalty had less power? No, justice would just be dealt out in pain and misery.
You’d count each life. This was your fifty-eighth life. Each life, each world, would be a different level, but communication could only be one way, only through death. Each world after the last would have greater technology, because our scientists would retain their past knowledge. Thomas Edison would invent the light bulb as soon as he was old enough to speak.
But then things would be different. Things would happen differently. The universe wouldn’t be able to collapse the same way and wouldn’t explode the same the next time. Infinite mortals can’t have memory. Mortals cannot know their infinite selves, or their infinite selves will not be.
Lume carries me back to the car as I think on her words. Randy is asleep in the front seat, while a man on the radio says, “-and our policies are only promoting it! It sickens me. It sickens me. It really does! And I’ll tell you-“
“Turn it off,” interrupts Lume’s voice.
“Wha…?” Randy sits up. I fold my arms.
“-sucking us dry-“ the radio warbles on. My throat starts to tighten.
“-it off!”
“-and the world is just…it’s just falling apart in their hands and they’re not going to take any responsibil- “
Fear knots in my chest. I fight it, trying to remember something funny Jack has said.
Crack!
Lume has leaned into the front seat, and smacked the radio into silence.
“What the hell?” asks Randy.
“Look at Grey!” growls Lume. They both turn around to look at me. With both of them watching me, I choke, and tears sting my eyes. I turn away from them.
Lume puts her hand on my head.
“What’s wrong with her?” asks Randy.
“The radio messes her up. Drive Randy,” commands Lume, as if she had told him three times before.
Randy starts the car and pulls back out onto the road. In my mind, I picture the car as an impenetrable airtight fortress, capable of driving through the middle of a battlefield, unaffected by artillery shells or missiles.
“The radio messes her up…what is she an alien? Is this…Is it really a horror movie?” mocks Randy.
“She’s sensitive.”
“I’m sensitive too! But I don’t burst into tears because the radio is on!”
“It’s just a thing, Randalf. It’s just a thing.”
It’s nice to have Lume defend me, especially since I don’t understand my own tears. She seems to understand me better than I understand myself. I suppose that isn’t hard.
The car’s engine lulls me to sleep. I’m too exhausted to figure myself out.
Wind rushes across my face. I’m hanging, suspended, a hundred feet above the highest point on the roller coaster beneath me. I twist, trying to see what holds me. I catch a glimpse of purple before I spin back the other way.
Penelope’s voice magnified a thousand times reverberates around me.
“We suffer a tragic fate, sister.”
Her face fills my vision, too big for me to watch all at once. I focus on the purple iris of one of her eyes.
“We cannot ride the roller coaster. I am too big. You are too small.”
Damp, hot, spearmint-tinted breath washes over me as she speaks, making my eyes water. Purple lips bounce and roll as she chews her gum.
“Don’t come here, little one. Stay away from this place.”
I sit up. Lume’s hand pushes me back down, pinning me against the seat of the car. My shirt sticks to me, damp from Penelope’s breath. No, it’s wet from the lake, or from sweating in my sleep. I don’t know.
Her hand covers my eyes.
“What if you were blind, as well as mute?” asks Lume. “There are some who have both these qualities.”
I’m not sure it would bother me. When watching a scary movie, people often close their eyes. Maybe life would be easier to take with my eyes shut.
“How much further?” asks Lume.
“Not much,” replies Randy.
“Grey is blind. Her eyes give everything away, taking nothing from the eyes of others. Her eyes wander and drift, afraid to look straight ahead.
“Her enemies are aware of her eyes, and their habits. They feel safe, knowing that her eyes will take nothing from them, and their defenses wane. Grey must only wait for her opportunity.”
The car stops. I hear Lume open the door, and I’m pulled outside. With her hand still over my eyes, like we are playing “Guess who?”, Lume speaks.
“Look ahead, like you did for me with Alice. Watch for your enemy’s appearance. I know it is difficult for you. I hope to see you again soon, Grey Winters.”
The Eighth: Frozen
Lume has left me. Outside of Jack’s house. My house? I’m not sure.
I walk towards the house, watching the path for missing bricks.
“Grey! I know your- ah!”
I look up in time to see Susan fall from the roof. She lands on her feet, but a loose brick betrays her, sending her sprawling backwards. Before I’ve sorted out what I’ve seen, she grins, apparently unharmed. She pulls me down on top of her, squeezing the breath from me in a crushing hug.
“I didn’t think they’d give you back and Jack wouldn’t tell me anything and I haven’t slept in days because I’ve just been sitting on the roof- Are you okay? I mean, where’s your sweatshirt? I mean, Jack’s sweatshirt. I mean, did they hurt you? What have you eaten? Are you okay?”
And then she starts to cry. She’s so huge that I shake with each of her quivering breaths, caught up in her earthquake. I’m reminded of how I feel when I’m around Alice, the only person I know as big as Susan, but even on this moonless night I can see Susan’s eyes are sharp blue and full of worry, not Alice’s furious red.
Susan carries me into the house, nearly knocking down the door to Karen and Jack’s room.
“-Winters is it. I don’t have anything real-“ Jack is saying, ignoring the sound of the door slamming against his bedroom wall.
He and Karen are facing away from us, hunched over a notebook.
“She’s back,” interrupts Susan. Jack and Karen jump up together.
“Where? How-“ Jack starts.
“Someone just dropped her off. She isn’t talking,” Susan tells him, while Karen takes me from her and showers me in kisses. I feel like a new baby being passed around.
“That’s okay. That’s just fine. She doesn’t have to talk. She shouldn’t be talking. Who is someone?” asks Jack.
“I don’t know. It was dark.”
“Could you tell if it was a man or woman? Or if they were wearing purple?” Jack presses.
“Purple? I don’t know! It was dark.” Susan gives Jack “I demand more sanity” looks.
“Okay, that’s okay. I thought maybe you’d developed night vision, perched up on the roof like an owl all night. Are done with that now? Can you go to sleep now? All the cool people are doing it. Grey is doing it right now,” Jack tells Susan.
I’ve only got my eyes closed, leaning my head on Karen’s shoulder. “What’s this?” Karen asks. I know without looking that she has spotted my tattoo.
“They put their mark on her,” grumbles Jack, sounding only annoyed at the news.
“Who?” demands Susan.
“Who…ever took her!” Jack growls, as if it should be obvious.
They pause, like they are listening to a fifth person I cannot hear.
“She needs a dry shirt. I mean, hers is damp. Does it have to be so cold in here?” asks Susan.
“Yes. Yes it does. But she can have my shirt. She can have all my clothes. I won’t complain anymore. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m a new man. A naked one, apparently!”
“We,” says Susan, taking me from Karen, “are going to bed. Before Jack gets naked.”
She leaves the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Still, I hear Jack’s voice faintly saying, “She isn’t speaking so…” until we enter my room and Susan shuts that door behind us as well.
Susan has apparently decided she will sleep on the floor of my bedroom, with a single blanket and a wadded up sweater for a pillow. I change into a nightshirt from the dresser and crawl into bed. As I slide under the covers, a stray strand of hair covers one of my eyes.
When my hair gets in my eyes, it’s like bits of black are creeping in from the sides. Susan uses hair clips and accessories I don’t like to keep hers up, but I wonder what it would be like to have bits of blonde intrude on your vision instead of bits of darkness. Would I even mind? Lume has hair the same color as mine, but she keeps it short.
Lume knows my last name. I didn’t know my last name. Grey Winters. Lume _____? Lume knows me. Lume found me by accident on the side of the road, but she knows me. How is that possible? It couldn’t have been an accident. Was she waiting for me to escape? “Look ahead, like you did for me with Alice”, she said. She knows Alice. Does she know Penelope too? Is she one of them?
One of who? The colored sisters? Purple Penelope and Red Alice? Penelope’s entire room was purple. I woke in it less than a day ago. No, I was woken, by an erratic shadow. By Lume. No one else moves like that. Lume snuck into Penelope’s room, propped me against the door, and woke me up so I would hear Alice and Penelope’s conversation, and then she escaped through the window and waited for me to break out.
Why didn’t she just help me escape herself? How did she know I would guess Alice’s password? Why would she pretend not to know me when she found me by the side of the road? Who is Lume? Who am…
Lying in bed, I feel the end of a long strand of hair that has slid underneath my knee. It tickles the back of my leg, so I shift my position, curling my legs up. My legs scrape against the sandpaper blankets around me. I push the away the blankets, and they feel like bricks against my fingertips. Susan watches me as I pull a pillow that seems to be stuffed with caltrops from its case. I try to lay my head on the bed instead of the pillow. Sharp aches so concentrated they feel like cuts spread across my body. It’s as if they used tiny knives instead of springs for this mattress.
I get out of bed, and sit next to Susan on the floor. I wait for a moment, afraid this will continue and the floor will feel like hot coals.
“Grey Winters…do you feel cold?” Susan asks me the way another person would ask if I had heard gunshots. Her words are the trigger. Excruciating cold slices across my feet. I feel, but cannot see, an icy disc of pain no more than an inch in height rising through me. My toes feel fine as radical subzero ice sizzles up through my ankles.
I jump up, trying to get away from The Cold, but it continues to slide up my legs. I start sucking air through my teeth. Susan pulls my legs from under me. I fall back onto the carpet, where Susan pins me. She covers my mouth with her free hand.
“It’s cold, right?”
My cry leaks through her fingers.
“Shhh! You can’t scream. I know it’s cold.”
It reaches my kneecaps, and my legs start to kick and spasm until Susan presses them into carpet fibers.
“Please, for your own good, try not to scream too loudly,” Susan begs. For Susan, I clamp my mouth and bite my tongue. I trust her more than anyone at the moment.
“It’s like…maintenance or something, I don’t understand. You’re doing it to yourself. Don’t try to fight it. Don’t fight it. It’s going to get bad. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
Susan keeps me pinned as The Cold sears its way through me. My stomach heaves and twists when it slides across my belly. It reaches my chest, and I need air. In a slow, excruciating fog, I cannot decide if I am hyperventilating or unable to inhale at all. Black lines flit across my vision.
When it hits my throat I feel as if a vortex of wind is squeezing a thousand Hot Pockets through. I taste pizza coated in peanut butter. I smell perfume and sweat and Susan’s fabric softener. The world screams at me.
“Watch for your enemy! I exist for my name! She’s isn’t talking if she would speak-“
I see Jack. His beard fades, and his hair darkens. He’s become Lume, but Lume is already shrinking. Her hair expands around her, and she looks up at me. She’s Grey.
I’m strong. I’ve spoken before. I can communicate. I told Jack I thought he was my friend. I can say to her, “I wish I were you.” I should be Grey. Everyone wants to be Grey. I want her.
I won’t fake it anymore, I promise. I’ll be little. I won’t speak. I’ll live in grey. I won’t I won’t won’t won’t wwww-
Ah…
I uncoil. My vision and hearing pop back into place.
Susan is crying. Her tears land on my face. Are they my tears, once they are on my face? I kiss her wet cheek. She holds me and sobs silently.
I taste copper. Blood. I touch my tongue and my hand comes away with a dark smear. Susan’s hand is bleeding too. She wraps a purple shirt around her hand.
“You hate this shirt anyhow,” Susan tells me. I don’t have any feelings for the shirt, but I let her think what she wants.
“Are you oka…how do you f…can I look at you?” Kneeling on the floor, she holds me out at arm’s length. Her arms support all my weight. I’m sure I could not stand on my own. My muscles feel like they’re pinned by lead weights, impossible to move after exercising them beyond exhaustion.
She examines me, even turning me around so she can look at me from behind. Eventually her eyes come to rest on mine. I can only stand the bright blue of her eyes for a few seconds, before I close mine. Her words rise through the darkness.
“I’ve learned that posture is amazing, Grey. It’s like, Every person holds themself in a different way, and you can tell a lot about them from that. I mean, if two different people took turns using the same body, you would know…”
Her voice distorts into static, swinging into a high-pitched whine. It slides back down through the octaves until it’s too low for me to hear, then begins curving upwards again. Eventually it stabilizes, and explains everything to me. Then I wake up.
Because of posting limits, this post is broken into two parts.
The Fifth: Luminescent
The icy water has forced strength into my body, and painful clarity into my mind.
I don’t know myself well. I don’t know my mind or body or past. I can’t speak or write or lift heavy objects. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. What do I want? A jacket or sweater or long sleeve shirt to cover my arms and keep them warm. A book to read. I’m feeling greedy. I can’t do much. I can’t ask for much. But if this is a dream…I want to know someone who won’t pick me up with one hand. I want someone to ask me if I like their shoes. And… what monopoly piece do I want? Only I can’t pick the dog because that’s theirs. Red hotels and green houses. I see myself moving the thimble past boardwalk, past Go. I put a hand against the side of the tub to keep from losing my balance.
Soaked and shivering in the shower, I resolve that I do not want to be here any longer. This is an Important Mental Step. I frown at the thought, unsure of where it came from.
I shut off the shower. I climb from the tub, puddles of water forming on the floor. As I peel off my wet shirt, curiosity cements. I want to look at myself while I’m naked. Maybe I will realize I am beautiful, or that my eyes aren’t so different. I leave my clothes in a heap on the floor, and climb on top of the sink, to look in the mirror there.
The tattoo is so dark, it makes my skin seem to shine white. I try to be nice and call myself slender in my head, instead of skinny.
I look nineteen, or twenty. I…I think maybe I’m pretty. I look like I bathe in estrogen. I have nothing but curves.
I don’t meet my own eyes. I’m afraid I’ll see my secrets in them.
Since Alice has not left me any dry clothes, I wring out my wet ones as best as I can, and dry my hair with a towel.
The only door out of the room is locked, with a keypad. The only window has the same lock and keypad. The numbers on the keypad seem sized right for my fingers. I press “A”, and see I have space for ten letters. I finish “Alice”, and press “enter”. The words “Invalid password” scroll across the screen. I try “Penelope.” Invalid password. I try “Grey”. I try “Red”, “Purple”, “Hate”, “Love”, and “Anger.”
The window lock pops. Her password was “Anger”. Knowing that, I pray I will never face her again.
The window is heavy. I push against it in vain. I readjust my handhold, and press upwards, straining my arms. It lifts enough for me to slide a shoe under. I hook my fingers into the crack held open by my shoe, and heave the window up enough for me to slide through.
I land on hard dirt, jarring my knee, and run. It’s a moonless night. I push through tall grass, leap over rocks, and scale tree stumps before reaching a fence of iron bars. It takes me only seconds to squeeze through the gap between the bars.
I reach pavement. A road. The yellow dividing stripes of paint are faded and erratic. The trees lining the road feel possessive. I can’t run anymore. The pain in my side is a roar. I’ve got no stamina. I’ve got no strength. I won’t make it far before Alice finds the bathroom empty. The trees watch. They don’t want me to get far.
Alice has murdered your friends, trees! I’ve seen the stumps! Let me go, so I can bring Laurel a friend, so I can grow strong like you. Don’t let Alice have me.
Rain descends from the sky. The water on the road doesn’t sink in or trickle away. It thickens, clumping together, rising like bread. A bubble, and then a sphere rises from it. It’s transparent, with a purple center.
A screeching flash punches through the sphere. It takes a few seconds for the fireworks in my eyes to die off. A soft chiming reaches my ears.
A car has pulled off the side of the road, ahead of me. I make out two silhouettes against the car lights. I’ve taken a step backwards, when a man’s voice reaches my ears.
“-saying anything if you were hit.”
“I saw nothing. There would be blood and dents and screaming,” a female voice answers. Her words snap together like puzzle pieces, but she puts no pride in them. She is like a talented sculptor who daydreams of being an ice skater as she half-heartedly chips rocks into wonders.
“Not if…”
They’ve seen me. I shield my eyes against the light. The man is tall…or maybe he isn’t. Anyone I meet towers above me, on a separate plane I cannot reach.
He wears a leather jacket. He’s clean-shaven, and all hard lines.
Around the woman, light seems dimmer. The way she moves is not natural, not the way people are supposed to move. It’s like she has read the instruction manual that came with her body, but never used it before. She’s got dark hair, but not much of it, and her skin is nearly as white as mine.
“Are you alright? What are you doing out here?” asks the man. The woman is still studying me.
They’ve got a car. Please, let them take me away from here. I pull my hand from my pocket, to show I’m not hiding a gun or knife. My hand comes out holding a shred of paper.
The paper disappears, and it’s several seconds before I realize the woman has snatched it from my hand.
“Grey,” she reads aloud. Hurriedly, I point to myself.
“Can you speak?” asks the man. I shake my head, and point to myself again.
“It’s her name,” the woman announces. “If I told you my name was miss White and he was Mr. Black, we could rob a bank and if you were caught you wouldn’t be able to reveal my true identity.”
“I’m Randy,” says the man.
“I’m Lume,” says the woman, the paper back to me. I fold it away nicely, because it’s my name, and I can’t write it or say it. “We didn’t hit you with the car like Randy thought, but-“
I catch Lume’s hand, and wrap her arm around me. Her nails are painted black.
“Little one found by the side of the road in the dark of the night, I am not about to abandon you to the wolves, or whatever predators might stalk you. Cars, from the look of things.”
If another person had said the same words, it would have been a speech. Coming from Lume, it’s no different, except everything Lume says sounds like the start of speech.
“Your hair is wet. Your clothes are damp. Randy, it hasn’t been raining.”
“She’s not bleeding is she?”
“Not unless water runs through her veins.”
Lume inspects the scabs the handcuffs left on my wrists, but says nothing.
I pull her towards the car. She lets me drag her into the back seat with me. Randy climbs in front, and when I point out at the road, he starts driving. Heated air hums from the air conditioning vents. Lume snaps on a light.
Her eyes are like mine.
They’re grey and soft and a watery like she might start crying any moment now and they’re just like mine.
“The time you ate last is long past, yes?” I…I suppose it is. I cannot remember when I ate last. I’m handed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bottle of water.
“We are in a horror movie,” announces Lume.
“We are not,” says Randy.
“A girl stumbles from the woods, wet and starving, unable to speak of the atrocities she has witnessed.”
“I don’t know where I’m driving.”
“I do. She has my eyes.”
I watch Lume’s eyes over the top of my sandwich. There is something savage in her, something Alice had that Penelope didn’t. She moves like her body is just a tool or a puppet, not herself. Her eyes are always laughing, like life is a joke to her, even when the rest of her face is serious.
Randy hands back a pen and pad of paper. Lume sets them on my lap, and asks, “Did you recently witness a terrible atrocity, such as one might see in a Hollywood horror movie, and are now rendered mute from the trauma?”
I start the line for N, not sure when I should stop it. I panic, and wrench the line off course, then I swoop back to enclose the polygon. I add some adjustment lines to the top to clarify, and balance it with a series of zizags.
This isn’t the letter N. I scribble it out. Lume takes the pad from me, and sets it on her lap. I’m never given enough time.
With her own pen, Lume writes the letter “N” on the page. I duck under her arm, and try to copy her “N”. As I focus on her letter, my pen drifts through it, slicing it in half with my line. I’ve ruined her letter. Her pen descends, and adjusts the impaling line so that it curves back around. The letter looks like the start of jagged monster teeth to me, so I add a few more, completing a mouth of menacing fangs. Lume’s pen continues in an arc, showing me that this is going to be a sea serpent, so I start drawing in the scales.
When it’s time to work on the ocean, I climb into Lume’s lap and hold the paper steady for us. I feel the vibrations of her voice when she speaks.
“The serpent is old, and tired of chewing on shark skin. The oceans are overrun with human ships and he no longer has the strength to sink them. Bitter and alone, he hides in a storm.”
A ship appears under our pens.
“The captain is old, and tired of pulling in crab traps. The oceans are crowded, competition is fierce, and he doesn’t care to race against fiery captains and freshly painted boats. Bitter and alone, he hunts in a storm.”
A spear appears in the serpent’s side. The captain’s boat comes into focus, shattered and broken from the serpent’s tail.
I finish drawing the last bubble in a turbulent ocean.
The Sixth: Inertial
“A product of cooperative genius,” said Randy. I press my cheek into Lume, clutch at her shirt, and feel the vibrations of her voice mix with her heartbeat. Her hand plucks at strands of hair hanging down my back.
“…thousands of men, women, and children…starving children, helpless with wide innocent eyes and…” Lume looks down at me, “…tiny women with very long hair and pale skin. Trembling, they were scattered in the woods in picked off not by wild animals, not by psychotic cultists, but by a tongue-devouring monster. The monster made no sound, only ripping the tongues from those who spoke or cried out.”
I rise and fall with each breath Lume takes. Randy’s voice comes from the front of the car.
“What were a thousand starving children and…” I see his eyes watching me in the rearview mirror. “…women doing in the forest?”
“Dragged from their beds by the oily tentacles of the tongue devouring beast!” declares Lume.
“Was her tongue devoured?”
I lock eyes with Lume. Without looking away, she says “No.”
“She hasn’t opened her mouth.”
“She has my eyes.”
“And you’ve got her tongue?”
“No.” Lume’s confident voice hums through me. She twists strands of my hair into knots.
“Well…?”
“She cannot speak from the trauma of witnessing a thousand tongues torn from their mouths. The fear of the beast who did it, who still-“
“-not a stupid horror-“ interrupts Randy.
“-roams the land!” finishes Lume fiercely.
Silence with an edge cuts between them. The car speeds through the silent night. Thump. Thump.
“Is she asleep?” asks Randy, at last.
“No. She’s listening to my heartbeat.”
“Why?”
“Maybe it will stop beating. Pull over.”
Randy pulls the car over to the side of the road without protest. Lume hands me a black coat to put on. It’s long enough to reach past my knees.
“We’re going outside, where the cold will get you,” she says, pulling the coat around me. She’s only wearing a T-Shirt. I touch the jacket, and then touch her shoulder.
“I don’t need protection from the cold. I am the cold.”
Lume forces the car door open. I close my eyes against the stinging wind. It tosses my hair from my face and streams it out behind me. My hair gets caught in the car door when Lume shuts it. She has to open the door again, so I can pull long strands of hair out and hold them against myself to stop them from trailing out behind me like a kite.
Randy waits in the car while Lume leads me away from the road. She slides down a steep bank of loose rocks. She rides the growing wave of rocks like a surfer, until she reaches flat dirt and the rocks and dust spread in a pool around her.
It could be a sport. Slope surfing. Mountain surfing. That’s called skiing. Not if there isn’t any snow. Then it’s avalanche surfing.
“Grey! Focus!” Lume hollers up at me. I take my first step onto the slope. Some gravel is knocked loose, but my footing holds. I can’t surf like Lume, so I’ll take baby steps.
A rock to my left looks steady, but it rolls away when my foot touches it.
“To your right, Grey!”
I look around my right foot, but I see nowhere to put my it.
“It’s right there. Yes…no…a little to your right…there!”
I see only darkness there. There’s no moon tonight. I shake my head at Lume.
“There! Put your foot down!”
I put my foot down into nothing. I stumble, then tumble forward. Lume catches me under my arms, slowing my crash into a gentle touchdown.
“I appreciate your faith in me. As you’ve just proven, it is not unfounded.”
I follow Lume into the trees. She walks slowly so I can keep up. Crickets chirp, sticks snap underfoot, and bushes rustle. I feel clumsy and loud. I hold my hair clutched against me, for comfort as much as to stop it from catching on things.
I wonder if someone could pick me up by my hair alone. Would it support my weight? I have a lot of hair, and there’s not a lot of me. If I was a criminal, maybe they could hang me without a rope.
My lungs burn and my legs feel like they are made of rubber. The ground is at an incline. Lume has stopped further up, waiting for me. She watches my slow progress.
“May I carry you? We’re only about halfway there. Randy has fallen asleep listening to some talk show on the radio, but when he wakes up in a few hours he’ll be upset if we’re not back.”
I nod gratefully. As she lifts me up, she says, “You don’t need to be strong. I am your strength.” I lay my head against her shoulder and watch the trees fly past. I think of when I saw myself in the mirror two days ago, at Jack’s house. I had been confused, but…my mind seemed…clearer then. Things hadn’t been moving so quickly.
I’d been upset because I’d thought I was stronger than the person I saw in the mirror. Maybe the mirror defeated me. Maybe I hadn’t been the person in the mirror until I saw her. Maybe once I saw her, I gave up, and became her. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. But things hadn’t moved so quickly back then.
“We’re here.” Lume sets me down.
A wall of rocks squats in front of me. It’s taller than me but not as tall as Lume. It’s just big river rocks, stacked and balanced on one another. I don’t see any trees on the other side.
“This is your wall, Grey, and it’s the problem.” Lume paces in front of the wall. Again I notice how bizarre and erratic her movement is. I’ve seen it somewhere before.
“This wall is your obstacle. Every person who has ever lived desires what lies on the other side of this wall, though not every person will admit it. Few people have found this wall, and none have overcome it.
I’m lucky. I’ve just found this wall, and I believe I can overcome it. I think others have made the mistake of trying to destroy this wall.”
Lume pushes a rock off the top of the wall. I hear it hit the ground on the other side.
“If you destroy this wall, you will destroy what it protects. That is what I believe. But I know another way. May I show you?”
When I nod, Lume picks me up again. Using one of the rocks on the bottom of the wall for a foothold, she steps over the wall.
It’s a cliff. We’re standing on a ledge only a foot wide between the wall and a twenty-foot drop into a lake. The wall was there to protect us.
Lume sits down, legs dangling off the edge. In her lap, I lean backwards.
“It’s terrifying,” she says.
Lume picks a rock off the ground. It’s the one she pushed off the wall. She rolls it around her palm before throwing it. It arcs through the air into the lake. I remember the phrase “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”, and then someone who countered, saying, “The most beautiful distance between two points is a curve.”
What if thrown objects weren’t beautiful? Imagine if they went in a straight line, then suddenly went straight down at a ninety-degree angle, like they’d hit an invisible wall. You could play Tetris.
“A thousand times. I could throw that rock a thousand times. The thousandth time I threw it, my arm would ache, and I would not even bother to watch the rock splash in the water. But you would still watch it. You would watch it like it was the first step on the moon, like it was still amazing.
I shouldn’t be speaking of this. It’s something you need. You need to have that. I’ll need to have that.
That’s not what we should discuss. We should ask ourselves: What if the big bang theory of creation is true? The universe is essentially an explosion. And the earth, and life, and you and I, are just particles in this massive expanding fireball of a universe.
It would have to be just another cycle. Cycle of life, cycle of nature, cycle of the universe. There would be the great implosion one day, and then another big bang. And if the big bang happened exactly the same way, then planet earth would happen the same way, and you and I would be here again, doing the same thing. And we’d do it again the big bang after that.
We must choose our actions wisely, because we’ll be repeating them for all eternity. And that makes us immortal.”
Lume pushes us off the edge.
The Seventh: Relative
We arc towards the lake, beautiful, for a moment. Straight as a needle, Lume pierces the water first. But we fell together, how could she-
Hit the water like frozen steel pipe to the gut. I lose my air, and try not to choke on the liquid ice sliding through my teeth. It’s too dark to see which way is up. The tail of my jacket catches on something. I’m hauled upwards, sputtering and choking into the air.
Lume patiently treads water like she has hopped into a public pool. She’s laughing. She laughs until she can barely swim, as she pulls me to the shore. I crawl onto land, and press my forehead into the dirt, feeling ill.
“I’m so-“ Lume tries to apologize through her laughter. “I’m…I’m sorry, hahaha.”
I inhale slowly, afraid I’m going to throw up lake water. I roll onto my back and lay against the dirt, fighting nausea. A drop of water, one among many, slides down my arm, trying to gain enough weight to fall to the ground.
It doesn’t make it to the ground. Lume intercepts it with a towel. She lifts me into sitting position and drapes the towel around me. She sits next to me, soaking wet, grinning like a demon.
“Falling from that precipice, did you fear for your life? Were you expecting death, immortal?”
I press my face into her bare, cold, wet arm. She puts her arm around me.
“You would say I shouldn’t force you through such a trial. Consider the alternative: walking all the way back down the mountain trail. Tiresome. Mundane.”
She sighs. “But not for you, I suppose. It would be better for you. I will make a confession. I’m not immortal. Not even if the universe explodes infinitely. I would live infinite times, but I would also die infinitely. What does that make me? Not immortal, but infinitely mortal.”
Infinitely mortal and Immortal, I repeat in my mind. Infinitely mortal would be essentially immortal if only you got to keep your memory. If everyone could remember their past lives, how would the world be? Would there be more crime, because the death penalty had less power? No, justice would just be dealt out in pain and misery.
You’d count each life. This was your fifty-eighth life. Each life, each world, would be a different level, but communication could only be one way, only through death. Each world after the last would have greater technology, because our scientists would retain their past knowledge. Thomas Edison would invent the light bulb as soon as he was old enough to speak.
But then things would be different. Things would happen differently. The universe wouldn’t be able to collapse the same way and wouldn’t explode the same the next time. Infinite mortals can’t have memory. Mortals cannot know their infinite selves, or their infinite selves will not be.
Lume carries me back to the car as I think on her words. Randy is asleep in the front seat, while a man on the radio says, “-and our policies are only promoting it! It sickens me. It sickens me. It really does! And I’ll tell you-“
“Turn it off,” interrupts Lume’s voice.
“Wha…?” Randy sits up. I fold my arms.
“-sucking us dry-“ the radio warbles on. My throat starts to tighten.
“-it off!”
“-and the world is just…it’s just falling apart in their hands and they’re not going to take any responsibil- “
Fear knots in my chest. I fight it, trying to remember something funny Jack has said.
Crack!
Lume has leaned into the front seat, and smacked the radio into silence.
“What the hell?” asks Randy.
“Look at Grey!” growls Lume. They both turn around to look at me. With both of them watching me, I choke, and tears sting my eyes. I turn away from them.
Lume puts her hand on my head.
“What’s wrong with her?” asks Randy.
“The radio messes her up. Drive Randy,” commands Lume, as if she had told him three times before.
Randy starts the car and pulls back out onto the road. In my mind, I picture the car as an impenetrable airtight fortress, capable of driving through the middle of a battlefield, unaffected by artillery shells or missiles.
“The radio messes her up…what is she an alien? Is this…Is it really a horror movie?” mocks Randy.
“She’s sensitive.”
“I’m sensitive too! But I don’t burst into tears because the radio is on!”
“It’s just a thing, Randalf. It’s just a thing.”
It’s nice to have Lume defend me, especially since I don’t understand my own tears. She seems to understand me better than I understand myself. I suppose that isn’t hard.
The car’s engine lulls me to sleep. I’m too exhausted to figure myself out.
Wind rushes across my face. I’m hanging, suspended, a hundred feet above the highest point on the roller coaster beneath me. I twist, trying to see what holds me. I catch a glimpse of purple before I spin back the other way.
Penelope’s voice magnified a thousand times reverberates around me.
“We suffer a tragic fate, sister.”
Her face fills my vision, too big for me to watch all at once. I focus on the purple iris of one of her eyes.
“We cannot ride the roller coaster. I am too big. You are too small.”
Damp, hot, spearmint-tinted breath washes over me as she speaks, making my eyes water. Purple lips bounce and roll as she chews her gum.
“Don’t come here, little one. Stay away from this place.”
I sit up. Lume’s hand pushes me back down, pinning me against the seat of the car. My shirt sticks to me, damp from Penelope’s breath. No, it’s wet from the lake, or from sweating in my sleep. I don’t know.
Her hand covers my eyes.
“What if you were blind, as well as mute?” asks Lume. “There are some who have both these qualities.”
I’m not sure it would bother me. When watching a scary movie, people often close their eyes. Maybe life would be easier to take with my eyes shut.
“How much further?” asks Lume.
“Not much,” replies Randy.
“Grey is blind. Her eyes give everything away, taking nothing from the eyes of others. Her eyes wander and drift, afraid to look straight ahead.
“Her enemies are aware of her eyes, and their habits. They feel safe, knowing that her eyes will take nothing from them, and their defenses wane. Grey must only wait for her opportunity.”
The car stops. I hear Lume open the door, and I’m pulled outside. With her hand still over my eyes, like we are playing “Guess who?”, Lume speaks.
“Look ahead, like you did for me with Alice. Watch for your enemy’s appearance. I know it is difficult for you. I hope to see you again soon, Grey Winters.”
The Eighth: Frozen
Lume has left me. Outside of Jack’s house. My house? I’m not sure.
I walk towards the house, watching the path for missing bricks.
“Grey! I know your- ah!”
I look up in time to see Susan fall from the roof. She lands on her feet, but a loose brick betrays her, sending her sprawling backwards. Before I’ve sorted out what I’ve seen, she grins, apparently unharmed. She pulls me down on top of her, squeezing the breath from me in a crushing hug.
“I didn’t think they’d give you back and Jack wouldn’t tell me anything and I haven’t slept in days because I’ve just been sitting on the roof- Are you okay? I mean, where’s your sweatshirt? I mean, Jack’s sweatshirt. I mean, did they hurt you? What have you eaten? Are you okay?”
And then she starts to cry. She’s so huge that I shake with each of her quivering breaths, caught up in her earthquake. I’m reminded of how I feel when I’m around Alice, the only person I know as big as Susan, but even on this moonless night I can see Susan’s eyes are sharp blue and full of worry, not Alice’s furious red.
Susan carries me into the house, nearly knocking down the door to Karen and Jack’s room.
“-Winters is it. I don’t have anything real-“ Jack is saying, ignoring the sound of the door slamming against his bedroom wall.
He and Karen are facing away from us, hunched over a notebook.
“She’s back,” interrupts Susan. Jack and Karen jump up together.
“Where? How-“ Jack starts.
“Someone just dropped her off. She isn’t talking,” Susan tells him, while Karen takes me from her and showers me in kisses. I feel like a new baby being passed around.
“That’s okay. That’s just fine. She doesn’t have to talk. She shouldn’t be talking. Who is someone?” asks Jack.
“I don’t know. It was dark.”
“Could you tell if it was a man or woman? Or if they were wearing purple?” Jack presses.
“Purple? I don’t know! It was dark.” Susan gives Jack “I demand more sanity” looks.
“Okay, that’s okay. I thought maybe you’d developed night vision, perched up on the roof like an owl all night. Are done with that now? Can you go to sleep now? All the cool people are doing it. Grey is doing it right now,” Jack tells Susan.
I’ve only got my eyes closed, leaning my head on Karen’s shoulder. “What’s this?” Karen asks. I know without looking that she has spotted my tattoo.
“They put their mark on her,” grumbles Jack, sounding only annoyed at the news.
“Who?” demands Susan.
“Who…ever took her!” Jack growls, as if it should be obvious.
They pause, like they are listening to a fifth person I cannot hear.
“She needs a dry shirt. I mean, hers is damp. Does it have to be so cold in here?” asks Susan.
“Yes. Yes it does. But she can have my shirt. She can have all my clothes. I won’t complain anymore. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m a new man. A naked one, apparently!”
“We,” says Susan, taking me from Karen, “are going to bed. Before Jack gets naked.”
She leaves the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Still, I hear Jack’s voice faintly saying, “She isn’t speaking so…” until we enter my room and Susan shuts that door behind us as well.
Susan has apparently decided she will sleep on the floor of my bedroom, with a single blanket and a wadded up sweater for a pillow. I change into a nightshirt from the dresser and crawl into bed. As I slide under the covers, a stray strand of hair covers one of my eyes.
When my hair gets in my eyes, it’s like bits of black are creeping in from the sides. Susan uses hair clips and accessories I don’t like to keep hers up, but I wonder what it would be like to have bits of blonde intrude on your vision instead of bits of darkness. Would I even mind? Lume has hair the same color as mine, but she keeps it short.
Lume knows my last name. I didn’t know my last name. Grey Winters. Lume _____? Lume knows me. Lume found me by accident on the side of the road, but she knows me. How is that possible? It couldn’t have been an accident. Was she waiting for me to escape? “Look ahead, like you did for me with Alice”, she said. She knows Alice. Does she know Penelope too? Is she one of them?
One of who? The colored sisters? Purple Penelope and Red Alice? Penelope’s entire room was purple. I woke in it less than a day ago. No, I was woken, by an erratic shadow. By Lume. No one else moves like that. Lume snuck into Penelope’s room, propped me against the door, and woke me up so I would hear Alice and Penelope’s conversation, and then she escaped through the window and waited for me to break out.
Why didn’t she just help me escape herself? How did she know I would guess Alice’s password? Why would she pretend not to know me when she found me by the side of the road? Who is Lume? Who am…
Lying in bed, I feel the end of a long strand of hair that has slid underneath my knee. It tickles the back of my leg, so I shift my position, curling my legs up. My legs scrape against the sandpaper blankets around me. I push the away the blankets, and they feel like bricks against my fingertips. Susan watches me as I pull a pillow that seems to be stuffed with caltrops from its case. I try to lay my head on the bed instead of the pillow. Sharp aches so concentrated they feel like cuts spread across my body. It’s as if they used tiny knives instead of springs for this mattress.
I get out of bed, and sit next to Susan on the floor. I wait for a moment, afraid this will continue and the floor will feel like hot coals.
“Grey Winters…do you feel cold?” Susan asks me the way another person would ask if I had heard gunshots. Her words are the trigger. Excruciating cold slices across my feet. I feel, but cannot see, an icy disc of pain no more than an inch in height rising through me. My toes feel fine as radical subzero ice sizzles up through my ankles.
I jump up, trying to get away from The Cold, but it continues to slide up my legs. I start sucking air through my teeth. Susan pulls my legs from under me. I fall back onto the carpet, where Susan pins me. She covers my mouth with her free hand.
“It’s cold, right?”
My cry leaks through her fingers.
“Shhh! You can’t scream. I know it’s cold.”
It reaches my kneecaps, and my legs start to kick and spasm until Susan presses them into carpet fibers.
“Please, for your own good, try not to scream too loudly,” Susan begs. For Susan, I clamp my mouth and bite my tongue. I trust her more than anyone at the moment.
“It’s like…maintenance or something, I don’t understand. You’re doing it to yourself. Don’t try to fight it. Don’t fight it. It’s going to get bad. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
Susan keeps me pinned as The Cold sears its way through me. My stomach heaves and twists when it slides across my belly. It reaches my chest, and I need air. In a slow, excruciating fog, I cannot decide if I am hyperventilating or unable to inhale at all. Black lines flit across my vision.
When it hits my throat I feel as if a vortex of wind is squeezing a thousand Hot Pockets through. I taste pizza coated in peanut butter. I smell perfume and sweat and Susan’s fabric softener. The world screams at me.
“Watch for your enemy! I exist for my name! She’s isn’t talking if she would speak-“
I see Jack. His beard fades, and his hair darkens. He’s become Lume, but Lume is already shrinking. Her hair expands around her, and she looks up at me. She’s Grey.
I’m strong. I’ve spoken before. I can communicate. I told Jack I thought he was my friend. I can say to her, “I wish I were you.” I should be Grey. Everyone wants to be Grey. I want her.
I won’t fake it anymore, I promise. I’ll be little. I won’t speak. I’ll live in grey. I won’t I won’t won’t won’t wwww-
Ah…
I uncoil. My vision and hearing pop back into place.
Susan is crying. Her tears land on my face. Are they my tears, once they are on my face? I kiss her wet cheek. She holds me and sobs silently.
I taste copper. Blood. I touch my tongue and my hand comes away with a dark smear. Susan’s hand is bleeding too. She wraps a purple shirt around her hand.
“You hate this shirt anyhow,” Susan tells me. I don’t have any feelings for the shirt, but I let her think what she wants.
“Are you oka…how do you f…can I look at you?” Kneeling on the floor, she holds me out at arm’s length. Her arms support all my weight. I’m sure I could not stand on my own. My muscles feel like they’re pinned by lead weights, impossible to move after exercising them beyond exhaustion.
She examines me, even turning me around so she can look at me from behind. Eventually her eyes come to rest on mine. I can only stand the bright blue of her eyes for a few seconds, before I close mine. Her words rise through the darkness.
“I’ve learned that posture is amazing, Grey. It’s like, Every person holds themself in a different way, and you can tell a lot about them from that. I mean, if two different people took turns using the same body, you would know…”
Her voice distorts into static, swinging into a high-pitched whine. It slides back down through the octaves until it’s too low for me to hear, then begins curving upwards again. Eventually it stabilizes, and explains everything to me. Then I wake up.