[31_days][lovefujitez] The Unlucky Ones
The Unlucky Ones
By Shira Sakura
The thrill of it all is that we have nothing to lose
We drank our poison and paid all our dues
And twisted fate until we ripped it in two
So call us the unlucky ones
--“The Unlucky Ones”, Admiral Twin
lingering like the smell of fire
There are little things, she noticed, that marked it. Marked it better than, at least in her mind, the date on the calendar that had been defaced in red by VISIT HIM, Mom’s letters curling in on themselves, turning inward instead of reaching out.
Three toothbrushes.
An empty room.
A dusty telescope.
No real running shoes anywhere.
When she closed her eyes, the rest of her senses did not amplify, like her teacher told her; to compensate for something lost, Ms Botts had said.
She could (still) remember him. Parts of him. Late night under the stars. Minty mouthwash in the bathroom. His sneakers reeking (enough to raise the dead, Dad said, but they didn’t when they needed to most, the baking soda doing the trick for once That Day).
She couldn’t remember what he was like though. All that stayed with her was the leftovers, the pieces of himself he had left behind. He was a part of the past now, immutable and untouchable. The rest of him stayed, lingered somewhere beyond her reach.
Grandpa smelled like smoke, always and forever. Even at his grandson’s funeral, she had caught him with a cigarette in his mouth. He needed it then more than ever, he had claimed, and even though she rejected his offer to take a drag, the smell of smoke clung to her.
When she closed her eyes now, she could smell that smoke. Not that of her grandpa, the smell of smoke mixed with car oil and aftershave. Instead, smoke that smelt of the garden mints at the funeral home, the roses by(surrounding) the coffin, fresh-cut grass, used sneakers, and late nights.
She wanted a cigarette.
when I think of all the things I never had time to say to you
“Get up.” I love you.
“Mmrpgh.” I love you.
“I said--get up.” I love you.
“Mmnnnoooo.” I love you.
“You have to go to school.” I love you.
“Noooo.” I love you.
“Yes. No excuses.” I love you.
“Please.” I love you.
“Nu-uh, mister. Up, up! You asked me to get you up at this hour.” I love you.
***
“Why didn’t I say I loved you?”
the next step of our journey
(the door squeals open and wood meets fleshboneblood)
He’s holding his head, which has gone somewhere between his knees, as he dry-heaves from the pain. Fingernails dig into the back of his neck, and it hurtshurtshurts like nothing ever before.
(falling is crashing is the sudden awareness of mortality)
He doesn’t know how much time has passed. With his head somewhere between his knees and wanting to be separate from his neck, he doesn’t have time for time. He just wants it to stop, one way or another, and he gets his wish, one way or another.
(it’s coldhotcoldhot and the last thing he’ll seesfeelstastesmellshears)
When it stops, when he can stop viewing the world upside-down, he is a-aware. He feels nothing now: no pain and nothing else; nothing to see, hear, taste, smell, touch. He thinks he could like this, since the last thing he knew was skullsplittingwhyohwhyamifeelingthis pain.
It doesn’t last. Nothing lasts forever, even nothing and forever.
(bangbang he shot me down)
A spark, and he’s hyper-aware now. Everything’s too bright, too smelly, too loud, too rough, too strong, and he’s stuck now. He’s trapped and hurting all over again and it’s not stopping it’s not it’s not and he doesn’t know how to make it stop or even right again but that’s all he wants now.
waiting to make the initial contact
Jeanne climbed the stairs to the attic, the steps spiralling away from the centre. Her son’s room had been in the attic they had converted into a liveable space once it had become apparent that he wouldn’t be an only child anymore. It was more spacious than the master bedroom, but the en suite bathroom was too nice to give up back then.
She had justified the decision to renovate the attic for her son and not for her husband and herself by saying that Luke might injure himself in that bathroom; later, it was that it just wasn’t fair to move him because she wanted more space.
The bathtub had jets, and was large enough for two, as was the shower.
Now, she would have settled for her university dorm--one filthy shower and one filthier tub--to have her son back.
The dormer window had been built at the back of the house; it was wide, and a padded storage space that doubled as a couch had been built there. The windows were only there for show: they didn’t open, as they had been put there when he was a child and still believed he could fly if given the height to drop from first; the skylight opened to give air, but it was impossible to climb through them except with a ladder. Before, the area was crowded with his stuffed toys; later, action figures, the stuffed animals boxed up below the cushioned lid; now, a pillow and a duvet--both taken from the bed he rarely slept in.
The space was too small for her husband to stretch out on, but Luke had taken after his mother, and was much willowy and shorter than most boys his age.
Had been.
Two words for the price of one.
She wanted to break something. Make it break to keep her from breaking. She came up her when her daughter was at school and her husband at work so they wouldn’t see her if she broke instead.
The dormer window cracked, and then shattered.
The glass shards spread throughout the room, reaching to her feet which were planted in the middle of the room. Her face was reflected in the standing mirror; her dead son’s face was reflected in the shattered glass.
His reflection was broken; hers wasn’t.
“What are you trying to tell me?” she asked.
a generation of unhappy men
Transcribed from an interview given by an anonymous following the events of 19 September 20--:
“Yeah, I get what happened….Look, you’ve got wrong, man. I don’t support those bastards or what they did--I mean, how could I? But I understand why they did it. It was the final straw.
“All the police are saying is that it could have been prevented if ‘someone’ had recognised the ‘signs’ and all that shit. Yeah, people probably saw it coming--except maybe that kid--that was just unlucky--but no one did nothing to stop it.
“…‘why’? You even have to ask that? Look around you--a profile does absolutely nothing in cases like this. Most of us show the exact same ‘signs’ as they did. But the thing is, you’ve got three options: you can wait it out, put a gun to your head, or put it to someone else’s.
“And you already know which one they picked.”
three panic-filled days
Day 1: Sit at home; school was cancelled across the whole district. Try to figure out why that was, what happened to Luke, where he had gone, why he wasn’t home too, why Mom and Dad were crying, why--for the first time in years--Aunt Marie had called. Sleep in Luke’s bed--he didn’t use it anyway.
Day 2: Go to school. You know what happened now. The principle calls you to his office, like he did for Susie and Matt and others who you don’t know. He says Holly, not Miss Gagnon like the time you punched a boy for spitting in your hair. Susie and Matt cried--you know this by their puffy red eyes and snotty noses--but you don’t. You don’t because you know better (he’s not lost; you could find him if he was lost and he’s not, he’s not, he’s gone and he’s never coming back).
Day 3: Go to the mall. You’re supposed to be at school, but Mom takes you shopping instead. You don’t want to be here (you want to be with Luke, you want him back, he was yours why did they take him from you why why why). Run away. Come back. No more tears. They make you thirsty anyway.
how to make it hurt less
He went back to work once his son had been buried. No sooner, no later. He had work to catch up on. Dealings with a major company had been put on hold when a call came in from the Medical Examiner’s office, saying he needed to identify a body.
He hadn’t seen his son that day. He slept in, catching up on lost sleep from speaking with people a world away. His son left early for track and field.
His mother was already deceased, and his father lived more than a day’s drive away. He didn’t know it would be--that it could even be--his son lying on the table. Children weren’t meant to die before their parents; parents weren’t meant to have look at the mangled face of a child and say that it was their child, broken upon the table.
He didn’t keep a picture of his family on his desk or computer at work. He kept them in his wallet, to be able to look at them whenever he wanted. He kept his personal and work lives separate. He wasn’t the guy at work who spoke constantly and incessantly of his family; he wasn’t the father or husband whose work had invaded the home. His wallet was the No Man’s Land between the two.
He had plenty of photos of his family together, the posed studio portraits. He had many more candid shots, the perfect ones that the subject didn’t know he had taken until it was too late.
His son’s school photo had been used in place of an open casket at the viewing. The photo of him crossing the finish line, the other runners far behind him, was placed at his burial plot by his daughter. The photo of him beneath the starry sky, his attention on it and his smile true, kept in his office drawer. It was the safest place for him now.
a single branch of glossy emerald leaves
He left him things. For him, the only one who had no reason to die, from him, one of the many who probably deserved to die by association. At least by their rules. Rules were made for those who broke and were broken by them.
Other people left gifts, too. A track jersey; a too-late reply to a too-early love letter; a sticky-note-delivered kiss.
They weren’t left for him there. It was too far and isolated. And certainly not there either, where no one dared to go now, the childhood fear of ghosts rearing its head.
He gave to him first. It was tiny and the shopkeeper said it wasn’t likely to survive the winter, but he bought, planted, and took heat from the teachers for it all the same. But the groundskeeper did(would)n’t uproot it, teaching him how to care for it, keep it healthy and strong and alive.
It was awhile until people noticed it, and started leaving things for him. And it was awhile until things disappeared from under the fallen autumn leaves. No one knew where they went; everyone suspected.
Different people.
Him. The groundskeeper. Petty thieves. The little sister. Him.
No one said anything. Some wouldn’t. Some couldn’t.
to walk the same earth and never touch
Holly, the principal says, why don’t you take a seat?
The seat is made of plastic and synthetic fibres, woven into something that resembles a cushion. She looks at it, looks at him, and says I have a science report I need to work on. She doesn’t sit. Grips the back of the seat instead. He’d have to pry it out of her (cold dead) hands before she would ever sit on it.
I understand you’ve suffered a terrible loss, he continued anyway, as if she had sat down, had been like the others. He hides surprise beneath sympathy, indignation beneath sorrow.
No, you don’t. Frank words. Her voice is calm. She’s already cried out for him, and he didn’t come like he would have if he could. He isn’t lost. He’s gone.
Holly, the principal says, when a person dies--
(Bangbang, that awful sound.)
They’re gone. He’s dead, not missing. I know exactly where he is.
I need to get back to class, sir. Have a day.
seen grace in the tiny dot of an airplane
“Are you getting sleepy?” Luke asked his sister, watching amusedly as she tried to stifle another yawn.
“No,” she replied. Her eyes watered and her chest was stuck in a heave. When her brother turned around again, she exhaled. She wasn’t sleepy; she just didn’t have enough oxygen going to her brain. “What am I supposed to be looking for? It’s kind of dark to be doing that.”
“Exactly. You said you were doing a report on the Venus.”
“So…?”
“I’m going to point it out to you tonight, so that you know what it actually looks like.”
“I can get pictures, you know.”
“And this way you can impress your teacher by being able to say how to find it without Google.”
“…fine--hey, what’s that one there? Is that Venus?”
“That’s an airplane.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll learn to read the sky eventually. I’ll show you how to find Venus, the Morningstar.”
four pieces of wood mitered together
“So you have options,” he started. He set a buying guide on the table and opened it to the first page. “Recently, biodegradable ones have become popular, though solid wood is one of the traditional options. I don’t recommend buying direct from the manufacturer--there’s no way we can guarantee that it’ll be the right size for bur--”
“Stop,” the husband managed to choke out, the words too large in his mouth, “trying to sell me something.”
The man stopped and waited. It was not the first time he had seen this happen. He kept his voice calm, and mustered what sympathy he could. “May I ask who this is for?”
“M-my--” he faltered. “My…”
“Our son.” That was the wife now, marble faced. Her face could have been used to chisel rock.
These were the ones he hated most--those poor, unfortunate souls. “In that case, we have an option for a more personalised casket and burial…”
in a way that defied logic
The bathroom stained a deep brown-red. No one used that one anymore, not after the school had tried and failed multiple times to bleach it clean, rid the school of an awful stain on its otherwise pristine learning facility. The tile had been removed even, and when that had failed, remodelled.
It had been returned back to its original design, after the fiftieth complaint of bloody water from the tap.
giving a lilt to the English words
H
He heard it at work, in the moment he set aside every day to think of him. It was all he would allow himself, before saying, today is the last day of grieving, and breaking that promise the next day.
E
She woke. There was no delay in thought, no wondering where or who she was. She didn’t know what had woken her, until she heard it again, chilling and marrow-deep.
L
Her grades hadn’t fallen, even though she no longer heard a word anyone said. Uninteresting, they were, when compared to her brother’s whispers.
P
His guilt of causing That was evident in his actions, but he didn’t need a dead boy’s voice driving him crazy, too.
M
She had memorised the note he had left her That Day, but she could never imagine him saying those words to her. She couldn’t even remember his voice in her dreams.
E
She wanted to let him go, but it was hard to run away from a boy who now only existed as a voice in her head.
cosseting her like a summer wind
The school track was quiet in the morning. As it grew colder, the coach took off the early morning practices in favour for longer afternoon runs. Most of the team revelled in the later mornings, a bit more time for much needed sleep.
She counted the number of laps could run in the morning, before the school opened in the morning. The school’s regulations had changed: she would have to shower and change before homeroom started now, as it was embarrassing to be there dripping sweat.
Fifteen--she still had plenty of time before she had to leave; this was the time to slow down, pace herself as she never would before someone showed her how. She slowed her pace, wishing she didn’t have to, but the fear of cramping overcame her desire to keep running. On the field, a breeze kept her warm, despite the near freezing temperatures elsewhere.
Eighteen--she wiped the sweat off her face, settling into a fast walk. The pace was weird, as if to a song that should have been much slower. But this was no funeral march, not yet, not now, not when she had a partner again.
Twenty--she stopped now, walking out to the infield and stretching. Reach to the heavens, then come back down to earth. A slow descent into madness, or at least pain on new levels as the weight on her back increased, making her reach extend nearly to her feet this time.
The hand on her head was warm as she held her legs in a butterfly. It rested there, before bent finger joints grinded themselves into her scalp, like her brother did every time he came home from university.
She wished those moments would last forever: that her brother wouldn’t leave, and that she could stay on that track forever, chasing Luke’s shadow.
the gates in his mind opened an inch wider
He was pressured to return to school; as one of the survivors of the incident, they said to him, you need to be there to serve as an example to your peers.
It wasn’t until he had finally succumbed and returned did he figure out what he was supposed to be an example of, even if it wasn’t what they were thinking.
Don’t do what I did, he thought, his newfound limp pronounced, ‘Cause karma’s a bitch.
dreamscape
It was January, so temperatures had dropped below freezing that morning. There was a wind chill warning in effect, but she was only waiting for the bus to come.
Luke was waiting at the bus stop with her, too, saying through his scarf (like cardinals and roses and blood) that he had missed the bus at his own stop. He seemed nervous about it, but he might have been shaking and stuttering simply from the cold. She was, after all.
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like if Jeremy and Dan hadn’t--you know?” he asked. A non sequitur, if there could be one following a chat about the weather.
“We’re alive, aren’t we?” She cupped her hands around her mouth and exhaled. She should have worn a scarf, or at least a hat.
“Cam.”
“What?”
“Camilla.”
“I said, what?” She glared at him, but his head was tucked low. Looking at him now, he didn’t seem cold at all. His chest moved up and down, unrhythmically, as if he had to remind himself that he needed to breathe.
“It’s time to wake up, Camilla,” her mother said, shaking her shoulders. Cam blinked the sleep out her eyes. Outside, a cold wind rattled her windows. “You’re going to be late.”
slipped back into the colors and vanished inside of them
Tom started when his little sister pulled the lighter fluid out of her backpack. He only told her to only bring the items that had been brought to her. He looked over at the two other girls, and was inwardly relieved that they were just as startled as him.
“What are you planning on doing with those?” he asked. He was pleased his voice wasn’t shaking, but he had to fight to keep it soft.
“Letting him go,” she said, as she picked up the garden trowel. She jabbed it into the dirt at the base of the tree, and when it resisted strongly, she started to speak quickly in a foreign language.
“You know you shouldn’t talk like that,” Luke--or the ghost of him--said. He was quite solid for a ghost, the only thing giving him away from being alive was the steadiness of his chest, even when he spoke. He didn’t need air to do that now. “When did you even learn French? They don’t teach it here until the eighth grade.”
“Mom and Dad talk a lot in French nowadays,” she explained, very slowly loosening the soil. “I don’t think they know that I know what they’re saying.”
“Give me that,” snapped Cam, tearing her eyes away from Luke. She didn’t know if he could touch things and didn’t want to find out. She grabbed the trowel from Holly, kneeled next to her, and repeated her actions, only much faster and with more success. “Jessie, lift it up. I need to be able to get at the roots.”
Jessie went over, reaching around the boy she knew as dead, and grabbed the skinny tree below the start of its branches. Its leaves were dark and thick and glossy, even though the grass around them was dry and brown from the regular summer drought. She started to lift, and it grew easier and easier as Cam knocked away more dirt. When it was fully out of the ground, and Cam had started to fill in the hole as best she could, she shoved the young tree into Tom’s hands. “Stop gawking and carry this to the parking lot. If we set fire to it here, we’ll just set the whole field on fire.”
Tom choked on air, and Luke snorted in laughter at this. “Huh?” Tom spat out, incredulous. “You’re going to do what?”
“Set it on fire.” Luke put his hands in his jeans pockets, rocking back and forth on his feet.
“But--”
“It’s for the best, dude. I’m tired.”
Tom looked at Luke. His eyelids were half-shut, and his eyes were a dull shade of blue. They used to be much brighter, he remembered.
His head bobbed once. Luke’s shoulders sank, relaxed, and he exhaled a breath he hadn’t been holding.
They moved to the parking lot, as soon as Cam had picked up all of the items Holly had brought with her. It was empty there. In a few hours, if they didn’t get caught, it would soon be filled with cars belonging to parents, teachers, and students. No one thought about what would happen if they were caught.
“Put it here,” Holly said, once they were in the middle of the black concrete. Tom set it on one of the diagonal lines, while Cam emptied the items they had left for him on top. They barely had time to step away before Holly started to douse it in lighter fluid.
“Isn’t that a bit overkill?” Tom asked eventually, when the bottle could only spit at the tree.
“No,” chorused brother and sister.
“Can I do the honours?” Jessie asked, holding the matchbook. Holly blinked at her, since she was certain she had placed them in her cardigan pocket. She shrugged and stepped away from the tree in a grandiose gesture. Jessie looked at the other three.
“How do I know I can even hold the matches, much less light them?” stated Luke.
“Have at it,” said Cam, her accent thick and her words being ones she would never say at school.
“I’m against it.” Tom held his hands up in a defensive gesture. “Why do you have to burn the tree?”
“Because it’s the last thing,” replied Luke, before he said to Jessie, “Burn it.”
Tom winced when the tree burst into flames, the multiple times of attempting to throw the match having failed. Luke, however, became winded.
“Are you OK?” Holly asked, reaching over to him. She reached through him instead. Cam and Jessie looked at each other, worried now.
He let out a short laugh. “Never better,” he gasped out, before he fell into the fire and vanished.
jewels that open up a doorway from present to the past
“Here you go,” she said, handing him a box. It was cardboard, and filled with many clear bags, each one labelled and sealed. “These are the belongings found on his person. Forensics is done with them, so you can have them back.”
William shifted through the box. Each bag he pulled out (his clothes first, clean despite everything and would he have worn those boxers if he knew he was going to die?) was smaller than the last. His life was summed up in the items with him when he died; how better a way to show that he didn’t know this was the end.
“This isn’t my son’s,” he said eventually, holding the last bag in his hand. “He isn’t religious.”
The woman looked at the ornate silver cross, and then shrugged. “He was wearing it when he came in. If you find out who the owner is, you should give it back--it looks like an heirloom.”
Fuck. Fuck? Fuck!
He knew something was going on. It was a large school, so most people hadn’t noticed a difference, even despite the new hyperawareness. This wasn’t something those senses were designed to feel.
Not the awareness of a coming disaster, or the lookout for beaten butterflies with a storm on their wings.
Another person tripped on the stairs, sent scrabbling and pawing for help that wouldn’t come. The school computer system was hacked again by the “Help Me” virus. One too many shadows appeared in empty hallways. Letters came from nowhere. Bloody water came from the taps.
The little mermaid just wanted to be a human. Pinocchio just wanted to be a real boy.
It was just too bad theirs was ending up twisted inside.
a trio of nuns, two priests and a group of teenage Goth girls
He hadn’t been to church in many years. Despite his father’s wishes, his son had a secular funeral, and never had he looked to any figment of his imagination for guidance during these times. In the last two weeks, he had spoken with more nuns, priests, reverends, and caretakers than he had in two decades.
He went to all the local churches, but no one there at the time knew who the cross belonged to. He was non-committal to visiting during “popular” hours, but the reverends and fathers where he had gone had promised to bring it up, the family heirloom that had fallen into his hands. He even asked the school to look into it.
Many claimed for it. Only one lead seemed promising. A group of girls with darkened eyes and falsely black hair at the school recognised it, being able to describe it in unreleased detail.
He wasn’t sure who to give it to anymore: both his son and the owner were dead now.
into thousands of anguished faces
This was a tragedy, not a story, but it was frightening how all too often people forgot that. They were real, living beings once-upon-a-bullet-ago, not the sensationalised, clichéd characters the media made them out to be, not the number statistics recorded them as.
In the end, the only ones the media truly remembered were them: the two boys who didn’t start it all, but they finished it.
In the story, it was so easy to forget the characters relegated into supporting roles.
In the tragedy, it was so hard to forget the people who died.
grimaces comically at this unintended pun
“Aren’t you tired of bugging me?” Tom asked, in between reps of sit-ups. Since being injured, workouts were harder than before--partially due to atrophy and mostly due to the healing spider web scar on his body. But even though he had quit the team, he still kept in shape. The stronger his shoulder were physically, the more he could carry emotionally.
“Dead tired.” The shadow sitting on his chair’s shadow sat up a moment later. Tom jumped at the cracking sound as the shadow smacked his own forehead. “Fucking hell. I hate this.”
tempted fate one too many times and finally lost
He was completely still, save for the controlled rise and fall of his shoulders. Around him, life still bustled about, despite and because of being in a hospital.
He should call his father. He should call her parents. He should bug a nurse on duty until she either tells him what he needs to know. That, or get thrown out.
He should get some sleep.
“Mr. Gagnon?”
His head jerked up. The doctor was dressed in minty green scrubs, his face mask dangling from one ear. Despite his youth, the head cover was a mere formality.
“She’ll need some time to recover, but the surgery was successful. Had the other driver been going any faster, we might have lost her. You can go see them now.”
“ ‘Them’?”
The doctor gave a smile. “Your wife and your son.”
luxuriate with any man of his liking
“Hey.”
Tom looked up. No one else did, their heads still bent over their tests.
“Over here.”
The voice came from above him, behind him. His shadow pooled at his feet, while another loomed over him. He didn’t look back and tried to concentrate on his test.
“Hey, listen!”
Shut up, he thought. I’m not crazy.
“No, you’re not. You just hear dead people.”
***
Her hands started to shake when she realised who sent the text message.
***
“Jessie! Jessie!”
She slowed down and doubled back to the coach. She didn’t stop, but bounced from one foot to the other. “What is it?”
“You just ran way past the end line,” he said, gesturing widely and wildly. “You’re getting faster, but you’re getting careless. You gotta remember to slow down.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to push yourself so hard now, also. Competitions aren’t for a while, but injuries will last that long. Nothing’s chasing you now.”
“…yes, sir.”
becoming temperamental and distant
“Hey, Holly,” the voice said. Holly turned around to see a girl standing behind her. From the corner of her eye, she could see a group of girls on a different part of the playground, whispering to each other and not hiding their stares very well.
“What is it?”
The girl twirled her hair around her finger, her face twisted by thinking. A cold Spring wind sent shivers down their spines. “So what was it like?”
“What do you mean?” The hair prickled on the back of Holly’s neck, and she started reciting her father’s words of stress: mon ostie de tabernac de câlisse de viarge.
“Yeh know, seeing a dead body. What was it like? It must have been--”
***
“I don’t want to know,” she stated immediately, as soon as she entered the office. “Just let me pick up my daughter and leave.”
“Mrs. Gagnon,” the principle started, “this is a serious issue. Your daughter is--”
“ ‘Temperamental’? ‘Violent’?” Jeanne looked at her daughter. She stared back, eyes big and bright and fearless. “I already know these things. We’re done here.”
“Mrs. Gagnon, if you already know these things then why haven’t you addressed the issue?”
Holly appeared by the exit, shrugging her backpack on. In the fluorescent lighting, her mother’s shadow was squat on the carpet, stretched so thin it had split in two. Another shadow stretched from nowhere, making rude gestures at her teachers and principle.
“I feel that her punching someone who’s tormenting her is better than her using an hunting rifle on them, but that’s just my opinion. Have a day.”
***
“Why?”
“I think it would be a good idea. A fresh start.”
“A fresh start is moving somewhere where no one knows you. This is turning your back on the real issue.”
“And what would that be?”
“Our daughter and her issues at school and her peers.”
“So we leave this place. Your father would like to see us more often, and Holly would benefit from experiencing another part of her heritage.”
“She isn’t going to learn anything by running away from the issue.”
“Here, she is learning violence is the only way to solve an issue.”
“Not if we help her.”
“Which you aren’t.”
how unimportant and expendable
Acquired from an unknown source; received weeks before the incident but unreported:
You will want to say that you didn’t know this was going to happen.
This is your warning. This is your chance to make things better.
We have guns. This is not an empty threat. You live in a community where almost everyone hunts. Do not think we won’t use the full arsenal of your fine and fair city.
On September 19th we will start firing. Do not say for a moment you weren’t warned.
someplace that is completely neutral
It was dark when she went out, which meant it was very late. The summer sky was lightly dotted with stars, but most of them were drowned out by the orange glow of the street lights. She didn’t live in town known for its nightly violence, but she still rode her bike as fast as she could, her heavy bag bumping against her thigh. She wasn’t sure if she needn’t have worried or not.
She went there first. She had heard her parents talk about what they were going to do with him when they moved. They didn’t want to leave him here, but they felt it was wrong to move him now.
She knew better. It wasn’t as if he was there, still bound to his flesh. After all, his shadow was stretching out alongside hers, even keeping up with her on her bike.
It was peaceful at that spot, that being the main reason why it was chosen. The leaves rustled in the wind, but she didn’t jump at the noise. She concentrated on it, waiting, listening for a sign that she was in the right place.
Nothing. Despite it being night, her shadow was still noticeable on the grass, dark and thin and much too tall for her. She could hear his whispers still, jumbled and unknown in her ears.
She was too far away, so she moved on, heading over to the school she would never attend. She didn’t want to anyway, not after the tales those people (his peers, though she would only extend the title of Friend to the one she recognized) had told her. Some things are just terrifying.
The school was dark inside, and he had moved from the shadows to be reflected back in the windows. His face was broken into pieces, fragments of the boy he once was and the ghost he had become fighting for dominance. She tore her eyes away quickly, sick and dizzy from watching the blood appear and disappear as it slid down his ever-changing face.
This wasn’t the right spot either, but she was getting nearer. His face was becoming more lively, less blood-splattered and bullet-torn. A wrong turn made him go the wrong way, marked when the black burns appeared where his mouth should have been. She eventually had to take out her mother’s compact mirror, which she had taken in advance of this trip, to show her the way. She had never been there before, but he had, bringing her the things he couldn’t have, or even bear to.
Three other figures were waiting for her, all shaking despite the warm night. They wore dark clothes with the hoods of their sweatshirts covering their heads. She didn’t understand the reason for the dark clothes; they weren’t going to get caught if they did it right.
“I brought the stuff,” she said, once she snapped the mirror shut. She placed the pink backpack on the ground, and waited. From behind the small, skinny tree he stepped out, as if That had never happened. He wore the clothes he had worn before he died, and his face was clean and whole and alive. The other three sighed in relief, while Holly started to pull the items--the sports jersey, the notes, and her report on Venus.
“I also brought a little extra,” she continued, once Cam, Jessie, and Tom got over the sight of her brother as alive as he could possibly be again. A gardening trowel, a large bottle of water, a matchbook, and lighter fluid.
desperate for answers
She used to pray to the Lord Almighty. Then, when her failures had finally piled up too high, she had figured that since he didn’t seem to believe in her, she might as well try to believe in herself for a change and ignore him. It had worked, and as soon as she had completed her education at home, she moved to Tokyo to teach English, though French was her better language. Even when that had fallen through, and she had to move to Vancouver and teach French there, she didn’t go back to her childish belief that He believed in her, one of six billion others.
When her English improved, she left again, around the time her niece was being born. She was hundreds of miles away in Vancouver, so what was several hundred more, she had reasoned when she moved to Seoul this time. She stayed, and moved from her small apartment to a larger condominium paid for by the private school she taught at now.
She could barely sleep these days, ever since the late night news story she had watched That Night. She had called her brother for the first time in years, only to find his wife on the other end and that her nephew had been on the wrong end of a gun, if there was even a right one.
Why him? she thought, to Him and no one and herself. He was just a kid. They all were. Her insomnia led to gardening, and she was currently pruning her plants on another sleepless night: vegetables for herself, red roses for her girlfriend, white roses for Luke. A disease caused it to wither after it bloomed only once, and she was forced to uproot it before it took the rest of her garden with it.
Did you like these? she asked, only to him, as she uprooted her dying rose plant. Can you even hear me? Do you even remember me? Are you at peace now?
the intimacy of memories
Every morning she looked in the mirror, once her husband and daughter had left. It was partially out of vanity, this being the time she would apply her makeup. She had been an artist in high school, and although she never had carried with it professionally, the picture of her son she had allowed the school to use (but not keep, she wouldn’t let him go now, not when he had already been taken) at the memorial service was a watercolour she had started before his death and finished after it.
She never put on a lot of makeup, just as she never used her paints wastefully. A stroke of foundation, a wash of flesh. The light-coloured pencil between her eyelashes, the soft sketch beneath to work from. A bit of mascara to open her eyes, a blue background to bring out his. A hint of rose to her cheeks and lips, a dash of pink to his face to bring back a life she would always miss.
She stayed in front of the mirror, even after she had finished her daily painting. When she did it right, she looked fifteen years younger, losing the ten she lost to time and the five she lost with him. On those days, she could bear to look at him, when her son appeared next to her, as whole and fresh as he had in her painting of him.
the familiar zone of another life that had gone wrong, finally put right
Holly covered her mouth to keep from screaming while the ghost-that-was-her-brother burst into flame and disappeared. The other girls gasped, while Tom let out a yelp.
“Oh my god,” he whispered, as the fire quickly died. All that was left was a pile of ash that had once been a tree, papers, and a sports jersey.
“Should it have burnt so fast?” The others looked at Jessie, whose face had become blank.
Cam was the first to speak after that. “We just saw someone disappear in a fire, and that’s all you have to say?”
Jessie shrugged. “We just exorcised a ghost. What else is there to say?”
this dank, dark narrow space
Luke’s footsteps echoed in the empty halls. He walked slow, trying to waste as much time as possible on his bathroom trip, since he was supposed to be in fifth period French class now. He didn’t have to go pee, in truth, but just needed out of the class. The teacher was an idiot, and had long since learnt that Luke knew more than he did. It didn’t stop him from looking expectantly to Luke, though, every time he asked a question. Apathy was solution one; absence was solution two.
The bathroom he went to was the farthest from the French class. It wouldn’t take the whole period to take a shit (not that he even needed to), but it was a break for everyone: himself, the teacher, and the unfortunate students who had to deal with the newest Cold War.
He swung the door to the bathroom open, and
Something smashed into his face, and he could taste the pooling blood in his mouth. The ground was cold on his unbroken cheek, and he wondered when it got so close.
“Fuck, what do we do? If he saw--”
“Don’t worry about it, Dan. I’ll take care of it.”
The words didn’t make sense to him. The little lights dancing before his eyes made more sense, their patterns becoming Ursa Minor and Cygnus and Lyra. He almost missed the next part of the conversation, if it hadn’t been directed at him.
“Sorry, Luke,” said the second voice, and Luke looked up to see his friend and a long-barrelled rifle looking down on him.
He managed to push himself upright, his spinning head making him want to vomit. “Jeremy--”
“I got to do this, man. I can’t take it anymore. You’re a good kid, but it has to be this way.”
There was nothing Luke could say, not when the end of the rifle was in his mouth and going off.
***
Jeremy doesn’t wipe Luke’s blood off his face. Luke’s--the body’s now, but he can still and is willing to call him by name--face is blown apart, and his blood is splattered everywhere. The gun going off is louder than he thought, but they are in a secluded part of the school, and trees are falling with no one to care.
Dan wipes the blood from his face and clothes, though the latter action just rubs it in more. “He wasn’t on our list, Jeremy,” he says, looking at the body. He can barely tell who it is anymore, despite seeing him alive, confused, and scared.
“He would have told. And he’s as fast runner--word would have travelled faster than we could handle. He’s a good kid like that.”
“ ‘Was’.”
“He was a good kid.” Jeremy picks up Luke and moves him into the handicapped toilet, propping it up against the wall. He carries the pieces of him that were blown off, and sets them on Luke’s cooling lap. He fumbles for a second with the cross around his neck--a family heirloom and a symbol that won’t be now--and takes it off, placing it around Luke’s neck.
“Rest in peace.”
By Shira Sakura
The thrill of it all is that we have nothing to lose
We drank our poison and paid all our dues
And twisted fate until we ripped it in two
So call us the unlucky ones
--“The Unlucky Ones”, Admiral Twin
lingering like the smell of fire
There are little things, she noticed, that marked it. Marked it better than, at least in her mind, the date on the calendar that had been defaced in red by VISIT HIM, Mom’s letters curling in on themselves, turning inward instead of reaching out.
Three toothbrushes.
An empty room.
A dusty telescope.
No real running shoes anywhere.
When she closed her eyes, the rest of her senses did not amplify, like her teacher told her; to compensate for something lost, Ms Botts had said.
She could (still) remember him. Parts of him. Late night under the stars. Minty mouthwash in the bathroom. His sneakers reeking (enough to raise the dead, Dad said, but they didn’t when they needed to most, the baking soda doing the trick for once That Day).
She couldn’t remember what he was like though. All that stayed with her was the leftovers, the pieces of himself he had left behind. He was a part of the past now, immutable and untouchable. The rest of him stayed, lingered somewhere beyond her reach.
Grandpa smelled like smoke, always and forever. Even at his grandson’s funeral, she had caught him with a cigarette in his mouth. He needed it then more than ever, he had claimed, and even though she rejected his offer to take a drag, the smell of smoke clung to her.
When she closed her eyes now, she could smell that smoke. Not that of her grandpa, the smell of smoke mixed with car oil and aftershave. Instead, smoke that smelt of the garden mints at the funeral home, the roses by(surrounding) the coffin, fresh-cut grass, used sneakers, and late nights.
She wanted a cigarette.
when I think of all the things I never had time to say to you
“Get up.” I love you.
“Mmrpgh.” I love you.
“I said--get up.” I love you.
“Mmnnnoooo.” I love you.
“You have to go to school.” I love you.
“Noooo.” I love you.
“Yes. No excuses.” I love you.
“Please.” I love you.
“Nu-uh, mister. Up, up! You asked me to get you up at this hour.” I love you.
***
“Why didn’t I say I loved you?”
the next step of our journey
(the door squeals open and wood meets fleshboneblood)
He’s holding his head, which has gone somewhere between his knees, as he dry-heaves from the pain. Fingernails dig into the back of his neck, and it hurtshurtshurts like nothing ever before.
(falling is crashing is the sudden awareness of mortality)
He doesn’t know how much time has passed. With his head somewhere between his knees and wanting to be separate from his neck, he doesn’t have time for time. He just wants it to stop, one way or another, and he gets his wish, one way or another.
(it’s coldhotcoldhot and the last thing he’ll seesfeelstastesmellshears)
When it stops, when he can stop viewing the world upside-down, he is a-aware. He feels nothing now: no pain and nothing else; nothing to see, hear, taste, smell, touch. He thinks he could like this, since the last thing he knew was skullsplittingwhyohwhyamifeelingthis pain.
It doesn’t last. Nothing lasts forever, even nothing and forever.
(bangbang he shot me down)
A spark, and he’s hyper-aware now. Everything’s too bright, too smelly, too loud, too rough, too strong, and he’s stuck now. He’s trapped and hurting all over again and it’s not stopping it’s not it’s not and he doesn’t know how to make it stop or even right again but that’s all he wants now.
waiting to make the initial contact
Jeanne climbed the stairs to the attic, the steps spiralling away from the centre. Her son’s room had been in the attic they had converted into a liveable space once it had become apparent that he wouldn’t be an only child anymore. It was more spacious than the master bedroom, but the en suite bathroom was too nice to give up back then.
She had justified the decision to renovate the attic for her son and not for her husband and herself by saying that Luke might injure himself in that bathroom; later, it was that it just wasn’t fair to move him because she wanted more space.
The bathtub had jets, and was large enough for two, as was the shower.
Now, she would have settled for her university dorm--one filthy shower and one filthier tub--to have her son back.
The dormer window had been built at the back of the house; it was wide, and a padded storage space that doubled as a couch had been built there. The windows were only there for show: they didn’t open, as they had been put there when he was a child and still believed he could fly if given the height to drop from first; the skylight opened to give air, but it was impossible to climb through them except with a ladder. Before, the area was crowded with his stuffed toys; later, action figures, the stuffed animals boxed up below the cushioned lid; now, a pillow and a duvet--both taken from the bed he rarely slept in.
The space was too small for her husband to stretch out on, but Luke had taken after his mother, and was much willowy and shorter than most boys his age.
Had been.
Two words for the price of one.
She wanted to break something. Make it break to keep her from breaking. She came up her when her daughter was at school and her husband at work so they wouldn’t see her if she broke instead.
The dormer window cracked, and then shattered.
The glass shards spread throughout the room, reaching to her feet which were planted in the middle of the room. Her face was reflected in the standing mirror; her dead son’s face was reflected in the shattered glass.
His reflection was broken; hers wasn’t.
“What are you trying to tell me?” she asked.
a generation of unhappy men
Transcribed from an interview given by an anonymous following the events of 19 September 20--:
“Yeah, I get what happened….Look, you’ve got wrong, man. I don’t support those bastards or what they did--I mean, how could I? But I understand why they did it. It was the final straw.
“All the police are saying is that it could have been prevented if ‘someone’ had recognised the ‘signs’ and all that shit. Yeah, people probably saw it coming--except maybe that kid--that was just unlucky--but no one did nothing to stop it.
“…‘why’? You even have to ask that? Look around you--a profile does absolutely nothing in cases like this. Most of us show the exact same ‘signs’ as they did. But the thing is, you’ve got three options: you can wait it out, put a gun to your head, or put it to someone else’s.
“And you already know which one they picked.”
three panic-filled days
Day 1: Sit at home; school was cancelled across the whole district. Try to figure out why that was, what happened to Luke, where he had gone, why he wasn’t home too, why Mom and Dad were crying, why--for the first time in years--Aunt Marie had called. Sleep in Luke’s bed--he didn’t use it anyway.
Day 2: Go to school. You know what happened now. The principle calls you to his office, like he did for Susie and Matt and others who you don’t know. He says Holly, not Miss Gagnon like the time you punched a boy for spitting in your hair. Susie and Matt cried--you know this by their puffy red eyes and snotty noses--but you don’t. You don’t because you know better (he’s not lost; you could find him if he was lost and he’s not, he’s not, he’s gone and he’s never coming back).
Day 3: Go to the mall. You’re supposed to be at school, but Mom takes you shopping instead. You don’t want to be here (you want to be with Luke, you want him back, he was yours why did they take him from you why why why). Run away. Come back. No more tears. They make you thirsty anyway.
how to make it hurt less
He went back to work once his son had been buried. No sooner, no later. He had work to catch up on. Dealings with a major company had been put on hold when a call came in from the Medical Examiner’s office, saying he needed to identify a body.
He hadn’t seen his son that day. He slept in, catching up on lost sleep from speaking with people a world away. His son left early for track and field.
His mother was already deceased, and his father lived more than a day’s drive away. He didn’t know it would be--that it could even be--his son lying on the table. Children weren’t meant to die before their parents; parents weren’t meant to have look at the mangled face of a child and say that it was their child, broken upon the table.
He didn’t keep a picture of his family on his desk or computer at work. He kept them in his wallet, to be able to look at them whenever he wanted. He kept his personal and work lives separate. He wasn’t the guy at work who spoke constantly and incessantly of his family; he wasn’t the father or husband whose work had invaded the home. His wallet was the No Man’s Land between the two.
He had plenty of photos of his family together, the posed studio portraits. He had many more candid shots, the perfect ones that the subject didn’t know he had taken until it was too late.
His son’s school photo had been used in place of an open casket at the viewing. The photo of him crossing the finish line, the other runners far behind him, was placed at his burial plot by his daughter. The photo of him beneath the starry sky, his attention on it and his smile true, kept in his office drawer. It was the safest place for him now.
a single branch of glossy emerald leaves
He left him things. For him, the only one who had no reason to die, from him, one of the many who probably deserved to die by association. At least by their rules. Rules were made for those who broke and were broken by them.
Other people left gifts, too. A track jersey; a too-late reply to a too-early love letter; a sticky-note-delivered kiss.
They weren’t left for him there. It was too far and isolated. And certainly not there either, where no one dared to go now, the childhood fear of ghosts rearing its head.
He gave to him first. It was tiny and the shopkeeper said it wasn’t likely to survive the winter, but he bought, planted, and took heat from the teachers for it all the same. But the groundskeeper did(would)n’t uproot it, teaching him how to care for it, keep it healthy and strong and alive.
It was awhile until people noticed it, and started leaving things for him. And it was awhile until things disappeared from under the fallen autumn leaves. No one knew where they went; everyone suspected.
Different people.
Him. The groundskeeper. Petty thieves. The little sister. Him.
No one said anything. Some wouldn’t. Some couldn’t.
to walk the same earth and never touch
Holly, the principal says, why don’t you take a seat?
The seat is made of plastic and synthetic fibres, woven into something that resembles a cushion. She looks at it, looks at him, and says I have a science report I need to work on. She doesn’t sit. Grips the back of the seat instead. He’d have to pry it out of her (cold dead) hands before she would ever sit on it.
I understand you’ve suffered a terrible loss, he continued anyway, as if she had sat down, had been like the others. He hides surprise beneath sympathy, indignation beneath sorrow.
No, you don’t. Frank words. Her voice is calm. She’s already cried out for him, and he didn’t come like he would have if he could. He isn’t lost. He’s gone.
Holly, the principal says, when a person dies--
(Bangbang, that awful sound.)
They’re gone. He’s dead, not missing. I know exactly where he is.
I need to get back to class, sir. Have a day.
seen grace in the tiny dot of an airplane
“Are you getting sleepy?” Luke asked his sister, watching amusedly as she tried to stifle another yawn.
“No,” she replied. Her eyes watered and her chest was stuck in a heave. When her brother turned around again, she exhaled. She wasn’t sleepy; she just didn’t have enough oxygen going to her brain. “What am I supposed to be looking for? It’s kind of dark to be doing that.”
“Exactly. You said you were doing a report on the Venus.”
“So…?”
“I’m going to point it out to you tonight, so that you know what it actually looks like.”
“I can get pictures, you know.”
“And this way you can impress your teacher by being able to say how to find it without Google.”
“…fine--hey, what’s that one there? Is that Venus?”
“That’s an airplane.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll learn to read the sky eventually. I’ll show you how to find Venus, the Morningstar.”
four pieces of wood mitered together
“So you have options,” he started. He set a buying guide on the table and opened it to the first page. “Recently, biodegradable ones have become popular, though solid wood is one of the traditional options. I don’t recommend buying direct from the manufacturer--there’s no way we can guarantee that it’ll be the right size for bur--”
“Stop,” the husband managed to choke out, the words too large in his mouth, “trying to sell me something.”
The man stopped and waited. It was not the first time he had seen this happen. He kept his voice calm, and mustered what sympathy he could. “May I ask who this is for?”
“M-my--” he faltered. “My…”
“Our son.” That was the wife now, marble faced. Her face could have been used to chisel rock.
These were the ones he hated most--those poor, unfortunate souls. “In that case, we have an option for a more personalised casket and burial…”
in a way that defied logic
The bathroom stained a deep brown-red. No one used that one anymore, not after the school had tried and failed multiple times to bleach it clean, rid the school of an awful stain on its otherwise pristine learning facility. The tile had been removed even, and when that had failed, remodelled.
It had been returned back to its original design, after the fiftieth complaint of bloody water from the tap.
giving a lilt to the English words
H
He heard it at work, in the moment he set aside every day to think of him. It was all he would allow himself, before saying, today is the last day of grieving, and breaking that promise the next day.
E
She woke. There was no delay in thought, no wondering where or who she was. She didn’t know what had woken her, until she heard it again, chilling and marrow-deep.
L
Her grades hadn’t fallen, even though she no longer heard a word anyone said. Uninteresting, they were, when compared to her brother’s whispers.
P
His guilt of causing That was evident in his actions, but he didn’t need a dead boy’s voice driving him crazy, too.
M
She had memorised the note he had left her That Day, but she could never imagine him saying those words to her. She couldn’t even remember his voice in her dreams.
E
She wanted to let him go, but it was hard to run away from a boy who now only existed as a voice in her head.
cosseting her like a summer wind
The school track was quiet in the morning. As it grew colder, the coach took off the early morning practices in favour for longer afternoon runs. Most of the team revelled in the later mornings, a bit more time for much needed sleep.
She counted the number of laps could run in the morning, before the school opened in the morning. The school’s regulations had changed: she would have to shower and change before homeroom started now, as it was embarrassing to be there dripping sweat.
Fifteen--she still had plenty of time before she had to leave; this was the time to slow down, pace herself as she never would before someone showed her how. She slowed her pace, wishing she didn’t have to, but the fear of cramping overcame her desire to keep running. On the field, a breeze kept her warm, despite the near freezing temperatures elsewhere.
Eighteen--she wiped the sweat off her face, settling into a fast walk. The pace was weird, as if to a song that should have been much slower. But this was no funeral march, not yet, not now, not when she had a partner again.
Twenty--she stopped now, walking out to the infield and stretching. Reach to the heavens, then come back down to earth. A slow descent into madness, or at least pain on new levels as the weight on her back increased, making her reach extend nearly to her feet this time.
The hand on her head was warm as she held her legs in a butterfly. It rested there, before bent finger joints grinded themselves into her scalp, like her brother did every time he came home from university.
She wished those moments would last forever: that her brother wouldn’t leave, and that she could stay on that track forever, chasing Luke’s shadow.
the gates in his mind opened an inch wider
He was pressured to return to school; as one of the survivors of the incident, they said to him, you need to be there to serve as an example to your peers.
It wasn’t until he had finally succumbed and returned did he figure out what he was supposed to be an example of, even if it wasn’t what they were thinking.
Don’t do what I did, he thought, his newfound limp pronounced, ‘Cause karma’s a bitch.
dreamscape
It was January, so temperatures had dropped below freezing that morning. There was a wind chill warning in effect, but she was only waiting for the bus to come.
Luke was waiting at the bus stop with her, too, saying through his scarf (like cardinals and roses and blood) that he had missed the bus at his own stop. He seemed nervous about it, but he might have been shaking and stuttering simply from the cold. She was, after all.
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like if Jeremy and Dan hadn’t--you know?” he asked. A non sequitur, if there could be one following a chat about the weather.
“We’re alive, aren’t we?” She cupped her hands around her mouth and exhaled. She should have worn a scarf, or at least a hat.
“Cam.”
“What?”
“Camilla.”
“I said, what?” She glared at him, but his head was tucked low. Looking at him now, he didn’t seem cold at all. His chest moved up and down, unrhythmically, as if he had to remind himself that he needed to breathe.
“It’s time to wake up, Camilla,” her mother said, shaking her shoulders. Cam blinked the sleep out her eyes. Outside, a cold wind rattled her windows. “You’re going to be late.”
slipped back into the colors and vanished inside of them
Tom started when his little sister pulled the lighter fluid out of her backpack. He only told her to only bring the items that had been brought to her. He looked over at the two other girls, and was inwardly relieved that they were just as startled as him.
“What are you planning on doing with those?” he asked. He was pleased his voice wasn’t shaking, but he had to fight to keep it soft.
“Letting him go,” she said, as she picked up the garden trowel. She jabbed it into the dirt at the base of the tree, and when it resisted strongly, she started to speak quickly in a foreign language.
“You know you shouldn’t talk like that,” Luke--or the ghost of him--said. He was quite solid for a ghost, the only thing giving him away from being alive was the steadiness of his chest, even when he spoke. He didn’t need air to do that now. “When did you even learn French? They don’t teach it here until the eighth grade.”
“Mom and Dad talk a lot in French nowadays,” she explained, very slowly loosening the soil. “I don’t think they know that I know what they’re saying.”
“Give me that,” snapped Cam, tearing her eyes away from Luke. She didn’t know if he could touch things and didn’t want to find out. She grabbed the trowel from Holly, kneeled next to her, and repeated her actions, only much faster and with more success. “Jessie, lift it up. I need to be able to get at the roots.”
Jessie went over, reaching around the boy she knew as dead, and grabbed the skinny tree below the start of its branches. Its leaves were dark and thick and glossy, even though the grass around them was dry and brown from the regular summer drought. She started to lift, and it grew easier and easier as Cam knocked away more dirt. When it was fully out of the ground, and Cam had started to fill in the hole as best she could, she shoved the young tree into Tom’s hands. “Stop gawking and carry this to the parking lot. If we set fire to it here, we’ll just set the whole field on fire.”
Tom choked on air, and Luke snorted in laughter at this. “Huh?” Tom spat out, incredulous. “You’re going to do what?”
“Set it on fire.” Luke put his hands in his jeans pockets, rocking back and forth on his feet.
“But--”
“It’s for the best, dude. I’m tired.”
Tom looked at Luke. His eyelids were half-shut, and his eyes were a dull shade of blue. They used to be much brighter, he remembered.
His head bobbed once. Luke’s shoulders sank, relaxed, and he exhaled a breath he hadn’t been holding.
They moved to the parking lot, as soon as Cam had picked up all of the items Holly had brought with her. It was empty there. In a few hours, if they didn’t get caught, it would soon be filled with cars belonging to parents, teachers, and students. No one thought about what would happen if they were caught.
“Put it here,” Holly said, once they were in the middle of the black concrete. Tom set it on one of the diagonal lines, while Cam emptied the items they had left for him on top. They barely had time to step away before Holly started to douse it in lighter fluid.
“Isn’t that a bit overkill?” Tom asked eventually, when the bottle could only spit at the tree.
“No,” chorused brother and sister.
“Can I do the honours?” Jessie asked, holding the matchbook. Holly blinked at her, since she was certain she had placed them in her cardigan pocket. She shrugged and stepped away from the tree in a grandiose gesture. Jessie looked at the other three.
“How do I know I can even hold the matches, much less light them?” stated Luke.
“Have at it,” said Cam, her accent thick and her words being ones she would never say at school.
“I’m against it.” Tom held his hands up in a defensive gesture. “Why do you have to burn the tree?”
“Because it’s the last thing,” replied Luke, before he said to Jessie, “Burn it.”
Tom winced when the tree burst into flames, the multiple times of attempting to throw the match having failed. Luke, however, became winded.
“Are you OK?” Holly asked, reaching over to him. She reached through him instead. Cam and Jessie looked at each other, worried now.
He let out a short laugh. “Never better,” he gasped out, before he fell into the fire and vanished.
jewels that open up a doorway from present to the past
“Here you go,” she said, handing him a box. It was cardboard, and filled with many clear bags, each one labelled and sealed. “These are the belongings found on his person. Forensics is done with them, so you can have them back.”
William shifted through the box. Each bag he pulled out (his clothes first, clean despite everything and would he have worn those boxers if he knew he was going to die?) was smaller than the last. His life was summed up in the items with him when he died; how better a way to show that he didn’t know this was the end.
“This isn’t my son’s,” he said eventually, holding the last bag in his hand. “He isn’t religious.”
The woman looked at the ornate silver cross, and then shrugged. “He was wearing it when he came in. If you find out who the owner is, you should give it back--it looks like an heirloom.”
Fuck. Fuck? Fuck!
He knew something was going on. It was a large school, so most people hadn’t noticed a difference, even despite the new hyperawareness. This wasn’t something those senses were designed to feel.
Not the awareness of a coming disaster, or the lookout for beaten butterflies with a storm on their wings.
Another person tripped on the stairs, sent scrabbling and pawing for help that wouldn’t come. The school computer system was hacked again by the “Help Me” virus. One too many shadows appeared in empty hallways. Letters came from nowhere. Bloody water came from the taps.
The little mermaid just wanted to be a human. Pinocchio just wanted to be a real boy.
It was just too bad theirs was ending up twisted inside.
a trio of nuns, two priests and a group of teenage Goth girls
He hadn’t been to church in many years. Despite his father’s wishes, his son had a secular funeral, and never had he looked to any figment of his imagination for guidance during these times. In the last two weeks, he had spoken with more nuns, priests, reverends, and caretakers than he had in two decades.
He went to all the local churches, but no one there at the time knew who the cross belonged to. He was non-committal to visiting during “popular” hours, but the reverends and fathers where he had gone had promised to bring it up, the family heirloom that had fallen into his hands. He even asked the school to look into it.
Many claimed for it. Only one lead seemed promising. A group of girls with darkened eyes and falsely black hair at the school recognised it, being able to describe it in unreleased detail.
He wasn’t sure who to give it to anymore: both his son and the owner were dead now.
into thousands of anguished faces
This was a tragedy, not a story, but it was frightening how all too often people forgot that. They were real, living beings once-upon-a-bullet-ago, not the sensationalised, clichéd characters the media made them out to be, not the number statistics recorded them as.
In the end, the only ones the media truly remembered were them: the two boys who didn’t start it all, but they finished it.
In the story, it was so easy to forget the characters relegated into supporting roles.
In the tragedy, it was so hard to forget the people who died.
grimaces comically at this unintended pun
“Aren’t you tired of bugging me?” Tom asked, in between reps of sit-ups. Since being injured, workouts were harder than before--partially due to atrophy and mostly due to the healing spider web scar on his body. But even though he had quit the team, he still kept in shape. The stronger his shoulder were physically, the more he could carry emotionally.
“Dead tired.” The shadow sitting on his chair’s shadow sat up a moment later. Tom jumped at the cracking sound as the shadow smacked his own forehead. “Fucking hell. I hate this.”
tempted fate one too many times and finally lost
He was completely still, save for the controlled rise and fall of his shoulders. Around him, life still bustled about, despite and because of being in a hospital.
He should call his father. He should call her parents. He should bug a nurse on duty until she either tells him what he needs to know. That, or get thrown out.
He should get some sleep.
“Mr. Gagnon?”
His head jerked up. The doctor was dressed in minty green scrubs, his face mask dangling from one ear. Despite his youth, the head cover was a mere formality.
“She’ll need some time to recover, but the surgery was successful. Had the other driver been going any faster, we might have lost her. You can go see them now.”
“ ‘Them’?”
The doctor gave a smile. “Your wife and your son.”
luxuriate with any man of his liking
“Hey.”
Tom looked up. No one else did, their heads still bent over their tests.
“Over here.”
The voice came from above him, behind him. His shadow pooled at his feet, while another loomed over him. He didn’t look back and tried to concentrate on his test.
“Hey, listen!”
Shut up, he thought. I’m not crazy.
“No, you’re not. You just hear dead people.”
***
Her hands started to shake when she realised who sent the text message.
***
“Jessie! Jessie!”
She slowed down and doubled back to the coach. She didn’t stop, but bounced from one foot to the other. “What is it?”
“You just ran way past the end line,” he said, gesturing widely and wildly. “You’re getting faster, but you’re getting careless. You gotta remember to slow down.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to push yourself so hard now, also. Competitions aren’t for a while, but injuries will last that long. Nothing’s chasing you now.”
“…yes, sir.”
becoming temperamental and distant
“Hey, Holly,” the voice said. Holly turned around to see a girl standing behind her. From the corner of her eye, she could see a group of girls on a different part of the playground, whispering to each other and not hiding their stares very well.
“What is it?”
The girl twirled her hair around her finger, her face twisted by thinking. A cold Spring wind sent shivers down their spines. “So what was it like?”
“What do you mean?” The hair prickled on the back of Holly’s neck, and she started reciting her father’s words of stress: mon ostie de tabernac de câlisse de viarge.
“Yeh know, seeing a dead body. What was it like? It must have been--”
***
“I don’t want to know,” she stated immediately, as soon as she entered the office. “Just let me pick up my daughter and leave.”
“Mrs. Gagnon,” the principle started, “this is a serious issue. Your daughter is--”
“ ‘Temperamental’? ‘Violent’?” Jeanne looked at her daughter. She stared back, eyes big and bright and fearless. “I already know these things. We’re done here.”
“Mrs. Gagnon, if you already know these things then why haven’t you addressed the issue?”
Holly appeared by the exit, shrugging her backpack on. In the fluorescent lighting, her mother’s shadow was squat on the carpet, stretched so thin it had split in two. Another shadow stretched from nowhere, making rude gestures at her teachers and principle.
“I feel that her punching someone who’s tormenting her is better than her using an hunting rifle on them, but that’s just my opinion. Have a day.”
***
“Why?”
“I think it would be a good idea. A fresh start.”
“A fresh start is moving somewhere where no one knows you. This is turning your back on the real issue.”
“And what would that be?”
“Our daughter and her issues at school and her peers.”
“So we leave this place. Your father would like to see us more often, and Holly would benefit from experiencing another part of her heritage.”
“She isn’t going to learn anything by running away from the issue.”
“Here, she is learning violence is the only way to solve an issue.”
“Not if we help her.”
“Which you aren’t.”
how unimportant and expendable
Acquired from an unknown source; received weeks before the incident but unreported:
You will want to say that you didn’t know this was going to happen.
This is your warning. This is your chance to make things better.
We have guns. This is not an empty threat. You live in a community where almost everyone hunts. Do not think we won’t use the full arsenal of your fine and fair city.
On September 19th we will start firing. Do not say for a moment you weren’t warned.
someplace that is completely neutral
It was dark when she went out, which meant it was very late. The summer sky was lightly dotted with stars, but most of them were drowned out by the orange glow of the street lights. She didn’t live in town known for its nightly violence, but she still rode her bike as fast as she could, her heavy bag bumping against her thigh. She wasn’t sure if she needn’t have worried or not.
She went there first. She had heard her parents talk about what they were going to do with him when they moved. They didn’t want to leave him here, but they felt it was wrong to move him now.
She knew better. It wasn’t as if he was there, still bound to his flesh. After all, his shadow was stretching out alongside hers, even keeping up with her on her bike.
It was peaceful at that spot, that being the main reason why it was chosen. The leaves rustled in the wind, but she didn’t jump at the noise. She concentrated on it, waiting, listening for a sign that she was in the right place.
Nothing. Despite it being night, her shadow was still noticeable on the grass, dark and thin and much too tall for her. She could hear his whispers still, jumbled and unknown in her ears.
She was too far away, so she moved on, heading over to the school she would never attend. She didn’t want to anyway, not after the tales those people (his peers, though she would only extend the title of Friend to the one she recognized) had told her. Some things are just terrifying.
The school was dark inside, and he had moved from the shadows to be reflected back in the windows. His face was broken into pieces, fragments of the boy he once was and the ghost he had become fighting for dominance. She tore her eyes away quickly, sick and dizzy from watching the blood appear and disappear as it slid down his ever-changing face.
This wasn’t the right spot either, but she was getting nearer. His face was becoming more lively, less blood-splattered and bullet-torn. A wrong turn made him go the wrong way, marked when the black burns appeared where his mouth should have been. She eventually had to take out her mother’s compact mirror, which she had taken in advance of this trip, to show her the way. She had never been there before, but he had, bringing her the things he couldn’t have, or even bear to.
Three other figures were waiting for her, all shaking despite the warm night. They wore dark clothes with the hoods of their sweatshirts covering their heads. She didn’t understand the reason for the dark clothes; they weren’t going to get caught if they did it right.
“I brought the stuff,” she said, once she snapped the mirror shut. She placed the pink backpack on the ground, and waited. From behind the small, skinny tree he stepped out, as if That had never happened. He wore the clothes he had worn before he died, and his face was clean and whole and alive. The other three sighed in relief, while Holly started to pull the items--the sports jersey, the notes, and her report on Venus.
“I also brought a little extra,” she continued, once Cam, Jessie, and Tom got over the sight of her brother as alive as he could possibly be again. A gardening trowel, a large bottle of water, a matchbook, and lighter fluid.
desperate for answers
She used to pray to the Lord Almighty. Then, when her failures had finally piled up too high, she had figured that since he didn’t seem to believe in her, she might as well try to believe in herself for a change and ignore him. It had worked, and as soon as she had completed her education at home, she moved to Tokyo to teach English, though French was her better language. Even when that had fallen through, and she had to move to Vancouver and teach French there, she didn’t go back to her childish belief that He believed in her, one of six billion others.
When her English improved, she left again, around the time her niece was being born. She was hundreds of miles away in Vancouver, so what was several hundred more, she had reasoned when she moved to Seoul this time. She stayed, and moved from her small apartment to a larger condominium paid for by the private school she taught at now.
She could barely sleep these days, ever since the late night news story she had watched That Night. She had called her brother for the first time in years, only to find his wife on the other end and that her nephew had been on the wrong end of a gun, if there was even a right one.
Why him? she thought, to Him and no one and herself. He was just a kid. They all were. Her insomnia led to gardening, and she was currently pruning her plants on another sleepless night: vegetables for herself, red roses for her girlfriend, white roses for Luke. A disease caused it to wither after it bloomed only once, and she was forced to uproot it before it took the rest of her garden with it.
Did you like these? she asked, only to him, as she uprooted her dying rose plant. Can you even hear me? Do you even remember me? Are you at peace now?
the intimacy of memories
Every morning she looked in the mirror, once her husband and daughter had left. It was partially out of vanity, this being the time she would apply her makeup. She had been an artist in high school, and although she never had carried with it professionally, the picture of her son she had allowed the school to use (but not keep, she wouldn’t let him go now, not when he had already been taken) at the memorial service was a watercolour she had started before his death and finished after it.
She never put on a lot of makeup, just as she never used her paints wastefully. A stroke of foundation, a wash of flesh. The light-coloured pencil between her eyelashes, the soft sketch beneath to work from. A bit of mascara to open her eyes, a blue background to bring out his. A hint of rose to her cheeks and lips, a dash of pink to his face to bring back a life she would always miss.
She stayed in front of the mirror, even after she had finished her daily painting. When she did it right, she looked fifteen years younger, losing the ten she lost to time and the five she lost with him. On those days, she could bear to look at him, when her son appeared next to her, as whole and fresh as he had in her painting of him.
the familiar zone of another life that had gone wrong, finally put right
Holly covered her mouth to keep from screaming while the ghost-that-was-her-brother burst into flame and disappeared. The other girls gasped, while Tom let out a yelp.
“Oh my god,” he whispered, as the fire quickly died. All that was left was a pile of ash that had once been a tree, papers, and a sports jersey.
“Should it have burnt so fast?” The others looked at Jessie, whose face had become blank.
Cam was the first to speak after that. “We just saw someone disappear in a fire, and that’s all you have to say?”
Jessie shrugged. “We just exorcised a ghost. What else is there to say?”
this dank, dark narrow space
Luke’s footsteps echoed in the empty halls. He walked slow, trying to waste as much time as possible on his bathroom trip, since he was supposed to be in fifth period French class now. He didn’t have to go pee, in truth, but just needed out of the class. The teacher was an idiot, and had long since learnt that Luke knew more than he did. It didn’t stop him from looking expectantly to Luke, though, every time he asked a question. Apathy was solution one; absence was solution two.
The bathroom he went to was the farthest from the French class. It wouldn’t take the whole period to take a shit (not that he even needed to), but it was a break for everyone: himself, the teacher, and the unfortunate students who had to deal with the newest Cold War.
He swung the door to the bathroom open, and
Something smashed into his face, and he could taste the pooling blood in his mouth. The ground was cold on his unbroken cheek, and he wondered when it got so close.
“Fuck, what do we do? If he saw--”
“Don’t worry about it, Dan. I’ll take care of it.”
The words didn’t make sense to him. The little lights dancing before his eyes made more sense, their patterns becoming Ursa Minor and Cygnus and Lyra. He almost missed the next part of the conversation, if it hadn’t been directed at him.
“Sorry, Luke,” said the second voice, and Luke looked up to see his friend and a long-barrelled rifle looking down on him.
He managed to push himself upright, his spinning head making him want to vomit. “Jeremy--”
“I got to do this, man. I can’t take it anymore. You’re a good kid, but it has to be this way.”
There was nothing Luke could say, not when the end of the rifle was in his mouth and going off.
***
Jeremy doesn’t wipe Luke’s blood off his face. Luke’s--the body’s now, but he can still and is willing to call him by name--face is blown apart, and his blood is splattered everywhere. The gun going off is louder than he thought, but they are in a secluded part of the school, and trees are falling with no one to care.
Dan wipes the blood from his face and clothes, though the latter action just rubs it in more. “He wasn’t on our list, Jeremy,” he says, looking at the body. He can barely tell who it is anymore, despite seeing him alive, confused, and scared.
“He would have told. And he’s as fast runner--word would have travelled faster than we could handle. He’s a good kid like that.”
“ ‘Was’.”
“He was a good kid.” Jeremy picks up Luke and moves him into the handicapped toilet, propping it up against the wall. He carries the pieces of him that were blown off, and sets them on Luke’s cooling lap. He fumbles for a second with the cross around his neck--a family heirloom and a symbol that won’t be now--and takes it off, placing it around Luke’s neck.
“Rest in peace.”