In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  When she blinks the darkness away, she is alone on the sidewalk, in a pool of warmth where the afternoon sun is just beginning to burn through above. Only the folding table remains.

  [IMAGE: A black snake curled in the shape of an infinity symbol, consuming its own tail.]

  i found your writing im not destroying it but its not right, you know its not right. all stories are fractions. im happy youre trying though. someone should. i want to help but its burning my hands. here is a thing you didnt say this city tastes like blood viscous rotting all the time, even before, i walk on the street and i can feel the carrion ooze run down the back of my throat. its hot and salty and i want to swallow over and over but i dont it wont help it wont go away. anyway i dont think ive told anyone that and there was no reason for you to know but it makes the story more complete. these are the spaces words cant fill.

  keep going okay

  2

  He speaks secrets to her in the dark.

  He speaks secrets to her when she least expects it—downstairs, lifting his gaze from his glowing screens, or in her ear as they board the bus. He tells her stories: he was fifteen and stole twenty dollars from his teacher’s wallet. He was six and afraid of horses because of the one that stepped on his foot. He was eight and fell out of a tree, but was too proud to say anything, so he walked home and went to bed with a cracked rib that he nursed for a month.

  When she knows everything about him that he can think to tell her, he whispers the colour of her hair or the sound of the rain on the windowpanes. He gifts her everything he is. He is terribly close—inches, a breath, the width of a dream—but his truths are cool on her skin.

  She gives him few words, but sometimes she lets him curl his fingers into her palm. He tells his secrets to her navel and her breasts and the shadow of her clavicle.

  She speaks with her hands. She keeps all his syllables safe.

  SEPTEMBER

  Continuing through the market, Verity sees a foot-long dragon, its tiny wings folded against the wind. There are gaps in its rusted scales and its tail lashes as it roots in the garbage by a news stand. The vendor says, “Fucking pigeons,” and throws a rock at the bin. The dragon explodes in grey feathers and an edge of pointed yellow beak.

  Verity doesn’t blink. Instead she folds her arms, head lowered, and thinks the dog is a snake is a dog, over and over like a chorus or a puzzle.

  The dog follows her.

  She knows the dog follows her because it smells of lilac and coal, and there’s a tingling at the edges of her lips. Verity keeps her head down and her hands in the pockets of her coat; she walks a little faster than usual, and her fingers are wrapped around her phone.

  She stops once or twice, whirling, catching nothing but an indecipherable blur, and the swift turns threaten to give her a headache as the maelstrom of the city resettles around her. A taxi moves slowly past her on the street, pausing hopefully. Verity almost flags it, but then her chin goes up and her shoulders straighten, so the driver continues on.

  Verity stares deliberately back at the corner where she last turned, but the sidewalk is empty in the afternoon’s emerging sun.

  Still, she smells lilac.

  She pauses at a bakery window, gazing at a tower of cupcakes and the ripped corner of a concert flyer where she now notices a stylized black canine logo and bold letters for The Between. The paper has been torn halfway up, the date and locale lost. In the glass, she sees her own reflection, pale and clean. Just over her reflection’s left shoulder, she spots the dog on the opposite side of the street. Its ears are perked jauntily; its tail is a waving banner.

  She feels a brief stab of triumph, but when she turns, the dog is gone.

  “It, um, isn’t very nice to scare me,” she says, more loudly than she is accustomed.

  A passing courier gives Verity an odd look.

  She shakes her head and continues walking.

  “Okay,” she says, this time halfway under her breath. “Then we’re going to the store.”

  No one responds, so Verity paces another two city blocks with the scent of flowered coal in the back of her throat. She doesn’t turn again, but once, she is certain she sees the dog slinking just across the street. It slides its belly low to the ground and a stubbled man in a baseball cap crouches to scratch its ears. Deliberately, she gazes down at her own careful steps and the raggedness of her scuffed white sneakers. Her thumb digs hard into the palm of her hand.

  She doesn’t need to look up when she reaches the corner store; she can feel the logos crawl across her skin. The faded paper advertisements stuck across the windows promise great savings, free coupons, special offers, and healthy snacks. Verity can hear the last one snicker; the taste of blood rises in her throat.

  Swallowing, she fumbles for the door; her fingertips almost brush a small cardboard square advertising menthol cigarettes. Fresh taste, shrieks the square, just in time, and Verity’s fingers jerk back and resettle on the barred glass of the door. The bottom pane has been shattered and plastered over with tinfoil and tape.

  A bell above the door chimes a drip of cold clarity down the back of her spine as she enters. Verity shivers and is assaulted by a thousand tiny spikes of sensation; rows of cigarette packs and candy bars and chips waver in the dim lighting. The sun through the door is warm at her back.

  In the ripple of cigarette symphony, the teen boy behind the cash register says something. It takes a moment for Verity to parse.

  “You can’t bring your dog in here,” he says again; there is a hint of irritation beneath his general malaise.

  “Um.”

  Verity draws a careful breath and turns; a foot behind her, the dog sits insouciant, its tail wagging slowly. Its golden eyes are bright, but the sun fails to penetrate the ink of its fur.

  Verity frowns.

  The dog flicks an ear.

  “It’s not my dog.”

  “Well, you can’t let a dog in here.” The teen folds his arms, frowning. The moustache he’s trying to grow is coming in unevenly.

  Verity would like to argue, but all she can think is the dog is a snake is a dog is a snake. She realizes that she can feel her heart pulsing.

  She says to the dog, “Go away.”

  The dog wags its tail.

  “Oh yeah,” offers the teen. “That’ll work.”

  His sarcasm throws a wave of black across Verity’s eyes just as a new shadow looms in the doorway, falling across the dog. For a dizzying moment, she can’t tell the difference, and she sees the dog and the shade squirm, the dog’s fur running like wet paint. Then, the door chimes and the man in the baseball cap enters the store. His hat is pulled too low; his eyes are hidden, but he wears a tobacco-stained denim jacket and a concert t-shirt. The Between, it reads, in black and jagged silver. Toledo 1994.

  The man smells of sweat and last night’s beer. He looks as though someone has been gnawing on his edges. He makes Verity itch.

  The dog’s ears are attentive as the man pushes past Verity toward the counter.

  “Uh, can I help you?” The teen slouches with arms folded, his shoulders pressed to a display of cigarettes. SMOKING WILL KILL YOU, repeat the warning labels behind him, little black squares on brightly coloured packages. Verity breathes them like a fresh drifting breeze.

  “Yeah.” The man in the hat shoves a hand in his jacket and pulls out a gun, so sharply that Verity barely registers the singing metal.

  The dog’s tongue lazes between its teeth. The boy at the cash has straightened, hands dropping and eyes going wide.

  “Open the register,” says the man with the gun. When the teen doesn’t move, the man snarls, “I said open it.” The gun is unwavering. Verity and the dog might as well not exist; the man stands with his back half turned.

  The teen flashes a panicked look at Verity. Glancing in turn at the shelves nearest to hand, she sees only discordant boxes of chocolate bars and gum. She fingers the phone in her pocket as the boy’s thin hands fumble with the register. Th
e machine makes a cheerful chirping sound; the cash tray remains shut.

  There is something wrong with the gun.

  Verity doesn’t realize it until the man in the hat snarls, “I swear to fuck I’ll put a bullet in your head,” and the metal whistles like a dying train in his hand. He keeps the barrel trained on the boy’s head.

  “He won’t,” she offers, swallowing. She wouldn’t speak, normally, except that it’s been that sort of morning and the shriek of the weapon offends her. She doesn’t like the acrid taste of a boy who thinks he’s about to die. Her words are almost lost beneath the chiming of the register and the frantic gasp of the boy’s breath. The man in the hat whips a fierce glare in her direction, and Verity looks at the floor. She sees that the dog has glided further into the store, winding between her and the man; it stands there, its plumed tail erect as a shadowed flag.

  “Shut up.”

  “He can’t shoot you.” Verity’s fingers twist in her pocket.

  “Shut up.” The man steps forward; the barrel of the gun rests against Verity’s forehead, and she draws a breath. She hears the teen make a choking sound. At her feet, the dog has flattened its ears.

  The dog is a snake, she thinks, and gun. But the gun part is distant and whining at the back of her skull. She exhales very slowly, drawing one hand from her pocket, and she touches her fingers to the strange man’s wrist. His skin is warmer than she had expected. She can feel his startled jerk.

  She asks, “Do you have any bullets?”

  “No,” snarls the man, too viciously for that confession; his eyes widen. His gaze is the green of spring grass, marred by the streaking red of a broken vein. “What the hell?” he adds; shades of genuine shock touch his anger. “I thought you were with the dog.”

  Verity drops her hand; she looks briefly to the teen, his hands clenched white-knuckled at the hard corners of the register. “He doesn’t have any bullets,” she offers, because the boy doesn’t seem to have been listening. The whine of the gun has died.

  She realizes too late that she has misjudged when the man’s eyes narrow. He jerks his gun hand back, the butt of the weapon raised, and slams a blow down toward Verity’s head.

  There is an obsidian blur as the dog at her feet launches itself, in perfect silence, toward the man with the gun. Verity doesn’t have time to more than half raise a defensive hand before man and dog tumble with a crash into the shelving—chocolate goes flying, jangling boxes scattered—and then something frigid brushes Verity’s skin, a whirl of burning before a furred force shoves her roughly to the floor and the store’s front window shatters outward.

  When the taste of razors in sunlight clears, man and dog are gone.

  Verity blinks several times at the half-crushed chocolate bar that lies on the linoleum just in front of her face. Its claim to be ‘new and improved’ bleeds slowly across the tile. She scents gasoline and dust; she realizes the smell is the breeze from the shattered window, an unseasonable autumn warmth that wars with the store’s air conditioning.

  She presses her palms to the floor and pushes herself up. When she turns her head to look at the broken pane, she sees only the glitter of glass edges and an empty sidewalk beyond. A car drives past and slows curiously. A torn advertising flyer waves nauseatingly in the breeze.

  The boy behind the counter has pressed himself back into the corner, one shoulder mashing the crinkling display of cigarettes. His breath hitches loudly.

  Verity’s own lungs are not quite working properly; she wonders at the hint of constriction in her throat and the tremor that twitches the ends of her fingers. She bites once at her lower lip before she asks, as calmly as she can, “Could I, um, buy some milk?”

  The teen’s eyes are white-ringed. Verity knows what he will answer, even before he blurts, “Are you freaking insane?”

  The question drifts behind Verity as the bell on the door chimes, then she’s standing on the bright sidewalk with shattered glass crunching beneath her feet.

  Verity looks up and down the street, but sees only cars and the drifting rot of the city. Closing her eyes, she sighs.

  When she reaches for her phone, something in her pocket jabs at her finger. Her brows draw down as she pulls the object from her jacket, finding it folded in a piece of paper. It is a round black pin, inexpensive and incongruous, the kind easily affixed to a lapel or a backpack. It has come undone and the protruding needle is sharp. The logo on the pin’s flat disc is a jagged silver B, matching the logo on the gunman’s shirt. The pin is less than two inches wide, a circle made of plastic and sheet metal, but it feels oddly hollow in her hand. She holds it between two fingers, frowning, and unfolds the paper to reveal a crudely printed concert flyer. THE BETWEEN, it reads, LIVE IN CONCERT, but the date is two weeks ago and marked CANCELLED. The address of the venue is McLuhan’s, a theatre on Bank Street that she vaguely remembers as crumbling.

  Verity breathes in lilac and coal and the lingering scent of dust.

  “Hang on,” yells the teen, from inside the battered store. “You gotta talk to the cops.”

  Verity looks at the broken window—at the sharp-edged glass hole and the shadowed shelves where candy and ramen packages live. Then she tucks the pin and paper back into her coat, lowering her head as she walks down the street.

  This time, she is moderately sure, she isn’t followed.

  She waits beneath a sign on the corner, until a bus comes like a red and white worm and she can sit in silence between a large man who smells of cheap cigars and a woman with a screaming baby and an empty stroller. At each stop the bus makes, the stroller rolls forward into Verity’s ankle. She keeps her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and still finds them shaking.

  The city glides past the window, shifting from the low awnings of the market to towering glass skyscrapers, and finally to gentrified streets with leafy trees and old, narrow houses. Verity nudges the stroller aside with her foot—earning herself a glare in the process—and disembarks. In the shelter of an oak, she pauses for breath, and to test for the oiled presence of the dog. Then, shaking her head, she walks up the stairs to the entry of a well-kept elderly grey townhouse. She crosses the small deck and pushes open the unlocked front door, on which frosted glass letters proclaim FLNEURS, INC. ALL SERVICES FREE.

  Verity enters the foyer, her footsteps quiet on the antique hardwood as the door closes and shuts out the city. Familiarity settles around her, white walls like a cloak. To the left, just past an open archway, Jacob’s unoccupied desk is cluttered with papers, his desktop computer, and two half-assembled laptops. Verity is grateful for the gossamer tease of the mess. She mounts the stairs to the right, fishing for her keys, and her hand brushes against the pin in her pocket.

  Unlocking the door upstairs, she hears an electric whirring that brings with it the tastes of ginger and cut grass—a sensation that dives down the hall and slaps lightly at her skin. When she closes the door behind her, the sound cuts off, and Jacob’s voice drifts from the kitchen.

  “Vee?”

  “Hi,” says Verity. She keeps her coat on. Her eyes are on the floor—she traces a wisp of that elusive ginger, a sparking flash—and she frowns at the puffs of flour like clouds on the hardwood. Her sneakers leave prints as she walks.

  “We’re having pancakes! Maybe. I’m not making any guarantees.”

  Jacob has short black dreadlocks and cedar eyes and freckles sprinkled liberally across burnt sienna skin. The ease of his grin often distracts from the unfortunate length of his nose. Just now he is looming over Verity; she blinks at the flour on his t-shirt, and the smooth length of his collarbone outlined just beneath.

  “I know I’m not a chef,” he admits, “but I keep wanting to—hey, what’s up?”

  His palm hovers an inch from Verity’s left shoulder. She shakes her head minutely and his fingers drop away.

  “Vee?”

  Verity frowns at the worn line of Jacob’s collar, where the soft fabric is developing the first signs of a hole. “Wai
t,” she says, and knows that he will. She tilts her head to the side, measuring the spiced brush of air against her cheek; she is silent for almost a full minute while she thinks. He stands there, though she knows by the taste that he is concerned.

  Finally she says, “I saw a dog turn into a snake. Only it wasn’t a dog. Or a snake.” She measures each word for its furred weight on her tongue. She can see the syllables hang like icicles.

  After a slight pause, the shadow of Jacob’s hand crosses her face. He tucks back a strand of her hair, and when she doesn’t flinch, he strokes his thumb just beneath the line of her jaw. “O-kay ... so I basically have no idea what you’re saying.”

  Verity swallows.

  Jacob sighs. “Is this like when they found that dead seal in the canal, and you told me it was a hippogriff?”

  “It was like a hippogriff,” she corrects, carefully. “It had a horse’s head.” She shakes her head, feeling Jacob’s touch melodic on her skin. She knows there is something helpless in her voice; she can feel the stammer start in the back of her throat, where she wants to explain. She tries again: “No. The dog—the snake—wasn’t the same. Except for some lilac, maybe.”

  “Like the dragons?”

  “A little like the dragons.” Verity rubs her palms at the thighs of her jeans. “There was a man in black.”

  “Are you okay?” Jacob shifts his hand, bringing two fingers lightly under Verity’s chin; she ducks her head, though she knows he’s trying to meet her eyes. Her vision is full of tiny flares.

  “Vee,” says Jacob again. “Do you need to talk to someone? I mean, I know we said—but if you needed to.”

  His concern is unexpected. It shoots lightning through her lungs. Verity does look up then, and her eyes flare. “No. We promised. No.”

  Jacob frowns down, his doubt etched between his brows. He has flour in the jagged locks of his hair. “If you’re sure.” The uncertainty hangs, but an instant later his gaze has brightened. “Oh, hey,” he adds. “Did you get the milk?”