by Stephen King
These dogs were his new family. I tried to accept that, but couldn’t. I’d grown up with Toad. Toad was my best friend. My dog. My friend. I needed him.
I prayed to God and promised that if Toad returned then he would never have to be tied to a pole again. I’d convince Father to let me keep him in my room so we could sleep together every night. And then after Toad was back, maybe somehow we could bring Mel back, too. Maybe we could reverse all these horrors, recycle these nightmares into pleasant dreams where happy endings weren’t fairy tales.
If only I could just pray hard enough, I could make everything right. Mother would come back home. Father would quit drinking. Toad would still be our dog. Mel would still be alive.
I sat in my bedroom a long time before eventually falling asleep. My mind raced and so did my heart. I did not know what tomorrow would bring but it was bound to be another round of depression. Another hour of blood, of tears.
Tomorrow would be today, but it would never be yesterday.
IX
Morning came and Mother still wasn’t home. Father was passed out in the living room, his whiskey bottle now empty. I kicked it across the room and winced as it shattered against the wall. But still, Father did not wake.
I left the house and sat out by the pole. I leaned my back against the metal, against my sister’s dried blood. I stayed out there all day, just as Mel had before she died. I thought about running through the hills, wild and hungry. I thought about hunting and eating anything and everything. I thought about shedding my clothes and howling at the moon. I wondered if maybe I wasn’t supposed to be born human after all. Maybe someone, somewhere, had made a mistake.
The dogs eventually returned. Toad led them past me and to the trash cans, only the cans were empty because nobody had thought to fill them.
I tilted my head back and watched the clouds slowly fade from the sky like they were dissolving into coffee. They were going away, and so was I.
The dogs may not have ruled the stars, but they ruled the hills.
They were free.
INSOMNIA IN REVERSE
JONATHAN BALOG
7 AM always feels like a camel on its last leg
He rolls like a wheelchair across the desert
My lucid dream sits on the edge of the bed
Negotiating terms of surrender to a deaf ear
And reaching across to the alarm clock from hell
I see I’ve lost a fight with insomnia … again
5 AM is a renegade chemist with a bad haircut
He treats my brain with caffeine and deadlines
There’s an unlicensed shrink in the corner
Stirring up childhood trauma till dawn
Like a friend who only wants to hang out
When I have to work in the morning
3 AM sounds like a tractor running on moonshine
He plows through my psyche with relish
The money on those thirty white horses
Could pay a quarter of my night’s rent
And with hope losing thirteen to twenty
The pigeons on my rooftop place their bets
THE WHIPPING GIRLS
DAMIEN ANGELICA WALTERS
ERIKA’S FINGERS TENSE on the steering wheel as she approaches the Kansas-Colorado state line. Endless fields of wheat waiting to be harvested sit on both sides of the interstate, the stalks rustling whisper-soft. Her car is thick with the smell of fresh bread—good bread, not the almost-stale dollar store loaves she grew up with and swears never to eat again.
By now the funeral’s over, and she wonders if anyone even showed. Her mother’s list of friends was a short one. She thinks of her dress, crumpled in a ball and tossed in the Dumpster atop bulging bags reeking of dirty diapers and fast-food wrappers, and a nervous giggle spills from her lips. What is she doing? Truly? Who quits their job and leaves their life behind at a whim, making the decision between opening a bottle of shampoo in the shower and toweling dry? She should go home, call her boss and beg his forgiveness, throw away the note she left for her landlord. The dress, however, could stay in the trash.
“Stop it,” she says, her voice too loud, too brittle.
“You’re always afraid of everything.” She hears her mother’s voice as clearly as if she were in the passenger seat. Smells the liquor on her breath, sees the pill-dilated pupils of her eyes. “And you’ll always be afraid. Nothing will change that, Eri. Nothing.”
“I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?” Erika says, but even with Topeka five hours behind her, her mouth goes dry.
“Fraidy cat. Fraidy cat.”
“Fuck you. I’m not afraid anymore,” she says as she grips the steering wheel tighter, guns the engine, and crosses into Colorado.
She sees the interstate simultaneously with her own eyes and through another pair awash in tears. The world through the second stretches out of shape into a blur of black and gold and blue, and her upper body thumps hard against her seat, as though veiled hands are yanking off a heavy coat. There’s a sharp bite of pain in her chest, but before she can draw breath to cry out, both weight and hurt vanish, and her vision snaps into singular focus.
In her rearview mirror, she catches a glimpse of someone standing with slumped shoulders on the side of the road, feet planted on the Kansas side, a half-formed girl made of fear and sorrow, someone who exists without really living.
Erika clenches her jaw. No one’s there, no one at all. Blame imagination. Blame the caffeine thrumming through her bloodstream. Blame a hovering haze on asphalt, never mind that the full heat of summer has yet to force itself upon this part of the world.
She sets her gaze on the road ahead and refuses to look back. The only way forward is through.
She picks up Interstate 80 just outside of Laramie, a route that doesn’t make much sense unless you look at the map. Staying on I-70 would send her too far south.
In spite of the spring weather, the mountains in the distance still have snow on their peaks, but against the impossibly huge sky, those mountains look like tiny hills. Funny, when people said the Wyoming sky was big, Erika always thought it a joke because the sky was plenty big in Kansas. Here, though, even the blue is different—brighter and clearer and dotted with cotton candy clouds.
“You are definitely not in Kansas anymore,” she says with a grin. And thank god for that.
She shifts in her seat and arches her back, stiff from sleeping in the car. She’s got enough money to stay in hotels, at least the cheap ones, but it’s cash she’d rather not spend, and as far as brushing her teeth and washing her face goes, rest stop bathrooms do the trick same as any sink anywhere.
Her tires keep chewing the miles and she thinks about what waits ahead. She’s nineteen, healthy, and not afraid of hard work; she knows her boss, even if he’s pissed off, will give her a good reference. She ticks off a mental list: a place to stay, a bank account, a job. It can’t be that hard. People relocate all the time. It’s not like she’s moving to another country. But she worries a cuticle until she tastes the tang of blood.
“You’ll never get anywhere, girl,” the memory of her mother says. “You don’t have what it takes and you won’t ever. No matter where you go, no matter what you do.”
“You’re wrong, Mom,” Erika says.
The last time her mother said those words, the night before Erika moved into her own apartment, she was even more drunk than usual, all glassy eyes and slurring words and sour breath. When Erika finally had enough and tried to walk away, Kaye grabbed her arm, digging neon pink acrylic fingernails into her skin hard enough to leave half-moon bruises. “Just remember. You can move out, you can run away, but you’ll never get anywhere.” With a laugh, she pushed Erika out of the way and staggered into the living room.
But Erika isn’t that girl anymore. She’s not.
Her vision bifurcates into road and blur, her skin burns with unseen fire, and she feels as though she’s peeling in two. The sensation and the double-vision disappear; the
pain slowly ebbs into a dull all-over ache.
And in the back seat sits a girl wearing Erika’s face.
Erika veers onto the shoulder with a squeal of tires and scrambles from the car, her mouth an oil slick of panic. The girl staring through the window is a slightly younger version of Erika, dressed in a shabby t-shirt and even shabbier jeans. Erika remembers how those jeans, another thrift store purchase, ripped during her move, how she cried when she threw them out. Stupid, because they were just jeans, but she was unable to stop.
She laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world, didn’t she?
The voice, heard with Erika’s head not her ears, is recognizably her own, and she takes a half-step backward. A horn blares, loud and indignant. Erika slams her body against the car as an eighteen-wheeler races past, tires leaving a mist of road grime in their wake. She squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them, the girl is still there.
A pale ribbon the color of smoke runs from the center of the girl’s chest, and Erika follows its length to her own. She peeks down her shirt; the ribbon runs through the fabric and into her flesh, piercing it seamlessly. No blood. No swelling. No discoloration. She tries to grab it, to pluck it free, but her fingers go in and through. It feels like half-set gelatin—warm and wet and amniotic—and she shudders, scrubbing her hands on her jeans.
Her mind spins with the how and the why, but there are no words for this. There are no explanations grounded in science and fact, only the incomprehensible here and now.
The girl appears real enough on the surface, but there’s something not quite solid, not tangible, as though she’s half-here and half-elsewhere, which is as ridiculous as it sounds. Erika blinks and in the brief darkness, sees the girl standing by the road in Kansas.
Some things don’t have hooks. They’re easier to get rid of.
Erika swallows hard, fighting the urge to step away again.
“What are you?”
No response, not in her head or otherwise.
“Okay, okay then,” she says, her voice trembling.
This isn’t real.
The girl isn’t, and can’t be, real.
With that thought firmly set in her head, she climbs back in the driver’s seat and tilts her rearview mirror, refusing to look at either girl or tether. She rests her forehead on the steering wheel, the low-grade ache radiating throughout her body.
The girl’s presence is persistent, like a bad tooth a tongue can’t help but revisit again and again. Erika pinches the bridge of her nose, sighs, readjusts the mirror.
“What. Are. You?”
What am I? You mean who, don’t you? It’s sort of obvious, isn’t it?
“No. You’re not me. You’re not.”
Believe whatever you want, but damage has to go somewhere. You’ve been carrying us around for a long time.
“What do you mean?”
What do you really expect to find at the end of this trip? Run as far as you can, gingerbread girl, but you can’t run away from yourself.
“I’m not running from anything. I’m moving on.”
Right. Leaving Topeka behind and starting over, I know. Proving Mom wrong.
Erika turns in her seat, faces the girl. “This doesn’t have anything to do with her.”
Don’t be an idiot. It has everything to do with her. If she made cookies and tucked you in at night instead of drinking herself into oblivion and forgetting to buy groceries or pay the electric bill, do you think you’d be here? If that’s the case, you might as well let me back in and keep heading west, keep pretending you’re fine.
“I am fine.”
The girl (and Erika refuses to believe it’s her, no matter what face she wears) rolls her eyes. If you were fine, I wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t be parked on the shoulder. You’re not fine, but you can be. I don’t know, maybe you’re not strong enough to do what you have to do. Easier to stay the way you are, right? Easier to stay damaged.
“I’m not—” Erika brushes hair from her eyes. “You don’t make any sense. What do I have to do?”
You let me out, so that’s half the battle, but it’s the easy part. The rest … She waves one hand. It hurts, doesn’t it? What’s inside you? But it doesn’t have to. You can let it go. It’s up to you.
Erika turns around in her seat and stares at the road. She wants to drive on, ignore the girl and hope she’ll disappear, but she can’t seem to remember how to shift the car into Drive.
I know it’s hard. This will change you. It will change everything. But you’ve made it this far, right?
Tears burning in her eyes, Erika meets the girl’s gaze in the mirror. The girl nods. Erika exhales. A shadow swirls around her heart, one she’s had for so long she doesn’t know how to live without it. Maybe her mother’s to blame for its existence, but Erika’s been keeping it in place, keeping herself prisoner.
And for what?
With a cry, she peels it free. The ache in her body begins to bleed out, her arms go all-over goosebumps, and a shiver dances along her spine. The tether in her chest darkens, first to charcoal, then to pitch, then to a black so absolute she can’t give it a name. It shrivels, a desiccated worm on the pavement of her lap, and dissolves into a millions specks of dark that cling to the air for a brief moment before they fade away to nothing at all, taking the last traces of pain with them.
From the back seat comes the sound of muffled sobs, and Erika whirls in her seat. Spilled-ink bruises pattern the girl’s skin. She’s shaking, her face contorted, her lips pressed into a tight line devoid of color.
“Oh, god, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want—”
I know. But now you understand. The girl manages a small smile, but the expression doesn’t meet her eyes. It will get worse, a lot worse, before it gets better. Remember that. The only way forward is through.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
The bruises spread, melting into one another, not covering the girl, but erasing her. Erika starts to climb over the seat, yet it’s too late. The girl is gone. A dark, oily after-image lingers; Erika blinks and then that’s gone, too.
A heavy silence hangs in both the car and Erika’s head, but her heart holds a new shape, a new weight. She wipes her cheeks dry, puts her car in drive, and pulls back onto the interstate.
Halfway through Utah, with the Great Salt Lake reflecting the blue sky at her right, Erika starts shaking and pulls into a rest stop. Ahead, the mountains are the jagged teeth of a submerged monster biting the sky, and she fears the beast will emerge and devour her whole.
“You think you’re something, don’t you,” her mother’s voice says. “You really think you can make something of yourself?”
The sound of dark laughter echoes in Erika’s mind. No, no, she’s done with that. She let it go.
But there’s her mother tugging at the edges of her mind, her mother tossing aside a report card, one eyebrow cocked and her mouth in a sneer. “Letters on paper don’t mean shit, girl. Never have and never will. You think being book smart means you’re better than me? Means your future will be bright and happy? You watch. You’ll end up just like me, no doubt about it.” The laugh again, all acid and teeth, and Erika’s vision doubles.
“No, please, no.”
Erika moans against her palms, envisions her body a cage with a lock impossible to pick, but she suddenly sees the mountains with her own eyes and those of another. Agony shudders through her, and she breaks in two.
She doesn’t want to look at the girl in the passenger seat, but she isn’t a child anymore who can pretend closed eyes create a cloak of invisibility or a spell of protection. This time the girl is even younger, her features caught in awkward adolescence, maybe thirteen or fourteen. Erika muffles a moan behind her palm. The tether between them wavers in the air and drifts down to settle across gearshift and thighs.
Why are we here? Why did you stop?
“Go away,” Erika says. “Please. You need to g
et out of the car right now. Please, I don’t want to hurt you. You need to go.”
The girl looks at the tether and then back to Erika, her mouth soft, her eyes helpless. I don’t think I can.
Hiding her face in her hands, Erika tries to keep in the pain, but it doesn’t want to stay. She doesn’t want it to stay. Instead of a shadow, this hurt is barbed wire sharp and cutting.
“I’m sorry.”
Wait. You don’t have to do this. Please. Just let me back in. I won’t bother you. I won’t—
Her words dissolve into hitching sobs. Erika closes her eyes, steels her heart.
Please, stop. Make it stop.
“I can’t, I’m sorry. I have to do this.”
No, no, the girl shrieks. Please don’t. Please.
Erika covers her ears, humming to conceal the sound of the girl’s cries, but it isn’t enough, it could never be enough. When the pain is gone, she takes a ragged breath and forces herself to look. The girl holds out arms crosshatched with gaping wounds, all bleeding darkness. Erika reaches for her, but the girl flinches, her eyes dull with hurt and betrayal.
You hurt me. Why did you hurt me?
“I’m sorry.”
Erika turns her face away until the pressure of the air changes, letting her know she’s alone once more. She rests her head on the steering wheel, a bitter pill of guilt on her tongue even while her lips curve into a smile that feels strange, but right and strong and true.
Nevada greets her with a blue and white Welcome sign. Low, boxy houses sit on her right; on her left, a resort and casino. More big sky, more mountains in the distance. Erika isn’t sure why, but she expected things to look different when she crossed state lines, each state a wholly separate place, not part of a whole.
Dusk creeps in as the miles glide by, an endless vista of flat land. She pulls into a gas station to top off her tank, but instead of returning to the road when she’s done, she moves her car off to the side and walks in aimless circles, stretching and shaking her arms. Over her shoulder, she catches the gas station attendant watching from behind the plate-glass window. She waves and he returns the gesture, a bemused grin set into his grizzled face.