by Brett Savory
I remembered every time she fell from her tire-swing, cutting a knee or scraping an elbow, and always getting right back into the tire because it was her favorite thing, her favorite place.
I wondered if Silica really understood that she was gone forever.
I opened my eyes and looked up at my wife. She gazed down at me, her own eyes empty, hollow, hard, and cold.
Glass . . .
“Silica, I’m tired. Can you help me to bed, please?”
She lifted me up and rested my top half on the bed, then swung my legs over to follow. I closed my eyes and thought again of fire making heat, making glass, making death.
Making peace.
When I heard Silica’s breathing become measured, I got quietly out of bed, went downstairs, found a hammer, a handful of nails, and a packet of matches, then returned to our room, the tinkling of glass in my head getting louder with every step.
When I started pounding the nails into the wood of the window frame, Silica stirred.
“Steven? What . . . what are you doing?”
I pounded two more nails in, adding to the four or five I’d managed to do before Silica woke, and turned around to look at her. There was fear in her eyes, and I think she knew then she was going to die.
I turned from her without answer, struck a match, and lit the bottom of the window’s curtains. Flames raced hungrily up the flimsy material, bathing the room in its soft, orange glow within seconds.
I walked out of the room, closed the door behind me and, using the remaining five or six nails in my hand, quickly nailed it shut like I had the window.
Silica screamed.
On my way down the stairs I heard her thumping her weight against the door, yelling for me to let her out, pounding her fists, her feet, terrified.
I dropped the hammer on the stairs, walked around to the back of the house toward the tire-swing.
As I sat down in the tire, closed my eyes, listened to the screams, and the crackling of fire, I reached up to grasp the ropes—
—and felt Jocelyn lean into me, her cheek against mine, arms around my neck, soft breath in my ear—
“Daddy,” she whispered gently . . . and I opened my eyes . . .
The bedroom window exploded outward and Silica fell, on fire and still screaming, until she hit the cobbled stone walkway three floors below, where her body shattered into myriad shards of twinkling glass.
I pushed my daughter gently from my chest and looked at her perfect face, pallid in the moonlight; her perfect long, brown hair blowing gently around her shoulders in the light breeze filtering in through the trees; her perfect eyes, no longer glass, but the deep, deep blue of the darkest waters on earth.
I closed my eyes, feeling numb, pulling my dead daughter against me and pushing off against the dirt with both feet—swinging, just . . . swinging . . .
I held Jocelyn tight, feeling her tears on my skin, and listened for Silica’s breathing somewhere in the blanket of crackling, popping wood and roaring flame, but heard nothing.
And for the last time, I thought of fire making heat, making glass, making death.
Making peace.
A DIAMOND OF SKIN
AND LOVE
Cutting.
Carving the skin of her face.
When the epidermis parted around the blade, the man smelled burnt leaves and rotting fruit. He inhaled the scents. This is the way love smells, he thought.
Neat little squares, each one inch by one inch, chin to scalp, ear to ear.
The man inhaled deeply again. Love burned his nostrils, his heart. Freed him.
And it would free David, too.
“What the fuck are you doing!?”
The man in the middle of the room looked up, capped and slipped the Xacto knife back into his pants pocket. “David, I wasn’t expecting you yet.” He sounded rather annoyed. There was a woman lying spread-eagled on the floor beneath him.
David Lipscombe, the woman’s husband, looked more than a little nonplussed at the situation before him. He dropped the briefcase he was carrying. It thunked to the floor, startling his cat, FatBastard, into near movement. The black brief teetered, tilted, and fell on the gray, obscenely overweight feline, who still did not move.
“What have you done to her, John?!”
FatBastard meowed, disgruntled that David had raised his voice.
John Decourcy stood up from his kneeling position over the woman’s face. He spit something red and glistening from his mouth, picked his teeth absently with one bloody finger.
“Oh, relax, David. Like you give a fuck about her, anyway.”
David blinked. Twice.
“Besides,” John added. “She’s still alive.”
FatBastard finally slithered out from beneath the briefcase, letting it fall flat on the hardwood floor. Another thunk. Another meow. A ruffling of fur. The giant cat waddled over toward Kristi.
David’s face crinkled up.
Oh, God, John thought, here come the waterworks.
John crisped the creases in his Armani suit. “Oh, for the love of Christ on his rickety crutch, David, please don’t cry. Don’t make it worse than it has to be, okay? Try to understand that this was necessary. Think about it for a minute—really think about it—and you’ll see that I’m right.” He was exasperated, impatient that David was upset by the prone figure of his wife lying in an expanding puddle of her own blood, breathing so shallowly it was nearly indiscernible, her face a patchwork of skin squares, blood interstices delineating the precisely cut sections.
“You . . . ” David started. Choked. Gulped in air. Fought back tears. Swallowed the lump in his throat. Tried again. “You sick fucking . . . good Jesus. Why? Why would—”
John sighed, rolled his eyes, already tired of the game. He knew this would happen. Of course this was happening—it was David. What else could he expect?
FatBastard pawed one of Kristi’s flesh squares free from her right cheek. It sloughed off, stuck to his paw, one nail stuck through it like a subcutaneous shish kebob. Epidermis on a stick.
John glanced at the blood on his hands. Grimaced. He bent over, picked the cat up, eliciting a rather resigned mewl from the beast, and wiped his hands on its fur. He stroked its ears, scratched its chin, leaving blood trails through the pelt. FatBastard purred contentedly and gazed up at John with nothing but pure, oblivious love.
Kristi’s chunk of skin still dangled from the cat’s nail. John chuckled, set the cat back down. More ruffling of fur, the curling of its mammoth tail into a question mark, giving form to David’s swirling thoughts. Fatty wandered away, the chunk of gristly skin now forgotten, slapping lightly against the wooden floor with each soft step.
Dumb fucking cat, John thought. As if in response, the cat—just before it disappeared down the hallway leading to the kitchen—turned back and mewed vacantly one last time, slipped a little on the blood-slicked skin as it rounded the corner, shook it off its paw, sniffed it, licked it, then batted it against the wall, just above the baseboard where it stuck like the world’s smallest abstract, blood frame oozing around it.
“Look, David,” John began, gesturing with his bloodfur hands, “you didn’t love her and you know it. You think you did, and you like to pretend and tell yourself you did, but you and I both know the truth. So don’t start whining about it, okay?”
David made a few more pathetic fishy gurgling noises, mouth flapping open and shut, open and shut. Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
Flashes of memory seared David’s brain: his and Kristi’s first hesitant kiss, so gentle, so sweet, heart pounding, the taste of tangy salt-sweat on her upper lip; their lovemaking, taking her from behind, her favorite way; the time she snorted milk out her nose in laughter at one of his oh-so-clever quips; how he squeezed her hand twice and smiled when their fingers were locked, as if to say I’m here, love, and everything is going to be alright.
None of it meant a damned thing to
him, he realized. None of it. Like a bad movie full of cardboard actors and cheap props. A movie no one would ever watch.
John took a few steps to his left, toward the chair, neatly sidestepping the halo of blood around Kristi’s now piecemeal facial features. His expression as he stepped over the body was of someone perturbed by the fact that their maid had missed a spot while polishing the floors.
The diamond was not beautiful to him just yet. But the cut is good, he thought. The cut is very clean.
He sat down in one of David’s big, puffy chairs, the arms far too high for any properly proportioned human being to comfortably use them. David claimed the elevation of the arms was to increase blood-flow to the head, though why that would be anyone’s priority when buying chairs, John didn’t know. “You know, David, you really need to get new chairs.” He picked a sliver of gristle from between his two front teeth.
Looking at her now, John was certain he’d done the right thing. She’s multi-faceted, he thought. She’s a diamond cut to no one’s specifications but her own. Pure. She’s our diamond, mine and David’s, and only we can cut her now.
David, in shock, aware of the events before him, but still not quite certain how to react to them, looked from John to Kristi for some sort of explanation. The flashing memories died out slowly, only an occasional sudden burst here and there. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, stars strewn across the blackness inside his head. When he reopened them, Kristi was different somehow, sort of wavering at the edges. He waited for his vision to readjust, but nothing changed. She’s a diamond, he thought. Pure. Sparkling. And only we can cut her now. David did not know where the thought had come from, but it calmed him, regulated his breathing, cleared his vision.
He noticed there was more than just the one skin square that FatBastard had made off with missing from his wife’s face. John was picking Kristi’s face-flesh from his teeth. Somehow, this did not disturb David.
John was right. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t quite generate the anger he knew he was supposed to be feeling. Actually, she looked sort of peaceful just lying there, precisely diced and ready to serve. Hors d’oeuvre, monsieur?
John stroked his goatee, glanced over at Kristi. “Honey? You still there, sweetie pie?”
When he’d looked directly into her eyes while he’d been cutting her, he’d fancied he could see scenes from the life they could have
(should have)
had split into diamond chips, each scene connected but angling away from the other. He remembered thinking, It’s not quite the way I would have cut it, but it doesn’t matter, because only we can cut her now. David and I. We deserve it for everything we’ve lost trying to love her. And the cut is good, don’t forget. Crisp, clean, flawless.
“Sugar,” John continued, “David’s here. Don’t die just yet, okay?”
Silence.
John and David waited, looked at Kristi, then at each other, then back to Kristi. “Sweetie?”
A muffled gurgle. A slight shuffling. The thick squelch of soft, crushed skull against hard, blood-drenched wooden floor as she tried to reposition her head, tried to lift it to see her husband, or maybe to see John. Maybe just to see where the cat had run off to with that piece of her face.
“Good,” John said, “you’re conscious.”
David—unaware, unloved husband, unwitting diamond cutter—took a few tentative steps toward her, stood above her. A noise dry-clicked in his throat. He moistened his palate and spoke. “Kristi, it’s David. Can you open your eyes and look at me, please? If you can, I mean . . . ”
Kristi twitched a little.
FatBastard stumbled back into the room, jumped into John’s lap and snuggled near the crook of his elbow. John smiled sweetly at the dough-headed thing and stroked its matted fur, the blood caked and crunching a bit in places where it had already fully dried.
“Dave—” Kristi coughed, the surface disruption causing one of the side cutlets to slip down against her ear. It stopped when it came up against her big, dangling bunny earrings. The grooves and etchings slowly filled up with blood.
“Dave,” she said a bit clearer, stronger this time, opening her eyes to look at her husband, “where’s . . . my kitty?”
Suddenly it all made sense.
Suddenly everything became clear to David.
He looked to John, who was still stroking the bloody butterball in his lap. John just nodded, smiled, sucked his teeth and swallowed. He had known before David, had been the one to see through the fog of years spent in routine, in habit, in an elaborate, drawn-out lie.
She’s our diamond, David thought, eyes locked to John’s. Ours to cut.
John stood up, gently cradling the gray/red cat, walked to Kristi, leaned over and placed the purring monstrosity on her chest. He straightened up, looked at David again. This time they both nodded. They kneeled then, each on one knee as if about to propose to the shattered woman whose blood-halo from the fissure in her skull grew with every minute, both desperate for her attention, but each for their own reasons.
John Decourcy, the man who had always been in love with her—a love so pure, so strong that he’d never had the courage to admit to it—took her left hand in his.
David Lipscombe, her husband, the man who had never loved her and didn’t know why, took her right.
True, silent communion.
They lifted her arms and placed her hands on FatBastard’s back. The cat purred, and the two men watched the woman’s hand caress the animal with the love that both of them had wanted to give and receive, but had somehow ended up with neither. The cat continued to purr, as oblivious as always, content even when the hands stopped stroking a few seconds later.
Cold. Dead.
John looked up at David, both men dry-eyed, the tired smiles of long-out-of-work clowns on their faces.
John stood up. “I’m glad you understand, David. I’m glad Kristi understood, too. I think even FatBastard understands.”
David stood up. “We’ll do it properly. The remaining cuts have to be clean, crisp, sharp.”
John straightened the creases in his suit pants again and nodded. “She deserves that. We’ll finish her before she gets cold.”
Both men looked down at Kristi’s dead, staring eyes. Light refracted off them, splitting into a million bright shards.
John pulled the Xacto knife from his pocket, reached across Kristi’s corpse, and handed it to David. “I’ll get a knife from the kitchen.”
*based on characters created by Sandra Kasturi, Jason Taniguchi, and Russell Martin. Used with permission.
SUBLIMINAL VERSES
Just beneath the surface.
They run through everything. Verses. Spoken by everyone, but in a language that no one understands. They dip into the collective subconscious, rise out of it again, dripping wet with dread. They course through our every sentence, infected with misery.
Ever since communication between human beings became possible, these verses have existed, riding just below the skin of our lives: a plague of verbal violence. The HIV of communication.
Subliminal verses have no geographic borders, do not know skin color, do not understand religion. They are their own God, answering to no one. And we embrace them, we let them flourish within us, provide them with a home, a warm bed, three square meals a day, and a companion with which to share the night.
They are the verses of history, defined by our experience, created by our deceit, our mistrust of one another. They grow black and gnarled with age, crumpled at the edges, burned and charred. Threaded through every word we speak, integral to the system. A parchment of oral disease.
When we argue with each other, the subliminal verses glow bright with purpose. When we strike one another in anger, they pulse, quicken. When we kill, they shine bright as stars. Beyond words, they are our breath, our blood.
Like a sickness, they spread from body to body, informing our decisions, blinding rational th
ought, becoming the purest of rages.
And we welcome them. We breathe them willingly into the song of our lives.
They are a handshake between God and the Devil. The fog that wraps around our hearts and squeezes. Their weight is the weight of all that has come before, and is just as inescapable, irreversible.
The only mystery is that of the speaker: Who created the verses? When? For what purpose? Mention has been made of God, of the Devil. But neither of these is a suitable candidate, because the verses are gray. Neither black nor white, they serve no one and so can be controlled by no one.
A man in a rumpled, charcoal suit sits on a bus, looks out the window, watches humanity slip by, catches glimpses of the subliminal verses flitting from person to person. Furrowed brows, sharp words, impatience—a hatred boiling inside blackened hearts beating sluggishly in screaming chests. Everything slowing down, hardening. Crystallizing.
This man is the First Man, seeing and hearing what no one else can. He is sad, knowing what will happen to the world, knowing where it is headed. Knowing that there is no way to change it.
But he did not intend this.
When he woke up on the morning of his birth, thoughts of nothing but the most basic of primal needs spun in his tiny head. Nothing else spoke to him. Nothing else breathed between the spaces of these thoughts. Nature abhors a vacuum, and a hollow needed filling. So there was an opening. And he let them in. These songs of disaster.
The chaos of creation unfolded inside his chest, unfurled in his mind. And with every day that passed, he heard the voice of this chaos more and more clearly. Until one day, when he was old enough, he opened his mouth.
And let it all out.
The man on the bus stands up and pulls the cord. There is a ding, a sign lights up in front of the bus driver, letting him know that a passenger has requested a stop. The man shuffles to the front of the bus. Tears spilling from his eyelids, shoulders shaking, the man gets off the bus, walks to the nearest convenience store, buys some cheese and crackers, and walks home.