Bleed

by Lori Michelle

  A few days later they released him from the hospital. The first appointment for chemo was set. He would get to go home in the meantime and pretend he was still like everybody else. Most nights he fought sleep until the sound of birds chirping and the blue tint of morning seeped into his bedroom. And always the next day he would find himself falling asleep in class or on the bus ride home. He didn’t tell any of his friends. What would he tell them? Shadows came into his dreams and gave him cancer? They wouldn’t believe him any more than his mother had. But he knew he would eventually have to tell Rudy about the cancer. And of course once the chemo started, he’d have to have a good explanation for where his hair went. He’d get made fun of for sure. Even if they knew, some of the kids would delight in his pain. Use it to make themselves look cool. Timmy couldn’t imagine there was anything cool about that.

  A few days went by without any dreams. Probably because he was barely sleeping enough to dream in the first place. But whenever he found himself dozing at school, he felt a kind of relief. He had never once dreamt of the shadows during the day. And then the lack of sleep caught up with him and the shadows found him again.

  He’d been more exhausted than ever that Friday night. He tried to keep his eyes open as he watched his favorite recorded shows on the DVR, but nothing could keep him from slipping this time and before long he found himself in the world of dreams. Good dreams at first. The kind of dreams that bring an unconscious smile to your face as you dream them.

  Just as quickly as the good dreams came, they disappeared, and Timmy found himself in the dark forest again, running. Running away from the whistling and the fog. His breath came out raggedly as he lunged himself forward, footfall after footfall. But the shadows were faster and this time one of them took his legs out from under him. He hit the ground face first and rolled a couple of times until he landed on his back just in time to see the shadow in his belly rise up from his body and float toward the heavens. Then the other one, the one that had tripped him, blasted into his torso exactly where the first had come out from. But this time was different. He could feel it wriggling its way upward to his chest. Timmy opened his mouth to scream but before anything could come out, everything flooded with darkness.

  ***

  Timmy woke up screaming. He could still feel the darkness inside his chest, pressing and stretching and gnawing. It was the worst pain he’d ever felt. The light came on, revealing his mother still half asleep and groggy.

  “What’s the matter, Timmy?”

  “It went in my chest this time! I can feel it in there hurting me, Mom. Make it go away. Make it go away.” Timmy burst into sobs of his own this time. His mother got him ready and took him to the hospital in their silver SUV. Timmy sat in the passenger seat, wrapped in his flannel blanket the whole way there. After a long uneventful wait in some secluded waiting room, they sat and waited awhile longer in a small room and Timmy watched TV. By then the pain had subsided some, but that gross knowing-that-something’s-there feeling wouldn’t go away. It was as if the shadow was hiding for the time being. Timmy could just see it not showing up in the scans and his mother thinking his dreams had nothing to do with it.

  They admitted him to a room and kept him overnight in order to have an MRI in the morning. By the next afternoon, the doctor came in with the results. The cancer had spread to his lungs and grown—the chemo would need to be done immediately. Timmy had never seen his mother so shaken in all of his life. She was a mess as she drove him over to the special clinic. And an even bigger mess as she tried to fill out his paperwork.

  The treatment was horrible. Painful in a way Timmy had never expected. Even worse than the pain the shadow had made inside him. But he knew it had to be done. He came back once every two weeks for more treatments. Each time got a little less horrible and he found he could sleep peacefully at night without the darkness or the forest or the shadows. His hair fell out as to be expected, but most of the kids at school didn’t treat him badly, didn’t treat him differently at all. He was thankful for this. All things considered, life seemed to be getting better for once.

  Several months later the doctor announced that Timmy was in remission and with many tears of joy he and his mother went out to celebrate. And for several more weeks, he slept soundly at night.

  Until they came back.

  He was dreaming of the beach and Chastity Summers when a dark cloud covered up the sun. Chastity screamed and ran up the dunes of the beach until she was gone. The dark cloud grew until the entire sky was dark and Timmy was all alone and unable to see anything at all. It took a long time, but eventually Timmy’s eyes became adjusted to the lack of light and he could see the sand stretching all around him. In the distance just beyond a large dune, the shadows waited, watching.

  Not that he could see them watching, but he could feel it. Like a snake slithering up his spine. Cold, slow, and very definitely other. He turned and ran, his feet blasting up sand as he went. It had to end. He couldn’t take it anymore. Would the shadows haunt him for the rest of his life or would they make what he had left shorter with each passing nightmare? He’d felt so happy when they started the chemo. He felt like he was fighting them, like everything was going to be okay. But now here they were again, ready to fill him with more of the cancer. They were closer now, he could feel them. It made him angry almost as much as it scared him. He wanted to make them go away somehow. He thought again of the chemo and how it destroyed the bad tissue and wondered if there was some way to destroy them. Because no matter how much bad tissue the chemo destroyed, the shadows would still be there to find him and start the whole thing all over again.

  As he was thinking about the treatments, he felt something warm from deep inside himself. He could see a glowing coming from his chest. A white powerful glow that shined on the sand and lit the way ahead. Maybe . . . He thought more of the chemo, of how it felt going through his body and the night the doctor had announced his remission. The glowing grew to an immense light that nearly blinded Timmy.

  The shadow reached out for him, but he turned to his thoughts once more and focused on the treatments that had burned away the cancer. The light burst out from his chest into a huge bright ball of light and he caught it in his hands just before it could fall into the sand. In that moment, he suddenly knew what he had to do.

  Timmy turned and flung the glowing ball at the shadows. For an instant, as it hurled toward them, he could see them for what they really were and he was glad that he had only seen shadows before. The ball of light blasted into several of the closest ones and they exploded into an ugly purple and blue mess and disintegrated. The others bent around the explosion and kept on coming. But the ball of light wasn’t finished. It circled around in the air like a boomerang and came back to Timmy. He had to jump to catch it, but catch it he did.

  The next throw destroyed even more of them. And before long, he had them running. Running from him. He laughed as he went after them, so happy to finally have a way to fight back the monsters who had so ravaged his life these past few years. The monsters that no one believed existed and no one would protect him from. But it didn’t matter anymore. Now he could protect himself.

  ***

  As months went by and life went on, that wasn’t the last that Timmy saw of the shadows. They came back from time to time in his dreams and each time he used his courage in a ball of light to hunt them down as they had hunted him. Eventually they stopped trying and Timmy found that he rarely had nightmares anymore. Best of all, the remission continued and there were no more cancers.

  ***

  Late one night, when Timmy’s mother had long been asleep while he was getting ready to go to bed himself, he heard an old familiar sound rising up from the wind outside. As the sound rose in pitch, he felt the snake crawling up his back again and he knew he was being watched. He’d just turned off his light and gotten under the blankets and the dim moonlight casting from another room into the hallway spread to every corner except for one—where the sha
dow was creeping its way into the real world. Timmy watched, horrified as it slid into his room like smoke, rising up into its full size and shape and coming closer and closer to his bed. Its willowy appendages stretched out and reached down for Timmy’s blanket, but before they could meet their target, Timmy threw the blanket aside, lighting the room with the huge ball of light blasting from his chest.

  This time, he was ready for them.

  THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT

  Christian A. Larsen

  Much of Christian’s love of words come from his mother, a cancer survivor, and maternal grandfather, who died in 1996 of leukemia. Christian now lives with his wife and two sons in the fictional town of Northport, Illinois. His debut novel, Losing Touch, features a foreword by NY Times bestselling author Piers Anthony. For more information, visit exlibrislarsen.com.

  “Mama, where are we going?” asked Abner, holding his mother’s finger in his small hand. His new wool jacket and short pants were stiff with starch, and the borrowed shoes he was wearing were too small and pinched his feet.

  “We’re going to have our picture taken, sweetheart,” she said, dabbing at her nose with a handkerchief and then shutting the door with her raw, scrubbed hands.

  Abner never forgot the way his mother’s dark skirt swept the steps down to the front walk, or the way she looked like a china doll, dressed all frilly and her hair done up in tight curls that jingled over her cheeks like silky springs. His father had gone on ahead of them, but nobody would tell him where Mary was—Mary, who had been the center of attention ever since she was born, carrying on as babies do. She had been quiet, though, since yesterday, and Abner ventured to ask again: “Mama, where is Mary? Is she coming too?”

  “Yes, Mary and Daddy will be waiting for us at the photographer’s,” said his mother.

  Abner had never been to a photographer’s before. That was something people who lived near the lake did, but not the Harringtons. Abner’s father was a house painter, and his father had been a dirt farmer in the South somewhere after the North won the war and freed all the colored people. Abner’s daddy didn’t like colored people, and Abner guessed that meant he didn’t like them, too, but he never really saw them in the Mont Clare neighborhood. The Harringtons might be poor, but they weren’t colored. Abner knew that much.

  He looked again at his mother.

  Her skin was so cool and white, not like yesterday. Yesterday it had been hot and splotchy, like baby Mary’s had been. He wondered if his mother had been sick. Baby Mary had been sick, and no one needed to tell him. Doctor Schaefer had come to their home in his big overcoat that smelled like cigars, with his heavy black bag filled with doctor’s tools. Abner knew it was heavy because he tried to slide it close him to look inside of it, and it barely moved. He had a lot of stuff in there, but had said that none of it would help Mary, which is why is was so odd that he left a bottle on the kitchen table. His mother had taken a few sips from it, and that was when her skin cooled off and her tears stopped falling off her cheeks like fat raindrops.

  The afternoon had a strange cast to it. Almost like a dream. Early spring brought a faint sniff of new life to the air, which Abner, at age four, didn’t recognize but appreciated after a long winter in a stuffy house with a crying baby. He stuck his finger in his collar and pulled. Why do grownups wear clothes that make them feel so uncomfortable, he thought, and he looked again at his mother. Her clothes looked even more uncomfortable, and he knew the corset she had on under her dress was squeezing her so tight she could only take clipped-off little half breaths, but the medicine Doctor Schaefer left might have been to make her clothes more comfortable. Abner would rather have uncomfortable clothes. Her medicine smelled terrible.

  Abner started to feel cold after a couple of blocks of walking, during which his mother didn’t say a word. He saw a spring robin hopping on the lawn near the street corner, a face in the clouds, and a friendly-looking dog wagging its tail, and Abner wanted to talk to his mother about each of them, but she didn’t want to talk. Like she was in a dream, too. His hand started to sweat and he tried to wriggle it out of hers, but she wouldn’t let go.

  “Not by the street corner,” she said patiently, without anger. “The streetcar will be here any moment. And what if a milk truck comes by and doesn’t see you, Abbie? What would your mommy do, then?” The tip of her nose reddened and her voice sounded like running water, but she didn’t cry. She was close, though. Abner thought maybe her medicine was wearing off.

  Abner loved riding the streetcar. He had only been on one once or twice, and he loved the way it zipped along, past all the storefronts and people walking as slow as snails. It was warm in the streetcar, too. But he thought it was funny the way everybody was all packed into a little box, right next to each other, and they never said a word, never even looked at each other unless they thought nobody was looking. It was like they were pretending they were all alone. All alone on a streetcar filled with all kinds of people—women shopping, men on business, even a few kids who had enough money scraped together to hop the line to head across town. It was all very heady to Abner, who’s hand was still sweating inside his mother’s.

  The door to the photographer’s studio banged a little bell that tinkled invitingly. Abner’s grandma told him that every time a bell rang, an angel got its wings. He wondered what the name of the angel was who could fly now.

  When the bell stopped ringing, it was quiet—quiet like church when the singing stopped, like the echoes fell down and couldn’t get back up again. Like the quiet choked the noise. Abner once caught his head between two slats in the fence in their front yard. He couldn’t even call for help, it was so tight. His father just happened to see him from the window and broke the fence to get him out, and he got hollered at that day. He didn’t like that feeling.

  A man stood behind the counter, dressed as fancy as Abner himself, but he didn’t look uncomfortable. In fact, he looked like Douglas Fairbanks in Headin’ South, that his parents took him to see at the picture show when Mary was still growing inside Mommy. The photographer gave Abner’s mother a polite smile and then he leaned over the counter and patted Abner on the head. The two adults exchanged words, but Abner wasn’t listening, though he did pick up that the photographer’s name was Mr. Loeb. His father had cast aside the black velvet curtain behind the counter and appeared in the room, as if by magic. His eyes looked swollen but dry. Maybe Daddy’s sick, thought Abner.

  “There’s my boy,” said Abner’s father, smiling so wide it squeezed the corners of his eyes shut. He ruffled his son’s hair, and then slipped his hand around his wife’s back, as if to steady her. “Louise.”

  “Daddy, where’s Mary?” asked Abner. He hadn’t been allowed to see his sister in about a week, and he thought a week was about as many days as anyone should have to count.

  Mr. Harrington’s smile never faded on his lips, but the light, such as it was, flickered out of his eyes. “Mary’s inside, son. She’s waiting for us.”

  “Is she still sick, Daddy?”

  Mr. Harrington smoothed his son’s blonde hair down again and looked into his wife’s eyes, as if to ask her what his answer should be. After a moment’s pause, he said: “No, Abbie. She’s not sick anymore.” He breathed deeply, and the air hitched in his chest. “Are we ready? Louise?”

  Abner’s mother nodded and dabbed at her eyes again with her handkerchief. Her nose still had a red cast to it, like a clown’s nose. But it didn’t look funny to Abner. He wanted to know what was on the other side of that curtain, but the thought of going inside terrified him. He squeezed his mother’s hand and the sweat squished between their palms. Their grip was so slippery, it felt like almost anything could sweep him away. The harder he squeezed, the more slippery it felt.

  Mary was waiting for them. She looked like she was sleeping in a lacy bassinet that was just a little too small for her. She had outgrown her own simple bassinet at home a few weeks before she had gotten sick. Abner worried that she might roll out an
d hurt herself. Her head looked so fragile with her fine, downy hair encircled with a headband as lacy as the bassinet. Her eyes were closed and her face looked so peaceful, like summer evenings on the porch in the rocking chair with mommy.

  Abner held his breath. His mother and father had always told him not to wake the baby, and here she was sleeping again. Babies aren’t much fun, he thought again for the thousandth time. He imagined having a ready-made playmate when his parents said a baby was coming. Instead, she was always crying or sleeping or making a mess, but he loved her, anyway. She was so pretty, even when she wasn’t dressed up in a stranger’s bassinet. Like an angel.

  “Abner, can you go over by your sister?” asked the photographer. “Just stand behind her. Here, like this—” He walked behind Abner and guided his left hand to the back of the bassinet. The photographer took Abner’s other hand and put it on Mary’s, which was crossed over her soft infant’s belly.

  But it didn’t feel soft to Abner. It didn’t feel like Mary at all. Her hand felt like a piece of furniture, cold and hard. He couldn’t feel her breathing, and it was starting to feel like an awfully long time for a baby to hold her breath.

  “Let me comb your hair, sweet pea,” said Louise, sweeping Abner’s hair across his brow. She licked her fingers and smoothed down his cowlick. “I think I want him to hold her. He needs to hold her, don’t you think?”

  “Louise—” said Mr. Harrington, his eyes darting from his wife, to his son, to the photographer. He looked like someone who was watching something teeter on its edge, any moment now about to lose its balance, all the while wondering if there was anything he could do to stop it. “Do you think we . . . all right.”

  Mr. Loeb produced a wooden chair, set it down in front of the camera, and rolled the bassinet into the corner as if it were empty. Abner watched it all unfold with a kind of detached curiosity and then detached from it himself, wandering over to one of the squares shrouded in black that was hanging from a wire on the wall. He peeked under a corner and expected to see a painting of a ship, or a print of a fox hunt, but instead he found a mirror.