Alien Virus Love Disaster

by Abbey Mei Otis

  From somewhere on the second floor comes a shrill reply. “Yeah?”

  “Will you come down to the kitchen?”

  She receives no confirmation, but detects a faint shuffling of fabric and plastic parts and can picture the girl extricating herself from some elaborate costume. While she waits she puts the milk and butter into the door of the refrigerator. She feels a certain heated twinge—something in between pleasure and anticipation—at the thought of making her daughter clean up the cereal. I am making you responsible, she thinks. Ha! You thought you could make a mess, but instead you will become a better person.

  Thonk, thonk, thonk. Out of the kitchen, out of the game world, out of even the pathetic Apartamento Ferdinand. All the way out to the rotten foyer. Thonking up the stairs are two more bodies, Ferdinands #2 and #4. In front: Bello, a suppler version of Floro, his face two years younger, less incongruous. Eyebrows spreading unchecked and jawline still hardening. One arm shoulders a purple flowery backpack, the other reaches back to hook fingers with the smaller hand of: Hailo, baby-baby sister, rightful owner of the backpack. Newly nine, with hand-me-down leggings that end three inches above her ankles. Just beginning to feel desire for things that cannot be handed to her. She flexes her fingerpads against her brother’s to test the bone under his flesh, keeps her eyes fixed on the back of his head like he’s helping her ascend to heaven.

  They pick their way up the dark stairs via smell and memory, absorbing the mildew drip in the air, the stale vapor of old cooking oil. They know to step lightly on the ninth riser. They do not touch the soft places on the walls. Hailo moves in double hops, flipping her hips from side to side, telling Bello, “. . . but like, I can do a front round-off. It’s not even that hard.”

  When the Ferdinand family encounters unkind observers, it may be noted that Hailo will never be as beautiful as her older, absenter sister. Girl has a forehead too high and a laugh too ricocheting. She will not realize until much later than Celado what traps can be woven from hungry eyes. But Hailo, close your ears to those unkind observers. They know not what they say. Even now, even this minute, skipping in the vacuum left by your sister, you are learning to weave other things.

  They come into the room just as Mom is settling back in her chair. Marbles snapped into her nodes. The world draining away like sand through a screen. Bello sees her first thing and inside him some trapdoor goes bang-shut. Hailo—in the middle of “I can probably show you right now, even. It’s just like so easy”—doesn’t even pause in her hop-twisting straight toward Offie. “Hey Mom, hey want to see—”

  Bello does a long lunge across the carpet and snags second sister’s wrist, snaps her away from the still form of their mother. “Don’t!”

  Hailo twists against him. “Let go let go! I want to show her—” And so he kneels, wraps both arms around her, curls her new long body into his new big one. Warm-breathes into the cloud of her hair.

  “Don’t.”

  In the blue-tiled kitchen, Hailo laughs when she sees the spilled cereal. “Well, yeah,” she shrugs at her mother. “It’s better when you mix up all the kinds.” Her grin is awkwardly large and her teeth portend orthodonture. She leaps for the dustpan without being told. “Sorry bout that.”

  Offie removes a tub of cooked pasta from the refrigerator while Hailo uses three times the necessary paper towels to sop up the milk. She dumps the pasta into a bowl, scans a cabinet with her fingertips to find olive oil, red wine vinegar, white pepper.

  “Where’s your sister?”

  Hailo shrugs. “Out.” The world of the game does not stretch much beyond the house. Sometimes characters can be vexingly vague when discussing their whereabouts.

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  Hailo shrugs again. She dances over to the counter where her mother works. Her ankles are wrapped in dozens of fluorescent string-bracelets. With her thumb and forefinger, she pulls fusilli out of the bowl and drops them into her mouth. “She’ll probably be back for dinner.”

  “And your brothers?”

  Hailo pours salt onto her palm and licks it off. “Out with Dad.”

  One a.m., two a.m. Moon creeps up, crests, begins to sink. Mother over the horizon, and now the Ferdinand children lay themselves down to sleep. Like he always does Floro tries to push Hailo to the floor, says she doesn’t deserve a bed since she’s no longer sharing. Little sister doesn’t say a thing, just blanks her face and gives him the wide-eye until he retreats to the other futon with Bello. Everybody has their rituals.

  They leave the window open and cold air sweeps their skin through the threadbare sheets. Bello and Floro arrange themselves in a frozen brawl. Fist to cheek, knee to stomach. Since babyhood have they slept like this, double heart, waking with bruises only they can decipher. Hailo drifts on the expanse of futon, tumble-twisting, unmoored. When Celado slept next to her they never touched; Cece always curled on the far edge with her elegant slumber scowl. But still. They sleep, three contorted quarters of a whole, her absence a small puncture in their lungs through which the air whistles.

  The last time Celado stood in that room? Yeah sure, went like this: mother and daughter, circling each other with stretched arms like witches raising a spell. Celado, her face so blazing it could have killed you or brought you back to life. Her mane of dark hair snarled back from her head, her ass drooping below short-shorts, her nails bitten down to red moons. Ofelie in her nightgown, face gouged with desperation, trying to smother the fear egg hatching inside her.

  “I’m keeping it,” Celado said. “Hector loves me.”

  Offie’s eyes could have shattered the windows. “You can’t tell love from garbage.”

  “And who’s my teacher?”

  “You got a scum brain too.”

  Flawless teenage shrug. Celado the Bulletproof. “Yeah, well. My baby. She’s going to know where she comes from.”

  Offie’s voice hoarse with rage: “Out.” Offie’s voice a whispered plea. “Out.”

  Celado went with a screech like an eagle. Slammed the door and opened it and slammed it again.

  And Hailo, lying under the futon with her face pressed to the pink hippo, thought: this must be what love is. Nobody who didn’t love each other could want so badly to eat each other’s hearts.

  Present night, in the alcove. Offie is a peaceful sculpture of herself. The falling moon drapes strands of light along her nose, the rise of her cheekbone. Look at her now, you would swear, it must be the real world she has vanished to. This place, this cold crowded room, these children who sleep like they’ve been gunned down, this must be the game world, which she only visits now and then.

  She rinses brussels sprouts in the sink, shucking off the outer leaves under a ribbon of water. Through the window above the sink she watches the wide green bowl of her backyard, the patio with gardenias still blooming.

  The game always supplies her with a husband. She cannot remember making this request but perhaps it read her unspoken desires. This one is only a pirated version bought from an old co-worker, but still she is often surprised at how it anticipates her.

  They do not have sex; it has been nine years and nine months since sex seemed like a good idea. And she sleeps, when she sleeps, on a king-sized bed with a white duvet that is for her and her alone. Rather his presence manifests in tasks accomplished while she is not around. The shutters, for instance, or bunk beds assembled in the girls’ room. When it snows, her walk is always shoveled. Sometimes there are flowers for her on the kitchen table. She cannot quite say how she knows this is the work of more than a maintenance script, but she does. He is undoubtedly his own entity.

  Occasionally, when she is busy with something like moving laundry, or standing at the sink, he will come up behind her and rest his warm callused hands on the place where her neck meets her shoulders, and her eyes will grow hot with tears.

  At work the next day, conveyor b
elts rurr as always. Offie rustles through rafts of cardboard caked with food, squeegees it away with blue-gloved fingers. Across from her there are no friendly overtures from Silene, not even eye contact. The cool from last night has passed; the air in the warehouse is thick and dull. Offie reaches under the cardboard for something that clatters and comes back mooing in pain. Someone has cast into the stream a bucket of syringes, uncapped. Her blue glove dots with red.

  Ah-ah-ah. The claws above her wheeze with laughter. You see, you are no good at this. There is nothing we cannot do better than you.

  Twitch, twitch. Offie twitches her shoulders, trying to dislodge the voices from her ears. She jerks her hand once across her face and streaks her temple with blood.

  Ah-ah. We can do your job better. We can raise your children better. Your missing, slut-tastic daughter? We could point the way to her immediately. We could even reach out (we are factory-specialized for reaching out, remember) and pluck her from the maelstrom, as easily as we pluck a single styrofoam cup from the flood.

  Oh you humans! (The imaginary claws jab Offie’s armflesh in a jocular, aggressive way.) Oh-oh, you haven’t made a thing yet that we could not pluck out! And when we pluck a thing, it doesn’t get away. It goes down exactly the chute it belongs. No matter if it is dirty or crumpled or used up, it goes down the chute and through the fires and gets formed into something new. Something useful. Something better. Perhaps that would be good for your daughter too. We will pluck her up from the dirthole where she’s hiding, with her latest string-muscle man who likes to stroke his dick across her belly. We will drag her out and drop her down the chute and push her through the fire, and it will burn the vileness out of her, it will melt down her used-up skin-n-bones body, we’ll sear the animal out of her, we’ll—

  NO!

  Offie roars like she can blast the thoughts from her mind. She tears at her head with mothereagle talons, wrenches so hard her hand comes away with a hank of hair. Her head rings in the quiet. Blood drips onto her collarbone.

  Across from her, Silene makes a micro noise, a-a, and collapses forward onto the conveyor belt.

  Her body pushes a wave of junk off the belt and onto Offie. Panic, canaries shrieking all down the line. Silene’s torso is borne a few feet downstream, legs dragged along behind, and then she floops! sideways onto the concrete.

  Inside Offie a continent shifts. Maybe her head is still full of the scraping claw laughter, maybe her lungs are still full of her own roar. She pushes the junk heap away, plants a hand, heaves herself onto the belt. In a second she is on the other side, heavy-breathing, kneeling by Silene.

  “Hey, hey, girl, girl-o, where are you? Where are you?”

  She holds Silene’s face in both hands, brushes her gray lips, presses her cheek to Silene’s cold forehead. “Water!” Looks up to see the other workers pressed sheeplike together. “You are stupid? Water! Help!”

  But the sheep/canaries are pushed aside and Supervisor emerges, guiding a floating stretcher that bumps his side like a nervous dog. “Hurry up, get her to the resus mod, we’re losing time.”

  She thinks he means time to save Silene, but no, duh, he means productivity tracking. Together they roll Silene (like she is full of volcanic sand!) onto the stretcher. It rises, wobbles under her weight, whirrs slowly toward the exit.

  Outside the warehouse there is a blue-&-white-striped vehicle, like an ambulance but sleeker. The recycling company parks it there for cases of extreme dehydration (also boneheaded dosings, hunger strikes, et alia). The stretcher whirrs up to it. Offie and Supervisor follow at a distance, Offie sneezing in the sudden daylight. The achy blue above them is a perfect match with the stripes on the resuscitation module. Silene’s feet flop back and forth with the motion of the stretcher; one hand drops off and swings like a pendulum. A small door at one end of the module slides up, just high enough for a stretcher bearing a body to slip inside. The stretcher fidgets for a moment, fits itself into the proper grooves, whirrs forward into the smooth white tube. Inch by inch, Silene disappears.

  Beside Offie, Supervisor looks pleased. “Ten minutes in there, she’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  Offie gives him the sharpest side-eye she can. Really, Mister Navid? Really? Suddenly afraid that he will try to pat her on the back, she edges away, then stumps back into the warehouse.

  His estimate was off: Silene returns in thirteen minutes. Her lips are still gray but her skin is dry. Her arms move like they are propelled by well-greased pistons.

  “Silene. What do they do in there?”

  Silene’s eyes aren’t focusing. She parts her lips a few times before speaking. “I don’t remember.”

  “Truth?” Offie grimaces. She wishes she could switch places with someone farther down the line. Silene’s straight back and sharp movements give her the jitters. People should break when they are wounded, don’t you think? Offie knows it. People should show their scars.

  She shakes as she walks from the bus station, as she climbs the stairs. Again and again she sees Silene collapse like a boneless thing, hears the claws cackle. Her skin feels alive; it is unbearable the way her clothes rest against her body.

  No offspring are around when she arrives home. She makes a straight line for the chair. The feeling of fullness within, that calms her without. Why does it not exist in this world? Here she contains only air and grief and cruel voices. She wants it back, she wants it back. Her hands slip as she tries to fit the balls into her nodes and she must retrieve them once, twice, before they are snapped into place. A-a. Do you know how the ship feels as it slips over the horizon? No, you say, because to the ship there is no horizon, there is only sailing farther and farther. But there is a feeling (yes, there is!) of watching the known world drop under the ocean. Of knowing you are out of sight, of easier breathing. As the game revs up that feeling seeps warmly through her flesh. Offie, come back! Are you listening? Ofelie, Mama Love-n-Hate, turn around, there’s still time—

  Around her there is only open sea. Finally, she thinks. Finally. They cannot get me now.

  Floro and Bello park their scooters in the street in front of a house. You want precision: in front of the garage of a house. The garage is complete but the house—big fat-man colonial—is only framing, no sheetrock or siding. Its bare beams have slipped down the years from pressure-treated yellow to bloodless gray.

  They frown at the closed garage door.

  Bello bounces on the balls of his feet. “Sure this is it?”

  “Doubting me?” Floro nudges him. “Yeah. Sure. I meet the guy Hector a while ago. I know.” He doesn’t say where he met Hector, but if you know the kinds of pursuits Floro engages in, you can guess.

  “Kay.” Bello shrugs. “Just not looking to start a thing.”

  They walk up to the garage door. They move like they have not eaten in weeks. Like one of them might be the savior of the world. There’s only one person on the whole freaking planet who could possibly be in that garage who should not be afraid.

  The door begins to rise and yellow daylight scans across the floor, revealing a garage converted into a makeshift home. Haphazard rugs, a lamp, rageporn posters tacked over unpainted walls. On a bare mattress in the back, cross-legged, still, a person-shape too shadowed to make out. The brothers strain forward. The light slides up her body, reveals the swollen belly she cradles with her hands, the hollows of her face, little dents in her bottom lip where she bites it, gray fairyqueen eyes. Celado Ferdinand.

  “You’re here.” She shakes like a bird pulled from an oil spill. Ready to sink her claws into anyone who gets too close. “Hector’s gone. He’s gone two days. I think—I think it’s for real this time.”

  Floro sucks his teeth, shakes his head. “You come with us, kid sister.” There’s nobody who can tell if that’s a question or not. Probs Floro isn’t sure, but he doesn’t leave things to chance. He walks into the garage, all the while secret-
like planning what he will do to Hector, whom he knows from certain pursuits, which limbs he will rend first.

  They pull her up, hold her among their four arms. They remember when she was born, how Offie dipped her into their laps for seconds at a time. Be careful with the baby! Bello lets his hand hover a millimeter above her stomach. “How far along?”

  That makes her smile. “Six months.” She traces shapes around her belly button. “Almost a real person now.”

  They do not know what to make of this. Not afraid but of course afraid. Bello nudges her shoulder with his. “Can you ride the scooter with me? Back to Colt’s Brook?”

  Celado chews her lip. “I think so.” Her smile shrinks. “She doesn’t want me there.”

  “She’s out twenty-four seven without you. Everything falls apart.”

  Standing as she is, the light hits her torso but leaves her face dark. Celado puts a hand on each brother’s shoulder, feels the play of their muscles under skin. There are vast countries in them that are alien to her, and then there are these small points of contact. On the edges of their sweat she smells the mustyrot of home.

  (How did you do it, Cece? Call out to them over the cul-de-sacked void. Summon them to your unlocked garage door. What everybody should know is, this is the particular gift/curse of the Ferdinand kids. In their hours of need, they can conjure up rescue. They can make something from nothing. Fire from the airless dark. Shaking love from still flesh. Spoiler alert: this is gonna be their doom, also. All that power, what do you think they do? Burn things, burn each other, burn themselves all down. Celado, do you really think you’re being saved right now? Does anyone?)

  She says, “Kay.”

  The house is silent, empty when Hailo gets home from school. To check she does cartwheels from one side of the room to the other. She walks on her hands by the boxes of commodity food. She does a headstand on the futon and stomps her sneakers against the wall. No one says Ai watch out, or Get the fuck outside, or Ow that was my head! Really truly authentically empty room.