Triumph Over Tragedy: an anthology for the victims of Hurricane Sandy

by R. T. Kaelin

  I’ll keep it to myself for now. I don’t want to give Jake and the doctor another excuse to fuss.

  * *** *

  I have a theory about how the nanobots work. In the dreamscape they construct our appearances out of how we see ourselves, and out of how I see Jake and he sees me. I don’t know how to put it exactly. Our brains exchange their signals and a combined image is formed. A composite.

  It’s more than just the exterior. It’s a construction of all the emotions, memories, desires, and depths of identity we attach to ourselves and each other.

  In this respect, the dreamscape is truer than life could ever be.

  * *** *

  Another flicker into the cold grey place last night. I know where it is.

  * *** *

  I find this difficult to write. I’ve already screwed up a few pages. But I don’t want to tell the doctor, so I’ll put it down here.

  A year after the accident that paralysed me and killed our baby, Jake had an affair. I found out a few months later. I had partly anticipated it, and wasn’t surprised by the two opposing reactions inside of me. One was pragmatic, accepting: it was a physicality he couldn’t get with me. Not because he didn’t want to, because he couldn’t. It had nothing to do with love. We would move past it.

  But the other side raged against him. It was a betrayal of the worst kind. He was punishing me for the accident, and I hated him for it. Hated him for making me alone in what had happened. For proving that it was my disability, not ours. Hated him because he had a way out.

  Last night Jake didn’t appear in the cabin as he usually does. I sat outside, waiting in the heat, flies buzzing around my head. Eventually I headed into the forest. I walked towards the lake, almost automatically. When I arrived, I found him with her.

  I felt dizzy and nauseous. I didn’t know whether this was the dreamscape or a normal dream, the real Jake or an invented one, his mind or mine. It was hard to grasp the difference. I sprinted back to the cabin, to see if the tennis ball was on the table, but I woke before I could get there.

  I can’t ask Jake about it.

  * *** *

  It’s the parking lot. Where the accident happened. That’s where the flickers in the dreamscape have been taking me. They’re happening more often now, twice a week at least. I can’t really call them flickers anymore, they last too long.

  I told the doctor. He said the mind is a complex machine, and every complex machine produces aberrant strings of behaviour now and then. He said they were probably side-effects of the unconscious mind attempting to express itself. It would help if I cut down on dreamscape time, to give it more room to play in. Perhaps I could give the nanobots a weekend off, he said. A rare joke.

  But I saw the glance between him and Jake.

  * *** *

  They won’t stop.

  Every night ends the same way. In concrete, in darkness. The tire screech freezes me. Shatters me.

  The nanobots create the parking lot for Jake too, they draw him in. Or maybe I do. Sometimes he’s driving the car. I’m not sure if it’s really him or not. Does it matter?

  The car always comes, and I can never move.

  * *** *

  Jake asked me again to stop. To abandon the dreamscape. He says we don’t need it, that it’s changing me, the robots are screwing up my head. But he’s wrong.

  Or half wrong at least – if I’m changing, then it’s back into what I should be. He is different in the dreamscape too, even if he doesn’t realise it. Uninhibited. Outside of it, I don’t recognise him.

  Why doesn’t he understand that we can only truly be together at the cabin?

  * *** *

  Last night I couldn’t move from the chair. When I finally managed I stumbled within a few steps and fell. My hands met with cold concrete. I couldn’t bring myself to look up.

  But I have to keep going. The cabin is where I am. During the daytime I drag around this empty weight that is meant to be me, and I am expected to pretend she is not lifeless, and that work and all those other mundane things actually mean something.

  That life will never be real, not anymore. Because I’m not there. It isn’t me.

  * *** *

  Jake had his nanos removed this morning. He begged me to do the same, and started yelling when I refused. He said this whole thing was only ever a Band-Aid for a dead relationship, and then he left.

  The doctor is abandoning me too. He told me he can’t be held responsible for what happens from this point on. He made me sign something.

  I have to keep going.

  * *** *

  Every night is the same. A few seconds of the cabin before I’m dragged into the parking lot. Into the same wrong self with which I wake.

  I have to keep trying. The nanobots can work as they did before, I know it, I just need to gain control. I know it’s possible.

  But even if I don’t succeed, and all I ever have are those scarce, precious seconds in the cabin, understand doctor, understand Jake, that it will be worth it. For a few moments each night I will see into who I’m supposed to be, who I truly am.

  I will live in the glimpses.

  *

  Coal: 1938

  by Doris Stever

  Me and Willard walked a half-mile to the two-room schoolhouse. In the early fall a mist would hover above the morning glory vines along our route, and I swore I could see little fairies darting in the haze. As soon as the sun peeked over the mountain, the vapor disappeared and took the magic with it. We made our way around the bend and through the little hamlet of Laurel, Kentucky, where other kids joined us. By the time we got to the school grounds, there would be twenty or thirty of us.

  But on the trek home, it was just me and Willard. We dallied, trying to catch the brilliant colored leaves that floated from the treetops. We knew that if we snatched a leaf in mid-air, we would get a letter in the mailbox within three days. We often speculated just who that letter would be from. Of course, we never received such a letter, but that didn’t stop us from chasing the falling leaves in hopes that our fortunes would change.

  We crunched through the golden and red and orange and purple, crackling, crisp, dead leaves. They made a vivid carpet covering our path. Our shortcut was not much of one, as it always took us a long time to traverse, winding through the woods and alongside the dusty dirt road that lead to our house in Shady Elm Grove.

  As fall deepened, we’d walk faster, and then we’d huddle in front of a potbelly stove that chased away the chill. And when fat, gray clouds gathered ominously on top of the mountains, snagging onto trees that now looked stark and spiny against the sky, we’d practically run home.

  Me and Willard would help Momma stock up on kindling. Momma preferred coal when she could get it. Coal heated hotter than wood, but usually cost more than we could afford. Still, me and Willard often managed to have the coal bin stocked.

  We never told Momma how we’d accomplish that.

  After school we’d take two big coal buckets and go down to Sassafras Creek. Balancing like high-wire walkers, we’d inch across a narrow, slippery wooden board that had been placed across the creek. Then we had a bit of a hill to climb. I’d hold the buckets while Willard pushed me from behind to keep me from sliding back down the muddy slope that stretched up to the coal cars. He always complained that I was heavier than the last time.

  A track curved around one side of the hill. In summer when there were empty coal cars sitting up there, we’d play and come out blackened with coal dust. But in the fall and winter the cars would be filled with coal dug from West Virginia mines that were a long way from Shady Elm Grove. For some reason the cars would sit for a time on the dead end track up on the hill. When there were quite a few waiting, the shifter would return, hitch them up, and haul them to who-knew-where. As they rambled along, sometimes coal would slide off. Me and Willard called those the lucky days. We’d gather the spilled coal much like our friends would hunt colored eggs on Easter.

  Once in a while
we’d make our own luck.

  Willard or me would climb onto the cars and throw coal over the side and down the hill. Then we’d pick it up on our way back home. Deep inside we knew Momma would not approve.

  Once in a while we’d run across Lilyfair Dancy with a coal bucket in her hand. She’d be picking up the fall-offs, too. But as me and Willard approached, she shyly faded away around the hillside.

  “Bo, you climb up and throw down some of the biggest lumps.” Willard thought he was my boss because he was twelve, two years older than me.

  “I climbed up the last time.”

  “Go on, girl. I’ll catch the lumps. You throw them out of the car.”

  “Yeah, an’ if somebody comes, you’ll run and I’ll be stuck on top of that coal heap.” Despite my protest he boosted me up to the first step of the cold, steel ladder. My hands got black in an instant from the dust. I climbed the rest of the way.

  Standing on top of that coal pile, I saw Lilyfair cut down through Gypsy Holler and cross the road to the path that led to stinky Eli Forbes’ shanty.

  In the other direction, I saw past the treetops all the way to the bridge going across Tug River into West Virginia. I was queen of the coal heap!

  “What are you doing up there, Bo? Get to work. We ain’t got all day,” Bossy yelled up at me.

  I didn’t bother to look where I threw the coal. I let it land where it may. Willard yipped when the lumps rained down on his head. He’d try throwing some back up at me, but I had the high ground, an advantage in the battle of coal throwing.

  I tossed and tossed, and he ran himself ragged, picking up and dodging the missiles. After the buckets were full, I threw extra lumps over the bank into the weeds by the creek to be picked up later.

  We lugged the brimming buckets home and put them on the back porch. Momma would make us take a bath, baffled at how we managed to get so dirty. She asked how Willard got that bump on the side of his head, but we never told.

  For an entire month we didn’t have to go back up to the track. I’d tossed enough by the creek. The coal was hidden in the dead weeds. We just had to sneak out and fill our buckets.

  “The Lord always provides,” Momma said.

  *

  Undivided

  by Marian Allen

  Pimchan’s Female did the unthinkable—she burst through the workout room doorway, knocking over the rosewood filigree screen, and entered her Mistress’ practice arena uninvited.

  Pimchan, ripped from battle meditation, whirled from her knees to her feet and grasped the girl in a double-handed grip designed to tear soul from body. With a brief quiver of muscle, she stopped herself on the very brink of harm.

  Through clenched teeth, she said, softly, “Give thanks, my Female, to Chaos, who has granted me control. Now you know why I must not be interrupted.”

  “Mistress, come!”

  The lack of repentance rang alarms. Pimchan released her gently, registering the panic of her female slave, a dark-haired and dark-eyed child of twelve, padded with baby fat. When the girl turned back toward the doorway, Pimchan grabbed her arm.

  “Talk first.”

  “We have to hurry!”

  “Talk quickly.”

  “It’s your Male. They took him! They came over the back wall right into the garden. They tried to take me, too, but I was farther from the wall. They’re gone—he’s gone.”

  Pimchan threw the girl across her shoulder and ran, talking as she went, the girl answering as best she could between bounces.

  “How many?”

  “Two.”

  “Dressed how?”

  “Like…house servants. One m-male and…one female. Brown…trousers—and—tunics, short boots…of cracked red leather.”

  Pimchan felt the girl shudder as they reached the back wall and the Female craned around to share Pimchan’s view of the bloodied bricks.

  “Is he dead?” her Female asked.

  “If he were dead, would they have taken him?” She put the girl down, ignoring the child’s agitated fidgeting.

  “Go on,” she prompted her Female. “You got away.”

  “The male stopped chasing me when I got close to the door. When I got in, I looked back. Your Male nearly got loose, but the woman swung him against the wall. I heard a thunk. The man went back and boosted her over the wall, then picked up your Male and went after them. It all took less than a minute. It’s only been a couple of minutes now.”

  Pimchan heard the unspoken sentence: You can catch them if you hurry!

  She replied aloud, “A Warrior moves quickly, but never hurries.”

  She inspected the blood on the wall, rubbing the runes tattooed on her own shaven head to help sharpen her vision.

  “A few hairs in the blood, but not many. Probably hurt, but probably not badly.”

  She inspected the boot prints, pressed deep into the dirt, where the invaders had dropped into the garden.

  “Anything else?”

  “The female was not as tall as you, but she was big—” Pimchan’s Female held her hands out in front of her own flat chest, “—here. Her skin was yellow like mine, but with more of a brownish hue. The male was taller than you and his skin was dark, almost the color of the good garden dirt. I didn’t see the color of their eyes. I was running by the time they hit the ground.”

  “Did either of you strike a blow?”

  “Your Male may have. I just ran.”

  “Well done. Now go inside and stay there. Tell Tyana to lock you in the keeping room, but to give you wash water, food, drink and fresh clothes.”

  “Y-yes, Mistress.” Pimchan’s Female only hesitated a second as the enormity of her trespass into the Warrior’s arena hit her, then she returned to the house to prepare for her warranted punishment.

  Pimchan drew her serpentine blue-steel dagger and lifted it high.

  “Let there be steel between me and mine. Let there be a sharp edge.” She gave way to anger at the unexpected trespass, to resentment at having to set protections appropriate to the wilds but—usually—unheard of in a Warrior’s home. “Let my Male and my Female, my Overseer and myself pass unharmed, but let all the unprotected feel the full power of my arm.”

  The curling runes near the dagger’s tip darkened, then faded again.

  Pimchan sheathed the weapon, willing her emotion to go with it.

  She climbed the garden wall so quickly she seemed to levitate, and stood atop it, surveying the paths around what was supposed to be her inviolable sanctuary. Invasion was bad enough—Warriors had been attacked in their safeholds before—but kidnapping a Warrior’s attendant slaves was even more perilous a gamble. Who would be so stupid? Who would have so much more to gain than to lose?

  She looked down, focusing her eyes to see what was no longer there. Finally, a vague shape coalesced into two shadows, one carrying a smaller shadow. They clarified into a man and a woman, the man carrying Pimchan’s Male. They climbed into an oxcart; the woman mounted the driver’s seat and picked up the reins, the man clambered into a hollow in the middle of a stack of bulging grain sacks, lay down there with the unconscious child, and flipped a cloth over the hiding place.

  The wagon pulled away to the north, toward the market.

  Pimchan jumped from the wall, landing lightly, and followed. She bore no weapons except her dagger. A Warrior was a weapon, capable of turning anything to destructive or defensive use against clubs, blades, spears, and—with luck—the new foreign firearms.

  The phantoms became more difficult to see as they passed through real carts and real people. Pimchan raised a hand, palm out, at belly level and muttered a string of syllables she had been taught by a very old man in a cold desert cave. The shapes she followed took on a yellow nimbus. She growled—dark blue would have been better in this bright sunlight, but the Glow colored itself arbitrarily. One of the drawbacks of accepting someone else’s spell in payment instead of cash.

  The second-hand spell fizzled and died in the sunlight and high tr
affic of the marketplace. Just before the glowing cart entered the turbulence of buyers and sellers, the driver looked back and Pimchan caught the gleam of spectral teeth, as if the shade expected her to try to follow and expected her to fail.

  Her quarry gone, she became more than peripherally aware of her surroundings.

  Lek, the chestnut seller, with his bags and brazier and bamboo fan, hunkered down at the corner. In a moment, she stood beside him. He raised a heavily wrinkled face and squinted at her as she described the invaders and the generalities of their vehicle. Lek had once served in a Warrior’s household, and had no more fear of a Warrior than he did of any of the many other people more powerful than he was.

  “I saw a woman in clothes like that with a scratch on her chin driving an old wagon down this street and into the market.” He pointed with his fan. “This wagon was painted black, but the paint was peeling. Is that the one you mean?”

  “It could be. Tell me more.”

  “Well…” He scratched his thin beard with his fan. “The grain sacks were white with red catfish on them. The oilcloth was brown, but not the same brown as her clothes. Her clothes were like… Like your skin, if you forgive the familiarity.”

  Pimchan glanced at her bare arms: the red-brown of roasted fowl. A difficult color to reproduce in dyed goods. That and the red leather boots pointed to a wealthy household. The disrepair of the wagon and age of the boots pointed to bad times.

  Lek went on. “The oilcloth was the color of this dust. Pale.”

  “Have you seen her before? Or the wagon or the clothing? Or the symbol on the grain sacks?”