Maze: The Waking of Grey Grimm

by Tony Bertauski

  Sunny took the plastic, assuming it was a kind gesture to escape the rain, but the weather had already soaked through three layers of clothing. Her flesh was soggy, possessed by a cold that turned her bones brittle. What use was it now?

  She looked around, the surroundings suddenly unfamiliar. “Where am I?”

  “Stop running.” Droplets spotted the oversized sunglasses, a distorted reflection looking back at Sunny.

  “Running? I’m looking for my—”

  Horns blared. The grind of rubber on wet pavement ended with the abrupt crack of metal. Sunny cringed, eyes closed, fists clenched.

  Cars worked around a center-lane fender bender. The drivers in the accident were out. The woman in the front car hurled curses from beneath a red umbrella at a man that held a black book over his head. Across the street, pedestrians threw hurried glances at the showdown. One of them stopped briefly before rushing against the flow of traffic. He hunched beneath a black umbrella.

  The collar of his overcoat was pulled up.

  “Hey!” Sunny threw herself off the steps. “Hey!”

  She walked through puddles and traffic without looking. A slow-moving Volkswagen crawled in front of her, gently nudging her thigh. The horn wailed. She was oblivious, eyes aimed at the overcoat. The man sensed the attention, glancing over his shoulder without noticing.

  He heard the footsteps and turned in time to put up his forearm just as Sunny swung on him. His briefcase spilled papers and folders, a shotgun of rain splattering the print. He cried out in surprise. She latched handfuls of his coat and threw her weight into his chest. He hit a storefront window and dropped the umbrella.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” He recovered from the ambush. “Are you out of your mind!”

  “Where’s my son?”

  Sunny stumbled backward and dropped the square of plastic Mrs. Jones had given her. His cheeks flush with anger, he adjusted his coat and knelt down to pick up the contents of his briefcase. They flopped like rags. He balled them up and stuffed them in like trash.

  “The police are coming.” He held up his phone. “I don’t give a goddamn what’s wrong with you, this is assault, the police are coming.”

  She grabbed the papers closest to her. There was nothing secret about them, no discreet photos of her around town, no investigative evidence of her son or the Maze. They were legal papers that had nothing to do with her or Gray or Donny or nothing or anything.

  He snatched them from her. There was a distant siren.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  Sunny knocked his hand away. He pushed her against the wall and she took a swing, tripping over her own feet. He backed off but barricaded her escape, briefcase in both hands. Trapped like a loose zoo attraction, bystanders crowded around, jeering the man in the black coat for pushing her. He was attacked first, he said; he was just holding her until the police got there.

  The sidewalk had scuffed her palms. She’d lost a shoe when she fell, droplets of blood oozing from her big toe. The nail broke in half.

  “Here.” A woman held an umbrella over Sunny, rain popping on the fabric. “Do you want your plastic?”

  She thought Sunny was homeless, the sheet of plastic her only shelter. The plastic had spread on the curb, a pile of translucent folds holding small puddles. A white card was stuck to it.

  The woman with the umbrella dragged it over. Someone helped her fold it back into a square. Sunny pulled the card from one of the folds. It was soggy. She thought it had come from the briefcase, but it appeared to be stuck inside the plastic. A section was torn from the middle.

  “Where’d she go?” Sunny said.

  “Who?”

  “The woman who gave me this.” No one knew what she was asking. They hadn’t seen Mrs. Jones wake her on the step, didn’t notice Sunny cross the street, only saw her attack the man still holding his briefcase.

  Sunny described her, the bag, the plastic sheet, the sunglasses. “A hat with a... a yellow flower.”

  “You mean Marie?” the woman with the umbrella said.

  Sunny shook her head. She didn’t know Mrs. Jones’s first name. “How do you know her?”

  “She’s always here. She’s homeless.”

  The siren was getting louder. Traffic nearly gridlock.

  Homeless. Sunny knew where the shelter was. She had volunteered there many times. And the card she found in Hamlet’s wallet, the one with the snake eating its tail. The sticker on the tin box in Grey’s room.

  But it couldn’t be Mrs. Jones. She must be mistaken. The old woman lived across the hall. She had cats and little paper dolls and a picture of Sunny and Grey on her mirror. And she’d been wearing the same clothes ever since the day Grey strapped the punch around his head.

  “Stop her!” the man with the briefcase said.

  Sunny kicked off her other shoe and ran down the sidewalks, cold puddles splashing over her feet, the pavement rough and unforgiving. No one ran her down or got in her way.

  She clutched the white card.

  The 511 card wasn’t something new, it was the way it ripped, a bite taken from the 511 tagline—Find something to please yourself. What was left of it spoke loud and sent Sunny running.

  Maybe it was a coincidence, just a random occurrence and a mistaken identity. Maybe it was just an old woman that looked like Mrs. Jones that gave her the plastic and filled her days picking up garbage, a good soul, a warm heart that reached out to Sunny and offered her protection from the rain. Maybe the card was on the steps and accidentally stuck in one of the folds when she picked it up and tore out the middle words of the tagline unintentionally. Maybe this was all a coincidence.

  Or maybe she was trying to tell her something. It was crazy to believe that. But everything was. Sunny was ready to listen.

  Find... yourself.

  24

  Sunny

  After the Punch

  A LINE HAD FORMED.

  Men and women took refuge beneath sheets of plastic and soggy cardboard. Most stood numbly in the open, with scant belongings as wet as the gutter.

  The city’s punishment.

  At the front of the line, beneath the sky blue awning of the City Shelter for the Homeless, a woman shrunken by time and gravity stood hunched over with a tattered bag on her shoulder.

  A plastic flower in her hat.

  Sunny’s feet were bleeding. She paused on the sidewalk, hands on hips, a long needle in her side. She walked past the men and women waiting for dry beds and a dinner bell, cupping cigarette butts in gloved hands, eyeballing her beneath dripping hats.

  “Where you going?” a bone-thin lady said, her receding gums holding blocky teeth. “Cutter!”

  One by one, they turned. Bitterness brought them renewed life, zombies smelling fresh brains. The message of a cutter fell through the line like racing dominos. Sunny was perhaps twenty steps from the sky blue awning when a heavy man blocked her way.

  “Back of the line.”

  “I’m not in line—”

  Somewhere beneath a crop of brows, eyes as hard as stones fell on her. Even in the nomadic world of homelessness, there were rules. There was order.

  Church bells gonged in a spire stabbing the sky. It was five o’clock.

  The doors opened.

  The line queued up, a centipede shuffling forward. The heavy man, however, cared less about the line than her place in it. Mrs. Jones was first in line. She bent in slow motion to pick up a silver gum wrapper to put inside her giant bag.

  Sunny wasn’t homeless. She had an apartment. She had a job and a son. A purpose. Where am I?

  She queued up. The heavy man watched her the entire way, slipping back in line once she started the centipede shuffle. One by one, the building swallowed them.

  “Marie’s always first.” The man in front of her was missing a molar. His face sagged with sparse whiskers. His winter coat was soaked, the hint of a pink cast peeked from the sleeve.

  “You were at the library,” Sunny
said.

  “She’s always first.”

  “Who?”

  He placed his hand against his forehead, wiggling his fingers. The plastic flower.

  “Welcome.” A preacher greeted them at the double doors, his hand on a shoulder. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome.”

  Sunny had volunteered infrequently. The staff rotated often and wasn’t likely to remember her. Not anymore. The preacher must have been a new director. Although she didn’t recall the shelter being an affiliate of the church.

  The building exhaled a mixture of warm bread and wet hair. A few of the needy hustled inside, but most of them responded to the preacher with gratitude. Sunny shivered beneath the awning as a young man conversed, continuously shaking the preacher’s hand, nodding as words mushed from his cracked lips.

  “Thank you, thank you. Thank you.”

  Rain trickled down the brick columns that supported the awning. They were decorated with graffiti and tinges of algae. Flyers were disintegrating in the rain, stickers sun-faded and peeling. A large circle had been painted on one of the columns, an outline of a snake.

  The preacher took Sunny’s hands between his own—warm, promising and steady.

  “Are you lost?” he said.

  Was it her hollow stare, the violent shiver? Rain seeped through her brows.

  “The old woman in front of the line,” she said. “The one with the flower. I need to talk to her.”

  “This is the first time you’ve been here. I never forget a face. Do you?”

  “I’m not staying. I just need to ask her a few questions.”

  “You’re safe here.”

  “No, I—”

  “You’re holding up the line.” He gently guided her inside.

  Sunny resisted at first, but the tug of a dry room drew her in. Her face flushed with warmth, pulsing in the jagged scar along her hairline. The lobby spun with a sense of déjà vu. She was familiar with the layout, where the rooms were located, how the kitchen worked. There was something new, though. A smell.

  Freshly opened air fresheners. Evergreen.

  “There are warm clothes.” A woman held Sunny’s arm. “You can change over there.”

  Sunny grabbed the social worker, suddenly dizzy.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes... there’s a woman here... her name is—”

  “You feel feverish.” Her hand was cold against Sunny’s forehead.

  “I’m fine. Dehydrated, I think. Can you—”

  “There’s bottled water over there. Change out of your clothes, at the very least.”

  “No, can you—”

  A chair crashed in the big room. Someone had fallen over. Others helped him up and began wiping the floor. He was tired. A red spot was glowing on his cheek.

  The big room was lined with folding tables. A clock was above the wide doorway. The red second hand pointed straight up. The rules were posted to the left of the big room. No alcohol, no drugs, no violence. All residents would follow the rules or sleep in the rain. She remembered the rule board.

  The clock was new.

  “Excuse me.” Sunny grabbed a volunteer. “Do you know where—”

  “Dry clothes over there.” The stout man guided her to a side room and left before she could ask about Mrs. Jones.

  They gave her a sweatshirt, a pair of cargo pants and a ball of fuzzy socks. She used to fold the clothes and organize them, hand them out to those in need. Now she was taking them.

  Her skin was pinkish-gray. She threw the wet stuff away and quickly stepped into the warm clothes. The boots were black and slightly big. But dry.

  When she stepped out, the big room had already been converted to a cafeteria. The residents were parked over plastic trays of food. They looked up, almost in unison, and stared at her. The next moment, they were digging into their supper.

  A thousand eyes followed her into the big room.

  “You look lost.” The preacher’s checkered shirt was tucked into a clean pair of khakis. “Why don’t you get something to eat?”

  “I need to speak with Marie.”

  He was as unmoving as his smile, gesturing to the clutter of the big room. “The cafeteria will be closing. We’ll fold the tables to make room for beds, for the overflow. A lot of people in need. You’ll be sleeping in here tonight. The women will be on the right side.”

  Wide-eyed, reluctant, she looked at the clock above the doorway. The hands hadn’t moved. She had lost all sense of time. No longer knew what day it was, what month—stuck in a churning moment.

  The preacher smiled at the clock. “Please, before the food is cold.”

  She moved into the big room, with his hand on the small of her back. The residents watched him guide her inside. She ate a dinner of chicken fried steak with lukewarm gravy and a side of grainy sweet corn. It was thick and tasteless. She ate it anyway.

  And they watched.

  They began breaking the room down, flipping the tables and kicking the legs. The cots came in, thin and squeaky. The residents began claiming their turf, tucking in sheets and fluffing flat pillows. Some talked to each other, familiar faces in a familiar place. Some kept to themselves.

  None had a flower.

  Sunny considered leaving, but the weather had grown severe. She would stay the night, but just this night. And just until she found Marie. Maybe she didn’t know anything; she was just an old woman that looked like Mrs. Jones.

  But the picture. How did Mrs. Jones get that picture?

  She went to a bare cot in the corner. A stack of sheets sat on a thin pillow. She sank into the springs, laying her head in her arms. Her feet hurt, ankles ached. The walls of desperation were truly slippery.

  The pit deep and dark.

  The cot next to her squealed in protest. The ramblings of a large person sank into the springs. Her back was to Sunny, a thick fuzzy hat, a kind that could be described as Russian, was pushed over her head. Her clothes were damp. A sour cloud of booze and stale cigarettes hovered over her.

  The preacher wasn’t around. None of the volunteers, either. The residents knew the routine. Sunny left the sour smell of Russian hat behind.

  The bathrooms were on the other side of the facility. They smelled like cleaning solution and wax. The sinks were spotless, mirrors free of smudges. An emaciated woman looked back at Sunny, the green shine of her eyes gone but the jagged scar still there. She stroked it gently. Felt it pulse, a hot cinder buried beneath her skin.

  She felt eyes follow her into a stall and watch her leave. She stared at her boots, one large step after another. There was laughter down the hall. And something else.

  Sunny stopped.

  She wanted to go back to the cot, curl up like the woman in the Russian hat and forget this day ever happened. Forget this life ever existed, at least for an hour or two. But the familiarity of a song pulled her back.

  Someone was singing.

  It was a hymnal, a wordless song that vibrated in someone’s throat and warmed her heart. It resonated in Sunny. She could feel it in her own mouth.

  Her childhood song.

  It was the one she sang in the shower, when she washed dishes, when she was bored or anxious. The ballerina song.

  It was coming from the end of a hallway.

  Sunny passed open doors. The rooms bunked men and women, longtime residents with dibs on more private quarters. Most of them had bedded down for the night. Some were still up, conversing, laughing. Eyes rheumy as they watched her pass. The humming cut through the chatter, overplaying the volume of televisions and radios when it shouldn’t have, like an amplifier was in her head.

  The scar blazed.

  The door at the end of the hall was different than the rest, a vintage door made of solid wood, paint peeling from the inlaid trim. The knob was burnished brass and dented, with a scuffed plate with a large keyhole.

  She put her hand on the cracked surface. The song trickled through her fingers.

  The song continued. A mu
sic box plinked along with it, the kind wound by a key, the tinny notes an undercurrent of music.

  “Hello?” Sunny knocked gently.

  The hallway behind her was empty. No one had come out to stop her. She gently turned the knob. The latch clicked. The door popped and the song gushed into the hallway, its arms wrapping around her, tugging her inside. It wasn’t a bunkroom or a bathroom. Not an office.

  It was a kitchen.

  The kind of kitchen found in a house, not a shelter. There was a center island and faux wood cabinets. The laminate countertops were enormous and set at eye level. But not just any kitchen. Sunny knew this place. She’d been there before.

  I grew up here.

  The countertops weren’t oversized. She was small. Sunny was wearing a faded nighty. Her bare feet poked out from the hem. Her little toes were painted turquoise, her favorite color.

  A man was at the table.

  He was eating cold pizza. His mustache was thick, his whiskers unshaven. It was a bristled chin that would scratch her face when he kissed her goodnight. He would smell like alcohol and musty fabric, a toxic mix of loud nights and slamming doors. Her mother would be crying.

  But not that night.

  Sunny had been sleeping. She woke up when something shattered. It was another fight. Only this time her mother wasn’t screaming back. She wasn’t telling her father to get out, she wanted a divorce, she hated him and always had. Her mother was quiet this night. Someone was on the floor.

  The toenails painted turquoise.

  It shook Sunny hard, filled her eyes and blurred the details. Her father turned, chewing his food slowly. She didn’t wait for him to tell her to go to her room. She spun around to get out, to run away. To never stop.

  The corner of the countertop caught her forehead. It sank deep into her flesh, tearing a jagged chunk from her hairline. A warm flood spilled into her eyes as she fell.

  She never hit the floor, never encountered the flash of light that followed the collision, the concussion that ached in her head. She never saw her mother wake up or her father taken away.

  She just kept falling.

  25