Black Iris

by Leah Raeder

  I know what you were searching for, Mom. The same thing I want.

  To live without pain.

  But the only way to live without pain is to live without feeling. Or to not live.

  I don’t know why they call it a downward spiral when you’re rising up, up, up.

  This was everything I’d dreamed of for so long. Get to him. Get inside him. Dig my fingernails into his soul and rip him inside out. And I was in there now, my claws wet with heart pulp, my fangs sunk gum-deep into hot meat. The wolf midfeed, drenched in gore. As soon as I whipped my neck he’d tear in half. I had him. I was ready for the kill.

  But I already knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  I became addicted to everything I tried. Drugs, girls, violence.

  For a while, hurting them helped. Klein’s fat face spitting blood. Luke’s surprise as he fell backward onto a lightning bolt. Zoeller’s bones breaking into a thousand pieces inside that pretty skin.

  Temporary fixes. Nothing satisfied me.

  And it wasn’t really the hurting that I loved. It was after. The audacious realization that we got away with it. We took revenge. We walked away unscathed. Me and her.

  All I’d really loved was her.

  And all I had now was drugs that were making me sort of crazy.

  There was a shadow in the apartment. It followed me from room to room, folded into corners, slithered into tile cracks. Orion would sit and gaze at it sometimes, untroubled. It wouldn’t hurt him. It was there for me.

  I saw things. Things that were there, but not as they really were. A pile of clothes on a chair was a crouching human shape. The hat on the counter was a head peering at me. I got so jumpy that Orion left the room when I came in. Going out didn’t help. On the train, in class, I saw faces in the corner of my eye, twisted and snarling, gnashing teeth. When I turned it was just a girl scrolling her phone, a man reading a book.

  I couldn’t look at anything.

  “This building is filthy,” I told Armin when he came to see me. “It’s full of bugs.”

  Spiders in every shadowy nook. Sometimes a centipede, horrifying, huge, running across a blank wall.

  “I can’t live here.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said, combing his fingers through my hair.

  Orion and I stayed in a hotel while they fumigated. Unbelievably, the hotel was full of bugs, too. A wolf spider crawled onto the sheet when I let a careless hand sprawl. I didn’t sleep.

  It was a relief to go back to the condo.

  “Laney,” Armin said as we carried suitcases back in, “what exactly did you see?”

  “Things with too many fucking legs.”

  He paused, backlit by the hall light, face obscured. “They didn’t spray. They couldn’t find anything.”

  In the corner of my eye, a black squiggle skittered up the wall.

  Don’t look. It’s not really there, you fucking psycho.

  “Laney,” Armin said again, more carefully, “what are you on right now?”

  “Can you stay here tonight?” My voice sounded small. “Please?”

  He scooped me up in his arms and carried me to bed.

  We lay with the lamps on, me atop him. Made out for a while with a doomed urgency, a sense of things accelerating toward an end, leaving marks with teeth and stubble, but when he took my shirt off I started shivering and the shivering became crying and he just held me, which was what I’d wanted to begin with.

  Why didn’t this feel good anymore? I used to love it with a nasty satisfaction. I used to feel so powerful, knowing what was in my hands. That I could crush it anytime I wanted.

  Come with me. We’ll leave all this behind.

  Armin stayed the night. As I dozed, my head filled with silly memories, things that used to make me happy. The time the three of us were walking to the beach and stumbled into an alley with amazing acoustics, and Armin sang backup while Blythe and I belted our lungs out to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Or that drunken night I told her, “Talk Australian to me,” and she rattled off every clichéd phrase she could think of from fair dinkum to no worries, mate while I feigned a swoon and Armin caught me in his arms, laughing. Or when he taught me how to greet someone in Persian, ever patient, and I tripped over my tongue and Blythe fell on the couch in hysterics and Hiyam listened appraisingly, giving unexpected encouragement.

  Fake. All fucking fake.

  We were never happy together. We were liars, all of us.

  Why couldn’t I get high enough to block it out? You can only go so high before cardiac arrest.

  On lonely nights I sat on the beach by myself, the sand cold as ice dust. No hands to hold me. Alone with my incipient victory. Alone with my hate and my hollow white-shelled pill of a heart.

  Forgiveness is weakness, Mom said. The weak forgive because they have no power to do anything else.

  Don’t be weak, Laney. Don’t be a fag. Pussy. Coward. Don’t be what you really are. Look what happened before when you opened your heart. When you loved.

  I was hard and brittle when Armin texted.

  They sent me one, he said.

  Sent what?

  You know. Her too.

  Blythe. Those two, talking. Discussing this without me.

  Paranoia swelled. How would I know if you’re both lying to me? What if she told you what’s coming, what I’m going to do?

  Would she?

  We all need to meet, he wrote. You know where.

  The three of us back at Umbra. Where everything began.

  When?

  Tonight.

  I stood, a cloak of pale sand falling from my legs like snow. Shook my shoulders, felt the sharp kiss of winter on my skin. A ghost-eye moon stared down at me, unblinking. I raised my head.

  Did I howl? I’ll never tell.

  ———

  Umbra had an Ides of March theme going on. Dancers in slashed, bloody togas swept through the halls, sipping goblets of wine. Every hour they reenacted the murder of Caesar in the Cathedral.

  The irony was not lost on us.

  They were there first, Armin in a V-neck, clean-shaven, impeccably handsome, Blythe in snug leggings and a loose sleeveless top, gorgeously sulky. I wore my usual nerdy skinnies and plaid. Nothing special. This could’ve been any night.

  Just like old times.

  They were talking when I arrived, but broke off and stepped apart. I joined them in a cone of hot cherry light. We looked like characters in film noir, all shadows and lurid red highlights.

  The last time the three of us were together in one place was the night we’d hurt Zoeller. The night we’d fucked each other.

  That same dark energy sizzled between us now.

  “We need somewhere to talk,” I yelled over the bone-jolting bass. “Private.”

  Armin seemed to sigh. His eyes closed for a second. “Follow me.”

  Down to the Oubliette, where I’d danced to his music, her touch. Where the three of us had been careless and free. I trailed a hand along the brick wall, remembering. Things would never be like that again.

  I knew the room before I stepped in. After a series of abrupt turns and seeming dead ends we came to a hidden door that opened onto a long, rectangular chamber. Armin pulled the chain on the single bare bulb. It looked exactly how I remembered: an old wooden bar at the far end, taps rusted shut. Tarnished mirrors leaning behind fat fresh candles. Ladder-back chairs arranged in a circle.

  I dropped my bag and locked the door behind us. On the inside panel, the Umbra eclipse logo was sketched in chalk.

  Armin retrieved a box of matches and we all lit candles. Light flickered weirdly through the room, casting skewed, startling shadows, as if there were more people here than merely the three of us.

  We took up positions at triangle points in the circle, like in truth or d
are.

  No one spoke.

  Dust in the air suspended marks the place where a story ended.

  I saw it in both of their eyes. They knew that once this began, it wouldn’t stop until we’d all been torn apart.

  Armin sighed again. “We each got one, Laney.”

  They held up their phones. On Blythe’s was a pic of me and Armin getting out of a cab, his hand on my waist, possessive. That day we met for coffee. I’d spent the rest of it in his bed while he kept me warm. On Armin’s phone Blythe and I were walking home together, hands linked, heads tilted close. Autumn, the leaves a tessellation of fire. We’d begun kissing in the stairwell and barely made it to her bed before we’d fully undressed.

  “Huh,” I said.

  Armin looked at me a long moment. Then at Blythe. Then he said, “I got more.”

  He scrolled through pics. I didn’t need to see. The blond and brunette blur. Me and her, together. Damningly.

  “I got more, too,” Blythe said, flashing her phone at us. Me and him going into apartments, coming out, hair tousled, mouths swollen. Post-Zoeller.

  “Huh,” I repeated, mesmerized.

  “Care to explain, Laney?” Armin said in a tight voice.

  Blythe was angry about something. “I’m the one owed a bloody explanation.”

  “You?” he said.

  “Me, yeah. You told me it was over.”

  “That’s hardly the issue. Because what I see here is that you did it to me again. Again. After you promised it was nothing.”

  “You arsehole. You promised me. You promised you wouldn’t touch her.”

  “So you could do this behind my back? Fuck you.”

  “No, fuck you, Armin. Fuck you.”

  I stared at them, dazed. Perfect, I thought. Hiyam set us up perfectly.

  I’d never given her enough credit.

  Blythe leapt to her feet, paced through dappling shadows. “I can’t fucking believe this, you lying bastard.”

  Armin gazed at me. His eyes were dark and full of knowing. “How long has it been going on?”

  “Has what?” I said, at the same moment that Blythe spat, “September.”

  We looked at each other, me and her.

  “September,” Armin echoed.

  “Yes,” I said.

  My hands tingled. I’d done some oxy but not my usual dose, and this wasn’t a chemical high. This was . . . feeling. Fear. Anxiety. Exhilaration.

  “I’ve been fucking her since September,” I said in an even tone. “I lied to your face. I never loved you.”

  The first domino teetered. I held my fingertip against it, giddy.

  Armin sank into the chair as if all his bones had melted. He exhaled, not a sigh but a sound of release, long and mournful.

  Blythe moved toward him, amped. “That’s right. The whole bloody time.”

  “You did it to me again.”

  “I didn’t plan to, but it happened.”

  “You fucking did it to me again.”

  She loomed above him. “You always hung it over my head. You never forgave me. What did you want from me?”

  He sat up and gripped her forearms, bronze on gold. “I wanted you to give a shit. About what you did to me. To us.”

  “Christ’s sake, I’ve apologized a million times.”

  “You never meant it once. And here’s the proof, Blythe. You didn’t care, so you did it again.”

  She reversed his grip, dug her nails into his skin. “You don’t want me to apologize. You want me to lie.”

  “I want you to be a human being who feels remorse.”

  “You want me to pretend I love you.”

  Armin sat back, his face contorted with pain. “How could I have been so blind? How could this happen twice?” That smoky voice wavered in a haunting way. I’d never heard him cry before. “It was right there in my face, but you convinced me I was imagining it. Convinced me so well, Blythe. So well.”

  Except Blythe was a terrible liar.

  “What is he talking about?” I said.

  She spun toward me, her eyes shining. Tears. “Fuck this. Fuck him. Let’s just go.”

  “Not yet.”

  I turned my phone in my hands. Armin eyed it with a distant expression. He did not seem quite present, as if part of him had receded from the moment and floated in an empty, remote space. I knew the feeling.

  “Apollo,” I said.

  The feeling inside me was incredible. Like petals opening up, a dark place receiving light for the first time.

  This was the real moment I’d been waiting for.

  “You know what’s on here, don’t you?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do. You’ve known this was coming for a long time.”

  That handsome face looked weary. “Show me, Laney. Go ahead.”

  It’s crazy, that the defining moment of your life can be nothing to someone else. Like an infatuation, an unrequited love, every bit of you is drawn to it, orbits that heaviness at the center of your universe, everything you think and feel revolving around it and yet, nobody knows. Even the one who caused it. Especially the one who caused it.

  I fetched my bag. Inside, two objects, one glass and one metal.

  “First we’re going to play a game,” I said, in the grand tradition of every villain ever. “You’ll like it. It’s called truth or dare.”

  I set the bottle down carefully and turned. And like every villain ever, I raised the gun.

  APRIL, LAST YEAR

  It rained all day. April was wanton and cruel like that, mixing dull roots with spring rain. Which is an apt antidepressant metaphor.

  “She’s getting twitchy,” I said, kicking a stone into the river. Raindrops dotted the surface, a million needles pricking silver skin.

  “That means it’s working.”

  Zoeller walked beside me. Our breath fogged in the chill. Ever since the pill switch we’d been watching her like a science experiment: Mom, cooking in a petri dish full of Zoloft. Nothing happened the first few weeks, but as we neared her birthday the tics began. Footsteps pacing the halls. Overtime at work, then awake all night at home. Once she was up till dawn working furiously in the garden. In the morning I found the early irises plucked bare, gathered into a neat heap of indigo petals.

  “I’m pretty sure she’s manic,” I said.

  This was the danger with bipolar people: the depression was soul-crushing, the blackest black, more intense than “normal” depression, but if you gave them antidepressants it could swing back the other way into mania.

  Which was precisely what we aimed for.

  “She’ll snap,” Zoeller said. “Wait for it.”

  I had my phone ready at all times to film one of her episodes. Some night she’d drink too much, pick a fight, put me in a chokehold or try to throw me out again, and I’d capture it in glorious HD. Insurance. If she and Dad split, she’d never win custody. She’d be kicked out of the house and Donnie wouldn’t be alone with the Gorgon while I went to college.

  The perfect plan, all tied up with a little bow.

  Except something nagged at me.

  “What if she does something really fucked-up?” I said, ducking under a branch. Rain dripped off the trees in sterling bracelets and crystal charms, piling on the ground, melting into mirrors.

  “Then get your dad’s gun.”

  The idea of pulling it on her seemed absurd. She was too big, too mythical.

  Zoeller saw it in my face. “You’re still afraid of her.”

  “I’m not afraid for myself. I’m afraid for Donnie.” Z offered a hand to pull me over a pool but I ignored him. “She’ll keep making excuses to refuse treatment. She’s selfish and likes her mania too much to give it up. Besides, she never wanted us. She only had us as some kind of life insuranc
e policy for herself.”

  “Your mom is too vain to destroy something she created.”

  Harsh, but possibly true. “So just cross my fingers and hope she doesn’t kill her darlings.”

  “Or control her breakdown.”

  I paused, quicksilver rippling around my feet. “What do you mean?”

  He wouldn’t say more till we reached a bank of black mud where the cobblestones ended. Spring threw the river into a frenzy, tearing dead leaves and branches loose, all the clotted, brooding thoughts of winter sweeping away. Z crouched at the waterline.

  “Come here.”

  I approached warily. His lessons tended to involve attempted murder.

  “Give me your hand.”

  I snorted.

  Z waited, patient.

  I gave him my damn hand.

  His was brutishly huge but the skin was smooth, surprisingly so. He pried my fingers open, rubbed the cold out. I jerked away.

  “Stop being such a dyke.”

  Not even worth a response.

  Zoeller placed a stiff, ice-crusted leaf in my palm.

  “Land it on that,” he said, nodding at a boulder jutting midstream.

  “How?”

  “Figure it out.”

  “It’s impossible.”

  He rocked back on his haunches, bored.

  This was a Zoeller puzzle. There was some trick.

  My first thought: lesson in humiliation. He wanted me to wade in and place it by hand. But ever since we’d confessed our personality disorders he’d softened toward me a little, no longer so casually cruel. He showed legit interest in my life. In his deranged way, he was helping me deal with Mom.

  If this kept up, I might actually start thinking of him as a friend.

  God.

  For the next fifteen minutes I made a complete ass of myself.

  I threw leaves like a child, and the wind blew them back into my face. I rigged them on sticks that snapped in the current. I found a loose string and made some kind of fail slingshot that nearly took my eye out. I slipped in the water twice. By then I was too incensed to feel the cold.