If only they could find the damned can opener. She had thrown it and heard it clatter against the wall. She did not know if it had perhaps been kicked or pushed out of the slightly open door.
The sisters went about looking for it. Although there wasn’t much in the boxcar, there was also a lot; things that had already been there, leaves that had blown in and pieces of trash. They turned around and around, crawling across the floor, searching through refuse for the can opener. Dammit, thought Ingrid, why did you have to go and throw it.
It wasn’t your fault, said the voice in her head. She made you.
Maybe that was true. The fight over the stupid cockroach. The cockroach that Ingrid had found and caught and then been slapped across the face for.
She slapped you like a little bitch, a little skinny bitch, and you would have shared, too. The thorns came back. She looked up and saw that Dulcy was distracted again. She was gazing absently up at the wall and Ingrid had a terrible thought.
What if they did find the can opener and got the can of beans opened? Well, that would mean that they would eat, would live longer, a little anyway. It was a horrible thought because it was a clear one. It became an echo and stayed long enough for her to consider this time, this last inch before death. Maybe food wouldn’t make much of a difference at all, but maybe it would. What if it hadn’t fallen and they hadn’t been stirred? They wouldn’t be looking now.
Dulcy shook her head and started looking again, crawling around on her bony knees and hands.
What if this horrible half-life was made longer? That was the cruelty of it. This was God’s final joke, although Ingrid was of the opinion recently that there was in fact no God. If there was, though, He dropped that can, the Burtie’s Holy Grail of Secret Family Recipe Baked Beans. When she thought of that she found that she could share her hatred of the nonexistent god with to everything else too, like Burtie himself and his whole fucking family wherever their roasted rotted asses were. She could share it with Dulcy as well. Dulcy, whose mind was rotting and didn’t know what she was doing half the time. Who slapped her and robbed her of her cockroach.
***
The wind outside made the walls of Xanadu yawn; tossed branches and more scraped refuse clambered on the side. Just then Ingrid, who was looking again for the opener, collided with Dulcy. Their heads knocked together and there was a sound like an overripe olive falling to the floor. Dulcy went stock still, coming to the realization that something had happened though she didn’t quite understand it. She looked like a skeletal bird who heard something but doesn’t know from where.
Ingrid saw the eyeball hit the floor while she was still lost in her own thoughts. She saw the eye, shriveled and gray, lying on the floor. All her thoughts were erased. She snatched the eye off the floor and stuck it in her mouth.
Dulcy watched it happen with her good eye and the fresh hole, and before she could protest Ingrid had already swallowed it with a gulping sound. She had understood what had happened and she was filled with dull horror (the sisters had been past the capacity for extreme horror for some time), and mixed with it was disappointment. The truth was, she had wanted to eat it herself.
“That was mine,” she said.
“That’ll teach you to share when we find food,” said Ingrid. “You ate de fing before dat.” She swallowed a second time. She thought she would have been more troubled with the way the eyeball had felt going down her throat.
“Go suck a cock!” said Dulcy.
***
What if Ingrid had choked on it? The thought nearly sent her laughing again. She kept from doing that though, and she doubted if it would make Dulcy laugh either but there it was, that thought again. It wouldn’t be bad if Dulcy died. It might be good.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Dulcy. Ingrid hadn’t realized she had been looking at her sister for a long time.
“Nuffink. Let’s just find the ding already,” said Ingrid.
***
One time Ingrid had made Dulcy laugh until she threw up; Dulcy had always been one to go into hysterics. But why all this thought about laughter suddenly, anyway?
This wasn’t a laughing matter, none of it.
Ingrid wondered, though. They were weak, but Ingrid feared she was the weaker one. Dulcy had had more fat to burn, she was stronger but... well, Dulcy was done for.
“You say something?” said Dulcy.
Soon she would be in worse shape, reasoned Ingrid. At times Ingrid had caught Dulcy absently watching her like one does a rotisserie chicken through a window. Usually she would cry, only crying had no tears now, liquid was too precious. But she couldn’t blame her really. Ingrid had had a dream where she had actually eaten Dulcy. In the dream she cut her open and found that her insides were boiling with the tiny red worm creatures she had seen in the water.
Now she noticed that the back of Dulcy’s ragged pants was stained with something new. Not with the tint of dysentery as usual. Now it was red back there. Before she died herself Ingrid would be listening to her sister wail from renal failure. Dulcy was too far gone to care, though. Maybe that was a blessing. Maybe, Ingrid thought, she should help it along.
***
At home when they ate dinners in the grand dining room, Ingrid occasionally gave herself the secret goal of making her sister laugh until she farted. Dulcy had always had uncontrollable gas, and when it actually happened it was the perfect contrast to the proper dining room and the expensive things and the stern-faced mother. When that happened, on more than one occasion, Dulcy laughed then passed wind which made her laugh even harder. It even got the smallest crack of a smile to appear in the watertight vase of their mother’s face now and again. That had been golden.
And now Dulcy cracked up at the most mundane things, a fact that kept nagging at Ingrid. Well, usually not after just having her eyeball eaten in front of her. No, Ingrid figured, a few “yo momma” jokes might not cut the mustard after something like that. And what if she got herself started again? She was already half-sure she was going to throw up what she had eaten a minute ago.
Was that funny?
***
Dulcinea knew what was happening to her. She had stopped thinking of the thing that she shared the boxcar with as her sister. She had also more or less stopped thinking of herself as herself. She was certain about one thing: the water she had drunk had killed her. But she had come back and now she was a lesser creature. The problem was, she knew that she wasn’t human anymore, that she had been human, but not anymore. Was that supposed to be allowed? Reincarnation was a funny thing. Then as she crawled around Xanadu looking for something which she could not quite remember, she remembered again how ridiculous that was. She was a person, not an animal. Who was she?
She started to chew on her thumb when she saw Ingrid. Ingrid was her sister. She was looking at Dulcy, or more like staring at her with big eyes. So she asked her.
It was happening more and more. She got lost in her mind and when she came back to herself her head hurt along with everything else. She tried to be Dulcinea for as long as she could and not get lost again, but it was getting harder. So she tried to remember things, things about who she was—is, who she is. She found one memory clearer than the others.
It was her tenth birthday party. There had been a big bouncy thing in the big living room in their house. There was a moon bounce too, and a mechanical train that her father had brought in. All of the children from her class had been there and the children of their parents’ friends, and it had been a wonderful party. A clown was the conductor of the train. He pulled on a chain and the train whistle made a toot-toot sound. The clown also did magic. She liked coming back to this, everything was different on that train. There had been a big cake as well and cake was food...
Then the memory went bad, and she was here again, and the girl in the boxcar was saying something.
“Wha?” said Dulcy
“I shaid your ash has never looked better, shister.” Ingrid. That was her.
“Red really is your color,” she said.
Dulcy wondered what she was talking about. She wiped a hand along her backside and looked at it. Her palm had a slight pinkish tint. Dulcy’s remaining eye became wide and she looked at her sister.
“Don’t worry,” said Ingrid, “That’ll shtop. Conshider it THIN-spiration, heh, we don’t have to worry anymore about the imposhible demands to shtay beautiful in our yooff.”
Dulcy ignored the tint of red on her hand. What else could she do about it?
“Wha?” said Ingrid. “Not going to tell me to shuck cock, shuck dick even?”
“I’m just hungry,” said Dulcy. When they talked it was easier for her to stay in the now, to be herself and not get lost in the clouds.
“Me too, shishter. Hell, if der wash any men leff I would suck, for food I would. I’d be a cock-shuckin’ shooperstar.”
“Shut up,” said Dulcy. She didn’t smile because she was tired, but she would have. “You’re not funny.”
“Yesh I am,” said Ingrid. “Do you know why, huh? Know why I’d be a shooperstar, shister?”
Dulcy regarded Ing with weak nonchalance. “Why is that?” she said.
“Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk,” said Ing and she made a wet slapping sound with her toothless mouth. “Shee? No keeth in dis mouf.” And she made googly eyes at Dulcy who didn’t want to but giggled in spite of herself.
“It’s okay, shishter, I know I’m hideoush,” said Ingrid. Dulcy’s hand was over her mouth. She was crying, but she was laughing too. It’s amazing what the mind can do to itself when it’s at the end of a fork.
“Sister, we’re both hideous,” she said.
“Nuh-uh,” said Ing, “you look like Jennifer Lopez.” She couldn’t say her S’s but she could say her Z’s just fine.
Dulcy sat down on her red ass and snorted, then took a few breaths, then she said, “You look like Madonna.”
“Oh, fuck you with a cherry on top,” said Ingrid, and that sent Dulcy to giggling.
“Stop,” she said, “don’t make me laugh.”
Ingrid sidled up next to her sister, slung one boney arm around her shoulders.
Why did the chicken cross the road? she thought.
What she said was, “What I wouldn’t do for a Ho-Ho.”
At the word “Ho-Ho” the funniness got under Dulcy’s skin and she giggled harder. How slappy and stupid. She couldn’t stop the place, inside, that jumps when you laugh, the involuntary flexing of the stomach muscles, her own of which where like bundles of wires. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to laugh, she was hungry and sick, but mostly hungry, she was... “I’m STARVING!” she managed and she though this breakthrough would slow her down, but it didn’t. Then Ing got in close and just as loud and in a humorous voice she said, “WE’RE GONNA DIE! And me bein’ a virgin, too!”
It was too much. Dulcy was rolling now, not truly laughing, not out of joy or amusement, it was like the manual break had come off of a steam train and now it was rolling and there was nothing there to stop her. She snorted. She went down on one side and she started to crawl away, a pain had started in the side of her head and another was reaching like a sharp branch down her side. But she couldn’t stop. Oh God, she could not stop. She snorted again. That bitch, she thought, that funny bitch is killing me.
Her vision was going white. She fell down and her face was against the floor.
Behind her she vaguely heard Ingrid say, “I’m so sorry.” And she felt her sister’s bony fingers wrap around her throat and squeeze. The white was taking all of her vision now. She wanted to fight but she could do nothing, only watch as the white turned slowly to black. Just before it did she got a twinkle of something metal. Something just by her head.
***
Ingrid sat looking at the motionless, thin frame of her sister lying on the floor. The same words kept repeating in her mind over and over, and behind it two different answers. How could I?
She was sick.
How could I?
Because you’re damned.
How could I?
She was suffering.
She found that she watched the body for a long time. She was reluctant to look away.
Was she dead?
How could I?
***
Ingrid became concerned that it might not have worked. Was her sister dead? She looked dead, but Ingrid’s senses couldn’t always be trusted. She figured she had better make sure.
She went close to her sister’s face, which was mostly flat against the floor. There was nothing left. No breath, no movement. Still, Ingrid poked Dulcy’s sunken-in cheek with her finger. Nothing. Then, just to be sure, she stuck the tip of her finger into the empty eye socket. She worked her finger part of the way in. That would definitely raise her, she thought. But it didn’t.
The inside of the eye socket felt like warm mud and when she brought her finger back out the tip was covered with a brownish liquid. Ingrid shuddered; something she didn’t think she could do, but she did. She wiped the finger on her ragged shirt.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and there wasn’t a hint of the “sh” sound in her words. Dulcy was in a better place now. She knew that. Looking down at her dead sister she knew that, and she wished for a long moment that it was her down there. Released. That time was probably not too far off, though.
But I can eat.
She would, if she could get the can opened. She wasn’t surprised to find that she still had an appetite after killing her sister, disappointed perhaps, but not surprised. The body has an imperative.
The can still sat upright in the center of the boxcar like a silent witness. It seemed like there was a spotlight shining down on it from above. She looked much faster now for the can opener. But she heard a sound from outside and it made her stop.
***
The noise sounded like it had come from a distance. A decayed tree finally giving up the ghost, thought Ingrid, but then there was another, similar but in a different place, still a bit far off. After a long time inside, everything out of the boxcar had seemed to stop existing so the noise got her attention briefly away from the can of beans.
Another sound, lighter, closely following the last. Ingrid waited. When she didn’t hear anything, she went to the door of the boxcar, slightly opened it and looked outside.
Through the door she saw nothing at first. Then she saw what looked like an oil drum being pushed to the side. The wind maybe? It tilted as if to fall over and then relaxed back into place. After it was righted a form showed above it. She thought she could make out a light...
“Looking for something?” a voice said.
She didn’t know where the voice had come from but it was clear. There was someone out there, someone with a light.
Then the voice came again.
“Behind you, bitch,” it said.
Ingrid spun around, her bony ass made a thumping noise against the floor of the car. Dulcy was standing up, her skeleton legs supporting the rest of her. She was looking down at Ingrid and there was something in her hand. Something with a wooden handle.
“God news, sister.” She was a ghost. The ghost was using a fake falsetto voice. “I found the fucking can opener,” it said. “Isn’t that just fucking corking news?”
Ingrid couldn’t believe her eyes. Dulcy was dead. She had made sure.
“Y-y-you’re dead now,” she said. Dulcy’s empty eye socket, dripping with that brown liquid, gaped vacuously next to the the other eye. That eye had a light of its own, a glaring hate, mixed with what looked like insane triumph.
“I’m not dead,” she said, “not yet.”
Ingrid remembered the light and the noise. This was crazy; there were people outside, actual people. She momentarily let herself forget that she had killed her sister. She was interrupted.
“While I was down there I thought up a few jokes of my own,” said Dulcy, “I’ll tell you one. Knock-knock.”
Ingrid’s eyes were large. “There are pe—”
�
��Knock-knock, I said.”
Ingrid said, “Who’s there?” and Dulcy jammed the sharp end of the can opener into her throat.
Ingrid grabbed onto her wrist. She sputtered and gurgled, grabbing at the wiry hands. Dulcy yanked the opener out of her throat and then stabbed it into Ingrid’s stomach. Ingrid fell to the floor, her face turning gray, blood running from her mouth and her nose. Dulcy stabbed her two more times but Ingrid was already dead.
The adrenaline fading quickly, she dropped the bloody can opener to the floor and laid down. She had woken up more herself than she had been for some time, but that might not last. She started thinking about the memory. The birthday party The big mechanical train with its clown conductor, the one who knew magic.
Such magic did that clown know. So many weird things she had seen on this mechanical train. She must still be there, she could always stay here, riding on this magic train. Until her impossible sister ruined the cake. That huge, glorious cake that was for her, for her birthday.
Everyone was dressed like princesses for the party, so pretty. Then awful Ingrid got mad because she couldn’t take two pony rides. She had thrown a fit and pulled on the table cloth, knocking the cake over and it collapsed on the floor, a wreckage of blue and white and pink frosting. Uncle Hal had slipped in the icing on the floor.
She came away from the memory when she heard a sound. It was a rusty squealing noise and it filed the air inside the boxcar. Dulcy opened her eyes and looked towards the sound. It was the clown conductor from her dream. He had opened the steel sliding door, the rusty one. The clown wore his clown conductor suit and a gas mask.
Arcane II Page 30