by Andra Brynn
“No, you’re probably right and it’s a stupid idea.”
“I didn’t say that.”
He shrugs. “It’s not a big deal. We’ll just wander around outside. You want to come with? You could invite Daniel.”
“Yeah,” I say, but my lips are numb and the very idea drags me down, leaving my heart aching.
“Are you okay? I mean, really?” Jibril is now frowning at me, clearly concerned.
I hope an asteroid hits me and blows me off the face of this planet.
“I’m fine,” I say.
He looks at me for a long moment. “Okay,” he says.
I close my eyes again and he wanders off.
I don’t sleep. Instead I let the sounds of the house ebb and flow around me, rushing over my head like water, and I listen to people argue, or laugh, tell jokes, discuss the rest of the day, what they’re doing this weekend, if they have time to shoot each other with Nerf darts before dinner. The sounds of lives well-lived, with friends and things to look forward to.
I let it all flow around me and keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to engage. I just want to listen and pretend that I am dead and everything is okay.
Tanya comes in. “Hey, losers,” she says to the room. “What are we doing for dinner?”
“Dunno,” someone else says, and then she notices me on the couch. I can tell because she goes quiet, and the next thing that happens is she hits me with a pillow.
“Wake up!” she says. “Time enough to sleep when you’re dead!”
I am dead. I open my eyes. “I wasn’t asleep,” I say.
“Then you should have an idea of what we should do for dinner.”
I think. “Drink until our hearts stop?”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re useless.”
“I know.”
With a huff she hits me with the pillow again. “Well, stop. Help me think of somewhere to go.”
“I’m not hungry,” I say, and I’m not. I can’t remember the last time I wanted something to eat. I dutifully shove a few morsels in my mouth every now and then, but my appetite has abandoned me.
“What about sushi? Will sushi tempt you?”
I shrug.
“Okay,” she says. “You aren’t actively opposed to sushi, and that’s good enough for me!” And she skips off, asking everyone if they want to have sushi tonight.
I get up and grab my bag. I should at least put my things in my room. I should try to act normal.
I climb the stairs. They groan like always, but instead of comforting me they make my heart clench harder. When I reach my room, I just want to climb into bed and go to sleep for days.
I dump my bag and shuck off my coat, putting it on my chair. Then I look around the room, feeling lost.
What now?
I know this feeling. It’s a familiar one. The feeling of knowing that everything has changed, and you have to keep going, but you don’t know what to do.
My eyes drift over to my closet, covered with a curtain. Tanya’s mother made those curtains for us the second week of the semester. “To make your room neater,” she said. I wander over and pull the curtain aside.
The box of wine stares back at me. The whiskey in my shoes pokes out. There’s beer in one of the drawers.
And I know I shouldn’t, but it doesn’t seem like it will do any harm right now. I mean, I’ve passed my midterms, right? I don’t need it, of course. But it will help.
Because people do die from pain. The trauma is too great, and they shut down. That’s why you have to get anesthetized during surgery. Too much pain will kill you.
But I know a way to make it all go away, even if only for a little while.
I crouch down and pull the bottle of whiskey out of my shoes. It will taste terrible, I know. Daniel would be disappointed. But Daniel isn’t here, and that’s my fault, and that’s why I’m going to put it in my mouth and drink it.
I unscrew the cap, put it to my lips.
I hope I drink myself to death, I think.
Then I pause.
That’s too close, I think. Too close to dying like an asshole.
And who would blame themselves, after I am gone? No more pain for me, but I know as well as anyone that suicide is contagious. Experience it, and ever after you think, when things are just a little too much, just a little too heavy to bear, you think: There’s always suicide, I suppose.
Die of the disease, give it to someone else.
I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
I swallow hard, put the cap back on the bottle, and stand up. Then I close the curtain and move to my desk.
For a moment I look at myself in the little vanity mirror on my bookshelf, and I think that maybe I should put some more makeup on, or something. Anything so I don’t look so much like a corpse.
I put eyeliner on, and concealer. I cover up, until I don’t quite look like myself anymore. Almost as good as alcohol.
My heart numbs. I’ll be okay for another few hours, won’t do anything drastic. No need to panic. No need to cry.
Someone knocks on the door downstairs.
I think nothing of it. The door is always opening and closing, rattling our walls. Being directly above the foyer, we’ve grown used to it. I smooth my hair down and walk to the door with every intention of answering the summons, but then someone beats me to it.
The door opens.
“Oh, hey, Daniel,” Tanya says. “Come in.”
My heart freezes and I am stuck in place, one foot in my room, one foot out the door. What is he doing here?
“No, no thanks,” Daniel says, and his voice is cool and detached, as though he doesn’t care at all. “I just came by to drop these prints off. Bianca wanted me to make some for her, so I did. Can you give them to her?”
There is a silence.
“Wait,” Tanya says. “Who?”
There’s a pause. “Bianca,” I hear him say.
I have to get out of here.
“Who?” Tanya says again.
“Your roommate?” he says as though she’s an idiot.
“Oh,” Tanya says. Then, “Oh. You mean Annie.”
.0.
Terror is a strange thing. Once you’ve felt it, it is forever anchored to that first moment when it filled you. You remember it. Everyone has a moment like that, unless they are very lucky.
I remember my first terror.
I think, sometimes, that there is a piece of me trapped in that moment. She’s always there, mindless with fear, running from room to room, her hands empty, empty. She always thinks she should be holding something, doing something. The emergency operator said to go outside, to wait for the ambulance, but she’s in the office at the back of the house, and she can’t find her way out. The world has tipped on its side, become a maze, a labyrinth. She’s trapped.
We’re still connected, me and her, so sometimes I am her again. In moments of great fear, I run, but I don’t know where to go, because nowhere is the place where it hasn’t happened yet. And sometimes I think she switches places with me, and that’s why I find myself in places without knowing how I got there, and no memory of the last minute, and I’m lost because it’s the wrong house anyway. I turn the wrong way, lose time, lose direction. We must have swapped over for a moment, her and I. A little do-si-do in time.
That’s a ghost, too, I think. When I’m dead and gone, there will be that piece of me left behind, forever running, forever mindless, forever mute, caught in that moment, over and over and over.
.19.
Tanya is still talking. “Bianca’s her first name. She goes by her middle name. Did she tell you to call her Bianca?”
There’s a fire escape outside of Lana’s room, I think.
My hands are empty. I should be doing something. Anything. Anything but be trapped here, locked into a future as indelible as the past.
I turn back to my desk. I grab my keys, throw on my coat, and dart out the door. I hear Daniel repeat my name, and I hear the shock in his voi
ce.
“Annie?” he says. And, “Then where’s Annie?” And then, with realization and horror, “Where’s Annie?”
He knows.
I run down the hall and knock on Lana’s door, but there’s no answer. I try the knob and it opens.
I slip through her room, past the mega-bed, past her huge set-up of her computer and a keyboard, and to the window. It groans in protest as I open it, and the cold comes in. We’ve only just banished it and I have to let it in again. I whisper an apology to her and climb out the window, closing it as much as I can behind me, but it will be freezing by the time she gets back.
The old rickety fire escape clangs under my feet and fear spurs my heart up into my throat. Don’t hear me, I think. Don’t see me.
The fear makes the world sway around me, but I cling to the railing of the fire escape as I stumble and descend the steps, keeping myself from falling more than once with a grip of death on the metal, so cold it numbs my hands.
I reach the bottom and run to the back lot where my car is parked. Snow is still piled around it, but I scramble inside and turn it on and it starts. The wheels spin, but then catch and move, and I’m backing out. The dark is falling, so I turn on the headlights. The radio is loud—it’s always loud—but I see, from the corner of my eye, someone running toward me.
I can’t help it. I look.
Daniel. He’s wearing a pea coat and a scarf, looking so adorable I want to stop and get out and throw myself into his arms.
But I can’t. Instead I throw the car into gear, peel out of the parking lot, and drive away.
I don’t know where I’m going. The future is behind me. But I can see the past clearly, and I will walk backwards as long as it takes to get away.
I drive.
I don’t care where I drive to, only that it is away. The landscape whizzes past, and I am numb, inside and out, not thinking, not feeling...but after a while I’m not shocked to find myself in Nompton, drifting through the streets, like a ghost returning to the place she knew best when she was alive.
I hate myself. I’m such a coward. My hands are shaking on the steering wheel, and my feet are trembling on the pedals. I know there’s nowhere for me to go but back home, but right now I can’t. I have to be alone. Truly alone.
The old church.
The thought floats through my mind. Perhaps put there by Jibril, or by our quick drive-by last weekend, but as soon as it presents itself I know there is nowhere else I should go. Nowhere else that would be right to go.
I turn through the streets, trying to remember where exactly it sat.
I stumble upon it almost by accident. The sun is going down, but the power is back and the clouds are clearing away for once, so it’s easy to see the ramshackle building squatting behind its chain link fence. I park my car and get out.
Slowly, I walk the perimeter. The air is cold, but the wind is slight, and it’s easy to find the spot to slip through the fence. It’s been left behind by others, and I forge my way through the dead weeds to its side.
It’s much bigger up close, and more solid looking. A true prairie church, with small thin windows—now broken and half boarded-up—and a stout bell tower. I wonder if what Jibril said was true—if there’s a way into the church through the floor. Then again, I wonder why the door would be locked after all these years.
I complete my circuit of the church. There is a door in the front, beneath the bell tower, and a door in the back, where the altar must be. I pull around to the front and look at the wooden steps leading up to the front door. They were painted gray once upon a time, and they look solid enough.
I put a foot out and test them. They groan and creak, but they don’t crack. Slowly I transfer my weight. The steps hold.
I climb them, one at a time, testing them with each step, and when I hit the top I realize my heart is pounding halfway out of my chest. Reaching out, my bare fingers close around the metal handle of the door, and I give it a pull.
It opens.
Shock rocks through me. I hadn’t expected it to open. But then I think, Of course it opened.
This is fate.
I step inside.
The bell tower section is first, just a little entrance. The floor creaks under my feet, but it holds. The doors to the sanctuary are old and solid and decorated with simple carvings, just little swirls and curlicues. No scenes of hell and carnage, no flood, no biblical tableaus. I try the sanctuary doors, and they open even more easily than the front. I step into the sanctuary.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim interior. Dust is everywhere, as are broken timbers and broken lights. The windows are boarded up from the inside, but only halfway up, leaving the top of each window exposed so the wind can howl and whistle through them. Just like every other dead building, there are dry leaves everywhere, and the furniture of the old building, though solid, is sad and raggedy. The pews were lovely once, and in the back is a gorgeous old altar, ringed by a low railing. It looks nothing like the churches my mother took me to, after our world shattered. The church of demons was just a little square room, and the churches afterwards were sterile and new, without soul.
But this...this had been a beautiful place, once upon a time. Now it is dying. I love it more than any other place in the world right now. I want to clean it out and let it decay with dignity.
Maybe I will. Maybe I will come back one sunny Sunday morning and fix the old place up. A flight of fancy, but one that makes me feel better, one that has nothing to do with my current reality.
My current reality is that I want to go somewhere to hide, and never come out again.
I move back into the bell tower.
There is a small, narrow door in the wall of the bell tower, and I suspect it houses stairs. The bell pull is still there, but though there are holes as big as my hand in the low ceiling I can’t see up there. It is too dark.
I try the door, and to my surprise, this one is locked, but the wood of the wall has rotted away and with a few kicks and a mighty heave I manage to open it.
I was right, there are stairs, and they are the tiniest, narrowest stairs I have ever seen.
Do I dare? I wonder. Small structures tend to be far more stable than large structures...
So yes. I dare.
I brace myself on the splintering wood wall and put my weight on the step in front of me. It creaks, but holds quite well, far better than the steps out front. Encouraged, I put my hands out and find the wall on the inside of the stairs, and then I begin to climb.
The stairs are so narrow that I almost feel as though I am suffocating in the walls. The dust is poisonous in my lungs and eyes, and I pause more than once to cough until I retch. But I keep going. The tiny stairwell carries me around, over the door to the sanctuary, and then over the entrance, and still up and up and up until I finally reach the top.
A huge hole in the roof, not visible from outside, lets light in. The fading light of the sun. The growing light of the moon. A lone bell hangs in the rafters, its long rotted rope disappearing down into the darkness below. The floor is square, with a square hole cut out of the middle for the bell to hang in and the rope to move freely. The whole space is maybe four feet tall—far too short to stand in.
The bell shines dully in the fading light.
Hardly daring to breathe, I test my weight on the little floor and it holds. I crouch down, keeping my head away from the rafters that no doubt have sharp edges and splinters and tetanus, and crawl on my hands and knees across the little floor.
Slowly. Slowly.
It groans under me. But it holds.
I crawl over to the hole in the roof. Rearing up carefully, I peer out.
Forest extends beyond the church. Forest and plains. Old open prairie. Tilled land. Dense woods. It all gleams silver and pale in the twilight.
This is a beautiful world, I think to myself, and I am glad I am in it.
And I am.
Beneath me, one of the boards gives a tiny crack.
My heart leaps into my throat. Taking care to distribute my weight equally, I sit down and lean gingerly against one of the heavy tower supports. It bears me up, and I close my eyes, breathing in and out and wondering if I can still achieve Buddhist enlightenment in the remains of a Christian church. Surely every place is just as holy as another?
I listen to the sound of crows, the sound of the wind in the branches of the trees, the sound of the old building settling, slouching back into the earth.
I let the world pass by.
When I hear Daniel’s car, I wonder if one can achieve enlightenment on a deadline.
He calls my name.
I don’t answer.
Go away, I think. Go be happy somewhere without me.
The chain link fence jangles as he finds his way through it. After a moment his footsteps creak up the front stairs. The door opens and he is inside the building, just below me.
I can practically hear him thinking, figuring out where I am, and when the stairs of the bell tower creak I know there’s no escaping, no hiding now. I could leap out the hole above me, but the roof would never take my weight. It’s borne the brunt of the elements for God knows how long, and I don’t trust it. I have no choice but to await my destined meeting.
The bell tower groans, and his footsteps come closer, and closer, and closer.
I let my eyes crack open, just as Daniel’s head appears above the little bell tower floor. He looks about. Spots me.
For a long moment we are both quiet.
“Annie,” he says at last.
But that isn’t right. “My name is Bianca,” I tell him.
He inhales, sharp, unsure. “I know,” he says. “Are you all right?”
Why does everyone always ask me that?
“I’m fine,” I say. Why wouldn’t I be fine? Everything is fine.
“Okay,” he says, but it is clear he doesn’t believe me. “If you’re all right, why are you hiding in a bell tower that could collapse at any moment?”
“To get away,” I say, and that, at least, is true.
“Bianca...”
“It’s fine.”