Luminous

by Dawn Metcalf

  “Look away,” V said, which made no sense until he flicked on a light. The cigarette lighter sparked like a flashbulb in the dark. It took a while for the winks of red and white to resolve into his profile, blackness underlining his eyes, nose, and lower lip. He held the little finger of flame high. “You okay?”

  She placed her palms flat against his chest, taking comfort in his solidity. “I’ve been better,” she admitted. “Is he gone?”

  V reached out to touch the walls. Consuela splayed her fingers, but pulled back when the blackness gave sickeningly under her hand. Only the space underfoot felt solid. They pressed against each other.

  “He’s gone crazy,” V muttered.

  Consuela only shook her head. Tender wasn’t crazy, not here; he was sane—which had to be worse when he’d been trapped for this long. Trapped with no way out.

  “He wants it to end,” Consuela said. “He wants to be the one to do it and take everyone down with him.” They were just ants, crawling, broken, and scrambling under his boot. She felt the awesome pressure of enclosure, the venom of claustrophobia seeping into her veins. It trembled on her nonexistent tongue. It was at that moment that she knew that Tender had written the poem.

  “Never ending,” she gagged. “It’s his hell.” I can’t breathe!

  “Don’t panic,” V said sternly, the flip side of calm. “We’re going to get out of this. We will. Trust me. Listen to the sound of my voice, all right? Think about something else.” His last words choked out of him as he fumbled in the darkness. “Talk to me,” V said over his shoulder. “You make skins, right? Tell me how it works.”

  “I don’t know,” Consuela croaked, fingers clawing at her missing trachea. “If I think about it too much, it doesn’t work.” She kept talking past the yammering panic, swallowing reflexively. “I just . . . do it. It’s the same when I undo it.”

  V kept her talking, feeling the spongy walls for any chink, waving the lighter like a lantern above their heads.

  “Undo it?” he prompted. “How?”

  She shuddered against the suffocating fear and began following V’s methodic prodding, grateful for something to do as she spoke. “I can change the skin back into its parts. The water is just water, the air disappears. My feather skin became a big pile of black fluff.”

  V reached above his head as high as he could, fingers extended, touching nothing.

  “What did you do with it?” he said as he strained.

  Consuela shook her head. She couldn’t find escape anywhere! Was this how Tender felt all the time? Was that what he was trying to teach them? Or would he really . . . ? Yes, he would. I saw him with that bloody sword.

  “I threw it out the window,” she said.

  “Really?” V said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. Consuela wasn’t sure why she’d done any of the things she’d been doing of late. Any time she stopped and thought about it, she ended up in tears. Better not to stop and think, just do it. Action. It had saved Rodriguez and the guy in the building, the drunken woman in a field, and a drowning boy. When she thought about herself and how helpless she felt, how much she missed home, she turned into a useless heap. It struck her that this was always when she’d hear V’s violin-voice singing her name. The one that now called her “angel” in secret. Angel Bones. It sounded very ominous now. Macabre. Hopeless. But she couldn’t give up. Consuela kept searching.

  V knelt on the floor and ran his hands over their feet, where shoes and bones touched blackness, pushing his hand, then his fist, hard against the Flow.

  “Anything?” she asked. He shook his head. She ran a hand over her skull. “Shine the light here.” V moved the lighter obediently toward her in case she’d seen something new. Instead, she pointed to herself.

  “Can you see yourself in this?” Consuela indicated the smooth plate of her skull, knowing that the abalone shimmer was dull, muted with color and light.

  “No.” said V. “It’s too . . . //Hypnotic/Beautiful/ Deep // . . . milky.”

  They were both uncomfortably silent.

  “I don’t have eyes to look into,” she said, almost chuckling, but afraid to let the laughter bubble out. “But there’s blood,” she said, suddenly serious.

  “Blood? What blood?” V demanded.

  “When you’d gone—I saw myself in a drop of blood,” Consuela said, remembering the scissors, which might have torn her to ribbons, but instead had puffed into smoke. Tender had meant them for V. This trap was meant for the both of them. “I’m okay. It was when I’d cut my finger on the glass. There was a spot of blood on the floor and I could see my reflection. I thought you could see me.”

  “I didn’t look,” he admitted. “I didn’t think about that. Liquid.”

  “While it’s wet, it can reflect. But I can’t bleed,” Consuela said slowly. “You can.”

  “I can,” he said. “But I can’t take you with me. Moving through reflections isn’t like moving through mirrors—it’s a tight squeeze. I barely got through the last time and I was alone.” V sighed. “I might be able to get out that way, but what about you?”

  “I’ll get out,” she said bravely.

  “How?” V pressed.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Somehow.”

  V shook his head. “Not good enough.”

  “V . . .”

  “No.” He said it one step shy of “please.”

  He took a step closer. “I’m supposed to protect you,” he said. “That doesn’t end now.”

  Consuela met his eyes, saying something she’d dared to wonder about.

  “Was I supposed to die in that changing room?” V said nothing. “I don’t think so,” she added carefully. “I think that I’m supposed to be here.”

  “I don’t know,” he confessed.

  “You were compelled to save me, and you did. I’m here. Now.” Consuela said it and her thoughts tumbled into order. “And I can save you.”

  The world snapped open.

  The world snapped shut.

  I’m here to save you. Save us. Save the Flow. She felt it like it was one of her skins, sure and solid. But how?

  “I can make it out through the reflection, all right?” he said. “But I’m not going unless I know that you can, too. Make a skin and get out first.” She shook her head. Her denial of the possibility seemed to feed his conviction. “Use anything,” V insisted. “Use the lighter. My shirt. The dark . . .”

  “I can’t. It has to be something . . . organic.” She struggled to put it into words. “I don’t think there’s anything I can use, because it’s not real. Really real.”

  Shadows wavered and flickered like laughter in the silence.

  “The fire is real,” V said quietly.

  “I already have a skin of fire back in my room,” Consuela said. “I don’t think I can make another one; it feels already done.” It was a feeling she trusted, but it left her helpless. “I don’t know what else I could use.”

  One-handed, V began patting his pockets, checking his clothes for something—anything—while his other hand held up the feeble flicker of light. He stopped suddenly with his hand flat against his chest.

  “Use me.”

  “What?” said Consuela.

  “That’s it,” V whispered. “Use me. Make a skin of me.”

  // I can save you. //

  “No.” She hissed back, “That’s not possible.”

  “You said something organic, something real.”

  “Not a person!” she said, when she meant to say, “Not you!” The idea made her sick.

  V shook his head. “You’re not listening to yourself,” he said. “You can make a skin of anything organic, anything real. I’m both.” He hushed her next protest with a chopping wave. “No! Listen, if it works, you can get out of here using me—my powers, right? My skin. You can get us through a reflection. You won’t need a mirror.”

  Consuela kept shaking her head, unable to express her horror without her eyes.
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  “I won’t do it,” she muttered. “I can’t.”

  V shook off her words. “You can and you will. We have to get out, tell the others, and stop him.”

  “What if there aren’t any others?” she shot back.

  “Then you will have to stop him.”

  Consuela tasted fresh panic. “I can’t . . .”

  “Stop it!” V spat. “You can. This will work.”

  He was right, it could. It should.

  “What if I can’t turn you back?” she said.

  “This will work!” V insisted. “Like reflecting in your eyes, right?” He touched one hand to her jawbone, lifting her skull upward. He spoke directly into her faceless face. “You thought outside the lines before. You showed me it could work. Believe it. Believe me.” V touched his eye. “Just a reflection,” he said, and touched his chest. “Just organic. You understand? Consuela: This. Will. Work.”

  She didn’t trust her voice. Her mind spun with the idea of a thousand feathers loose on her bed. What if a person just turned into . . . parts? V?

  “I can save you,” V said quietly. “Let me save you.”

  // This is what I’m here for/Consuela/Angel/Bones //

  // I can save you. //

  // Let me save you. //

  She shook her head against the montage of grisly doubts in her mind.

  “No. Not just you, not just me—it has to save us both,” she said, projecting a certainty she didn’t feel. She touched his arm, speaking quickly. “All right. Tell me how it works, what to look for in there”—the Mirror Realm—“and I’ll get us out.”

  V was suddenly taken aback. Her hand on his flesh, he realized the ramifications of what he’d been asking, begging, her to do.

  “Keep your . . . my eyes open,” he said carefully. “See the black door and walk through it without moving your feet. Like through the Flow: with intention. When you’re in, look for the Vs drawn in the top right-hand corners. Those are the mirrors I’ve used. The tall one with the condensation is yours. It’ll most likely be on your left, but you never know. Don’t wander through any strange mirrors. Always aim for the one you know.”

  She nodded. He did, too. A sort of understanding passed between them, leaving an awkward acceptance behind.

  “Give me your hand.” The way V said it, she had to obey, the way she had since first coming to the Flow. She saw his hand on hers and wildflowers and Christmas lights and a half-remembered kiss. Consuela offered her hand, forcing herself to watch his every movement, trying not to think too much about what was happening or what might come next.

  He rolled up his sleeve and turned his arm over. Taking her slim finger bones in his grip, he pressed the talon ends to his skin and resolutely pressed down. Both gasped as her fingertips pierced the skin, blood welling up in little vampire pools, a tiny spray of red flung almost to his wrist. He let his arm fall and fisted his grip, pumping blood down his forearm, massaging out a thin pool drop by drop. Thankfully, it didn’t soak into the Flow. V grunted against the pain and sweat speckled his face.

  // I hate pain. //

  They knelt over the growing red splash. The lighter in his hand shook slightly, setting the shadows dancing. When the patch of blood spread as wide as his palm, V placed the lighter to one side, snapping its lever down with a rubber band wound around its middle. V pressed his hand over the wounds and wound his sleeve around them, glancing at the lighter, then at her.

  “I can see the outline of your body,” he said. // Naked in the firelight. //

  Consuela was glad the bones would not betray her blush or her fear. She hoped, though, that perhaps V might see her smile.

  Her lips were ghosted shadow and half-reflected light.

  The Flow snapped open.

  The Flow snapped shut.

  Together, they entered the impossible.

  V gently picked up her hand and placed it lightly in his own. He spread his fingers and threaded them through hers—finger-flesh, finger-bone, finger-flesh, finger-bone—like piano keys and living things. V lifted their joined hands up to his eyes, trailing their forearms together. It looked as if he waltzed with death.

  He held their hands up so that she could see.

  “You can do this,” he said. “I trust you.”

  Entranced, Consuela said nothing, but turned her hand within his—still touching—and walked around his body, keeping close and quiet. She tried to think of him like the air, like the water and the flame, like the feathers and butterflies, but his smell brought her back to how very alive he was.

  He was human—he was V—how could she make him into a skin? What would I be taking? Can I accept what he’s offering? Will I be able to give it back when it’s done? The questions tumbled in her mind and fed a secret, shameful place that delighted in the awesome power she would have over him if it worked; and the terribly awesome power she’d have—sanctioned murder—if it didn’t.

  Consuela circled closer, trying to help them get used to each other: a breath away from touching, casually creasing clothes, the kiss of skin on bone. She hovered like a moth flying closer to the flame. But she was the fire coming to consume him, and V, the moth, was letting her happen.

  Irresistible, she thought.

  // Please, // he thrummed. // Do it. //

  Stepping slowly behind him, she dragged her skull against his shoulder, tracing her way to his back, following the curve of his ribs as a guide. His breathing was a forced-down gasping, trying to maintain control in a moment tense with permission, unconditional, unknown, and closer to worship than fear.

  V closed his eyes, his head lolled forward. His hair hung down. His black lashes cast long shadows, just touching his cheek.

  “I trust you,” he said, perhaps more to himself than to her.

  // Do it. // Now. //

  “Relax,” Consuela coaxed. “Let me in.”

  Consuela lifted her right hand under the weight of his palm, flexing her fingers to match each of his, spreading them wide like a puppeteer. She bent both of them at the wrist and pushed her hand upward into his.

  He gasped, but she did not retreat.

  She rested her head against his shoulder and felt the charged anticipation there. Curiosity, electricity, pain. She tasted it in the air.

  “Relax,” she said, and placed her left hand against his shoulder blade, a giant albino spider against his shirt. Consuela touched its surface in a clinical way, then pushed her fingers into his back, caressing the inside/underside of his arm, sliding into his left hand like a glove.

  V’s head whipped back and he groaned once into the dark. He squeezed his eyes against the sensation and she bowed her head reverently as she entered his spine. She felt his body push and part like heavy curtains against her face, and she walked in—warm and welcome—stepping through his calf muscle into the boot of his foot. First one, and then the other, before she opened him fully as skin.

  She was surprised to hear an echo of his consciousness as his head covered hers, alive, entombed, a human skin; it was his last gasp of letting go.

  “Be in me.” It rang inside her, his voice instead of his usual, unusual violin song. It touched her that in that last second, he trusted her to the end.

  Consuela stepped into his body, letting it zip closed behind her.

  She looked up and out.

  Her eyes saw from behind his eyes, like his irises were soft contacts over her own; her nose could smell beneath his nose, and she swallowed, scratching her throat along his Adam’s apple. V was still there, spread thinly all over her. He was still alive, but she was the one living him.

  She placed his hand upon her chest and wondered whose heartbeat she felt there.

  Consuela turned slowly in place. She could feel the larger, callused feet, the odd weight between her legs, the itch of stubble on her face . . . It was a wholly unfamiliar feeling, moving in the suit of him, but she couldn’t wonder about it any longer. She/he/they had to go.

  She lowered herself gently, n
ot yet trusting her borrowed body. Consuela spread her wide hand over the surface of the blood. She could imagine her bones resting on his hand, now in his hand—together they would get through this. She felt their confidence in each other. These hands, entwined, enmeshed, would see it done.

  She flexed her fingers and picked up the lighter, feeling the cool kiss of metal, and smelled the tiny tang of fuel. So human . . . V felt so alive, so virile and vulnerable, it humbled her to be inside him. Yet part of her loved it, lusted for it, craved the complete invasion of another’s soul—not soul, she reminded herself, just his body. His body. Not mine. She fumbled for the lighter. Knocked it over. It went out. Plunged into darkness and an unfamiliar body, Consuela yelped and hoped that V couldn’t hear her panicked thoughts in his head.

  It took four tries before she sparked the lighter back to life. Fingers shaking, she held its single flame over the thin pool of blood. She felt the raw sting in his arm where the punctures still bled, but she pushed the pain aside and lowered his face to the floor. She waved the lighter back and forth, trying to catch both his eye and the blood in the weak, gold light. Finally, she saw it: the tiny curve of his iris—a bit of the corner, framed in dark lashes, and a hint of his cheek. She saw the opening in his pupil, felt a tug—it was enough.

  Smirking a little, she pushed forward. Even with the vertigo of sight and sound, she was inhumanly proud. Tender could not have expected this.

  teNDeR stared down into the pit wondering, watching, what they would do. Which one would go while the other remained? Who would be his sacrifice? Who would try to confront him later when he’d all but won?

  He couldn’t hear them, but he liked to watch. He gloated at their vain searching. He reveled in their argument. He could almost taste their shadowy pain. He was surprised when V pierced his arm, feeling every bit the Peeping Tom at their intimacy thereafter. It excited him more than he wanted to admit, desire pressing warmly against the inside of his skin. Tender touched the edge of his own arm as she cut and caressed his own chest, imagining the kiss of pain as she entered V’s back.