Sip

by Brian Allen Carr

  It was silent a minute and then Mira came in. “Hungry?” she asked Bale.

  “Starving.”

  Mira moved toward the kitchen, spoke over her shoulder at him. “We got eggs. I can fry some up.”

  “Eggs?”

  “Yeah. Chicken eggs. You like ’em?”

  “Never had ’em.”

  “Wait,” said Murk. “What do y’all eat back there?”

  “Rations. Until the crops come in. We’ve got stuff planted, but I don’t know what. We’ve all got jobs and mine’s not farming.”

  “Rations?”

  “It’s like,” Bale said, touching his little shirt, his shorts. “I don’t know what to compare it to. It’s food.”

  “What’s it made of?” Mira asked.

  “Dunno.”

  “Is it vegetables? Grain?” said Murk.

  Bale felt stupid. “Guess I never really asked.”

  “I’ll make eggs,” said Mira. “And we got milk.”

  “Milk? Like for babies?”

  “Yeah,” said Murk. “Like for babies. You’re gonna suck on Mira’s titties.”

  “Shut up, Murk,” Mira said. Then, “From goats.”

  “Goats make milk?”

  “The brown ones make chocolate milk,” said Murk, laughing, his leg clutched tight in his hands. His eyes sloe—like deep holes in his head.

  “Shut the fuck up,” said Mira. “C’mon.” She led Bale to the table in the kitchen.

  To anyone familiar with one, the egg is a mundane thing, but, if foreign to you, the thing is a miracle. It exists in its own packaging—viscous when raw, solid when cooked. Bale watched Mira crack three into a bowl, and he wasn’t sure if the things were alive before their brown shells were broken. He thought, perhaps, their casings were exoskeletons and what landed in the bowl were organs or innards. A terrible student while in the dome, he’d a vague recollection of what these things were, but, as he watched, he confused them in some way with caterpillars, thinking, as Mira cooked, that what she’d done with the egg was to extract an animal from its chrysalis, disturbing the cycle wherein the goop of the egg was to morph into the bird it would be. But he didn’t dwell on these thoughts long.

  Mira dropped a pat of butter into the pan on the stove, and the smell of it caramelizing radiated through the kitchen, made Bale’s stomach ache in a way it never had. Until then, everything he’d eaten was of some secretive manufacture, a kind of paste the color of tree bark that tasted consistently of nothing but nutrition—a food made from a formula rather than a recipe.

  Mira handed him a glass of goat’s milk—a new mystery. He took a small sip from the glass, then gulped away. It was wholesomely perverted. It was shamefully gratifying.

  Bale listened then as Mira poured the whisked eggs into the pan, heard them hiss as they hit, and watched Mira work them with a wooden spoon briefly before leaving her spot at the stove—watched her lean form, her hips. She set a plate and fork in front of Bale. Smiled so soft at him Bale thought he might giggle. Her eyes seemed to know things. Some brief silences have a thousand years inside them. She stepped away, an energy retreating with her, came back a moment later with the pan of eggs in her hand. She scraped them onto the plate.

  “Eat up,” Mira said. Then, noticing a kind of shock in Bale, said, “Something wrong?”

  Bale shook his head. “No. Just didn’t think they’d be this color.”

  Murk and Bale

  Talk Shadows

  That next morning, Mira’s mother woke screaming. A discord ensued. Bale, who’d slept on the sofa, under a quilt made from slapdash-selected fabrics, was perplexed at the chaos of it. Murk hopped alive, pegless out of the recliner, wearing only boxer shorts, rubbing his stump. Mira emerged from a back bedroom to tend to her mom. Things fumbled about. Human smells hovered. Murk turned on music, bobbed his head to it.

  “I love mornings,” he said toward Bale. “The sun comes up.” He shook his hair.

  In Bale’s world, all things had been scheduled. People moved in straight lines to meet itineraries. This new disorder was bewildering. He thought a moment. He had nowhere to be. The speakers bleated tunes. “How do y’all have electricity?”

  Mira, who intercepted the question passing through, said, “Solar panels on the roof.” She wore a cotton robe that stopped at her thighs. She touched the hem of the robe. “About like you yesterday in Murk’s jacket.” She went to the kitchen, banged around a bit. Pots and pans. Tea kettle. “I won’t be able to leave her like this.”

  “Just you and me then,” Murk said. “Bring your gun. We’ll shoot shit.” Murk killed the music, began getting dressed.

  “Only got fifteen rounds.” Bale gathered up Mira’s father’s clothes to change into.

  “We’ll only shoot fifteen things.”

  “Don’t shoot anything you don’t have to,” Mira called from the kitchen. “If it were up to Murk you’d waste all your bullets on tree stumps and jackalopes.”

  “What’s a jackalope?” Bale asked.

  “A thing that ain’t real,” Mira said.

  When they set off, Bale asked, “How long will we be gone?”

  “Back by night,” Murk told him.

  They headed out into the thicket, walked cautiously through the thorny limbs until they came to an open grassland that Murk hopped into—he seemed a scarecrow gifted with life. He found the sun and put his back to it, lowered himself to the thin shadow that had leached from him and gulped it up, began singing, “A world with two suns.” He rolled to his back, looking pleased at the sky. But, once propped up on his elbows, he saw Bale kneeled, his rifle shouldered, the barrel of the thing aimed at Murk’s heart.

  “Your eyes,” said Bale, “they’re black as fuck.”

  “Thank God. It still works. I always worry. You know, you’re real fucking big. I bet your shadow would fuck me up.” A thin, puzzling laughter stretched from him. Murk’s head disfigured a bit, quivering. Hallucinatory.

  “What now?”

  “We go to the train.”

  “But your eyes. When they’re like that. They tell us it makes you evil. Can I trust you? You gonna try to do stupid shit?”

  “I might do stupid shit, but you can trust me.” Murk pulled up at his trouser leg. His wood peg showed. “There’s not enough of me.” He stood sloppily, his balance wobbled. “I mean, I could drink up other shadows and get darker, I guess. Like your shadow. But I’m not so lost as that. Look at my wrist.” There was some kind of serial number tattooed there. On his other wrist as well. Murk raised his pant leg revealing his ankle. The number was there too. “Somewhere,” said Murk, “there’s another leg with the same marking. I’ve never looked for it, but maybe someday I’ll find it. It’s being gone makes me less dark, but because it’s gone is the reason I get dark at all. If I had a whole one like you? All big and shit? If I drank it, I’d be a shitty mess, I guess. Folks with full shadows? They’re peculiar and mean. Me? I’m just peculiar.”

  “Find the other leg?”

  Murk rambled toward the train they were after. “Sure, it’s why they’re tattooed. My mom did it. So I could try to track ’em down if they were stole. I don’t know what she was thinking there. She used to pray to some God who told her to do it. There’s a place they get taken to, the legs. The arms. Shadow addicts like to cut on folks.”

  “A place they get taken to?”

  “That’s what I’m told.”

  They marched on in the humid morning air, their shoes slick with dew and their shirts moist with sweat. Thorns littered the grass and the parched dirt lay dry-cracked and scraggy.

  “How old do you think I am?” Murk asked.

  “Don’t know?” said Bale. “How old?”

  “It was an honest question. Your guess is as good as mine. You like flying?”

  “Flying? Never have.”


  “I’m not an idiot,” said Murk. “You’re a domer. You may as well have spent your whole life in a coffin or beneath a canoe. I’m asking if you like the concept.”

  “The concept?”

  “See that bird up there? Does it do anything for you?”

  Some black bird listed across the sky. “I’m not sure.”

  “Then it doesn’t. You’d know right off if it did.”

  They jostled as they moved over the craggy land. “I’ve not seen all that many birds,” said Bale.

  “What’d you do for fun?”

  “Fun?”

  “In the dome? To pass the time?”

  “Worked,” Bale said, “or avoided working. Slept. Went to school. Watched the girls shower.”

  “I like to fly,” said Murk. “You have any rope?”

  Bale touched a shirt pocket. “I don’t . . .”

  “Of course not,” said Murk. “Why would you? But I have a few yards. Feel like running?”

  Bale stopped and Murk walked some distance before realizing. Once he did, he turned toward his slack-stepped acquaintance.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Bale asked.

  “Running,” he said, and Murk mimed the practice.

  “I know what running is.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “Listen: flying, fun, rope, running? I’m not following you at all. The shadows make you silly?”

  “Yes,” said Murk. “Very silly. But what does that have to do with it?”

  Bale stretched in his tight clothes, trying to make them bigger, fit better.

  Murk reached into his jacket and produced a length of rope. “I tie it round my waist. You run. Pull it.”

  “What the fuck?” said Bale.

  “You’ve already asked that,” said Murk. “And now I’m telling you,” he said. “I’m telling you what the fuck.” Then, slowly, “I TIE THIS,” he motioned to the rope, “ROUND MY WAIST,” he motioned to his waist, “YOU RUN,” he mimed running. “PULL IT.” He tugged toward the sky. “No reason we should both be stuck on the ground.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Murk’s gray grin. “You’re a domer,” he said. “Might as well’ve spent your whole life in my pocket or up a jackalope’s ass.” He began to tie the rope around his waist. “A world with two suns,” he said, “that is the dream.”

  Attack

  Drummond’s eyes opened. He’d been asleep. In that dim space, he’d nearly forgotten his fate. He breathed slowly, puzzling the darkness, recollecting events. He felt a kind of shame a moment. His nude body seemed gruesome to him. Rust dust clung to his nakedness. He lolled a bit and then he knew: the train had gained speed. He sat alert, listening intently for some sound of coming aggression. It came.

  A noise so loud Drummond’s eyes saw light erupt—a white, hideous resonance thrummed the dark alive—and Drummond pitched from the surface of the floor, smacked the wall and dragged down it. His face gushed warm blood against his flailed-open palms. The smell of pain. Shock swept his heart. His pulse rattled. The train’s wheels screeched and blatted. Outside, gunshots cracked and popped along. Murder music beating rhythmic. The darkness darkened. His thoughts constricted. Involuntarily, he went. Into the inner cavern of bewilderment.

  Faint seized him.

  Drummond surrendered to dream.

  Flying

  “Faster!” Murk—ballooned into his thinner form, organized, as best he could organize himself, like a kite. Beneath him, Bale ran: the rope in his right hand, Murk’s peg leg in the other, the butt of the back-strapped rifle slapping his ass. “As fast as you can.”

  “This is,” screamed Bale, hopping grass clots and snag gaps, “as fast as I can.”

  “It’s gotta be faster.”

  “Love to see you,” Bale huffed breath, “try it.” His bruised feet throbbed.

  “Impossible. I only have one leg.” He spread his arms.

  “Exactly,” said Bale. “And my feet are fucked.”

  “Let out.”

  “What?”

  “As much rope as you have.”

  Bale loosened his grip, felt Murk catching the wind and felt the burn of the rope skating against the pad of his hand. “It hurts like hell,” he said.

  “Slow down,” said Murk.

  “It hurts.”

  “Slow,” yelled Murk, “down.”

  Bale secured the rope to stop the burning and stumbled to a walk. He gasped, his shoulders heaving.

  “Success. You’re better than Mira.” Kiting, kiting. Murk aloft.

  Bale walked backwards, marveling at Murk’s flight.

  “Train’s that way.” Murk spit in the breeze. “About an hour more.”

  Even from a mile off it looked blundered. The harsh smell of rust and smoke stained the air, and juries of buzzards circled in the distant sky. Some stench of putrescence found them and Murk came down scuffing the earth, dry heaving, his eyes bulging as he hacked. Some grand decay crossed the air like filthy cobwebs. Bitter lace. Rotten beach sand. Murk retched. A thread of sputum dangled from his bottom lip. He coughed and it quivered. He cuffed his hand through it and flung it away toward some grass. It caught on a long blade of it, smeared down like a slug. “You don’t smell that?”

  “Beginning to. Must be thicker up there.”

  Murk hid the mask of his face in the collar of his leather jacket. His voice came muffled. “Worst odor ever.”

  “We should hear it moving by now.”

  “They never stop it?”

  “Only when they’re kicking us out.”

  Bale helped Murk up, and Murk leaned on Bale as he reattached his peg. They walked on cautiously, the foul reek constricting as they advanced. Bale coughed a bit. Murk did the same.

  Once close enough, they saw odd graffiti on the cars of the train—black skulls with hashtag eyes.

  “Know what it means?” Bale asked.

  “Nope. Never seen it but can’t be a good thing.”

  They went quietly to the track’s edge, slipped beneath two buckled-up cars, gnarled steel and shredded lumber. The battered outpost within—burnt buildings and toppled towers. In the wreckage, dead bodies strewn, carcasses of fetid flesh mulled upon by carrion crows that dawdled unfazed, their gory beaks thick with congealed blood. Flies tap-tapped against the bloated bodies, the constant buzz of their tiny wings.

  “Who did it?” said Bale.

  Murk used his jacket like a mask, lowered the thing to answer. “Probably Santa Claus.” He hid his face again.

  “That like a gang?”

  Murk’s eyes swelled. He let his jacket collar fall. “Serious? Y’all don’t got Santa?”

  “Who?”

  “Comes down the chimney? Brings presents? For Christmas?” The buzzing. The stench. On occasion some buzzard alighted or disembarked. Claws on the rot or wings against the air. Their wicked-upped eyes like yellow jewels of insanity.

  Bale shook his head.

  “What about the Easter Bunny?”

  Bale was blank.

  “Tooth Fairy?”

  Blank.

  “St. Valentine’s?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You got any holidays at all?”

  “Holidays?”

  “Sweet God,” said Murk. He sang, “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way!” Then, “You ain’t never heard that?” He dry heaved, nauseous from the death essence. Raised his jacket collar.

  “We should see if there’s anything worth taking.”

  “No, no, no,” said Murk, his voice muffled. “Presents,” he said. He dropped the collar. “Y’all got presents?”

  “Like gifts?” said Bale. “Yeah.”

  “When do you give them? When are they e
xchanged?” Murk’s face hid again.

  Bale held up a finger. “On birthdays.” He held out another finger, “on Dome Day.”

  “Dome Day?” Muffled.

  “Yeah. Celebrates the day we moved into the dome.”

  Murk shook his head, put his face out near Bale’s. “Why would you celebrate moving to a place with no sun and no Santa?”

  They climbed in and out of burnt-open cars, poked at the dead with sticks, looked under debris, came up empty. All about them buzzards dawdled with grim treasures of purloined flesh jiggling from their beaks. Their claws click-clacking.

  “Check that one’s pockets,” said Bale. There was a man perched in ash, half his face burnt back to skull, the other half shiny with decay, smeared with buzzard shit. They scrutinized the mess of it.

  “I can’t touch him,” said Murk. Sunlight twinkled off a bead of plasma that dribbled down the dead man’s cheek. A glinting spec of mephitic wetness. The spot where his eyes should be, desiccated and gray.

  “He might be where all the smell is coming from,” said Bale.

  The dead man seemed like an exhibit in a museum of nightmares. A cadaver designed to scar the emotions of spectators.

  But then Bale flung forward, skidded to the ground, his face at the dead man’s half-rotten skull. Screamed, “The fuck. The fuck.”

  Because some thief—ash across his brow and whisper-thin hair, clothes tattered and hackneyed—gulped up a swallow of Bale’s shadow as they were hypnotized by the decomposition. Bale winced at the death he landed near, and the stranger popped up, sprinted toward the train, ducked beneath one of the cars and was out of view.

  Drummond’s

  Deeper Prison

  Drummond woke and the train was still. He made to his feet before realizing the train car he was captured in had been toppled. He stood on the wall of the thing, stared at the floor. In whatever incursion that transpired, the sheet metal ceiling was gashed, and a column of light screamed into the otherwise darkness. It seemed unnaturally bright, and Drummond crept to eye the opening, to witness the goings-on of the attack’s aftermath.