Empty Rooms and Hallways

by Roman Theodore Brandt

  "What a great idea," Melinda said, gathering her bed sheet and standing up. "Let's go make out in the bathroom."

  "Yeah, sure. You go on ahead."

  Melinda left the table, humming to herself, and Hannah ran a hand through her hair, gathered her things and walked shakily to the door, picking up speed as she went. By the time she reached her car, she was out of breath.

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  Phantoms on the Horizon

  I've been staring at these dusty fields since we got here, straining to see the freeway in the distance, a shimmering black ribbon across the horizon. Sometimes, I think of running away, but then I think: to where?

  When we first got here, it was dark, so I couldn't see anything beyond the house in the glow of the buzzing safety light. Nathan came around the front of the car, laughing. "Isn't it great?"

  "Yeah," I said, looking from the empty, staring windows to the sagging roof. "It's great."

  By then, he was already at the back of the car with the hatch open. "Let's get our stuff inside. Joey's coming by with the van tomorrow. We don't need two cars to unload in the morning."

  "Right," I mumbled, turning to look at him.

  He peeked around the side of the car. "Come on."

  "I'll be right there."

  A few trips in and out of the house carrying luggage and lamps and end tables revealed room after room of cobwebs and peeling paint, hanging from the ceiling like fly strips, dangling and sticky from rain. "Oh my god," I said quietly, squinting up the stairway into the abyss overhead.

  Nathan bumped into me on the way past, sending me into the railing.

  "Where do we sleep?" I asked.

  "Are you kidding?" He came up behind me and sighed happily. "Isn't it great? Our own place."

  We spent the night in sleeping bags on the floor upstairs in some room with a window. I thought of all the places I could have been by now, all the dreams I packed away when we got married. This stupid house, I thought bitterly, looking around at the burned electrical outlets and rotting baseboards in the glow of the safety light from outside.

  In the morning, Joey came by with the furniture in the moving van and helped us pile the contents into the rooms we assumed they belonged in. I spent a lot of time out on the front porch alone, staring off at the freeway and wishing for a free moment and the keys to the car.

  Nathan came outside with two little bottles of sweet tea. He handed me one and I took it, but I just stood there while he drank his.

  "What's on your mind?" he wanted to know.

  "It's a real circus right now," I told him.

  He laughed and looked out at the fields as well. "Look at all that. It's all ours."

  I sighed and shielded my eyes to see the freeway better. I pictured a tombstone with my name on it with the words 'died of dusty fields and a stupid old house.' "There's got to be some town nearby," I told him.

  "Not for miles," he said, like he was proud of himself for it.

  "I'm going to die out here," I said finally.

  He was quiet for a long time, and I could feel his anger building. All the money that went into moving us out here, chasing his dreams down the highway, shoving me into the car with everything we owned once the novelty of marriage died down.

  "I don't want any more negativity out of you," he said quietly, and the distance between us grew.

  "Yeah, okay," I told him. I stood looking out at the fields, trying to shove my own anger back down inside and just find something good to focus on. My sweet tea was shaking in my trembling hand as my eyes darted from him to the dust to the freeway. "I just need to adjust."

  "You'll get used to it," he said on his way back into the house. The door slammed behind him. I let out a long breath that I had been holding since the last time I spoke and looked down at the bottle.

  "This stupid house," I said under my breath, and I stepped down off the porch into the yard, turning the bottle over in my hands to read the back. I walked to the edge of the yard, to where it became dust and forgotten crops and it seemed like the whole world was dust except for our little square of brown grass. I heaved the unopened bottle of sweet tea as far as I could toward the freeway.

  I did get used to it, though. The freeway became a silent, unknowable place, a roaring strip of cars in the distance, phantoms on the horizon going nowhere just like me.

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  The Tiniest Point of Light

  On the starlit horizon, two cars meet in a sheet metal kiss. The sky lights up for a second, then it’s gone, spinning away into the ditch. The trees stand as silent witnesses.

  *

  Two cars speed toward each other in the night, the red one skidding around a curve and the white one jumping a railroad, tires spinning in the air. They hit like dynamite, fire and glass, singed oxygen and coolant spraying the trees and pavement as they spin away into the ditch, burning in the dark.

  *

  Even with the dash lights burned out, Jake could tell they were going too fast. He looked over at Stephen, whose knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel so hard.

  “You need to slow down,” Jake said.

  Stephen said nothing and stared out at the road, and Jake turned to watch the trees flying past the passenger side of the car. There was a flash of red and white.

  “Jesus, Stephen. That was a stop sign.”

  “Yeah, so what?” Stephen yelled, filling the far with a sudden, oppressive silence afterward. Jake stared at him for a minute.

  “Can I drive?” he asked.

  “No, you can’t drive,” Stephen roared. “This is my god damned car. I’m driving.”

  They ramped a railroad, sending Jake’s stomach up into his chest, and suddenly the windshield was bright, a flash of light, a honking horn blaring everywhere over Stephen’s voice saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  The impact was huge, worlds colliding, McDonald’s bags and sweet tea cups tumbling in slow motion up from the back seat toward the dashboard, which suddenly flickered to life, lighting up and cracking and going dark. The second impact was also huge, skulls to plastic, metal to bone. Then, nothing. Silence.

  *

  The brain was alive, firing panic messages from the corneas to the brain stem. Start the pool of ice water in the stomach, shut off the pain sensors. This is going to hurt.

  A dead eye, not blinking in the dark, watching the flames all around. The brain sends panic messages to the legs. Move, move, move. The message comes back: return to sender. Invalid address.

  A flashing banner, red on black: save yourself, save yourself, save yourself. The neural highways are destroyed at the bridges, trucks tumbling end over end into darkness, spilling words and sentences into the void below. The eye blinks once, then never again, and the world collapses into a single point of light, a dot on a map, a truck stop town in a rectangle state on a blue planet in an empty, gaping, starry void with no sound, silent and cold and getting bigger every second.

  *

  In a galaxy far from here, now, the tiniest point of light shines with no change.

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  You Look Like You Just Climbed Out of the River

  THE SUBWAY

  I’ve seen a lot of characters on the Subway, and these two were characters. Two teenage boys, both dirty and wet, one wearing a black hoodie and the other in some kind of blue blazer and tie, like a private school uniform. They sat down across from me and didn’t look at each other. The train picked up speed, plunging in the dark underground of the city. These two, with their big wet eyes in the buzzing florescence of the train, looked like they had just climbed out of the river.

  “I don’t know what to tell my mom,” Uniform Boy said eventually.

  Hoodie Boy turned his head to look at him.

  “I mean, how…” Uniform Boy’s voice trailed off.

  “Let’s just find a place to sleep,” Hoodie Boy told him, and then he sat back
against the seat. “I just want to sleep,” he murmured.

  “I just don’t know how you can sleep,” Uniform Boy told him quietly. “With everything that’s happened tonight, you feel safe enough to—”

  Hoodie Boy nudged him and gestured toward me, and that was the end of the conversation. They got off in a hurry at the next station, leaving two empty seats in the flickering light of the train, plunging again into the darkness.

  THE BUS

  It felt like hours that I stood at that stop sign in the rain waiting on the bus, and when I finally heard the rumbling diesel engine and saw the headlights coming over the dark horizon, I knew everything was going to be okay. I thought of my parents, asleep in their beds, their dreams filled with nightmares of my future. Never mind them.

  The bus slowed to a stop and the brakes hissed, and I could see him inside waving to me, and I felt the warmth pooling in my stomach, sparks igniting in my veins. The door opened, revealing a large, uniformed woman behind the wheel. “You got your ticket?” She asked when I was up the steps. I pulled it out of my back pocket, wet from the storm. She took it and put it through the reader. “Yep,” she said as she closed the door behind me. “Welcome aboard.”

  I hurried toward the back of the bus and let myself drop into the seat beside John. “You look like you just climbed out of the river,” he said.

  I sighed and leaned my head against his shoulder. “I feel like I did.”

  “What did your parents say?” He asked, and I didn’t say anything at first, picturing the conversation the night before. Dad sat glaring at me over his dinner, and Mom stood at the sink, wringing her hands.

  “No son of mine,” Dad started to say, and then he stopped, unable to continue.

  “I might throw up,” Mom said from the sink.

  “Jesus, Barbara,” Dad said to her, and then he continued glaring at me. The silence was palpable. Even breathing was hard to do, with the whole house closing in on me. Finally, Dad spoke again: “This isn’t over. They have those camps… you know…”

  “We are not sending him away,” Mom said, her voice low and unrecognizable, and she started to cry. Dad and I sat at the table and listened to her sob. Finally, she turned to look at me with her face wet from tears. “Do you even know this boy, Bradley? Is he really worth throwing your whole life away over?”

  Back on the bus, I sighed and closed my eyes, breathing in John’s scent. I imagined a little house far away, with a white fence and a dog. I saw the two of us sitting on the couch, watching TV. “My parents,” I said quietly. “Never mind them.”

  THE TRUCK STOP

  At a midnight truck stop, I stopped for some coffee and a candy bar. It would be a long drive to Vermont where my mother no doubt sat waiting for me in her living room, bathed in the flickering blue of the TV.

  I passed two boys crowded around a pay phone. “Tell her we’re here,” one of them said.

  The boy with the receiver handed it over. “She wants to talk to you,’” he told him, and the first boy rolled his eyes, grabbing the phone.

  “Yeah, Mom,” he said into the phone as I left the store, tucking my candy bar into the pocket of my hoodie. In the distance, I could hear the sound of the river rushing past.

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  The End of the World, Minivan Edition

  All the families in our neighborhood went on vacation at the same time we did. That's what Mom said, anyway, and that's why we were stuck on the freeway in a van with no air conditioning. We left the house pretty fast, with my brother and I carrying suitcases and Mom and Dad grabbing everything that would fit in the car.

  "Did you grab the photo albums?" Mom asked, turning in the front seat. Dad sighed.

  "You're worried about pictures, Linda?"

  "I'm just thinking about the kids, Henry," She said, and then she looked behind her, over our heads. "I just want them to have pictures, that's all."

  "We can take pictures when we get there, Mom," I said, and she laughed.

  "Yeah," she said. "Pictures." She turned around in the seat to face forward. "We should have left when we had the chance."

  "Let's not start," Dad said.

  "I said 'Henry,' I said, 'Let's leave before the neighbors find out.' And you said 'Oh Linda, we've got plenty of time.'"

  I looked out at the sun, bright and hot in the sky through the minivan window. My brother squirmed in the next seat. "I want to ride the llamas," he said to no one.

  "I want to drive the cars," I told him, and he laughed.

  "Quiet, quiet," Dad said.

  We were all quiet for a while, and traffic moved a little bit.

  "Boy, I wish we had air conditioning right now," Mom said, turning on the vents. She laughed. "Not that it matters, anyway."

  "Would you not talk like that?" Dad asked.

  I looked out the window again and saw people standing outside cars, doors open, shimmering exhaust rising into the air.

  "You suppose it'll hurt?" Mom asked.

  "Not if you close your eyes," My brother said, and I laughed.

  "I want to go on the log ride," I told him.

  "Look, look," Dad said. He turned the van off.

  "Why's everyone getting out?" Mom asked.

  I looked outside again, and I saw all the car doors open, people running past, screaming, heaving themselves up and over the metal bulk of vehicles. Far behind us, I heard rumbling.

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "Everyone let's not panic," Dad said.

  "I want to get out," Mom said, flinging her door open. "Let's get out."

  "Are we taking pictures?" My brother asked.

  "We aren't even there yet!" I said.

  "Linda, close that door!"

  "I'm running, and you can run with me or you can stay here, but I'm not staying in this van." Mom started to climb out of the van and Dad grabbed for her, pulling at her hair, her arm, and she slapped him away. "Get out," She said. "Get out and run!"

  I was getting scared at that point, and I said, "Where are you going, Mom?"

  She looked right at me with the rumbling behind us getting louder and she said, "Oh my god. It's too late."

  It was the loudest thing I'd ever heard when it hit us, and it sucked Mom away, slamming her against a car and then she was gone. The last sound I heard was Dad trying to start the van.

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  I Live Alone

  Somewhere in the shimmering, dark recesses of my mind, I knew something wasn't right. The glittering landscape around the house hadn't felt as deserted as it usually did, the fire felt as though it had warmed another set of hands, and my hot cocoa tasted vaguely like the saliva of someone else. I'm the only human for miles, and that's the way I like it, so falling asleep with this new sensation was difficult. I wasn't really surprised when I was still staring up at the ceiling past midnight. There was someone in the house, I knew that much. I'd not heard much more than the sound air makes as it parts around someone, but it was deafening. I imagined a hand picking up the little gold-framed pictures on the tables in the living room and staring at them, putting them back. I heard something conclusive soon enough, the brush of a hand on the wall outside the bedroom door.

  There's no one for miles, as I've said, so for someone to come this far to break into a house in the middle of the woods was not an accident, and I stared at the door, waiting, and when it didn't open, I knew I was almost dead. My heart pounded in my chest. My veins pumped battery acid, and my stomach filled with ice water, bubbling up my throat. I remembered my mother's first visit to my solitary little house, her lips pursed against telling me "you are out of your mind, son." Right then, I finally got it. With no one for miles and bad cell phone service and sounds in my house, I suddenly wished for neighbors, anyone really, to see me about to be killed.

  Just then, I heard the door knob turn, and the door swung open with a long, low creak to reveal the blackness of oblivion, where someone stood in the
shadows, invisible. "Get out," I said, unable to move. Suddenly, with all the force and anguish of someone facing death, I screamed, "Get out of my house! I know who you are!" Footsteps retreated, fast and clumsy, and a table fell over in the living room. I sat up and breathed heavy, heaving myself out of bed, still shaky. I heard the front door flung open and then the distant crunching of snow. "You go on, get out!" I yelled on my way to the light switch. I flipped it on, flooding the living room with light, but everything was normal now aside from the open front door. The only thing the only real proof it had even happened now were the boot prints in snow across the floor, and I knew them too well.

  *

  Something wasn't right. I live alone, but from where I parked my truck, I could see smoke coming out of the chimney down the road. "What on earth?" I mumbled to myself, staring down at the windows in the fading light of another sunset. With no neighbors for miles, for someone to come to a house in the middle of nowhere and start a fire in the fireplace was no accident. Strange things had been happening in the house though, come to think of it. Maybe this was just one of those things.

  I figured I'd better wait until dark to go back, and it'll be over. I'd track some snow in for sure, and there wouldn't be time to clean it up before I went to bed, but it would melt by morning.

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  Wisconsin

  I was in Wisconsin when I was picked up again. This time, it was a small car, a hatchback. It slowed to a stop, the brakes screeching, sending the car fishtailing past me, then it backed up. I stood for a minute staring at this lone car in the middle of nowhere, and then I approached the passenger side. I opened the door and got in. My body fit into the seat uncomfortably, and I looked over at the driver.

  “I’m sorry for getting your seat wet,” I told him.

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  We started down the road, and then we rode in silence for a long time. The inside of the car was plastic and littered with old foam coffee cups and fast food sacks. “I like to eat, too,” I said. I realized how stupid it sounded after I said it.