Black Rainbow

by Scott Savino

  There wasn’t hope for either of them. They’d be stuck, just like every other poor bastard they knew. Stuck living pay check to pay check, and sometimes not even that. Skipping meals, stretching out the food stamps, getting used to the times when the water or power got cut off.

  They couldn’t afford niceties. Couldn’t afford extras.

  “You better not be bullshitting me,” Gabe said, interrupting the silence in an attempt to silence his own dismal thoughts.

  “I’m nooooottt,” Alex groaned, frowning and shooting him a narrow-eyed look.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Gabe, fucking come on. This isn’t gonna work if you don’t focus.”

  Focus. That’s what Alex had said when they’d been smoking on the stoop. Neither of them had wanted to stay inside to face their respective families, each for their own reasons. Gabe didn’t want to deal with his momma—the fussing over his clothes, the way she called him “Olivia” and told him he needed to dress like a lady “instead of wearing all that boy shit”. Even after he’d told her he is a boy. Even after he’d told her to call him Gabriel, a name he’d taken in memory of his grandfather.

  When Alex was home, he just got the hell beat out of him. Gabe couldn’t count the number of times he’d snuck out once his momma was fast asleep and heard the familiar sounds of yelling and thumping behind the door to Alex’s place. Alex’s old man was a drinker and his ma may as well have been absent for how passive and quiet she was.

  Which sometimes worked to Alex’s advantage. The two of them pretty much lived off the money Alex slipped from his pop’s wallet.

  They were brothers, they liked to say, closer than their blood had ever been to them. They had each other’s backs, held each other up when one of them was close to their breaking point. Not to mention, if it weren’t for Alex, Gabe would never have started to socially transition. Alex had gotten him his first (and only) binder, and often gave him baggy hand-me-downs. Alex was the bigger of the two of them so the clothes sagged on Gabe’s lanky frame, but he didn’t mind. They made his chest look flatter and hid a lot, like his slim arms and the hips he hated.

  Gabe rubbed his chest, feeling the tight, nearly inflexible material of the binder beneath. Too tight. It made his ribs ache and sometimes it was hard to breathe. He knew surgeries would help him, knew there was medical stuff out there that fixed boys like him. Sounded like a fairytale, though. One like the fairytale they were chasing down. Like whispers of small shops and rituals. Of making all your dreams come true. For a hefty price, he was sure. He’d seen the expensive way the word “mastectomy” was spelled, felt the impossibility of it like a weight. The weight of his hidden chest.

  “Gabe, please. Focus, okay?”

  “Fine,” Gabe grumbled, stopping in his tracks.

  He felt like an idiot. For being there. For closing his eyes like he was making a wish, trying to picture the boy he should have been with a body so different from the one he was born with. But he did it, he focused, grabbing onto the image, squeezing it tight, holding it in his mind. For Alex. For the small part of him that wanted so badly for the rumors to be true.

  But nothing happened.

  He stood there for a few moments listening to the crunch of Alex’s shoes as he turned in a circle, probably looking for a sign of something.

  Anything.

  Gabe opened his eyes.

  The alley was the same. No store front had magically appeared. No ancient looking woman beckoned to them. There was just a long stretch of wet concrete and brick punctuated with hissing steam pipes, and the two of them.

  “Fuck,” Alex bit out, stomping over to a dumpster to kick it. Then kick it again. “This is such bullshit.” Another kick. Then a few more. Gabe knew that frustration, knew the hopeless hole they were stuck in, the one where they were forever grasping at muddy walls hoping to find a root strong enough to help pull them out.

  To help them find the freedom everyone else had.

  He drew in a long breath and rubbed his chest when constriction cut the breath short. “I gotta stop for a sec anyway. Then we’re heading home, okay?”

  His lungs burned and he quietly cursed himself. He should have taken his binder off the night before. Everything he’d read online said he should take breaks, should take it off so he didn’t damage his body, but he was at a point beyond caring. He hated this body, wanted to damage it, as if hurting himself would change anything.

  He leaned back against the nearest wall, not minding the dirty brick and the fact that it was probably going to rub who knew what off on the back of his jacket.

  Christ, he couldn’t breathe. He felt dizzy.

  “You good?” Alex edged closer, putting a hand on his shoulder. Gabe opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t get the chance as Alex nudged him and pointed. Gabe followed Alex’s line of sight and froze. The air around him felt thicker, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. There, just where the alley ended in a T, was a kid.

  “What the hell?”

  The girl was dressed in clothes that were old, Victorian, maybe, but they were somehow pristine, like new. Her hair was dark and curled tight. Her eyes—Gabe couldn’t be sure, but he thought they were black. Not just the irises, but both whole eyeballs, black where white and color should be.

  “Who—” Alex glanced between Gabe and the kid before looping an arm around his waist and tugging him upright. “Hey kid,” he called, but the girl had darted down the alley to the right, her shiny black shoes echoing off the walls as she ran.

  As Alex hauled him forward, Gabe realized he could make out the slow, creeping signs of life. Not obvious or loud, but glimpses of curtains pulling back, of figures with faces neither he nor Alex could really make out, peering down at them silently.

  Alex took a right at the T, following the child’s path, and quickened his pace when he caught sight of her waiting ahead of them. The sky had gone darker, or maybe the rooftops had gotten longer, blocking out the sky completely as they stretched up in miles and miles of brick and windows with parted curtains and indistinct, leering faces.

  As Gabe pulled his attention back from the strange faces watching them, he realized the girl had stopped before an aging shop front with faded letters painted above the door.

  CORA’S CURIOS AND MORE

  The girl opened the door for them, a bell tinkling above her, and then waited, staring with her dark eyes.

  Their pace slowed as they approached. Alex was still dragging Gabe along and Gabe still struggled to catch a full breath, so he was glad when they stopped completely.

  The shop’s display was dingy and cluttered. There were books stacked on a dusty side table, wooden boxes sat open to reveal unappealing jewelry that didn’t so much as shine. Taxidermied animals watched them hesitate at the threshold: a falcon with its beak parted and wings spread wide and a skunk with its spine arched, tail bottle brushed, stood guardian among the clutter staring out. Cracked porcelain dolls leaned lopsided against other, bigger glass and ceramic figures.

  It all looked so old. Untouched for decades or more.

  A soft voice called out from the depths of the shop. “Won’t you come in?”

  They stood there, both of them a little overwhelmed and neither willing to move.

  “We should leave,” Gabe whispered. He was still in pain, still a touch dizzy, but he was also increasingly aware it wasn’t his lungs that were keeping him from breathing. Something in the air, something like lead and fire, had settled itself beneath his rib cage.

  Anger.

  Anger at his body, at his mother, at his home. Even—deep down in a dark place Gabe didn’t like to touch—at Alex for being lucky enough to be born with everything Gabe wanted. It was a desperate anger and it tasted like bile. He burned with the need to change, with the knowledge there was nothing he could do about it, and the need to make it happen anyway.

  Dangerous.

  This place was dangerous.

  His pulse picked up its pace an
d he swallowed hard, his gaze darting to the girl, meeting her eyes. They were pitch black, just as he’d thought. Shining obsidian framed by even darker lashes.

  “Alex, let’s go,” he insisted, firmer and louder this time.

  “Nah,” Alex whispered. “We came all this way, and we found it.” His voice was breathy, a smile breaking across his stunned face. “This is great.” He gave Gabe a squeeze, trying to move forward, but Gabe didn’t budge.

  “Your friend is right. You did come an awful long way.” A woman appeared at the open door looking as timeless as the girl. She wore a bustled crimson dress with a floor-length skirt that hid her feet. It was long sleeved and high collared. A side-tipped hat sat atop her perfectly coiffed blonde curls. A silver broach depicting a fox glimmered at her throat. “You shouldn’t go back empty handed, right?” She offered them a smile Gabe knew was meant to put them at ease.

  He didn’t relax in the slightest.

  Alex moved forward. This time, Gabe didn’t resist. He was still uneasy, but Alex’s excitement made him hesitant to leave right away, whatever his misgivings about the place. Plus, he was still too out of breath, his chest still too tight, to face the maze of alleyways again. He could rest for a few minutes and then they’d leave, he reasoned with himself.

  The woman—Cora, Gabe assumed since that was the name emblazoned over the door, and she was the apparent shop owner—turned and lead them deeper, her crimson skirt swirling with each step. The girl by the door followed, the bell chiming again as the door closed behind them.

  The shop’s interior was cramped, cluttered: old items stacked high to the ceiling in towers imitating the impossibly tall brick buildings outside. Cora led them through too-thin walkways—left, right, straight—walking through time as cracking porcelain and dusty hand-carved knick-knacks gave way to stacks of 80’s and 90’s themed electronics, dog-eared paperbacks, kitschy lamps, and even more dusty jewelry, all piled atop particle board shelves.

  Gabe’s hope to catch his breath was quashed with each aching lungful of dusty, mold-laced air he managed to suck in.

  “You’ve come with something to trade, I hope,” Cora sang over her shoulder as they reached the back of the shop where a red velvet curtain blocked the aisle ahead of them. She stopped, turning on her heels in one smooth motion so she could look at them, still smiling, though it didn’t reach her eyes.

  Those were too cold and calculating to let any kind of happiness break through.

  “Something to—?” Gabe started to croak, but Alex cut him off.

  “Yeah. We’re here to trade. We, uh, we want …” Alex faltered as his hold tightened on Gabe, but he couldn’t bring himself to finish his thought.

  “I know what you want.” Cora fixed her even gaze on Alex, flicked it to Gabe, then returned to Alex. “Once we begin there’s no going back.”

  Alex nodded and Gabe was left wondering what the fuck was going on.

  “Should go,” Gabe muttered, his stomach churning. They shouldn’t have been in there. They shouldn’t have even come looking for this awful place.

  “Alex,” Gabe’s voice softened, a frown forming on his lips. “We should go.” He was already turning, but the girl behind them blocked their path.

  Was it his imagination or had she gotten a bit bigger? Her eyes darker? For someone so small she’d become strangely imposing.

  “No,” Alex said firmly.

  “Good,” Cora replied, that cold smile spreading across her lips even further. “Come on, then, boy.”

  Gabe’s eyes were still fixed on the girl, on the inky voids staring back at him. Voids that grew, the black stretching out, trying to engulf him.

  He started to panic, tried to run, but his limbs were locked—leaden—trapping him in a prison of meat and bone too heavy to move.

  Behind him, the air stirred. Somehow he knew Cora had extended a hand and that Alex had taken it. Then there was an emptiness, punctuated by the curtain’s muted ripple as the two disappeared.

  Before him, the void stretched wider, a terrifying maw of darkness closing in around him. Images filled the dark, flickering through a disjointed narrative he didn’t understand.

  An impossibly old stone altar stood in a quiet, wood-paneled room hidden behind a velvet doorway.

  Candle light danced, throwing sinister shadows on the walls.

  Then came the hard, nauseating scent of copper in the air. The sensation of something hot and wet on his hands. On his body.

  And all the while, Cora’s cold, serpentine smile filled his mind.

  Then there was Alex, propped up against a bookshelf like the cracked porcelain dolls they’d passed on their way in. His body was stiff, eyes glassy like those of the stuffed trophies staring into the alley from the shop’s grimy storefront.

  The images blinded him, flickering by on a sickening loop. His eyes hurt. Everything hurt. He tried to shut it out, the contrast on the images in his mind becoming harder, brighter, and darker all at once. The ancient altar, the burning candles, so much blood and Cora’s smile, then Alex propped against the shelves. Over, and over, and over.

  The smells burned through his nostrils until he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t smell blood, dust, and mold.

  And still Gabe couldn’t breathe.

  His chest ached.

  Crushing his ribs.

  So. Damn. Tight.

  He tried to scream, opening his mouth as wide as he could until something caught, a pressure building between his teeth, spreading his mouth so wide it ripped at the corners, tearing apart like the rest of his body. Muscle tearing, tendons grinding, bones breaking.

  And there was blood, hot and wet. So much blood. His and Alex’s, the thick fluids mixing and becoming one.

  And then there was nothing but the void.

  oOo

  Morning broke cold and apathetic in the city when Gabe woke to the sound of crying.

  He cracked his eyes open, the familiar and unforgiving springs of his too-old mattress digging into his back, urging him out of bed. His feet hung off the end and his head was bent at an awkward angle against the headboard. His first groggy thought as he stretched the stiffness from his limbs was that someone had shrunk everything in his room while he slept.

  A nightmare lingered—flickering images of dark rooms, dancing shadows, and a boy with eyes like glass—as he pushed unsteadily to his feet.

  His curtains let in a blinding stream of sunlight between edges that didn’t quite meet and he squinted as he glanced to the clock.

  Almost noon.

  The crying wasn’t anything new, really. Mrs. Simmons had been trying for a baby for as long as he could remember. Another miscarriage would come with another few weeks of tears, of seeing the poor beaten woman lingering in the halls, clutching the latest baby blanket she’d bought, sure that this time she’d have the son she’d always been meant to have.

  As if sensing he was awake, his momma called from the living room.

  “Boy, getcha ass up and fix us some tea.”

  He huffed, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he shuffled to the bathroom to take a piss.

  “Yeah, all right,” he called back as he closed the door and stood in front of the toilet, dropping his pants to stare blankly at the dangerously teetering shelves above the toilet’s back.

  He wondered how long this bout of depression would last, how long Mrs. Simmons would be hanging around their place lamenting an unborn “Alex”, a baby that would never be. He drew in a deep breath, scratching his bony chest with one hand and aiming at the toilet with the other.