Black Rainbow

by Scott Savino

  “It was my brother.”

  “You never told me you had a brother.”

  I took a deep breath. “He passed away. Four years ago. I had his name on my shoulder.”

  Emily looked at me, her eyes wide, as if absorbing the stars around us. “I’m so sorry.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s all right. I thought I could carry him with me.”

  “But then you changed your mind?”

  “It didn’t seem right. I mean, it felt more like I was celebrating his death instead of honoring his memory.” I could sense the confusion in her gaze. She looked at me, almost examining me. I continued, the words tumbling out. “While I had his name tattooed on my shoulder I felt bad. Guilty, I suppose. It felt like I was forcibly tying him to me. When I had it removed it felt like I was releasing him, letting him move on. Does that make sense?”I didn’t know if it did. The words were clumsy to me, as if they were too heavy and ill-fitting to put my thoughts into a sharp relief.

  I looked at Emily, losing myself in her beautiful eyes even as I expected distance from her, a look of hesitation. Instead, she nodded.

  “It does make sense. You wanted to carry him with you but you found a different place to keep him.” She touched my chest, her delicate fingers resting over my heart. “In here.”

  Nodding, I slipped my hand around hers.

  “You want to keep playing?” Her fingers toyed with my hair.

  I nodded.

  Emily righted herself, letting her laughter fall. “The name of this game, Eight Little Lies, right? That’s from a nursery rhyme my Aunt Anansi used to tell me.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  With a playful smile that lit up her face, Emily spoke the rhyme.

  Eight little lies

  To catch the flies

  To snare them in webs

  Spun by eight little legs

  Then sit back and watch

  With your eight little eyes

  The lump in my throat returned, but now it sat lower, hovering down in my chest.

  Something about her laughter just a moment before felt wrong, somehow deeply improper.

  “I don’t understand,” I whispered.

  Emily smiled at me. “It’s just a nursery rhyme,” she said. “My aunt taught me to say it to the prey I’d hunt.”

  A chill drifted over me. The hair of my forearms bristled. I leaned back, trying to move away from her, but Emily held me in her warm smile.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, kissing my neck.

  Outside the wind bellowed and I winced. That was no playful nibble. It stung hard enough that my hand slid to my neck before I even realized it. I looked down at my fingers, barely noticing the blood they’d carried away from my neck. I tried to move my fingertips, but they were already growing numb and alien, like little phantom limbs.

  “What is this?” The words felt thick in my mouth and I struggled to form them.

  Emily hushed me. “Relax. You’ll be fine. It’s just a neural toxin.”

  “You bit me,” I managed to say before my tongue became a limp and useless mass.

  She didn’t reply.

  The room grew dim and Emily cradled me on the bed sheets.

  “It will act fast,” she said. “You won’t feel a thing.”

  She was right. And suddenly the fear was gone, fading into a foggy mist as I felt my heartbeat slowing. My panic had become as numb as my body.

  Emily watched me as she gently spun her fingers together.

  “I could tell you were the right choice,” she said, her attention focused on her twirling fingers. “What you said about your brother, about him being part of you? I knew you’d understand.” Gradually, with almost deliberate care, she drew a thin stand of webbing from her fingertips and started to fashion it into a cord. “I said you could trust me and I was right. You’ll get to be a part of me now and we’ll be together forever. That’s what love is about, right?”

  Suddenly I realized I did trust her, and that I always would. I wished I could have formed a smile as she slid the silken thread around me, because I felt the millstone weight of my baggage grow lighter and lighter with every slowing breath as she wrapped me in her webbing.

  She was right, of course. We’d be together forever.

  And as I struggled to breathe, I looked up into her loving face and caught the reflection of the candlelight shining against her pupils, like eight tiny little eyes.

  It Should Be Raining

  N.L. McFARLAND

  “HOW ARE YOU FEELING, SKYE, my love?”

  Skye groaned at the intrusion of light even though they’d only opened one eye. They rubbed their eyes with tiny fists, trying to burrow back into the pillows.

  “Mornin’, Jarrick,” they mumbled. “I guess I’m feeling … sad. Still sad. How’s it look outside?”

  Jarrick peered through the several inches of open Skye had left the blinds. It was a point of contention between them. Jarrick would have preferred them completely closed, but Skye enjoyed looking out and watching the neighbors.

  “It looks sunny.”

  “Ugh. That’s not right. It should be raining. I’m gonna take another day off work.”

  “All right. I’ll leave you to sleep, then.”

  Jarrick squirmed out from under the comforter and made sure it was tucked around the slender beauty in his bed so no breeze would get to his partner. He couldn’t resist just one more stroke of the little puff of blond poking out from the blanket, though, which elicited another little grumble of protest and a reminder not to let the snakes in.

  Getting the hint to leave Skye alone, he scooted along the length of the bed bit by bit until he could reach and grab his wheelchair. He eased himself into it as carefully and quietly as he could manage.

  It was always a process to get the chair through the doorway and he grimaced every time he saw just how badly the wheels had scraped on both sides, despite him trying to be careful.

  Yeah, they weren’t getting their security deposit back when they eventually moved out.

  The door to the smaller bedroom was open, but was suddenly darkened by a huge looming presence.

  “Madison,” Jarrick smiled and looked over the third member of their little queer collective with appreciation. Hadn’t he been wearing that outfit the day before? Had he slept in his clothes again?

  “Morning, Jarrick,” Madison stretched with a louder than intended groan, quickly covering his mouth and glancing into the main bedroom. “Skye still asleep, huh?”

  “Yep. Might be another heavy dysphoria day. I think I might try to make breakfast for them. I’m feeling pretty good today, for once.”

  Jarrick would have pulled his wheelchair back to let Madison pass, but he was already through the hardest part and wanted to spare the doorway as many scrapes as possible. Besides, Madison was a big guy, his shoulders barely fit through the narrow hall any better than Jarrick’s wheelchair. It was always single file for them.

  “Food does fix a whole lot of problems,” Madison said.

  “Yes, it does,” he agreed.

  But first, the morning routine. Jarrick wheeled along behind the couch separating the dining area from the living room, snagging his yoga mat as he went. He didn’t even have to nudge anything out of the way to roll it out in front of his chair when he parked. Then he slid across the mat and reached up to open the blinds of the balcony door so he could do his yoga bathed in the morning sun.

  He still didn’t understand why Skye had wanted it to rain. Hadn’t it rained enough? Jarrick wanted to enjoy the sun, even if it was cool like shade and no one ventured outside to enjoy it. There was enough to be depressed about without adding weather to the list.

  An hour later, yoga done, mind and body centered, Jarrick rolled up his mat and settled himself back into his wheelchair. While it was true his body worked a little better after the yoga, he didn’t much feel like pushing his luck. He could walk with a cane when necessary, but only for very short distances and he
had no idea if something else was going to need that extra bit of energy.

  He hoped Madison had made something for breakfast to save him the effort, but when Jarrick looked around, the big guy was nowhere to be found.

  Weird, he thought. The front door was right there, not feet from where he had been doing his yoga. Surely he wouldn’t have missed a guy as big as Madison leaving the apartment.

  Even stranger, Madison’s coat was still on the hook, shoes in the line by the door where everyone put them in a vain attempt to keep the carpets cleaner, but somehow there was always mud.

  Jarrick shrugged it off and went about his day.

  The fight with the shower went about the same as usual: an utter pain and a severe drain on his energy. His wheelchair didn’t fit in the bathroom, it was exhausting to get completely washed while seated in the shower chair, and everyday it seemed he was losing ground with his legs. Nowhere was that loss more evident than in the shower as he struggled to stand. Still, he wasn’t ready to quite give up the independence of his daily shower, no matter how frustrating it was.

  All of that and breakfast wasn’t even started yet. That was usually how his days went though; breakfast became brunch after all of the various obstacles he had to face.

  He powered through it, leaving his wheelchair yet again to work in the kitchen.

  It was a galley kitchen, only wide enough for the chair if he didn’t plan on opening a damn thing. It was easier to hobble around and use up some of the extra energy he’d saved than fight the kitchen to stay in the chair, so he pulled himself out, leaned on the counter for support, and labored over brunch enough for three.

  In the end, despite all his efforts, Skye didn’t eat.

  They didn’t get out of bed at all except to use the bathroom and complain about the weather. A few times, Jarrick thought he heard them crying, but when he asked what he could do to help they said “I just need some space.” So he gave them space.

  Jarrick was eating dinner alone when Madison reappeared.

  “Hey, get yourself a plate, I made enough for everyone.”

  “Saw there was leftover breakfast, too.”

  “Yeah, Skye didn’t eat. You can have it if you want.” Jarrick knew Madison loved his breakfast food.

  The big guy sat across from him at their little table. They had started with just a card table when they’d moved in, but had searched high and low around garage sales and flea markets to find just the right little table for their tiny space, complete with two matching chairs. It was perfect for the three of them.

  They hadn’t originally intended to be a thing. Jarrick had always been monogamous, but mostly because it was all he’d ever known. Skye was the one who was firmly polyamorous.

  With all of Jarrick’s preconceived notions of polygamy—mostly from jokes about Mormons and the stigma of Middle Eastern religions his family feared simply because they didn’t understand—going into those first conversations had been awkward, to say the least.

  Skye had been so patient and understanding, though, gradually introducing Jarrick and Madison to the idea of Skye dating both of them, and really explaining the concept of polyamory to assuage all the prejudicial ideas Jarrick had been burdened with.

  Then he and Madison had suddenly clicked with each other, and instead of each of them only dating Skye, they had all become a loving unit. Skye had been utterly delighted! Of course it had come with an entirely different set of conversations, but it had been more than worth the effort for Jarrick to be able to date these two amazingly wonderful, but starkly different people.

  “Are you going to be all right without me?”

  Jarrick blinked, startled by the question. “What do you mean?”

  “You and Skye. You were so solid before I came along,” Madison grinned. Oh, he had a grin that could light up the room. He was such a big, cheerful guy. Always with a joke timed at the moment it was needed most. But this was different. This wasn’t a Madison joke. It was something deeper Jarrick wasn’t sure he understood.

  “We’re solid, the three of us. What are you talking about?”

  “Yeah, I know we’re good as a trio, we were really good. I just want to make sure you two are still gonna be okay.”

  Something hit the balcony window, pulling Jarrick away. As he wheeled himself over he found a crow, broken and limp on the patio. He searched the sky, though he didn’t know what for, and closed the blinds. He didn’t recall the rest of the conversation he had with Madison, or even if there had been more. He found himself curled up on the couch with Madison in his usual spot in the oversized recliner, watching one of Madison’s favorite movies. The couch was never quite big enough for him, not when Skye and Jarrick wanted to bring out all the blankets ever to make a nest there.

  The next day was much of the same. Skye was too sad to get out of bed except for the most basic of needs, but it was their normal day off, anyway. As much as Jarrick wanted to help them in some way, they insisted they just needed time to themselves to cry it out.

  It bothered him that he couldn’t do more, but he contented himself with his morning routine and a slow, but thorough, cleaning of the apartment. Mold had started growing around the windows and doors, and there was a persistent leak from the balcony. Jarrick could never find the source, but he suspected the upstairs neighbor had some kind of automatic watering system that had broken and was leaking into their apartment. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was the best he could come up with to explain the puddle that appeared daily.

  The crow was still outside, joined by two more sometime in the night. Jarrick checked the glass for cracks, but found none.

  By that evening, when his cleaning finally took him to the fridge, he found a strangely massive amount of leftovers. Once he’d pulled them all out, he sat and looked at the pile of food, debating with himself about what to do with it, confused as to why it existed.

  In the end, he didn’t have the energy to take it out himself so he bagged it all up and set it aside by the trash can in a neat little pile so nothing would tip over and spill. Their apartment was on the third floor, the only unit available at the time, and even the first and second floor units involved half a flight of stairs anyway. The city wasn’t big on accessibility, they’d found, so Jarrick had given up finding an accessible apartment and settled on what was otherwise a perfect little home for the three of them.

  As he was wheeling himself into the bedroom to tuck in for the night, he paused to watch the dark form moving around in Madison’s room.

  “Hey, Big Guy, can you take the trash out before you leave tomorrow? Thanks,” he smiled and blew Madison a kiss before scraping the rest of the way into his room.

  The bags were still there when he woke the next morning. Jarrick didn’t think too much of it, though. Madison’s door was open and no one was in there, so he assumed Madison had been late for work, or hadn’t had the time, or maybe he hadn’t heard Jarrick ask him in the first place.

  It did give him pause that Madison’s coat and shoes were still in their place by the door, though.

  Was it nice enough out that Madison didn’t need his coat? That was possible. It was also possible he’d just gotten new shoes, and instead of replacing them in the line of shoes by the door he was forgetting to take them off until he got to his room. Perfectly logical explanations, Jarrick reasoned, moving on with his day and ignoring the piling crows on the patio as he opened the balcony blinds.