by Taya DeVere
“Tina,” Timothy finally breaks the tense silence. He keeps his gaze locked on Iris’s enraged eyes. “Go tack up Alfred. Warm-up time, ten minutes per side. Shoulder in, straight, counter-bend. Repeat. Just like we talked about.”
Without a word, Tina walks over to the row of bridles and grabs the one under Alfred’s name tag. Spinning around on her heels, she heads to the saddle racks and lifts the dressage saddle up to rest against her hip. With agitated steps, she leaves the room.
I’m going to faint, Iris thinks but keeps her gaze on Timothy’s puffy eyes. I need to breathe. Or I’m going to faint.
Timothy smacks his lips together, dropping his gaze. As if Iris never existed, he reaches for the laptop and opens the lid back up. The computer hums back to life. Iris acts before she has time to think. She swipes at the lid again, closing it, then picks up the computer from the table. Hugging it against her stomach, she fills her lungs with air so she can speak.
“You said it’d be me. That all I needed was to prove myself to you. Prove that I’d do anything to ride in the Cup. And you and I both know, that’s exactly what I did.” Iris pauses to let Timothy speak. When all he does is stare back at her, she repeats, “You said it’d be me.”
“Yeah, well…” Timothy empties the rest of the coffee with one big gulp. He picks up an apple from the bowl on the table, gets up, and steps around Iris. “Now I’m saying it’ll be Tina.”
Iris turns to look at Timothy’s back as he’s about to leave the room. “Why?”
He freezes by the door. “Why?” he imitates Iris’s voice, mocking her. He turns around to look at her with a look of loathing. “Why, she asks?” he takes two strides closer, leans in, and hisses at Iris. “Because… I… fucking… said so. That’s why. It’s my fucking barn. My fucking horse. My fucking decision.”
Iris holds her breath, something dark washing over her. It’s hard to see. It’s hard to hear. It’s hard to feel anything but the strangling need to attack this man—this filthy, sick scumbag—and slam his head against the floor until he stops moving.
But when Timothy backs off to stand up straight again, Iris is frozen in place. The rage has paralyzed her. The pain from last night has turned from a throbbing nag into screaming, engulfing flames.
“Ah, good,” Timothy says cheerfully as he peers out the open door. “She’s already in the arena, warming up. See, this is how a proper student works. This is how it should be. Tina humbly takes an order, does as she’s fucking told, and keeps her whining to herself.” He tosses the apple in the air, then catches it and takes a bite. His mouth full, he points in the direction of the grain room. “Speaking of. Don’t you have some chores to catch up on? Or are you just going to fuck off all day? Huh? Let me and Tina do all the work, as usual?”
Iris’s whole body has started to shake. She stares at a piece of dirt, fallen from the bottom of Timothy’s boot onto the viewing room floor, unable to move. Shaky breaths are all she manages. Shaky breaths—so she won’t pass out.
“Suit yourself,” Timothy says and leaves the doorway, taking another bite of the apple. The crunching sound seems deafening in Iris’s ears. “This is why you’ll never make it, Iris!” he hollers as he leaves the barn aisle and enters the arena. “You’re too hysterical. Too fucking weak!”
The viewing room lurches and spins around her. The room changes, sounding like it’s started to slowly sink toward the bottom of the ocean. Muffled hoof steps, as Alfred trots past the viewing room window. Timothy’s uncharacteristically cheerful voice mixes with the thumping, followed by Tina’s jingling, happy laughter. Her back against the window, Iris keeps staring at the dirt on the floor.
You’re seriously going to let him walk away? her inner voice circles around her, whispering into Iris’s left ear, then right, while it swims around her, radiating scorn and judgment. This is the first time she notices how the voice sounds more like her mother’s than her own. This sick fuck used you. He let you think that you’d get everything you ever wanted if you just played along like a good girl… How naïve can you be? How fucking pathetic? You let him screw you over—literally—and now you’re letting him walk away?
Her feet move before Iris knows what she’s about to do. She marches into the arena and opens her laptop. She fills her lungs with air, then yells as hard as she can while she lifts her knee and bashes the laptop against it—smashing it in half. Once the pieces fall onto the arena floor, she stomps on them, her gaze locked on Timothy, who’s standing next to Alfred and Tina in the middle of the arena—his filthy hand frozen on Tina’s upper thigh.
“What the…” Timothy starts, but he doesn’t have time to finish his sentence.
Iris whistles once, nodding at Alfred. “Alfred! Up!”
The stallion snorts and takes half a step back. He rears up on his hind legs without warning, kicking his front legs high in the air. Unprepared for the unusual and sudden movement, Tina falls back and lands on the footing with a scream. When Timothy rushes over to Tina and kneels down to check on her, Iris whistles again. Alfred lands down on all fours, snorts once more, and lifts his head up to look at Iris. He picks up a canter, heading right toward Iris. Without stopping, he passes Iris, slowing down just enough for her to run, jump up, and climb into the saddle, her hands grabbing onto his mane.
Without looking back or hearing what the angry voice yells after her, Iris wraps her legs around the stallion and leans over his neck. They gallop down the barnyard, onto the driveway, and off to the lava fields. The wind in her hair, she holds on tight. She isn’t afraid of falling. With the enormous power accelerating under her as Alfred flies across the field, she refuses to enter her mental vessel. She refuses to acknowledge the burning tears in her eyes. She lets the pain radiate around her body until it numbs down into a throb. When the mental images arrive, mocking and cutting her, she doesn’t shy away.
Her bedroom door opening in the dark.
Breeches covered with sawdust.
Pajama pants wrapped around a broken phone.
She keeps the images in her mind’s eye—welcoming them—until they seem unreal. Slowly, they start drifting away.
In this moment, as Alfred’s hooves thump against the hard ground and the silent field basks in the morning sun, she lets herself remember her stepfather’s waxy face. Her mother’s evasive eyes. Little Iris’s bedroom door handle, slowly moving down in the night light’s dim glow.
Unlike her mother, she dodges nothing now. She accepts what’s happened. What they made her do. What she’s become. For the first time ever, here on the galloping stallion’s back, Iris lets the demons enter her happy place.
Let them.
***
Huffing, his neck covered in sweat, Alfred slows to a walk. Iris looks up from his mane, momentarily startled when she realizes she’s lost all sense of time and place. His hooves clopping against the tarmac, Alfred heads up a well-groomed lawn and toward a water fountain—and a familiar hotel front.
By the front door, Iris pulls gently on Alfred’s reins, coming to a halt. She looks around the silent hotel yard. Not a single vehicle is parked in the designated slots. Not a single guest wobbles past them, drunk or high on the new pills her mother used to rage about. At the resort, it’s rare to see anyone sober these days, no matter how early in the morning. But no one’s here at all—just Iris and Alfred.
She leans forward to swing her right leg over to the left, then slides slowly down from the saddle. Clicking her tongue, she asks Alfred to follow her to the resort’s courtyard. The horses in there whinny and nicker, watching the strange approaching horse with interest in their eyes. Iris spots an empty but bedded stall at the farther side of the horseshoe-shaped yard. Without thinking, she leads Alfred in, takes off his saddle and bridle, closes the door, and throws in a flake of hay from an open bale nearby. Carrying the saddle and bridle, she enters what looks like a combined grain and tack room. In the corner, she spots a few western saddles on a rack and bitless bridles hanging next to th
em on the wall. She places Alfred’s saddle on top of the less dusty saddle and hangs the double-bridle on top of the bitless one on the wall.
The tack room has another entryway that leads straight to the hotel’s front door. Iris wipes her hands on the back of her jeans and looks around. Still no one here. The yard is empty and silent, as if the resort has turned into a ghost town since Iris’s dinner with her mother not too long ago.
“Why am I here?” she half-whispers. “What the hell am I doing?”
Unsure whether she’s talking to herself or her inner voice—or whether they’re one and the same—Iris stands still and listens. She waits for a snarky answer or a reminder of how idiotic and useless she is. How all the bad things that have happened to her are because she didn’t make better decisions. How she needs to grow up and learn how to take better care of herself.
She hears nothing. Not around the resort, not inside her head.
She’s all alone. And for the first time since she can remember—that’s okay. It doesn’t matter where she goes, why she’s here, what happens next. She’s alone, not because everyone has abandoned her—but because she wants to be. She’s broken free from a mental prison her inner voice once created for her. And now, the voice has gone silent.
She walks to the hotel’s front door, assuming it to be locked and sealed. Out of business, as nearly everyone in Iceland has now been relocated or retired to a land far, far away.
Cowards, she thinks and tugs on the door. It opens with a click.
Inside the lobby, the house plant sits by itself in the corner. Iris’s steps echo in the empty hall. No lights are on, and not a single sound reaches her ears. She looks down the corridor, then at the restaurant, the bar.
Nothing.
Turning in place, Iris takes in the peace and calm. No clocks tick on the walls, no digital screens tell her how late or ahead of time she is on her chores. No tapping boots, no demanding looks. It’s just her and an empty hotel in the middle of a country that everyone else has given up on.
For a reason she can’t quite understand, she steps over to the plant. Kneeling down, she reaches for the soil inside, fumbling around until her hand touches something solid.
A martini glass.
She turns to stare at the door with the double-lock. It’s cracked open, a brick shoved between the door and its frame. A dim yellow light glows inside. Warm. Inviting.
How did I miss that when I walked in?
Holding the martini glass, Iris steps over to the door. Leaning in, she listens. A low humming sound is all she hears, coming all the way down from what she believes to be a basement. With steady hands, she opens the door a bit wider so she can slip in. The tile stairs ahead look odd. They’re made of some high-tech material Iris isn’t familiar with.
Walking down the stairs, in addition to the machine-like humming sound, she hears a woman’s voice. When Iris steps on the floor at the end of the stairs, a yellow tile lights up underneath her foot. In the middle of the room, Laura Solomon paces around in small, unhurried circles, her hands folded behind her lab coat, and a set of AR or VR glasses on her head. Nodding, she listens to whoever is on the other line, saying “yes” or “no” as her assured steps move her around seven strange-looking pods, standing upright in the room.
Blinking in the light from the tile, Iris tries to see around her. The basement is huge, it seems. The way sound travels around makes it seem endless. Narrowing her eyes to see further down the room, Iris stares at a row of silhouettes in the distance. Like tall buildings, they stand and hum steadily. She looks at the capsules next to Laura, then into the distance again. What the hell is this?
“Welcome back.” Laura’s voice forces Iris to look away from the rows and into the doctor’s mesmerizing eyes, partly covered by the glasses as she lifts them with one hand to see past them. “Is that my martini glass?”
Her mouth gaping, Iris looks at the glass in her hands, then at Laura, then at the capsules in the distance.
“Are those… people inside?”
Laura lifts her index finger to indicate that she needs a moment. Placing the AR-glasses back on, Laura says, “What was that? What, no. No one’s here. No, mother, listen. Just tell Nurse Saarinen to take in as many as she can. I have to go. Mm. See you tomorrow… That’s what I said, isn’t it? Tomorrow. Mhm, yes. I’ll actually come home this time. I’ve got to go.” She takes the glasses off and puts them on an operating table next to one of the capsules, staring at them in frustration. After a moment of deep, even breaths, Laura stands tall again and remembers Iris in the room. With the same assured gait as before, Laura walks over and reaches for the martini glass in Iris’s hands. She wipes off a layer of soil and blows into the glass. “I was wondering where I left that.”
Iris keeps her gaze on the rows of capsules in the distance. As though Laura hadn’t spoken, she takes a few steps closer, hoping that the tiles that light underneath her muddy shoes will provide a better view. She walks over to where the rows start, steps up on a lifted base, and presses her face against the capsule’s frosted glass. Inside she sees a sleeping but sickly and pale-looking woman. Mesmerized, Iris doesn’t turn around when she hears Laura’s steps approaching right behind her. “Is she dead?” Iris asks without taking her gaze off the pale woman.
“No.”
“Is she sick?”
“In some ways… yes.”
“Is she in a coma?”
Laura’s coat fabric rustles lightly as she shrugs a shoulder. “In stasis. Has been for a few months now.”
“But why?” Iris half-whispers, trying to tear her gaze from the sleeping woman.
Laura pauses, turns around, and steps on the stasis capsule’s base. Her gaze locked on the martini glass in her hands, she turns around and leans her back against the capsule, raising the glass against the dim light from the staircase ahead. She blows into the glass again then looks at Iris, investigating her face like it’s some sort of a puzzle.
“Well, let’s see,” she says and nods at a small computer pad attached to the stasis capsule she’s leaning on. “Go on. It’s easy enough to use. Has to be. I’m a doctor of western medicine, not computer science.”
Without hesitating, Iris reaches for the pad and taps a button on its side. Another tap on the screen opens a control panel and an easy-to-read database. As she investigates the gadget, she waits for her inner voice to appear, scolding her for being this reckless and stupid. Doctor Solomon is a maniac. A madwoman with an underground graveyard for naked kidnap victims in the middle of the most public place in Iceland.
But the voice says nothing.
For the first time since Iris can remember, she feels safe. In the middle of this strange basement room, with a woman who’s known for her megalomaniacal ways, a newfound assurance fills her mind. Down here, no one can harm her. In Laura Solomon’s secret underground space, she’s untouchable.
“You can read it?” Laura asks, nodding at the pad in Iris’s hands.
“Yes,” Iris says and nods back.
“I don’t remember them by heart,” Laura says, stepping down from the base. A yellow tile lights up under her white shoes. “But let me guess…” she turns to look at the capsule, tilting her head. “Postpartum psychosis leading to maternal filicide.”
Iris taps open a folder under diagnosis and reads aloud. “A thirty-five-year-old female with chronic anxiety was brought in after a maternal filicide that took place in Vantaa, Finland, 2084. The patient was referred for further medical investigation and diagnosed with schizophrenia by a psychiatrist at Helsinki Universal Hospital. During her stay in the Finnish Mental Institution, she reported chronic pain in her lower stomach. The patient said she believed the pain to be a result of electromagnetic impulses sent to her ovaries via an electrical implant in her body. According to the patient, this device had been planted into her body two years earlier by a government organization…”
“Ah,” Laura says, interrupting Iris. “I remember her now. And I wa
s wrong; it’s been longer than a few months for this one. She’s one of the first ones they signed over to me.”
Iris looks up from the pad. “Who did?”
“The Finnish government.” Laura shoves the martini glass into her coat pocket. “Before they bailed out and retired. Cowards.”
“I don’t…” Iris shifts her weight, more intrigued than nervous. She’s thrilled to learn that Laura seems to feel the same way about people abandoning their home country just as it needs them the most. That they’re pathetic cowards. Though not everything the doctor is saying makes sense to her. “I don’t get it. Finland doesn’t have a government anymore?”
Her smile is not petty, nor is it friendly. “Would you be surprised if I said that Iceland doesn’t, either?”
“Not really,” Iris says slowly. “Not many people left to govern around here… But wait, why is this woman here in Iceland if she was first treated in Finland?”
“My dear mother,” Laura says and pats the martini glass in her pocket. “said I need to use some of my mandatory vacation days. The company uses this resort every now and then for team building, meetings, that sort of nonsense. So I promised to come here and try out drinking and hotel life. But I never said anything about not bringing in some light work with me.” She nods at the capsule where the woman rests in stasis. “I had a batch of long-term patients shipped in a few days before I arrived. And when the hotel refused to rent out the whole basement,” she pauses to shrug, “I bought the place.”
“You bought the whole hotel?” Iris breathes.
“No.” Another shrug. “I bought Iceland.”
A nervous laugh escapes Iris’s lips. But as she stares at Laura, waiting for the woman to burst out laughing too, she realizes she won’t. Doctor Solomon is not joking—she’s actually somehow managed to purchase Iris’s home country. “Is that why we have no government left?”
“Ah, no dear. I just quickened its end. Don’t feel bad; it’s the same all around. This is hardly the only country I’ve added to my cart as of late.”