Negative space, p.22
Negative Space, page 22
“Come on,” Maddie nudged my shoulder with hers. “How about doing one with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light?’” And a dozen scents and images flooded me. Driving out of town with Dad, howling along to that song. The way his truck felt so high above the rest of the world, how it smelled like old coffee and fake pine.
“Of course,” I said.
She smiled. “Okay then.” She handed in our cards and the DJ jumped in with a cringey rendition of “I Gotta Feeling.” After her, an enormous handsome man sang “Genie in a Bottle,” a middle-aged leather daddy did “LA Woman,” and a girl with short blue hair did an insane version of “Shoop.” We went back to the car and smoked some weed, came back and caught Jerome wrapping up “These Eyes.” I was so high I almost wept.
“Alright,” the DJ said. “Next up we have Maddie Gascar and Jill Trill.”
Maddie grabbed my wrist. “Want to be Meat Loaf or Ellen Foley?”
“Let’s just be both.”
She kissed me on the cheek. We caterwauled for eight minutes about cold lonely deep dark nights and glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife. We threw down our mics and ran out to the parking lot and she pressed me up against her Passat and sucked on my lips.
Later, when she brought us all back to campus, she asked if I wanted to come up to her room. I nodded.
She wrapped her arm around my waist, steering me upstairs through Butterfield, occasionally pressing me against a wall or door to make out some more. Someone had spray painted the overhead lights pink so the halls were all lit like neon hell. We got to her room, she unlocked the door, and we pushed in.
The room was half empty, just a bed and a dresser and a mini-fridge. “My roommate dropped out and they never assigned anyone new.” She winked and put her index finger to her lips. “Our secret.” She began clearing the books off her bed. I looked at the top of her dresser. A breath caught and died in my throat. It was covered in bundles of dried plants, a few half-melted candles, a rusty horseshoe, and a nest of hair. Symbols like veins drawn in wax on the wood. My insides dropped through the floor. “What’s that?” I whispered.
“That ...” she smiled shy. “That is not something I can tell you about yet.”
“Okay.” Tiny invisible worms crawled through my shoulders and calves.
“It’s just silly. It helps me process stuff. Work things out.”
“Okay.” The room snapped apart. Time stopped and my feet nearly came loose from the floor. I looked between the candles. Something stood there. A beige, breathing shape. A tiny rabbit, dancing on its hind legs.
I pretended like my phone buzzed, took it out of my bag and looked at the screen. “I have to go,” I said.
She looked at me, puzzled and sad.
“It’s my mom,” I lied. “Somethings wrong, I have to take this.”
Maddie covered her lips with her hand. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. Of course, whatever you need.”
I put the phone to my ear and said, “Hey, what’s wrong?” and left through the doorway, down the hall, down the stairs and out of the building. I crossed the campus to my dorm. I crawled into bed and squeezed my eyes closed while Tilly snored like falling rocks and the wasps hummed above my head.
AHMIR
That weird kid Arnie came down to the bridge, asking if I had any WHORL. I told him “Nah.” He got up close to my face and asked me again. I told him to get the fuck out of here. He started crying and walked back up the slope.
I got home and Tyler was on the couch, watching TV. Anime girls screaming and exploding beneath monster truck tires across the screen. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“You dated that girl Cindy, right?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t even look away from the screen. “She’s dead, I guess.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Figured you should know. Condolences.”
I went upstairs and lay on my mattress. I tried to feel some kind of way but couldn’t.
LU
I poured the ring of salt around me. I lit the candles, inhaling and exhaling each time the flame touched wick. I hummed.
“Don’t even,” Arnie shouted, huddled up on the couch. “It’s too fucking sad.” I didn’t say anything, slipping a sheet between my heart and his. I whispered her name in my head and unzipped my pants.
Nothing changed in front of me. Mundane textures. I focused on Saint Gobnait’s name. My breathing. Trying to exhale her name without speaking; to paint it on the air with my eyes. My palm stroked up and down. Nothing. Then I focused only on the breathing. No name at all. No caretaker. My palm stroked up and down. I settled in between the beats of my heart. My entire life. A thousand years. Magenta prickled through my spine and ribs. My back arched rigid. I opened my eyes.
A faint purple disk spun between the candles. Bits of thread dangled down from the ceiling, dancing, diminishing and returning between blinks. A length of twine wound from my penis, stretching forward and disappearing inside the disk. I spurted pearl and clasped my palms together. I prayed for Arnie but didn’t tell him what I saw.
JILL
My sister called the next morning. “Long time no speak.”
“I’m at school.” The only excuse I could think of. “Been busy.”
“I know what school’s like.”
I inhaled deep. “What’s up?”
“Just everything. Everything is up.”
“Okay.”
“Mom’s losing the house. She’s too ashamed to tell you herself. So yeah.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Jesus.” I didn’t actually feel anything, though I knew I was supposed to feel something.
“She’s going to have to move in with Aunt Mill.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it. Not like you give a shit.”
I tried to conjure an adequate response but then just hung up instead. I clamped my eyes shut and pulled the covers over my head. In the darkness, I saw a tiny brown rabbit dancing on its rear legs. It turned to me and its eyes were like Tyler’s.
I tossed off my sheets, got dressed, went down to the food commons, and got in line at the lo mein station. A finger tapped at my shoulder. I turned. Maddie. She smiled with sad eyes. I went cold.
“Hey,” she said. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s okay.” I forced a weird smile. “Actually, no. That’s not true.”
She tilted her head to the side. “If you want to talk about anything ...”
“No. It’s fine. Totally.”
“You alone? Want to eat with me?”
“No. I should probably get to class.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“Sorry, I have to go.” And I left, back up to my room.
Something had changed. Something was missing. The skirt I’d pinned around the wasp nest was gone. The nest itself was gone. Tilly lay on her bed, scrolling through her phone. “There was a fucking wasp nest up there,” she said. “Had to get security to clear it out. Don’t hang up any more clothes or anything. Critters love to hide in that shit.”
I got into bed and lay on my side, facing the wall, pulling the covers over my head, clamping my eyes shut, feeling like I was flipping through space on the mattress, disconnected from all gravity. Through the dark, I could see a thin, flesh-colored sheet dancing in the emptiness. A sheet with a face. He smiled at me.
That night twelve kids on my floor OD’d.
LU
Arnie stopped leaving the house. He almost stopped talking altogether. I stopped asking whether he was going to look for a job and tried to accept the life we had as it was.
I performed the ritual in the morning before work, while he was still asleep. Humming under my breath. Stroking. Slipping between my heartbeats. The strings. The disk. I prayed for him, and the disk devoured the strings from my hole. Nothing whispered back to guide me.
AHMIR
Tyler’s teeth started falling out. I’d find them all over the apartment—in the kitchenette next to the dish rack, on the coffee table in the living room, in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Sometimes I’d dream of his mouth, grey and purple vines sprouting from his gums. He’d stuff his fists in his mouth, sucking and slobbering, before wiping the drool on grass and tree bark. The landscape changed depending on the parts he marked.
JILL
I ran into Jerome in the library. “Maddie thinks you hate her,” he said.
“What?”
“She says she keeps reaching out and you keep snubbing her. She’s bummed.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not going to say you have to be best buds. Do whatever you want. But I’m curious. Why don’t you like her?”
“I don’t.” I looked away. “It’s not that I don’t like her.”
“But?”
“I don’t know.” Then: “Do you know what’s with the candles and hair and stuff on her dresser?”
He screwed up his face. “Is that it? Oh god, are you Christian or something?”
“What? No. It just seems weird.”
“Oh, it’s totally weird. Just some new age thing. Like Wicca or something. Totally harmless. I love her to death but I couldn’t give a crap about that stuff.”
I shook. Flared up. Totally harmless. I wanted to smash his face in, to tell him that he was an idiot, that he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Instead, I nodded and said, “Okay,” and left it at that.
LU
I got home from work and he was hiding under the card table. Curled up, wet nose and eyes. A sloppy oval of salt poured around his body. I crawled onto my knees and ducked my head under. I asked what was wrong. He asked if I was one of them.
“It’s me,” I said.
“They’re coming inside.”
“Who?”
“Did you see them?”
“Who’s coming inside?”
“It’s no good. They’re breaking in.”
“No one else is here.”
He shook his head. He wouldn’t come out.
I climbed under the table and held him while he went wet, until he fell asleep and I almost did. I got up, slowly so not to wake him.
I poured the salt. I knelt at our shrine. I lit each of the candles. I blew gently through my lips. I unzipped my pants. I stroked my palm up and down. Nestling in between my heartbeats until my body vibrated, and I held it there. Breathing circular. The string crawled faintly from the corners of the room, rapping against the window. My purple disk spun between the gate. I shut my eyelids, and saw through them, into the living room, and through the walls into outside. Nothing strange out there. Nothing trying to break in. Nothing that shouldn’t have been.
I prayed for Arnie, painting my wish on the oxygen. I glazed my palms with pearl and closed the gate. I got up, washed my hands and crawled back under the card table, wrapping Arnie in my arms.
AHMIR
It was early morning, the moon was waxing and Tyler was stomping all over the house, up and down the stairs. Humming, louder and louder until it became a wail. I got out of bed, pulled open the door and stepped into the hall’s dark.
Tyler froze. He was naked except for one sock. His whole body covered in fresh bloody cuts, like veins but on the outside. He turned and stared into me. Mouth agape. His penis drooped soft, stuck to his thigh; a gentle push of urine streaming from the tip and down his leg, painting a black circle in the carpet.
“Do you see?” He said.
I looked into his eyes. His pupils had swallowed the irises. Nothing inside.
“Do you see me?”
JILL
Jerome invited me to a party. I told him I had finals. “We’ve all got finals, girl.”
“I think I’m good.”
“I’ll message you the address. Just in case.”
I spent the evening playing with my phone, before grabbing my coat and hopping a bus.
The party was off campus, at a house painted purple like an eggplant. In the driveway, a line of kids sat on their knees, puking into the bushes. Two others smashed up a flat-screen TV with aluminum bats. It felt like home.
I got inside and saw her immediately, talking with Jerome and Paige. She saw me too and smiled with sad eyes.
It took me four beers alone in a corner before finally summoning the nerve to approach her. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said.
“Want a smoke?”
She looked over at Paige and Jerome, shrugged, then back at me. “Sure.”
We went outside and I bummed her a butt. I told her I was sorry. That it was just me being a freak. That it was just homesickness. That I was losing my home. That I still liked her a lot, but I was real fucked up.
She cupped the back of my head and ran her fingers through my hair and leaned in and kissed me. “I don’t mind real fucked up.”
I nearly fell apart. “Okay.”
She kissed me gently again. “Want to get out of here?”
“Yeah.”
She drove me back to the dorms and we went up to her room. “Wait just a sec.” She disappeared inside, shutting the door to just a crack. Shuffling sounds. Things being moved. Then she popped back out, pulling at my hips. “Okay, come in.”
I tried not to look at her dresser, but did anyway. Everything was gone. None of the candles or herbs or hair or anything. I was drunk, so I just pointed and asked where it went.
She looked away a little. “Jer told me it weirded you out.”
I leaned into her, hooking my chin over her shoulder blade. “You didn’t have to do that.”
She squeezed me tight. “It’s okay.”
“Jerome said you were Wiccan?”
She rolled her eyes. “He would say that. It’s different. I mean, I don’t even really believe in it or anything. It’s just something I do to keep my head straight.”
I asked her to show me.
“Okay.” She went over to her mini-fridge and took out a half-filled water bottle. Bits of ashy paper floated inside. “You don’t have anything you got to do tomorrow, right?”
I shook my head.
She handed me the water bottle. “Just take one big gulp.”
I held the bottle up and looked at the bits of grey and purple paper dancing inside. I popped off the cap and took a gulp. It tasted like plastic.
She took the bottle back, took a gulp herself, and returned it to the fridge. She took my hand and led me over to her dresser. She bent over and picked up the box full of her things, carefully setting each item: three candles, four bundles of herbs, a horseshoe, and a nest of hair. She lit the candles with her lighter. “Okay.” She slipped behind me, kissing my neck and running her fingers across my belly and up to my breasts. “Now do this,” she whispered, and began quietly humming behind my left earlobe. I hummed with her and the air vibrated as we slipped in and out of harmony. “Yeah, the dissonance is good. Now look between the candles.” She hummed with me again, and her fingers unsnapped my jeans, brushing my pubic hair, reaching down and pressing on my clit. My voice vibrated against hers and the air wobbled. “Keep going,” she said. “And watch.” Her fingers rubbed half-moons in my groin. My hum stuttered. Hers matched mine as I shook against her, feeling her heartbeat on my back. She held me tight. Our tones locked together. A light gust hit my face, and slowly, between the candles, a tiny rabbit appeared, dancing on its hind legs.
LU
I poured the salt. I knelt at our shrine. I lit each of the candles. I blew gently through my lips. I unzipped my pants. Stroking up and down. Nestled in between the beats. A hundred years. A thousand years. The strings lapped at my skin. Gazing through the walls to the complex, to the outside, gazing through the town, the woods, across the landscape, the molten trees and curling brush, across the planes, roiling purple and black clouds spreading across galaxies, unable to see any trace of the invaders Arnie spoke of. As though they existed only in him.
I closed the gate and swept up the salt.
AHMIR
I got home from the bridge. A dead dog lay in the driveway. Its head caved in like a red rotten pumpkin, swollen with flies. A red-stained chunk of cinder block lying next to it. Later that night Tyler told me he just wanted to feel in control of something again. I went to bed shaking.
JILL
He’s so far away, but I see him. I keep inhaling his scent. My body smells like him—like his teeth and hair and red-swollen wounds. I see him. Flat. A body and face like an empty balloon. He smiles. An orange cord in his hands, its length floating out toward me from back home. Fibers wrapping my wrists. It feels like his skin. Like his hands around my waist and then my neck.
I woke up. The bed—Maddie’s bed—was empty. I looked around, letting my eyes adjust. Maddie stood, backed against the wall, clutching between her breasts. Soaked in sweat, shivering, a frown torn into her face. “Who was that?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Who was that with you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.
She pointed to the door. “You have to go. Now.”
LU
The next morning Arnie was already up and wet before I left for work. “You’re not going out there right?” he said.
“I have to.”
“They’ll get you. And then they’ll come in here.”
I crawled back onto the mattress and hugged him close. I whispered that it was going to be okay. That no one was trying to get in. I started to leave and he went all the way wet. I put a sheet between his heart and mine and caught the 8:15 bus to downtown and Golden Market. I headed toward the back to put my coat away when our manager Tanzy came up behind me and said my name. “Can we have a quick word?” I nodded and she brought me to her office. Maximum blue, maximum cold.
“First of all, I want to make sure you understand that what I have to say in no way reflects your job performance. Because it doesn’t.” She spoke slowly, in a voice reserved for a child.
