Break From Reality. Daily.
Granny sat heavy in my stomach. She tasted of garlic and pickles, not unpleasant, but I knew she’d give me indigestion later. I was still hungry, and after the savouriness of Granny, I was looking forward to the sweetness of Red. There’s nothing like finishing off a big meal with a sweet treat.
I was still picking my teeth when I heard her skipping up to the front door, so I had to think of something quick to keep Red in the house long enough to corner her.
The pedestrian walkway under Rideau Street smelled of weed, beer and urine. Shannon hesitated, then walked on with brisk steps.
This route would get her to the bus stop a good fifteen minutes faster than the crosswalk. Nerves spurred her on. Let’s go, let’s get this done. Her heart sang her hope. Hurry, hurry, hurry and see the grandbabies!
She knew this place. She’d been here often, sleeping off a bender in a dank corner, invisible. She’d hated the people who walked by, unaware.
My closest friend disappeared in the strange, cold summer of 1818. Anna was as close to me as a sister, born on my family’s tobacco plantation to Mimmy, a woman owned by my father and charged with looking over the children in our household. Anna and I were born two months apart; my secrets were hers and hers were mine. Mother fretted over our close bond, but Daddy always said it was harmless. Daddy was wrong.
1818, the year without a summer is what they called it. Late frosts damaged our crops, and tension ran thick throughout the whole plantation. Mimmy said the weather was something mystical and ungodly. Daddy said it was caused by ash from a volcano half around the world. Both were right, I think.
A small life, he knows. Loren Birby’s got a restaurant, used for feeding the people in town and catering events. He’s also got a daughter, spunky Sadie, a freshman in college. He raised her with his beautiful wife, Karen. Loren likes running his business, and he even likes having an empty nest.
Until Karen flies off, too.
Blonde and youthful, she picks a podiatrist named Sandy Mullen. An accomplished doctor, Karen’s friends say by way of an excuse. An overpaid toenail trimmer, say Loren’s friends over beers.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do.”
Do I?
They played the very last game of the very last World Series in Los Angeles. It was August and below freezing at Dodger Stadium.
As he watched the game on the old television, Melvin Thompson cried a little when one of the players went down on a patch of ice. “Hudson tries to steal second, he slides . . .” — then a pause, it became clear it was not a slide — “he’s not gonna make it, he’s out.” The pitcher went down for good, after going into convulsions in the seventh inning.
One last grasp of happier times, Thompson thought, before sunlight, baseball and hot dogs slipped away for good; before pandemics, a looming ice age and little men in big cars, kidnapping ordinary Americans under the cover of darkness and official badges, took everything away.
I . . . don’t want to do this. I’ve visited Illias village to claim hundreds of sacrifices on hundreds of new moon nights, but this is the first time that thought breaches the swamp of dread in my stomach. I don’t want to do this.
I stop at the top of the valley. The village is dark. Its people are hiding, the way they always do.
At least the stars stay out for me.
I hefted my axe and ran my thumb along its edge, split and doubled over in places, caked in blood and hair.
Not today. The axe would not touch today’s condemned in its condition. It would be clean and sharp, and it would get a good polish and oiling as well.
I am minutes away from spending time with my parents for the first time. My first name is Oliver and that’s all I know. I’m a seventeen-year-old orphan and the white sales associates inside the Memory Room are viewing me with suspicion. A Hispanic man should not have access to 300 credits.
I sit in the pristine, sterile booth waiting for the associates to attach the helmet and goggles. They scan the barcode on my arm, expecting my code to flash red and set off alarms. Nothing happens but the number 0000003 appears. They huff, shuffle, and then retreat, believing their brainwashed stereotype of other races being inferior. Fear rules our society.
