Break From Reality. Daily.
My life has been reduced to a few lines on a piece of paper. My memories are fading fast, and I know that if I don’t write them down they will be gone forever.
My name is Martha Geller. But I think at one time my surname was Jensen, so maybe I was married — maybe I’m currently married. I just don’t know anymore. To hold on to some sense of myself, every few minutes I say my name over and over so I don’t forget it.
My name is Martha Geller, my name is Martha Geller, and I’m scared.
Standing in the tight space between the front seats of the van, Ted used the rearview mirror to examine his appearance. “I hate this. I look like a moron,” he said as he fussed with the knot of his yellow and black polka dotted tie.
“Can’t help how you were born,” Ruben said with a smile.
“Please, I look good. It’s this damn outfit,” Ted retorted.
Ruben typed on his keyboard and the three monitors in front of him came to life. “The boss says wear the suit. You wear the suit. That’s how it goes,” he said.
“Your turn.”
This and Sarah’s nudge in the back hit Thomas like a slap with a wet towel. He jerked his head off the pillow; by the bedside clock it was three a.m., meaning he’d been asleep for just two hours, and he had an important meeting in the morning.
“You go, love,” he groaned.
Sarah nudged him again, more forcefully this time.
“C’mon Tom! I went last night. And you said you wanted to share.”
I sat in my car in the parking lot, seething, as I kept an eye on the apartment door. I had gotten the girl’s address off the label on a Mother Jones magazine Jeremy had left at my house. After being stopped by a train on my way here, I had arrived later than planned. Hopefully she hadn’t left yet.
My son would thank me for this one day. He was about to make a huge mistake and derail his whole life. All because of this little tramp.
I have scoured my memory for her. At first I scrubbed at the surface of my mind, but this is the wrong approach. Too much dirt falls away as you discard unwanted clumps — dirt which might hold clues. The way to do it is brush, brush, brush, sweep away the rubble — schools, foster homes, detentions — until a speck of reality shines through.
When you see it, you want to clutch it, hug it to you, admire it again and again. But a memory from when you’re five years old wears thin, like a gold coin hammered into leaf.
I have just a few coins. The fabric of her skirt. Her dark hair, tied back in the heat. Her first name; her surname, like mine, is too common to be any use. Her real name: Mama.
“Excuse me.”
I nearly drop my phone into the water. A woman has approached. I shoot a quick glance at the parking lot to see if her ride has dropped her off but, seeing it still stands empty, decide that she must have come from one of the houses down the street, quite a task in a wheelchair.
“Careful there,” she says with amusement. “I assume you are my ride?”
They had come to Little Cayman to end their lives. Arthur had even said as much to the young couple in the chalet next door.
“We’re here to die,” he told them, with a mischievous sidelong look at his wife. They had assumed that he meant they were here, like everyone else at the resort, to dive. This was also true. They would take the morning boat out to the Bloody Bay Wall and fin-kick over the edge, where the shallow coral shelf slopes into a vertical underwater cliff face. Then they would keep going.
The shot rang out in the small conference room, and the bullet that exited the gun’s chamber unfortunately found its way to me … well, to my head, to be exact.
The effing moron with the gun was, first off, a poor shot, and second, some asshole who couldn’t handle the fact that his wife was insisting on becoming his ex-wife.
My body lay slumped over the seat in front of me, some of the contents of my skull splayed all over the pretty spring dress of the woman who sat there, the actual target of the gunman’s rage.
Bailey picked up his pace when he saw that Eli was already seated on the steps. Although he’d never admit it, this was his favorite part of the day. Handing out towels at the welcome desk at the gym was monotonous, and going home to his one-room apartment was isolating, but lunch with Eli was engaging and fun. He felt like he was back in school, hanging out with friends and goofing around, before they’d all been sorted into their assigned professions and sent their different ways.
Eli was already partway into his vitamax sandwich by the time Bailey sat down. “You started without me?” Bailey complained.
“Yeah, sorry,” Eli said, his words blunted by his full mouth. He took a swig from his water bottle and said, “I had my quarterly check-up last night and they cut my calorie count again. They said something about my blood pressure getting to high, so I was starving by noon.”
Hayley Ball stood by the set, lost in a memory of the last ninety seconds of her beam routine. The Olympic crowd held their breaths for the teenage star taking on the giants of gymnastics from China and Russia. She completed her routine — daring and perfect, landing with a satisfying thump on the suedette beam. Then time for the spectacular dismount — she would attempt two tucked backflips with a single full twist, to thunderous applause. She tensed, sprang into their air and —
“Cartwheel!” said the director.
Hayley said “Oh,” and missed her cue. By the time she cartwheeled across the set, the supporting team of three bouncy cheerleaders had completed their ra-ra-ras and the entire production team was glaring at her.
“So, dad.”
Christopher fidgeted in his chair. His father eyed him from the sofa, then switched his focus to Dorothy, his son’s wife, then back to Christopher. Albert was old and not as bright as he once had been, but he knew an intervention when he saw one — although he wouldn’t have known the word for it.
“What is it, son?”
The neighborhood cats love my yard. I don’t know why. Every time I look out the window there are at least two cats out there, perched on a fencepost or skulking through the tall weeds behind the shed. When I open the back door, they look at me like I’m the intruder. They love the unused flower beds best of all. I think cats come from miles around to shit in my flower beds. I can imagine their conversations. “It’s the best outdoor litter box you’ve ever seen. Just the right ratio of sand to mulch. Let me give you directions.”
After the sun sets, my backyard turns into a kitty night club. I couldn’t guess how many kittens have been conceived back there. Judging from the amount of yowling, hundreds. At least.
In February, I survived a devastating car accident. It was quite the affair, the whole shebang. Light at the end of the tunnel, life flashing before my eyes, clinically dead for thirty seconds, seeing Death himself, everything. They tell me I’m lucky to be alive, even luckier that I only sustained simple fractures in my legs, though the bruises on my face will take time to fade and there may be some short-term memory loss. My heart stopped, but they started it back up again. The guy behind me was fishing for his phone and not paying attention. He plowed into me. My back seat was in the front seat and me? I was just lucky. I lived.
Rune’s fingers ceased their slow, rhythmic tapping. His thoughts had carried him away from the poem he was reading. Rubbing his eyes, he was surprised to find them aching. As he tried to resume reading, the lines blurred and twisted and overlapped. What was the time?
“Sir?”
The librarian’s voice came from her desk, hidden behind shelves. Its sound was weighed down by tiredness, hollow as if disembodied. The Swedish man played with the thought for a second — a ghostly librarian gliding through the shelves, watching readers.
“We’re closing in half an hour.”
He snapped out of his reverie, his head jolting up, his eyes following reluctantly, but he had to know, he had to look. Outside the window was a solid black wall.
Pema tiptoed through the amber morning light as fast as she dared, her feet silent on the titanium ground panels. She clutched her shoes to her chest to contain her clanging heart and kept her head down, as if this would make the passageway stay empty. Her mother’s voice filled her head.
We’re starting on Field 4-1 today.
Something about a generator down. Routine Maintenance. Pema didn’t hear the rest. Didn’t ask questions. She couldn’t. Panic had gripped her throat too tight.
It was after midnight when the soldiers marched to the village in Myanmar. Flames flickered as if the sun had exploded.
“Wake up,” whispered Mya, ripping her son from his dreams.
There wasn’t time to pack. No food, no warm clothes. Kafia rubbed his eyes, arms around his mother’s swelled belly.
“Momma, what’s happening?” Fear and a million questions stared back at her.
“We have to go.”
It starts with a light kiss, a gentle pressing of the lips together. I feel tiny, I feel completely unworthy of having this man standing above me, looking down on me. He is burly sinew, he is mature, he seems like a god, he may actually be one. What am I doing?
Yet there is an electricity between us I haven’t felt in a long time, like a shock, and it spreads a sparkly warmth down to my toes.
Save for a faint beeping noise, the room was quiet. It looked and smelled like most hospital rooms I’d seen, cold and antiseptic. A man occupied the couch in the corner, fast asleep. The body of a young boy, about twelve years old, lay on the bed, emaciated and unmoving. The body was connected to several machines surrounding the bed by various tubes and cables. The boy’s soul sat on the side of the bed, legs swinging absentmindedly. A thin, diaphanous cable stretched from him and disappeared into the body’s chest. He glanced at me then turned away, assuming I was just another mortal.
“Hello, Wes.”
That morning, my mother had not felt well enough to get out of bed. Her breath was laboured and it was, no doubt, from the dust and plaster in the air which we had no choice but to inhale. She called out from her room as I was trying to calm the boys. They were inconsolable and at one and two-and-a-half years old I couldn’t help them to understand that maybe there would be more food tomorrow. I held Faisal close to my chest and rubbed Tahir’s back hoping that it offered some comfort.
Rasha jumped up before I had a chance and said, “I’ll check Grandma.” Her tender, helpful heart made me smile just a little and I secretly hoped that she never lost those traits despite the circumstances in which she would have to grow up. She galloped down the hall and at the same second I saw her disappear into the adjacent room, I felt the sound before I heard it and my stomach sank.
I was five minutes late, only five minutes, but the Mentor can be quite unforgiving, as well as merciless. I tried to explain that there were some unforeseen circumstances, but he didn’t want to hear excuses — he never did. I knew the Mentor was demanding when the job was given to me … well, thrust upon me really, I never would have chosen it for myself. I was told the life I had before was gone, but it was hard to let go, and the Mentor thought that made me weak. I didn’t care, though. I wanted to remember the happiness, and the smiling faces of people I loved, but had to leave. That’s why I was late; I went back to observe them, and he knew it.
Sometimes I could see flashes of that old life; bits and pieces of faces, remnants of times that seemed more like dreams than real experiences. The Mentor told me that “my feelings cannot interfere in the job we are tasked to do.”
We could have gone back to work at old man Metzger’s nursery, shoveling gravel and six varieties of manure, each guaranteed to singe the nose hairs off a rhino. We could have caught up on the gossip, snide jokes, and nasal bickering tossed around by Betsy and Selma in the pig-hole they call the employee’s lounge. We could have gone back to collecting our Friday paychecks, enough for a week’s supply of Ramen noodles and five nights at Andy’s rundown neighborhood bar.
We could have left before any real damage done, and I was considering just that, getting ready to grab Pluto by the back of his collar and drag him out of there, already thinking how we’d laugh about this moment in years to come while tossing back beers and smirking at women. We could have turned back.
Then Pluto shot Gert Franklin and it all went to hell.
A jittery stillness shrouded the streets of Berlin. From where he stood, the dull glow from searchlights formed ghosts on the Wall, their bodies twisted and skeletal. Werner threw his cigarette to the ground, relishing the hiss which followed as it melted the snow. Its flame, small and flickering, died in an instant. He was itching to look down at his watch — to count how much longer he had to wait — but stopped himself. Seeing the time would make it real.
Instead, he concentrated on the surrounding buildings, which were hunched downwards as if exhausted. No light could be found — the tenants had nailed their windows shut with wood because the Vopo didn’t want anyone jumping to the West. He missed being able to see into their homes, though; he liked to spend his shifts watching figures walk to and fro, seeing their lives unfold, imagining their stories. Now, there was only the darkness.
The invitation had promised bubbles in exuberant cursive. Did they mean champagne? Why not say that? It was, Evan thought, a dubious enticement to tempt a grown man to a child’s birthday party. Yet here he was sipping stoically from a plastic flute filled with some sweet sugary fizz of questionable alcoholic content.
“You like Ben and Tori,” Naomi had insisted, when he had groaned about the engagement.
“I don’t dislike them,” he had clarified.
The baby appeared to have acquired the status of a minor deity in the home. Professionally produced images that riffed on its inevitable smallness covered the walls. Here was Atticus curled into Ben’s flabby bicep. There he was lying naked in a thatch basket of freshly laundered whites as though he’d snuck in there himself in a fit of puppyish mischief. Next was the child’s hospital band, like a tiny nightclub entry bracelet, encased in a glass exhibit. A plaque gave the particulars: Atticus Tobias Fletcher, Jan. 4, 2008, 8lbs, 7 oz. Why always the weight? Why not 19 inches or whatever height babies were.
It is a very good company to work for. Almost like a family.
Colin, sir. I am an operating technician here. I always wanted to be a doctor but unfortunately … it was not possible. I am doing the next best thing, though. (We need to take this elevator.)
My job is to provide maintenance on Hummans and I have been doing it for … well, quite some time now.
It was not predicted to be the storm of the century, but it didn’t sound good, either. Adam and I listened to the weather report on the radio while I circled the grocery store parking lot, trying to find a space. Everyone was picking up supplies before the weather turned.
“What’s freezing fog?” Adam asked from the back seat.
“It freezes onto anything it touches.”
The Devil doesn’t wear Prada. He actually prefers Dolce & Gabbana.
Satan, The Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub, or whatever you want to call him, was sitting in the Tasty Brew Café, sipping a latte and keeping a close eye on one Emerson Fyvush.
Emerson was a curious fellow, tall but hunched over, as if ashamed of his six-foot-five-inch frame. A thick unruly mane of yellowish hair sat atop his head, he had a pasty complexion, and his skin was always covered in a thin sheen of sweat. This whole pale, death look had a tendency to scare small children and adults alike.
Emerson was sitting in the food court at Carrington Mall, back by Wang’s Chinese and American Food. It was a great place to observe people without also being observed. He was watching Judy Hightower, manager of the Chic Boutique, a clothing store for the full-figured gal. Emerson had been tracking her movements for weeks. He had to. I mean, how else could he plot her demise?
The four had been searching for a way out of the windowless, hinge-less room for hours. Jordan paused her fingering of the padded wall to check over her shoulder. The other three searched at the far end of the big open room.
“Yes! Found something! It’s a button!” one of them said.
“Push it!” said another.
CHHHSSSHHHT. CLICK-CLANK. A panel emerged from the wall like a pocket door and slid across the floor. Everyone froze, watching it lock in place to create a new wall in the big open room.
I’m sure it’ll all work out fine, Sarah. But if for any reason I … I’ll tell you the story of what happened today. It’ll take my mind off the pain, as well. I’ve tried to call you, e-mail you, send you a message, but there’s no signal here at all. This is the next best thing, I suppose. I think there’ll be enough battery, so I’ll start from the beginning and try not to leave anything out.
I watched Brittany pack up her desk as people stopped by to congratulate her and give hugs, struggling to hold back their tears. Her going away party didn’t begin for another hour, but already the waterworks were starting. She had only worked here for a little over a year, but everyone loved her.
Everyone except me.
I had volunteered to plan her party, and I had spent the past two weeks making sure that it would be a party no one would ever forget.
There is a protocol for finding a missing person Outside. Number one, you do not jump up and yell, I’ve found him, he’s dead! Life on this arid world is harsh enough already.
Social graces aside, you make no assumptions. Maybe the person you’ve found isn’t the right person, or maybe he isn’t dead. You don’t shout out conclusions the moment you clap eyes on a corpse.
Number two, you call for help and you stay with the body until it arrives. No wandering off into the vast, unmapped areas of Parch, no detective work. Stay put with your suit zipped up and, obviously, Number Three, don’t touch anything.
Number three is a little muddier because Number Four — I may have this out of order — is to revive the person if possible. Nobody wants to be accidentally cremated.
So for the sake of the missing person, for the sake of the colony itself, there are rules, and you’d better follow them.
Mama tells me this place is magic, but I don’t see it at first.
The cool air of fall is only just giving away to winter chill, but there’s not a single red leaf beyond these gates. The few trees standing are bare-limbed and white, as if death permeates the very soil of this place, sapping life out of every living thing. Three words arch over our heads as we walk through: ARBEIT MACHT FREI, work shall set you free. Mother clutches our suitcase in her left hand — the only piece of luggage allowed the four of us. She had packed and re-packed it. Things went in, things came out. In the end, most of what was taken with us was food. Father added a watch and some earrings, saying quietly, “in case we have to trade for more.” Her right hand squeezes my cold finger painfully tight but I say nothing. A hundred people are ushered through the gates behind us.
I am eight and I hear father whisper to my brother, “we can work. If we can work, we can live.”
“It’s just an hour drive inland,” he’d said to her yesterday at the resort’s buffet dinner, holding out the brochure from the front desk. “It’ll be fun.”
Trekking through the jungle sounded anything but fun, but she knew if she went along, it would be it easier to beg off tomorrow, or the next day, when he would undoubtedly have found some other tour to drag her along on. We did your thing, honey. Then she could zone out to the swoosh of the Caribbean Sea rolling turquoise over the white sand.
Any minute now, she knew, he’d grab his camera from his backpack, aim its bulky lens at the pile of rocks, seeing something she couldn’t.
She crossed her arms and tried again to picture what the crumbling limestone might have looked like fourteen hundred years ago.
All she saw was rubble.
Johnny Mitchum was going about 70 down Route 40 in his dad’s 1968 Dodge Dart GTS. Twins Hank and Frank Needham were in back, and best friend Clay Albright rode shotgun.
Aggie’s Diner was their destination, a last night of fun before the twins left to work in Texas and Clay headed to San Diego for basic training.
They’d been friends since kindergarten, but now at age 22, the “Four Screw-ups,” as Johnny’s father called them, were well past the age when people smiled and saw their misadventures as harmless teen pranks.
It seemed they were also beginning to realize that those days of doing a whole lot of nothing were nearing their end, and Johnny suggested, “Let’s ride to Aggie’s, sit in those old greasy booths, and have one last hamburger before we say adios.”
Sarah nervously picked the paint off her nails. There wasn’t much of it left. She’d painted them two days ago, the first day of the hearing. Now only small spots of paint were left on a few of her fingers.
The lawyer in the grey suit and red tie sitting across from Sarah sighed. “I know this isn’t easy, but the judge has left it up to you. You need to decide.”
Sarah thought about how the judge’s face had turned red as he’d lectured her parents. “You’re both a disgrace and if the law would let me, I’d take everything you have and leave you both sitting in the gutter,” he said in a booming voice. The angrier he got, the more the vein in his temple throbbed. Sarah thought it might burst when he stood, wagged his finger at them, and yelled, “You’re the most selfish, self-centered, arrogant, ignorant, contemptible people I’ve ever had in my courtroom.”
“All right, my lovely. Just one more.”
The man pulled the thin blanket up to his daughter’s chin. Her short breaths came in tiny wisps of vapour. The cold air whistling in through the broken windows made the man shudder.
“It was a freezing winter and —”
“Once upon a time, daddy.” The girl’s voice was a whisper.
The worst part about insomnia was all the wasted time. I could have been cleaning my apartment, or binge watching The Crown, or learning Spanish. Instead, I spent hours lying in bed with my eyes closed, unable to fall asleep but too tired to get up.
Once, years ago, I had tried taking a sleeping pill. I woke the next morning mostly naked and stretched out on the picnic table in the back yard. Our neighbor was out on his deck, drinking his morning coffee and staring at me.
My husband was not amused. He had learned to tolerate the blackout shades and earplugs, the pacing around the house in the middle of the night, and the screaming fits if I managed to fall asleep and, God forbid, he sneezed and woke me. He had even weathered the time I didn’t sleep for three days straight and started using a hammer to kill the giant spiders crawling up the walls. Public nudity was a step too far. He moved out shortly after that, and I wasn’t sorry to see him go.
The pocketman treated me with the contempt I deserved. “I trust this suits . . . sir.”
He came recommended as the best master pocketman in Nab, a vital assurance for a gentlemen newly arrived from the countryside. Every gentleman requires an expertly-sewn coat, so that theft and shame can be minimised. Yet it stung, that my innocence was so obvious.
However, I had been robbed three times on my way to the Palace the day before and could not afford to upbraid the pocketman for his rudeness. “Yes. Thank you.”
My first thought is
I did it.
My second thought is
I did it wrong.
I start to form a third thought, but it turns out to be considerably difficult to do when one careens at nauseating speed through a tunnel of psychic subspace.
I often watch him from my hiding place. He always wears a long aviator’s scarf that flows out behind him when he walks, and one of those old leather bomber jackets.
Maybe he was a pilot in his old life — back before the Order.
He wanders late at night when the streets are empty and quiet. That time of night when you can pretend you don’t live in a society run by a group of brutal monsters.
The Order of the Void is in power now. Traditional governments were disbanded after the Order won the War of Annihilation. Chaos followed, and most of the population fled to the outer regions known as the Unknown Territories. The rest of us are captives within these borders, and at the mercy of madmen.
People laughed at Daddy when he told them the dangers of the Order. I wonder what they think now.
“You start, Candace,” Mom said.
Everyone looked at me. I hesitated, trying to decide whether to tell them my news
“Come on, Candace!” seven-year-old Tyson called. “That turkey’s going to grow wings and fly away. I’m starving.”
When the laughter died down, I took the plunge. “I’ve written a short story and it’s going to be published.”