Category: Stories

In Your Hands #4: You hunt for food.

Your bow readied, an arrow between your fingers. You crouch, walk toward the rustling on the balls of your feet.

You’ve hunted plenty of times before. Stalking always feels like it takes forever, but you know, logically, only a fraction of the time you feel actually goes by. Your eyes adjust to the shadows, the setting sun, making your slow steps avoid fallen branches and crunchy leaves with ease.

Pause. Wait for another hint, a misplaced step, to dictate your direction. You hear it: a leaf ripped form a stem, a hundred feet or so away from you.

One step. Another. Ready your arrow. A quick death. No chase.

Right before you release your fingers, an illuminated arrow sails from your left and the deer collapses on the ground. The sound of it writhing over dead leaves blends with two sets of footsteps from the arrow’s origin.

An adult and a child, maybe a human and halfling— hard to tell in the dark. Each figure wears a dark cloak. The taller figure holds a metallic bow. Portions of its pattern glow in the new light of a lantern held by the shorter one.

They start talking. The shorter one’s voice is high and nasally. “See? It harnesses the power of lightning within the shaft. When it makes contact, that bolt surges through the target. It’s genius, really.”

The taller one sounds tired, their voice a low drawl. “That mean the meat’s cooked then? I can just take a bite off the thigh there?” They lift one of the hind legs, bring it to their mouth.

“Sweet Sol, no! Stop that!” The shorter one knocks the leg out of the taller one’s hands. “There’s still disease in it! Obviously. Lightning shocks, it doesn’t cook.”

“There’s smoke coming out of the wound. The fur is singed. How is that not cooked?”

The short one sighs. “Selnk. I swear. You are smarter than this. That small portion may be ‘cooked,’ as you say, but the rest isn’t. You’ve stopped the heart; you didn’t roast it over a fire.”

“You’re no fun when you’re hungry.”

“Then pick up that carcass so we can cook it then! It took all day to put that enchantment together!”

Selnk bends over, flops the deer carcass over their shoulder. The arrow sticks out of the deer’s neck behind them. You could see the burnt fur, bulging eyes. The deer’s weight brings down their hood, revealing dark, wavy hair just above their shoulder. There are bags under their grey eyes, a scar creating a valley in their beard.

“Lead the way, Alri. You got the lantern.”

Alri holds the lantern up to inspect the carcass one last time. They throw their hood back to get a better look. The braid over their shoulder looks like a coil of copper. They poke the deer’s shoulder and nod. They lift the lantern and lead Selnk down the trail, debating what tea goes best with venison.

In Your Hands #3: You go toward the river.

You bend down a little to fit your head under the arch of the hollowed-out log. You carry your pack in front of you in one hand, your bow in the other. Brittle wood brushes against your hunched shoulders; a chunk falls on the ground behind you.

Out on the other side, the clouds begin to part. Sun rays filter through the trees in angles you can read which tell you it’s early afternoon. You step into and out of its warmth as you walk down the trail.

An annoying thing about being in sunlight, even briefly, if that you start to feel like a person again. Images from the morning come back to you in waves: an old scroll, alchemical formulas, a beaker in the rotten center of a stump, a westerly gust, an explosion.

That voice in your head felt familiar, even though you’d never heard it before. A woman’s voice. Whatever it was is gone now. You feel the absence. You only hear it like an echo from around a bend.

The river becomes louder. The trail gives way to a pebbly bank. Rocks shuffle under your step. You look at where you step and see blood drop from your face. Right. The blood. You need to wash your face.

You squat at the edge of the river, stick your hands in. Cold. The black clouds trails from your hands in the water. You make a bowl with your hands, watch it fill up. Tossing the water onto your face feels nice, refreshing. You wipe your hands across your face, brush your hair out of your eyes. Combing your hair with your fingers, you see red droplets fall from your knuckles.

You get a glimpse of your face in the moving water. A cut above your right eye, connecting your temple to your hairline, about the length of your index finger. You dry your hands on your jacket, dig out a bandage from the bottom of your pack, and dress the wound.

The sun’s rays lose shape, diffuse in the late-afternoon mist. Your stomach growls. No food left in your pack.

Downstream, dots can be seen in the windows of buildings in town. You could probably get there by nightfall, in time for a meal at an inn.

Upstream, a similar rustling sound from earlier can be heard over the river. There’s a good chance a deer or something similar could be hunted there.

You hunt for food.

In Your Hands #2: You choose a longbow.

You reach under your pack to defend yourself with your longbow. It spins in your grip as you nock an arrow, draw it back, aim.

It’s only a deer, you realize, foraging for acorns under an aging oak. As you relax your arrow, the deer lifts its head and looks in your direction. You see a vibrant purple gash in its face, right below its eye. It’s deep, bright, its edges spread out in tendrils wavy as a canyon river. It appears dry, the fur around it unstained. The deer startles itself, hops further into the forest.

You take a half-step after it, but stop. The amethyst from the crater, now behind you, draws you in its direction. The smoke from it is dissipating. You hear a voice coming from it, a little louder with every step you take.

“time— constant— it’s time—always now—an end— time— beginning—”

The crater is hardened, charred earth. Heat radiates through you. In its center is the amethyst, its pulsing glow, no bigger than a halved apple; it would fit in the palm of your hand. 

“time— it’s time—”

You reach for the amethyst. Surprisingly, it’s cold in your hand. You feel its jagged edges across your palm.

The gem’s light pulses. As it brightens, you feel something surge through your wrist. Your veins take on a violet hue under your skin for only a second. It doesn’t hurt. The wave fades as quickly as it came.

“the bow—” The voice is all around you now. “it’s time— the bow—” Maybe it’s inside your head.

You look back at your bow, untie the lather straps of the grip, exposing a small crevice in the wood. The gem is a close fit, but needs more space. You dig out the crevice slightly, carefully, with your pocket knife.

Once you’ve removed a few slivers, you replace the amethyst in the crevice. The wood glows in the purple light and you see small purple tributaries stretch from its center. You rewrap and retie the straps of the grip.

Always the scientist, you nock an arrow to see what happens. As soon as the shaft rests on the top of the grip, the arrowhead glows. You aim toward a log a few yards away.

The arrow sinks deep into its side, a bit deeper than usual. A polypore erupts from the point of impact. The bark around it becomes brittle. Lichen drapes hang from the edge of the shelf fungus. The quickened effect only lasts a few seconds, then the log and its decomposition seemingly return to the regular flow of time.

You become restless. The clearing’s stillness feels ominous. You gather your things and figure out where you can go.

The soft roar of a river can be heard to your right, probably half a mile away. A hollowed-out log connects to a trail in that direction.

On the end of the clearing in front of you is a cluster of deer ferns, a small gap in their leaves reveals a narrow trail beyond the tree line. It seems to go back toward town.

You go toward the river.

In Your Hands #1: You wake up on the forest floor.

You wake up on the forest floor. You lie face down on a bed of moss. It takes a lot of effort to lift your head, to get onto your knees and hands.

The world seems to spin. To find which way is down, you squeeze your eyes, ball the moss bed in your fists. Equilibrium comes after a minute or so— time is hard to discern. When you open your eyes, the maple branches seem to move both faster and slower than you think they should.

There’s a layer of smoke between you and the trees. The clearing is filled with the smell of a campfire. Ash floats like snow.

Now that you’ve secured gravity, you look down. Your knuckles are pale as the falling ash. Relaxing your grip doesn’t last; your fingers slap back against your palm like a mousetrap. A drop of blood lands on your right thumbnail.

There’s nothing above you but clouds and ash. The diffused lights makes it impossible to tell what time of day it is. There’s a red circle in the moss where your head lay before. Your face is slick as you roll your hand over it. Your palm comes back red.

Your gaze sticks to the puddle of blood in your hand as you try to remember how you got here. So hazy. An explosion? But why? From whom? You? Was this your goal?

Sharp waves of pain don’t wash over you. Your limbs have the dull ache of overuse, a bad night’s sleep. You half-reposition, half-fall onto your backside, landing by your pack. Every breath is labored; your throat itches. Your eyes strain to take in light, focus through the blur of growing tears.

You take in your surroundings to see if it jogs your memory.

To your left, the moss climbs up a nurse log. Straightening your back to see over its crest, the moss yields to a grassy meadow. Black smoke emanates from a sunken patch of darkened soil a few yards aways. Something glows in the center of the crater, a slow pulsing amethyst. There are no other people in the clearing, no other bodies on the ground.

The urge to move is overwhelming. That pulsing light calls to you; it will answer your questions. It’s a slow process, getting to your feet, but you can eventually stand upright without leaning on the nurse log beside you.

A rustling emerges from the bushes behind you. A flood of adrenaline turns you around in an instant. You reach under your pack to defend yourself with your…

You choose a longbow.

A Note Should Suffice

There’s a tower out on the horizon.

You’ve lived in this forest a long time. So long, in fact, that you’ve started to name the trees— not the species names, like spruce, cedar, hemlock; those you learned on your grandpa’s nature walks years ago— names like Rela, Sophia, Brett.

The black face of the tower is stark in contrast to the orange-green hue of the treetops across the valley in the morning light. Its top half is coiled like a serpent around a shaman’s forearm, coming to three sharp points a hundred feet above the western red cedars at the base of the mountain.

The tower wasn’t there yesterday. You’re almost certain. You don’t remember a tower living there— isn’t that where Storm River started? At the base of Thunder Falls? The face of the glacier still sunbathes on the mountain. It must still drift there. You don’t remember the last time you really paid attention to that area. You don’t remember the names of those trees, if the trees are still there.

You strain your eyes, grasping at the finer details just out of reach. Soft, faint, purple cyphers flow along the tower’s coils, glowing in a slow pulse that climbs up the snake’s spine.

The colors of the treetops by the tower are washed out. The leaves and pine needles pale, white as day-old coals. The bark’s black as night. No life there, no movement. You could almost feel the absence of the grubs that crawled within the folds of the bark.

It’s cold, as mornings here tend to be. The sun, contrary to what city people say, is not a morning person; it takes its time stumbling over the mountain. You’re halfway through your earl grey, meaning you’re toward the end of the hour between dawn and when the sun is actually visible.

Your porch is quiet in a loud way. The quiet has a presence, and it demands to be known. One morning, about a week ago, a crow landed on a maple branch on the northeast corner of your front yard. It cawed, then froze and, you swear, lowered its head apologetically before flying away.

You finish your tea, then pack several days of supplies in your backpack. Your partner is still asleep. Not wanting to wake them, you leave a note on the counter saying what you’re doing, where you’re going, when to worry.

A Story, Sure.

I’m not good at beginnings and endings. I have trouble choosing the most impactful points in time for them.

By the time you read this, I’ve figured out how the story ends. If I care about the efficiency of communicating information to you, I’d get to the point and tell you that George gets a promotion at work, loses his wife, and leaves a cult with his existential issues still intact. The specific points in time don’t matter, since George fails to change after the Thursday on which all of these temporal slices occur.

But, without context, you probably don’t care about George, his job, or his wife. Most readers, not you, of course, would demand for some sort of event to help you bond with George. They want to derive meaning out of whatever happens to him, even if there is nothing to read into.

So, I have to give you a beginning. I just don’t know what the right beginning for George’s story is.

I could be a pretentious art film, start with the Big Bang.

We start with a boom, a matte white screen that fades to black, then two nebulas form. Purple clouds that spiral, pull together, form two stars. We watch them play a game with gravity until they make a binary star system. 

They orbit each other. Sometimes farther apart, sometimes closer, until they collide. There’s a large spark; the orchestra crescendos. Bright chunks of matter fly in all directions, and the screen goes dark.

You’d probably read this as an allegory (or, if the academics protest, at least a solid metaphor) to foreshadow what happens to George. You can do that, if you wish.

Or, I could choose to start the story before George was born; I could tell you about his parents.

They were typical products of the 60s. Long hair, flowers punctuating their hairlines. They misdirected their frustration with a war they disagreed with on the veterans of said war. It was embarrassing for everyone.

His parents never really settled down. They fought on a regular basis about things that ultimately didn’t amount to much more than which nightly news show they should watch during dinner.

But, none of that is really necessary to George’s story; as none of that involves George directly. Yes, this could be another example of reading into foreshadow for how George’s life shapes. But, of course, it doesn’t, because he never met them. They gave him up for adoption immediately after he was born. 

I should have said that earlier. All apologies.

I don’t really know how to tell you what happened to George. 

I really just wanted to tell you that on Thursday, May 14th, 2015, George woke up later than usual, after spending Wednesday night at the temple of a religious organization (i.e. a cult) he joined a few weeks prior. 

He followed a breeze from the folded-open sheets across the bed to the open bedroom door.

He walked by some copies of The Secret his sister got him piled on his dresser on his way to the closet.

He decided that Thursday, May 14th, and all Thursdays that dare to be May 14ths are doomed days.

Until he got to work, oddly enough, where his manager had interpreted his past few brooding months as introspection on the process the business uses to boost sales, and, consequently, gave him a promotion to sales director.

But, is that where his story ends? Should that be where I leave it?

I mean, George persists after that Thursday. 

In the research we did on Thursdays that happened to be May 14ths after that day, the results were inconclusive; they were just as chaotic and random as any other Thursday or May 14th.

George didn’t keep his job forever. He came back from his divorce in better spirits. He did not, however, overcome his ennui.

Usually, the author wouldn’t tell you this. They’d leave you with the end of that Thursday, and you’d go on your way thinking that George had a good life afterward.

I can’t do that, though. 

George’s life wasn’t tragic by any means.

He didn’t suffer terribly much, aside from the lung cancer that eventually killed him.

He lasted long enough to retire from his job. The office had a retirement party, where he saw all the people he didn’t know celebrate the fact that they got cake during work.

He grew old enough to start forgetting things. He forgot the foster homes he stayed in, his first wife. He remembered his 3rd grade teacher being awfully strict, though. 

His children discussed this peculiarity with his doctors, and they all scratched their heads and shrugged their shoulders.

They don’t know what caused it. Or what it meant. But it happened nonetheless.

First, you smell the sulfur.

First, you smell the sulfur. You feel warm concrete on your fingertips. It creeps to your elbow. For a moment, you think about proximodistal development, whether this would be a good counter-example. Then, you remember what happened.

You get fleeting images only. Clocking-out at work. Orange clouds over grey buildings. Horns. Concrete— you remember thinking it looked comfortable, as if you could sleep there. Flying cars. Fire. Shockwaves. Black. You open your eyes.

Your eyes focus on the gravel first. Inches from your face, you see more detail than you ever thought possible. Intricacies fade as your gaze sprints forward. You see smoke sweeping through the parking lot. The sky is black, leering over burning storefronts. No stars. No streetlights. Horns sprout from the ground.

You process colors first. The head: black, seemingly caked in soot, ash. The body: red, blood stains. You try to focus on details, but they keep shifting like a taillight behind a rainy windshield. It looks at you, moves forward. You get to your feet.

You realize you aren’t hurt. You reflect briefly, but cannot figure it out. The creature smiles at you. You feel your arms rise, your mouth open. You hear a thunderous scream— sounds from other worlds. Your story is over. You’re a passenger in a gondola.

She Thought It Was a Good Day

Emma woke up around noon. She opened her eyes, saw her bedpost. Must have fallen off the bed while she slept. A cluster of dust bunnies huddled on the right side of the post.

She imagined them planning their next attack on her throw rug. Standing around a little map of her bedroom, the general seated in a little throne made from a gum wrapper. They would attack from the north and east, cornering her beloved rug between the dresser and the bed. It would have no chance against their fire arrows and cannons. The epic battle would last four days, the throw rug about to surrender and begin composing a treaty to the dust bunny general—

Emma realized she had fallen back asleep and forced herself up. It was now a quarter to one. She untangled herself from her comforter, a butterfly about to emerge.

She blinked four times. Quick. Quick. Slow. Quick.

The room was well lit by the sun. She avoided tripping over her piles of Hemingway and Faulkner, but kicked Melville all over the floor. She chuckled at her own symbolism.

Emma dragged her feet to the kitchen and poured water into her old teapot. It reflected the sun’s light into her eyes.

“Damn it!”

The teapot’s impact echoed from the sink. She picked it up and slammed it onto the stove. She grabbed a mug, debated which tea to drink. English Breakfast seemed the most logical. It also made her feel regal.

After drinking her tea, Emma got ready for the day. It was almost four.

Her phone’s blue light shined through her living room. It was a message from her friend, Erica, who wanted to go on a walk. Emma looked at the pile of reading she had to do that weekend and decided to go on the walk.

They met at the park at the edge of their neighborhood. When they were kids, they would play there after school— tag around the slide, backflips off the swing set, castles in the sandbox. The slide was taken away when they got into middle school, the swings in high school. Oddly, they left the swing set’s frame, only removing the swings. So, a rusty lower-case N stood in a mixture of gravel and bark, victorious in its war with time.

Emma stood by the frame, ran her fingers over the rust. The blue paint that mirrored the summer sky was still clinging to parts of it. Some was eaten by rust. Her pinky finger moved from the rust onto the paint, but it flaked and fell to the ground. She stared at the lonely flake as it lied on the cold gravel.

By the time Erica arrived, Emma had lied down by the flake and began staring at the sky through the gaps in the trees.

Erica approached hesitantly. “Emma?”

“Yes?”

“You doin’ ok?”

Emma shook her head, “Yeah. Yes. I’m fine. Yes.” She picked herself up and brushed off her arms and legs. “How are you?”

“I’m good, not laying in gravel, the usual.”

“Hah hah. So clever.” Clouds of dirt and bark glowed in the evening sun. “Do you have anywhere in mind?”

“I was thinking about going through the woods to the pond.”

Emma agreed, and they headed off, talking about what they had done over the summer, the people from high school they hated, and their confusion over Pierce College’s registration process.

The conversation was fairly one-sided. Erica dominated, choosing which tangents the conversation should go on, like a park ranger leading a hike on a trail with many forks.

Emma didn’t mind. She understood that Erica exaggerated her views a lot. It seemed like Erica found some comfort in portraying a caricature instead of her real self around other people, like how a sunny winter day looks warm, feels cold.

They arrived at the pond around five-thirty. A mallard couple swam by the dock they stood on. The sun danced on their ripples. Emma assumed they were on a date.

Erica stared at the mallards. “Remember when we came here after Josh broke his arm in 7th grade?”

“Of course.”

“I remember seeing him in gym. We were playing dodgeball, and he was the last one left on his team and he took a huge drive to avoid one of those red, smelly balls, and he hit the floor, and there was this empty thud, followed by him yelling, ‘Fuck!’ and the teachers debated over scolding him before they realized he needed help, and…”

Emma had heard this story a hundred times. It happened every time they came to the pond or Erica thought about something bigger than herself.

“… We all came here after school, and we started trying to figure out what had really happened…”

“Yeah, and Dina wouldn’t shut up about all the blood.”

“I know! There wasn’t even that much of it either!” Erica laughed at the memory. Emma smirked.

The two sat on the edge of the dock with their feet in the pond, kicking cool water into the warm air.

Emma focused on trying to create a momentary rainbow while Erica recalled other stories about Josh, Dina, and other people from their childhood. She considered it a good use of her time.

I Wanted to Write Something You’d Like

You always told me how much you liked the way I describe things, so I’m going to try to do that now. 

I had just got home from work. I parked my Focus in the driveway. The early-December frost was still lazily slumped in the corners of the curb. The clouds had layers, many wispy strands floating together attempting to make a uniform grey sheet. The air was cold and thin, much as it always was on the top of the hill we lived on. 

We called it a hill, anyway. Ryan and Laura had called it a mountain when they first moved here, remember? They were really confused when we laughed, and then we got into a senseless argument about the differences between the definitions of “hill” and “mountain.” Far too academic for such a stupid thing. 

Right, so, I had left the car, situating my your-beanie on my head. Thank you, again, for finding it in a shoebox in the back of the closet when I had lost mine, and subsequently not wanting it back. The car’s warmth that had soaked into me and my clothing dissipated far too quickly; I hate thermodynamics. 

I went to get the mail, the chore I always do before going inside the house. The sidewalk, somehow, still had a layer of frozen dew. The border of the frost followed the shadows of the Diaz’s house and Tyrell Jackson’s pick-up. There was a soft, faint crunch when I stepped. Not a full-on-snow crunch, but there was an attempt, like Simba trying to impress Mufasa with his roar.

The mailboxes recently got changed from the individual sub-sandwich-shaped boxes nailed to several two-by-fours to the factory-farm-chicken-cage letter prisons on metal poles. Our box was number 7, even though our house number was 23561. I don’t understand why they couldn’t consolidate the numbers to be the same— I’ve talked your ear off about this thing before. Too much, in fact. I’ll move on. 

There was nothing there. Well, there were ads for Safeway and Albertson’s, but those don’t really constitute mail; anything that lands in the recycle bin instead of on the dining room table doesn’t count as mail.

The apple tree in the corner of the Tanaka’s yard by the mailboxes was bare. Its branches were thin and weak in the breeze. A plump robin perched on one of the lower branches, making it and its relatives bob up and down under its weight. It must frequent their bird feeder. The robin’s head twitched left and right, seemingly unperturbed by the cold. Perhaps by instinct, perhaps realizing how alone it was, the robin took off and flew down the block. 

Our mailbox, if you remember, was around the corner on 22nd Street. The view on the way back, where 22nd meets 162nd, faced west. When the sky was clear, we could see the Olympic mountains. Today, the wispy clouds bunched up high enough that the silhouette of the mountains from the setting sun was crisp. A deep-orange fire burning behind the glaciers and rock reached up to meet the blue-black of the evening sky. 

The colors blended, or met, or touched— I don’t know, but there was a line in the sky between them. It felt like there should be a word for it. Or, maybe I thought I was supposed to see some undiscovered color that would give me some transcendental realization. But there wasn’t a word that could placate me, no epiphanies. 

I didn’t turn on 162nd back to the house that day. I kept walking west down 22nd, taking deep breaths of icy air, seeing how long I could exhale steam. The steam coned out from the pinpoint precision of my mouth to the broad shotgun array a few feet away, before losing all sense of rhythm and deforming into clusters of chaotic clouds. 

At the end of 22nd, where the housing development started to turn back on itself, there was a clearing on the northern corner— something about how if the number of houses exceeds x, then the developer needs to build and maintain a small park, so the lot was left empty. The wild grass still had white tips, completely untouched until my footsteps broke their peace.

I could see the abandoned golf course from the lot. Well, the edge of it, around the tree line— you know. We drove by it whenever we went to the highway, and we had walked around the lonely concrete trails that lead from hole to hole. There were three parked cars on the shoulder of the spur that lead to its parking lot. The company that bought the land barricaded it years ago, but never did anything else with their purchase. 

I had always meant to draw up a map of the golf course and blow out the proportions to become the world for a story I had thought of. When we had gone on our first walk around it, I had started piecing together the cities. There was a railroad track along the eastern side that would transport goods throughout the towns along the foothills of the impassable mountain range. There were rolling hills and vast lakes and small, dry patches of desert; ocean would hug the western coast.

The story was supposed to revolve around a woman making a dessert for some special occasion, how stressed she felt while making it. Maybe stress isn’t the right word; she would be excited to make the thing and for people to eat it, but she wanted it to be perfect. She’d walk around the floating flour specs of her kitchen and pour precise measurements of sugar into different measuring cups, some complicated fractions would stick out from the recipe that would need to be broken down and converted.

With every ingredient she’d add, there would be a cut away to another person who would be moving through their daily routine to gather, package, distribute, or sell the ingredient the woman just used. Their lives would be rough and stressful and tiresome. Then, it would jump back to the woman and her dessert.

I never wrote that story. I had thought about it, as I said, but I never wrote it. I knew that if I did write it, I’d show you, and you’d probably tell me it was weird. So, I’d save it on an external drive somewhere and always mean to come back to it and fix it, but be too afraid to read it again. Its 0s and 1s would sit on that disk undisturbed until the end of time.

Maybe I should have written it. Maybe you would have liked it. I don’t know.

The orange was dimming around the peaks of the Brothers and Mount Constance. The bones in my fingers were starting to ache. It’s weird how the cold pierces so deeply so suddenly. Small icy flakes shifted horizontally in the air carried by the soft northerly wind. I started to walk back to our house.

Your hatchback was in the driveway. I had forgotten. It had sat there for several months, and I had seen it there every day, but I had momentarily forgotten that you were gone. 

This realization happens too often, I admit, but your death just hasn’t dug its roots deep enough. I’m afraid they never will, that I will keep forgetting and having to remember all over, and the gale of grief will consume me again.

I cried that day. I curled up in the front yard and hugged my knees into my trembling chest. The grass was cold and wet, slowly changing colors in the faint glow of the Morozov’s Christmas lights.

A Morning in Kroa

The sun rises over the Haurathon, the centerpiece of Kroa. Its spire shoots out 1000 feet above the neighboring buildings. The Haurathon is used as the symbol for Congress, who use it to decorate their lapel pins, our flag, our money. You are to never forget about the Haurathon or Congress— they own you.

Sunrises are my favorite part of the day. The way the sun peeks at Kroa, like it’s wincing, makes me feel seen. It looks at me directly, tinted in the haze of the green fog dissipating from the streets. I think the beauty may be in the way Congress’ night poison rises with the sun, like a final battle cry to the heavens.

“Aja. It’s time to wake up,” I say to my sister. She’s sleeping on the couch, as she does almost every night. Her feet stick out of a mound of blankets covering the couch cushions. 

White stitches stretch out where we sit every night. Our family has had that couch since both our parents were alive; I guess that would be at least eight years or so. The dark green upholstery, the color I remember old fir trees having, has faded a lot since then, too.

Aja rolls around under the blankets, making tired groans. She says half words and flails her arms. Usually, it’s around this time that I pick up one of the blanket edges to help her out. This morning, I do not.

There’s a picture on the mantle
in a simple black frame
with four people in it.

One was
a woman with a black ponytail
and wrinkles around her smile
and small, green eyes that asked you how your day was,
          and was Mom.

Another was
a man with a thick beard
and a lumberjack’s flannel shirt
and thick arms that would hold you up to see over the crowd,
          and was Dad.

The smallest was
a girl with brown eyes
and small hands that held an old 3DS
          and was Aja.

The last one was
a girl with dyed purple hair
and a shirt from a cyborg-punk band no one listens to anymore,
          and was me.

The corners are chipped and faded.
Dust layers tint the grass’ green hue.

I sit cross-legged on the coffee table, facing the window, the couch on my right. The Haurathon dominating the view. I can feel steam from my coffee graze against my chin out of the mug I made Mom back in school. It’s wide, the sides thick and lopsided. The purple paint starting to peel around the edges. Coffee stains line the rim on the inside, no matter how much I scrub it.

“Boa, any help would be appreciated,” Aja grumbles.

“You’re 14. You can figure it out.”

“Not when the blankets travel between dimensions!” Two mountains erupt under the blankets.

“There are only three dimensions, dummy.”

“No lines think there are squares, Boa.”

I pause, sip my coffee, bask in the bitter grip in the back of my throat. “Still dumb.”

“Boa! Please! I’m dying!”

“No you aren’t.”

“I can feel Death’s cold hand on my neck. He’s dragging me into the abyss! Boa! Take care of Cat for me! Noooo!!!” Her plea fades.

“Super dumb. Cat doesn’t even need us.”

“Fine.” Aja sits up, blankets cocooned around her.

Cat sits in front of the window, staring at us. She gives me a disappointed meow, stretches her forelegs, saunters off, her chin up. 

“Cat hates you,” I say, taking another sip. The sun starts to give definition to the clouds. I can see shapes forming, green and white clusters.

“Cat loves me,” the blanket pupa replies. “She could not live without seeing my beautiful  face.” The blankets peel away, and Aja emerges. Her short, black hair sticks out in all directions. She reaches her thin arm out of the oversized shirt she wears to bed and grabs my mug. She takes a sip and recoils harshly. “Nope. No. Still no. Never. How!? Why!?”

She quickly puts the mug back in my hands. “Get up. You’re going to be late for class.”

She lets out a long, exasperated sigh. “But I’m sick!” she counters, giving two well-paced coughs into a blanket. “I think I should just stay home and rest,” she continues, putting one of the blankets back over her head.

“You literally said the same thing two days ago.”

She pauses. “But the blankets are warm, and comfy, and I named this one Gerard.” She pulls out a quilt Mom made. It has red and white squares alternating in rows.

“No you didn’t. I named them Margaret before you were even born.”

“You were three!”

“Shut up. Go get dressed.”

She gets up, walks away slowly, leaving a trail of blankets in her wake. “I’m doing this under protest.”

“You know not to tell those jokes. They’ll hear you.”

“Whatever you say, Boa. I don’t think Congress has enough interest to keep track of what every apartment is saying all the time.”

I look at my coffee; it’s almost gone. I feel a chill growing in my fingers. “That’s what everyone said when the night poison started.” 

My eyes are fixed on the bottom of the mug.

Sunset.
Orange cirrus clouds
          streaked the mauve sky.
Tiny stars awaken,
dance above the rooftops.

You joked
about curfew,
and I laughed.
          I laughed.
                    I laughed.

Night.
Green stratus clouds
blanketed the roads.

Echoes
of doors and windows locking shut
bounce off the walls and sidewalks and stoops,
and I got inside.
          I got inside.
                    You didn’t.

“I know, I know, I know. Roads dangerous after dark. Stay inside, Aja. You don’t need to remind me again. This isn’t The Hunger Games.” Aja’s annoyed voice and the sounds of brushes falling on the counter fly out of the bathroom, the door wide open. The light seems brighter than usual. I look away.

“I’m sor—”

“You don’t need to do your passive-aggressive apologizing, Boa.”

The roar of her hair dryer punctuates the conversation.

I look at the dregs of my coffee. Stains like layers of earth spiral to the bottom. Droplets stuck in place like fossils. I tilt the mug, watch them collapse, fall into a puddle at the bottom. Persistent coffee grounds swim around.

I hear Aja walk out of the bathroom, the light out. Her bedroom door creaks and clacks shut. 

She never understands. No one ever does. I’ve been told a thousand times that it wasn’t my fault. I’ve heard it from hundreds of faces; none of them have helped. My guilt is cold coffee I can’t swallow.

I was turning six,
and she baked a chocolate cake,
even with her two-year-old crying the whole time.

I remember the chocolate frosting and them smiling at me.
They sang to me.

The cake was delicious.

“When do you get off tonight?” Aja asks. Her black boots announce her approach.

“I’m opening, so I should be off around four.” I get off the coffee table and walk to the kitchen to wash the mug.

“Great, so you’ll cook dinner. Awesome. Thanks!” Aja quickly grabs her backpack and moves toward the door.

“That would only be the case if you somehow clean the apartment before I got here.”

“Bring home some fries, and it’s a deal.” Aja sticks her hand out to shake. She smiles confidently.

“Deal,” I shake her hand. “Go learn things.”

“I always does. I learn real good.” Aja grabs her keyring from the basket by the door. She uses Dad’s old Super Mario keyring. It’s faded, the colors starting to become a uniform red.

“I swear, Aja. Another F and I’m calling Skynet,“ I say, pointing a soapy scrub brush at her. 

“They’ll never find me. I’ll go off the grid. I’ll live off the land with my trusty bow, relying solely on my archery skills and stealth to stalk my prey.”

“This isn’t the Hunger Games, Boa.”

“Shut up. Bye.” She smiles, turns to the door. Her red coat swishing behind her.

It doesn’t take long for me to give up on scrubbing the stains out of the mug. I place it on the drying mat next to the sink and get ready for work.

It never takes much time. The beauty of working in the kitchen of a restaurant is that you don’t have to doll yourself up for the public if you don’t want to. Management likes it when you do, as they can force you to do more jobs that way, but it’s not a strict rule.

I put on some worn-in jeans and a red shirt with the restaurant’s logo on the left breast, “Rodwell’s” in some modernist font inside a neat, blue rectangle. It’s starting to fade, but they change designs every two years, so I think I’ll be fine.

I check the mirror before I leave. I try to make my hair go in one direction with a brush. It’s futile, so I put on a black beanie. Hat hair seems like a good enough excuse.