Stardust

The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.

—The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

One need not be a Chamber—to be haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain—has Corridors surpassing
Material place—

—Emily Dickinson

     Unfortunately for you, instantly slipping into full unconsciousness was not in the cards. You hung in a confused, agonizing, timeless limbo, the smell of smoke permeating your skull and blistering heat and freezing chill sweeping through you in waves, until your mind finally gave up and collapsed under its own weight, like the ceiling you were buried under.

     Your head finally broke a pocket of surface tension and you gasped; your lungs expanded gratefully, cool, clean air rushing in. You found yourself treading water in the very same lake you left several days ago, water now dull and black under a foreboding overcast sky. The air was thick, hot and wet and smelling of petrichor. You began doggy-paddling to the shore.

     The meadow's damp grass was like sandpaper against your skin as you dragged yourself onto the bank, sluicing waves of liquid onto the ground where they pooled in puddles on the over-saturated mud; you knelt, gasping, fingers sinking into the cool muck, for a long time before you gathered enough courage to look down at your shining-wet skin. When you did, you saw a twisted, melted mass of flesh spread over your torso.

     Fat blisters peppered the skin of your right arm and trailed down your collarbones; irritated flecks of pink speckled your left side; angry, shiny patches of red surrounded your breasts and crept up your stomach; your arm and hip bore hideous patches of melted brown flesh, swollen and oozing pus. It should have hurt much more than it did. As it was, you had to grit your teeth and take a few deep breaths through your nose, but no more than if you’d received a deep papercut.

     You also realized you were entirely nude. This was not unpleasant, given the heat and the humidity.

     “Fucking Christ,” someone said; you looked up to find June standing over you, arms crossed over her torso, hair in two long braids and black eyes narrowed angrily. “I told you Daddy couldn’t find us in the garden, I said, and instead of staying where it’s safe, your stupid ass goes straight to him.”

     You were overcome with a mixture of shame and desire; if it wasn’t for your cracked and bubbled skin, you would have jumped to your feet and thrown your arms around her, apologized for running away. Instead, you staggered upright, cheeks flushed scarlet at your nakedness, and said “I love you.”

     “You don’t know what love is,” June said, cruelly, dismissively. “Go check the water.”

     You turned around to face the lake. Its cool, black depths undulated gently; thin gray waves lapped at the very edge of the grassy bank, pooling among patches of wildflowers. Shapes floated faintly in the dark—and you realized they were floating up toward the surface.

     Long, four-limbed forms came into view; black figures, clad in shiny mirrored helmets, dark liquid blooming out from their bodies and swirling in eddies above them. Your heart began to race.

     “I don’t want to,” you said, looking back at June.

     In an instant, she grabbed you by the hair, hand fisted firmly at the base of your scalp, and forced your head back around to stare at the water. Scraps of fabric melted away, baring mutilated flesh in shades of death-white and ashy blue and purple. Your breath came in quick, short pants.

     “You should,” she said, “you did it.”

     A low, distant rumble of thunder sounded. Heat lightning flickered in the clouds above your heads, illuminating folds and swirls of storm clouds in brief flashes of austere relief.

     The shape of a larger body slowly floated into view, parting the sea of slim corpses as it came, dark water swirling around it more quickly than the others. Sage’s brown skin and shock of pink hair stood out starkly in the swirling spiral of death; you felt queasy looking at her bare form, her thick torso covered in dark violet bruises, a messy slice of flesh carved out from her left thigh.

     “Oh God,” June said, disgusted, “I hate visitors.”

     The pressure on your scalp vanished. When you looked back at your sister, she was gone.

     Without pausing to think, you waded into the lake, fighting back nausea as free-floating limbs brushed your skin, nudging up against you gently like animals begging to be pet. You forged through the macabre display, dragging your feet through the chilly water determinedly until you could reach Sage’s body; you grabbed her under the armpits and hauled her backward, displacing masses of flesh in waves as you dragged the cumbersome bulk of her to shore. Water splashed up with every heavy step you took, lapping at your knees and splattering against your ass, your nausea rising as you went.

     Finally, you pulled her fully onto the muddy grass and collapsed beside her, your burns flaring once again. Her chest rose and fell in tiny, even movements; comforted by this, you allowed yourself the privilege of resting the very tips of your fingers on her side as you closed your eyes, feeling her breath and blood pump through her as a constant reminder. You hadn't ruined everything.

     Yet.

###

     When July regained consciousness, she was in agony.

     It was instant and blinding, searing through her entire body the second she emerged from the muddy gray limbo she’d been floating in. Blistering heat rippled over her skin, like she was still on fire.

     Distantly, as though it was playing on a television in another room, July heard herself groaning in short, sharp bursts as her breathing stalled and started unevenly. It was kind of embarrassing. She hoped nobody was around to hear.

     No such luck, of course. As she lay wracked with pain, someone’s fingers slowly carded through her hair and a man’s voice whispered, over and over again, “Shh, honey, it’s alright. You’re alright,” and other empty platitudes.

     Excruciatingly slowly, July dragged her eyes open, feeling as though there were ten-pound weights attached to each eyelid. Everything was muddled like she was underwater; she blinked a few times before realizing there were tears blurring her vision. It was thoroughly humiliating.

     As tears filtered out the corners of her eyes, entirely against her will, shapes swam into focus all around July; Lake’s face hovered over her, his expression drawn and concerned. One side of his face was swollen and purple around the hollow of his eye, blooming into yellows and green along his cheekbone, the skin puffy instead of practically concave.

     He was alive, though. He was alive, and he was moving, holding her ever-so-slightly upright with one arm around her back, the other holding a cup in front of her face.

     July, not seeing any other options, allowed him to bring the cup to her lips and tilt it to pour the liquid inside into her mouth. She sputtered at the flavor; it was cold and crisp, but it tasted like licking the inside of an aspirin bottle. Despite this, she quickly found herself gulping down the entire thing.

     Eventually, the cup was empty and he let her drop back to a prone position. July wet her cracked lips with her tongue and choked out with a throat full of nails, “Where—“

     “Don’t worry,” he said quickly, “you’re safe.”

     She could accept that. As her surroundings slowly filtered in to register with her overclocked brain, she found that she was lying on a mattress, a pale pink bedsheet draped loosely over her lap, which supported the claim that there was no immediate danger. That was not her main question, though. “Cass?”

     “Don’t worry,” Lake repeated.

     July was not having that. Even as her vision narrowed again, a fresh swell of tears bubbling up involuntarily, she gritted her teeth and spat out “Cass—“, struggling to drag her leaden limbs up and prop herself upright. Her skin crackled and bubbled at the strain.

     “Lie down,” Lake said sharply, placing one hand on the center of her chest; this hurt so suddenly and violently that July let herself collapse immediately, fighting back a pathetic whimper.

     Lake looked disturbed, which came off as ghoulish on his normally stoic face, his mouth twisted into a grimace and his swollen eye screwed up so tight it shut completely. After a few seconds of looking July up and down while she clenched her jaw and resisted the urge to scream, he breathed a long, heavy sigh, his shoulders dropping as he reached out to comb his fingers through her hair once again.

     When he spoke up, he sounded exhausted. Resigned, even. “She left. They left you for dead. I don’t know where they are. I’m sorry.”

###

     When you opened your eyes again, Sage was no longer lying next to you, but there was a warm hollow in the grass in the shape of her body.

     You did not feel up to much. You rolled over til you lay in the shape pressed into the grass, your palms to each side, spine resting against dirt still radiating with her body heat, and you stared at the sky.

     For countless hours, far beyond any capacity you retained for marking the passage of time, you lay there and watched the clouds flicker with arcs of heat lightning, occasional distant, gentle rumbles of thunder rolling through your chest. It did not rain, of course.

###

     It was several days, maybe even weeks, before July felt up to anything more than sliding in and out of hazy, confused dreams, sipping water and occasionally choking down thin broth with Lake’s help.

     When she finally felt like a human again, it was suddenly and all at once; she woke up in the middle of the afternoon, bright sun streaming through the window at the head of her bed, and realized she wanted to sit up.

     More than that, she realized she could sit up.

     July took inventory of her surroundings as she awkwardly scooted herself back to lean upright against the headboard. She was in someone’s bedroom, an airy, mostly wooden room with high, vaulted ceilings and raw wood support beams. It was covered with cobwebs and dust, but the floorboards were shiny and smooth as if they were freshly scrubbed. Her sheets were pastel pink, dotted with small white flowers and topped with a thin white crochet blanket.

     Catty-corner to the bed, a heavy wooden chest of drawers sat with most of the drawers open; strewn over its surface were an overwhelming amount of kickknacks, jewelry boxes sitting open with pearls and thin chains spilling out, scarves and makeup—all overshadowed by a hefty-looking statue of a woman, hair covered with a long scarf, cradling a baby. There was a mirror hanging over the drawers, dusty and smudged, with a dark wooden frame.

     Two windows were propped half-open on the wall across from the drawers; they were covered by a pair of thin, lacy white curtains drawn shut, which did little to dampen the vibrant sunlight streaming in. The walls featured, aside from a few faded photographs, an unfortunate variety of crucifixes and a framed image of a man with long raggedy hair who July assumed from context was probably Jesus.

     July considered the possibility she was about to be murdered, but promptly discarded it as too merciful.

     Sitting up was one thing—standing was another entirely. Her whole body ached like a sore tooth, and when she attempted to put her weight on her right arm, she gasped and flinched back, sharp stabs of pain flaring at the pressure. It wasn't until that moment she realized her arm was wrapped with bandages; curious, July took further inventory of her body, reaching under the massive t-shirt that dwarfed her form to gently prod at and skim over her flesh.

     There was also a large square bandage taped to her waist; three more thick cotton pads were taped to her upper torso, one on her right breast, the other two on her collarbone region. She ran her fingers along her neck; there was a fourth taped to the right side of her throat.

     July lurched to her feet, feeling pathetically weak and dizzy. She grabbed onto one post of the bed to steady herself.

     “Do you need help?”

     Lake’s voice startled her, but she wasn’t in any shape to go into fight-or-flight; the most July could manage was to whip her head around in surprise. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb in an infuriatingly casual manner, dressed in a loose v-necked t-shirt that draped off his collarbones in a way July would, in her innermost thoughts, usually refer to as “faggy.”

     “Um,” she said, voice cracking. She swallowed a few times, trying to conjure up saliva out of nothing. “I have to piss.”

     “That’s why I asked.” He was maddeningly cool and collected. His face wasn’t swollen anymore, only a hint of sallow yellow remaining around the hollow of his eye; July wondered how long it had actually been since she was last conscious. As she stood there, feeling like a deer in the headlights, he impassively held a hand out to her. “I’ve been helping you with the bathroom this whole time, I’m not suddenly going to get shy.”

     July did not remember that and she did not want to think about it. “How long have I been… here?”

     “Three weeks yesterday.”

     Befuddled, she staggered over to Lake and accepted his hand. He led her out of the bedroom and into a hallway, the main feature of which was a large carved banister fencing off a massive staircase leading down; he passed by it without a second glance, taking her to the door at the end of the hall.

     She waved him off as she opened the bathroom door. To her horror, Lake gave her a look of concern.

     “I’m fine,” she said. “I can wipe my own ass.”

     Hilariously, Lake’s cheeks turned visibly pink. “You… haven’t been very… awake.”

     She didn’t know how to respond to him stating the obvious like that, so instead, she just waited for him to get to his point. He was getting pinker by the second.

     “I may have made some mistakes dosing your sedatives,” he said. “Uh. Sorry about that. I put you on a much lower dose yesterday, so…”

     “Okay,” July said loudly, and closed the door in his face.

     It wasn’t that she was upset. July’s entire body felt like one massive tender bruise after three weeks; if anything, it was the best possible outcome for her to sleep through the worst of her recovery. She didn’t know how to respond to Lake, though, and she needed a break.

     The bathroom was scrubbed clean, all gleaming white tile and pale pink ceramic counters, everything shining in the sunlight that streamed through two vertical window panes held together by an old-looking brassy latch. There was a freestanding bathtub with thick brass tap handles, something that July had never seen before in her life; she immediately wanted to climb in and stay there for multiple hours, but taking her bandages off seemed like a bad plan.

     The window looked out onto a mid-sized clearing in an entirely overgrown area, no civilization as far as she could see; the trees dotting the landscape were dead-of-winter bare, and a thin layer of snow lay over everything, so she had no idea what the greenery looked like, but it was obvious it was there, dormant. There was a tiny wooden shed at the edge of the treeline, a low structure made of visibly weathered planks tinted with deep green, topped by a rusty pitched roof.

     “Where are we?” July yelled through the door. She pulled down her underwear—which she didn’t recognize, and that didn’t sit right with her—and sat on the toilet.

     There were a few seconds of silence, during which July became worried that Lake had wandered off, but then his voice filtered back through the heavy wooden door. “My family’s house.”

     July finished pissing and flushed the toilet. As she stood to wash her hands, she glanced at herself in the mirror. Her heart dropped almost immediately.

     Shiny, pink patches of new skin crawled up the side of her neck and splattered along the right half of her face, like stains from a thrown bucket of paint. Where it disappeared under her bandages, her skin began to twist and crack, hinting at the ugliness hidden underneath the cotton.

     A wave of dizziness suddenly swept over July. Clutching the sink, gaze fixed resolutely on the sickly pink basin, she decided to add this to the rapidly-growing list of things she didn’t want to think about.

     After flicking the water from her hands, she opened the door to see Lake leaning awkwardly against the banister, hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans. “Your family?” she said.

     “Yeah.” His leg started rapidly bouncing as he stood in place, his weight shifted to the opposite foot. “My mama's, actually. She's gone, don’t worry.”

     “Oh.” July thought about this as she leaned against the doorjamb for support. When Lake offered his hand to her again, she took it and started, “May her—“

     “Don’t bother.” His voice was as easygoing as ever. “She was a bitch. I wouldn’t have brought you here if she was still alive.”

     “Oh,” July said again, faintly this time.

     She didn’t speak again until she was back in bed, her head light and her vision wavering threateningly. Feeling very small and very tired, and deciding to put everything she’d learned over the past few minutes aside for her own sanity, she said “Can I have some food?”

###

     Once July was on her feet, she refused to keep resting. This was a controversial decision with the focus group, but seeing as it consisted solely of Lake, she overrode him cleanly.

     Their first order of business was clearing Lake’s mother’s things out of her bedroom. On July’s end, this was mostly because of her overwhelming distaste for Jesus paraphernalia and dressing like a pastor’s wife. On Lake’s end, there seemed to be something else going on, but she felt like it would be rude to pry.

     After a few attempts at working on it in short bursts, which July inevitably forgot to follow up on after taking a break, they finally decided to make an entire day of it. The first order of business, clearing out the closet, didn’t take very long; Lake, with a stoic expression and a stony commitment to silence, hauled what seemed like endless trash bags and cardboard boxes down the stairs and dumped them in the flatbed of a pickup truck parked outside. When she asked about this, he said “Taking this shit to the dump,” and refused to elaborate.

     The next task, thankfully, was removing all of the Jesus paraphernalia from the walls and surfaces. July relished dumping crucifixes in the trash one-by-one; they’d been grating on her nerves for the past several days. She felt a bit like a vampire.

     When it came to the framed image that July assumed was Jesus, Lake grabbed her wrist just as she was about to dump it into the nearly-full trash bag. She yelped in pain; he’d grabbed her right arm over the bandages. Lake flinched and stumbled over himself in his hurry to apologize.

     “What’s with the sudden love for your lord and savior?” she grumbled, gingerly cradling her wrist with one hand. Lake, for some reason, broke into a grin and giggled, running a hand through his shaggy locks in a way that July was slowly coming to recognize as preempting a joke or a bit.

     “It’s Aragorn,” he said. When she shot him a puzzled look, he continued, “From Lord of the Rings. When I was like fourteen, I took a movie screenshot and got it framed, gave it to Mama as a birthday present and told her it was a picture of Jesus. She never figured it out.”

     July looked back-and-forth between Lake’s shit-eating grin and the photo for a few seconds, processing this, before proceeding to break into laughter.

###

     As time passed, you did not move from your spot in the meadow, nor did you see anyone else. The clouds continued to swirl overhead, wracked with lightning splitting the heavy humid atmosphere. The storm never broke.

     When Sage finally returned, it truly shocked you. Not only did you not anticipate her return, but you felt exposed—in your continuing nudity and resulting inability to hide the marred surface of your burned flesh, yes, but also in your passivity, in how you had not moved even an inch from the impression she’d left on the grass all those days ago.

     She sat several feet away on the bank of the lake, clad in dramatic shades of bright pink and blood-red lace, staring out at the distant treeline on the other shore. When you sat up, fruitlessly attempting to cover your most vulnerable bits with your hands, she glanced back at you; at the sight of your face, she appeared rather taken aback. (She was.)

     Giving up on your ridiculous hand-based endeavor at privacy, you instead drew your knees up in front of you and wrapped your arms around them, feeling hot humiliation creep over you. Wordlessly, she whipped her jacket off—a bulky red velvet coat, edged with cream-colored ruffles—and tossed it to you. You put it on silently; it thoroughly dwarfed your frame, which was a positive at the moment, as far as you were concerned.

     “It’s weird to see you again,” she said quietly.

     You were not sure how to respond, so you did not. You did, however, scoot forward to sit at her side.

     “Everything’s been a mess since you’ve been gone,” Sage continued, occupied with something in her lap. Craning your neck, you saw her large, nimble fingers deftly weaving greenery in and out of itself, creating some sort of chain of flowers and stems. “I never knew you very well. I don’t know how to comfort them.”

     “You don’t have to,” you offered. She looked over at you at this, a wry, sad smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

     “I don’t even know if you would say that. Isn’t that strange?” With a sigh, she returned her attention back to plant-weaving. “I guess it doesn’t matter. This is happening for a reason. Maybe I should lean into it.”

     To your mind, she was making even less sense than she had before. You wrapped the coat tighter around your body, nestling into its warmth. It smelled spicy, like cinnamon, overlaid with a hint of indescribable, person-specific musk.

     “Axel has been telling me about you,” Sage said. “Cass, too. I think I was right, I think I would have liked you.”

     “I like you right now.” The words fell out surprisingly easily; it was true. You did like her, in some inexplicable, intuitive way.

     That got a full-throated laugh; Sage tilted her head back, exposing the warm brown hollow of her jugular, which captivated you thoroughly. When she stopped, she returned her burning golden gaze to you, still wearing that sad little smile.

     “You deserved these while you were still alive,” she told you, holding out the woven chain of flowers; she’d joined the ends, making a circle of green stems woven through with sprays of purple and white blossoms. Your breath caught in your throat as she leaned in toward you.

     Sage placed the crown of flowers on your head, her fingers lingering at your temples for ever-so-slightly longer than was needed. As thunder rumbled low in the gravid sky, she bent down and pressed a heavy, long kiss to your forehead.

###

     Rain swept over the frosty landscape, turning snow into slush and loose soil into mud, covering everything with a mushy gray hue. July felt like it was awfully early in the year for this; Lake had only just told her earlier that morning that she could try taking her bandages off permanently if she wanted, so they couldn’t have been there long enough for the seasons to change. The weather did not listen to her reasoning, and continued to dump rainwater into the soil.

     Bandage changes were one of the most annoying parts of her days; she preferred not to look at her wounds, so Lake got in the habit of doing them for her, and she got in the habit of politely pretending he couldn’t see her tits while he did. Given this, it should have been exciting to consider doing away with them entirely, but the thought wigged July out.

     Even so, she forced herself into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, nude except for her bandages and a pair of loose sweatpants with the drawstrings tied as tight as they could go; her dog tags lay on her bare chest, glinting under the bathroom light. She'd considered getting rid of them, but when she dangled them over a full trash bag, she couldn't bring herself to open her fist.

     She wrapped one fist around them right then, their edges cutting into her palm as she listened to rain pour over the window; the white noise was somewhat comforting, the roar and slosh of the gutters blurring sharp edges of individual drops into gentle ambiance. It lulled her hummingbird-quick heart slightly, reminded her to take a few deep breaths. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. Again.

     July carefully peeled tape off the edges of the large square bandage at her waist, wincing as it pulled at the thin, fine baby hairs of her stomach. She had dispensed of the smaller pads several days ago, leaving only her arm and the one at her waist; the skin under the small ones was pink and shiny, but not all that distressing.

     These were another matter entirely. July’s breath caught in her throat as she peeled the layers of cotton away, revealing a twisted mass of new red flesh, like dark chewed-up bubblegum, wrapped around her waist and cupping the swell of her right breast.

     June giggled.

     It was shiny with antibiotic ointment and still tender to the touch, but it no longer sang with pain at the slightest pressure, which July guessed was an improvement. But as she looked at it, she found herself profoundly disconnected from the image—like it was someone else’s reflection. Someone else was in the mirror, wearing her tags and an expression like she'd just been shot.

     The smell of smoke crept inside her nostrils and made itself at home. July tried not to gag as she unwrapped her arm.

     More wrinkled, mottled red-and-pink flesh crawled up her arm, starting just above her wrist and ending just above her elbow, with paler, smoother, thinner licks creeping up to her shoulder and down along her hand. Lake said she was half-under a pile of rubble when he found her, her sleeve on fire and her burning arm pressed up against her torso. He’d said she wouldn’t stop screaming and sobbing, that she was delirious with pain and smoke-drunk, that he knew she would give their hiding spot away if he took her back to Olive’s attic, and in his panic, he took them both to the only safe place he could think of.

     The roaring of the gutters sounded very much like the roar of a fire. June began humming tunelessly.

     He’d cleaned her burns, given her water, stolen drugs from a pharmacy to quiet her agonized sobbing, and all the while he was pushing through the worst pain of his life. He didn’t say as much, but July could tell from how short and clipped his voice got when she’d asked how the trip affected him. They weren’t in the northeast anymore; he’d blinked farther than he ever had.

     July found herself hyperventilating as she stared at the girl in the mirror, the scarred failure who’d never look pretty in a dress. She didn't even look like a soldier.

     Short, sharp bangs sounded against the door. Lake’s voice filtered through the smoky air; “You almost done in there?”

     She didn’t answer. The ceramic of the sink pressed burning-hot against her fingers; looking down, she realized she was gripping the edge so tight, her knuckles were white. Looking down was a mistake, though, because it meant she could see flames licking at the sides of her feet.

     It wasn’t real, of course. That didn’t matter. It was real, once, and so was her sister, and now it had joined June in the cavalcade of ghosts haunting her heart, lapping at her skin and poking her with grubby hands. July’s arms and shoulders trembled with the ferocity of her grip on the counter, as if that could ground her.

     “I have to piss,” Lake announced, opening the door—and almost immediately he froze, paused in the doorway. When he spoke up again, his voice was infuriatingly gentle. “Are you okay?”

     The girl in the mirror was crying. This was idiotic.

     Lake’s broad palms and long fingers cupped her shoulders; he stood behind her, apparently careless of her nudity, gently applying warm, steady pressure to her joints. “Are you seeing things?” he asked, voice careful, like he was trying to coax a stray dog into accepting food from his hands.

     Unfortunately for July, that approach worked on her. “Yeah,” she gasped through the thick smell of smoke, nearly retching.

     Lake gathered her up into his arms and took her out of the bathroom. July, with her belly full of acid and her head full of ghosts, didn’t resist. She barely even registered it as he took her back to her newly-clean bedroom and sat her on the bed; she felt strongly that she was several feet behind her body, experiences filtered through a distant lens, like everything was at the end of a telescope.

     After placing her blanket over her lap, Lake knelt in front of her and slowly rubbed life back into her hands, making warm, brisk circles with his palms over the breadth of her knuckles and the tips of her fingers. Almost like it was an afterthought, he plucked her tags from the sweat-sticky skin of her torso and manipulated her hands til they were wrapped around the little metal rectangles. As she returned to her body, July found herself crying louder and harder, in humiliatingly body-shaking sobs, snot stuffing up her nostrils.

     “What’s wrong?” Lake said, so kindly it was a knife to her gut.

     July sputtered and choked for a minute or two, stumbling over her sobs in her effort to get a word, any word, out, and finally settled for “I’m ugly” before collapsing back into a disgusting, snot-filled wreck, clutching her tags so tight she briefly wondered if they'd leave cuts.

     “Oh, sweetie.” He got up to sit on the bed next to her and gathered her up into an all-encompassing hug; she let herself be pressed up against his chest, let his smell envelop her, woodsy and just a little musty, like an unused attic or the crumbling pages of an old book. It overwhelmed the smell of smoke entirely.

     As he held her, Lake followed this up with possibly the only sentence that could have brought her back to reality at the moment: “Don’t be stupid.”

###

     The next day, Lake disappeared for several hours, leaving July to wander the house absentmindedly following up on their many cleaning tasks.

     The house was rambling and old, three stories and a screened-in porch; when they’d arrived, it was littered with detritus of a long life, knickknacks galore, an entire wall of metal gelatin molds hanging in the kitchen, a china cabinet crammed with gold-rimmed dishes and cups, a glass-paneled cupboard full of dozens of snowglobes in all sizes and designs, a nativity set apparently displayed year-round, a massive collection of novelty stuffed toys themed after various tourist destinations up and down the Outer Banks, a useless chunky block of a television straight out of the 80s.

     They’d spent several days clearing out all of the junk and loading it into the bed of Lake’s pickup—whether it was actually in his name, July had no idea, but after a few days of using it, he referred to it as his—and a couple of times a week, he’d drive out and dump everything who-knew-where. Probably at a junkyard.

     Now, the house was clear of everything useless. They’d kept the furniture, and the cleaning and cooking supplies, and the big red jugs of gasoline out by the truck, and the shelves and shelves in the basement packed with home-canned and jarred goods, and the multiple chest freezers also in the basement. (July got the distinct impression this was what her mother was complaining about when she used to bitch about “preppers.”)

     As she crept around the empty house, with its high-vaulted ceilings and raw wooden beams, its thick patterned carpets Lake had vacuumed free of dust and its shiny floorboards she’d gotten on her hands and knees and scrubbed herself, June wandered half a step behind her, occasionally brushing the back of her hand and sending cold shivers up July’s arm. It was becoming difficult to ignore her again.

     July checked the to-do list stuck to the fridge with a magnet, but it was sparse for once. She could do the dishes after Lake cooked that night, but there was no point in starting them now and making herself do two rounds.

     She tied her hair up into a ponytail, went into the basement, and hauled some of the stockpiled firewood out back to chop it. They’d talked about using the fireplace in the living room earlier that week, and July enjoyed the violent satisfaction of swinging an axe in the brisk midday air. It gave her a little rush every time her centrifugal force slammed into a log, resonating through her wrists and up her arms. It made something swoop deep in her belly, quick and low.

     The sky was still overcast, bellies of clouds hanging low and heavy with rain; when the first fat, wet drops broke over July’s head, she stopped, hauled the wood in through the back door, and went to go shower off the sweat and dirt and wood chips stuck to her sticky skin.

     By the time she was done, Lake still wasn’t back, so she dressed herself in another endless too-large t-shirt and underwear and occupied herself by doing planks and push-ups for a while, ignoring June perched on her back as she worked out.

     Just as the drizzle-patter of rain against her bedroom window died down, the sputtering cough of Lake’s truck sounded from the packed dirt that served as a driveway. July sprung to her feet and dashed downstairs.

     Lake was hauling the last of three packed trash bags in through the front door; when he saw her, he closed the door behind him and waved awkwardly.

     “Firewood’s by the back door,” she said by way of greeting.

     “Thanks,” he said. Then, with his hands shoved in his pockets, avoiding her eyes, he jerked his head vaguely in the direction of the trash bags and said “Got you something.”

     July came over to pull the neck of one of the bags open. It held a mass of different fabrics, all in different bright colors and patterns, stripes and florals and lace and velvet and vinyl.

     “The church one town over was doing a charity thing,” Lake said, still looking away from her, one foot tapping restlessly. “I told them I just moved here to take care of my sick little sister, and she didn’t have any clothes that fit. They ate that shit up.”

     “So I’m your sister,” July said, fighting back a cackle. “Don’t they recognize you?”

     “Nah.” Lake’s voice had that overly casual air it always took on when she asked about his family. “I was homeschooled, and my mama worked and went to church in the town to the north. The one to the east is full of Catholics.” The way he said this gave July the impression it was some sort of joke, but she had no idea what it meant.

     “Thank you,” July said, and she really did mean it.

     “One more thing,” he said, and he pulled an orange prescription bottle out of his pocket and tossed it to her.

     She caught it automatically, starting to say “I’m not in pain,” but he shook his head and gestured to the bottle again. July examined the bottle; its label said, in blocky print,

SEROQUEL 50MG,

     then underneath,

TAKE TWO TABLETS BY MOUTH DAILY BEFORE BED.

     It had someone else’s name on it. She looked back at him, still puzzled.

     “They’re antipsychotics,” he said, foot tap-tap-tapping away. Very quickly, as if he was trying to head something off, he added “I’m not saying you should—just—you seemed upset, so if you want the option… it’s there.”

     June tugged insistently on July’s ponytail, whining like a puppy begging for attention. July looked back down at the little orange bottle in her hand, heart beating in her throat.

###

     The next time you saw Sage, raindrops finally began to drip from the thunderclouds building over your heads, thick and hot and heavy against your skin. She chivalrously held her jacket over your head like an umbrella, but it did little to stop the rapidly-building deluge.

     As water poured from the sky, every successive drop increased in size, the pace of drops accelerating til it was pouring down like a stream—then like a waterfall—then like a river. It beat at your skin cruelly, weighing you down; you both stumbled under the downpour, the jacket now hanging wet and heavy over your heads.

     She shouted into your ear, “Should we go?”

     You shook your head, because it was the right thing to do.

     The waters of the lake rose, cool and black and choppy, lapping at your feet, then at your ankles; Sage grabbed you and held you against her chest, jacket discarded and left to float in the inky waves as they splashed up against your knees, your waist, your chest. She held you tightly, so tight you felt your shoulders crunch, as thunder shook your bodies and waves crested over your heads, surrounding you with shifting, icy darkness, darkness that wormed its way up your nose and into your ears, slid into the sockets of your eyes and filled you with freezing liquid.

     As quickly as it rose, a final massive, wave broke over you, splattering into millions of tiny droplets that scattered over the surface of the water, now back to chest-deep. Sage still had her arms wrapped around you as the two of you stood, unmoved by the apocalyptic torrent. Waves washed away what little remained of the meadow, leaving behind cold concrete, chipped sidewalks with dandelions growing through the cracks, crumbling brick facades and beat-up iron bars.

     When the last of the waves disappeared, retreating into the horizon like the tide going out, you were left standing in front of your old apartment, a run-down brick building with multiple storefronts. Yours was small and unassuming, a little display advertising your mother’s favorite books and a number of leftist theory texts in the front window, a makeshift wheelchair ramp leading up to the tiny front door—the door was much too skinny to fit most wheelchairs through, but you made do with what you had.

     “Oh,” you said quietly.

     The front door of the shop opened, a tiny bell sounding as it did, and June popped out, looking chipper in her school uniform and two long braids, batting her bright green eyes.

     “Where are we?” Sage said from just behind you, but answering that would have been time-consuming and confusing, and June was acting as though she wasn’t there, wearing a mischievous smile that made your heart swell and burst in your chest.

     You took her hand, self-consciously adjusting the skirt of your school uniform with your other. It felt too short on your thighs, a problem you’d had for several months at that point, but Mom was struggling with the bills and new skirts weren’t top of the priority list.

     “I have detention today,” you announced, swinging your linked hands back-and-forth as the two of you fell in lockstep, strolling down the street. June cackled wickedly.

     “I’ll stay after with you,” she said, squeezing your hand. “What’d you do?”

     “Stabbed Frasier with a pencil.” You grinned as June continued to cackle, playfully body-checking you without breaking pace. “He tried to take my earbuds out.”

     “Dickhead,” June said. “He groped my ass once.”

     “Gross! He’s like, fifty!”

     “Or something, yeah. Get stabbed, idiot.”

     You were dimly aware of Sage shadowing you a few steps behind, but it ceased to register as important. June was there, so nothing else mattered. Besides, you didn’t have time to think about her—you had more important things to worry about, such as detention, and not missing the bus, and whether or not you’d done the Geometry homework, which you suddenly could not remember for the life of you.

     All at once, your world shook.

     It was quite literal. A high-pitched whistle filled the air; June barely had time to glance around for the source before the ground shook violently, a massive BOOM rattling through your body, through the sidewalk itself.

     The two of you clutched each other, whipping back-and-forth to look all around you in confusion; wildly, briefly, you thought of earthquakes, but then June pointed up and over and said “There!”

     A plume of dirty brown smoke twisted into the sky from somewhere several streets over. You clutched June’s hand tighter as she craned her neck, taking a few steps in the direction of the smoke.

     “We should go,” you said uncertainly, but she shushed you.

     “I want to see what it was,” she said, and then everything actually exploded.

     Your hand ripped out of hers; you flew through the air and hit the hood of a parked car, the breath whooshing from your lungs in a short, sharp gasp. You lay on your back, mouth gaping breathlessly, as debris and dust rose all around you, a car alarm blaring directly in your ears; it was all too much, too loud, too big, and as you slowly began to sip tiny, dirty breaths of air, you coughed violently, your ribs aching like a bruise.

     When you scrambled to your knees, still kneeling on the hood of the car, you were aware of increased activity on the street—running, shouting, sirens blaring—but it all felt ephemeral, like a marker bleeding through the back of a sheet of paper. Not the shapes themselves, but an afterimage, a gesture at lines and colors and structure—people rushed past, but you could not see their faces, you could not hear what they were saying, only the volume at which they were saying it.

     You picked yourself up off the car and stepped onto the cracked street; deep fault lines ran through the pavement, and in the distance, massive chunks of street were pulled up, leaving gaping holes in the ground. Out at the very edge of your range of hearing, you heard the sounds of more whistling, more roars and bangs and crashes.

     “July,” someone called; you turned around and there she was, your sister, dead pitch-black eyes staring at you viciously, her long blonde locks soaked red.

     She glared at you from her position sitting on the sidewalk, bleeding from a wound on her temple. You backed away.

     “Yeah,” June said. “That’s what you did, isn’t it? You ran. You ditched me.”

     “I’m sorry,” you gasped, trembling with the weight of it all.

     “I was right here,” she said, teeth sharp and bloody. “I tried to follow you, you know. You ran too fast for me.”

     A hand fell on your shoulder. You looked up; Sage towered over you, her bright pink hair a beacon in the swirling miasma of smoke and dust. “We should go,” she said quietly.

     She began pulling you back; you let her lead you in slow, measured, steps backward, but you still faced your sister, unable to tear your eyes away.

     June continued to sit on the sidewalk, legs crossed in an unladylike manner that exaggerated how poorly her school skirt already fit. “Go ahead. Leave me again. See if I care.”

     “I still love you,” you said helplessly, and then you turned and ran, ran, ran through endless mazes of alleyways and city streets, ran til your lungs burned and screamed, ran clutching Sage’s hand as if she was your last lifeline in the labyrinth of your childhood.

     When you finally stopped, collapsed panting onto the ground in front of a subway station entrance, Sage knelt down on the stairs and ran one broad hand over the back of your head. She could cup most of your skull in one palm, you realized.

     “I think I understand,” she said thoughtfully. “I don’t want to say anything, in case I’m wrong—it would be too cruel. But I think I understand.”

     “I don’t want to go in there,” you sobbed, your throat raw. Immediately, her bright yellow eyes snapped to yours, a curious and sudden purpose in her gaze.

     “In the station?”

     Your chest ached, an empty hole threatening to take over the entirety of your body, a raw wound begging to be filled. There were no words to describe the enormity of your feelings, the hysterical need that gripped your very being; you could barely keep eye contact with Sage as her eyes burned your heart, ripped away what little scraps of dignity you clung to. There were no words for the fear that gripped your stomach when you thought of descending the stairs, no words for your need to run, leave, get away from the girl that lived in your head.

     There was only one set of words that passed through your confused, miserable head; one sentence that you circled back to, dumb and muddled and afraid, and as you knelt in front of the steps, trembling in Sage’s grip, you let it spill from your throat.

     “I can’t go back,” you said. “I can’t ever go back.”

###

     July was becoming lethargic; at first, she chalked it up to the nightmares, but as several weeks passed and her sleep became more and more frequently heavy and dreamless, she realized she couldn’t keep justifying it like that.

     It was nice, in a way. It hadn’t hit her until she finally had an extended, unbroken period of rest, but July was deeply, deeply tired, in a way that permeated down to her very bones. She was barely an adult, legally speaking (for all that even meant—July was pretty sure she didn’t even actually exist, legally speaking), but she felt old, older than anyone she’d ever met. Older than Lake, definitely.

     While she was lying in the bath one day, examining the ever-so-slightly-faded scar at her waist, she had a thought: she’d lived a life, more than a life, more life than most people ever had to live in their lifetimes, and now she was done.

     Shameful as it was to admit, this made her smile, made her shoulders drop slightly as a knot of tension released from her neck. Luckily, this could just as easily have been the hot water, so she didn’t think about it too hard.

     The pills worked. Sort of. She didn't constantly have to deal with smoke constantly clogging up her sinuses, or hear the constant crackle of fire just behind her, but—June still appeared, just out of the corner of her eye. She’d run away as quickly as July saw her, dashing behind a wall or disappearing through a nearby doorway. Sometimes, when the sky was particularly overcast and choked with stardust, she'd still see tongues and teeth rolling and gnashing their way through the clouds.

     It didn’t bother her very much anymore, although admittedly, it was much more difficult to bother her at all these days.

     July became aware of this change one bright morning, when the air was wet and warm and sunlight shone down on the backyard. Brilliantly green grass sprung up around the flat beds she and Lake had constructed from spare lumber several weeks ago; they were filled with thick, rich soil, and Lake had instructed her on where to plant the saplings he’d either “liberated” or purchased, she wasn’t sure which.

     (He had to have a job of some kind—she was sure of this, because he would go out several days a week and return exhausted but empty-handed—but they’d developed a comfortable routine, one where she didn’t ask questions and did the hard labor of home upkeep and repair, and in return, he laughed at all her jokes and cooked for her and taught her how to do things like use a washboard and dust the ceiling fan and change the oil on his truck.)

     She was laying in the grass between plant beds, feeling pleasantly warm and drowsy in the sun, when Lake's ridiculous height suddenly blotted out her sunbeam, and he said “It’s hunting season.”

     July squinted up at him. “Yeah?”

     “Start of, anyway. Want to come shoot deer with me?”

     This should have sent July over the moon. Her heart did give a funny little leap at the idea of holding a gun again—but that was it, just a little leap.

     “Sure,” she said.

     And it was, objectively, a nice time. Lake dug some camo out of the basement, along with two hunting rifles and plenty of ammunition, and she relaxed in the passenger seat of his pickup while he drove them through the early-morning countryside. She still wasn’t sure what state they were in—again, she didn’t ask questions—but it was a beautiful one, with trees much sparser than she was used to, and a gently-rolling landscape dotted profusely with bushes of fat purple, white, and pink flowers. Every sunny day, the sky was a brilliant, eye-blinding blue, and this one was no exception.

     Wielding a rifle felt… well, it made her feel something, especially when the heel of the gun jerked against her and the recoil reverberated familiarly throughout her body, and that something made her realize that she was, on the whole, feeling nothing most of the time.

     This was a disturbing realization for July, who was used to being suffused with so much emotion she felt she would explode.

     And her inability to identity the feeling coiling in her gut when she held her rifle—the utter flatness when she shot a deer right through the head, heard the crack ring out through the woods and walked to kneel by its body, looked it straight in its lifeless glassy eye and felt nothing but a nameless twinge—it all left July with an ambivalent unease.

     But it was a good day, and July didn’t want to ruin it by thinking too hard.

     They dragged the deer, a bulky buck, onto its back, twiggy legs splayed out awkwardly to each side. Lake un-shouldered the bag he'd brought from the truck and opened it to reveal a collection of blades—sheathed knives, folding knives, a handsaw. He retrieved a knife—small but nasty-looking, shiny and smooth, with a hooked cutout on the flat of the blade—and began slicing through the deer’s crotch, calm and unbothered.

     “Show me how,” July found herself saying; he looked up at her and smiled, genuine and wide.

     Lake showed her where to cut and pull, how to reach into the deer’s still-warm, velvety insides with two fingers and gently press into its belly as he dragged the hook of his knife up through its abdomen; it unfurled in a way she found almost beautiful, like a blooming flower. He sawed through its ribcage and showed her how to slice through the thin membrane inside, how to strip its stubborn tissues from its spine, how to slice its windpipe and drag the whole thing out in a bloody, crackling heap.

     Blood splashed her face, soaked her hands; organs slid, slippery-warm, against her skin, tantalizing her with promises of feeling just out of reach. A warm emotion bubbled just under the surface of her mind, but she couldn’t grasp it—couldn’t name it.

     She felt strong when she helped Lake haul the massive carcass through the woods and into the bed of his truck, and feeling strong was positive. And when they got home, and she helped him drag it into the shed behind the house—“I’ll skin and butcher it tomorrow,” he said, “I’m fucking exhausted”—she felt a vague sense of accomplishment.

     The ambivalence didn’t fade, though. July prowled around the house for the rest of the evening, restless and strange and empty. Showering the blood off didn't help. Neither did making and eating a sandwich, or doing the dishes.

     Eventually, she opened her dresser and went through her clothes, most of which she’d never bothered to try on. On a whim, she wiggled into a denim miniskirt and red sweater, and trudged over to the vanity to check herself out.

     Objectively, she looked nice. The sweater accentuated her curves, and the skirt showed off her thighs. July found herself frustrated by how little she cared.

     She wanted to feel pretty, or maybe she wanted to want to feel pretty. She wanted to have felt something when the deer’s viscera slid over her hands, to have felt its blood jet over the swell of her cheek and understood that it meant something, it was for a purpose. She wanted, desperately, to feel the feverish yearning that led her to smash Axel’s face in, to lick the metallic flavor off someone’s lip, sit in their lap and run her nails over their skin and tell them yes, yes this means something. This is the real shit, you and me, your blood in my mouth, and may God forgive me for it because I want to do it again.

     But the thought filled her with… nothing.

     July wandered down the hall and knocked on Lake’s door, feeling as if she was in a trance. It didn’t take long for him to tell her to come in; she opened the door and leaned against the jamb, arms folded over her chest, one leg slightly lifted to prop her foot against the doorway.

     Lake was lying on his black bedspread, feet swinging in the air above him, one of his many comic books laying open in front of him. His hair was getting out of hand these days; it crept down the back of his neck almost to his shoulders.

     “Do we have any alcohol?” July said.

     Lake looked at her. It took him a long time to answer; he scanned her carefully before he did, as if he was solving a complicated equation in his head. July kept her face neutral, which wasn’t very difficult.

     Finally, he said “Mama always kept a few bottles of whiskey in the basement. Are you drinking?”

     “Yes,” she said. She lifted her chin slightly, narrowing her eyes. If he had a problem with it, he could shove it up his—

     “I’m joining you,” Lake said abruptly. He sprung from his bed, startlingly lively, and brushed past her to tramp down the stairs loudly.

     After a second, July followed, feeling not quite alive, but not quite dead, either.