Work Text:
I know it’s not real. Objectively, logically, as realistically as that knife is physical against my hand, nestled into the groove of skin and splintering against the thumb, it is not. It can’t be. But—
I take the train, no, the bus, to work. Cold clammy morning, the headlights an angry blazing yellow, I sit upon the seats that are overripe, bursting at the seams, listening to the scrape of wheels against swollen asphalt, and watch the sea shy across, ocean waving, night wind swirling. I dig my hands into my bag: a change of clothes, a phone that’s cracked and whose screen turns black when I hit the volume button for a second, the gauze and bandages and rubbing alcohol, the sturdy calloused work gloves, and the knife, because I need to put them somewhere. My fingers cramp in anticipation, and through the duffle bag, I feel for the handle, grope for it despite knowing it’s smothered further than I could grasp. I want it. I need its violence.
I tap my leg against the floor repeatedly. A habit I’ve never been able to shake, a habit I try not to think about. One for each thought. One for each worry. One for each excitement. Tap-tap-tap, one for each; the work, the spikes, the water. In the corner of my eye, a business man stares at me with reproach, from my shifting foot to my bag then to my eyes. I’m too soft, his gaze says. Estrogen changes the face. My leg stills.
I blink to the side. The sea seems to splash against the window when I turn to it. He shouldn’t be able to tell.
The inside is cold. A stomach is warm, enclosed, wet, within your abdomen. My work place is similar, if not for the freezing drop in temperature. And suppose location differs too. I guess. There was a fire once, across the street, to keep something out. Outside, the coast’s children gather, whisper. I imagine they think the reason for all the metal is to keep fire away. Laughably so, in the immature unreasoning way they’ll pretend to be smart in. Metal is a conductor. If there were a fire here, it would take too long to get out. I don’t bother to think about safety often.
The next fish is passed to me with a greasy swipe against conveyor belt. There’s a splinter digging in where my fingers press against handle, and I frown, but do not move. I am not messy; the blood is contained until my knife slices past meat and to bone. The stomach, the gullet, the eye. Packed fish meat cans. I haven’t had real fish in so long. I don’t think I could even stomach it. I want it.
The building has no good light. It’s not from neglect, the owners, the manager, they roll their eyes and groan whenever the nice light bulb buzzes out, sparks then dies, going out to replace it or sending some lucky worker to fetch more, but I think it’s more so from spite. Fire could have been the second light of mankind, after that sun. But the bulb hasn’t popped yet. So under its dim halo, the gold twinkles, blinking at my silver knife.
The ring is buried in between intestines and fish organs. The ring is bloody and dull and tarnished in the clear flickering light. In my good hand, it is there, and I will never say what it made me think.
The knife simply slipped.
My manager told me to go to the hospital when it happened. Red angry gash, through the thick leather glove, the skin soft and weak and flimsy, it bled and my coworker yelped, told me to go to the office, told me to go to the hospital, told me to go home, and I had to pick. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I went to their office.
My manager was busy when I knocked at the door. I felt immature, stupid, dizzy as I rapped knuckles against the wood, like I was coming for a bandaid and a promise it’ll all be better at a ripe adulthood. This was stupid. I was stupid. The ring was on the conveyer belt and could not lend its input.
My manager told me that I needed to go the hospital. Needed to, they stressed. The tendons, your hand is a delicate muscle, and yes, you will be excused, did you even hear my orders? My head is cotton. My head is the clouds. I nod.
My work place is a cavern. It is the gullet of Saturn, and I feel sickly pale, sickly light, sickly faint when I leave it with a headache. I squint at the shining light. I thought it was evening.
My bus comes at noon. It’s eleven, my palm tingles where I hold the phone against ruddy muscle. Eleven thirty. The blood is warm where it trickles down my swan-white long sleeve.
I haven’t told many people of what my doctor said to me. Who would I tell? Mason, oh I could not bother him with so trivial a matter. Even when we were kids, I knew better than to bother him with stupid things. My coworkers? What would they care? And of Moe, of it. It fills me with terror at the very thought of them knowing. I don’t want them, Mason, work, my friends, to know anything about me and him. It’s irrelevant.
My eyes are not any special. I see blurry, I need glasses, contacts, things I cannot afford, but I go on fine. My doctor wears glasses. Those eyes were what killed a child. A child was murdered— no, children. And now, I suppose I will join their ranks. But I’m not scared. I shouldn’t be scared. This is a good thing I’m doing. It shouldn’t be hard for me to understand that.
When my bus came around, at the peak of the heat, where my sweat stung into my wound, revitalizing the flow and moistening the nearly scabbed over blood, the driver told me to go to the hospital too, in a low murmur, overcast by their bark for me to get out my money. I barely had enough. I should have asked if my pay was going to be docked.
My shirt bunches against my skin. I don’t know my blood type, I don’t remember, and maybe my doctor knows. I hope he doesn’t. God, for once, let him not.
Your home is small, damp, in the unpleasant way, not like the beach and coral reefs, like grouted tile and fossilizing food at the back of the fridge. Unopened expired tuna fish can laying forever on my counter. You can never find enough time to eat it.
You need more. More vitamins, more sun, more air, more time outside, more blood, more health, just more. I’m a doctor, the phone calls, the emails, the appointments, and the professional portfolio on LinkedIn all tell you when you search up the name Dr. Thatcher. He should know best. He should know you better than, well, you. Not like that would be hard.
Those eyes made a clone of you. On one appointment, they needed to take your blood. He wouldn’t tell you why, or rather said some jargon that dizzied and dazzled your senses, charmed you with his smartness to pull out your arm and let him take. Is that you real? Across your seat on the bus, there was someone sitting right there. There was a bandage against her hand, there was a smile to her lips and perfect teeth and wonderful gums, and she didn’t smell like saline, more like the beach and the sea and the ocean and everything else beautiful about the water. Your lips quivered.
What’s your name? How do you get your face so soft? You blinked. Let go of your hand, the uncovered wound prickling in the air, and your skin is fish and sweating pool and chlorine and drying bathtub. You hate your smell. You hate her. She wasn’t there when the bus doors opened to a confusingly pristine neighborhood, with houses you would have to sell your own eyes for to rent one of those buildings. Her eyes sparkled at your window as she stepped off. Gave a cheeky wave. Other hand on the phone. Mason, her pretty lips spell out, laughing along to something he must have said. You should call him.
You raised the wrong hand to wave back with. When the bus moves again, you wipe off the blood that splattered. You think you’re dreaming.
I think the device is tracking me. I like to think a lot of things. It helps distract me from the greater schemes of life, of my doctor, of my computer, of my friends. But the device.
An experiment, my doctor told me when I asked, frowning at the expensive looking laptop that was just about to be handed to me, for no fee. It just seemed too good to be true, I murmured thoughtfully and he hummed, nodding. We just need to see how it would act out in the wild, he replied, and I didn’t get it, I didn’t understand, but I took the clipboard when he offered it, and I took the pen and signed it, paying no attention when it burst at the end and bruised the words The doctor will not be held accountable in case of patient injury, incapacitation, or death. I wasn’t scared then. I made a promise to help. He took an oath, and he gave me his hands to take the vow, and I was not terrified out of my mind.
But the device. It’s watching me. Of course, with those eyes, how could it not be, but the virus, the clones, the children, the death. I know it, what they want from me. I put it into my book bag, the one I was meant to use for college, before I stopped going. Remember to actually drop your courses before dropping class! some clever post tells me on a doom-scroll. But I don’t. I won’t have enough time. Not before the eyes, before they get their fill. Inside my book bag, the laptop whirs and churns its fans in protest. I won’t relent. I hide in the bathroom, in front of the mirrored medicine cabinet, one hand against the counter, the other hidden to my chest, hiding the places where tissue has began to develop. Ashamed.
My doctor hasn’t asked about the hormones because they’re not relevant. My gender is unneeded for his mission, my purpose. I never know what he needs.
I bandage my hand there. One loop, two, three of the gauze, and then I pour down the alcohol in the wrong order, and it hurts, but that’s good. The bathroom door is locked. My phone does not buzz and the side is still sticky with blood.
I do not pay the bill for the lights often. I try to keep up with the heating. But always, the water bill is ready.
You’re burning. You’re on fire. You are in that warehouse across the street, you are in the metal can working, you are in the down-under, and you are being digested. You are dying. You are at the bottom of the sea and your air tank has punctured. They will miss you, this version of you, with the golden ring on your finger and the perfect work ethic, and your wife will miss you, your husband, or spouse, or partner that you don’t want, or your doctor, or him—
Your hair clings to your forehead when you wrench yourself from the water. Slippery cold fingers grasp and clench onto bathtub edge, and you’re breathing heavy. Thick heavy swallowing gasps. Desperation for air bordering on disgust. You don’t want to die. It’s a mantra, a choking sensation that verbalizes itself through a dying animal’s groan, showing itself with teary eyes. You don’t want to die, you don’t want to die, God, Mason, please, I don’t want to die.
My fingers are clumsy, blurred by the moisture that sticks to my eyes as I reach for the phone, to call and hang up on, to dial in and hear him. Mason. Mason, please. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
He picks up on the last ring. He breathes differently, careful, calculated, listening, but you fill in the silence well enough with an inhale that is clogged with congestion and the splashing of water. I can’t think. I can’t.
“Why did you call me, [Ze]?”
My body is cold in the tub. I breath in, painfully, through my nose that burns. I can’t speak. I look down, to the water that pools to under my chest, barely grazing the underside of breast tissue. At the expanse of tar like substance at spot where I imagine stomach goes, then down, to pelvis.
It’s not Mason. Misdial, you think about muttering, then pressing the red hang up button a second before he can respond. You can't say the words.
“I can’t do the report today. For this week.” My wound trembles. I shouldn’t have gotten it wet. “My hand. It’s cut.”
There’s silence. I lay my head against the end of the porcelain, breath in through my mouth rather than my painful nose, try hard not to look at the pill bottle that’s sprawled against the floor, at the numbers which time how long my doctor sits in his disappointment, at the pile of clothes that sit at the door. My body is disgusting even bare.
“I see. And how did you get it cut?”
On my phone’s time, it says 11:59 PM. “At work, there was an accident. It was my fault, I was cutting a fish, and then. Yeah.” You swallow back the words I’m sorry. It’s not my fault. I lied, it’s not my fault.
“I never said it was, [Ze]. But [Ze],” you wince at the continued sound of that name from his lips, look back to the tiled wall you’ve yet to wash, turning on your side, skin clammy against the bottom of the tub. “I doubt you called just for that.”
You just give a small hum in reply. He seems to take that as cue to go on, you frown. “You should be more honest, [Ze]. I’m supposed to be helping you. And you should get more sun. It would make you feel better. And more creative enrichment. Helps the brain, limits the stress.” He pauses on that word, empathizes it, and I feel my face burn as I tuck it into my knees. I don’t interrupt him. He’s always right. “There’s this wonderful art museum I know. You could benefit, no, you would benefit greatly from attending. It’s in downtown, at—”
He rattles of the address smoothly, the sound of it muffled as you sink your ears back into the water, closing your eyes in avail to pretend this is not happening, this is not real. “Sure,” you lie, lips grazing the water’s edge, against the skin of your knees. “I’ll go.”
“It’s all very dreamlike. Ethereal, abstract, aesthetic too. You would like it. And who knows someone better than their doctor?”
Nobody.
The train is late to the station. Its words flash angry red, to who, I don’t know, but there’s been a delay. I think of a railroad accident, of a broken hand, or a family murder. The conductor is not bloody or gorey or ruined. Everything is perfect.
The train ride will be overnight. The ticket said so, I said so, and Mason, through a series of misspellings, said that it sounded fun, that it would be an adventure. I think I would like that. Who knows someone better than a childhood friend?
I fiddle with my fingers; left hand, index, middle, pinky, then right, avoiding the ring fingers, careful not to press against palm or touch the gold. I don’t know why I brought it. It’s too tight for my skin.
My bag is against the seat besides me, I am sitting against the far end of the row. I booked the late ride without thinking. My neck is drying with the train’s faulty AC. My nose hurts when I breath in. The museum website calls itself an Art Nouveau monument, a review site calls it a tacky waste of housing space, and Mason says it looks like just some art museum and I hope you have fun! with a smiley emoticon. I wonder if it’s too late to change the destination of my ticket to the airport. It’s been so long since I’ve seen his face.
An art museum. I search up the words, have to copy and paste, but I still don’t understand it, its focus, Art Nouveau. I didn’t take History of Art when I still attended my classes.
I nod my head when someone pokes their head into my space, asks if these seats are occupied, quickly, enough that I have to repeat myself and they frown. It hurts to be looked at.
The Wikipedia article on the museum doesn’t load. It’s a red link, a no results on the search bar, and I occupy my time instead by going to some other inane topic, the history of some race horse and its legacy. I haven’t thought about my family in weeks. I don't remember my father's name.
The strap on my bag is wrapped around my good hand. If someone were to grab it, steal it, take it, then I would have better chances of getting a firm grip on it. Behind me, the sky is turning a putrid purple, the moon rising, the stars twinkling. I blink back at them, frowning at their loveliness.
I can’t see any ocean nor coast.
I think I fall asleep on the train.
The museum is hostile. Monuments are made to honor, I vaguely define the word, and supposed if that is correct, then this building has its purpose down. It sickens me, with how fulfilled it looks.
Inside, there’s suits of armor, polished and held standing by back supports, cast behind the overhanging sign of DO NOT TOUCH THE EXHIBITS. The whole building is narrow hallways. Windowless rooms, plaster white walls, clean floors. Like a doctor’s office, I think, grimacing at the thought. I’m inside of the throat, the esophagus.
I thought that monuments were more crowded. Dreamlike, my doctor described it, the only distinct word out of his mouth. But there’s no haze, no fog as I go about, stop in front of a painting that must have been in my world too. A replica, I hear someone mutter to herself besides me. I can’t discern her tone of voice. The father eats the son, the son kills his father, and the daughter? Saturn’s rings being made from its moons is a popular theory. The air conditioning makes the whole building smell like freshened chemical.
I swallow, dry, go to another painting, thumb the ring lower on my finger within my pocket. To the base of the knuckle. My phone doesn’t ring.
The tile is crisp edges, blurred only because of my own eyes, and it’s all so clear now. I guess those pills did help after all. Everything was in such a haze before. So dizzy, although that could have been the blood loss. On cue, my wound throbs against the gauze.
It’s only when I’ve reached my fourth exhibit, do they start the speakers. Loud screeching pitch announces it, makes my eyes pinch and my mouth tighten, before the soft chimes of a piano start to play, picked up with some stringed instrument; violin? Harp? I was never that good at music either. Classical, I think it what this would be called by some music professor. It makes me drowsy to think about. It’s an elegant sound. It would have hated this music.
I shouldn’t think about it.
The fourth is a large ornate rug. Hand woven, submitted by artist’s family, preferred anonymous. The artist drew this up, woven it, days before death. A mimicry of cave paintings’ style takes up the orange yarn, spindly flowing black horse like figures running across, and my hands cramp for minutes after leaving, just seeing those stitches and imagining those motions of yarn over fingers or loom or needle. I’m dizzy.
I think the medication is wearing off. I think I’m in the wrong museum. I think my bandages are coming loose.
When I try to retrace my steps, back to the painting of Saturn Devouring His Son, I can’t find it. I don’t live in Spain. The train doesn’t go to Madrid. That’s not even the name of the painting. Nobody was supposed to look at it.
The music cuts to the sound of whales singing, waves overcasting the chords of their vocalizations. I get tapped on the shoulder, a woman with a healed scab on her palm asks me who’s the lucky partner with shining teeth. I’m not married. I don’t want to be. I mumble It’s a mystery to me, shuffle off, out, away.
The lights are blinding, strongly white overhead. I get lost more times than I can count, and for some reason, I think about that cave in my world, the eyes at the bottom, and then I get out. The back is not furnished. My shoes scuff dirt and abandoned construction site.
I think the woman told me Good luck before I ran fully out of earshot. But I’m not proposing. I’m not—
The hospital my doctor belongs to is shutting down its lights. The garden is filled with alliums. Purple blooms across the green hedges and I think about the last victim, the one before me. Child, Patient M. [Michamazing2]. Micha [Tanner]. I haven’t looked him up. I’m not supposed to know his last name, not even his gamertag, but my doctor can be giving. For once.
There’s the shadow of someone leaving the building. I turn, catch only its eye and golden ring, before I freeze, blood cold. It’s not real. It’s not real. My computer is at home, in that laptop bag and that dorm I always lock. It’s not real. I have to turn away to get my blood moving again. I can’t hear it walking away.
Outside, I call him. He picks up before the first ring, as if waiting for this moment. The line starts with just static, before his voice cuts through, deeper than it was months ago. I don't remember what either of us used to sound when children and I don't want to.
“Ze? What’s up? Did you have fun at the museum?”
The air is wet with mildew. The weather forecast notification told you that it was going to rain. “Yeah, I guess. I had fun. Lots of modern art and old paintings,” you shrug, murmur light as the water begins to fall. You take a step back, turning to the sliver of roof as shelter. The quiet is filled with the sounds before petrichor. “You sound different,” I blurt without thinking, just to fill the air, and there’s a noise like a smile against the receiver.
“I do?” Yes. Do I? No, estrogen can’t change the voice. I think. I can barely recall the time the train home comes.
Is it a good difference? Yes. Of course it is, it’s you. Mason. “Well. That’s good to know.”
I could tell him. The eyes, I could start, and then he would interrupt me, ask if I renewed my prescription. He wouldn’t mean to cut me off. It wouldn’t be his fault, just chance. I ask him what he’s going to get at the store instead, and he laughs, before rustling some drawers for a list and rattling off the items one by one. His voice occupies my time walking to the station.
I miss you, I almost murmur, just as he’s finished mispronouncing Gnocchi, some recipe he wants to cook despite the money and time and kitchen it needs, taking a breath before moving onto some internal debate he’s had over bread brands, something I would have made him make external for us to pass the time if I were there. I should be there.
I swallow, taste salt water. The last time the two of us went out, we went fishing. I can’t afford to send him money for another plane ride. I wish I could.
I’ve reached the station, at the top, Daphne Gate, when the doctor calls. Mason is telling me about Mr. Donovan’s discovery, muted tone, hushed lull to his voice, frown heard when he pauses.
You should hang up, he whispers, a melancholy tinge to his voice. You shake your head. “I won't,” you promise, looking down into the station tunnel, to the dark metro system. Power went out you guess. “He can wait.”
There’s a dark red patch on my white jacket when I lower the phone. My thumb aches with my palm when I press Decline Call from Doctor. No one is looking at me. I take off the ring. Watch impassively as it rolls out of my fingers, taking only the smallest of steps when it lands into the gap between sewer grate, too late to grab it and too soon to claim blamelessness. GOES INTO THE OCEAN is marked on its side.
The train's next stop is the beach.
You tell Mason you've been thinking of going swimming with him.