Distinct

by Hamill, Ike

  “I’m not the one you should worry about,” Romie said, but she knew what Ava was talking about. Her eyes kept wanting to drift out of focus. Staying present in the moment was a battle and she was losing it.

  Pam and Kenny started to argue about whether or not they were going to buy a new TV in the morning. For once, their roles were reversed. Pam was the one who wanted to spend the money but Kenny thought they should save it up. He never seemed to have any shame about he and Pam living in his mother’s basement. Maybe he was finally starting to get some.

  “Romie!” Ava said. She nudged Romie’s elbow. Ava had been holding out the same bowl of peas for several seconds.

  “Sorry,” Romie grunted. She took the peas and handed them to Fran. “Scuse me,” Romie said. She pushed back from the table. Her spot was east to get out of, since she was closest to the refrigerator. Being the oldest, she was always the one expected to fetch the forgotten things from the fridge.

  Romie crossed the kitchen and slipped out through the back door. Momma was trying to get her rusty old lighter to work. The thing had been empty for days, but Momma wouldn’t give up. She would be lighting things with just the spark soon.

  “I’ll be back in a second,” Momma said. “Don’t come out here on my account.”

  “I just…” Romie started to say. She knew what was going to happen next. Her mother would be swept up into the sky, never to return. Romie shrank back in anticipation. She had already lived this experience once and then had seen it in a hundred nightmares.

  “Take control,” a voice whispered to her.

  Romie didn’t stop to think where the voice was coming from. The idea made perfect sense. This time, she knew exactly what was going to happen. She didn’t have to be a passive victim again. With a fierce cry, she leapt for her mother. Momma turned with shocked surprise as Romie grabbed her around the midsection. The momentum of the impact took them both over the edge of the porch. They began to tumble down the stairs.

  Momma, usually so composed and sharp-tongued, could only scream as her busted lighter flew from her hand.

  Their fall didn’t last long. Something invisible, with sharp claws and endless strength, grabbed Romie and Momma. Romie felt one set of claws dig into her shoulder, pierce through skin, muscle, and into the bone. Romie and Momma both screamed as they were jerked upwards and absorbed.

  Romie heard her own scream for just an instant and then it was silenced by the suffocating membrane that wrapped around them. The world was black and silent for a moment. Romie felt like she had been transported to some patch of starless space. She waited for her brain to slowly starve without oxygen. She waited for panic to envelop her.

  Of course none of that happened, and Romie knew why—she was already dead.

  The light started as a pinprick. It was so small and faint that Romie assumed that it was just a fault in her eyes. It grew. The light was something that she had witnessed on two separate occasions. She hated it. It represented the failure of being conquered. Romie realized that she was back on firm ground. No longer lost in a void, she stood, looking up at the great ball of light that meant death.

  Her mother was next to her.

  Fran, Ava, Richie, Kenny, and Pam were there too. And they weren’t the only ones. Romie was in a crowd that stretched as far as she could see. They were all standing in concentric circles, looking up at the light. One time, her friend Brad had showed her a secret that he had kept from the others. It was a picture of his ex-wife, Karen. Somehow, Brad had kept the thing safe through all their travels. It had one bent corner, but it had been clear enough for Romie to recognize her now. Karen stood just a few people away from Romie.

  Her mother reached up a trembling hand, trying to touch the ball of light.

  “No,” Romie said.

  Her mother took a step forward, pushing her way past Pete.

  “No,” Romie said.

  Her mother turned back.

  “Romie, this is what we hoped for,” Momma said. She took Romie’s hands and leaned forward to peer deep into Romie’s eyes. “Our whole lives, we lived for this glory. Don’t fight it now. The struggle is over, once and for all.”

  “No, Momma,” Romie said. “That light is a lie. It consumes us to feed itself. It doesn’t care about us one bit. We’re just nourishment for it.”

  Momma shook her head. Kenny put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a gentle push.

  “Romie, when you were inside me, I knew you didn’t want to come out. I was in labor with you for the better part of an entire day. You were afraid to leave me—afraid to go out into the world—but look at what you became. You came from inside of me and then you grew up to be bigger and stronger than I could have ever hoped. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me and it all started with you taking the chance to leave your home inside me. Don’t be afraid to take a risk. You have nothing to lose.”

  Romie looked from her mother’s eyes up to the light. Her words were compelling, but they were also confusing. This wasn’t the way that Momma talked to her. She was supportive, but never without a wicked twist at the end of her comments. She said things that should have been encouraging, but always in a way that made Romie feel diminished.

  “Who are you?” Romie asked.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  Robby looked up at the clear blue sky. It was beginning to darken as the sun went down. The wind picked up, bringing the smell of seaweed and the lobster pound. Jim was sitting on one rock with his feet propped up on two others. He stared down at a puddle of salt water and poked at the life that had been trapped there by the receding tide.

  “We ought to get home soon,” Jim said. “Dinner’s going to be epic.”

  “If your brother doesn’t eat all the good pieces,” Robby said.

  Jim chuckled and jabbed his stick at a plant.

  Robby ran his tongue over his teeth. The chip was still there. Lisa had made a cherry pie and missed one of the pits. Robby had chipped a tooth. Of course, if he had eaten Lisa’s pie, then…

  “We’re not here,” Robby said.

  “Yeah. Right?”

  Jim smiled at him.

  “No, I mean it. You’re dead. I thought that kid was you, but he wasn’t.”

  “Shut up, Robby. What do I always tell you?”

  “That I ruin everything by thinking too much about it.”

  “Exactly,” Jim said. “Sometimes, you have to just shut up and enjoy things.”

  Robby nodded.

  “You know what? I was wrong,” Robby said.

  Jim looked up at him. The end of his poking stick just hung in the air. A drop of seawater fell from the stick and splashed back to the pool.

  “I was thinking about my father before and how he taught me to be less of a weirdo.”

  “He didn’t do a very good job then,” Jim said.

  Robby smiled. “He told me to use some of my intelligence to learn how to fit in, you know? You remember back when all I did was read books and keep to myself?”

  “You mean like yesterday?” Jim asked.

  “Seriously,” Robby said. “My father thought I was turning into a real freak and he wanted me to be well rounded. That’s why I started doing sports, talking to people more, and that’s when we became best friends.”

  “Ha!” Jim said. “What a joke! I’m the one who decided to be friends with you!”

  “Yeah, I know,” Robby said. “That’s what I was just realizing. In a way, I always thought it was my job to look out for you.”

  “For me?” Jim dropped his stick and grabbed his belly. He rolled backwards, balancing as he rocked back and forth.

  “I know. Very funny, right?”

  Jim wiped the corner of his eye with a finger and then pretended to flick it at Robby.

  “I guess I didn’t realize how much I depended on you,” Robby said. “My father told me what I should do, but I still didn’t have any idea what that should look like. I patterned myself on you—the way you talked and dress
ed. I think I would have stayed an outcast if I hadn’t met you.”

  Jim nodded. “Yeah. I know. That’s why I stole your pencil. You clearly needed help.”

  “Thanks for that,” Robby said. “If I never really said it when you were alive—thank you. You were my best friend.”

  Jim shook his head. “I am your best friend. Still. Best friends don’t go away for no reason, Robby.”

  Robby thought of a dozen rebuttals. He kept them to himself. He stood up and brushed off the back of his pants before he reached down to give Jim a hand up.

  “I have to go back now,” Robby said. He turned a slow circle, wondering how to wake himself from the dream. It had been lovely to be so immersed in this world. The island still looked just the same in his memories. In real life, the place had been turned over by the floodwaters after the thaw. Houses were ripped from foundations and litter was scattered everywhere. It would never look as pretty and put-together as it did in Robby’s memory.

  He closed his eyes and took one more deep breath of the ocean. He heard the low horn of the ferry. Both of their fathers were on that boat. Robby’s father was working, and Jim’s father was returning from the mainland with a big bucket of chicken. It didn’t happen often, but when they got takeout fried chicken from the shore, the boys were in heaven.

  “You have to go home first?” Jim asked.

  “No,” Robby said. “I have to go back to real life. I want to believe in all this, but I can’t.”

  Jim was shaking his head.

  “There is no real life anymore, Robby. I thought you knew that. It’s either here or nothing.”

  Robby wrinkled his brow. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Jim, it’s just that he had never thought Jim would ever admit to the illusion. If this was all part of Robby’s dream, there was no reason that Jim should acknowledge that fact.

  “That man that they told me about,” Robby said. “Do you know about him?”

  Jim stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked a tight circle around the puddle of tidewater. He shook his head slowly.

  “This is what I know, Robby, and I’ll tell you straight. Everything is fine here, but you don’t want to go thinking about it too hard. There’s darkness out there and it’s no fun. Just be thankful for what you’ve got.”

  “No, Jim,” Robby said. He reached out and grabbed Jim’s arm to stop him so he could look him in the eye. “That’s a trick. Someone’s trying to trick me into staying here because he needs me to. I think he needs all of us to, for whatever reason. But I’m not going along with it. I’d rather live in the real world where everything is messed up but we see the world for exactly how messed up it is.”

  “That’s a bad idea, Robby.”

  “How do I get out of here?” Robby asked. He looked up towards the sky again. When he looked back down, his hand was empty. Jim was gone.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  “You done fucked up,” Luke said.

  He had an egg in his pocket, Frank was sure of it. He hadn’t offered it to him.

  “I did everything that was asked of me,” Frank said.

  “You might have to kill a dog if it’s coming at your throat, Frank, but you don’t kidnap kids and try to kill young women.”

  “I did it to bring you back, and look! It worked. Here you are. You’re back because I did those things. The Origin told me to and it worked.”

  Luke shook his head.

  “There are some things you should never stoop to. No matter what, you don’t hurt kids. You remember when you had the idea of burning down that kid’s house? You remember what I told you?”

  Frank looked down at the ground. He couldn’t face Luke. He remembered exactly what Luke had said—it was the same thing he was saying now. It was the same reason that Luke had kicked that other guy out of the group.

  “Kids can’t defend themselves, so it’s up to everyone else to defend them,” Frank said towards the ground. He looked up and begged. “But, Luke, you’re so much more capable than I am at making everything right. The kid wasn’t really hurt. Doesn’t it make sense that I should just pretend to threaten him in order to get you back?”

  “For what?” Luke asked. “If we turn the world to shit, what the hell are we defending?”

  Frank nodded. “Okay. What do I do?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You also told me that what we’ve done in the past doesn’t matter half as much as what we do going forward, right?”

  Luke nodded.

  “What can I do to set things right? Do I have to find the kid and tell him I’m sorry? The girl lived, do I have to apologize to her?”

  Luke simply stared at Frank. The answer was there in Luke’s cold eyes. If he had actually said it, Frank would have objected. Instead, by not answering, Luke put the duty back on Frank to be his own judge.

  The trial was short and conclusive.

  Frank would have to make an enormous sacrifice in order to fulfill the debt he had incurred.

  “Okay,” Frank said. “I done fucked up.”

  He started walking. Frank knew it was a dream. He knew that what his eyes were telling him was nowhere near the truth. It was easier this way. He could be brave and cowardly at the same time. Around him, he saw the border between his property and Luke’s, back in Maine. He was in his perfect fantasy.

  Frank smiled as he walked.

  For a moment, he paused at an errant thought. He remembered a time on the road, when Luke had led the group from Maine to New York. They were stopped by a flow of water that ran across the road. It seemed perfectly safe. Several of the scouts had gotten good at spotting the killer liquid, and they said it was safe. Still, if it was the bad kind of liquid, things would have gotten hairy.

  To save them the trip around, one young man had offered to try to draw the liquid out.

  Luke had turned him down, saying, “I’ll never ask you to kill yourself, and touching that killer water might be killing yourself. There’s enough danger out here to go around. We don’t have a single expendable person in our ranks.

  Frank turned back towards Luke, knowing that he must be mistaken as to Luke’s meaning. He didn’t have a problem making the ultimate sacrifice, but he had to know that it was indeed required.

  Luke was gone.

  Suddenly, Frank wasn’t completely sure that the person he had been talking to was Luke. He seemed so familiar, but also a bit off, like a really good impersonator.

  Frank called and started to walk back.

  The ground went out from under his feet.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  Tim was just about to step into the shower when he heard the phone ring. He let the water run and walked naked down the hall to his cell.

  He smiled as he raised it to his face.

  “Can’t talk—I’m jumping in the shower.”

  “Skip it. You only have twelve minutes to get down here!” Caleb said.

  “Pause it!”

  Caleb laughed. When he laughed, his voice jumped around between octaves. The sound was musical.

  “I can’t! I told you that. This is live, and it’s going to be on in eleven fifty-three, fifty-two…”

  “Okay! Don’t worry, I’ll make it.”

  He hung up on the sound of Caleb laughing again. Tim ran for the shower anyway. There was one rule he always stuck to—when he could smell his own sweat, he didn’t curl up on a couch with potential husbands.

  The water was hot and the bathroom steamy. Tim rushed through a quick scrubbing. Salt from his scalp washed down into his eyes. Jogging had taken him all the way around the park on the sunny side and he must have lost three pounds of sweat.

  “Cedric would have burned up,” he muttered, laughing. The dog loved to run but summer was tough on him. With all that hair, the dog would pant just from walking around in the heat. It would have been pure abuse to take him out jogging on a hot summer day.

  Tim’s hands stopped as he was rinsing the shampoo from his hair. His condo didn
’t allow dogs that big—where did Cedric live?

  The phone started ringing again.

  Tim finished rinsing and shut off the water. He grabbed a towel and left wet footprints down the hall’s bamboo floor.

  “Yeah?” he asked, out of breath.

  “You’re missing it! Hurry up. They’re about to reveal the results from last week.”

  “How could I be missing it? It still has to be…”

  He looked at the clock. It was two minutes after eight. Had his shower taken fifteen minutes? Was that even possible?

  “I’m on my way,” Tim said.

  “Good. Run!” Caleb said.

  Tim dropped the phone and grabbed shorts and a t-shirt. He just needed keys and his phone and he was out the door. The elevator would take too long. Tim headed for the stairs. Caleb lived just one flight down and on the opposite wing. He had a decent view, but Tim liked his own better. Caleb got the sunset and the extra bedroom. Tim got sunrise and a park view. If they could put both condos together, it would be perfect. Actually, it would be perfect in a lot of ways. They practically lived together now, sharing one place or the other depending on schedules. Tim wouldn’t mind combining their arrangements. Caleb wasn’t ready for marriage, but living together was definitely on the table. If they couldn’t agree on which condo to choose, maybe a neutral location should be…

  Tim stopped.

  The staircase ended after the second stair. He stood there, holding the railing and looking down. The platform was still there, where the stairs would have turned the corner and then continued down. Below him, Tim just saw nothing for a few flights. Somewhere down there were normal stairs again.

  He shook his head and blinked, like reality might change. It didn’t.

  “They should put up a sign or something,” Tim said. It wasn’t unlike the building manager to undertake repairs without notice. This seemed particularly stupid and dangerous though. Who ever heard of replacing a flight of stairs and doing nothing to block them off? What if a blind person lived on the floor?