Through Shattered Glass

by David B. Silva

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, then, what does it feel like?”

  “Like a smile. Like silver tear drops and the first summer jump into the swimming hole. Like the first star at night and vanilla ice cream on a sort throat.”

  “Yes! Exactly!”

  5.

  It had been a year now since Parker's sister had died in an automobile accident. She had been on her way home from her boyfriend's apartment. They had just broken up, and she was upset. She had left crying, and it was late out, and it had been raining, and she had tried to take a comer a little faster than she should have. The car lost control. It ended up off the side of the road, wrapped around the trunk of an old oak.

  His sister died instantly.

  6.

  The following Monday night when Parker went to work, it was still there on the side of the road, that clump of fur or whatever it was. It was still there, but it had changed in some indefinable way. He passed it going slower this time, straining to get a better look. It seemed as if it might have grown, maybe filled out a bit.

  One of the feeders, no doubt, he thought, surprising himself. And where had that come from? He hadn't realized how much his mother's dementia had begun to infiltrate his own thoughts.

  The clump of fur, still unidentifiable, disappeared from sight and Parker turned his full attention back to the road. He was running late tonight, and while he didn't need to officially show up at the Wonders before his first round at seven, Parker preferred to get an early start whenever possible.

  He clocked in and went to the back office, after his flashlight. The building was empty. It was quiet, the lights dimmed, the air still warm from the day's activity. At his locker, Parker held the Master lock in the palm of his hand, and drew a complete and utter blank. It was the first time it had ever happened to him. He stared at the lock a moment, his mind a blank slate, then dropped it and leaned back on the desk. How long it took before the combination finally came to him, he didn't care to guess. But it came all at once in a rush, and he fingered through the numbers, gave the lock a tug, and...

  ... and it opened.

  Thank God.

  The rest of the night went by uneventfully, except for something that had left Parker feeling strangely uneasy. The sculpture was a wire and sheet-metal monstrosity that had slowly been taking form over several weeks now. He still wasn't sure what final form it was supposed to take. It consisted of two main elements. The central piece, shaped something like a tuning fork with breasts, stood fifteen feet high. The second piece was half that size, a faceless human form that he thought might be female. A bronze placard had been recently added. The work was titled The Feeders.

  His last time around, just as sunrise was warming the eastern horizon, Parker stopped and studied The Feeders. He wondered where it had come from—that title, and how his mother had known about it. And he wondered what the sculpture would look like when it was finally complete. And then a strange thought came to him. Maybe it never would be complete. Maybe it was...

  Maybe it was ... becoming.

  Yes.

  Becoming.

  That thought, along with what his mother had said—“Sometimes they come as your father. Sometimes as you. And sometimes ... sometimes maybe as a chair or a television or a coat or a pair of shoes.”—followed Parker home that morning, a nightmare waiting to happen.

  7.

  Parker woke up several days later with only a vague idea of where he was.

  He sat up. He wiped the sleep from his eyes. A light, walnut dresser sat against the opposite wall, an RCA portable television on top, pushed into the corner. Next to the bed on the night stand, a digital clock attested to the time: 2:53 p.m. There was a door off to the right, closed, a window off to the left, the blinds drawn. It was at once both familiar and frightening. How had he arrived here at this place, at this time? And where exactly was this place?

  Outside, an autumn storm huddled in around the building, the sky low and dark, the limbs of the dogwood stirring in the wind, fashioning shadow puppets across the bedroom walls.

  A light rain began to fall.

  Parker recalled a similar day from a long, long time ago. He was with his sister, out back of the house at Waterford. It was autumn and a storm swept over the western mountains like a huge wave, bringing down a warm, intoxicating rain. His sister giggled and raised her arms, her lamb's wool sweater dangling loosely as she spun and twirled, a ballerina dancing without an audience, dancing for no one other than herself.

  “Isn't it grand, Parker?”

  He looked at her, believing she had lost it this time, completely lost it.

  “Isn't it?” she repeated.

  “What?”

  “Life! Isn't it grand? Close your eyes and it's a cool reminder against your face. The world is alive! Take notice! You breathe it in and send it out again, a thousand times a day and never say thank you. But it's all around you, Parker. Everywhere! Just waiting for you to find surprise.”

  “I've found surprise.”

  “No, you haven't.”

  “I have.”

  “Go on, then! Close your eyes and raise your arms and see if you've ever—”

  The phone rang, the sound jarring him out of the memory, nearly jarring him out of bed as well. Parker wiped a hand across his face, and let out a long breath. Outside, a light, steady rain softly tapped its autumn song against the window pane.

  The phone rang again, and again once more before he found it on the floor, between the bed and the night stand. He hoisted it to his lap, listened to it ring one more time, then lifted the receiver off the hook. He raised it to his ear.

  “Hello?”

  “You never did,” a voice whispered.

  “Never did what?”

  “Never found surprise.”

  And it was true, he realized. Even after that day in the back yard with his sister, he never had found surprise. There were too many things going on, too much to do, too little time to get it all done, and one day passed into another, one week into one month, and so on.

  “You're in your bedroom, Parker. At home. It's time to come out and play.”

  8.

  That night, the clump by the side of the road was gone.

  Parker drove past the spot where it had been, moving at little more than a crawl, straining to make sure he didn't miss it. Going the other way, Diana honked at him and he waved absently. The clump was gone. He drove past the speed limit sign, past the telephone pole with the Child Quest poster stapled eye-level, and the clump should have been there somewhere, but it wasn't. It had disappeared. Someone had picked it up or the wind had blown it away or ...

  It didn't matter, Parker tried to tell himself. It had been a clump, an unidentifiable clump of something, and that's all it had been. He drove past the spot by the side of the road, trying not to glance in his rearview mirror in case he had somehow missed it, and then he glanced anyway, and felt uneasy that he couldn't let it go.

  Inside the Wonders, he clocked in and made his way to the back office. He dropped his lunch box on the chair next to the door, got his flashlight out of the locker---no trouble with the combination tonight---and started on his rounds.

  Building One was where most of the work was done. Parker passed through the maze of torches and anvils, mallets, cutting wheels and shaping tables, and made his way out of one work area and into another. Everything seemed unusually quiet tonight as he crossed to Building Two. The alleyway, all weeds and dry grass, had been overrun with crickets. Sometimes they had raised such a racket he had trouble hearing his own thoughts. Tonight, though, not a sound, not a chirp, as he made his way across.

  Building Two was a mammoth brick building that had once served as the assembly wing of an auto plant. Twenty-seven foot high ceiling. Concrete slab floor. Block and tackle hanging from the overhead rafters. Parker moved around the outer perimeter of the building, checking the windows and skylights, trying the doors, shining his light down the long stacks of iro
n bar and Corten steel. He wasn't alone tonight. Someone or something was here with him. He could feel it.

  That feeling followed him all the way to the far back corner of the building, like a nagging ache, and he found himself standing before the last great sculpture. The Feeders. He stood in awe, wondering why he hadn't realized before, wondering why he hadn't understood.

  “Oh, Parker,” his mother cried. She was the second piece in this great work, the faceless human form he had thought might be female. He had been right. All along, he had been right. “We've been waiting so long.”

  “Mom?”

  She reached and took him in her arms, all smiles and warmth and assurance.

  “I've missed you, Mom.”

  “I know,” she said softly, lucidly. She smiled again, held him away from her to look him over, then pointed to the center piece, the fifteen-foot shape that he had thought resembled a tuning fork with breasts. “And who's this, Parker?”

  “Sis?” She was wearing her lamb's wool sweater, and for the first time, he made the connection. The clump by the side of the road hadn't been a dead animal after all. It had been his sister's sweater, his sister's lamb's wool sweater.

  “Yes!” his mother cried.

  Parker climbed onto his sister's lap, feeling warm and safe, not in a dream but of a dream, not lost but found, not alone but attended. He raised his face to her sweet smile, and closed his eyes, free of myocardial infarctions and automobile accidents and dementia, just him and his mother, him and his sister, together again.

  Can you feel it?

  Yes!

  9.

  “Open your eyes, Parker.”

  He did, and his sister smiled at him, the smile of sweetness and fond memories, of joyous laughter and soft whispers. He raised his face to the rain, feeling the cool touch against his cheeks, the delight of rivulets down his forehead.

  “Taste it,” she said.

  He opened his mouth, the water tickling his tongue, filling his cheeks.

  “Tell me.”

  “Like spring and autumn. Like a breath of fresh air and the song of a flute. Like a kiss.”

  “I miss it, Parker.”

  “I know you do.”

  “And do you know what I am?”

  “One of the feeders?”

  “And why I'm here?”

  “To take me?”

  “Yes! Exactly!”

  10.

  Pete Burton, the janitor, came in a little after five the next morning. He turned on the lights and made his way to the back office, half-expecting to bump into Parker, and surprised when he didn't. He made the rounds through Building One, opening windows, emptying trash cans, sweeping metal shavings off the floor, then moved to Building Two, where he continued the same routine.

  He found Parker at the far back corner, lying at the base of a huge sculpture called The Greeters. The work was still weeks from completion. It was a Buddha-like figure, reaching to the sky, welcoming an understanding of life and death, of mystery and knowledge, of love and hate. At least that had been the way the sculptor had explained it.

  Parker opened his eyes, looking lost and vacant.

  “Parker? You all right?”

  “Shhh. They might hear you.”

  “Who? Who might hear me?”

  “The feeders.”

  Slipping

  1.

  "It's hard to tell the difference sometimes. You spend all day and half the night editing the final version of an ad, then you go home, crash for a few hours and start all over again the next morning. Every once in a while I have to remind myself what day it is and where I live. And there's always the danger, I suppose, that if you're not careful, you might drift a little too far from the reality loop. It's happened to some of the best of them."

  --Raymond Hewitt

  2.

  For a moment, before he became fully aware of his surroundings, Raymond Hewitt, age 32, didn't know where he was. He had been sitting in the La-Z-Boy in the living room of his apartment, watching Nightline, and nibbling at a leftover chicken burrito from last night's dinner. But now, he realized suddenly, he was standing in his bathroom.

  The light was on above the mirror. He stared at himself, dressed only in his pajama bottoms, the toothbrush in his hand. There was a thin line of toothpaste sitting on the bristles, and his mouth was dry. He hadn't started to brush yet. But ...

  But what am I doing in here?

  A sliver of grayish light slipped through the opened bathroom door. He glanced down the hallway at the living room where the television was off now. There was plate sitting on the end table next to the La-Z-Boy. Even from here, he could see it was empty, except for a fork and a crumpled napkin. The chicken burrito was gone. He had finished it, he supposed, though he couldn't recall having done so.

  What happened here, Raymond, my friend?

  "I don't know."

  He looked again at his reflection in the mirror, at the puzzled expression staring back at him, and brought the toothbrush mechanically to his mouth. What had happened, he decided, was simple: he hadn't been paying attention. He had finished the burrito, turned off the television, and changed into his pajamas without paying attention to what he was doing. It had been like driving on automatic. Entering the on-ramp, thinking about how you're going to get everything done by tomorrow's production meeting, then suddenly finding yourself a block away from home with no recollection of the miles in between.

  Either that ... or he had misplaced a little piece of himself tonight. Stashed it away in the same hollow place where he kept the bitterness of his separation from Sherrie and his every-other-weekend visitations with Robin. Somewhere out of mind, where the memories were kept dull and painless.

  One of those, Ray decided as he climbed into bed. He pulled the bed sheets up under his chin and covered his eyes with his left arm.

  It would be another twenty minutes before the Sand Man would accompany him down a long, spiral stairway into the pure black peacefulness of slumber. In the morning, he would struggle to pull himself out of that dark, safe sleep, and by the time he was fully awake, the episode of the night before would be long forgotten.

  3.

  "I'm going to miss it," Bev told him late the next night.

  Ray switched his briefcase to his other hand, and checked his Rolex. It was five to midnight. A light rain had fallen sometime after dinner, and the streets mirrored the soft shimmer of the surrounding city lights. It seemed later than it was. In fact, Ray told himself, it seemed almost as if the night had settled in to stay. "No you won't. We've got five minutes before the last train leaves."

  He took her by the arm, and together they hurried across Fourth Street and started down the tunnel entrance to the Midtown Station. If there had been someone else on the street, they might have been mistaken for a young married couple heading home after a late-night dinner with friends (a late sup, as they liked to say on the Hollywood side of the business). But that would have been a mistaken assumption. Bev had hired on with Baylor & Baylor Advertising a little less than a month ago, after a national ad campaign at another agency had won her a Clio, and CEO Chet Baylor had lured her away with an offer of bigger bucks and more creative freedom. She had been lured right into Ray's office, to work on a campaign for a small independent film called Timescape. A get-your-toes-wet project while she learned her way around the agency.

  At the bottom of the steps, Bev switched her purse from one shoulder to the other, and brushed a wisp of hair back from her forehead. "I still don't understand why they're front-loading this movie. It's not that bad."

  "Ours is not to reason why."

  "God, you're cynical."

  "Not a cynic, a realist," Ray said easily. "It's a horror flick, not Gone With The Wind. Two weeks after it opens, it'll close. And two months after that it'll be in every video store across the country. Doesn't matter how good we do our job, we aren't going to make Timescape into a box-office hit. They know that. As long as we can max the theater gro
ss they'll be happy. Video sales'll take care of the rest."

  "Seems like a waste. I've seen Oscar winners that were worse."

  As they arrived at the platform, Ray checked his watch again. Midnight, straight up. It had been ten or fifteen minutes since the last train had come through, though it felt as if it might have been days. A cool breeze carried out of the tunnels, howling softly and faraway. The train was running late, and they were the only two people waiting. He couldn't recall that having ever happened before, being alone in the station.

  "Why is it so quiet?" Bev asked. "We miss something?"

  "Maybe the system's down."

  Overhead, the information monitor ran through a blurb for the symphony: The Skylight Center. Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. General admission $15.00. Ray watched until it went into the Arrival/Departure Schedule. "Nope. Looks like it's just a few minutes late."

  "Where is everyone?"

  He placed his briefcase on the floor between them, and glanced about the empty station. Someone had spray-painted a symbol in day-glow orange across the face of a billboard of a local FM station. It looked a little like an hourglass on its side, with a man buried in the sand to his knees. A sleeve of newspaper swirled out of one of the tunnels. Ray cleared his throat. "It's midnight," he said with a shrug. "There's never much of a crowd this time of night."

  She seemed to relax a bit. "You have your daughter this weekend?"

  "Supposed to, but Sherrie took her down to Florida on some sort of business trip. They're doing Disney World and Epcot while they're down there."

  "So what's your weekend look like?"

  "I don't know." He watched the sleeve of newspaper drop back to the tracks. "Maybe I'll spend some time at the office tomorrow."

  "Another look at Timescape?"

  "Yeah, if you don't mind?"

  "No, of course not," she said, and he could see she really was comfortable with the idea. "I suppose I should have brought this up earlier, though ..."