[Dis]Connected

by Michelle Halket

  Dionne stuck around for another thirty minutes before leaving for her next class, and in the wake of her absence, Artemis had grown quiet. Used to her partner’s shifting moods, Lena didn’t initially pay much attention to the stillness that had settled deeply into the apartment over the course of the afternoon. However, once night had fallen and Artemis still hadn’t shaken whatever was distracting her, Lena grew nervous. Her uneasy feeling followed both women into bed, where neither of them could sleep, despite lying quietly in the dark for over an hour.

  “Lena?”

  “I was beginning to think you’d never come back to me.”

  Artemis reached out a hand in the dark and Lena took it. “Do you remember the night we met? Can you still see it? Because I can still see it.”

  It was cold but it wasn’t Minnesota cold. The snow was piling itself into little drifts outside the sliding glass door where Lena had been standing for twenty minutes now, watching.

  She pulled on her boots and grabbed her coat from the back of a kitchen chair before she stepped out into the night. The sky had darkened hours ago but the lights at the back of her apartment complex lit up the small space between the building and the wooded area beyond. She crossed the patch of land that made up her backyard and stood at the edge of the woods, staring.

  Lena couldn’t put a finger on it, but something felt off. Something pulled her toward the woods like she was on a string—or, someone pulled her. She was struck with an overwhelming feeling that she wasn’t alone. Still, the string tugged and she followed. The complex’s lights faded after a few steps in, so she moved forward by the light of the moon, full and looming directly above her.

  Only a few minutes passed before she saw the doe: eyes staring unblinking into hers, pink nose, white coat blossoming with red like an ugly rose. Almost as soon as she registered the deer, it was gone. Not gone. Different. Collapsed in a moaning pile.

  Lena lunged forward, reaching into her pocket for her phone, unsure of who she was supposed to be calling—animal control? A vet?—when she saw it wasn’t a deer at all, twisting there on the ground and making small, wet noises. It was a woman, so beautiful even by moonlight that she was physically difficult to look at. Blinking until her brain righted itself and the woman’s face took on a comprehensible shape, Lena stumbled forward. “Oh, shit,” she said, still fumbling with the phone. “Oh my god. What kind of fucked-up Narnian shit is this? What the fuck?” There was shouting in the distance and the woman lurched to her feet, something under her skin making a sickening popping sound.

  “Are you okay? I … I don’t … What am I supposed to do? What do you need from me? Where are you hurt? I’m calling 911—or I can take you to a hospital myself if it’s less urgent. I know the ambulance rides are expensive if you’re not covered under insurance, or actually sometimes even with insurance.” Over the years, Lena had cultivated a variety of nervous habits. Rambling was one of them. Her brain was still trying to play catch-up with the situation unfolding before her.

  “Those men.” The woman turned her head again towards the sounds in the distance. “They will pay for what they have done to me.”

  “Nobody’s paying for anything right now. You’re hurt.”

  “Hurt?” The woman, Artemis, pressed a finger to the wound on her shoulder and winced, wiping the blood onto her exposed thigh.

  “Oh my god, I wasn’t even thinking,” Lena said, quickly shrugging out of her coat. “What else do you need from me? What can I do for you?”

  Artemis accepted the coat, although it was a fair bit wider and shorter than her frame. The cold wasn’t much of a bother to her, but the offering was noted. She glanced once more into the depths of the beckoning wood before turning to study Lena and the questions she’d posed. Her own needs were something Artemis hadn’t considered in a long time.

  She had avoided human affairs for almost as long as she could remember. There were times when she’d been slightly more involved, but there always seemed to be blood under her boots in those days—or in her hair, or on her hands. She’d run off to the quiet parts of the world, but the world had refused to stay quiet. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d stopped running.

  “I need somewhere to rest,” Artemis said.

  “Yeah, that’s—yeah. I can do that. I’m just around the corner. You can borrow some clothes and call someone if you want.”

  They hurried along without another word as Lena tried not to stare at the other woman’s bare feet crunching through the fresh snow.

  When she reached the complex, Lena put her hand on the door and paused. “We’re going to have to talk about that deer thing. I mean, that’s weird shit. I’m probably in shock. It’s weirder than weird shit. It’s like, DnD meets Animorphs meets something else, probably from the 90s. The 70s? When was C.S. Lewis doing extraordinary talking animals? The 50s? I don’t know, but we’re not pretending I didn’t see that happen.” She turned to Artemis, who looked more amused than anything else.

  “We’ll have to go back a bit earlier than the 1950s.”

  “And do you remember the morning after?” Artemis said, shifting onto her side to close the distance between them on the bed.

  “I thought you said you needed to rest,” Lena said, regarding Artemis carefully as the other woman entered the apartment through the back door. There was red splattered on her throat and cheek like new freckles. She wiped the back of her hand across her face, smearing what was unmistakably blood. “After our talk last night, I didn’t think you’d still go after them.” Lena sighed, sliding into a kitchen chair and looking down at her palms. “What those men did to you, I understand—”

  “You understand?” Artemis laughed but her words were stilted, uncomfortable. “Men have always treated me like a thing that could be owned, so I made myself un-ownable. What could you possibly know of being hunted?”

  Lena stiffened.

  “I’m sorry,” Artemis said, softening her gaze and taking a few hesitant steps towards the kitchen. “I didn’t realize—”

  “We just don’t all deal with it the same way you do, Artemis. I’m not saying don’t be angry. Be angry. I’m saying …” Lena’s voice trailed off for a moment while she took stock of her own anger, buried there in the center of her stomach like a wick. She felt it flicker, just for a moment. “You can’t only run on anger or you’ll burn out.”

  “Dionne—she cares for you. She wanted to make sure you were safe and loved,” Artemis said quietly.

  Lena turned to look at the familiar outline of Artemis in the dark next to her. She gave the other woman’s hand a tender squeeze. “Of course,” she said. “Dionne has been with me through a lot. I’ve been with her through a lot. What does that have to do with how you and I met?”

  “I had a friend like her once,” Artemis said. “He died. It was my fault.” She pulled her hand away from Lena’s and rolled back over to her spot on the opposite side of the bed, allowing the emotional space between them to become a quantifiable distance again. “Did you know, they say I was three years old when I pulled myself into my father’s lap, asked to be attended to by twenty beautiful nymphs, and declared that I wanted to remain a virgin forever? Men are always hearing what they want to hear.”

  Lena said nothing, afraid to stir the other woman out of whatever finally had her talking. She’d been told the basics that first night, and bits and pieces thereafter, but like anyone would, she had questions. She’d tried to give Artemis the space to bring things up on her own and she was surprised to find it was Dionne’s visit that had triggered something in her partner.

  “They came after me, you know,” Artemis continued, “with their hounds and their hands and their thirst for conquest. Bards spun these tales of men’s love for me and never said a word about the blood or the spit or the bruises. There is a story about a man who watched me bathe nude and was so overcome with adoration and desire that he approached me. They say I turned him into a deer before he could even speak and watched his hu
nting dogs rip at his flesh. Men have spent thousands of years romanticizing their unwanted advances, their assaults. They have spent just as long demonizing women for their anger and their retribution.”

  Artemis paused to shake her head in the dark. “As if ‘I want twenty of the most enchanting nymphs you can find to tend my every need’ somehow meant anything other than me wanting to lose myself in the thrall of women.

  “I became known for this thing that I wasn’t, and I dealt with that. As tales of my anger with men made their rounds, more and more angry women prayed to me for vengeance against the men who had wronged them. I fought my own battles and I fought theirs, too—for a time. I was so full of anger for so long, Lena. There wasn’t much to be done about any of it. If people prayed in the name of a virginal goddess, they wanted me to appear as one. I wasn’t allowed to take lovers openly or to marry. I wasn’t permitted to entertain the company of men—not that I wanted to.

  “Orion’s friendship snuck up on me. I knew him to be a great hunter, like myself, but our paths rarely had real excuse to cross until he attempted to court one of my girls. He burst in on us in a glade once, her face buried in my thighs. He let out this great booming laugh—things finally clicking into place, you know? He gave up his pursuit and I will admit I was comforted by his presence. By his love of things I loved. We spent long years hunting together, talking of our consorts by firelight. He was boastful and I was proud, but we were comfortable together.

  “Family is complicated—always, I suppose, but mine especially. In the stories, my brother, Apollo, claims he was protecting my maidenhood but the truth of things is always less clear than what is written and put into song. He was jealous of my fondness for Orion, the intimacy we shared. He couldn’t understand how I could care for a mortal when I’d shunned most others. Both gods and men are fickle and angry and jealous creatures.

  “One morning, Apollo came to me with a terrible story of one of my girls, assaulted and bloodied. He led me to the perpetrator. Though still a great distance away, the man was no match for my silver bow or divine aim. I buried a quiver of arrows in his back before my brother revealed his cruel trick.”

  “That wasn’t your fault, Artemis,” Lena whispered into the dark space between them.

  “It was my bow. My anger. My rush to judgment. They were my arrows stuck in his back. It’s on my hands, whether I believe the blame rests there unjustly or not.”

  “Was it hard for you today? With Dionne? Seeing her with me. It reminds you of him.”

  Artemis raised her hand and with a flick of her wrist, everything obstructing their view of the pitch-black night faded away: the ceiling, the apartments overhead and their tenants. There was only the moon and the stars and the sky, so sweet and dark it looked like a ripe plum hanging above them. “Do you see that?” Artemis said. Lena easily picked out Orion’s Belt overhead, a small part of one of the few constellations she knew, although she wasn’t sure about the rest of the stars that belonged to it. “More than anything else on this Earth, I love sleeping under the stars. I haven’t been able to do it with a guilt-free conscience for hundreds of years. I don’t need another reminder.” She paused. “It is hard every day for me. With you.”

  Lena bit her tongue, afraid of the inevitable point their conversation seemed to be hurtling towards if it continued. Maybe it was her fault for wanting Artemis to open up. There was no sharing without baggage and there was no baggage without pain. For some people there was no pain without running. It was clear Artemis knew firsthand what that was like.

  The mattress groaned and shifted. Artemis said nothing as she rose and left the room. The sound of the sliding glass door opening and then closing left Lena feeling like she was going to be sick, like she’d swallowed too much ocean water or surfaced from a dream too quickly.

  The alarm was blaring. Lena knew before opening her eyes that the bed was empty next to her. She lay there for a moment like that, still and quiet. Not kicking her legs out to feel the open space on the left side of the bed, not listening for movement in the rest of the apartment. Just breathing. Just being present, in her body, in her own bed, alone.

  “We’re out of coffee,” Artemis called from the kitchen.

  Knee to Knee

  TRISTA MATEER

  In the dream, we are strangers knee to knee on a train. It’s the most we ever touch. I still write about you. I still end up here. There is something to be said for a love that refuses to melt. A love stored in the freezer, in a Ziploc bag. Stashed behind the ice cube tray. Always waiting to be pulled out. Willing to thaw, to forgive like spring, to pick up right where it left off. You, cradling a phone in the crook of your arm. Me, crying about produce. You call, and I answer. You say, “Do you know what an air traffic control room looks like? All those switches and buttons blinking? When I hear your voice, everything lights up all at once for me. Nobody else does that.” I don’t say anything eloquent. So we’re back on the train, with the knees, only this time you’re looking me in the face and I’m staring out the window. What do you think happens when love gets left out too long?

  The Train

  LIAM RYAN

  THE SEATS ARE TWO-BY-TWO, SEPARATED by an aisle. All facing forward. Attached, but wide enough that intrusion of space can be avoided. Everything is navy blue and grey in combination. The headrests are nice. I note my row mate hasn’t yet arrived.

  I hate small talk. Four nights on this train. Three days. I would never have agreed to this trip any other year. But it’s been a tough one and my brother knows it. I’ll be seeing him in Vancouver. My mother called yesterday, told me this trip was a good thing. I think she used the word “decompress.” So here I am. I store my belongings and fall asleep within minutes, cheek to the window.

  I wake to bright sunshine pecking my eyelids, drool on my chin, and the rumbling clack of the train sprinting down the tracks. I look around and most people are still sleeping. It’s quiet, probably 7 a.m. My now-present row mate, reclined beside me, is a sleeping woman, facing the aisle and covered in a blanket. She seems young and I feel a wash of relief. Most young people understand why small talk is murderous. While I don’t want to get up, hunger and a full bladder are making me uncomfortable so I climb over her. I find a bathroom. Small, not overly clean, but functional. A toilet is a toilet, I guess. I splash some water on my face and wipe the mirror of the errant drops. The face that looks back at me is one that carries a tiredness and a weight I’d prefer not to notice. That young man isn’t me. He’s just observing me. Lightless eyes from deep within the mirror. It has been this way for years.

  I make my way back through the car of yawning and stretching passengers to grab my phone. The multiple greens of Northern Ontario in the summer flash through the train and the sky is bright. When I get to my seat, the woman hasn’t moved. From my vantage point in the aisle, I can now see her face and she is indeed young. Long, dark-brown hair. Maybe my age. Something about her face … My guts twist with the anxiety of sudden epiphany.

  Her sleeping face is one that I know, well. I turn and walk away, quickly, to the dining car where I order breakfast. I bury my head in my phone and my coffee while my heart dances with the tracks.

  She’ll be twenty-six next month. At one time she hated country music. Her laugh makes other people happy. She’s as honest as the rain. She stood up for herself once when someone tried to put her heart in a box. She used to smile when I smiled. I have remembered her a million different ways since I last saw her. Cara.

  My best friend for nearly twelve years.

  The girl I was in love with for nearly twelve years.

  There is nothing between us now but time. I sip coffee and eat toast and think about how long it’s been. I settle on four years.

  Our mutual presence in our small town must have been the only thing that kept us together. After high school, we only saw each other on holidays and at parties when she came home from university. Once, she surprised me with a book by my favourite author.

/>   She was busy. I was busy. My mother told me life gets like that. Every Christmas it was, “Merry Christmas! Hope all is well.” My first birthday after she left, she surprised me with that book. My second birthday, she came home and we went to a party. The third was a card mailed from school with an excuse of exams and work. The fourth, a text.

  The next four birthdays: nothing.

  I find myself staring at an older couple sharing a newspaper.

  Kids always say they’ll be friends forever, but they don’t really try. Now it’s eight years since we were properly connected and she’s on this train and her seat is next to mine and I just walked away. Maybe she didn’t know it was me last night.

  I don’t think of her like I used to. I don’t know much about her anymore. From social media, I know she has a boyfriend—has had for the last three years. He seems nice but we all know photographs lie. She lives in Belleville. She went to school for writing but I don’t know what she does for work. I don’t know if she’s happy. I don’t know if she misses our town, me, the way things used to be. If she still hates country music.

  So many friends have left. For months, years, I missed Cara most. I remember hoping she loved me, too. That a part of her just couldn’t bring herself to admit it. I remember how much it all hurt.

  And life has carried on. We all go on to bigger and better things, right? But right now, this train is all there is. I gulp too-hot coffee and leave my toast, with the stark realization that she’ll be coming here soon. I’m not ready to see her. I move further down the train, to the observation car, and think about what I’ll do. Obviously, I’ll have to talk to her. There’s still another three days.