Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas

by Emily C. Skaftun

“It won’t stick,” says Fay, drifting past me with her mug of horrible coffee from the break room. She pauses, leaning against my desk to peer out the window. “It never does. Snow here is just a big tease.” Fay looks like something of a tease herself. Even on the coldest day of the year, she wears a short skirt and a low-cut top. Her one concession to the weather is a pair of furry boots over black tights. She slurps her coffee, embracing it with her whole mouth, licking a drip from the side of her yellow mug. But I am not thinking about her mouth, not anymore.

  “Of course, everyone in the city will lose their minds,” she adds casually.

  I look past her, out the window. White flakes against a sky the color of aluminum. With a hint of leathery wing? I shiver.

  #

  Cities are pretty safe from the dinosaurs: like all wild things, they prefer the wild. Only occasionally do you hear about a flock of Procompsognathuses taking the subway into Manhattan or Chicago to terrorize the native rats. The cores of cities—like the business district of Seattle where I work—are even relatively safe from pterosaurs, who don’t like to chance the alleys between tall buildings.

  Still, I hope to see one. Their smaller cousins used to visit us at our Southern California house, landing on the roof and frightening Lani awake. “Make a wish,” I’d tell her. To me, spotting a dinosaur was like glimpsing a shooting star.

  I call home after lunch. Lani answers with a cheerful “hello,” but I hear sleep in her voice and I have to bite my irritation back. I imagine her as a mountain of blankets, distant and immovable. Yet also strangely compelling.

  “How ‘bout this weather, huh?”

  A pause. Bedsprings squeak as she scoots to the window. “Oh my goodness,” she says, and I imagine her looking out onto the backyard of our rented house, seeing it transformed into a rumpled bed of shapeless bushes and rusting lawn furniture. I see her donning a bathrobe, running one hand through bed-flattened hair.

  She’ll stay inside all day, wisely avoiding the chance to become prey. We live on top of Queen Anne Hill, after all, and the elevation and low buildings make it a prime hunting ground for Quetzalcoatlus. And Lani has nowhere in particular she needs to go.

  Sitting at my steel desk, lunch-cart sandwich and burnt coffee eating holes in my stomach, I try not to hate her for it. But I do. I hate her for this cold weather, hate her for my cubicle, hate her for this whole city, her city. I want to go home.

  “You better come home right away.” Now she sounds agitated, finally wide awake. “You’ll never make it if you wait.”

  “Okay,” I say. But I’m not really listening. Some of us have to work, cannot simply leave any time we like. Can’t lounge all day in a warm bed, soft skin against flannel sheets. I can picture her there, and the image is so beautiful that it makes my hatred waver.

  Outside, the air swirls.

  #

  By five p.m. drifts pile high against buildings, covering the city’s debris like draped sheets in an unused room. In the streets, cars slush through brown snow, honking and belching steamy exhaust clouds. Intrepid or foolish cyclists weave between them, exhaling clouds of vapor and ire. The panhandlers in the square wrap dirty blankets around their shoulders as they shake torn coffee cups of change at passers-by. They huddle in the shelter of doorways and under the wrought-iron and glass portico in the square. My own jacket feels inadequate, wind biting through in gusts.

  A few hipster types in ironic wool caps with ear flaps are building a fort in the alley, packing snow into venti-size paper cups then mortaring the resulting blocks into their wall with more snow.

  The snow stuns me. Sure, I’ve seen it before: I’ve been skiing, and once it even snowed in the desert town of my birth. It didn’t stick, though. It was just a tease.

  This is different. I start to think Lani was right about getting home. I briefly consider abandoning my car to the lot it’s parked in, taking a bus home. But then I think of the walk from the bus stop, imagine being plucked by my head into the air, bony beak squeezing as I flap my arms uselessly, and the car seems a better option.

  Before I get ten feet from the office, Fay calls after me. I turn to see her skipping my way, scarf trailing behind her. Her short leather jacket is unzipped, and I wonder how she can stand the cold. But when she nears I feel heat radiating from her. The snow seems to evaporate around her in a foggy haze. Talk about not cold-blooded.

  “Are you really driving home?” she asks. She looks at me like I’m a lunatic. But when I nod she laughs, puffs of dragon’s breath wafting up to me. “Thank god. Can I have a ride?”

  “Sure,” I say immediately. Not thinking of her apartment, her bed.

  “You can just drop me at the bottom of the hill,” she says. “If we make it that far.” She winks, and my face feels warm.

  We drive through a city made strange. Traffic is backed up everywhere, but though the roads are slick I manage not to slide into cars or trees or suicidal cyclists. Fay babbles about the snow, about growing up in Montana and living in Los Angeles, about so many other things that I can’t keep up. She tilts her head against the window to look up into clouds the color of bruises. But she reports no sightings of pterosaurs, only three-headed snowmen and cross-country skiers.

  I have to crack a window. The defroster is no match for Fay’s monologue.

  Finally we reach the area locals call Lower Queen Anne. Home is a straight shot from here, up one very steep hill. But it may as well be Mt. Everest. At the bottom of the hill, cars are pushed off the street at odd angles, piled in drifts like giant metallic snow. Like the middens of shells dropped by gulls, writ large. I imagine they were left there by an even larger pterosaur—one larger than any yet discovered, let alone cloned—something immense enough to grab cars right off the road and drop them onto the asphalt, breaking them open to reach the soft meat inside.

  As Fay and I watch from a side street, a huge accordion bus slides backward, jackknifing. It sails past us, just missing my front bumper on its way to the junk heap farther down. People run toward the spectacle, crowding the sidewalks on both sides of us like spectators at a ski jump. There are so many of them that I again consider my chances of walking home, using the crowd for cover. The very thought chills me to the bone as I remember the icy wind and my thin jacket. I sigh.

  Fay laughs, the cackle of a joyous witch. “You’re not getting home tonight,” she says. She reaches across the parking brake and squeezes my thigh, and her heat goes right through my wool slacks. She smells like palm trees and sand and—is it my imagination?—suntan lotion. Skin and Christmases at the beach. Home. The steamy look in her eyes fills me with a mix of fear and excitement, but in that moment I know I will follow her heat anywhere.

  “Let’s make snow angels,” she says.

  There’s not much room on the streets, but I manage to back the car out of traffic and park near where I imagine the curb to be. We get out and the cold air assaults me. Reflexively I look to the sky, but all I see is the city’s light reflected on clouds. The buildings around us, I judge, are high enough for safety.

  The snow melts into icy water when it hits me, cold rain dripping down my neck. Fay leans her head back to catch flakes on her tongue, but I doubt any of them get that close to her without evaporating.

  She falls backward onto the snow-covered hood of a parked car, flapping her arms, leaving an imprint of angel wings. “Come on,” she beckons. I look around, but her wingspan covers the hood. And the thought of plunging into snow makes me shiver.

  So instead of leaning back, I lean forward. Fay rises to meet me, pulling the lapels of my coat. Her mouth meets mine, and I stop shivering. We fall together onto the car’s hood, grasping at each other as pedestrians pass by and the occasional crunch and shout from Queen Anne Avenue tells of another car accident.

  No one is getting home tonight.

  My frozen fingers find the space between Fay’s skirt and her top and she gasps. But it only makes her pull me closer, and I fall into her as if through broke
n ice.

  When my phone vibrates, it shocks me like a cold splash. Jangling tones play: Lani’s ring. I picture her waiting for me in our warm house, our castle atop the hill. I am hours late already. I imagine her peering out a foggy window, pulling the curtains aside to look for me coming up the driveway, delicate eyebrows knit into a squiggle of worry.

  I draw back. Fay lies between her angel wings, hair fanned out like a halo in a Byzantine painting. “Stay with me,” she whispers.

  But it isn’t only guilt pulling me away from Fay. Her halo, her wings mock me as I turn. Angels aren’t the only things with wings.

  “You’ll never make it,” she calls after me.

  “I know.”

  #

  My Honda starts to slide even before I nose out onto the steep, icy street. But I rev the engine anyway, pushing hard to get up the hill. The watching crowd shouts to me as I go, mostly with derision. They’re right, of course. All of them. I am an idiot.

  My wheels spin and I start to lose momentum. Slowly, the car comes to a stop. Then gravity takes control and I slide backward, sideways, down the hill toward the jumble of cars at the bottom. Steering is useless. Braking is useless.

  And then I see it in the sky, the huge dark outline against glowing clouds. Make a wish, I think, and step on the gas one more futile time.

  I won’t make it. But I don’t regret it. I had to try.

  ***unpublished

  Story notes:

  I wrote this story as a bit of literary fiction, perhaps a last gasp of the overwrought feelings-based stuff I thought was good in my twenties. But it never really worked that way; it needed dinosaurs. I was given the prompt “quetzalcoatlus” by a sponsor in the Clarion West Write-a-thon in 2012, and it was a marriage made in … well, surely not heaven.

  And for those of you who’ve never experienced Seattle in a snowstorm, all of this is accurate.

  Down in the Woods Today

  Today is the day.

  At dawn we wake from our paralysis, Mr. Wuzzy and I. He pushes himself up off of his face and stretches, wiggling his embroidered nose, then jumps down from the shelf above your desk, Cherie. He lands gracefully, lightly, as though his age is no factor. I shimmy my own self out from under your arm and your pink comforter and slide to the carpet, and together Mr. Wuzzy and I creep out of the house. I stand on his head to reach the doorknobs.

  “Goodbye, Cherie,” Mr. Wuzzy whispers, when we are far enough away that you won’t hear him speaking. “Do not search for us.” Do not search for me is what he means. And to some degree, I share his view. Despite the honor and privilege it would bring me, I do not really wish it to be you, Cherie. You keep me safe on your soft bed, and you are rarely rough with me, holding me by the ears or snout or tail.

  At the clearing we meet other bears, hugging old friends so hard our stuffing shifts in our bellies. There are bears no bigger than your palm, and some who must be bigger than your whole self. They tower over Mr. Wuzzy and me, but they are still soft and sweet. We beat them every time at hide-and-seek.

  Some bears look worse for the year past, but I feel svelte and smooth. My fur is soft and clean; none of my seams need to be restitched.

  The day is spent this way, in a spirit of joy, for we know that at dawn the paralysis begins again. We run and tumble and exalt in movement. Some bears do nothing but eat and drink. Some are drunk as plush skunks by sundown. Others climb the oak and maple trees, rustling about in the branches like I imagine real bears must do.

  An ancient Teddy Talks-a-Lot hobbles through the long grass, his beak-like mouth opening and closing soundlessly. I think he is singing, but he must have been out of batteries for years. He will never be chosen. At the edge of the clearing, as usual, a clique of Caring Bears share a joint. When I pass by them a Hope Bear yells, “Cheer up!” and the others laugh.

  Mr. Wuzzy and I are playing ball tag when the creeping sensation crawls up everyone’s backs, making the fur of our scruffs stand on end. Humans are watching.

  We are pros; every bear drops instantly, simultaneously. The forest is now a silent place, littered with lifeless toys. Light slices through the trees at a long angle. The ball bouncing through the long grass and off into the trees is the only movement.

  I sense a juvenile human weaving through the trees toward us, and I know that it is you. Mr. Wuzzy knows it too; I can see the panic in his plastic eyes from ten feet away.

  You could still remain safe. But then you step into the clearing.

  It is all any of us can do not to gasp. The excitement that runs through us is electric, almost palpable. You step right over Mr. Wuzzy and his matted old fur. You step over a dozen bears on your way to me, so gentle, so careful not even to kick any of them. In this moment we all love you, but I love you most of all because I know you are mine.

  “Mr. Fuzzy,” you say, bending over to pick me up, “what are you doing out here?” You scoop me sweetly up into your arms, not even tugging me by a paw, and pluck a leaf from the fur of my face.

  For an instant I’m not sure I can do it.

  I look into your innocent face, questioning me as though you already believe I could answer. Then I rear my head back and bare my teeth, pointy and sharp and crowded as a shark’s. I wait for your shock; need to feel it. Perhaps I am trying in my own way to give you an escape. But you do not drop me.

  And then I bite.

  My poison acts fast. You drop like we do, like a rag doll onto the forest clearing, still cradling me in your arms like a precious baby.

  In the next moment the bears come to life, cheering and pumping their paws in the air. A few bears look disappointed, kicking stones and muttering things like, I thought it was my year. But they do not complain.

  Only one bear is truly upset. As I step down from your paralyzed body, Mr. Wuzzy approaches me shaking his head. “We should let her go,” he says. “She’s been kind to us and doesn’t deserve this.”

  “You’re just jealous,” I say. I run my paw through the fur on my head, smoothing it down. “You’re not her Mr. Fuzzy anymore and now you never will be.”

  He looks like he wants to say more, but we are interrupted by last year’s Chosen Bear. Cuddles is an old bear, taller and thinner than Mr. Wuzzy and me, with the lumpy misshapen look of a comfort object. His fur is even more matted and stained than Mr. Wuzzy’s, and one of his plastic eyes fell off long ago and was replaced with a gray button. He grabs my paw with his and lifts it into the air like I’m a boxing champion. All the other bears cheer again. In the corner of my eye I see a Joy Bear clapping her paws across her rainbow-embroidered tummy. When she catches my eye I see her wink.

  Cuddles turns back to me when the crowd starts to disperse. “Congratulations, Mr. Fuzzy. What a year you’ll have. I must have seen the whole world! It will be hard for me to go back to the stillness again.” His plastic eye takes on a faraway look as he rambles, but his button eye holds fast to me. He claps me on the back. “Enjoy the rest of the picnic, son. I’ll get everything ready.”

  And so I step away from your body. I have a Joy Bear to find, a Mr. Wuzzy to ignore, and a picnic to enjoy.

  It is difficult to lose Mr. Wuzzy, who follows me around jumping up and down like a young human who has to pee. “You don’t understand,” he says, but I do not listen.

  It’s easier to find Joy Bear, and when I do at last old Mr. Wuzzy gets the hint and goes, head down, out into the crowd. Joy bear is forward, nuzzling her pink heart nose into my neck even before we sneak away from the clearing. Already I enjoy being the Chosen Bear.

  #

  When the black sky starts to lighten, we gather for the ceremony. You are bound hands and feet in the center of the clearing, and when you see us gather around you your eyes grow wide with fear. It seems now you understand: it’s lovely down in the woods today, but safer to stay at home.

  Cuddles stands beside you, as does Mr. Wuzzy. He strokes your face, staining his fur with your tears. When the crowd’s murmuring dies down Cuddles sp
eaks: “Another year of paralysis has passed. Another year begins at dawn. But before it does, we make this offering so that next year we may again gather here.”

  He turns to you, gesturing with one paw. He has a flair for the dramatic that I’m trying to memorize. Next year it will be I saying these words. “A human has come here, of her own free will. Who will testify to it?”

  The crowd erupts as almost every bear raises a paw and shouts his testimony. Cuddles gestures to me. “Mr. Fuzzy, Chosen Bear, is this your human?”

  “Yes,” I say. Mr. Wuzzy scowls at me.

  “And are there any challenges?”

  I am surprised when Mr. Wuzzy raises his paw. “I challenge,” he says. A gasp ripples outward through the crowd like a wave through water.

  Cuddles looks confused. Never have I seen a challenge, even though it’s usually the case that more than one bear is linked to the human in question. The honor belongs to the Chosen Bear. “She is your human too?” asks Cuddles.

  “Yes,” Mr. Wuzzy says.

  The crowd is loud with speculation. What happens now? I hear some ask. A female voice says, Maybe they can share the heart. But I look into Mr. Wuzzy’s eyes. He does not want to share. He wants to set you free. I wonder if you know the depth of his devotion: without a sacrifice none of us will be released from our paralysis next year.

  And so I don’t wait for a judgment. “I am the Chosen Bear!” I shout. “Her heart belongs to me.” There is a moment of silence before the crowd reacts, but when they do it’s clear they are on my side. They cheer for me, and I feel powerful. I bare my teeth at Mr. Wuzzy, running my tongue along each thorn-like point. I do it to make him angry, and it does.

  Mr. Wuzzy jumps across your squirming body and tackles me, his own needle-teeth snapping in my face. I am on my back in the grass, but I manage to get all four paws under him and push him away, and he falls back. I charge him like a bull, but he is quicker than me. He grabs me and before I really know what he’s doing my face is in the dirt. I think he is stepping on my head, twisting and grinding until I feel the stuffing breaking apart inside, feel the dirt working deep into my fur. Over it all I can hear your scream.