by Austin Bunn
When I was done leaking, I put the pillowcase in the washing machine with two cups of bleach. I got it clean.
Leah,
I woke up this morning + decided that I would not feel anything for you. When we all came together at 3 a.m. for our vitamins, I took off my glasses so I didn’t see you + swallowed in the dark. During brain exercises, from 8:36 a.m. to 10:36 a.m., I finished my crosswords without thinking about you once. I wrote our report about the human encounters from yesterday + didn’t mention your questions or your doubts. At 10:54 a.m., I drank my protein formula + ate a cinnamon roll + more vitamins but I didn’t look at your vitamin cup.
Then the doorbell rang + silence came. Darwin rushed into the den + said, “Someone’s at the front.”
A visitor! I got so excited because I thought it might be Jesus. Bo says that Jesus, the Total Overcomer, might surprise us one day but that he won’t look like Jesus. He’ll have a sheer face + black eyes + a giant head to hold all available knowledge. I thought of the last visitors we had. Remember those two Mormon missionaries? In their starched shirts + cowlicks, they asked Bo if he wanted to go to Heaven. When they saw all of us in our turtlenecks together, they thought it was a family reunion. “We’re going to Heaven,” Bo told them. “We’re going to get there before you.” We clapped in unison + the boys got scared like we were vampires + they ran away. I know you didn’t like seeing them. You were thinking of your family back in Salt Lake + older brother, weren’t you? Did he look like those two? Don’t they all look the same?
Then I realized I was thinking of you again. I stopped myself by climbing the main stairs to see out the cathedral window over the door. I don’t know why Bo let that one be the only window that is not covered with tinfoil. I think because it was too hard to put the tinfoil there.
Through the window, I saw an older female container chewing the pad of her thumb. Under her other arm she carried a cake on a plastic tray. She had long black hair + jeans + a winter coat, but there’s no winter in San Diego so then I knew she came from elsewhere. Bo never mentioned a winter coat on Jesus.
“May I help you?” Bo asked when he opened the door. He was so thin now his white turtleneck hung loose on his vessel.
“I’m here to speak to my daughter,” she said. “Her name is Leah Shearling.”
“You daughter isn’t here,” Bo said calmly.
“How do you know?”
“There are no daughters here,” Bo answered. “Only Overcomers.”
She didn’t know what to say to that! But then your mother peered inside, at all of us gathered in the foyer in the dark. It must be wonderful to see thirty-nine people with the same haircut + clothing, like the biggest math team that ever was.
“Leah, are you in there?” she called out.
I couldn’t help it, but I looked at you, at the threshold to the living room. + the woman saw me look + followed my eye machines to you. You didn’t make any expression go on your facepart.
“It’s me, Leah. It’s Mom,” your mother said. “I want to talk to you.”
“We have affairs to attend to,” Bo said + started to close the door, even though all we had to do was more brain exercises. But your mother wedged her sneaker at the base of the door.
“I don’t know who you are, or what this is about, but you can’t hold her here,” she said.
Bo turned to you. Everybody in the foyer cleared a path between you + him. “Leah, do you want to go with this human?” he asked.
I wondered if you would be strong enough to shed your feeling, right there in front of us. I wondered if I would be strong enough. But we have to let go + release even the best human memories. Like your mother. Like you + me, after the burgers. Remember how we walked up the ramp of the visitors’ center in Salt Lake to the planetarium the Mormons painted there? We sat on the benches + peered up at the planets + you said, “I feel like an alien on earth, Do you ever feel like an alien?” So I explained about our vessels, how our souls drove them like cars until they were jalopies + how Bo would open the Gate for our souls to go weightless + level up. You’d heard so many explanations in your life you were skeptical. But your backpack was heavy, so heavy + confusing, wasn’t it? The next morning, you showed up for our meeting in the hotel conference room. Then you went to that phone booth + looked up the name we told you + wrote down the place Darwin had written in the margin + came the next morning, to a field outside of town, where our van idled. You said, “I want to walk through the door of my life.” Bo said, “This way.”
But you came with Rocket on a leash. You had to leave him.
He chased the van until we got on the highway. You wept so much your facepart looked wet.
See, Leah, I do it too. Human love is remembering + remembering is the weight that will keep us here, on this dying planet.
In the foyer, I watched you shake your head no. Suddenly, I felt warm in my chest, the way gas in the universe collapses together + forms a hot star out of nothing.
Your mother broke down. She shot exhaust from her mouthpart. Then she dropped the cake on the front step. Bo closed the door + turned the lock + I could hear her crying when we began to clap.
Leah,
Can I tell you something? When I was seventeen, I thought maybe I was Jesus. I created my own religion where the saints were the animals of my block. I believed the clouds of feeding sparrows were the face of God. I composed psalms for the squirrels on my clarinet. At this time, I slept in the basement of my father’s house, a house in a neighborhood of bullies, + one night a gray tomcat came to my window. His emerald eyes transfixed me. I let him crawl into bed, where he worked the blankets on top of me + curled into sleep, his purr a throaty rumble. This was my holy visitation.
During school, a new Bible wrote itself in the close-ruled pages of my notebook.
Then one night, I found the tomcat at my window, dazed + bloody, one ear blown away to pink tissue. Bits of a firecracker’s red paper wrapper lay matted in his fur. He pressed against the window screen but refused to come in, refused to let me touch him. He had come to me to die. Have you ever watched something surrender its vessel, Leah? I vigiled for two days with water + food that this tomcat didn’t eat until, finally, his brilliant eyes shallowed + I was inconsolable, just like you were with Rocket. I saw that our skin is an envelope, ready to be opened. My father thought I’d lost my mind. He called my mother in Phoenix for help. She asked to speak to me. “I have died for the smallest things,” I told her. “Put your father back on the phone,” she said.
I knew that the next time I found God, I would go with him when he ascended.
I told myself I would not feel anything today + then your mother came + now I feel again. All these possible worlds—every place, every person, is a planet, charging with life.
Leah,
It was midnight + tomb-time when I heard your steps outside. I rose from my bunk, peeled a corner of tinfoil from the laundry room window + saw you, at the end of the concrete path, past the tennis court + the dumpster, at the edge of the pool. I thought you were about to dive in, all dressed. But you stood still while the lights from under water—Bo liked to keep the pool lights on as a beacon for the ship—skittered across your body.
Why were you alone, without a check partner? I thought about Bo’s counsel on the white board—“Major Offenses: Having likes + dislikes, Trusting your own judgment, Using your own mind” + I knew I had to rescue you from your thoughts. Which itself was also a thought but the right kind. I lifted the window + slid myself through it + snuck out to you because I wanted to know your secret. I wanted to be the one to hear it. I wanted to tell one too.
The bougainvillea flowers supernova’d into pink + red along the path. A warm wind brushed the palms. I came beside you + said, “What is it, Leah? What’s wrong?” There are no mirrors in the house, but if there were mirrors you would be able to see how tired your eye machines were.
You said, “When you look up, what do you see, Michael?”
The clouds were gone + left a litter of stars. I was surprised that at night I still couldn’t make out the ship or the comet, but Bo always reminded us that human eyes were foreign + cheaply made. I cranked my head back + laced your fingers with my fingers. It was wonderful + bad + strange since I had not touched someone else’s skin for three years, since I joined up. Your container was so revved, like the hood of the van after one of our thousand-mile drives.
“I see our last night on earth,” I said.
I had no thoughts when I kissed you except: I am not thinking, finally I am not thinking. I crashed through your atmosphere + landed in a place I already loved.
“What are you doing?” you said + pulled away. As you did, I could see Bo at the back door. His facepart was hard + cold under the door light, the way my father looked at me when he saw the tomcat dead at my window. Bo’s gravity pulled us to him. Air pumped through his nostrils as if he’d come from a jog. His scalp was newly shaved but scored with nicks.
“Go immediately to your rooms,” Bo said. “I will be there promptly.”
What I didn’t get to tell you: Leah, your mother wrote you letters too. Last year, when we lived in the earth-ship made of dirt + Coke cans in New Mexico, her letters came every month to our P.O. box + it was my job to check the mail. “Christmas this year was lonely without you,” she wrote. “Daddy and I miss you and love you and hope you are well, sweetheart. Please come home.” There were dozens of these letters, at holidays + birthdays + I learned so much about you. They were even how I came to write these letters to you now. Once, there was even one all the way from Brazil, from your brother. I got them + read them + I threw them away.
Leah,
Bo almost found my letters to you tonight! He came in + told me that the earth gravity has addicted me to human behavior + that he wasn’t sure that I would make the window any longer. He searched my entire room—under the mattress, my dresser, even inside my suitcase for tomorrow. (But not in the lint filter of the dryer!) He knew I was hiding something somewhere + that I was having my own thoughts. Then he sat beside me + put his hand on my thigh + squeezed + said that I would have to work as dispatcher tomorrow, which is like doing the dishes except with people’s containers. I wouldn’t get to see you at all.
I am still so nervous. I felt like I was about to shed in front of him. He just left. Right after, I took out my tuning fork from my pocket + consulted the Next Level but there was no broadcast. I spent some time practicing my telepathy with you, except you don’t seem to want to transmit. I’ll leave you alone.
Leah,
I’m writing you from the nursery, in the dark, because I don’t have much time. This whole morning I have been running around the house like a crazy vessel. Helping fifteen people shed is not easy. Brian is supposed to be the captain but all he did was give me the plastic bags + tell me that I needed to make sure each person had eaten their medicine + shed their container entirely before going on to the next person. But that’s hard because I’m distracted by you not being home + because some of the containers backfire + puke a little when they shed.
Old Margaret told me that you went with your new check partner Ladonna to get more applesauce (people had been snacking!). But you’re still not home yet. It’s almost noon. Where are you? Reading the greeting cards like you loved to do? Watering the plants in some parking lot?
I’m sitting here in the nursery because it was your room, because it is where babies were + they are weightless. I remember once we sat on the floor + you showed me your suitcase. It was covered in glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars. You had packed it with everything you wanted to take with you on the space jump: T-shirts + books + gum.
In the bunks around me, the four containers lay still, Thomas + David + Claire + Julie, because I already did this room. I figure they are at the ionosphere, maybe further. Their suitcases are next to me on the floor. Through the wall, I can hear Bo doing his testimony for the camera, the final one. “It is time to level up,” he says. “The end of the age is upon us.” I still have the fifteen plastic bags in my hand from the first departures. They have condensation inside them because breath becomes water when you shed inside them. I have to take them to the dumpster—Bo does not want us to recycle.
Writing this, I wonder how long the window in the sky will stay open + if we can still hold each other even if we cross through at different times or if that is just me being stupid. When I lived in Boulder, resurrecting computers, I felt I had no windows. Now there are many + they are open. Still, Bo says it is possible to miss our rendezvous + then we drift in the vacuum, like space trash. I have to stop now, somebody’s knocking—
Leah,
I screwed up.
Brian came to the nursery. He had a whole bunch of messed up towels in his hand. He said he’d been cleaning up after me. “Why?” I asked.
“Just go upstairs,” he said.
Bo + Old Margaret were clustered around the bunk in the guest bedroom. I knew I was in trouble. Darwin was stretched out, streamlined for his XXL container: hands at his side, Nike swoosh on his feet for velocity. Darwin was one of Bo’s favorites. He had been with Bo for two decades. He even had his testicles erased in Mexico, like Bo had done, because of the drag. “Some students have chosen to have their vehicles neutered,” Darwin once told the camera. “I can’t tell you how much lighter it has made me feel.”
Then Bo pointed to Darwin’s chest. It rose + fell, rose + fell, a bad bellows. I must have taken the plastic bag off too soon, before Darwin was done shedding. Bo + Old Margaret stepped away + I knew my responsibility as dispatcher. I pressed my hand to his mouth + pinched his nose + stared at his chest to make it stop. But we all knew that I had banged his timing. Darwin is space trash now.
I felt sick to my stomach. I thought the insides of my container were going to come out my mouthpart. But Bo put his hand on the back of my neck. He said, “Don’t take on his weight, Michael.” All of the sudden, I remembered why I need Bo. Because Bo doesn’t let any weight hold him to the earth at all.
Leah,
This is my last letter. I have to write it in my head because you’re not back + I don’t know how to find you. We’re ready for the last group to make the space jump. That means me + you. Brian has bowls of pudding + applesauce along with baggies of Bo’s powder. Plastic cups of the vodka we bought checker the kitchen table. I choose the applesauce because I think it will get you back faster. Old Margaret gives me a piece of paper that she printed with the Routine: “Eat two teaspoons to make room for the powder and stir. Then drink.”
“Wait,” Brian says. “Shouldn’t we wait for Leah?”
Your name is a comet streaking.
Bo shakes his head. He’ll be left behind to take care of you, but that’s not good enough. I want to be with you when we go. You are my gravity, Leah. The only way I can go is to follow you.
Everyone empties out of the kitchen in silence. We go to our rooms to eat our powder + drink their vodka + shed. My job as dispatcher is over. Bo remains in the room, gauging me. He knows how much waiting I’m capable of.
He blinks his eyes catlike + slow, the whole of understanding inside him. “It’s time,” he says.
I go mechanically, so without you, to the laundry room, to my bunk. The washer thumps with a full load. But I see that you’ve left me something! It’s your suitcase next to the bed! I feel so happy. Even if you aren’t here yet, I know that you will be with me, on the bunk above.
I set my applesauce + powder down. I go to the dryer to collect my letters to you. I wrap them in a shoelace + then I open your valise to sneak them into your belongings.
But your suitcase is empty, except for a page ripped from the Upanishads, something you could spare. “I’m not coming back, Michael,” it says. “There is nothing in the sky.”
Bo says that when a star explodes, it leaves behind the darkest energy in the universe. My eyes leak, the last of what’s inside me. This is what it took to get me to zero.
Bo is at the door. He spoons my dose into my mouth. I don’t stop him. The applesauce tastes bitter + gritty, like ashes in mud. Bo pushes me flat, so I rest, his hand brushing my cheekpart. Then, I hear the hum, soft at first but soon it is in my jaw, like my head is pressed against the generator of the ship rending space. Leah, vanisher, you will never know this. When you look up, you will not see us, not the comet only the tail. Not the thing only the going. Then the hum shatters my container, the hum is the blood in my ears + it slows + slows + now Bo with a plastic bag in his
The Worst You Can Imagine Is Where This Starts
The bag looked all wrong, tucked against the wall of the basement near the root cellar, glistening under the bare bulb.
Graham knew he hadn’t put the bag here, and Graham was the only one in the family who put anything down here. The place was a warehouse of his unfinished business, the tool table an open grave: lobotomized light switches, hopelessly knotted crowns of Christmas lights, the radial saw whose cord—the fucking brain stem!—he’d chewed through on the first go.
His wife, Marlena, would venture down into the basement only under duress, in desperate sorties, with a broom in hand to mash spiders. In fact, they now had a special broom just for mashing spiders, the tiny berries of their carcasses poleaxed on the straw. (It lived, unspeakable, at the bottom of the stairs.) Their sixteen year-old daughter, Emma, deemed the basement “sketchy” and also “rapey” and refused to come down. There was a lot of refusing left in her, Graham was learning. So the basement was his alone, to clutter and abandon and befoul. But then, here was this black contractor bag that he had all of nothing to do with.
Graham set down the space heater he’d come for, feeling put-upon. He’d taken a personal day for a morning of triage. They were selling in the spring, if they could get a buyer. If the market didn’t shit itself again, if he could get this basement cleaned and maybe paneled and deem it a room. He’d work until Em came home for lunch—most days, she bolted from school, what she once called “the hellscape.” They would have a wary, silent lunch together like strangers at a cafeteria, Em’s head down, not making eye contact, eating a grilled cheese he’d make for her, and scrolling her phone for a drip of validation.
