The Lanyard

by Carter-Thomas, Jake

  "I'm ready," she said."

  "Right. Be careful with it."

  She seemed to know what she was doing. The flame flickered as he let go and then held, though steadily decreasing in size since he had set it in motion at the bottom of the shaft, as if the air was colder the further in they went and this chill was smothering the light. But it was light enough.

  He took the handle with a firm grip, keeping it at arm's length and using it as a guide to position himself in the right place to shoulder. He tried opening the door normally one more time but nothing. So he kept the handle down and threw himself into it continuing through and plunging forward, hitting the ground and sliding some way, it felt like on ice, as she hurried to follow and pressed her hand into his back as he stood up.

  Inside the room were rows of shelves that made lines down either side then turned in, criss-crossed. The shelves had containers on them. He moved towards them with a new sense of hope, no longer cautious, reaching for a box and misjudging how far away it was in the dark, knocking it so it fell into another, and another and then crashed to the floor.

  The sound echoed. They clung together for a moment.

  He picked up the box, not waiting for her to bring the lighter flame around, his fingers finding his way to the top of it and ripping open the cardboard seal. He sat with the box of grain cereal between his legs and began to laugh as he plunged his hands down into the bits, pulled some out and dropped them onto the floor so that they hit like heavy drops of rain, not caring to conserve them because there were enough boxes in there for them to live forever, like all of the galaxies of stars combined, spreading out around his feet.

  He put one a piece into her hand and she bit it, her mouth so close to his ear that he could hear the crunches and then the saliva washing up from wherever it came to soak into them. She swallowed and her throat touched the side of his head. Her hand came back for more. He gave her a few more, and then tipped the box over her cupped hand so that a whole heap of the flakes fell onto it and piled like corpses fit to burn, spilling out to the sides, dropping like golden starlings killed by a cloud of poison gas.

  "Maybe we could just stay here," she said.

  He smiled. "Maybe we could."

  The lighter flickered and died.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  "Well, I guess we need to find a way to get the lights working before we get too comfortable."

  "I know. But we will."

  "Give me the lighter for a second."

  "Why?"

  "To try and get it working. It might just need a shake."

  "No."

  "Huh?"

  "Well, there's no hurry is there?"

  "You want to sit in the dark?"

  "Maybe... Just... Wait a second won't you?"

  "What are you doing?"

  "Trying to kiss you... I mean, I would if I could see you."

  "That was kind of my point."

  "Alright, if you have to ruin it. If you have to be illuminated all of the time, if you don't trust me."

  "What?"

  "I'm teasing -- don't get all serious."

  "It's just that, well -- I just seem to find myself... in situations like this."

  "Like this?"

  "Like hiding in the dark... Can you not even see me shaking my head at you? Can you not even sense me?"

  "It's probably a good thing."

  "Ow... So now what?"

  "We stay here and eat."

  "In the dark?"

  "Well if you're going to ask, if you're going to defer..."

  "Alright. Well I guess you should wait here and I'll find a switch or something."

  "I mean, would it really be so bad?"

  "What?"

  "Just... waiting."

  "But in the dark?"

  "Or in the light... We've food. It's dry. It's just... us, you know?"

  "But what if we get too tired?"

  "Yeah... There must be beds down here... Somewhere."

  "You want to come help me look then?"

  "I do. If we hold hands we can sweep out a larger area so we don't knock into stuff, right?"

  "Right -- but what if there's not."

  "There is what there is. You're right. I'm fed up of moving around too. Why is growing up all about just thinking about where you end up, wishing it away?"

  "My Dad said something about trying to experience as much as you can... I always figured that growing up was like climbing some mountain. It's just, well, I'm not sure what's meant to be on top, except a view..."

  "He meant a lot to you."

  "Yeah... He told me to go... To run... To get away."

  "It kind of sucks, huh?"

  "You could say that."

  "I know you don't want to hear it, but my Dad said everyone is trying to forget their past. That's what growing up is. That's why people don't stop growing up. It's not about just getting older, bigger, it's about finding a skin you're comfortable to live in, about finding the right head space. It's what's inside that matters; it's the change going on there. Ironically, that's why. That's why I couldn't let it happen anymore..."

  "Anymore?"

  "Yes..."

  "All that stuff you said about not being able to watch..."

  "It was part true."

  "So you killed things just as much as they did?"

  "I always wanted to stop alright? Is that not allowed. Can people not change and act a different way, if that's what they want to do?"

  "I'm sorry."

  "Forget it."

  "Ok."

  "But do you think this was supposed to be a safe place? Do you really think it was?"

  "Maybe."

  "So what happened to it? Where is everyone?"

  "They waited too long?"

  "Or what if something got in?"

  "Or something got out?"

  "Why'd you think people always seem to have stashed so much junk at the top of their houses, so many pictures, and videos, and words. As if they couldn't throw it away. Look at all the stuff down here."

  "Because they love the past?"

  "Right. That's more like the truth. They preach evolution on one hand but then try to keep everything the same way on the other. They're scared of change. They like to hunt it, they must... Well maybe sometimes better things emerge... I think it's obvious what happened down here."

  "You do?"

  "They were doing experiments. They were scientists. You saw the white coats. Maybe testing the cure. And something went wrong. Come on, this is making me shudder; we need to get the lights on."

  "Don't, you'll freak me out too."

  "I don't care."

  "You know the lighter isn't broken."

  "Huh?"

  "I just wanted to talk..."

  "You're kidding me?"

  "No. Sorry."

  "Well light it then!"

  "But I'm not sure we really made up our minds."

  "About what?"

  "What we'll do... run or hide. Or fight. Or give up."

  "We haven't?".

  "You know they'll come down here, don't you?"

  "What if they didn't see?"

  "They will."

  "But how?"

  "They will never let me go."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The room across the way turned out to be an area that would sleep a small group on metal edged single beds. They found a switch on the wall that brought emergency lights, dull and damp green. In the near dark, sat on one of the beds, he took the lighter from her and began to click it with his finger. The flame appeared again, but did not cast as much light as before. He got off the bed and then crouched, putting his hands on the floor. He held the lighter down to where his feet were, and waited for the warm glow to catch onto something, anything. But all the light found was more cold, more grey, darkness. The flame kicked one way and then flickered, as if a wind had grabbed hold of it and tried to take it.

  There was something on the floor barely visible in the dark. He m
oved his hand towards it instinctively and the object lit up whiter, bare. It was a piece of bone, a thigh, or an arm, long with a ball socket on the end. He let the light flicker along its ridges, its scratches, all along the side of it, meandering over it. There was a smaller chunk further on, just a knuckle or something like that, a toe, and then another and another, and then more bones all in a pile, which looked like broken up rib, another body he could be drawn to try and light, with the flame in hand, if she let him, if he asked.

  "Why don't I leave you alone for a bit?" she said.

  "Huh?"

  "Down there, with your bones..."

  "I was just--"

  "I'm kidding. I need to get my head fixed though."

  "What for?"

  "Don't ask too many questions right now. Ok?"

  "Alright, but I don't think you should go off on your own..."

  "I'll be fine," she said.

  He got out from under the bed and hugged her. He took the knife from his backpack with the patches of black the roots of those trees had sucked up and spread on it when they attempted to cut.

  "I don't need that," she said. "It's blunt."

  He opened the blade and showed her anyway. She looked at it. He did. It was even more meek in the gloom, with no real light to reflect off the edge. All the blade contained was cold, the same cold that was in the air in the room, circulating around them, circumlocution... Just what was it she wanted to say? To do? He shook his head, kept his hand fixed. She took the knife eventually, kept it open while she walked back towards the door, aiming the point of it out like it had become some compass to guide.

  He knew she was humouring him. He turned away rather than watch her leave, but was careful to track the sound of her feet as she left the room and turned to go back to the portion they had already explored.

  He slumped down on a different bed and put his hands on his knees, praying while sitting up, staring at the ceiling that vanished before he could see it. An image of her running away from him, finding a way out, somehow, a way to escape, back up the sides of the shaft on some incline he didn't know about, that she had stashed in her head from the start, waiting for this chance, to go outside and bring them, to finish him off...

  He missed her. He felt a space where her heart had been, where her heart had beaten for him, had beaten him, had chained him to the wall and washed over him solidly, like the tide, and soaked him in spray. He needed all of the tenantless air next to him filled. He needed a sense of a hand to hold on to, of a rope surrounding his wrist, of a hope, holding her to him, to them, as he hung on to it, like hanging from a noose, or simply sitting and waiting for the nearing of death, spinning on a hot rock dancing around the sun. There was nothing to be had here of loneliness. And he could feel the space of it reaching from the corners of the room, crow black, with talons at his heart and for his heart, to find it and to pluck it out.

  He was on his feet for a moment, as if about to go after her, but he had no grasp of what the way back was anymore, the route around the beds, around the doors, and he stopped himself from staggering forward, and falling down to beat the floor. He reached back and found the rough fabric of the blanket instead, wrinkling under his grasp, realising he was squeezing it too hard, until it scratched at his skin, at his sin. And he sat on it again and started shaking, started struggling to breathe, started sobbing out loud, for her, for him, for them.

  He flicked the flint at the top of the lighter, got good at it until sparks came out and fell. And he could see, or sense, within the microscopic plain of the fabric the same sort of spiked trees, the same dips and divides that the world contained, enlarged, that route out from the city to where they had left the car, and then walked to set up camp. And he knew somewhere in there was a small pile of insects, like the ones they had found under the plank, the sort that fed off of skin and scraps when people lay on the bed, as he did now, with his arms behind his head because the pillow had lost its support, feathers flown, and merely sagged in the middle. He could picture a whole pile of them ready to torch, a spark approaching from above like a falling comet and striking down until it seared them through and then popped out of existence.

  At long last she returned, sliding the door closed behind her so even the emergency light went out. The noise must have woken him. He sat straight with a start, and reached out a hand in front of his face, flicking the shadows off of him and then grabbing onto the tearing fabric again, with a pain in his neck, wedged against the wall behind the bed.

  "Where did you go?" he said.

  "".

  "What are you doing?"

  She slid around the side of the first two beds almost silently, squeezing her body between one of the other metal frames and the wall before she was in front of where he was.

  He tried to listen for her breath, unable to see anything where he had heard her stop, as if she was not real, and just some imagined ghost of his wishes, some spectre that would haunt him in whatever days he had left alone, starving. He couldn't tell anymore. He sat forward but then backed away, climbing onto his hands so that he could edge nearer to where the metal frame made a cage around him without bars, the touch of iron cold on his arms as he grabbed on and used the anchor to pull up his legs.

  He stared at the darkness, at the nothing ahead.

  He waited.

  He looked for her eyes.

  There was no light that could tack into them here and bounce off. There was nothing but the outline of fuzz in his head, where his brain made patterns out of the void like a storm of snow pulled into a whirl.

  He swept his hands over the sheet underneath the blanket that he must have turned down as he squirmed in his sleep, letting the heat from him run into the mattress, letting it steal his heat away. He soon found the lighter. He flicked the flint once, twice, again until the sparks came, too faint to illuminate anything, and merely cowering like tame tigers let out of a cage to fight and refusing instead. The sound of it was comforting, though, like some mechanical heart in a drum of helium, some delirious breaths, some actions, something that might keep the silence off.

  Then he stopped.

  Her breath collided with his, hot breath, warmed in her lungs like those bags full of bacon on the fire, releasing an aroma that had his stomach turning again. Or was it something else, somewhere else? Another part of him perhaps. In another room, in another house? He could taste her now. He was sure. He could taste her lips again. The cherry scent she had brought to him like a garland of flowers and placed around his neck, the signals that had flowed across his chest and down, and on, and up.

  The bed began to sag her way, as if tipping him towards her, into her, become a black hole in space that would sip him down and destroy him with tides as he spiralled in, as if she was standing in the middle of a trampoline, slowly bouncing, so that he might lose all balance and tumble to where she would land on him, kick him this way and that, and skip away and leave him beaten up, become the force driving a whirlpool, become the goddess who would pull men to their doom at her feet, the siren singing secretly, whispering in tune, and forcing him forward.

  He put out a hand and found a bar in front of him. His fingers closed around it and the outside gave. It was her arm, elbow locked and twisted so that it fell over him. He ran his hand over it from the base to the top, flexing his fingers, spreading them out as if to get a greater sense of what it was, exploring all the shapes that it held within, the blocks and saw edges of her bones tapering down to the wrist, with two lines his hands could follow like tracks up to the top, the slight jab of fat here and there, the point of the elbow, the pointless elbow, locked, the divot of flesh beneath it, below where her muscles were tense, inflamed, pushing against the skin and then a further flap of flesh as he climbed, as he claimed, to the heat of her armpit.

  His other hand wrapped around her, and tried to pull himself up like she was a rung on a ladder. As he lifted off he found her head. He hit her head with his. So their skulls collided and he felt the sudd
en shock of bone on bone, a sound that was trapped inside his head and could not escape, a momentary pain leaping from one ear to the other like an electrical pulse.

  She was naked. Perhaps this explained the silence, the drop he had heard when she had come in and stopped at the foot of his bed before she had climbed towards him.

  He gasped but this breath did not last long before she moved for it, before she opened her mouth and swallowed it, and then locked onto where it had come.

  They kissed. But not like outside. The gravity was different here, what with her on top, and him below, having to both push against each other to stop themselves from crashing. This push made it more exciting, more forceful, almost as if he was fighting her off. And she used her teeth on his skin. She bit his lip. She pushed her tongue into him and then rocked back and forward so all he could do was accept it, nod his head in turn, like some animal eating grass of of his face, chewing over him, digesting him, softening his body with her spit, with his.

  He held her still clutching the lighter, the flame become her heart. He let it drop but it did not fall and merely clung to the sweat on her skin. He began to move down her body, unsure if she was climbing up him or he was sliding down her, licking her neck, then lower, and lower as she raised her back in an arch like a snake about to strike and sat on top of him, all alkaloids and grease between her legs, between his.

  At last came some noise, some breath, like the sound of a requiem, a lone, long song that played at a funeral before the coffin dropped into the dirt, a sigh, a rush of air from her lips as she ground down onto him, a noise he needed. He came up for air and took her hand, then the gentle curves of her breasts and gasping stomach, pulled tight, the drop of skin at her middle, until he found a forest, until he found a stream, until he crossed, until he slipped and fell in.

  He knew now he must promise to keep her memory alive whatever would become of them. He could feel it deep within, like a fire ready to burn. He would promise to stay by her side the way an astronaut does, cut free of his craft, gliding the way the stars cross the sky, embracing the subtle patterns in her skin as points of light, points of focus, glimmers of the past like bones crushed into precious jewels, like the roots of gold that run through the trees, like elephant tusks that turn in on themselves and shudder the doubt like a line of soldiers with bayonets making a tunnel of blades, under which a coffin could pass, a black rock with a body inside, a hollowed out wooden tomb, to the burial of all the things they had never had, to all of the remains. Those still remains, stirring in his soul as if a wind caressed them, watching over them, over him, from the view where we once stood and held hands, like the lines of veins in her skin, in his skin, dilating, lifting the flesh from exertion, pumping with blood, which would watch her come and go, and come.