Soul Cycle

by Erik Hyrkas

  “Thank you so much for taking me home,” Marcy said. “I… I don’t know what I would have done.” She leaned forward with her face in her hands. “Aiden’s family is in Boston and mine is in Chicago.” She moaned. “They won’t ever see his face again.”

  Brit guessed that his funeral would be a closed coffin affair. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Brit whispered.

  She thought of Aiden’s mother. She remembered seeing her last at their high school graduation. She was a little, round woman and had such glowing pride in her eyes at seeing Aiden graduate. Brit wasn’t sure why that moment came back to her now, but the graduation scene danced in her head now and she couldn’t dispel it. After high school, his mother had moved to Chicago to be closer to her sister. Brit hadn’t seen her since. Aiden had stayed in the Twin Cities and went to college in Minneapolis.

  They drove in relative silence for a few minutes. Marcy continued to sob and moan inarticulate questions while Jax drove stoically and Brit, who felt miserable, watched Marcy.

  Brit wanted to say something to comfort Marcy, but nothing came to mind. What did you say to somebody that had lost their husband in such a sudden and horrific way?

  When they pulled up to Marcy and Aiden’s house, a shabby single-story rambler jammed between other shabby single-story ramblers, Jax got out of the car and came to Marcy’s door. This time Brit got out, too. Together, Jax and Brit helped Marcy inside.

  The temperature in the house was much cooler than Brit was used to, but knowing Aiden’s propensity for pinching pennies, she knew he probably had the thermostat set to a hair above freezing. The smell of cookies still hung in the air, and Brit speculated that Marcy had been baking recently. The lights were still on in the living room and kitchen, which were only separated by a lime-green countertop.

  Jax and Brit helped Marcy take off her shoes and then guided her to bed, which she climbed into still fully clothed.

  Once outside of the bedroom, Brit hugged Jax and whispered in his ear. “I’m going to stay here with Marcy tonight.”

  “That’s fine. We can probably just camp out on the couch,” he said.

  Brit smiled at him. “Go home. I don’t trust Hunter alone in our house.”

  “He’s not eight years old, and the matches are well out of his reach,” Jax said. “He’ll be fine.”

  “Michael is also there,” she said. “You can’t expect him to survive Hunter alone.”

  “Fine. I can see you have this under control. Promise to call me if you need anything.” He gave her a sad smile. “I’ll come by in the morning with breakfast.”

  “I promise.” She hugged him closer and kissed him softly. “I love you.”

  He smiled and looked into her eyes. “I love you, too.”

  He quietly slipped out of her arms and out the door. Brit watched him pull away, and after his taillights were out of sight, she went to the kitchen to make tea.

  She flipped through cupboards for a few moments before finding a dented cardboard box of teabags. In a few more moments, she managed to find a shelf of mismatched cups. She picked a tall red one, filled it with water, and put it in the microwave. While listening to the hum of the microwave, she stared out into the dark backyard. There was enough moonlight to silhouette the snow-covered herb garden and the abbreviated shoveled path that led to a one-stall garage.

  When the microwave buzzed, she pulled the cup of hot water out and put in a bag of decaf tea to steep for a minute before she brought it to Marcy.

  While waiting, she pulled out the tinted glass the EMT had dropped. Her hands were slightly wet from filling the cup. She wiped a finger across the surface from one side to the other like she would unlock a phone.

  There was a momentary red swirl floating a fraction of an inch above the surface of the glass. The swirl shrank and disappeared so fast she was left wondering if it had really been there. Brit looked around the room, trying to find a source of red light that might have been reflected on the glass surface. She couldn’t find any.

  A small, tinted glass disk fell from the back of the rectangle she was holding and fell into the sink. She picked it up. The disk wasn’t much bigger than a quarter and appeared to be made of the same material as the rectangle. She flipped it over and didn’t see anything special about it. When she looked back at the rectangle that it had fallen from, it was the same size and shape as it was before, as if the disk that it had produced had come from nowhere. She placed the disk in her pocket as she studied the rectangle more closely.

  A grinding sound made her look out the window. A man was shoveling the path to the garage. The shovel made a loud scraping noise of plastic on cement that permeated Brit’s being. She felt prickles spread through her whole body and choked back a scream. The glass rectangle slipped from her fingers and bounced on the floor. The sidewalk was already shoveled, and nobody should be in Marcy’s backyard anyway—especially nobody wearing Aiden’s jacket.

  She blinked and the man was gone. A moment passed with her heart pounding in her ears, and all she could do was scan the dark backyard for signs that the man had really been there. There were no footprints in the snow, the garage door was still shut, and he hadn’t come to the house’s back door.

  Brit bent down and grabbed the glass rectangle, slipping it into her back pocket, and ran to Marcy’s room. The ceiling light was on even though Marcy was in bed.

  Marcy sat up instantly. “What is it?”

  “I thought I saw…” Brit fidgeted. Marcy had lost her husband only hours earlier. It wouldn’t be fair to tell her that her husband was outside shoveling when Brit knew that it was probably nothing more than fatigue and stress that caused her to imagine the man who, logically, could not have been there.

  “What did you see?” Marcy pressed. “You look scared.”

  “I thought I saw somebody in the backyard,” Brit said. “It was dark though, and I probably imagined it.”

  “I don’t want to be alone,” Marcy said. “Would you mind sleeping in here?”

  Brit nodded and crawled onto the queen-sized bed without turning off the light. She pulled out her phone and opened the contacts. With trembling fingers, she found Jax’s contact entry. She was ready to press it if anything scary happened.

  “This is all Michael’s fault. If he hadn’t convinced Aiden to go to play Satan’s game, Aiden would still be here,” Marcy said.

  “Michael had no way of foreseeing what happened,” Brit said, ignoring Marcy’s reference to poker as a satanic game.

  “He seduced poor Aiden,” Marcy sobbed. “I warned Aiden that gambling is a sin.”

  Brit couldn’t help herself, and despite knowing how terrible Marcy’s loss was, the words came tumbling out at the suggestion that Michael would ever harm anybody. “Michael wouldn’t hurt a fly, and I really doubt Aiden is his type,” Brit said. “Actually, I’ve never seen him with anybody…so I guess I can’t be sure of what his type is. I guess I imagine him being with a really quiet girl, somebody that could take care of him and not spend her time criticizing him.”

  “Do you believe in Satan?” Marcy asked.

  Brit sighed. “I know things are really bad right now,” she said. “I remember when my father died. I spent a lot of time trying to find somebody to blame.” She shook her head and looked off into nothing. “I was stuck in that hole for a very long time. Losing a family member is hard.”

  “He’s not lost,” Marcy said. “He was taken from me, but it’s only temporary. I will see him again. He’ll wait for me.”

  Brit didn’t answer. What if there was a heaven? Would Aiden be in that heaven? What if Marcy was wrong about which religion was real? If Aiden had seven virgin wives, or whatever the one true religion granted, would he wait for Marcy? She never got the sense that Aiden was particularly happy to see Marcy. Sometimes Brit wondered if Aiden had married Marcy because she met all the criteria on his checklist. Then again, he was a man, and so maybe he kept his boundless love hidden away. She thought of Jax, though,
and remembered that he always shined when he saw her, and people constantly told her about the times he talked about her.

  Her thoughts drifted to the unknown shoveler in the backyard as she lay in the dark, drafty bedroom for an unfathomable time, grasping her phone and listening for any sound out of the ordinary. Soon she heard Marcy’s breathing deepen and become regular. Brit was afraid to fall asleep. The more she tried to convince herself that she couldn’t have possibly seen Aiden, the more scared she became.

  But then Brit woke with a start in a dark room. The memory of the unknown shoveler came back to her instantly. Panic set in. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, and she quickly looked around the dark room but couldn’t make out much. Marcy was still breathing regularly, apparently asleep. Brit was holding her mobile phone, but the screen was dark. She pressed the button on the side and the screen only showed the picture of an empty battery for a moment before going black again.

  She berated herself for not charging her phone last night while the guys were playing poker. If anything happened, she’d have no way to call Jax now. Brit knew that he would come in an instant if she called, probably before the police could get here, but without a way to call him that wasn’t possible. Marcy must have had a phone, and Brit scanned the bedroom for it.

  Marcy’s charger was plugged into the wall next to the bed, but the phone wasn’t there. She noticed that it was for a phone that wasn’t compatible with hers. Marcy had called Jax from the hospital, so maybe it was still in her purse. Brit hoped that Marcy’s battery was still charged in case they needed it.

  She wanted to get out of bed and find Marcy’s phone, but she didn’t move. She didn’t want to wake Marcy. After all, she needed her sleep. Still, the rising fear was tough to fight back.

  Brit scrunched up her eyes and rubbed her face. She was being silly. She’d had a long day yesterday and drank two beers and part of a third. She had imagined somebody that couldn’t have been there, and now she was panicked because her phone battery was out. She needed to get a grip, she told herself.

  With excruciating care, she slipped slowly out of bed, making as little noise as she could. Marcy slept on. Brit tiptoed out of the dark room. All of the other lights in the little house were out, even though she was sure they had been on when she went to bed.

  Brit flipped the light switches on and off, but the room remained dark. The power had gone out. The only sound in the house was a battery powered analog clock on the wall. The repetitive ticking was unsettling in the dark.

  The sky was already lightening and the backyard was easier to see when she looked out the kitchen window. A light drift of snow had covered the sidewalk. There were no footprints marring any snowbank or the sidewalk itself. She sighed. She had definitely imagined the man.

  The microwave door hung open, and Brit remembered the tea that she had been making for Marcy. She pulled out the tall red cup of cold tea and shut the microwave door. The teabag was stuck to the inside of the cup.

  Brit took an experimental sip of room-temperature tea. The taste reminded her of dirty socks and oranges. She wrinkled her nose and drank more deeply. She finished the whole cup in a few swallows, peeled the tea bag out of the cup and threw it in the trash, then set the cup gently in the sink.

  There was no way she wanted to go back to sleep. Her phone was dead, and so she needed something else to occupy her time. She walked into the living room and saw the small TV, which was useless without power. The idea of having a little sound to drown out the ticking clock was a comforting idea.

  There weren’t any books or magazines anywhere in the living room. She sat on the love seat, the only sitting furniture in the living room, and pulled out the piece of black glass again.

  She absently turned it over in her hands a few times and studied the way the light reflected off of the surface in an all-too-perfect way. Slowly and deliberately, she ran a finger around the entire edge of the rectangular face.

  A bright, white light flashed on in the kitchen, and Brit screamed. She momentarily forgot the glass in her hands and jumped to her feet. A hazy, undulating light was coming from the kitchen.

  Marcy hopped out of bed and came to the bedroom door. “Oh my god! What is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Brit whispered, as if afraid whatever it was would hear her.

  Brit didn’t take her eyes off of the light. It wasn’t a consistent color, there were gray, rectangular shapes that she was trying to make sense of, and at the same time, every ounce of reason in her body was telling her to run.

  Only moments after she felt certain that it really existed, the light winked out.

  Chapter Three

  Jax drove away. He felt guilty for leaving Brit alone with Marcy. His feelings of guilt were not because he was concerned for Brit, but rather, he felt guilty for being so relieved to go home. He wanted nothing more than to slip into the soft sheets of his bed and sleep. The relief he felt over not spending the night on Marcy’s couch was strong enough that he decided to stop at the all-night drugstore and buy a sympathy card. And a bag of chips. And a jar of salsa. And a magazine with a sexy woman on the cover and the promise of many interesting articles on health. He left the drugstore twenty-three dollars poorer and feeling a little less guilty.

  Hunter was sleeping in the guest room, and Michael was asleep in the room that might someday be his kid’s room. So Jax left the lights off and was cautious to walk softly through the house. Hunter had a fair amount to drink, and so there was a chance that he wouldn’t wake up. Jax wasn’t as sure about how heavily Michael slept so didn’t take any chances.

  The first thing he did was carefully set the sympathy card on the kitchen counter where he would definitely sign it in the morning. Then he carried his bag of chips, bowl of salsa, and magazine upstairs. He set his cell phone and keys down on his dresser, stripped off his clothes down to his boxers, and climbed into bed. As he ate, he was careful not to get crumbs in the sheets. Brit hated when he ate in bed, but she’d never know.

  At some point he drifted off to sleep. He woke up with the lights on, a magazine stuck to his face, and bag of crushed chips under him. There were crumbs everywhere. Brit was going to kill him.

  The clock on the nightstand read 6:04. Despite the fact it was Saturday and he was still dead tired, he simply couldn’t sleep in. Whether it was his body’s internal clock or the disturbing events of the previous night, he was up now and he was starving. He clambered out of bed and flicked off the bedroom light.

  He went into the master bathroom and took a piss in the dark. As he stood there relieving himself, he decided that he needed some eggs for breakfast.

  Normally, he might walk through the house in his underwear, but he remembered that Hunter was in the guest room and Michael was in the kid’s room, and so he pulled on his discarded pants and his t-shirt from the previous night. He grabbed his phone from the dresser.

  He went to the kitchen and turned on the stove and pulled out a frying pan. He opened the fridge and spotted the strawberry pie Brit had made for poker night and that they hadn’t gotten around to eating. Grabbing a fork and the pie, he dug in, not bothering to get a plate. After a few forkfuls, the warm glow of the stove reminded him that he was going to make eggs. So he returned to the fridge and set the carton on the counter. As he was about to shut the fridge door, there was a soft knock at the front door. When he made it to the living room, he looked back and noticed that he had not managed to push the fridge door shut all the way and it had swung back open. They really needed a new fridge with a door that hung straight and actually stayed shut, he thought.

  Jax wondered absently who would knock this early in the morning. His best guess was that the police must have stopped by to ask more questions about Aiden’s death.

  He walked through the living room, which was lit only by a few slivers of moonlight filtered between window shades. Jax pulled open the front door and was surprised to see a muscular man in tan slacks, a vibrant orange dress shirt with the t
op two buttons undone, and a stylish brown sports coat. He wore a necklace with a black, square piece of glass hanging from it. After a moment, Jax remembered he was the EMT.

  “May I help you?” Jax asked.

  “I dropped my phone earlier,” the EMT said. “Is there any chance you might have found it?”

  “Oh,” Jax said. “Mmm. Let me check. Maybe Brit picked it up.”

  Jax scanned the moonlit room. The poker table was still in complete disarray, cards, snacks, a heap of napkins, and piles of poker chips strewn about its surface. He glanced at the coffee table near the TV and then the bowl on top of the tall stand near the door, where they kept their car keys when they got home. He didn’t see a phone anywhere in the living room. He decided that there was a chance that Brit would have brought it into the kitchen, and so he walked that direction.

  The front door creaked, and Jax glanced back. The EMT wasn’t standing there anymore and the door was ajar.

  “Hello?” he called.

  There was no answer. He ran to the kitchen, intent on grabbing a knife or the hot frying pan, the only weapons he would find in the house.

  The front door clicked shut, and he turned to look. There was still nobody there. The room was empty and dark, and every shadowy corner felt menacing. Jax thought about yelling for Hunter, but his voice wouldn’t come to him.

  He pulled out his phone to dial 9-1-1 and took a cautious step backward, toward the kitchen. He bumped into something, and when he spun around, there was the towering EMT standing behind him.

  The EMT lifted the square dangling from his glass necklace. A red arrow briefly flickered on one corner and then went black again.

  “It isn’t here,” he said. “You’re going to have to come with me.”

  Jax balled his hand slammed his fist into the EMT’s stomach.

  The EMT sighed and backhanded Jax, knocking him off his feet and into the wall. A picture of Jax and Brit was dislodged and tumbled to the floor and broke. His phone landed face up on the floor showing 9-1-1, but he hadn’t hit the send button.