by Aimee Bender
She looks at the front door. She thinks about opening it, but she just can’t.
Instead, Irene leans against a wall and slides to the floor. She knows she doesn’t have a choice, she has to leave, but the anxiety she feels when she goes outside can be so overwhelming that she almost prefers death.
“Why am I so weak?” Irene yells at the ear cat by her foot. “I wish I was one of the strong ones.”
Gentleman Cat continues to play the violin, while Muscle Cat strikes a pose.
“Do you know how great the job market is for people who aren’t agoraphobic? I could get three times the amount of pay by doing half the work. But I’m weak. My mother was weak. My father was weak. They were both agoraphobic, too, back when it was still pretty rare. When I was a kid, my mother wouldn’t let any of my friends come over. She was uncomfortable with the idea of strangers in her house, even kids. She also wouldn’t let me go over to my friends’ houses because she was too scared to drive me. I was lucky that the school was within walking distance or she would have had me homeschooled and I never would have had any friends at all.”
The ear cat sits there, listening to her through all of its ears.
“Of course, I was homeschooled eventually. When I was in 6th grade, a car hit me on the way home from school. I was rushed to the emergency room with two broken legs and a concussion. My mother never came for me. She was too paranoid to leave the house. My dad came, but only to drive me home once the doctors were done with me. Then my parents never let me leave the house again. They were afraid I would get hurt again somewhere and they wouldn’t be able to come help me. They wanted me to stay home, where it was safe.”
The ear cat cuddles against her hand. She doesn’t even realize the earwax greasing across her fingers when she pets its back.
Irene stands up and stares at the door again.
She’s got to go through it. If she doesn’t leave the house she’s going to starve to death. She might have the worst panic attack of her life, but a panic attack is not going to kill her.
The gentleman cat stops playing his violin as Irene’s hand wraps around the doorknob.
“Meow?” the ear cat says, looking up at Irene from the floor.
The door opens.
The withered, muddy neighborhood has been a frightening two-dimensional painting to her for the past ten years. She thought she would never have to enter that painting again.
She takes one step and closes her eyes. Then she takes another. Her fingers start wiggling. At first, they wiggle slowly. After she takes another step, her wiggly fingers become frantic.
The gentleman cat steps outside and stops Irene’s fingers from wiggling. He holds her hand in his tiny warm palms. She looks down at him and he bows to her. She takes another step. The gentleman cat stays with her, holding her hand as firmly as he can.
The ear cat and the muscle cat come outside with them. She takes another step. Then another. The painting of the neighborhood becomes three-dimensional. She is inside of it. It is a dizzy swirling of colors. It overwhelms her so much that she can hardly feel her body from the neck down, as if her head is floating.
When she gets to the edge of her driveway, she keeps going. She walks through the withered neighborhood. The street looks as if it hasn’t been used in decades. Weeds have broken through the asphalt and overtaken the road, the sidewalks, and the walls around yards.
There aren’t any more grocery stores, so she doesn’t know where to go for food. Everything is delivered through the mail. All the food is hidden away in warehouses that she’ll never be able to find. But she can’t think about that now. She has to focus on each step. She can’t let her surroundings overcome her.
There is a maple tree collapsed in the road in front of her. She stops moving. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, not sure what to do. She wants to pop her fingers, but the gentleman cat holds her hand too firmly for her to do it.
The tree rises off the ground. Underneath, Irene sees Muscle Cat. He is lifting the tree over his head as high as he can. He tosses it out of the road, into a muddy yard.
Irene nods at Muscle Cat.
The muscle cat says, “Meee-ow.”
She continues on. She tries not to think too much about it. She just takes one step at a time.
Ear Cat leads the way, using his powerful sense of hearing to guide them. His body is tense. He can hear something in the distance.
Once they get closer to downtown, Irene realizes what her city has become. The streets look like a tornado swept through ages ago and nobody ever bothered to clean up afterwards. The buildings are overgrown with vines, the roads have been ripped apart by roots and weeds, there are cars rusted into the sides of the street, there are piles of rubble as if bombs had gone off.
“Meow,” says the ear cat, gesturing its head to the distance.
“What is it?” Irene says.
Up ahead, people are coming out of buildings. Thousands of people spill out of the surrounding apartments and houses. They climb down fire escapes, they rappel out of windows, they climb up from the sewers. All of them are confused and anxious. They look uncomfortable, fearful to be so close to each other, yet they are still drawn together. And accompanying each of these nervous people, staying close by their sides, are three cats: a gentleman cat, a muscle cat, and an ear cat.
“Meow?” says the ear cat, looking up at Irene with a wide childlike smile.
Irene nods.
She moves toward the crowds of people, taking one baby step at a time. Her head is still dizzy, her fingers are still trying to wiggle, but the three Kitties of the Month stay by her side every inch of the way.
NUB HUT
KURT DINAN
Four of us surround the hole in the ice, each lying with an arm submerged deep in the water. This is nothing like I pictured. In my mind I saw smaller, individual holes and a sense of transformation. Instead, the hole is one large opening maybe ten feet across, and all I feel is the great freeze as we wait under the Alaskan moon, the snow twinkling down like millions of tiny flash bulbs.
Hannah wears only jeans and a Gamecocks sweatshirt. She hasn’t moved or said a word since we began, but her frozen breath still occasionally drifts up. Beside her, Nigel Nine Toes is pants-less. His argument that his missing toe should make him an automatic for the Nub Hut ended with the admission that he lost it to a lawnmower when he was sixteen. The Nub Hut, Sheila proclaimed, must have standards.
The smart money is on Gillian. She’s built like a lumberjack, even wearing flannel shirts and boots like she’s off to chop down sequoias. Gillian’s worked the slime line at the cannery for years. She’ll be radiating fish stink the rest of her life, however long that is.
Me, I’m in true winter wear—thermals, rubber-soled boots, an arctic jacket —and am resting on a blanket I swiped from the bunkhouse. Using a gutting knife, I cut off a coat sleeve so nothing would come between my bare arm and the water. All four of us are alike in that respect. That and the mandatory rope, of course, one end tied around an ankle and the other spiked through the ice.
We wait in the glow of the Nub Hut. What once housed two Snow Cats and the back-up generator now sits thirty yards away onshore. The windows are covered with thick black plastic, but orange fire light seeps through the slats. A spray painted “Nub Hut” streaks down the door. Muffled music plays inside, evidence someone scavenged a battery.
“Think you can guess how long it’s been, Alan?”
Nigel Nine Toes speaks through chattering teeth. He may be thirty, he may be fifty; it’s hard to tell. Alaska weathers a man, and that’s just what he wants. “To be reduced to my base animal” is how Nigel puts it. He stalks camp spouting about the chaotic beauty of the tundra while making sure we’re all aware of his Che Guevara shirt. To most of us though, he’s just the guy who complains that his recreations of famous paintings infused with aborted fetuses are kept out of galleries due to an elaborate conspiracy.
“Come on,” Nigel says. “Take
a guess. How long?”
I can’t turn his way because my ear is frozen to the ice. “An hour?”
“Forty minutes. And that’s why you won’t make it. Your mind is weak. Only the primal can survive. All humanity must be whittled away until all that remains is a god, a creator, an explosion and implosion of raw energy.”
So that’s Nigel.
This is the first conversation in some time. All of us shouted in solidarity when we first plunged our arms in, but the camaraderie wore off fast. This isn’t about friendship; this is about the Nub Hut. Tell four people only two will be chosen and inevitably this is what happens.
“I’m having a hard time breathing,” Gillian says. “Can’t catch any air.”
“Arm feels like it’s in a vice,” I tell her.
“I can’t keep my thoughts straight.”
“I’m seeing double.”
And on and on.
The first few minutes of submersion were the worst. Nothing but burn. The icy water collapsed around my arm squeezing out the blood. Only through sheer will power was I able to keep it in the hole. But you want will power? Sheila’s nothing more than a torso now. There’s talk she’ll do her ears soon. None of us doubt it.
The door to the Nub Hut opens and music pours into the night. Nigel Nine Toes says it’s Neil Young but Gillian says it’s America and now they’re arguing over who sang “A Horse with No Name.”
For a brief moment I see inside—firelight, shadows, maybe a table—then someone steps out and shuts the door before anyone can see. Whatever happens inside the Nub Hut is a mystery, but it must be wonderful.
At the sound of boots crunching snow, I tear my ear off the ice, leaving behind a pulp of skin. Warm blood trickles down my neck, dotting the ice. As the silhouette draws closer, the outline becomes clear and Gillian says, “MilaGino.”
Between them, Mila and Gino have been married separately five times. Sheila presided over their sixth attempt last week in the Nub Hut. They spent their wedding night holding hands under water. Afterward, Mila sacrificed her right arm, Gino his left. Now they’re sewn together at the shoulder.
They take a knee and I feel stale breath on my face. MilaGino speak as one, both mouths repeating the words a moment apart, creating a strange echo.
“How are you holding up?”
I attempt to respond, but my tongue is a balled-up sock.
“It’s okay, Alan,” they say putting a hand on my shoulder. “We understand.”
But they can’t understand. Maybe they could when they wandered camp as lonely hearts before the takeover. Or maybe they could have understood in the days after the revolt when we were all unified, everyone joyous in having a place to call our own, a place where we belonged. But they can’t understand anymore. Now they’re muscle for Sheila. Now they belong to the Nub Hut.
While the wind chips at my face, MilaGino survey the others. Everyone smiles through frozen lips. Hannah and Nigel push their arms deeper into the water. We’re all dogs hoping to go home from the pound.
MilaGino draw out the choice, discussing us privately, their faces inches apart. But it’s all show. Everyone knows who makes the final call. They nod simultaneously then say, “Hannah, come join us in the Nub Hut” and my arm burns all over again.
Just one look at Hannah, with her hangdog face and saddle bags making it appear that she’s carrying hundreds of pennies in her pockets, and you can understand how it’s a thinly disguised pity pick. Every society needs a target. And who’s easier than the woman who spends her free time talking of Renaissance festivals and reading her silly backward comics? I might feel sorry for Hannah if I didn’t hate her so much right now.
Hannah’s sweatshirt clings to the ice as MilaGino help her up. With a jerk, her hoodie tears away, leaving white university letters behind. MilaGino lose their footing for a moment, slipping on the ice and tumbling sideways before regaining balance. As they guide Hannah up the path, her feet barely touch the snowy ground.
“There’s gotta be some sort of mistake,” Nigel says.
“That it wasn’t you?” Gillian says. “Let’s see, Nigel. Sweet Hannah without an offensive bone in her body, or you with your pseudo-intellectual bullshit and babies playing poker.”
“They’re fetuses. It’s symbolic.”
“What it is, is asinine.”
“I have a hundred dollars that says you played softball in college, Gillian.”
“Asshole.”
“Dyke.”
It’s like that.
My lips twitch as if electrified and now I’ve lost all sensation in my feet. My eyes are closed before I realize it.
This is how it happens. No matter what you try, you never take root. It’s years of no luck with work, no luck with women, no luck at all. You’re on an endless search without a clear destination. You tell yourself it’s in the next city or the next town, but everywhere you go you’re a cipher. On the outside you look like everyone else, but inside you’re ash and isolation. Then on the Discovery Channel you see Alaska’s promise of endless possibilities as the last frontier. And if you’re twenty-nine and have traveled nothing but dead-end roads, you’ll follow whichever star lights the way. It’s only when you get here that you realize the entire state is filled with mirror images of yourself waiting for further directions.
Cheers erupting inside the Nub Hut shake me from my haze. We crane our necks for any sign. Hannah must be submitting to the blade. She belongs to them now. As the ovation dies down, we all crumble back onto the ice. No one has to mention the resentment surging through each of us.
Minutes later, Gillian whispers, “Alan?” A thin layer of frost covers her face. Her lips are white in the moonlight, but it’s her eyes, wide and bottomless, that frighten me.
“It’s so strange,” she says, “I’m not even cold anymore.”
Gripping the hole’s edge with her free arm, Gillian pulls herself into the water. She drifts downward like a snow flake before disappearing altogether. The rope around her feet snakes behind her until going taut. Someone will reel her in later.
I’m too cold to move, too cold to respond. I just stare into the abyss. Maybe in the daylight I could see her, but in the darkness the black water reveals nothing.
Nigel begins laughing and can’t stop choking on his words. Finally he roars, “Ophelia of the Arctic,” and pounds the ice with his free hand until I think bones might break.
In the beginning, only two others joined Sheila in the Nub Hut. Lorna iced her toes, Trevor his hand. After that, everyone flocked to the hole for a chance at metamorphosis. Now supposedly there’s a pile of severed nipples on a table. Gillian said the Asian from Toledo sliced off his lips. Rumor is some are talking castration next. No one can touch Sheila though. She sacrificed both legs the day after removing her arms. Even God’s terrified of Sheila at this point.
“Why don’t you take a swim too, Alan?” Nigel says. “Join your friend. This is beyond you. Your core self isn’t—”
Even with Nigel’s yammering and the wind howling across the Chukchi Sea, I hear the party in the Nub Hut. Harriet must’ve finished the sawing by now. She used to go through three hundred fish an hour, so it makes sense that she commands the knife. Once done, Marco does a fishing line suture, closing the wound in a criss-cross of railroad tracks. Sometimes though the soldering gun is necessary.
There’s no burn anymore, no freezing, not even any pressure. I even have to double check to make sure my arm’s still in the water. Gillian watches me through the ice. She stares wide-eyed, our faces separated by inches. Free from the confines of her hat, red hair swims around her face. With her eyes, she blinks out Morse code messages I can’t decipher.
In the weeks leading up to the revolution there were grumblings throughout camp as if Alaska had reneged on her promise. Then one day Sheila pulled the conveyor belt’s emergency shutdown and Milo sledgehammered the control panel announcing, “This belongs to us now.” There wasn’t much thinking after that, just y
ears of frustration pouring out in busted jaws and smashed machinery while Sheila smiled surveying the chaos. Outnumbered, and with no help for hundreds of miles, management evacuated in the buses. Two days later, Sheila birthed the Nub Hut.
“They won’t take you.” Nigel’s voice creaks like a rusty hinge. “You don’t belong here. You never have.”
I want to tell him how there isn’t anywhere else. How he’ll never get up because his bare legs are welded to the ice. But what comes out instead is, “Sherrshingfel” before my tongue freezes and my vision fails.
I’m not sure how long I’m out. I’m dreaming of roads clogged with hitchhikers heading north to the Nub Hut when plastic sliding across the ice snaps me back. With my free hand I paw at my face, chipping away the frost sealing my eyes. The noise grows louder until it is right in front of me. Nigel bays with excitement. When I can finally see again, I am staring at four rubber-soled boots. MilaGino.
Trailing behind, pulled in her red disc sled, sits a triumphant Sheila ready to announce her final selection. She is propped on a pillow, little more than a face peeking out from the blanket bundled around her. MilaGino scoops her from the sled, holding her high like a newborn.
Sheila’s teeth, now filed to sharp points, gleam in the moonlight. No one mentions the scar anymore, zigzagging across her face, that in the old world kept her working alone in backrooms away from the public. Now Sheila is beautiful. Now Sheila is someone. Now Sheila rules the Nub Hut.
“After tonight, we will be complete,” she says. “There is only room for one more. The Nub Hut is not for everyone.”
It’s Nigel. Sheila doesn’t have to say anymore for me to know. I can instinctively recognize defeat. The decision radiates from Sheila’s eyes, from her aura, even from the air.
