Inspire

by Cora Carmack

  For a moment, I entertain the idea of being with him. Would it be possible? Could I hold back the energy from him and expend it elsewhere? But how would I keep that balance? And what kind of relationship could I ever have with him when I had to run off to satisfy my needs with another person every few days? No … even if I was willing to risk it, it could never work. No matter how badly I want it to.

  Who knew it would be this hard? It's not as if I'm as young as I look. I've been around the block a few (thousand) times. We didn’t even sleep together. Not really. There are men that I've been far more intimate with, men who've known me better, longer. I should be able to file him away with the rest of the memories and move on.

  I don't know why he's different. Sure, he's got the whole mystery factor with his odd ties and tattoos combo. And he's sweet. And he's caring. And he doesn't need anything from me.

  But is that really enough to explain the tight pull I feel toward him now? It's almost as if there's …

  My mouth goes dry.

  A string. That's what I'd been about to say. I feel as if there's a cord between us, and no matter where I go or what I think, I can still feel its weight, the reminding pressure that he's there, that he's not going away.

  I've never seen the fates, the three beings whose strings decide the life of every mortal and every god alike. They always remained separate from the rest of us. I think the greater gods didn't like the reminder that they weren't entirely in control of their own destinies, that in some ways they aren't that different than the mortals they place themselves so high above. But I've heard stories. I've heard that they appear both old and young all at once, their countenances shifting between one blink and the next. Some say that they are time. Others maintain that they're the only thing not affected by it. They are at once old and young, alive and dead. They are the past, present, and the future. Always.

  I've never seen the fates, no. But I've felt them.

  I clutch my damp dress close, but not even the cold fabric can keep me from tumbling into the memory.

  Mel.

  I don't think of her often. Not anymore. You don't live as long as I have without learning how to compartmentalize. And soon, you have so many thoughts stored away in so many boxes that they all sort of fade into the background.

  Melpomene was one of my eight sisters. And for our early life, she was the chief muse of tragedy. The plays and poetry and music she inspired … there was a depth to it that wasn't rivaled by any of the rest of us. There was something about her that enabled the artist to dig deeper, to examine the darkest portions of the soul, but because of that she had … well, she had a higher rate of incident than the rest of us. Sometimes the artist would go so deep that she wasn't able to get them back. And while she might have dealt in tragedy, Mel wasn't swathed in darkness. She was light and brilliance and beauty. And she felt guilt. It clung to her more stubbornly than the rest of us.

  Century after century, it weighed on her until her light began to fade. Somehow, even though she renewed daily like the rest of us, she began to look older. She had no wrinkles or graying hair or any other signs of age, but even so, we all saw it. Her eyes carried her years, the curve of her mouth was dragged down by the past.

  In December of the year 557 A.D., we were in Constantinople. It was Brumalia, a festival for the winter solstice honoring the gods who held some connection to the harvest. By then, the gods had been re-christened with Roman names. Saturn. Ceres. Bacchus.

  It was supposed to be a celebration. Wine and food and dance. But Mel wouldn't celebrate. By that point, I'm not even sure she could. She'd stopped taking on artists. She couldn't handle it anymore, and looking back, she'd lasted far longer than I had before the effects set in. She withdrew inside herself. I can remember looking across the room during the festivities, and she was standing by the wall, so still that she nearly blended in with the statues decorating the hall. It hadn't been like it was with me. When I gave in to the power, it had been a chaotic euphoria. Melpomene reminded me of a woman drowning. She'd been still, not struggling to survive; silent, not gasping for air. But even so … I could almost envision the way her hair would bloom around her in the water. I could nearly see her sinking down into a darkness where I would never reach her.

  Then between one instant and the next, she collapsed. She writhed on the floor and howled, the noise a keening that was simultaneously desperate and furious. The energy hadn't just leaked out of her; it had exploded, filling the space until even I was choking on the potency. The gentle celebratory music swelled to a cacophonous roar. The room burst into movement and noise. Some reacted with glee, others malice, and still others in terror. There was going to be a riot. A stampede. A massacre. You didn’t need to be an oracle to prophesy that future.

  Maybe if I could get to her, maybe she would still have the strength to pull back. But I couldn’t even see her on the floor anymore through the throngs of people. They rushed for the doors, uncaringly trampling over anyone who fell in their wake. I couldn’t see Mel, but I could hear her, screams so melancholy they neared a song. A dirge.

  Then between one step and the next, I felt something pull tight in my chest, constricting, making it hard to breathe. And though it wasn’t a familiar sensation, I knew instinctively it had to do with Mel. Then whatever that binding was, it gave way, it tore loose as if someone had tugged hard enough to tear it free. I was so busy trying to steady my feet and catch my breath that it took me several seconds to realize that Mel was no longer screaming. And I suddenly felt as if gravity had lessened, as if there was one less thing holding me to this earth.

  I suck in a breath, and cold air stings my lungs. I’m shivering, and maybe it’s the memories or maybe it’s my damp dress in Wilder’s cold room. Either way, I force myself to pull back from the past. I don’t want to think about the moment I found her, nor the fury who had been standing over her lifeless body, blood dripping from her sword. I don’t want to think about the Earthquake Poseidon had caused to cover up Mel’s … to cover up Mel.

  The only thing that matters about that night now is that I not repeat it. Because that’s what the Argus’s threats mean for me. Step out of line, and it could be me facing the swift justice of a fury’s blow.

  And the string.

  When I’d talked to my sisters afterward, we’d all experienced the same feeling, as if the cord binding us together, the thing that intertwined our fates with Melpomene’s, had been cut.

  I’d known it was fate, but I’d always assumed that those kinds of heavy ties only existed because my sisters and I were bound by blood, by purpose. Because we were immortal. I’d never felt it with another person. Certainly not a human.

  I glance back at Wilder. The sheets are tangled around his hips. He has one arm folded behind his head and beneath his pillow. The other is sprawled wide where I left it. Bare skin gives way to inked designs on his arms and upper chest, and he looks … sexy doesn’t do him justice.

  I don’t feel that kind of pull to him, do I?

  I don’t.

  It’s just attraction. The lure of the forbidden fruit. It will disappear with distance. With time. And I’ve got plenty of that. I sneak into his closet and borrow a t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts with a drawstring waist.

  Okay, so it’s not borrowing, since I don’t plan on ever seeing him again. But my dress is wet, and what else am I supposed to do? It’s not because I want something of his. It’s necessity. That’s it. And yeah, it makes me an even bigger jerk for stealing from him, especially after all he did for me last night, but …

  Why am I reasoning this out with myself? I just need to leave before he wakes up.

  I grab a cheap pair of plastic flip-flops that are way too big, but at least they’re shoes. Add them to my tally of sins.

  With one last glance at the sleeping man in the bed, I ignore the twist of my heart, and sneak out of his house into the pink early morning sky and begin my walk home.

  I learn that it’s Saturday morn
ing when I get back to my apartment, which I’d apparently left unlocked the night before. Though if someone tried to rob or vandalize it, you certainly wouldn’t have been able to tell. Not with the way I left it. It takes me the entire weekend of near constant working and cleaning to undo the damage of my dance with inspiration.

  That word … Inspired. It’s the last thing I tackle, and though I’m able to scrub the ink away, it appears I went over the word so many times that I scratched it into the floorboard. I have to settle for a slight rearrangement of my living room so that the rug in front of my couch now covers the carved word.

  I sit on the floor, and place my hand over the spot on the rug that I know covers the word.

  “Enough,” I speak aloud to the empty room. “You can’t change this. You can only live with it.”

  So, that’s what I do.

  I live with it.

  With the guilt. With the memories. With the longing.

  I bury it as deep as I can.

  I won’t be Melpomene. I won’t allow myself to crumble under the weight of this life. So I box up those memories and seal them away. Wilder, too. I refuse to be like Mel, and it’s not possible to be the girl I’d been with him last night, so all of it has to go.

  There’s only one thing I can be. The only thing I’ve ever been.

  Someone’s muse.

  And if it stings a little that the very nature of my life, of what I am, requires me to be someone’s possession, someone’s tool, then it’s a sting I do my best to ignore.

  To live with.

  PART TWO

  Wilder

  “Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”

  Albert Camus

  Chapter Nine

  It’s a bleak fucking Christmas.

  Mom spends most of the holiday working double shifts at the hospital. And I pick up whatever extra hours Mr. Gibson will give me at the firm. There’s plenty to do as the year draws to a close.

  It’s necessary, and if I’m honest, I prefer that god-awful boring office to being at Mom’s. That probably makes me a dick, but it’s just a little too much for me to handle. Without the distraction of classes, I can’t even pretend that I don’t see how miserable Mom is. Gwennie, too. It’s hard on her because she’s still young enough that she doesn’t quite grasp what’s happened. Oh, she knows Dad’s gone. I caught her playing prison with her dolls once too, so I know she gets that part, at least a little.

  But she thinks it’s all temporary. Like the bad version of a vacation. That eventually Dad will come back, and they’ll move back to the old house with two floors and big rooms and a pool, instead of the apartment she and mom are in now. She thinks everything will go back to normal. To her, money is just the colorful sheets in Monopoly or plastic gold coins. She can’t even pronounce the word embezzlement, let alone grasp what it means for our family, the mess Dad left us in.

  Sometimes she’ll say things … about how she can’t wait until we have a pool again or she’ll wonder what Dad will get her for Christmas, and I can see the way it affects Mom. She’d always appeared young for her age, but in the last year, her posture has changed, her shoulders curve downward. I don’t know if it’s fatigue or fear or the absolute fucking unfairness of it all that weighs on her, but it’s there and I can’t unsee it. And I’m doing my damndest to fix it, but I can’t fill the gap Dad left. I can’t even fucking fill the gap left in her bank account, but I will. I’ll get this damn business degree, and then I’ll get a job that pays decent enough to get back a little of what we lost.

  And in the mean time, I’ll do what I can to make up for the rest.

  Like taking Gwen out to find a dress for Christmas, second hand of course, because we can no longer afford to buy her the poufy monstrosities that she loves to wear for every holiday and occasion. She’s growing so damn fast that she doesn’t fit into any of her old ones, a discovery which had led to a complete meltdown this morning when I came over to take my shift as babysitter while Mom went to work.

  When Mom had told her that she couldn’t take her shopping for a special dress this year, Gwen’s sobs had been headache-inducing. I’d promised to work something out just so she’d stop, and so Mom could get to work without being late.

  It’s the day before Christmas Eve, so the last thing I want to do is go anywhere near anything that involves the word shopping, but I’d made a decision after Dad was sentenced to put my own wants aside for a while, and this is part of that.

  We try the mall first, but as I feared, those tiny little dresses are fucking expensive. I don’t even let Gwen try them on because I can already envision the chaos that would ensue when I had to explain that we couldn’t get whatever dress she wanted. I go for a different tactic, and map out directions to a Goodwill on my phone.

  But from the moment we enter, Gwen is pouty and stubborn, and nothing in their limited selection of little girl’s dresses is what she wants. I’m reaching the end of my patience, and I have to work hard not to snap at Gwen as I take her hand and pull her back toward the front of the store. A middle-aged woman sorting donations at the front counter calls out as we near the door, “Try Caroline’s Closet. It’s north a few streets. Still second-hand, but I think she might find it a little more to her liking.”

  I thank her, and load Gwen into her booster seat in the back of my SUV. She complains when I try to buckle her in, so I step back and close the door. Sure enough, after a minute or so of trying to buckle herself in, she starts to whine that it won't work. I lean between the seats, reaching back to her, and click the thing into place.

  I take a deep breath and clutch the steering wheel tight for a moment.

  This is my life now. Not even now. Always. This is my life. Period. The end. I sigh and lift my glasses to rub at my eyes.

  It's not that I don't love Gwen. I do. Even with that high-pitched cry she's so good at weaponizing to get what she wants. I love her, and I love Mom, and I would do just about anything for them. But when you think stuff like that … you think of grand, heroic gestures. Pushing someone out of the way of a moving vehicle. Standing between them and danger. Sacrificing something important. But it's not like that. Not at all. It's not one big moment, it's a thousand. It's every day. And you don't sacrifice just one important thing, you sacrifice a little more and a little more until you start to feel hollowed out. It's not the sacrifice that hurts so much as the thought that it will never end. That you're stuck in your fate, and nothing and no one can change it. You’ll just keep giving and giving until you don’t even know who you are.

  “Ready to go?” I ask Gwen, even though it's me that's kept us parked here as I regrouped. I get a reply somewhere between a humph and a sniff. Probably the best I'm going to do.

  I find the store that the lady mentioned on my phone, and it is just a few blocks north of us, so I shift into drive and pull back onto the street. I can tell just from the outside that Caroline's Closet has a much better chance at pleasing Gwen. The store logo is pink with flowers and butterflies, and it appears that the store is specifically focused on kids' clothing. We have to parallel park on the street, and Gwen nearly gives me a heart attack when she takes off running to the store as soon as her feet hit the ground. I slam the door shut, and lock it with my key chain while I take off after her. I swing the door to the store open, and nearly run over her as she stands in awe just over the threshold.

  The place is like a little girl's paradise. It's not just the clothes, though there are a lot of them, it's the decorations, the space. Everything about it looks like a child's fantasy. There's enough pink to make me feel like I've overdosed on Pepto Bismal, but Gwen likes it, and I can deal with just about anything to make her happy.

  She looks up at me silently, asking for permission, I think. And I nod. She disappears between racks of clothes that are taller than she is, and I scramble to catch up.

  She’s strug
gling to unhook a baby blue dress when I find her, and I lift it off the rack for her. I become her designated dress holder, and my arm is covered by the time an employee finds us and asks, “Can I help you find anything?”

  She's short with black-rimmed hipster glasses that make her big eyes look even larger. Gwen is immediately infatuated with the giant flower on her headband. I can see her hand reaching toward it, and I take it in mine before she can accost the employee. Lennox, according to her nametag.

  “This is Gwen,” I say. “We're doing some last minute shopping for a holiday dress. For her.”

  Lennox smiles, and bends so that she's closer to Gwen's height.

  “Yes, you'll look much better in one of our dresses than he would.”

  Gwen giggles uncontrollably, and Lennox asks her questions about her size, what colors she likes, and what kind of dresses she's had in the past. Then she asks me what I'm looking to spend, and she doesn't even blink when I tell her what I can afford.

  “I think we can handle that. Why don't we go ahead and take these dresses you have”—she takes the scratchy things off my arm—”and we'll get you set up in a dressing room. While you start trying these on, I'll grab some others I think you might like.”

  I'm immediately glad we came here. I was an only child until Gwen came along, so I've not had much experience shopping for kid's clothes or dresses, and I don't realize how much pressure I'd been feeling until it eases.

  “We've even got a nice, comfy couch for Dad to sit on while he waits.”

  “Oh I'm not—”

  Gwen interrupts me to say, “My dad is in prison. That's just Wilder. My brother.”

  To Lennox's credit, her eyes only widen for just a second at Gwen's admission, and then she's back to normal.

  “Okay then. Brother Wilder, it is.”

  The dressing rooms are just as intricately decorated as the rest of the place. There are pink cushioned benches, and ornate mirrors that remind me of Snow White, and soft cream-colored curtains cover each door.