There are the people scattered about, eating, talking, running, swimming, laughing. An elderly lady sits in a circle telling an enthusiastic story to a group of children. Another man naps peacefully in a hammock, a book cracked open on his chest. A mother and her child play in a pool together, and when she tosses him up, he squeals. Nearby, a couple lounges on a blanket, and the woman giggles when her girlfriend whispers something in her ear. A small girl in a yellow dress rushes past Sloane screeching, with a little boy in overalls on her heels.
Ches’s hand loosens on Sloane’s and falls to his side as he gets lost in fascination. His mouth hangs agape as his chocolate eyes try to take in everything at once.
“Feel a little more comfortable?” Erim comes up behind Sloane.
She glances at his smug face. “Could still be a cult.”
Erim laughs lightly, wrinkling his eyes at the edge. Sloane turns back to the waterfall they passed under. It’s the largest she can see, spewing down from a high cliff that must overlook the entire valley. “Maybe we should talk?” Erim suggests softly.
Sloane nods. “Hey, Ches, why don’t you go listen to that story while Erim and I talk.” She points to the group of children listening to the story. One of the little girls with a long cinnamon braid keeps turning back, eyeing Ches.
“What are you going to talk about?” Ches asks, staring skeptically at the group and the girl.
“Boring stuff.”
“Like what?” He’s not even focused on the answer, just stalling to avoid peer interaction.
Sloane wracks her brain for the most uninteresting Ches topic she can think of. “Uh, like comic books and Pokémon.” Ches scrunches up his nose in disgust but is still reluctant as the girl waves at him. Sloane sighs. “Ches, if you go listen to the story, I will find out how Erim did that trick with the water.” Now he’s interested, his eyes alight at the prospect of learning how the science-defying magic trick was done. Sloane tells him she will be in sight close by, and he trudges over to the other children.
Erim is waiting for Sloane in a nearby patch of green. She leans against a palm tree, careful to keep Ches in her field of view. Nim stretches, putting her front paws on a tree trunk and dragging them down, raking the bark with her claws. Sloane’s pretty sure she’s meant to take this as a threat, but the fox masks it with an innocent look, sitting next to Erim.
“Okay, I’m listening.” Sloane crosses her arms.
“You may want to sit down.” He motions to a hammock.
“No, I’m good.”
Erim’s jaw tightens. He stares at her levelly, like he won’t begin until she complies. Sloane plops down with a sigh. “What’s your name?” He asks, sliding his hands into his pockets.
“You know Ches’s name, but you don’t know mine?” Erim remains silent, awaiting an answer. “Sloane,” she huffs, her voice unintentionally irritated.
“What’s the last thing that you remember, Sloane?” She tries to pull pieces from the thick haze in her brain, but the memories resist her, snagging as if caught in a bog. She can only see snippets, the stark white rock… her lungs seizing… how the warm water rocked her gently… the car that came out of nowhere… then nothing. Erim’s eyes don’t leave her, waiting patiently.
Sloane shakes her head. “I—I can’t remember.” She looks up and catches Erim’s glance. Her breath catches as she suddenly realizes that his eyes are black. That’s the unnatural look she had picked up on but wasn’t able to identify until now. His irises aren’t dark brown or blue but completely black, like charcoal and the space between stars.
Sofia flickers into Sloane’s mind as something snaps, a barrier breaking. As more memories crash into her, she massages her temples to pacify the chaos. She can remember the smell of soil and palm leaves, the twinkle of the ice cream truck… the car came out of nowhere. Sloane’s hands close into fists, her teeth grind with frustration. The answers are dangling right in front of her, so close, but she just can’t reach them. “Something big happened. I just don’t know what.” Erim nods thoughtfully, bringing a dry laugh out of Sloane. “Judging by your poker face, it’s nothing good.”
“I can show you,” he says gently. Sloane stares at his outstretched hand, her chest tightening with apprehension. She knows she should take it but dreads what she’ll see, not sure she can handle it. She looks over at Ches, who’s making the girl next to him giggle. He molds an involuntary smile onto Sloane’s face. She needs to know what happened for him. Without looking back, Sloane grabs Erim’s hand.
The park appears before her eyes, with its swaying trees and tall swing set, all splotched by the afternoon sun. The playground is empty of children except for a Ches and a tawny-haired young woman sitting together on the yellow crawl tube. At the far edge of the playground, Adrian stands amongst the small children at the window of the ice cream truck.
It takes Sloane a second to recognize the scene, to identify herself. She’s not used to watching herself at a distance from outside her body. She’s the one talking to Ches on the playground. Adrian watches them, smiling as the ice cream melts down his hands. Then a car comes barreling out of the trees, having veered off the road next to the park. It’s heading straight for them. It all happens so fast, but Sloane does not miss a detail. She doesn’t miss the shock that overrides her expression, or the speed at which she flings her arm out and pushes Ches off the back of the crawl tube, just for the car to crush her seconds later.
In one swift moment, the car smashes her hips against the playground tube, flinging her torso towards the windshield. Sloane winces at the wet sound her body makes as it bounces against the hood of the car and goes limp. She didn’t know bodies could bounce like that, just a sack of soft, squishy flesh and snapping bone being shuffled together.
A rushing sound creeps up on Sloane. It’s the sound of her blood pounding in her head. The same blood that courses through her body, feeds her organs, the same blood that is spattered across the car’s rusted paint job. The flow forces the sounds of the scene around Sloane to dampen. Everything’s fuzzy.
Adrian is beside her body, and Elena is with Ches trying to wake him up. He doesn’t. His hands didn’t go out fast enough to catch his fall. Elena’s trying to stabilize his head, which seems abnormally wobbly on his neck. There’s so much screaming, horrified parents call out for their children, who are shrieking.
The door of the car creaks open, and a man stumbles out of the driver’s seat. Sloane only catches his face momentarily before he flees into the panic. Parents locate and whisk away their children, some forming a circle of breathless onlookers.
Adrian calls Sloane’s name over and over, begging her to wake up. He screams for help, a terrible new sound that slices through the muffle, like a scythe. Sloane hasn’t ever heard him make a sound like that. It makes her shudder. A few larger men heave all their strength to free Sloane’s body from where it’s trapped. Her weight tumbles down onto Adrian, who receives her carefully and cradles her in his trembling arms. Parts of her bend at unnatural angles. Her eyes are closed, looking relatively peaceful under the circumstances. Blood paints her face, streaming from her broken nose and a deep split in her scalp. Adrian’s panicked sobs fill the air, his face contorted with grief. Red and blue lights blur with sirens, and Sloane doesn’t want to see any more.
Sloane releases Erim’s hand, abruptly finding herself weightless back in the hammock. Every time she blinks, she can see the ghost of the scene in all its horrifying glory. She understands now why Erim made her sit down; her legs are shaking. She looks over at Ches, who is wholly absorbed in the children’s story. Elena’s cries still echo in Sloane’s ears. She takes a couple of deep breaths and looks at Erim without focusing on him.
“Ches and I are dead.” Nausea floods the back of her throat. “We’re dead.” She repeats it to confirm that the bitter taste accompanies the word every time she says it.
Dead.
It’s such an ugly word. Sloane hadn’t noticed before.
“Not quite.” Erim bends down to her eye level. “You’re both in medically induced comatose states.”
Sloane nods and stands to her feet, surprising Erim. The wash of shock is too much for her to handle sitting down. She paces back and forth, trying to control her breathing. “Tell me where we are right now, exactly.”
“This is The Midst.” Erim’s gaze following her steps from side to side. Sloane’s relieved that he didn’t call it Heaven or something stupid like Valhalla. “It’s a place for souls to rest and wait. They’re no longer alive, but they aren’t quite ready for what comes next.”
“And what’s that?” Sloane asks quickly. Focusing on holding the conversation is just enough task to keep her from tipping over the edge.
“The Midst is a place for people after life. The next step is for people after death.”
Sloane stops walking to glare at Erim. “Do you get a kick out of being impossibly vague?” It’s a serious question.
“It’s not really meant to be understood concretely.” Erim shrugs, apologetic. “Death is a spectrum, not so black and white. We’re in the gray area.”
“But everyone here is dead?”
Erim exhales heavily. “By living definition, yes.” He clearly isn’t comfortable giving such definitive answers. “Not everyone passes through here. Many go directly Onward. That’s the place after, the next step.” Sloane wrings her hands, her pulse pounding through her ears. “Everyone in The Midst belongs here; they’re brought specifically to fulfill part of the larger grand plan, what we call the truest plan. The reasons vary, and sometimes it takes people a while to discover why, but no one is here without a purpose.”
“What’s yours?” Sloane knows it might be an invasive question, but her inhibition centers are at limited capacity. She bores her eyes into him, demanding an answer.
Erim thinks about it for a second. “I’m just one of the people here to help,” he responds.
A laugh escapes Sloane at Erim’s most ambiguous statement yet. “Wow. I’ll try not to drown in that fountain of information.” She turns to check on Ches, who’s waving his hand frantically at the storyteller, wanting to ask a question. A thought—or a realization more, sprouts in her head as she turns back. “If everyone’s meant to be here, why did you know Ches’s name and not mine?” Her words are slow.
“It doesn’t happen often.” Erim avoids her eyes.
The gears in Sloane’s mind are already on overdrive. She doesn’t need help reaching the unavoidable conclusion. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she whispers.
“You sure you don’t want to sit back down?”
“No! Stop that!” He blinks at her. She hadn’t meant to yell; it just came out that way. She groans, clapping her hand over her forehead. “Sorry.” She lowers herself back down into the hammock as atonement.
“Oh, don’t apologize to me.” He waves it away, shaking his head. “You’re actually handling this quite gracefully.”
Sloane snorts at Erim’s usage of her and the word “graceful” in the same sentence. But she appreciates the sentiment. They sit in silence for a moment. Sloane rubs the fabric of the hammock between her fingers, identifying the bumps of the woven strands. “Why am I here, Erim?” Sloane knows he doesn’t have an answer, be she doesn’t know what else to say.
He sits in a hammock across from her, setting it off into a gentle swing. “I don’t know.” He looks down at his hands.
Sloane appreciates his honesty, that he doesn’t sugarcoat it. A grin breaks out on her lips. “Just a meaningless mistake then?” It wouldn’t be the first time for Sloane.
“Or a very meaningful mistake.” Erim searches for her gaze, and she gives it to him. “It doesn’t matter that you weren’t expected. You have a part to play in the truest plan, even if we can’t see it yet.” Sloane stares at him, wordless and thoughtless. More inky hair has fallen into his face. He notices it with her watching him. He swipes it off his forehead, and his eyes dart away.
“Maybe you’re not as bad at this as you think,” Sloane says softly.
“Oh, just give me time.” Erim laughs shortly. “It’s a wonder I’m still employed at all.” Sloane pulls her eyes away, and Erim clears his throat, trying to regain his solemnity. “I know it’s a lot of information to process.” He carefully leaves the hammock.
An elderly man rushes up, sweaty and anxious. He pulls at the collar of his sweater like it’s choking him. “Erim, you’re needed immediately.” His voice is timid.
“I’ll find you when I’m finished here, Albert,” Erim assures him. Albert doesn’t move, clearly unable to accept that as an answer.
“Go ahead,” Sloane says. “And I’ll speak to Ches. Don’t say anything.”
Erim turns to leave, then hesitates. “You did the best you could to save him.”
“Well, I didn’t, did I?” Sloane feels the bitterness soaking her voice. Erim’s mouth tightens, but his eyes remain soft. He leaves her, and Nim trots after him.
As soon as they are out of sight, Sloane pulls her feet out of her shoes and socks, spreading her toes through the grass. Her body has settled: no flare of anxiety, breathing is steady, and her ears aren’t being battered with noise anymore. The grass is cool and soft under her feet and might have tickled if she weren’t feeling so numb. She draws her feet up into the hammock and lays hugging her knees to her chest, curling into the tiniest shape she can manage.
QUATTUOR
As Erim walks through the trees, he replays the entire encounter over in his mind. It always takes him a while to come down from the nervous high of an intake. This one was particularly delicate, and he reflects on his performance as clumsy, which is typical. Talking less would help. The primary aim is to calm the soul, but Erim’s version of lightness makes him seem oblivious to the gravity of the transition. Being both settling and understanding should be something simple, but he’s never gotten it quite right.
Sloane’s face the first time she saw him is still imprinted in his head. The color of her hair as she spun around was the fieriest shade of russet. Surprise raced through her expression so fast he might have imagined it, replaced in a second by ferocity. The instant her eyes locked onto him, her body morphed, repositioning to protect Chester. The movement was so calculated and decisive, Erim thought for an instant that Sloane was the boy’s mother. But when she squared her face towards him, Erim could see she was too young. He’s convinced that she startled him more than he had her. As if making that stellar first impression wasn’t enough, Erim’s words didn’t exactly instill confidence. He just babbled about nonsense and even accidentally threatened her with Nim. Sloane was rightfully defensive. Erim probably seemed like a crazy person.
He meant it when he told her she was handling everything well. She didn’t really follow any of the typical reaction trajectories. People usually cry; some cling to denial. A rare few will lash out with furious violence. Those cases are actually the easiest for Erim to deal with, even if it’s only happened a few times. He’s able to physically restrain most anyone, and then it’s just a matter of waiting out the fit of blind rage. But, had Sloane chosen that particular path, Erim thinks that she would have been uniquely challenging to subdue. He’s not sure it would even be possible with Chester part of her equation.
The souls who cry and sob are the worst for Erim. He’s never able to say the right thing. No words feel like enough. That’s when he feels the most ineffective. Erim’s lucky Sloane didn’t react that way either. It would have been especially complicated to find words appropriate for her unusual situation: not dead, but not alive, and not meant to be in a place where everyone’s supposed to belong. She seems uncommon in more ways than one.
Ben approaches him along the watery path, just in time to highlight his ineptitude. Her purple hair is pulled back messily, her legs wrapped in her favorite fishnets and torn-up black shorts. She’s wearing another obscene t-shirt, but at least this one doesn’t have readable profanity. Erim supposes the giant middle f
inger image might mean nothing yet to the younger children. Ben’s holding the daily intake clipboard in one hand, clearly looking for an Erim to dump it on. “Hey Numbnuts, Dmitri forgot to give this to you.” She tosses it to him and wipes her hands on her shirt, like the responsibility of it is going to make her break out in a rash. “How was your intake?”
“Oh, it was great. I love feeling inadequate at my job.”
“Along with everything else?” Ben grins. “Dmitri’s convinced you’ll get better at them if you just keep practicing, but he’ll learn.” She chomps on her gum.
“She’s astray.” Erim records Sloane on the list, just realizing that he didn’t get her full name. “I’m stopping by the Medium Hall, and then I’m going to tell Somboon.”
Ben raises her eyebrows. “Isn’t he the one who did the eviction?”
“Apparently, none of the Arcs got the call.” Erim’s jaw shifts uneasily.
“Cool, didn’t know that was possible.” Ben leans over to peek at Sloane’s name on the paper. Erim shoots her a look that tells her no, it’s not cool.
“Right, no, of course not.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m much cooler.” She bends down to scratch Nim right down the spine, just how she likes. Nim purrs in euphoria. She’s always loved Ben; they share a ubiquitous irritation towards the general population.
Interitum Page 4
