Offers My Hand

Mother always said I was destined to be married. I wish she could be here to meet you, I know she would have approved. A proper English gentlemen.

I lace my fingers in yours and stare at the simple rings we both wear. You may not have been happy about the wedding planning, cold and detached even, but how the heat of my skin warms your body now. The music working its crescendo in uninhabited heartbeats and razor blade teeth. I see perfection in your Milky Way eyes and absent limbal rings. I close my eyes and hear your voice, each syllable a volcano, erupting paradigms in my ear.

A violin plays in the background, the strings like the sinew between your bones. Amber lights flood through stained glass windows, refractions animate your monochromatic corpse. My black dress caresses the wooden floor of this church as I twirl around you. Its velvet ink billows like smoke, and the dust I kick up dances with me. Fingerless piano players, always missing C sharp.

I make my way down empty pews, thanking our guests for attending our union. Their imaginary smiles and handshakes of congratulations fill me with elation. I spent countless nights creating each guest, complete with ruffles and lace. In the midnight hours my only real company was the spiders, spinning their silken webs of envy. I tried making them tiny hats and ball gowns, but these were fickle creatures. They would attend simply in their Sunday best.

As I dance my way back up the church floor I see you sitting there, all alone, but happy. Ignoring the pleas to sit and chat. I take my seat beside you. I rest my head on your shoulder and bring your hand up to my lips. “Oh darling,” I whisper, “just a little more time, one more dance with our guests.” I place your arm back by your side, smoothing out your cravat. I straighten the top hat I picked out for you this morning and push the corners of your mouth up, trying to create a smile.

Walking up to the front pew I grab Mr. Blakesly’s makeshift hand and pull him to me for a dance. He’s been a nuisance, these three days past. We try to move in unison but his straw filled head isn’t staying upright and I keep tripping over his feet. I tried to fit his scarecrow body into my beloved’s clothes, but I had made our guests too small by comparison.

“Really Mr. Blakesly, is this the first time you’ve danced with a lady?” I scoff and smile at you from over his shoulder. Your head is tilted to the side in what I take as amusement. You were never much of a dancer. I try to twirl us around but my dress is getting caught in your stuffing and my arms are tired and sore. I let Mr. Blakesly find his own way back to his seat.

I flutter in feverish heat across the church, finally having a moment to acknowledge each and every guest. I comment on Mrs. Winter’s Brussel Lace. A gift from my cousin in Essex. Your lips are forming a thin, hard line. I’ve been so caught up in attending our guests, I haven’t offered you any food.

I offer you a plate of meats and cheese but you continue staring off into the void. “It’s quite good you know, the spiders even ate from this very plate. See here, see where their tiny mouths feasted?” I sigh in defeat, not even a single glance since I sat down. “Are you mad at me for dancing with Mr. Blakesly? He’s just a lonely, old man. His wife died last year I think.” My voice drifts off into the very space your eyes are consuming. The hours have again ticked by and the amber lights have turned silver.

The moon is bathing me in its mercury aurora by the time I’ve had my fill of food and guests. Masks and ball gowns are lucid moments in repartee. There are uninvited guests here, I see them sticking to the shadows.

It’s ok, we’re all vampires tonight.

I’m drunk on happiness and tired from the weight of our guests. Conversations that brought joyful smiles just hours before are now exhausting and labored. You’re lying on your side, limp in the throes of REM sleep, I’m sure. A cat nap, what a pleasant idea! My heart races as I curl my body up around yours. I sweep my arm in front of us and whisper in your ear. “Isn’t it so lovely all our family and friends could make it, my love?” I nuzzle your neck and the beautiful coldness that is your skin takes away my fever.

This fever came on months ago. Perhaps it was only weeks, but it’s so hard keeping track of time. I blame it on the stress of planning our wedding. Our families long since passed. You stopped helping me shortly after the fever came on, damn fine timing on your part, if you ask me.

My eyes are beautiful and glassy, filled with the stars of the night sky. My skin is alabaster white, but my cheeks are flushed without any rouge.The looking glass can’t hide the truth. With what seems like every passing day my corset is cinched tighter and tighter. I’m the envy of the town. I’ve heard their whispers behind gloved hands. A porcelain doll walking down London streets.

I try several attempts to get you to stand, but you’re too tired. I struggle, and as the room starts to spin with my effort, I’ve finally gotten you on your feet. Your body moves with mine as we make our way across the floor, your feet dragging behind you, your head lovingly resting on my chest. I lean down, my lips against your ear; “I knew you would be a wonderful dancer, husband.” I whisper, as the hours tick by. “It’s easier to dance once rigor mortis sets in.”

Written by: Tiffany Melanson

Photograph by: Erin Notarthomas

Illusion

We smoke for the first time together in her attic apartment, the ceiling unfinished, hidden by tapestries that meet at a point in the center. One is pale purple and patterned with flowers. Another holds colors of a sunset.

She packs the glass bowl, and hands it to me. When she says the word, “Greens,” I watch her mouth open to reveal her teeth, and it looks more genuine than the smile I saw back at the bar.

“I never—” I say, and she adjusts my hands, and lowers the flame in front of me. I take a deep breath and cough and she laughs as the small amount of smoke I’d taken in fills the space between us.

I can’t stop myself from kissing her again, this time with tongues and teeth, which clink together like our wine glasses just an hour or so before.

I met Prue at a place called Gypsy’s.

She pointed to women dressed in thick petticoats, brocade blooms patterning the fabric. She told me they called themselves sisters of the sun, homemade henna tattoos on their arms to prove it.

“You have to meet the fortune teller,” she said, pulling me to a table near the back of the bar.

I waited in line while she drank more wine, staining her lips a deep red. I wanted to kiss her an infinite amount of times, but I didn’t tell her this. Instead I kissed her once, and proceeded to the table.

“You are faithful, a loyal man, true. But you see the colors, too,” the fortune teller said, tracing the lines of my palm. I wondered how they were visible beneath my callouses; if she knew I was a painter. I said nothing, just nodded and tipped her and walked back to Prue, who gave me her hand. I traced it the same way the fortune teller did without seeing anything but her in front of me.

She said, “Follow me.” And I did.

Prue kissed me from one street corner to the next until we reached her place.

Now, when she smokes, she seems to fall back against the world, and as I take another hit, I wait to feel the same thing. But I find myself distracted by the way the bowl gleams beneath the lights on the ceiling, so purple and pure and pulsing when I squint just right.

“The lights,” I say, because I can’t say anything else. I don’t know how to explain that the lights look more alive than I feel because maybe they are alive and I’m just here; an illusion.

“I strung them myself,” she says. And I kiss her for the lights, and the moment. I can’t remember ever feeling the world in such a monumental way.

She offers me another hit, holding the bowl in front of me, letting me go slow.

“You see the fortune teller,” I say.

“Where?” Prue asks. I trace the outline of the purple flowers on the tapestry above.

We find other shapes on the tapestry, too, like we’re cloud gazing, but the ceiling is the sky, and after a while, my eyes feel heavy, and I sink into the floor, falling back against the world.

                                                                                                    ***

The first few weeks together exist in a black hole; time tentative and unreal. At my place, Prue runs her hands over the half-finished people who live within my sketchbook.

She dips her finger in a bit of blue, same as the spring sky. She paints points on blank pages. “The mountains,” she says. “They’re calling me.”

“I’ve never been,” I say, my brush in the blue, letting it puddle just so beneath her eyes.

She explains time in the mountains changes people. “But I know I’ll never go,” she says. The words are clipped, as if she's cut her hopes before they feel too real. Her eyes wander, reveal her gypsy soul within that bathetic body; an unmoving juxtaposition between want and need.

I paint Prue with perfect lips, covering the canvas with her arms and covering those in small swirls, which remind me of the sun and our first date and the beginning of everything.

“What’s your favorite season?” I ask. “For the background, you know?” I try to imagine the color scheme she’ll choose before she says it, but I can’t.

“The In-Between. That’s what I love,” she says. “One sprout through frozen ground, not quite thawed. Dandelion snow. The just-there-crisp as the first leaves fall; days disappearing,” she says.

When I finish, Prue looks at my work, stares at herself, and the faint hint of mountains beyond. I wonder if she recognizes this version, almost sad. She kisses my hands despite the paint, and I think she understands; I know her.

                                                                                                    ***

Most nights we sleep and smoke beneath my painting of Prue, her acrylic eyes protecting us from the world. I kiss my Prue and see her in shades of yellow: butter and daisies and faded henna and honey. I don’t remember when I start to see her this way, until one day, her jaundiced skin is all I see.

                                                                                                    ***

Prue sleeps and sleeps and never wakes. I’m not sure where she goes, but when I look at her, I feel trapped in the sun’s rays, eyes blinded. Sometimes it hurts too much to look at her, so instead I kiss her, and ask if she believes in the future. When she doesn’t answer, I roll a joint with thin sketch paper from the book she bought me for my birthday. While she sleeps, I smoke, and I wait for everything else to disappear.

                                                                                                    ***

One month later, Prue disappears.

They take her body and leave me with her painting. And for days after, I paint her. I surround her with pale purple flowers, eyes clouded with something I could never see.

I pack her few belongings from the attic apartment, and bring them back to my place. I take each of the tapestries, and the purple lights, which burn out.

                                                                                                    ***

I’m arrested outside her building.

The officer waits until I finish the henna lines on Prue’s arms, which I’ve painted on the side of the building.

She exists for everyone now, the brick bleeding through her skin. Her lips are dark red and everything else is pale and pure and if I squint just right, she starts to fade at the edges; only a ghost.

                                                                                                    ***

I’m released the next day, and I return to her building because I need to see her.

From the alley, I smell fresh paint.

Prue isn’t here.

Painted over.

Disappeared.


Written by: Kayla King
Photograph by: Tiffany Melanson

Edie's Reflection

It rained all day Friday through most of the morning on Saturday, finally turning into a slow drizzle that had ceased by early afternoon. Edie had spent most of her Saturday morning with her forehead pressed against the window, staring at the world through rain droplets running down the other side of the glass and watching her breath fog up the surface.

“If you’re bored, you could always read a book or play with some of your toys,” her mother called from the office down the hall. Edie didn’t respond. Not purposefully, but because she didn’t hear her mother when she called. She was too busy focusing on each individual rain drop that hit the window pane and joined the many rivulets cascading down the glass. She wasn’t bored. There was too much excitement and wonder right in front of her. Rain had to be one of her favorite things in the world. A close second was the world outside after a good long rain.

When the rain did stop, she didn’t hesitate for a second. She ran for the door, reached up for the knob and pulled it open, only stopping to heed her mother’s words to put on her rain jacket and boots.

When she stepped outside the whole world smelled new and fresh, like the laundry her mother would pull out of the dryer and put in the hamper. Sometimes, when her mother wasn’t looking, Edie would jump into the hamper and feel the warmth of the freshly dried clothes and breathe in those clean smells.

The green grass of Edie’s front yard had turned into a bit of a mess. She stomped through puddles of dirty water. Bloated bodies of earthworms had floated to the tops of the puddles and Edie did her best to avoid those ones. She made her way to the sidewalk and looked up. A blanket of light grey clouds covered the sky. There were little slivers in the blanket where the sun did its best to peek through and shine down onto the earth.

One of the slivers of sun shone down onto the street corner next to her home. Edie and her family lived on the corner of 11th and Spring Street in a neighborhood that mostly consisted of older couples without children. Most of Edie’s parents’ friends wondered if Edie was ever restless or lonely living on a street with no children. Edie always thought it was a strange question. Then again, she never really liked being around other children very much to begin with.

She skipped to the street corner and stopped in her tracks when she looked down and was greeted by a mirror image staring up at her. The corner of the sidewalk had cracked and caved a while ago. Edie always had to be careful running around this corner. She’d tripped and fallen on the jutting sidewalk before, scraping her palms and cutting her knee. Today, the rain had filled up the space to make a little pool. There was something about this puddle that was very different from the puddles in her front yard. The reflection was practically crystal clear.

She crouched down and examined herself in the pool of water. The reflection was so strong, she could barely see the sidewalk and dirt beneath it. She could see the green street signs for 11th and Spring behind her, except in the pool, the sign read Gnirps instead. This struck Edie as odd. Why was the G capitalized in the reflection? She looked up at the sign above her. Only the S was capitalized. She looked back down, noticing that her reflection was still looking up at the sign. She let out a little gasp, and her reflection looked back at her with a casual expression.

Edie sat still and studied her reflection in the pool, doing her best not to blink. She didn’t want to miss a thing. The reflection stared back at her. She tried to get it to do something else by catching it off guard. She would move her head back and forth, stick out her tongue, or jump around in circles, but the reflection did the exact same things that she did. She grumbled to herself, knowing perfectly well that she had seen something extraordinary, but was unable to recreate that magical event. It almost looked as if the mirror image wore a smug expression of victory.

Edie wondered about what this discovery could possibly mean. Had she found some parallel universe right beneath her feet? Had it always been there, and she was present for the freak accident that brought the two worlds together? Had it wanted to be found? How far did that world underneath her go? How would she get there? Was it as easy as stepping into the puddle? Would she even want to visit?

Eventually, Edie’s curiosity got the best of her and she stretched out her arm and lowered it slowly to the pool. Her mirror self followed. Her palm and fingertips touched the surface of the pool. She flinched. She didn’t feel the cold, wet surface of a puddle. What she felt was another palm touching hers. She remained shocked and frozen for a moment, wondering what she should do next. Her reflection watched her. The other Edie had a much more menacing expression on its face, an expression that seemed to dare Edie to pull her hand away. In the distance, Edie heard her mother call out for her.

Edie hesitated for one moment more, then pulled her hand away from the puddle. The reflection’s hand shot up from the pool and grabbed her wrist. Edie opened up her mouth but no scream came out as the reflection’s grip tightened on her wrist. The reflection grinned. Edie pulled back with as much strength as she could muster and broke free. She fell to the ground a couple of feet away from the puddle. The hand shrank back into the water and disappeared under the surface. She got up and ran to the house as fast as she could. When her mother asked what was wrong, Edie lied and said she’d tripped on a sidewalk crack. She never went outside after a rainstorm after that day.

Written by: Quentin Norris

Photograph by: Tiffany Melanson