Short Stories

The pain of a reverie gone sour in your mouth, a dream that you no longer recall to help you drift into sleep but rather a shudder of cold recollection through your spine. Brief moments pass by you that remind you of a version of yourself you used to be, the version shaped like the finish line. Your goal is to write the simplest of explanations on a piece of printer paper. Keeping details light and filling the space to the brim with pointed language that paints pictures more kind than the reality they portend to portray. Lies wrapped around Rayleigh’s mind gripping and worming together images that fit reality but don’t give much information to these officers. She understands their authority while also understanding her ability to right a ship pushed off course that has still yet to collide with the rocky shore.

 

Things didn’t feel over when she said goodbye to Riquint in a way that she couldn’t express to either officer that stand between her and the exit to the four walled, cement dungeon-like interrogation room. Both officers had made comments in passing to make it clear to her that she wasn’t a suspect but rather the other rooms are occupied by victim’s families. The stockier man had said it in a matter of fact way that let Ray know he held the nature of his work, investigating people like Ray, at arm’s length. This was in stark opposition to the way that the slender and flamingo-like officer, presumably the man’s partner for at least this case, approached Ray. He had clear contempt for her, visibly upset to have to inform her about the other, occupied rooms current uses.

 

Ray shudders at the thought of either officer knowing any of the victims, feeling instant shame wash over her like a prickly, hot wave that drops the bottom out of her stomach. That feeling in your stomach that happens at the top of a roller coaster incline that’s impossible to replicate in any regular, none adrenaline raising scenario. A gust of chill air washes over Ray’s arms, exposed because she’s wearing a t-shirt with sleeves ending right above her elbows. She hates this shirt but it’s one that she took from the slender officer before changing in the station bathroom, her own placed into what she assumed was an evidence bag. The officer chose not to say much to her, which further informed her sense that he knew people involved and simply had to deal with her for the time being due to jurisdiction.

 

Visible goosebumps raise on Ray’s arms and she crosses them over her midsection, almost embarrassed to be cold given the circumstances. Her mind keeps jumping to cameras, are there any in this room, in the corners or hidden in some object. She’d watched interrogation videos in her training and felt like the camera angles gave away the hidden aspect of the filming, like the footage being surrounded in harsh, fuzzy borders as if the lens is pointed from within another object. It never seemed like the participants, officers or citizens, had awareness of the cameras existence let alone being filmed. Despite these weird angles Ray always thought that the rooms contained hidden microphones closer to the subjects due to the crisp audio quality. It gave the footage an immersive feeling, picking up the smallest of shuffles of the interrogators and the prisoners they interrogated.

Cotton candy pink and artificial raspberry blue starting to fill the sky, dancing together while the light fractures through the clouds, smoke rising into the air around me. My chin lifting without my command or conscious acknowledgement, the sky filling so quickly started to disrupt my view, if only I could become taller or higher to see over. I can feel that I am not meant to see this but that thought feels distant and deep, the ones on the surface about breathtaking beauty.

 

Elements with names I have never heard before mix together so beautifully I forgot why this is happening, the chemicals and the explosion now something separate from this view. I need to breath, I need to remember why—I suck in air that isn’t air at all. Charred oxygen and ash sucked into my throat and down into my lungs. The smoke is tangible inside of my body, dancing among the capillaries with brutal clarity of it’s purpose. I can feel my lungs screaming and wanting to separate what little oxygen is left in the air from this sedimentary like compound that is now floating visibly and otherwise.

 

Already flared nostrils automatically suck in scorching burn that instantly turns my previously mucus coated nostrils to desert dry wastelands, chemically damaged beyond use. My nose rejects the air along with my lungs, stomach seared with pain that doubles me over. I read about fibrous smoke in textbooks but what to do or how to survive doesn’t exist in my brain at the present. I’m here and I’m nowhere at the same time, observing myself and experiencing this all at once, I hope it isn’t a side effect of the gaseous explosion.

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 Nostrils and eyes now coated in grit of dead skin and chemical sediment they are of no use, eyes now clenching shut in attempts to protect them. Tears start streaming out of my closed eyelids, burning my damaged skin with the salinity. Now bent in half clutching at my organs that are trying to survive this assault of force, combustion, and body altering chemicals.

 

Even if I could use my eyes to take in another look of the sunset I can no longer open them and doubt with the heaviness of the air now that it would even be visible through this smog. I can imagine the pinks are now reds and oranges, ominous rather than soothing. Seeing them wouldn’t make a difference now, I can’t imagine caring about a sunset ever again.

    Lack of oxygen or breathable air restricts my lungs, clawing at them like a demon crawling out of the pits of hell, knowing I need to stop myself from sucking in more but my automatic reactions trying to take over and keep me alive.

 

Consciousness is now like a sand filled hour glass, the center like a drain beneath me and all of it slipping out one grain at a time. Painfully slow and fast, the feeling of observing is only increasing, like I’m now levitating above myself but I’m unable to imagine what it actually looks like or how to use that to escape. The grains fall out faster than I can replace them, edges darkening and cinching closed. Everything stops in an instant, just stops and explodes into nothing darkness.

Boots clacked against the wet pavement one after the other, in rhythm moving forward, click-thwack, click-thwack, faster than a normal gait. The cold smacked against her face but she’d stopped feeling her cheeks over 4 blocks ago, keeping eyes down and body tilted forward to brace against the late night wind. The front of her legs had gone numb around the same time as her cheeks and she couldn’t feel the tear in her tights that ran up the right leg starting at the ankle at the top of her boots. The chunky heels made a hollow sound when they hit the freshly rained on pavement, echoing down the perpendicular streets as she passed. She’s given up the sidewalk long ago, opting for the gutter after falling off several times, unable to walk in a straight path.

 

She’d ripped her tights when she rolled her ankle falling off the curb the last time. She got so knocked so off balance despite the short fall to the street that she almost fell right over, tripping even further into the street before she caught herself. She felt thankful for her intoxication because she didn’t feel it yet, the inevitable bruises forming on her knees, the torn sleeve on the borrowed shirt, the fabric skirt that had managed to stay spandex tight even after everything, or the rolled ankle becoming swollen in her boot as she continued forward. A location didn’t necessarily matter, she’d lost her way back to the spot over 10 minutes ago and now slugged along in a multi-block wide semi-circle passing unfamiliar landmarks that didn’t help orient her. The world around her looked similar and familiar but foreign to her in a way that left her utterly lost. She adjusted her tight grip around her middle, holding the thin jacket closed, too small to zip up.

 

It feels almost so useless she laughs but even the thin layer between her and the freezing winter temperature is better than the wind whipping against her bare arms. She knew that leaving before buses or even humans started traveling the city presented risks but this immediately became a bad idea. She gave up trying to get home and only attempted to find the house she’d just come from, nestled between 2 taller buildings on a city block further outside of downtown than inside of it. It looked like the last holdout was actually a mid-2000’s built square monstrosity lacking in beauty for the utilization of space, chopped into 8 different apartment suites that connected to a main living area and 3 bathrooms to share. She didn’t know much of that at the time however, only that the bed she’d left presented a warm spot to rest while she sobered up.

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Suddenly she sees grass rubbed down to the mud beneath it like someone slipped in it, still wet from the rain and disturbance. A sense of dread flood her, welling up from within her like acrid vomit singing her throat in toxic bile, except it isn’t just a sense—it is actual vomit. Using the back of her hand she wipes the edges of her mouth and then goes to wipe that hand on her thigh, but it slides into mud rather than skirt or tights. Coughing she tries to clear her throat and blink the water from her eyes while holding her hand out, not wanting to further spread the mud. The walkway up to the house had a raised section with more grass halfway up a full story-length staircase that was twice as steep. The mud made more sense when she touched the railing, the thought of reaching for it and the feeling of it in her palm shooting back like an unwelcome boomerang from what couldn’t have been more than 2 hours prior.

To understand what I’m talking about you’ll have to accept 2 truths and 1 fact, that nothing I say could’ve changed anything, that you have to accept the reality of a situation, and that by becoming a monster you can change both. I wanted to feel what they were talking about, to feel the warm blood of revenge falling down my wrist and off of the end of my elbow, hand raised to my face to stop the bleeding from the cut. I thought if I just stopped all of the questioning about it—if I just did it. If I just added that last ingredient, that last binding, maybe just maybe I could be one of the winners also. 

 

The world felt like it stopped as the drops rushed down off of me and towards the floor, pulled by gravity. Something reached back, I swear it, reached back towards the top of whatever this is, and wanted to pull something back with it. Wanted us to see it do it, just because it could, and to witness it. I wished I could suck my blood back into my body as simply as pressing the rewind button, spinning the wheels of time in reverse. The regret welled up instantly, acidic in my throat and burning my vocal chords, causing me to cough and fall forward, catching myself on the chalk sigil beneath me with my hands, crashing forward.

 

I want to apologize in advance, if I’d known what I know now I wouldn’t have made the cut, said the words, or yelled the name. I wouldn’t have done anything but take my black ass home. The once cement cellar floor felt like it turned to shaking and rocking rubble rocks and began to wave with the vibration of the pulsating gravel.

 

I have to get it out of my head. It gnaws and grinds away like a broken, misshapen record being eternally scratched by an old record needle. Like the record it goes around and round, lopsided with moments the song almost plays normal right up until the next part of the record is scratched to release the dysfunctional sound of 2 broken machines attempting to complete their tasks in spite of one another. Maybe it’s a worm, withering down into the rotten core of an apple, completing a process of returning nutrients to the soil—screech—there it is again.

 

The worms we learned about, the shoeboxes full of black paper and tin foil to try and melt a s’mores, the field days and carnivals, the fluidity of it all I took for granted. But it’s that time, that period that gnaws away, the before is peaceful and the after is chaos but somehow even the chaos isn’t as vivid in my mind as that period. Screech—I can feel my back cinch together like a slinky put to rest, losing half of it’s height in one sharp movement like that of an animated cartoon villain crushed from above by some heavy object with a tail of smoke trailing after it as it lands. I don’t want to go there yet I can’t escape it.

 

The weight of regret and sorrow is heavy with the air of confusion. It feels like everything happened and didn’t happen in just a few short years. I start to worry that my memory tape is full of only this footage that will play over and over again. I just want it out of my head—it can live in the casket with this bag next to this empty bottle of bleach covered in my fingerprints.