***

  I am the wolf who dreams in dreams. Freedom is the forest, with my brothers, hunting under the moon.

  But I am tied to the world with a gossamer thread, spun by those who would keep me here. I am called from the dreaming to dance and heal.

  “Where are my brothers?” I cry. I am sick, and in the dreaming the wolves leave the forest, following the reindeer. I am abandoned, a captive of my own heart.

  In desperation I descend the thread, bite it through and fall into the forest. My brothers return to heal me. We sleep beneath the trees, and hunt under the moon.

  *****

  Rosalie Parker runs Tartarus Press with R.B. Russell. Her short stories have appeared in Best New Horror, Best British Horror, Shadows and Tall Trees and Supernatural Tales. Her two collections of short stories are The Old Knowledge (Swan River Press) and Damage (PS Publishing). Rosalie also makes films and writes film scripts.

  HERE, ONLY SORROW

  DAMIEN ANGELICA WALTERS

  Four days after we buried Lucas, Aidan came to me, eyelids red and swollen. “Half of me is gone, Mama,” he said, pointing to his abdomen.

  I saw nothing save his Paw Patrol shirt, but I understood. “I miss him, too.”

  “Is part of you gone?”

  “Yes,” I said, touching my chest. “Here. It feels like a great big hole inside me.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “More than almost anything,” I said, holding out my arms.

  We sat together in the window seat, which now seemed far too big for only two, and watched birds pause at the feeders in the back yard and then take flight. Would that we could escape as easily.

  “Will it ever go away?” he said.

  “One day it won’t hurt as much.” The words tasted like lies, like a story you tell yourself when you can’t bear the truth.

  “Will you forget him?”

  “No, no, never think that. We won’t ever forget him. Not ever. Part of him will always be with us.”

  “Do you think Lucas hurts, too?”

  Grief overwhelmed my voice, but he waited patiently.

  “No, honey, he doesn’t hurt,” I said.

  Aidan picked at the skin around his fingernails and even when I cupped my hands over his, his fingers strained toward each other. My own bore the same ragged evidence of the habit. At night, unable to sleep, I’d pick until the blood flowed and wake in the morning with dots speckling my pillow case and sheets.

  Two fat squirrels approached the feeder and began chittering to each other. I caught sight of Aidan’s reflection in the window and for a moment, I had two sons again. Two perfect, identical sons. I reached for the second, to bring him closer, but met cold delusion instead of real warmth. Aidan shifted on my lap, and his weight was wrong, insufficient.

  “Do you want to watch a movie?” I spoke softly, but tension gripped my shoulders.

  He nodded, slipping from my lap before I finished asking the question. Of late, he’d been spending countless hours on the sofa while one movie or another droned on, usually at my suggestion. It was the sound I craved; the audible difference between two children and one was brutally apparent. The movies provided a smokescreen. I needed to get him out of the house, take him for a walk – but not to the playground with the monkey bars. Never again there – but although my mind knew such things, my body wanted no part. I couldn’t be outside, pretending normalcy.

  From the sofa, Aidan asked, “Can I have Avengers?”

  He was slouched as low as he could go without folding in two, bent legs flopped out to the sides. Lucas always sat perched on the edge of the cushion, rocking slightly back and forth from time to time.

  With the movie playing and a juice box and bowl of goldfish crackers within Aidan’s grasp, I ghosted through the first floor, wiping imaginary crumbs from the kitchen counters and picking up invisible bits of lint from the carpet. I slipped upstairs with the same intent, but found myself in the doorway of the boys’ room.

  Strange how something so familiar could feel so alien, so wrong. The room held matching twin beds, nightstands, dressers; the rug in between, a landscape of roads. Posters adorned the pale green walls – Thor on Aidan’s side, Iron Man on Lucas’s. Lucas’s bed was half-made, a corner of his Marvel comforter folded open as though, ten days later, the bed was still waiting for him to climb in. His treasure box, something he’d made at day care out of wood blocks, paint, and glue, sat atop his dresser. His stuffed hippo sat beside the pillow. His red light-up shoes were neatly placed on the floor at the foot of the bed; Aidan’s, in blue, at the foot of his.

  I’d been avoiding looking at Lucas’s side of the room and couldn’t imagine how difficult it was for Aidan. Should I remove Lucas’s things? His furniture? Would that make it easier or harder? If I slitted my eyes, I could almost see Lucas sitting on his bed, occasionally tugging his hair, the little tic he’d had since he had hair to tug.

  When they were babies, I often dressed them alike as expected, but I’d done less and less as the years went on. I’d often wondered which one would be the first to want his own space, to take me aside and ask if he could move into the guest room. Now I pinched the delicate inside of my lower lip between my teeth to keep from screaming.

  A scrap of red stuck out from beneath Lucas’s pillow and I crossed the room before I could stop myself. Wadded into a flattened ball, his favorite Iron Man shirt. I lifted it to my nose and breathed him in. My knees weakened and I steadied myself with a palm to the wall. Inhaled again. My boy. My baby boy.

  One day the shirt wouldn’t smell like him. One day I’d forget his smell completely.

  “Mama?”

  I startled and spun around, warmth flooding my cheeks.

  “Do you think Lucas would be mad if I played with his toys?”

  “No,” I managed. “Of course he wouldn’t.”

  He disappeared downstairs, his feet bare whispers on the carpeted treads. I folded the shirt into a square and returned it beneath the pillow.

  That night, I noticed that Aidan had moved Lucas’s stuffed hippo to his own bed, snugged it next to his stuffed giraffe. I didn’t say a word, just kissed his head and pulled the covers tight. He didn’t ask for a bedtime story, nor did I offer one.

  In my own room, I propped the pillows behind me and opened a book. After I’d read the same page three times without comprehending one word, I rummaged through my nightstand drawer for the amber plastic bottle of pills my mom tucked into my pocket at the funeral home. Half of one at night to help you sleep, she’d whispered.

  I rolled a pill between finger and thumb, digging my nail into the score mark where the oval would split. What I truly wanted was to sleep for a month. Or a year. However long it would take so it wouldn’t hurt so fucking much. Maybe I should ask my parents to take Aidan for a few days. It might do us both a world of good. If they couldn’t, I could ask my ex in-laws; though I couldn’t count on my ex-husband, I had a decent relationship with them. It would only take one phone call. Neither set was the sort to push their way into my life or to show up without calling.

  I dry swallowed the whole pill. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’d take Aidan for a stroll around the block at least. Maybe that would help. But in the morning, a storm blew in, taking the decision out of my hands. I told myself I was disappointed, but it was a lie. I was so foggy-headed from the pill that changing out of my pajamas and brushing my hair was unthinkable.

  After breakfast, Aidan surprised me by going upstairs to play. I sat on the sofa with a fleece throw over my lap and flipped through endless television channels. By noon, most of the haze in my brain had cleared somewhat and I went upstairs to take a shower.

  The boys’ door was shut and from behind, there was movement and whispers.

  “Kiddo?” I rapped on the door with my knuckles and turned the knob, but feet thumped across the floor and the door pushed shut from the inside before it could open more than an inch.

  “No, Mama, you can’t come in. I’m playing a game.”

  “I can’t come in?”

  “No, not right now.”

  I crossed my arms beneath my breasts. “Okay. I’m going to take a quick shower and after, I’ll make you some mac and cheese?”

  “Okay.”

  I thought I heard a giggle and bitterness scalded my tongue. His brother was in a box beneath the ground. How could he laugh? How could he be happy? With my knuckles, I mashed my lips hard against my teeth. He was five years old. He was allowed to play.

  For the next few nights, I swore I wouldn’t take a pill, but I did. Aidan spent most of his time in their – in his – room alone. He descended for meals and movies and I wanted to say we spoke, but I knew we didn’t, not in the way it mattered. I told myself we both needed space, silence, to mourn. On the surface, it made sense.

  The night before trash pickup, I collected the discarded wads of still-damp tissue from my nightstand and carried everything outside. The air was warmer than I expected, and I stood on the porch with my elbows cupped in my palms. The sun was beginning to set and long shadows painted the lawn and the street. I suspected my heart looked similarly drawn. Behind me, the door creaked open, and Aidan slipped his hand in mine. Instinctively, I flexed the other, touching only empty air. I choked down a sob and when I could breathe again, I tried to give Aidan’s fingers a gentle squeeze, but he’d already gone inside.

  The next morning, he came downstairs wearing Lucas’s Iron Man shirt and his red light-up shoes. My spine stiffened and my freshly poured coffee sloshed over the rim of my mug. He had plenty of shirts of his own. Why did he need to wear Lucas’s? Now the smell would be all wrong. I wanted to tell him to change, but the words wouldn’t take shape. Blame – or thank – the pill.

  His smile was tremulous. I tried to return it, but the expression distorted my mouth and his chin quivered.

  “Today I’m Lucas, Mama,” he said.

  I forced my muscles to relax. It was only a shirt. It wouldn’t smell of Lucas forever, no matter whether Aidan wore it or not. “Okay, kiddo,” I said.

  “Not kiddo. Lu-cas.” He tugged his hair, as if to hammer home the idea, though his cuticles were scabbed and torn, breaking the illusion.

  The tension threatened to return, but I clenched my jaw. “Okay,” I said. “Okay…Lucas.”

  As soon as I spoke the name, I knew I shouldn’t have – it tasted of ashes and false hope – but he beamed. I turned away fast and spilled more coffee. Instead of sitting with him while he ate his cereal and an English muffin, I carried a load of laundry into the basement and stood beside the washing machine, letting the water rushing into the tub mask the sound of my tears.

  After he fell asleep that night, I crept into his room and took the shirt – which was now all Aidan and no Lucas – and the shoes and buried them in the bottom drawer of my dresser. I sat on the edge of my bed, spine painfully straight, fists tight, breathing through my nose.

  I wasn’t the only person in this family who’d lost someone. If wearing Lucas’s things and playing with his toys helped Aidan through his grief, I’d just have to deal with it. I was the fucking grown-up, after all.

  I took the shirt and shoes out of my drawer and padded into the boys’— to Aidan’s room. I stood by his bed and watched him sleep, the way I had when he was a baby. The steady rise and fall of his chest, the slightly parted lips, the subtle shifts beneath the blanket. I remember feeling so overwhelmed by the heat of love I’d feel weak at the knees. Now I felt nothing at all.

  It wasn’t until before dinner the next day that I noticed he was dressed in his own clothes. The following day, though, Iron Man and the red light-ups were back. I pretended not to see them, but I also made sure not to use his name so he wouldn’t try to correct me.

  Either the pill before bed, too many cups of coffee, or a lack of food left me disjointed and jittery, with an inescapable need to be out of the house. I pushed through it as long as I could but in the early afternoon, ready to rip off my skin, I said, “Hey, let’s go for a walk.”

  “Okay, Mama.”

  Whenever the three of us had walked, Lucas always took the right side, Aidan the left. He started on the left then moved to the right. “I forgot, I’m Lucas today.”

  It took all I had not to let go of him, but I angled my body slightly away. A few steps later, he let go, opting to run ahead, crouching here and there to inspect insects on the sidewalk. Once, he spoke off to the side, but his mouth moved without making a sound.

  As we left our cul-de-sac, I guided us to the right. Though it wasn’t far, the park where Lucas fell and struck his head wasn’t visible, but I didn’t even want to draw too close.

  “Mama, look!”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “No, look close.”

  Begrudgingly, I crouched, my left knee creaking on the way. On the pavement below, three ants were carrying a dead beetle five times their size. Occasionally it would tip over; the ants would carefully crawl beneath it and lift it once more. The muscles in my ankles protested, my thighs ached, but I stayed put. There was something fascinating in their dogged persistence in moving forward, yet part of me wanted to squish them beneath the sole of my shoe. How dare they make it seem so fucking easy?

  “Mama, how can they do that? Isn’t the bug too heavy?”

  “The bug is heavy, yes, but ants are very, very strong.”

  “Superhero strong?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  He tapped Iron Man. “I’m a superhero.”

  I nodded.

  “Superheroes always come back.”

  The sun was suddenly too bright, pricking my eyes with tiny little stabs of pain, and I stood up fast enough to make my head swim. “Listen, Aidan, I don’t feel so well, so let’s go home, okay?”

  “I’m not Aidan,” he said, running ahead again. “I’m Lucas, and I don’t want to go inside yet.”

  “That’s fine, then you can play out in the back yard.”

  “Nope. I want to play out here. We haven’t been outside in forever and I want to run on the sidewalk.”

  “Aidan, please. Come on.”

  “Not my name, Mama. Not today, ’member? I’m Lucas today. I’m Lucas.”

  My feet stomped on the pavement as I closed the distance between us. I grabbed his shoulders, brought my face level to his. “You are Aidan. Do you hear me? Lucas is gone. He’s dead, and he isn’t coming back.”

  I let him go, one hand floating up as though I could catch the razored words in the nets of my fingers, but it was too late, the damage released. He blinked in surprise, tears beginning to pool. I reached for him, but he recoiled. Panic slicking my mouth, I glanced up and down the sidewalk and panned the house fronts, praying no one was watching.

  “Aidan, I…” He began crying so hard he wasn’t making a sound, and I pressed fingertips to temples. “I’m sorry, I—”

  He ran in the direction of our house, not bothering to check if I was following or not. Although my knees griped at the effort, I caught up to him, but lingered a few steps behind and even when I unlocked the door and held it open, I couldn’t look at him.

  Once inside, I said, “Kiddo, I wasn’t feeling so well and I’m so sorry I yelled at you. It was a mistake, a big one. Will you forgive me?” I held out my arms, hoping for a hug I could believe was forgiveness, but he simply nodded and took to the stairs.

  I called him for dinner a few hours later, and, no longer in the Iron Man shirt and the light-ups, he acted like nothing had happened. But that was the first night I didn’t give him a kiss and a hug before bed, and the first time he didn’t ask for one.

  He was already in the living room, still in his Superman pajamas, watching Team Umizoomi when I got out of bed.

  “I’m sorry I slept so late,” I said.

  “It’s okay. I had some string cheese because I couldn’t reach the cereal.”

  My chest flushed with guilt. “How about if I make pancakes?”

  “Can I eat them out here?”

  “Sure.”

  There was just enough powdered mix and syrup for one and I added them to the growing list held with a magnet on the fridge.

  Aidan had moved to the small space between the sofa and the coffee table and he smiled as I set down his plate, though it was clear the expression wasn’t for me. He needed a haircut, yet another thing to add to the ever growing to-do list, because it was sticking up in porcupine quills, save one piece, shorter than the rest, that curved against his forehead. It had not been that way yesterday, of that I was sure.

  “Did you cut your hair?” I asked, keeping my tone as light as possible.

  Staring at his plate, he nodded.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I just wanted to.”

  Weren’t there people who cut off all their hair when a loved one passed, or was that something from a book I’d read? Maybe something I made up? My fingers twitched to smooth his hair, my lips to say something of comfort. Then he gave the shortened lock of hair a tug, and I tore a snippet of cuticle free, relishing the sting and the taste of blood. After he finished eating, he retreated into his room and while I rinsed his plate, I wished for two and fought the urge to take a pill and sleep the rest of the day.

  The hours passed like molasses in January, punctuated by lunch, the second Avengers movie, and dinner. When full dark descended, I paused by his closed bedroom door to let him know it was time for bed, but I heard muffled whispers, indistinct and vaguely conversational.

  “I’m going to bed,” I said, not waiting for an answer; he’d go to sleep when he was tired.

  In the morning, he once again donned Lucas’s Iron Man shirt and his light-ups, and once again, I pretended not to see. Safer for both of us. I spent the morning on the sofa, sipping coffee and flipping through old magazines, hating – and yet fascinated by – the artificially bright smiles peppering the advertisements.

  I was keenly aware when he sneaked down the steps and climbed on the sofa’s other end, settling on the edge of the seat, but didn’t glance up, merely nudged over the remote. Though he couldn’t operate the DVD player, he knew how to turn on the television.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18