Her body was weakening... The blood was betraying her. Screaming out of her from between desperate fingers and the thumb she hoped could plug the faucet. The shadow shrouded beast lunged from the fog and falling red leaves. Faster than her eyes could lead the firearm held tight in her other hand, the beast's dirty claw hooked under her collarbone and like a swine on a meat-hook, dragged her carelessly. It all happened so quickly that leaves were almost suspended in time, spinning in place before continuing to waft through air so thick that breathing felt like drinking.
She raked at the ground and stuffed a handful of dirt and leaves into the wound to slow the bleeding. With the sun cresting over the mountains and beginning to pierce the fog, she aimed the pearl-handled pistol at center body mass... Anything to stall time... But to no avail. The bullet passed lean through the creature without drawing any blood.
The beast released her in a clearing and she could feel all the eyes on her. Laying on the red, leafy underbrush and moist dirt it was hard to tell how much of it was the changing of the seasons versus the trail of blood she was surely leaving that painted the red carpet who her assailant was walking her down. She didn't even entertain the idea of rising to her feet. So there she lay, in the one spot illuminated by sunlight and in the receding fog, a pride of those beasts emerged. She was under no illusion that she was going to make it out. She didn't most times, but this time she was certain and for once she felt... free maybe? It made her let go. Smile, even. She had no blood left to fire through her muscles and finally, she'd fought long enough. Suddenly it seemed so funny to her. All these prison-like nightmares later and finally she can find rest that sleep no longer offered her. The beasts flayed her as she remained still; laughing, screaming, crying--
And then nothing. Nothing but a slight annoyance wriggling beneath her left shoulder. A bother strong enough to shake loose the murkiness of morning as her ears equalized. The alarm on her phone was blaring loud. Defeated, she turned it off and stumbled through her daily routine. This morning, something was beginning to break. She had a foreign notion she couldn't quite shake. Like the brush of air against the back of her neck or a crawling sensation between her shoulders. Despite making it yet another day, the night won. One wound remained. She felt something good when the creatures bore down on her. Release. She took note of this and made a point to tuck an extra caffeine pill into her pocket before closing the mirror cabinet and pressing out into her day.
She treated herself to a breakfast her parents raised her on: a scramble of eggs with fried cherry tomatoes, reduced spinach, diced peppers, diced ham, spoon fulls of avocado and a heap of shredded cheese all thrown into a pan. She would smell it most mornings when she woke early enough, along with coffee and hazelnut sweetener. Her parents would tag team the dish as she watched from her twisted sleeping place on the couch, pretending to be deep in sleep. She never grew tired, or less intrigued by the love her parents had between them.
Her childhood was a happy one by most measures. Her parents were college sweathearts from opposite sides of the tracks. The cliche'd love. They found each other comically and maintaining that same sort of levity from their first hello, almost as a mantra, molded them into the loving parents she came to know. In the early days though, before her first breath, stability wasn't a guarantee. They were star-crossed, episodic lovers who experienced the gamete of loss and hardship between the two of them before they reached solid ground. Absolute insanity yes, but somehow it panned out and none of that gained perspective was lost on their parenting style.
When the time was right, they married as people do. Her mother's slender figure superimposed on that of her father's sturdier built bones, like when they embraced as silhouettes against the light of the east-facing windows at dawn formed a double helix with their incongruities. Evita was always told she looked like her mother, but whenever she looked in the mirror it was her father staring back and her mother felt the same. Inevitably this meant they butted heads, albeit rarely. But that's what real love looks like.
She grew up the second oldest of four. There were three girls and a baby boy. What she saw in her formative years was the exception to the rule though she never knew any other norms existed and why. Her parents were opposites in every way physically and for some time built in her mind the unhealthy belief that love was all about combining opposites. She grew out of that one quickly, much to her parents relief. Evita never thought there was anything to see about her family until students were surprised on Heritage Day in the 6th grade. America was the great melting pot but her family looked like try-hards because they embodied the melting pot within their own home. She came to be treated like a trophy of society by her peers when her grab bag of features was explained by her dark father, but none of it penetrated that innocence she held. It all seemed so unnecessary.
Her home was always an amalgamation of wedding gift dining sets, refinished furnishings and grade school art projects. The walls paraded the smiles of family near and far, along with just about every picture her mother ever took of her stumbling about with her baby siblings in diapers and pajama tees. Home was kool-aid stained lips, metallic tap water, nicked counter-tops and a propped open garage door. It was hose fights when dad washed his car, ice cream dates on mothers bill if she was out too much rehearsing with her ballet company and latch-key kid summers past it being legal anymore. But they were happy.
But all of the love in the world or the love she was swathed in from the day she was born could undue the crack on her heart and the cross she would bare. Beautiful, blameless and bewitched-- or paying her dues if you asked her.
She twirled the fork around, toying with the last glob of egg while staring into her glass of water. Her eyes lost focus in the fluffy yellowness of it before once again being snatched back into the moment by her 9am alarm. A low warmness began to trickle back to her when she remembered what day it was.
It was her uncle's birthday. He was a kind man, only a couple of years younger than her father. His own children were away, each with families of their own and work keeping them away for the first time in years. Though initially bummed, Evita was more than happy to deliver their prepared gifts along with her own at the potluck her uncle was hosting. They had mailed her their gift ideas so she could wrap them. Uncle had a knack for story telling moreso than her father who instead had a knack for laughing before the plot-line was fleshed out. It was usually then that her mother would step in.
She slipped into a floral dress she'd stolen from her mother's wardrobe years ago, slipped on some low heels, gathered her things and scooted out of the doorway, jingling about and flicking light switches without looking. Her heels clicked loud enough to cut through her plastic headphones. Nothing was playing yet but she figured there was no point if she was going to be hopping into the car after crossing her meek front yard.
Thanksgiving was fast approaching but a Midwest holiday season was different from that of other regions. The summer seemed to drift into winter sheepishly and then like that, poof in the dead of night only to surprise the early risers with unforeseen flurries of slush strewn about the streets and expansive, empty farmland. But of course runners as headstrong as Texas' history pressed on indignantly and made fools of themselves before the cars passing by just in time for the awkward slips and spills. She used to see much more green space when the city was as young as she was. She made a habit of staring out into the horizon over the turned soil and drift into daydreams. Back when uninhibited imaginings flooded her mind and well before her first rent bill. When she would imagine her state and cities history, down to the county's crown jewel of being the location of the first ever train robbery as her 5th grade history teacher taught her. But the city picked up and grew faster than she could. It became something she almost didn't recognize when she came back from college to find work. And rightfully so. Nearly everything that made that old town "hers" was stripped to the bone and doctored into something more contemporary. Abandoned barns were leveled to make room for McMansions. Pet hospitals, the flagship of the middle class, popped up on odd corners all over. She had to admit though, it was nice having an ihop just a rocks skip away and a outlet mall just around the corner. Small town-turned-suburbia had it's own sort of charm against all odds.
She placed each gift bag neatly into the space below the glove box and drove windows down to her uncles red-brick. The kind that donned bushes and brick-lined flowerbeds, unkempt but homely. His wife always made it her business to pluck the weeds but left the rest of the overgrowth alone, hoping that with enough patience one day a thick trellis of vines would drape itself over the front facing exterior that greeted the street.
Red leaves. Billowing, tumbling red leaves and then a familiar air that caused phantom pains to ripple through her shoulder.
Her senses tightened, stretching the seconds and clocking every moving thing within her line of sight. Families, children bundled neck high flooding into homes, swinging bags, dipping branches and steamy car exhaust pipes in perfect entropy skyrocketed her heart rate. She thrust open the door, tried to step out only to find no ground and look into the bottomless fleshy maw of a gargantuan beast engulfing the entirety of her world. Uneven rows of ramshackle teeth closing in.
Her own blood-curdling scream shook her awake.
Texas came back into view. The engine continued turning and the heater hummed right along. The sedan was quite hot at this point. It must've only been for a couple of minutes, but it was a danger all the same. A heavy eye-lid lilting just a moment too long could sling her headlong into yet another battle against time. There it all was, though. The families were still flooding and pipes still breathing. She dug her heels a bit deeper into the curbside pavement and hurried inside. Sleep has become my enemy, she muttered.
Matthew 6:34 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself."
She read it every time she came upon the doorstep and looked through the transom window. It was etched into a stone tablet set deep into a mahogany frame and hovering below the banisters lining the second floor. It was the first thing that caught the eye upon entry, as if the entry to the kitchen 45 degrees to the right, the dining room another 45 degrees over, and the lobby/foot of the stairs directly to the left all formed contours that pointed toward it. She was brought up in the church but never realized how much it would save her when the dreams came. It all started when she turned 18. Like she'd been under close watch by an army of guardian angels until the moment she'd completed that last trip through the cosmos. Gabriel himself must've been out to lunch these days, she thought, because Ev fought against the night ever since. In the beginning the beasts at least resembled things she'd seen before. Normal things. Like the undead, ravenous rodents, bears, cold showers, the works. The onslaught surged and faded each time she survived yet another day, fluctuating with how well her conscious hours went. She pressed through with a pair of crossed fingers up her sleeve but even dumb-luck began to hit a wall that eventual preparation and sheer will had to bust through. The summer sun and simple joys of college were good for that. But unfortunately for Ev, even that was reaching its limit. The terrors were taking on new shapes.
Tanned skin aside, the sun doesn't shine quite as bright anymore.
Each time it was different. Sometimes she's shimmying across a rocky mountain face, maybe pacing along a country road, or sloshing fetid marsh. A different weapon, in her hand and the terrors give chase. On the harder days there was no weapon at all. Craftiness came at a premium on such occasions.
"Ev, come in come in! I'll take those gifts and you can just go ahead and make yourself a plate." Al guided her past the stone tablet under the stairs, past the kitchen directly ahead to the secondary living room and informal dining area where her parents were already sopping up morsels from empty bowls and smudging lips on wine glasses. Red bean and rice stew bubbled on the stove top. Cornbread rose slowly int he oven, filling the whole house. Ev had just eaten but the smell awakened a second stomach that college return-visits had helped birth.
The combination of flavors taken all at once were glimpses of heaven on brisk days. Heart meals had a way of reaching the past and snagging feelings of comfort even if she had no business feeling them. Her mother's cyclical menu of old always had the stew dropping into rotation just when it needed to - like laughing the one time you shouldn't or finding a $20 folded in a dirty pair of jeans. Something in possibly inconvenient in the moment but interwoven into a perfect braid of wonderful happenstance with time. The accuracy of the proximity between crockpot serving and new lifelong memory was uncanny, so she took note as she continued to spoon the broth and tap through phone applications. There wasn't a defining moment when the transition from naive to well-informed happened. Ev would love to say it was on her 18th birthday just in time to vote, or graduation, but like with most changes in her life, it just sort of happened. And so it goes. Her phone now took a news-feed pit stop before checking what birthday's she'd awkwardly acknowledge on FB or text messages she'd need to leave unopened cause she'd forgotten to turn off read receipts again.
Ev's father was the first of his litter, as he calls it, to start a family so he claimed one couch in particular from her grandparents for his starter home but quickly found that it deserved a home with a bit more structure. Panache, even. After the early years of seeing dad passed out, mouth agape with Animal Planet playing for white noise, it now enjoyed a comfy corner under a window and a Kramer signed by Joe Satriani. Whenever her siblings and she would spend a couple of days with uncle over the summer, she always opted for the same set of heirloom cushions over a bed and AP running up the electricity bill. Uncle Al never complained because his wife never failed to mention how he left his guitar amps all plugged in through the night and didn't want to have that nitpicking match again.
It was this very couch that she joined her parents on after a quick couplet of cheek kisses. The cushions had a knack for swallowing guests from mid thigh to lower rib, so she made a point to cross her legs and save her auntie the show. An open book in practice, but never one to ... "overshare" in any fashion. Post-church-service conversations at the dinner table taught her and her siblings how to mind that line with finesse. No kid was ever too good to get themselves into trouble.
As square as I was, there's so much they don't know she said, smiling to herself. The nostalgia melded her deep into the couch. She never went longer than a week without seeing her aunts, uncles or parents ever since she was little. She never could understand the kids who chose money for outings over quality time with family. Wonderful as her friends were, it wasn't the same. It's a shade of life she's never seen.
The elders opened gifts together, gushing her Al before flipping on the football game at my parents' request and turning ofof all but the necessary lights in the house downstairs. Just over the TV commotions one could hear her younger kinsman of all ages thumping around. Wall decorations rattled ever so slightly but the adults paid it no mind. Those rumbles have sustained and yet to knock anything over for upwards of 20 years. That's including the years before children were in the picture.
The ornately framed portraits of extended family rocking from the... festivities of the couple in the bedroom above brought about a laughs that squeaked through cringing clenched teeth. The birds and the bees talk that came in 6th grade, with all the cousins gathered in a room one sweltering summer afternoon, felt ridiculous as a result. It only took one eye-roll and snicker from Ev's younger sister before embarrassment painted every adult cherry red. When the kids got older it became fair game for jokes.
The downstairs company were soon all taken by the sandman, deep in sleep with technicolor flashes painting their faces with each camera flip.
yawn ballooned out of her.
She took a caffeine pill with the last swig of water left in her mothers glass and collected the dirty dishes from the area. Placed them as quietly as she could in the sink before leaving. She spied her nieces and nephew's shadows goofing and playing the arcade-style basketball hoops like she used to. There was always a comfort in that. She said a quick prayer before throwing on her seat belt and putting the key in the ignition.
It was much colder out than before. The sun had set some time ago. Her uncle's neighborhood was much like the one her parents lived in; diverse and peaceful. Like one of those stock photos about "unity" in the workplace. Or "teamwork", picturing a bunch of disembodied hands of every color interlocking in a circle. It was if the only thing the neighborhood was missing was the tacky watermark. The moon was nowhere to be found, so she took a moment to soak in the peace all around. The warm life pulsing behind windows.
Her phone began to buzz in her pocket.
The moment was cut short. She felt guilty, dirty even, when the screen light flash-banged her eyes and disrupted the peace of it all. One of her childhood best friends was coming into town but she'd forgotten how soon. Judging by the call, Ev had the feeling it was indeed that day. She wasn't wrong. She wasn't even one to drink beyond a buzz in college, but she made exceptions around a certain motley crew of friends (five to be exact). Luis was one of them.
Ev met him for drinks at one the bars nearby that seemed to cycle out every other fiscal year. They always had cheap well-drink whiskey cokes and mojitos. She'd burnt herself out on most other things. One unfortunate night on a spontaneous visit, feeling particularly daring, she had a drink and swallowed the worm. This lead to her making a pass at Luis, but he took her back to his apartment strictly as friend and host. Before anything funny could happen, he restrained her with a warm blanket and tipped her over into a bed, nursing her until she fell asleep. He took the foot of the bed and woke every time she did to vomit. Ev finally came out of the black-out state and yet another hard fought bloody battle to a strong brown hand offering her coffee and a fat cat purring loudly against her back.I am not a bad person for what happened, she mulled. I don’t know that I made the right decision right now because I am not one of the Trafalmadorians from Slaughterhouse 5. Time isn’t displayed all at once with imagines set upon themselves like worms wrapping the earth in layers of eternity. I’m not standing in the dark-room of life seeing all the photos at once, strung up to the ceiling on a clothes line with laundry clips. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I’m stuck in the moment as it stands and have no precognition of when joy or pain will end. Days have to develop with patience and the occasional flip of the photo in the liquid soaking phase. But ALL of that said, I’m doing my best. Her thoughts weren’t quite that poetic at first contact, but when she replayed them in her head before sleeping, they flowered nicely into something with layers.
All the same, she met with Luis for drinks, as they tend to do. And Ev got lost in her thoughts, as she's prone to do.
He was a tall man with a sturdy build. Upwards of six foot, though Ev never cared for the details. He had strong arms and legs but by no means was a model figure. He was never one for fashion, so he wore the same old crew-neck white t-shirt and jeans that he always did. They accentuated his frame well, but that was merely a side-perk of their primary purpose- to be versatile and comfortable. At first she thought to ask why he wasn't wearing a jacket, but then remembered that she was wearing nothing but her sweater-dress and was 70 lbs shy of his cruising weight, so the weather just wasn't going to affect them the same.
Glass slammed down hard onto hardwood and splashed every which way over his shoulder while they sat and talked. She tried not to acknowledge it but the sway of the hops caught her eye. Ev pondered about how many glasses a bar must go through during the football season. Maybe there was this room stacked from floor to ceiling with glasses, ready for when their number was called. Or a manager who just instinctively orders 20 glasses a week and has a nice chat on Monday's about it with the delivery guy before he signs off and carries in the boxes through the back. Or maybe it's about noting at all, past how the Cowboys are doing in the league or if the Rangers game will clash with their wive's planned date nights. Of course they're arbitrarily Italian in an alley that's clearly Brooklyn when she pictures it, but why fight the natural image, she thought. No use forcing the cowboy hats and wrangler jeans. The mind makes connections unintentionally. Or at least her's does. Everything is connected, she always says, though somewhat haplessly.
Luis gave her a soft nudge with his knuckles.
You didn't even hear me, did you, he said softly. He waited for a moment, searching her eyes for something. Alright fine, Ev. That's an answer too, I guess. He chuckled to himself. What do you say we take this drink and grab a bite, I'm buying? I'm sure you're good but I haven't touched any food since the "a.m." I know we just got here but some trashy Tex-Mex is calling my name.
It wasn't. At least not the answer that he thought. He knew about her dreams. But where his mind would lead him to conclude sadness, and rightfully so, it would be wrong. There was no hidden pain that she could process at the time. It was bona fide apathy preparing for a wide birth. Near death blood-lettings were losing their power. Half the reason that people live peacock lives of grand plumage as their worlds rocket off into the horizon like fireworks, hoping the explosion is big enough and loud enough to be mistaken for a star is so that they can fight "against that dying night". But the end didn't chase her, nor did she run. It hung with her step for step, laced tight to the exact edges of her body like a shadow. It joined her when she sipped her tea or rode the bus. Even more so when she threw an old McChicken into the microwave- or so she thought. This gave her pause but made her laugh.
Closer than a buddy sharing a couch with her to watch her favorite TV show and let the old McChicken go cold once again, she knew that well. The bending of Kronos' domain. She learned a lesson one should never have to-- microwaving a McChicken crisps the mayonnaise and toughens the buns. Still edible though. Especially if you cross your fingers and close your eyes. Her dad once said that crossing the fingers was basically top-shelf birth control in Alabama before her mother slapped at his shoulder and apologized to grandma across the dinner table.
She loved that her friendship with Luis was as deep as it continually proved to be. He knew when to press and when to keep moving. Her Thank You's were shared in the comfortable silence that followed his curiosity, or in knowing expressions. The weekend was upon them, so they took another shot at Luis' insistence, a leverage he knew he had, given the conversation earlier. Slightly buzzed while Luis and his party boy tendencies were utterly unfazed, he drove the two of them to his house. The man had cleverly roped her into helping him unpack. His townhouse was equidistant from her own house and her parent's fully paid-off home, forming a triangle on a map. Though home was a bit of a stretch for him. Ever since they were 22, he'd been working on and off in remote locations on drilling sites. The roughnecking came out of post college career impatience but carefree as ever, he didn't complain. As lovely as his family is, his parents imprinted on him a voracious hunger for wealth and an inability to say no to it (within reason). Ev figured that's just what happens when your parent's mention it cyclically like passing the potatoes at Thanksgiving. Betrayal or selling out wasn't on the ledger, but he was that one guy everybody knows that never makes it for planned events. A flake, as it were. Weddings, vacations, reunions always cut short because of a call in the night. Within 24 hours following, he was inevitably boarding a plane to create yet another vacancy, working his youth away.
She counted new wrinkles around his eyes and hairline as he brought in luggage that she would then open and begin to deposit around cookie cutter, untouched abode. 4 years had passed since his first contract and 2 since she'd seen him for a full vacation. Ev figured the same would happen this year, "sabbatical" and all, so she committed herself to spend time with him. Right then, paper wrapped picture frame in one hand and a wine glass in the other. She aimed to spend as much time as he could with him before he could slip away.
That year he stayed. And so it goes.
She raked at the ground and stuffed a handful of dirt and leaves into the wound to slow the bleeding. With the sun cresting over the mountains and beginning to pierce the fog, she aimed the pearl-handled pistol at center body mass... Anything to stall time... But to no avail. The bullet passed lean through the creature without drawing any blood.
The beast released her in a clearing and she could feel all the eyes on her. Laying on the red, leafy underbrush and moist dirt it was hard to tell how much of it was the changing of the seasons versus the trail of blood she was surely leaving that painted the red carpet who her assailant was walking her down. She didn't even entertain the idea of rising to her feet. So there she lay, in the one spot illuminated by sunlight and in the receding fog, a pride of those beasts emerged. She was under no illusion that she was going to make it out. She didn't most times, but this time she was certain and for once she felt... free maybe? It made her let go. Smile, even. She had no blood left to fire through her muscles and finally, she'd fought long enough. Suddenly it seemed so funny to her. All these prison-like nightmares later and finally she can find rest that sleep no longer offered her. The beasts flayed her as she remained still; laughing, screaming, crying--
And then nothing. Nothing but a slight annoyance wriggling beneath her left shoulder. A bother strong enough to shake loose the murkiness of morning as her ears equalized. The alarm on her phone was blaring loud. Defeated, she turned it off and stumbled through her daily routine. This morning, something was beginning to break. She had a foreign notion she couldn't quite shake. Like the brush of air against the back of her neck or a crawling sensation between her shoulders. Despite making it yet another day, the night won. One wound remained. She felt something good when the creatures bore down on her. Release. She took note of this and made a point to tuck an extra caffeine pill into her pocket before closing the mirror cabinet and pressing out into her day.
She treated herself to a breakfast her parents raised her on: a scramble of eggs with fried cherry tomatoes, reduced spinach, diced peppers, diced ham, spoon fulls of avocado and a heap of shredded cheese all thrown into a pan. She would smell it most mornings when she woke early enough, along with coffee and hazelnut sweetener. Her parents would tag team the dish as she watched from her twisted sleeping place on the couch, pretending to be deep in sleep. She never grew tired, or less intrigued by the love her parents had between them.
Her childhood was a happy one by most measures. Her parents were college sweathearts from opposite sides of the tracks. The cliche'd love. They found each other comically and maintaining that same sort of levity from their first hello, almost as a mantra, molded them into the loving parents she came to know. In the early days though, before her first breath, stability wasn't a guarantee. They were star-crossed, episodic lovers who experienced the gamete of loss and hardship between the two of them before they reached solid ground. Absolute insanity yes, but somehow it panned out and none of that gained perspective was lost on their parenting style.
When the time was right, they married as people do. Her mother's slender figure superimposed on that of her father's sturdier built bones, like when they embraced as silhouettes against the light of the east-facing windows at dawn formed a double helix with their incongruities. Evita was always told she looked like her mother, but whenever she looked in the mirror it was her father staring back and her mother felt the same. Inevitably this meant they butted heads, albeit rarely. But that's what real love looks like.
She grew up the second oldest of four. There were three girls and a baby boy. What she saw in her formative years was the exception to the rule though she never knew any other norms existed and why. Her parents were opposites in every way physically and for some time built in her mind the unhealthy belief that love was all about combining opposites. She grew out of that one quickly, much to her parents relief. Evita never thought there was anything to see about her family until students were surprised on Heritage Day in the 6th grade. America was the great melting pot but her family looked like try-hards because they embodied the melting pot within their own home. She came to be treated like a trophy of society by her peers when her grab bag of features was explained by her dark father, but none of it penetrated that innocence she held. It all seemed so unnecessary.
Her home was always an amalgamation of wedding gift dining sets, refinished furnishings and grade school art projects. The walls paraded the smiles of family near and far, along with just about every picture her mother ever took of her stumbling about with her baby siblings in diapers and pajama tees. Home was kool-aid stained lips, metallic tap water, nicked counter-tops and a propped open garage door. It was hose fights when dad washed his car, ice cream dates on mothers bill if she was out too much rehearsing with her ballet company and latch-key kid summers past it being legal anymore. But they were happy.
But all of the love in the world or the love she was swathed in from the day she was born could undue the crack on her heart and the cross she would bare. Beautiful, blameless and bewitched-- or paying her dues if you asked her.
She twirled the fork around, toying with the last glob of egg while staring into her glass of water. Her eyes lost focus in the fluffy yellowness of it before once again being snatched back into the moment by her 9am alarm. A low warmness began to trickle back to her when she remembered what day it was.
It was her uncle's birthday. He was a kind man, only a couple of years younger than her father. His own children were away, each with families of their own and work keeping them away for the first time in years. Though initially bummed, Evita was more than happy to deliver their prepared gifts along with her own at the potluck her uncle was hosting. They had mailed her their gift ideas so she could wrap them. Uncle had a knack for story telling moreso than her father who instead had a knack for laughing before the plot-line was fleshed out. It was usually then that her mother would step in.
She slipped into a floral dress she'd stolen from her mother's wardrobe years ago, slipped on some low heels, gathered her things and scooted out of the doorway, jingling about and flicking light switches without looking. Her heels clicked loud enough to cut through her plastic headphones. Nothing was playing yet but she figured there was no point if she was going to be hopping into the car after crossing her meek front yard.
Thanksgiving was fast approaching but a Midwest holiday season was different from that of other regions. The summer seemed to drift into winter sheepishly and then like that, poof in the dead of night only to surprise the early risers with unforeseen flurries of slush strewn about the streets and expansive, empty farmland. But of course runners as headstrong as Texas' history pressed on indignantly and made fools of themselves before the cars passing by just in time for the awkward slips and spills. She used to see much more green space when the city was as young as she was. She made a habit of staring out into the horizon over the turned soil and drift into daydreams. Back when uninhibited imaginings flooded her mind and well before her first rent bill. When she would imagine her state and cities history, down to the county's crown jewel of being the location of the first ever train robbery as her 5th grade history teacher taught her. But the city picked up and grew faster than she could. It became something she almost didn't recognize when she came back from college to find work. And rightfully so. Nearly everything that made that old town "hers" was stripped to the bone and doctored into something more contemporary. Abandoned barns were leveled to make room for McMansions. Pet hospitals, the flagship of the middle class, popped up on odd corners all over. She had to admit though, it was nice having an ihop just a rocks skip away and a outlet mall just around the corner. Small town-turned-suburbia had it's own sort of charm against all odds.
She placed each gift bag neatly into the space below the glove box and drove windows down to her uncles red-brick. The kind that donned bushes and brick-lined flowerbeds, unkempt but homely. His wife always made it her business to pluck the weeds but left the rest of the overgrowth alone, hoping that with enough patience one day a thick trellis of vines would drape itself over the front facing exterior that greeted the street.
Red leaves. Billowing, tumbling red leaves and then a familiar air that caused phantom pains to ripple through her shoulder.
Her senses tightened, stretching the seconds and clocking every moving thing within her line of sight. Families, children bundled neck high flooding into homes, swinging bags, dipping branches and steamy car exhaust pipes in perfect entropy skyrocketed her heart rate. She thrust open the door, tried to step out only to find no ground and look into the bottomless fleshy maw of a gargantuan beast engulfing the entirety of her world. Uneven rows of ramshackle teeth closing in.
Her own blood-curdling scream shook her awake.
Texas came back into view. The engine continued turning and the heater hummed right along. The sedan was quite hot at this point. It must've only been for a couple of minutes, but it was a danger all the same. A heavy eye-lid lilting just a moment too long could sling her headlong into yet another battle against time. There it all was, though. The families were still flooding and pipes still breathing. She dug her heels a bit deeper into the curbside pavement and hurried inside. Sleep has become my enemy, she muttered.
Matthew 6:34 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself."
She read it every time she came upon the doorstep and looked through the transom window. It was etched into a stone tablet set deep into a mahogany frame and hovering below the banisters lining the second floor. It was the first thing that caught the eye upon entry, as if the entry to the kitchen 45 degrees to the right, the dining room another 45 degrees over, and the lobby/foot of the stairs directly to the left all formed contours that pointed toward it. She was brought up in the church but never realized how much it would save her when the dreams came. It all started when she turned 18. Like she'd been under close watch by an army of guardian angels until the moment she'd completed that last trip through the cosmos. Gabriel himself must've been out to lunch these days, she thought, because Ev fought against the night ever since. In the beginning the beasts at least resembled things she'd seen before. Normal things. Like the undead, ravenous rodents, bears, cold showers, the works. The onslaught surged and faded each time she survived yet another day, fluctuating with how well her conscious hours went. She pressed through with a pair of crossed fingers up her sleeve but even dumb-luck began to hit a wall that eventual preparation and sheer will had to bust through. The summer sun and simple joys of college were good for that. But unfortunately for Ev, even that was reaching its limit. The terrors were taking on new shapes.
Tanned skin aside, the sun doesn't shine quite as bright anymore.
Each time it was different. Sometimes she's shimmying across a rocky mountain face, maybe pacing along a country road, or sloshing fetid marsh. A different weapon, in her hand and the terrors give chase. On the harder days there was no weapon at all. Craftiness came at a premium on such occasions.
"Ev, come in come in! I'll take those gifts and you can just go ahead and make yourself a plate." Al guided her past the stone tablet under the stairs, past the kitchen directly ahead to the secondary living room and informal dining area where her parents were already sopping up morsels from empty bowls and smudging lips on wine glasses. Red bean and rice stew bubbled on the stove top. Cornbread rose slowly int he oven, filling the whole house. Ev had just eaten but the smell awakened a second stomach that college return-visits had helped birth.
The combination of flavors taken all at once were glimpses of heaven on brisk days. Heart meals had a way of reaching the past and snagging feelings of comfort even if she had no business feeling them. Her mother's cyclical menu of old always had the stew dropping into rotation just when it needed to - like laughing the one time you shouldn't or finding a $20 folded in a dirty pair of jeans. Something in possibly inconvenient in the moment but interwoven into a perfect braid of wonderful happenstance with time. The accuracy of the proximity between crockpot serving and new lifelong memory was uncanny, so she took note as she continued to spoon the broth and tap through phone applications. There wasn't a defining moment when the transition from naive to well-informed happened. Ev would love to say it was on her 18th birthday just in time to vote, or graduation, but like with most changes in her life, it just sort of happened. And so it goes. Her phone now took a news-feed pit stop before checking what birthday's she'd awkwardly acknowledge on FB or text messages she'd need to leave unopened cause she'd forgotten to turn off read receipts again.
Ev's father was the first of his litter, as he calls it, to start a family so he claimed one couch in particular from her grandparents for his starter home but quickly found that it deserved a home with a bit more structure. Panache, even. After the early years of seeing dad passed out, mouth agape with Animal Planet playing for white noise, it now enjoyed a comfy corner under a window and a Kramer signed by Joe Satriani. Whenever her siblings and she would spend a couple of days with uncle over the summer, she always opted for the same set of heirloom cushions over a bed and AP running up the electricity bill. Uncle Al never complained because his wife never failed to mention how he left his guitar amps all plugged in through the night and didn't want to have that nitpicking match again.
It was this very couch that she joined her parents on after a quick couplet of cheek kisses. The cushions had a knack for swallowing guests from mid thigh to lower rib, so she made a point to cross her legs and save her auntie the show. An open book in practice, but never one to ... "overshare" in any fashion. Post-church-service conversations at the dinner table taught her and her siblings how to mind that line with finesse. No kid was ever too good to get themselves into trouble.
As square as I was, there's so much they don't know she said, smiling to herself. The nostalgia melded her deep into the couch. She never went longer than a week without seeing her aunts, uncles or parents ever since she was little. She never could understand the kids who chose money for outings over quality time with family. Wonderful as her friends were, it wasn't the same. It's a shade of life she's never seen.
The elders opened gifts together, gushing her Al before flipping on the football game at my parents' request and turning ofof all but the necessary lights in the house downstairs. Just over the TV commotions one could hear her younger kinsman of all ages thumping around. Wall decorations rattled ever so slightly but the adults paid it no mind. Those rumbles have sustained and yet to knock anything over for upwards of 20 years. That's including the years before children were in the picture.
The ornately framed portraits of extended family rocking from the... festivities of the couple in the bedroom above brought about a laughs that squeaked through cringing clenched teeth. The birds and the bees talk that came in 6th grade, with all the cousins gathered in a room one sweltering summer afternoon, felt ridiculous as a result. It only took one eye-roll and snicker from Ev's younger sister before embarrassment painted every adult cherry red. When the kids got older it became fair game for jokes.
The downstairs company were soon all taken by the sandman, deep in sleep with technicolor flashes painting their faces with each camera flip.
yawn ballooned out of her.
She took a caffeine pill with the last swig of water left in her mothers glass and collected the dirty dishes from the area. Placed them as quietly as she could in the sink before leaving. She spied her nieces and nephew's shadows goofing and playing the arcade-style basketball hoops like she used to. There was always a comfort in that. She said a quick prayer before throwing on her seat belt and putting the key in the ignition.
It was much colder out than before. The sun had set some time ago. Her uncle's neighborhood was much like the one her parents lived in; diverse and peaceful. Like one of those stock photos about "unity" in the workplace. Or "teamwork", picturing a bunch of disembodied hands of every color interlocking in a circle. It was if the only thing the neighborhood was missing was the tacky watermark. The moon was nowhere to be found, so she took a moment to soak in the peace all around. The warm life pulsing behind windows.
Her phone began to buzz in her pocket.
The moment was cut short. She felt guilty, dirty even, when the screen light flash-banged her eyes and disrupted the peace of it all. One of her childhood best friends was coming into town but she'd forgotten how soon. Judging by the call, Ev had the feeling it was indeed that day. She wasn't wrong. She wasn't even one to drink beyond a buzz in college, but she made exceptions around a certain motley crew of friends (five to be exact). Luis was one of them.
Ev met him for drinks at one the bars nearby that seemed to cycle out every other fiscal year. They always had cheap well-drink whiskey cokes and mojitos. She'd burnt herself out on most other things. One unfortunate night on a spontaneous visit, feeling particularly daring, she had a drink and swallowed the worm. This lead to her making a pass at Luis, but he took her back to his apartment strictly as friend and host. Before anything funny could happen, he restrained her with a warm blanket and tipped her over into a bed, nursing her until she fell asleep. He took the foot of the bed and woke every time she did to vomit. Ev finally came out of the black-out state and yet another hard fought bloody battle to a strong brown hand offering her coffee and a fat cat purring loudly against her back.I am not a bad person for what happened, she mulled. I don’t know that I made the right decision right now because I am not one of the Trafalmadorians from Slaughterhouse 5. Time isn’t displayed all at once with imagines set upon themselves like worms wrapping the earth in layers of eternity. I’m not standing in the dark-room of life seeing all the photos at once, strung up to the ceiling on a clothes line with laundry clips. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I’m stuck in the moment as it stands and have no precognition of when joy or pain will end. Days have to develop with patience and the occasional flip of the photo in the liquid soaking phase. But ALL of that said, I’m doing my best. Her thoughts weren’t quite that poetic at first contact, but when she replayed them in her head before sleeping, they flowered nicely into something with layers.
All the same, she met with Luis for drinks, as they tend to do. And Ev got lost in her thoughts, as she's prone to do.
He was a tall man with a sturdy build. Upwards of six foot, though Ev never cared for the details. He had strong arms and legs but by no means was a model figure. He was never one for fashion, so he wore the same old crew-neck white t-shirt and jeans that he always did. They accentuated his frame well, but that was merely a side-perk of their primary purpose- to be versatile and comfortable. At first she thought to ask why he wasn't wearing a jacket, but then remembered that she was wearing nothing but her sweater-dress and was 70 lbs shy of his cruising weight, so the weather just wasn't going to affect them the same.
Glass slammed down hard onto hardwood and splashed every which way over his shoulder while they sat and talked. She tried not to acknowledge it but the sway of the hops caught her eye. Ev pondered about how many glasses a bar must go through during the football season. Maybe there was this room stacked from floor to ceiling with glasses, ready for when their number was called. Or a manager who just instinctively orders 20 glasses a week and has a nice chat on Monday's about it with the delivery guy before he signs off and carries in the boxes through the back. Or maybe it's about noting at all, past how the Cowboys are doing in the league or if the Rangers game will clash with their wive's planned date nights. Of course they're arbitrarily Italian in an alley that's clearly Brooklyn when she pictures it, but why fight the natural image, she thought. No use forcing the cowboy hats and wrangler jeans. The mind makes connections unintentionally. Or at least her's does. Everything is connected, she always says, though somewhat haplessly.
Luis gave her a soft nudge with his knuckles.
You didn't even hear me, did you, he said softly. He waited for a moment, searching her eyes for something. Alright fine, Ev. That's an answer too, I guess. He chuckled to himself. What do you say we take this drink and grab a bite, I'm buying? I'm sure you're good but I haven't touched any food since the "a.m." I know we just got here but some trashy Tex-Mex is calling my name.
It wasn't. At least not the answer that he thought. He knew about her dreams. But where his mind would lead him to conclude sadness, and rightfully so, it would be wrong. There was no hidden pain that she could process at the time. It was bona fide apathy preparing for a wide birth. Near death blood-lettings were losing their power. Half the reason that people live peacock lives of grand plumage as their worlds rocket off into the horizon like fireworks, hoping the explosion is big enough and loud enough to be mistaken for a star is so that they can fight "against that dying night". But the end didn't chase her, nor did she run. It hung with her step for step, laced tight to the exact edges of her body like a shadow. It joined her when she sipped her tea or rode the bus. Even more so when she threw an old McChicken into the microwave- or so she thought. This gave her pause but made her laugh.
Closer than a buddy sharing a couch with her to watch her favorite TV show and let the old McChicken go cold once again, she knew that well. The bending of Kronos' domain. She learned a lesson one should never have to-- microwaving a McChicken crisps the mayonnaise and toughens the buns. Still edible though. Especially if you cross your fingers and close your eyes. Her dad once said that crossing the fingers was basically top-shelf birth control in Alabama before her mother slapped at his shoulder and apologized to grandma across the dinner table.
She loved that her friendship with Luis was as deep as it continually proved to be. He knew when to press and when to keep moving. Her Thank You's were shared in the comfortable silence that followed his curiosity, or in knowing expressions. The weekend was upon them, so they took another shot at Luis' insistence, a leverage he knew he had, given the conversation earlier. Slightly buzzed while Luis and his party boy tendencies were utterly unfazed, he drove the two of them to his house. The man had cleverly roped her into helping him unpack. His townhouse was equidistant from her own house and her parent's fully paid-off home, forming a triangle on a map. Though home was a bit of a stretch for him. Ever since they were 22, he'd been working on and off in remote locations on drilling sites. The roughnecking came out of post college career impatience but carefree as ever, he didn't complain. As lovely as his family is, his parents imprinted on him a voracious hunger for wealth and an inability to say no to it (within reason). Ev figured that's just what happens when your parent's mention it cyclically like passing the potatoes at Thanksgiving. Betrayal or selling out wasn't on the ledger, but he was that one guy everybody knows that never makes it for planned events. A flake, as it were. Weddings, vacations, reunions always cut short because of a call in the night. Within 24 hours following, he was inevitably boarding a plane to create yet another vacancy, working his youth away.
She counted new wrinkles around his eyes and hairline as he brought in luggage that she would then open and begin to deposit around cookie cutter, untouched abode. 4 years had passed since his first contract and 2 since she'd seen him for a full vacation. Ev figured the same would happen this year, "sabbatical" and all, so she committed herself to spend time with him. Right then, paper wrapped picture frame in one hand and a wine glass in the other. She aimed to spend as much time as he could with him before he could slip away.
That year he stayed. And so it goes.
The monsters are clawing after me while my eyes are still open.
She snuck over to where her friend was sleeping on the couch, fished his
phone out from an outstretched hand draped over the cushions to set alarms in
45 minute intervals. Her phone was already dead and she would need the skirmishes
short. The phone unlocked with the same password he’d always had, but when she
checked in the clock app she found that he’d already set alarms starting from
4am to 10am. She was never quite sure how much he believed in her night time
experiences, but he was mindful of them all the same and that brought an
unexpected tear to her eye.
The first dream went smoothly. Ev was dropped directly into the set of The
Thing. While ghastly masses of mouths and limbs from their hosts, she remained
in a storage room locked and reinforced from the inside. In any other situation
the move would’ve been a bad one. She’d sequestered herself into what would be
her grave once the cold had been given time to set in. But she knew how to play
the game. A light sleeper in what everybody called real life, she didn’t need
to beat the monsters. She just needed to outlast them. The horde amassed behind
the door and watched as she shook from the cold until it meshed seamlessly with
the buzzing phone by her head. It still wasn’t late enough for the sun to come.
She was still drunk when she woke, and bubbly rocked her back to sleep
quickly.
Round 2 was in a looted warehouse. Disembodied heads with agonized faces
crashed through the rusty ceiling. Dust and frayed metal rained down with them.
Spider like legs burst out of orifices at random, dragging them toward their
prey with lipless, gnashing teeth.
A strap was pressing into her leg. A holster clung to her left thigh,
proposing a handgun and plenty of ammunition. She’d played out this scenario
before.
Like she had in the past, she sprinted for the far corner and used a tilted
cabinet unit to vault herself onto the top of a metal storage shelf without
compromising any of the supporting frame. She’d seen all too well what would
happen if she tried to climb it like a child into a tree. That was the first
time she was impaled by a metal bar.
A head dropped down directly above her. Without a moment’s hesitation she shot
a line from jaw to opposite side temple, killing it instantly. Dozens of heads
clamored after her, clacking their teeth like a sea of castanets. A handful of
them split off toward their former bodies. Things would take a shift if too
many of them followed suit. Splitting attention between the immediate threat clumsily
ascending the shelf and the building threat approximately 30 meters away was
becoming dicey at best. But she kept thinking to herself-
The time should be up any minute now.
The top shelf was beginning to warp, forming a bowl under her weight. Shell
casings pooled at her feet.
Shit, she thought. What if Luis hit snooze… I can’t take any risks… If she
was going to beat the onslaught, she needed to conserve bullets wherever
possible. She spotted a fireman’s axe still within its glass covering on a wall
clear from potential host bodies.
After dropping a few more of the creatures with dexterous shots, she tried
pushing again. With a creak the shelf toppled over, trapping a few of the heads
and slowing down plenty others. Ev performed a well-timed combat roll at the
bottom of her fall and used the momentum to spring-load a burst of speed across
the trash covered floor, flicking drops of blood with each motion and painting the area like a Pollock.
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