Smoke

Chapter Three: The Noise

Death, meet Brody; Brody, meet Death. But Death’s harvest might be more appropriate, you think.

Not for the first time are you encountering these corpse-ghost creatures, walking people only half solid, half there. You see the boy again, and he does his offering hand gesture, making you want to crawl out of your skin. If only you could leave your body. Maybe float through the ceiling, the roof, into the sky.

You settle for Xanax, Vicodin, weed, any depressants you can get your shaky hands on. Sam starts to notice. At night when you’ve melted into the couch and can’t say anything, in the morning when any little sound makes you leap nearly out of your skin, and you look at him as if to say don’t sneak up on me, but the words never leave your mouth.

One night you get so bombed you think you might’ve forgotten your own name, and you wake up the next day in Matt’s bed. Only your fully clothed state and lack of soreness tell you you didn’t have sex. You drive home like that, after popping a handful of Ultram, leaving a passed out Matt curled in the fetal position at the end of his bed. 

Sam is awake and cooking something that smells good but turns your stomach when you walk in, intent on a shower.

“Where were you last night? I texted and called you,” he says.

“Stayed at Matt’s,” you say, realize you must’ve forgotten your phone at his apartment or in your room. It’s a fairly frequent occurrence.

You’re grabbing a water bottle out of the fridge when Sam says, “Did you fuck him?”

And the way he says it, like he thinks it’s a foregone conclusion, makes you freeze. You look at him, hoping your eyes convey the same message a death ray would. He goes back to stirring vegetables in a pan, and you turn and stumble into the bathroom.

You ignore the corpse-ghosts as best you can at the restaurant, pasting on a smile while a little girl floats across the street in a white dress and patent leather shoes, eyes perforating you, arm snapped back at a steep angle, skull crushed in as if it’s a deflating basketball that someone’s punched.

Are you ready to order? You ask young couples enjoying the warmth the outside tables provide, ignoring the dead people they can’t see.

Though you wish it were possible, you can’t be stoned all the time; you’re too conspicuous about it, too out of practice.

But you could slide so easily oh it would be so nice to allow yourself to drown in it but you’d promised yourself never again too many things lost already too much rewiring or burning away or whatever it was that the ECT had done to your brain.

So you try, in a sharp dawn, chain-smoking on the porch, to look up the woman who’d created the block that cured you. You’d called her cell number countless times, but no answer. She’d done some kind of ritual, a witchcraft thing, years ago, made you wear talismans for months. You google Sharon Long.

One of the first results is her obituary.

Sharon Long, born April 11, 1956 passed away January 30, 2011 in her home of natural causes. She is survived by two daughters and a son, as well as three grandchildren.

You stop reading when you feel your stomach drop out your ass, wait for it to splatter your shoes.

Could that be the reason it’s stopped working? The reason you’re seeing them again? The curer’s gone. Did she take the cure with her?

Under your bed, in a shoebox, is one of the protection crystals she'd given you to wear. You'd worn it as a necklace during the whole process and for months after, but it was like antibiotics. Once the symptoms were gone, you'd stopped wearing it, thought I'm cured.

You pull the box out and carefully open it, setting aside the top with a reverence you apply to almost nothing else. The crystal sits atop stacks of photographs that have fallen sideways. It has a yellowish tinge like smoke stained teeth, and you pick it up by the cord connected to it, peer into its murk, and place it around your neck before tucking it under your t-shirt.

You'd stacked the photographs face down in the shoebox two years ago. It was one of the last of the belongings you'd placed in your car. In the front seat, with your cameras. You pick up one stack, flip it over. It's you, shorter, smaller. Baby fat on your face, braces pushing your teeth together, your hair spiked up the way you used to wear it, a skateboard under your arm. Your brother's got one arm slung around your neck, tugging you down and toward him, his mouth open in an inaudible laugh, a skateboard under his other arm.

Without thinking, you caress his face. Place the photo on the carpet next to the box. The next one is of your father with a big dumb smile, a spatula in one hand. He stands in front of a grill, an apron that says KISS THE COOK on it tied around his body. You put the picture aside.

Sam finds you that way, knocks lightly on your open door.

"Want some coffee?" he says, and you blink at him, realize it must be a decent time in the morning already. It's Saturday, and he gets up no earlier than ten on the weekends.

"Sure." He sits next to you, hands you the mug in his hand. "Thanks."

"No problem. What’s all this?"

You consider all the pictures, scattered around the box in a small swathe, some touching others and some stacked, and wish you could have hidden them before he noticed.

"Just photographs," you say, voice emerging in miniature, as if from far away. You take a sip of the coffee. Soymilk and sugar, the way you like it.

"Is this you?" He picks one of the pictures up, carefully sliding his fingers underneath it, palm flat against its bottom. "You look so young." He says it around a smile, glancing at you, and he has a nice smile, you think. "Is the other guy your brother? You look a lot alike."

"Yeah.”

"How old is he?" He returns the photo back to its spot on the carpet. Careful.

"He's dead." You watch Sam move his hand away.

"That sucks. A lot," he says, no pity liquefying his eyes. Just something like sympathy, a touch of I-know-grief that you've seen on others, at grief support group meetings where everyone is as broken as you.

You nod, let out a small laugh. "Yeah. A lot."

--

“So what’s up with you?” Sam asks, over tacos in City Park. You sit on the long concrete bench, facing the man-made lake. Most people around jog or speed walk by, a couple or two dotting the other sides of the pond.

“Hm?”

“You’ve been acting strange lately. Jumpy, drugged out. What’s been bothering you?” He scans the area, as if talking about the weather. The food in your mouth loses its taste, and you swallow on automatic.

“Summer,” you say.

“Summer? But it’s nice.”

“I get this way, some summers.” You set your taco down in its little paper basket, swipe your hands against your pants. “When things slow down, it’s like I have too much time to think.”

No way could you tell him. Crazy. He would think you’re insane.

Another corpse-ghost follows a couple. They’re strolling hand-in-hand. He’s a middle-aged man with a beer belly.

Sam takes the last bite of his taco, wipes his hands on a napkin.

In the lake, arms flicker, splashing, a head surfacing for breaths, mouth moving in silence. The girl goes under completely before appearing again in the paddleboat she falls out of, alone, her end stuck in a loop.

It’s funny how many people die violent deaths. You’d never have guessed.

“Let’s go lie in the grass,” you say, glancing away from the drowning girl.

You throw away your trash, walk along the sidewalk without a word. Settle on the stretch of grass on one edge of the park. It’s shaped like a bowl, and you lie on the incline, pull out your cigarettes.

“My sister passed away when I was seventeen.” Sam says it after a couple minutes of lying with his eyes closed. It’s clear and darkening. “Cancer. She was eleven. I knew it was coming, though. She was given a ten percent chance of survival. By the time it happened, she’d dwindled away to nothing. There was a small amount of relief, you know. My whole family felt it.”

So that’s it then, you think. You’ll tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine. Except in reverse.

“When no one was home, my brother shut himself in the garage, in his car, and he turned it on. I found him. He was seventeen.”

“What was his name?” You look at him. He’s staring into the darkening sky, as if in conversation with it, his arms folded under his head.

“Forrest.” He turns his gaze on you, and you imagine the silhouettes of memories are producing the glimmering in his eyes as they cross through his mind. “What was your sister’s name?”

“Ashley,” he says. Your vision blurs, and you don’t keep yourself from blinking in time. You feel the wetness brim and spill, and you’ve always thought crying was like your eyes had sprung a leak, and all you had to do was fix it by sucking it up. Until now. You move onto your side and place your ear against his chest, right over his heart. He wraps an arm around you, crushing your body tight against his for a moment. He doesn’t say anything.

And you think about finding Forrest’s body in that garage, how you shook him, put your ear against his chest after two fingers against his neck had discovered no movement, fingers against his wrist the same. You’d performed CPR.

You hadn’t cried.