Fiction

The problem with learning to fly is that, on the first few attempts, you actually think you might be able to do it. I was luckier than most on my first try. I only shattered my tibia, a minor price to pay for the sake of progress. The whole ride to the hospital my mom was crying, both for me and the medical bills she would have to cover.

“What were you thinking, jumping out the window like that?” she screamed between the short, choked sobs and occasional honking of our rusted-out ford as we navigated the back roads to the hospital. “Never do that again. Look at me Charlie. Never. Do that. Again.” The thick musk of whiskey hung on her every word.

I spent what seemed like forever in the hospital, trapped in an oppressively white room, surrounded by a small army of nurses that watched over me like my mom used to. Then came the doctors, measuring my reflexes and asking all sorts of questions about my injury and family.

“Have you ever done this before?” / “Tell me if you can feel it when I do this?”

“Can you rotate your ankle for me?” / “How’s your relationship with your father?”

For the first few weeks after I was got home there was nearly always someone with an eye on me. Family dinners, a new concept in our house, were suddenly the norm. Most ended with little being said. Dad occasionally skipped them altogether to work in his den, or because he had to work late. It didn’t matter to me. Eventually, they would stop watching. Things would go back to normal. I’d learn to fly, whether they wanted me to or not.

That chance came on a wonderfully sunny Sunday afternoon. Mom was sleeping on the couch, beer cans strewn about the floor. Dad had been in his office all day, only coming out to use the bathroom. Every once in awhile I could hear his Keurig splutter out another coffee, the only indication I had that he was still there.

I crept up the steps to the second-floor window, slid the screen out and took a deep breath. The breeze rustled my hair a bit, I could see the trees swaying from side to side in the sunshine. I took a few steps back, got a running start, and propelled myself out the window. For one, beautiful moment, I hung in the air. Then the ground came rushing up to meet me.

Simon Matela is an undergraduate Creative Writing major at Chatham University with a focus (on/in) Fiction. He has been published in The Minor Bird and now The Blue Marble Review. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his cat, Lola.

In my memory I’m home and opening the door, speckled brown and white and grey where the paint had peeled. I remember that the doorknob was in the shape of a goblin head. It scared me, with a snouty nose and smirking mouth clenched around the copper hoop. I swung the door open, creaking like a horror movie, but it was really just that mummy hadn’t oiled the door, and I walked in.

I don’t remember the colour of the walls, or the pictures hanging on them but I know that the floor was cold wood in whorls and ovals that my mummy said was a tree’s inside. Strange. For me sound lingers and sight fades, and I can hear the pud pud pud of socks on wood, because mummy was always very strict about the no shoes inside rule, and I remember my voice shouting mummy mummy mummy mummy.

And I remember the silence, but maybe that isn’t something you can remember, not something there; it’s an absence, a hole in the fabric of noise and life. Worry crept through the rip of silence and into my heart, and its conjoined twin fear, and both lodged deep and permanent claws in my heart. If you can, feel the transition from innocence to terror, like Eden after the fall. Or if you want, if you can, insert another metaphor that rings more true. I was never a good writer, and now my brain is being eaten all up by this tumour, so even less. I revert to my high school clichés and metaphors and similes when I write. But I digress. My purpose is to tell this story.

Far back along the warped trails of remembrance a pink, plump hand turned the knob and went into the kitchen and there was a person on the floor It was my mummy with her flowy-long red hair which she let me twist and pretend I was a hairdresser, but my lovely happy-face glow-eye mummy was not moving and she was not laughing and the chips for supper were spilled all round her head going soggy and my mummy didn’t like soggy chips. I went over and touched her cheek, because she hated people touching her face, but she still didn’t wake up and her chest was a crumpled empty shell.

In school we had a teacher who wore glasses that made her eyes look like big bug eyes and she was teaching us about science and how everything was kept alive by a heart which is inside your ribs and which is really for blood and not feeling love like everyone thought. If my mummy was not well maybe she needed a new heart. I didn’t want to leave her alone all by herself in the hard kitchen, but I went and got some paper and a crayon from the crayon basket in the playroom. The playroom had plastic chairs striped like a candy cane.  It was an orange crayon and I hoped that was all right because I couldn’t find the red one (which is proper heart-colour) and I sat and drew a heart. A child’s heart, two bumps and two lines, and then I put it on my mummy where I thought her heart was and I gave her a kiss, because that’s what princes do to wake up princesses. Her skin was very cold, and her makeup smudged when I kissed her. Then she woke up.

And that was it.

My red mummy with red lips and red hair and red heart and she gave me a kiss, lots and lots of kisses like she always does and she didn’t mind that the chips were spilled.

“I must have tripped, and banged my head.”

That was what she said. It was probably a heart attack. That was what got her the second time round, years later, when I was too big and grown up and far away to help.

And that was it.

We had goldfish, two, and they were in a big glass square with bits of the price sticker still on it.  Sometimes I would watch how the light was reflected through the corners of the aquarium, or stick my hand in and the fish would nibble on my fingers. I was older than before. I could tell the fish was dead when I saw it that morning, but it was so pretty and gold floating above the fronds of weed and I didn’t want it dead so I drew it a heart, just a tiny one on the corner of paper I ripped off the shopping list. I pushed the paper underwater and held it against the fish’s heart with the tip of my thumb. The fish rolled over and shimmied away and the scrap of paper floated down to the bottom of the pond bleeding ink and now I knew.

It wasn’t magic or god, least I don’t think so. It just was. That was the last time I used it, but I saw dead bodies many times more. I worked in the maternity ward, and every squalling, flailing life was a miracle, but sometimes the tiny bodies were still and my hand itched for a pen and paper but I did not, because I could not.

And now I’m in a bed where the mattress is hard and thin, everything is sterile and white and I stare down at these little black marks on the paper and I know that when the sight leaves my eyes and my voice leaves this world there will be no one to draw a clumsy heart on a paper and hold it to my silent chest.

Temima enjoys living, doing unexpected things and eating good food. Preferably simultaneously. She also has two cats, or maybe they have her.

monophobia (the irrational fear of being alone)

she collects words. makes lists and pins them in her apartment. her walls have long forgotten the color of her hair, her caving clavicle, her clattering teeth. they have been blinded by the paper: mostly scraps, forced onto the rough wallpapering. the walls, they resent her for covering their eyes.

(she knows this because they whisper while she’s asleep.)

she is always writing. she has pens everywhere. extracting them from behind her bookcases, buried in her sock drawer. you even find one pinned on her wall.

why’s that pen up there? you ask.

i was making a list of things that i can always trust, she says nonchalantly.

you don’t ask: what about me? don’t you trust me?

instead, you clear your throat and survey the wall that is weighted with fluttering papers. it’s like the whole wall is about to take flight.

adding quickly she says that: i realized soon after i can’t even always trust a pen. the foreverness of their ink, the way it bleeds through the paper desperately, trying to escape… but you know, once you make a list you can’t change it.

you didn’t know this was a rule. but if she says it’s one then it is. she’s always been good at these things. she’s usually right.

you sit down at the coffee table. its surface is covered with shards of paper laminated over with stained plexiglass. a splatter of dried coffee covers the title of a list with four items: love money happiness fame.

pointing to it, keeping your index finger on the stain so the list won’t run away, you ask about the list delicately.

that silly little thing? she cries.

yeah, you shrug, trying to look disinterested. remember what the poster looked like in the counselor’s office? disinterested: pupils that slither to the corners of eyes, raised eyebrows, hand on cheek.

it’s a list of what people think you need in life, but is actually complete bull, she says. i made it a while back.

oh.

and you’re back to reading the lists. you finish reading the coffee table’s surface, so you move on to the legs. there are four, but the lists are plastered on crookedly, words often left dangling, only to be finished on the next face of the leg.

she turns around, sees you crane-necked, and laughs hoarsely. the pawing of a pen against cheap paper, the sound of her rippling hair, the shreds of lists flapping against each other like a paper ocean. familiar sounds.

she tiptoes to reach the top of the wall. says nothing as she does so. neither do you.

buried deep under the sofa lies another layer of lists. these are personal and you’re glad she’s busy taping a new fleet of lists onto the ceiling so she can’t see you absorbing everything. head half submerged in the dusty darkness, you find unlucky numbers (10 – when the older kids, your role models, taught you about popularity and cafeteria lunch and magazine covers and ribcages, 12 – when you feel grey all over for the first time, 15 – when you’re sitting with the grey on your birthday, no one else, just grey. everywhere.)

you army crawl deeper into the murkiness of the under-couch. here you find dreadful colors (stained white – the color of bathroom tiles and toilet bowls and office walls, ocean blue – the color of your eyes trapped into one dimension, grey – how loneliness feels, all scratchy and hollow and damp.)

she’s done taping the lists up. her pointed feet step down from the ladder and land lightly on the plexiglassed lists on the ground.

where are you? she asks quietly.

you scramble to read more, absorb more, even though you know this is knowing too much of her.

reluctantly you roll out, yelling boo with lackluster energy, coated with dust.

you found my secret spot! she says, flustered.

you push yourself up with your arms and sink into the couch, causing dust to ricochet off the cracked leather.

you notice that in your absence, the whole ceiling has been plastered down with lists. you spot beautiful words, best days of the week and most populated countries. a thicket of paper whispers around you.

            you stand up, knees trembling, large eyes, confused eyes. all four walls are lined with lists. the ground is, too. the tables, the bar counter, the fridge. and the ceiling.

you spot one last list resting cockily by the mirror: worst places to be trapped in.

            the only item is: your own brain.

            as soon as you look up, the ceiling comes crashing down in a fitful plume of smoke and crackled cement. as you emerge from the rubble with plaster and slips of paper on your arm, you notice that she is gone. and so are the endless lists with their endless words.

so it’s just you now. just you.

Claire Shang is a sophomore at Hunter College High School in New York. She runs and drinks tea almost as much as she writes. Claire’s works have been recognized on a national level by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and she will be published in the forthcoming issue of Moledro Magazine.

My older sister was always a bewildering creature,—at least, to me.  I was sure that to my mother and father, she was just Delilah, just like I was just Willow.  They never blinked when Delilah waltzed around the house, humming tunes from a time before she was born, or when she buried herself beneath wool blankets, so deep that I was surprised she could breathe. I know that I wouldn’t have been able to breathe, but then again, Delilah was a different species.

Delilah was older than me by seven years, which might have been part of the reason that we lived in two different worlds. She didn’t attend school like I did, which was fine, but it was just another area where our paths diverged. Most days, I never saw her. When Delilah did surface from her room, she wore her hair braided down her back, and a yellow sundress, no matter what season it was. I didn’t understand how she wasn’t cold, but for all I knew, her skin might have been immune to the icy air. From the way everyone treated her, the idea that her skin was made of porcelain, was entirely plausible.

The strangest thing about my sister though, was not her mood swings or the distance she kept from me. It was her favorite activity, which she found time to do, even when she was having one of her “rainy days,” as mother liked to call them. Delilah liked to pick the petals off daisies and paste them to her skin.

I’d watch her do it, when I could. Father always kept a bouquet of daisies on the kitchen table, and whenever they’d disappear from their green, glass vase, I’d start searching. When the sun was warm, I’d find her in the garden. If it rained, she would be in the living room. When the wind blew, it was the front porch. It had taken me a while, but I had memorized each of the spots.

She always had a tin, full of some type of paste, and a bristled paintbrush, that she used to smooth the paste over her skin. Sometimes she put the petals on her arms, and often her shins. It was rare, but I once saw her press one of the yellow petals against her cheek.

Delilah would cry while she worked, or if it was a “sunny day,” sing one of her songs. Whether there were tears dripping down her cheeks or a grin spread across her face, she was meticulous as she worked. Once she finished, the petals would remain on her skin, until they turned from yellow to brown, and finally crumbled into dust. Then, Delilah would paste more on. I was fascinated by the whole process; I found it beautiful.

So, on an October day, when the sun peeked through the clouds, I pulled the daisies out of their vase, and headed out to the garden. I didn’t have Delilah’s special tin or the paintbrush that she used. They were both hidden in the most forbidden area of the house, her bedroom. But I was determined to wear the petals on my skin, so I held a bottle of Elmer’s glue in my grubby, little hand, and the daisies in the other.

I knelt on the stone pathway, and began to pluck the petals from their stems. I tore the first few, not realizing how gentle I needed to be. Some of the petals blew away in the wind, and others slipped between cracks in the stone path, but soon I had a small stack, ready to be used. I slathered my arm in glue, and was preparing to lay the first petal down, when I heard a scream.

I looked up and saw Delilah standing close by, her yellow dress billowing in the wind. Her skin looked ghostly against the blue sky, and for a moment, I believed she was a figment of my imagination.

“What are you doing?” Delilah cried, as she ran and knelt next to me. She yanked the daisies out of my hand, and in my surprise, I didn’t protest.

My sister never spoke to me, whether she was happy or sad. It was part of what had made her into such a mystical being, and even now that words had spilled from her mouth, the spell was not broken. I felt as if I should run away and hide, rather than remain in the presence of the strange creature that was my sister.

“What are you doing?” Delilah asked again, this time with more force.

“I wanted to put the flowers on,” I spoke quietly; refusing to stare into her icy, blue eyes. “Like you do.”

“You can’t,” she insisted.  “You can’t ever, ever, be like me.”

“Why not?”

Instead of responding, Delilah looked to the ground, and began picking up the scattered daisy petals. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, and I knew that I should leave before she began to cry. But at the age of nine, my curiosity was too much for me to walk away without my questions answered. So, if Delilah wouldn’t tell me why I couldn’t have flower petals, then I wanted to know why she could.

“Why do you always wear the petals?” I asked.

Delilah looked up, seeming almost as surprised as I was, that I had the courage to speak again. I found myself staring at the freckles on her nose, as she turned my question over in her mind, hopefully forming an answer.

“The things I feel sometimes,” she said slowly, as if she were tasting each word carefully on her tongue, “I can’t ever explain them in words.  It’s hard for me to remind myself that I ever felt different. That I can feel different again.”

I nodded my head, though none of her words made sense. All I knew was that my sister was talking to me. My sister was talking to me, and I wasn’t going to stop her.

“When I put the petals on my skin,” she continued, “they represent happiness, and when they crumble to nothing, they represent sadness.  But the thing is, there are always more petals. There is always more happiness, no matter how many times it turns to dust.”

She finished collecting the petals, and stood up, walking back towards the path. She didn’t say goodbye, or invite me to follow her, but I didn’t need her to. On that day, the strangest part of her, the obsession with daisy petals, had made her seem more human.

Caitlin Roberts is a young author, born in California and raised in Alaska. She enjoys all types of writing including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Her other activities include dancing, playing piano, and spending time with her wonderful dog, Tess.