Catastrophe Jones

“It’s dark now and the fireflies sing but they don’t come down they don’t come down to where I am, where I’ve been and what I can see if I close. I closed at the daylight, only one kind of flower, and my whole heart sang, but he’s gone now,” she whispered, staring at her fingertips in consternation, as though the answer might be written along the whorls of her fingerprints.

She sat on the floor of the closet, tying and untying shoes that weren’t on her feet, relacing them again and again. “They have to be the right shoes, otherwise they won’t be there when he needs them. When he needs me,” she muttered quietly to herself, opening and closing her starry eyes in a way that was less like blinking and more like the awake/asleep of an old porcelain doll picked up/put down over and over.

“It’s funny all the things you remember,” she told herself. “Because they haven’t happened yet. It’s still breakfast time, and the white feather is in her hand, and the cup on the ground is broken. Everyone’s medallion is tarnishing for lack of use, because they don’t even have them yet. Did you know she had a plan for everyone to have theirs? She did,” she said, and then chewed her lower lip, thinking back over the statement.

“She introduced him and blushed while she spoke because she knew she was doing it wrong,” she said, fingers pulling the loops undone yet again. “I can hear them singing. Only in my right ear,” she murmured, reaching up to run a finger around the rim of the shell of her ear, then splay her fingers through her hair, and twist the curls.

“It’s dark now and the fireflies sing but they don’t come down they don’t come down to where I am, where I’ve been and what I can see if I close. I closed at the daylight, only one kind of flower, and my whole heart sang, but he’s gone now,” she whispered, staring at her fingertips in consternation, as though the answer might be written along the whorls of her fingerprints.

She sat on the floor of the closet, tying and untying shoes that weren’t on her feet, relacing them again and again. “They have to be the right shoes, otherwise they won’t be there when he needs them. When he needs me,” she muttered quietly to herself, opening and closing her starry eyes in a way that was less like blinking and more like the awake/asleep of an old porcelain doll picked up/put down over and over.

“It’s funny all the things you remember,” she told herself. “Because they haven’t happened yet. It’s still breakfast time, and the white feather is in her hand, and the cup on the ground is broken. Everyone’s medallion is tarnishing for lack of use, because they don’t even have them yet. Did you know she had a plan for everyone to have theirs? She did,” she said, and then chewed her lower lip, thinking back over the statement.

“She introduced him and blushed while she spoke because she knew she was doing it wrong,” she said, fingers pulling the loops undone yet again. “I can hear them singing. Only in my right ear,” she murmured, reaching up to run a finger around the rim of the shell of her ear, then splay her fingers through her hair, and twist the curls.

“I can almost–” she breathes, eyes squinched shut behind black lashes laid to pale and cherryspot cheeks as she claws the air, fingertips trembling, hand electrified, splayed as though it could hold all of the everything if only she spread her fingers wide enough.

“–almost–” she hiccups, and for a moment she is not one but two, not one but

everything

everyone

every

one

“–almost–” she whispers, and her parted lips are a half smile, and her starfield eyes are wide, wild, euphoric.

“–almost–” she says,  and then everything snaps into place with an audible click so perfect, so once that they hear it come from inside the LHC, from outside the airlock, from the pages of the book, from the white and gold brushstrokes around the moon.

“There,” she says, and she looks down. A packet of bottlecaps in her hand, butterfly wings in her hair, bare feet. Twenties in the borrowed shirt pocket.

“Here,” she says, lifting her eyes and looking around. “What do you see?” she asks herself, and she feels giddy nostalgia rising up, promising to overwhelm.

When she speaks again, it is with urgency and joy and hope all at once.

“The city. The forest. The waves. The stars. The desert. The ice. The nothing. The halls of man. Clouds like blood and the songs that spill on the tongue and whole worlds within wheels within bone etched by electric blue, with words under and through the skin, through the now, through the then, where she is slowly going deaf but can’t stop listening, where he lives thousands of miles away, where she is uncertain if he ever wept for her but she is certain he was heartbroken all the same, where she holds no grudges, where they dance around words but always find that they fit, where terror is named by moon and fire, where going home will get you lost, where the sky can be that color, and dreams are made real by mouth and hand–” she says, the words running like a brook, a torrent of made real.

Waking up was instant — eyes were closed, then they were open. She blinks, looks around, and immediately sits up, hissing in pain as she unclenches her hands, dropping a small handful of old bottlecaps into her blanketed lap. “Oh,” she says to no one in particular. “I must have been sleeping. How did that happen? Silly girl.”  Getting up, she carefully scoops up the bottlecaps and puts them in the pocket of the pants she’s already wearing. Walking is faintly lopsided. She glances down.

One shoe off, one shoe on.

“These aren’t the right shoes, anyway,” she murmurs, and rubs her eyes. “Where did everyone go?”  For a moment, she walks in a slow, small circle, but grows frustrated when she doesn’t get anywhere. She’s focused so tightly on her steps, she doesn’t hear the door open.

“Are you coming down for breakfast, or—Christ. What did you do, wear your sneakers to bed?” an older woman sighs. “Is there mud in the sheets again?”

The girl’s head jerks up, and she looks at the palms of her hands, then the backs, then over to the woman in the doorway. “I think I’m lost.  I’m stuck. I was headed there, but I’m still here,” she explains. “You understand.”

“No more of this,” the woman says, not unkindly. “Come to breakfast. You’ll stay home today.”

“Home.”

“Yes, home.  I–”

“That’s where I was going. Oh, he’ll be so worried. So sad. His eyes, they light up. I miss him; I have to get back–” At first, she seems relieved to have a plan, but as she keeps talking, she looks alternately worried and saddened.  “I have to get back to him.  I know they put me to bed, and he isn’t waiting anymore, but he never– I don’t know when he…” She puts her hands into her tangled hair and utters a low sob. “It’s all gone backwards. It was supposed to be then but then it was now and he isn’t even there yet, is he? I don’t have the right shoes on,” she pleads.

“Honey,” the woman says, going to put her hands on the younger woman’s shoulders.

“NO!” the girl screams. “Don’t! I won’t be able to get back. I won’t be able to find him again.”

Flinching back, the woman sighs, and wipes tears from her own eyes tiredly. “This again,” she says resignedly. “Sweetheart, I–”

Footsteps down the hall, and a man walks in, with wire-rimmed glasses and hard grey eyes that aren’t touched by his concerned smile. “What is it? I heard shouting.”

“You don’t belong,” the girl whispers, shaking her head, her fingers to her mouth. “You never did, and that’s why it makes you so angry. And you, and you, and you and you and you,” she says, shaking her head. “Well it isn’t something I had a hand in, just all my fingers, in every pie. All of them. Just a taste. She’s laughing. She laughs at my jokes. I have to get BACK!” she shouts, and then her voice dwindles into a mournful sob. “Back home.”

“Okay okay — if there is home,” the woman murmurs, her voice so very soothing, “then where are you now, darling?”

“Stop that. You’re not helping,” the man snaps. “Don’t cater to her. Don’t play into her fantasy — you know this is all nonsense.” He walks up and reaches for the young woman, and grabs ahold of her shoulders and gives her a rough shake. “You listen to me, young lady. You’re old enough to know better. You stop this instant. Do you hear me?”

At first, she squirms, rolling her eyes and batting ineffectually, making pained mewling sounds in her throat.

“You stop this nonsense! Don’t you understand what you’re doing to this family? Don’t you see?” The shouting doesn’t seem to reach her — it is only when the back of the man’s bare hand touches her cheek in a stinging slap that anything registers.  “Damnit, don’t you see?”

The girl’s head snaps down and to the side, and her eyes flinch shut as all the mewling stops. She shudders, taking a step back, and puts her hand to her cheek, panting briefly.

“Yes,” she whispers. “Oh, yes.” When she looks up, and her hair falls away from her face, she opens up her eyes and stares, through and through, far and away, her eyes shining blue-black, speckled with twilight stars, galaxies of possibility.

Her voice is full of threads of potential, of all possibility, as she whispers, “I see.”