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this is the only hill in what looks like miles, and there is...a house, on top of it, if you can even call it that. it looks like a house that has been merged with several other houses by a...house surgeon, who has never gotten a formal degree. it’s ramshackle and has too many doors, too many mismatched windows, and too many random blowing curtains made out of way too many different fabrics. it’s like a breathing thing that moves when the wind blows and i don’t even know how it’s standing upright.
the yard is a different story. not a yard, not really, because is it even a yard if there are no houses around you at all and all the sprawling property appears to be yours? i don’t know. but the yellowed grass is covered in...stuff. there are cars, pieces of furniture. there are several giant metal wash tubs standing vertically in a row, like tombstones, down the hill. there are no real walkways, but you can see where the grass is worn down to dirt by many feet. narrow dirt trails worm their way around piles of junk and enormous wooden picnic tables, mangled flowerbeds, whatever else. this feels like a fantasy place, if your fantasy happens to be the hills have eyes crossed with alice in wonderland, steeped in extreme hoarders. it doesn’t feel safe but it also doesn’t exactly feel...unsafe. dangerous isn’t the word, but it’s like, pretty close to it. blood spatter would look at home on some of these faded floral curtains, but it just isn’t there.
i didn’t wake up here. not really. i woke up on a hot, battered old bus parked at the bottom of the hill. the bus, i can see from the outside, is a dingy light blue. and from being inside, i can also say that the seats are vinyl and stick to your legs in the sun.
there wasn’t anyone else on the bus, but the house is...alive with people. i don’t know any of them. my mask helps with the blowing dust but it also helps to hide how startled i am by the people who live? here. there are children of every age, some outside, in the so-called yard. there are so many people. not one of them has on a mask, and that does scare me a little. i guess out here in nowhere, they don’t have much exposure risk. but it’s been so long since i’ve seen people with bare faces that it gives me pause because the other thing is-i can’t remember people looking like...this. every single one of them is distorted. misshapen, somehow, as if put together by a different artist than the one who made me. i hate to sound callous. for a weird second i hope that they can’t hear my thoughts. they don’t seem...threatening, honestly, and as i walk up the hill towards the house none of them really give me a second glance. i wonder if i actually DO know them. do i have some kind of amnesia? should i know them? why am i still wearing this mask, then, out here where no one else seems to have heard of the virus? i didn’t come from here. i didn’t. i know i didn’t.
the first door i get close to is already open and leaning heavily on the bottom hinge as if the top one is about to give out. a child with one eye blinks at me from inside the doorway and i wave a little, used to being unable to smile in greeting, and he waves back. i step inside. the house is a maze. all i really find myself looking for is a bathroom, because i have to pee, i can’t even remember drinking anything. there is a man with jagged teeth and wiry red hair in a hallway, and it takes everything in me to casually ask him where the bathroom is as if maybe i’ve just forgotten where it was; he smiles all too friendly with those teeth and crooked jaw and he points to a porcelain basin sink, set into the wall of the hallway.
my heart sinks. yes, of course. a squat sink with absolutely no covering for privacy, i don’t know what i was expecting. unable to bring myself to use the alleged bathroom, i thank the crooked man and walk back outside, hoping that maybe the urge to pee will just...i don’t know, go away on its own. there is a wooden picnic table sitting at an angle nearby and i go to sit at it, still unsure what else i should be doing here, and that’s when i am joined by him.
him, is a broad-shouldered man with short brown hair. he sits across the table at the very other end of it as if afraid to sit any closer. he is not wearing a mask, like all the others, but unlike them he actually...doesn’t look cartoonishly skewed, as if being viewed through a funhouse mirror. his features look mostly normal. he isn’t looking at me at all but it feels deliberate, as i am staring directly at him, not intentionally sizing him up but it is what it is, and then i see his hands. they aren’t hands. theyre fleshy clubs, almost claws, with what looks like...three? massive fingers, if you count the thumb, at the end of each. my eyes must linger too long because without looking at me, the man pulls his hands into his lap underneath the table. i immediately feel guilt and look down at my own hands. very small, and almost ridiculous looking in comparison. this time i know he is looking at them too. i don’t look up.
its been two days. i think. time doesn’t seem to pass the same way here. i still can’t use the hallway sink bathroom, and i still don’t know what to do with myself in this junkyard dust bowl house, or outside of it. every day i sit at my picnic table, and every day for at least a little while, the man with the club hands sits with me. today he brings bread. i hear the plate hit the wooden table and look up, and he slides the plate over with his elbow, keeping his hand hidden behind his neck. i want to say i’m sorry for staring but instead i just say thank you, and eat the bread with my puny normal hands. he watches and i pretend like i don’t notice, like i haven’t noticed the hunger stabbing into me for the last 2 days. when the bread is gone he stares at the plate, and i stare at it too, until i look up at him and see the almost pained expression on his face and realize he is trying to figure out how to pick the plate up without exposing his hands to me again. i suddenly hate every single one of my ten fingers. picking the plate up with them anyway, i hold it out to him at the other end of the table, in a way where he could not take it from me without the addition of hands at all, and hope this is a peace offering.
he stares at me. i stare back. we wait. my arm is heavy holding this plate in the air. we wait.
his shoulders roll with a heavy breath and he stands suddenly, reaches out and takes the plate with one misshapen hand, and walks into the house without looking at my face. which is okay. he can’t see me smiling.
on the third day, he nods his head at me in a very deliberate way. almost with his chin, sharply pointed at my face, almost like he is asking a question. it makes me wonder if he speaks at all. he does it a second time and i realize, he is asking about the mask. i’m not sure how to answer. if the virus isn’t here, maybe it’s pointless anyway, but it feels somehow like a comfort now. it’s been so long. i like being hidden. i shrug my shoulders and say, it keeps me safe. and nothing else. he nods in understanding this time, and looks down into his lap. we sit for hours. it never rains here, and the sun is always in the same place in the sky no matter what time of day it is. if time exists here, at all. maybe the sun knows that it doesn’t.
i do not sleep here. i don’t think i do, anyway. i have no memories of any pause between one day and the next; they bleed into each other like watercolors and i just have this intrinsic knowledge that it is tomorrow. i am losing track of the days now. there is something of a routine and this comforts me, i like routines. i like schedules. even in this corner of backwoods wonderland it is a relief to know that things happen for me in a certain familiar order, and i think maybe he likes it too, because he sits down at our table at what feels like the same time every day. it is impossible to say this is true without a clock, but as soon as i think it’s about time, he shows up. the table always groans and lifts slightly at my end, he is big. not in a monstrous way, at least, not...okay, not in a scary way. but he is very big, with those wide shoulders, and at first it had been hard to tell how tall he was when i only saw him seated. i’ve caught more glances now. he has to bend almost in half and turn his body sideways to even go through the doorway of the house. he is immense. but there is something about the curve of his shoulders and his almost cowering, slouched posture that makes me think he doesn’t want to be so big, that he is trying desperately, constantly, to make himself smaller. i don’t know if it’s because of me. maybe to try and seem less threatening. he still seems to think i am afraid of him. i don’t think he’s threatening. i’m not afraid.
when he sits today i turn to look at him and he is rummaging in the pocket of his worn flannel shirt with one hand. his hands do not even make me look twice now. i wish i had better words to describe them. claws sound so vicious, and clubs are violent, but they still aren’t exactly hands either. he pulls out a piece of fabric and tosses it gently across the table so that it rests between us, before pulling his hand back out of my view. everything he does with the appendages at the ends of his arms is very careful and clumsy. he, for all of his height and towering build, is just a shy little boy. my mask always hides my smiles. i have never seen him smile. he never really even meets my eyes.
i look at the cloth for a moment before i pick it up and realize...it’s a mask. well. almost. it’s roughly the right shape, but it’s too big for my face. the ear straps are loose and sewn haphazardly. i stare at it in my hands for a few seconds more before it dawns on me that he made this. he made a mask. he made it for me. i want to rip mine off so he can see my face and how red it is but it hasn’t been 2 weeks, not yet. and i can’t risk it. instead i look up and i say thank you. i say, it’s almost perfect. i say, this is really good for your first try. he still doesn’t smile but does that chin-pointing thing i’ve gotten used to, clearly gesturing for me to try it on, and i do. i hook the straps over my ears and pull it over my nose and mouth, covering the mask i already have on, and look at him. he examines my face with a weird intensity i haven’t seen before and his shoulders drop a little when he sees how ill-fitting the fabric is on my face, and my chest hurts.
i say, it probably fits you pretty well.
he nods, defeated.
i say, my face is just a lot smaller.
he nods again, this time reaching out too carefully with one giant hand to unhook the ear loops, and pull the mask off of my face. i don’t move. he seems to gauge my reaction. when there isn’t one he points at me with one finger, then pinches that finger and his thumb together in a familiar gesture that i recognize as “tiny.”
you are tiny, his hands say to me.
i kind of laugh, but barely. everyone is tiny to him. i shrug my shoulders. i say, okay, then make a tiny mask.
he looks at me for a very long time. we look at each other. he's meeting my eyes in a way he hasn’t before and his eyes are blue. or green. they’re both of those colors and they are so sad, for some reason. he finally blinks and tilts his head slightly in a nod, as if accepting a challenge. he stuffs the huge mask back into his shirt pocket, and moves to stand up. i’m suddenly hit with inspiration and i stand up first.
hey, i say.
he stands slowly and towers over me. i’m about chest height on him. he looks down at me as if i am a baby rabbit that he is afraid of scaring away. i’m not a rabbit.
i, um, could use your help, i say.
i tell him with only mild embarrassment that i really have to use the bathroom. and that there isn’t any door. or curtain. or anything. and i can’t go when someone is looking. the words tumble out in a stuttering rush because i am uncomfortable, but he hasn’t reacted.
there is a very long, very heavy pause. i am intensely staring at one of the chipped buttons on his shirt instead of craning my neck to see what his face is doing. who asks someone they barely know to help them use the bathroom. who does this. why am i doing this. and then, his entire body turns toward the house and he takes a few steps before looking back at me and nodding slightly to the door. i know what he means, and i’m grateful. follow me, is what he means. come on. i walk after him, and it feels almost insane to walk right through the door after watching him bend and cave in on himself to even fit through it. he has to stay slightly bent even inside the house. it looks like he is in a mine shaft, or some tiny tunnel not made for him and i wonder if his back hurts from doing this. it’s no wonder he spends so much time outside.
we make our way through the first hallway and into the second, where my nemesis waits. this sink. this deep, cracked sink, built into the wall, with a rusted silver spigot and something i didn’t notice before...a loose silver chain to pull the dirty stopper out of the drain. i guess this is how you flush. i do not want to do this. this is a nightmare. my face is redder than it has ever been, and i look up very hesitantly to see what he’s thinking of my reaction to these accommodations. he looks...blank, but in a way that looks like he’s forcing himself to appear so. he looks expectant. like, hurry up. i don’t know how to say, i am not tall enough to position myself over this sink. this is not mildly embarrassing, this is mortifying. my hesitation is like a physical thing in this hallway with us.
he takes a very deep breath that broadens his shoulders briefly, and touches my arm. i look at him. he closes his eyes. then opens them. then closes them again. i know what he means. he’s saying, i won’t look. it’s okay. i won’t look.
i unbutton my stupid shorts. he snaps his eyes shut, but when i step as close as i can to the sink it’s taller than my hip and i have no idea what to do. his body is curled around where i am standing and i am hidden from the narrow spaces in the hallway, but i still can’t reach this sink. with a noise i don’t actually mean to make i try to hoist myself up to the edge so i can sit on it, but i slip and my feet hit the floor with a thud. he must hear me. his eyes crack back open and there’s this clarity in them, he sees what the problem is and i’ve never felt so helpless in my entire life. i hope i die. standing here in my unbuttoned shorts, i look up at him and watch him silently come to some kind of personal conclusion.
keeping his body around me like a shield, his arms come up to my sides and his huge hands gently grip either side of my ribcage. i am literally not surprised in any way. he’s looking at me to see if this is a valid solution that i am okay with. i’m really not okay with needing help to pee. i’m embarrassed beyond words. but i can’t argue with this and i stubbornly nod, and moments later feel my feet leave the ground as he ever so carefully lifts me to set me on the edge of the sink. after looking to make sure i am securely seated, he nods and pulls one hand from my side to rest on the wall, keeping me blocked from view, but the other remains carefully holding me in place. i start to wriggle out of my shorts, and the action makes the hand on my side tighten almost painfully. i don’t even check to make sure he isn’t looking. if he’s seriously going to be this close to me the entire time i don’t even care anymore.
it’s like, the best pee i’ve ever had. i’m barely even thinking about how i’m being cradled by a giant over an unsanitary sink toilet. it doesn’t even matter. i venture a look up and he is staring down the hallway, one temple pressed to the wall, not looking at me. i wonder if this is as deeply uncomfortable for him as it is for me. i wonder how a person says thanks for this kind of help. i wonder if there’s toilet paper, and then don’t even bother thinking about it further. when i am done i wait for a few seconds before awkwardly trying to pull my shorts back up, and i feel him move forward give me the room to do so before he picks me up again and sets me back down on solid ground. there is the heaviest silence. i resolutely do not look at him.
and then he reaches out and pulls the silver chain and i hear the drain empty.
i finally do look at him and he actually...rolls his eyes at me. as if to say, what, were you raised in a barn? it’s so absurd that i start laughing, almost hysterically, and can’t even catch my breath. i’m laughing the entire time he’s nudging me down the hallway and back outside. i’m laughing as i stumble back to the picnic table. i’m laughing as i say, i’m sorry, i didn’t mean to. and then i am not laughing as i look at him red-faced and say, thank you.
that was really stupid, i say, but thank you.
sorry for being such a pain in the ass, i also say.
he is predictably silent. but he pats his shirt pocket, the one holding the mask prototype, and turns to go back inside, leaving me alone again. right, he’s making me another mask. a tiny one.
days pass in the same groundhog’s day-like quality, as if listening to the same song over and over again. i like repetition. there are still no nights, and it’s okay. the sun is bright but never seems to burn. the house is a carnival ant colony of activity, teeming with its resident sideshow oddities who still never speak to me or notice me; they run circles through it and around the junkyard property and there is always motion around me. i still do not have a name for my new friend, my silent companion who sits with me every day and brings me food, and makes me things. i have started to call him different letters in my head, and they stand for something new all the time. today he feels like an L for Lenny, from Of Mice and Men. L for lobster, which is probably mean, and i would never tell him that one. L for Leviathan.
he takes me inside to use the bathroom every day now. it’s a routine i’m not sure i am comfortable getting used to, but i am getting more comfortably used to it than i would like. now instead of tensely perching on the sink edge, i lean against his chest as he stands in front of me like a protective wall. if this familiarity makes him uncomfortable he does not make any sign of it. i always pull the silver flush string myself before he sets me down and he pats my shoulder softly as if to say good girl, and i feel 5 years old again.
he does not hide his hands from me anymore. he sets plates of bread and other random things in front of me and pokes me if i do not eat what seems to be enough for his liking. he brings glasses of water and sometimes lemonade or iced tea, and everything looks so small when he is holding it. he has brought 3 masks now and none of them fit right. it’s apparently a challenge he has some kind of need to complete, and with every mask i try on his eyes narrow and he huffs a disgruntled breath before taking it back and re-pocketing it. he’ll get it right one of these days. he keeps getting closer. i do not tell him how it makes me feel to imagine him sitting on the floor of a faded farmhouse room, cutting and sewing fabric, trying to make me something perfect. it is a feeling i can’t put into words, anyway.
i don’t say very much to him. i mean, i didn’t really at first. i’m starting to say more now. i don’t ask questions, but sometimes i tell him things. one day he brings me a heaping bowl of pasta salad, and i tell him how i love pasta salad. then i start telling him some of my other favorite foods. he listens, sometimes making faces. he doesn’t like the idea of sushi and he lets me know with a sharp head shake. when i mention egg sandwiches, he nods several times and seems to light up.
the next day, he brings me an egg sandwich with a clumsy fried egg and dripping cheese on a big, doughy roll. for the first time ever he has two plates, and there’s an identical sandwich on the other. i realize he brought one for himself. i’ve never seen him eat. he never eats with me. but today we sit at our table and eat our egg sandwiches together, and it’s the most normal thing in the world.
however, this is easily the messiest thing i’ve had to eat here yet. it’s been difficult, eating, keeping a mask on. i could probably have taken it off but at this point it’s a principle and comfort, a piece of armor. tearing off little bites of this sandwich, runny yolk and melted cheese, is not ideal. i hate getting food on my hands. i’m tearing the sandwich into tiny pieces and smearing the yolk everywhere, sticky handed, and sneaking little bites up under my mask like some kind of freakish plague chipmunk. i can tell he’s watching me and i’m being deliberately obtuse about it; he has no way of knowing my food peculiarities and i don’t really know how to explain them. but i also don’t have a napkin, and there is egg and cheese and crumbs everywhere, and i am having something of an internal panic attack. days into living this dreamscape hillbilly fantasy life with no context or explanation, and this is what will be my undoing. i hate myself.
the table shakes and i look up to see my companion leaving to go into the house. it’s abrupt and he leaves his empty plate on the table and doesn’t take mine either. it’s weird. he’s changing the routine. i’m honestly thinking that my huge sandwich mess offended him somehow and i’m sitting here, sandwich mostly gone, hands absolutely wrecked, feeling like the most unclean thing that has ever graced the earth, when he comes back out and he’s holding...a towel.
a ratty, once-white dishtowel.
he walks in that not-slow, not-fast, quiet way of his and comes to stand next to where i am sitting. i shift so that i am facing him, and assuming the towel is for me because i am a slob, start to reach out for it, but he catches my wrist. i freeze. i don’t know what he’s doing. but he gets down, slowly, to his knees in front of me, and starts using the towel to wipe my hand carefully. one finger after another. the rag is damp which means he literally went inside, wet a towel, and came back out to clean my hands. something rises in my throat and i start to say, i could do it, but without moving his head his eyes meet mine and i just stop before i can even finish the sentence. his silence says, sure you could, but i’m going to.
he finishes one hand and drops it, expectantly waiting for the other, and i raise it to his grasp obediently. he wipes it clean with just as much care. when he’s done he rises to tower over me again and reaches behind me to grab my plate. i’m just looking at him, rubbing my damp fingers against my shorts to half heartedly dry them. there is a pause before he goes to take his own plate, and he glances back at me as if to make sure i’m looking at him before he shakes his head a little and does that tiny eye roll. the one that means, you’re a mess, but means it in an almost affectionate, patient way. once he disappears into the house i stare at the place where he had just been and have a moment of clarity that makes my hands ball into little fists.
he LIKES this. he LIKES doing all of these things. he LIKES taking care of me as if i am a tiny living doll that is his to feed, clean, and provide for. my next thought goes beyond clarity and a laugh bubbles up from between my lips because i?
i like it, too.
when he meets me the next morning i am waiting like a puppy that hasn’t seen it’s owner and the second i see him i sit up straighter. today he is more of an O, i’m thinking. maybe for Optimus Prime. maybe for the Oh! i made quietly when i finally saw him in my field of vision. who knows. if he notices anything about my demeanor he makes no indication of it, but for the first time he sits at the table next to me instead of diagonally across at the other end. i say, hi! he is silent but raises an eyebrow, places a new mask on the table in front of me, and looks at me very intensely. i waste no time in trying it on. the second my hands leave the loops around my ears i know that it fits, and so does he, because his face brightens in a way i haven’t seen before. this is maybe mask prototype...5? 6? and i can see how happy he is in the way his oversized hands clench in his lap as though he is restraining himself from reaching out and touching it on my face. i do the only thing i can think to do.
i take the mask off.
he looks...stricken.
just, wait, i say.
i take off this black fabric mask i've been wearing since i got here. the one he has never seen me without. and i look at him and smile, visibly for the first time. but only for a second.
i put on the mask he made me and set my old one on the table. the one he's made is light blue, like the chariot that brought me here, and has little flowers on it. maybe an old curtain, maybe a sheet. maybe it doesn’t matter. what does matter, is the absolutely insane expression on the face in front of mine. he looks....shell shocked? or like he’s been electrocuted, perhaps? it’s hard to say. i can’t tell if i should be worried or not, like maybe seeing my bare face was the worst thing that ever happened to him, but then there is a huge hand on the side of my head and it’s just. holding my face like i’m made out of porcelain. i meet his eyes slowly and he’s...
he’s....smiling. i’ve never seen him smile. but the way he is now is so bright i want to bottle it and keep it close. i lean my head a little into his hand and he pats my face gently. i want to laugh because the meaning that i’m getting is basically, good face, yes, i like this face. but i don’t laugh because my throat is almost completely closed up with some wild unnamed emotion that i can’t currently define.
we sit like this, like some kind of renaissance painting, for what feels like an eternity before he lets my face go and lightly touches the mask over my features. the gesture feels almost sad. if i had to guess, i would think it meant that he wished i wasn’t wearing a mask at all, even the one he so painstakingly made for me. and i get it. i mean, i do, too. i think finally letting the sun hit my entire face will be amazing once i can do it. but i still can’t explain the virus to him, or my fear of getting him sick. i really don’t think that he or any of his assumed family have any exposure out here. it can’t be my fault if anyone is compromised because of me. it can’t be. two weeks will happen eventually, even if i am guessing at it. i’ll wait. and i still can’t explain all of this so the best i can do is to say, it’s not forever.
he tilts his head.
the mask, i say, it’s not forever. i can take it off soon, just not yet, i say.
he nods a little bit, and pats my shoulder as if to say he understands even if i’m not sure he really does. but it’s okay.
instead of dates i only have meals to judge by. we eat breakfast sandwiches, bowls of bow tie noodles, hash brown potatoes, huge chunks of bread or big buttery biscuits, reused plastic containers of carefully cut up fruit. he has only tried to serve meat to me once and it was bacon, with our daily bread, and i explained that i don’t eat meat before dumping my portion of bacon onto his plate and eating just the bread. he hadn’t looked offended, just puzzled, but it seems like he and his cohorts don’t eat much meat either seeing as it has only come up once. i don’t know who makes the food but i heavily suspect it’s him. it’s cute, imagining him bending in half in a country kitchen deciding what we eat today. i do not say this out loud.
i’ve started to inspect the yard. i dig through piles of junk while he watches, warily, with an expression that can only be described as please be careful. i find tiny things and show him, like buttons and little trinkets, and he pats my head approvingly. i find bones and feathers and when i show him those, he raises an eyebrow as if to question how strange i am, but pats my head nonetheless. i have a small collection of things that i am keeping in a drawer i pulled out of an abandoned wardrobe on the back end of the yard, and i showcase my found objects in it on the picnic table. i never worry about rain. he looks at my tray of treasures and one day, after we eat biscuits and fruit, he comes back from disposing of our dishes and stands at the head of the table.
i look at him.
he picks up my collection drawer. i get a little nervous. but he moves his head in a little nod towards the house and i follow him into it, past the hallways to the bathroom, past two staircases and up a third. i feel like i should be leaving biscuit crumbs to find my way back. i trail behind him as he weaves us through this endless, multi leveled country castle and finally to a battered white door at the end of a hallway on what is maybe the third floor. he motions for me to open it. i do, turning the tarnished brass knob with anxious fingers.
the room is big. the ceilings are sloped, making me think it is one of the rooms near the top of the house, and i know immediately whose room it is when i see the box of fabric squares on the floor by an immense brass bed frame. it’s his. i look around, at the faded floral rug over the hardwood floor, at the gauzy white curtains fluttering out of the open windows. at the bedside table, wood painted off-white, with nothing on it but a pair of heavy metal shears and a tiny tomato pincushion stuffed with sewing needles. there is a huge wood armoire against one wall and a standing mirror, taller than i am, with a yellowed blanket draped over all but one corner of it. a half-opened closet door. and nestled into the opposite wall closer to the bed, is a set of built-in shelves. they are all empty. i turn to look at him.
he doesn’t look back. he pushes past me to walk into the room and set my drawer on the bed, where he carefully begins placing my treasures one by one on the built-in shelves. possum and mouse skulls, antique glass bottles, jars of buttons. each object looking tinier than ever in his enormous hands. i think about what this means, my things being moved into his room. i have the urge to ask a million questions but i start with just a couple. is this your room, i ask to confirm.
he nods without looking at me.
can i stay here too, or just my stuff, i ask.
the drawer emptied, he finally turns around. his eyes are firmly glued to the carpet at my feet and there is a very heavy tension in the room around us. i feel like i may have asked a question that made him uncomfortable, and start to open my mouth to apologize, but then he raises his head and points one finger directly at the center of my chest.
you, he says.
i stare at him.
please, he adds, a little desperately.
his voice isn’t as deep as i would’ve thought. it’s warm and sounds creaky with lack of use, and it’s very quiet. hesitant. my eyes have to be as big as dinner plates, staring at him, and his anxiety is palpably getting more intense with every beat of silence. i finally blink.
so, i manage to say, you’ve been holding out on me.
it’s not the answer to his question. but it surprises him enough to blink, too, and stop holding his breath the way i can see he’s been doing for the last 30 seconds.
i continue to add, and yes.
yes, he repeats.
yes, i say again too. yes, i like your room, and yes, i’ll stay. and thank you, i add at the end, because he had said please and i like how polite he was.
he smiles this tiny little half smile and nods.
but, i continue, i want you to talk to me more.
he rolls his eyes but his smile stays.
it’s the strangest thing. there has been no night since i arrived here on the edge of nowhere, but the second i start staying in the house...darkness falls. if i were a scientist i am sure this would fascinate me, watching the sky darken for the first time in who knows how many days, but i’m not. i ask no questions and don’t even wonder why the days change only from within the walls of this dilapidated building. i sleep soundly in the enormous, creaking old bed next to my equally enormous companion who tries each evening to carefully leave space between us by teetering himself on the edge of the mattress; every morning i wake up stuck to his side anyway. i always wake up first.
tiers of comfort are slowly being built like a brick wall. at first i sleep in my shorts and tee shirt, by night 3 or 4 i am in just a huge old crewneck sweatshirt i found in his closet. at first when i wake i carefully peel myself away from him and make sure he doesn’t realize we were ever closer than how we fell asleep, by the next few mornings i wake up and shamelessly bury myself further into his side to hide from the sunlight. the dip in the center of the mattress rolls him towards me no matter what, and it’s a ridiculous facade to even pretend like i don’t want to snuggle into him. i have always been a cuddler.
it’s morning...6 now. i wake up on my stomach, pinned to the bed with one huge heavy arm, squirming because the breath on the back of my neck is tickling me. i press my face into the pillow and-oh, shit. i press my face into the pillow.
my face.
where is my mask.
freezing, i open my eyes and move my head very slowly to try and see where the absent fabric is, and there-it’s stuffed under the edge of the pillow. i can’t believe this hasn’t happened yet, honestly. as i lay there, heart racing, i start to think about it and realize i’m sure it’s been about two weeks. granted, my calculations are rough. but it’s been long enough that signs of anything would have showed, either for him or myself. and i don’t think i’m leaving, not anytime soon. i realize what the pillow smells like and it’s comforting, an unidentifiable homey, lived-in smell that i try to breathe in as deeply as i can. i haven’t really...smelled anything in so long. my lungs feel like they’re trying to absorb every molecule of fresh air in the room. i feel like i can smell the dust, and the sun coming in through the curtains, and the attic-y old wallpaper smell of the house itself. my heart slows. i don’t try and put the mask back on. i lay there, pressed to the bed, and think about how impatient i am to share the decision i’ve just come to. i wiggle my nose, and rub my lips together, and practice smiling, all the things i haven’t been able to do in too long.
as if wakened by my contagious excitement the arm heavily draped over my side tenses, then relaxes, and the breath at my neck turns into a sleepy little rumbling noise. i feel him shift a little and then gently bonk his forehead into the back of my head as if to say, hello, wake up. like i haven’t been awake. i wait for the breathing behind me to regulate before i twist, with difficulty, to turn onto my side and face my bedmate fully.
his eyes aren’t completely open at first, but at my continued movements he sleepily blinks them a few times and focuses on my face. there’s only a few inches between our noses and i smile super brightly and say, good morning.
he stares at me. there is the feeling of time slowing to a total and utter halt, as i see his eyes move down my face. it’s like he doesn’t know what to say, except i’m wrong because the next second he says very softly, time?
i nod against the pillow. yeah, i say, it’s time.
his next word makes the heart in my chest feel like it’s oozing out from between my ribs to puddle between us like honey. i’m melting into nothing as he almost whispers again, safe?
i think back to trying to explain the mask to him in the beginning, at the start of all this. i had told him it kept me safe. yeah, i say in a voice that sounds frustratingly like i am about to cry, i’m safe.
he smiles very, very slowly, and moves his head just close enough to touch the very tip of his nose to mine. i wonder if he knows what “eskimo kisses” are or if this is just instinctual. i don’t move but i smile again too. there’s no reason to move. there’s no reason to get up at all, actually. we don’t have a schedule here, or a constant barrage of things to do. there is nowhere to be but here.
there’s nothing but time.
the sun smells like i don’t even remember where i came from. the weight of his arm on my side feels like it’s always been there and i wonder faintly, randomly, what breakfast will be today.