I've had to stop watching the news over the last couple years. I hate being uninformed, and not knowing about the important things going on in the world - people often look at me with amazement when they realize I haven't heard about a school shooting in some US State, or missed the fact that Rob Ford admitted to smoking crack. But the truth is that my heart just breaks too easily. I've realized that anything truly earth shattering will eventually make its way to me. Most of my Facebook Friends are fairly like-minded to me - and I use them as news filters. They post the huge news items, or the really interesting discoveries for me to read - and I don't have to read about all the other shitty things that have gone on in the world on any given day.
If you know me through work you might think that I have a really thick skin. Depending on the interaction we've had, you may even think I am the kind of person who goes home and kicks kittens for fun. Don't get me wrong, I don't go around blasting my coworkers - but I do expect people to do their jobs properly (or at the very least take ownership of their errors), and I do expect people in other departments to respect my staff and the challenges they face. I will respectfully, but without sugar coating, tell you the truth. This is a skill I have honed at work - and it is one of my strengths as a leader. Anyway, this is not a post about my strengths and weaknesses at work (if it was, I could definitely tell you about a few weaknesses as well). The point is, that people who know me through work, might not understand, or even believe that on the inside I am human goo.
The people who see the real me, or rather the whole me, could tell you that I've been known to disintegrate over a sappy Kleenex commercial - if I had a catch phrase, it would be "I'm not crying - my eyes are just watering." When it comes to human suffering, or even human triumph, I will cry at the drop of a hat. The triumph part is ok - I can live with the fact that I will cry watching contestants make it onto "So You Think You Can Dance" - there is something incredible about getting to see that moment when a person sees their dreams become a very real possibility. What I find more challenging is the other side of that coin - the side where I become inconsolable over injustice, the side that can't fathom a world where Tibetans are tortured for their beliefs, the kind of world where rapists are referred to as "Clumsy Don Juan's" and victims are vilified for wearing short skirts.
I can't count the number of times growing up that my mother had to remind me "It's not your tragedy - stop trying to own it." I have the ability to empathize with almost any situation - I can feel other people's pain. I'm not saying that if you experienced some terrible tragedy, that I know how you feel - but I can certainly imagine how I would feel in that circumstance. My heart breaks for you.
So Monday, as we drove home from the cabin, with CBC on the radio and heard over and over again about the massive human tragedy in that happened in the Philippines this weekend, I cried. I cried a lot. I cried when they talked about the 17 year old living in Canada who hadn't heard from her family. I cried when the little old lady got the news on Facebook that her son and his family were alright. I cried as I listened to the screams of terror recorded for radio play - it reminded me of September 11th, because I was at work that day and we listened to the whole awful thing play out on the radio.
Beyond the tears, I hold these tragedies in my heart. I try not to make them mine, and to understand that I am separate from them - but I always have to temper that with the knowledge that I can't separate myself to the point of apathy. It's a fine line. I try to close out the unecessary heartbreak, by ignoring mainstream news media as much as possible.
So what can I do? I can help the Red Cross put a band aid on it by donating some money - which I will do. I can remind myself how lucky I am to live somewhere that typhoons, and most other natural disasters, don't devastate lives. Whenever I am tempted to complain as the thermostat dips lower and lower this winter I can remind myself of how lucky I am that all I have to contend with is really shitty weather. I know all that is trite, and that it doesn't do a stitch to help the people whose lives have been devastated - but at the very least it shows some respect for the fact that by comparison I have very little to complain about.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Monday, November 11, 2013
Atwood Aftermath
So, just in case you didn’t read my last post – Margaret Atwood was here last month. Like many other things in life, much anticipation was met with a somewhat anticlimactic outcome. I’m not sure it realistically could have come out any other way. Before she even appeared several announcements were made indicating that she was on a very tight schedule, as we would be leaving to go directly to the RWB for the world premier ballet adaption of the Handmaid’s Tale – after all, that was the reason she was in Winnipeg. Terry MacLeod would do a public interview for an hour. Directly afterwards she would sign books – as many copies of MaddAddam as you wanted, but only one of her other books. No chit chat. Period.
Our books were taken from us ahead of time so the page to be signed could be marked, and the inscription written out for her on a sticky note. When I finally arrived at the signing table I debated whether or not to say anything. I finally managed something along the lines of “Your writing has meant a lot to me.” She smiled politely and said thank you. So I managed to be trite, but not stupid – which I frankly think is nearly as bad, and certainly more boring. But whatever… what did I expect? To have a riveting conversation with her, become pen pals and have her offer to mentor me as a writer?
Onward and upward, right? Right.
If I want to make something come of my writing, impressing Margaret Atwood is not likely the way it’s going to happen anyway – writing more would probably be a good start. Alice Munroe’s recent win of the Nobel Prize for literature has got me thinking about short stories. A short story is an undervalued medium – so much has to be said in such a small framework. At the same time it is not as daunting to set out to write a short story. Also, setting out to write a novel when you haven’t even managed a short story seems akin to saying you want to fly, when you are barely shuffling along with proper footsteps.
What better way to get started, but to start writing short stories and getting them out there. So here you go – it’s a first attempt,and the more I read it the less I like it - but I have to just suck it up and put something out there - so be kind, but constructive criticism is certainly welcome.
Untitled
This place is stifling sometimes. Grey. Grey walls, grey floor, grey ceiling – broken only by the odd shock of colour. The lime green velour arm chair, subdued shades of blue and purple floral in the bed spread. These are leftovers from before – placed here, just in case, but never intended to be used again. I wish they had thought to hang a picture on the wall. I have a vague memory, like a shadow in the far corner of my mind – if I focus all my energy on remembering, the edges become slightly less blurred – a warm hand in mine, sun on my skin, a faint spray of water across my face. If I quiet my mind, a difficult task when all you have are your own thoughts, I can hear a faint high pitched sound from shadows that circle overhead. When I am still to the point where I can no longer feel my chest move slightly up and down as my breath does its work to keep my organs alive, I can feel something hot, comforting and ever moving beneath my bare feet, as though the ground was alive that day. There is a boy with shaggy blond hair, playing in the malleable ground in front of me. This is the only picture I have of life before this place.
Everything I need somehow exists here – shelves stocked with sustenance, both physical and mental. Years ago she taught me how to use the tool with the circular blade to remove the top from containers, in order to extract food. I have no recollection of being taught to decipher the inscriptions in the many books that line the walls. I’ve read them all more times than I can count, and the ones I like best even more often. It’s hard for me to imagine the worlds that they depict – but then it is hard for me to imagine a time when it was safe to leave this place. She used to ask me, when I finished one, what did I think about it. I was never sure which ones told about things that were true, and which ones told things that were made up. I’d ask her “Is there really such a thing as a lion? A giant beast with a golden mane, teeth like jagged stone spires that could rip a man to shreds and a roar so powerful the sound of it would shake the earth?” And she would smile and nod in confirmation – “There was once such a beast, but it stopped existing a very long time ago. There are no more.” Then a few days later I would ask “Was there really a boy who never grew up? Who flew from Neverland to visit Wendy, and bring her back with him to be his mother while he had adventures with other boys?” And she would tell me there was never such a boy – that this story was made up by a man, who wrote it down so that other people could read the story. I had trouble deciphering what was real, and what was made up. It was good that I got through most of the books before the day she left.
She’d been talking for a while about the time before – about how I’d had a father, and how he’d taken us to a place called a “beach”. We’d pack food and eat outside – that was called a picnic. In books when people looked the way she did when she talked about the beach, the books called the look “joyful”. I don’t think that I have ever felt joyful. There is nothing in this place that makes me feel the way she does when she remembers the time before. I wish I remembered more about the time before, so I could feel joyful too.
“Mother?” I asked one day, when she was telling me about the beach.
“Yes?”
“Was there a boy too?”
Her face fell ever so slightly as she spoke, “There was once…” she trailed off.
“Where is he now?”
“With your father.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know exactly – outside maybe. But probably not. If he was outside, he would have come to find us when it was safe to come out.”
“Where else then?”
“Maybe heaven.” Her eyes are wet, but I don’t understand why. My eyes are only wet when I fall and hurt myself.
“What’s heaven? Did you bite your lip? Why are your eyes wet?”
“When your eyes are wet it is called ‘crying’.” She explains – I remember crying from books, but it makes more sense now. “I am crying because heaven is where people go when they die, and we can’t see or talk to them here on earth anymore. It makes me sad that I can’t talk to your father because I loved him. He was my best friend.”
A few sleeps later she decides that it is time to see if “outside” is safe. Outside is where we lived before – I don’t really understand why it stopped being safe. Mother says it’s because of “war”, but I don’t really know what that means because she won’t explain. Some of my books talk about war – it’s where there is lots of fighting and people die (OH! That’s when people go to heaven!) – usually the fighting is because men can’t agree on an idea (I don’t know why it is always men who can’t agree – where are all the women when they decide to have war? It seems like they are still dying, and the children too, even though they don’t get to decide about the fighting. Maybe they could make the men stop fighting if the men would listen to them?) but in the books the war always ends, and some people went to heaven, but many people stayed and it becomes safe again. So I don’t understand why we have to be here instead of outside. Mother usually answers all my questions, but when I ask about the war she has a look I don’t understand. I know that I don’t like the look, so I don’t like to make it happen.
So, mother is going outside. Then she will decide if I can come too, and she will come back. I am not to leave until she comes back.
Many sleeps pass, but mother doesn’t come back. Now when I think about mother, my face feels the way hers looked when I asked about the war. It’s not a good feeling, so I try not to think about her.
Thirty seven sleeps after mother left, I woke up with blood on my legs. It is very strange because normally when there is blood, the skin is scraped away and it stings. This time all my skin is not scraped and nothing stings.
In our place – my place – there are two areas. One is where we sleep, read, make food and do most things. One is much smaller – it is where there is water. Water is in the toilet, the sink and in the shower. Mother said we don’t know how much water there will be, so the shower is only for once every thirty sleeps.
I decide I should use some water to clean the blood. It hasn’t been 30 sleeps since the last time I used the shower, but I will use it anyway. Now there is only one of me here, so I can use the shower a little more. I clean away the blood that has begun to dry on the inside of my legs – I was right, there is no place where my skin is broken underneath. Where did the blood come from?
After I have dried off, I am sitting in just my skin, reading a book about a man who is not really man, but really a vampire – vampire’s drink people’s blood instead of eating food. I forgot to ask mother if vampires are real. They seem like they might be, but I hope that they are not – that’s when I noticed there is more blood on my legs and also a little on the floor where I am sitting. I realize that it is coming from the hole that leads inside of me. I am afraid a little – I have read in books where a person bleeds so much they go to heaven. Then I think that in heaven I might not be all by myself and I feel something tingly and nice in my stomach and chest when I think that.
I have three towels, so I take the one I dried off with, and cut it into strips around one and half inches wide by four inches long, and I press one to the hole. I don’t know if it will stop the bleeding – but I don’t know if I want it to. I just think that I don’t want the blood to get everywhere.
It keeps going for 5 sleeps – every day there is a little less – then it stops completely as though it never happened and I cry.
I go back to normal, only now there is no one to talk to even. I keep reading the book about the man who is not a man – the first time I read it was scary, but now I just think it is sad.
When my stomach tells me to, I open a can and eat something. I sleep a lot. More than I did when mother was still here. I think more than I did when mother was here. I never really thought before about trying to leave our place, but now I think about it all the time. If I leave and the war is still the war, then maybe I can get hurt and go to heaven. If the war is not the war, maybe there are other people? Maybe mother is there, but can’t find her way back to our place. Maybe she found the beach and is too joyful to come back. If I could find her there we could both be joyful together.
I finish the vampire book, and decide to read my favourite book again – even though I have read it more than all the other books. It is a book about a boy who has a very unhappy life, until one day someone comes and tells him that he can make magic. After that he leaves his sad life alone, and goes to a school with many other children who can also make magic. This story is so long that it had to be separated into seven books. The seventh is the one I read again and again, because once you get through all the sadness, just when you think that all hope is lost, you get to see that in the end the boy gets to be happy. I never asked mother if that one was real, but that was on purpose because I don’t want to know if it is not. I like to believe that someday someone might come tell me that I will get to leave this place and go to school with other boys and girls. I even wish that I could go on adventures, terribly hard and sad ones, and fight in a war for something I believed in – because even though those things are terrible, at least they are something. At least I could choose to be brave, or to run away. To choose anything would be better than to have no choices at all.
Twenty nine sleeps later the bleeding starts again.
After that I start to notice small changes – I am starting to feel more like mother – softer and rounder in some areas, hair begins to appear in others.
This time the bleeding lasts six days. Every night I wash out the pieces of towel and start over.
I begin to stare at the moving part of the wall, that mother left through. What do they call it in books? A door? In my mind I make up a million scenarios about what might be on the other side.
One night I have a dream about going through the door. On the other side I have to get through a castle where a vampire lives, and the stairs keep swinging around, changing their direction. There are men with guns and gas masks running through the halls. Just when I think I am about to make it out of the castle, a small explosion takes me off course. I run in the opposite direction, into a room where a waiting lion eats me alive.
I wake up drenched in sweat and my eyes are wet, but I am not actually hurt.
Now when I stare at the door I can’t help but feel the jaws of the lion closing around my flesh. I try to do everything I can to distract myself from it. I read for hours, wash the bed linens in the sink, like mother taught me. I count the new hairs appearing under my arms. There are eight of them now. I think about where mother might have gone, and I feel a new feeling – anger. I run in place for a bit – mother always said it was the best thing to do when I felt something I wanted to stop feeling. It usually worked, but not today. I decide to take a shower – mostly to spite mother and her rules. Then I eat six different cans of food – we are not supposed to eat more than three a day, to make sure they last.
I go back to get number seven, even though my stomach feels like a small man is punching it from the inside. I reach in to extract the can and my hand bumps the brick behind it, but rather than scrape my knuckle, there is give and the brick slides back a little. Now rather than the can, my hand has a new target – the corner of the brick. I close my fingers around its rough edges, there is not a lot of space to get any purchase from, so I dig my nails in a little and pull. The brick hesitates a little but slides heavily out of place. It’s dark in the cupboard and I have trouble seeing what might be behind the brick, so I reach my hand into the small empty space it has left behind. My fingers close around something cool and hard. A small metal box slides into the light.
Inside the box there is a small stack of paper – each paper is folded to make a sort of case, with more paper inside. On the outside there is a name, and some other numbers and words. Most fascinating though is the upper right hand corner, where there is a picture of a woman’s face. She is what I have always pictured when a book describes a woman as handsome, and wears something very ornate in her hair on the top of her head. I wonder why her picture appears here, what she has to do with the papers inside.
After thoroughly examining the cases I remove the papers from inside. There is a type of writing I have never seen before – fluid and scrolling, unlike the uniform letters inside books. I have trouble deciphering it.
Nov. 15, 2020
Dearest Emily,
I have now been at the training barracks in Salt Lake City for 17 days. I have barely had two minutes to sit down other than to eat a meal. Training is intense, and I am afraid of what is to come. We hear rumors from the frontline in British Columbia that inhumane acts are committed every day – I have heard of unspeakable atrocities, which I cannot repeat here – and I am afraid. The Northern forces are said to be pushing further South every day.
I’m sorry for this communication to be so short. I will write again as soon as possible. Until then take care of Violet and Aidan, and stay safe. If the fighting comes too near, move to the place we’ve made ready, and do not come out until I have come for you.
All my love,
Michael
***
Dec. 28, 2020
Dearest Emily,
Christmas has come and gone, and what a miserable one it has been. Not only am I far away from my family, but I have received news that we will be deployed to the frontline in British Columbia tomorrow. I pray every day for an end to this war – sometimes I can barely recollect what it is we are fighting for. The other men in my platoon are good men, and I am glad to have them here with me. I can’t say much more, and even if I could I’m sure the Bureau of Censorship would black out much of what I wrote.
Be prepared to go soon. It’s time to make sure you have everything you need.
All my love,
Michael
***
Mar. 1, 2021
Emily,
It is my dearest hope to see you again someday – but hope is nearly dead in my heart. The things I have seen have broken me in ways I cannot describe. I’m not sure you would even know me if you saw me pass you in the street tomorrow. Hope is a dangerous thing to hold onto – I have very nearly let go.
All my love,
Michael
***
Feb. 17, 2021
Emily – take the children and go. Hopefully you have done so before this letter arrives.
M.
***
That was the last communication. Were Emily and Michael my mother and father? Was Aidan the boy I had the faint memory of?
More than ever, I want to open the door – my stomach starts to churn when I think of what might be on the other side. More than ever, I am frozen with fear.
Twenty seven sleeps later the bleeding starts again, and I am still locked in time staring at the door. I am no longer afraid of the bleeding, but I have also given up hoping that it might take me to heaven.
One night I am woken from my sleep by a deep rumbling noise. As I shake the sleep from my mind I realize I can no longer hear it. Did I dream it? I wait a few minutes, my ears straining, my eyes closed in the dark. Then it starts again. I think it is coming from above me. It lasts a minute and then stops again. When it starts again it sounds nearer. Now there is another sound – faint, barely there. Is it the sound of human voices? Slowly they grow louder – “just a little bit further now”, “we’re almost there”. I have never been more terrified and more hopeful in my life. Someone is coming for me.
The door rattles, and bangs open. All I can see against the blinding light streaming through the opening is the silhouette of a man.
Our books were taken from us ahead of time so the page to be signed could be marked, and the inscription written out for her on a sticky note. When I finally arrived at the signing table I debated whether or not to say anything. I finally managed something along the lines of “Your writing has meant a lot to me.” She smiled politely and said thank you. So I managed to be trite, but not stupid – which I frankly think is nearly as bad, and certainly more boring. But whatever… what did I expect? To have a riveting conversation with her, become pen pals and have her offer to mentor me as a writer?
Onward and upward, right? Right.
If I want to make something come of my writing, impressing Margaret Atwood is not likely the way it’s going to happen anyway – writing more would probably be a good start. Alice Munroe’s recent win of the Nobel Prize for literature has got me thinking about short stories. A short story is an undervalued medium – so much has to be said in such a small framework. At the same time it is not as daunting to set out to write a short story. Also, setting out to write a novel when you haven’t even managed a short story seems akin to saying you want to fly, when you are barely shuffling along with proper footsteps.
What better way to get started, but to start writing short stories and getting them out there. So here you go – it’s a first attempt,and the more I read it the less I like it - but I have to just suck it up and put something out there - so be kind, but constructive criticism is certainly welcome.
Untitled
This place is stifling sometimes. Grey. Grey walls, grey floor, grey ceiling – broken only by the odd shock of colour. The lime green velour arm chair, subdued shades of blue and purple floral in the bed spread. These are leftovers from before – placed here, just in case, but never intended to be used again. I wish they had thought to hang a picture on the wall. I have a vague memory, like a shadow in the far corner of my mind – if I focus all my energy on remembering, the edges become slightly less blurred – a warm hand in mine, sun on my skin, a faint spray of water across my face. If I quiet my mind, a difficult task when all you have are your own thoughts, I can hear a faint high pitched sound from shadows that circle overhead. When I am still to the point where I can no longer feel my chest move slightly up and down as my breath does its work to keep my organs alive, I can feel something hot, comforting and ever moving beneath my bare feet, as though the ground was alive that day. There is a boy with shaggy blond hair, playing in the malleable ground in front of me. This is the only picture I have of life before this place.
Everything I need somehow exists here – shelves stocked with sustenance, both physical and mental. Years ago she taught me how to use the tool with the circular blade to remove the top from containers, in order to extract food. I have no recollection of being taught to decipher the inscriptions in the many books that line the walls. I’ve read them all more times than I can count, and the ones I like best even more often. It’s hard for me to imagine the worlds that they depict – but then it is hard for me to imagine a time when it was safe to leave this place. She used to ask me, when I finished one, what did I think about it. I was never sure which ones told about things that were true, and which ones told things that were made up. I’d ask her “Is there really such a thing as a lion? A giant beast with a golden mane, teeth like jagged stone spires that could rip a man to shreds and a roar so powerful the sound of it would shake the earth?” And she would smile and nod in confirmation – “There was once such a beast, but it stopped existing a very long time ago. There are no more.” Then a few days later I would ask “Was there really a boy who never grew up? Who flew from Neverland to visit Wendy, and bring her back with him to be his mother while he had adventures with other boys?” And she would tell me there was never such a boy – that this story was made up by a man, who wrote it down so that other people could read the story. I had trouble deciphering what was real, and what was made up. It was good that I got through most of the books before the day she left.
She’d been talking for a while about the time before – about how I’d had a father, and how he’d taken us to a place called a “beach”. We’d pack food and eat outside – that was called a picnic. In books when people looked the way she did when she talked about the beach, the books called the look “joyful”. I don’t think that I have ever felt joyful. There is nothing in this place that makes me feel the way she does when she remembers the time before. I wish I remembered more about the time before, so I could feel joyful too.
“Mother?” I asked one day, when she was telling me about the beach.
“Yes?”
“Was there a boy too?”
Her face fell ever so slightly as she spoke, “There was once…” she trailed off.
“Where is he now?”
“With your father.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know exactly – outside maybe. But probably not. If he was outside, he would have come to find us when it was safe to come out.”
“Where else then?”
“Maybe heaven.” Her eyes are wet, but I don’t understand why. My eyes are only wet when I fall and hurt myself.
“What’s heaven? Did you bite your lip? Why are your eyes wet?”
“When your eyes are wet it is called ‘crying’.” She explains – I remember crying from books, but it makes more sense now. “I am crying because heaven is where people go when they die, and we can’t see or talk to them here on earth anymore. It makes me sad that I can’t talk to your father because I loved him. He was my best friend.”
A few sleeps later she decides that it is time to see if “outside” is safe. Outside is where we lived before – I don’t really understand why it stopped being safe. Mother says it’s because of “war”, but I don’t really know what that means because she won’t explain. Some of my books talk about war – it’s where there is lots of fighting and people die (OH! That’s when people go to heaven!) – usually the fighting is because men can’t agree on an idea (I don’t know why it is always men who can’t agree – where are all the women when they decide to have war? It seems like they are still dying, and the children too, even though they don’t get to decide about the fighting. Maybe they could make the men stop fighting if the men would listen to them?) but in the books the war always ends, and some people went to heaven, but many people stayed and it becomes safe again. So I don’t understand why we have to be here instead of outside. Mother usually answers all my questions, but when I ask about the war she has a look I don’t understand. I know that I don’t like the look, so I don’t like to make it happen.
So, mother is going outside. Then she will decide if I can come too, and she will come back. I am not to leave until she comes back.
Many sleeps pass, but mother doesn’t come back. Now when I think about mother, my face feels the way hers looked when I asked about the war. It’s not a good feeling, so I try not to think about her.
Thirty seven sleeps after mother left, I woke up with blood on my legs. It is very strange because normally when there is blood, the skin is scraped away and it stings. This time all my skin is not scraped and nothing stings.
In our place – my place – there are two areas. One is where we sleep, read, make food and do most things. One is much smaller – it is where there is water. Water is in the toilet, the sink and in the shower. Mother said we don’t know how much water there will be, so the shower is only for once every thirty sleeps.
I decide I should use some water to clean the blood. It hasn’t been 30 sleeps since the last time I used the shower, but I will use it anyway. Now there is only one of me here, so I can use the shower a little more. I clean away the blood that has begun to dry on the inside of my legs – I was right, there is no place where my skin is broken underneath. Where did the blood come from?
After I have dried off, I am sitting in just my skin, reading a book about a man who is not really man, but really a vampire – vampire’s drink people’s blood instead of eating food. I forgot to ask mother if vampires are real. They seem like they might be, but I hope that they are not – that’s when I noticed there is more blood on my legs and also a little on the floor where I am sitting. I realize that it is coming from the hole that leads inside of me. I am afraid a little – I have read in books where a person bleeds so much they go to heaven. Then I think that in heaven I might not be all by myself and I feel something tingly and nice in my stomach and chest when I think that.
I have three towels, so I take the one I dried off with, and cut it into strips around one and half inches wide by four inches long, and I press one to the hole. I don’t know if it will stop the bleeding – but I don’t know if I want it to. I just think that I don’t want the blood to get everywhere.
It keeps going for 5 sleeps – every day there is a little less – then it stops completely as though it never happened and I cry.
I go back to normal, only now there is no one to talk to even. I keep reading the book about the man who is not a man – the first time I read it was scary, but now I just think it is sad.
When my stomach tells me to, I open a can and eat something. I sleep a lot. More than I did when mother was still here. I think more than I did when mother was here. I never really thought before about trying to leave our place, but now I think about it all the time. If I leave and the war is still the war, then maybe I can get hurt and go to heaven. If the war is not the war, maybe there are other people? Maybe mother is there, but can’t find her way back to our place. Maybe she found the beach and is too joyful to come back. If I could find her there we could both be joyful together.
I finish the vampire book, and decide to read my favourite book again – even though I have read it more than all the other books. It is a book about a boy who has a very unhappy life, until one day someone comes and tells him that he can make magic. After that he leaves his sad life alone, and goes to a school with many other children who can also make magic. This story is so long that it had to be separated into seven books. The seventh is the one I read again and again, because once you get through all the sadness, just when you think that all hope is lost, you get to see that in the end the boy gets to be happy. I never asked mother if that one was real, but that was on purpose because I don’t want to know if it is not. I like to believe that someday someone might come tell me that I will get to leave this place and go to school with other boys and girls. I even wish that I could go on adventures, terribly hard and sad ones, and fight in a war for something I believed in – because even though those things are terrible, at least they are something. At least I could choose to be brave, or to run away. To choose anything would be better than to have no choices at all.
Twenty nine sleeps later the bleeding starts again.
After that I start to notice small changes – I am starting to feel more like mother – softer and rounder in some areas, hair begins to appear in others.
This time the bleeding lasts six days. Every night I wash out the pieces of towel and start over.
I begin to stare at the moving part of the wall, that mother left through. What do they call it in books? A door? In my mind I make up a million scenarios about what might be on the other side.
One night I have a dream about going through the door. On the other side I have to get through a castle where a vampire lives, and the stairs keep swinging around, changing their direction. There are men with guns and gas masks running through the halls. Just when I think I am about to make it out of the castle, a small explosion takes me off course. I run in the opposite direction, into a room where a waiting lion eats me alive.
I wake up drenched in sweat and my eyes are wet, but I am not actually hurt.
Now when I stare at the door I can’t help but feel the jaws of the lion closing around my flesh. I try to do everything I can to distract myself from it. I read for hours, wash the bed linens in the sink, like mother taught me. I count the new hairs appearing under my arms. There are eight of them now. I think about where mother might have gone, and I feel a new feeling – anger. I run in place for a bit – mother always said it was the best thing to do when I felt something I wanted to stop feeling. It usually worked, but not today. I decide to take a shower – mostly to spite mother and her rules. Then I eat six different cans of food – we are not supposed to eat more than three a day, to make sure they last.
I go back to get number seven, even though my stomach feels like a small man is punching it from the inside. I reach in to extract the can and my hand bumps the brick behind it, but rather than scrape my knuckle, there is give and the brick slides back a little. Now rather than the can, my hand has a new target – the corner of the brick. I close my fingers around its rough edges, there is not a lot of space to get any purchase from, so I dig my nails in a little and pull. The brick hesitates a little but slides heavily out of place. It’s dark in the cupboard and I have trouble seeing what might be behind the brick, so I reach my hand into the small empty space it has left behind. My fingers close around something cool and hard. A small metal box slides into the light.
Inside the box there is a small stack of paper – each paper is folded to make a sort of case, with more paper inside. On the outside there is a name, and some other numbers and words. Most fascinating though is the upper right hand corner, where there is a picture of a woman’s face. She is what I have always pictured when a book describes a woman as handsome, and wears something very ornate in her hair on the top of her head. I wonder why her picture appears here, what she has to do with the papers inside.
After thoroughly examining the cases I remove the papers from inside. There is a type of writing I have never seen before – fluid and scrolling, unlike the uniform letters inside books. I have trouble deciphering it.
Nov. 15, 2020
Dearest Emily,
I have now been at the training barracks in Salt Lake City for 17 days. I have barely had two minutes to sit down other than to eat a meal. Training is intense, and I am afraid of what is to come. We hear rumors from the frontline in British Columbia that inhumane acts are committed every day – I have heard of unspeakable atrocities, which I cannot repeat here – and I am afraid. The Northern forces are said to be pushing further South every day.
I’m sorry for this communication to be so short. I will write again as soon as possible. Until then take care of Violet and Aidan, and stay safe. If the fighting comes too near, move to the place we’ve made ready, and do not come out until I have come for you.
All my love,
Michael
***
Dec. 28, 2020
Dearest Emily,
Christmas has come and gone, and what a miserable one it has been. Not only am I far away from my family, but I have received news that we will be deployed to the frontline in British Columbia tomorrow. I pray every day for an end to this war – sometimes I can barely recollect what it is we are fighting for. The other men in my platoon are good men, and I am glad to have them here with me. I can’t say much more, and even if I could I’m sure the Bureau of Censorship would black out much of what I wrote.
Be prepared to go soon. It’s time to make sure you have everything you need.
All my love,
Michael
***
Mar. 1, 2021
Emily,
It is my dearest hope to see you again someday – but hope is nearly dead in my heart. The things I have seen have broken me in ways I cannot describe. I’m not sure you would even know me if you saw me pass you in the street tomorrow. Hope is a dangerous thing to hold onto – I have very nearly let go.
All my love,
Michael
***
Feb. 17, 2021
Emily – take the children and go. Hopefully you have done so before this letter arrives.
M.
***
That was the last communication. Were Emily and Michael my mother and father? Was Aidan the boy I had the faint memory of?
More than ever, I want to open the door – my stomach starts to churn when I think of what might be on the other side. More than ever, I am frozen with fear.
Twenty seven sleeps later the bleeding starts again, and I am still locked in time staring at the door. I am no longer afraid of the bleeding, but I have also given up hoping that it might take me to heaven.
One night I am woken from my sleep by a deep rumbling noise. As I shake the sleep from my mind I realize I can no longer hear it. Did I dream it? I wait a few minutes, my ears straining, my eyes closed in the dark. Then it starts again. I think it is coming from above me. It lasts a minute and then stops again. When it starts again it sounds nearer. Now there is another sound – faint, barely there. Is it the sound of human voices? Slowly they grow louder – “just a little bit further now”, “we’re almost there”. I have never been more terrified and more hopeful in my life. Someone is coming for me.
The door rattles, and bangs open. All I can see against the blinding light streaming through the opening is the silhouette of a man.
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