It has been 12:00 around here for five months now. The lights by the entrance are all burnt out, and at times it feels as if there’s nothing here but us and the endless night. If you look for shadows you’ll see only your own; if you hold your breath you’ll hear only the wind.
It’s pathetic, but it’s ours, and it’s all we have left.
She came to me no better than a stray, stumbling through the woods outside my window and grasping at branches to stay upright. In the cloudy twilight she looked almost ghostlike, with only her frail frame and soiled hair to clothe her. I’d never seen anybody even remotely near here and I’ve yet to see anybody since, and I almost dismissed her as just a delusion. But what if she wasn’t?
Carrying some leftover bread and a half-empty bottle, I walked outside and motioned for her to come. Strangely, she complied. We sat down on frozen soil and she hesitantly took the bread from my hand. She took one tiny bite, then a bigger one, then I rolled the bottle to her and wondered where she could have come from.
In short time the bread was gone. A few moments later the water was gone; some got in her mouth, the rest ran down her face and chest and started tunneling into the earth. And then she just sat there, exposed and unwanted, eyes slowly rising from her empty hands to me.
My curiosity took over. “Hey,” and she flicked her eyes away. “Where do you live?” She looked to the woods and declined to answer.
I kept pressing. “Your home. Where is it?” From the woods, her eyes fell to the ground in some cocktail of dejection and disinterest.
“What about your parents? Do you have any?” She started shivering.
“Hey! Answer me!” She kept shivering.
Her words for me today:
“Hey! Heey!”
Yes?
“I hate you.”
Then she stood there, placidly awaiting the right response. I used to try to find one for her but now I don’t even bother. I just nudged her out of the way and grabbed a bowl from the sink.
She wasn’t angry when she said it either. She just wanted me to know, and slurred together whatever she could find to say it. And as she waited to see if I could do the same, she played with her feet, quietly treading the five foot perimeter that kept us together. No more, no less. She had nothing to her.
In retrospect I couldn’t even give her a name. Abigail, Adeline, uhh Agnes Amelia and every other letter bounced off her unacknowledged. After weeks of haunting I just gave up, since when there’s only two people then “you” is all you need.
And so we lived out our lives with common words, each trying our best to not step on each other’s toes as the house continued to shrink. For the most part she hardly existed, yet at times she’d make a point to find me on the floor and peer over to see how I was. Her flicker of light would send a jolt through me and I’d mutter “Come here—,” my tongue curling in on itself, unable to vocalize what she is to me.
Sometimes I see her outside my shower. Sometimes I see her over my bed. Sometimes I see her hiding in my closet. Then I look to be sure and she’s snuggled in her room.
This time I sat in a frigid tub and hoped the pattern held. When the hot water broke I tried to find a solution for her sake, which ended in me heating up every pot and rushing them to her in lukewarm desperation. It never satisfied, and in time she chose to go without. I found I didn’t care.
Across from the bathtub I kept two pointless suitcases holding everything I wore and everything I’d want to keep. Were my patience to one day betray me, I could simply grab them and disappear. But I’d never be able to do it, if only because I’d see her in the airport. I’d see her along the highway. I’d see her outside my hotel room, and if I look to be sure I’ll soon be home again.
She spends so much time gazing out the window, and with her unfocused eyes she almost seems like a captive. But it’s not my fault. She’s free to leave whenever, though I don’t know where she’d go.
Still, I understand. A change of scenery would be nice, even if we couldn’t go out to feel it. And if one day these woods were to collapse in fire, we both would choose its flames over the deadest gray that surrounds us now.
Has she ever seen a world with color?
Years ago I found a long-forgotten camera. On my way to get it developed I used its last few shots on stuff along the way. An intersection, some water fountain, a stray; nothing noteworthy, and when I came back I left the photos in a drawer and forgot once more. Today she found them and I found her on the floor, enchanted by those throwaway shots. My past life was tossed out with disinterest, but those silly pictures of a city she’ll never see captured her heart like nothing else.
She looked up from the pile, looked down, remembered me, then looked back up with some light inside flicked on.
“Heyy! Do you love me? Do you?”
I don’t know. I can’t bring myself to lose her, is that love? I can’t patch the hole above her room, is it still love? I’ll see her in the hallway and turn around until she’s gone, but what is that?
“Do you?”
I swallowed and shut the door.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!“
I didn’t even bother. I’m going to bed.
“Heeey!”
I tried to shut her out but she was standing in the doorway. I threw myself on the bed and tried to drown her voice with a pillow.
“Hey! Love me! Love meee!”
I looked up. Was that what she had been saying all along? And when I tried to look at her it all made sense. Her eyes carried desperation’s weight and her lips almost started to twitch. What used to be her clothes had been worn to semitransparency, and she stood in the doorway too vulnerable to care. Everything about her was utterly pathetic.
I motioned for her to come inside but she wouldn’t respond. I opened up my arms and she held hers to herself tighter. She must want me to come to her.
I looked over her and nothing changed. I took her by the hand, sliding my fingers into hers and my thumb up to her wrist. And slowly we walked to the house’s far corner, and to her room.
The light was on yet lifeless. The walls were decorated with mold and the floor was a minefield—of what, I don’t know. Her old music box lay crushed in the corner, her plushes leaked stuffing, and posters were starting to peel from the ceiling. Has it really been that long?
As we fell I thought the bed would give when we came down on it together. And just like that we stayed, frightened and motionless, while the light from two rooms over made its way to where we were. In time she began to take form for me. The darkness painted over her in muted hues and, as I stared into her face, I began to see who she could’ve been. Cruel, cruel God, I thought. In a better world she would be beautiful.
I ran my fingers through her hair until her eyes lost their perennial tension. From her hair I moved to her body, feeling her flesh prick up with every stroke and bringing her the vaguest hint of contentment. I put my arm around her and brought her close and she rested her hands on me.
If there was any right time, it was now. And so I brought my hand to her thigh, slowing rising with my fingers and she started to snap from her trance. A couple inches and she was at attention; I met her and she bucked against my far arm with all her strength. When that failed, she started clutching it unintelligibly, to see if I would give.
She stained me. Poor girl. Unliked and unlovable. When I found her I knew that her heart only got a shade of the light we both saw.
“Hey! Geet up! Get up!”
“Get! Up!”
She loves me. She really does love me. And I stuffed her in the freezer.
The worst thing about it, honestly, is that nobody won. Had I the resolve to walk away and stay away, she would’ve been done for and I would’ve been free. Had I simply imagined doing this and thought about what I thought about during those ten terrible minutes, then perhaps we could still inhabit the same room together.
We may have lost each other, but we gained so much more. I learned that I truly love her. She learned a new word.
“Heey! Hey! Why? Whyyy?” And to her credit I thought about it. By now I could even give her an answer, were she able to receive it.
But suppose she could. Suppose I sat her down, even though every step I take toward her ripples through the earth and sends her flying five feet. Suppose I could take her by the hand, look her eye-to-eye, and explain as much of me as I can.
“Why?”
You annoy me.
“Whyy?”
Being around anyone for so long would annoy me.
But not to the point of murder, no.
“Why?”
You’re around me all the time.
But there are people I’d like to be where you are.
“Why?”
Our relationship is incomplete.
But what is missing?
“Whyy?”
I can’t do anything to you.
I can’t do anything for you.
Yet you still demand something from me.
“Why?”
…If you were capable of introspection you wouldn’t need to ask.
And deep down you terrify me. You’re cute, and your smile hurts my heart, and you need to cling to the walls when walking. But you’re not right! You’re not normal! You’re not even human!
She would look at me blankly, and that would be that. Then tomorrow I would wake up and time would begin anew:
“Why? Heyy! Why?”
Thus ended my hypothetical, and thus ended today’s night.
“Deep down you terrify me!”
She flung me out onto the permafrost and loomed over me. Her shadow stretched out for yards, warped and jagged like a knife. And only a sick twist from an unseen moon stood between me and dismemberment.
“You’re cute, and you lock the bathroom door even when you’re alone, but look at me!” I made it up to her nose before I couldn’t.
“You’re not right!” The snow below me was glistening.
“You’re not normal!” It dulled quickly as her shadow swelled and covered it all.
And she wrenched my chin up to hers.
“Hey,” she whispered, her face primed to swallow me whole. “You’re not even human.”
Then I woke, and then she was there, and then she was gone. For a second I dismissed it as a delusion or an afterimage, as if she had escaped the dream and come to finish the job. But then I heard a distant thud, and a familiar moan, and I wondered if she was really here in body too.
I checked the hallway but she wasn’t there, and neither was she in the kitchen. I walked over to her bedroom, peeked in just to see, and then I caught a shadow slinking away behind me toward where I began. It was almost cute until I remembered that she desperately wanted the trick to work.
Unfortunately, as I made my way back to my room, she realized that I had given her no place to hide. She was forced to watch me, step by deliberate step, probably looking like a slasher, as I approached her.
Soon only feet separated the two of us.
“Hey.”
She didn’t plead, nor scream, nor try to escape; she merely looked up in quaking terror and braced herself for inevitable suffering. I shouldn’t have been surprised, were I capable of introspection.
“I love you,” I choked out as best as I could. And then I crawled back into bed and tried to disappear.
For minutes nothing happened, but she didn’t leave either. Then my heart started to still and my arm started to numb and I sensed a shadow moving by and heading toward the door.
But it stopped, and came to rest softly atop my bed. It came as close to me as it dared and, nearly imperceptibly, its hand curled around me and found my chest again.
Courage overtaking her, she drew closer, until her body snaked down my back. She must’ve assumed I was already asleep, because moments later she fell apart. I could hear her hollow whimper, even as she tried to stifle it. I could feel her tears bleeding through the back of my shirt. I refused to turn around, afraid that she would leave me. I refused to even breathe until I heard her own slow down.
To my terror I was right. She really does love me.
And two dozen candles ago we lost time itself. Something must have snapped, and now even 12:00 was no more.
In its place we had to redefine time for ourselves, and the measure we used counted in both directions. On one hand, twenty-four candles, twenty-five candles. On the other, three candles, two candles.
Every door was shut and stuffed, and we locked ourselves in a windowless room where we could barely hear the wind around us. Our candle’s light was the only light we had, and our bodies’ heat became precious to each other.
And nothing happened. I stroked her hair, her stomach rose and fell, and nothing happened. The stasis was hypnotic and, in the space between watching one candle fizzle and lighting the next, I began to wonder if they still kept clocks in Heaven.
Then she would shiver, and I’d pull the blanket tight around her icy back and wonder how she saw our world. Could she think of clocks and Heaven, and think of time that counted two ways? Or was it all mutant voices and unending darkness?
Sometimes the light would play off her eyes and I could see the terror she kept locked away. I’d keep looking and that ocean would crash into her again and again and I’d wonder how she, of all people, could bear it. There was no way in to cure it, and no way out to release it, and I thought of every smile she had given me and how much it took for such joy to break through. And I regretted what little I had given her in return.
I had to make it up to her somehow. I had to give her something. She was weary, and fading, and our time was nearing its end.
Good night, good night
The angel said to me
Tomorrow you may journey
To places yet unseen
And though you are a stranger
Abandoned and alone
Good night, good night
Tonight you’ll find your home
It was only fitting for her to love a children’s song unheard by any living child. It was perfectly hers, and I did my best to help her keep it. I’d hum it while her eyes were dimming, and whisper it while she was asleep. I’d repeat its puerile copied melody until it made sense to her, and soon enough it did.
“Heeeey…” she would ask, in little more than a moan.
“Goodnight?” I would reply, and she’d cuddle up in affirmation. And then we would begin again. During breaths I’d hear her humming beneath me, her warped cadence mirroring my own.
I’d pull her close as she looped those last lines until they faltered and gave way to her dreamland. It’s silly, but I really hope she found her true home there. Maybe there she had a sun that shined, and a night covered in stars. Maybe my good twin was waiting there for her with open arms.
And dear God, he’d say. Cruel, cruel God. If anything else, she could’ve been happy.