Orphans of the Atercosm: A Collection (Side A) by Page C. F

Author:Page, C. F.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

IV: The Consecrated Void is a Lonely God

First there was darkness, then a light. Across what my drug-addled brain perceives as a nearly endless expanse of unfinished basement stands a young woman before a curtain. An obscure glow, the source from somewhere

(very cold and very dark)

nearby. The curtain, reaching the ceiling, wraps around a cylindrical shape. A quote comes to mind for a reason beyond my immediate perception—“when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you,” by Nietzsche.

It makes me crave a cigarette. I’ve never smoked one before. Better late than never.

“When I called you ‘Jake Sullivan,’ I thought maybe you were your father,” says Maggie.

“You knew him?”

She turns and looks at me like I’m stupid. Her face is a tenebrous wonder; it’s all bending blacks and deli­cate angles.

“Obviously not his face.” A pause. “But you look like how I imagined he would look, although when you came closer I saw you were my age. Then I remembered that”

(which stares back)

“your father had died . . .” She lets that linger, turns back toward the curtain, and then an almost super­natural nonchalance noticeably begins to override her posture, her mannerisms (fear finally roots itself at the base of my skull and tells me it’s there and that I should be afraid—very, very afraid). She says, “Your mother called again.”

I move a few fingers. My toes waggle. Tongue rims dry lips. I mumble out, “What’s beyond the curtain?”

Ignoring me: “I told her I was your girlfriend and that she could leave a message. I don’t think she believed me but she left a message. Said your stepfather called her. Spotted a woman in his apartment. She had a scar. He called her a . . . mermaid.” Maggie laughs.

“Samina?” My heart races. I need to see her.

Ignoring me again: “I should thank your father for everything I have here.” She spins in a semicircle, arms open. “I went to a nice college; didn’t have to spend a dime.”

“What are you saying?”

Finally responding: “Baxter Daniel was not the man who killed my sister. While my mother was still in the hospital, your father and his partner—your ex-stepfa­ther, the one who will be here shortly—showed her a few pictures. Asked if she recognized anyone. Her eyes grew wide when she saw Baxter Daniel’s face. She pointed at him and said, ‘He harassed me at the grocery store,’ or maybe it wasn’t a grocery store but you get the point.

“A few days later a lineup was presented before my mother. But this time she said Baxter was not the killer.

“‘Why?’ your father said.

“To which my mother said, ‘Because he doesn’t have long, pink nails; nor a tattoo on his left wrist.’

“‘What kind of tattoo?’

“‘It was odd,’ she said, ‘occult-looking’—”

I think about the occult symbol under my crib.

“—you sketched it on the photo you left in front of my apartment,” I say, and now I’m able to sit up and lean against my elbow. The room is breathing in and out, expanding and contract­ing.

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