SSCS 03: Installment 15 of 35
Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
This is Installment 15 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
The air seemed clean and new, but I was afraid that if I breathed in too deep I’d smell the salt and some indefinable darkness hiding underneath. We’d seen something rushing by in the rain. Many somethings. Were they still on the streets of the city, hiding in alleyways? Had they gone completely with the path of the rain? Or maybe they’d gone and hidden in the junkyards. Maybe they were gathering and waiting and the river had used this opportunity to send more.
…Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
Installment 15: 20.1119
Back through the door into the factory, everything was the same, deserted and crumbling. There were a few puddles left from the rain, but it looked like most of the water had run away through the drain line set along the back wall. The glass house was just as clouded and mysterious as ever. The rickety stairs leading up to the workshop were a little quieter, the water seeping in where things usually squeaked.
Before we went up them, though, Jack turned to me. “Do you think that’s what happened to Maia?” he asked, his voice soft. “And the others?”
I couldn’t look at him. I was looking at his beautiful hands, which had taken up one of mine, turning it palm up to expose the blisters. With one fingertip he touched them ever so lightly. “Maia’s hands used to look like this sometimes. She would never tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know what’s happening.” I whispered. And I was trembling, maybe starting to really shake. “I don’t know anything. I’ve been having black-outs. And when I come to I’ve done things, added to the bell template.
“Is that good?” I couldn’t hide the shaking from my voice. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’ve only just gotten here.” I could barely speak for the lump grown hard in my throat. I didn’t think I would be able to say the next words, but I managed to. “I don’t know why they made me leave my old factory.”
But Jack didn’t scoff and turn away from me. Didn’t back up and look at me the way people do when they realize someone’s unlucky – at least I don’t think, I was still looking at his hands. Instead he’d gripped mine tighter in his, but even pressing into the blisters I didn’t mind. It was like when he’d sat next to me in the noodle shop. My trembling grew quieter, and stopped.
But he still held still like that a long moment, keeping quiet. I realized that even though the water had run away, I could smell the rain in the courtyard, a prickling musk of green things, the stony tang of rust. Then Jack said, “I’ve blacked out too, a couple times. Down there.” He nodded toward the doors he’d said earlier lead down to the machine. “I didn’t do anything though, that I know. Figured I just wasn’t eating enough, or something. My mom always said I look pale when I’m hungry.” His hand squeezed a little tighter and I looked up just high enough to see the dimples of a small smile.
“Elka called me ‘sacrifice girl’,” I answered. “Is that what she called the others?”
“I don’t know. But Lily calls you ‘the dreamer.’” He dropped my hand and tipped his head toward the stair in a gesture that said we needed to be getting back. “Yes,” he answered as he was turning away. “She called Maia that too. But she sounds less exasperated now that she’s talking about you.”
“Is that good?” I whispered to myself. Then, following him up the steps, I spoke more loudly, “What do they call you?”
His step faltered, but then he kept going. “Nothing I care to answer to,” was all he said. But I noticed he was as careful to step over the dandelion blooming up from the crack in the stairs as I was. And he held the door open at the top for me to go through first. Then, with the white flash of his smile, he vanished into the steam and smoke.
I wrinkled my nose and followed the path I was slowly learning. My mind lingered on the image of Jack’s brown, sandaled foot stepping over the dandelion. There was something about the shape of it.
But then I came around the screens to where my tablet was and found Elka still there, hunched and sitting on my stool, and staring up at the great slab of a thing. “There’s hole in it,” she said without looking at me. “It won’t make a bell with a hole.” Then she turned, and her eyes were depthless black, like the cobble stones outside, wet with rain, in the deep of the night.