0534. Awake
NORMALLY I LIKE THIS time of day—the early hours, before everyone else wakes. The sun rising coyly over the shoulder of the hills like a backward glance. The cool haze of a new day. I don’t always get to see it.
Something rings in my head; the sound of your laugh. That’s the last thing I can remember. Are you satisfied with your little rebellion? Was it worth it?
But I should have woken in my bed. Dr. Hodel was here, he gave me my usual pills.
More’s the pity, Prince of Darkness. I think we both know you’re not in charge.
Well, fine. Whatever I did last night, now I’m awake in the greenhouse on the side of the house.
This part of the house is—like the rest of it used to be—crumbling, ancient, overrun with weeds.
I’m slowly working my way through some repairs, trying to tend the plants that have survived by virtue of sheer accident.
The fountain beside it, on the other side of the glass, is broken.
I’ve been trying to repair it in my spare time, but things keep getting moved around.
The new motor I ordered online is nowhere to be found, the new filter’s gone, and all you can tell me is that it’s my fault.
I can’t keep things orderly, I’m surrounded by garbage.
Every time I wake up there are new boxes of shit I don’t remember buying.
Climbers’ rope. Cubic zirconia. Hedge trimmers.
Four different kinds of kitchen timers. They all go off in my head, and I open my eyes.
Well, I wasn’t working in here, I know that much.
I’m shivering in my boxers, for one thing, and holding a pile of clothes, clutched tight in both hands.
My jeans, a ratty T-shirt. Blood is splattered on both, concentrated in some places and delicately bejeweled in others.
A discrete spray of ink. My boots are on the ground, I’ve been looking for those.
Well, now I’ve found them, congratulations to me.
The treads are crusted with something that could be mud.
Or maybe not.
I bend down to check if they’re worth cleaning. There’s a tube of lipstick tucked into them, the drugstore kind, that shade of red you think is tawdry. Cheap, you call it, like it validates something for you. Some innate measure of value.
Fuck.
I look around for the inevitable camera and find it in the corner, barely concealed behind a tangle of vines.
“Are you seeing this?” I ask it.
Yes, you chuckle in my head.
My phone buzzes.
Yes, Ova texts me.
“Are you going to do something about it?”
No answer. I wipe a bead of sweat from my forehead. Fuck, it’s hot in here.
You’re getting sloppy. You’re not even trying anymore. And the ritual is still—
“Yes. I get it. I know.” From the canyons of my mind, another rattle of a cough.
The blood was wrong again.
“So you’ve mentioned,” I mutter over the churning of my stomach. “But I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
You chuckle gaily in my ear. If only that were true.
I can’t tell if the blood on my clothes is old or fresh; if it’s someone else’s or mine. I’m not actually wearing them, I reason with myself. I’m holding them. So, anything could have happened.
Probably! you agree. Probably just a dashing rescue. Or hey, you add, and for the record, it’s not amusing, this sneering tone, maybe you ordered takeout and had a quiet night in. That’s probably what this is.
My grip on the clothes tightens. “I didn’t do this.”
You have absolutely no idea what you did, you point out. So why not save us both some time and assume the worst?
Helpful. Very helpful.
Thank you. I aim to please.
My phone buzzes again. Wait there, announces the text from Ova.
I set the clothes down and take a seat on the greenhouse floor. I don’t know what she’s going to do with them that I can’t. Fling them over the side of the hill? Bury them in the ground? Burn them?
Burn them, you chime in like the chorus. Then scatter the ashes.
“It’s fire season. This place is a fucking tinderbox.” I swear I’ve never experienced heat like this, or wind like this. Every year things seem infinitely worse, trudging invariably toward the end. Like spores, gradually consuming.
Delivered like a promise: You’ll live.
“Shut up,” I mutter. “Please, just shut up.”
Your voice turns simpering. But then who would you talk to?
“Julian. Come here.”
When I open my eyes, Ova is standing there, waiting.
She’s fully dressed, as she always is, or has been ever since our coffers were filled and the house was finished, its long-lost glamour finally hers to command.
This precious house, so important to her.
So much more important than anything it contains.
“Sit,” she says.
She gestures me to the broken seat of an outdoor patio chair.
“Tetanus,” I note aloud.
Which Ova will it be today, I wonder? Or rather, who is Ova, really?
Her face remains impressively still. Though I always find Ova impressive, the way she bends to whatever means best suit her ends.
She will do whatever it takes, and who am I not to admire her for it?
We’re not always aligned, but we are at least empathetic in this regard, in the matters we acknowledge and those we don’t.
“Sit.”
She has electric clippers in her hands, and a pair of kitchen shears.
I do as I’m told. I often do, in the end. Trust would be the wrong sentiment, but when it comes to my dealings with Ova, a gentleman’s agreement is implied. “Why, exactly?”
She takes my hair out of its ratty elastic and grips the fistful of strands at the nape of my neck in a brutalist ponytail. Then she cuts it off, though the shears aren’t sharp enough to take care of all of it at once. She chops at it, hacking three or four times before it all falls to the ground.
“Maybe someone saw a long-haired man,” she offers in tacit explanation. I can tell she’s trying not to look at the bloody pile of clothes. For all that Ova sees, there is much she pretends not to. “Things like that stick out.”
I am not accustomed to feeling like things are good or even fine. But that still stings.
“I didn’t do this.”
She says nothing while she takes out the clippers and shaves the rest of the hair from my head. I have no idea how close she’s cutting it. I imagine briefly that she takes the blades to my neck, just nicking the edge of my carotid.
Like I wouldn’t see that coming.
“I didn’t do this,” I repeat. There’s pressure on the backs of my eyelids, a searing heat of pain. I can’t breathe and I try to lean forward, but Ova yanks me back.
“Stay still.”
“I didn’t do this.” My voice gets that edge to it, the thing you call a childish whine.
Shut up, you say. You’re a man now. Be a man.
“I didn’t do this, I don’t even want this—”
Ova turns the clippers off and I rock back and forth for a few breaths until I settle.
My hair is on the floor, it’s everywhere, matted and disgusting.
There are a few white hairs, too, which is absurd.
I’m twenty-four or something. I’m at least twenty-three, I don’t think I’m older than twenty-five.
I feel like I would know. Either way, it’s like my life is scattered increasingly around me.
Most of my time isn’t even mine. Will I wake up one day and be eighty years old, my whole life parted from me already? By a dream I only half remember?
How long before I learn my lesson and stay asleep?
A lot of people would kill for this kind of power, you know. You say it in an upbeat way, encouragingly, like a pep talk. Come on! Life’s too short to hate yourself.
“You’re keeping me alive,” I whisper. “But for what?”
Ova doesn’t even look at me. She knows by now that I’m not talking to her. It’s almost like a version of affection, the way she doesn’t make me feel crazy. She just makes me feel like I’m not even there; like eventually I’ll be something different, more easily put to use.
For fun! you say. A lilting melody shanties through my head. Why, aren’t you enjoying yourself?
“Can’t you do something?” This time I look at Ova.
She looks dully back at me. “You’re the one making it worse.”
A deep shame colors my cheeks then.
“But he needs us. And he wants you—he’ll listen to you if you just—”
Ova interrupts then, tossing me something.
“Take these,” she says, and leaves. Apparently she’s finished.
In the end, all she did was cut my hair and shove it in a plastic bag alongside my clothes and boots.
I’ll just have to order another pair and hope that in the meantime, you don’t step on broken glass.
I look down at what she threw me. Another set of clothes, obviously a woman’s. A tank top, a pair of cutoff shorts.
“What am I supposed to do with these?” Part of me is relieved to not recognize them, to know they’re functionally irrelevant for not being a pair of Levi’s 501s. The jeans she always wears, the only ones I’ve ever seen her in. She loves them, I can tell she does. They’re like a talisman for her.
No, wait. I didn’t mean to think that. I didn’t mean it, I take it b—!
Too late. You’re smug with triumph. I told you, it’s her.
“No, it’s not, it can’t b—”
Why should it matter? I thought you only wanted to be free.
“But she isn’t—” I falter. “You only want her because I—” A hard stop. “Because I’m the one who saw her first.” That last bit is a petulant whisper.
And? Your laughter rings in my head. You know the ritual is failing. The longer this goes on, the worse it will get. How high must we pile the bodies? This you pose with complete indifference, picking sinew from your teeth.
Instinctively, I tighten a fist; my skin cracks where the blood on my knuckles has dried.
Forget Ova. Who am I, really?
Come with me, Julian, and find out.