Chapter 5
ROSE
Igasp in shock, though it takes a moment for my mind to catch up and understand why it is that I feel so surprised as I stare ahead. I’m here again, standing in the empty, dilapidated bones of my house. Outside the sun has already set, the same as every other time that I have awakened like this.
These moments hurt the most, when I feel like my father should come striding through the back door at any moment, dressed casually in his grubby gardening clothes, a stray patch of dirt on his cheek.
Amaryllis should be sitting at the piano right now, playing a tune rather poorly.
Iris should be running through the house, always up to no good just as little girls as adventurous as her often are.
My mother should be sitting by the fire, her knitting needles clacking together repetitively.
Instead they are gone. The house is dark, and far too quiet.
I haven’t yet allowed myself to cry over these things, fearing that once I start I may never stop, but the tears burn the backs of my eyes now, and a low sob escapes me as I sink to the floor, giving in and giving up all at once.
I’m still laying on the floor amongst the general filth, wallowing in my misery, when I hear a sound that scared me only a short while ago, but has already become so familiar.
A vehicle on the street. They are so different from the odd Ford I used to see in town, and another reason why I am certain that I have been dead a very long time.
Everything that I have observed in this world has changed, from the strange talking box that sits on the wall in the neighbouring house, playing brightly-lit moving pictures, to the way people speak to each other, to the clothes that they wear.
Zak, the man who can see me, has not come by this evening as I’d hoped he would, but as the sound of the vehicle draws closer and light shines through the broken gaps in the front wall, I sit up, anticipation bubbling in my chest.
I peek out the window. It’s him.
I can see the moment he spots me. He stills briefly — he’s eating again, the same way he was last week — and it makes me smile to see a big man like him pause so comically. My smile fades, of course, when I remember that it’s me who he finds so terrifying.
I’m almost too afraid to step out of my house, too scared that he may run again like he did last week, but I’m desperate for company. I enjoyed speaking to him so much last night, even if it was brief. I thought, perhaps, that he also enjoyed speaking to me.
Zak is already walking towards me when I push the door open, keeping hold of the handle to prevent it from crashing open the way it did the first night I touched it. There’s a smile on his face, his brown eyes filled with warmth, and I find myself grinning in return.
“Hello again,” I say as he nears, stopping at the base of the porch stairs.
“Rose.” There’s something about the way he says my name that sets a fire burning low in my belly.
I know what I’m feeling — I’ve been feeling it since I first saw him.
Attraction. Desire. Up close, he is a very handsome man in an otherworldly way, the parts of him that I’m not used to — those pointed ears, the large, protruding tusks — all fitting together to create beauty.
Tonight he wears his hair long, only a portion tied in a top knot, and it suits him.
“Zak,” I say, just to have his name on my tongue. “Thank you for coming by again.”
“Of course. I would have come earlier, but I had work.”
I nod. I don’t know what to say next, so I point to the strange packet in his hand. There’s a yellow M on the front of it. “Is that your supper?”
“My supper,” he repeats quietly, amusement and something else — wonder, perhaps? — in his voice, and he nods. “Yeah, it’s my dinner. Just quick and easy, through the drive through. I’d offer you some fries, but…”
His unspoken words hang in the air between us. “It’s alright,” I say. “I don’t think I can eat them.”
This time, his nod is slow and serious, a crease forming between his brows. I’m certain he has a thousand questions — I certainly do — but he remains quiet.
“Please,” I add, gesturing to his food. “Eat. Don’t let my presence stop you.”
He listens, eating the fries — they’re thinner versions of chips, I realise, and I wish I could smell them — chewing on his food slowly, his expression thoughtful. “Is it just you here, Rose?” he asks, his voice so quiet and gentle for a man of his size.
“Yes, it’s just me.” I wonder if he can tell that I’ve been crying. Do my lashes appear wet to him? Are my eyelids as swollen as they feel?
“I live next door, as you know. It’s a flat… uh… what I mean is I just rent a bedroom in there, and we share the living space. There’s four other guys.”
“I’ve seen them, but I don’t think they can see me.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I figured that was the case. I don’t know why I can — but I’m glad!” he adds, and it’s obvious he’s worried I may have taken offence to his words. “It’s nice talking to you, Rose.”
“I’m glad too.” My chest aches, and I wrap my arms around my middle. Zak notices, his eyes darting to my waist momentarily.
“I’m gonna stay here chatting to you, if that’s okay,” he announces. “Until you go.”
It takes me a moment to compose myself enough to reply. “I would like that,” I whisper. “I enjoy your company.”
“I’ll come back tomorrow, too. After work.”
Zak finishes his food, folding the stiff packaging it came in and slipping it into his pocket. I consider inviting him inside, but it’s such a mess in there that it doesn’t seem right. My mother will — would have — thrown a fit.
“What…” I begin, trailing off as I attempt to formulate my question in the least offensive way. Zak looks at me expectantly. “What, exactly, are you?” I ask tentatively. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
His mouth parts in surprise for a moment, and my stomach drops in dread that I really have offended him.
But then he laughs, loud in the still night, and shakes his head.
“Of course you don’t know,” he says, more to himself, before clearing his throat and levelling a very direct gaze at me. “I’m an orc.”
“An orc.”
“Yeah.” His eyes search my face. “You don’t know what that means, do you?” His question is curious, not condescending, and I can tell he’s trying to understand something, though I don’t know what.
“I don’t know anything about it. I don’t feel like I know anything at all,” I tell him honestly.
“But what about yourself?”
I hold out my arms, staring at my hands, confronting the fact that I have tried so desperately to ignore — that I can see through my own limbs. It’s a horror; a living nightmare.
Or a dead one.
“I don’t understand any of this, sir. Like I said, I understand very little at the moment.”
He nods again, the frown between his brows deep and serious now. “But your ears… that’s what I meant. You’re an elf, right?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Now he truly looks shocked, his eyes widening, a quiet “Fuck,” escaping his lips. The silence stretches between us a beat too long, before he tentatively asks, “You don’t know?”
I say nothing.
“Your ears are pointed, Rose,” he explains gently, pointing to his own head. “They’re similar to mine, just a little rounder on the edges.”
“No,” I say immediately, even as my hands drift upwards, touching my — I gasp, breath caught in my throat, because he’s right.
“That…” I start, unsure of what I’m trying to say.
There is already so much that has happened to me — I’m clearly already dead, I am a ghost, invisible to almost everyone, I am trapped here within this property, I can see right through my own body — so why am I so thrown by this? “They were not like this, before.”
“Back when you…?” Zak doesn’t finish his question, his eyes searching my face as the unspoken when you were alive? hangs between us.
“Yes. Back then.”
He looks so concerned, and I can tell it’s not that he’s afraid of me, but for me.
“So you didn’t know that you’re not human?”
This is all too much. I shake my head slowly. “If I’m not human, what am I?”
I look him over in the ensuing silence, and realise he’s shivering slightly. “Oh Zak, you’re cold.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, go home. You don’t… you don’t need to stay here with me.
Please, go, be warm. I’d hate for you to get sick on my account.
We can’t have you ending up like…” I suddenly can’t finish my sentence, the words dead like me trapped between the pain in my chest and the burn in my eyes.
I blink rapidly, staring out into the dark of the front garden.
I can barely see it, but I know it’s a mess, just like everything else.
“Hey,” Zak says quietly, and his voice feels like a caress, the only warmth left in my entire existence. It’s enough to make me want to step into his arms, as forward as that is. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I can. I’m almost certain that I’d pass straight through him.
“I’ll be fine, Rose. Orcs don’t get sick the way humans do. I’m more worried about you.” He licks his lip, and I follow the movement. When I lift my eyes to meet his, something shifts in the air between us. I want to linger in this feeling, but the new discovery about myself gnaws at me.
“You asked me if I was an elf,” I prompt.
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” This time, when his eyes rake over my form, it’s purely analytical.
“My guess is an elf, but I could be wrong. One of your parents must have had elf blood; it would’ve been a few generations back, I reckon.
You wouldn’t be the first one to not know, by the way.
When… shit, you don’t even know about the Unravelling, do you? ”
I shake my head, and with the movement, my vision begins to blur.
No!
“Rose!”
“I’m going,” I say in explanation, feeling so weak, as if someone is pulling my soul out of my body, pulling me under in dissected parts. Perhaps that’s already happened. “I’m sorry, I —”