Windows 10 X Litros
Sofie Kovalcheck
The young girl had her back to Mind, her nose pressed up against the glass and her palms flat as she stared at something going on outside. From where she stood, Mind could pick up the sound of a muffled conversation, and then a breezy laugh. Mind flinched and braced herself with one hand, her fingers curling over the dark threshold she felt frozen in.
Mind stepped out of the shadows, her hands clasped so tightly in front of her that she knew if she looked down, her knuckles would be white. She took those hesitant steps across the length of the office to the second window. Then, she leaned forward, huffed, and jerked back.
Heart looked at Mind with half of her face illuminated by the colorful glass and the other half obscured in shadows. The one bright eye Mind could see was filled with hope and Mind felt her whole-body clench.
Instead, she slid from the cushions and away from the windows. She slid past Mind, and Mind waited for the beat of each step until Heart reached the landing. She only let the tension fall from her shoulders when the click of the living room door soon followed.
Mind let out a startled gasp when she walked into her office a few days later and found Heart spread across the alcove, utterly still. At the sound, the girl sprang up and whipped around to face the doorway. There was no time to acknowledge the sweeping relief that Mind felt, because Heart had already begun speaking, motioning wildly at the windows.
Mind braced a hand on the arm of the chair, shutting her eyes. Even when the sound faded, Mind could still feel throb of it around her. Could still feel the pain she had inflicted on the thing she cared about the most.
Breathing sharply through her nose, Mind slowly opened her eyes. That was when she spotted it, hiding in the darkest part of the room. She had to blink a few times before she could be sure it was truly there.
Tentatively, Mind stood and crouched down before it. Her fingers found the limp strip and she tugged, the bottom giving way to the beaming white wall on the other side. Too afraid to do more damage, Mind released the narrow piece of paint and sat back on her heels. For a fraction of a second, she did not know what to think.
There was the sound of another rip and Mind launched herself against the wall, her hand pressed firmly against a new fissure. She clawed for the hammer at her waist and her fingers fumbled for a nail, a couple stray ones falling and petering on the wood floor. The nail ended up being crooked in the wall, but there was no time to lose, because the room shook again, and another layer of paint was getting ready to split apart.
The whole office looked like it was made of cracked glass. Her desk was pushed to the side, the contents spilled out onto the floor and its once neat surface. The only thing that remained untouched was the alcove and the stained-glass windows facing the outside.
Mind looked over her shoulder, squinting at the stain-glass windows. A hot, beaming glare of light radiated from the outside and the silky sound of laughter moved throughout the room. The walls pulsed, the paint continued to peel, and Heart stood beside Mind, who was now flushed and wide-eyed.
The light filtered through the glass, flooding the two women in color. Heart lifted her chin and Mind saw the first strokes of love envelop her. Mind saw her happy, marked the moment in her thoughts. She felt her stomach drop.
And then, just like the moment that She and the boy first began to speak, Mind knew that this is where everything she had ever done would officially come to an end. And she knew, once again, she would do what she needed to do to protect the person she loved the most.
Shards flew and struck the floor like the last pitter-patter of a dying pulse. The color vanished from the room in an instant and a draft swept in, flying up the walls and shooting through the cracks. The whole house froze as the cold settled in its bones. At once, the boy, and whatever She had felt for him, was gone.
Mind turned to the side and Heart followed her gaze. On the other side of the shattered window, deep within the gloom where a thousand lights once shone, the darkness of the world gleamed back. All the heartbreak She had suffered was wide open for Heart to see.
Still, it is not all bad in this place. I sit on my couch and slowly dismantle its arms with the metronome scratching of my carefully gnawed fingernails. I hold my cross so tightly that I think I can see its shape through the back of my hand. I can almost scratch the itch that way.
The courtyard outside my building is of a contagious gray that floats through its residents like milk through tea. The bricks of the complex rise around it in a square gray shaft. The sky above it, like a mirror, conveys grayness even when it shines blue. My neighbors hang colors out their windows, the flags of sports teams and faraway countries. They cannot see these offerings from the insides of their own apartments. I imagine they hang them for each other. Sometimes I am bold enough to wonder if I am, myself, a member of each other.
From my couch, I can watch the courtyard. In its center is an old bathtub stray dogs like to chip their teeth on. One of my neighbors threw it out of his window in a rage fifteen years ago. Before I sat on this couch. Before I pressed my cheek to the floor.
I am grateful for the bathtub because it brought the dogs. I used to throw them bits of chicken from my window on the second floor. I can no longer chew chicken. Now, I overturn jars of baby food and let the jelly grenades slop down among them.
This infuriates my neighbor on the ground floor. The dogs overrun her petunias in pursuit of glutinous shrapnel. She has never asked me to stop. I do not think she realized it would take me so long to die.
Only one does not seem to care for the jostling nor its reward, though I can see her ribs, her spine, and, in some places, her skin. She lays on a patch of dirt and licks her paws while her packmates snarl and prowl. She is the largest of them, with short red-gold fur and a head too big for her frame. She carries herself carelessly, like a puppy, but the look on her face is at all times very serious.
I forgot my name a long time ago. There are some things I remember. I remember not to snap at the yellow bugs that float around the flowers. I remember that shiny surfaces are easy to slip on, and should be approached with caution.
Names are a source of pride among us. Biscuit is young and remembers the name he was given and the faces of those who gave it to him, which makes him intolerable. The way he looks at Leader recalls to me the bite of the steel bison humans ride, the time my tail got too close.
One of our pack returns with a strange offering. He nudges the object with his nose, showing us how it opens like a butterfly with a thousand wings. We sniff. There is no odor of the ants we can see crushed between each of its wings.
Leader returns. He smells of the meat of animals that died in despair. This is what humans eat, and it is strong in the scent of their sweat and the things they leave behind. Perhaps it is their way of keeping each other away.
I do not know how to make Biscuit understand that meekness can be more powerful than strength. We learn this from the taste of our own blood. I have tasted mine. I hope never to taste his. Biscuit arrived to us clean, proud and unpunctured. Still warm from human hands and reeking of their ingested despair. But alone. I do not know what we smelled like to him. Some kind of savage promise. I hope we kept it.
Leader was never given a name and does not suffer its loss. We know that he is bold and fair, but we do not love him as we do each other. We do not nip his tail in play. Biscuit, I love as though I bore him. His rashness is a great vulnerability, and I am careful to protect him without offending his pride.
It reminds me of the silky plains of rock above which water swirls and from which it falls. I visited a place like that with the humans who gave me my name. I cannot explain why I remember something that bears so little on my survival.
The white stone is shiny. The first time Leader walked on it, his paws slipped and he nearly fell. Leader does not like us to see him fall. Now, the stone is padded with bits he has found on the street and he walks with assurance.
Today, I went outside. All morning, I had been thinking about dying. I put my salt and pepper shakers in my pocket. They are among my most cherished possessions, small ceramic models of Dutch windmills, white and blue. We got them on our honeymoon. In Akron, not Amsterdam.
I carried them to my local second hand store and put them on the shelves. I stood back from them and looked at them there. I tried to imagine myself as a young shopper, turning a first home into a treasure chest. I tried to imagine delight at this small secondary effect of my passing. It was out of my reach today.
When I returned home, I started to make myself a cup of tea. I watched the dogs out the window. Their alpha, a shaggy gray male, thin but lovely, was lying in his spot in the broken bathtub. Between his paws, inexplicably, was a book. The way he was looking at it, it was as though he were reading the title, and I laughed.
I turned off the stove and poured myself a glass of red wine. My doctor said that drinking would kill me faster. I told him that without it, the time I have is too much. Mortality and morale dust themselves off and shake hands.
Tonight, neither of us sleeps. His ears jump at the slightest sound. I go to him, though his reception of me these days carries a possibility of menial violence. I find him pliant. I sniff his anus and smell his self-pity.
I sometimes lament that I am not the type of person who gets carried away. There are those who collect useful and pleasant delusions as easily as I collect dust on the bottoms of my grippy socks. I envy the victims of pyramid schemes their certainty and enthusiasm. These are people who possess the capacity to take themselves seriously in public.
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