PostApoc (19 page)

- 29 -
DON'T DIE, ONLY DREAM

I
wake. Not because of the dream but because of the warmth and wetness at my face: a wolf, white, its snout stinking.

It pulls back when our eyes meet. The sun rises through the slats of the barn, the sky the colour of lavender. The wolf's got the body of a girl: round breasts, narrow waist, tight hips. Hands darker than the rest of her skin.

“Sleep,” she says, but her mouth doesn't move.

I dream that the lake has come and gone all over again, dragged Shelley and Anadin in with it. I can't stand its rate of absorption. I can't stand its soft grey surface, a slate magnified to hide what the bowels of this earth have consumed.

On my back in the barn, I spin, land on a memory and a hope. I don't die, only dream:

That you had me by the hair, not hard. Right at the end before we broke apart. Your last grab, but not last gasp. You didn't fight it.

Did you know I wasn't coming with you? Could you feel me dragging behind?

When we first met, you told me about your favourite saying, something about an old proverb that a kiss was a mingling of souls, and now that we'd kissed we'd be in each other forever.

You've kept your hair long: spider's silk between my knuckles. I expected mold and the same degree of decay that's been around me since the first sky went out. You still smell like incense and ink, blue ballpoint pen and black magic marker.

I grip the back of your hair now like I should have then. If I'd held on maybe it would have worked. How do you work your way back into someone's life when there's hardly any life left?

I'll still hold on to you but you need to know that there's someone else I want to be holding onto soon.

In a dream attached to a dream Anadin's voice rises up from underwater. “Don't look at the lake too long,” she says. “The dregs at the bottom will suck you in with it. Just wake. Wake up.”

My stomach is empty again. I make a pile of stale saltines I stole from the old lady's house and eat them one at a time.
The crackers are so old they've gone soft but I shove them in anyway until they're a wad at the back of my tongue and a rock in my gut.

It's hotter today than yesterday but I keep telling myself, “Ride.” I mumble it when I can spare the breath: “Ride, ride, ride.” I don't let myself stop until a headache arcs sharply between my ears. There's a road motel off to the right. I manage to get into the parking lot and off my bike before I faint.

Tara's toe is in my rib, the steel of her boot enough to bruise. The reality is as unexpectedly crushing as her greeting.

“What are
you
doing here?” she asks, the “you” heavy with déjà vu.

It's still day but over Tara's shoulder I can see the moon hanging heavy and full, closer to the Earth than I've seen it yet. A vertical grin smirks from a crack in its belly.

“Did you know what I was thinking?” Tara asks, kneeling beside me. “I was thinking that I couldn't do this without you. I couldn't be here alone. You must have gotten into my head and heard me.”

A chunk of moon falls toward the dead of the lake. It doesn't take speed; its plummet is slow, a featherweight rock. There's no rush. The End is already here and wants to take its time with the process.

There was a time when the moon was considered a good omen. When far, it meant an exposure of secrets, which isn't always as bad as it sounds. But rules have reverted now, turned in on themselves.

Tara's cheeks have broken out under the skin. A tiny white worm pokes its head out of her right nostril. She wipes at it with the back of an arm and then puts out her hands to help me up. We go slow but my head still spins.

Tara's been living in this motel since she left the house. Neither of us knows how many days it's been. I don't ask. A fox, dead for maybe three days, is in the parking spot in front of Tara's room. I can see it from here, its mouth unhinged, tongue shriveled. Tara shows me its tail that she cut off.

“It came away clean, no blood,” she says. “I just had to shake it out in case there were fleas or something.” She's been keeping it in her bag, leaving its white tip peeking out.

The curtains on the window of Tara's room have been torn off and left on the floor.
There's a knock on the door. “Just a minute,” Tara says, and then to me, “Come next door. Colton's gonna hook me up. You want some?”

Tara walks ahead of me and I follow her out. The room two doors down still has its curtains and its darkness expands around us.

“Who's that?” Colton asks, pointing at me but looking at Tara.

“That's my friend, Ang,” she says. “Remember, the girl I told you about?”

“She's not planning on staying here is she?”

“No,” I say. “I'm just visiting. Heading east from here.”

Colton's counting out some doses of grayline. He stretches back onto the bed and pats the space beside him. Tara moves in, runs a hand down his thigh. Their weight against the headboard of the bed sends a light brown spider squirming out from behind it. The spider runs up the wall and into a thick web in the corner where other spiders are at work on white sacks with dark, squirming middles.

“How much grayline have you got today?” Tara asks.

“Some,” he says. “How good are you gonna be today?”

“As good as you need me to be. But you've got to give some to Ang, too.”

Colton doesn't take money. I offer but he says company is his currency. Tara leaves the room for a second to get some air and he says, “I'm getting bored of looking at her when I tell my stories. And she never has much of anything to say, which is why she's always touching me. I'd like to talk to you, though. Look at you. You want to look at me?”

He tells the stories of each of his tattoos: a scythe, a fish, a sun, a star. He tells the stories of his scars: surgery, fight, car accident, motorcycle accident, grease fire, cigarette burn.

Tara returns, out of her head. She starts nodding out almost right away. Her chin sinks into her chest and a small wet circle of drool appears on her shirt. A spider crawls over her shoulder and through the warm spit, disappears into her mouth.

“You want a candy?” Colton asks. He holds out three lollipops: yellow, red, orange. I go for the yellow one. It hits my front tooth and the rush of synthetic lemon mixes plaque and the copper under-taste of blood. I don't want Colton to know I just knocked out my tooth and that it's now gnawing its way through me.

“Is the grayline on you yet?” he asks, eyes half-shut. Tara swallowed most of it so I'm not expecting much, but a soft wave kicks in just as he gets me thinking about it, as if it needed my permission to flow. Euphoria slowly rises through my chest, just as Colton nods off.

I lie back, too, and try to re-create my earlier dreams, but the pain in my gums flutters through the gap where my tooth used to be and keeps me distracted. I unwrap a red lollipop that's fallen onto the floor and rub it against my bare gum as if it will make it feel better. My stomach aches and I wonder if it's working against the edges of the tooth.

There's more drowsiness with this grayline than what I'm used to. It must be cut with something but I can't place what that might be.

When I wake again my tooth has grown back. I had no dreams while I slept through the pain of teething and the ache in my stomach is gone. I wonder if my body pushed out fresh bone or if the tooth just found its way back to where it belonged.

Tara's head is still on her chest, but she's slumped slightly sideways. The drool on her shirt has expanded into a small pool of thin vomit. Even in the dank light of the room I can see her skin's gone grey, a colour I know from Aimee's adoption of death.

“Shit,” I say, and then remember we aren't alone. I peek over the top of the bed but Colton's still asleep.

On my knees in front of Tara I say, “Wake up,” even though I know she won't. I try to reach into her thoughts but can't. I lay her on her side. Her cheek is hard under my lips. I want to whisper something to her but don't know what to say, so my mouth just pushes out silence.

The nightstand drawer is full of lollipops. I grab them in handfuls and put them in my bag to take with me. And then I see Tara's bag, and I take that, too.

I test my strength before getting back on my bike by clenching and unclenching my fists. I can't faint again because there's no one left on this road who I can trust to help me. I make a note of the weakness in my hands. Clench, unclench. The heel of my palm is pocked with crescent moons. My skin is stuffed under my fingernails, handlebars holding chunks of my palms. My body is decomposing already, before my heart or my head have even stopped. I rub at the eye earring Tooth gave me and think,
Maybe it'll go away once I get there
.

Outside the sun's still strong enough to cast shadows. As I pull out on my bike, I see the silhouette of Tara's foxtail bobbing behind me.

On the highway I rush underneath overpasses. Their concrete torsos have fallen away, showing off rusting metal ribcages of the road. Metal barriers have come loose and swing low. I pass a sign that says I've only got twenty kilometers to go until Montreal. I suck on one lollipop after another, keeping as much sugar in my blood as I can until I get there.

I suck on two lollipops at a time and almost swallow my tongue. I brush the hair out of my eyes and a hundred strands come away in my hand. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and it ends up smeared with watery blood. I catch my foot on the road when my sole slips from the pedal and I feel a toenail come loose. I think of Tara, feel for a psychic connection, just in case I was wrong to leave her, but get nothing back.

At Montreal's outer limits the sun is still in the same position as when I left the motel. I wonder if we'll have to wait another day for night to come.

I stop ahead of an overpass to catch my breath, rest my legs. It's the first break I've taken. Spraypainted in neon orange on the side of the bridge is a greeting:

WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD

The paint isn't fresh, but it throbs with accuracy. With my front wheel facing east, I ride.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to Kire Paputts, my favourite person, who always lets me disappear when I need to get some writing done, and who read several versions of this story along the way.

Thank you to Danila Botha, Shanen Crandon, Jason E. Hodges, Marisa Iacobucci, Misha Lobo, Ken Rodney, and Natalie Zina Walschots for reading this novel in its developing stages and providing valuable feedback, support, and, most of all, encouragement.

Shanen Crandon also deserves credit as the source of the Ouija board story that appears on page
43
.

Thank you to Jennifer Chivers, Lindsey Clark, Jennifer Clipsham, Jessica Dennis, and Cailey Lenehan, for all of the time we've known each other.

Thank you to Corpusse for the conversation, inspiration, and friendship.

Thank you to coffee, Toronto, Hamilton, wolves, Rozz Williams, and Cocteau Twins.

Thank you—big time—to Chris Needham and the team at Now Or Never Publishing for making this weird book happen.

And of course, thank you to my parents, Mary and Nelson Worth.