The Last One(91)

Maybe that’s what I’ve been able to smell since cresting the stairway. Lily pollen. Maybe the whole room is filled with lilies, and their rotten pollen stench is filling the air, drifting out to the hall to meet me.

“Lilies,” I say aloud. “It’s lilies.”

But this isn’t what lily pollen smells like.

“Mae?” says Brennan.

“I can’t,” I say. I can’t go back, I can’t go forward. I can’t stand here forever.

“I’ll go in,” he says.

I put out my swollen hand to stop him, but he hasn’t moved.

It takes all my strength to lift my foot.

I recognize our maroon-and-gold comforter. The bedding is rumpled, mounded on the far side. My side. A patch of fuzzy darkness near the head.

Pressure builds behind my eyes. This is my punishment. For the cliff, for the cabin. For leaving.

I can’t look. I can’t see you like this.

A baby. Our baby. A little boy with light blue eyes. I left him, crying. I had to have known. His fingers so chubby and grasping, and I left him there and here you are, gone, and I don’t even know for how long because I was off playing another game.

We met playing a game, Wits and Wagers, and in the final round you bet it all on my answer: 1866. I was one year over; you lost it all and so did I. Three years later, your best man framed the story of our mutual loss as the story of our mutual gain in a toast that had us laughing tears. Afterward we wondered: How many other weddings have referenced assassination?

My eyes flicker toward the window. Sunlight blinds me. It should be raining.

I feel myself hit the floor without experiencing the fall, without feeling my knees give.

You’re gone. Right there, but gone.

Brennan walks past me, toward the bed. I can’t watch him; I can’t not watch him. If I blink my skin will rupture. I stare at the nearest leg of the bed frame. Mahogany, bought from a stranger online; we haggled fifty dollars off the price because of a scratch that later buffed right out. Brennan reaches for the covers, doing what I cannot do because I’ve done it before, I’ve seen what lies beneath, and I kneel here willing my heart to stop beating, begging it to—Please. A pair of brown slippers, size eleven, at the foot of the bed. A birthday present, from me to you. The practical gift, not the fun, we promised to give at least one of each, always. They’re askew, and I can see you there, kicking them off before crawling under the covers. My side.

Maroon and gold rise at the edge of my vision. I hate the boy for it. He shouldn’t see you like this. No one should see you like this. You shouldn’t exist like this. My hands are limp upon my lap, one gruesomely swollen and bruised, the other with shredded skin. I can’t feel either. All I can feel is the endless, overwhelming ba-bump of my heart, grotesque in its insistence to keep on beating. The comforter, not falling—being placed. You, covered now. My ears are ringing. The boy’s looking at me. My forehead strikes the floor, the peeling veneer of what we thought was hardwood.

This isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t what I meant.

Pressure, Brennan’s hands upon my shoulders. The floor retreats; I have no resistance left in me. He’s talking—crashing waves, my ears still ringing—and I think: All I’m left with is you. Hatred like flame and fear like fuel. This isn’t how this was supposed to end, how we were supposed to end. The boy’s face in mine, imploring, beseeching, needing, trying. One phrase penetrates. “It’s all right.” Over and over: It’s all right. An automated response; he doesn’t know what he’s saying. It’s not all right, it’s all wrong. I was wrong. Wrong to leave, wrong to fear, wrong to lie, wrong to think that you couldn’t make even raising a child possible. I’m sorry, I was wrong, I will forever be wrong—but I came back.

It can mean nothing now, but I did.

I came back.





22.


Footage from the first full day of the Solo Challenge is sent to the studio, but the editor never sees it, never spins it. Never adjusts tint of the trees or the saturation of Zoo’s eyes. The contestants will search and hike and scratch at mosquito bites in real time, forever. That night the third episode of In the Dark airs, the first and only weekly finale. It’s widely watched, but few will remember it. Footage from the second day of Solo is never even sent in. A drone lands, never to rise again.

The third day, Exorcist wakes to find his cameraman collapsed outside his shelter with red mucus leaking from his nose. He uses the cameraman’s radio to call for help. The voice on the other side is panicked, but assures him help is coming. Exorcist holds the cameraman’s sweaty, bloody head on his lap for hours, telling him stories and dribbling water into his mouth. Help does not come, and the cameraman’s heart beats its final rhythm. Exorcist tries to carry the body out of the woods, but after a slow half mile falls to the ground, exhausted. He mutters a final blessing, crosses the man’s stiffening arms over his chest, and leaves him under a black birch. He soon mistakes a combination of deep thirst and pathogen-caused nausea for hunger, and decides to hunt. Stumbling through the woods, delirium falls over him like mist. A branch sways with the weight of a squirrel; he chucks his sharpened dowsing rod. The rod flies swiftly, hits the trunk of a different tree, and bounces into a bed of leaves. Exorcist searches for the dowsing rod until nightfall. In the dark he begins to sweat, and then his stomach heaves. He can’t stop coughing. He feels too warm. He wipes at his runny nose and his sleeve comes back red. He weeps, seeing the bloody eye of his ex-wife. His inner monster is nothing compared to this possession—so quick, so painful, so total. In a moment of semi-lucidity, he wonders why it never occurred to him to try to exorcise the cameraman’s sickness. And then the demon grasps his organs with its many claws and rends his innards.