Mud Vein(14)

“Hush,” he says. “You don’t get to judge my turn of phrase.”

I lay my arm across the table and rest my head on it.

He looks less and less like a doctor nowadays with his scruffy face and long hair. Come to think of it, he’s acting less like one too. Maybe this is rockstar Isaac. I don’t ever remember him drinking during the time we spent together. I lift my head and rest my chin on my arm.

I want to ask if he had a drinking problem back in the day—when he was actually living his tattoo. But it’s none of my business. We all medicate with something. He notices me looking at him funny. He’s on his fifth shot.

“Something you want to ask me?”

“How many more bottles of that stuff do we have?” I ask. The one he’s holding has a third left. I’m thinking we might have some darker days. We need to save the happy juice for sadder times.

He shrugs. “What does it matter?”

“Hey,” I say. “We are sharing family memories. Bonding. Don’t be depressing.”

He laughs, and sets the bottle on the counter. I wonder if he’d notice if I hid it. I watch him walk into the living room. I’m not sure if I should follow him or give him space. In the end, I go upstairs. It’s not my business what Isaac is struggling with. I barely know him. No, that’s not entirely true. I just don’t know this side of him.

I wrap myself in my comforter and try to sleep. The whiskey has made my head spin. I like it. I’m surprised I never got addicted to alcohol. It’s such a nice way to check out. Maybe I should find a new addiction. Maybe I should find Isaac.

Maybe…



When I wake up I feel sick. I just barely make it down the ladder and into Isaac’s room. The bathroom door is closed. I don’t think twice before flinging it open and throwing myself at the toilet. Isaac opens the shower curtain just as I do. I have a moment where the vomit is halfway up my esophagus and Isaac is naked in front of me, everything stands still, then I push him aside and hurl.

It’s a terrible feeling, everything coming up from your stomach. Bulimics should get a medal. I use his toothbrush because I can’t find mine. The one thing I’m not is a germaphobe. When I walk out of the bathroom, he’s lying on the bed. Dressed, thank God.

“How come you didn’t get sick?”

He looks up at me. “I guess I’m an old pro.”

I have a fleeting thought, one where I wonder if he’s the one who brought us here. I narrow my eyes and scan my mind for motive. Then I come to my senses. Isaac has no reason for wanting to be here. There is no reason for him to be here at all.

“Do me a favor,” I say, against my better judgment. “If in your past life—the one where you tattooed emotion all over your body—you had a drinking problem, don’t drink.”

“Why do you care, Senna?”

“I don’t,” I say quickly. “But your wife and baby do.”

He looks away.

“We are going to get out of here eventually.” I sound way more sure than I actually am. “You can’t go back to them all messed up.”

“Someone left us here to die,” he says, blandly.

“Bullshit.” I shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut. I’m feeling queasy again. “All the food … the supplies. Someone wants us to survive.”

“Limited food. Limited supplies.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I say. We both stopped messing with the keypad the day I spilled all that nonsense about Adam and Eve.

“Maybe we should get back to breaking out of here,” I say.

Then I run back to the bathroom and throw up.



Later as I lie in my bed, still green-faced and queasy, I decide not to try to help anymore. It’s not my forte. I want to be left alone, I should therefore leave others alone. We pick up our code breaking again, for lack of anything else to do.

To stave off boredom I try my hand at reading again. It doesn’t work; I have kidnapped ADD. I like the feel of paper beneath my fingertips. The sound a page makes when it turns over. So I don’t see the words, but I touch the pages and turn them until I’ve finished the book. Isaac sees me doing it one day, and laughs at me.

“Why don’t you just read the book?” he asks.

“I can’t focus. I want to, but I can’t.”

He comes over and takes it from my hands. The sofa yields as he sits down next to me and opens it to the first page. He’s sitting so close our legs are touching.



Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.



I close my eyes and listen to his voice. When he reads the words, “I was destined to be unlucky in life…” my eyes shoot open. I want to say Jinx. Maybe I’ll like David Copperfield after all. This isn’t the first time Isaac’s read to me. The last time was under very different circumstances. Very different and very much the same. He reads until his voice becomes hoarse. Then I take the book from him and read until mine gives, too. We mark the spot and set it down until tomorrow.





Nothing happens for weeks. We develop a routine, if you can call it that. It’s more of a day-to-day stay sane and survive kind of thing. I call it Sanity Circulation. When you’re caged up you need somewhere to send your hours, or you start getting prickly, like when you sit in the same position for too long and your legs get pins and needles. Except when you get them in your brain, you’re pretty much on your way to the nuthouse. So we try to circulate. Or, I do at least. Isaac looks like he’s two blinks away from needing Haloperidol and a padded room. He makes coffee in the morning, that’s consistent. There is a huge sack of coffee beans in the pantry and several industrial sized cans of instant. He uses the beans, saying that when we run out of juice in the generator we can heat water for the instant over the fire. When … not if.