1930s Chicago. A scarred, ancient creature has endured decades of chains and silence in a secret lab. Then they resurrect her –curious, fearless, fully alive.
She leads with instinct and desire; he follows, a century of restraint finally breaking. Two monsters learning to be lovers –and refusing to go back.
The waitress returns. Waits. There is a pause before they realize what is expected.
The money looks smaller once it is outside their pockets. Folded bills. Dirty coins. The remains of almost a week. It had seemed sufficient, when found and hidden away.
On the tabletop, though, it looks fragile. The cost of an hour of warmth.
The waitress takes the money, and counts it thoroughly. Then counts it again. Nothing else is given or returned –not even a look.
They stand up. He helps her with the jacket. She dusts his hat before handing it. They leave.
The cold hits them immediately as they step out. The smells return –engine exhaust and wet wool replace burnt coffee and frying oil. The city is busy, though not lively. Boots strike wet pavement. They walk without destination, without hurry. Not too close. But close enough. They’re together, visibly so.
“Not much left,” she says quietly. “Maybe enough for tonight.”
“Just tonight.”
Maybe enough for one night in the cheapest room this city offers, if the cheapest room asks nothing for breakfast and the lock works and nobody looks too closely at who's asking. Or enough for two meals and nothing else. Or held in reserve, spent on nothing, until there’s less, and less, and then the particular silence of an empty pocket.
And still neither one of them can fully regret spending their money on hot food and a quiet seat. It is not regret nor remorse, then –something else. The now habitual bitterness underlining the pleasure once it’s over.
She thinks of a bathtub, of warm water. What the price of that specific comfort might be.
Long bitter gusts find every gap in fabric and leather. She pulls the stolen jacket tighter and keeps walking. Her breath comes in small clouds that the wind immediately takes. The brace becomes used once more to the friction of movement. And yet it is cold enough now that she can feel the metal through the leather harness. A chill that presses in at the knee, and doesn't leave.
He slows for a moment. She turns around. He draws a breath before taking brisk strides back to her side.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes.”
“Your wound,” she says. “Does it still hurt?”
He doesn’t want to lie. So he simply tells a different truth.
“It will heal.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can bear it.”
“We need to fix it.”
“We don’t,” he insists. “It’s alright.”
“It’s not.”
He gazes at her. She stares back.
“It’s not,” she insists, her voice firmer.
He wants to argue. He believes it would make no difference. Yet he knows she will not ask him to accept a doctor. Whatever they do, it will be done between them, and no one else.
The wound throbs softly. It has done so for days now. He breathes in. He remembers her hands. Assessing. Refusing to look away.
The morning crowd moves around them. A delivery truck rattles somewhere beyond the next intersection. The city continues with the confidence of a machine that has never once considered stopping. Now, however, they have a mission.
She studies him. The coat hides most of it. The scarf hides more. But she remembers the stab. The blood on the train. The way he shifts his shoulder when he thought she wasn't looking. The careful movements.
The meal sits warm in her stomach. The coffee still lingers on her tongue. The pie, the booth. The brief illusion that they could simply sit somewhere and exist. All paid for.
The total number of their savings means little by itself. It becomes meaningful only when she begins attaching things to it.
Her jaw tightens. The city is suddenly full of prices. Every storefront they pass seems to advertise something. Shoes –newspapers –cigarettes –coffee –haircuts –a night's lodging. And somewhere among those windows and signs is the cost of keeping him alive. She hates how quickly the calculation arrives.
But she is not going to watch him bleed. They cannot afford that either.
She looks down the street. Anything, she thinks. A pharmacy, a drugstore.
Whatever they find –bandages, aspirin, anything to close the wound –it will cost them. They both know it.
The street has filled in around them. More people hurry along the sidewalks. More bodies, more movement –less space between one person and the next. The kind of crowd that makes everyone indistinct.
A grocer has arranged his window with the particular effort of someone trying to make very little look like abundance. A pyramid of tins, a string of dried something, a fold of paper under a bunch of root vegetables to raise them up and give them presence.
She is looking at the grocer's window when she sees it.
Not the window itself –what lines the bottom of it. Her eyes rest on a crumpled newspaper page, half beneath a pile of bruised apples. Ink has bled into the cheap paper. The photograph is grainy, more shadow than detail. A shape on the ground. A dark coat bent over it. She frowns. Could be any narrow street.
Then she reads. “Chicago murder pair sought by police—”
He notices her pausing. The words reach him a second late. He immediately comes closer, and reads along.
“Seek missing crippled working girl and scarred companion a woman with a leg brace along a large man with a black leather coat—”
She shifts her weight. The brace answers, cold metal against leather. He turns and looks around.
She continues, barely lowering her voice. “A couple matching the same description was seen earlier at a night club where witnesses identified the woman as identical to Ida Bolinski missing since late December—”
“Ida.”
He remembers her saying the name. She remembers sharing it.
She looks away first. He follows, turning to face her. They stay still, silent. A grocer comes out, with a cigarette and a glance.
“Do you need anything?” the grocer asks. A neutral voice. Routine.
“No,” she says. She read enough.
He pulls her arm. Gentle –urgent. “Let’s go.”
They walk away carefully. The street is the same. The people are the same. But such a realization, she learns, has a way to heighten perception.
Everyone is a witness. She understands this in a way she didn't an hour ago. The clerk at the theater. The men in the shantytown. The woman who swept her stoop and looked once and looked away. The young couple on the train who whispered. All of it retroactively reorganized. Evidence, accumulating.
She thinks of green and white walls. Of the smell of ozone and ether. Of cold hands. Of the unnatural white light –and the quiet feeling of being erased.
I will not go back to the white void. It is not a decision –it is merely a fact. She will not be reset, reduced, corrected. She will be herself. Whatever that means. However long it takes to find out.
And the name comes back to her, like a soft pressure returning to a bruise.
Ida. Now Ida Bolinski. A woman missing since late December. A woman who might have frequented nightclubs, who might have worn a blue dress, who might have smoked easily. A woman with a history. Settled, with a designated place, and with people who noticed when she disappeared.
Her hand slips into her pocket. A finger strokes the sharp edge of the mirror shard. She knows that is not her. She is also aware that she wears her face.
She had been curious about the idea of being legible. Being defined. But not like this.
They stay silent as they cross the road. Only then she picks up the pace. A rusty creak. His heavy steps. The bruises on her knees. The blood under his nails.
He sets his jaw. His hand closes into a fist.
“I should have—”
“It’s late for that,” she mutters. “It would make no difference.”
She stops. He stops too. She looks at him, up and down, and an idea arrives.
“Your coat,” she says. “You can wear mine.”
They remove, then exchange their stolen coats. Hers fits tight on him. His is loose on her. But it helps somewhat. The leather coat now covers her legs. The scarf and hat still cover his face. The weight of the gun pulls down from his right shoulder. The wound winces –the sting lasts half a second.
She buttons the coat to fully drown the sheen of silk. Her fingers briefly stroke the soft heavy leather. It smells warm, earthy. Like him. It is comforting, in a way she does not want to linger on.
“A train,” she remembers. The few remaining bills tucked in the breast pocket. “Do we have enough?”
“Barely. But even anywhere…”
“Things won’t change.”
He adjusts the scarf. “They might be waiting. At the station.”
“At a hotel. Anywhere.”
They have left that city. But it wouldn’t be so easy, despite the change of scenery. It dawns on them –the full extent of the consequences. What has happened. What will happen, if they are caught.
Her hand reaches down to grip his.
“We will not go back.”
He grips it back. He keeps his eyes low. Then faces her. The determination in her eyes serves as a gentle comfort.
She is still gripping his hand as they keep on walking. He is still looking at her.
The newspaper has confirmed a simple fact: he will always be hunted. And yet it has also served as a reminder that she is being hunted, too. It is his fault –his killing. It is also hers –her threat. Her boldness. Her refusal to comply. Her insistence on being someone who, when threatened, does not flinch nor retreat. Someone who plans.
She can see him accounting for the street behind her –the foot traffic, the sightlines, the distance to the nearest corner. His guard has snapped back into place.
Nobody lingers on them for now. Four men in denim, holding their empty lunch pails, head in the opposite direction. Workers. Paychecks. Routines. Wives and children, perhaps. The ordinary life.
They belong here, he reminds himself. And while we do not, we will remain. They have decided it.
And still, a quiet idea appears. If he vanished now, she might still have a chance.
The thought arrives and dies almost immediately. Neither of them would permit it.
“There.”
A drugstore advertises itself across the street. DRUGS, in faded gold. They head toward it, as she briefly scans the windows. Patent medicines, shaving brushes, boxes of soap. A single light burning.
A bell gives a small, tired ring. And yet their arrival is still announced –exposed.
Tall shelves line the walls, crowded with tins, boxes, packets, stacked unevenly. Dark wooden floors, worn smooth, creak under their feet. The interior is narrow, and deeper than it is wide. The light is warm and dim: not the sort of light that exposes, but the light that achieves the bare minimum. He hopes it can work in their favor.
Behind a long polished counter stands a shopkeeper. Middle-aged, wearing a white coat, wire-rim glasses. A foolish hope presents itself: perhaps the man won't look closely... And then the shopkeeper looks up. They both look aside. Normal, as normal as they can.
A shrill woman’s voice cries. She jumps.
“But surely, Margaret, you cannot mean to leave him now—!”
Her shoulders slowly drop. The voice comes from a battered radio behind the counter. A loud musical cue follows. She stares at the radio cabinet for a moment longer, before her attention returns to him.
He wanders through the shelves. Beyond the radio, the drugstore is quiet, seems empty. No crowd to get lost in. No more eyes to linger on them. He glances over his shoulder. The shopkeeper is adding figures on a ledger. Busy. She comes close to him, shoulder pressed against his. They continue their way down the aisle, with their back to the counter.
"You don't understand, Robert,” the voice weeps. “A future without you is no future at all—"
“What do we need?” she asks quietly.
“Something to close the wound.”
“Bandages?” she offers. She doesn’t know. She expects him to. “What else?”
He has no answer. She sighs. There is the option to ask the sole other customer, or perhaps ask the shopkeeper himself. She quickly decides against it. They have already been seen –noticed –registered. If asked, they will mention them. But there is no need to give them more reasons to remember them.
Perhaps, she tells herself, they can move by quietly, try their best at being forgotten. Or leave. Would that be more suspicious?
She sees him, showing small, brief glimpses of tension. He is increasingly failing at acting normal. So is she.
She glances at the shopkeeper. Round reading glasses face the ledger, but the grey eyes behind follow them. Not fearful, not yet. Only aware. It stands to reason that he has not read the news.
He rubs the quarters in his pocket. Regards the gun in his pocket. And she keeps searching for gauze. An unnecessary expense.
The newspaper had settled it –they have been labeled as criminals now. Criminals with only a handful of coins. Every penny counts.
She decides that the shopkeeper wouldn’t notice one sewing kit missing.
Nearby, a woman wrapped in a shawl finds a bottle of cough syrup at the far end of the store. Turns it, reads the label. Too distracted, it seems, to notice them.
He breathes carefully. Lingers near her, but not too near. She reaches for a small cardboard box –the bandages. She picks it up, examines it, then shows it to him. He nods.
The woman with the shawl opens her purse and counts coins. He rubs his quarters in his pocket.
The bell rings. A man with a grey hat walks in, slow, assessing. Another witness. Someone who might have read the newspaper that week. She turns her face, though her attention remains fixed on the new customer. There is something equally off about him.
The man with the grey hat approaches the counter. Right hand slips into his coat pocket. The fabric tightens around something heavy. A familiar shape.
“Don’t make trouble.”
The shopkeeper’s posture changes, then hurries to cooperate. The robber keeps darting glances around the store. Never settling. Always shifting. If this is not the first time, then experience hasn’t guaranteed confidence.
A metal drawer snaps open with a ka-ching. The woman with the shawl looks up, already heading toward the counter. Only then the situation fully dawns. Low worn heels stop clacking. The atmosphere settles. Nobody moves, nobody says a word. The awareness doesn’t change the circumstances.
The sewing kit is quietly slipped into the pocket of her jacket.
Meanwhile, the crackling speaker continues humming. "If I marry him, my life won't belong to me anymore—"
The robber grabs the bills. The left hand is free, quick but clumsy. The robber stuffs his left pocket. One bill drops –swears under his breath. Quickly leans down to pick it up –then stands back up –checks the room one last time. The bell rings as he leaves. The stillness remains.
“Jesus,” the shopkeeper mutters.
She turns to him. He still watches the door. Alert. Slowly, his head turns to face her. A shared look. It holds.
The woman with the shawl breathes out. “We should call the police.”
The shopkeeper promptly scoffs. She moves closer to him, in a way that could be read as looking for reassurance. He hooks his arm around hers. They leave the store before there is even time to reconsider making the call.
They walk cautiously. Not too fast. Not too slow. He rests his hand on hers. She doesn’t move her hand away. The street remains the same, as busy as before. The woman in the shawl quickly hurries past them. The woman might not have recognized them –perhaps simply did not care.
They pass a hardware store. She notices the clerk through the fogged window. Then notices the register. Not the window display –just how there is one door. Four customers in a line. Payments handed. A sense of politeness, a frail quiet. She notices herself noticing. Then she turns, and keeps moving.
He tells himself that he has never fully belonged in society. That he might never be truly inside it. He thinks of the gun in his pocket, how she had pulled it out when threatened. He wonders if she is thinking of it, too. About the contract that man had broken, and the contract the robber broke, and how he –we –cannot break a contract they were ever party to.
He holds that thought for a moment longer. He asks whether it is wisdom or rationalization. He has no answer.
She doesn’t think of contracts. Neither does she think of society itself. She thinks of the sound of the register opening, and the bills changing hands. She wonders what the robber will use them for.
And then there’s the exchanges she has been witness to, since they arrived in the city. Movie tickets, a night at a hotel, a train ride, a meal. She makes a thorough inventory. She comes to the conclusion that there is a precise nature in money, an ease to how it allows to move through hostile ground. It can purchase access. It can purchase dignity. Or at least, something close enough.
They have spent days fleeing. Yet every moment of peace they had managed to acquire had been bought.
And money is at last running out.
“We could do that,” she says.
They don’t stop. They still look ahead.
“We have six bullets,” she continues. “We wouldn’t need one.”
They slow. He stares down and thinks. She knows it, but it takes a moment for him to realize: robbery changes nothing about what we are.
“... You would take the counter,” he mutters. “I would watch the room.”
A car grinds past. He remains silent. Everyone passes by them –nobody is listening in on them. And yet someone could.
“A small store. One person. One witness,” he continues quietly. “Evening, when the till is full.”
“And we leave quickly,” she adds. “Before the police are called.”
1930s Chicago. A scarred, ancient creature has endured decades of chains and silence in a secret lab. Then they resurrect her –curious, fearless, fully alive.
She leads with instinct and desire; he follows, a century of restraint finally breaking. Two monsters learning to be lovers –and refusing to go back.
The rain has left the city cleaner than it deserves.
She notices this first –the way the pavement holds a faint shine, the gutters running clear, the air carrying less of its weight of exhaust and old grease. She imagines it won't last. By midday the streets will have reasserted themselves, absorbed the rain back into their smell of industry and effort. But for now, in the early morning, this new city offers itself up washed.
She walks beside him. The brace is stiff with cold –it needs time to warm to her body. She gives it that time, shortening her stride, letting the rhythm establish itself. Creak, thump, pause.
The first city had been louder at this hour. This new city feels more horizontal, somehow. Less intensity, less energy. Less vertical ambition.
And, by now, cities have lost their luster. This is not disappointment. It is something quieter –the recognition that they might be, at their core, repetitions of each other. She had arrived in her first city not knowing any of that. She knows it now.
He walks beside her, his scarf pulled high, his hat brim low. The morning crowd is thin –men with lunch pails, a woman hurrying with her coat half-buttoned. Nobody looks at them twice. The anonymity of early hours, when everyone is too tired and purposeful to be curious.
He is watching the street, as he always does. But something in his watching is different this morning, she thinks –less surveillance, more observation. The distinction is small and she can't fully articulate it. But it’s there.
Her stomach contracts. She ignores it. She has been ignoring it since they boarded the train, since the chestnuts in the park. Since nearly a week of almost nothing. She believes she can endure. But endurance is not the same as absence of want.
And what she wants is something hot. Something that takes time to eat. She is wondering what might happen if she continues ignoring hunger—
Then she realizes he is no longer beside her. She can’t hear his heavy footsteps anymore.
He has stopped. She follows his gaze.
The window is crowded, cluttered and demanding attention. Musical instruments –a trumpet, a saxophone, a battered violin. Tools –hand tools, a good saw, a level. A fur coat, hanging at the back of the display. Men's suits, properly pressed, with a paper tag. An assortment of jewellery –wedding rings, pocket watches, a strand of pearls. And a handwritten sign propped in the corner of the glass: ALL ITEMS GUARANTEED TOP DOLLAR FOR GOLD WE BUY AND SELL.
He stands there, his back to her. Delicately fogging the glass. As if considering a transaction.
Her hand drifts to her pocket. Her fingers graze the coins, the gun, the shard. She can’t part with any of them.
She pays close attention. Only then, faint and unhurried, the music manages to reach her. Swelling strings –faintly like the records in the conservatory. The cry of a trumpet, much like the nightclub. And the voice –it isn’t the melodic chirping of the records, nor the winking hollers of the bandmaster.
It is like the voice from the radio near the train tracks. But not ‘dirty music’. No despair. It sounds like peace, like completion. It sounds like a man speaking a sacred truth.
“An' you mus' laugh an' sing an' dance For two instead of one... Want no wrinkle on yo' brow, Nohow, Because de sorrow of de past Is all done, done...”
He hasn't moved. But his stillness has changed. She can recognize it. It's not vigilance now, it's something else. Something approaching openness.
She steps closer. The yellow light reaches her. Through the pawnshop window, the phonograph spins.
“We'll go swingin' Through de years a-singin', Mornin' time an' evenin' time an' Summer time an' winter time...”
He holds his breath. He fears it might obstruct the sound, that it could cause him to miss one single fragile second.
She looks up, beyond the wares. There is a man in the store, sitting still at his desk, pen frozen above an open ledger. The man watches them. And she stares back. Almost wanting to give thanks.
The final piano notes fade. There is a long soft crackle. The needle is lifted. The street is dead quiet.
He does not move at once. Something in his face has gone unguarded. She saw it.
Then he looks at her. It is not a plea. Not apology either. More like a question he can’t find the words for, nor the courage.
She holds his gaze for only a moment. Long enough to let him know she saw. Then she turns and starts down the sidewalk, slowly enough that he can follow.
He thinks that the man allowed the song to finish. No rap on the glass, no waving away. Just four minutes, the length of one side of the shellac. It cost the man nothing. Barely a kindness. But it is something. Not a proof of mercy. Perhaps pity, at most. He keeps the melody in his mind like a gift.
Songs lie. He knows that much is true. And yet he can’t deny the beauty of the lie –much less the appeal of hope.
Ahead of him, she keeps walking. She does not look back –yet doesn’t hurry, either. He understands she is giving him time.
She allows the distance between them to hold. She wonders what has just happened inside him, that gave him permission to enjoy a small grace. On some level, she’s glad. She knows what it is like, when a song burrows inside you. Not exactly like the nightclub, not like the records. Something one can linger on.
The sound of their steps returns. His, heavy. Hers, measured. They walk together without speaking. The morning has grown slightly warmer, or else she has simply stopped noticing the cold. Her stomach pulls at her again, more insistent now.
The rhythm of her steps falters. Not enough to stop –just enough to change. The pause lingers a fraction longer before the next step lands. The brace answers with a dull complaint.
He adjusts without looking at her. Slows half a step to match. Then they resume the pace.
The street carries on around them. A delivery truck rattles past, leaving behind the smell of hot metal and oil. Somewhere ahead, a door opens and closes. She turns her head slightly, not enough to break stride. But she slows as they pass the window.
There’s muffled voices, the dull clatter of plates, the scraping of cutlery. Windows are fogged, with condensation frozen around the edges. Warmth presses faintly through the glass.
She has a few coins left. Maybe enough.
“We can get something outside,” he says. “Cheaper. Faster.”
She doesn’t answer. She is watching the room –the way bodies lean, the way hands wrap around cups. The way food steams, and is quickly eaten. He can see her dark eyes through her reflection.
“There’s a vendor across the street,” he adds. “It will be enough.”
“For you.”
A pause. The door opens briefly –someone leaving –and a spill of heat and noise pushes against the cold. The door is closed again.
“You can wait for me outside.”
An option. He considers it. He imagines a brief breakfast on the street —the relief of anonymity, the safety of not being enclosed, not being looked at, not having to occupy space among people who belong to it. He imagines standing with a paper-wrapped meal, eating without being seen.
He also imagines eating beside her, inside –the possibility of temporary shelter. Not welcoming, but perhaps providing its own sort of comfort. At least, that of company –that which he still can’t take for granted.
Then he imagines her inside, alone. Watched. Confronted. Provoked. The thought settles differently.
She has already decided. Her hand finds the door without hesitation. She opens it, and the warmth spills out again –stronger this time. She steps in. The door begins to swing shut behind her.
He reaches for it before it closes.
A bell rings. The heat is dry. The smell of slightly burnt coffee and grease is strong, almost overwhelming. Natural light drifts in through the windows; everything feels slightly muted, softened by warmth and steam. She has slowed down, assessing the seating alternatives. A counter with stools. A few tables. Small booths –the one at the far end of the diner is empty, waiting.
She glances at him behind her. He looks at her from under the brim of his hat. The brace creaks, too loud in the quiet. Her boots click on the scuffed linoleum as she heads towards her choice.
He looks around. A man in a sweater smokes and reads a newspaper. Two workers dressed in worn denim talk behind empty plates. A mother urges a small child to eat. A waitress stares. Eyes flick to his scarf, his height, his worn shoes. He stands still –expects a verdict –and, when none comes, he walks to the booth at the far end.
The smoking man slightly lowers his newspaper. One worker stirs his coffee slowly. The mother leans forward towards her child as he passes by.
The booth is narrow. The table between them is fixed, the wood surface worn to a dull shine. She sets her jacket beside her. He keeps his coat on, removes his hat. The scarf remains over half of his face.
“You can lower it,” she tells him. “They don’t care.”
He glances at the other tables. Their attention seems to be gone, focused on more urgent matters. So, slowly, he pulls the scarf down. He draws in a quiet breath.
The room does not react. A spoon clinks somewhere near the counter. Someone turns a newspaper page.
He exhales.
Then the waitress approaches.
“You two want something?”
He tenses. The waitress is trying her best to avoid looking at him –her sight is firmly fixed on her instead. So her crooked smile resurfaces, old lipstick cracking at her lips.
“Yes, please.”
A silence. He keeps still and his eyes down, mind racing to think of what he is expected to order.
“Coffee,” he finally says. “And... toast.”
“And eggs, and bacon too,” she asks. Her head swivels and turns to the glass box near the counter. “And pie.”
The waitress glances at the glass box, as if having forgotten it’s there. “We got apple pie, pecan pie, cherry pie, lemon meringue pie...”
“Lemon meringue pie,” she repeats, imitating the waitress’ cadence. “Yes. That.”
The waitress hesitates for a moment. “... You got the money for that?”
She nods. The movement is not fully smooth.
The waitress shoots her one more look before leaving.
The sounds of the diner gather around them again once she is gone. Cups set down. A chair dragged across linoleum. Someone coughing into a handkerchief. Grease hissing somewhere unseen.
She watches the waitress pin their order to a rail in the kitchen. He watches the room. Morning light presses through the fogged windows in a dull silver wash. It softens the faces around them, but not enough to erase caution. He feels the eyes that land and leave. He keeps his hands flat on the table.
She turns back to him. He sits up straighter.
“I know where I come from.” The white void. The smell of ozone. Nothing before then –nothing she can remember. Nothing certain. “You were already there.”
That is not a question. He remains silent.
“You asked for me,” she continues. “Who asked for you?”
He does not answer at once.
The waitress calls something through the kitchen hatch. A plate strikes ceramic. Someone laughs near the counter. His jaw shifts once beneath the scarf.
“A man,” he says at last. “My creator. He regretted it.”
“A lonely man?”
“A learned man. Ambitious.”
“Cruel?”
He looks down at the scratches on the tabletop.
“Weak.”
One thing does not negate the other, she thinks. Still, she accepts this without comment.
“Did he love you?”
“No.” Immediate. Definitive.
She studies his face after he says it, as if checking whether certainty always sounds so clean.
“And what were you before me?”
His thumb shifts against the tabletop grain. Before her.
The years gather badly when called. Snow. Barn lofts. Forest paths. Long roads. Faces turning in fear. Doors barred. Names shouted. Fields. Firelight. Silence.
He had been many things. None worth keeping.
“Alone.”
She expected that answer. She still lets it sit between them for a moment longer.
“In the alley,” she says, voice softening. “You knew what to do.”
He looks down at his hands on the table. She does not look away. After a moment, he speaks.
“I have killed before.”
Her expression does not change.
“A young man... A young woman. A child.”
The sounds of the diner continue. Coffee poured. Cutlery set down. Someone asking for more toast.
She wonders if he knew them. If they stood in his way. If they slighted him somehow –or if they were innocent victims of circumstance.
“Do you feel guilty?”
There is a pause. He breathes quietly. She watches him, waiting for his answer.
“Those deaths were useless. Once it was over... it was a waste. I had wanted my creator to feel as I did. Lost. Lonely.”
But then he died –and there was no reward, no relief. His quest had been for nothing.
“I was joyful when I killed,” he admits. “It gave me purpose. This... reckoning.”
“Retribution.”
“Yes,” he says as he nods. “... Yes.”
The word settles between them. She watches him –not with disdain, not with sympathy. With newfound interest.
“And now?” she asks.
He frowns.
“... Now that it’s finished.”
A longer pause. He looks at his hands, as if he might find something new there.
“Just... try to live,” he says, after a moment.
She tilts her head slightly. “What else is there to do?”
Two chipped ceramic cups are set between them. He turns his face away towards the window. She offers a new smile, slightly gentler. The waitress doesn’t respond to either gesture.
She wraps her fingers around the cup without drinking. The warmth seeps slowly into her hands. She stares at him across the table. The coffee steams between them, gently obscuring his face. She looks for a shape, an explanation, something she can read. He provides nothing, or at least nothing she can translate.
“I thought violence was anger. Or hunger,” she finally says. “But that’s a function. You know it. How to live around the hurt. Find purpose in it.”
He looks at her. Surprised by her understanding. Then again, she always did.
“It was long ago,” he says.
“Very long ago.”
“Before me. And it sits with you. Here. Now,” she insists in irritation. Then something less sharp follows it. Pity. An impatient kind. “It’s rotting. It’s useless.”
He frowns. She still stares. Almost defiant.
“You cannot change it. They are dead. You are alive.”
“Yes—”
“Guilt has no purpose. You still killed. And killed again.”
“I learned,” he tries to argue.
“Did you?”
A silence. He swallows. She can see how his teeth grit under the skin.
“Remorse asks little beyond endurance. It explains. It has weight. A name. I can carry it—”
“What for?”
His hand tightens once around the coffee cup, then loosens. He has no answer ready. And he feels the shape of her words pressing against something fixed in him –testing it, not breaking it.
For so long guilt has been the only inheritance he trusted himself to keep. It explained the past, and gave his solitude a shape. It gave weight to what would otherwise be empty.
To set it down would not be relief alone. It would be exposure.
“If I am not the sum of what I ruined...” He sighs softly. “Then what remains?”
“What remains?” she repeats. She can’t answer it for him.
He thinks of his existence. Not the events –what they left behind. What remains of them. He thinks of the conclusion he has reached –despite the pain, the ache, and the brief and scarce moments of peace.
His fingers reach a scar on his hand. He lifts his eyes briefly, not to meet hers, but to steady himself enough to speak.
“This life is a collection of miseries,” he says, voice low but certain. “But it is mine –it is my life.”
And, she understands, that’s all it needs to be.
“Are you grateful?”
He turns to look at her.
“I think... I am.”
He is quiet for a moment after he says it. Admitting such a thing has a weight to it.
"... Are you grateful?" he manages to ask back.
The question now feels forceful. A demand. He isn’t sure he is even allowed to ask it.
And yet, slowly, she smiles. “Yes. I am.”
Not a full answer. But an honest one, and he receives it as such –a small visible loosening in his shoulders, a breath taken and released without the usual caution behind it.
The waitress arrives, setting down plates with brisk efficiency. Eggs, bacon, toast. Porcelain against wood, a brief clatter that draws a glance or two from the nearby tables. She leaves quickly, to refill someone else’s cup of coffee. The plates sit between them, still giving off heat. For a moment, neither of them moves.
She looks at the eggs first –the soft yellow, the way they tremble slightly on the plate. Steam rises in thin threads. She picks up her fork, hesitates only briefly, then presses into them. The yolk breaks easily, running into the white. She watches it for a second, before bringing it to her mouth.
The heat surprises her. She inhales through her nose, sharply, then continues chewing. Salt. Fat. Something substantial, filling. More than what she hoped for. Across from her, he has begun more slowly. He tears the toast into smaller pieces before eating it, as if testing the action. His movements are contained, deliberate. He keeps his head slightly lowered, eyes flicking once toward the room before returning to his plate.
She notices. Then doesn’t. She takes another bite, larger this time. Then a strip of bacon –crisp at the edges, resistant at the center. She pulls it apart with her teeth, less carefully now. The fork rests forgotten for a moment in her hand.
He watches that, briefly. Then he stops tearing the toast. He takes a bite directly from the slice instead. The motion is small, but less mediated. He chews, slower than she does, considering the texture as much as the taste. When he reaches for the eggs, it is with less hesitation.
For a few minutes, neither of them speaks.
The sounds of the diner continue around them –cutlery, low voices, the scrape of a chair –but they recede. The heat of the food settles into her, spreads outward. The tightness in her stomach loosens, replaced by something steadier, heavier.
She leans forward slightly over the plate, no longer measuring the space she occupies. He notices that too. He allows it to himself.
The waitress arrives once more. She straightens slightly without thinking. He stills. The pie slice is set before her, the meringue slightly uneven on one side, the lemon filling catching the light from the window.
She looks at it. He looks at her looking at it. There is a pause in which nothing needs to be said and nothing is.
She picks up her fork. Takes a bite. The tartness hits first, then the sweet –a small surprise that shows on her face, as something shifts in his own expression. Curiosity.
Still sucking on the fork, she looks up at him. Not an invitation, not an offer. He looks back. He picks up his fork –sinks it into the creamy yellow filling –and takes a bite.
“What does it taste like?” she asks him.
He considers it for a moment longer. "Bright. Sharp... Then soft."
She takes another bite. The sugar coats her tongue, sticks to her molars. She sucks on them. He eats a little more.
Only then she notices the child at the nearby table. The young boy is watching them –watching her –openly, with big, fascinated eyes. She watches him back, swallows quietly. Smacks her lips. The stare begins to shift as she lowers her chin and changes her posture.
A grin begins forming on her face –too wide. She draws her lips back suddenly –teeth bared, eyes widened, brows pulled tight. The boy startles, winces –then whimpers.
Across from her, he looks up –follows the line of her gaze, understands at once. The laugh comes out of him before he can contain it. Short. Strange. She turns to him –caught off guard. Then, slowly, pleased.
The boy has already been turned back toward his plate. His mother mutters something low and firm, one hand settling on the back of his head. It’s rude to stare.
She looks back down at her own plate, as if nothing has happened. But the corner of her mouth shifts. He notices that too.
The morning light has strengthened. It reaches their booth now in a pale band across the table, touching the empty plates, the gleaming forks, the backs of their hands. She watches the light for a moment.
“Who would you be?” she asks. “If you could be anyone?”
He considers her question.
“... I’d be the man in the movie picture,” he says after a brief pause.
She tilts her head. “The poor man or the rich man?”
“The poor man,” he smiles. “He got to dance with the pretty lady.”
A simple choice. She believes it suits him –and that he has, in a way, been that man already.
He holds the smile a moment longer, then lets it fade. The question lingers until he decides to turn it back. "Who would you be?”
“An actress,” she answers quickly. “So I would be someone new every week.”
“A dancing actress?”
“Certainly.”
That earns a softer laugh from him this time. Her smile widens.
“Would you watch my talkies?” she asks him.
“I would not miss a single one.”
A pause. A truck passes by –the light shifts slightly across the table.
He has a sip of coffee. It’s cooled now. He doesn’t mind.
“What would your actress name be?”
This time she doesn’t answer at once. Something passes behind her eyes. A name comes to her –a word. Small, humble.
1930s Chicago. A scarred, ancient creature has endured decades of chains and silence in a secret lab. Then they resurrect her –curious, fearless, fully alive.
She leads with instinct and desire; he follows, a century of restraint finally breaking. Two monsters learning to be lovers –and refusing to go back.
There is a dull ache in the old scars of his left shoulder. His skin feels just the slightest bit taut. The air has changed. He doesn’t look up, not yet. He can feel it coming –a storm is near.
She walks beside him. The brace speaks: creak, thump, pause –creak, thump, pause. It has been the only voice between them since they stepped off the train. Maybe longer. He has been listening to the rhythm of it, the way it has slowed since they left the station, the way the pause between creak and thump has widened by half a second. Her weight is shifting differently. Exhaustion has finally settled in.
He does not ask. She would not answer. The silence they are carrying is not the one they carried before. That one was legible –a shared language of small glances and smaller smiles. This silence is distance.
He adjusts the scarf over his face. The first drop hits the brim of his hat. Then another, on the back of his exposed hand. The pavement begins to darken in small circles, then in streaks, then all at once.
She does not stop walking. Neither does he.
But the brace is slowing. The pause has become a full second now. Her breath is audible –not labored, but present. A quiet counter-rhythm to the metal.
They stop under the awning of a store. She huffs quietly. The leather harness has been digging deeper, tighter into her thigh. She picks at the lacing to try and loosen it.
A tapping of a glass startles them both. Behind them –the store window –a man waves his hand, shoos them off. He stops, however, when he gets a proper look. It doesn’t matter. They’re already on the move.
He scans the street ahead. There: a concrete overpass, the underbelly of a bridge, shadowed and dry. Figures huddle near the embankment: dark coats, bundled shapes, the occasional glint of a bottle or a set of watching eyes. Perhaps threats. Perhaps not.
She sees it too. She does not ask. She turns, and he follows.
The rain arrives in earnest as they step beneath the concrete. It drums overhead, a sudden roar that makes the silence beneath it feel deeper, more enclosed. The storm doesn’t wash away the smells –in there, they feel trapped. Wet cardboard, stale urine. In there, men have unshaven faces, frayed overcoats, broken shoes ruined by slush. They shuffle along in a way she recognizes from somewhere else. Men accustomed to waiting.
He feels as if he might belong there. She isn’t so sure.
The men stare, of course. At her, out of the corner of their eyes. He is dangerous to stare at.
He guides her by the elbow –barely a touch –toward the far wall. There, the concrete is dry and the overhang is deepest. She does not pull away. She does not lean in. They find a spot near a pillar, out of the wind's reach. The rain keeps roaring beyond the mouth of the underpass. It safely fills the silence.
He turns to look at her. She isn’t soaked and weighed down, like on the night of their escape. Her silk dress is dotted by dark raindrops. Her platinum hair is dusted with rain. Her wet skin catches the low light.
He stares. Then looks away.
She glances at him. He looks about the same.
The bundled men have lost interest. Her hand drifts absently to her thigh, where the leather bites deepest.
The rain has become loud enough to swallow a conversation whole, if kept small. He notices this.
Then he looks down at her. “Your leg?”
She keeps silent. Her eyes stay forward, on the grey curtain of rain.
He doesn't push. He turns and looks out at the street instead. A bottle rolls over asphalt. One of the bundled shapes tries to polish shoes with spit. Another coughs as if nearing the end. Another has his hat over his face, sitting up, chin to chest. Sleeping.
She finds a dry patch of concrete near the far wall and lowers herself slowly, her back against the cold rough surface, her left leg stretched forward. The brace shrieks once as she settles –then goes quiet. She doesn’t mind the cold ground beneath her. Not too much.
He remains standing. He watches her, pretending not to.
The rain thickens. Its roar fills the underpass, buries them in white noise. When she speaks, her voice is low –barely above a murmur, aimed at no one visible.
“You didn't make me.”
Silence returns for a surprised beat. “No.”
He carefully crouches down beside her. Not close enough to crowd her –close enough to be heard without raising his voice above the rain.
“How did you earn me?”
The word earns a pause. He knows how it sounds. He also knows it is accurate.
“I complied.”
His words land. Quiet follows. A flash of lightning, the crackle of thunder. Light floods the side of the underpass. Deep shadows against white; then dark again.
“... Was it worth it?”
He doesn’t know the answer. He believes he does –but his belief has proved to be flawed. The response would be painful either way. And he doesn’t want to hurt her.
So he says nothing.
Rain strikes the concrete in hard sheets. Somewhere beyond the mouth of the underpass, a car hisses through standing water. One of the bundled men coughs twice, then goes still again.
She watches his silence more than his face. It is answer enough to some questions, and useless for others. But if he cannot speak to value, then perhaps he can still speak to facts. What was chosen. What was taken. What, if anything, had belonged to her before she opened her eyes.
She shifts against the wall. When she speaks again, her voice is steadier.
“Did you know me?” she asks. “Before.”
“No.” His voice is flat, certain. “I first saw you when you came to life.”
Her fingers press into the concrete beside her leg. She is deciding whether to believe him –he can see the calculation in the set of her jaw, the small movement of her eyes. She does not arrive at a verdict. Not yet.
The rain fills the silence she leaves behind. He doesn't press it. He straightens, slowly, and turns back to face the mouth of the underpass. His hands find his pockets. His shoulders settle into their familiar set —watchful, patient, present.
She watches him for a moment from where she sits. The line of his back. The stillness of him, which is never quite the stillness of rest. Rest.
Then she looks away.
Yellow glows on her right side –a car passing by, or streetlamps flickering on, she assumes. The rainfall hisses like an old radiator. The clinking of the empty bottle acquires a gentler pitch.
She closes her eyes –not to sleep, only to rest them. The concrete presses cold through her dress. The ache in her leg spreads, dull and heavy, pulling her downward.
Someone is speaking. Close. Too close to be outside the rain.
She doesn’t remember turning her head.
And yet the words are already there –ready to be heard.
“He's delighted to love me, but you know, I just don't know what to say to him,” a croaky woman’s voice mumbles, quiet and muffled between soft laughs. “I just don't know—”
The blare of a clarinet startles her.
Warm fingers touch her shoulder. “You alright, darling?”
A woman with black curls stares at her. She feels her own painted lips twitch for a moment –before smiling her crooked smile.
“Yeah, of course.”
The woman with black curls smiles back.
The light is wrong for morning and too dim for night. It exists in its own hour. Her eyes need a moment to adjust. Old bulbs –the kind that should have been replaced long ago –cast a yellow light that flatters nobody and softens everything. She looks around as faces turn from smudges to features. They’re sleepless, thoughtful, bordering on desperate, not daring to sink yet. A bartender moves without hurry at the far end. The place is both business and shelter.
She knows, however, that safety is never guaranteed.
There’s the smell that reminds her of the nightclub –only difference is the scent of old beer soaked into wood, the particular staleness of a room that never fully empties. The air is dense –it feels used.
Low murmurs are layered over the constant hiss of a radiator. There’s the clink of glass, a cough that repeats every few minutes from the same corner, a chair dragging slowly across the uneven floor. It never goes silent –but it never rises into chatter either.
And in between the hum, there is one voice. It slurs words, pushing through the haze of liquor and smoke.
“Heard it on the radio, it's no good Heard it on the radio, it's news to me When she gets somethin’, it's understood Baby's got somethin' she's not used to...”
Beyond their table, a singer performs on a small stage, singing for her supper. Dressed in a slip of a dress. Shadows sharpen her clavicle and shoulders. The voice is raw, restless, rugged –rough. She likes it. Nobody else seems to mind her.
Her eyes casually wander as she takes in her surroundings. It is a narrow room, with a low ceiling that traps the smoke of old cigarettes. Behind the bar, a woman in a dirty mirror turns to face her just as she does the same. The woman has dark roots –peroxide blonde –combed neatly into waves. Still, a few stray hairs have slipped out. She fixes them for her.
She is seated at a small round table, her fingers resting on its surface –wood worn smooth at the edges, marked with cigarette burns and old knife scratches. She knows this table. Not from memory, exactly. From the body. The way she doesn't have to think before settling her weight into the chair. The way her elbow finds the exact spot where the varnish has worn through to bare grain.
She turns to look at the men across the table.
The older one is settled into his chair the way men settle when they believe they've already won something. Loose shoulders, a half-smile that doesn't reach the eyes. He is looking at her friend with the particular attention of someone who has done this before and knows what he is doing. Her friend knows it too –she can tell from the angle of her chin, the slight tilt that says I see you seeing me.
The younger one is watching her.
He is perhaps twenty-five. His jacket is too new, his collar too carefully pressed for this hour and this place. He holds his glass with both hands, as if it might escape. His eyes move to her face and then away, then back again –a small orbit, helpless and recurring. When she meets his gaze directly he doesn't look away fast enough and his ears go pink.
Eager. Anxious. Trying to appear otherwise. Not dangerous –the dangerous ones don't fidget, she knows it. He is simply young, and hopeful, and slightly out of his depth. I am the reason.
She finds she knows what to do with that.
She reaches for her cigarette –it is already there, resting in the groove of the ashtray, a thin line of smoke rising from the tip. She lifts it to her lips and draws in slowly. The exhale comes just as naturally. She watches the younger man watch the smoke leave her mouth. She understands that she is, in this room, at this table, in this body that moves without asking permission, entirely fluent.
That is the word for it. Fluent.
Not happy, not free –those are too large, too final. But fluent. She speaks this language without translation. She laughs at the right moment –a low sound, private, not performed. She meets the older man's eye when he makes a joke and gives him just enough to satisfy without encouraging.
The music shifts. The singer begins another verse, slower this time, almost conversational. She becomes aware, in the new tempo, of her own stillness —the way she is simply sitting, simply here, without calculation or effort.
Her hand moves across her lap. Her dress is not her rust-orange –it is a bright, almost electric blue. She runs her hand over the soft fabric, just once. She can’t recall who gave it to her.
“... Don’t you agree?”
The younger man is looking at her, eyebrows raised. Waits for an answer to a question she didn't hear.
She blinks. “Sorry. I was somewhere else.”
The three of them chuckle. She chuckles, too. They reach for their glasses. The younger man pours her something amber from a dusty bottle.
“What should we toast to?”
They look at her. She takes a moment –then smiles and picks up her glass.
“To life.”
That’s good, she thinks. Vague enough. True enough.
“To life!”
She shifts in her seat as she leans forward. And then she feels it.
Not an absence, exactly. More like a silence where sound should be. She becomes aware of it –her left leg. No pull of leather, no press of metal, no low persistent ache. Nothing but flesh.
She looks down. The blue dress falls cleanly to her knee. Below it, a leg. Just a leg –red stocking, black heel. She stares at it.
The younger man notices. "Something wrong?"
"No," she answers, almost like a question.
She flexes her foot. The movement is easy, immediate –answering her before she finishes asking. She does it again. The response is the same. No delay. No negotiation.
Something moves through her chest. Not grief. Not joy.
She wants to stand up.
The thought arrives complete, urgent, unreasoning: she wants to stand up and walk to the center of the room and feel this body move the way it knows how to move. She wants to find out how far it will go. She wants to dance.
She pushes her chair back an inch.
The older man glances at her. A mild curiosity, nothing more –he has seen stranger things at this hour. But the younger man leans forward. His hand moves to the edge of the table –not touching her, not yet –an uncertain, hovering thing.
"Hey," he calls. "Hey, where are you going?"
She doesn't answer him. She is already somewhere else.
She stands. The leg holds. She takes one step away from the table and the floor meets her evenly, without the compensating shift of weight. She takes another step. And another.
She is walking across the bar –forward, continuous, uninterrupted.
The singer on the small stage watches her from under heavy lids. The song doesn't stop: it gains momentum, becomes wilder. More like a confession, an invocation. A dare.
“Goin' on the corner, I'm gonna score Baby wants somethin', she's in the mood to Baby wants somethin', I want more When I don't get it, I get blue, blue...”
She reaches the open space near the stage and turns around. The room looks different from here –smaller, contained, the low light pooling on the faces at the tables, the smoke drifting in slow columns. She can see her friend's dark curls, the older man's settled shoulders, the younger man half-risen from his chair –his collar still too pressed –his expression caught between wanting her back and not knowing how to ask.
“C’mon—”
He reaches out to grab her arm –she yanks it away.
“I wanna dance—”
This music is not meant to be danced to. But it does have a rhythm, a pace, slow and brooding.
Her foot finds the beat.
It is so easy. Not painful, not bittersweet –just easy, and that ease is the most foreign thing she has encountered in any room in any city. Her hips move without the half-beat delay. Her arms lift without calculating the distance. She turns once, cleanly, her heel finding the floor without apology, without the screech of metal on metal, without the practiced rebalancing that has become as involuntary as breathing.
Her eyes close as her body sways. Shoulders roll slowly, and the rest of her follows. A leg drags across the floor in a smooth glide. Fluid movement. No pain. No constraints.
She bends backwards, as a heel follows the low thrum of a bass line. Arms stretch, wrists circle, thighs tighten. The singer’s voice turns into a hoarse cry –she longs, longs for something, something unnamed. She thinks of what she longs for. She longs for so much.
She turns again.
And a voice calls: “Ida!”
And she sees herself.
Not in a mirror. In the sensation of it –the seam. And the bar lights flicker –and for a moment the yellow bulbs are the cold white of a train car, and the singer's voice is his voice, low in her ear –and the smoke is steam rising from a radiator in a warm narrow room –and the floor beneath her feet is pavement covered in slush –and the woman with black curls is gone –and she steps forward –she is crossing a muddy field, lightning splits the sky, and she is looking up—
The streets. The cold. The rain.
The brace.
It comes back before she does. The weight of it first –faithful, unasked-for –and then the ache beneath it, the leather worn into the shape of her, the metal that has come to feel like a second skeleton. She feels it before she opens her eyes. Her body has already returned. It was waiting for her.
The bar dims. The smoke dissolves mid-reach. The last thing she carries back is the name.
She opens her eyes to concrete and rain.
The underpass holds its particular dark –not the dark of closed curtains or shuttered rooms, but the dark of a place that has never quite been light. The rain is quieter, fading.
Her leg is there. The brace announces itself immediately –cold metal, damp leather, the low throb beneath the harness. She breathes through it. The concrete is hard against her back. Her neck has stiffened where her head dropped to the side.
She blinks. Once. Twice.
He is there.
His back is against the pillar at the edge of their space. His hat is pulled low. She can tell from the set of his shoulders that he has not slept. He is not resting. He is simply waiting in a different position.
One of the bundled shapes nearby has shifted in the night, drawing closer to the wall. Another is gone entirely, slipped away into the rain at some point. The man with the hat over his face is still there, still breathing –she can see the slow rise and fall of his chest from here.
She sits up. The movement is slow, deliberate –her body ordering its complaints in order of severity. The brace, the hip, the stiffness in her lower back, the faint pulse at her knee. She catalogs them calmly. They are familiar. They are hers.
He hears the shift of fabric, the small sound of her waking. Turns his head.
She meets his eyes briefly. Then looks away, toward the mouth of the underpass.
The rain has left the street dark and gleaming. A streetlamp reflects in a long puddle, its light stretched and trembling. The air is cleaner now –the wet stone smell has thinned, replaced by something cooler, less trapped. Almost like the field outside the city, that first night. Almost –not quite.
She could tell him. She knows how it would go. She can’t predict his words exactly, but she knows the shape of his caution. The way it moves through him, the particular set of his jaw when he is trying to protect her.
He would listen. He would wait until she finished. And then he would tell her –quietly, not unkindly –that memories are like songs. Lies. That she cannot trust the door they open. That the woman in the blue dress might not be real.
He might not be wrong.
She turns the dream over once more. The peroxide curls, the easy walk, the younger man's helpless eyes, the name cutting through the smoke-filled air. The way the leg moved. The way the room knew her.
She shifts –there’s a slight high-pitched creak, distinct from her brace. Glass, not metal. More fragile. Her hand drifts to her pocket. The mirror shard rests there, cool against her fingers.
She lifts it slightly, just enough to catch a fragment of herself –an eye, the curve of her cheek, incomplete. A strand of hair has come loose.
She stills. Then –slowly, deliberately –smooths it back into place.
She lowers the shard. For a moment, her hand lingers at her pocket –before slipping it back inside.
She looks back at him.
He is still watching her, patient and still. The question is present in his face. A faint trace of worry.
“The rain is stopping,” she says.
His eyes move to the street. Back to her.
He reaches a hand down to help her up. She looks at it –the broken knuckles, the old stains, the familiar map of his scars –and takes it. The brace groans as she rises, loud in the quiet underpass. She steadies herself, hand briefly tightening on his before releasing.
She straightens her jacket. He straightens his hat. Then she steps out first, into the thin remaining rain.
1930s Chicago. A scarred, ancient creature has endured decades of chains and silence in a secret lab. Then they resurrect her –curious, fearless, fully alive.
She leads with instinct and desire; he follows, a century of restraint finally breaking. Two monsters learning to be lovers –and refusing to go back.
The space between them grows quiet. A new type of silence.
The train continues to carry them forward, iron wheels grinding beneath the floor. Around them, people shift, cough, murmur to one another. They remain still.
He watches her. He cannot tell whether she is angry, wounded, or thinking: for a moment, she has become a stranger. Her head hangs. Her breathing becomes only the slightest bit hurried. Her hands rest loosely in her lap. She does not look at him.
He waits. For her verdict, for her rage, for her disappointment –for anything.
Then she moves.
She rises from her seat. He looks up at her as his fingers squeeze his knees. She falters, but soon enough steadies her posture and synchronizes her movement to that of the car. She limps down the aisle before he can say anything else. Legs pull away, turning hurriedly to clear her path. She doesn’t look back –though she does listen for any nearby footsteps.
Is he following?
He isn’t. He wants to, desperately. But he doesn’t. He can hear her voice –”step back”, “go away” –even in her absence. If he stays, he stays away. And yet –she might return. He chooses to delay the decision. He hopes she hasn’t made it yet.
Still, every minute that passes –it’s a suture being pulled from an old wound.
She keeps moving.
She needs to stop, though, once she faces the end of the aisle. The small wooden door resists her. She leans into it, shoulder first, then corrects, sets her foot more carefully. The door is stiff, but it yields.
The vestibule is louder than she expects. The rails hammer beneath her boots. The metal floor clangs. Wind slips in through the seams –sharp and insistent. A pause, a gap. The floor shudders beneath her –the metal railing cold enough to sting. She still grips it tight, knuckles turning white. Each step is measured. Her weight shifts as she becomes used to the aggressive sway. The brace answers with a small complaint.
The next door opens onto the coach where the women are gathered. Quiet. Contained. The air is different here –still crowded, but softer, somehow. The smell is wool and soap and faint perfume. There is less smoke. Less movement. People sit more upright.
A few heads lift when she enters. Not alarm –assessment.
She feels it immediately, the way she felt the mirror’s gaze in the washroom. Her dress is too bright for this space, even dulled by wear and grime. The orange silk catches the light –refuses to behave. The hem brushes her right leg unevenly. One blue stocking is stretched and ripped; the other is stained darker at the knee. The brace creaks as she steps forward, metal answering metal.
No one says anything. They don’t need to.
A woman near the aisle shifts her feet to make room. Another pulls her coat a little closer around herself. An infant with brown curls is asleep with her head against someone’s chest, mouth open, snoring quietly.
She is even more noticeable standing in the middle of the aisle. She finds an empty seat halfway down. She pats down her frizzy hair out of habit, though it makes little difference.
The clinking of coins is muffled by the wool. The shard of mirror digs into the cloth. The weight of the gun presses into her thigh. No use for either here. No threat.
No one looks at her now. She looks at them instead.
Across from her sits a woman a few years younger, perhaps, dressed in a dark red coat with neat seams. Shoes are sensible. Hair is pinned at the nape of her neck. She holds a folded letter and reads it again and again, not moving her lips. Delicate makeup. Gloved hands. When she looks up, her eyes are steady, untroubled. This woman is going somewhere specific; this woman has a place to arrive.
She quietly imitates the way the woman’s legs are gracefully crossed at the ankles. There is a brief pull in her thigh, but she manages.
Beside her, an older woman knits. The yarn is a soft-looking purple. Fingers move without pause –practiced, economical. It is hypnotic in its competence. The stockings are neat and modest. A small valise rests by low heels. When the train sways, the older woman sways with it, never losing a stitch.
She keeps her hands near her chest, positioning her fingers like the older woman does. She doesn’t quite achieve the ease of those wrinkled hands.
Near the end of the bench, a mother sits with a child on her lap –awake now –whispering instructions close to his ear. She can hear them. Don’t touch. Sit still. We’ll be there soon. The child obeys. The mother’s voice is tired but firm. There is no doubt in it. The mother belongs to someone; someone belongs to her.
She imagines the weight of the child, the strain on her legs and back, and strokes the air. She pictures the breathing of a living thing, so close to her chest.
She measures herself against their coats, their shoes, the way they occupy space. They have purpose. She thinks of what she has: a body that requires planning and a dress that cannot pass unnoticed. The stolen contents of her pocket. She thinks of what she lacks: a trade, a letter, a suitcase, a destination.
No one asks her name. No one asks where she’s going. She wouldn’t have the answer to either question. But she could lie –no, invent.
She imagines staying here. Riding like this. Sitting among women who do not look back once they’ve chosen a seat. She imagines getting off alone, managing the steps, finding a room, finding work, any work. She imagines the arithmetic of it. How many days the quarters would last. How long before the gun becomes a necessity rather than precaution.
She thinks of standing up alone at the next stop. What being alone, with no one to wait for her, would mean.
There would be a new station platform. A new day. A new crowd to be lost in. She would navigate a new city, and eventually find her way in it. She would be careful as she walks the streets. She would carry her weight differently –she knows this now –when she’s on her own. She would observe strangers, learn their patterns. She would become one of them, another face among many.
Not one of them, no. She does not know if that is possible. It might be. She does not know.
There would be different rooms. Staircases to climb. Cold nights. Mornings with no witness. She can’t know for sure if the isolation will be a release or a burden. After all, she has never been truly alone before.
She leans her head back briefly, closes her eyes, and listens to the layered sounds of the car: fabric shifting, breathing, the faint click of knitting needles, the rhythm beneath it all. The quiet holds. Not kind. Not peaceful. And yet not cruel.
It is possible.
Is this freedom?
She can’t say for sure.
It will be a shock, she can be certain of that. Like breaking out of the conservatory –out into the world. Icy rain, watery mud. Dirt. Danger. Real.
She will survive the world. Even if she can’t, she must. So she will.
But it is not just a question of survival.
And yet she is aware that this type of independence is based on a delicate balance. It requires clarity. It asks her to give answers –to present clean hands, manageable pain, a story that fits between stations. It asks her to be legible at a distance. To carry only what can be explained.
And that might simply not be who she is.
She opens her eyes. The young woman with the letter has folded it now, slipped it into her coat. The older woman’s knitting grows steadily, the shape of it already decided. The mother strokes the child’s hair, her fingers moving with slow certainty.
They know how to stay.
The leg brace tightens as the train sways. Her knee throbs, deeper now. The ache does not ask permission anymore.
She presses her palm against the brace, feeling the heat beneath the metal. For a moment she waits for the pain to settle.
She remembers the way he steadies her when it happens.
“Life can be so sweet...” she hums, barely moving her lips. “On the sunny side of the street...”
She thinks of his familiar hands. Grounding her with their weight and warmth. Indicating how to breathe through a steady rhythm. Gently tracing patterns over the bare skin of her back. Veins, scars, broken knuckles, fingers stained a deep red.
Guilt. She saw it in his face, in his voice. Guilt does not change the truth.
What shape might that request have taken? Was it spoken to the doctors –or to someone else? Why did they agree –and what did they gain? She isn’t sure she wants to know. She recalls the first moment she saw him when they brought her out of the white void. He reached for her, and smiled. Now she knows why.
She tightens her jaw. Was she ever truly free? Where did choice end, and where did bondage begin? He never mistreated her, never raised his voice. But she was still his –the answer to his prayer. She still relied on him –more than he could ever rely on her. At least, that’s how it feels.
Why did he ask for this –for her? What motivated him? She can speculate, as she thinks of herself in his position. His body, his history –time, experience. A place like where she came from. Solitude. Silence. Silence is safe, he had said. There would have been doctors, more than the ones she had to face. No one to care for him. A true loneliness she is only now daring to taste.
She begins to understand the dependency. Not excuse –but she can imagine a form of anguish, a sort of ache that might be born from a lack of hope. She can imagine herself suffering from that affliction for which she had been his cure. His.
So is he hers? After all, there must be a reason she has stayed with him for so long.
The answer comes easily. With him, nothing needs to be translated. Pain does not have to be minimized. Damage does not need to be justified. And she doesn’t need to pretend.
If she stays, the bond will deepen. She will continue to be his. But the terms of that bond might be negotiated.
It is not safety, exactly. But it is alignment.
Her hand presses into the seat. She leans forward, gathering herself. The motion draws a glance or two. A woman shifts her feet again to make room. Someone politely murmurs excuse me.
She stands. The brace complains, louder this time. She waits it out, breath measured, then steps into the aisle. The weight in her pocket pulls, reminding her what she carries. What she would have to carry alone.
As she moves toward the door, she senses it –not regret, not relief –but a narrowing. A growing certainty. Possibility collapsing into choice.
The vestibule is cold. The noise is harsher here. The train stretches around her. She grips the railing, waits for the sway to pass –then opens the door to the next car.
The sound rushes in: voices, movement, the less orderly rhythm of bodies packed together. Cigarette smoke swirls in the heavy air, illuminated by the morning light. A few eyes meet hers. They turn away.
She steps through. The door shuts behind her with a heavy sound.
He sees her –sits up. A flicker of hope... Yet for a moment he thinks she has returned only to end it properly.
Her brace creaks as she lowers herself in a small empty space, to sit in front of him. She stares at her hands for a moment. Slowly, she looks up at him.
Stay, he desperately tries to ask. Stay with me.
Her eyes are dark and hard. She came back. But there is no clear forgiveness. Instead, there is assessment. He recognizes it instantly.
He is a constant. He is predictable. He is a baseline. He is, somehow, despite everything, a form of comfort.
And he is her best bet at being understood.
He, her ground wire. She, his live current.
Her hand reaches out, tentatively. He almost shoots his hand out to hold hers –he manages some restraint. He softens his fingers instead, palm facing up, in a request. She hesitates. She continues –slow, hesitant. He stays still. He feels the warmth before the skin. The tip of her scarred fingers almost feel like exoneration –but not quite.
She holds his hand, and grips it tight. Tight enough to hurt. He returns it.
1930s Chicago. A scarred, ancient creature has endured decades of chains and silence in a secret lab. Then they resurrect her –curious, fearless, fully alive.
She leads with instinct and desire; he follows, a century of restraint finally breaking. Two monsters learning to be lovers –and refusing to go back.
By the time they reach the station, the blood has already dried.
The monumental building spills light through the glass. It is still dark outside. It’s a threshold hour. People leaving, arriving, or waiting all gather right outside the towering doors. Someone plays a slide guitar –a thin, metallic sound.
Her left knee has begun aching quietly, as if pain has finally been allowed to arrive. She adjusts her step without thinking, without stopping. He slows to match her.
She sees the busker has large scars on his face. Tired eyes, chapped lips, a slight quiver in the strained voice. Still, the busker doesn’t look like him at all. The busker just looks like a soldier from the movie theater newsreel: plain, distant, even as they pass him by.
"In the pines, in the pines, Where the sun don't ever shine, I would shiver the whole night through..."
He drops two nickels into the tin cup. She hopes the busker spends them on a good movie.
"Her husband was a hard working man Just about a mile from here
Her head was found in a driving wheel, But her body never was found..."
The station opens its mouth. They step forward, and the crowd absorbs them at once.
Inside, the temperature shifts but doesn’t fully comfort. The hall swallows sound, replacing the guitar's twang with a low roar of a thousand conversations and echoing footsteps. She pays attention to the low, constant hum of the building: distant boilers, vents breathing, a faint electrical buzz. Somewhere deeper in the station, there’s the slow exhale of a steam locomotive –a hiss that rises and fades like breath.
And the station itself –the boards clacking with departures, the smell of coal smoke and anxious bodies. Tall ceilings loom above, pale stone catching what little light there is. Dawn filters in through the high windows, blue-gray and thin. Electric lights still burn overhead, casting a warmer yellow glow that clashes softly with the morning haze. Shadows are long and sharp –columns slicing the space.
They walk warily, avoiding the coats and the eyes. The building hums on, unaware.
Blood had been dripping down his back, under the layers. Its initial warmth had given way to a quiet, sticky discomfort. There’s red coating his fingers, too. He doesn’t mind. Someone else might.
They stop behind a pillar by the ticket windows. She finds the sign for the washrooms. A silent agreement passes between them. They must separate. They must clean the night off.
She leaves his side. He watches her, right until she disappears from his sight.
The door shuts behind him with a hollow sound.
Dirty, once-white tiles. Rows of porcelain sinks. The dull metal of worn brass. An echoing drip that seems to come from everywhere at once.
The light hurts. It flattens the room, erases depth. Everything is too even under it, too exposed –far too close. His hands don’t seem his. Colors look off.
He soaks his broken knuckles in ice-cold water. It barely stings. His fingers stretch and splay, wrist turning slowly. More scars surface –old, familiar. He watches them for longer than he needs to.
Only then does he notice the blood still spreading at his side. The shirt clings where it’s wet. The new wound. He presses a hand there –the stab replies –brief and strong, yet controlled. He exhales once.
He has never become fully accustomed to phantom sensations. By now, he thinks he never will. The unpredictable nature of his own skin is a sporadic reminder: this is not yours. It is bad enough in winter, when old scar tissue tends to announce itself. Now there is a new one for the collection.
He thinks of how her blistered fingers touched him. Sometimes it hurt –he hid it well –he liked it too much to complain.
But the ache in that moment, in front of the mirror, in the cold tiled room, is different. It runs deeper.
He might come out and find himself alone at their designated spot. She might have disappeared into the crowd. One thing is a threat –another is the evidence.
The men in blue have seen them. The man with the knife is still alive. He thinks, I should have killed him, too.
And her expression when she saw it –the body, the blood –it was one he would have never imagined. An understanding.
He can still hear the steady rhythm of her breathing. She didn’t run. Her hand reached for him. She was there –she stayed there.
The ache lingers.
And if she isn’t there anymore...
He would look for her. Even if it was useless –the crowd would swallow her instantly, the city is too big, he doesn’t know yet how to navigate it. He would try. And once everything has been attempted...
He might retreat to the hills. Or be found and captured, during his search. Captured, again. Alone.
The dripping stops. The silence is worse.
The air smells of disinfectant, layered over something sweet. The lights buzz faintly. A stall door slams farther down.
She huffs and leans carefully. Her hands rest on the edge of the sink, before reaching down for the lower hem of her dress.
The blood has seeped into the silk, staining it for good. She wets the fabric and rubs it, but it’s no use. Pink water circles down the drain, thins, disappears.
She reaches for soap –the smell makes her hesitate.
Something briefly surfaces. Foreign hands, running over her skin, pressing down. Cold water. A sharp breath.
She leaves the stain as is.
She groans quietly. Staying still for more than a few seconds is causing her leg to take in the exhaustion. There’s a heaviness on her shoulders, on her lower back. She presses a hand there, testing the tension. Her eyes close. She breathes in.
Gravity thickens. She notices, right then, how her body has been compensating. The brief rest in the L train hasn’t fully allowed her to let up. The fatigue begins pooling at her hip –under the leather harness –spreading at the knee, a dull ache. Her ankle pulls. Then her heel digs into her sole, balancing the warm throbbing on the end of her foot.
She shifts her weight. Her mind reaches for the train they will board –another metal car, another bench, another hour of borrowed stillness. Her hand moves down the metal bars of the brace. You’ve done enough. She has learned how to walk for hours. Standing still, though –that was harder.
The door swings open. Clicking heels. A woman hurries to stand next to her in front of the mirror. She blinks, slightly startled.
The woman gives her a once-over. For a moment she awaits some sort of comment, some criticism. The woman does not give her one. Instead, blue eyes fix back on the reflection, and makeup is reapplied. She continues staring at this woman –the way she carries herself, the way her lips open gracefully, the way her hands pat her properly coiffed hair.
And then, something funny happens. Her body readjusts. Her spine stretches. Her jaw tightens, then relaxes. Her head turns slightly. She stands just like the woman does.
The woman stares back at her –lips twitching between an amused smile and an unnerved rictus. She is not mocking. She is not threatening. She is just observing.
The woman shoves her little tools inside her bag, and leaves quickly. The brace creaks as she settles back into herself. She is left alone in the washroom again.
The faucet is dripping. She turns it firmly, tensing her wrist, pushing until it gives no more.
She wonders if he is at the designated spot already.
The police might have caught him. He is not leaking blood anymore, she doesn’t think so. But he still has a knife wound in his back.
What will she do, if he’s taken? She might wait for him, for as long as she can wait. Can she board the train without him? He has the money. He has the knowledge. She only has herself.
She sees the weight dragging down the pocket of her jacket. Feels it. Six brass circles. Infinite threats. An unreliable form of protection.
He is reliable. She can trust him, as far as she can trust anything at all.
A burst of anxiety –a quiet fear. Maybe separating for a moment was the wrong choice. They’re safer together. She knows this –but never truly sat with the thought.
Somewhere in the station, a whistle shrieks.
They have to leave the city. Leave behind all the places that carried the echoes of the other her.
She smooths her skirt, checks the brace and wipes her fingers on the coarse wool of the jacket. The ache in her knee settles once more into something manageable.
The whistle echoes once more, farther away.
Outside the door, a train rumbles past. Time does not pause for him.
He adjusts his scarf, straightens the coat, and leaves.
The noise hits him like a wave as he pushes the door open. For a second, the crowd is a blur of coats and hats.
The designated spot is the pillar near the ticket windows, where they agreed to leave the other’s side. He scans it. Empty.
He holds his breath. He just needs to wait. Patience is, he would assume, one of his few virtues.
Then—
He sees her first –a flash of orange under a stolen men’s jacket. His shoulders drop. She turns and sees him. Relief washes over.
She doesn’t wait for him to reach her. She crosses the distance with that rhythmic, metallic clacking of her leg.
He grips her shoulders until his scarred knuckles turn white, steadying her, anchoring her to the floor. She pushes her forehead against his collar, her hands wrapped around his wrists, feeling his pulse. It is a tight embrace –the survivors of an unstoppable disaster.
There’s still blood on the black leather. There’s still a faint smell of copper.
The embrace breaks by the jostle of a hurried passenger. A conductor's call echoes down the platform. A gate clangs open. The crowd begins to flow toward the platforms.
He quickly straightens the lapels of her jacket, making it neat again. She gives him a crooked smile, and adjusts the brim of his hat. He smiles back.
The departure board clacks again overhead.
They move towards a queue formed right outside a booth. People shift forward in small, impatient steps. The line moves quickly. Coats brush past one another. Someone coughs loudly. Someone argues behind her about change.
She steps forward when the man ahead of her clears the window. The clerk doesn’t look up right away. A ledger is being squared, a rubber stamp set down with care.
“Next.” The voice is somewhat muted behind the glass.
She places the bills on the counter. Smooths them flat with the tip of her fingers.
“Two tickets.”
The clerk finally looks up –not at her face, not at the brace –but at the money.
“Destination?”
Her voice is carefully even as she repeats a name picked at random.
“One way or round trip?”
“One way.”
The clerk reaches for a stack of thin cardboard rectangles. “When?”
“The next train.”
The stamp comes down. Once. Twice. The sound is firm, practiced. Ink blooms and dries.
“Coach,” the clerk says, not asking.
“Yes.”
The clerk looks up again. Her breath hitches for a second. Her cheeks stretch –between a smile and a rictus. The clerk looks down again.
The tickets slide across the counter. The clerk is already calling for the next person. She gathers the slips of cardboard, folding them carefully, then tucks them into the inner pocket of the stolen jacket.
She steps aside. The line closes behind her at once. She does not look back.
He has stayed where they agreed –half shadows by the pillar, watching the crowd. She reaches him, the tickets already warm in her hand.
“Next departure?” he asks quietly.
She glances towards the board. “Four minutes.”
He nods.
Around them, the station keeps moving. Another train exhales steam somewhere beyond the walls.
The platforms are colder. Steam hangs in the air, rolling around iron beams. The train breathes –hissing, settling, preparing. The smell is stronger here: oil, smoke, hot metal fighting winter air.
The light has shifted again. Morning is closer, though not there yet. The sky is undecided.
Porters call out destinations. A door slams. A conductor’s voice cuts through the noise. The platform shifts as passengers begin to move toward the waiting cars.
She remembers the great iron beast that rushed past them outside the city. Inevitable, unassailable. Here, at rest, it is not as imposing. Here, it appears domesticated.
It exhales constantly. Steam swirls from beneath the cars, drifting low, then lifting, then dissolving. Metal ticks softly as it adjusts to temperature –small, nervous sounds. The cars are dark, windows reflecting platform lights more than revealing interiors.
He helps her climb up and board the train, holding her hand as she pulls her leg behind her. The metal step is slick with frost. Someone warns another to watch their footing. A porter lifts luggage without ceremony. No one thanks him. A few coins are exchanged, at most.
The moment they step inside, the world narrows. The door closes with a heavy, final sound.
Outside noise dulls immediately, replaced by a contained, interior hush. Warmth exists, but it’s stale warmth, carried over from previous bodies, coats, nights.
The aisle is tight. Coats brush coats. Shoes bump into calves. Someone mutters an apology without looking up. He is careful where he steps.
Seats are upholstered, worn thin in places. The windows are cold to the touch, faintly fogged near the edges. Overhead racks hold battered suitcases, tied bundles, paper-wrapped parcels. Nothing is truly stable.
A jolt. The train gathers itself.
The windows fog unevenly as bodies warm the air. Outside, the platform slides away in fragments –stone, iron, steam –until there is only movement and pale light.
She glances at it. The sight has lost its novelty.
A conductor passes. Tickets are checked, punched, returned. She stretches a hand before his face. He draws his head down between his shoulders –scarf covering him, hat tilted down. The tickets are accepted. The exchange with the conductor is brief, ordinary. She notes it.
He lowers his scarf an inch when the conductor moves on.
The train gathers speed. The rhythm deepens, more confident now. With each mile away from the station, the city loosens its hold. The last few days settle in her mind. More solid than the memories –already deepened with the weight of past experience.
Dawn finally enters the car. Pale light stretches across the aisle. Faces look different now. Shadows soften. Frosted fields, industrial edges, smokestacks slide past in fragments. She has already seen them before.
The train is steady, much more than its younger brother inside the city. By the time full morning arrives, they will already be elsewhere.
The coach car slowly fills with sound: the low creak of wood and metal, the steady churn beneath their feet, the hiss of steam slipping through unseen seams. Seats are taken quickly. Knees knock. Coats overlap. Someone clears their throat. Another coughs, deep and wet.
They sit side by side, close enough that their arms press together when the train sways. She considers leaning her head against his shoulder. He considers wrapping his arm around her. They remain still.
Across the aisle, a woman whispers to a man. Their eyes flick toward her, then quickly look away. Somewhere behind them, an older man chuckles. Paper rustles. A thermos cap twists open. The smell of coffee drifts through the car, thin and bitter.
No one speaks to them. A few glance at them –no more.
She exhales slowly, counting the beats of the wheels. One. Two. Three.
A question presses at her throat. She can’t imagine a reliable answer –that is the only true reason why she must ask it. She suspects he might not know either.
She turns her head just enough to see him in profile. His eyes are lowered, forward, fixed on nothing. She wonders if he is in pain.
The train keeps moving. She leans to him –and whispers.
“Why were we made?”
He looks up. Turns to see her. She is staring at him, with soft eyes.
The question hangs between them.
He can lie. He can say he does not know. He can tell a half-truth. Silence is an option.
But she deserves an answer.
He doesn’t want to lie to her. He doesn’t want to lose her, either.
But that is a risk he knows he needs to take.
He leans just an inch closer. She stays still. His eyes wander over her face. Her eyes remain on his.
He breathes in.
“They did not create you... Just for science,” he says, his voice almost a sigh. “I begged for you.”
She understands the words. The order is what’s confusing. She repeats them silently. Meaning slowly clicks into place.
“You are the answer to a selfish prayer.”
She blinks. It hurts to look at her –but he must.
She turns towards the window. Her reflection is a ghost over his haunted face.
1930s Chicago. A scarred, ancient creature has endured decades of chains and silence in a secret lab. Then they resurrect her –curious, fearless, fully alive.She leads with instinct and desire; he follows, a century of restraint finally breaking. Two monsters learning to be lovers –and refusing to go back.
They are down on the street, in the gold and the grime. Her head tilts back. There is a black ribbon, in between towering buildings leaning into the center of the street. The last glimpse of nature. Everything else is overpowering and in motion.
She is entranced.
Streets feel narrower. Light feels harsher. The scale is almost humbling. The roar of the city borders on overwhelming –and then stays right behind the line. Streetcars clang and chime. The elevated train rumbles as it passes by. Car horns blare. Newsboys shout final editions. A whistle cuts clean through the air. It doesn’t take long before the wall of sound becomes homogenous, dense and uniform –a steady symphony.
And the crowd –varied, strange, fascinating. Well-dressed women in furs pour out of doors, laughing brightly. Men in hats and overcoats stride with the confidence of purpose. In between them –pencil salesmen, shoeshine boys, beggars huddled in doorways, breath visible in the electric light.
They walk side by side, dodging the black slush, moving through clouds of billowing steam. The crowd parts when they pass –not so much out of dread as pragmatism –nobody wants to bump into the figure shrouded in black leather. And yet nobody stops to stare. Stopping is prohibited.
Their bodies, everyone’s bodies, are reflected in shop windows, polished granite, wet pavement. The world is duplicated, distorted. The shard in her pocket feels redundant among all those echoes.
She exhales in something like laughter. When she breathes in –freezing wind slips into her throat and lungs –bitter car exhaust fumes –damp garbage –perfume and pomade. She has the city inside her.
His eyes don’t watch the same things. He keeps his sight at street-level, away from the hundred squares on the walls closing in on them.
He has known cities –gaslight and stone, markets and bells, streets that slept at night. He has known crowds, too –gathered for sermons, for executions, for war. But this is something else. This does not gather –it surges.
The light is wrong –too constant, too bright –unearned. It erases shadow instead of casting it. The noise does not rise and fall; it presses, uniform and relentless, a force without breath. There is no pause built into it.
He realizes, with a faint unease, that this city does not notice him. It would grind on whether he stood still or vanished entirely. His presence is unremarkable. It is a sort of shelter –just not one he recognizes.
Beside him, she is alight with it –already moving to its rhythm.
Her leg brace does attract a few stares –the creak, the restraint of it. Nobody stops –they slow down at most, barely linger, then resume their pace. She doesn’t mind now –too busy staring back. Faces blur, come into focus and then blur again. Thick mustaches –dark lips –light eyes –thin brows. Gritted teeth. Sly smiles. A face turns –then disappears. Rustle of clothes, shiny buttons, clicking of heels, gentle glow of hair. She pictures herself like them: a series of fragments –a set of black eyes, a flash of orange, a messy curl, a rusty iron bar, a muscle tugging at her cheek.
He remains a sizable shadow. The brim of his hat and the hem of the scarf narrow his view. He searches for edges –any sharpening of intent. There is a new threat here –there is always some threat –but it is concealed. He is lost. Not scared, but unsettled –displaced. The anonymity of the city doesn’t feel fully safe.
He expects the known signs: a loud realization, immediate pursuit, some sort of pressure or action. A commotion, breaking through the noise.
What he does not expect is silent fixation. Now, suddenly, they are seen.
The crowd had stood in between their line of sight and the men in badges and blue uniforms. They smoke, talk, unaware. He slows down. His shoulders tense. They are too close. They should run. They should hide.
One of the men looks up. Eyes meet. The man furrows his brow. A hand reaches for the cigarette hanging from a stiff mouth. The stare holds for perhaps one full second –but it is enough.
She grips his arm tight. Not a flinch –a command. Her hand pulls him forward.
The three men stare. Smoke blooms out of lips and nostrils. A whisper passes through.
They continue walking, imitating their previous pace. She forces the brace into a hard rhythm that absorbs the scrape and bites into the flesh of her thigh. They move past. Every step becomes a swallowed sound. They feel the men’s eyes on their backs. She thinks of white and green walls. Her hand feels around inside her pocket.
He finds a narrow seam between two buildings. The only offer the street would make. A way out. Reliable shadows, away from the exposure of light. He gently steers her towards the gap in between the walls. His hand on her back is no longer a guide but a request. They pivot as one body. Her eyes catch a final golden smear from the street –and then she is in the dark with him.
The alley is colder, damper. Snow and ice haven’t yet been worn down by hundreds of steps. The silence is slightly startling. Noise fades with each stride. Soon the wide busy street behind them is just a drone, ringing in their ears.
This new delicate sound has a different texture. Dripping water. Exhausted buzzing. Scuttle of something in the trash. In the stillness, every small movement becomes as loud as a scream.
They keep moving. They listen carefully. The only true constant is their own steps on the pavement. They are alone.
But not for long.
There’s a quiet rustling of fabric, just a few feet ahead. An old woman, wrapped in a ratty coat and a dirty blanket, stumbles out of the shadows, with the unsteady gait of a professional drunkard. The woman looks sick, and mutters what sounds like doubtful prayers. She can catch a few rambling words as they come closer:
“Past the square... Past the bridge, past the mills –and the stacks—”
The woman looks up and stares at them. The corners of her mouth are pulled, exposing a mouth of jagged teeth. The woman laughs –a wet, hacking, whooping cackle –as her voice echoes in the alley.
“Through the ghettos –through the barrios –through the bowery –and the slum...!”
A string of words hangs from his memory –the remembrance of that primal language, the first he has learned to speak: should intermitted vengeance arm again... His red right hand to plague us?
She glances at him. His scarf has slipped, resting on his collar. His eyes are empty. The same as back at the conservatory –absent, impenetrable. She looks away, ahead.
The woman’s voice fades and becomes smaller in the distance. There is still a remainder of the low mumble, trapped in the coarse surface of the brick walls.
She can’t quite see the end of that alley. Hard, isolated lights and exposed wires cling to their right in intervals, displaying layers of ripped advertisements. Scraps display dim, washed-out colors, hands, eyes, mouths, lines, letters, half-legible words. She reaches out. Her fingers graze the thin damp paper of a peeling edge. Ink bleeds down.
They go through another patch of darkness.
The alley doesn’t seem to end. The space repeats itself. The sounds become monotonous.
Then faintly, almost gently, a new sound emerges.
Soft footsteps behind them. No humming –not the old woman. Quiet, but they mark a steady pace.
The footsteps turn heavier, louder. He places his hand on her waist, pulls her closer. She clenches her jaw. Her hand slips into her jacket’s pocket, seeks the shape and weight of her confidence.
“Evening.”
A shape detaches itself from the shadows ahead.
She sees movement, and looks down. A dark, silent silhouette is drawn over the pavement. Its source fixed behind them, it stretches ahead, walking as they do.
“You look like you took a wrong turn.”
Even from a distance, he can see it. The man's eyes are dilated, almost black.
She notices the stance. Assured, tense. Weight shifting on scuffed shoes. The man has something in his pocket; the light displays its shadow under the outline of the worn fabric.
They keep walking. The man intends to block their path. They don’t stop.
The man does not step aside –seems not to care –instead notices the leather coat, the silk skirt, the leg brace, the scars. An assessment of value and vulnerability.
She reaches down –he steps forward—
The silent man behind them sees her hand moving out of her pocket. A shove –she drops –the gun slips –it trips and clatters and ends up bumping against the wall. Silent, just another piece of debris. Her knees hit the pavement –her brace cries out, metal hitting the bone –a blunt, immediate pain, followed by a grunt. A sting of dread, like sour bile bubbling up her throat.
He turns around before the man can manage to lay a hand on him.
His fist lands dead centre in the man’s chest. The man stumbles back –coughing –and collapses.
A sudden, small explosion under the skin of his back –a burning he knows well –a sharp breath. Pulse loudens. Dark blood spreads: wet heat. Clumsy footsteps move away from him. He stays upright. The man behind him has pulled the blade out.
The man lunges forward for another stab.
This threat has a face. A tool. It can be stopped –it can be ended.
He knows this. He can read this. He knows where to lay his weight. It borders on relief.
He grabs the man’s hand –the knife is dropped. He grips the shoulder –pushes down with a slight increase in strength –the man’s face lands on the curb. He raises a knee. Boot stomps down –the crunch of a bone –a shrill, cut-off scream.
The body yields. The threat recedes.
The alley goes quiet in a way that feels deliberate.
One man on the ground is no longer struggling. The other stays down, reaching for air. An attempt to escape. A shallow, barely successful gasp.
This is enough. He could step away.
He doesn’t.
His hands remember before he does. It is still this easy. He adjusts once, feeling for the place where resistance gives way. He can sense the tension of the windpipe under his palm.
Muscles tense. The man is pulled to his limp feet. The body swings –head tilts to the side –to then be bashed against the brick wall. Once –twice –three times. A dull noise echoes through the alley. A quick red splatter reaches the hem of her dress.
He releases. The body slumps, striking the pavement with a sound too solid to mistake. Blood spreads slowly beneath its cracked head, dark against the wet stone.
Behind him, she makes a small sound. Not a word, not a whimper. Something like a sigh.
He turns to her. He is already bracing for it –the fear, the recoil, the moment where she sees him clearly and steps back.
She doesn’t.
She looks at the man on the ground. There is no horror in her face. Only attention. As if she has learned something useful.
He feels it then. Not shame, not regret –but the ache of having been seen.
And when she reaches for him instead, steady and unafraid, the relief is sharp enough to hurt.
1930s Chicago. A scarred, ancient creature has endured decades of chains and silence in a secret lab. Then they resurrect her –curious, fearless, fully alive.She leads with instinct and desire; he follows, a century of restraint finally breaking. Two monsters learning to be lovers –and refusing to go back.
Her hand runs over the rivets of the steel girders. The heels of her boots hit the dark, worn floors of the platform. He follows behind her, leather creaking quietly.
They stop where the crowd thins, near a pillar plastered with faded ads. The platform rattles beneath their feet. Wind tunnels through the station, tugging at loose paper and the lightly frayed hem of her silk dress. Somewhere down the line, a train screams –a warning roar.
She watches the crowd instead of the tracks. People hurry past with their collars up, their bodies turned inward, their lives tucked close to the chest. Exhaustion and anxiety weather their faces just as much as the winter’s cold wind.
“Before I reached into your pocket, it felt like nothing. Noise. Sweat. Laughing...” She grits her teeth. “... And then it felt like a switch.”
He tilts his head. “A switch?” His voice is muffled under his scarf.
“A thing that could tip the room,” she says. “Just by pulling.”
The train approaches, its lights shuddering through the dark. The rails begin to sing –a rising, electric hum.
“Most people don’t realize how thin it is,” he says. “The line between ordinary and… Something else.”
She considers this. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Does it frighten you?”
He hesitates, only slightly. “No.”
She turns back to the platform edge. A man drops a newspaper page; another steps over it without noticing. Someone yawns. Someone coughs. The world continues, oblivious.
The arrival is marked by a storm of sound. Doors rattle open. The humble crowd compresses, then spills inside.
As they step aboard, her elbow brushes his sleeve. His arm moves an inch –to lightly lean closer. She thinks of the warm pressure of his hand gripping hers.
Doors close. The train carries them through the night.
They stay near the exits. The air smells of damp wool, oil, and yesterday’s smoke. He briefly wonders if she might need to sit down. All that dancing must have tired her.
The car sways as the train lurches forward. Light flickers across their faces in rhythmic streaks –window, pole, window, pole. It is like a pulse.
Across from them, a man sleeps with his hat tipped over his eyes. A woman cradles a paper bag as if it contains something fragile, or alive, or both. She watches them all with careful interest.
“Do you think the city forgives things,” she asks softly, almost idly, “If they’re useful?”
He considers the question longer than he needs to.
“It forgets,” he says, matching her tone. “That can feel like forgiveness.”
She nods and hums. “The doctors never worried about being forgiven.”
“They never had to,” he replies. “They had titles. Locks. White rooms.”
“No one stopped the doctors.”
No one, until they did. Until the need became stronger than the fear.
He shifts his weight as the train rounds a curve. The car groans, an old and tired sound.
“Power,” he says, “is often mistaken for permission.”
She feels the weight of his words. Whose permission do we need? Who has power over us?
She watches a pair of young men laughing loudly near the far door. One of them shoves the other, playfully. The shove is returned –a small, careless act that carries the faintest hint of escalation.
A woman in a grey coat and unbuckled shoes leaves her seat. He gestures to her. They hurry toward the bench at the far end of the car. Huddling against each other, foreheads almost touching –for secrecy and stability.
More passengers rush in. One man, struggling under the weight of his exhaustion, sits by his side. She breathes softly. Her hair presses against his temple.
“Being in danger changes what is allowed.” she murmurs. She thinks of the crack of the orderly’s wrist when he twisted it.
He looks into her shadowed eyes. He has no way of knowing –but he suspects what’s on her mind.
“It changes what feels necessary,” he says. “People tell themselves many stories about necessity.”
“Do you believe them?”
He thinks about punishment. His fingers stroke a scar on his wrist.
“... No.”
The train rattles over a junction. The lights flicker again, briefly dimmer.
She lowers her voice even more. “If something is possible,” she says, “does that make it inevitable?”
“No,” he answers. “But knowing you can do a thing… It alters you.”
“I don’t feel guilty.”
He does not look away. “You are not required to.” Guilt. The heaviest word he knows.
“I feel… Aware,” she continues, with a small exhalation. “Like I’ve discovered a door I didn’t know existed.”
The train slows for the next station. A hiss and sputter of air brakes. Doors open with a clatter-bang. A gust of cold air sweeps through the car, carrying street noise –horns, footsteps, a shouted argument. They watch out for any suspicious stares. One woman glances at the color of her skirt, then quickly looks away. For the time being, they can allow themselves something similar to peace.
As the doors close, the world outside recedes again.
She sighs. “Survival excuses things.”
“Survival explains them,” he tries to correct. Then he realizes how his words resemble the doctors’ vocabulary. “... Excusing is something they do afterward.”
Her hand rests briefly by her jacket pocket, then falls away.
The train surges forward. Noise and motion. They stay silent.
The window displays a grimy square of the city. Images blur past the frame –lit windows, dark buildings, the smear of a neon sign. The thought of the movie theater –the large, bright, glowing face of the leading lady –blinks into her mind. The city looked so different there. Clean, innocent –like the idea of a city, more than the real thing.
A sharp jerk –her body slides on the bench –he reaches and grabs her arm to steady her. Lights sway violently to the turn at the corner, and the shadows dance as the whole car shudders. It is not the inevitability of the iron beast they encountered outside the city. There are designated stops –tangled wires –human voices, garbled like static through a radio signal. It is smaller –fragile –crowded with brittle lives. A system inside a larger system, a part of something denser, more complex. There are so many rules. To whom do they benefit?
The city is the machine, she realizes, and they are loose parts inside of it. Untethered.
Louder voices make their way through the groans and shrieks of the brakes on the rails. Quiet comments and small human sounds are cut short. The two voices draw attention to themselves.
His eyes focus on the other end of the car. A man is yelling at another one, hands shivering in tight fists. The other bodies that crowd the seats keep still, silent. Her eyes open wide. A fight is begging to begin. The two men are teetering on the edge of it, in a small dance of moving forward, moving back. They exchange cruel, meaningless words, raise their voices, not yet full threats. A woman takes two steps back.
One of the yelling men closes his mouth, then breathes in. She does the same. Her fingers close around the wool of her oversized jacket.
A new stop. Another man, wearing a cap and a uniform, intervenes. Some kind of authority, she assumes. The other two men listen to him. The near-fight fizzles. He believes there is a small, collective sigh of relief, but he can’t be entirely sure. A part of her is curious to know what would have happened if the conflict hadn’t been repressed.
The train moves again. Conversation returns, fragmented, cautious at first, then unremarkable. The car settles back into its rhythm, the earlier tension folded away as if it had never existed.
Outside the window, the dark begins to break apart. The city grows brighter –louder –closer. The streets draw closer together, dense with movement and promise. Windows multiply. New glowing signs –larger, brighter, in blazing colors –red, orange, yellow. Scattered letters rush past. Steam columns rise through the frozen air, like smoke from a fire. The city is engulfed in electric flames.
It is offered –it pulls –it craves.
She leans closer to the glass, pressing her forehead against her reflection. Denser, noisier crowds of dark figures –hats and shoulders glowing gently to the lights of signs and streetlamps. All is covered in gold. Buildings crowd nearer to the tracks. Slick cars slide over asphalt covered in slush dirty with soot. Glimmering metal –more light, more.
When the train slows, she is already watching for the doors.
Her head swivels to face him. He notices. Her eyes glow.
Charles yawned, though he still felt wide awake. He was still excited, dizzy and euphoric on the remainder of his sugar rush. After changing into his pajamas and brushing his teeth, and kissing his mother and father goodnight, he had gotten all nice and cozy in between his sheets. He considered reading ‘Rabbit, Run’, a longer book he had taken from his father’s bookshelf and hidden under his pillow, and that sounded like something he would like. But he wasn’t really in the mood for reading. So he turned off his light, and turned around in his bed, with his eyes still open. His mind fluttered from one thought to the next, going over everything that had happened during his birthday party, as if trying to sear it into his memory.
It had gone better than he expected. Everyone, not only him, had the time of their lives. His parents had put a couple of tables out in the garden, and crowded them with dishes and bowls of cookies, popcorn, gummy bears and other candies and snacks for the children to feast on. They had set out a game of cricket for the kids to play, too, even though most just played tag, and tripped on the grass, and got up and started running again. Everyone seemed to be having fun. Most importantly, Charles, the birthday boy, had his fun. Birthdays were usually a bit of a chore, but this time it hadn’t been half bad. A couple of his classmates had been annoying, but he just did what he often did: just fantasized about slapping them or punching them or shutting them up with a threat or two, and he would feel better. That was one of the few things that he felt he shouldn’t have shared with Danny. Those fantasies were apparently not common nor appropriate for a boy his age, he had to guess from his uneasy reaction. He wondered when, if at all, they would be appropriate. Thankfully Danny had promised to never tell anyone about it, and so far he had kept his word: if he hadn’t, Charles could expect that he would have ended up being a little more suspicious after the death of that guinea pig.
His mind went back to the party. He had gotten so many presents from his parents, of course, and from the classmates he didn’t expect would even pretend to like him at all. He had been given a View-Master, his new favorite toy, with some reels from the Batman TV show; a tin rocket which he could pop open and use to store little green men and astronauts with rayguns; and another toy truck, even though he didn’t care much about toy trucks at all. There had been other gifts, of course. Clothes and books, mostly, but he didn’t really like them. All the books were for younger kids (he would scream if he got another unbearably whimsical Dr Seuss book), and the clothes were too bright and colorful for his tastes. He had thanked everyone, though, as he knew he should. He’d find a way to accidentally rip the knees of those ugly corduroys, or to permanently stain those loudly-patterned shirts.
And his father had congratulated him with a pat to the back, and called him his “little man” (Charles had hated it, but had smiled nonetheless, for his sake), and taken just about a hundred photos of him while his mother straightened his jacket and adjusted his shirt collar. Charles had kept smiling, both because he wanted to keep these photos of him looking happy and because he did feel truly, really happy. Then his father had taken more photos of his son standing along with his wife, and with Danny, and with a few other classmates, probably to make himself believe he had more friends than he really had. But they had all smiled for the white flash, they had all seemed happy to be there. Happy faces all around.
Charles had blown those seven little candles before the wax started drooping on the white frosting, and hurried to make the wish he already had memorized. He had asked to cut the cake himself –he said it was to make sure that he cut it in the same sized portions for everyone. His mother had smiled, knowing he would save the biggest slice for himself. And, when she said no, he had frowned and pouted and glared at her in the way he knew he could do to get whatever he wanted from her. Obviously, she had acquiesced in the end. Holding the big knife in his hand, he had wondered if it was anything like what the mass murderer on the radio had used to kill his victims.
And later, when the sun began to go down over the treetops of the Hackensack suburb, welcoming the evening, the children said their goodbyes, and climbed into their parents’ cars, tired from all that running and squealing, drowsy and heavy with candy and cake. Charles had taken his gifts inside the house while his parents picked everything up. Then his mother got started with the dinner, and his father went back to listen to his music in the living room, while Charles played alongside him on the carpet with his new tin rocket. And then they had dinner, and they had wished him a happy birthday once more, and then they tucked him into bed. And now Charles was turning between his sheets, sighing and smiling to himself.
He wished every day could be like that.
So he closed his eyes and went to sleep, happy and content.
“Tomorrow, after school,” Charles said. “You’re coming, right?”
Danny Hyde scoffed. “Of course I’m coming. There’s gonna be cake!”
Charles laughed. Danny was his best –and, arguably, his only –friend, but he was also a bit dumb. He didn’t get the best grades, often got lost during class, and sometimes he could almost swear he barely knew how to read. He didn’t care. Charles wasn’t very good at making friends –everyone else just seemed stupid to him –but Danny at least was kind enough to stick by his side regardless of how many times Charles laughed at his ignorance. The fact that the other teachers encouraged the friendship, hopeful that Charles’ smarts would eventually rub on Danny, definitely didn’t hurt.
And besides, his mother was always talking about how important it was for him to make friends. He didn’t want to spend all his time alone, after all, did he? Charles wasn’t sure he minded it. But he had to agree that, sometimes, he thought about things that he knew his mother wouldn’t understand, or that would make his father nervous, and Danny was the next best person to share his ideas with. Not that he understood much, of course. It was still better than nothing.
“The party’s at my house tomorrow, after school,” Charles said as he handed an invitation to a pigtailed girl whose name he didn’t remember. “Be there or be square.”
He knew these other kids wouldn’t come unless there was candy and games. They really didn’t care much about Charles, just as he didn’t care much about them. His mother would be sad if he spent his birthday without any guests, though. A party needed guests, right? So he made the effort to deliver the invitations she had so lovingly written and decorated herself to his classmates, to appease her.
He sighed, and handed a couple more. Danny chewed noisily on his bubblegum while standing beside him on the hallway, glancing around, probably thinking about that dull fishing trip he was going to have with his father over the weekend. So many things they did seemed to be just for their parents’ sake. If Charles could have his way, he would stay up late watching cartoons on TV, and ride his bike around the neighborhood after it got dark, and eat candy and cookies and fries and steak whenever he wanted and never be told again to eat his greens, and read whatever he wanted without anyone to tell him it was only for grownups, even if he didn’t understand everything. He would understand everything, when he grew up. Those were just a few reasons why he wanted to grow up already, and be a grown man like his father, so he could be properly free, and do whatever he wanted to do.
“What would you do if you were a grownup?” he asked Danny.
Danny shrugged. “I dunno. I’d be a firefighter, I guess.”
“What for?” Charles laughed. “Just to get burned alive?”
“Firefighters don’t get burned, they save people from getting burned.”
“Firefighters aren’t fireproof,” Charles said in a condescending tone. “They’re just like everyone else.”
“Well, they’re smart enough not to get burnt,” Danny argued.
“Then you can’t be a firefighter. I don’t think you’re smart enough.”
Danny chuckled and elbowed his friend. Charles gave him a friendly shove.
“I won’t be a grownup for a while, anyways,” Danny said, and blew his bubblegum to make a big bubble. Charles popped it with his finger, and Danny turned his tongue and pulled the gloopy pink matter back into his mouth. “So I don’t really care.”
“It’ll happen someday.”
“Yeah, but dad says I should be happy I’m still a kid. I guess he’s right,” Danny shrugged again. “If I were a grownup then I couldn’t live with mom and dad. I would have to live on my own, and find a job, and all that stuff grownups need to do.”
Charles frowned. He hadn’t thought about that. Did he have to move out? Couldn’t he stay at home with his mother, even if he was a grownup? He hadn’t seen anyone do it, not in his books, nor on TV, nor in real life, so maybe it was simply impossible. But would his mother really kick him out, once he got old enough? Would she be so heartless to do such a thing? He didn’t think so, but if everyone else said she should, then maybe she just might.
But who would feed him, if his mother wasn’t there? Who would wash his clothes, and keep everything neat and clean? Who would care for him, and do everything a mother had to do?
Who would love him unconditionally, like she did?
Charles didn’t like that. Not only did he not like thinking about what he would do without his mother, he didn’t like realizing how much he depended on her. He had never stopped to think about everything she did for him, and how lost he would be without her. That wasn’t fair. He should be able to do things by himself! He had to learn. His mother wouldn’t live forever, after all. Her father had died before her, so it stood to reason that Charles’ mother would die before him. And then what? He couldn’t go on living like a baby, coddled and protected like he was some fragile little trinket. Not if he wanted to be a man someday.
Maybe that could be his birthday wish. To become a man, perfectly independent, and never have to depend on anyone ever again.
There was barely a sound in the house apart from the rain pitter-pattering against the windows. The mother was quietly fixing lunch in the kitchen, and the father was sitting on his favorite chair and listening to his music in the living room. Bored out of his mind, Charles went down the stairs and approached him quietly, not so much as to bother him as to find out what he was listening to now, buzzing through his headphones. He huffed when he recognized the melody. All he listened to was boring old people’s music, Beethoven and Purcell. At least Charles’ mother liked what played on the radio, actual good music, the type that made one want to dance and have fun. But he still picked up one of the record sleeves and examined it, pretending he cared about what it said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his father noticing him, smiling in pride at seeing his boy show an interest in classical music.
Charles put the record down, sat on the floor, and had a look around him. There were his mother’s paintings on the wall, abstract shapes of color and movement. Blue, silver, gray, black, white. He liked them, even if he didn’t understand what they meant. And there were also the tall modern lamps, with which he liked to pretend to create lightning strikes, turning them off and on, even if his mother protested. And, set against the wall and next to his father’s chair, the state-of-the-art hi-fi stereo console, one of his father’s most prized possessions. More than once Charles had fantasized about smashing it with his baseball bat, see what was inside, see what would happen. He wondered if his father would cry. There was a chance he got angry, but he had never seen his father angry. He would probably just say he was disappointed in him, like he always said when Charles misbehaved, and then he would buy a new one, and that would be the end of that.
There was also his mother’s small portable radio, which she listened to when she was cooking or painting, forgotten on top of the little table beside the sofa. Charles crawled on the carpet, reached the radio, and turned it on. Pop music blared out of the plastic speakers, and cut through the silence.
“Charles... I’m listening to my music here,” Peter said with a sigh. “Can’t you see?”
“I want to listen to music too,” Charles complained, frowning, staring at his father. He wasn’t a particularly strong-willed man, but unfortunately the boy’s glares rarely, if ever, worked on him. “I want to choose.”
“Once I’m done, you can choose. Alright?”
Charles just grumbled, but didn’t turn the radio off just yet. He lowered the volume and changed stations, turning the little dial, listening carefully and stopping only once he heard a familiar set of words.
“A mass murderer continued his reign of terror today, leaving two more dead in his wake,” a voice reported. “As violent crimes continue to rise, we urge all citizens of Hackensack not to go alone at night—”
“Two more, that makes thirteen,” Charles realized out loud. “Counting the last three from the mall... I wonder what he killed them with.”
He turned around to face his father, who had now taken one of the headphones off, and was staring at his son with a dismayed look on his face. Charles often asked uncomfortable questions –Peter had to assume that was understandable, at his age –but this was something else entirely. Why did his curiosity lead him to such dark places?
“Will the police kill him, when they find him?” Charles asked his father.
Peter grit his teeth. “If he resists arrest, then he... If he doesn’t stop and the police catch him, then maybe they will shoot him, yes. Like the cowboys and Indians on TV.”
“They would kill him so as to make him stop killing,” Charles repeated, just to make sure he understood correctly. It did make some twisted sort of sense. “Why don’t they just put him in jail instead?”
“They can try, but sometimes, policemen just can’t catch them without getting very hurt,” Peter explained as patiently as he could. “So they shoot him, hopefully somewhere where it doesn’t kill him, to stop him. That’s the most important thing to them,” he told his son, in his best comforting tone. “To stop him, so people are safe.”
“Have you ever killed someone?”
Peter Ray looked at his son as if he had just slapped him.
Charles just shrugged. “Mr Briggs next door says you save lives. Do doctors only save them, or do they take them, like the police?”
“I... Charles, that’s not the sort of question you should ask.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s... It’s rude .”
Charles frowned. “I didn’t mean to offend you, and I didn’t insult you. How is that rude?”
“You can’t just ask people if they’ve ever killed someone—”
“Well, have you?”
Peter stretched his shoulders, shifting awkwardly in his chair. “I didn’t kill anyone, strictly speaking... But there have been complications with one particular surgery, some time ago, and... We all knew the risk, certainly, and the patient knew the risk. Still, we... We couldn’t save him.”
Charles opened his eyes wide. “What did that feel like?”
His father sighed. “It... It’s devastating. It’s confusing, and paralyzing, and terrifying... Knowing you might have been able to do something else, done better... We did the best we could. I know that. But it still feels like I carry that guilt, sometimes,” It probably wasn’t a good idea to discuss such matters with his six-year-old son. Now that he had started, though, Peter thought he might as well finish explaining himself. “I suppose it’s just not something you can really ever forget, your first death.”
His father didn’t cry, of course, but he seemed just about to. Charles winced. It seemed silly to him to worry so much about it. If he did the best he could, then what did it matter? People died every day. That same day, two other people had been killed. There wasn’t anything they could do about it, so what was the point of worrying?
“Your first ?”
“You don’t have to be scared about that killer,” his father said, quickly changing the subject. “There’s policemen patrolling this neighborhood every night. He wouldn’t dare come close.”
“I’m not scared,” Charles said.
That was only half true. He knew that the police were looking for the man, and he trusted he would eventually get caught. But he would be lying if he said that he wasn’t at least a little bit nervous about the possibility of him showing up around. Would he kill a child? Well, there wasn’t much of a difference, was there? Would the death be painful and drawn out, or easy and quick? Charles grimaced. He didn’t like to think about it, but now that he had begun, he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to think about the chances of him getting killed. There was so much he still wanted to do. It was embarrassing, but if he came face to face with the killer, he had to admit he would do just about anything to avoid being killed.
His father smiled, and sighed, and reached for his son’s head to stroke his hair reassuringly.
Charles’ sneakers tapped on the floor as he jumped up and down. He grinned and leaned forward, spreading his fingers on the kitchen counter, while his mother made the shopping list of things to buy for his birthday party. It was coming real soon –next Tuesday. He would turn seven, which sounded like a lot to his mother, who still remembered struggling to change his diapers at the crack of dawn as clearly as if it had been yesterday. She couldn’t think about that for too long, because if she did, she would only get herself teary eyed. Her little boy was growing up so fast. But that was a cause for celebration. She knew he couldn’t wait to be old enough to... To do whatever he wanted, she had to guess.
“Streamers, balloons, party hats...”
Charles leaned his head on his arms, resting them on the cool countertop, and gazed up at his mother. She was very, very pretty, prettier than all the other mothers at school and around the neighborhood. She had a soft, patient voice, with which she read him bedtime stories and sang him lullabies. She had gentle gestures, graceful hands, and neat posture, a result of years of ballet in her youth. People said Charles had his father’s eyes, but had also been told he had his mother’s hair, and her nose, and he even had her surname, which wasn’t that common. Elizabeth Lee. He liked the way that sounded, like a character in a folk song or in a storybook. Better than his father’s, at least. Peter Ray. Something about it didn’t sound right. Maybe the conjunction of the last R in Peter and the first R in Ray, which made it an awkward phrase to pronounce. Together, though, they made a great surname. Charles liked his name very much, and the way it was double barreled –it was special, no other kid he knew had a surname like that. It had a nice ring to it. He knew that some famous people changed their name when they made it big –but if he ever became famous, he would definitely not change his name.
“Potato chips, and popcorn...” she wrote down, tapping her lips with one finger. “Hot dogs, and... What about a piñata?”
“Yes!”
Charles laughed giddily. His mother looked down at him and grinned, happy, as always, to have made him happy. Sometimes, when he was deep in thought, her son would get serious and withdrawn, and lock himself up in his room, silently reading books stolen from his father’s shelves; but other times he seemed just like a normal kid again, laughing and smiling and playing around the house with his colorful crayons and his Play-Doh and his little toy soldiers. She wished he was always like that, just a normal little boy, but she guessed she should be thankful that Charles seemed like such a smartypants so early on. Her husband said that it was a sign he was meant for great things. And wasn’t that what every mother wanted for her child?
“So, what kind of birthday cake would you like?” she asked him, going back to writing down the ingredients she would need.
“Chocolate cake!” he cried excitedly. “Chocolate cake, and... And candy apples, too!”
His mother stopped scribbling. She turned the pencil in her hand, pressing her lips together, tensing up ever so slightly. Charles watched her, between amused and surprised. His mother was somehow still fidgety every time he mentioned apples –ever since last Halloween, when he bit into a razor hid into one, and apparently felt no pain. That wasn’t true. He had felt pain, but it was a funny sort of pain, different from a papercut or a scrape from falling off his bike. It was sharper, and lasted longer, and it gave him a weird sort of comfort. It was the taste of blood on his tongue, the tickle of it dripping down his chin, the thick warmth it had as he swallowed. The feeling of feeding off himself. It was pretty funny, that feeling, but his mother didn’t seem to agree. She had found him in the living room, standing in front of the coffee table with his mouth full of blood, and gotten terribly scared. She had taken the apple away from him, hugged him as she barely repressed a scream, and put him on the backseat of the family car and into the hospital. Charles liked hospitals. People were kind to him there, treated him respectfully and carefully, and paid attention to him. That was the most important thing –they paid attention to him. They were paid to do it. He knew that because his father was paid to do the same.
His mother wasn’t paid to love him. She did it because she wanted to, because she saw him as the sweetest boy in the world. Now, Charles wasn’t sure she was completely right about that, but he didn’t care much. All he cared about was that she loved him unconditionally. She would love him even if he misbehaved, even if he bit into razor apples, even if he killed a stinky old guinea pig. That’s what a mother did, and that was, indeed, how she loved.
“Of course, candy apples,” she nodded. “That would make a nice treat after the cake, don’t you think?”
Charles nodded, glad his mother got over her fear for him.
Charles huffed. What could he do now? A part of him said he should bribe Jeff to keep his mouth shut, and another part of him said that Jeff didn’t deserve anything he could ever give him. He should have been more careful. He should have made sure more kids were out of the teachers’ sight during that recess, to make sure there were more suspects to the crime.
“Well, I know I didn’t do it!”
“Really? So where were you?” Charles asked him, loud enough so everyone could hear. Their classmates had already begun paying them their undivided attention, intrigued by the noise, excited about the prospect of a fight.
“I... I...” Jeff muttered. Really, all in all, Charles was pretty lucky that this other kid was the only other suspect. Jeff had a reputation already, which already made him even more suspicious.
“Now, that’s enough,” Mr Pollock said, standing between the two boys. “This is a serious matter. Who was it?”
Charles and Jeff exchanged glares.
“... I saw Jeff going into the classroom, when I was going to the bathroom,” Charles said quickly, as if it was a secret he just needed to confess.
“That’s not true!”
“Yes it is!”
Jeff closed his hands into fists, and stared at Charles as if ready to pounce on him. Charles assessed his chances at winning in a fight with him. Jeff Kinney was a skinny blonde boy, tall for his age, with a considerable overbite and a penchant for yelling at teachers and pushing other kids around at the playground. He also knew two curse words which he used liberally to sound like a grownup. Charles thought he was alright, but he definitely wasn’t going to befriend him, especially not now. He knew how that would look to the teachers, to associate with the resident bad kid.
Jeff was taller, but he was also way too confident in his ability to intimidate. And Charles wasn’t intimidated by him one bit.
“I didn’t do it, and I didn’t go into the classroom during recess!” Jeff yelled. “Charles did it! He’s a goddamn liar!”
“Jeff!”
Charles managed to hide his smile just as quickly as it appeared on his face. Jeff was clearly not good at appearing blameless. Better for him.
“Why would I hurt Coconut?” Charles said with a frown to appear confused, managing to remember its name right on time. “I liked her a lot! I always fed her treats after class!”
“It’s alright, Charles,” Miss Campbell said as he approached him, and he looked up at her, putting on a very convincing distressed face. Miss Campbell was the art teacher, and his favorite teacher of the bunch. She was pretty (not as pretty as his mother, but close enough), always complimented his work, once confided in him to tell him he was her favorite student, and had nice golden hair, and a kind smile. But she wasn’t smiling this time. “Listen, Jeff, it’s alright if you did it, but we just need to know—”
“It’s not alright,” Mr Pollock, the math teacher, cried. “That guinea pig was gutted !”
“Please, Mr Pollock—”
“Which one of you did it!?”
“Charles did it!” Jeff screamed. “He did it!”
“He just wants to blame me so nobody thinks he did it,” Charles insisted, looking around to gauge the level of approval he had. The other children, sitting all awkwardly behind their desks, glanced at each other, seeming unsure. But what mattered was what the teachers thought –and they appeared to be pretty convinced. “But I didn’t do it. I would never hurt her!”
“You liar—!”
“Mr Kinney, follow me to the principal’s office,” Mr Pollock finally said.
The jury had made their choice. They had found Charles innocent, just like he knew they would.
“But I—!”
“Enough!”
Mr Pollock grabbed Jeff’s arm and began pulling him out of the classroom. Jeff screamed and grabbed one of the desks, clinging to it like an anchor, dragging it noisily across the floor. Meanwhile Miss Campbell rested one hand on Charles’ shoulder, squeezing gently, as to reassure him everyone believed him, and that everything would be alright. The rest of the children talked to each other in hushed whispers, exchanging opinions, still somewhat shaken, even a day later, after Bonnie Jones had first walked into the classroom after recess and shrieked when she found the dead guinea pig in its cage, in a pool of its own blood. Charles could still hear the shrill scream echoing in the classroom walls, as he had shifted his expression into one of shock, and even managed to pretend to be disgusted instead of fascinated by his own display. Miss Costello had desperately called their attention away from the dead animal, called the other teachers, called the principal, called anyone who would listen, terrified by the idea that one of her students could have ever done something like that. All the while Charles delighted in the panic he had caused. He was even tempted to admit he had done it, just to make sure everyone knew what he was capable of.
Jeff looked up and let go of the desk, puffing and panting, still making an effort to struggle and break himself free. As if he hadn’t already signed his sentence. The more he resisted, the more guilty he looked.
The last thing Jeff saw, before disappearing from behind the door frame, was Charles’ pleased little grin.
Charles had a question in mind, and once his curiosity was piqued, he couldn’t think of anything else.
What was the limit between life and death? A heady question for an elementary school boy. Then again, Charles thought with a smile, he had always been mature for his age.
He had already decided ants and flies weren’t enough. Flies were too hard to catch, and when he had started out with ants the day before during recess, carefully watching them as he pressed on their legs with the tip of a pencil, immobilizing them before slowly crushing them, he had realized that was no good. They were barely more than everyday objects to him, always in the background, and the only difference between alive and dead to them was the speed in which they twitched. He needed to experiment with something else.
While the rest of the children were at the playground, he had told a teacher he needed to use the bathroom, but instead he had taken a pair of scissors with him to the classroom. There were streams of bright orange sunlight cutting through the dark. The sun had already gone through its highest peak in that autumn afternoon. Recess would be over soon, and the last class of the day would begin. Charles glanced at the clock on the wall. He didn’t have much time.
He opened the cage door, grabbed the guinea pig, and petted its soft fur to calm it down first. He felt its rushing heartbeat in his palm. It was nice and warm. It reminded him of the heat of a fever, or of a swollen bruise. He wondered if the guinea pig was scared, and smiled wider. It was so small and helpless it probably felt scared every single second of its life.
Charles pulled the scissors he had snuck out of the art classroom from his pocket, squeezed the little guinea pig between his fingers, and turned it around, searching for the best spot to make the incision. He was intrigued about what he would find if he cracked its head open –how hard could a guinea pig skull be? Like a walnut, at most? –but he decided that, with the tools he had, the chest was his best option. He squeezed a little harder when it tried to wriggle out of his grasp, maybe guessing what Charles had in store, its nose and whiskers twitching desperately, beady eyes shifting from side to side. Charles chuckled. How funny it was, to see such creatures squirm. It never got old.
He spread the scissors open, brought the blade close to the small animal’s chest, and pressed it gently against its belly. He hesitated for a second or two. And then he sank the tip of the blade into it, ignoring its squeaks, pushing it further. Like the juice of an overripe fruit, the blood poured out and covered the fur, the blade, the hand. Charles gasped and moved back to avoid getting guts on his sneakers. Something red and sticky fell on the floor with a splat! , and Charles stared at it for a moment before turning his attention back to the guinea pig. Its heart still beat, it was open but alive. How much farther could he go before its little body gave up? He would find out. Now he dragged the blade of the scissors down to reveal more organs, lungs and liver and stomach, like in the anatomy diagrams he found in his father’s thick heavy books. The insides of a guinea pig and those of a human didn’t seem to be that different from one another. Grimacing a little, just out of the anxiety of inexperience, Charles slipped two fingers inside the gash and felt around its innards, looking for something throbbing and alive. He found it, small and slippery, nestled between the rapidly swelling lungs. Its heart, beating madly. Charles watched it for a moment, transfixed in how he had managed to locate such an important part of the little creature’s whole being with just his hands. If he tried, if he had a sharp enough tool, he could do that with a frog, or with a cat –or with a person, like his surgeon father often did. Scramble their insides, see what’s wrong, what needed fixing. Having people owe their lives to him.
Slowly, its heart began to quieten down, and its wiggling stopped. Charles frowned. Whether it had been because of the blood loss or because of the stress, the guinea pig was just a dead thing now. He wished he could know which one had done it in.
He looked up at the clock on the wall once again. Two minutes before the bell rang. Charles dropped the limp little furry body back in its cage, left the sticky scissors on the table, and rushed to the bathroom to wash the blood off his hands, after making sure he wasn’t trailing any out the classroom. He knew he would get in trouble if someone found out, and he couldn’t trust any of his classmates not to rat him out.
Miss Costello stopped writing on the blackboard, and sighed. She should have expected this question eventually, but she was woefully unprepared to properly answer it. Besides, weren’t her students old enough to know the basics of death already, through some pet or some relative? Haven’t they been taught such matters by their own parents by now? She turned around, chalk in hand, to look at the boy that had spoken. Shiny blue eyes stared back at her, along with that mischievous smile that, to be perfectly honest, made the teacher feel more than a little uneasy. You never knew what little Charles Lee Ray was thinking about –but it rarely seemed like it was purely wholesome thoughts.
“Dead means...” she replied, and she took a deep breath. “It’s what happens to something when it is no longer alive.”
Charles shrugged. “So what does alive mean? ... Apart from not dead.”
“Well... Plants are alive. Animals are alive. Me, and all of us, here, are alive—” She immediately regretted saying that. That was an open invitation for these children to fear the possibility of death. More questions, to which she wouldn’t have the appropriate answers to. “That means that we breathe, we think, we... We are here.”
“So dead just means ‘not here’?” he asked with a small frown.
“Dead means...”
Miss Costello could have simply refused to answer, right? And then just continued teaching her class. But then the boy would search for answers somewhere else, and maybe just traumatize himself with the lies of the older students. No, it was better to be honest.
“Dead... It means you stop existing,” she answered.
“But is the body still there?”
“It’s there, but it doesn’t have thoughts, or feelings... That is what it means, to be dead,” she said, still unsure that her explanation was quite enough. “It’s sort of like... Like not thinking anymore.”
“My mom once said that my granddad’s soul is in heaven,” he insisted, as he noticed she was trying to wrap up the subject and get him out of her hair. “She told me souls live forever, but we can’t see or smell or touch them. That they’re the part of us that feel, and that make us who we are.”
Now they were on the subject of souls? Miss Costello forced a smile. One thing always lead to another with him, to more questions. He was at that age, after all. It shouldn’t come as a surprise.
“When you die, then, your soul goes to heaven?” Charles asked.
“Yes, some people believe so.”
“What do you believe?”
Miss Costello was an atheist, despite her Catholic upbringing, and did not believe in such things anymore. But Charles’ family seemed to believe in it, and therefore she couldn’t really burst their bubble.
“I think souls are a part of people, and when they die, their soul might as well leave their body and go somewhere else."
Miss Costello glanced around the classroom to see what the general reaction was. The other children were awfully quiet during this interrogation. They exchanged a few looks, but they said nothing, barely seemed to breathe. She would have expected some questions from them, but they were all too engrossed in the back and forth between the two of them, carefully listening to all these difficult answers. Besides, they all knew Charles did not like to be interrupted.
The truth was, Charles did already have an inkling of knowledge regarding death. He knew its definition, for instance, from the dictionary he kept in his bookshelf. He knew his mother cried when her father died. He knew most people were scared of it, scared enough to avoid even talking about it, like it was a dirty word. And he knew that people became uncomfortable when he mentioned it or asked questions about it to strangers at the grocery store. That was the reason he had asked his teacher about it in the first place. To see her uncomfortable. To see her squirm.
The bell rang, and finally the children squealed and stomped off their desks and got out of the classroom, behaving like kids again. Charles, however, took his sweet time picking up his stuff, to Miss Costello’s dismay. She picked up her own things, dreading having to continue answering more existential questions. But really, what was it about this boy that unsettled her? Was it how sharp he was? How he watched everything so carefully, as if understanding something she couldn’t even begin to fathom? Or was it just that he could be rather quiet, in a classroom filled with more boisterous types? Not that Charles was the best behaved boy of the bunch, of course, she thought as she dusted her hands. He wasn’t particularly difficult, but he definitely wasn’t the precious ray of sunshine his parents seemed to think he was. The other teachers adored him and his truthfully rarely precedented level of interest in his classes, in absorbing as much information as he could. He was a good student, no doubt about it. But he threw tantrums about the silliest things, screamed when asked to share his toys, and he was, in some respects, even more bratty and childish than the rest of his classmates. Though, again, none of these things were particularly strange. So what was it about him that unsettled her so much?
“Have a good day, Miss Costello,” Charles said, adjusting his backpack straps over his shoulders, flashing her another one of his knowing smiles.
She smiled back, and hoped her trepidation wasn’t too evident. “Have a good day, Charles.”
