Emergence

M.W. Lockwood

Life

Today I make tea at ten a.m. like I always do, whether the sun is shining or not. Today, I pull the bedcovers down to reveal my sleeping husband. He is here today, and he is alone. I do not have to kill him.

We kiss violently and awkwardly, our foreheads slamming together for a brief instant, lips grazing a nose or a cheek. We are alive and we are in love.

I can hear the kids hopping and tumbling down the stairs from their rooms. A quick head count reveals that one is missing. I head upstairs, but my youngest child, Raya, is gone. Panic zaps through me as I return to the kitchen, the rest of the family impatiently waiting at the table. 

It’s pancakes for Julian, the oldest, and strawberries and eggs for Mia, the middle child. I choose a block of cheese for myself, which my husband burns on the stove. An accident. He settles for a fried salad.

After breakfast, the food is scraped back into the refrigerator for tomorrow. Julian and Mia head upstairs while my husband and I hurry to the car.

We drive past a couple trees and benches in silence. Out the passenger window, I see a dog peeing on a fire hydrant.

“Can we keep him?” I ask my husband.

The dog looks like he’s a golden lab. I name him Spot and he jumps into the backseat with little coaxing. My husband says nothing.

Not long after, we find Raya. She is hanging out with some people I don’t know. Girls wearing crisp shirts, with long, slim legs and updos. Raya looks out of place beside them. Her clothes are a bit too wrinkled to be crisp, her updo is messy. She looks frightened, as if they will find out at any moment that she is not one of them.

There is one man, barefoot and shirtless. A flush creeps up my neck and sets my cheeks aflame.

“I’m Beau,” he says, and smiles. “These are my daughters, Stacey and Lacey.”

The girls are both blonde like their father. I can tell that Raya has already become best friends with them, whether they know it or not. For a long moment, nobody speaks, only looks at each other from under a mantle of tension. 

Beau gives me a look as if he knows the thoughts in my head. I can hardly breathe.

“It looks like you found our dog,” he says, and Spot jumps out and licks his face.

We drag Raya to the car and say goodbye to Beau, Stacey, and Lacey. Once we’re home, Raya marches up to her room and scowls. Julian and Mia are asleep.

The raised voice of my husband carries to me as I start to make lunch, and a shriller sound—the angst of Raya—rises up above him. I can tell by the tones in their voices that my husband has grounded Raya.

At that moment, the doorbell rings.

On the other side of the wood stands Beau, with his daughters in tow. Spot is running in circles on the lawn.

There is something about Beau that is different than the rest of us; dangerous, even. I could slam the door in his face and make lunch for my family. We would never have to see each other again.

I could make tea the next morning, like always. With that thought, I open the door wider.

“Come in,” I say, and let them pass. Raya has come downstairs. Her eyes are red and puffy, and she has been crying. Raya, Stacey, and Lacey squeal when they see each other. They run outside to play with Spot, despite my daughter being grounded. I secretly wish my daughter will be brave enough to run away again.

I’m left alone with Beau. He doesn’t even need to speak; I already know what he is thinking. I lead him to the bedroom. We lay under the covers and graze lips. I am fully clothed, but Beau is shirtless, like before. I place my hand on his bare chest and my husband comes in with a knife.

Tonight, he kills me, but tomorrow, I will wake up at ten a.m. like always, to make tea.

#

Next Life

The next morning, I wake and make tea at ten a.m. I am alone in this house on this morning. I am drinking my tea in the living room when the doorbell echoes through the dark. 

My legs feel stiff when I rise to answer the door. My throat is constricted and fuzzy, and I can hardly swallow my tea. I wish only to go back to bed and dream this nightmare from existence.

On the other side of the door, a familiar face smiles at me, though I do not know how I remember him. He is blonde and shirtless and barefoot, and I invite him inside. We get married on the spot and have twin daughters, Stacey and Lacey, who are already half grown. Stacey brings a dog home from a friend at school, a golden lab named Goldie. 

Somehow, the scenario is familiar. Somehow, I know I’ve done this a million times, in a million different ways. 

I close my eyes. My brain is electricity, my heart a perfect siphon. I feel blood crackling through my veins, feel thoughts swooping and diving behind my eyes. I touch my wrist, but my skin is cold and there is no pulse.

A storm roars in, and Goldie hides under the sofa. A drop of rain splatters on my shoulder, then another. My husband goes out to fix the roof but he doesn’t come back. I open the door and see his broken corpse crumpled over the shrubbery. I place my fingertips on his neck, but his skin feels no different than mine.

#

Last Life

The next time I wake, it is dark outside and I think in whispers. I have never woken at this time before, and I feel disoriented. I see the bodies of my loved ones scattered around me: my husband, dark-haired Julian, Mia covered in freckles, Raya with her blue eyes open to the ceiling.

I lurch to my feet and stagger to the kitchen; my body feels stiff, like every part of me has gone numb. 

In the kitchen, food of all kinds is strewn across the counter, but none of it looks appetizing. I try to turn on the stove to do the one thing I know to comfort me, but it doesn’t respond. The teapot is hollow, the lid glued on tight. Frightened, I continue to wander. 

The chairs are uncomfortable, the bed is stiff. Everything is cold. The others lay in heaps around me; now I see a golden dog on its side, legs sticking straight out, and over to one side, my Other daughters, blond and smiling, limbs intertwined and faces to the floor. Something is missing, though I cannot decipher the buzzing in my mind to put the pieces together. I start to believe for certain that the others will never wake.

Sinking. I’m sinking. The floor is as cold as the rest of the house, as cold as the unstaring eyes of my family strewn before me, as cold as myself.

My legs don’t bend very well. Already I am going stiff, like the others. I settle for a half-crouch, and lay back on the floor, as if I’m about to do a sit up. The ceiling is high and hidden in the shadows. I realize for the first time that I do not know this house.

Run! my mind screams, and I force myself to rise, though it would be easier to succumb to the stiffness.

Holding my head, I stumble to the door and push it open. The outside air is just as stifling. Run! Run! Run! 

I’m sent reeling. Once on the ground, I see what tripped me: a shirtless man with blonde hair laying halfway in the shrubbery. His face is frozen by the same smile shared by the others.

Suddenly, his smile disappears and his lips part to release a soft shhhhhh. I leap vertically and find myself on my feet once again, preparing to run.

Hard fingers wrap around my ankle and bring me down sharply, but there is no pain when I fall. I want to retch, but all I feel is emptiness inside of me. It feels as if I don’t even have a stomach. 

I fight against his grip as he tries to bring me down to the ground with him. “Stop,” he pleaded. “If they see you—”

I wrench myself from his grip and take off running across the lawn, past the benches, past the fire hydrant. I don’t see the cliff until it’s too late, and then I am treading air as I plummet. 

I hit the bottom on my stomach and bounce once before coming to a stop. Even though I hit the ground hard, I feel no pain. Soft threads surround me; I am floating on a sea of them, it seems. The sea is pink, my favorite color. And Raya’s.

I raise myself to my feet and cry out in shock. 

I hear a scrabbling sound somewhere above me, but I pay it no mind. Instead I am fixated on a huge looming structure, larger than twenty of my houses put together, standing before me. It is unmistakably a bed. A giant bed. And beside it, a giant end table. The sea I am standing on must be a carpet, I realize.

My brain cannot process what I’m seeing. I sink to my knees and curl up as much as possible. I focus on breathing.

 “Stay quiet!” Beau whispers. He is beside me now, in this vast sea of pink.

I rise to my feet, not knowing what I will do or where I will go, only knowing that staying quiet is the last thing I can do with my head buzzing. Beau hisses and leaps after me. A game of cat and mouse ensues, but we are not playing.

“Stop!” Beau gasps.

I do not stop, and neither does Beau. We run around in circles, sometimes tumbling, kicking and clawing at each other, arguing in harsh whispers.

A form in the bed sits up slowly, and we find ourselves looking into the giant sleepy face of a girl who reminds me of Raya.

She squeals, loud. Beau releases his grip on my arm, and I fall and scramble backwards. Instead of fear, I see happiness on her face, and I suddenly feel bashful.

“I knew it!” she screams.

She leaps from the bed as the door crashes open. A man stands on the other side of the door. 

“For God’s sake, Adley, it’s three in the morning!”

He crosses the room in three quick strides. Adley turns to face him, shielding us with her body. 

“What are you hiding?” he asks, trying to peer behind her.

“Nothing. I was just playing.”

“Playing? At three in the morning? Were you trying to wake me up? Did you want to make me angry?”

“I’m… I’m sorry, I’ll go back to bed.”

The girl makes no intention to go back to bed, but remains in the place between us and the man.

I can feel anger emanating from the man, and something else. Something sour. 

Adley inches towards the bed, and Beau and I scoot further into the shadows, but too late, the man sees me. 

“Oh my God,” he says. His hands fly up to his chest.

As he comes toward me, I melt into the shadows.

He snatches up Beau. He must not have seen me, after all. Beau struggles in his grasp, kicking and scratching, but the man hardly seems to notice. 

The man’s fingers are huge. His skin is smooth, but I can see lines crisscrossing like highways. His nails are neat, trimmed. Despite my fear, I’m fascinated by the whorls on his skin. I’ve never seen fingerprints before.

The giant turns Beau around and tightens his grip. “What the fuck,” he says.

The girl looks worried, which doesn’t make me feel any better. I fight to slow my breathing. My heart is a roar in my ears.

The man steps through the doorway, Beau struggling weakly in his fist.

“No!” Adley shrieks. “Give him back!”

The man crosses the room in two strides and lurches toward her. Adley shrinks into the covers.

She is crying now. 

The man doesn’t seem to notice or care how much he has frightened her. His eyes are gleaming with rage; I wonder if he even sees her at all.

She whimpers.

“Your mother should have never given you this set,” he says with venom. Then adds, “Who knows what kind of voodoo shit she’s thought up.”

Then he’s leaving: one step, then two, and I am holding my breath and my heart is caged. Before the third step he turns, and looks towards the house. My miniature home. 

 One minute it’s standing and the next it’s in splinters. I see the dog, Spot/Goldie go flying, hitting the wall and leaving a mark of golden paint. He stomps something into the carpet and I hear a loud crack.

He turns to leave, but before he closes the door, I see a glimpse of Raya’s face, frozen in a smile. Her body is not with her head; her chin is nestled in the crook of the elbow of a severed arm. She looks so small and fragile and lifeless and I want to scream but I can’t.

When the door closes, the girl, Adley, melts into a mess of sobs on the bed. Where is her mother? I wonder. As if in answer, I hear a woman’s garbled yell on speaker phone, and the man’s voice raised in fury.

“I’m sorry, this is all my fault,” Adley whispers to me. I clamber to her side, wipe her tears like I imagine her mother should, except my hand is plastic and not soft and warm. 

“No,” I say. “None of this is your fault.”

At first I’m not sure if she can understand me, but then she holds me tighter and sobs harder, but quietly so the man can’t hear.

I turn my face to my family home, where my sleeping, broken children lay beside Goldie and the fair-haired twins, and my husband, who I do not love. They lay in pieces, smiles on their faces, like they have never been alive at all. I hope Raya doesn’t feel pain. I hope she is blissfully unaware that her body is in pieces in a sobbing girl’s bedroom on a stained carpet. 

I am the only one who sees this girl, Adley, weep. I am the only one who can wipe away her tears and hold her hand. I am the only one left to stay strong for her and for Raya, my beautiful broken children. 

I am only a doll. 

But perhaps I can still be a mother.

Morgan Lockwood is the co-managing editor of Nocturne Magazine. She is obsessed with Halloween, chocolate, and goats.