Chapter 6
“Make it quick!”
Bertha hopped out of the car while it was still heaving to “Park”.
As she sat down on the excessively cold toilet seat she wondered how, if circumstances had been different and she hadn’t known George very well, he driving her out to the middle of nowhere so urgently would seem far more suspicious.
George jerked his neck impatiently at her as she walked back to the car.
A black sedan had pulled up beside them, ruffling up dust flurries.
The area near the side of the road began to look more unruly, and before they knew it they were at the margins.
It still felt like early morning because of the coldness of the day. A loon cooed in the distance, synchronizing with the squeaking wooden sign which somehow managed to look more decrepit than it had the day before.
Bertha shuddered with excitement, eager to run off into some misadventure.
But, much to George’s dismay, it seemed to take him forever to find the rock city. He kept ending up at the four cabins, too sharp minded to get lost.
“Why don’t you let me try?” Bertha shrugged, as they sat on logs outside taking a break after walking strenuously in circles.
George just gave her a look.
“I don’t want you to get us lost!”
“Well wasn’t that how you found it in the first place?” Bertha shrugged. “Maybe it’s one of those places you can only find if you’re lost. And I’m very good at getting lost and stumbling upon things by accident.”
“Hmm…” He continued to look skeptical, but Bertha could tell that he was going to give in soon. “Fine.” He shrugged.
And sure enough they found themselves back at the two forked path.
A nearby squirrel nibbled at his acorn defensively.
Kitty popped her head up, ever alert and bounded out of Bertha’s bag before she could object to the little enraged huntress.
“Kitty!” She yelled in futility. “Ugh come back…”
Bertha sat down on a nearby log. “Well maybe we should just give up then I don’t even know what we’re supposed to be looking for. I’m sure there are a ton of boulders in here…”
Kitty came bounding back, alert, and stood in front of Bertha looking vaguely guilty. Upon noticing her owner’s disapproval, she brushed up against George’s leg.
“No trust me we’re almost there.” He awkwardly placed flailing Kitty back in Bertha’s purse.
As they walked around the stony alleys Bertha began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here. I think we should leave…” Her eyes became panicked like a horse about to throw its rider. She was more claustrophobic than George. “We need to get out of here.” She grabbed his hand urgently. “The sun is higher in the sky, who knows how dark it’ll be when we get back…”
“No, just trust me…”
They stepped into the grove.
For a few moments, Bertha just stood in silence.
Kitty poked her head out of the top of Bertha’s purse and began to hiss, detecting the black magic.
“Wait…that can’t be right.” Bertha peered closer at the wall. “Do you see that too?”
George wasn’t exactly sure what to say; he was still terrified of her possible reactions.
She fell to one knee, making the leaves around her shudder.
Kitty brayed even more loudly, and hissed at the wall, emphatically.
“It’s ok.” George put his hands on her shoulders.
“So there is someone who is out there better for you… and… and I am damned. So all those feelings of gracelessness… those were actually real…”
“It’s ok it’s ok.” George sat on a nearby rock and peered into her eyes. “Those things on the wall… I think that we can change them.”
She steadied herself, and sat on a rock jutting out of the center of the grove. “I was right. There is a better person for you out there. But this isn’t fair… I didn’t formally sell my soul to the devil…that I can remember, anyway. Granted, I do tend to forget these things.”
“Hey…” George looked more closely at her. “At least you’re better off than the author.”
Bertha brushed off her knee and sat down next to her. “Wait… what do you mean the author?”
“These notes about us… it’s clear that we’re some predestined fiction. And these are just the notes.”
“But what about the devil? I mean granted that the author is God.”
“Oh.” George’s eyes grew dark. “Well I’m not sure about that.”
Actually he was sure.
The wind whipped through all the stones, whistling, making empty box lonely sounds.
She was hunched monstrously on the stone, the sound of her crying warping her voice.
He kneeled down and grabbed her hand.
“Let’s make a heaven of this hell. Bertha…. will you marry me?”
She sat there stunned. “Yes.” Flew out automatically and her eyes began to get teary. “Even if it’s selfish of me… yes…”
“How is that selfish? I want to be with you too! Come on, let’s get out of here…”
“You do realize…” Bertha began to pant as she put on her seatbelt. “You’re potentially tearing a hole in the fabric of reality to marry me.”
He grabbed her hand and shook it a bit. “Well who else is going to put up with your shenanigans?”
She grinned back, but her face fell when she realized who Mr. Plot was.
“Wait… George.” She gripped his hand harder. “I don’t think we can go back.”
“Hmmm…” he frowned. “Well where are we supposed to go?”
The sun began to set, making the relative silence of the Margins all the more creepy.
Bertha’s stomach rumbled obnoxiously.
“Well I guess we can go somewhere to eat, and then maybe figure out things from there.”
The sun began to pinken everything. Eventually they pulled over and hopped to the back part of the truck. Food could wait; the world was going to end.
The wind hit the bus, creaking hollow empty world outside them, but not between them. Can the empty things hold full things and still be empty?
They lay on each other, panting and hungrier than before, yet reluctant to move from away from the warmth of each other’s forms, or put their clothes back on.
(Look how defiant we are!)
(Keep your leaves away from us you cruddy Victorians.)
The sun had sunken in, leaving the brash lady bar lights.
George’s snow skin turned blue and then red as he shifted his pants on.
Despite the odd hour the diner was surprisingly crowded. A couple of pre-teens, excited to be out this late, spent their time flirting with a group of boys the same age, who didn’t seem to notice their silly banded hand waves and constant texting.
Giggling, gaggling, obsessed.
(Wearing more make up than I own.)
(Then again I did spend most of my pre-teen years with my nose in a book, and spent more time running away from boys than I did chasing after them.)
At another booth a middle aged couple finished up their bowls of soup, and made way for an outrageous platter of midnight breakfast.
The waitress serving them had raccoon eye-mascara, skin that was too tan, and sneakers that were too white. They squeaked viciously as her cankles picked up speed.
A heavily bearded trucker, who looked as though he could hide a bird in his beard, was discussing politics with the cook who was alternately flipping eggs and playing devil’s advocate.
But as soon as they opened the door, it all stopped.
In one, slow prolonged single swoop, every head turned, as if their necks had all been cued to swivel at the same time.
“So…” George tried to break the silence, assuming that they were all silent because someo
ne had seen them in a car.
But when they remained silent for a full one minute, necks craned in the same position, some unnaturally so, Bertha began to back up slowly.
(They know we are different.)
Bertha’s eyes: blue with a yellow ring. Fire in water is witchcraft.
(Let’s get the fuck out of here.)
George, irises bigger bluish green: the world.
It seemed to take forever for them to back up, slowly, slowly, slowly…
Bertha squealed in terror when her back hit the bar on the door.
And out they went, half running half walking, hungry, into the blessed night air.
“Shit, where are my keys…” George began to frantically search his pockets.
They waited for a few moments in silence.
Bertha had no desire to look at the diner again but reason told her that she should keep a lookout.
“Holy…oohh.” Bertha couldn’t even talk. Their heads had moved again.
But their bodies hadn’t.
One of the preteen girls had her head turned exorcist style. She could almost see the blood move through her veins which had uprooted themselves from their niches. Her eyes were bulging unnaturally big jellyfish…
“George, don’t look up…” Bertha finally said.
Then the savior jingling of keys.
They left marks on the pavement when they rolled out.
Neither of them could think of anything comforting to say, so they just drove and drove.
“Where do we go?” Bertha began to panic and breathe heavily.
“Well… you’re going to kill me for saying this but…”
“What?”
“Oh no. Oh no no no, please no. I mean it’s fine to go there during the day but weird stuff happens there at night. I really don’t want to go to the Margins right now.”
“Well where do you suggest we go exactly… we can’t go back to town, especially not after that…”
“How are we going to get food…”Bertha stroked Kitty, who was nuzzling her urgently.
“A valid concern.” George continued to drive in the same direction, but as soon as they came to a light they turned south.
“North… what’s north?”
“We’re going south lovely. We’re going to Uncle Frank’s.”
“I thought Uncle Frank died.”
“He did.” George looked off distantly. “But I can still get in the house.”
“Hmm…” Bertha looked out into nothing. It was so dark that even after putting on his brights it looked as though they were driving into ink.
George turned the radio on as the silence began to itch his insides.
Despite being the house of a deceased uncle, the old cabin was slightly comforting.
“God, it’s cold in here…” George rubbed his hands, and attempted to switch the lights on, but to no avail.
“We could just sleep in the car…”
“No…” George let his eyes adjust to the dark. “It’s safer in here. And besides we can still start a fire.”
In the meantime, Bertha searched around blindly in musty rooms for blankets and came back with the covers from and pillows from the beds, eager to get out of each room quickly with an odd feeling that something was watching her.
“That ought to do it.” The fire was crackling and dancing seductively upward.
(Nothing is more beautiful than fire.)
Bertha looked at the way her diamond glittered in the firelight.
(It’s such a shame that everyone else is a zombie I wanted them all to see my ring.)
“What are you doing silly girl?” George rested his head on her shoulder.
“Nothing.” She kissed him on the cheek, and then turned his head to face hers. “I’m not sure if I told you… but I super love you.”
“I super love you too.”
“Oooo I very much want to build a fort right now. Eeee!”
“Strange girl.” He frowned, but he began to arrange the covers and pillows. “Oo actually I could build a fort to keep me safe from you.”
She gave him a look.
“Grrrr….” She replied, and tackled him. “No, see now you can never, ever escape. I steal you.” She smiled curtly. “See, I win.”
“What are you writing about?” A hipster peered over at me. He had pretty, dark brown eyes. Unfortunately with the glasses he translated into a bit of a monkey in a sweater.
(Hmm…I’m writing a novel in Starbucks. Does that make me a hipster by default?)
(Damnit.)
(Wait no, I’m not a Democrat, nor do I own anything by American Apparel. I should be ok.)
“Nothing.” I wasn’t particularly interested in divulging my story.
I also wasn’t particularly excited to admit that, despite having the appearance of being productive I hadn’t actually written anything yet, just scribbled up four different intros and then crossed them out of my notebook which looked deceivingly like a printed book with its hard cover.
(Maybe I can start with names. Names are easy enough.)
(Caroline?)
(No, reminds me of the roses song.)
“What are you writing about?” I replied in return. He seemed to want me to ask him.
“Oh, a bunch of different things.” He sighed, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and inched his mac a bit closer to him.
(Don’t worry I’m not going to steal your precious story.)
“Mostly I’m going to talk about the downtrodden inner-city kids.”
(Of course you are.)
“But I’m also studying the concept of “bling” and how it acts as a mockery of legitimately gotten “proper” money and old power institutions by creating new forms of power, new monarchy.”
“That’s really interesting. So I take it you’re sociology major too?”
He gave her an odd look. “You’re sociology major?” he looked me up and down.
That day I happened to be wearing a nice, bright blue corduroy skirt with black patterned tights, a scarf, and a black scarf. “Yes.” I smiled. “Surprising as that is.”
(Excuse me for not looking like I just rolled out of a homeless center ironically.)
(What the devil am I going to write about?)
(Why is my narration alternately in the voice of a 40 year old British man?)
(Both valid concerns.)
“So what do you normally write about?” He asked.
Another girl sitting at his table looked scornfully at me.
(Don’t worry I don’t want Glasses, Ms. Short hair.)
(Go stare defensively into your espresso I’m not in the mood for a staring contest right now.)
“Just stories for the moment. I’m under the great delusion that I’m going to write a novel.”
“Aren’t we all?” he shrugged.
(Eh, maybe hipsters aren’t that bad.)
“Oh.” And suddenly it hit me. “I have an idea…”
He nodded his head awkwardly, until I looked back up from my hunched stroke of genius look, realizing that he expected me to elaborate.
“I think I’m going to write a love triangle where the other person is a girl and not a guy. Like Les Miserable. And then she dies. That seems to do the trick. It’s going to be about the ultimate failure and impracticality of true love.”
“That sounds like a downer.”
“Indeed. Well, if you think about it nothing super happy is really very good. Depressing things win awards. I’ll start with your basic love story. Bertha and George, but then George meets another girl and Bertha is left to some dire fate.”
But when I looked back, the hipster and his friends had magically disappeared.
(Can all of them do that?)
The table was still tottering a bit.
I shrugged and tried to start at the beginning again…
But I couldn’t bear to start writing o
n one nice, clean blank page, and then marring it with a cross out, so I started to jot my notes in the margin.
(Stupid dirty washcloth mind always needing to be rung out.)
Phone bzzzer.
(Insistent little demon, won’t you ever let me be?)
Hey you can come back to the room now.
(Thank goodness. I’m so tired of writing in public; it’s so tedious talking about things you haven’t written yet.)
On the way back through campus, she came across a group of drunken girls.
(Already, what time is it?)
She could hear them before she could see them though.
“Omg, omg no she is such a bitch… omg we need more pictures I look fat in this one!”
Teetering and tottering and giggling.
Garish tans.
Geese on stilts.
Squawkers.
They gave me a look, looked at one another, and started to whisper.
(Why do you want to push down all of the things that are blooming up?)
“Is that…?”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s her.”
“Oh my god, she does look crazy.”
I am legend.
Is it horrible that I want to think that they are talking about me?
You’re not supposed to like that sort of attention.
Right?
Everyone has to start somewhere.
But I have bigger things to contend with than tittering chimpanzees.
The smell of passing coffee caught my struck heart.
(I want.)
(oh…)
(Awkward ahhh no awkward awkward, look down. No don’t look down too dramatically, no look away…)
It wasn’t him.
Sigh.
(Thank goodness…)
(Right?)
(Why is it that the fallen always have a habit of finding one another?)
(But I should save them from that. Good for them.)
(After all dating me is a bit like carrying the ring; most of the good ones turn half-mad and evil.) (If in fact we exist in a multi-verse, there’s probably versions of us who have dated, married, killed, or never known each other anyway, so it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference which verse it happens in.)
By the time she got back her roommate had already fallen asleep with the lights still on and a book in her hand.
(I wish I was able to do that.)
But despite being tired, I could only twist and turn in bed, constantly getting up to adjust my back so I could potentially be comfortable, and listening to a mix of conversations that wafted up from the vent above my bed combined and the trailing drunken discourse of people near one of the main gates.
(Bubble girl.)
But for once I actually recognized a voice. It was one of my exs, pretending to be tough and probably lighting a cigarette in front of this skinny girl who had been following him about for some time.
(Get together already!)
(Don’t you hate when you see two people who match and you don’t have the authority to provide the circumstances for them to do so?)
(Of course, I have been wrong in the past… but I’m pretty sure about this one.)
The older I get the more and more I notice people who just match. They don’t necessarily have to look alike but sometimes they do. They talk similarly, or answer questions in similar manners.
But at the moment he was with a different girl, who, quite frankly, was too pretty for him, and all wrong…
(Do I have to come down and fix everything myself?)
(Of course everything is supposed to happen for a reason, but no one ever said that it was necessarily a good one.)
(Maybe the author is just getting sloppy.)
I turned a bit, lifting my arm up around my pillow, seeing if the elevation helped a bit.
(I really need to work on my posture.)
(Eh… I guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead.)
As I took out my notebook, the morning birds started to chirp.
Morning birds are the worst, when you can’t sleep.
(They’re mocking me in a sing-song manner.)
(Them and that damn radiator hissing all the time.)
(Well, you know what. In the universe I’m about to write all the birds went extinct because they were all eaten by symbolically fictitious cats, and radiators were never even invented.)
(So there!)
(You know something is wrong with you when you have the desire to avenge yourself on the radiator that keeps you up at night.)
(Although I do like dogs better, why are all these iconic movies associated with cats?)
(All of my encounters with cats have been far less epic in comparison.)
(No, no I’ll use the cat for now.)
(And I’ll match all the people I want to together, and explain the tragedy of being with someone who you don’t match.)
(The concept of fate is a bitch.)
By the time I had finished scribbling notes and some of the hastily done preliminary pages it was light out and the garbage-men where courteously shouting in Spanish and clanking everything.
(How did I end up making myself care so much about something that technically doesn’t exist?)
(If the world doesn’t make sense, I’ll make one that does.)
(I am the mad scientist with no limits.)
(Mmm I want Dunkin doughnuts for…)
George and Bertha woke up tangled and thankful.
“Hey George?”
He turned over. “Hmmm?”
“Shouldn’t we be dead.”
“Mhm.” He groaned, only half listening.
“I thought so.” Bertha sat up. “I just have the strangest feeling that everything is going to go horribly wrong.”
“Mmm?” George was still buried under the covers, reluctant to move. “No, I’ll cuddle later. Sleep now.”
“Wait, do you smell that? It smells like something is burning.” She got up despite her reluctance to move from the warm buffer of blankets into the cold, dusty house.
By day the house was far less creepy. It still had a quality of old cabin to it, that was for sure, but not haunted old cabin, just stale house.
The fire had since burned down to ashes, and it didn’t appear to have moved from the fire place.
Yawning, she opened the door to acres and acres of…
Nothing.
It looked like some backdrop for one of Salvador Dali’s warped clocks.
A few burnt trees, still smoking, looked like skinny, hunted and depraved skeletons on the vast hills of rock and ashes. The only sign of life was the resilient tiny purple flowers of fireweed emerging from some of the cracks.
It looked like Tim Burton purgatory, but if you squinted hard enough…
(This looks oddly a lot like my nirvana, with the purple flowers, just not constructed yet.)
The sun, fresh in the sky, painted everything pink tinged.
“George come here for a second…”
“Fine.” He snarled, and stumbled over zombie-like. “Huh…” the image struck him momentarily silent. He scratched his tussle of unruly curls. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Goodness I’m hungry. There’s a Dunkin doughnuts down the way do you want to try our luck with that…”
“Hmm…” Something brushed against her leg.
Kitty had a dead bird in her mouth. How she managed to look so cute and innocent with a bird who had broken its neck and dripped blood on the porch was beyond Bertha.
“Kitty don’t eat that.”
Kitty tilted her head, and pranced off with her prize, well aware that Bertha would not be able to pry it from her iron like jaw grip.
“George…” Bertha felt quicksand hollow out the bottom of her stomach. “What do you think happened to our families?”
“I don’t know…” George suddenly looked nervous too. “Hmmm… let’s wo
rk on getting food first. I know those people in the diner were terrifying…”
Bertha shuddered.
“To say the least… but they didn’t come after us. And facing one shouldn’t be too bad besides…” He disappeared with that trailing thought.
The thought of anything bad happening to her family was almost more than she could bear, and she began to blame herself ahead of time.
“Why didn’t I check on them…?” She petted Kitty, who was contentedly licking the blood off her tiny chin.
Suddenly Bertha heard what sounded like a loading shotgun.
“…we have protection now.” George finally finished that thought.
“You wouldn’t use that, would you?” Bertha looked at him, confused.
“Only to scare them off if they approach.” George explained, seemingly feeling at odds holding the gun. “I don’t like it either, but if something ever happened to you I couldn’t forgive myself.”
“I’ll try and find something too.”
Bertha searched through old drawers, crawling with moths and flannels.
(And he didn’t even die that long ago.)
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately because Bertha had no idea how to use a gun, she only found what looked like some sort of hunting dagger. The handle was well-worn and craved into what looked like a tiger.
(If no one’s putting any symbolism in this story, why is it still showing up?)
She didn’t plan on using it at all, but having it sheathed at her belt made her feel a lot better. And also like a badass.
“To Dunkin Doughnuts?” Bertha asked.
He cocked his gun. “Let’s do this.”
After which they proceeded to laugh, almost wickedly.
“Who knew the end of the world was going to be so much fun?” Bertha’s finger traced the pattern on the handle. “Wait do you have money?”
George gave her a look. “Darling, all of this is a fiction, you might as well pay with monopoly money; none of this is backed by anything.”
Bertha, very taken with the idea of fake money and feeling guilty about just stealing something even if the person they were stealing from was essentially blind in some hypnotic stupor, took a piece of paper along, and began to draw the first new dollar.
She started drawing a cat’s eye, but only just finished it by the time they got there.
So there it was the symbol of a new nation, taken from an old one and an even older one: an eye.
“George.” She turned his head as they parked. “Did I ever tell you, you have the best eyes?”
“Not now.” George got out of the car, spastically, urgent to get his bagel and run.
The man at the counter didn’t see them at first; he just continued to put some croissants up on the shelf.
But the second he caught them out of the corner of his eye, he froze.
Bertha’s first reaction was to back out again.
“It’s ok.” George grabbed her hand, which was shaking too.
They made their way slowly up to the counter, where the man peered at them as if he were some form of robot.
But, sure enough, he didn’t move.
Bertha, anxious for coffee, decided to blatantly ask “Can I have number 8 please with black coffee” out of habit.
He didn’t move, but tilted his head eerily.
“I’ll take it black.” Bertha said, pseudo-impatiently.
His stare was particularly unnerving.
“Here give me the gun.” Bertha took it, and held it up to his face. “Now get us some doughnuts and a coffee for me.”
George obeyed reluctantly, afraid that any minute the employees head would snap around, but he or it remained focused on the gun perhaps out of some eternal instinct.
Still shaken up, they ran out, never fully looking back.
Unthinkingly they backed up, not noticing the obstruction, until their car reeled upward and suffered the damage.
Screeching metal…
“What the hell was that?”
Neither of them moved, frozen in place.
Bertha noticed the garbage can rolling off lopsided with a dent in it, and settling to a halt.
Behind the cash register the man began to move again, but didn’t seem to notice them at all. It was as if he were a holograph on a loop putting the croissants back up again.
“It was just that.” Bertha decided, and they pulled away neglecting to notice the woman lying on the ground where their car had been.
A livid red halo surrounded her cracked neck and awkwardly crushed and twisted features. Reconstructed, she had green eyes, a pretty nose, and a nice laugh. She had been coming into work to help take the shift of the man putting away the croissants. He had simply gotten a “creepy feeling” but unable to explain it simply said that he needed her to come in to make up one of her days.
She reluctantly agreed and drove over in a green Volvo where she suddenly caught sight of Bertha and George and froze, as they backed over her.
In the meantime, Bertha and George were entirely unaware that they had hit someone, and the evidence came off in the misty rain, leaving scarlet lines in the road of a newly lawless land, as they sang a Journey song to make up for the lost radio.
And it just so happened…
… that girl…
… may have possibly…
… wait, let me check on that…
… may have been..
… George’s soul-mate.
“I’m tired of singing” Bertha decided. “And we should probably ditch this car soon. Whatever we hit, it’s making the car slower. Don’t you think?”