Breadcrumb #28

BOB RAYMONDA

Pavlima sits hunched over a dimly lit desk and revels in her work. She’s surrounded by giant spools of fabric throughout her small workspace. Each spool a different color representing another facet of the organization that contracted her. Adjacent to her desk is a wireframe dressing dummy that she adjusts after measuring her clientele, rusty from decades of use. Wrapped around it are thick swaths of formless yellow fabric. Eventually these will transform into custom-fitted cloaks for the paramilitary security agency that governs the upper district, but not yet, for she is only getting started.

     She agonizes over one of the patches that will emblazon its breast and shoulders — a lone wolf standing underneath a starry sky, looking upon a thin crescent moon. A growing pile of the small triangles sit rejected at her boot. To the untrained eye, they each look like perfect replicas of one another, but there is one misplaced stitch in each. Pav is what you’d call a type-A personality, so if her work isn’t exact, she doesn’t use it. This is both the reason her employers hired her, and the reason she drives them crazy. Every single piece is made subtly unique while remaining uniform and is almost impossible to replicate with a sewing machine. So while they keep indoctrinating the youth into their cause, she can’t keep up with their demand, and some of the market streets remain unpatrolled, much to the Wolfpac’s chagrin.

     Pav’s fingers are nimble, but they aren’t quick as she loops her needle in and out of the patch with spidersilk thread. Traditional industrial folk music plays out of the speakers mounted in the corners of the room, which is the easiest thing for her to stitch to. It used to play at a deafening volume, but her neighbors have been reporting her to the Wolfpac for noise violations, so she’s toned it down a bit. A stale coffee sits close to her left hand, and she continually reheats  the coffee to sip throughout the day. Most visitors scoff at her working conditions, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

     Something buzzes loudly and she connects two of the stars together with a single stitch. She could tear it out, or hope that no one would notice, but she throws it at the ground in frustration and grabs the communication device from her hip.

     “What?” she seethes, curt.

     “Kendall is on her way for her uniform fitting,” responds a gruff voice on the other end. Root, her employer. She imagines herself sewing the poisonous thread she uses through his navy blue tentacles, and it relaxes her for a moment. 

“She imagines herself sewing the poisonous thread she uses through his navy blue tentacles, and it relaxes her for a moment.”

     Pavlima lets out a snarled laugh. “Are you kidding me? I told you she could come next week.”

     “There was an incident.” His breath on the other line is heavy, ragged, as if he were wounded. She’s glad. “We need to have 23 new recruits robed up in the next six weeks; we can’t allow you to dawdle, Pav.”

     “That’s impossible, Root.”

     The signal goes dead, and there’s a knock at the door. She throws her communication device against the wall and it shatters, which pleases her. She answers the incessant pounding and is taken aback by what she sees. For some reason she’d pictured Kendall as a man, but the recruit was anything but. All high cheekbones and rouged lips, accentuated by a tattoo local to one of the under dwelling communities where Pav grew up. Pav lets the fresh-faced girl enter before slamming the door shut behind her.

     The recruit takes one look at the monstrosity on the dummy and the stack of patches on the floor and says, “I thought my captain told me to be here now. Should I come back another time?”

     Pav chuckles as she sizes the poor thing up — young and fresh faced like Pav was when the Wolfpac snatched her up from her mother’s free clinic in the Eastern Summit. “No, he certainly told you to be here now, so we’ll do our best.”

     The recruit nods, “Where should I stand?”

     “Where you are is fine, please disrobe.”

     The girl’s eyebrows raise, but she obliges. Her body is covered in pockmarks and scars, her wrists burned by the telltale sign of plasma cuffs. Pav has no idea how she’s raised herself this far up the ranks, but she’s intrigued. She rips the misshapen fabric from the dummy and drapes it over the girl's shoulders, but not before studying her nakedness. She grabs a pincushion from her desk and starts pinning the fabric where she’ll need to make adjustments so that it is both form fitting and breathable.

     “So what’d they tell you, Kendall?” Pav says to the girl, a pin clenched between her teeth.

     “Sir?”

     “To get you to abandon your family.” Kendall’s shoulders tense up, and Pav smiles, pushing one of her tentacles out of her face.

     “Sir, I just came here to get fitted, not talk politics.”

     “Oh, I’m not judging you,” the girl yelps as Pav accidentally pricks her with a pin, “Sorry about that. But, I’m not judging you. I certainly didn’t grow up ever seeing the sun.”

     Kendall relaxes, but not entirely. “That if I could make a difference in my own life, I could elevate my little brother. Let him live in my apartment.”

     Pavlima nods and takes a look at the work she has cut out for herself. Kendall is stunning in the unfinished uniform, and Pav wants to make sure she’ll always look that way. She wants to have a hand in that. “So when will you let me buy you a drink?” 

     Pav takes notes in her chicken-scratch handwriting marking where she’ll have to alter, and unpins the girl from it. As it falls in a pile at Kendall’s feet, she covers herself and smiles at the seamstress.

     “I didn’t need to get undressed.”

     “Nope.”

• • •

Breadcrumb #27

MADELEINE HARRINGTON

The delivery men propped me against the wall. You left me there for hours, and I looked out your very small window and pretended to be artwork. You paced the room and sized me up. Finally, you took me off the wall and climbed on top of me. You were nervous and stretched your limbs with well-practiced hesitancy. You’re afraid of settling I’ve learned; you like the idea of it but there’s something that keeps you from fully giving in to gravity. You change positions frequently, every seven and a half minutes in fact, even in your deepest sleeps, so that your silhouette never has time for significant indentations. That night, you lay on top of me and we examined the cracks and rivers in the ceiling. While I hardly fit in that room and you covered me with a shiny red sleeping bag, those were my favorite days with you. It was just the two of us, staying up late, bracing for the infinite, daunting future.

     You never gave me a frame, so there was always a strange, sinking dance between you and your guests.  Kissing while descending is difficult, I’ve realized. It requires a silent synchronicity, a certain level of trust; otherwise it just looks wrong, like two people drowning.

     The first guest was too tall for me. His feet dangled over my edge, and in his sleep he struggled to tuck them into the sheets. Your bodies didn’t always align, but you put in the effort. He smelled sometimes and made you angry, but he changed the lightbulbs and stayed around for a while. And the cadence of your voices together felt low and comfortable, like the tune to the theme song of a television show that you used to love.

     You painted your walls sea green and it spilled all over me. You worked well into the night and fell asleep on the couch, leaving me alone with my stains to settle. The second and third guests alternated into the summer. When they tried to hold you, you complained about the heat. When your ex-boyfriend visited, you fucked aggressively and woke up periodically. The sheets came off my edges, the red sleeping bag kicked to the corner. When he left, you entered me like I was a warm bath, put the sheets over your head, and lay so still that I started to worry. Eventually, though, I began to hear the unmistakable vibrations of weeping. You cried always with your face smothered by pillows, your body like a crescent moon.

“You cried always with your face smothered by pillows, your body like a crescent moon.”

     You welcomed the fourth and fifth guests with ambivalent embraces. I stopped counting the amount of times you went to the bathroom throughout the night. You kept things inside of me — a hairbrush, a book, Altoids, a museum brochure — that were better suited for your shelves. It was because you were lazy partially, but I could tell that you liked it — having all your possessions within reach, floating amongst you on your island.

     The sixth and seventh guests didn’t even spend the night. I woke up once at 4 a.m. to see a mouse watching us. I will never understand why humans fear these animals so much, but I’ve also learned that nearly all your emotions are disproportional. You hung artwork, posters, newspaper clippings that arrived and vanished with their relevance and your boredom. The mouse lived with us for weeks and you slept through all of its appearances. You had a boyfriend. You bought a comforter, wrapped me into it with meticulous affection, and stuffed the red sleeping bag deep into the closet. When the mouse was finally gone, I felt guilty, like I had a secret from you. You had a breakup and hid inside of me. You drooled and flinched from nightmares. You found another boyfriend and together you painted the walls back to white, and the smell and general chaos of the room kept all of us up late. 

     We moved: more natural light, a larger room, an optimistic outlook. You had another breakup and repositioned me to face the door. We fell asleep to the cadence of your weeping and woke up early from fitful, incomplete sleeps. You never got around to buying curtains and, on good days, the light touched every object you owned with firm persistence.

     One morning, you woke up and something felt different. Your limbs felt heavier, your breathing rhythmic and void of restlessness, and I could tell you were realizing just how alone you really were. And as the sunlight crawled across the floorboards and sloped along every surface, I felt a sense of sheepish excitement; it was just the two of us again, examining a crack in the wall, bracing for the day.

• • •

Breadcrumb #26

DALLAS RICO

His scent gets me every time. It’s an orange spice that always makes me crave an Orangesicle. I wish Matt would wear some fancy cologne, or do anything sexy for that matter. When Zeus comes over for Matt’s birthday dinner, I prolong my hug just to get a whiff. His smell transports me to a forbidden place. It’s not really cheating if it’s all in my head, I tell myself. At night I fantasize about us having passionate sex in every position imaginable.

     “You give the best hugs,” Zeus says after we both let go. I shrug and walk into the kitchen to check on the roasted chicken. It’s really just an excuse to step away before I say or do something stupid.

     “I’ve got this,” Matt says, following me into the kitchen. I think he’s being passive-aggressive because no one else showed up for dinner.

      “All right, all right.” I raise my hands as if to surrender and head toward the living room. I should’ve known better. Matt is the chef at a three-star restaurant in Wicker Park. So, he takes his cooking a little too seriously. I blame him for my weight issues.

     Now, I’m stuck on the couch with Zeus. We’re isolated from Matt because of the wall that separates the two rooms. If only our three other friends hadn’t canceled at the last minute. I make sure to sit on the other side of the couch, with enough space between us for Matt to fit. Even from this distance, his strong fragrance fills my nostrils like I’m smoking it. I pull out my phone, hoping one of my girls has some emergency only I can fix. No such luck. No texts, no missed calls. I’m feeling the non-love right now.

     “So, how have things been at the hospital?” Zeus asks. The awkward tension is so thick you could cut it with one of Matt’s cooking knives. I feel a magnetic pull toward him but I resist. I hold the armrest tight lest some force of nature actually thrust me toward him.

     “Same old. Now that I’m in surgery my work is a little more interesting.”

     “Surgery?” He pulls his head back and raises his eyebrows like he’s impressed. “That must be stressful.”

     I shake my head. “Not really. I just supply the doctors with the tools they need and let them do their thing.” I hate talking about my job. “What about you? How’s work?”

     “Oh, it’s OK. We won a case and were finally able to put a major drug dealer in jail. So, I’m feeling rather accomplished today.” He’s always doing something amazing but tries to play it down.

     “That’s awesome.” I smile.

     “Thanks.” He smiles back. We let the silence hang for a moment. There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask him. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s never talked about his relationships with women. Maybe if I knew he had a girlfriend I would just get over myself.

“Maybe if I knew he had a girlfriend I would just get over myself.”

     “So,” I start, “I’m sure a successful guy like you has girls chasing after you all the time.”

     “Actually, no. Dating in Chicago sucks.” He sits forward and starts explaining different dates he’s been on and how they all ended in disappointment. I don’t know whether to be elated or feel despair about this.

     “I’m curious. What cologne do you use?” I ask, changing the subject.

     He raises one eyebrow. “That’s top secret info right there.”

     I nudge him. “Aw, come on.” He considers me for a second.

     “All right, if you insist.” He leans closer to me.” It’s Ephemeral by Calvin Klein.”

     “Interesting name.”

     “Yeah.”

     I get on my phone and start reading Huffington Post articles about the presidential race.

     “Food’s ready,” Matt says, holding a steaming pot of chicken and potatoes. He sets them on the table and we eat. During dinner Matt and Zeus do their “bro” thing, where they talk about college basketball statistics and the latest video games. I used to get irritated about it but now I just let them be. I chime in when I can, which is rarely. After dinner, I make sure to write down the name of that cologne.

     The next day after work, I stop by the mall and buy a 3.4-ounce bottle of Ephemeral. It even comes with free body wash and shaving cream. At home, I find some old newspapers and use them to wrap the bottle. When Matt comes home I present it to him as a late birthday gift. It seems to cheer him up. He puts it on immediately. After a nice dinner we end up having the best sex we’ve had since we started dating. And the whole time I’m imagining it’s Zeus. 

• • •

Breadcrumb #24

BOB RAYMONDA

The sky is a clear blue, and the sun feels warm against my shapeless body. I feel my highest peaks and lowest folds twist and turn with the wind — it tickles. I am pregnant with precipitation, but I know to hold it in, at least for right now. I wouldn’t want to rain on anyone’s parade.

     Mother floats imposing in the distance. She carries the weight of the world on her back, and I am in awe of her strength. A castle shoots up from just beneath her surface, and none of us in the community are quite sure how it came to be. We’ve simply used it as a reason to justify following her advice. She must have gotten something right, to have been chosen for such an amicable deed.

     I’m not quite sure who lives in the castle on Mother’s back. At times I witness a small creature’s foot peak out one of the many disjointed windows and wiggle its toes. I long to feel something other than the rain I collect within my body. I glide across the expanse to rest at my mother’s side so I can speak with her.

     “Mother, will there be a day when a castle sits on my back?”

     The sound of her chuckle is thunderous and demeaning, though I’m sure that isn’t her intent. “Maybe someday, little one, but you know how it is with these things.”

     “No, I’m not sure I do,” I whisper as I feel a small creature careen through the lowest reaches of my body. It is a bird, and this is a feeling we all experience. A set of wings purposefully propelling itself through our bodies to get from one place to the next. It doesn’t seem as royal or rare as holding a castle or feeling a person’s toes revel in you. I pout.

     “What is your rush for responsibility, child? You only formed a few days ago.”

     Days. I’m not quite sure what she even means by that. A unit of time, I think. Something the rain in my stomach understands better than I do. It says that it will release itself from me tomorrow.

     “I just want to know if there is more to life than resting shapelessly in the sky, Mother.”

“‘I just want to know if there is more to life than resting shapelessly in the sky, Mother.’”

     She refuses to answer and chooses instead to leave our conversation at that. She regards me as she tends to the questions of my brothers and sisters, and I glide away so that I can let my thoughts stew in private.

     “We know a way for you to have it all,” says a rumbling from the rain in my tummy. It is a whisper at first, but if I focus in on it, it booms. “We were once chained to the sky as you are.”

     “How? What do you mean?”

     “Tomorrow at high noon. Let go of yourself. Join us.”

     I feel an unrest. I’m not sure if it is simply from my own excitement, or from the stirrings within me. Mother told me to expect this after I was born. She warned of rain, of the possibility of becoming a storm cloud if I let my emotions get the better of me. If there was a mirror around, I would see the dark tones emerging along the edges of my pillowy white prison.

     After what feels like an eternity of watching Mother and pondering the possibility of the structure on her back, the rain reacts. “Breathe, young one. You will leave a part of yourself behind.”

     I follow their instructions and, instead of the stability of my flowing body, I’m trapped inside a single droplet from my stomach. And I’m not alone. The voice that beckoned me before instructs me, “We are careening headfirst toward the ground.”

     I know immediately it isn’t lying. The regular patchwork of checkered landscape beneath my community has now become one giant gray slab. We fall past giant concrete protrusions that reach into the sky, almost as if they’re reaching for us. Calling to the castle my mother protects. Much of the water that originally fell with us is caught up in their unforgiving grasps.

     “You can feel the freedom your mother feels if you’re patient. Landing might hurt, but soon you’ll understand why this is worth it.”

     And it isn’t wrong. The moment of impact is like nothing I’ve ever felt. It’s simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating and, in a few seconds, we are joined by even more of the liquid that once lived inside me. We huddle together in a puddle. Some of the droplets tell me we’re in a city, while still others tell me that it doesn’t matter. I wonder if Mother has ever been here, this far away from home, and I know in this moment I’ll never be able to ask her.

     I can’t see her from where we lie. It is dark, and hard to breathe. There are walls around us, and the puddle feels crowded even though it should. I panic, but there is nowhere to go. 

     I wait.

     But the waiting doesn’t take long. The humidity in the air brings us close to swelling. We swell up from the puddle and reform into a thick marshmallow mist. Our body feels similar to how my own did, but far more constricting. We are a blanket over the ground upon which creatures of all shapes skitter and crawl.

     But, in this one moment, I know what my stomach was trying to tell me before we fell. Because the small toes my mother feels are nothing compared to this. The lack of control over one’s physical form as other, more tangible beings make their way blindly through you is euphoric. And we wouldn’t change it for the world.

     The sun rises, and though its rays don’t reach the ground where we rest, and our consciousness is nothing more than condensation on the side of a building — we are content.

• • •