Breadcrumb #663

GENEVIEVE SACHS

Everything that has touched Mary’s tongue for the last month has been bland. Every food, every person, every word. She’s been awake since 6:00am—the first time perhaps in history that she’s been up bothering her dog before the dog can do the same to her. There’s a half-bitten Excedrin on her desk but she opts for two full. Something in her bed is broken and she believes Hank is responsible for both the broken bed and the broken Excedrin. Through the grates of her ground-floor window, she’s forced to look at a cumbersome half-finished tag on the sidewall of the opposing building. Apparently the culprit happens to be Hank’s studio mate. Directly next door under the graffiti is a giant, weed-filled—the foliage but to be honest probably the drug too—lot, or as she and the other tenants of Apartment #1 refer to it, The Pit. Vagrants come and go but the only seemingly permanent residents are the Pit Kitties. The Pit Kitties tend to scream into the wind, at the wind, and at each other every morning but today they’ve been unnervingly silent. Inside, Mary’s stomach recoils every few minutes at the scent of last night’s nearly drained wine glass (bottle) wafting through her bedroom. Yesterday’s abandoned deli coffee sits next to it, and the day before’s sits next to that. She has a rotation of three coasters always in use surrounding her bedside.

She is writing she is recounting she is re-counting because it is Sam’s birthday today and they split four weeks ago. They last spoke 22 days ago on the day his exhibition opened and he thanked her for the flowers she had sent him cross-country. I’m still thinking about you, too he sent back. This is why she decided that her preference is to fill her head with thoughts of coasters and cats in heat and the way her dog taps her shoulder, so that she doesn’t think of how she and Sam couldn’t even make it to the next birthday. Their life as we only occupied the space between birthdays—shortly after his 40th until the month before his 41st. She is 23 but before he gets to you, it wasn’t an Age Thing. The days following their grand finale at the East River, she was on a manic high, delaying the heartbreak and in denial of any other shoe ever dropping. She fared surprisingly well until on the cusp of the Third Week, she broke. She broke and she broke and she broke and she broke her promise to herself not to break. 

Mary and Sam’s love fell apart right as the Quarantine hit. The churning collapse of it got her to feel like both Abigail Williams and her yellow bird simultaneously. She used a napkin to write down ways to continue loving him but ate pepperoni pizza and the grease started to drip and her cuticle started to bleed and so did the ink on the napkin. Her flowers died, a different ex got married at City Hall, and a cat on a leash showed up at the dog park. 2020 planners were marked 50% off before March even started so she should have known the universe was about to enter the New Dimension and she should have known it wasn’t going to look very good. She slowly began scaling down her 11:11 wishes as she started to feel more hopeless—smaller and smaller desires until she was simply asking for her eyes to stay dry, to stay open. Meanwhile she was having difficulty opening her own notebook in fear that he’d manipulated her words as well as her thoughts. She was having difficulty opening her underwear drawer in fear that he’d monopolized even her own thongs. The only thing that meant anything to her was Words and she sank into the increasing repulsion budding from him having told her how to write. One night, she dreamt that she wore a red dress to say goodbye to him, and she donated her red dress the next day. 

“The days following their grand finale at the East River, she was on a manic high, delaying the heartbreak and in denial of any other shoe ever dropping.”

Another quarantined day she must now get through but she can’t even manage the thought of embarking on her deli coffee trip. She keeps filling her head filling her head filling her head with the man from the dog park in the orange pants and dredging up the courage to cook meat and grand plans of doing laundry so that the Coca-Cola t-shirt Christopher sent her doesn’t reek of him. But her thoughts just keep drifting back to needing to make her ex-lover proud. 

Christopher. Christopher came at the exact right time; from the moment her lips first closed around his finger—the first time they met—to the morning he laid down sleeping bags to cushion their bodies on the floor of his closed art gallery, he carried her out of a potentially very deep Pit. And for that, she was grateful. 

She knew he was in a non-monogamous marriage and had two kids—a 16-year-old and an accidental 4-year-old—but she didn’t expect to be warming her boots by the fire with all of them, let alone texting pictures of puppies to each parent separately. Bottom of her boots facing the fire, next to her new lover and his wife, careful not to get too close. Christopher said two weeks is when people normally get sick of him. She assured him that she was not “people,” but did wonder why he insisted on sharing every dirty thought in his head, both having to do with her and not. He masturbates in front of a camera for money. A 50-year-old Cam Boy. He described it as his “side business of selling his dick to gay guys and, remarkably, dudes who want me to fuck their girlfriends,” followed by, “the guys who say it’s for their girlfriends are just gay and don’t know it.” He apologized in case his morals had disappointed her but she just blanched inwardly at the humble-brag disguising his glorification of sex work of this sort. Sorry, sir, you have yet to shock me, she kept to herself. 

She brushes it off, they brush it off. They do drugs by the fire, he bends her over his workbench, she feels her way to his pullout couch in the dark and takes the train home barely conscious the next morning. That was one week ago. That week followed the Worst Week, which means that presently she is almost two weeks removed from it. In the interim between the Worst Week and This Week, the Quarantine escalated. 

As the New Dimension seemed to get even more hopeless, she scaled her 11:11 wishes back up, way up. She wished for it to end, she wished to feel the sun on her bruised legs, she wished to wrap those legs around a body, she wished that the best thoughts weren’t the ones she has right before falling asleep so that she may remember more of them. She wished that crucifying her flowers upside down didn’t make them look more beautiful than the day they were placed in her Valentine’s Day arms, that crucifying them upside down didn’t ultimately keep them alive. 

Slowly, the girl realized that in order to continue getting by, everything must come down to a matter of seconds—Fight or Flight. Slowly, she realized that everything comes down to how she treats that passing of time; otherwise, if she checks out, even for what feels like a second, and doesn’t give the passage of time its due sentience, her sun spot will be gone and suddenly she’ll find herself sitting in a room slightly too dark for her to be able to function normally.

• • •

Breadcrumb #659

RENEE LAKE

The library stands empty. Everyone has gone for the night. A silent building against the twilight. The windows are gaping holes to pitch-black rooms lined with bookshelves. What would the books say if they could talk? Would they tattle to weary librarians about the otherworldly nighttime activities?

The night time patrons come in, through bookshelves, out of walls, up from the floors. Dozens of spectral beings. Some transparent, but obviously people; others wisps of white smoke with voices. A few in color and even fewer solid and lifelike. Many are black and white like old photos or movies. 

They settle around the room, far enough back so they can’t be seen through the large glass doors and windows. They don’t want to frighten the entire neighborhood, and if people saw them, their nights together would end.

“I think the old librarian suspects something,” a teenage boy says, laughing, pulling a book down from the shelf. It seems to float in the air next to him.

“Should we be more careful?” A young man in a suit and tie peruses the nonfiction section a few feet away.

“Not sure how we could do that, we clean up after ourselves.” The boy grins at a particularly naughty joke in his book.

“It seems to float in the air next to him.”

They don’t haunt this library. They use it as a meeting place. 

A sad woman holds a baby, enjoying the break from wandering the lonely highway, night after night.

Wisps dance together, excited to be anywhere but the swamp.

Two little girls read picture books out loud, wishing people would bring books into the old hospital wing instead of bouncing balls.

“Maybe we should see if there is another library, we could rotate, that way there’s less to be suspicious of?” A voluptuous blonde ghost breezes into the room. Her hair floats behind her like a mermaid underwater. She is beautiful and pale, with eyes burning like coal. Everyone adores her, especially their host.

An older ghost scowls at this. He is why they gather here. This used to be his library. So many years ago, he forgot how many. Back before the library had fluorescent lights, computers, and audiobooks. 

“I don’t like to leave my library unattended,” he says in a thick southern drawl.

“We know dearest, we know. It was just a suggestion,” the blonde tells him, laughter in her black eyes.

Silence once again fills the room, as more ghosts show up.

One-man drifts near the ceiling, eyes closed, trying to decide how best to scare tourists at his prison.

A shadowy woman known as the Red Lady of Everston Estate keeps to herself. She sits in a corner, fear leaking from her, affecting the very air.

“Who wants to read out loud tonight?” a tween girl asks. Her head crooks at an odd angle. She’s dressed in Puritan fashion.

“I will,” the blonde woman says, gliding into the middle of the room. She holds a hardback novel. It is bright red and leather-bound.

She begins to read. It is a light-hearted tale about friends on a journey. The story is full of jokes, euphemisms, innuendos, and life. 

The rest of them congregate around her. They eagerly listen to her voice twist and turn over the words and spin the chapters of the novel.

The library is quiet, aside from her voice. She reads, untiring until the light begins to peer over the horizon.

The sun is rising.

She sighs and closes the book to grumbles and groans.

“I wish we could stay here forever,” the little girls say; their hollow voices echo in the room.

“You know we can’t,” the teenage boy tells them. He’s lit a cigarette. It isn’t real, merely a manifestation of vice.

Their host looks out the window, “you all know the drill, out you get.” He loves the book club, but as dawn approaches, he is anxious. He wants to be back in the basement with the dust, damaged books, old microfiche, and cobwebs; he hates making the librarians nervous. 

One by one, the spirits leave, they need to get back before the sun rises too high.  If caught by daylight, their eternity will fizzle in the heat. No one wants that, and no one knows why. These rules have been in place too long to question. But they all remember Dead Hazel, who roamed the cemetery. How she told them she wanted to see the sun once more and then never came to the book club again. 

Twice a week, they meet. From sundown to just before sunrise. 

They can’t be gone from their haunts every night, or they start to forget who there were, who there are. They will moan in their houses, scare the unaware or retreat into the darkness of their minds until the next meeting. It’s something to look forward to. Nothing in this afterlife is how they thought it would be.

This brief respite brings joy and companionship. The old southern man watches as they disappear, the woman with the burning eyes is last to go. She always is. Waving, she blows him a kiss before stepping through the back wall.

He sighs and rights a chair the children knocked over. He will put everything back in its place before the librarians return, they already feel his presence enough, no need to cause them panic.

As he sinks down into the basement, he’s excited for the next meeting of their ghostly book club and another phantom kiss from a woman who still calls him dearest.

• • •

Breadcrumb #653

NICK PERILLI

A frame of a person carrying a tray of small, lit tealight candles emerged from the kitchen. The restaurant pattered with conversation. Outside, the midwinter afternoon approached evening. The flames danced on their wicks in excitement.

The chef’s hand shoved the frame into the busy lanes between the tables, where servers sped, and drunken patrons staggered. But the frame did this every night, so it slipped darkly around every full body, its long arms and spindly legs laying the dancing tea lights between the people and their food. 

One at the table with the couple breaking up. Trying not to make a scene. The fire shined on both their wet eyes, perhaps enough that the two of them remembered why they got together in the first place. The flames were interested, of course, but it wasn’t the frame’s concern.

The frame had candles to place. One at a time. Between the conversations and problems of families, friends and partners.

A new server bounding down the lane with a tray full of wet glasses crashed hard into the frame, but it kept its perfect balance. The new server fell with his tray of glasses, into shards of cutting glass slick with beer and soda. He screamed. Not the frame’s concern. Even the fire in the frame’s tray didn’t care. They stood tall—unwavering as they peered at the fallen and bleeding server.

“Even the fire in the frame’s tray didn’t care.”

One candle with the lonely widower sitting surrounded by the pictures of her family, all of them lost to her in one way or another. Three between the banquet of businesspeople, the flames falling immediately to their gesticulating arms. 

One final tealight at the empty table by the large glass window, where the evening poured in from the street. The frame placed the candle between two empty place settings. Another frame seated in front of one grabbed the frame’s arm, slipping between it like a puzzle piece.    

“I didn’t see you there,” our frame said, trying to pull away once.

“What are you doing putting candles on tables?” the other frame asked, slipping further into our frame.

“It’s what I’ve always done.”

The other frame shook its head. “You’re supposed to be right between all this.” It eased into our frame’s veins. “Neither here nor there.”

Our frame dropped its tray, dotted with dry white wax. It clanged on the floor. A server barreling by picked it right up. It hummed in her blistered fingers. Our frame shuddered.

“Is that right?”  it asked, its arm dripping sweat into the black seams between the floor tiles.

The other frame’s hand ended where our frame’s arm began. The other frame reared back, pulling our frame with it over the lip of the window and through the restaurant’s twilight glass. The mass of customers, mouths wet with unwiped food aglow in the tealights, didn’t hear or notice as the two of them slipped between any of this—all of this. Bored, the flames stood tall on the candles, reaching to tease the rats in the ceiling. Then, they snuffed into rising smoke. 

During the next evening’s rush, the chef reached out from the kitchen and shoved through empty air. An absence crossed through her, but only briefly. She picked up a tray of tealights waiting for her by the server station, their flames dancing in somber excitement, and slipped into the busy lanes between the tables.

• • •

Breadcrumb #635

JOE BENINCASA

In the dark of night, I entered the church from the back of the nave. A knave in a cave. Brave. A slave.

My strange OCD echoes in my head, the way my voice might in this vast cavern where the religious hopeful, the unswayable zealots, and the lost searchers gather to search. For wisdom, for direction in a directionless life, for a glimmer of hope that all of existence is part of a greater plan. For a literal light at the end of the tunnel. A funnel.  

Not I. 

I am here for them. The shadows I see...well, feel more than see. Sense, in the world around me. To be honest, I see them everywhere. On street corners, in restaurants, in homes, in the back seats of cars. In offices, at parties, at funerals. Everywhere. Here and there. In the air. Without a prayer.

“To be honest, I see them everywhere. On street corners, in restaurants, in homes, in the back seats of cars.”

For as long as I can remember, they were there. At first, indistinct. In childhood, I thought I was seeing the darkness as a natural part of this world, balancing the light, but as I grew and learned my experience was unique, I saw them for what they are: the manifestations of our evils. Not some bullshit balance for the good I knew. Just a festering multitude. And they were growing in number. Slumber. Numb-er. 

They can’t hurt us, at least not physically, and we can’t affect them. But I can see their effect on the world. They are both a result, and a cause, of the deep, profound, yawning darkness pervading the human condition. Contrition. 

Like pollution, they are created by humanity, and worsen that human condition, in a feedback loop that threatens us. Adding more darkness, more despair, more chaos. Like pollution, I sense there is a tipping point, beyond which we cannot stop their inexorable, breeding infestation of our world. Whirled. Knurled. Unfurled.

Strangely, I have always found the greatest concentration in places like this. In churches. Is it any wonder? Here gather those often without hope, barely tamping their fear of the final abyss. Led into ignorance and passivity by an increasingly corrupt and opportunistic prelacy, hell-bent. Hell-sent. Well-spent. 

I am a lapsed Catholic, the flimsy veneer of religion’s illogic shed years ago. Even these...daemons, let’s call them, to match a metaphor to our surroundings...only reinforce my certainty that there is no god, benevolent or benign, guiding our lives. If anything, my studies in physics, especially in the quantum realm, have led me to see these dark souls as manifestations of the energies we create in our lives, by our decisions, our choices, our minds, our hearts. Energy neither created nor destroyed, but changed form by the improbable impulse of our intelligence and actions. Our free will. Bitter pill. Swill.

So I often return here, late at night, using an old entrance in the basement neglected by the clergy, to commune with them. I say “commune”, as they seem to sense me as much as I sense them, and I imagine we ponder each other’s existences. Though I’m not sure they possess any semblance of intelligence at all. Perhaps our mutual attraction is governed by elementary forces, large and small, with exchanges of energy to provide us both (again, I imagine) a frisson of contact, of...communion. No, the irony is not lost on me. Communion. Reunion. 

With no small dose of sarcasm, I whisper, “The body of Christ.” Pay the price. Sacrifice.

And so, over time, they have grown. Not only in spite of them, but because of them, I have spent a lifetime in an effort to bring more joy into the world. But I fight in vain against a rising tide. Humanity’s optimism has turned to despair. Hope has been poisoned, decaying into apathy. Striving for achievement has become a grasping for fleeting fame, and generosity has turned to greed. Need. Bleed.  

The tipping point is near. Very near. Fear.

Tonight is different. There is an energy in our dark dance, the shadows and I, and they grow, merging, swelling. An amorphous, roiling, writhing thing, feeding off my despondency, my discouragement, my despair. Our energies merge, and I am filled with their breath. 

Death.

• • •

Breadcrumb #630

ALEX BUXTON

Death rested the end of his scythe in the dust and said a silent prayer for the small body in the canyon, still some way off. He looked around. It was hotter than hell out here, and twice as dusty. A dreadful place to be wearing black.

‘Are you Death?’

A small voice at Death’s side brought him back to the present.

‘Who are you?’

The little girl pointed to the body up ahead, and then her own face.

‘Don’t you recognize me?’

Death craned his neck.

‘Oh, yeah, of course.’

‘If you can’t see from here, we could go closer.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ said Death hurriedly. ‘We don’t have to go closer.’

“It was hotter than hell out here, and twice as dusty.”

‘Do you kill people with that?’

She was pointing to his scythe now.

‘Not really, people are generally already dead by the time I get there.’

‘So what’s it for?’

Death shrugged.

‘It’s good to lean on sometimes.’

‘What don’t you want to go closer?’

Death squinted into the midday sun. Flies were starting to settle on the little girl’s corporeal remains.

‘I don’t really like dead bodies.’

The girl didn’t say anything, she just stood looking at herself lying amongst the rocks.

‘No offense.’

The girl looked at her feet.

‘Well,’ said Death, ‘we need to get going,’ and he started off through the desert.

After a few seconds the girl trotted after him.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

Death scratched his head. Why did everyone ask that?

‘I don’t know,’ he answered truthfully.

‘Will my parents be there?’

Death did a quick mental calculation.

‘Not for a few years yet I’m afraid.’

‘Oh.’

There was silence.

‘Your grandma’ll be there,’ Death eventually offered, in an attempt to cheer her up.

‘Yeah?’

After that Death had run out of things to say.

They walked on through the stifling heat. It really is hotter than hell out here, Death thought to himself.

Eventually, the girl piped up again.

‘How much further is it?’

‘We’re nearly there,’ Death told her. ‘Not far to go now.’

The silence alone could kill you in a place like this.

Death found his mind wandering. He looked at the baked, red rocks all around them, carved smooth by millenia of winds, and wondered if, if he was mortal, he’d find them beautiful. He poked one moodily with the end of his scythe as they passed.

‘Will you hold my hand?’

Death left the rocks alone and looked down at his companion.

‘I’m scared.’

Death reached out a hooded sleeve and felt her small hand tighten around his.

‘Your hand feels funny.’

‘Sorry, they’re not really meant for holding.’

‘That’s alright.’

They were at the door now. Sensing their approach, it opened for them. The girl stopped. They stood together, looking at the door.

‘I can’t go with you, it’s against the rules.’

‘Are you sure?’

Death nodded.

‘When will I see grandma?’

‘I don’t know.’

The girl still didn’t move.

As gently as he could, Death put his arms around the little girl and picked her up. He could feel her wrap her limbs around him, burrowing into the space where you’d expect to find a chest with a beating heart. He wondered what that must be like. Softly, he stepped forward towards the door.

‘It won’t hurt.’

She nodded against his neck as he reached through the door and put her down on the other side. As he withdrew his arms she opened her mouth to say something, but before she could make a sound the door closed, and Death was left alone once more in the desert.

He stood for a minute, trying to think of something to say back, then started off again through the dust.

• • •