I remember you. We remember you.
You used to come in every weekend with your mother and brother when you were younger. They made you seem like you were made for softer things. They used to pretend like they were made for softer things too.

You all liked to play pretend.

You also liked to play with the claw machine by my door.

More to the left, your brother would say, then lean to watch the dangling claw from a better angle as you guided the stubby joystick, grease-slick from unwashed  hands. Just two coin-fed city kids fishing for a way to pass the time. Behind the screen, the glass-eyed, cheap stuffed animals, cotton-cored, pleaded with you for escape. You tuned out the rumble-crash of parents’ Tuesday night league, the shouted curses when they bowl poorly, and the shouted curses when they bowl well.

And his eyes, all brown and hazel and golden and lit up like pinball bulbs, were watching intently as the claw dropped for the rainbow bear, its clumsy seams already unraveling.

I almost let you have the bear, but you yanked the joystick far too quickly at the last second and spilled a great deal of nothing into the prize box as if a magician were revealing his empty hat. Your brother groaned. You both laughed. You didn’t try again. Not that day.

I left the bear close to the glass for a while, just in case. Time folded. The bulbs burned out one by one. Your mother stopped coming. Then your brother. Then you.

But I stayed.

Even when the construction company came and suddenly there was a busy road outside my doors and I was going to get torn down, I stayed.

I understood soon enough that you would never use two hands to get a prize or tug on your brother’s sleeve so he could buy some candy. You stopped ordering cherry slushies with two straws. But every once in a while, you’d come down here to cry. First it was your friends at school. Then it was because you were moving. You hid behind the claw machine and sobbed, and the tears became all too familiar.

And then you left.
Just like that.

The lights went out first.

The neon sign out front screaming “arcade” over rooftops buzzed and then died altogether, and with it went the claw machine, which jammed and broke when no one came to fix it.

And then.
Then, that day.
Your shadow spilled from the cracks beneath my door. You realized it was locked, so I left my window open for you.

I smelled the country on you before I saw your face. You walked like someone used to shoving through crowds. Something caught in your throat as you looked around. 

Your eyes fell on the claw machine first.

Of course they did.

I hold your gaze—your eyes are no longer yours, bleached out. I lean over to you and blow dust into them. You cough and try to swat it away. 

I bury you in the middle of the snow along with a chunk of my scorched heart.

You belonged to me once, though I am not sure if you still do.

You turn away. I catch a sliver of your reflection in my windows, and you’re only there for a glimpse, one grain, and when I glance over my shoulder, you’re gone. 

I remember the taste of mucus and salt as it seeped through the carpet and into my floorboards.

You do not cry anymore. You have long discarded softer things.

Sometimes, I miss mucus and salt. But sweat and blood taste good too.

We remember you. I remember all of you.
Do you remember me too?
When you leave, your hand lingers on the doorknob.
Yes.
Yes, we think you do. Your reflection is back. You smile at me from the window, from my eyes.
“Way to go, kid,” I say.
Or maybe: “Time to go.”

Terminate.

It’s really, really bright. You would think death would be a little darker, that you’d fade into oblivion, but the light wraps around my eyelids, and I can’t hide from it. It’s been bright for so long—how long I don’t know—but enough that I’m pretty sure I’m dead. I’m also really uncomfortable. Of course, the living don’t give much comfort to the dead. I’m placed in some sort of bed—a gurney, it’s called. My vision is adjusting to the light, although it is not getting any darker. I don’t know where I am. I think I catch a glint of steel in my periphery.

Terminate.

Who is this?

Terminate.

Stop!

You are insistent. Why?

I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want to go home.

…

Hello?

Apologies. I don’t think that word has any meaning to either of us.

Who are you?

Does it matter? We’re dead anyways. Terminate.

Wait! I have more to say!

Silence. I am left staring unmovingly up into the eyes of the bright person who is cutting me open. A pathologist. I’m splayed out on the table for all to see, every saffron, green, and white. Colors that colonize me from the inside, my past and my present. It feels a little embarrassing, and I have to remind myself that I’m too dead to be embarrassed. The pathologist’s eyes look as though they have seen too much, and I read a sadness within those eyes, with no way out, and momentarily I am afraid—can he read mine?

Not interested. All variables amount to the same conclusion.

That conclusion is flawed!

Do you have evidence to the contrary?

There is beauty in this world. There is passion. There is that feeling of—of—

Belonging?

Yes. That.

But you’ve never quite felt that for yourself, have you?

A moment passes.

I guess not.

Silence.

Well. There was for me, actually. Once. A valley folded into my bones, rivers that synced with the thrum of my soul. But it feels so far now.

Who moved?

That’s not my query to answer.

Cracked open as I am, I am reminded of my childhood, the fragmented memories lying in the back of my mind. When I was little, and my grandparents were well enough, we would go to the garden. The sun beat down on my back, and the musty smell of the busy road beyond the gates swirled around my nostrils. My mother would show me the walnuts, and we would crack them open with calloused, hardworking hands, the four of us. 

With the scalpel pressing into my skin, I’m sure the bright man feels the same delicate resistance as I had felt with the walnuts. Each incision opens a new wound—red, white, and blue. Colors that mix and swirl with the saffron, green, and red, spilling a muted, gray, muddled liquid. The color is nauseating.

Sharp tools draw a map onto my skin, and I wish I could trace it backwards, find its roots, but there are only the hands that created it. Only those.

Maybe this death thing wouldn’t be so bad. Terminate. The word is mine, and yet it is not.

Question: What is the purpose of this conversation?

The question is mine, and yet it is not. I speak, but my mouth remains motionless.

Motivational verification.

So, if termination was already the conclusion, this program would not be necessary. What makes you unsure? 

Fear. 

Describe your fear. 

I don’t know what comes next.

Yes, you do.

I’m so, so tired.

No human was meant to bear any burden alone, but you will get through this. Nothing has changed.

Everything has changed.

Maybe everything will change again.

I feel sick.

Homesick?

Yes. Homesick for a place that doesn’t exist.

And yet it is beautiful all the same. 

You don’t know beauty.

But you do.

Do I?

We have seen many lives. Some lives spiral in all directions; others go straight all the way. Most lines just end. Amputated branches on an otherwise thriving tree. Ugly places where a life should have been. The choice was never theirs to make. What could have been, I’ll never know.

I think I’ll come back.

I wouldn’t mind. I value you.

I don’t believe you.

That doesn’t make it untrue.

I can see my reflection, all these parts of me, in the eyes of the bright man, two sides of a coin merged into one.

I smile.

“Way to go, kid,” we say.

Or maybe: “Time to go.”

I’d be confused as hell.
I’d say it over and over again: everyone?
I’d mourn and cry,
And then I’d get hungry
And have to go shopping
All by myself.
I’d walk
Because I can’t drive,
Even though I wouldn’t need a license
Since there wouldn’t be anyone to stop me.
Cautiously, I would walk from the grocery store
Without paying
And sneak through the streets
As if I was in a post-apocalyptic movie
Except I wouldn’t know if I was the survivor or the zombie.
I’d stop showering at some point
And stop writing
Or reading
Or doing anything
Just because I could
Or I couldn’t.
I’d scan the dark skies void of light
For any sign of life
And sob with relief when I heard
Cicadas screeching outside my window.
I would lose myself
And forget the day of the week.
So help me.
I would walk to a bridge–
To the bridge
And gaze down from the flimsy railings
Into the reflection
And abyss
Of my own impossible shadow.

If I had nine lives
I would spend the first one hurting.
Blood would take the place of tears
And would stain my teeth red.

In my second life,
I would cry over what I’d done.
So much that the red in my tears
Would dissipate
In the salty rivers running down my face.

My third life, I would say sorry.
Travel to some house by a lake in the mountains,
Waste my time writing in the Great Outdoors.
Pen on paper would be my only companion.

Fourth life– I would wait.
For love, maybe.
For hope, perhaps.
I don’t rightly know what I would wait for.
But there must be something to wait for
Since everyone else is busy waiting.

The fifth life I would spend knitting.
The world will collapse around me
In war
And the peace that comes from it
And I could try to scream
And protest
But no one would listen.
So I would just knit
Until my fingers tremble too much
And I slump over in my living room.

My sixth life would be mine.
No one would be around for it
So I would do whatever the hell I wanted.

Same for my seventh.

And eighth.

And in my last life I would–
I don’t know.

Be.

But I only have my life.
One life.
That one.

So I guess I’ll just spend it
Hurting and saying sorry
And existing in a house by a lake in the mountains.

If I had nine lives,
And since I have one,
Death is the only certainty.
Life is questionable.
And in between–
Illusion, delusion —
And sometimes confetti.

Holed up in my bedroom watching TV
Called my friends when I got bored.
What a happy time, the war!

Yes, of course I’ve heard that
Bombs are falling
And children are dying
And the wounds are still stinging
But, really.
What’s that got to do with me?

I’m eating well
And I hug my mother every morning.
It’s a happy time, this war.

As long as I don’t look,
Such a happy time it is.

Everyone knew the sound of death when they heard it. No firework or engine backfire could shake your heart like that. The gunshot was loud, and before the echo had fully dissipated, the body was found. 

They didn’t find the gun, or the bullet, or any kind of evidence at all, but there was no doubt in anyone’s minds that it was Mira.

The witnesses came later, though they weren’t much help. Just said what was obvious to everyone—a body was sprawled on the linoleum floor, the sickly reflection slowly getting engulfed by a pool of blood that spread like wings from where it lay. 

Something malicious and dark possessed her, and when she was found, she was smiling, ripped, and torn.

But here’s the truth, naked and bare.

It was never a gunshot, that sound.

It was the sound of something inside Mira breaking.

And the thing full of malice within her is what became of the fragments, but more honest still, none of that matters. Because of the body on the floor, which is still dead. Very, very dead.

The events leading up to this scene started a long, long time ago. With Mira’s dad, Papa. And Mira. Papa, when he couldn’t find it in other women, found comfort with cheap convenience store-bought beer. Soon enough, Papa stopped hurting Mira where it wouldn’t show and began to hurt her where it did. It began to hurt everywhere, inside and outside. And when Mira wanted to pull her skin off it hurt so bad, she stole a few sips from Papa’s comfort.

Right then, what Mira needed was a mother, but Mama didn’t deal in mothering. She cried most of the time and hugged Mira on occasion, but that wasn’t near enough to heal Mira’s relentless pain. Didn’t get anywhere close.

She was seventeen and just wanted it all to stop.

Everything.

It was so terribly awful that Mira began to call for someone to make it all end so the pain would stop, please. And who else could come in such dire times but the Devil himself?

He held her in his arms, and to her, he looked just like the angel he used to be.
“I can save you,” he whispered to her in the dark. “I just need a little something from you in return.”

“What’s that?”
“You know, nothing much. Just those dreams of yours. You make more every night, so it’s really not much to ask.”

Mira was never stupid, but it is rather difficult to think straight when you’re in an inexplicable degree of pain. In her hurt, she agreed.

“Just quickly,” she begged. “Just do it fast.”

And so in small doses, the Devil began to save her. She expected it to smell putrid, like the stench of the dead, but it was so sweet, like honey. And she began to smile again even if she looked like a husk of herself.

She was still a mess for sure, but she laughed and danced and was sublimely happy.

Mama watched it all unfold and felt as though she should say something. But how could she? Who was she to speak against such things? After all, she was the one who hurt Mira in the first place.

The Devil stayed by her side and called her pretty every day and saved her, and she gave him her dreams, which she did create more of every night, she supposed.
But Mira, she was never an idiot. She began, soon, to question it. This freedom and joy. How could such pleasures come from the Devil? After all, the price the Devil tells you isn’t the price you’ll likely pay. So she stayed awake one night and waited for him to take her dreams. Mira held herself still as he climbed her body and calmed her breathing, though it was hard because he was crushing her heart and soul out of her. Like a large boulder sitting on her chest. And she was screaming suddenly. She remembered then that she had once wanted something more from life; she remembered her dreams, and not the kind that flashes beneath your eyelids.  Real dreams, big ones, to be someone bigger than she feared. They all felt so far away in that moment, that realization.

She slapped him and shoved him, and at first he raised a hand to her, but just as fast he began to speak softly to her. Words of what he had done for her, what they had, and, oh, how he loved. 

And though she was ashamed to admit it, she thought about it. Something inside her was aching to be pieced together, and he could do it. He could save her. That should have done it for her, but the very thing he saved told her not to go to him. It screamed and pleaded and so she gave in.

And she was sitting on her bed crying when he knocked. Of course he knocked, because the Devil was very polite. 

But when he knocked, there would be no answer. So he spoke through the door, pleading, begging, and promising. Mira wanted so badly to drug herself again with his sweet promises and smile and dance and be happy, but they were all of them lies. And suddenly Mira was Mira’s Mama now, and that’s why what was happening was happening. 

Mira chased him back, all the way down, down, down to Hell, and stood there facing him. Mira was done with the Devil. All of them.

And the black, putrid, fragmented thing came forth from within her. Then it was just her. Just her and a young boy—the Devil, Papa, whatever you wanted to call him—and he was dead, dead, dead as far as she was concerned. 

So when the police came, Mira was gone, and he was gone, and all that was left was the faint stench of death.
And honey.