She put her makeup on slowly. She wanted it to be correct. Never quite flawless, she was more adept at wearing graceful missteps to humanize herself in public. Tonight, she moved slowly. She paid attention to the brow bone, the jaw line, her full lips, all of her best features. She stopped applying the powder to stare. The blush she chose was dark; a shimmering burgundy that ran across her face and cheekbones in the shape of a bruise– untidy but organic. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear examining the soft, honey waves falling over her shoulders first as they moved with her fingers, with the light twist of her neck, and then again as they settled over her clavicle. She wanted to see what she looked like as she approached in stillness and in motion.
“That took too much time,” she said out loud.
Moving her head back and forth in a slow no gesture to see what she looked like disagreeing, she could feel and see the skin of her lips cracking. She eyed the chapstick on the shelf but wet her lips with her tongue instead. We must move on. There was nothing she did for anyone without motive and no one was around to touch them yet. Setting the bamboo brush on the sink, she ignored her dry mouth and unyielding thirst to pick up the mascara. Carefully, she applied the wand to the eyelashes of her left lid and then immediately stopped to examine herself again. Unbundled and free, her thoughts had been leaping ahead of her. They were constant, persistent and biting. Sometimes they were mean. You will never make it. It was distracting. They were being seized by something else (you will never make it); something distant, either imaginary or future she could never tell, but something tugging at her sleeve. Look behind you. She stopped applying the mascara to reach for the twisted, plastic straw from the sink’s ledge and began twirling it in her fingers on instinct. Letting herself be overtaken by the fake memory; the fake way he held her, the fake way he smiled, the fake way it felt, she felt the rush in her chest.
“Stop it,” she barked at herself.
Staring at the mirror once more, she held her own gaze in trance.
“My name is Catarina Kacurek,” she practiced again.
She said it a couple more times out loud until she was satisfied with the way it felt rolling off her tongue. Naturally. Nodding, she put the straw back on the ledge and began to apply the mascara to the right lid’s eyelashes. It’s always like this. She couldn’t see the clock in the bedroom and was thankful. I’m late, she knew. Taking her time anyway, she could still feel the electric bubble running up her spine underneath to announce its arrival, announce its bones were growing over her bones into a grove of wands. I have things to do. She set the mascara neatly back in her makeup bag and pulled out the eyeliner. Dragging the skinny black pencil across the top of her left lid first, she felt a breeze, a draft from a hidden place to the left of her. As she fawned over herself inside, pretending he was next to her complimenting her as she coyly licked the cherry gloss from her lips, she let him praise the way her eyes grew from small and doting to big and black and full of infirmity. She let him kiss her cheek and she closed her eyes to feel it, his light kiss that held no real urgency. She felt his lips part near the corner of her mouth. She could feel his tongue poke out a little as she turned to meet him before she heard a car backfire a few blocks over. Goosebumps trickled up both arms. He was gone and she was gone too. She opened her eyes to see the pencil was now in the drain in a pool of tiny drops of water. In her spine, her bone grove of smoke and scream and sudden life, she felt it. She stared at the pencil, now damp, not ruined but damaged like everything she owned. He was not with her in the bathroom. He was not with her. To clear her throat, her desert dry throat that desperately needed attention, she let out a tiny cough. She came back to life.
“My name is Catarina Kacurek,” she began, facing the mirror.”May I come in?”
She held it there, in her reflection, her dirty blonde and olive complexion not unlike her original self but twisted, distorted slightly like the way it feels when you finally see yourself without a mirror. You’ve been looking at yourself backwards. She was looking at herself angled her whole life; angled smirk, angled eyebrow lift, angled posture. Manicured and yearning and looking more nubile lately, she began wetting her lips again with her tongue. Her lips tasted like plastic fruit and she laughed aloud to see her smile lines so she could once again hide them when the time was right. She laughed aloud and the car backfired again but she expected it now. Her spine grew. She let herself feel the backfire of every other thing in the distance.
She walked slowly towards the house. A transfer of guilt must be achieved, she recited in her head. She was moving her fingers, clutching at the bottom of the jacket. The straw lost somewhere, she kept moving her fingers to mimic cradling it. A transfer of guilt must be achieved. What was the rest?
It was the second polar vortex in four years to hit the city this hard. Pounds of air stood packed around her so she felt boxed every step. She couldn’t see. Snow fell all around her and because the wind whipped her face with each violent gale, she was also forced to look down. Forced to crawl upright, she could only feel her way through: the knife-life breezes, the sting right below her eyes with every movement, every touch of sleet against her skin a slow-drawn slap. Every snowflake bruised her; it’s touch burrowed hard beneath her cheekbones and lingered. She was red faced and trudging. Her eyes were brimming with tears that wouldn’t leave the bottom of her lids. It is freezing. They were frozen there. A transfer of guilt must be achieved.
Her eyelashes were coated in snow and she could hardly make out the building in front of her. Being drawn to the light in the window, she floated like a black moth to the driveway. As the girl stepped closer, she could see there were candles, maybe a soft lamp, burning in the upstairs window. Everything else was dusky and had the stale feel of abandonment. The house was coated an ashen gray color by owner or night, tall, protruding but with no bright awning or curtains or mailbox or car. No song wafting through the howl of the storm. There was no sense of welcome but it was her only option. Let it be a party. Let it be jovial and light inside. You can deceive yourself into believing anything just so you’ll participate.
About thirty feet from the door, her body was suddenly struck with sensation: panic. This is respite. Stillness creates panic. She stood still and let a shiver take her; let something pass through her. The future was here and it was portentous. She grabbed the sapphire amulet around her neck. God, give me strength. Pausing at the top of the yard, she allowed her breath to come out slowly, deliberately and with planning. What do I look like? She was draped in all black but blue in her flesh; pallid and chattering. She was a ghost in a cloak. Blue like ice. Blue like river. Blue like the ash-filled locket. Give me warmth. Her breath was slow and deliberate and planned. The girl was pacing herself in stillness instead of step.
Before continuing, she allowed her body to stay there, frozen from foresight and weather, in a posture of complete surrender. She was upright and floating allowing the wind to carry her up the short driveway to the door. There was no effort to shovel. The driveway was packed with snow too. It had taken her several steps to get from car to driveway and several more to get from driveway to knob. The door itself was plain beige without number or knocker. There was nothing spectacular here. Looking around once more to confirm there was no one else on the block, she held the locket with her bare fingers and set her teeth together to quiet them. She was a shadow in the doorway. .My breath is slow and deliberate. Her hand balled in a fist, she began to raise her other arm as she fingered the silver chain. I am breath. I am breath. She tightened her fist. B r e a t h e. She was muttering. I am safe and protected in white light. She exhaled. God, give me grace. She began knocking loudly, feeling her jaw clench and her respiration stop, the last of her crystallizing in air.
It was twenty degrees and he felt it before he even opened the door. With every change in the wind’s direction, the cabin dropped a degree. He was layered now: hoodie, jacket, fleece, long johns, gloves, hat and a bottle of water in his pocket. He stood on the front step to examine the window before his hike. The hole was covered with duct tape that he had criss crossed into a new flimsy pane.
“This will have to last until Monday, “ he said aloud to himself
Standing on the front porch, he could see the holes where he didn’t affix the pieces together correctly; pin-sized and almost tiny but enough for air to freely flow back and forth. Every time a breeze blew he felt it. It was Saturday afternoon. He had two more days before he was leaving
“This can wait until Monday.”
Looking at it only a few seconds longer, he nodded to himself to confirm that was true and began walking west towards the boulder with the blue paint mark. He would light a fire later, put on the kettle, run a hot bath. There may be another sudden gust this weekend and he just wanted to stay warm. There may be more windows to patch depending on the direction of the storm. For now, all was still.
He heard a couple crow calls, around eight am, and then nothing. There was no wind or sound or movement in the woods.The cabin stood at the edge of the lake in the middle of a trail, not the mouth of the hike. Because he only hiked when he visited the cabin, Milo was always forced to start with The Blue Trail. If he was feeling up to it, he would cut north and wander the three miles through the Red Trail and decide later if he was game for the Black Trail. He was tired and hadn’t slept well because of the shattered window at 1:00 am so he doubted he would make it there. He never ruled it out though. The Black Trail was a beautiful hike through the middle of the forest. In the summer, it was lush and colored by unidentified evergreens, pines, full blue spruces, oaks, and fir. In summer, it was littered with people and birds: sparrows, blue jays, cardinals, finches, hawks, owls, the occasional eagle, and tons and tons of goldfinches. Milo loved birds. He loved listening to them during his days at the cabin with his dad.
“Look!” He would nudge his father every time they saw a cardinal. “Look!”
“Cardinal,” his father said.
Milo would nod. His father would walk in front of him.
“And what’s the black and white bird and the long tail that sang to us this morning?”
Milo would look sheepishly at his shoes as they hiked, feeling like a girl.
“Magpie.”
“Good son,” he would say without turning around.
There were other animals too: deer, beavers, frogs at the edge of the lake, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, the occasional fox, and even the occasional coyote. Wolves roamed the perimeter but he never saw any. In winter, the hunters abandoned the area and all animals moved south to eat or north to hibernate. It was lonely. Milo watched himself tread the snow-covered floor and he wanted the sound of the morning birds: the magpies and the sparrows, the coffeemaker and his father’s cough from the living room. The lake was covered in ice. He cherished the couple of spiders nesting in the corners of his bedroom. He was completely alone again. Whether he was in the city or not, he was alone.
About two miles in and past the tree he always noticed, the one with the X carved neatly into it from some bored hunter’s buck knife, he suddenly couldn’t remember if he locked the front door. He was overcome with this sensation; something unfamiliar, the sensation, and a thought pattern he had never had to soothe before.It started at the bottom of his spine and traveled upwards through his shoulders. Ominously, he turned back but all he could see were trees: brown trunks and white ground. The cabin was out of sight and would him take him too long to circle back, yet he stood there, frozen, waiting for the door to answer. He thought to himself: I didn’t lock the door and the thought reverberated all over his body. It seemed strange to even question it and he doubted anyone else was here but it was on his mind and gripping his mind. He felt anxious. He patted his pocket to feel for his key. I must have, he thought. He turned back around to face the X.
“I must have.”
Yet, he couldn’t remember doing it: actually taking the key out of his pocket and turning the lock, checking to make sure that the door was locked. Milo stood silently on the trail and thought about it. He remembered standing on the front porch to examine his window. He remembered taking the bottle of water out of his pocket to drink. He remembered walking towards the boulder. He did not remember locking his door. Milo waited another few seconds for something to interrupt: a rogue squirrel or light breeze or ice droplet from a branch, but nothing shook him. He held the key in his pocket and stared at the X. Let it go. There’s no one here. A crow called in the distance. It must be noon, he thought and kept walking forward.
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