This story won third place at the MAYDAY 2024 Short Fiction Contest.
I liked the people over at detox more because they wore blankets as capes slung over their shoulders and walked around like overused mop heads, dirty and dripping. One guy came through still speeding, still mind-running.
“You wanna play a game?” he asked me, opening an Uno deck.
We wanted safe from the shadows, the invisible watchers—tree people and other hunters.
The couch clung to sweat; we gave it willingly from our wild, wet pores. I sat with my knees tucked under my chin, one eye on the front door, one rolled up, fixed on the popcorn ceiling. I was glassy and breakable.
The speeder breathed down my neck. “You know where they keep the toenail clippers?” he asked. He was barefoot, his toenails looked like tree bark. Fruit flies attacked bananas behind him, smelling the room up sweet-rotten. I waited for the sickness to stop enough that I could run.
A moan came from the curly brown hair that spilled out from the faded blue comforter on the couch; the sleeper grunted and ground her teeth. Her bones squeaked in my ears. When she turned over, her sleeping face was an angel; like the blanket was her mother and she was just born. Scrubbed nurses small-talked, told me their names a hundred times, called me mija.
Little kid laughing behind me, the speeding guy asked, “Wanna do something?”
*
Monday you call your mom with complaints of severe food poisoning: You “can’t stop throwing up” and “can’t keep anything down.” You mention the Urgent Care, that you’ve avoided going because money—you don’t have any. You say how the dog needs food and you want to make sure that gets paid for first, foremost. Concerned, Mom transfers a lump-sum into your bank account.
“Don’t apologize,” she says.
Granted, you really can’t stop throwing up. Every time the powder hits the back of your throat it gags you and bile zips up from your stomach, coats your tongue. You cash out, but Mom can see that, your accounts being connected and all. You make up a loophole where if you pay for a doctor’s visit in cash where you live, it’s cheaper. Smalltown-mom, what does she know of healthcare and the big city?
By Wednesday the lump-sum’s up your nose and the trashcan overflows with empties. Your throat tastes like spoons and one nostril flaps like gills out of water when you breathe.
You’ve been in pickles like this before, where Mom already helped and the coming weekend stares you down, when Grandma’s usually unavailable, busy with events at her winery. Considering your future self, you give Grandma a call. She asks if you’re feeling any better.
You weaken your voice.
Segway into how expensive it is to run the AC; how, for the dog’s sake in this hell-summer, you do what you have to. Sprinkle in how the Urgent Care bill ended up being a bit more than what Mom sent. “A bit,” you say, but you stretch out the words and nervous laugh, so what Grandma hears is, “A lot.” Now you’re telling Grandma how it looks like you’ll just have to be late on those utilities. Throw in a throat-clear; granted, your throat is sore—scraped.
And there’s Grandma, transferring saving-grace-money into your account.
*
The ceiling fan kept me up with its whispers, secrets. Nurses intruded, a group of them, “Male,” they said, and told me to come downstairs.
In the office, squeezed in a blood pressure cuff, I asked, “I got a letter?”
All those nurses, with their same brown crew cuts, same Jesus-on-the-cross bicep tattoos, like brothers—twins upon twins—they moved and melted together. The nurses popped two, four, more, a pile of pills into my sweaty palm. The scrubbed mob, dozening itself, moved for cups of water from the fountains. The pill pile in my palm got soft and slick, soaking their coating onto my skin. Blink, the nurses placed the cups in my free hands.
Blink, I swallowed their medicines, blink, blink, and the nurse-clones leaned down. They asked for my tongue; I stuck it out.
*
My brain woke before my eyes. Lids like lace curtains let in window light, the fan rocked the popcorn ceiling. My bedside was littered with half-drunk Gatorades that tasted like cough medicine but didn’t do the same trick.
Screams—terrible, bright, like how giving birth must sound—rang the wall, through the yellow-stained, sweat-haloed pillows. The voice cursed and spat; it strangled me. Sat up in my sick bed, seeing straight, I searched the scuffed, clawed walls for a clock. But there was no time, no time at all; only mirrored doors on empty closets and me, staring myself down.
I stood at the screaming door of the bedroom next to mine, hesitated, pushed it open. What creatures were held up in this shadowed house? Who was the worst of us?
Shut blinds turned this room fuzzy and gray; in this girl’s closet mirrors, the fan whisked wild. “Come on,” she whimpered, ragged voiced, as only the dying sound.
Crumpled sweatpants and wifebeater blocked my entry, crumpled on the soggy carpet. I stepped over the clothes, left the door cracked behind me. The room smelled like sweat and tears, sweet-rotten. Black droplets like mascara tears trailed around the bed. Crouched and naked, the curly brown-headed girl, that angel-sleeper from before grunted, her shoulders bounced.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
And the curly girl muttered, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” over and again; she dug her fingers, her thumb, her wrist, her forearm inside herself, between her legs. She spread her lips with one hand and searched with the other, twisting her elbow to push deeper. Her stomach sucked bouncy breaths. Her eyes squeezed shut, she muttered, “No, no, no, no, no.”
She screeched like Baby, my sweet dog, when I pinched up her scruff and bit hard as a mother might to get her from nosing me to play with her, to walk her.
Blood dripped like worms inching down this girls arm, her fingertips dirty with it. “I can get help,” I said, and stepped back, catching the other side of the blue-white girl, bone-skinny, twisted inside herself, in the mirror.
The room flooded with light. My nurse with his Jesus tattoo and muscles rushed in, “Male,” he said, “male staff.” “You don’t belong here,” said the nurse, pushing me into the hallway.
And stumbled back in my room, I could hear that girl crying, “No, no.”
*
Friday, you tempt God.
You text Grandma. Something’s wrong with Baby, you write, meaning your dog. Oh no, she replies, and asks what’s going on. Sat on the floor with your legs stuck under the coffee table, you lean over the messy-mirror, staring at yourself between white-powder-enemy-lines.
She’s throwing up, you write, reply, again, and she’s got this rash all over.
Peaceful-asleep in the sunlight that kisses the couch in afternoons, your doggy—thank Jesus—she’s all healthy. But the price of a vet visit equals a weekend of your medicine.
Grandma’s at the winery and can’t get on the phone right now, so she just transfers you a grand, for safe measure. She knows how emergency-vets tend to rob us blind.
You clean the mirror in one breath and throw your head back to drain it. Your baby lifts and stretches and shakes. Her toes ticktack on the plasticky floor; she bumps you, wet-nosed, licks your crying chin to say, C’mon outside, where there’s sunshine, where it’s warm. Play with me, she’s saying. Her wet brown eyes.
You, Mother, snap at Baby when she snouts too close to your mirror. Baby runs tail-tucked onto the patio, into the light.
And numbers flow into your account, drip flows from your nose. You find blood on your hands where snot should be. You hood up, and head for the nearest ATM.
*
And sometimes, a nice, normal person with a clipboard and a necklace of keys would touch some shrugged, blanketed shoulder. They’d roll suitcases and clean folk through the threshold, on to the next phase, next stop. When my stomach and my eyes stopped fighting, I’d sit in the common area and wait and pray.
My hair felt a whole hand longer weighed down by sweat and lying cold on my neck. The dining table floated tall behind the couches with chairs you had to hop onto like barstools. I pushed the pieces of a spilled out Starry Night puzzle around the sticky tabletop. Pieces missed chunks of art, missed thick blue hill tops and yellow swirling star parts; peeled by nervous, shaking hands, bitten, chewed.
Nurse walked over, the Jesus on his arm cried, his eyes flicked up to heaven. “You want some help?” he asked, smiling, stupid.
My face felt hot, I gripped my chair.
*
Sunday, God’s Day, you wake up, and the house smells like you wasted good vodka last night; spilled your guts somewhere and left the mess. You go searching and find the vomit puddle stuck with little green blades of grass and yellow fuzz like tennis balls.
You call for the dog, “Come here Baby,” you say, and in a few steps your sock gets soaked in another bubbly puddle. You picture the silent watchers, the hunters, finally broken in, finally kidnapped the one thing you love, and you twirl yourself dizzy watching walls, shadowed corners, hiding places.
You send out a silent prayer that whoever did this, that they had mercy, and left your stash untouched. The bile trail shrinks into little spitty droplets. Around the corner of the coffee table, there’s Baby’s tail. There are her legs sprawled and limp, her ears flung over her head.
And there’s your mirror, upturned on the carpet, licked clean, looking your own stupid face back up at you.
*
Nurse slid two pieces of the puzzle together and smacked his lips. “Boom,” he said.
I had the border of Starry Night complete, the corner pieces edged together. He looked at my progress, “Damn girl,” he laughed, “you’re smokin’ me.”
A female nurse led the curly haired girl down the stairs slow, whispering, “We’re gonna take a seat on the couch,” and “Gonna watch some TV,” mother-tender in her ear.
The girl looked blank and pale; she wore socks on her hands, strapped on with medical tape. She met my eyes. We stared each other down, like looking in a mirror.
“We must be missing pieces,” said my nurse, “or I’m just stupid.”
He was stupid, I wanted to tell him, wanted to fight, punch, and say how this whole thing was stupid. But the fight wouldn’t come, not for a long time.
He caught me looking at the girl’s sock hands. He leaned over and said, “Sometimes, they stash up there,” he pointed to his crotch and winced, “or they mean to.” I folded a black window-fragment puzzle piece into my fist. “Man,” he whispered, “you can do that shit out there,” he nodded toward the front door. “That’s what I say,” he sat back, “do that shit out there.”
“Weren’t there more of you?” I asked him.
“I wish, mija,” he laughed, “just us tonight,” and he nodded to the lady nurse.
“No, your brothers,” I said, “you had brothers. In the office?”
The nurse lifted his scrub sleeve. Just above Jesus were black, cursive names and dates. He said, “This disease killed them.” He said, “I know I gotta go,” he shook his head, rolled down his sleeve, “just not like that.” He took up the box again and said, “Pretty cool art.”
“Starry Night,” I said.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“By Vincent Van Gogh,” I said, “Starry Night?”
“Shit,” he said, “see, you’re too smart for all this.”
The curly headed girl laid down; her sock-hands pressed under her cheek. I watched her eyes fall shut, watched the front door, watched the sun go down through the blinds.
*
The receptionist at the emergency vet asks, “So, what was it she got into?”
You look at her with one eye, the other eye keeps out for danger. “Ketamine,” you tell her. She starts typing at the computer, then stops.
“We gave that to her here?” she asks, “When did we give her that?” An owner pets her Pug while they wait to be seen, the little fat dog shakes and pants.
“No,” you say, “not here.”
“Your regular vet?” she asks.
You shake your head. The receptionist eyes your sweating head, clocks your shaking hands. She says, “’Cause we give that to pets here,” she says, “she didn’t get it from her vet?” You shake your head.
She looks at you too long, she says, “But she got into it?”
“I was sleeping,” you tell her. Granted, you were asleep. But you don’t say how you got down on your knees over Baby, how you pressed on her soft, white chest, her pink freckled belly.
How you stalled and looked for an easier, softer way out.
The receptionist raises her eyebrows and goes, “So, you had the ketamine at home?” You nod. She asks, “Okay, like from your doctor?”
“You can get it from a doctor?” you ask.
The receptionist tells you to take a seat. The Pug owner whispers, “It’s okay, you’re okay,” to her puppy. You ask if you can use the bathroom, and the receptionist’s face drops. Before you walk away, you ask, “Will she get any today?”
“Get what?” she asks.
*
The blue TV light flashed our faces. The scrubs bedded down the patients upstairs. I clicked the last available piece of the puzzle into place—the black tip of that wind-bent tree in the foreground of Starry Night. The sticky table shone through the holes left by missing pieces, lost, swallowed; consumed by that house, its weeping walls, and sweating couches.
I looked at the girl asleep on the sofa, still sock mittened. I pressed my ear to the tree on the puzzle and listened for the voices, the secrets, the solution; listened for the old, familiar noise. The only sound was my skull, like inside seashells.
“What are you doing?” said the girl, her voice bounced me. She sounded normal, like everybody else, anybody. She reached for the remote and tried to control the TV, flipping channels, cursing the socks. “Wanna help?” she asked.
I sat next to her and took the remote, asked her what she wanted to see.
“Jesus,” she huffed, “Whatever.”
Her scalp shown through her curls in a milk-white line along her part. She could’ve been me, my sister, my twin, my reflection. She told me how her Baby Daddy sent her here again,
how she just wanted to get back home, back to her kid, and be the best mom, like hers was.
She said, “Man, my mom,” she paused, “Disneyland and Christmas, we did all that shit.” “I had the best childhood,” she said, rubbing her curls with her socks.
She said being a mom was the hardest job in the world. “You got kids?” she asked. I started to answer but she said, “My man thinks I got issues. But I just need to let loose sometimes, y’know?”
She asked how many times I’d been through detox. I told her this was my first. “Lucky you,” she said, “just sweat out, and get out,” she said, “before they wash your brain.”
The girl fell asleep again. I brushed her curls with my fingertips. Footsteps ran down the stairs. The boy, the speeder from before, ran by us barefooted, flung open the front door, and disappeared onto the street. Here came scrubs, following him out.
My girl stayed asleep, nestled in her blanket when the wind crept in. I looked at the open door. I slid my hands into my sweatpants, over my underwear, held between my legs. My ears perked for any noise, any voice. But only the TV talked, only the wind hummed.
I got up from the couch and stood in the open doorway. The moon shone inside like God’s eye, like the white detail strokes that ring the yellow stars in Van Gogh’s painting. I was visible, looked-at, spotlit, even in the night. Nobody said a word but the sky in its silent language; leaves shushed; branches twisted.
One foot out the door, I looked down the streetlamped road. I pictured the way the asphalt, if my Baby were walking it, would file her claws down the easy, soft way, one block at a time; the way the ground groomed her, so I didn’t have to. I pictured an easier, softer way out.
*
Later, in treatment, they tell us how the people God brings into our lives are merely mirrors of ourselves. That what gets under my skin about you, has really been under my skin all along, itching me, biting me. Ask, “How much do we want to suffer?” and “If not now, when?”
And we come and go. We shrivel and wring clean. We do the best we can with the time we have. All of us—all of you—have to go sometime.
*
Half in, half out of the house, I considered the runner, how the street, black and cold, would gnaw on his naked feet if he stayed out. I stumbled backwards out of the moon. I took the knob, closed the door, shut myself back inside.
On the couch, I laid next to my curly-headed girl. Her sock-mittens were tucked under her eyes and wet. The ceiling fan ticktacked like Baby’s nails. The moon blued us through the window. And we fell asleep together. We woke up together.
SUNSHINE BARBITO is a fiction writer, living in Long Beach, California. Her short stories have appeared in several literary magazines, including “Sleepover” in Fecund Magazine and “Jump for Heart” in Prometheus Dreaming. As an editor, Sunshine worked on many acclaimed series, including The Umbrella Academy Volume 3: Hotel Oblivion, We’ll Soon Be Home Again, and Fight Club 3. To Sunshine, fiction is everything.
