Emily's Seams

I knew he was there. I could hear him breathing through his mouth and shuffling his feet. I didn’t look up at him. Instead, I quickly glanced at his feet. His pants were too long. I wondered how much dust he was now dragging around.

“Em?”

I still didn’t look up. “Emily.”

“Sorry. Right, I forgot you hate it when people shorten your name.” he said shyly.

“No, Robert, you’re wrong. I hate it when people shorten anyone’s name. I think it makes them sound stupid and lazy.” I still didn’t look up at him. Looking through the microscope I could see that the cells were almost confluent. Maybe one more day to go.

“Oh.” He waited. His feet shuffled.

I still didn’t look up.

“I’m leaving now and wanted to see if you were up for getting some dinner.” he said quickly. “There’s a little sushi place around the corner and they have amazing California rolls.” he added.

Oh yes. California rolls would be the deciding factor here.

“No.” My pace at the microscope was slowing. He was slowing me down.

“Okay. Maybe some other time?” He didn’t sound hopeful.

“Probably not.” I replied.

“Emily?”

I sighed. “What?”

His feet shuffled again, like he was trying to stand up a little taller. “You’re kind of...well, mean.” His voice didn’t quite carry the tone that I’m sure he’d hoped standing up straight might convey.

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” One more flask of cells to look at.

He shuffled away. I still didn’t look up. I already knew what I’d see. Slumped shoulders underneath a ratty white lab coat, covered in staining supplies.

It had been a shit day at the lab. It was dull. It was boring. I couldn’t wait to leave except that I really had nowhere to go. My aunt Jude would be home, puffing away in her recliner, watching whatever was on the television.

It’s made of real leather, she’d say as she smoothed her crumpled hand over the dark green skin of her chair.

No, I couldn’t go home. Not yet.

As I stepped out of the building, the fresh air hit me like a bucket of ice water. It was so beautiful out. I turned the opposite direction from my house and started walking.

The rows of non-descript houses seemed to end abruptly, as if they had finally given up on trying to get my attention. I walked through a park and into the industrial crypt of town. There was no longer a truck-making industry here. It died out when the selling price got too good for the local owners to stand their ground. Can’t say I blame them. I heard they moved to Phoenix with all that cash. The city as a whole didn’t seem to notice, but this one neighbourhood did. The business was shut down and the buildings were left to rot. I passed through this part of town as quickly as possible.

Suddenly I was standing at the end of a street, staring at a wall of trees. There was a worn foot path like an old scar in the forest’s underbrush.

The clouds had fattened and darkened, telling me it was time to head back. But I just couldn’t. Not today. The trail was littered with banana peels and water bottles but it was easy to follow. At one point the trail forked. One branch headed up and the other down.

I went down.

I could hear the patter of the rain on the forest canopy overhead. It was a nice sound. I didn’t know what to expect but I was surprised to see the forest thin and then disappear completely.

In the center of the forest clearing was a building. It was two stories, made of brick and looked like it had been empty for years. As I stood there staring at it, the rain began to fall harder and faster. I was getting soaked. I ran towards the old building and passed through the open front doors under an awning with rusted letters.

Creekside Institute.

I had heard stories about this place as a kid. This was where crazy people were stashed. Someone was murdered here. They hid aliens in the basement. The usual.

The walls inside the forgotten hospital were covered in graffiti and not the kind you could almost appreciate. Oddly shaped penises and poorly drawn women with swollen genitalia looked back at me as I took a few steps down the hall. The childish drawings were accompanied by beer cans, condoms and empty chip bags.

Yes, this was a place of healing. Sexual, juvenile, drunken healing.

The place smelled so stale that I knew no one else had been inside for awhile. The old smell of piss still lingered in the air but the musk of the mould and mildew that was probably filling my lungs with toxic spores was stronger.

I turned right at the end of the hall and headed down the next corridor to get a look outside from the window. I couldn’t believe the glass was still intact. I pulled myself up by the metal grate that covered the window and looked out onto the sorriest excuse of a garden ever. An empty plot would have looked nicer than the dead foliage twisted around old, wooden posts. A picnic table of rotting wood stood by like a set of forgotten bleachers. No one cheered on the little garden anymore. This particular home team had disappointed just one too many times.

I seriously doubted that any real push for recovery had gone on at this hospital. Even in its heyday, it still would have been a shit hole.

A squeak down at the opposite end of the hall made me turn from the window. I hadn’t heard the main door open after I had come inside but suddenly I knew I wasn’t alone. And it wasn’t just the sound. I could see delicate twists of cigarette smoke wafting out of one of the rooms.

I didn’t get nervous that often. Probably because I didn’t care about most things anymore. But I can’t lie, my heart was going a little faster. I quietly made my way to where the hall turned back to the entrance and thought about making a run for the door. There was probably some sex depraved homeless meth addict in that room.

But I didn’t leave. Instead, the dumber Emily, the one with no thoughts of self-preservation, picked up my feet and walked me to the room. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was not this.

An old man, maybe in his seventies, was sitting on a plucked and stained mattress in the middle of the room. He looked at me, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he just raised his bony hand to his face and sucked on his cigarette like it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

I realized then that Dumb Emily had kind of wanted to see something grotesque. The rest of me though was relieved.

“Crazy weather, eh?” I said.

He looked at me now like he actually saw me for the first time. He didn’t say anything, he just nodded once.

“Okay.” I raised my hand in a stiff, awkward wave and turned to leave.

“Wait.” he croaked.

I thought about leaving anyways but then decided against it. Any old man in a weathered Red Sox cap and a cigarette pack tucked into the sleeve of his rolled up t-shirt deserved a second or two.

“You with the black hair. Can you see me?”

I’m sure my face twisted with that what the fuck are you talking about look but I still nodded.

“Wow.” That was all he said for an entire minute. I know that doesn’t seem long but his cigarette was burning down quickly and getting dangerously close to his fingers. And I was just standing there.

“What year is it?” he asked.

I didn’t think he was stupid for asking. If someone didn’t know what year it was, it’s probably because they’d been in a coma, avoiding the actually stupid people in their life for as long as possible.

“It’s twenty-eleven.”

His eyes were unequally framed by saggy, wrinkled skin. They opened a little wider as he nodded in appreciation of what I had just said. “Well then...”

He took another long and satisfying drag of his near spent cigarette and stood up slowly. Not because he was old but because he was just that cool.

There wasn’t much left of his cigarette but he gently brushed the lit end of the butt until it was out and then carefully tucked the remnants away in the cigarette pack in his other hand.

“My name’s Angus. I’ve got to get back to my friends now.” He suddenly seemed to perk up with a great idea. “Say, you wouldn’t want to meet them, would ya?”

“Will there be shuffle board and digestive cookies?”

His eyes brightened a little and he smiled. “I know, I know. Why hang out with an old gramps like me, right? Well, I wouldn’t have asked except that you seem a little alone and we could use a new face. Would probably cheer us up. I guess you could say you’d be doing us a solid.” Each word had an ease to it as if it came with a cold beer and a sunny day.

He was tall and thin. I had no trouble picturing Angus in another time when he was young, strong and played with the hearts of young girls like they were dice. Meant for shaking and throwing. He was past that now, that was obvious, but there was something else.

I could tell when someone liked me. Or at least how I looked. It was clear I wasn’t his type.

“Okay.” I could feel Dumb Emily nodding our head.

He smiled. “They’re over here.” He walked by me and into the hall. I assumed he’d head to the entrance but he didn’t. Instead, he ducked into the room beside the one I had found him in. It was another patient room but bigger. It had the skeletons of four single beds, one rusting in each corner of the room.

“Franny doesn’t like the smell of my smokes. Makes me leave if I want to smoke them.” He looked at the pack of cigarettes in his hand wistfully. “Lucky for her, I’m almost out.” He huffed, sort of a non-verbal oh hell, and tucked his cigarette pack into the rolled up sleeve of his t-shirt.

“We’re through here.” I looked at the wall he motioned to. It had cracks reaching down it from where the rain had weakened the ceiling. The paint, that odd toothpaste blue color, was chipped in some places and peeling in others. It was just a crummy, disintegrating wall.

And then the strangest thing happened. The dirty plaster began to peel in on itself. It rolled over the patches of blue paint that had survived the years. The folds of plaster got fatter and fatter until a jagged hole had formed in the wall.

I didn’t have to look at Angus to know he was smiling at me.

“Crazy shit, huh?”

I just nodded. With each step my feet pushed some old rubbish out of the way. A crusty newspaper. An old beer can. Candy wrappers. My only witnesses to this crazy shit.

I looked into the hole and saw a clean white room on the other side. I looked back at Angus and his smug smile, and then glanced over the room I was actually living and breathing in. It was like the white room’s ugly, deformed cousin that was normally kept hidden away in an attic and fed scraps. But this was the room on display for the world. The other one, the white room, was the one being stashed.

“What the fuck is this?” My voice was so small.

Angus sighed. “We think it’s purgatory. Too clean to be hell.”

I ran.

It was raining even harder when I dashed out of the building but that didn’t stop me. The trail that ran up through the forest was slick now and I fell more than once. I shot out of the forest and ran down the street, soaked through. My tights were torn and covered in mud from my multiple falls. I must have looked pretty bad but the few people I passed on my run home didn’t say much of anything, just a few sideways glances.

They didn’t just see a wall open up in an abandoned crazy house. No. It didn’t open up, it melted. I ran it over in my head again and again but it didn’t make sense. I’d been in stasis for so long now and this had violently ripped me out of it.

Snip. A seam. Just one. But it was the first one that had failed me since the patch-up job I had done when she left.

After forty minutes in the rain, I was home. My building was an older four story affair, straight from the seventies. Huntsville was full of them. Normally I was fine with it, the lack of a functional elevator didn’t get me down, but today I was cold, wet and winded from my run.

The trudge up to the third floor was hell. The adrenaline had exhausted my muscles and my mind. I was slipping into that fatigue that inevitably follows a rush.

My hand shook as I tried to open the door to my apartment. It took me four tries but the key finally found the lock. I warily stepped into my warm and musty home.

I could hear my aunt Jude snoring away in her recliner. I dropped my bag at the door and went through the kitchen and into the living room. Mr. Puggums was sleeping in her lap, snoring just as loudly.

He poked his furry head up as I turned the television off. He meowed at me like an old organ that had been burned and left to rot.

“Shut up, Puggums.” I whispered. I patted his scraggly hair and scratched behind his ears. I could see him kneading his paws into my aunt’s thigh but I didn’t worry about it waking her. A long time ago she’d striped this cat of any dignity. No balls. No claws.

My aunt’s jaw hung slack as she snored again. She twisted her skinny body a little in the recliner, farted, and then went right back to snoring. Mr. Puggums didn’t seem to mind any of this.

The hot shower finished whatever calming down the forty minute run home in the rain hadn’t.

I couldn’t believe what I’d seen tonight. It just couldn’t be real. I looked at myself in the mirror as if she were another person who was supposed to figure this out.

Nothing.

“Guess we’re going back tomorrow then.” I said. Pretty sure Dumb Emily had just piped up there but it didn’t matter now anyways. I was going to go back. I wanted to see that place again.