Free Unknown by Jane

coming to me.
    “What is it, why are you so upset?”
    “Madison, I can’t protect you. It’s really fucked up out there. You haven’t seen anything yet. The bodies are piled everywhere. The fire and smoke, oil burning, cars overturned. The smell. It makes the musty rot down here seem like a spring shower in a flower garden. I have to toughen you up, teach you some things - how to shoot, to find your way around the city, to hide from the Blisterheads and Ethereals. They’ll skin you alive and wear your hide. Even a tribe of survivors like us would take one look at you and gang bang you in the nearest alley.”
    “Jimmy...”
    “No. I’ve been keeping it from you. I’ve been trying to hide the destruction and brutality, but I can’t anymore. If I leave you down here they’ll find you.”
    “Okay. What do you want to do?” she asks, her gaze wide open, kneeling at my feet, her tiny hot hands on my knees. A rivulet of water runs down the far wall.
    “We can’t stay here, that’s for sure. There’s no way out if we get cornered. We have to find a safer place, get supplies, and figure out how to work our way to the nearest airport.”
    “Airport, what for?”
    “We have to go back.”
    “Back
    where?”
    “To the island. There’s nothing out here. We have to wipe the slate clean, but we can’t do it alone. I thought if I got out that things would be better on the mainland. It’s not, Madison. It’s so much worse. We have to be part of the rebirth, or we’ll be part of the erasure.”
    “Jimmy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re scaring me.”
    I hold her head in my hands.
    “I know. I’ll explain it all to you later. For now, we need to get supplies. We need to get you some new clothes, some boots. We need to work on our hand-to-hand, our gun skills, and staying in shape. It’s a boot camp for the apocalypse.”
    4. X
    She is coming, very close. Stripping off my clothes, I neatly fold them and stack them on the table. I recline in the chair and begin the process of submitting to the Mahayana meditation. The parable in my mind transforms into a complicated mathematical equation, into an intricate pattern, into a hot white light. I need to catch her past before I can transform her future.
    I am in Marcy’s apartment. The windows are closed, and the stale smell is of cigarette smoke and red wine, the bureau dotted with the remnants of cocaine. I stand in the studio apartment, naked and flushed red, while the movement in the bathroom hints at an upheaval. I creep to the open door to see what she is doing, down on her knees out of sight.
    The crumpled pack of Marlboro Lights sits on the bathroom sink, open, two left. She clutches the sides of the porcelain bowl and retches out the rest of her lunch. The chunks of pink salmon were not good enough. The bits of lettuce and carrots, roughage that would’ve been hell on her stomach, lone trespassers on a dry stretch of road. The diet coke with lime swirls around the partially digested remnants, while her forehead shines under the harsh lights, a sheen of exertion.
    Standing up with a shake in her arms, Marcy pulls her long brown hair back into a ponytail, and fastens it with a rubber band. She straightens the pink kimono, and cinches the tie. I backtrack to the bedroom, two open French doors with lace curtains leading to a queen sized bed. The crisp, white sheets are our canvas.
    She checks her hollow cheeks in the mirror, sparkle eyes and vacant earth. Glancing out to the living room the stack of bills and paychecks mock her. The answering machine flashes the number 12. Beneath the side table is a set of hand weights, 10
    pounds each, dinged at the edges, like the floor beneath it. Back to the mirror her ivory skin is this month’s fashion trend.
    It’ll take another year of this to get her out of hock. At least that long to get the paperwork in order and her son back. Maybe she’ll be ready by then, clean. She smiles at herself,