Free Not Dark Yet by Berit Ellingsen Page A

canoes navigating flooded suburban gardens. Then they showed another demonstration, in another city, on another continent, it wasn’t clear which, maybe from several different places, not just one. He took in the images of the political manifestations on TV, and marveled at how it was mirrored by the shouting crowd that surrounded the bus, before he turned his gaze back to the throng on the screens.

11
    THE WATER IN THE OLD POT HAD BEGUN TO BOIL, convection bubbles bursting on the surface of the liquid. He reached for the handle to move the pot off the flame, but a brightness flared inside him and flooded his mind. He was familiar with the brightness; it was nothing new. He had first seen it in his sleep when he was little. At that time it caused nothing more than slightly painful contractions along his spine. During the previous spring the brightness became impossible to ignore, but he had gradually grown used to it. After the initial blast it usually faded to a glow behind his thoughts, but now, in the solitude of the cabin with nothing to distract him, the brightness overtook him. He was distantly aware that his legs buckled beneath him and that he banged against the stove, faintly hoping that he wouldn’t knock the boiling water over and glad he had placed it on a ring in the back. Then the light outshone everything else. Inside it, he was what he had been before he was born and what he would become when his body was forgotten.
    The multi-colored rug was accordioned beneath his hips and against the canister beneath the stove. He blinked and reached for the knobs above him, thinking he could at least turn theflame off, but fell into the light again like a drowning person sliding back into water.
    The second time the world came into view he fumbled hard against the front of the stove and almost managed to reach the knob. If he had been home his two cats would have found him and curled up against him, unaware of his struggle. Instead, he heard a tapping on the glass above him and wondered if it had started to rain.
    A face, round and pale like the moon, was staring in through the pane in the door. He was half beneath it, half up against the stove, and too close to be fully seen from the outside. The water on the stove hissed and spat tiny needles, which occasionally landed on his skin. The neighbor knocked on the window again.
    “Are you all right?” the face asked, breath misting the old glass, voice muted by the barrier. Was that Mark? “If you move a little, I can open the door and come inside!”
    “I’m fine, thank you!” he shouted and wriggled closer to the door. “Don’t worry!”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    At university he had an acquaintance, a pre-med student, who used to tell a story of how she saved one of her neighboring students when he suffered a seizure while frying ground beef to mix with pasta.
    “I heard an odd shout and then there was a bang against the wall,” the pre-med student would say. “I recognized the yell as that of an epileptic fit, dropped everything I had, and ran into my neighbor’s room. He was indeed having a seizure, didn’t even know he had epilepsy. I saved him,” she said, again and again. Every time the pre-med told the story he made a mental note to stay silent if he ever had a fit.

    “Eloise and I bought some rice that was on sale in the store,” Mark said. “We bought a bag for you too, if you want it. Have to take advantage of a sale, especially since the prices have jumped again. I’ll just put the bag here.” There was a thud on the deck and something fell against the door.
    “Thank you so much!” he said, guilt blossoming up inside him for keeping Mark out while the neighbor was only being friendly. “How much was it?”
    “Oh, please don’t worry about it,” Mark said. “It was on sale.”
    “No, no,” he said. “Please let me pay for it.”
    “It’s nothing, we’re neighbors, after all,” Mark said. “Consider it a