#TheMuseWaits
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Here there be monsters
Fiction by Nicole Colinarez (Image: Jinen Shah via Unsplash.com)
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Rule #1: “Never be the first to break eye contact.”
As soon as the children in our village are able to walk on their own, this rule becomes a daily refrain. Even as they toddle about, the beachgrass waving above their downy heads, they know.
They know.
The mamas remember the missing. The fathers build taller fences.
They know breaking eye contact first is the same as leaving your house at night without a lantern.
They know breaking eye contact first is as close to a yes as can be.
They all know.
Rule #2: “No matter how hungry you are, remember that it bites back.”
It was just the one time, mind you.
The potato and cabbage soup had been cut with water so many days in a row that it was more like washing water than soup.
The hunger felt like it was clawing its way out.
My stomach rumbled, loud like thunder bouncing off the cliffs, but I still heard the snap! of twigs just off to my right, still saw the flash of grey like cresting seafoam.
Might’ve won that day if the pangs hadn’t heightened my senses.
Rule #3: Take the offering to the shore pines and don’t look back.
It’s tempting, I know, but don’t.
“Pray the candles are enough to illuminate the footpath. Pray that river of honey is enough to sweeten your haste. Pray the food lasts until the next full moon.”
That’s what the elders like to say.
They made the rules.
They know there’s nothing safe to see there.
So, light the candles until they burn bright, pour the mead until it flows over the side of the cup, place the food in the hollowed out stone . . . and go.
Just go quickly and don’t look back.
This late in the month, I’m too hungry to chase you too far anyway.
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The color of fate
Fiction by Nicole Colinarez (Image by Kaihao Zhao on Unsplash)
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“Birdie.”
No one gets away with that but Jenna, so when I look up I’m not all surprised to see her. What does surprise me, though, is the exasperated expression she’s wearing.
She must have been calling my name for a bit.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” she replies, sliding into the seat across from me.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. What are you doing down this way?”
She looks at me like I’m supposed to know the answer to my question, but I don’t read minds anymore. She knows this now.
“Ava, we had a meeting today. Remember? You were supposed to come with me so we could finalize the lease agreement on the shop space.”
Fuck.
“Jenna, I’m sorry, babe.” I feel so small, so exasperated with myself. “Today . . . today just got away from me. You know?”
Her hand resting on mine tells me she understands. Her sincere but sad smile tells me she’s going to say what she has to say anyway.
“I know today is hard for you, Bird, but it’ll be a whole year. He wouldn’t want you hiding out here. He wouldn’t want this for you.”
I feel the reminder like a punch to the gut, folding in on myself.
Is that all it’s been? One year has felt like both forever and nothing at all. I didn’t want to hope, but it’s like my body has a mind of its own and despite my best intentions, I still find myself here. Waiting.
“I know, Jen. I just . . . what if I don’t show up and he does? We don’t even know for sure what happened.”
“Bird, babe, no one hikes the PCT without risk. But, like, most people finish California in just a few months, babe, and it’s not uncommon to, you know, to not find a body.”
The car was empty but locked when the park rangers found it, and his gear was completely missing. That should mean something, right? And phone batteries die all the time.
“I should have gone with him.”
He’d talked so many times about leaving it all behind, but I just couldn’t. Not with the business finally taking off and not with my mom needing the help so much. He knew that.
He knew that and he left anyway.
And that’s why I’m here, waiting. Hoping. Praying I am wrong.
Jenna doesn’t know about the fight we had before he left. No one does. Just like no one knew why we had those matching red rings.
When the fortuneteller at the boardwalk called us over to her table, we went on a lark, laughing the whole way. What could she possibly tell us about us that we didn’t already know? We’d been in love since we were 15, and best friends since we were old enough to realize we could talk to each other through our shared backyard fence. We thought nothing she could say would surprise us.
We were wrong.
“The two of you?” She pointed at the two of us like an accusation. “This is not your first time together. This is not even your first life together. Your lives are tied together. Hear me: the two of you cannot live long without the other. It is why your love always begins so young and, unfortunately, why your lives end so soon.”
We stood there, no longer laughing, jaws open like yawning caverns. We wanted to laugh it off, but we’d both felt it before, the pull of the other so strong sometimes we swore we could hear the other’s thoughts even when apart.
“This will buy you more time in this life.” She handed us the rings then, thin circlets of red wire tied off with a knot.
The night before he left, I threw it at him. I was so hurt, so angry that he couldn’t just wait a little while longer, that I ripped the ring off my pinky and threw it at him. The look on his face was pure devastation. He peeled out of the driveway like the devil himself was on his heels.
I ignored his first attempts at reaching out. I was crushed and angry and wanted him to suffer without me. And I knew he was, because I could still feel him, could still hear him when he was particularly focused or happy or sad or feeling defeated. And, so, two months into his hike, I finally answered one of his sporadic texts. I told him I’d be here, at our favorite spot, a huge pitcher of beer and a piping hot pizza waiting for his triumphant return. I told him to enjoy the hike, to take photos for me, to text or call me any time he found service. I told him I loved him, that I was sorry.
I never told him I couldn’t find the ring.
And I never told anyone when I stopped hearing his thoughts.
Turns out the color of anger is the same color of fate.
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The Stacks
Fiction by Nicole Colinarez (Image : Janko Ferlič via Unsplash.com)
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Her fingertips leave trails in the dust clinging to the spines.
Heads, bent in concentration over brightly lit screens, barely turn her way at the shush of her shoes moving along the runner separating the desks from the stacks.
As it should be, she thinks.
She tries, almost desperately, to make very little noise. She remembers vividly what it was like to feel the tendrils of a thought within her grasp only to feel it slip away because of something unexpected.
The cart at the top of the aisle is heavy with books, a paperweight if she ever saw one, so she gathers a few titles in her arms and begins the tedious process of shelving. It’s an art, really, the ability to notice when something isn’t where it belongs.
Sliding the worn copy of Platt in its place, she notices a pair of eyes staring at her from the empty space beside it.
Oh! leaves her lips on a rush of breath while the rest of the books in her arms fall to her feet. Bending quickly, she scrambles to gather her fallen wards and finds herself looking at a pair of worn Converse.
“Hello,” he calls from above her.
Library voice, she thinks.
Lifting her eyes, she smiles in return.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be over here.”
“It’s quite all right,” she replies. “It’s not the first time I’ve encountered something unexpected when shelving.”
He laughs at that—a little too loudly.
“So,” he says, “is it really haunted?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
Walking back toward the end of the aisle with him trailing her, she sets the forgotten returns on the cart and heads back to the front desk. She really doesn't want to have this conversation right now. It feels like asking for trouble.
“The library,” he continues. “They say it’s haunted. Is it? It is, isn’t it!”
She knows he isn’t shouting, but he’s so close to her ear that he might as well be.
“I . . . I wouldn’t say that exactly.”
“Well, what would you say?”
She stops just then and he almost bumps into her. Turning to face him, she notices the way his hair falls just a bit onto his forehead and a sudden ache to brush it back slams into her.
She never expected he wouldn’t recognize her, but maybe it’s different from person to person?
She can hardly remember anything after the accident. There was that flash of light and then . . . and then she woke up sitting between the stacks they used to hide in for make out sessions before afternoon classes.
She smiles at him, only this time she wonders if he notices the sadness hiding there, and reaches for his hand.
It’s cold now, but she knows the chill eventually fades.
“I would say I’ve been waiting for you . . . I just didn’t know you’d get here so soon.”
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