Y.S.T.

"somewhere there's a feather falling slowly from the sky; you need not know the reason why."
-nico

the snow was beginning to fall quietly on the pale and pillowy streets. From the front room, the girl could see the indentations of her heavy footsteps to the front door slowly refilling, becoming indiscernible from the current snowfall. And for just a moment, she had the strangest sensation: she imagined herself out in the snow, a faint, silvery expression, walking backwards gradually, taking with her feet those dark indents of the earth. She grew fainter and fainter, the steps becoming smaller and smaller, and before she knew it, she was taking her ice skates off in exasperation, wiping her hands of the cold red pool that had begun to surround her shivering frame. and then she fell violently from the sky like a mad and wool-coated snow terror, bursting her chapped lips on the ice. but then, she was speeding, gliding like the smoothest fountain pen on stationery, lifting her feet delicately and purposefully from the ice just as a pen does when proceeding to the next line, feeling the ripping January wind dance with her lips as her arms stretched out from her sides, fingertips cupping the tiny shining flakes that fell gently from the sky like a broken string of pearls. The girl put on her ice skates in a hurry; the water still retained that captivating unknown, and regardless of the season, remained whispered in a state of beguiling repose. She knew where she was now. The girl ran faster, clutching her heart with her mittened fist; the hollow heaviness of January was making itself a warm home within her lungs. She looked through the expansive limbs of the trees, and as they groaned with each gust of wind, wrapped in their burdensome snowy boas, she saw the lake. The girl was walking aimlessly through the silent woods, occasionally knocking her skates on a tree trunk, the subsequent falling accumulations her only company for miles. Then, she shut the door to her house with a punctuated click. The girl decided to go for a walk; the snow was beginning to fall quietly on the pale and pillowy streets. And then…

///

the girl’s pale face began to warm, starting at her chin. She could feel the blood vessels in her cheeks begin to expand one by one, resembling the first roses that bloom in Spring. There was a natural rhythm; her cheeks tingled at one, two, three, four, and then the fleshy valleys of her temples joined, and finally her forehead was in tandem. And then she felt hot, as if her face were a flame and her slender body the candle. Wax began to trickle down her face and onto her body, and her eyes returned to the falling snow, transfixed. And in the blinding and bloodless light, the girl began to see two cardinals playing in the sky, their feathers occasionally dwindling from the clouds to the white-wigged earth in a remarkably straight pattern, only swaying slightly by the occasional gust of wind. Her toes were tingling now. The girl peered closer into the windowpanes to the point where she could see the reflection of her blue eyes staring coolly back to her. While admiring these trails of crimson feathers, she caught herself in the window, wan and translucent as a ghost. And then she saw blood, trickling from her mouth all the way to her feet, beginning to collect and cool like wax on the floor. A jarring sensation overtook her entire body at once, commanding all of the girl’s attention. She violently tore her eyes away from the flypaper windowpanes and gazed in horror as hot, stinging blood crept down her body, plotting it like some kind of map. She could feel it glide easily over her hips, the goose bumps atop her thighs, the purple bruises that were swelling on her kneecaps; she could feel the blood marking her body’s geographical features and claiming its territory like a venomous snake. The cardinals and their feathers disappeared in panic, and the snow fell harder outside, making the border between her yard and the street completely indiscernible. And as she stood against the paralyzing and eternal pallidity, pale and bleeding like a macabre candy cane, the girl began to wonder if there were even birds to begin with. But there she remained, hoping for their eventual return.

Her mother, Nancy, found the girl later that day, still standing naked in front of the window. Nancy ran in at once, as the door to her home was wide open, allowing a thin layer of snow to accumulate in the front hall. The blood on the girl’s body had dried, now resembling the dark and muddy tire tracks that appeared on the now navigable snow. A poorly covered pothole in the form of a scab covered the gash on the girl’s lips. Nancy dropped the grocery bags at once and ran over to her daughter, shivering in front of the window.

“Alina, honey, what on Earth are you doing? Why are you bleeding?”

The girl was distant, still staring off into the snow, in a state of confused admiration of the tracks her mother’s car made in the driveway. “I’m just waiting for the birds.”

Nancy took off her coat and draped it on her daughter’s shoulders, pulling her away from the window. “The birds? What birds? It’s been practically a blizzard all day today.” She clutched her daughter’s chin, wincing at the nickel-sized gash on her lower lip. “Alina, what have you done to yourself?”

The girl didn’t respond.

Nancy looked to the front door again, and saw a pair of dirty ice skates. “You didn’t go to the lake again, did you?”

Again, the girl didn’t answer.

Nancy took her daughter by the wrist to the bathroom and began running the bathwater. “Aren’t you going to answer me? What did you do while I was gone today, Alina? Do you remember?”

The girl was silent. She could hear the hiss of the faucet, the water striking at the porcelain, filling the basin and creating a current of transparent teeth capable of swallowing a person whole. Her body began to ache.

“I don’t like baths, Mother.”

“You’re a mess, Alina. Now get in.”

The girl didn’t move.

“Don’t make me carry you. Get in.”

“Fine.”

Her mother began to wipe the stains away from her daughter’s face. “Sweetie, what did you do while I was at the store?”

She was watching the steam rise from the water, and how it began to erase the brown and bitter smelling lines from her body. The girl didn’t trust it at all. “I told you, I was just watching the birds.”

The girl looked to her mother, and for a moment, the whites of her eyes seemed to disappear and turn to pink, resembling the bathwater. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not, sweetie. I’m not crying. Do you remember what you were doing earlier today? Anything at all?”

The girl licked her lips and felt a hard bump, and then tasted something bitter. She pressed one of her fingers against the wound and pulled it away. Blood.

Her mother winced and grabbed another rag, rinsing it in cold water. She handed it to her
daughter. “Here, honey. Put this—“

“Mother, why am I bleeding?”

Sitting on the toilet seat, Nancy put her head in her hands. “I don’t know, Alina. I don’t know why you’re bleeding.”

///

While sitting in the bath, the girl could hear her mother on the phone.

“Doctor, I was only gone for two hours this afternoon. I had to run some errands, get groceries for the snowstorm...I know; had I known, I would never have left…no, I came home to her standing naked in front of a window, bleeding. There’s a huge gash on her lip. She didn’t know what she was doing or had done this afternoon, said she was just watching the birds...no, I looked around the house and I found her ice skates next to the front door. I’m assuming that’s what she did, she must have fallen again...right, but I thought you said it would be getting better by now. She’s been doing better lately, no incidents like this in a while...yes, but the accident happened almost a year ago, doctor. When is she going to be OK again? I certainly hope so; you have no idea how much this hurts me to see my daughter go through something like this...I know I’m fortunate she’s alive, I do. But what kind of life is this? She’s 16, and she can’t be left alone for more than an hour...and the birds, Doctor. It’s bad enough she can’t remember what is here, but now she is seeing things that aren’t…yes, OK. I will let you know if anything else like this happens. Goodbye.”

Meanwhile, the girl continued to flounder. She spread her fingers apart, feeling the hot pink water pass through them weightlessly. Occasionally, she would wave her hands in the water, and all of a sudden, it was heavy. The water kept rising. It was up to her ribs; sweat began to trickle down her forehead. The water had infiltrated and was percolating from her body, coming at her from all sides now. The hairs on her body rose and stood straight as needles; her pupils dilated. She clasped her chest, feeling her heart race, but the sound was drowned by the roaring hiss of the faucet. She couldn’t breathe. She was going deep, deeper, and everything was becoming dim and fuzzy…there were leaves in the tub. She saw the faint outlines of birds’ wings as she grew colder and colder, there was a slight pain on the side of her head…and there was a face: silent, paralyzed, bobbing above hers as she fell deeper and deeper, and it was all out of focus…murky and red…

Nancy returned to the bathroom, and turned the faucet off. “Alina, this water is freezing. Why didn’t you turn it off?”

“I don’t know.”

Her mother sighed. “Well, you’re all clean now. Here, get out before you catch a cold. I have your favorite soup on the stove now.”

“What’s that?”

Nancy thrust a towel to her daughter, shaking her head. “Best dry yourself off before it gets cold.”

The girl took the white towel to entirety of her body, drying each leg, each arm, her neck, her breasts, her waist, her vagina. She looked to the towel. It was now wet, but it was still white.

///

That night, the girl lay in her bed restlessly. She hadn’t had a dream in a hundred years. She liked to lay in silence instead of sleeping; she didn’t trust that amorphous space between her bed and the wall. The thought of conjuring something from nothing without barriers of reality and time frightened the girl, and she wouldn’t take any part in it. Dreams were deceiving; they provided action sequences that the girl (when she was younger) thought could last a lifetime, but when she woke up five hours later, were not so. The girl despised dreams and how they would usurp her consciousness, taking her to a world of elastic infinites that she would never be able to understand, and then, at their own discretion, abruptly catapult her back into a very rigid and equally confusing reality.

Although sometimes at night, she took pleasure as the real shadows and darkness bewitched her furniture and transformed it into different things. Sometimes, her plant would turn into an ice cream cone, her guitar would turn into a fat goose staring intently at the ceiling detail. Her favorite, though, was her floor mirror at the corner of the room. Before bed, the girl would hang a coat on it, and at night, she would imagine that it was some sort of angel watching over her as she lounged in her queen bed. In the mornings, it was always painful to tear herself from her bed, and realize that she was in a room with instruments she could not play, plants that did not need watering, and a mirror that would only reflect her and no one else. Soon enough, the girl gave up on imagining dreams, too.

///

Rising somberly the next morning, she trudged into the bathroom to shower. Before entering, the girl stopped in front of the mirror. Her eyes were puffy and raw from hours staring into space. There was a scab on her lip. How did that get here, she wondered. It certainly was hideous. The girl frowned, and with naked lashes, closed her eyes as she stepped into the shower.

Three minutes later, she re-emerged, cold skin resembling Braille. She reached for a towel from the rack, but unfortunately, there were none. Nearly slipping on the tile, the girl grabbed a wrinkled white one that lay next to the toilet with her hands. It was dry, and that was good enough. At first, the towel smelled a bit bitter, but that was soon to be replaced by the fruit and chemical scent of her shampoo.

Now completely dry, the girl re-entered her room. Immediately she was depressed. She saw her bed: on one side, there were off-white mountains and valleys made of cotton; the other side was completely cold to the touch, silent and still with all the placidity of a frozen lake. An occasional sheet edge hung lazily at the corner of the girl’s side of the bed like a tongue. The bed looked like a stroke victim. At once, the girl took to the unruly side of the bed and pulled it tightly to mirror its crippled counterpart. A few minutes passed, and the girl gazed contentedly at the bed, now pleasant and inviting; how nice it was to wake so clean and to an already made bed. Suddenly drowsy, the girl took to her bed and without thinking, fell fast asleep.

///

She was at the lake again. Laughing and lavender fingertipped, the girl laced her bubblegum pink skates one at a time, pausing momentarily to admire her surroundings. It was empyrean: the girl looked to the trees, melting icicles hung from them like crystal dripping pendants, and then beyond that, small popcorn clouds covered a bright blue sky. Pale beams of sun cascaded down and illuminated the frozen lake, which was covered with just enough snow that made it sparkle with a certain shine that was quite rapturous to her. She couldn’t wait any longer. Her older sister wasn’t too far behind; the girl could hear the snow compress into the earth as her sister lumbered on in the distance.

The girl took to the lake in her ice skates, dazzling her pretend audience with the ribbon-like designs her blades made in the ice. First it was a simple figure-8, and then a clover, then a fleur de lis. She could hear her sister in the distance, red-coated, huffing and grunting while attempting to put on her ice skates. The girl was ready to wow her audience; it was her final act.

She was ready to jump. She picked up speed, her blades whipped through the paper thin ice faster and faster, and she began to skate so quickly that the flakes that hit her were not cold or cotton-candy globules, but rather glossy beads of water. She looked to the sky; it was all so bright. She could see black birds flying. The girl closed her eyes and prepared for her own flight, and then she was in the air, floating above the glimmering earth like an angel.

And then there was a crash, and water, deep biting water, seeping through her skates, tearing through the stitching of her corduroys, pulling down the seams of her coat, bombarding her air passageways. The wings of the birds were growing fainter and fainter as she sank deeper into the lake, eventually becoming eclipsed by soggy dead leaves.

But then there was a face, and then there was a single, white hand grasping at her collar, yanking her freezing body out of the water like a weed. And then there was a splash, another crack, and as the girl was lying on the ice, unconscious, all of the birds gathered round and perched atop the branches as a solemn jury dressed in black, cocking their heads as they watched another cardinal-coated girl flapping her wet wings helplessly in the water, rendering the lake's verdict. Her lips darkened in surrender as she began to realize her sentence, slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the lake. Soon enough, there was silence, except for the flapping of black wings as the crows left their bench and went about their business. And from the lone treetops, all that could be seen was a girl, lying supine, gathering a faint dust of snow on her frozen frame, and a small single flash of a figure wrapped in red fabric, floating in the middle of a giant black gash, resembling the final, crippled petal that falls from a single, dying rose.

///

The girl awoke seeing red. This time, it was in the form of flashing lights of an ambulance. She awoke, screaming and attached to a gurney, a white sheet blanketing her like a baby. Her head throbbed in agony. To her left, she could see another gurney with a sheet, covering its respective body completely. Everything around her was white: the snow, the sky, the vehicle, even the words that surrounded her. Soft-spoken words like hypothermia and blunt trauma and hypoxia and I am so sorry for your loss, ma’am. The words were spoken so starkly, and were so brittle, as if they would disintegrate into a million pieces if spoken with any more feeling, and had the sharp fragility of an icicle: depending on how they fell from the tongue, they could kill.

And they did, or at least that’s what the girl thought. Once the words fell from the mouth of the man, they disintegrated, and began to tear away at their unfortunate victim. However, the words were drowned by the cries of another woman, someone the girl couldn’t see. My beautiful girl, it cried. My beautiful girl.

The voice came closer to the girl, and then she felt cold hands cupping the sides of her face, sending shocks down her body. “Alina, honey,” it said, “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

///

The next morning while her mother was still asleep, the girl decided to go for a walk. The snow was beginning to fall quietly on the pale and pillowy streets. She shut the door to her house with a punctuated click. The girl left her home, and walked aimlessly through the silent woods, occasionally knocking her skates on a tree trunk, the subsequent falling accumulations her only company for miles. Curiously, she looked through the limbs of the trees, groaning with each gust of wind, their snowy boas becoming quite burdensome and heavy. And then she saw the lake. The girl ran faster, clutching her heart with her mittened fist; the brisk March air was making itself a warm home within her lungs. She knew where she was now. The girl put on her pink ice skates in a hurry; the frigid water still retained that captivating unknown, and regardless of the season, remained whispered in a state of beguiling repose. Then, she was speeding, gliding like a smooth fountain pen on stationery, lifting her feet delicately and purposefully from the ice just as a pen does when it skips a line to begin a new chapter. She felt the cool, early Spring winds dance with her lips as she stretched her arms out from her sides, fingertips cupping the tiny shining flakes that fell gently from the sky like a string of broken pearls. The girl leaped into the sky, but then she fell violently, like a mad and wool-coated snow terror, slamming her body on the ice. There was a snap, another snap, and then a starburst of needle thin lines began to spread, and the girl began floundering in the midst of this terrible, watery web, its cold and sharp teeth biting at her face. She could not swim, and her skates felt so heavy, pulling her deeper down into the earth. Everything was growing faint and dark and cold; she could not remember why she was here in the first place. Memories were murky, and as the girl began to submit to the heavy weight of her pink skates, she made one final, conceding look above. There were cardinals flying above in the sky. And then there was a single white hand, yanking her from beneath the ice.

Gagging and coughing, the girl emerged from the lake, shivering and blanketed in a thin, springtime snow. She licked her lips, and although they were wet, they were smooth. The girl looked to her left and stared at the dark, vast hole, and then to her surroundings. There was no one for miles; in the distance she could hear the gentle pitter patter of ice melting from the trees, and a single cardinal feather fell from the sky. The girl looked to the feather, and watched as it languidly fell atop a piece of broken ice, a few sharp points jutting out like fingers. Transfixed on the feather, she scooted closer to the hole, and just as she was peeking over the ledge, she saw a mitten sinking deeper into the unknown. The now still water reflected a single cardinal perched in the sky, cocking its head at the hole. She turned around to admire the bird, but when she did, it was gone. The girl looked back into the lake, only to see the pale blue eyes of her sister smiling back at her. The girl blinked, and then they were gone, back into the depths from which they had come.

Alina clutched the red feather; even though she was one shivering body among a vast yet disintegrating lake, she was not alone.

///

Alina would still return to the lake occasionally with her mother, and even though her memory never really improved, she always led the way. They loved going there in the Spring, as its snowy and paralyzed face would begin to soften, the illusive ice taking with it the things the women both hated and loved, revealing a tender and beautifully indifferent surface. Alina liked to watch as the birds would dive confidently from the sky and skim the lake; Nancy took to the red roses that, regardless of how harsh the winter, were just as sweet-smelling as the year before (and would be, for years to come). And the water remained unchanged throughout time; providing life and just as easily taking it away. Its exterior would shine brilliantly in the June sun, reflecting all that was real and warm and present, but just when one of the women would begin to look too carefully into its depths in an attempt to understand, Winter would come, shrouding its unknowable abyss of secrets in the pale and pillowy snow.