Maggie Hoppel

And a woman who newly named herself Tong’ae rang the bells at the gate of Cathigan.

Bellamy Versus [Eternity]

Maggie Hoppel

Bellamy worked at the airport. That morning, like every cursed morning, her [alarm] had startled her awake at 5:00 A. M. exactly. She hadn’t slept in, just climbed into the [shower]—scrubbed her body, shaved her legs and armpits, shampooed and conditioned her hair—and dressed herself in plain [clothes]. Her [breakfast], then her toothbrush went into her mouth after that. They tasted the same. She owned no makeup, nor a hair dryer—she braided her unruly brown [tresses] instead of drying them. Grabbing her [phone] [keys] [bag] and sliding on her bland-colored [shoes], Bellamy had then proceeded with her usual trek down the apartment stairs to her car, but never before locking the [door] behind her. File deleted: [HOME]. She wasn’t going to think about her apartment, about a million apartments, about huts, castles, fortresses, cottages, townhouses, with her husband—kids—pets—roommates—by herself because none of it was real. The world she had just left, like all the others, had simply … stopped, when she turned her back on it, and it would be waiting to spring back into reality when she was ready to return to it this evening. It didn’t exist. It didn’t exist. It didn’t exist. Bellamy had placed her hand against the long, rusty railing by the stairs and stilled her fidgeting body. Closed her eyes, and opened them. She counted: 5, she saw stairs and colorful, but teenaged graffiti and her boring slip-on shoes and her bag, far too large for the few possessions it carried, and the pastels of the dawn settling onto the city ahead of her like freshly fallen snow. 4, she touched the cold metal of the railing, then the rough cement walls, noting the feel of her wet rat’s tail of a braid against her back and the smooth cotton fabric of her shirt straining a little bit against her broad shoulders.

3, she could hear her own breathing and her heartbeat, proof that she was still alive. Bellamy was always, always still alive. She listened for one more thing and detected the distant chatter of another commuter exiting their apartment from the floor below, regurgitating the morning’s final farewells to a spouse or child or roommate. 2, she smelled hot, stale city and her deodorant. 1 … Bellamy raked her tongue across the palm of her hand. It tasted salty from sweat and railing germs. Maybe she would get sick. Wait, no, she wasn’t going to think about sickness right now. Bellamy was not currently [sick], not coughing, hacking, bleeding, aching, oozing, so illness wasn’t—couldn’t be—part of her reality. Bellamy lived in a world of walking to her [car] and nothing else. So she put one [foot] in front of the other, her breathing steadier now. She clambered into her decade-old [Volvo] and started the [engine] and drove to work in moderate [traffic]. Then there was the airport. Bellamy worked at the [airport]. It wasn’t anything interesting, really, not like the pilots or security officers—who, she reminded herself, didn’t exist unless one happened to pass by baggage claim while she was watching. And, yes, she worked in baggage claim. Sending lost [suitcases] off to Tokyo or Disney World or South Dakota to reunite with their owners. The owners existed, or at least their stuff did. In a weak moment, Bellamy would open their bags and peer inside—you know, just to see how they folded their [shirts]. Today, like every day, she walked in right on time, waved hello to her [manager], and settled in at her designated [desk]. “What’s shakin’, Belinda?” asked the man in the cubicle to her left. He tried a different [name] each time since he could never remember hers. She thought he might have one of those brain diseases, like Alzheimer’s. He was sort of old and definitely decrepit. Bellamy shook her head and allowed a slight [smile] to debut on her lips. “Not much, Milo, not much.” Milo harrumphed. “Then whoever picked the radio station today did a rotten job.” Bellamy chuckled, though Milo’s usual response never surprised her. It was more the idea of [dancing], which definitely hadn’t existed in Bellamy’s world for a long time.

Regardless, her pulse began to speed up at the foreign idea, already triggering a thousand memories of a million songs and steps and people and nights and days and—5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and she would calm down, play along with the old man who was here and now and real. “I’d say something about needing a partner, but I’m not sure your joints could take that,” she admitted. “Bah,” scoffed Milo, and then he laughed too. “You’re probably right, cruel as you are.” She had known he would agree. Counted on it, for she’d never intended to dance at all. “Guess I’ll get started on this paperwork, then.” And in her usual [dismissal], the two turned to their individual [computers] and began the day’s work. Because Bellamy worked at the airport. But the moment she opened her laptop and saw the fresh [feed] sprawled across the screen, everything changed. To anyone else, the website would have looked like [clickbait]. Something to scroll past with a disparaging swipe. THIS UNNAMED “IMMORTAL WOMAN” APPEARS THE SAME AGE IN PHOTOGRAPHS ACROSS CENTURIES … WHERE IS SHE NOW? She found her fingers moving the [mouse], clicking on the [link] and inserting her [earbuds] before her brain could decide against this. If Bellamy would truly admit this FULL VIDEO BELOW into her world, right here right now. And, sure enough, there she was, in a photograph that dated back to the 1840s. Different [clothes] and [shoes] and [hairstyle] but still the same old Bellamy with her thick eyebrows and chiseled nose. There was a man sitting next to her. He had a clumsily trimmed beard and kind eyes and had wanted a picture of the two of them that day for Bellamy to keep when he was gone. Only later did she realize that the photograph was his gift to her, to take the edge off her loneliness as she lived and lived and [lived]. She hated this 1840s Bellamy, this woman who’d crawled from the depths of Uncanny Valley to create whole wicked universes in her head. She hated 1900s Bellamy, too, for posing for a small watercolor out West, where a penniless painter had captured her heart with her sob story. Back then, making it as an artist was near impossible, and making it as

a woman? Even worse. But Bellamy never should have allowed the lady painter’s brush to bring about anything close to her likeness. It hurt too much to look at now. And 1980s Bellamy—that one, she hated most of all, with her perm reaching pathetically toward the skies as she wrapped her arms around a small boy—James—and beamed for the camera. In those years, she’d taken to fostering orphans with terminal diseases, having been thoroughly numbed to losing her loved ones. But James, James had gotten to her. Wormed his way into her heart and made her smile so brightly for this miserable picture, made her scream so relentlessly at the doctors who failed him every time, made her lose touch with the adoption agency after she’d buried him. But there was more, stretching as far back as the Jamestown colony and as recently as 9/11. The images paraded by in a dark carnival of debaucherous history, a man’s voice-over buzzing inconsequentially in her ears. Bellamy was chewing her tongue, gnawing it into a bloody gob of flesh in her dry mouth but she didn’t even notice, couldn’t look away. She hated all the Bellamies and their memories, thousands and thousands of them drowning her in their immortal waves. If she could’ve died by now, she would have—but here she was, still alive, always, always [alive]. A wrinkled hand landed on Bellamy’s shoulder, squeezing in what was perhaps reassurance following the horrors of the video, but Bellamy wasn’t ready, didn’t want to be touched, and she screamed, earbuds ripping painfully from her ears as she stood up up up and slammed her [fist] into Milo’s [temple]. Milo? The entire room of workers sucked in a breath as the man collapsed, unconscious. Maybe dead. His music still played on the radio, and Bellamy still didn’t feel like dancing. File deleted: [FRIEND]. She thought no more of smiles and jokes and hands and trips and wrinkled faces and young, innocent eyes and the butterflies of someone who might become something more one day and the warm, safe feeling of