Space / John Ingold

SPACE / JOHN INGOLD Fiction

We moved in on a Sunday. The haze had lifted just enough so that, from the car, I could barely make out the shape of the house. It looked like a mirage, a glass box falling from the sky and landing amongst all this dying foliage. The house’s sharp lines and floor-to-ceiling windows looked dated, not like something you would purchase nowadays. An investment in the past, as Grant would say, almost too seriously. Like buying a record player, or a camera, or a book. “You’re not worried about the trees over the house, are you?” I asked. “Some look like they could fall at any minute.” I’d never owned a house before. The thought terrified me, all this space to be managed. I already missed our apartment in the city, and the gentle comfort of having all our possessions in one room. Grant looked over at me. “Don’t worry, okay? We’ll figure it out.” This had become a ritual of ours, a perverse magic trick. From my hat I conjured worry and fear, and as quickly as it came it vanished, disappeared by some sleight of hand on the part of Grant. But these things were not gone, only hidden. As Grant directed the car into the garage, I couldn’t help but feel angry with him. It was a misdirected anger that burned nonetheless, growing hotter with each passing second. I sat in silence as the garage door closed behind us, waiting for the automated response that signaled it was safe to get out of the car. Even when the sound did come— a robotic bird whistle that echoed through the empty garage— I did not get up from my seat. In this car, I was still from the city, and this house was not my house. Leaving the car and entering through the front door would confirm that what was around me was mine, and what was behind me was no longer mine. Like I had become two separate people, and opening that door would force some awful recombination. Granted scanned a paper-thin keycard against the handle of the door connecting the garage to the house. He turned to look at me. “You coming?” ————— It unfolded like a dream. There was before, sitting on a blanket, enjoying the sun as it fell like patchwork on our skin. And then there was the sensation of falling asleep, of blinking into existence a dark grey cloud that blossomed on the horizon. Grant said something, but his words have since been smothered by that single image of birds in flight, their wings only capable of taking them so far. Some people screamed, I thought. A toddler began to cry, alone. And all the while there was Grant, tugging at the sleeve of my coat, urging me to run. “What is that?” I asked, but Grant could only shake his head. We tried to run but with each glance backwards we confirmed what we already knew. The cloud was growing. Eventually it would cover the sun and then what? The nearest building was the art museum. We could barely make out the glass wall that extended above the trees. It was too far away, but we ran anyway. Other people were running too, each one of them propelled forward by the column of haze that grew closer with each second. A woman had tripped on a loose piece of gravel, her skirt flung upwards to reveal the hot pink underwear she was wearing. This was the last thing I remembered before the cloud caught up with us, pulling a curtain over my eyes until there was nothing but grey and the sound of Grant whispering my name into the air. Later, there was this: I will sweep away man and beast, I swill sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, and the rubble with the wicked. I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth. It appeared on televisions and newspapers and the sides of buildings, everyone whispering those two sentences to themselves as if there was a hidden truth to be found between those words.

Eventually the logic of everything— of what had happened and who had caused it— unraveled until there was only the live-feed of three scared individuals, their heads bowed as they waited for the bullets to end their waiting. And we were waiting too, perched on the edge of our sofa as a man dressed in an ill-fitting black suit read aloud their crimes in a monotone voice. More than a million people dead or dying, countless others to be affected in a manner only revealed through time. Irreparable damage to the environment, a toxic grey haze the spread from the city until it clung to ever corner of the northeastern part of the country. “We did what we could,” said the woman in the middle. She was young. My age, maybe, and angry. The bullet entered the back of her skull and exited through her left eye. Her lips were still parted when it happened, and a part of me could hear the ghostly echo of those words: we did what we could, we did what we could, we did what we could… ————— The house was simple but efficient. I liked the rotary phone that hung on the kitchen wall. “It’s not real, of course,” the real estate agent had said. “But the architect had a penchant for those things.” Those things. Old things. There were other objects misplaced in time as well: a wood furnace in the living room, a typewriter in the study, even an analogue television set in the basement. None of these things worked, of course. “They’re just for show,” the agent added. It reminded me of an old theme-park ride I’d been to as a kid, a rotating stage show that featured dioramas of four different time periods ranging from the early 1900s all the way to a distant, LED-lit future. The futuristic diorama had been my favorite. I liked the robotic dog that sat in the corner, barking occasionally before doing a back-flip. I thought of this dog when the real estate agent showed us the garden in the basement. “For purifying the air,” she said as if it was a normal thing to say. But it was a normal thing to say, after all, and one of the main reasons we were forced to move in the first place. “It’s a new addition, just added last month. And for a good price.” She patted Grant on the shoulder which made me jealous, a response that immediately made me feel ridiculous. The garden was Grant’s favorite part of the house. He talked about it incessantly in the weeks leading up to our decision to purchase. He even made a list of all the things we could grow in the garden: tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers, peaches…The list would continue on like this until I became fed up, suggesting instead that we use the garden to grow marijuana, the new super-powered strain that was rumored to induce an almost twenty-four hour high. Grant never found this joke funny, but neither did I. Both of us were trying to be honest with each other, trying to cope with what we had. When I first stepped into the garden all I saw was a dimly-lit room with dusty shelves lining either wall. Irrigation lines crossed the ceiling in what reminded me of a city’s traffic grid. This garden seemed just as empty to me as the animatronic dog that barked on an endless loop as spectator’s glided past. But Grant saw something else. It had been reflected in his eyes. As much as I tried, I could not understand exactly what it was that he saw in that garden, in this house. I could not understand if this uncertainty, this unknowable-ness of Grant made me feel angry or in love. “It’s beautiful,” he had said, the agent nodding in agreement. “Let’s see more of the house. Yes?” Her nails were painted bright red and ended in sharp points. When she waved her hand to usher us back up the stairs, I was reminded of a shark’s mouth snapping shut. The other rooms had a similar layer of dust, the type that only appears after many months of neglect. It had been almost a year since the last owners had moved out, threatened by a wildfire that started in the neighboring foothills. “It’s so strange,” said the agent. “The fire just barely missed the house, but the couple never returned. They just…” A snap of her fingers. “Vanished. Into thin air.” That type of thing happened more often these days, people disappearing without a trace. Grant seemed unbothered by this news, going so far as to wink at me when I turned to look at him with suspicion. Later, as we began the process of moving in, I became obsessed with finding their impressions amidst the various discarded objects. In the kitchen under the sink, I found a mason jar filled with cooking oil, the cap rusted with age, In the medicine cabinet, a single pill bottle sat on the highest shelf. I tried to read the faded ink but could only make out a few letters, nothing sub-

stantial enough to reveal a name or drug type. At the bottom of the bottle was one light pink pill shaped like a disc. I had never seen a pill like that before. A few days later, I discovered an old photograph in the back of a hallway closet. It was of a man and a woman, both of them dressed for what I imagined was a Halloween party. He wore a skin-tight silver suit decorated with tubes, buttons, and control panels, an ode to the type of cartoon robot that I used to see on television as a child. The woman, in a similar reenactment of the past, had her skin painted green, two antennas sprouting from a head of curly black hair. A robot and an alien. When I looked closer, I felt something like déjà vu tugging at the corners of my memory. The alien, underneath all that make-up, looked like the girl from the television, the one who was branded an eco-terrorist and shot on video for the entire world to see. I tried to remember what the real estate agent had said about the missing couple. Artists, maybe. A photographer and a writer, but I couldn’t remember which one was which. I didn’t think they looked like artists. I wondered if they looked like terrorists. When Grant and I crawled into bed at the end of the day, I tried to imagine what the next owner might think if they found a photograph of Grant and me. Would they notice the way Grant’s chestnut hair was cut to military precision? The shape of his jaw as it clenched in a tight-lipped smile? And there would be me, standing next to him, slightly shorter and with a posture that deferred to almost everything around me. Or at least that’s what I saw when I conjured up the two of us in my head. Perhaps this other person would see something else. Was I the robot or the alien? I couldn’t get this question out of my head, even as Grant turned to kiss me quickly on the lips. “Our first week in the house,” he whispered. “Our house. Weird, right?” All I could do was nod and turn over in bed. I decided not to tell him about the photograph. He would ask too many questions that I didn’t have the answers to. “Goodnight,” I said. ————— I am in the house alone, looking for Grant. I am calling his name into each room, but there is no answer. Only silence. It is only when I look out the kitchen window that I see where Grant has gone. His tall silhouette is framed by an eerie combination of moonlight and haze, his body almost ephemeral in the mixture. It is like seeing a ghost. I try to knock on the window to get Grant’s attention, but it doesn’t work. His gaze is fixed on some point just above the roofline of the house. His face is hollow, lifeless. The poisoned air curls around his body, drawing shapes against his silhouette. Grant, I try to scream. Grant, get back in the house! You’ll die out there! Grant! When two silhouettes appear behind Grant, I stop trying to scream. A man and a woman step out of the haze and stand next to Grant. The woman is in the middle. All three of them begin to hold hands, reminding me of those paper doll chains I would make as a child. When they start to kneel on the grass I try to scream one last time. Grant looks up and around, but I am lost to him. They begin chanting something that I cannot hear. I am alone, trapped in this house. ————— Grant was in the shower when I woke up. I could hear the soft patter of water, see the steam curling underneath the doorway. I turned my body slightly so that I could look outside. The floor-to-ceiling windows to the right of the bed revealed a line of trees that seemed to float in the haze. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes. I had read that once, back in college. But this fog wasn’t yellow. It didn’t have a color, really. It was like a kaleidoscope, some viscous filter that descended from god knows where. Only we did know where it came from and that made it worse. I went to the kitchen to make coffee. As I transferred the contents of the pot into my mug, I had the uncanny sensation of being watched. This too could be a diorama, the coffee never reaching my lips as I bring the mug to my mouth in a facsimile of domestic life. Like a butterfly, I’ve been pinned to the wall, relegated to this cycle of motion that neither begins nor ends. ————— The museum was closed on the day it happened. It was a national holiday. By the time Grant and I reached the top of the stairs leading up to the entrance, the doors had been completely shattered, people standing dazed in the lobby as if they had been petrified. “We need to get away from the windows.”