Stygian

The doors are al ays kept shut: that’s the rule. The only one that can open them is me, but I never do. When we run out of food, I go down to the basement. We eat a carefully measured amount for every meal, three times a day. I have plants that grow too. Under the manmade lights from before. Though, I tell Maggie it’s from something distant and spiritual. It’s better this way.

“I’ll make corn,” Maggie says.

She’s meek. Shorter than me by several inches. The only thing that’s noticeable about her is her large chest, though, she’ll never know the benefits of that in here. She moves around the kitchen like a game of Operation, careful not to touch anything. Sometimes, I question if she exists at all. I think about her ignorance to how the world once was, her face that’s absent of all knowledge. The pain of loss and losing that’s so prevalent in me, is completely unknown to her, the chains of memories and desires are only strapped to my ankles.

Occasionally, I think about if she slipped on that stool she uses to reach the pots that hang from the ceiling, the chains rusty from

• 54 Alissa Tarzia

time. With just the right angle, her head would slip into the fire underneath. Her hair is long and would catch fire first, then her flesh, the smell would be overpowering, but I’ve been through worse things. She’s so quiet I debate if she would even scream; maybe she would just weep. I would have to put out the fire in just enough time to save the house. Her face would go next. Her young, pale, perfect complexion, unmarked by time or stress. Her blue eyes, that I try not to look too hard at in case they’re as limpid as they seem, would stab through the fire as they revealed my silhouette back to me within her irises.

“The corn is done Mama,” she says.

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