Althea Parker Stories pt. 5

Tuesday and The Knife (Age 11-13)

There are other kids at the Nine. 

This has never happened before. Not in a million years. 

Sure sometimes kids come through. We get all sorts at the Nine, like Mr. Pinch says. There have been a few kids over the years. Visitors. Guests of the Nine. 

But they don’t stay. Sometimes they leave with different people. Sometimes they leave in pieces. Sometimes they take a trip down to the boiler room with Mr. Malick.

Those times are few and far between though. Like plants and pets, kids don’t last long at the Nine.

It’s just one of those things, like when the carpets leak blood that only I can see or how the lights flash 13 times during asteroid showers. 

I don’t play with those kids, anyway. I’m not supposed to bother the guests. Mr. Pinch gets mad when I do. Threatens to tell the Proprietor. 

And the parents always as questions. They use that voice adults use when they think they’re being smart.

Where are your parents, little girl?

Do you live here?

Where’s your mother?

Who takes care of you?

What are you doing here?

I don’t like those questions.

Besides, I don’t need those kids. They’re not real. Just another type of ghost. We have enough ghosts at the Nine. They look at me with my scabbed knees and elbows, raggedy jeans, messy white blond hair, and they see an animal. Something base and gross and strange.

 Sometimes they point and laugh. It’s worse when they point and whisper. 

I’m glad we almost never get kids here.

But these ones are different. They’re not guests, they’re residents.

Like me. 

So it doesn’t count as bothering guests.

They look around my age, eleven twelve thirteen. They’re beautiful. They have shaggy thick black hair and skin like they’ve been bled dry and big dark eyes. They wear sleek, tailored outfits in blacks and whites.

No shades of grey.

Their names are Tuesday and Knife. 

They’re twins two of a kind just the two of us double double toil and trouble. Two halves of one. I can see it when they lounge around in their room, reading comics and showing me how to pick locks. 

They’re bound connected tied merged. One person in two people. 

I wonder what it’s like to never be lonely. To always know where you are and who you are because you have a mirror reflection right there. 

I tell them which floors to avoid and which people to steer clear of.

I never see their parents. Just Tuesday and Knife. 

We spend time in their neatly kept, almost sterile room. It’s bigger than mine. 

I don’t ask about their parents.

They don’t ask about mine.

Instead we spy on Mr. Pinch until he spots us and sends us scurrying. We find a library of books with music instead of words. I convince the demon in their bathroom to move one room over. 

We’re on the roof. I’ve got a pack of cigarettes I took from the room of a dead man, and his Zippo lighter. It’s heavy and silver. I flick it open and closed, listening to the noise.

Tuesday and the Knife are playing with a gun. We got that from the dead man too. It’s big and black and takes two hands to lift. I see her arms shake when she raises it. 

I don’t ask what they’re shooting at.

I hate guns.

I smoke my cigarettes and read my chemistry book, sneaking peeks at the siblings through the curling smoke. 

I need more pipettes. I’ll have to ask Mr. Malick about them.

‘Do you want a turn?’ I look up to see two fragile, almost elfin faces. They look like heroin chic, like the models from the old magazines I found in the basement. All clean lines and liquid movements. 

‘No,’ I say. Turn a page of my textbook.

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t like guns.’ I try to blow a smoke ring. Can’t get it right. Light the night with a fight alright.

‘Why don’t you like guns?’ 

‘Because I don’t.’

They come over to me as one. Move in symphony, not checking each other or anything. They just know.

If you look at the lights and wires around them, they’re intertwined.

‘You should know how to shoot a gun,’ he says.

‘I do.’

‘Prove it.’

‘No.’ 

‘Come on.’ I see him walk across the roof with his long legs in black jeans. Black fedora tucked over one eye like a gangster or an old time movie star. Picks up a rusted, bent can and puts it on a box.

There’s a lot of old junk on the roof. That’s part of why I like it.

‘Here.’ He offers me the gun. ‘Go for it.’

‘I don’t want to,’ I say. Feel the blood rushing to my face. Great. Crimson face even redder against my white blonde hair. Great look. Very cool. 

He waves it in my face. I take it. Turn on the safety. Hand it back.

‘I said no.’

‘Leave her alone,’ says his sister. She sits next to me on the old couch Mr. Malick dragged up here after the fire. It’s rotted and burned and smells like cooked flesh and old cologne. 

‘You don’t have to, Althea.’ She glares at her brother. He shrugs and squints into the distance and he looks like he’s about to sell me hair products I can’t afford. He’s handsome and ethereal and when he smiles the hair on my neck stands up.

When she touches my hand I feel it too. Two. Et tu, Brute. Electricity and sparks and a rush of heat.

It’s nice. It’s strange. I don’t know what to do with it. 

‘She just can’t shoot,’ he says. Voice teasing, smirking as he speaks. I could push him off the roof before she could stop me. I wonder if she’d go after him over the edge. If she’d be unchanged or if she’d be a half person, a shadow, a shade, less than human.

I stub out my cigarette, crush it beneath the heel of my combat boot. 

‘You should come with us, the next time we go out,’ she says. Hand still on mine. Too cool for school. You rule. 

‘That’s alright,’ I say. ‘I don’t leave the Nine.’

As soon as I say it, I know I’ve made a mistake.

They exchange glances, eyes having an elaborate conversation right in front of me. I feel foolish and left out, all alone go play by yourself Althea. Go read a book go take a walk go talk to your imaginary friends.

Oh, Althea. We didn’t see you there.

‘You never leave the Nine?’ he asks, and I hate the careful shaping of the words, how he’s suddenly treating me like I’m less than, barely human. Fuck him.

‘Nope.’ I pop the ‘p’ because it makes Bishop really angry and then I learn new swears. 

‘Why?’ she asks. I close my book, defeated.

‘Because I don’t,’ I say. ‘It’s not a big deal.’

‘It’s weird,’ he says. She nods. 

‘It’s not,’ I say. 

‘Are you grounded?’ she asks.

‘No.’

‘Are you in trouble with the police?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘The only ones I’ve ever seen are already dead.’

‘Do you want to leave?’ he asks. I shake my head.

‘No. Not really.’ 

I can see questions dancing on the edges of their lips, almost shaping the words but not quite able to take the plunge. Questions are tricky, in this fragile friendship we’re developing. 

There’s a lot of questions we don’t ask.

Where are your parents.

Why are you here.

How did you get here.

We know that we’re here. At the Nine. Bound by age and proximity. Exploring the same hallways and listening to the same screams. Standing around eating ice cream cones in solemn silence while the Sisters spray down bloodstains and drag away a former guest.

If they have questions, then so do I.

They’re talking with their eyes again. I can hear them, whispering on the edge of my brain. Can’t quite make out the words, but I can hear their voices. Merging twining blending, making something new and stronger than either of them.

I light another cigarette. Blow on the tip so the embers flare. The light accentuates the hollows of her cheekbones.

Between them I feel small and ugly and awkward. Ignorant and helpless even though I know it’s not true. I want to stub the cigarette out on my arm. Know that the burst of pain will quiet the ugly feelings licking at the sides of my brain like acid like hungry wolves like the rising tide.

‘There’s a curse,’ I say. ‘You know how I can see the ghosts and know all sorts of stuff?’ They nod in unison. The sun is setting behind them, painting them in sheets of orange and red. They glow like a phoenix. There can only be one at a time. But there’s only one of Tuesday and the Knife. Divided by two. Still just one.

‘Well it’s a curse situation,’ I say. ‘If I leave the Nine, something horrible will happen.’ He raises an elegant eyebrow. Looks like a rich kid already bored with life. 

‘What will happen?’ he asks. 

‘I’ll turn to ash and dust like a vampire in daylight,’ I say. ‘One step and it’s all gone. No more me. Poof.’ I blow out a long stream of smoke for emphasis.

They’re talking with their eyes again, weighing the possibility I’m bullshitting them with the fact that they’ve seen glimpses of what the Nine is about.

‘Is that what happened to your parents?’ she asks. 

I stand up and take the gun from his unresisting hand. They watch with their big unfathomable eyes as I turn and look at the can on the box. It’s the whole length of the roof away from me.

The cigarette dangles from the corner of my mouth. I lift the gun. Take aim. Just the way he taught me. Remember your stance, Althea. Focus. Breathe.

I pull the trigger. There’s a ping and the can goes flying off off off the roof, down over the side into the endless desert below. 

Tuesday and the Knife whoop and shout and cheer. One slaps me on the back and my face is red again but for different reasons. The other takes the gun from my hands and whistles.

I smile but only with my face. Inside I feel gross, dirty, grimy, greasy. 

I really fucking hate guns. 

But there’s always room for negotiation, like Mr. Valentine says. A trade. I give them a show, they don’t ask any of their questions.

Later I sit cross legged on my bed. I smoke cigarettes and stub them into an ashtray made from an old Ouija board indicator. Make notes from my chemistry book. The lamp by the bed reflects off the glossy pages. I can hear gunshots in the distance. Or maybe in my head. Bed dead better red than dead. 

I don’t feel bad about lying to Tuesday and the Knife. I like them well enough, and we’re a version of friends, but I don’t trust them. You can’t trust people who think like that. All wires and tubes and gasoline and bullet wounds.

I wonder what it’s like to talk without words. If they lie in bed facing each other and have whole conversations in silence. A snake eating its tail forever and ever amen. Tail tale fail the pale. 

Around me the Nine thrums and sighs, relaxing into another night. I’ll wake up to eggs and toast for breakfast in the kitchen, blood in the hallways and fingers without an owner under the bar. 

I wonder what it’s like to have a family.

Not that I want one. 

But when I was a little kid, I thought my parents would come back for me. Stupid. I never told anyone, and I’m glad. Can’t imagine how that would have gone down. What their faces would have done. Should we tell her. 

They didn’t tell me. They still haven’t.

I was four five six and every once in a while I’d get it in my head that my parents would come get me. Either, both, mom, dad. I wasn’t picky. Adopted family. Sibling. 

I wanted someone to look for me.

I just wanted someone to notice my absence. 

Why don’t you ever leave the Nine, Althea

Because because because. Because it’s my home. Because it’s where I belong. It’s who I am. Because if I step outside those doors I’m not Althea Parker anymore.

I’m a girl without a county. An orphan an outcast. Something that was thrown away. Something unwanted and unloved and forgotten. Kept alive out of obligation instead of affection.

If I leave the Nine, I have to become someone else. And I don’t know who that is and I can’t imagine a world outside these walls and I don’t want to. I like it here. It’s safe.

When I was little I thought if I ever went outside, my parents might come looking for me and I’d miss them.

Stupid. Silly. Childish. Absurd. Bullshit.

Bishop would piss himself laughing. Even Mr. Pinch would smirk. 

I can’t imagine what the Knife or Tuesday would think about it.

If I leave the Nine I have to admit that no one is looking for me. That there’s a world outside this one and that there’s no place for me there.

This is where I belong.

This is as close to real as I’m ever going to get.

And that’s okay, really it is. I have the Nine. She sees me. Cares for me, in her own cold, practical way. Distant and all-seeing and immovable. Like god. 

There’s nothing for me outside the Nine.

I stub out my cigarette and turn off the light. I stand by the window. It’s night, but the sky is alive with fire and flames and lights in countless colors. 

I look out across a vast, endless desert. Burning screaming rotting figures walk towards the Nine, one lumbering step at a time. 

They haven’t reached the Nine yet.

Or if they have, they’re different by the time they walk through the door. 

I would be different if I walked out that door.

I don’t know who that person is. If they even are a person.

It’s silly and stupid and absurd and immature and pathetic and sad. 

I try not to think about it. 

I can still feel the gun in my hand. Even after scrubbing it like Lady Macbeth. Heavy and ugly and weighing me down with things I don’t understand. 

Sometimes I think I might be crushed like a bug under all the things I don’t know.

It doesn’t matter what’s outside that window, what’s outside the Nine.

This is where I belong. This is who I am.

It still takes me a long, long time to fall asleep that night.

I’m in a room made of liquid. I can dip my fingers into the walls. Coat them with rich blues and greens. Pinks and yellows, so bright that they blast your brain like a gunshot wound to the head.

The floor is like a disco ball flattened out and lit from underneath. If I push my face against the wall I’ll be coated in paint. I’ll drink it and drink it until my insides are covered and I’m not ugly anymore. Until I’m pure and beautiful and all the black, rotting bits inside me are covered in something lovely.

I’m 15 and tomorrow I’m going to kill a man. 

The paint spatters all over my jeans, my black tank top. My skin is flecked in rainbows.

I look like a phoenix. 

My hair is getting stiff from the paint, hanging in multicolor clumps around my face. I take my royal blue hand and press it against the floor, hard.

I was here I am here I belong here I am. Proof of life. Proof of existence. A teenage hand in impossible paint.

I leave the room once I’m nothing but a technicolor nightmare, blotches of bright color covering me from head to toe. I take off my ruined sneakers and toss them down the garbage chute. Odds are they’ll end up in my room anyway. They do that. 

If they don’t Mr. Pinch will be pissed. 

Tuesday and the Knife are coming down the hallway. Usually around them I feel awkward and slow and stupid, with their sleek style and their model perfect faces and the way they smile when I’ve said something clever. 

But I’m covered in an armor of rainbows and tomorrow I will become death, destroyer of someone’s world. I feel free and light and the Nine sings around me in anticipation.

‘You look a disaster,’ she says in admiration. A touch of envy. Like she’d give up her all black ensemble and her ice cool attitude to be covered in a mess of colors. I smile and spin around in a slow circle.

‘It works for you,’ her brother says with a grin. Eyes on me in a way that I’ve seen directed at other people, but never me. Oh gee. ‘Let me walk you to your room.’

As we walk, he tells me how he and his sister hotwired a car outside the restaurant down the street. How they took the ice blue BMW for a joyride through the city to all the dirty dark disgusting places. 

They left the car in a river.

He says I should come next time. We could get ice cream and see a movie and maybe do some pickpocketing.

We’ve been practicing when they hold events in the ballroom, but if anyone finds out we’ll be in deep shit.

It’s nice that he asks, but he knows I won’t. Asks me less and less often these days. He’ll stop soon, start to and stop himself. 

‘Maybe next time,’ I say like I always do. He might step outside into a hideously beautiful city with sex workers and scumbags, murders and martyrs, buildings that touch the sky and sewers filled with bodies and filth, but I won’t.

The only thing outside the Nine for me is a desert. It stretches out to eternity in every direction. There are some dead trees etched into the landscape.

And the bodies. All dead, all in various stages of decay, all on fire. Blackened and rotting and burning and searing and some days I seriously consider becoming a vegetarian. The smell hangs thick in the air, so thick you can almost see it.

Another thing you can’t see that’s real.

That’s what I’ll find outside. 

But if I say stuff like that around Tuesday and the Knife, they start exchanging looks like books like a couple of crooks. The looks adults still give me if I talk too much, the looks I got all the time as a kid for being weird wrong strange sad lost left out abandoned aborted. 

And the voices in my head start to get loud, so loud that I can’t hear people talking to me and they’re all shouting at once telling me to do things see things be things and I cover my ears and close my eyes and sob until the voices fade and all that’s left is a ringing in my ears and a headache from crying.

So I make sure not to say shit like that around them. Around anyone, although most of the time I think Mr. Valentine knows and is just too polite to say anything. 

I make a version of myself like a paper doll, cutting away the bits that no one likes and that I fucking loathe.

I’ve learned I’m very good at becoming other people. 

We make it to my door. I turn to him.

‘Thanks,’ I say. For what? For walking me to my fucking room? He gives a small shake of his head.

‘You’re welcome.’ 

We stand there, the air heavy and strange and awkward and I can taste change in the air and I lean into it, eager for my life to begin.

His lips are soft and smooth, like he scrubs them with sea salt every night. I imagine him on silk sheets, even though I know he uses the same scratchy hotel sheets that I do.

I kiss him back, my mind a total blank. No thoughts no fears no confusion no quiet ache in the chest. Just his mouth moving against mine, using his hand to tilt my head, to guide me. Lips coaxing mine open. His tongue touches mine, once, a tease or a promise.

I pull back and he’s smiling. He has a nice smile. There’s paint on his lips, mint green and baby blue and blood red. I take my thumb to swipe away the mess, but only manage to make it worse.

He laughs and kisses me again. My second. This one is slower, more intense, and I end up with my back against my door and his hands around my waist. My arms are thrown around his neck and when the fuck did that happen.

When we break apart, breathing hard, it’s only because we hear the elevator.

His mouth is a Jackson Pollock. 

‘Your sister will know,’ I say. Stupid stupid stupid what a stupid thing to say. I’m drunk on hormones and anticipation. 

He laughs, and there’s a hint of teasing in it, but I don’t mind. His hands are moving in slow circles around my hips and it’s very distracting.

‘She knows I was planning this,’ he says. I want to ask when he started planning. I want to ask him why he likes me. What he sees worth liking. Do you see a person or a thing do you see the way the walls bleed and the sky goes black with dying birds do you see the truth or something better?

‘Oh,’ I say.

‘I think she’s jealous,’ he says.

‘Oh,’ I say again. I don’t ask of who, or why. 

I need to watch more teenage comedies.

‘Good luck tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I know you’ll do great.’ He pauses, looks down the hallway. A woman in a long cloak opens the room two doors down. She’s followed by a man with a tremendous hunch on his back lugging a pile of luggage.

‘Thanks,’ I say. The Nine pushes at my back. Go. Do it. Don’t be scared.

Is it me or the Nine talking? Does it matter.

‘You wouldn’t want to hang out the day after, would you?’ I ask. ‘We could go explore the room with the tunnels some more. I got more markers.’

He smiles, and my heart sings and my cheeks flush and Kid Althea would be horrified by what a fucking sap I’m being.

But I’m happy. It’s fragile and unexpected, a gift I want to give him in return.

‘Cool,’ he says. ‘I’ll bring some weed. We might as well be high in case we die.’

He’s still smiling, so I kiss him again, a bit more confident but still scared shitless. He kisses me back but it’s harder because he’s still smiling.

‘See you then,’ he says. Ambles down the hallway on long skinny legs with his hands in his pockets and a psychedelic stain across his face.

I go into my room, lock the door, and throw myself onto my bed. I look at the ceiling and my face aches from smiling.

Tomorrow a man is going to check in. He’ll be short and fat with a handsome face and a charming personality. Walks with a cane he doesn’t need. Rolls his ‘r’s.

I’ll follow this man from the lobby. Watch him check in. Track him when he goes to dinner. Sit at the table beside him. He’ll have fancy clothes, a suit with a tail, but it’s shabby and frayed at the edges. He’ll order steak which is smart considering our kitchen, and stew which is not. He’ll drink while he eats, two gin and tonics followed by hot coffee and a piece of the Sister’s questionable cherry pie.

We never have any cherries in the kitchen. 

I’ll slip away when the pie comes to the table. I don’t want to watch him eat it anyway.