burial. Just like last time, with his brother. No one wants to see a dead body, no beautiful barbarism here. Poor old Willux, his wife and two sons now all dead, three boxes in the Personal Loss Archives.
Partridge staggers forward, sliding along the surface, throwing himself through the blades. There’s another knick on his cheek. He hears distant ticking. The motor. He jumps through the second-to-last fan and sprints. He can see the final set of pink filters at the end of the tunnel. He wants to get out. He wants to feel it all again, wind and sun. He wants to find his old street, his old house—gone, he knows, blown up, but still. There is resistance in his behavioral coding. Why? What does it have to do with his mother? He found her things in the box, and everything changed. He has the envelope filled with her possessions—the swan necklace on a gold chain, the birthday card, the metal music box, and the photo—locked in a plastic pouch. He feels it all there on his back.
The final fan clicks backward, just one single inch, and Partridge dives through the last set of blades just as the fans begin to roar at his back, and the wind is drawn in like a deep unending breath from the other side of the last set of filters. The current is drawing him backward now. This is how his memory has felt, a long inhale that pulls him back. He falls to the ground but sets his boot heels and, hand over hand, pulls himself away from the blades. His strength coding is kicking in. He feels a surge of power. When he’s close enough, he reaches out and stabs the filters with his kitchen knife and drags his body forward against the wind. The pink fibers break loose and stream past him into the fans and he thinks of the word
confetti.
PRESSIA
KNOCK
PRESSIA IS WORKING LATE AT NIGHT on her small creatures. Her grandfather is asleep by the alley door, sitting upright in his chair, the brick on his thigh. He’s taken over the bartering and, ever since, she’s needed more creatures to sell for smaller returns. Sometimes he’s too sickly to make it to the market at all and they both feel useless, something they both hate. She marks time by hunger now. During these late nights, she’s begun to realize that she could die here slowly, wasting away in an ash-laced cabinet in a cramped room. She looks at her grandfather, his wired stump, his closed eyes, the sheen of his burns, the labored rise and fall of his chest, the soft wheeze of ash in his lungs, the spinning fan in his throat. His face is clenched even while dreaming.
She keeps Bradwell’s gift, the magazine picture, on the table. She sometimes hates the people in their 3-D glasses—an ugly reminder of what she’ll never have—but can’t seem to put the picture away.
Ever since she opened the gift, there have been more memories, quick flashes: a small tank with fish swishing back and forth, the feel of the woolen tassel on her mother’s pocketbook, that soft yarn in her fist, a heating duct under a table that seemed to purr. She remembers sitting on what must have been her father’s shoulders as he walked under flowering trees, being wrapped in his coat as she was asleep and being shuttled from the car to her bed. She remembers brushing her mother’s hair with a wire brush while a song played on a handheld computer—the image of a woman singing a lullaby about a girl on a front porch, and someone is begging her to take his hand to ride with him into the Promised Land. Just her voice, no instruments at all. It must have been her mother’s favorite lullaby. She played the recording every night before Pressia fell asleep. At the time, Pressia got tired of the song, but now she’d sacrifice almost anything to hear it again. Her mother smelled like soap made out of grass—clean and sweet. Her father smelled like something richer, more like coffee. The picture of the people in the theater, for some reason, jolts her memories, and she’ll miss her parents so deeply that sometimes
Partridge staggers forward, sliding along the surface, throwing himself through the blades. There’s another knick on his cheek. He hears distant ticking. The motor. He jumps through the second-to-last fan and sprints. He can see the final set of pink filters at the end of the tunnel. He wants to get out. He wants to feel it all again, wind and sun. He wants to find his old street, his old house—gone, he knows, blown up, but still. There is resistance in his behavioral coding. Why? What does it have to do with his mother? He found her things in the box, and everything changed. He has the envelope filled with her possessions—the swan necklace on a gold chain, the birthday card, the metal music box, and the photo—locked in a plastic pouch. He feels it all there on his back.
The final fan clicks backward, just one single inch, and Partridge dives through the last set of blades just as the fans begin to roar at his back, and the wind is drawn in like a deep unending breath from the other side of the last set of filters. The current is drawing him backward now. This is how his memory has felt, a long inhale that pulls him back. He falls to the ground but sets his boot heels and, hand over hand, pulls himself away from the blades. His strength coding is kicking in. He feels a surge of power. When he’s close enough, he reaches out and stabs the filters with his kitchen knife and drags his body forward against the wind. The pink fibers break loose and stream past him into the fans and he thinks of the word
confetti.
PRESSIA
KNOCK
PRESSIA IS WORKING LATE AT NIGHT on her small creatures. Her grandfather is asleep by the alley door, sitting upright in his chair, the brick on his thigh. He’s taken over the bartering and, ever since, she’s needed more creatures to sell for smaller returns. Sometimes he’s too sickly to make it to the market at all and they both feel useless, something they both hate. She marks time by hunger now. During these late nights, she’s begun to realize that she could die here slowly, wasting away in an ash-laced cabinet in a cramped room. She looks at her grandfather, his wired stump, his closed eyes, the sheen of his burns, the labored rise and fall of his chest, the soft wheeze of ash in his lungs, the spinning fan in his throat. His face is clenched even while dreaming.
She keeps Bradwell’s gift, the magazine picture, on the table. She sometimes hates the people in their 3-D glasses—an ugly reminder of what she’ll never have—but can’t seem to put the picture away.
Ever since she opened the gift, there have been more memories, quick flashes: a small tank with fish swishing back and forth, the feel of the woolen tassel on her mother’s pocketbook, that soft yarn in her fist, a heating duct under a table that seemed to purr. She remembers sitting on what must have been her father’s shoulders as he walked under flowering trees, being wrapped in his coat as she was asleep and being shuttled from the car to her bed. She remembers brushing her mother’s hair with a wire brush while a song played on a handheld computer—the image of a woman singing a lullaby about a girl on a front porch, and someone is begging her to take his hand to ride with him into the Promised Land. Just her voice, no instruments at all. It must have been her mother’s favorite lullaby. She played the recording every night before Pressia fell asleep. At the time, Pressia got tired of the song, but now she’d sacrifice almost anything to hear it again. Her mother smelled like soap made out of grass—clean and sweet. Her father smelled like something richer, more like coffee. The picture of the people in the theater, for some reason, jolts her memories, and she’ll miss her parents so deeply that sometimes
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