Listen to the author reading this story:
The bluebells aren’t making much progress, Hank said from the porch, half-lying, half sitting, neck cranked like a meerkat. Skin grey from God knows what. The bluebells weren’t up to much but Hank meant something else and Ani had no idea what because she’d just come from the train and walked the whole hour to get here with her stupid shiny suitcase that broke a wheel in minute three. Running sweat and feeling screamy. ‘Do you get the screams?’ Hank asked a long time ago and just like that her creeping neon ants got a name. They crawled her nerves three times a day until she tore away from Hank with his river eyes and bustedness.
Now there were welts on his body. She didn’t ask why. Her heel bled from a violent blister and her head kept trying to suck her back to 1995.
‘Why are you here?’ Hank asked because he liked questions she couldn’t answer. He wore a map of mistakes all over his body, from his little toe to the hairline scar by his right eye. ‘I can’t see with it anymore, he said, gesturing. She had to lean in to hear him. He smelled like something empty.
They hadn’t been in this house since Ani was 18 and Hank 25. It was big gap then, bigger now with his skin like rope over melting sinew. Would the dog’s bones still be under the crab apple tree or had something dug them up long ago? Ani had sobbed when Bronx died but Hank disappeared for a week and came back with a gash over his chest like a new rib. He dressed his body in his pain. He won’t last in this world, Ani thought when he had circled long arms around her bright head and they rocked, shushing and blubbing over Bronx like babies until moon stretched all the way to the window. It was the first time Hank felt like a real brother. But it was over by morning.
‘It hasn’t rained for 50 days,’ Hank said like an old man would. Eyes on the scorched bluebells. ‘I can’t water them.’ He waved at the three small porch steps like they were mountains and her glance skittered off to avoid his withered legs. She went to the kitchen, a mess but somehow mostly unchanged. Filled the metal watering can, so heavy her shoulders yanked. ‘A hose would be better,’ Hank said but if the house ever had one it was lost years ago.
The bluebells really weren’t up to much. ‘They like it wet,’ Hank said. ‘But they wound up here.’ Ani refilled the can, then a third time until the cracked ground streamed and water mingled with blood from her blister. Better late than never she thought but it wasn’t true. The bluebells were hopeless.
‘They shouldn’t have come here,’ Hank said and she wondered again what he meant. Himself? Her? Bronx? The fucking flowers? Maybe nothing survived this place.
‘You’re supposed to learn from mistakes, not die from them’ Ani said. She meant it to be reassuring but he laughed and then she laughed. They both laughed, long and rasping like something in the throat scrabbling to get out.
Eirene Gentle writes lit, mostly little, usually from Toronto, Canada. She’s happy to be published in some great journals and for Pushcart and Best short fiction nominations.