Everyone's Asleep In The House But Me

[Maraoone]

((June Madison continues from Dum Spiro Spero))

It was some time past midnight now, and June was the only one awake in the house.

It had been her idea. Someone had to watch out for, you know, was how June had put it to Medea. Medea, after a few seconds of thought, a frown, agreed, and also agreed to June taking first shift. She never passed up an opportunity for a few more hours of sleep. The island hadn't changed that yet, at least.

For an hour or two, she had been curled up against a wall of the living room, facing the front door, arms wrapped around her legs. Her hands no longer felt sticky. She'd been able to wash them in an ice-numb puddle of snowmelt off the path they'd taken to here. Yet, she would still open and close her hands, and she could swear to herself that she could feel the skin of her fingers adhere to the skin of her palm, that she could smell metal in the air, before she rubbed her hands together and felt nothing but frictionless, normal skin.

There was nothing to do. It made her anxious. The two of them had minimized their work for the night shift beforehand. Shut the windows, closed off the back door in the kitchen with a couch so that there was only one point of entrance and exit, the front door.

So, there was nothing to look at other than this four-panel door, white layer partially chipped away to reveal a rotting brown beneath. There was almost nothing to hear, even, not even a gust of wind. Only the occasional drip of water from the roof.

She'd tried to make a game out of breathing in and out, inhale, exhale. Her breath spiraled into the air, barely visible wisps of vapor dissipating into the cold black of the night.

In. Out. In. Out.

The first time her therapist had had June try meditation, tenth grade, their first session after the incident with the TV, it had felt like pure ecstasy. In, out, she intoned to her, and June had followed along with the languid tempo, inhaled, exhaled, coming to a sense of inner peace she had not known ever. For a couple years now, there had been this constant static in her head, a purely mental sort of tinnitus that faded and came back into focus, again and again, and that session had been the first time in a long time that she'd known anything else. And, at the time, she thought that now, now she could finally be calm. Now she could finally learn how to relax.

She managed it a few times after. Sometimes on her own, mostly with the therapist. Less and less frequently as the months and years passed by. It wasn't that she meditated less. She set time aside for that every day, just as her therapist had told her to. She was following the instructions. But the effect of those sessions, in, out, in, out, had become less reaching a destination of calm, and more pure and simple inhibition. Less reaching an inner calm, and more appearing to be calm. And, that helped too, helped keep her from verbally attacking a friend on a foul day, helped keep the peace with her mom whenever her mom snapped at her. But it didn't feel like it helped.

She wondered if she had made up that memory. That memory of calm at the first session. Some ideal paradise always just beyond the horizon. You will be calm by next month. You will be calm by next year. You will be calm in a decade's time. You will be calm when you're your mother's age. Always, you will be calm on the next page, and the next page, and the next.

All this nothing made her anxious not because of the fear of anticipation. She would hear clearly if someone tried to push up the window pane or break the glass, and she would respond then. That wasn't what scared her. It was that, in this void of stimuli, any other thought could come in to fill the space. She didn't have her phone with her. She wanted her phone with her. Counterintuitive as it was, though it caused her much stress, there was something calming about scrolling down her Twitter feed. In between the bursts of despair or rage at the latest bad news, there were cute little memes and recipe videos and little thoughts from her friends that made her smile, and for a second, she would be happy. It was a deluge, the on-and-off switch of good news and bad news, rage and mirth, so rapid-fire she didn't even have the room or space to think, just a static of thing after thing after thing and, these days, it was the closest thing to calm she had.

And she didn't have it right now.

She looked over at the sleeping form of Medea. She had it. She was calm. Having a good night's sleep, surprisingly. There was a slight smile on her face, the semblances of words she mumbled had a sort of gentle quality to them. She felt safe in June's company, somehow.

June didn't feel safe in her own company.

She'd told Medea about what she'd done to Iris, and Medea had been so quick to forgive her. You didn't mean it, she assured her.

But, if she knew that that wasn't even the first time June had thought about pushing someone down the stairs, would Medea be sleeping so soundly now?

Her therapist had disclosed to her, at the start of their first session, that if she said anything that would deem her a threat to herself or others, she would be obligated to request inpatient commitment. So, June decided not to be a threat.

It wasn't that she'd made plans for it. It was just that, if something bad happened, like if she was in a fight with her mom and her mom was shouting at her, she wanted her to shut up. She wanted her to shut up, so she would imagine shouting even louder than her, but her mom wouldn't yield, she never yielded, and she always made her feel so bad, so fucking terrible, so she imagined making her mom feel worse, scaring her into feeling worse, just one rush of anger and a flight of stairs and,

She'd described a watered-down version of that to her therapist. Just talked about quick bursts of anger, what to do when they happen. Her therapist's answer had been to first acknowledge what is happening, and then stop it once you recognize it. As if the anger was deliberate, as if it could be planned, controlled. As if you could slow down an explosion.

The first time those thoughts had happened, it had shocked her, but she pigeonholed the memory, because it was a one-off. And then it happened again, at school, at a classmate. And then again, at work, at a customer. And more, and more, and more frequently until they became what they were, about weekly. Always inhibited by her meditation sessions, in, out, in, out, but never stopped before they began. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter because they were just thoughts, and June was not a threat.

She'd never said anything about it because it was never supposed to matter.

It was never supposed to matter. Everyone had violent thoughts from time to time, she'd thought. In comedies, drivers stuck in traffic, imagining choking the life out of the driver in front who'd cut them off, even miming their hands around their neck. Irate college students, wondering what it'd be like to smother their snoring roommate in their sleep. Everyone did it. So it was fine that she did it. It was just something she was meant to swallow, these bursts of anger, just a bit of turbulence and then she'd move on from it. And then, years on from now, when she was her mother's age, when she'd finally reach the next page, when she grew up into a well-adjusted adult with a two-story house and her own restaurant and a husband and a son and daughter, when she would finally be calm, she wouldn't even remember this. All the violence, it would fade into oblivion, like all the other teenage bursts of anxiety, like all the awkward silences and overthought conversations and what could have been's and why did I say that's.

It wasn't supposed to matter.

Iris Waite was dead. Even if she survived the initial blow, the blood had been so much, the wound so severe, that there was not enough medical treatment in the world, much less on this island, to save her. Iris Waite was dead, and she had spent her last seconds screaming, terrified, betrayed by the first person she met on this island, betrayed by someone she trusted to help her out. Or maybe if she survived the initial blow, she had spent her last seconds stuffed in a barrel, slowly bleeding out, blood pooling around her head, limbs crumpled together, asphyxiating, because June didn't even have the moral integrity to face her own sin, she just stuffed it in a barrel like a broken vase.

There was no way to make up for it. No apologies or distance to be maintained or make-up gifts or promises to be better because Iris Waite was dead, and she had spent her last few moments in pain.

Come tomorrow, the announcements would state that June Madison had pushed Iris Waite off the stairs, that Iris had died of grievous head injuries, that June had killed her. They would announce that, and Medea would finally come to her senses and run for safety.

And June, she would be free to climb back up the mountain, and find the nearest cliff, and walk off. She would be free to do that, and she would no longer be a threat to anyone else.

Or,

She slowly slid to her side, head resting against the cold wooden floor.

If she went to sleep right now, someone could come in the middle of her sleep, shoot her in the head, and she wouldn't even know it.

That would be nice.

((June Madison continues in Daylight))