Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

"I thought I’d forgotten that."

Another sister moved closer. "You never tried to make any friends after that, ever, not even after you were in high school. You were always afraid you'd get laughed at.

"Why have you spent so many years putting mud in your own hair?"

"...don't know, I...I don't know. Scared, I guess. So scared, all the time." She wiped her eyes, then rose from the bed and crossed to one of her bookshelves, kneeling down to scan the spines until she found the one she was looking for.

She flipped through the pages of her college yearbook, remembering the endless nights of waitressing and typing term papers and even working as an operator for one of those I-900 "psychic revelations" lines that helped foot most of her bills as she worked toward her degree, then came her first secretarial job at the insurance company, which led to another, more important position as she studied for the first of the endless actuarial exams, going at the books day and night and weekends, acing most of them on the second or third try—

—she put it away, then pulled out her high school yearbook, turning to her senior class picture and wondering why she'd even bothered to have the damn thing taken.

Nobody had asked her for one.

She read the small bio underneath the photograph—Drama Club, Cup and Chaucer Society, Chess Club, Homemaker s Club—then looked at her quote. Every senior had been allowed one brief quote under their photo and bio, an epitaph for their youth before they went out to die a little more every day in the great big bad real world.

She read:

Just be the best and truest person you can!

Her vision blurred briefly. She wiped her eyes, then placed her hand, palm-down, on top of the photograph, embarrassed at her youthful optimism for what Might Be, now what Might Have Been.

"Might have been," whispered Amanda, softly. How much time had she wasted with thoughts of what might have been? How many moments of her life had been sacrificed to fantasies, well-choreographed memories of tremendously exciting or romantic things that had never happened to her? For so long everything had been defined by absence: the absence of laughter, the absence of friends, the absence of the noises made by a lover trying hard not to make any noise—not only that, not only the absence of noise, but the absence of noises to come—no phone ringing (a man calling to ask her for a date), no car pulling up into the driveway (said man coming to pick her up because he was old-fashioned that way and thought it right and proper that the man do the driving), no nervous knock on the front door (because he wasn't all that well-versed in this dating thing, poor guy).

But now...now there would be a new absence in her life; the absence of might-have-beens, because now she was beautiful, and almost didn't care if Beauty was a lie because Beauty always has her way—

—no; she mustn't think like that. Ever again.

Her sisters stared at her, expectant, inquisitive.

"Don't ask me," she said to her sisters. "Don't ask me if I remember that time I got lost at a family picnic when I was five and spent three hours wandering through the woods crying. And don't ask me if I still have that picture of Bobby Sherman that I cut out of Seventeen when I was in high school because I thought a paper lover was better than no lover at all—and before you remind me, yes, I did hide in the attic on the afternoon of my thirteenth birthday party and I know Mom and Dad were worried sick, and I know I broke their hearts when I didn't like that awful record player they bought for me—it looked too much like the one Mom used—but everyone has to have their heart broken sometime in their life, don't they? And no, I never called that guy from Columbus back because I was afraid he'd reject me and I've never really handled rejection well, in spite of what I tell myself."

Her sisters said nothing.

She looked down at her high school photograph once more, this time tracing the shape of her cheek with a fingertip. "God, honey," she whispered. "I'll miss you so much. But don't worry—I'll never forget anything I learned from you."

She carried the book over to the dresser and used the business end an antique letter opener to cut out her photograph, then carefully tucked the picture into a corner of the mirror's frame.

She examined the letter opener in her hands, admiring its sharp edges. "I remember one time when I was a little girl Dad shot a deer and split it open from its neck down to its hind legs, then hung it upside-down in the basement to drain. I didn't know it was down there. I went down to get something for Mom—I don't remember what—and it was dark and I didn't want to go down because the light switch was all the way over on the other wall, which meant that I had to walk across the basement in order to turn it on...it always seemed like a twenty-mile hike through the darkest woods to me, that walk across the basement to the light switch.

"I went down to get—a screwdriver, that was it! Mom needed to pry the lid off some can of silver polish and needed a screwdriver. So I get to the bottom of the stairs and take a deep breath and start hiking through the forest, then I slipped in a puddle of something and fell on my stomach. I yelled because I was having trouble getting up, so Mom came down and walked over and turned on the light...

"There was so much blood everywhere. I was so frightened I couldn't even scream. The deer's hanging there, its eyes wide, staring at me while the rest of it gushed blood and pieces of guts and I didn't know if the deer was bleeding on me or if I was bleeding on it, I wasn't even sure if the thing was dead. I reached out to Mom and tried to speak but I couldn't. I was afraid that if she didn't pull me away the light would go out again and I'd die there with the deer in the dark forest.

“I never got myself a pet because of that. Because animals die and that meant someday I'd die too. Alone in the dark forest. Alone in the dark."

8. Programmed For Paradise

Her sisters surrounded her now, whispering of their awe and admiration as they caressed her— I've never seen hair as lovely as yours your eyes are so breathtaking and pure azure what I wouldn't give for a figure like yours with that stomach so flat and diamond perfect God your lips I love your lips so full and red and sensual and moist your neck so slender your arms so slim your hands so delicate your legs so exquisite your skin so luminous —

—then she remembered the words of Old Roses, who was Shekinah and Malkuth, as well: Women shouldn't care about lies like Beauty and Ugliness and Plainness—

—she saw that each of her shadow sisters had claimed some part of her old self— her old eyes, her old lips, nose, hands, legs, cheeks, teeth, bone structure, neck—and it took a moment for the full impact of that to register—

— As forgettable as you think you are, there is someone out there who envies what you have; to whom you , as you are, are the ideal— "I don't want you to envy me," she said to her sisters. "Not envy," said a sister in Shekinah's voice. "Admire." "Why are you here?" "To admire, and to give thanks. I am changed." "I am changed," echoed the others. "I am more than I was." "I am more than 1 was." "But you always were," said Amanda. "All of you." “We know this. Because of you.”

One of them placed a warm, loving hand on her bare shoulder, a touch so sensual in its silent softness that its physical pleasure transcended the merely sexual. “We understand how you feel,” said this sister, “and we love you so very, very much." She leaned forward and kissed Amanda on the lips, long and lovingly; then, with great tenderness, cupped her face in magical hands and squeezed until Amanda had no choice but to part her lips; when she did this, her nameless sister breathed into her mouth an age-old breath filled with the breath of all sisters before and yet to come. It seeped down into her core and spread through her like the first cool drink on a hot summer’s day: an ice-bird spreading chill wings that pressed against her lungs and bones until Amanda was flung wide open, dizzy and disoriented, seized by a whirling vortex and spun around, around, around in a whirl, spiraling higher, thrust into the heart of all Creation’s whirling invisibilities, a creature whose puny carbon atoms and other transient substances were suddenly freed, unbound, scattered amidst the universe—yet each particle still held strong to the immeasurable, unseen thread which linked it inexorably to her soul and her consciousness; twirling fibers of light wound themselves around impossibly fragile, molecule-thin membranes of memory and moments that swam toward her like proud children coming back to shore after their very first time in the water alone, and when they reached her, when these memories and moments emerged from the sea and reached out for her, Amanda ran toward them, arms open wide, meeting them on windswept beaches of thought, embracing them, accepting them, absorbing them, becoming Many, becoming Few, becoming One, knowing, learning, feeling; her blood mingled with their blood, her thoughts with their thoughts, dreams with dreams, hopes with hopes, frustrations with frustrations, and in this mingling, in this unity, in this actualization, she became: