Kelsey Sutton: Some Quiet Place

Flames shoot up the walls. The heat throws me back, and I land on my side. There’s a brief flare of pain, but then my survival instincts kick in; I jump to my feet and search for an unblocked exit. Survive . I run back to the side door, but the floor above me collapses. I barely leap out of the way in time. I spin. All the ways out are guarded by the fire. Hay hisses and bursts. The cows bay in their terror, and my skin sears with heat and pain. I do the calculations several times, but Fear has done them, too, and he has every possible avenue of escape eliminated.

Heat eats up my pant leg, up my side and arm. I drop and roll. The smell of burnt flesh fills the air. I’m burning alive, I realize. The physical pain swiftly grows overwhelming, and tears run down my cheeks. But pain is usually impossible to endure because of the rush of feeling that comes along with it. I should be frantic. I should be screaming with

horror.

I feel nothing. I am nothing.

“Stop, Fear,” I say with my wet cheeks and smoking skin. Hell continues to crackle around me.

I hear him sigh yet again, doing an excellent imitation of my mother. Then, in the space of a single blink, the fire is gone. Everything is the way I left it, nothing destroyed or charred, although it’ll take the cows a while to calm. Power shivers around me. I search for Fear as the burns on my skin close up—it was all an illusion. There he stands, leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest. It’s as if none of it ever happened.

“Who could have done this to you?” Fear muses for the thousandth time. “What could have that kind of power, and for what purpose? You’re completely human—I’d know if you were anything else. You haven’t been sought out, collected, or studied. Why—”

“I’m going to the house,” I cut in. “If you’re going to come, fine. But please calm the cows down first. Dad grounded me last time he came out and saw them so riled. He thought I’d done it.”

“Why would you care if you were grounded? You never go out.”

I don’t say it out loud, but it’s simple, really. I pretend to care because a normal teenager would. I make any and all attempts to be just that. But I don’t want Fear to know this; it’ll only encourage his obsession.

“I won’t rest until I’ve tasted your terror, Elizabeth,” Fear tells me. He vanishes.

I stare at the wall for a moment, absorbing the absence of danger. No thoughts, no fire, no beings from the other plane to disturb the normality. There is only me, my breathing, and the frantic moans of the cows.

I shut the door.

I’ve been told that I cried as a child. I screamed when I didn’t get my way. I laughed and pulled my mother’s hair. I got into fights with my brother. When I hear these things, it’s as if I’m listening to stories about a stranger. The little girl I see in the pictures doesn’t really look like me. The physical details are the same, of course. The wild blond hair, the blue eyes, the smooth, sun-darkened skin. But if someone else hadn’t said that the little girl was me, I wouldn’t have known. It’s not that I don’t remember being so young … I just don’t know how I became what I am now.

There’s something missing in the girl I see in the mirror compared to the one in those pictures: a sort of soul. A light inside. Her smile is innocent. When I practice smiling, it looks puny and tight. False. Sometimes I think of it as the Caldwell mark; it’s how my entire family smiles, now.

I have knowledge few other humans have. They are unexplained and unwarranted, these ironclad truths. Yet I don’t know everything. I may be able to see the creatures that no one else can, I may know about the other plane, and I may understand the natures of humans and animals alike, but I don’t have the one thing I should have above all else.

I don’t know what it is to feel.

I can’t experience the freedom of grief, the abandon of ecstasy, the release of fury. And of course I can’t be curious about these experiences.

I don’t have the luxury of the people around me. I can’t weep, I can’t lust, I can’t cower in terror, I can’t celebrate. Not in a true sense; I’ve grown talented at the art of pretending. The only sensation I’m capable of—not an Emotion, but something physical—is a sort of … nothingness that’s always there.

The next morning, on my way through the kitchen, I pass framed pictures of the little girl on the wall and remember those stories. I adjust the strap of my book bag, contemplating that smile for what feels like the thousandth time. The bright eyes. I turn my back on her and glance at the clock on my way out. Late again.

Closing the screen door gently—Dad is out in the fields with the harvester but Mom is still sleeping—I attempt to put the pictures from my mind.

It’s a cold dawn. Fog hovers over the ground. Gravel crunches beneath my shoes. In the distance I see a shadow in the fields, the form of a man. But it’s not a man. He stands there, utterly still, and the fog rolls around him. Because that is what he is. Fog. Element. Other. More. I don’t just see the Emotions that wander the world—I see everything. I don’t pause to observe; it is something I have seen many, many times before. I throw my bag onto the passenger seat of my truck and hop in.

The engine rumbles as my truck bumps along the dirt road. It’s an ancient ’96 Chevy; I bought it with most of my babysitting money. The smell of gasoline permeates the air. I roll down the window and listen to the vehicle’s peaceful growl, feel the cool morning breeze on my face.

But a few minutes away from the house, my awareness sharpens and the brief stillness falls away. My eyes scan the trees alongside me; I sense something. Something else otherworldly. It’s the same sensation as when Emotions are near—my nothingness strengthens, hardens, prepares. But I don’t recognize this essence.

The minutes tick by, and I get closer to town. Nothing happens. Nothing appears. When I pull into the school parking lot the clock shows 7:59, and there’s still no reason for why my senses are tingling.

I pull the hood of my windbreaker up over my head as I walk toward the school doors. Under my lashes I take stock of my surroundings. There are the Dorseth brothers, roughing each other up near the wall—they’re infamous for their drugs and constant suspensions. There are the cliques that I don’t take part in. And there, sitting on the wall a little ways down from the Dorseths, is …

“Maggie,” I say, stopping. I instantly take note of the veins beneath her translucent skin, the trembling, the smudges under her eyes. Her ink-black wig shines weakly in the sun. “Maggie, you shouldn’t be here.”

She puts a book in her bag and stands, grinning. The smile has a contrasting effect; she’s wearing so much makeup it makes her eyes look droopy and hopelessly sad. “Well, hello to you too, bitch,” she says wryly. “I can tell you missed me.”

I know she’ll be hurt if I don’t reassure her. “Of course I’m glad to see you,” I intone, failing to correct the pitch of my voice before the words come out. “It’s been a long time,” I add, forcing a note of sincerity into the words now. I move forward and hug her. She’s like a bag of bones in my arms.

I step back to get a look at Maggie’s clothing; her choices seem to be getting more drastic. Today she’s wearing fishnet tights and a short skirt, complete with a chain clinking against her thigh. Her feet are covered by thick leather boots that are way too big. Velvet gloves adorn her arms to hide those jutting, pale hands. Her top … there isn’t much of a top to speak of. But she’s so flat-chested that the low neckline is a bit pointless.