Бен Маркус - Notes from the Fog - Stories

In the car, I asked if I could go ahead and lie down all the way. I wasn’t tired. It wasn’t that. It was mostly because I did not think I could keep looking out of the window, at the people on the streets, marching off the end of the planet. I couldn’t do that without really starting to have some feelings that I was fairly sure would not soon go away. Permanent feelings? Maybe not. I don’t think there are such a thing. I think that we die, and the feelings go on, they find a new person, and so on, moving from host to host, destroying bodies and soaring away to the next fellow. But probably not forever. That’s too big a claim. I’m not comfortable going out on that sort of limb. We just don’t know enough.

Dr. Nelson had another clinic,I guess. The secrets people kept! They had beds there. It was all super professional, a real building in a real place with people as real as can be scurrying around looking busy. Sometimes Nelson brought his subjects in, during a trial, for closer study. That is what I figured when I saw this place. The experiments needed to be controlled. You couldn’t blame him. You have a subject who’s out at large in the city, and how can you possibly begin to collect any reliable data? If you put them in a bed, in a room, with nurses and the whole shebang, your experiment gets tighter. You narrow down your variables. It’s just good doctoring, is what it is. Dr. Nelson knew how to swim in this world. He wasn’t going to go over the falls. He knew how to keep from disappearing.

They made me comfortable, which I appreciated. It was only late afternoon, but who doesn’t like slipping on some pajamas and getting into bed early now and then? Who would really complain about a luxury like that? Especially when it’s snowing. To get into bed and be cozy while the world is turning to powder outside. I was in good hands.

This was the part of the study where they sent in people who pretended to know me. I had to hold my ground. They found an older couple, gray-haired and shriveled up. They played a certain role. They showed off a certain kindness. You’ve seen it before. Compassion and concern, faces twisted into sympathy. Straight out of central casting. I always loved that expression: central casting. Didn’t that just mean the whole world, every fucking person? Anyway, here came the two, sweet-faced old-timers. The name “Terry” was on their lips. Of course it was. They’d obviously been briefed. I didn’t mind. They approached my bed, smiling, melting with concern, and took my hand. Even fake feelings can feel good when they come down on you—you know there’s very little difference. I’ll take a hug when it comes. I’ll hug right back. I’ll feel the warmth of a body, even the bodies of those two old-timers, who got pretty worked up. I’m really not picky. Does it matter if it’s a stranger? What I would like to know is who isn’t a stranger? Name one person.

The man they called Richard was the biggest stranger of all. My soon-to-be husband. They sent him in and he said his words. He wore a familiar body but it was big on him. It didn’t fit. You could see him squirming inside it, trying to get out. Unless you can rip apart someone’s body and finally know their secrets, then they are a stranger. It’s fine. It’s how things are. Stop crying about it, is what I think. You should, you know, hug them, too. Hug whoever you can. You should live with them. You should spend your whole life with them if you want to. Answer to whatever name they call you—does it finally matter? Put down roots and hand over your money and take off your clothes when they snap their fingers. Just don’t forget. Don’t take your eyes off them for even one second.

The next thing they did was pretty clever. They had two people come at me masked up perfectly. A young man and a young woman, as if someone had taken my kids and rubbed them in life, in time, in years and years. Maybe someone dragged these people from a truck, sprayed them with oldening, and just pulled on them longwise until they grew and were disfigured and were just some typical, sad-looking adults. But with the faces of my children. The unmistakable faces. And someone made those faces cry as they hugged me. I hugged them and they hugged me and I held my ground. It was easy. Someone peeled them away and they sobbed and said goodbye and I said goodbye, too. It was easy.

It got a little bit late, and it got a little bit dark. For a while when it was snowing it was like the snow was so white and so abundant that it would hold the light, well after sunset, and into evening, radiating it back, so the night never got dark. But that didn’t last. It couldn’t. That was just a fantasy, because the world doesn’t work that way. You have to be realistic.

Most of the people cleared out of my room, but the two old-timers stayed, sitting in chairs, keeping their distance. I didn’t want to admit it, I didn’t want to tell anyone this, but I was getting tired and I wasn’t sure how long I could hold on. Maybe if I wasn’t in bed, and maybe if that bed wasn’t so goddamned comfortable, and maybe if out my window I couldn’t see some lights—of the city, speckled and flowering outside—maybe then I wouldn’t feel so drowsy. But I was determined to stay vigilant. You have to stand guard. You have to hold your weapon high. I was thinking that even your enemy has to sleep. Your enemy gets tired, too. You can count on it.

They kept trying to offer me water, but what was I, a moron? Water. Did they know where I worked? Did they know what I did? Water. I remember when I drank water, just a little girl who didn’t know better, unlocking the gates myself, pouring it right in. Come and get me! Holy Christ. Here, have some, they kept saying, just a sip, you’re thirsty, you must be so thirsty, Terry, and I wanted to reply, Why not just cut me open. Let’s dispense with ceremony. I’d hand you the knife myself, if I had one. Just don’t treat me like a fool, please. Treat me with dignity. I’m a human being. Have you ever heard of that? Do you know what a human being is? Well, here’s a real one, right in front of your face. Stand back and bow down and show some fucking respect. If there’s something you want to know, get out your knives and come at me. I’m ready.

My wife, Gin,once knocked gently on my head, as if it were a door. “Hello,” she kept saying. “Hello. Who’s in there?” She and our therapist, Dr. Sherby, laughed a little about this, so I did too. What fun. Keep knocking on my head like that, like it’s a door, or an egg. I wasn’t going to be the only one not laughing. That’s Human Survival 101. Not that survival is such a prize. But, still, you might as well control your exit. Put your own little spin on how you step away from the show once and for all. I laughed as Gin kept knocking on my head, and I said, as if I might really be answering the door, “Just a minute, I’m coming. Hold your horses. No need to break the house down.”

We all just looked at each other. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be in on the joke. Gin stopped knocking and tucked her hands in her lap.

“I’ll be right there,” I said, in the most distant voice I could manage, as if I were many rooms away—underwater, overseas—crawling toward them as best as I could.

There was nothing wrongwith us. We were sweet. We were great. Friends, if that’s what you wanted to call them, said we were the perfect couple. To me that meant we were alive. We hadn’t died. We hadn’t bled out in the streets. We didn’t drag each other by the hair from room to room. We observed holidays and put food on the table and hadn’t been pushed from a cliff yet. We couldn’t fly, we couldn’t live forever, we couldn’t fight off disease when it came. But we lifted the kids into the air and let the wind shape them. Not really, not really, but it could feel that way, and who really knew how the kids had ended up so kind, so free of murder in their hearts? It wasn’t because of us. Certainly not me anyway.