Austin Bunn - The Brink - Stories

But Bo’s face fell.

“Michael, your attachment to Leah is getting worse,” he said. “I’m very disappointed.” It was as if he’d taken a hammer to my container + pounded. “My answer is no.”

I went to the laundry room + collapsed on my bunk, pulling big Gs of grief. I cried into my pillowcase for eight minutes + twenty-five seconds. I turned on the dryers to cover my noise. I don’t want to be alone, not for now, not for as long as it will take to traverse the universe. Leah, am I with you in the Spirit Room? Are you feeling the same? Are you feeling at all?

When I was done leaking, I put the pillowcase in the washing machine with two cups of bleach. I got it clean.

Leah,

I woke up this morning + decided that I would not feel anything for you. When we all came together at 3 a.m. for our vitamins, I took off my glasses so I didn’t see you + swallowed in the dark. During brain exercises, from 8:36 a.m. to 10:36 a.m., I finished my crosswords without thinking about you once. I wrote our report about the human encounters from yesterday + didn’t mention your questions or your doubts. At 10:54 a.m., I drank my protein formula + ate a cinnamon roll + more vitamins but I didn’t look at your vitamin cup.

Then the doorbell rang + silence came. Darwin rushed into the den + said, “Someone’s at the front.”

A visitor! I got so excited because I thought it might be Jesus. Bo says that Jesus, the Total Overcomer, might surprise us one day but that he won’t look like Jesus. He’ll have a sheer face + black eyes + a giant head to hold all available knowledge. I thought of the last visitors we had. Remember those two Mormon missionaries? In their starched shirts + cowlicks, they asked Bo if he wanted to go to Heaven. When they saw all of us in our turtlenecks together, they thought it was a family reunion. “We’re going to Heaven,” Bo told them. “We’re going to get there before you.” We clapped in unison + the boys got scared like we were vampires + they ran away. I know you didn’t like seeing them. You were thinking of your family back in Salt Lake + older brother, weren’t you? Did he look like those two? Don’t they all look the same?

Then I realized I was thinking of you again. I stopped myself by climbing the main stairs to see out the cathedral window over the door. I don’t know why Bo let that one be the only window that is not covered with tinfoil. I think because it was too hard to put the tinfoil there.

Through the window, I saw an older female container chewing the pad of her thumb. Under her other arm she carried a cake on a plastic tray. She had long black hair + jeans + a winter coat, but there’s no winter in San Diego so then I knew she came from elsewhere. Bo never mentioned a winter coat on Jesus.

“May I help you?” Bo asked when he opened the door. He was so thin now his white turtleneck hung loose on his vessel.

“I’m here to speak to my daughter,” she said. “Her name is Leah Shearling.”

“You daughter isn’t here,” Bo said calmly.

“How do you know?”

“There are no daughters here,” Bo answered. “Only Overcomers.”

She didn’t know what to say to that! But then your mother peered inside, at all of us gathered in the foyer in the dark. It must be wonderful to see thirty-nine people with the same haircut + clothing, like the biggest math team that ever was.

“Leah, are you in there?” she called out.

I couldn’t help it, but I looked at you, at the threshold to the living room. + the woman saw me look + followed my eye machines to you. You didn’t make any expression go on your facepart.

“It’s me, Leah. It’s Mom,” your mother said. “I want to talk to you.”

“We have affairs to attend to,” Bo said + started to close the door, even though all we had to do was more brain exercises. But your mother wedged her sneaker at the base of the door.

“I don’t know who you are, or what this is about, but you can’t hold her here,” she said.

Bo turned to you. Everybody in the foyer cleared a path between you + him. “Leah, do you want to go with this human?” he asked.

I wondered if you would be strong enough to shed your feeling, right there in front of us. I wondered if I would be strong enough. But we have to let go + release even the best human memories. Like your mother. Like you + me, after the burgers. Remember how we walked up the ramp of the visitors’ center in Salt Lake to the planetarium the Mormons painted there? We sat on the benches + peered up at the planets + you said, “I feel like an alien on earth, Do you ever feel like an alien?” So I explained about our vessels, how our souls drove them like cars until they were jalopies + how Bo would open the Gate for our souls to go weightless + level up. You’d heard so many explanations in your life you were skeptical. But your backpack was heavy, so heavy + confusing, wasn’t it? The next morning, you showed up for our meeting in the hotel conference room. Then you went to that phone booth + looked up the name we told you + wrote down the place Darwin had written in the margin + came the next morning, to a field outside of town, where our van idled. You said, “I want to walk through the door of my life.” Bo said, “This way.”

But you came with Rocket on a leash. You had to leave him.

He chased the van until we got on the highway. You wept so much your facepart looked wet.

See, Leah, I do it too. Human love is remembering + remembering is the weight that will keep us here, on this dying planet.

In the foyer, I watched you shake your head no. Suddenly, I felt warm in my chest, the way gas in the universe collapses together + forms a hot star out of nothing.

Your mother broke down. She shot exhaust from her mouthpart. Then she dropped the cake on the front step. Bo closed the door + turned the lock + I could hear her crying when we began to clap.

Leah,

Can I tell you something? When I was seventeen, I thought maybe I was Jesus. I created my own religion where the saints were the animals of my block. I believed the clouds of feeding sparrows were the face of God. I composed psalms for the squirrels on my clarinet. At this time, I slept in the basement of my father’s house, a house in a neighborhood of bullies, + one night a gray tomcat came to my window. His emerald eyes transfixed me. I let him crawl into bed, where he worked the blankets on top of me + curled into sleep, his purr a throaty rumble. This was my holy visitation.

During school, a new Bible wrote itself in the close-ruled pages of my notebook.

Then one night, I found the tomcat at my window, dazed + bloody, one ear blown away to pink tissue. Bits of a firecracker’s red paper wrapper lay matted in his fur. He pressed against the window screen but refused to come in, refused to let me touch him. He had come to me to die. Have you ever watched something surrender its vessel, Leah? I vigiled for two days with water + food that this tomcat didn’t eat until, finally, his brilliant eyes shallowed + I was inconsolable, just like you were with Rocket. I saw that our skin is an envelope, ready to be opened. My father thought I’d lost my mind. He called my mother in Phoenix for help. She asked to speak to me. “I have died for the smallest things,” I told her. “Put your father back on the phone,” she said.

I knew that the next time I found God, I would go with him when he ascended.

I told myself I would not feel anything today + then your mother came + now I feel again. All these possible worlds — every place, every person, is a planet, charging with life.

Leah,

It was midnight + tomb-time when I heard your steps outside. I rose from my bunk, peeled a corner of tinfoil from the laundry room window + saw you, at the end of the concrete path, past the tennis court + the dumpster, at the edge of the pool. I thought you were about to dive in, all dressed. But you stood still while the lights from under water — Bo liked to keep the pool lights on as a beacon for the ship — skittered across your body.