As we roasted our dinner by a dark cedar lake, I knew I was dreaming. You adore fire and flames, but detest nature at night.
Looked up through dozens of snapping white sparks to see a canny man towering over the embers, smiling too wide with too many teeth.
Tried to offer him hot dogs, but you snatched them back from me. Sharing food with weird strangers was never your thing.
The canny man glowered. Waggled ten twiggy fingers tipped with crushed ivory shells, dripping baby bird viscera that sizzled on the glowing red wood. You sniffed in disgust and he poked at your forehead.
Then he asked about your scar, but you kept your lips shut.
So I told him a story.
About a masked woman standing in winter on a long snaking line while the sky spat burning ice chips into her ears. Guards barked out orders. Show me your papers. Do you have a fever? Lady, step to the side. Of more waiting and barking and ice and directives.
Just to ride up an elevator and arrive at a doorway, blocked by a minotaur in hospital green. The woman heard beeping, then a cold prickly whisper. His cellmate’s infected, and we can’t let him leave. Save yourself, woman, turn around now, and hasten back home. I’m feeling a mite peckish and you smell rather tasty. Don’t let me see your shadow darken this passage again.
But she’d come for her love and crept down the hallway. Plucked a vial from her purse and swallowed it down. Shrank herself to an insect and scurried beneath the minotaur’s notice to find her mate bound to a mattress, arms strapped to the bed. Lying there all stitched up like a roughly worn hand-me-down. Missing a kidney and still as a stone.
Too small to untie him, she crawled up a pant leg, sat on his pillow, and sang him awake.
And there they stay trapped, alone and together, in a sick place of healing, a prison of plague.
Boring as heartbreak, yawned the canny man. You must pay the toll. Now go jump in the lake.
But you’re afraid of deep water.
So down I dove through choking reeds and slithery things til I reached slimy bottom. Sifted all night through silt for some trinket until my hand brushed against cold skin and I shivered to a stop.
Found a catfish sleeping in her mud bed, gold coins woven pretty into her whiskers. Her only beauty, arresting on a flat homely face. I’ll just take two, I promised, reaching quite stealthy, unbraided them gently. Sorry, I murmured, fisting them tightly. Tucked my arms to my sides and kicked for the top.
Held out my hands to the man who trailed blood on my palms. He plucked the coins up, bit both hard with incisors, and buttoned them into his eye sockets. Then melted away on a smoke tendril twisting up to the treetops where he roosted in wait for others like us.
Opened my eyes in our bed to find you just sleeping. Rolled up like a taco in the soft blanket I bought when you came home to mend.
Or maybe I was still dreaming. Thought I heard that catfish slopping her way across our bedroom floor. Swish, splat, gurgling and gasping, crying out for her jewelry. Buried my face in your shirt and breathed you all in. Stuffed plugs in my ears ‘til it was mostly silent again.
Woke up the next morning and fetched the mop from the closet. There were puddles on the floor and I worried you’d slip.
Dina Perthakines is a writer and licensed psychologist in New York City. She’s worked in a range of settings, from hospitals to non-profit AIDS service organizations to universities. Her work is upcoming in BULL and Flash Fiction Forum.
The Cabinet of Heed 