She Is Our Warmth, She Is Our Shelter
by Andrew Nadolny
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
I drive past a dilapidated house on Broadway when the phone rings. He’s calling me—he hasn’t stopped calling me—and he’ll keep calling me until I answer, or until I turn around, come back, and tell him I’m sorry, and tell him I didn’t mean it, and tell him he’s the best, and tell him I’m the worst, when he’s the worst, he’s the worst.
He’s brilliant, he’s beautiful, he’s perfect.
He’s an ethylene glycol prince.
Smiles hurt, words hurt, truth hurts… he says he says.
He says such horrible things so easily, so beautifully…
They must be true, right?
I eat a donut from the Speedway and almost can’t swallow it. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.
Crumbs in his car… sticky fingers on the wheel… sticky sugar. Carbs. Fat…
But it’s okay because I still love you…
He’s the best. He’s the fucking worst.
The snot tastes gross as it melds with the glaze.
When did I start crying?
I hear the train that crosses Nicholas, and I step on the gas. The car in front of me is going to just make the barrier before it comes down.
I’m not. I’m going to go through it.
I’m going to go through it just as the train comes and let it hit me and take me out in one glorious fucking WHAM and I’m going to do it in his car. He says it’s our car but it’s not our car because if it was our car then I could drive it without telling him where I’m going and asking him if it’s okay. There’s going to be blood on the seats, brains on the dashboard, and my dead body will piss and shit on the leather seats before they scrape me out of here. It will ruin this dress that he loves so much.
Why do I only smell good when I smell like your mother?
I see it coming. It’ll be close, but close is perfect. Maybe I’ll see his ex-wife in Hell. I think that’s why I don’t see the racoon—the damn fat little furry shitbag that nearly launches the car when I go over it and slam on the brakes. I turn the wheel, ending parallel to the tracks hearing the roaring engine of the black roadster speeding off towards the Marathon with the cheap vodka, and the roar of the train, the rush of the wind, the phone still ringing on the passenger seat before it goes to a voicemail that he’ll never leave.
I hit the racoon.
He’s never going to let me take the car again.
I kill the racoon.
He’s never going to let me leave again.
I stop the car and get out.
It’s still twitching.
I didn’t kill the racoon.
It’s staring at me.
Its organs are spilling out on the fucking blacktop. It’s reaching for me. Blood is coming out of its mouth.
And then the rats come—
Hundreds of rats from both sides of the tracks, not caring that they’re being crushed beneath the wheels of the train.
The whistle is loud in my ears, screaming as they scream.
As I scream.
He was right.
They drag it away, down to the river as it screams.
He’s always right.
I walk back to the car.
I pick up the phone.
He doesn’t yell.
He never yells.
I think I’ve pissed myself, and I don’t even know if it’s because of the accident or because he answered the phone.
I tell him what happened because I’ve always told him everything.
“…I don’t know why animals do that. I don’t know why stupid fucking animals have to do stupid fucking shit like that. Why don’t they know any better? Why don’t they fucking know any better it’s a car?! These things have been around for a hundred fucking years now! It’s a car and it’s going to fucking kill them if they run into it!”
“I don’t know babe, I don’t know. But that’s why you don’t run.”
That’s why you don’t run.
This morning there was a cat that lay on a warm spot of concrete behind a dilapidated house on Broadway. Tonight there is a cat that still lies on that same spot of concrete behind a dilapidated house on Broadway—the remnants of a cat—the remnants sort of spread out, for they were warm for a while. They were actually quite hot. And then they were cold. They were hot when the spray hit me, and there was a heat from my own leg when it bit me. But I bit it back, back—bigger, stronger, better, better. I don’t know why it took my food. Does it think the old woman leaves the food for it? It’s getting fat off the old woman’s food, off my food.
It’s small. So small. The light that’s always on in the darkness flickers, and it irritates me because it hurts my eyes with its on and off flicker. But it doesn’t irritate me as much as the thing stealing my food. Why does such a small thing not run when I come for it? Why does it hiss and spit at me while I come back to my food on the bottom step of the porch? It’s a stupid small thing, and it dies easily like a stupid small thing should. I don’t understand it. I should not have to kill such a stupid small thing in order to eat my food. It has died. It moves no more. I bit it and scratched it until it stopped moving and making noise. I made sure it stopped. No need to keep it lame and easy prey. It was fast, I think. I don’t know.
It felt strange.
It felt strange to make a thing stop. A thing that was warm, a thing that bled warmth on me and felt slippery and sticky as my paws trailed through its fur. It felt curious. The small dead thing felt interesting. The small dead thing did the same to other smaller things, but it ate them. I once ate a smaller dead thing, but it was not as good as the food the old fur-less female giant puts out. This thing was not good either. The fur tickled my whiskers, and it slipped and wriggled when I bowed my head and tore into its belly. It made my fur too sticky, so I left to wash. There is a place close by that cool water that also has treasure left for me and whoever climbs to get it, and that tastes much better to me as well.
But this was interesting.
The next night the old fur-less female giant is kneeling down on a piece of cardboard in the light of the moon and that hateful light. There is a hole in the earth where there wasn’t a hole, and that dead creature lies inside of it. I see it when I approach looking for my food. But there is no food. Why is there no food? Surely this dead creature could not have made the old giantess forget my food? I walk back from the porch slowly. I’m disappointed, but it will pass, and there will be food tomorrow.
But then I stop.
I stop because there’s a sudden breeze that I feel, not from the wind, but from her shriveled arm stirring the air, and I see her flapping that arm at me, a piece of pointed silver in her hand. Why is she waving her strange thing at me when she has no food? Why are such loud, angry noises coming from her mouth? Why does she throw the thing at me and hit me? It hurts. It hurts. But that is the way of it, the larger things of the world are at the top. Did that dead thing feel the same? My head shakes. My paws tremble. Her growls are louder, and I move to retreat but not before I nip her and let her see that there is still pride, and I shall still not be kicked around so easily, even by a giant.
I bite her.
She falls.
She falls so easily?
Has it always been that way?
She kicks at me, holding her hand, and she is slow. She is howling with such cries of pain that she hurts my ears, but more than that, I wonder.
I wonder what it’s like to…
I wonder what it’s like to make one of these dead…
And that is why I don’t run.
In the walls of a dilapidated house on Broadway, there are ten generations of rats. There has not been so much time passed that some of them don’t remember what it was like to be cold, to be hungry. There were the oldest of them who came into these walls, young, bright, eager and starving when the cold wet white began to fall, and here they were fed. An old female creature living here was so old that to them she seemed like an ancient god, and she murmured words, hunched over the countertop, and filled a bowl with little black seeds, nuts, fruit, things that were sweet and fatty and precious—a feast of kings—so they ate their fill, grew healthy and strong, mated, bore more children who were also fed by the old giant god until she went out one evening and did not return.
I watched her from the pile of bricks outside—where it was dangerous, but not so dangerous that the younger of us dared not venture when it was warm and a breeze fluttered through the fur. The flying monsters hunted us, but that sloped and splendid creature kept them at bay, even as slow and fragile as she was, kneeling down, digging up dirt one paw-full at a time until there was a hole in the ground. And then in it was laid the body of one of the four-legged monsters that roamed the outside. But it was in her thrall, and it never came for us when she was around.
She returned it to the ground, and perhaps it came from the ground? I wonder if it sprang from the earth, fully formed black phantom that it was, just as dangerous at night as the flying ones. I watched to see if another would come, but I saw only another large gray beast approach from the bushes, others having joined me to watch the strange ritual and bow our heads because it seemed appropriate to do so when she did. She would bow her head, paws together before she ate a meal, and some of us did so as well in thanks. Those who performed that trick for her were said to receive extra berries.
She made the keening sound when the beast drew near. She threw something at it, and then it attacked her. I drew back afraid, for what could a creature strong and brave enough to attack a god do to me? I shrank into the shadows, as did my brothers and sisters, and surely she would rise up and use her powers to fell the beast. Surely a god such as her could defeat it? But she did not, and our cries, mine among them grew more frantic and shrill as she fell to her knees crawling for the door as it tore at her eyes and I felt as if mother was being drowned before me but still could not find it in me to move.
Stop mother
Stop our God
Save our mother
It watched us then. It turned its head up and hissed at us as we drew back, and she turned to us and told us to run as well, and I cried as I never had for being so small and weak until my father came up from under the door to the basement and cried along with my uncle, his eyes also wet with red tears.
It is one. We are many.
We are many, we are strong.
And I heard them back then,
We are many, we are strong.
And I knew…
What one knows, all know.
She is our warmth. She is our shelter.
She is our food. She is our water.
What all know, one knows.
If she falls we all fall.
And that is why we ran.
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