Page 72 - WTP Vol. X #5

The Mask of Red Death (continued from preceding page)
And older than Ana—who it turned out had been the one who’d texted you, just before the crash. Her text either almost-killing you or saving you, who can
say. She must have sent it from her perch on Friend D’s convertible in the Graduation parade. Short and sweet and clueless: saw u- u ok? It wasn’t till days later when Mom finally left you alone in your room that you thumb-texted Ana back: ‘n (duh).’
By then she’d heard about your crash, heard rumors from our fast-scattering former classmates. Some of them had sent emails and e-cards. Ana at least did text back, hoping you’d feel better soon; hoping we’d get 2gether once she got back from the Cape. Her usual June trip to her family’s summer home there.
“Do you ever think of hurting yourself?
the usually smiley Guidance Counselor asked you via Zoom and you shook your head no, lying.”
Where you might be now, soaking in the sun beside Ana, in your former life. Instead of lying here pale- faced in your peach-painted room as if you did die.
~
But no. Alas, as my new BFF Edgar A.P. might say. I’m still here. The girl with the scraped-off face.
(I might as well switch back to ‘I—to end this story. My story. Might as well just, like Twitter trolls say, own it.) My damn dumb story: the story that will forever frame my life-to-be.
Lucky me. Still breathing and still so-called recovering here at home, mid-June, 2020. My bike helmet so- called ‘saved’ me. The goddamn helmet I kept on be- cause Grandad made me promise. And I couldn’t break that promise. I couldn’t stop dreaming it was Grandad carrying me to the sidewalk; those dreams more vivid and real than real life, my silent sunny bedroom.
Where I feel here, but not here. Only less not-here than at the hospital. At least here at home, these last couple cooped-in weeks, I get to be alone. Like everyone’s
been telling me I don’t want to be. I keep my window open, gently humid June air drifting in. Any fresh air tastes better than disinfected-piss hospital air. Mostly, being alone feels good, in a sad way. Just me and Edgar Allan P, his black-and-white face blurred on the Xeoroxed stapled story on my nightstand. Sad old (ac- tually, sad young) Prince Prospero didn’t have anyone watching over him like Mom, or like I feel/imagine Grandad still doing. Prince P. just had his Frat Boy friends who didn’t give a damn if he dropped dead. Friends who turn out to be only skin-deep.
I sit propped by floppy normal-smelling pillows as I type, trying not to scratch under my new lighter ban- dages. Not to feel the pill-numbed ache in my thigh. Instead I keep typing away on this way-overdue final assignment. Which will finish my high school degree and ‘graduate’ me—into what? And what will my scraped-off face look like, once the bandages come off ?
At least the damn face masks we’ll all be wearing forever will cover it up: whatever scars I might wear, forever. What passes as a hopeful thought, for me. The new older me. Typing slower, dusk falling outside. Beside THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH on my nightstand sits a vase of brown-tinged roses rescued by Mom from Grandad’s now-overgrown garden. Not Peace Roses, which bloom later in sum- mer. Another kind of rose, with a name Grandad would know.
Gazing at those dead but-still-pretty roses, I consider again ending my story like Poe’s, everyone dying. Me dying, anyways. What I’d wondered, all Spring, if I want. But no: I’ve typed my whole story true, so far. And that, in a sad way, feels good too. So I’ll just keep going.
Once I finish this thing, any-which-way, I’ll be an of- ficial member of the Covid-19 Class of 2020. Doomed yet not dead. Not yet. All of us rolling for- ward into an End Yet a Beginning. Lucky us. I pause to sniff the funky Not-Peace Roses. At least my nose isn’t broken; at least I’m still breathing. I hold in that last breath. Last, I mean, in this story.
The (I thought I wanted to type this last word, but now that I’m doing it, I don’t) End
Searle is co-writer on a forthcoming feature film from Duplass Brothers Productions, I’ll Show You Mine. Her five books of fiction include My Body to You (Iowa Short Fiction Prize), We Got Him, and A Four-Sided Bed, in development for film. Her show, Tonya & Nancy: the Rock Opera, has been widely produced to national media. She teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine.
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