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Or maybe I’m just really fucking scared of being alone.
* * *
Flames lick the edge of the burner when I light the old, outdated stove, and set a pot of broth and meat on top. Just one of the many antiquated appliances in the cabin Russ and I have called home for the last few years. Miles out from the downtown area, it sits smack in the woods. Not a single neighbor within walking distance.
Mind lost to the cataclysm of thoughts in my head, I slice through a carrot, nearly adding the tip of my finger to the pile. “You could beat it, you know. This cancer. If we lived closer to civilization. A hospital.”
“Doc says it’s stage four. I’d sooner have them cut every one of my limbs off with a butter knife than sit in some hospital bed all day long and go through their treatments.”
At the sound of his lighter, I twist around to find him lighting up a cigarette, and I swear it takes sheer willpower not to stab him right now. See, Russ believes that his exposure to agent orange during the Vietnam War is what led to the diagnosis of small cell carcinoma, and not the millions of cigarettes he’s smoked over the last four decades since then. “Really?” It’s a miracle I haven’t chopped my fingers off, as forceful as I’m cutting the vegetables for the stew. “Why do you have to be so goddamn stubborn?”
“What do you care, Angeltude?”
Angeltude. ‘Face of an angel with a fuckton of attitude,’ he used to say, when I was younger. My name literally means celestial, or heavenly in French, which has become a mocking contrast to the last near decade, during which I’ve been somewhat hellish, bitter and angry. About everything, really. Where we live. How we live. He’s been bitter, too. But it seems the nickname has become more of an endearment for him in the last few months.
Teeth grinding in frustration, I stir the vegetables I’ve chopped into the pot of broth and meat.
“So, how long is it? A year? Six months?”
“Doc says I’ll be lucky to make it to spring.”
“That’s … that’s like … four months away!” Heat pulsing behind my eyes and in my nose tells me it’s only a matter of time before the dam breaks and all these real feelings come pouring out of me.
“I know. We got a lot of shit to do before then, kid. Lot of affairs to settle.”
Keeping my back to him is all I can do from breaking down. “I don’t want anything to do with your affairs.”
“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout women. Just tyin’ up loose ends.” A long pause follows, and he’s picking at his fingers when I shoot a glance over my shoulder. “I don’t want to leave you alone by yourself.”
“I’ll be fine.” Somehow, hearing him say it aloud, though, sends a shudder of fear through me. “Don’t you … worry about me. Just … worry about yourself. Maybe stop smoking those things, while you’re at it.”
“I know you’ll be okay. You’re strong. Always been strong. A survivor.” He isn’t talking about the fact that I can hunt a wolf down, or gut a rabbit with my bare hands, even if reluctantly. I’m the lone survivor of one of the most heinous murders in the state of Louisiana, where I’m originally from. A life I had to leave in order to survive. One he had to leave, as well, for reasons that still don’t quite add up for me.
“And what about your family? Shouldn’t you tell them?” Once, about four years ago, Russ left the cabin to set some traps in the woods, and desperate for answers, I rummaged through his stuff. Tucked away in an old, worn-down looking wallet, was a driver’s license, alongside a picture of a beautiful blonde and a young boy, maybe ten years old. When Russ caught me, he swiped the wallet out of my hand and sentenced me to two nights without supper. The worst punishment he’s ever issued in the all the time we’ve been here.
“They don’t need to know anything. Better for them, better for me.”
“You wouldn’t know what was better for you if it slapped you upside the head.”
He snorts a laugh that sends him into a coughing fit. Bending over, he holds a white kerchief to his mouth, and I glimpse the red saturating the cloth when he pulls it away.
The sight of him sends a nervous thrumming inside my veins, and I turn away, mentally searching for something else to think about. Something less terrifying than how utterly empty this place will be when he’s gone. And without Noya.
“Shit,” he rasps. “This …. This is my penance. All the bad shit I’ve done.”
“You don’t believe in all that religious crap, remember?”
“Ain’t religion. It’s karma. Bitin’ me in the ass.”
It’s futile asking him to elaborate on what he could’ve possibly done in his life, what horrific events in his past would warrant this shit hand, so I don’t bother to respond to that.
“You still wear that damn thing?”
At his inquiry, I look down the front of me, where I’ve mindlessly pulled out the chain ordinarily tucked inside my shirt. The one I’ve been skating the attached key along, back and forth, back and forth, in habit. “Always.”
The key to a secret place.
It’s the only thing I have left of my true home. My family. The life from before, as I refer to it, but I don’t dare say what it was that broke my childhood into two halves. Couldn’t, even if I wanted to, since I don’t remember most of it, anyway. A blackness that sits on the edge of my memories like a damaged movie reel. But there are these snapshots. Picture frames inside my head that appear and disappear. And I know things, details about that night, from the snippets I’ve read in local newspapers. Except, there’s a strange and inexplicable detachment to them that doesn’t seem to trigger any light inside that dark stretch at the back of my mind. Like I’m reading about someone else’s tragedy instead of my own.
