Charley Anderson
Agnes was lying beside a girl with eyes full of little stars. Agnes had his eyes closed. She had been watching him pretend to sleep, and her stare had an obnoxious, expectant weight. The skin itched where she looked over him between his left shoulder blade and spine. He knew that his arm was of the perfect length and flexibility to fold around his back and reach this exact spot. But the girl was convinced he was asleep, and he didn’t want her to hear his skin. He would in fact, at this point, prefer not to have it, and let whatever was kept inside that skin, be sifted down through the sheets, the bed frame, between the floorboards.
How was it, he wondered, that people could sleep in the same bed, every night, forever?
So far as Agnes could recall, they got high together last night. Sometime around two he had rolled away from her. An attempt to trick his mind, or his body, or both, into thinking he was sleeping alone. She never tried to breach the gap. She may have, he believed, shifted further away. That was probably the most intimate interaction they had ever had.
He heard her making a move now over the sheets, and a hand scratched between his shoulder blade and spine.
I’m making coffee, she said.
He didn’t open his eyes. But his breathing had changed, and he felt her notice.
The smell came into the room long before she returned. When she did, she held the cups on a dark wooden tray with gold metal handles. It looked like something her grandma had given her. She looked at Agnes after she’d set it down on the desk. He was propped up on the side of the bed, fully dressed, slipping his shoes on, his bag swung by his side.
Sorry, it’s just they need me home, Agnes said.
I thought your mum wasn’t—
It’s okay, he said. It’ll work itself out.
It sounded… You know you don’t have to.
Agnes shook his head. It sounds worse than it is.
She tilted her head to look out the window. I’ll see you tonight then?
No promises. Agnes gave a short laugh.
She laughed too. What?
What?
She was silent.
*
The room was like a kaleidoscope with water poured into it. The people were turning. The glasses were sliding. Liquor was pouring. Everything was fluid.
I like night-time, Agnes said. Nobody is wondering where I am at night. I don’t feel like I need to be anywhere.
The boy beside him made no reply to this as he was in the middle of ordering Agnes another rum and coke.
What are you thinking about right now? Agnes asked when he handed the glass to him.
The boy shrugged. I’m not.
I’m jealous, Agnes said.
Then you should stop thinking too.
This boy could be a stranger to Agnes, or it could have been his best friend from grade school. It didn’t matter. He would be talking to him all the same. Agnes knew that the boy thought he had seen Agnes first. But Agnes had seen him first, from behind, and had made his way purposely to the bar and had asked for just such a drink.
I wish I could stop thinking. Agnes smiled. I haven’t been able to do that since I was a kid.
Well, the boy said. He raised his glass almost imperceptibly. To us one day being children again.
He drank. They drank.
The way Agnes’ eyes and brain fixated on the boy, it seemed as if time bent around him. They were still in front of the bench, but they had moved slightly down towards the dancefloor, with glasses lined in front of them. Agnes didn’t want to turn around because the room was dropping, and if he turned away from the boy’s gaze for even a second, he would go with it. He raised his hand and placed it onto the cross on the boy’s necklace as if dangling off a cliffside. This was his rope.
Didn’t expect one of these, Agnes said.
What? the boy asked.
Agnes raised his voice and shook the cross. Is this a joke?
I look like a godless person, do I?
No, no. Agnes laughed. I didn’t mean it like that.
You know, you strike me as a godless person, he said.
Agnes was surprised by how offended he was by this. What? Why?
You are, the boy said. You look lonely enough to be.
Right! Agnes said, and almost spilt his drink as he raised his arm. Well, I wish I could buy into it. Can’t even imagine how happy I would be.
The boy smiled. And here comes the but–
But I just can’t. Agnes shook his head, more times he normally would. Guess reason trumps happiness. No offence.
Ah, the boy said. That intelligence and no wisdom. He touched Agnes shoulder. Did you ever consider that you don’t know everything?
Agnes looked up at him. He just wanted to eat his words, those blurry, perfectly posed words. The boy took his hand without fear or question and lead him to the dancefloor. As they danced the shape and size of the room itself grew indistinct, but Agnes began to feel the desires and sensations of those around him with a startling clarity. What had once been the tried, artificial movement of skin and clothes and skin again, had turned to the pulsing sweetness, sadness, of faces and eyes and hands. And the people who directed them, or were directed by. These people, trying to feel what was happening to them.
Agnes didn’t think of his feelings as something real. If a friend had asked him to explain them, he doubted he could. Because he did not know what he felt, only saw it. In his head Agnes was the boy’s sculpture, his clay. He was his porcelain cup. He saw himself be shattered. He saw the boy pick him up, the little pieces, and stick him back together with melted gold. He was to be rebuilt in his image. A girl, a boy, someone else. The boy could have Agnes’ body, he would give it to him, and whatever was left could escape through the ceiling, to be annihilated in the sky which had no corners and edges. He liked the idea of leaving his body to the boy. His prayer was to be left in his hands. To be left in his hands was prayer.
But when he looked up to see that sky all he saw was the metal bars holding up the black, boxed roof. The steel was clean and in it he thought he could see his faint, blurring reflection. He saw that the boy had put his arm around his waist, and was ripped back down from that image in the metal. The boy felt like a rock wall up against him now. A wooden horse. And soon enough he could smell him again, that overwhelmingly masculine musk. It amplified his own self-disgust. Realising that if the boy were there, experiencing him, Agnes was also, by that cruel math, being experienced.
He looked up at the boy’s face. The eyeliner was dripping down, not from tears, but drunken sweat. The boy gave Agnes a dull look of question, of misunderstanding, in such a specific way that burned the story he was writing between them. He wasn’t one of Agnes’ best friends from grade school. He couldn’t play off him like he’d known him forever. It was no longer the two of them. It never was. The dream became dust, the names were changed. He would never be his brother.
*
Of all the nights Agnes had spent in the girl’s room, what he remembered most was the soft, pastel-like orange light from the salt lamp that coloured her walls and the long mirror set in the dark wood. On the glass where his face would float, she had written in neat, deliberate black marker her favourite quote from her favourite novel. The smoke from her incense twisted between the letters. He couldn’t forget those little whispers. When it intersected with the light, the orange set the angel curls afire like rustic dust.
I want to hear you read it aloud to me this time, Agnes said.
She turned on the side of the pillow to face his ear and she said it to him very quietly. He did not turn to her as she spoke but kept his eyes closed as she read, and without the letters her voice became weightless as the smoke. When she was done, he opened his eyes and they both looked at each other. It was quiet for some time and all Agnes knew to do was nod.
You don’t even know what the hell it means, she said.
He looked at her with an open mouth. Of course I do.
Explain it to me then.
He stared at her and slowly a smile crept over his face.
Right. She laughed and shook her head. Right.
He reached out for her, but his hand fell on the crumpled wall of the sheet between them. Tell me, please.
Would you actually listen if I explained it to you?
Agnes narrowed his eyes. Is that how you think of me, that you even need to ask that?
Okay, okay. She sat up quickly against the bedframe. To be honest, I had to read it a few times at first too. But once I got it, it made me wonder… She parted her hair, flicking it behind her shoulders and readjusted the pillow beneath her. Okay, sorry. She shook her hands out. It’s just, I’ve played through me explaining it to someone a hundred times in my head…
He smiled beneath her.
Okay… so what if everything we know, all these people fighting and, well, you know… what if they are all just scenes, or tests, put on by so-called souls, or spirits, to figure out what was right?
I like your take on the simulation theory a lot better.
Oh, fuck off. She almost kicked over the lamp. It’s not about that. This is about physicality. Like if all this wasn’t just meat, it was like spirits spinning out in costumes, playing with toys just trying to… know themselves. Just the honour of that. The meaning. It’s so comforting.
The incense went out and the fan began chopping away at the smoke into nothing. Into what was less than smoke. Agnes was trying to stay quiet, but he had nothing to watch. Except her eyes, on him. I’m sorry, he said quietly. For all of it.
She looked at him, and looked, and kept looking, trying to see something. Finally, she sighed and shook her head. Don’t be, she said. We’re young. We’re searching. I don’t have any more control over it than you.
I can’t, he said. I can’t even see what’s happening. What I’m doing. Why?
I couldn’t tell you, she said. It’s taken a lot of strength and love within myself to realise that I just don’t know.
He just nodded at that and wiped his face.
And even if I could, she said, it wouldn’t be my place.
No, was all Agnes said. He wanted to actually speak to this. He wanted to say something, something that would absolve him of everything, something that would make him a stranger to her and himself again. Something straightened, uncoiled and untouched. But words could not touch where he had gone. So, he did what children do when they are yet to learn the words for what they are trying to say. He reached out and put his hand on hers, and his body spoke to her, in all its honesty, and she understood. He had never been in the space between a handshake and handholding before.
It won’t be like this forever, okay?
Okay, he said.
Okay.
Author: Charley Anderson (he/they) is an emerging Meanjin-based writer of short and long form fiction, currently studying Creative Writing at QUT.
Artist: Phoenix Sunrider (they/she) is an aspiring author with several works in the making. They love all kinds of animals, and add as many as possible into all their works whether that be high fantasy, magical realism, or even fan fiction. They currently have no social media platforms, but hope to develop some when more work is completed.
Edited by: Mia Paton