walking scott street [day 5 leisure] [mylee]

walking scott street [day 5 leisure] [mylee] Apr 2, 2022 8:44:37 GMT -5

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Post by heather - d2 [mylee] on Apr 2, 2022 8:44:37 GMT -5

I keep looking for the knife that was in my hand, but I can’t find it.

All that’s left now is an empty palm and the stiff silence that settles over the six of us. They’re all looking at each other, I’d imagine, and I’m staring at the pale and dirtied plate of my palm, grime stuck deep into each line that crosses it. They’re unfamiliar now, unidentifiable. Who knows who might know me; who knows why they would want to.

[ When Izzy looks up, she sees the handle of her last knife lodged in Peter’s eye, his body crumpled around him in the dirt. The knife seems central, suddenly, as if it’s been there much longer than it has. She cautiously removes herself from her mech, her body landing ungracefully in the dirt. She starts, slowly, to take steps toward the body, the way one might approach a sleeping child, or the dead. ]

As I get closer, the details of the knife’s handle start to come more into focus, start to become more clearly the place where my hand once was, perhaps still is, really, and then I can’t see anything but that, can so clearly see my body stuck with the boy’s until the end of time—he’s still dead, but I’m stuck standing over him, keeping watch, my hand forever wrapped around the knife.

I reach out to grab it, to assume the position I feel I must, though my body is screaming to turn, to run. I shake my head furiously, this conversation silent and unheard by those still around. My fingertips brush against the rough plastic, the rest of my body tense and stiffly fitted against the boy’s.

[ Just as Izzy gets to the point of grabbing the knife, Bowie lays a hand on her shoulder, turns her away from Peter and back toward himself and Isaac. Izzy doesn’t catch what he says but resists his direction, her brow furrowed and fists clenched. She says No, softly, but he doesn’t catch it either, and communication is at its worst here, the fabric of the conversation lost by both parties. Eventually, the grip on her shoulder tightens, and Izzy folds, lets herself be guided back to her mech. Bowie crams the upper half of his body inside with her for a moment, places each of her hands on the controls. We’re not going far from here, just hang with us for another minute, yea? She nods, but neither of them trust the confirmation. Still she succeeds in following behind them, the pace slow and irregular, her mech jarring to life and then sputtering, taking wrong steps—it’s all been made new to her.

When Isaac and Bowie stop, Izzy’s mech grinds to an ugly and unnatural halt, and she spills out of the suit, sobbing. Her breathing is ragged and sharp, and she manages to make her way to Bowie’s mech, then Isaac’s, banging hard against the metal with her fist. ]

I can’t take the confinement anymore, my body squeezed into a place it does not belong, and what of a home in rusted metal, in a body that’s given up on itself as a body, too. When I fall out of the mech, I know I won’t be getting back in it again. I was in there when I lost my knife, and even when I found it I couldn’t get it back. I can see my own body crumpled in the dirt and me, standing just beside it, screaming hard and desperate for it to be with me again, and then Bowie’s hand on my shoulder, guiding me away from myself.

I’m trying to get them to safety, still they return, like loyal dogs, to those suits, crawling through the cavernous mouths of them. When Bowie finally steps out of his, I run up to him, take his face in both hands and say, Don’t go back in there. I killed someone in there; Isaac did, too. But it doesn’t come out like this, of course, the words jumbled and incoherent between the sobs that jar my lungs, the breaths that I can’t get in or out. I’m just standing there, holding his face, afraid.

[ When Izzy finally lets him go, she turns to the task of emptying her mech, tears still streaming down her face. She tosses things out, wild and not particular, items flying toward Isaac and Bowie with such velocity that they have to duck and dodge. And then it’s empty, so we might say it’s over, our Isabella, her face tear-streaked and tired, kneeling in the dirt. In one hand, a piece of rope; in the other, twine. Do you remember a few weeks ago? How in the training center she’d asked Bowie to untie the knot at her throat and, despite his unease, had obliged? ]

Isaac insists I keep the knife, if nothing else, and I let him set it in the dirt beside me after he thanks me for the bandages, though I have not given them to him, just thrown them in his direction. I set the twine in front of my knees and get to work on the rope, my hands shaking as I pass them as far behind me as my shoulders will allow, and then I wrap it to the front, tie a bow at my jugular tight, yet somehow soft. My chest aches, a burn that feels also like a break, and I wonder how long one can hurt like this, if it could be forever. I pick up the twine and chew it into pieces, tying knots wherever it feels right to do so, my fingers and wrist, an ankle. I think by now my mother must have lost all her fingers to a lack of circulation—I’m not there to cut the pain-cause away. I offer a piece to Isaac and Bowie, by which I mean I lay them on the ground in front of them and watch how the ends, damp with my saliva, cause the earth around them to clump.

They must know they won’t get me back in that thing, must know that I fear nothing more than the potential of what could be lost, how close we already are to losing it.

[ see maint ]