After Hope Dies Read online

  The kitchen is their jewel of the home. Happiness is these bright curtains, the little view of the vegetable patch outside and the block of the solar charger, the neon-tone hum of the fridge inside. Lastly, her mother centers and brightens up this place. Head hung low over sundown-color coffee, tired and thin from the night’s highlights.

  ‘Morning, Mom.’

  Janelle sits down opposite and takes her mother’s hands in her own; two sets of life around the coffee cup. Corrina stirs but she is still very, very far away. Withdrawn in withdrawal.

  ‘Gumornin’, sunshine.’ Very, very far away. But those eyes try and say ‘I’m right here, darlin’.’

  Janelle feels a sudden urge strike her heart – to tell her mother what happened to her last night. But on the tip of her tongue, the words sound all wrong, a strange story forged of dirty memories and unreal things. I was raped. I was resurrected. Would they simply wash over her mother’s foggy mind? So the girl ends up with: ‘Are we going to church today?’

  ‘Naw, don’t think so. Lots to do. I gotta get to work in three hours.’

  Janelle smiles, tightening her grip a little. ‘You got Sunday work?’

  ‘Cleanin’ job. The Hyatt call me up. Somethin’ bout a conference.’

  That’s good news. ‘Mom...’

  Corrina nods and nods again. ‘What is it, sweetie?’

  ‘The Fildac was a good idea. You’re getting better.’

  ‘Who gonna take care of you if I’m smacked up? You’ll be ok today if I work?’

  Janelle stands and fetches a liquid breakfast box from the fridge, taking out the straw and popping the foil. hur-uhh-ha as the fridge door closes; the charge is dwindling – they’ll need more sunlight from the solar block to keep it going. See? The meter’s in the red zone. Ignore it. Ignore it. Between sips, Janelle replies to her mother, ‘I can take care of myself. But if you’re going to be working so much, you need to stay clean.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do it for me?’

  ‘And I’m supposed to be the responsible one…’ Corrina takes a sip of her coffee and her animation restores to perfect function, just for a moment, but no sooner does cup return to table that the spark is gone. It’ll take another hour or two for the placebo to settle in.

  Janelle probes, ‘I’m going to the Outlet today to buy some clothes. Do you need anything while I’m there?’

  Corrina blinks.

  ‘I’ll buy some noodles for tonight.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Janelle scoops up her poufy bomber jacket from the coat hooks at the door, slings it on her coat hook body. Goodbye, house.

  ‘Love you, Momma!’

  Out on the front lawn now and the day is set: clouds and rolling skies, threatening rain or sleet but surely delivering none. A ten-minute walk to the bus stop, carried there by a wind at her heels. She waves good morning to her neighbor, Mr. Narren, who’s busy watering the little weeds out the front of his tiny home. He seems entirely surprised that Janelle, of all people, should be waving to him. Still, a little kindness goes a long way. The bus doesn’t take too long to come: half an hour between the services is a pretty reasonable wait for a $25 return fair to the Outlet. Plus, it gives her time to build up excitement for her new dress. So she waits, out of sight in the shelter, hands in jacket, eye to sky. Nobody else on the streets. An emptiness that eats into the day…

  Eventually, a silver slug of a bus comes blundering down the street, rattling like Oscar the Grouch’s home on wheels. She swipes her national ID into the scanner and takes a seat behind the driver; there’s no trouble on the bus on a Sunday but it seems awfully lonely for one woman to have to drive a single girl into the city and have her sit all the way at the back.

  Janelle cups her hand against the window and looks outside at the meager mess of Stallwind suburbs, looking at all the old Buicks and GMs and Great Walls piled full with people on their way to the local Baptists and Gospels. Look to the sky and, well, there is no God beyond those clouds. Fact. Janelle didn’t see a God up there. Just a vacuum and birds. Everybody’s worshiping the birds, maybe. Girl lets her mind sweep into the dusty level of her memory and immediately her hand goes to her throat.

  That monster. No, not Mirror. No, not the men. The other monster.

  She has seen it many, many times before. All her memories of the visitations feel slippery to her, covered in a soapfilm and kaleidoscope fraction. But they are real memories. Like the first time she saw the creature at her club. Remember as it sat there by the bar with a drink full of ice in its hand. Ruby eyes leering at her from the shadows as its outline danced like a flame on the barstool. It watched while she danced on stage; she struggled to keep up her routine. But the monster always kept its distance from her, seemed to want no trouble. Still, she never dared venture from the stage through the tables to where the monster lay. Even if she entertained in the open booths next to the bar, she was never game to lock eyes with the creature or make a single move that could be construed as interest. It sat, it drank, it watched her. Wherever she was. Like a compass needle praying to a moving, underage Mecca.

  No, it is not from this world. Of that she is sure. The slippery nature of it – the fact that it never interacted with anybody, not even the bar staff (this seemed incongruous given that the monster always held a drink), made Janelle certain that she was always in the presence of something that did not belong. Like one time recently, she was with a client in the back room performing a lap dance – that’s how she earns the middle tier pay, so you know. In those closed walls she was suddenly struck with a pressing feeling, a hot coal on the neck, like she was being peeped at through the solar-red walls themselves. She actually stopped her dance and stood up with her panties halfway down her ankles as she asked her patron, ‘I-is someone watchen us?’

  Well, that certainly caused a spook in her client. Turns out (some) men don’t like the idea of being watched while a child gives you a lap dance. Janelle must have been convincing, because the patron – some bald shill in a fancy suit – took such a fright at the mere suspicion that he left immediately, parting with a hefty tip and a threat of silence too. As he raced from the club, Janelle caught sight of him leaving by the bar exit. But as she turned her attention back to the club, her eyes fell on the bar stool…

  And the monster was not there.

  And the next weekend, Janelle had her throat sliced open and her soul stolen.

  The bus stops at the Outlet and the driver yells in her croaky toad voice, ‘Outlet, little misses!’

  ‘Thank you!’ Janelle smiles as she hops off the bus and makes her way into the Outlet strip, resisting the urge to touch her throat, resisting the urge to check whether she is actually still alive or in some sort of cruel, identical-Earth limbo. Focus on the real, focus on the now. Just push it all away. Come on, open those eyes and let it all flow in.

  The Outlet is a single-story strip near the main street of town. Like her very own kitchen, this place is the jewel of Stallwind South. Not much here, but this little heart beats and beats. There’s a parking lot populated with cheap cars. Mostly empty though. Janelle takes to the street, on a mission, and steps beneath the Outlet archway. There aren’t all that many people here on account of it being Sunday, but most of the stores are opening up for the 10AM to 4PM day. Just imagine this place at night – the shutter-tooth storefronts would give anyone nightmares! But she won’t be here for that long. She’s come for a specific item. Her heart stutters. Closer and closer to the source. Hotter and Hotter!

  Here it is. Dallion’s Dresses. And there it is. The dress.

  You were raped last night.

  This dress: all perfect on the black, strike-a-pose mannequin. This dress: white like a warm sun, segmented into three. Top section: plain, coming down over the bust and – crucially – designed for a little woman with no breasts (rare, given the typical Eastern American diet). Pretty and slender straps for the shoulders. Middle segment: covering a sliver of the belly with a t
iny window of lace cupped underneath by extra fabric so the skin doesn’t show through. Not showy. Intricate and modest. The bottom segment begins at the hips and billows out like clouds, like sheets of water layered together in perfection. Leaf petals, pinwheel arms swinging. Down to just above the knees. Add a pair of black stockings and the ensemble is complete! This dress. This is the dress she has wanted for months.

  But wait, what’s this? This wasn’t here last weekend! Look how well it complements the white; such an elegant hat. Wide-brimmed and copper gold with a white ribbon tied around the bonnet. Wouldn’t that look amazing with the dress, with her new golden hair? Janelle presses her nose into the glass and imagines her reflection all dressed up…and imagines no more.

  It’s decided.

  In she walks. A security chime goes off like a little false start at band practice. A woman behind the counter locks eyes with Janelle and an instant scowl breaks her face. Ah yes. They have a history. But Janelle nips the situation in the bud; she walks calmly over to the counter and cups her hands before her, lowers her head in conciliation. She opens her mouth and the words fall out:

  ‘Please forgive me for how I acted last week. I know it was rude of me to insist that you were refusing my friend and I service because I was black, when instead it was my foul behavior that was the main cause to our being shown out of the store. I apologize deeply for upending that display of ‘buy two get one free’ clothing – that was indeed a valid suggestion for a person of my income level, and I know that you were meaning no offence by it. It was also inaccurate and hurtful of me to call you an infertile mole – I am deeply sorry. If you are willing, I would like to purchase outright the white dress in the window along with the hat.’

  The woman squints at Janelle over her half-glasses, as if trying desperately to understand something, or, perhaps, to reconcile reality to unreality. After a few awkward seconds, the assistant asks in that prim, pin-prickly voice that Janelle remembers from the week before, ‘Didn’t you used to have short black hair?’

  ‘Oh,’ Janelle fumbles with a loop of her new hair. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Extensions?’

  ‘Yes, extensions. May I please try the dress?’

  ‘Well…’ With slack-jaw disbelief, the woman drums her fingers on the glass cabinet, says, ‘Young miss, this dress is very expensive.’

  ‘Yes, I saw the price tags. Three thousand and twenty in total. It’s about what I earn in a good week. I can afford it, please trust me.’

  A deep, deep sigh. Ok then. Janelle smiles. The woman walks to the display and removes a folded copy of the dress from a storage drawer underneath. Looking around the store as if checking for another customer that deserves more attention, she then ushers Janelle and the dress, with hat, into the change room at the back. Only when the tiger is in her cage does the assistant hand over the goods with the beast locked and sealed in cubicled privacy.

  Oh, how smooth the fabric feels between her fingers! She can’t wait! Surrounded by three mirrors, Janelle strips off her winter clothes and on goes the dress like snowfall. She fixes up the curves and creases (the woman guessed her size perfectly, and isn’t it nice and warm). Janelle looks at herself in the mirrored spotlight, turns this way and that way. Hat on the head now, pressing down the golden hair. Perfect.

  Perfect. She wants to wear her new ensemble out! Best not to, though…

  From sweaty socks, out come the thousands in polyester cash. The woman behind the counter does the obligatory UV scan – up comes president Roosevelt beside Dr. Salk – and the mood lightens. The dress comes wrapped in tissue paper; Janelle watches the woman work as she folds her elephantine fingers over the crinkly stuff, kneading fabric into tight spaces and folding, folding. The hat lives in a box, just like a pair of shoes! And it all comes in a pink bag that’s almost the size of Janelle. Taking the enormous thing, Janelle thanks the store owner in what must be her most antiquated yet effusive use of the English language to date.

  ‘See you next time,’ is what the woman says from between pursed lips. Eyes back to the counter, waiting for another customer. Janelle smiles to herself, knowing she has done a very good thing.

  Onto the other, less glamorous things.

  There’s no Plan B on the shelves of the drug store across the road. Janelle searches through the boxes of pregnancy tests, pads and perfumes and tampons and condoms. Nothing. Damn. Dani usually buys packs of contraception for Jan from this store. But where are they now? Ever since the Pill lost government listing it’s become wildly expensive without pharmacy help. Think: a month’s bus fare expensive. Bax was forced to cut costs on the girl’s medicals, so no more free contraception aside from condoms. And who wants to wear a condom in a brothel, seriously.

  Janelle moves between the maze-like aisles of white and white and waits her turn at the back of the store in the pharmacist’s queue. Doesn’t take long – there’s only a half dozen people or so claiming charity health goods. A half-hour wait. Shame she doesn’t have a phone to keep her amused. You’ll need to buy a new one, girl. When it comes her turn, Janelle turns and spies the new queue of people standing behind her, each in their own world of waiting isolation – that special place where time becomes meaningless in pursuit of the eternal wait. Everybody knows it: the still dance of the times. Eyes everywhere but on her, the little black girl asking for:

  ‘I can’t find Plan B on your shelves. Can you please dispense a dose for me?’

  This pharmacist is a young woman, white as chips with a lipstick smile. She looks down to Janelle with instant pity and tut-tut replies, ‘You’re far too young for Plan B, little miss.’

  Little miss…‘No, I’m at the right age. I’ve hit puberty and I’ve been sexually active. I need the pill.’

  ‘Oh, honey, we can’t give the pill to you without a prescription.’

  Janelle tilts her head to the side, just a fraction, and replies, ‘State regulation allows anybody who requests the pill to be given it, regardless of age.’

  ‘At the discretion of the pharmacist.’ The pharmacist points to the pharmacist, white as chips with a lipstick smile. Oh. Right. So it’s true, then. The pharmacy really did cut ties with the club. Out comes the wallet, out comes Janelle’s thin prostitute license. Snap on counter, hard. Pink and square. Janelle ploughs on, ‘I was raped yesterday at work, so I’m in need of a rapid form of emergency contraception. Please, there’s no need to give me the compulsory lecture – I know how to put a condom on a banana and if we could afford to use the pill…Anyway,’ Janelle dishes out eight hundred dollar notes on the table, ‘This will do, right?’

  The pharmacist grins like a perverse Cheshire cat. All teeth. Toothpaste-commercial perfect. God damn, Janelle – look at all that dental work you’ll never afford. Jan looks away. Pharmacist does not argue with the girl. She scans the cash – Washington and Dr. Collins flash up on the UV panel – and disappears into the back room to dispense the drugs.

  Janelle turns around and finds the entire queue looking at her. What they see: the spawn of Satan let loose in place of going to church. Sinful creature! Oh well. It’s not like child prostitution is illegal or anything. Who cares what these people think? Nothing else matters save for the fact that she has a fabulous dress that she has wanted and saved for, and also has a drug that keeps her from getting pregnant. Win win. And above all, she apologized for a wrong she committed.

  Yet, those eyes, all on her…

  Janelle exits pharmacy with Plan B burning holes in her hands.

  Getting the noodles from the grocer is much more straightforward. Find the cheapest linguini ($20, dried in Australia, export quality) and collect a handful of vegetables and mycofungus ($40 – the meat is $60 today!). Washing detergent is $129.99; Jan rests a finger on the price, bites her lip. No, she can’t afford it, not after her other purchases. Skip the luxury item. Girl lines up and pays using a Flat Rate Government card. The man behind the counter pays her no attention. He has seen her hundreds of times before, here an
d there.

  Time to go home. The sun’s setting already – winter’s playing cruel tricks on the world. No sun can set at two in the afternoon, but the darkness hits the land hard. And on this little shopping strip in the middle of nowhere the world turns very dark very quickly indeed. Janelle clutches her luxuries tight on the bus home. No longer alone. There are shadows that watch her from the other seats. She can feel their coal-burning eyes admiring her slender form. Blonde hair weighs a metric tonne now. For maybe the first time in her life, she considers: it doesn’t feel good to be stared at.

  Turn around, little girl. They are all monsters of flame. See them watching you. Hungry.

  Take me home.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  From the shadows, Mirror girl watches.

  Dark night turns the Outlet into a haunted nightmare. Storefronts locked tight, piss-sour yellow moonlight painting the scene with a ghoulish garnish. From the shadows between the stores, tucked in an alley, Mirror watches as the Pharmacist across the road fiddles with her keys outside her storefront. White as chips. How dare she. How dare she embarrass Janelle like that, in her own version of events. How dare she fuck the club over and turn her back on the girls. A quick look up and down the street – nobody. Nobody to witness what might come next…

  Mirror reaches down for the loop at her belt and pulls forth the ruby dagger. Strong like gemstone, cold and ready for the taste of flesh. The girl smiles wicked as she holds the blade up and slides it over her vision, covering the pharmacist in the distance with a kaleidoscopic hue. Lust kicks hard in her belly.

  Janelle has her own way of solving problems.

  This way seems more effective, though.

  The knife sinks into the woman’s right calf; Mirror twists, pulls the dagger free and finds the Pharmacist’s spine. In the dagger slides, finds passage like string through jelly, through the bone and vital substrate. The woman screams in a hiccupy, giddy sort of screech but Mirror kicks out the back of her knees and down she comes to the pavement. Down. Hard. Mirror uses the toe of her shoe to right the woman so she’s face up, eyes up to dark sky, shadows over the storefronts, and Mirror. Mirror in total view. Child presses her heel into the woman’s throat, pinning her down so she cannot move. Knifepoint ready. Pharmacist’s eyes go wide and she splutters but keeps her lips closed as the blade comes down to her lips. And there it hovers. Waiting. Waiting for a peep of those goddam perfect teeth to make an appearance. Those moon-white tombstones, those perfectly-aligned, cavity-free, strong, good teeth.