Sixteen Small Deaths (16 page)

She had some of Tuesday’s features but a person not in the know would never agree that they were sisters separated by two short years. Kylee had the qualities that made her a better person than her sister. No erratic behavior, no melodramatic instances of panic.

I poured myself a small glass of apple juice and let the plastic bottle sit halfway on the kitchen counter, just stable enough that it wouldn’t fall on the floor. Kylee hated when I did that.

The two pillows on my bed were like giant puffs of heaven. My body was tired and needed to be in bed for a while. I didn’t have the courage to wake Kylee and ask her to hold me, my own heart would defeat itself again after the night I just had.

Two minutes or two seconds passed and I fell asleep.

#

When I was a child, my dreams were narrow slices of black-and-white cinema. People spoke without words, their eyes obsidian drops that stained my thoughts. Not much changed as I grew up. My dreams were still black and white and the characters had the eyes of devils.

Kylee always told me that I held out my hands while I slept, looking like I was reaching for something that I could never touch.

The sun shined into my bedroom through the half-open blinds. I walked over the strands of light on the carpet and found Kylee sitting at the kitchen table, mug of coffee in one hand, the newspaper open to the arts and entertainment section. She glanced up at me and gave me the look that she had given me dozens of times before.

I know where you went last night, she said. She needs to stop,
Britt. You need to stop.

I nodded and leaned in for a kiss but she pushed me away. My heart fluttered and I clutched the kitchen counter.

Kylee, I love you, I said. Everything is going to be alright. I promise.

She shook her head and looked down at the newspaper, looked through it and through the kitchen table. Her eyes could burn a hole in the tiled floor.

If I ever knew that the two people I love the most were slowly destroying themselves, I would have killed myself a long time ago, she said.

Her bare legs were my main focus and I tried to forget that it’d been more than twelve hours since my last hit. It’d also been more than twelve hours since the last time since I was inside of Kylee. I wanted her lips on mine, her tongue tasting my body. The tears started to form in her eyes and I forced myself to leave the room. Any sound in the world wouldn’t give me a jitter except crying. I’d much rather hear a saw cutting through a child’s bone than hear the sad wisps of a female.

I put on my shoes and headed for the front door after grabbing the small plastic bag from my bedroom nightstand. The air was much colder than the night before and I silently wished for my leather jacket. Pounded pavement and many steps followed until I reached the alleyway between the corner Chinese restaurant and the first of five conveniences stores on this side of town.

Sitting between two steel garbage barrels and a dumpster, I pulled out the plastic bag from my pocket. The brown powder on my finger went up into my nose within a matter of seconds. The rush fell over me and I looked up at the sky. Beautiful strokes of blue above me.

The only cloud in the sky was the one above my head.

#

The first snow of the season fell onto my face, my eyelashes. It had been six hours since I left the house and at this point Kylee would have gotten tired of waiting for me to come back. Calling Tuesday would be useless; the two had a rough time talking to each other as of late.

Three elderly women walked past me on the busy street, each with department store shopping bags in their hands, genuine smiles on their faces. I wondered for a second what my life would be like without Kylee, without Tuesday.

The snow on our house looked like shimmers of glitter and I opened the front door. Kylee sat on the couch in the living room, tight black sweatpants hugging her legs, her chest hidden under a baggy beige sweatshirt. She held the gun with one hand, a beer bottle with the other.

Kylee, what are you doing, I said.

She sniffled and put the barrel to her cheek. She shook her head and cried, tears careening onto the gun, her neck. I froze and stopped breathing, then slowly walked over to her.

Honey, stop, I said. Stop it right now. Don’t be fucking crazy.

Kylee looked at me, her eyes apologizing for the things I’d done wrong, the things I’d done to let her world smash into a million tiny pieces. She pulled the trigger and I stumbled back, the loveseat catching my fall. Kylee smiled and continued to cry. The gun wasn’t loaded.

I wanted to, I wanted to, she said. I don’t want to live like this.

My arms pulled her head into my chest and I tried not to hear the sounds of her crying. The only noises in my head were the ones I imagined, the sounds of broken guitars and the static of my mind.

You’re killing yourself, she said. You’re killing my sister. You’re killing all of us.

I know, I said. I know.

We sat like that for two hours, on the floor. Kylee cried the entire time and my shirt sleeves were soaked by the time we
stood up. She fell asleep within minutes and I lay awake the entire night, unsure of whether to remove her head from my chest or make my heart stop beating.

#

When the phone rang the next morning I knew exactly what the person on the line was going to say. It was the way the phone rang, the ringing telling its own story. The dread hit my brain, it slithered into my bones, dripping from my ribcage and everywhere below.

My father died when I was ten years old. He was a police officer, one that this town was proud to have in its ranks. He served for twenty-one years, started out working at a desk at the cramped police station, worked his way up the line. One night he left our old house for the night shift, giving me a small kiss on the forehead after wrapping my mother in an embracing hug.

Be good for your mother, he said. See you in the morning.

He walked out the door and never came back. With an hour left in his shift, he pulled over a car with a broken taillight. When my father asked the driver to step out of the vehicle, the creep pulled out a gun and shot him five times in the chest, once in the head. My mother was forced to have a closed-casket funeral.

The police eventually found the driver, a drug dealer who lived out of his ’78 Buick. He sold heroin to kids from the local high school, disillusioned Goths and experimenting jocks.

It’s always funny how the word “irony” can be used to describe a person’s life.

I picked up the phone on the eighth ring. Fifteen seconds passed before I said anything because I knew exactly what had happened. Tuesday overdosed in her apartment. She shot up 9mg of heroin after snorting God-knows-how-much coke. Her heart stopped and apparently she died with her eyes open.

She’s dead, Kylee said. She’s fucking dead.

Kylee’s voice always sounded much sweeter in person, her words more genuine. On the phone, she sounded surreal, like dialing zero and letting the operator tell you that your girlfriend’s sister just died. Like a voiceover before the movie ends, the final words that sum up the film’s theme in just a few words.

The hair on my arms stood up and I looked outside. The sun shined with uncertainty and I could smell the rain before it began to fall, the hint of death in the air. My legs refused to stand up at first, the trepidation in my chest had spread throughout my body. Even though my heart was broken, Kylee’s would be much worse. She was the one who died that day, not Tuesday. Tuesday had it coming, I had it coming. Kylee was the angel, the one born to absolve our misfortunes, the one good person in our lives.

Tuesday’s body would burn into ashes but it would be Kylee’s that would feel the pain.

#

The raindrops hit me harder than expected. Tuesday’s apartment was a long walk away, enough time for me to think of what to say to Kylee. Enough time to think my own life over before it was destroyed it even more. Scattered people passed by me on the sidewalk, each with their own destination, each walking in hurried steps and long strides. Stopping under a canopy of a small Italian restaurant, I lit a cigarette and watched a young couple at a table. The man, short black hair and sympathetic eyes, held his beau’s hand, stroked it while she smiled at him. The scene gave me goosebumps.

I continued the walk to Tuesday’s apartment, my soul stung and jacket sopping wet. The key in my left hand, I stood in the center of the lobby before starting up the stairs. So many times I jogged through the area in a rush. So many times that Tuesday would be waiting for me upstairs, waiting for the one thing she
treasured the most.

When the heart’s treasures are gone, it dies. My heart passed on a long time ago.

Kylee was most likely with her parents, so it didn’t worry me to bump into her there. I walked up the stairs one-by-one, each step creaking, calling me out. It took me five minutes to reach Tuesday’s door and I knocked out of habit, expecting her to quickly unhinge the locks and let me in, giving me that tight hug that I was used to.

I turned the key and opened the door, the sweet waft of oak moss and regret. So many times the soft light of the hallway lamp was turned on when I came in. Tuesday was afraid of the dark, afraid of what would happen to her if she was left alone with the absence of light.

The one time I slipped was in this hallway. My body couldn’t resist Tuesday and we both gave in and added another notch to our belt of sins. The hundreds of times I made love to Kylee I was thinking of the one night that I was with her sister.

The illumination of Tuesday’s past in my vision, I sat on the floor of the kitchen. This kitchen, the one where too many times I forced her to give in to her addictions, too many times I gave in to my own.

The world is only what I had made of it, a self-mocking spiral of disgust. It was only a matter of time before Kylee left me. Only a matter of time before she realized that she was dealt a bad hand.

I fumbled through the magazines on the kitchen counter and pictured a strung-out Tuesday trying to read them all at once, trying to pardon the feeling in her chest. Her bedroom door was open and I found myself sitting with my back to the bed. The first of my tears came easily. The rain outside was unforgiving and I knew that I couldn’t stay in this room forever. Legs stood up when my face was dry, my body starting to feel warm again. I smoked three cigarettes and left the apartment, looking back
before heading down the staircase.

Bye Tuesday, I said.

My fingers clenched the small bag of brown powder in my pocket. I picked it out and tossed it into the garbage can next to the doorway. Outside of the apartment complex, I stood for a minute and closed my eyes. Tuesday’s ghost walked past me and into traffic, then she floated away. The colors of the sky bled before me, the hum of rain in the background.

#

The whine of cars screamed past me as I approached the house. The rain was steady, rampant. A breeze of violent, burnt wind at my back. The lonely white of the wooden fence in front of me.

It was only when I took my first step inside the house when the sound of a gun clicking caught me. Kylee was pointing it at me, tears hurriedly falling from her eyes. She looked beautiful, my love with a gun. My love with the intent of putting a bullet anywhere it would kill me.

You killed her, she said.

All I could do was shake my head. This life was a tragedy, a disaster. I slid off my jacket, my soaked t-shirt exposed.

Kylee, I wasn’t there, I said. I didn’t know she was going to do that.

She shook her head twice, then closed her eyes. She probably thought about the time I carried her into our bedroom, only stopping to remove our clothes. Or the first time I kissed her. Or she thought about her sister, that one that I killed.

Kylee, I love you, I said. Put down the gun and let’s go inside.

She shook her head again. And then fired.

#

The sky opens up and my body feels warm. My wet t-shirt burns
my skin. Clumps of clouds break apart, the rain stops. The sun looks like it’s dying, an orange glow fading into pink. Kylee stands over me, the gun still in her hand. I’ll never have the chance to ask her to marry me, never have the opportunity to fall in love all over again.

My home is blurred in the corner of my eye. The dry and cool air cycling inside, a place that Kylee will go once my eyes close, once I stop breathing. I can’t think of my family right now, I have no recollection of my mother, my father. My memory lies within the house thirteen feet away from my body.

Home is where my memory is and my memory is bleeding to death.

She moves like a crimson ghost. Every motion flutters with the glittery viscera of a million shimmering butterflies. Hair as black as ash swims in a sea of endless auburn and for the fifteen seconds it takes her to saw through the nameless man’s arm I’m sure I’ve never loved anyone as much as her. A crimson geyser sprays plasma the color of broken rubies and a single miscible scream penetrates the layers of the dank hotel room, lost somewhere between the moon and the stars.

Penny takes a breath and sits at the edge of the bed, the weight of our world pressing into her shoulders like an angel’s fists. The man falls forward, clasps the fresh stump with white-knuckled fingers, and softly moans until a thin layer of saliva escapes his lips and collects into a mirrored pool on the carpet.

I stand up, dig my soul out of chest and kiss Penny’s forehead. A trail of comet dust spins between our bodies when she looks down at the unconscious man. I collect the thirteen-inch blade from the center of the bed and wipe it clean with a beige hand-towel. Penny crosses her legs and removes the small makeup container from her purse on the side of the bed. She checks her eyeshadow, blinks three times, and smiles with cheeks the color of Christmas morning.

The man squirms beneath me and when I place a pillow under his head, he looks at me with eyes of desperate abandon. Neither of us knew his real name and he paid the full three thousand in crisp, unmarked cash that was housed in a briefcase that smelled of whiskey and regret. Penny reaches over for the phone on the mahogany nightstand and hits the button to reach the front desk.