living on the Edge
You are twelve years old and your sister is ten and your parents, your parents are dead. You decide that the two of you will not eat them, although you are hungry. There are enough cans of beans and formaldehyde jars in the cupboards to last you for a very long time. If you are careful. You haul the carcasses in your sister’s brick red wagon past the city limits. She tugs a gallon of gasoline behind you; nobody uses it anymore, so it’s rendered worthless. Except for this purpose.
When you get to the Edge, your skin is slick and you’re breathing like a dog. Your parents are a crumpled knot of rigid limbs, and you fill the cracks with gasoline. You tell your sister to stay behind the rusty barrier, haphazard rails leaning drunkenly against one another.
She follows you, silently, to the very brink, and you aren’t her mother or her father, so you don’t say anything.
The match doesn’t light, your vision warped and shiny, as if your eyes are covered in bubble wrap. You’re too disoriented to realize you’re crying until the heated dewiness of the tear crawls stickily down your cheek. Her hands are cold and steady as she takes the match from you.
You don’t look at her face as she strikes it in one swift movement of her wrist. There’s a shooting star sparking from the red tip, and then hungry flame claws at the air. You look tired and she looks...you can’t read her expression. It is hidden in the flame, or perhaps the flame is hidden in it.
Your parents look dead.
Your sister drops the match into the wagon as you kick it over the Edge. You glue your eyes to the sinking burst of brightness, scolding them when they scamper away. There are three shapes engulfed in fire now; gravity’s greedy grasp has wrenched the cadavers from the wagon, from the embrace of each other, in their plummet.
Your sister looks at the emerald velvet of the sky and laughs her sweet little girl laugh, the sound a knife through the jello of the air. Of your brain.
At night you wind your bodies together like kittens or sardines or dead bodies in a red wagon. In her sleep, your sister’s eyes flicker and her bow of a mouth curls into a smile. The nape of her neck smells like roasted chestnuts and her hair is a dense thicket for your hands to get lost in up to your wrists. You tell her you love her while she is lost in dream.
The only time you have seen your little sister cry is in her sleep.
You are at the mayoral inauguration when a crack opens up in City Hall and swallows a dozen white folding chairs and nine civilians and three camera people, plus equipment, with a creaky belch. You are sixteen and she is fourteen and you pull her away into your chest and feel her ribs vibrate beneath your fingers. She laughs and laughs as you pick shards of glass out of her palms with jagged yellow fingernails, and the Mayor gives her his crown of daisies. “I resign,” he says, and then he shoots himself in the head. Your sister wipes his cerebral cortex off her flats with a fistful of daisy petals.
You go to the former Mayor’s funeral because no one else will. You are stronger and taller now, and you drag him by the armpits and try not to get too many grass stains on his suit. When you have reached the lip of the Edge, your sister pours the gasoline down his crisp white collar. It pools in the hollow of his throat, in the trenches of his collarbones.
You hurl his pyre into oblivion and the new Mayor dances on the end of the world in the sudden, scalding rain, your skin crackling in harmony with hers. The daisies hide their blushing faces and disintegrate timidly into ichor and ashes, and the song of incineration is a sweeter tune than cherry Kool-Aid and victory.
Your sister sits on the crumbling roof of an apartment building, watching the herd of elephants flying against the sunlit sky. “How are you so happy?” you ask in a sandpaper voice, because you’ve given up on pretending, because she’s not so little anymore.
She giggles and cups your chin in her plump brown hands. “I’m not any happier than you,” she whispers.
Your sister’s toes curl around the gentle line where the yellow crabgrass drops off into infinity. “What are you doing,” you hiss, catching her shoulder and spinning her around to face you. But someone has stolen her face and all that is left is the sickle moon of her mouth.
You cry for her hollow cloudy eyes while she laughs like daggers.
“I was looking for Momma and Poppa.”
The elephants are howling in the distance.
When you are eighteen you find your sister doubled over in fits in the building with the big windows and swirling dust motes and too many books to read in a dozen lifetimes. She’s cross-legged on the mildewed carpet, and a thick tome is on her knees. “Look,” she calls to you, her voice hysterical. She has the book open to a page with a big blue sphere. “They say,” she chokes out, “they said the world was round.”
The woman with cobwebs in her hair at the CIRCULATION DESK tells you to be quiet.
You have never considered the fact that she might jump. You always thought that she might jump. You thought you kept her safe. You know you killed her from the day your trembling fingers released the match to her care. She is a stranger and you hate her and you care about her more than anything in the world; she is your world; your world is flat and falling apart at the seams; and you cannot say I love you to her for that would be a lie most foul. You take your sister by the wrist and look her dead in the eye. But wait, you’ve forgotten.
She doesn’t have eyes. Someone took them.
You try to look at her the same way you tried to look at your parents as they spiraled down into oblivion in that wagon. Something is poking into your throat, and you spit it out. It is sticky and stinking and black, made of tarry feathers and it takes you a moment to realize that it is your heart.
Your sister swallows it whole.
“I’m sorry,” you say, because it is the only true thing you can think of. But you don’t know what the words mean besides nothing.
“I have been watching,” she tells you (though she does not have eyes to watch with). “The elephants have gone. I am going to follow the elephants. I am going to a place where the world is still round.”
You don’t think that place exists (you don’t think it matters).
She jumps, or maybe she trips, or maybe you push her.
You watch her laughter fade away as she falls. You slide a hand into your pocket and pull something out. It is a face. All that is missing is a mouth.
When you get to the Edge, your skin is slick and you’re breathing like a dog. Your parents are a crumpled knot of rigid limbs, and you fill the cracks with gasoline. You tell your sister to stay behind the rusty barrier, haphazard rails leaning drunkenly against one another.
She follows you, silently, to the very brink, and you aren’t her mother or her father, so you don’t say anything.
The match doesn’t light, your vision warped and shiny, as if your eyes are covered in bubble wrap. You’re too disoriented to realize you’re crying until the heated dewiness of the tear crawls stickily down your cheek. Her hands are cold and steady as she takes the match from you.
You don’t look at her face as she strikes it in one swift movement of her wrist. There’s a shooting star sparking from the red tip, and then hungry flame claws at the air. You look tired and she looks...you can’t read her expression. It is hidden in the flame, or perhaps the flame is hidden in it.
Your parents look dead.
Your sister drops the match into the wagon as you kick it over the Edge. You glue your eyes to the sinking burst of brightness, scolding them when they scamper away. There are three shapes engulfed in fire now; gravity’s greedy grasp has wrenched the cadavers from the wagon, from the embrace of each other, in their plummet.
Your sister looks at the emerald velvet of the sky and laughs her sweet little girl laugh, the sound a knife through the jello of the air. Of your brain.
At night you wind your bodies together like kittens or sardines or dead bodies in a red wagon. In her sleep, your sister’s eyes flicker and her bow of a mouth curls into a smile. The nape of her neck smells like roasted chestnuts and her hair is a dense thicket for your hands to get lost in up to your wrists. You tell her you love her while she is lost in dream.
The only time you have seen your little sister cry is in her sleep.
You are at the mayoral inauguration when a crack opens up in City Hall and swallows a dozen white folding chairs and nine civilians and three camera people, plus equipment, with a creaky belch. You are sixteen and she is fourteen and you pull her away into your chest and feel her ribs vibrate beneath your fingers. She laughs and laughs as you pick shards of glass out of her palms with jagged yellow fingernails, and the Mayor gives her his crown of daisies. “I resign,” he says, and then he shoots himself in the head. Your sister wipes his cerebral cortex off her flats with a fistful of daisy petals.
You go to the former Mayor’s funeral because no one else will. You are stronger and taller now, and you drag him by the armpits and try not to get too many grass stains on his suit. When you have reached the lip of the Edge, your sister pours the gasoline down his crisp white collar. It pools in the hollow of his throat, in the trenches of his collarbones.
You hurl his pyre into oblivion and the new Mayor dances on the end of the world in the sudden, scalding rain, your skin crackling in harmony with hers. The daisies hide their blushing faces and disintegrate timidly into ichor and ashes, and the song of incineration is a sweeter tune than cherry Kool-Aid and victory.
Your sister sits on the crumbling roof of an apartment building, watching the herd of elephants flying against the sunlit sky. “How are you so happy?” you ask in a sandpaper voice, because you’ve given up on pretending, because she’s not so little anymore.
She giggles and cups your chin in her plump brown hands. “I’m not any happier than you,” she whispers.
Your sister’s toes curl around the gentle line where the yellow crabgrass drops off into infinity. “What are you doing,” you hiss, catching her shoulder and spinning her around to face you. But someone has stolen her face and all that is left is the sickle moon of her mouth.
You cry for her hollow cloudy eyes while she laughs like daggers.
“I was looking for Momma and Poppa.”
The elephants are howling in the distance.
When you are eighteen you find your sister doubled over in fits in the building with the big windows and swirling dust motes and too many books to read in a dozen lifetimes. She’s cross-legged on the mildewed carpet, and a thick tome is on her knees. “Look,” she calls to you, her voice hysterical. She has the book open to a page with a big blue sphere. “They say,” she chokes out, “they said the world was round.”
The woman with cobwebs in her hair at the CIRCULATION DESK tells you to be quiet.
You have never considered the fact that she might jump. You always thought that she might jump. You thought you kept her safe. You know you killed her from the day your trembling fingers released the match to her care. She is a stranger and you hate her and you care about her more than anything in the world; she is your world; your world is flat and falling apart at the seams; and you cannot say I love you to her for that would be a lie most foul. You take your sister by the wrist and look her dead in the eye. But wait, you’ve forgotten.
She doesn’t have eyes. Someone took them.
You try to look at her the same way you tried to look at your parents as they spiraled down into oblivion in that wagon. Something is poking into your throat, and you spit it out. It is sticky and stinking and black, made of tarry feathers and it takes you a moment to realize that it is your heart.
Your sister swallows it whole.
“I’m sorry,” you say, because it is the only true thing you can think of. But you don’t know what the words mean besides nothing.
“I have been watching,” she tells you (though she does not have eyes to watch with). “The elephants have gone. I am going to follow the elephants. I am going to a place where the world is still round.”
You don’t think that place exists (you don’t think it matters).
She jumps, or maybe she trips, or maybe you push her.
You watch her laughter fade away as she falls. You slide a hand into your pocket and pull something out. It is a face. All that is missing is a mouth.
Franziska Lee is in the eighth grade and is frequently antisocial. She enjoys autumn, small ink-black dogs, and apple pie. Occasionally she indulges in slightly accidental acts of pretentiousness. She aspires to be a superhero once she has blossomed like the proverbial flower and moved out of her parents' basement.