PULL ME UNDER - Bonded By Blood - Two

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Two

Duke’s blood spurting out of the broken Bic pen was the most satisfying thing she had ever done, and she thought of it any time she needed a quick pick-me-up. The little arches of red matching his heartbeat just before he pulled it out of his neck, she was so proud of herself. That’s why she was painting BIC in silver Rustoleum in an abandoned rail tunnel. Great big bubbly letters, the simplicity, the soothing hiss of the spray, arm going back and forth to fill in the throw up slow and steady, getting the paint in all the nooks and crannies of the blown out rock knowing she wasn’t going to get caught way out here. Her friends were all sleeping at the campsite already, but she had to paint.

Tanner kept her company, not able to sleep either, sweating and jittery as he watched.

Lauren was older than Tanner by about ten months, practically twins, and had been inseparable throughout childhood. As she got older and more troubled and their homelife became unbearable, she dropped out and fucked off to Winnipeg in a desperate attempt to get her life together. That’s when his fell apart. But she was home, now. He was going to get better, too. He had to.

“It’s starting to really suck,” he wiped sweat onto his denim jacket cuff already darkened from grease and she wasn’t sure if it could absorb anything more. He was going to wear that thing ‘til it rotted off his body.

Lauren swung a hard look over her shoulder, her bitch act, though inside she had nothing but pity. He was a good kid. Nothing was fair for him. “Shouldn’a been a dumbfuck and we wouldn’t be out here for you.” Mosquito on her leg swatted. “Remember, it was your idea.”

“It was my idea, I know, but, Lauren, I don’t know, I don’t know… If it was the best idea I ever had,” despite his distress, he chuckled at himself. Tanner had two modes when he was sober: pissed off, or laughing. The “laughing” was getting rare before she left.

Lauren’s biggest worry was if he didn’t kick the opiate habit now, he would wind up on needles. Seventeen. He might not live to see twenty if that happened.

My fault for leaving him. “You’ll be okay. It’s going to suck, like, a lot, but you’ll be fine.” She had no idea if she was lying or not. “Then we’ll find you a place away from them.”

“How far away?”

She switched cans out of her bag. “We’ll hop on a Greyhound. I dunno. How far you wanna go?”

“Fiji.”

“Can’t afford Fiji.”

“Tibet.”

“Fuck off, Tanner, I’m serious.”

“I am too.”

She started shaking the black can and the rattle echoed off the tunnel walls. Tanner started giggling again. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re used to that motion, eh?”

It did kind of look like she was jerking the can off. “Not as much as you, champ.”

Night bugs and wildlife, hoots and howls distant, hands switched and motions changed so her arm didn’t get too tired—rattle rattle rattle.

It was really good to see him again—thinner and his skin all fucked up wasn’t so great. After sticking the Bic into her ex-boyfriends neck and running like hell back home, Tanner’s stupid face was the only thing she wanted to see. Their parents hovered in her periphery but went largely ignored. Dad called her a whore as usual and Mom kept her mouth shut and it just made Lauren hate herself for getting involved with a guy just as bad as her father.

What a wholesome life, a plenitude of alcoholics and crackheads.

Duke played bass for a shitty black metal band and seemed like a sweetheart. (“Has anyone ever told you, you look like Liv Tyler?” What an asshole.) Then she moved in with him and thought it was really weird that none of the sinks in their apartment had the little mesh screens in them, her stuff started going missing. Then he started breaking shit, including her, whenever he came back from visiting friends. Stay out of my fucking business, hey, I bet you’re fucking [an imaginary list of men] are you disrespecting me? She never told Tanner about it, the hitting part especially, because she didn’t need him coming to Winnipeg and killing a guy.

She was wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, the sleeves ripped off, and Duke’s nice black hoodie. It was hers now—a petty thing.

Everything on her was stolen or bootleg. Fake black Converse, stolen Levi’s with the knees ripped out, even her hair colour was fake, black that shone with a hint of blue.

“I need to go to town, Lauren, I can’t do this.”

“Darts are in my bag.” He rifled through it, lit a cigarette.

By the time she outlined the B, he was sobbing, soft and muffled. Her heart collapsed into her diaphragm and she put the can down, wiping the errant spray off her fingers onto her pant leg as she crossed to his side of the tunnel, sat next to him. She let him cry, let him put his arm around her shoulder, let his body shudder against her. A better mother to him than their own mother. I should never have left.

The cool damp rock through her jeans barely registered, her brother all there was. His hair tangled in her fingers, gentle caresses. He used to play hockey, his shoulders and his neck were thicker then. Got penalties for fighting a lot. But now, he didn’t feel right, like some of him got lost—a very bad reproduction of himself, a photocopy of a photocopy. They looked so much alike as kids they’d get confused for proper twins, but age and all the rest and it was very obvious who was who.

Lightening cracked bright outside the tunnel, surprising them both, a boom rumbling in quick time. “Good thing we’re in here,” Lauren said, thinking of their friends already asleep. Rain wasn’t in the forecast—but there was a distinct lack of rain. No sound of it. A charge in the air, that ozone smell, but no rain. Tanner had a puzzled look on his face too, momentarily distracted, and they both looked up and down the tunnel to try and find evidence of anything else weird, but it was too dark to tell, country night blind outside the beam of flashlight. She shivered.

“Finish your piece,” he said. “Then you should try and sleep.”

“You should sleep.”

He chuckled offended, “I won’t,” and stood on shaky legs, grabbed the light and paced, the clap of his engineer boots echoing off the rock. Orange seed glow just past his face. In the couple years she was gone he found time to sprout up a few inches, too; now he was the taller one and she couldn’t make fun of him anymore. His hair flowed in waves, the colour of stout and thick enough to hide the big Megadeth back patch on his jacket. All the rest of the patches made him look like a collage, half of them vintage ‘80s. The Slayer shirt so worn the holes looked artfully placed lit up as he held the light to himself. “You gonna paint?”

“Yeah,” she took a drag from his smoke in one hand and gave the paint can a quick chatter.

“You should finish it off with a big cock.”

“Why, so you can get jealous?”

“Well I figure there’s already five or six other dicks on this wall you wouldn’t want to buck the trend.” He wiped more sweat off his brow.

“Not everyone is as original as I,” she playacted a proper artiste for effect.

“Ah yes, no one has ever seen big letters before, truly avant-garde.”

“I like the little Bart Simpson there.”

“You could do better than that.”

She agreed with a little bob of her head and jut of her lip. “Still cute though.”

A soft breeze blew down the tunnel, bringing leaves and bits of plastic tumbling at them with a hush. That electric smell came with it, stronger than before. Tanner spun the light down the tunnel, and began walking to the opening. Something had caught his attention… She stuffed the cans in her bag and swung it up over her shoulder, a little jog to catch up.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

“See what?”

“A blue light.”

“No.” She held him back by the elbow. “I don’t need you wandering off, let’s go, try to sleep.”

Feet planted on an old rail tie, he stayed. There was a squeak, like a squirrel or a chipmunk, maybe he did see something, light lowered to the tunnel floor, and there was a strange little lizard tilting its head at them. There were no wild lizards, too far north, especially no lizards with… feathers?

“Tanner, what is that?”

He shook his head. It chirped at them, and she thought maybe it wasn’t a lizard, but a little dinosaur… but that was ridiculous. Then the thing sped off on little feathery legs and the siblings just stood there and looked confused at each other.

There was light, a dull blue. No, it can’t be morning, nights are short but not that short, what the hell time is it? That little thing won’t survive up here—did someone release an exotic pet or… Tanner stepped first, blue lead pulling him, her grip tightened on his arm and the white beam swayed with his steps to the mouth of the tunnel.

The landscape looked strange, not how she remembered. Tall blue-needled conifers loomed topless past thick haze. Those needles piled thick on the forest floor, once fallen turned aged bronze and gave cushion under their feet, and the little feathered lizard chirped at them as it dug its head into the hole at some roots and vanished. The flashlight flickered and died, Tanner gave it a whack on his palm, got nothing. It was light enough anyway, and when they went back to camp they’d change out the battery. At the thought, Lauren threw a hand to her mouth with a strike of panic like she left the stove on; spinning around, the tunnel was gone.

“Lauren, your hair.”

“What?” She felt at her ponytail at the nape of her neck, pulled the strands around to see—her black dye was gone. Black dye didn’t just fall out. He hiked up his jacket sleeve and the tattoo of Conan’s sword on his right arm was gone, too.

She fell hard on her knees. Tanner knelt down beside her in the strange wood, their breaths in little puffs with the morning chill. Nothing around them but trees and silence. It smelled of pine and earth and ozone, but none of it was familiar. She had to be dreaming. “The tunnel is gone, Tanner.”

“Yeah. Tunnel’s gone.”

***

They had no food but for a dusty old granola bar at the bottom of her bag, and a single bottle of water. A half a roll of toilet paper, tampons, a hairbrush, deodorant, make-up, a few dollars, a sketchbook and pencils, an empty bottle of ibuprofen, half a pack of cigarettes (already one less, hanging from her mouth) and four cans of spraypaint (black, silver, orange, and purple). Tanner went through his own pockets and pulled up a pack of gum, a pocket knife and her lighter before he laid his jacket down on a cozy little knot of roots, on his side clutching his legs tight to himself to shake and sweat.

Guess going cold-turkey is mandatory now. And me too, fuck, desperate suck on the smoke. He’d need more water. Where the hell could she find more water? She’d get lost. This wasn’t their forest. What if the water here was all poison, if she even managed to find some and find her way back. Full of brain-eating amoebas or some shit.

Talk. “Remember when we were nine or ten, we ran away to the bush on the other side of the tracks for like a week and no one noticed? We found the old porn stash?”

“I’m gonna hurl.” His face was yellowed and pale, sweat dripped, and her hands shook to watch him suffer.

“Go ahead.”

He moaned, coughing and spitting without moving from his makeshift bed. Damp hair stuck on his brow. She tucked the strands behind his ear, fingertip brushing the old scar on his cheekbone, and he winced at her touch.

Heat on her back as the mist at the treetops dissipated, the sun helped pull the damp off them. The trees were gargantuan in height. The ground was flat but for the odd lichen-stained rock, and absolutely nothing but trees and rocks and strange little lizards that maybe were birds the more she saw them hop about. She pet his greasy hair, humming Queen. What else to do? She draped her hoodie over him and suddenly they were nine or ten again across the railroad tracks after he ate the berries she warned him not to eat, only worse.

When he did puke he was courteous enough to pull the clothes away from the stream. The noise always made her gag more than the smell did, and she had a touch of sympathetic nausea as she rubbed his back. After a swig from the bottle of water he needed her help to get up and find a place to shit. Laying back down on his little bed he sobbed all sorts of sorries at her and she just shushed him and kept her hand at his back. Neither of them had an appetite, so that helped extend the lifespan of the granola bar. But they’d have to find water, somehow, with no way to boil it. She hid her face from him to let her own tears fall—they were lost and she didn’t understand how.