There was a long inhalation inside the little room. Someone in there was breathing in and in and in, quietly, but so that the room hummed, like a wooden lung. Everyone in the room shifted in reaction to what they were seeing, and Lucas heard a voice from the table inside that could have belonged to either his father or his mother give a long shuddering groan, the prayer of a suffering animal, and there was lapping, and motion, a releasing of bated breath, and a pressing toward the door, and from hand to hand he saw a tall, clean, empty glass was being passed forward. When the groan came again, louder, barely stifled and more insistent, Lucas staggered, ran, threw himself out the back door and into the wind and spray of the beach at night, losing himself at once in the gusts of icy mist.

Lucas ran until the boiling black and white line of the waves repelled him too, causing him to turn and struggle through the sand along the shore. When he stopped, and turned, the blank contour of the house was not that far behind him, as inscrutable as any. It was constantly at risk in his vision of sliding into the shapeless mass of the other houses. Lucas’ knees buckled. He collapsed on the sand, and the cold made the tears on his face burn like slashes. His head drooped and swam, his face bunched and hot, his nose running, and he knew he didn’t have the strength to throw himself into the black and white ocean, which would snatch up, toss, and smash him against the beach. Tomorrow morning exploded with terror. He would stand as ever in front of a tall gemmed glass of white milk, with the eyes of his father and the weight of everything in life thundering down on top of him without a sound.

His hands spread out and traveled over the sand, picking at stones, bits of seaweed, cigarette butts, until he found a pebble that looked right, lifted it, and his eyes caught the gleam of a fragment of broken glass that he picked up instead. Lucas bared his left arm and held the glass edge over its clean skin, shaking with terror in the icy mist. It took him a long time. After a moment, he watched a thin ribbon of amazing red fall across his arm and drip into the sand, forming a little dark patch that grew bit by bit, and then stopped. Lucas dropped the glass and studied his arm, examining his red wound, the first of many.

Stillville

Stillville