Page 53 of Grim

The silence punctuates the poem’s final couplet fittingly. I wipe a stray tear from my eye. I hear a soft sniffle on the other end of the line.

“Beautiful, baby. Simply beautiful. What a haunting metaphor. I want to paint your words.”

“Thank you, Mom. There are loads more in all the notebooks in my room. You’re welcome to them anytime.”

“Don’t talk that way, Rue. They’re your creations. Yours to share.”

“Just know they’re there, Mom. Yeah?”

I blink hard and press my palm to my chest. Everything is starting to ache.

“I think I’m gonna come visit this weekend,” she says suddenly, the words tripping over each other.

I close my eyes. My throat tightens. “What?”

“Yeah. I’m tired of this long-distance shit. I want to sit on your porch and make fun of your neighbors.”

“By neighbors, you can only mean the family cemetery—full of dead people.”

“Fine, then we’ll drink wine and mock the squirrels. I don’t care. I’ll bring that stupid rug you keep trying to steal.”

“I bought you that rug.”

“Details.”

I press the heel of my hand into my sternum. “That sounds nice.”

“Then it’s settled. This weekend. You can read me more of your work. We can make art. Together. ”

Regret washes over me. Why didn’t we ever do this? It sounds so wonderful.

“And maybe you can introduce me to this handsome mystery man.”

“Ah,” I sigh out. “Now your true motives are revealed. I knew something seemed fishy!”

“I’ll bring soup,” she continues.

“Oh, no, Mom, please not soup.” I groan. “Spaghetti?” I offer.

“You hate my spaghetti.”

“But you love making it.”

That gets a laugh. “You little shit.”

“My big tyrant.”

“My perfect brat.”

There’s a pause.

“Well, I’ve gotta run, Rue. There’s always something going on! But I’m so glad we had this catch-up. What a talent you are. And with a man. This weekend. I can’t wait.”

“I’ll see you then,” I lie.

“Wonderful. Until then.”

“Goodbye, Mom,” I tell her truthfully.

She ends the call.

And I sit there until the screen goes dark. Until my reflection stares back at me in the black mirror of the phone. Pale, small, and unraveling.

It’s just me again. Me and the kitchen. Me and the ache. Me and all the words I couldn’t bring myself to say.

“Brutal,” Big D says before shoving another fistful of popcorn into his mouth.

My jaw tightens. I don’t look at him. “She didn’t tell her,” I say quietly. “Her mother doesn’t know. And Rue didn’t tell her.”

“Of course she didn’t.” D’s voice is halfway bored.

“That’s the entire tragic point, Kane. These mortals, with their little soft bodies and their ridiculous insistence that what they do matters.

That they can do something.” He waves a hand, the popcorn in his palm scattering across the floor. “Rue didn’t have it in her.”

“She can do anything she wants.”

D turns to look at me, raising one sharp brow. “No, she cannot. That’s not how this works. Have you been paying any attention?”

“She wrote that poem. Those fucking words.”

“Yes! Now you’re on to something, Kane. Art, my friend.

Art is the antidote to all that humans cannot control.

” He gestures wildly with his hands. “It’s their most noble delusion.

Their attempt to tame chaos with rhythm.

To answer all those pesky questions that claw at the inside of the skull— how, why, what if. ”

I interrupt his ceaseless musings with an earnest plea. “Take me there. There’s still time.” I lock eyes with him, hoping I can climb my way to some compassion beneath those obsidian orbs.

“In which of your ten languages,” D says, his tone dripping with mock pity, “do I need to explain to you, that is not going to happen? Hmm?”

I cry out a guttural, hopeless sound.

“Oh look!” Big D replies gleefully as he points toward the screen. “She’s on the move.”

Each step feels taller than the previous one, and I cannot say if that’s my body playing tricks on me or a design flaw of the house I did not previously detect.

I feel like Alice trying to walk out of the rabbit hole.

My legs quake beneath me, but onward they march.

Halfway up the stairs, I stop. It all feels like too much.

Too much effort, too much pain, too much to face.

Lingering midway, I seriously entertain the thought of resting here, taking a seat for a minute.

I need more strength, and then I can press on.

The power I lack is not physical. Though I am bone-weary and my erratic heart a jackhammer in my chest, I know I can make it up. What I lack now is the courage.

Most people don’t know the when of their physical end, and most who have the best idea are too physically incapable to do anything about it.

Resigned to petering out in an antiseptic hospital bed, plugged up with tubes and strapped to machines that monitor all that which keeps us alive, none of which makes us human.

The ancestral clock strikes again. This time, a single gong rips through the house, the death knell.

The soft vibrations of generations pulse off my skin and whisper in my ears on the sound.

Spurred on now by my family, strengthened by my own determination to make something out of nothing, I take one more step up.

My hand clings to the banister as memories of the passion shared with Kane and the pathos shared with Seek distract me from the fear and motivate my moment.

Oh, Kane, where are you now?

Her unspoken thought somehow pours from the screen, as though she said it directly to me.

“I am right here, Rue,” I whisper aloud in D’s office.

“Immersive stuff. This viewing technology keeps getting better. It’s like we’re almost there.”

I ignore Big D’s continued sardonic jabs and press my energy through the ether, willing my words to reach Rue.

“I am with you, brave girl. I am always with you. Even when I cannot be there. I am fused to you. Love knows not time and space. I am yours. In every way. In every place. In all planes of space and time, Rue, I belong to you.

“ Eros : I love you passionately.

“ Agape : I love you unconditionally.

“ Pragma : I love you enduringly.

“ Mania : I love you madly. Je t’aime toujours. De tout le chemin. I love you always. In all the ways, Rue Chamberlain.”

“That was beautiful, Kane. Unfortunately, the viewing screen doesn’t work in both directions,” D says quietly. At least he has the decency to sound somewhat contrite .

We both get sucked back into the action on display in front of us as Rue makes her way to the roof.

“This is it,” D says with far more solemnity than fanfare. “Bang and whimper time.”

I conquer the final stair and peer back down to marvel at how far I’ve come. Something poetic about it all. A rugged ascent before my final descent.

I force open the attic door. The musky air escapes through the opening like a prisoner from an unlocked cage. Memories are trapped in every cobwebbed corner. I stumble across the floorboards and throw myself toward the dresser beneath the gabled window.

My heart flutters like a trapped bird in my chest, too panicked to take flight, too broken to stay still.

The latch sticks but eventually succumbs.

A cold rush of night air fills my lungs, a sharp contrast to the dingy confines behind me. A gentle rain falls, and a cool wind dances across my skin. The combination sends prickles along my flesh. It is not an unwelcome feeling, like nature knows. But then nature always does know, doesn’t she?

I make my way cautiously up the slope to the place from which I can see as far out into the world as possible. The same place where Kane and I saw as far into each other as we ever did.

The potent memory distracts me, and I slip on a wet shingle. My heart rate spikes, and I claw at that air to regain my balance. Fear jolts through my body, and then I stabilize and steady myself. I almost fell off the roof and died. Just like I did that night up here with Kane.

His words right before we kissed echo in my chest. “Believe me, it’s very dangerous to fall.”

The utter absurdity of it all overtakes me, and I do something I thought impossible in this moment. I laugh. A giddy, dizzying mess of a laugh.

Eventually, the giggling subsides, and I come to stillness atop my perch.

My dress gets tighter against my skin as more of the misting rain accumulates.

It makes it heavier. That feels right too.

My hair knots around my face. Lightning bursts across the clouds, illuminating the landscape in the distance.

Rolling hills and copses of trees dot the horizon, adorned with homes that look like out-of-place decorative cake toppers.

The wind slows, then completely dies. Portentous, invisible force. The rain softens, now mixing on my cheeks with my tears. Impossible to tell where nature’s weeping ends and mine begins.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. No sound. What is left to say? And who’s even here to listen?

“I am, Rue. I’m listening. Speak what is in your heart. Share your soul while it’s still yours,” I plead low in my throat.

These words belong only to her.

“Did we miss it?” Fate barks, materializing in the room and drawing my attention momentarily away from Rue.

“Did we make it?” Time chirps.

“Of course we did.”

“We’re right on time,” Fate’s sister concludes with a smirk in her voice.

Big D laughs at the Sisters, beaming at their entrance.

The powerlessness that I’ve been wearing like a blanket since entering this room lifts slightly as a bone-deep anger begins to bubble over. Each tickle of their amusement adds immeasurable fuel to my burning rage.

Daryl’s voice booms over all other noise. “The climactic action. The big finish. The storm after the calm. It all leads to this.”

He sweeps his arm toward the screen, and all our eyes pore over the vision of Rue in the rain before us. Visible yet impossible to touch.

Rooted to the most towering place in my home feels like a fitting spot for Rue’s Last Stand.

I do what I imagine many souls do when face-to-face with the end.

Fears are generally best conquered with others.

And there is no greater fear than the unknown.

Though I do know that something awaits beyond this earthly realm, what it will mean for me, or even what’s left of me, is a complete mystery.

Faced with the yawning abyss, I seek connection. Solace through symbiosis. And I know to whom I wish to be connected with in this moment. Though I know in my head it’s futile, I seek my voice again. “Kane?”

“’Fraid not, love. It’s just li’l ol’ me.”

I do not know where he came from. He simply appeared, and his sonorous voice somehow fills all the open air around us. There is little of the smug brashness in his tone. Asher’s voice carries the weight of the moment with appropriate reverence.

He is almost kind when he asks, “Will you cross willingly then?”

“Asher,” I rasp, voice raw, “no.”

“Shame that. Would have been a lot easier that way. And there’s no other Rue running around to give you a second chance at this later. So, it’s the easy way or the hard way,” he says, resting his hand on the pommel of his bowie knife.

Flashes of his speed and brutality from the catastrophe fire in my brain, but I will not be moved.

“For a life I fought so hard to live, the only way to honor that legacy is resiliency to the last.”

“In spite of its utter uselessness?”

“No, Asher. Because of it. Because the life I was living had so much more story to tell and the love I just found is far too young to die. So, if my truths have to conform to that bleak reality, then Fate and Time can extend some extra comfort where I’m concerned to answer for their cruelty.”

“Still determined then?”

“Resolute. Let them know that for a life snuffed out with wax to burn and a love that could have burned forever, I fought to the bitter end. I refused to let go.”

Asher’s face seems to indicate he’s coming to grips with the reality before him. A look akin to pride flashes as he quotes The Bard, “‘It is an ever-fixed mark.’”

“‘That looks on tempests and is never shaken,’” I continue the line with a stone-like set to my voice. I square my shoulders and face my reaper. “So, bring on the fucking storm, Asher.”

Right on cue, the wind returns on a howling cry, the rain intensifies to a lashing ferocity, and the sky illumes with the staccato crack of lightning and thunder.

Asher remains silent in the ensuing torrent, but he slowly begins to unsheathe his blade.

And then I feel it. Again.

It. The it. The cessation of a beating heart. It doesn’t hurt this time. Because when everything hurts, there is nothing to compare the pain against. It just is.

And I simply am … dying.

Before I lose the last breath I have, I sing my final notes. Though my cadenza is not belted to the back of the balcony, but rather a softly whimpered, “Mayday.”

Strengthened by my defiance, even in the face of death, my second utterance is a marble statue of my reckless madness. “Mayday,” I declare with stony certainty.

In my final stubborn moment, I give in to hope and allow myself to believe. One more cry for help, and I shall be saved. Kane will appear, and all will be right. My dad will ride in on a phantom vessel and whisk us all away. My own words will leap from the page and protect me from being forgotten.

My story will end with the happiest of ever afters if only I can …

The thought dies on the vine, never destined to become anything other than shriveled and dry.

I see the glint of Asher’s blade against the moonlight before I can pronounce the word a final time.