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the archive(s):
issue no. 3:
Small Circle of Sky / Lisa Gratz
So there are these Douglas fir trees alongside the trails in Tolmie State Park in Olympia, Washington and I happened to be sitting under one on a Sunday last June when I saw someone suddenly pass across my inner vision. I blinked, looked down at the moss-carpeted log underneath me, my glance bounding quickly around the trees and, in silence, watched their branches clamor for the sky's attention. I listened for Liz who was somewhere further along the trail, but I couldn't hear a single footstep approaching. Some raccoons or curious deer catching my scent, probably. After being exceptionally quiet for a few more seconds and hearing nothing but the breeze, I let my head fall back down in age-old ritual towards the pages of the notebook lying across my folded legs, my hair hanging down like a portable tent around my face, ensconcing me in privacy. I sent my pen back to work and it was only a minute later that I felt someone clap their hand over my mouth.
You'd think I would have panicked, right? Jumped up, or fallen back off the log, notebook and pen flying into the air, legs flailing. But that's what she wanted, I think, for my notebook to go flying. I think she was trying to spook me out of pinning her down onto paper. I think she sees her death in those white valleys that lie between the jagged black ridges of my cluttered script. That's where we'll meet someday; that's where I'll kill her, right there, her blood reddening the space between the lines, and she knows it. We'll meet like Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, and I'll send her over into the chasm. I'll call her out and write her down and push her over, my words like thrusting hands, and watch those sibling eyes descend, like sunlight glancing off mirrors, a few spots of crimson amongst the upswing of my loops the only evidence of her passing. And no one will even see those drops, they'll only see black and white. Only black and white.
As soon as I feel her clap her hand over my mouth, I freeze. Her fingers are pine-scented and oddly sticky, like a child's, but her hand is as big as mine and it presses hard into my cheeks and I let it. I let her do this and I close my eyes and she moves up behind me till I can feel her leaning her front against my back. She doesn't say a word. I don't say a word. I can feel the moss's moistness seeping through my jeans.
We listen together, me and her, sister and sister, ambitious murderer and intended victim, to the trees. A wind has kicked up, since it's growing slightly dark, and an early evening gust from the Puget Sound ripples its way through the branches, which slowly creak like a dozen haunted doors softly opening.
Liz is nowhere in sight; she must have walked all the way down to the water's edge. I'm glad she's not here: no witnesses. I can feel the wet log under my butt, her leaning against my back, and the notebook and pen in my hand. And I can hear us breathing. I can feel her belly on my back: it sucks in as she inhales. Her fingers still press my mouth closed. I am very calm. I write a question.
"Who are you?"
She snatches for my pen and as I grapple it away, the woods go dark and I suddenly realize that they were always dark. I'm seated inside something, deep inside of it, and I look up and all I can see is a small, circular patch of sky. It's like being at the bottom of a stone well. My face turns upward as I try to deny that this place is familiar to me, but it's an absolute lie and it only takes me a second to realize it.
I recognize this place. I spend every day in here, at the bottom, looking up. It's so dark and now that I recognize it, I realize I'm so tired of being in here and looking up and only seeing that one little circle of blue and white that often goes quickly dark. I think maybe I've been marooned here for weeks, or maybe years. Is that possible? There's no clock in here, it's impossible to know. For some reason I couldn't see it before...but I can now, now that she's made herself known. She's hiding now, though. I can't see her.
As soon as I wrote that, something shimmered up near the top, and now that circle is no longer visible, things have gone dark. There's something blocking the top of the tunnel. I can see it now! There's something coating the inner rim, something sitting there. It looks like me, but it can't be. It can't be.
It is. I recognize her. But it's not quite me all the way. It's like there's someone sitting up there who was assigned to be me while I'm down here, an actor who's been employed to play me to the world. Did I assign her? Do I remember that? Did I create her? I let my hair fall down, listen to the small echoes in this well, and write the next question.
"If so, why?"
I don't know why. But I'm realizing something. I've grown her. Like a second skin. Or rather, like the skin on the top of chicken broth, where the fat collects. She owns all my grins, she's got them in one of those accordion wallets you see the cat pull out in a Loony Toons cartoon. She talks to everybody for me. She decides the color of all my desires, carefully shaves the edges of each opinion. She's a filter. She's cheesecloth. Everything goes through her. She's the fat that's left, and the rest spills down into my well. Yet, if I grew her, how does she hold me prisoner? How can she plug the entrance to the outside without my say-so?
Shoes. I've got to take off my shoes. Footholds. There must be footholds. I climb as far as I can go.
Then I grasp the pen and stab blindly upwards.
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