Somewhere

Before you knew it this story was hurtling down a dirt road, getting smacked in the face with branches, letting high keening noises rip from its throat as it careened through unknown territory, terrified. It's no one's fault but your own that you couldn't hear the screaming and the branches breaking skin. It may have taken a few phone calls to realize it, but even if it's her story you're as guilty as anyone. You've been condemned.

Somewhere in Kansas, it doesn't matter exactly where, there's the one-story house that you and Claire bought. Remember putting down the tile in the bathroom together, and how bravely you vanquished the cockroach that came out from underneath the radiator to attack your lady? You were happy then. She would take frost-bitten generic meals from the fridge and heat them up in the stove for dinner, and you didn't mind; it's not like you could really afford anything else at the time. They were delicious, in the sense that cardboard dipped in gravy tastes a little less like cardboard. You told her it was wonderful because she was there with you, that's what mattered, and when you were done you would crawl into bed with her, kiss her shoulder, and catch an ankle around hers. You loved her.

Before Kansas, when you still lived in New York, at separate ends of town, she would sometimes call you in the middle of the night. She had nightmares. In her dreams something would go wrong, and she would call 911, or some trusted relative, and they were always too busy to help her, or they weren't paying attention. So when she woke up she would call you, just to make sure that it wasn't true. You always answered, proving her dreams wrong. After you told her about Kansas, she stopped having nightmares. That, or she stopped calling.

You were going to propose to her. The ring was nothing to write home about, but you did anyway, and told your father that everything was going to be okay for you and Claire. He had his doubts of course, while you struggled to make a name for yourself in a faceless corporation. It's why you moved to Kansas. You were so full of hope. Every morning it was a cup of coffee and she would tie your tie, and you kissed her on the cheek before you walked out the door. You told her you loved her. And you meant it.

It was the coffee that made you feel professional, and like you might be making some kind of progress. When you had drained your mug, arriving at the office, you were buzzed and ready to tackle the technology which seemed to be doing all the real work. You knew you were doing well if you weren't criticized by your boss, an impossibly thin man with impossibly red skin. On lunch breaks you would sit outside and inhale the dry air. Kansas was nothing like New York.

You were four months in Kansas when it all started to go very wrong. You would kiss her goodbye every morning, like always, and she would give you a smile, but the smile was sad. Sadder than anything you'd ever seen before. It pulled up a pity in you which until then had been reserved only for the state of society on its darkest days. Then, when you asked her what was wrong she would tell you that it was nothing. If you were lucky she would say something about stones and lakes. No amount of questioning could get her to explain to you why she went silent for hours on end, and why she sometimes sprinkled water at the corners of the bedroom door. She only smiled when the sun set.

She started to write strange notes, and leave them in even stranger places. "One at a time," was inside your left loafer. "Middle of nothing at all, ever," was inside a Tupperware of frozen meat sauce. You didn't dare ask her about these things which belonged to her and left no space for you. Things were already too far along by then anyway. Claire talked every night in her sleep. She told you stories which she could not tell when awake, about blurry clouds and water and fire. Then she would curl up on herself, no matter how gently you touched her she would not yield.

So you put the ring away, in a sock, under some collectible baseball cards inside of a shoebox. You called your father, but he had nothing to say. And then you left her. You left her money, continuing to send her checks even up until the end, and you left her the house. It's the least you could have done. And you tried not to leave your heart.

But you stayed in Kansas. You would avoid the streets down which you knew she walked. You found new places to eat. You took a twenty minute detour so you wouldn't see the houses that reminded you of her. What good was that? The very sun reminded you of your time with her, and when the sun set, and you thought you were free, the moon came up to remind you of other, more painful memories. You came to love moonless nights.

You have an apartment now, and it hasn't been so long since you left her. She hasn't called yet, but she's still pulling your hairs from her comb. You hear a story every now and then about the police arriving at your old house in Kansas, doesn't matter exactly where, on reports of screaming. They never find anything though, other than a woman whose eyes are watery, and who hides notes in shoes.

After a few months she starts calling you.

"Hey," she says.

"Hi," you say.

"What happened?" she asks, and you feel something sink in your chest. Something has just fallen apart, but you're not sure if it's her, or you.

"Something," you say.

"You don't have anything to say to me?" she asks. You tell her you miss her, and she hangs up. You wonder if she knows that you miss her as she was, not as she is. Meanwhile, Claire will sit outside and stare at the moon, listening to cars and losing her grip on what it means to be sitting outside at 4 in the morning, waiting. She hears crickets chirping about mistakes and lost time. Out in the fields, when the tips of the corn start to flirt with the moon she will go back inside and sleep on the couch for a few hours. She doesn't work much anymore.

You hear that the police have stopped making regular trips to the home where nothing discernible is happening. You also hear that she's been out to the bars, the kind with the perpetually sticky floors and the cheap beer. They say she has burns on the back of her arms, and some sick fuck flashes the pictures to prove it. There are never any teenagers at those bars, but it is no relief to know this. The only thing worse than the thought of Claire with some punk teenager, is the thought of her with an oaf of a man who has a penchant for disciplining her with a cigar. You hear everything in this town, doesn't matter exactly where it is, and this is what you hear: She doesn't look crazy, but there is a large man now living with her. You can see him lying in your bed, with your fiancée – and then you remember that it's not your bed anymore, and she was never your fiancée.

After a few months she starts calling you.
"I miss you," she says. And isn't that supposed to be the end? You hang up on her and what you want to do is run to her rescue and kick out the oaf of a man, reclaiming your rightful place by Claire's side. Then you remember the notes.

And it's not the end. What scares you is that it's not even the beginning. The start of all this was some undetectable moment long ago. Something burrowed under her skin, a switch that when hit let all those crazy notes into her fingertips where they could manifest into tangible words, the words which made you leave. The switch that dropped stories onto her tongue, the stories which made you sweat in the bed you shared. You blame yourself for playing with an invisible trigger.

She still walks around with burns on her arms. You haven't seen her in person yet, but then you can imagine it all too well. She has infinity in her eyes. There's something that she can see, and you almost wish for a glimpse of that darkness. When she looks at the corn fields and the cars and the moon she is gone from Kansas, gone from the love of her life who has left her, gone from the man who prods a gun into her ribs when he doesn't get what he wants. You get sick when you hear the stories.

She calls one last time. You were finishing your cup of coffee and about to step out the door when the phone rang. You break up the routine in order to answer it, and you hear whispering.

"What? Hello? Wh-..speak up, please?" You ask, and you receive.

"Can you help me? He'll be back soon. Please don't hang up on me."

"Claire?"

"John," she says "Call 911." She is hysterical in her serenity. Even in this moment of confusion when all the buried hate you have for her new lover comes seething through your pores you find the time to be upset. You slump into a chair as if you have eaten too many TV dinners, and you feel heavy with the fact that she wants you to call 911. She doesn't want you. She wants the men with badges.

"No. I'm coming," you say, and she starts to cry. Claire knows it's all over before it can begin.

You hang up and get to her place as fast as possible, killing a small rabbit on the way. It was an accident. You see only her car in the driveway, and a figure move by the window to the left of the front door, where the kitchen is. You were mostly composed up until this point, but then you start to sweat like Kansas is now Hell, and you have a lot of sin to make up for. In the rearview mirror it's that man pulling his truck into the driveway behind you, and you can see the smoke slipping out of his cracked window. You bolt from the car and get in that house you know so well only to slip on the blood on the threshold. You go down, and before you have a chance to pick yourself up and close the door so that the man can't come in and do any more harm, before you can even see where Claire is bleeding from, he's there. He has closed the door behind him and he's leaning over with a hand on his knee, the other hand lowering his gun to the tip of your nose.

Claire starts screaming in the corner, you can't see her, you wish you could, while you feel the blood soak through your button-down office shirt, while you struggle to breathe. You stare up into his face, registering immediately that you are practically of the same mold, he's simply bigger than you, and he has a gun and he likes cigars and torturing your fiancée. Claire is still screaming, he doesn't say a word, and you start to cry.

You wonder who the crazy one in this room actually is. And then he shoots you, it doesn't matter exactly where.