Magnetite Tonight (pt 10).

Even in decent boots there’s no keeping the water out; you climb the steps to the Health & Welfare building, your feet squishing unpleasantly, and after the third step you decide the hell with it and kick them off, stripping the socks off, too. The flood is right up to the edge of the western wing of the building; beyond it the parking lot is full of swamped cars, many that have floated into the treeline or been carried by the engorged creek downstream. Two-thirds of Rain City is underwater after the Upper Dam at the Wonder plant burst; all of Orchard’s been washed away and a whole lot of Diamondale, too.

They let you into his room and tell you that you get fifteen minutes, they’ll check on you, and then you can have another fifteen but that’s it. You say thanks and sink down on the end of the bed; Jay is sitting back against his pillows with his knees drawn up to his chest, his eyes hollowed out and his hair unwashed and tangled into knots.

You look the same as me, he says, licking his chapped lips. You’re just out there instead of in here.

I probably do, you agree. You are tired enough that you could sleep here forever, and maybe if you’re lucky you won’t wake up again. And Jay in here, covered in scabs and scratches and coughing up blood, they picked him up at the library tearing books apart and throwing them at people, and all he would say was he was looking for something.

Jay grabs your arm and then yanks down your shirt collar. I don’t have it, you tell him.

He falls back on his pillow, looking haunted, ashamed, and so, so hungry for it.

I wish I did, you admit. Your fingers pick at your skin, but there’s no hair left there.

He asks you what’s going on out there and you tell him about the flood. Your brother’s fine, you tell him. I checked on him. Your trailer’s soaked but not too bad.

He coughs; it looks like agony, and they waste precious minutes waiting for him to get his breath back. Something broke, he croaks. Somebody broke the law. Maybe it was us, he says, I don’t know, I don’t know anything. Before you showed up I was her oven. I made them with her. And right when I was going to quit she let me have a little Jude and after that I felt dirty all the time. Filthy.

He tries to move his hands but he is in restraints. I just want to leave, he says tiredly. Everything, I just want to leave everything.

From outside they hear the cracking sound of a tree falling and then the thunder as it lands and dies; they’ve been doing it for days all over, the ground under their roots washed away until they succumb.

Your mom was still there, you tell him, answering his unsaid question. When I went to check on them. Your brother seemed like he was getting along with her.

Not for long, Jay says darkly. He sniffs; his eyes are grey and watery. We used to have real names, he says, and then she took us to the field and we got new ones, and after that I couldn’t remember my old one anymore, and neither could he, and neither of us could remember out mom’s name before she turned into Tambourine.

Names are traps, you agree. You are grinding your teeth hard enough to drive slivers of pain into your jaw and your skull, but you can’t stop. Once you have been out of yourself, once something else has ridden around inside of yourself, your body is no longer your body; it’s just aging and putrid and you can’t stand the feel of it anymore, like rags soaked in piss wrapped around you that you can’t escape.

But out there. You moan, looking up at the wire-covered window. In the light.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to True, Jay says. I don’t know if I can take care of him. He’s so little.

The orderly comes to check on you; you give him ten bucks to stay away for longer than he’s comfortable, but he takes the folded bill from you because times are tight. And for half an hour you talk about what you’re going to do. It’s easier than expected, but then again there is no fight in either of you anymore, no desire, no love. If it had been a drug your ruined lives would be navigable but this is your soul, and nothing can salvage that once it’s gone. What Jude did when she let him use your bodies, neither of you have any idea: sometimes you saw the aftermath, but mostly you chose not to. You didn’t care about anything other than getting into the light again that washed you with love and truth until each trip back into what was left of you was more awful all the time. There was never going to be a healing from this – yet you have just enough of your outrage left to not want her to get away with this. And so you talk. And after awhile, you agree.