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by Nayt Rundquist

You’re fuzzy & shivering & no amount of blankets piled on you can sever that cold. The one connection you still have to anything external. Anything but the thoughts thoughts thoughts echoing through your head. All else is unplugged—tuned to a wrong station—floating out there beyond reach. Even sleep flitters through your grasp, tauntingly close but frustratingly elusive. Bed is comfort is solace is nest is barricade is hollow. Save for you.

& another tear in the emptiness. Some rancid ichor plops to the floor. You’ve smelled this before—somewhen outside this eternal vacuum. & she steps out, timid. You almost remember that timid. Not her, but a her, & her smile is a whisper. She is Legos about to fall all apart. Running her tongue over her teeth, she hugs herself in her corner. Shadows sway waving across her face—the branches out the window a tangled mess of claws & fingers twitching awake. The zombie hand thrust from the grave, scratching for entrance.

& another hole rent in the air, more pus & more voidstench. Gooseflesh skitters up your arms across your shoulders up your neck settles prickly into your scalp. Digs its claws in & now you’re colder than ever. Your tongue remembers the ghost of bubblegum & a mirror girl steps reluctant through the tear. Sliding her fingers through her hair, you mimic & break your heart all over. But it’s feeling something again. Zombie hands whip into a frenzy. Snapping crackling against the panes. Timid’s eyes flash panic & she hugs herself smaller—face darting from you to mirror girl to window to you.

& another slice—smooth elegant. A whisper in the nothing. When she steps through, she could almost be your mom, but she’s too much crust on a peanut butter sandwich. She takes in the room & tries to set her eyes to kindness but only manages a wistful sad—recognition of pain you haven’t felt yet. recognition of devastation on the horizon. & the nightsky is gone green behind clawing whipping hands. Your hair remembers snagging in clutches like those. & fat rain drops kamikaze into window—thick visceral splatter. You peel the purple comforter from the bed offer it to timid in her corner. One by one, fingers pry from shoulders & her feet pad to the bed. Purple becomes her cape, shield. She retreats; her eyes are seeing home after years away.

A crack in everything. She feels brittle, gnarled, but the whole room is diving into a massive pot of stew. Soaking your soul in a spa for a month & a half. Lightning tears in pieces the greensky outside but your room is toasty for the first time you can remember. Your skin is tiny shivers, speckles of ice flecks littering the ground after hoarfrost. But you’re warming from within. Thunder cracks, tearing a second in two. but none of you flinch.

& it’s electric, this moment stretched out a blanket over the years. Though eldritch storms emerald beyond frenzied branches scratching clawing scratching, within is motionless, charged. is full moon & milky way & aurora borealis dancing doubled on the surface of a lake. is the power of those bodies watching each other themselves spinning through the skies through the water. is the crackle placing your hand against a just-turned-off TV screen. is five magnets with perpetually reversing poles, pushing pulling pushing palpable in this tiny room. Your eyes meet mirror’s meet timid’s meet Mombutnot’s. For that finite little eternity, a whisper would deafen you all.

& it’s here too. all peanut butter & bubble gum, powder drinks & stew. but soured, skinless beyond the threshold of this room. this now folded between two instants that never were. the sixth magnet as repellent as the others.

your eyes meet crone’s & you see all of them. you. in every iteration. in every moment & combination. & their your pain is so real so pungent so omnipresent so all consuming. But the sheer size of youthem the enormity of heryouthem dwarfs it all. the grief is whitehot, cloying, but the frame of her eyes galactic, starry, eternal, puts it in a perspective you can swallow, can carry in your chest can honor can live again.

This hunched old woman—a spider—a Baba Yaga—shuffles to timid, whispers to her so soft no one can hear. She thinks a beat. Nods & straightens—takes up more space. Old gives young a gentle shove, & she falls back through the hole in the air. Monsters can be slain if your heart is brave.

Lighting flickers across blackening expanse distorted through rainstreaked panes, & the zombies seem a little less eager to break into your room. Pale ghoul shines less bright in the doorway. Mombutnot throws you a soft smile. She’s more sandwiches & a bag of chips than a hearty stew but gives comfort anyway. Shambling ’round to mirror, Baba braces herself, one clawhand on the foot of your bed, the other stabbing into her back. Mirror stops fidgeting with hair as crone whispers. A moment, An eternity, An instant. Nodding, streaking tears down her face—she fishes something from a pocket, sets it on your dresser, tumbles into the empty rift. Zombranches still clatter for entry, want to rend you to shreds, but sky is black & starrish—a sliver crescent moon tries to glow—ghoul ethereal, hollow, harmless. You’ll never forget her, but solitude is not your solution.

As though she’s not walked this much in millennia or more, Yaga takes hours to reach Mombutnot. She doesn’t lean to whisper doesn’t spark her eyes, holds out her hand, palm up. Waits. Younger face roils anger confusion questions betrayal trepidation in a moment. She’s slow in removing something from the back of her belt. Sliding out, it sings, awakening a delicious aria reverberating in your soul. She brandishes, clutches, then places in palm a knife gleaming in the lack of moonlight. Head bowed she turns to her ether slice, almost walks through. Casts a longing—lustful?—glance to her friend. Sighs. Vanishes into Nowhen. Knife slices, disappears too. ghoul a vanished whisper lost between lips & ear. Branches outside settle into gentle waving, tiring themselves out. You don’t need it. Not now.

When the old woman stretches, tries to align a spine that’ll never go back to where it began, you see a knife tucked into a pocket of her dress. It sings you a little tune you both barely remember. Even if you haven’t heard it yet. Shuffling to face you, her leathered face cracks open to a grin. So few teeth remain in that mouth—two maybe three scattered in the gums. But it soothes, placates. She whispers a song to you so silent you’re not sure she can hear. & you watch her shamble back to her crack in everything. She turns toothfree smile to you once more, nods, & fades into the crack as it seals back into nothingness. Never having existed at all. You’ll survive this. & eternity will be better for it.

& you’re still cold in the silence—branches, storm outside settled to still—static clearing, nearly crystalizing to a channel. You will slowly plug back in. Buzzing fades as you retrieve what mirror left behind: sunshine in a bottle of nail polish. It’s still warm, heavy with the memories of horizons & wrong lyrics. & they feel a little more within reach now.

& you will.

Photo of Nayt Rundquist

BIO: Nayt Rundquist’s (they/them) odd scribblings have been nominated for Best Small Fictions, shortlisted for the Brave New Weird anthology, and can be found in Whale Road Review, Inverted Syntax, Digging Through the Fat, Roi Fainéant, X-R-A-Y Lit Mag, Scavengers Lit Mag, The Citron Review, and others. They live just outside space and time with their artist-jeweler wife and their fifth-dimensional dog.