WE LIVE IN THE WALLS --Chapter Six

MANY OF THE RESIDENTS are too able bodied and mentally stable to be of any use to me, but I was lucky to discover that Healing Meadows had a pretty substantial palliative ward on the first floor, and with my buttons back on and my sneakers already fixed it’s easy to turn sharply to the left and enter Violet’s room.

I’ve been coming to Violet for a couple of years now. Her long illness left her unable to move or speak, the feeding tube pumping nutrients into her that she no longer wanted. Only a thin sliver of shadow held her soul to her body. This was what a good death looked like. Gentle easing, like a soul being reborn in a chrysalis until she’s fully formed for the next life. Hopefully she’ll just walk into it like the others had done, and avoid the gaping maw of the violent Light that ate up the Host’s victims. Worst case scenario, she becomes something like me.

I won’t let that happen.

I sit on the small, pink upholstered chair, the washable surface freshly sanitized and smelling vaguely of Dettol. Her physical body is struggling to breath and her soul hovers above it, fully formed and watching herself.

“Hey, Violet.”

Her spirit turns to look at me and I am startled by how young she has become since the last time I’d visited, only a few days prior. The death rattle in the body beneath her sounds like a metal ball bearing shivering loose in her lungs. Her serene face slightly morphs into worry as she points out my bits of disrepair, and she makes a scissoring motion at her bangs with her fingers, suggesting she thought I needed a haircut.

“It’s nothing, I just got a bit run down. I’ll spend the afternoon here and I’ll be good as new, don’t worry.”

She isn’t convinced, but I try hard to keep quiet about what I’ve done. Violet is such a worrier. She points to the entrance of her room and I lean closer to her to give her the scoop: “That new nurse helper on the third floor has lupus and doesn’t know it yet. The other nurse helpers are mad at her for not taking their shifts last weekend like she promised. It’s causing a bit of stink and they’re being mean to her. Oh and that new guy in room 227? He’s got fully blocked arteries and he was sent home from the hospital on the wrong meds and no one caught it yet. Cranky as fuck, they think he has dementia but it’s just the meds messing with his head. Oh, and Cecil bit the General Manager and there’s this big promo going on about ‘de-escalation’ which is pointless because Cecil is a bite first ask later kind of guy.”

She smiles but she is clearly distracted, her gaze constantly drifting towards some invisible point beyond my left shoulder, at times riveted on it. I fiddle with the buttons on my Walkman, but I keep the headphones silent. I don’t want to hear ‘Life In a Northern Town’.

“You’ll be leaving soon.”

She gently nods, grey eyes transparent and sad.

I guess it isn’t right for me to feel upset about this, after all, this is her journey and who am I to have any kind of feeling about it? I am her beneficial parasite, feeding off of her body and spirit’s woes while she becomes stronger for that other world that I only partially manage to survive in. She told me, in her silent way, that I was of great help for her. That as I fed on the way cancer ravaged her physically her soul became more defined. In the early days when she was able to talk she used to tell the nurse helpers who cared for her about me. “There’s this kind young man,” she would say to them. When she could no longer talk our silences became impressions that turned to monologues, long conversations made with a lift of her brow and visual flashbacks that weren’t mine that revealed her rich and wild life.

My Walkman was pristine by the time an hour had passed between us and the relief makes me feel kind of miserable. She is the closest thing I have to an actual friend, and like all of those who had come before her, that connection is temporary. Once she gives me that final smile, and breaks free from her shadow tethering her to her body, she’ll simple walk away and disappear, leaving all the pain and suffering of this world, and me, behind.

She frowns over my sad expression. She points to the framed photo of a farmhouse where she grew up, not half an hour outside of town.

“It’s been bad at home,” I admit. “Our Host is going crazy, he killed two more girls.” I fiddle with my Walkman, there is a new tape in it but I don’t want to play it. It looks like the mix tape I made. The tape I was playing when I was in my room, alone, in 1985. Through the tiny window provided on the cassette cradle I can see the black and red ink and messy doodle of a gun I’d drawn on it and that wasn’t good, no way, I will not press play...“I talked to a cop. I know there’s risks. I manifested. He saw me. That’s why I’m such a fucking mess right now, or was when I came in to see you.” I open and shut the cassette cradle, the tape changing every time I snap it into place only to end up back at that same mix tape, with the red and black ink. “I know it was a dumb thing to do, but I can’t just sit around and watch him kill people. I’m tired of murder. That’s not what I signed on for, you know?” I tuck the Walkman into the back of my jeans, the headphone cords straining. “Sorry. I know you hate it when I swear.”

She gives me a kind, motherly look and I feel a rush of fullness from it, so much that she stops breathing, her death rattle audibly silent. I pull back and she gives me a stare of frustrated disappointment.

“Tomorrow, okay?” I promise her. “It’ll happen tomorrow.”

Her body chokes and sucks in another pained breath.

I wipe my palms on the thighs of my too tight jeans, leaving slight sweaty streaks.

“I’m scared,” I admit.

She smiles and in that moment I know she is my friend but she is longing to move on and my fears and worries aren’t supposed to be a part of her, and I’m being selfish. I get up from the chair and blow her an airy kiss. “I’m gonna go check on the newbies. I’ll see you soon, Violet.”

“Tomorrow,” she whispers in my head as clear as if she’d spoken it.

I shiver. She is so close to death I can taste her vowels in my mouth and it makes me nauseous.