Arcane II (38 page)

“Shut up.” She said. “Shut up, skinny bitch.”

“Ish that what you called me?” said Ing, “If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle a skinny bitch.” Sometimes Ingrid’s “s” sound came out as “sh.”

Dulcy laughed and then snorted. Now they were both giggling. Ing knew if they got really started then Dulcy might not be able to stop. She had seen it happen once since Dulcy drank the water. She’d seen her do a lot of things, but this one reminded her of when they were children and it started an idea in her head that she didn’t much like.

She had to stop though, because laughing was a dangerous thing. That, and there just wasn’t anything to laugh about. Not in this world. In this world laughing could kill you. It was of no use to two working holocaust victims. But still, for Ingrid the idea was there now and it wouldn’t go away. That idea was that it might not be a bad thing if Dulcy died.

She was dying already. They both were, sure, but Dulcy had drunk the water and now it was doing things to her.

***

“Go suck a cock.” said Dulcy.

It was about the hundredth time she had told Ingrid to go do this. The thousandth maybe since junior high when Dulcy had caught Ingrid doing just that thing to a boy who was her secret boyfriend at the time and who both of them liked.

To Ingrid it had been an innocent but dangerous thing, having him in her mouth in her room, how they had snuck in through the back door, not knowing quite what they were going to do but having thought of things up until that point and been above all curious and willing to explore. It was a memory that could have been different, not one she thought of often, but when she did it was interrupted by that phrase, her sister telling her, “Go suck a COCK!”

That was what Dulcy thought about when she told Ingrid to do that and she always wore the same face when she said it; the expression that had been on her face when she walked in on them that day, cold and surprised and concerned. That look and that phrase was a cold sharp stone that they would always share.

She looked down at the can of Burt’s Baked Beans in her hands, then back at Ingrid. And as if she’d forgotten what she had just said a moment before she said, “I’d tell you to go suck a cock, but I... don’t think... there are any you haven’t... already sucked.” She trailed off in breath between. She managed to wheeze through a smile, and it was a hideous thing. That milky orb that always looked up and to the right, looking nowhere, was snotty gray and more and more that useless eye ran a viscid brownish liquid.

“Just how you like it, shishter,” said Ingrid. “Now let’s find the can opener. We can share, and you need help opening that can.”

***

The truth was neither of them knew if they had a can opener. Ingrid thought that she may have thrown it at Dulcy in the fight over the cockroach. The thought of it made unwanted feeling well up in her again. She kept looking back at the can sitting upright on the floor; an object so familiar in a former life as to be unnoticed most of the time now seemed foreign, like something she had never seen before although you would see them stacked up and down and side by side on supermarket shelves, back when supermarkets still existed. It was everything. The Holy Grail. There was more nourishment in that larger-than-average can than either of them had had in weeks.

If only they could find the damned can opener. She had thrown it and heard it clatter against the wall. She did not know if it had perhaps been kicked or pushed out of the slightly open door.

The sisters went about looking for it. Although there wasn’t much in the boxcar, there was also a lot; things that had already been there, leaves that had blown in and pieces of trash. They turned around and around, crawling across the floor, searching through refuse for the can opener. Dammit, thought Ingrid, why did you have to go and throw it.

It wasn’t your fault,
said the voice in her head.
She made you.

Maybe that was true. The fight over the stupid cockroach. The cockroach that Ingrid had found and caught and then been slapped across the face for.

She slapped you like a little bitch, a little skinny bitch, and you would have shared, too.
The thorns came back. She looked up and saw that Dulcy was distracted again. She was gazing absently up at the wall and Ingrid had a terrible thought.

What if they did find the can opener and got the can of beans opened? Well, that would mean that they would eat, would live longer, a little anyway. It was a horrible thought because it was a clear one. It became an echo and stayed long enough for her to consider this time, this last inch before death. Maybe food wouldn’t make much of a difference at all, but maybe it would. What if it hadn’t fallen and they hadn’t been stirred? They wouldn’t be looking now.

Dulcy shook her head and started looking again, crawling around on her bony knees and hands.

What if this horrible half-life was made longer? That was the cruelty of it. This was God’s final joke, although Ingrid was of the opinion recently that there was in fact no God. If there was, though, He dropped that can, the Burtie’s Holy Grail of Secret Family Recipe Baked Beans. When she thought of that she found that she could share her hatred of the nonexistent god with to everything else too, like Burtie himself and his whole fucking family wherever their roasted rotted asses were. She could share it with Dulcy as well. Dulcy, whose mind was rotting and didn’t know what she was doing half the time. Who slapped her and robbed her of her cockroach.

***

The wind outside made the walls of Xanadu yawn; tossed branches and more scraped refuse clambered on the side. Just then Ingrid, who was looking again for the opener, collided with Dulcy. Their heads knocked together and there was a sound like an overripe olive falling to the floor. Dulcy went stock still, coming to the realization that something had happened though she didn’t quite understand it. She looked like a skeletal bird who heard something but doesn’t know from where.

Ingrid saw the eyeball hit the floor while she was still lost in her own thoughts. She saw the eye, shriveled and gray, lying on the floor. All her thoughts were erased. She snatched the eye off the floor and stuck it in her mouth.

Dulcy watched it happen with her good eye and the fresh hole, and before she could protest Ingrid had already swallowed it with a gulping sound. She had understood what had happened and she was filled with dull horror (the sisters had been past the capacity for extreme horror for some time), and mixed with it was disappointment. The truth was, she had wanted to eat it herself.

“That was mine,” she said.

“That’ll teach you to share when we find food,” said Ingrid. “You ate de fing before dat.” She swallowed a second time. She thought she would have been more troubled with the way the eyeball had felt going down her throat.

“Go suck a cock!” said Dulcy.

***

What if Ingrid had choked on it? The thought nearly sent her laughing again. She kept from doing that though, and she doubted if it would make Dulcy laugh either but there it was, that thought again. It wouldn’t be bad if Dulcy died. It might be good.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Dulcy. Ingrid hadn’t realized she had been looking at her sister for a long time.

“Nuffink. Let’s just find the ding already,” said Ingrid.

***

One time Ingrid had made Dulcy laugh until she threw up; Dulcy had always been one to go into hysterics. But why all this thought about laughter suddenly, anyway?

This wasn’t a laughing matter, none of it.

Ingrid wondered, though. They were weak, but Ingrid feared she was the weaker one. Dulcy had had more fat to burn, she was stronger but... well, Dulcy was done for.

“You say something?” said Dulcy.

Soon she would be in worse shape, reasoned Ingrid. At times Ingrid had caught Dulcy absently watching her like one does a rotisserie chicken through a window. Usually she would cry, only crying had no tears now, liquid was too precious. But she couldn’t blame her really. Ingrid had had a dream where she had actually eaten Dulcy. In the dream she cut her open and found that her insides were boiling with the tiny red worm creatures she had seen in the water.

Now she noticed that the back of Dulcy’s ragged pants was stained with something new. Not with the tint of dysentery as usual. Now it was red back there. Before she died herself Ingrid would be listening to her sister wail from renal failure. Dulcy was too far gone to care, though. Maybe that was a blessing. Maybe, Ingrid thought, she should help it along.

***

At home when they ate dinners in the grand dining room, Ingrid occasionally gave herself the secret goal of making her sister laugh until she farted. Dulcy had always had uncontrollable gas, and when it actually happened it was the perfect contrast to the proper dining room and the expensive things and the stern-faced mother. When that happened, on more than one occasion, Dulcy laughed then passed wind which made her laugh even harder. It even got the smallest crack of a smile to appear in the watertight vase of their mother’s face now and again. That had been golden.

And now Dulcy cracked up at the most mundane things, a fact that kept nagging at Ingrid. Well, usually not after just having her eyeball eaten in front of her. No, Ingrid figured, a few “yo momma” jokes might not cut the mustard after something like that. And what if she got herself started again? She was already half-sure she was going to throw up what she had eaten a minute ago.

Was that funny?

***

Dulcinea knew what was happening to her. She had stopped thinking of the thing that she shared the boxcar with as her sister. She had also more or less stopped thinking of herself as herself. She was certain about one thing: the water she had drunk had killed her. But she had come back and now she was a lesser creature. The problem was, she knew that she wasn’t human anymore, that she had been human, but not anymore. Was that supposed to be allowed? Reincarnation was a funny thing. Then as she crawled around Xanadu looking for something which she could not quite remember, she remembered again how ridiculous that was. She was a person, not an animal. Who was she?

She started to chew on her thumb when she saw Ingrid. Ingrid was her sister. She was looking at Dulcy, or more like staring at her with big eyes. So she asked her.

It was happening more and more. She got lost in her mind and when she came back to herself her head hurt along with everything else. She tried to be Dulcinea for as long as she could and not get lost again, but it was getting harder. So she tried to remember things, things about who she was—is, who she is. She found one memory clearer than the others.

It was her tenth birthday party. There had been a big bouncy thing in the big living room in their house. There was a moon bounce too, and a mechanical train that her father had brought in. All of the children from her class had been there and the children of their parents’ friends, and it had been a wonderful party. A clown was the conductor of the train. He pulled on a chain and the train whistle made a toot-toot sound. The clown also did magic. She liked coming back to this, everything was different on that train. There had been a big cake as well and cake was food...

Then the memory went bad, and she was here again, and the girl in the boxcar was saying something.

“Wha?” said Dulcy

“I shaid your ash has never looked better, shister.” Ingrid. That was her. “Red really is your color,” she said.

Dulcy wondered what she was talking about. She wiped a hand along her backside and looked at it. Her palm had a slight pinkish tint. Dulcy’s remaining eye became wide and she looked at her sister.

“Don’t worry,” said Ingrid, “That’ll shtop. Conshider it THIN-spiration, heh, we don’t have to worry anymore about the imposhible demands to shtay beautiful in our yooff.”

Dulcy ignored the tint of red on her hand. What else could she do about it?

“Wha?” said Ingrid. “Not going to tell me to shuck cock, shuck dick even?”

“I’m just hungry,” said Dulcy. When they talked it was easier for her to stay in the now, to be herself and not get lost in the clouds.

“Me too, shishter. Hell, if der wash any men leff I would suck, for food I would. I’d be a cock-shuckin’ shooperstar.”

“Shut up,” said Dulcy. She didn’t smile because she was tired, but she would have. “You’re not funny.”

“Yesh I am,” said Ingrid. “Do you know why, huh? Know why I’d be a shooperstar, shister?”

Dulcy regarded Ing with weak nonchalance. “Why is that?” she said.

“Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk,” said Ing and she made a wet slapping sound with her toothless mouth. “Shee? No keeth in dis mouf.” And she made googly eyes at Dulcy who didn’t want to but giggled in spite of herself.

“It’s okay, shishter, I know I’m hideoush,” said Ingrid. Dulcy’s hand was over her mouth. She was crying, but she was laughing too. It’s amazing what the mind can do to itself when it’s at the end of a fork.

“Sister, we’re both hideous,” she said.

“Nuh-uh,” said Ing, “you look like Jennifer Lopez.” She couldn’t say her S’s but she could say her Z’s just fine.

Dulcy sat down on her red ass and snorted, then took a few breaths, then she said, “You look like Madonna.”

“Oh, fuck you with a cherry on top,” said Ingrid, and that sent Dulcy to giggling.

“Stop,” she said, “don’t make me laugh.”

Ingrid sidled up next to her sister, slung one boney arm around her shoulders.

Why did the chicken cross the road?
she thought.

What she said was, “What I wouldn’t do for a Ho-Ho.”

At the word “Ho-Ho” the funniness got under Dulcy’s skin and she giggled harder. How slappy and stupid. She couldn’t stop the place, inside, that jumps when you laugh, the involuntary flexing of the stomach muscles, her own of which where like bundles of wires. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to laugh, she was hungry and sick, but mostly hungry, she was... “I’m
STARVING!
” she managed and she though this breakthrough would slow her down, but it didn’t. Then Ing got in close and just as loud and in a humorous voice she said, “WE’RE GONNA DIE! And me bein’ a virgin, too!”