Authors: H.M. Jones
She tried to sound hopeful, but knew she just sounded worn out and scared. Ishmael bent down to untie and remove his shoes and she did the same. She took the bag on the right side, unzipped it and climbed into it. She counted it a great blessing the inside was less crusted with dust than on the outside. It was much warmer than the weak heat radiating from the short flames, which she figured Ishmael lit so they weren’t consumed in darkness.
She watched as he got into his sleeping bag then stared at the diminutive window in the front of the cabin. She noticed the cold fog rolling into the woods. It clung to the small window, sending out tendrils that tapped on the window panes, begging to be let inside. She was surprised by the sound of Ishmael’s voice, just above a whisper:
“Mist clogs the sunshine.
Smoky dwarf houses
Hem me round everywhere;
A vague dejection
Weighs down my soul.”
Ishmael and Abigail faced one another and she noticed, in the dim light, a smile on his face. He opened his mouth to say more, but she cut him off:
“Yet, while I languish,
Everywhere countless
Prospects unroll themselves,
And countless beings
Pass countless moods.”
He laughed quietly. “Exactly.” He propped his head up onto his hand. “You wanna guess where those two stanzas are tattooed?” He lifted his eyebrows flirtatiously.
She snuggled deeper into her sleeping bag. “No. I don’t.” She forced a laugh. “Pretty perfect for the circumstances, though.”
He shrugged. “Actually, I was just thinking, usually, I’m staying here by myself, and the poem fits better, but I don’t feel like it’s as bad with company. Especially since my company can quote Arnold.”
He grinned at Abigail and her heart felt lighter and more at ease. “I hate to break it to you, but ‘Consolation’ is still a very fitting poem to be reciting right now. Our situation sucks.”
Ishmael nodded, amused. “Yeah, but it’s not going to help to linger on it, so let’s try getting our minds off the mist and languishing.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
“I can think of
a lot
of things that might get my mind off of languishing, all of which make for a great night, but I know you’ll just shoot me down.” She glared at him, which just made him laugh.
“Okay. I’ve got an idea that won’t get me into too much trouble. Tell me the rest of the poem you stumped me with yesterday.”
She hummed in thought, flopped onto her back, and rested her head on her hands, concentrating on finding the words. “I’ll have to start from the beginning.”
Ishmael sat up, his bag resting around his feet, his arms around his knees. “Let’s hear it.”
She took a breath and began:
“How strongly does my passion flow,
Divided equally ‘twixt two?
Damon had ne’er subdued my heart,
Had not Alexis took his part;
Nor could Alexis powerful prove,
Without my Damon’s aid, to gain my love.”
Abigail watched Ishmael, who stared blankly into the fire. He was listening intently. His body was tuned to her words even while his gaze was lost in the flames.
She took a breath and continued:
“When my Alexis present is,
Then I for Damon sigh and mourn;
But when Alexis I do miss,
Damon gains nothing but my scorn.
But if it chance they both are by,
For both alike I languish, sigh, and die.”
She fixed upon his careworn face, his tangled hair, his green-brown eyes. Since she met Jason, she’d never met someone whose features so interested her. That thought bothered her, so she concentrated on the cobweb ceiling, as she breathed the last stanza, an urgent whisper:
“Cure then, thou mighty winged god,
This restless fever in my blood;
One golden-pointed dart take back:
But which, O Cupid, wilt thou take?”
Abigail paused, an image of Jason crossed her mind, but she couldn’t say why. She shook her head, watching Ishmael, from the corner of her eye, switch his gaze from the fire to her.
“If Damon’s, all my hopes are crossed;
Or that of my Alexis, I am lost.”
Ishmael stared at Abigail, who was pretending to examine the ceiling. Finally, he broke the silence. “She sounds wishy-washy to me.”
She didn’t know what to say about his response. She exhaled, slightly annoyed, slightly abashed. Though, she didn’t want to admit why she felt either of those things. “Wishy-washy?” she asked, annoyance in her voice.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, it seems like she’s saying she loves them both equally, right? But she’s not nice to either so long as the other is away, which means she’s a bitch to both of them.”
“You realize you sound like a pig, right? You want to start picking apart the characters of the many male poets we’ve discussed so far?”
Ishmael scoffed. “What? You think someone can love more than one person at the same time? Or that someone can truly love
one
other person?”
She felt trapped and embarrassed for having revealed one of her favorite poems to someone who so clearly misunderstood it. “You’ve already said you don’t even believe in love, so it’s useless to argue the point with you.”
He shrugged. “I’ve don’t think I’ve ever been in love. I’ve been attached, horny, heartbroken, confused, happy with, and even crazy about another person, but I think love should be a reserved feeling. People overuse it. I think this lady is an example of that.”
She didn’t know why, but she was getting angry with Ishmael’s assertions. “Maybe you’re just emotionally retarded. I think it’s possible to feel passionately about more than one person for different reasons, even at the same time. But I’m allowing, I suppose, too broad a definition of love for your taste. If you don’t hate someone. If you don’t dislike someone. If you would give up your life for theirs what is that, if not love?”
Ishmael lit a cigarette and stared into the fire. He blew smoke out slowly from his cigarette and answered. “I feel things passionately, too, Abby. I’m not emotionally retarded, despite the appearance I put on. Maybe I’m just careful.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Or you really haven’t been in love, in which case I envy you.”
He frowned. “Envy me? Because I haven’t loved someone?”
She just nodded and let her eyes unfocus, not wanting to see anything. She didn’t say it aloud, but what she wanted to say sat leadenly on her chest and lips: Being tied to another person was tough. The more people she loved, the more people she let down. She never felt romantic love for anyone before Jason, so she assumed he was her soul mate. But she was starting to think ‘soul mates’ was a silly idea.
People change
, Abigail thought.
They fall in love and out of love with the same person. Most move on when lovers die or leave them. It’s only in romantic books or movies people die of broken hearts. My parents remarried. They loved each other but couldn’t live with each other. They loved their new partners, too. Yes,
she thought,
love is complicated, but not exclusive.
But she didn’t say those words.
She didn’t want to argue with Ishmael about love. She didn’t want to talk about love at all, especially in a place like this. She felt too vulnerable in this strange, cold, close cabin. She felt too vulnerable inside herself, too. She had for a while. She just wanted to sleep without dreams, and get home to the family she
knew
she loved, no matter how imperfectly.
She yawned. “We can agree to disagree. I’m tired.” She pulled her sleeping bag up to her chin. Ishmael finished his cigarette and flicked the butt into the fireplace. The blue fire was shrinking, its slight warmth being undone by the cold squeezing in through the glass, the chimney, and cracks in the walls.
“Thank you for sharing the rest. Sorry if I pissed you off. I wasn’t trying to.” His voice was uncertain and gentle, which was off-putting. He was annoyingly certain of himself most of the time, but she didn’t send him words of comfort. She closed her lips shut like a vice. She felt like she’d said more than she wanted to say.
She sent up a fervent prayer, hoping God heard her in such an awful place. She prayed for relief from the confusion clouding her mind, emotions and words. She felt it before coming to Monochrome because of the depression. But this place, and, if she was honest, her relationship with Ishmael, only made it worse.
God, let me sleep without dreams. Let me wake clear-headed.
She prayed for this, she prayed for her family somewhere lost to her, and she prayed for the desperate man beside her, kept awake by his own confusing feelings and thoughts, until she fell asleep despite the cold, despite her mind, and despite the nervous energy bouncing through her body.
*
Abigail walked on heavy feet through gleaming trees. A white mist, alive and angry, nipped at her heals. Suddenly, the mist took the shape of a tall person, pale and faceless. She knew intuitively, the way one knows things in dreams, the being in the fog was the boss who Ishmael feared; the man or woman or thing that controlled this awful place decided to take notice of her.
She stopped and spun towards the misty figure, but found only a dense fog and steel trees, tall as alders and just as bare. Though she couldn’t see the figure, she felt its eyes were on her, from every corner, every black pebble, every navy tree, every Nightmare prowler who stalked through these woods in the dark. It was everything cold and wrong about this place and it knew she was searching for a way out.
Her eyes darted around, searching for Ishmael.
Where is he? Why has he left me here by myself?
A thin laugh, carried on a sharp breeze reverberated in the woods around her. A whisper voice mocked, “He’s gone. He does as I say, you know.” The thin laugh sounded again. She shivered, but stood firm. She didn’t want to think about how the voice knew her thoughts. “Ishmael? Where are you?” No response came from the pitch-black woods.
The whisper voice rang again. It was all around her and beside her at the same time. “You see? He’s a good actor, no? You thought he cared for you. He’s the perfect Guide, equal parts mystery and kindness. He reels them in so easily, especially the ladies. And you plan on taking him from me?” The laugh was harsh. “He belongs here, and he will make sure you do, too. By any means.”
She shook her head and put her hands to her ears. “Ishmael, please!” she yelled, confused and upset with herself for believing the voice.
But Ishmael
has
been lying to me.
She reminded herself.
The whisper didn’t seem to need her physical participation. It was inside of her now. “Yes, he has and he will again, and because you are gullible, you will forget my warning. You will choose to trust him and he will lead you further astray. Do you like my little hidden cottage?”
Abigail shook her head, and ran through the trees. “Ishmael!”
Her foot caught on a stray vine and she fell to the ground. She struggled to rise, but her feet were tangled in the web-like vine. She clawed at the vine’s steely exterior; the sound of her nails running over the metallic skin was like a key over a car door. Running wasn’t an option, Monochrome had her. Fearful sweat dampened her hair, her shirt stuck wetly against the skin of her back.
She shook as a misty figure rose from the clammy fog surrounding her. Again, the fog took shape. Dark clothing appeared on a fog body, long hair appeared under a black wool hat. Ishmael prowled towards her with dead, black eyes and bent over her. “Need some help?” But no concern reached his eyes. His voice wasn’t the careful tenor she’d grown used to. This voice was high and bitter like winter wind through frosty window panes.
Abigail struggled to free herself of the black vine, but it was wound too tightly around her legs. The wrong Ishmael grabbed her arms in his hands, and pushed her body against the ground. “You’re mine now. Everything here belongs to me.” His handsome face contorted and shifted. For an instant, Abigail saw the demon behind the mask. Not a red-faced, horned demon. No. He was the most beautiful being she’d ever seen. His features were perfectly sculpted, his hair a mass of dark waves, his eyes like a grey day on the Puget Sound. But he was there for only a second, and then he vanished, his Ishmael mask stuck in place.
She struggled against his arms and screeched. “Ishmael! Help me!” The man straddling her laughed.
She pushed against him with all her might, but her arms felt leaden with sleep. “Jason!” She heard herself call for her husband, but immediately wondered why. He’d never come to a place like this. He wasn’t like her. He was all logical solutions, unhindered by the darkness so often her companion.
The wrong Ishmael leaned into her, his body pressed against hers, his mouth to her ear. “Fight me. I like fighters.” She kicked her legs and thrashed her arms, but her dream-laden body was no match for the man’s heavy weight. She let her limbs go limp. Defeated tears ran down her cheeks.
A firm voice sounded in her head. “Abby, wake up!”
The voice didn’t belong to the man holding her down. It belonged to
her
Ishmael. The man above Abigail was swept away with the last of her nightmare as she opened her eyes. Ishmael sat next to her, her wrists in his hands, concern in his eyes, his hair tangled and his clothes wrinkled.
“Abby?”
He dropped her wrists. She sat up slowly, her body ached. Her legs throbbed, as if the nightmarish vines still wound around her skin. She pulled her legs out of her blanket, but saw no marks. She hissed as her sore muscles protested the movement.
“Abby, are you alright? You’ve been yelling and struggling in your sleep for the last hour or so. I tried to wake you up, shake you even. You fought me, but you stayed asleep, like you were in a trance.” His voice was groggy, but comforting because it was
his
, a clear hesitant tenor.
Abigail didn’t say anything for a moment. She just took Ishmael’s face in her hands and stared into his green-brown eyes. They grew wide in surprise, but he didn’t move away. Finally, she broke her silence. “It’s you.”
He furrowed his brows. “What?”
She shook her head. “Never mind. Just a very bad dream.”
He rubbed his arm like it was sore. “You kicked and punched me like crazy.” He chuckled. “Even in your sleep, you’re a ninja.”
She shook her head, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I was being attacked. In my dream, I mean.”
He ran his hands through his hair, combing it. “I see. Well, you’ve been through a lot already. Your life might be easier if you were tougher on the eyes.” He nudged her with his foot. “Gotta stay sharp. No rest for the ninja, I suppose.”
“Apparently. I feel like I got no rest, anyway.”
“You can try to sleep more if you’d like.”
Abigail shook her head. “No. Not with dreams like that. Plus, I want to get an early start. I have to get out of here. This place is making me paranoid and crazy. The dream…” But she didn’t continue. She didn’t want Ishmael to feel responsible for her strange nightmares. What’s more, her dream made her want to be less forthcoming with him. After all, she did have reason to be suspicious of him.
He nodded. “We can start as soon as you’re ready, bed head.”
She glared at him. “Look who’s talking.”