Sometimes Vahn Writes Stuff Options

[Frisk]

She is sleepy, but she stirs. There is a warmth and an aggravation tucked in beside her, and her name is Mia. The girl is pressed painfully into Alice's ribs, and her breathing, deep and rhythmic, is not soothing. Over the night she has stolen the cover and wrapped herself in it, leaving Alice cold on the bed. Looking at her twin, she sees herself and her fists ball up for a moment before relaxing. With one quick motion she clenches her hand around Mia's hair and yanks upward, harder than she should. Mia cries out.

The moment is quiet, and the two sisters watch each other, waiting. Mia springs first, and soon they are rolling on top of each other, scratching and biting at every opening. They do not punch, yet.

Their house is big, and their parents live on the other side of it. They are free to beat the living hell out of each other as much as they want. Their fight ends when they fall off the bed and Alice's head smashes against the side dresser on the way down. She does not cry, or scream, but simply stares at Mia, and they know the fight is over.

"I'm sorry," Mia says first. Alice considers not saying anything back.

"I'm sorry too," she replies. They get dressed and go downstairs, to the kitchen. Alice pours both of them a bowl of cereal, and they sit in the quiet of the morning, eating. Outside the sky is still grey; the sun still hasn't risen.

"Looks like it's going to rain. When the sky is grey like that, it means rain," Mia says, looking from the dark sky outside to her sister.

"Not in the morning. It just means the sun isn't up yet," Alice says without looking at Mia. She breathes in, then breathes out heavily, leaning back to stretch. Little fingers drum a tune on the kitchen counter. Mia watches, then taps her spoon on her bowl in the middle of Alice's beat. Her head rocks gently back and forth, miserably failing to move with the rhythm. Soon her foot is tapping, and then Alice's hips are swaying on the chair, and of course they end up dancing around the kitchen, keeping just short of too loud.

It's almost twenty minutes before they notice the steady rain beating against the window.

[Frisk]

Outside, the rain beat against the roof. The noise leaked into the room, echoed in the empty space. There was no light. In the darkness Johnathon led Marie by hand. There was a mattress in the corner of the room, where wall met wall. To it they went, a small dim splot of white hanging in the dark. Bare feet moved from the hardwood flooring onto the cool of the fabric. They sat together, and Johnny drew a blanket around both of the them.

"The rain is full of ghosts tonight," he said.

"That tap and sigh."

"And listen at my window for reply. I missed you, Marie." His lips brushed her neck.

"What will we talk about? The before, the after, or the now?"

"The everything."

"Everything is an awful lot to talk about in the time we have."

"Tell me, are you happy?" His hands have taken hers.

"Happier than you can know, just to be here with you," Marie's voice changed tone. "Babe, listen to that downpour! It reminds me of that time. Do you remember? You tried to play it so cool."

"Tried? I was the definition of suave. At least as suave as I could be, considering I could see straight through your clothes."

"My perfect gentleman."

"Sarah's getting married soon."

"Yeah. She wanted you to know how grateful she is."

"I knew they'd be perfect together."

"Are you cold, Marie?"

"It's warm enough. The blanket is a bed, your body is my comforter. The rain is my lullaby."

"Don't go to sleep yet."

"I feel like a little girl fighting it." There eyes should have been adjusting to the dark, but they were not. "Is all of this real?"

"Our feelings are, no matter what lies beneath."

"Or above, I suppose." They kissed, and their dreams drifted into the air, just outside the blanket. And the rain slogged on, marching forward, breaking against the roof, the walls. Under the floor was soil, dirt, and water.

One dream was radiant. A light seeped through the blanket, and it framed Marie's face in shadow. Finally, there was a light, and it reflected and framed Marie's face.

She was watching her feet, barefoot and flecked with pieces of wet grass. She was looking for Easter eggs, searching with a relentless, childish tenacity. There was one, cream-colored and polka dotted. She couldn't wait to brag; she was gonna have the most, the best, the prettiest.

But she didn't. She went off the trail, and there was a beautiful spider-lily flower. Red and bloody. She watched it, marveled at the way the petals sprang and dipped, crisscrossing. She was so taken aback that she lost track of time, and the children beat her.



"Marie, don't fall asleep," Johnathon said. "Stay awake a little longer." But Marie's eyes were no longer open.

[Frisk]

She asks them what they want and they say nothing. She asks again and they say nothing. The third time they answer honestly but she is exasperated and wishes they would have spoken up the first time. The phone goes off, and she hopes it is a certain handsome man. Mia and Alice grab at their sandwiches and rush off to pick out whatever table is most convenient. While paying, out of the corner of her eye, she sees them tearing into their sandwiches. Pieces of lettuce and tomato are being strewn all over the table. It does not concern her, because it’s the workers’ job to keep the place clean, not hers.

They can hold down the fort. She leaves them to their feast and makes a beeline for the bathroom. Words are exchanged, and the words aren’t entirely truthful. But the intentions behind the conversation are. Lisa will soon cheat on Mark with this man, and the thought thrills her. While sitting on the toilet, pretending to be at the grocery store, Lisa dreams of this man giving her an escape. She knows it won’t be, but she can nurse that heartbreak after she is satisfied.

She comes out of the bathroom and the beasts have abandoned the hunt to stare blankly out the window. Not for the first time, she wonders if one or both of them are defective. The way they press their nose to the glass, fogging it up, irritates her. The only thing outside is a heavy snowstorm, and she sees no beauty or grace in it.

“Sit down,” she says, and then turns to eat her own sandwich.

[Frisk]

Their mother had retreated to the bathroom. They sat side-by-side, faces turned to the window. Snow, snow, snow. It beat against the air in gentle, steadfast currents. The sun was shining, causing every small dot of white to glow and gleam with a fantastical brilliance. The snow directly outside was pulled to the left; the rest drifted to the right. And engulfed by the glittering diamonds, people were walking back and forth, oblivious to the beauty blooming and withering all around them. Separated by the window, no sound from that mysterious, tiny world made its way to them. Outside was a town that never made a sound, eternally caught in a blizzard but never blanketed in snow. Ghosts with familiar faces walked in the streets, never recognizing their life for what it was. It was a picture, a painting, an old memory. Darren winked, his skinny silhouette recognizable to both of them. Mia smiled at the specter, and Alice sucked in her breath. It was him, the real Darren who smiled like he loved the sun and the snow one and the same.

Then the snow died down, and their breath left their lips, staining the glass. Mother came out of the restroom.

[Frisk]

Alice was asleep, and Mia wished she wasn't. The wind moved gently through the leaves outside, stirring something old and familiar in Mia. If Alice was awake, she could get at this feeling by talking things out. Instead,she listened, and once the first drops of rain began to beat across the window, she could no longer tell if she was awake or asleep.

Lightning cleaved the night and stars; first one, and then the other. Mia sank deeper into the cover, languidly listening as the wind began to call for something. Its voice was shrill, and reminded Mia of a teapot whistling, like in the movies. The sound grew muffled and the night became still, and it was dark under the cover, but Mia felt Alice there, breathing lightly.


Once, back in the old house, they had built a campfort in the corner, with a foundation made by two couches' sides and a cover placed across. There was also a stick propping the blanket up that would probably (definitely) fall by the end of the night. It was hot and a little stuffy, and the house was full with friends of Mia and Alice's parents, friends that the kids ignored in favor of their own world.

Darren was over, and he laid on the pallet spread out on the floor of the campfort. He was lookin' at the ceiling, with his hands dug into the folds of the quilt for added warmth. Alice was sitting up with her back against one couch side, reading. It was an old picture book their mom had found. Her feet were buried under Darren. Sleep wordlessly stalked her, inching ever closer, closing the distance between her eyelids.

Mia was leaned against a wall, making careful strokes of nail polish on her toes. The bottle was balanced (badly) on the blanket, and it fell over at a slight brush of Mia's leg when she went to switch feet. Time froze, the world greyed out. A thousand screaming yells from Mia's mother began to echo in her mind. The polish was already soaking into the quilted blanket.

For a few breathless moments Mia stared at the mess, hoping she would blink and it would be gone. No such luck. So, doing the only thing she could think of, she went to work covering it up. Panic time was over; it was time to take action.
In a graceful and smooth stretch she arced her legs over the spill, and took a quick look around. Nobody suspected a thing. As inconspicuously as she could, she reached for the bottle with her hand. Once she had it, she pinched a small fold of the quilt and pulled it over the spill to hide it.

"Well I'm thirsty. I'm going to go get some tea. You guys want some?" she asked.

"No thanks. Also, Alice is asleep," Darren said.

"Bring warm milk. Got you," Mia said, before crawling out of the campfort.

She walked through the living room as a ghost, ignoring and being ignored by those around her. Mr. Motes and Tabbie were sitting on the couch in the living room, laughing as Harold (was that his name?) danced to the music.

"What do you need, doll?" Some guy definitely unknown to Mia, with a red face and lots of scabs, asked her when she got to the kitchen.

"A glass of tea.' When he got up to get it, she slid the polish onto a shelf and grabbed a dry rag from beside the sink. She tucked it into her pocket and went back to the fort. When Darren wasn't looking she placed it on the stain and spent the rest of the night sitting on top of it, hoping very hard the problem would go unnoticed. At the end, she didn't remember much, just the feeling of the three of them close together under the covers, falling asleep as the room moved on into a party that could not comprehend or care about their world.


Looking back on it, Mia realized Alice was always the one who fell asleep first. Mia thought about how the sound of falling rain was such a lovely song. She dug back out of the covers in time to watch lightning flash and shed light across the room.
Darren was there, staring up at the ceiling just as he had that night. But the light left, and Mia saw his outline fog over and melt into the corners and shadow of the room. She worried that in the morning her mind would mix what she had seen with the memory she had called up, and that's just what happened. She couldn't shake the feeling, as unremembered dreams began to hone in, that it would be unforgivable to let that happen.