It started with a feeling of gentle discomfort, of suggested motion, a piece of string tied around her back molars that began pulling tight. Tighter. Painfully tight.
This way, turn this way, the feeling seemed to say. Confused at first, and then, yes, the spike of anger she knew would come. Finally, resignation. Maybe a little giddiness? A child-like satisfaction in finally learning something vast and secret. Because it had been kept from her. Not on purpose, she knew. It just…hadn’t been her time.
Well, her time was now, it seemed.
A Thursday afternoon. Tuna melt awaiting, crispy and gooey both. Iced coffee, sweetened beyond a human norm. The last few chapters of Fervent Hearts Forever. She’d been saving that, too. For the right time.
Ah well, the feeling said.
Move it.
No purse, no scarf. No make-up, nor cellphone. Not even a post it note for her daughter, or her sister, who’d come to live with them after her husband had been pulled away. They’d know what had happened, no need to rub it in. Besides, they could always come visit, right?
Just because no one had, didn’t mean they couldn’t try. Right?
Not for her to worry about. She trusted Tessa with Phillipa. In many ways, her daughter preferred cool aunt Tessa to her overbearing mother. Maybe they’d become even closer once she was gone.
Ah, but she was stalling. The string around her teeth pulled harder, insistent. Come now, don’t make us yank, the string said. Pain pulsed through her gums, a wet, pink warning. Time to go.
Cheese cooling and coagulating, mayo-drowned tinned fish, iced coffee losing its chill at a rapid pace, heartthrob and broken heart just about to resolve it all—she left everything behind.
It was her time to join the pile. So off she went, a cold curiosity driving her as much as her aching jaw.
How far was it again? She hadn’t been into town in weeks.
That’s okay, she knew she could use the walk. If the stories were true, she wouldn’t be walking again.
•••
It was a nice walk. Farther than she remembered. But she hadn’t gone on a walk in God knew how long, especially towards town. Once the pile had gotten to a certain size, the town council had begun to usher citizens towards other streets. It would have been a shame that the butcher and the laundromat were out of business, but both Mrs. Finch, and Ms. Carpenter, had joined the pile early on, so, she didn’t think they minded.
Or did they? She had no clue. A lot of observers had likened the pile to dying. They don’t come back! They don’t talk! They don’t move!
But c’mon, clearly no one was dead. When she passed the pile, she saw people she knew in there, yeah. Except a lot of them were smiling. Many of them had their eyes open, looking at the sky like it was the best and only thing in the world. She even saw a few people holding hands! Total strangers.
Yeah, no. The pile wasn’t killing anyone. That would have sent everyone into a true panic, she knew.
It was just…insistent. That’s all. It wanted. Wanted in a deep way. And something in her, walking towards it now, understood that.
Hadn’t she wanted deeply once before? Hadn’t it been so long since she had been wanted?
She entered the pile’s shadow before she reached the thing itself. She hadn’t been this way in a few weeks. Getting awfully high, wasn’t it? From the looks on the face of the attendant before her, it wasn’t a concern. Or at least not a very big one.
Walking closer, she heard dozens of voices coming from the pile. She’d never gotten this close, she realized. Huh. Interesting. No words. Some humming. Slurring. Moaning. The faint grind of teeth. Someone deep in the pile might have been singing. But if they were, they were muffled by all the bodies above and around and beneath them.
The attendant smiled as she approached. Big cartoon eyes. Dark hair pinned up. Clipboard. Khakis and a green button down, like a park ranger. Wore a pin that said, “Ask Me About The Pile!”
“Helloooo! Are you Ann Marie?” she said, smiling and looking down at the clipboard. “I’m seeing an Ann Marie here, coming from the Dillard’s Plaza area south of town. Is that you, miss?”
It took her a second to remember that was her name. For all the times it was said, with all the spectrum of random emotion, she thought her name had just become Mom. “Yeah, that’s me,” she said, relieved that some part of her remained Ann Marie. “That’s my name.”
The woman wiped her brow in mock relief. “Well, thank goodness! The pile would have been quite unhappy if you were someone else. It really doesn’t like when randos just come waltzing over like tourists or curious little birds.” She made a shooing motion with her clipboard. “Get outta here, little birds! The pile will call you when its ready!”
Her laugh was a little too exuberant. If she, Ann Marie, were an unkind person, she’d describe this attendant as annoying. But she liked to think she thought she was a kind person, and so the word she landed on was…plucky.
“So…um, it tells you? When certain people are supposed to come here? To…it?”
The attendant went still. Looked at her.
A light flickered in the attendant’s eyes. A sharp caustic petulance that was not there before. Or had been hidden. “Well, well, well. Look who has questions right before her big moment! You want to stand around for answers while you’ve the pile right here, waiting for you? Wanting you?”
She felt her heartbeat in her jaw. Thundered through her, once, twice; bigger, louder. The pull on her molars was tightening, like a fist around ripe fruit. Insistent, that word again. Insistent. And demanding.
But she’d always wanted to know…
A reflexive spasm of pain jerked one leg forward; her knee lifted but she didn’t lift it. Oh, but she was curious! And if the pile really was what the rumors said, would…would she even be able to ask anything ever again?
Through the pain, each tooth hot in her mouth, roots aching, she said, “Why me? Why now? That’s all, please!”
The pain stopped. Gone. Swept away, a magician wiping their deck of cards clear from the felt table while the audience bled from their eyes and ears.
There was a look in the attendant’s eye. But it was not that light from before. If anything, she would swear it was relief. “Oh, that’s all? Oh, Ann Marie, we can answer that! That we can answer. The pile doesn’t like too many questions, you see, but we can make an exception.”
She ran a thin, pale finger down the crisp paper. “Ann Marie Carrero, age 56, 127 Dillard’s Plaza, Apartment 5B, Blood Type O-, ah, okay there we go! You got called because of a one Clarissa Stinson.”
“Oh…and who is that?”
Staring. Unblinking.
Then the smile came back. But Ann Marie recognized how it had shifted. This smile was the one she tended to give her own daughter. The “Oh, honey,” smile. The one her own mother had given her when asked something decidedly…silly. Which was just her word for stupid.
“Clarissa Stinson?” she said, as though that should shake her into remembering. “She sat behind you? Freshmen chemistry? Played with your hair because she said she thought it was pretty, but you always kind of thought it was because she was jealous or something? Because, you said, she had, ‘seaweed hair,’ whatever that meant, but it made your friend Patty laugh, so you never stopped saying it.”
Ann Marie’s hand went through her hair. It was thinning; more morning fog than dawn ray in color. It used to be thick. Golden. Age was taking it from her, like it took everything. And yes, she did remember. The horrible shiver of a different hand tangled in it. Petting her; cold little fingers. Like a dead child pawing for her brain. Ann Marie would whirl around each time, hoping to catch her.
But the limp hand was always drawn back, gone but not forgotten, like a ghost.
Unconsciously, she’s holding the back of her neck, as though protecting it. “Why would…what does she have to do with me? With…it?”
Patience was wearing thin. The attendant’s lips pinched in, a sour taste somewhere in her mouth. “You’ll see. You will. I promise. Some stuff just can’t be answered, Ann Marie. Sometimes, you just need to lie down. And in rest, you’ll…get it. Okay? Why don’t you rest?” she asked.
At least that’s what her mouth said.
Her eyes seemed to say, You rest. I can’t.
Or maybe won’t.
The hugest wrench of pain through her, then. Molars, eyeteeth, uvula, front teeth, eyelashes, the specific and intimate details of her face, her skull, pulled. Taut as a piano wire around a windpipe.
Her skull pulsed, a searing, terrifying pain, like the meat of her brain was being bulldozed in one direction, one direction only.
Toward the pile.
Hundreds and hundreds of bodies. Maybe even thousands; she’d heard people had started drifting in from over the state line.
People she knew. Waiting, breathing, eyes open, mouths ajar, nostrils flaring every few moments.
If this was rest, Ann Marie didn’t want it.
But pain didn’t care for what you wanted or didn’t want. She wished she could say otherwise, had lived a life brave enough to resist. But she knew: pain went away when you submitted. When you had the strength to give in.
And goddamn it, she had that strength.
She knew if she didn’t choose to lie down, she would soon have no choice at all.
Wasn’t that the scarier thing?
Without a word, she winced at the attendant, an admission of apology, a sorry for not understanding your pain in all this.
She moved, step by step, toward, onto, into the pile.
Her feet stepped on people. She crushed throats of all kinds, felt testicles here and there slide out from under her thin-soled sandals, lips smearing, ears bending. She thought walking on people was going to be the worst part. But the worst part was that no one reacted. Like she crawled across landscape, living scenery.
When she slipped, catching herself on an old man’s face, she felt a finger enter and grip at the corner of his eye, nail touching the jelly, blood welling and falling like tears. He was silent, staring at the sun.
Despite the horror, Ann Marie could not stop. She waded into the pile as far as she could and when she fell, she crawled. Groped at shoulders, using the flesh of breasts and bellies and belt buckles, thighs, armpits, and shoelaces, like a mountain climber found cracks in the stone as they ascended. So many hands. Some hands so much like her own, she could’ve already been in this pile and not known.
Oh, god. God, what was she doing?
Resting, her teeth said, reeling her in.
If this was rest, why did she shake with effort, with the physical bravery crawling toward death required of you?
Ann Marie lost track of how long she’d been crawling. At a certain point, she had crawled inside the pile. A little hollow made of dozens of limbs—hairy, withered, pale, dark, cold, all of them so, so cold. She despaired as her breath steamed in front of her, as though it was winter inside the pile.
And it was. A different season within. An alien world.
When she stopped moving, she didn’t know. Or didn’t realize until she felt her heart begin to slow.
Wow, she thought. I’m in the pile. This is so weird. We’re all in this pile.
And she was. They were. Who was she, anyway? Ann Marie? A name. Names were nothing, useless. Little sounds bound together by intent, utterances from mouths of beings who were so scared of not knowing everything that they made little sounds for everything. Catalogues of sounds. Language. Disgusting language. Language for beast and burden, thought and emotion, restrictions on time that were not dawn and dusk, nor noon or midnight, when stars were soft or when they rioted across dark sky.
People, they thought, as one, as what remained of her, people were so worried. At all times, that astringent fear, sharp and hot and eager, a needle entering the hungry vein.
Bless and thank the nameless totality, the unvarnished and unraveled all which sat at the center and bottom and top and all of this pile of us. For in them, in all of them, we all feel it: peace. Happiness. Rest.
The dregs of Ann Marie knew now. Knew why Clarissa had thought of her as Clarissa herself had ceased. As the dregs of Ann Marie felt her fingers begin to melt and fuse with the meat of a leg, felt her stomach slowly liquify onto the orbital bone of an old man below her, dripping, solidifying, building up slowly like a stalagmite which would one day reconnect to the shell that had been her…she wished she could thank Clarissa, who she knew was four hundred and nine feet north by northwest, on top of a girl the dregs of Ann Marie had seen skin her knee at the pool last year, who was not there anymore the way the dregs of Ann Marie would not be there soon…Ann Marie, whoever that was, must have been so damn miserable. She must have been so sad, so, so sad for Clarissa to think of her and want this for her.
Because right now, she felt a bliss that was so overwhelming, she almost wished she could take Clarissa in her arms, the coolness of her somehow always damp hair, and whisper in the nape of her clammy, cold neck, thank you, thank you, I’ve wanted this and never knew how to ask for something on some level I never expected to find, let alone deserve.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
She got it.
As the last of her exhaled and faded, like wisps of smoke fleeing a crushed cigarette butt, she thought, I have to do something with this knowledge. I have to pass this on. It’s only right.
You know who she thought had always been sad? Who had been like her when she had been a her and not a blissful body in a pile? That one guy at the post office, whose shirts were a little too small for him, whose cheeks were just always kind of bristly and red? Who said have a nice day like, actually go kill yourself fuckface?
What was his name…Ch—Chuck? Charles?
Oh, Charlie.
Charlie Wyndham.
Charlie, you have to experience this.
Charlie, I promise.
You’re never going to be so sad again.
The dregs of Ann Marie finished flushing down the drain of a system she found herself so thrilled to be a part of. A system, she knew instinctively, that could flush those last dregs anywhere she wanted.
Smiling in the way the damned smile, the little trickles of Ann Marie’s final act of consciousness made their way to Charlie Wyndham, who sat in his little apartment burning a can of beans and weeping, pistol on the couch eager and waiting, and Ann Marie wrapped herself around the little bottom molars of his mouth, and with the touch of an angel, gently pulled.
