Liminal

Tess Hick

Man, fuck January. The girl flexes her fingers inside her mittens. The metal bench is cold, and the Light Rail won’t arrive for another eight minutes. The station is empty, but the city goes on around her. A car squeaks through an intersection. In the distance, horns honk. Across the street, a woman walks by with a German Shepherd. The girl tracks her progress until the woman reaches the end of the block and turns, and is no longer visible. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and checks again. Still eight minutes. A memory stirs of a dog. It must have been in New Jersey. New Jersey comes to her in flashes of ocean and a small white house. She tucks her head down against the cold and tries to remember. She’s seen the dog in pictures, laying next to her on the linoleum kitchen floor, gap-toothed grin pointed at the camera. She painted the dog, once. That was it. Spilled blue fingerpaint on its light brown fur until it looked like a Pollock. She snorts at the memory. They must have left the dog when they moved, but she was young and only remembers the red balloon her parents got her and tied to the back of the car in order to get her in it. It had worked, because she was four and didn’t understand what moving meant.

She checks her phone again. Six minutes, and a text from her friend Oliver. She’ll reply later, she tells herself. Her fingers are too frozen now, yeah that’s it. She pushes away guilt. She should be happy for him, she tells herself forcefully.

New Jersey winters were the only other ones she had, and it was never this fucking cold there. In San Fran the bay brought in morning mist but even in December it cleared. In Florida it snowed once when she was in seventh grade and school was let out for a week. Here winter never ends. She checks her phone again. Six minutes, and a text from her friend Oliver. She’ll reply later, she tells herself. Her fingers are too frozen now, yeah, that’s it. She pushes away guilt. She should be happy for him, she tells herself forcefully. He got into a good school in California and he’s doing cool shit. Same with Elodie at NYU. Sarah at University of Boulder. Zach at Reed. All doing cool shit, she thinks. Ultimate Frisbee. Skiing in the morning and then surfing in the afternoon. Posting pictures of their plays and picnics with their friends. She knows they still love her. She knows they still love her. It sounds forced, even to her. She shoves her phone back in her pocket. Only one year of age difference fucks stuff up.

Her mind is beginning to numb along with her body. She’s seen no one since the German Shepherd, and is running out of things to think about. She starts to catalog the people who came into work today. The little kid with the monkey-backpack leash. The quiet woman with what must be waistlength red hair intricately pulled up in a bun. The elderly couple from Canada. She gets stuck on them. She had leaned over the counter to hand them their pin-on badges so they could enter the art gallery, and asked false-cheery, “so are you from around here?” The woman had taken the pins and looked lovingly at her husband.

Light Shadow Anna Perleberg

“Are you from here, darling?”

“We’re just passing through, aren’t we, sweetheart?”

He nodded. “Why not take a look around while we’re here, eh?”

They were driving down to Chicago to see their grandson graduate from college. Minneapolis was a necessary stopover, to stay the night.

Gentle snow begins to fall, pulling her again out of her reverie, and she looks up at the slate sky. It hasn’t snowed since December. What’s left is frozen into gray heaps by the side of the road. She looks across the street, but the snow ends several feet in front of her. She reaches out, into the whirl. It’s not snowing. A shift in wind brought what little icy powder was left rushing down off the top of the Light Rail shelter. It settles quickly, and looks as if nothing has changed. There are no cars on the gray street. There are no lights on in the windows in the dusk, no leaves on the black trees, reaching towards the blank sky with no snow left to fall. Maybe she should want to cry. She doesn’t. So she sits, curled into herself in search of any warmth left, waiting for a train.

“Are you from here darling?”

She answers herself. “Just passing through.”

// Ben Atmore

Long long ago, there was no such thing as Night. All the world was bright and Day reigned over the earth. People sang and praised Day, for He was warm and light, and they had never known anything different.

One time, a darkness appeared in the Sky, and the people looked up to see that Day had gone. He was nowhere to be seen. The Sky spoke to them and it’s voice was cold and harsh.

“I am Night. Day has abandoned you, so now I come to rule over you.”

The people cried,

“We want Day back! Bring Him back! Where did He go?”

To which Night replied,

“He has gone far far away from you. He abandoned you because He does not love you. He simply uses you as entertainment.”

The people were furious at their treatment: they thought Day was kind, but Night had convinced them otherwise. She told them that Day left them because He had grown bored of them; that they weren’t good enough for Day.

But Day did not leave His people. He was forced out by Night. She had banished him to the Nothing, and He looked on as she lied to His friends, deceiving them into thinking he left.

Back on earth, it began to turn cold, for there was no light to keep things warm. Night blew chilling winds which howled through trees and battered people as they walked. The people looked up at Night and said,

“Why is it cold? Is Day doing this? He’s supposed to keep us warm.”

Night was confused: she did not know what “warm” meant. She lied to the people, saying,

“Yes! Day has taken your warmth away!”

Then, people started to cry. They were cold and quite uncomfortable. Night did not know what to do. She tried to comfort them saying,

“I will sort this out, not to worry!”

And in saying so, she took off. She sped to the Nothing and asked Day to help her.

“Explain to me what ‘warm’ means, for the people say that it is gone.”

Day told her, “Warm is a feeling in which it feels like all the Oranges and Reds and Yellows are wrapping themselves around you.”