amelia l. hall, UNTITLED
FREEZING ICARUS zach busch
Chapter 1 The homeless man sitting outside my building has a face with lines like soldiers’ trenches and his beard is a mass of gray clinging to his chin like a dead animal stuck on with glue. Flecks of soot and dust have work their way so deep into his skin that they have become a part of his complexion. His clothes are draped over his bones rather than worn, and the smell coming off him—that unnatural odor that comes from weeks without washing—scrambles its way up my nostrils, making me gag. He hasn’t moved in half an hour; a life spent sitting on concrete steps and sleeping in old subway terminals has a way of making a person patient, I suppose. I can’t stop thinking about him. Always outside, sitting, waiting for something. I wonder if he even knows what he’s waiting for, sitting there with that weathered trumpet in his chapped hands, metal so tarnished it looks black. I wonder what I’m waiting for. Part of me desperately wants me to return to the window and see if he’s still there. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Like when you’re lying in your bed and your closet door
is open, and you feel like something’s in there, watching you. And you want to get up and see where the noise is coming from, but you can’t bring yourself to do it, because a part of you is afraid of what you’ll find in there. I feel like I’ve seen the homeless man before, in a nightmare, in the instant before waking up with my heart pounding. And in that final instant of the dream, I knew something horrific, something I forgot as soon as I woke up. I’m staring at the window, wondering whether to look out of it or not, when there’s a knock. I’m jolted as if from a dream. The knock at the door that shocks me to my senses is the beating of a heart high on adrenaline. The sound of irrationality with a purpose. Frantic. Fluttering. I stand on legs weighed down by sand on a floor that seems to tilt, even though I only slept about half an hour, and make my way to the sound. The apartment is a warzone. The debris littering the floor tells stories.The yawning window taunts me with the stormy air it invites in and I don’t remember opening it. I wonder how long it’s been like that. I wouldn’t know. Now at the door and struggling to say
upright, my mind races while I turn the handle— I’m in that half-dream state where nothing makes sense and everything makes sense, where I’m aware of the state of things but my mind is still explaining it with dream-logic. So when my hand opens the door for me without consulting my brain, I’m ready for anything. Well, anything except this. Seeing Colette’s silhouette in the door gives me that horrible dream sensation of falling. There’s a long pause as we stare into each other’s eyes. At least I’m staring into her eyes—she’s staring in my direction, but it feels like she’s looking past me. Through me. Her eyes do that.They pull me over the edge of something that was once safe. Finally: “What are you doing here?” I say, stupidly. There’s nothing else to say. She doesn’t move. She stands perfectly still, at a strange angle with the floor like her body doesn’t need to obey gravity. I know that look in her eyes, her eyes that look like an artist’s long strokes. It’s a look of absolute, mind-bending terror, a look of seeing the world and not recognizing a thing. I’ve seen her like this before, when she works herself too hard. But