“MILKING IT,” CONTINUED... Stepping off the train at my new town with the jar of dirt in one hand and the handle to my roller suitcase in the other, I didn’t make eye contact with any of the guards, standing in periodic posts along the station. I didn’t say anything when one of them grabbed a young woman wearing a polka dot dress up from one of the benches and put the barrel of their gun against her low back and shouted for her to keep walking. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to draw any extra attention to the jar but I knew that was bullshit, knew it in the wobble of my knees when one of them stopped me anyway. He grabbed me by the shoulder and twisted me back and I let my face collapse into the most feminine, droopy half-smile I could muster. “Miss, you know I’m going to have to ask you what that is.” Play the widow. I forced myself to look up at the guard. Of course, all I could see was my own face reflected in his sunglasses, the brim of his hat, and without looking down, the gun on his holster. “This?” I heard my own voice break and wished Meg was there to hear how well I was doing. “This is from my hometown. I’ve been — I’ve always been married to the same guy and then he died and I — I learned about the curse —” “The curse?” “You know, a superstition.” I stared hard at his face until my eyes started to water on their own, and then I let go of my suitcase and rubbed my knuckles against the lids, pulling down, trying to force out a complete set of tears. “Everyone knows about it. It’s just something you have to do to shed misfortune, to — oh God, I’m sorry.” Now I wasn’t really trying to act. Now I squeezed my eyes shut and I really did see Henry’s glasses on the dining table. And what else? A book? No, he didn’t have a book out. It was something else. Newspaper, maybe. Everything got taken away so fast. “It was Henry who told me about it. Seems like I owe it to him.” “Uh, yes —” The guard turned away from me, shuffling his feet. “Okay, sure. Just — don’t cry. Here —” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a light blue plastic bag. Like everything here, it had an arrow swooping across it like a grin. “Carry it in this and no one else will ask you about it. You know where you’re going?” “Yes. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.” I stepped away with my bag and my suitcase and walked the rest of the way off the platform and to my new house without further incident. I thought the only thing I had to worry about was the guards. I thought that once my jar of dirt was protected in plastic branded by the corporation, nothing else could touch me.
*** The first day not taking my lactation medicine, I felt mostly the same. Maybe a little bit dizzier. I just wanted a phone so I could tell Meg how it went but nothing here was set up yet. Just the basic furniture and food. No wifi. I was alone with the jar of dirt but I didn’t dare touch it except to slip the pills in. That very first morning, the guard looked inside the plastic bag and asked me about the dirt, but I only had to explain it once and then it blended into the house effortlessly. Meg was right. About everything. I should have been wearing white and drinking wine back when I lived near her. Even though I knew it would be useless, I sat on the couch and turned on the TV. Right there, in stunning HD even though there was
16 INLANDER OCTOBER 28, 2021
no internet or cable, was the man himself. The CEO. He stood at the edge of a green field, a dilapidated, cartoonish looking barn behind him. His bald head prickled pink. He had the chain of one of the silver dog tag necklaces in his hand. I brought my fingers to my own, felt the engraving with my number and the loop of the laser cut bell shape. Meg never wore hers. I don’t know why, but I kept mine on. “Hi, there.” The CEO spoke like him and I were in a confidential board meeting. “When my company decided to take on climate change, we knew there was only one place to start. Factory farming in the United States was one of the largest contributors to —” I grabbed the remote off the side table and shut him off.
*** The second night, after I cooked myself the pre-portioned stir fry set up in the fridge, I laid down on the couch and stared at the ceiling fan until I fell asleep. Something was slightly off with it, so when it rotated around to the top it gave a little clicking noise. I followed the thread of that clicking noise into the dark until I came out the other side into silence. A green field, but this time, the cows were back. They saw me in their space and they all turned at the same time. I knew I should be afraid but I wasn’t, just kept walking toward them. The grass was tall. It scratched at the skin around my ankles and shins and I kept going. Was it still a stampede if you welcomed it? Was it still my body if it fed no one? The cows kept coming closer and they were loud. Louder than the train whistle or the pounding on the door every morning when the guards came to check my pill bottles and my trash cans. The clicking. The ceiling fan and the clicking came back and I snapped awake, sucking in air. My whole body felt like it had been electrocuted, like every nerve ending was firing off at the same time. A nightmare. God, I hadn’t had a nightmare since — “Since you were sixteen and started taking the pills.” I jumped, throwing down the blanket I took from my bed to the couch and spun around. There, at the kitchen table (identically round as the one in my old house where his reading glasses sat after his body had begun decomposing) was Henry. “Impossible. You’re —” “Dead. Oh, Vee.” The light above the table was on, but the rest of the house was dark, casting strange shadows across the bottom of his face. I moved toward him but he pulled back. “No. It’s best if you stay over there.” “Why —Henry, I —” “Vee, I can’t believe you would do this.” “Do what? The pills? I — it was Meg’s idea. I didn’t know they were suppressing nightmares, or whatever they were doing. I’ll take them if you want me to, Henry.” “You don’t know anything.” I couldn’t see him anymore but I knew from the tone of his voice he was shaking his head. “Henry? Henry?” I turned on every light like I could pin the
“My whole body felt like it had been electrocuted, like every nerve ending was firing off at the same time.”
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in Spokane, Lauren Gilmore writes speculative fiction for YA and adult readerships. Her short story “Clotting” was featured in the HAUNTED edition of The Hayden’s Ferry Review. She is currently pursuing her MA in Literature and Social Justice from Lehigh University where she is bridging her interests in the digital humanities, American horror literature, feminist studies, and writing pedagogy. Her reported and analytical writing has recently appeared online in Horror Homeroom and Collider.
