An Episode of Remnants.

Content Warnings

• Descriptions of terminal illness
• References to serious injury
• Internalised ableism
• Depictions of characters with PTSD
• Allusions to sex
• Implications of suicidal ideation
• References to murder, including descriptions of premeditation
• References to drug misuse
• References to death as a result of drug misuse

Transcript

[FIRE CRACKLES, AN OMINOUS HUM RISING]

APPRENTICE
Sir. Sir, who wouldn’t you have let go?

SIR
I— I can’t I—

APPRENTICE
Talk to me. Please. I need to understand, you can’t keep—

SIR
I don’t know! I have tried so hard not to. Tore it all away.

APPRENTICE
Sir. It’s alright, please I—

[SIR GASPS]

APPRENTICE
It’s okay. I’m here. Talk to me.

SIR
Your hands…

APPRENTICE
Yeah, I— fuck. Your face, you, oh my god. Sir.

SIR
There are scars on your palms.

APPRENTICE
You’ve never had a— there wasn’t a— your face.

SIR
I hid it.

APPRENTICE
Why?

SIR
I didn’t want you to see.

APPRENTICE
Why?!

SIR
I was afraid. None of this was meant to be for me! I only wanted— I just—

APPRENTICE
It’s okay. I— it’s okay.

SIR
What do you see?

APPRENTICE
A— a face. Your face. Scars, smooth under my fingers. Taut and mottled at the edges. Your eyes. Like fog, filled with stars and— and everything I—

[WHOOSH]

The last day I remember, I am sitting in the window and I can feel the breeze upon my face. It is autumn, I can smell it. He comes in and runs his hand along my shoulders. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’ he asks.
‘I wanted to see the garden,’ I tell him. ‘It’s funny, when I woke up, I was so sure I’d be able too. Then I opened the curtains and it still wasn’t there.’
‘It’s there,’ he promises me. ‘I can take you out, if you want.’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘No. I think I’ll need to sleep again soon.’
Elio rests his cheek against mine. I reach up and feel the lines on his face, the scruffy beard that’s grown in there. He tells me it is still as jet black as when he was twenty, but I know he’s lying. He tells me my hair isn’t grey, either. He tells me it’s as blue as the sky. He tells me my eyes are blue, too, and there are stars caught in my pupils, but he also tells me I am beautiful. He’s always been a liar. I wonder if that it is what it means to love. Reality is too bland for it.
He helps me into bed and lies beside me. I rest a hand on his chest, one side rising, the other still, as always. I think of you as he buries his face in my hair. I wonder if he knows. I wonder if he thinks of you too, caught between us like a held breath. He will read your daughter’s poem at my funeral, he says. He has promised me a dozen times. I know he won’t make it to the end. That’s alright. I prefer it this way.

[WHOOSH]

He’s run a bath for me, he calls. I trail my hand down the wall, breathe the steam deep. I find his arm on the lip of the bath and shake my head, try to be disapproving. ‘I thought this was for me,’ I say.
‘It is. Get in.’
The tub is not large enough for both of us, and my limbs are upset at being asked to fold around his, but we manage it.
‘We’re too old for this,’ I say.
‘Shut up,’ Elio scolds, flicking water in my face. I send a cascade towards him. ‘Jesus! You’ll flood the whole house.’
‘You should be grateful my aim is so bad.’
‘That’s understating it,’ says Elio.
‘Fuck you!’ I slosh more water at him and he cackles. ‘Shh! You’ll set the dog off.’
‘I shut her in the kitchen,’ he tells me.
‘Great. So she’ll start barking anyway.’
‘Not for an hour or two. I gave her three sausages for her supper.’
I try to look disapproving, but Elio just laughs.
‘You worry too much,’ he says.
‘She’s getting old.’
‘So are we, and you never worry about us having too many sausages.’
‘We’re not dogs.’
Elio gives a half-convincing bark, grabs my arm, closes his teeth just above my wrist. The feeling disappears over the scar down the centre of my forearm. The bite turns softer, lips instead of teeth, water sloshing onto the tiled floor as Elio moves to press his mouth against the crook of my arm, the centre of my chest, the top of my stomach. He stops at the mess of scars between my hips. I can dimly feel his hand in the dip on my thigh where the muscle is missing. The silence goes on so long that I want to crack open Elio’s skull and drink his thoughts like soup.
‘Elio.’
‘I’m thinking,’ he whispers.
‘About what?’
’See, I’d take you apart right here, but I think it’d murder my back.’
I laugh so hard I slosh more water onto the floor. Below us, the dog has started barking in the kitchen. I drop my head back, listen to Elio scrubbing himself clean. I let him wash my hair, relish his nails against my scalp.
‘Help me up,’ I say, when I’m done.
‘Yes, sir.’ He pulls me to my feet, both of us groaning a little. We stand pressed together, warm and damp and naked. Frightful sight to any poor soul who’d walk in, I’m sure.
Elio sighs. He rests his head against my shoulder. I wind my fingers through his hair.

[WHOOSH]

We walk along the path the woods, close enough that when we turn, the backs of our hands brush together. Every time, I smile, but I think about another life where I could take his hand without worrying. It is unlikely anything bad would happen were I to take it now, but a lifetime of training myself to swallow the instinct prevents me from closing the gap. Instead, I relish his knuckles against mine and smile.
A little boy runs ahead of us along the path. His mother chats about his schoolwork, about letter’s she’s received from your granddaughter. Elio has only one photograph of you when you were a child. He has described it to me, how small you look, bundled into a hospital bed, bruised, your limbs sealed in casts. I wonder what your life would be if it had started like the little boy ahead of us when he asks us to stop walking. ‘It’s a stone, resting,’ he says. His grandmother laughs, and so does Elio. I crouch at the edge of the path and the boy guides my hand to the resting stone. It’s cool under my fingers, but his hand on my wrist is startlingly warm. I find grooves and dirt and a slick strip of moss. ‘Careful, don’t wake him,’ says the boy, and then he lets me go and skips away.
I wonder who he will grow into. I dream a whole life for him, long and happy and real. I hope those hands hold hands that love him. I hope nobody ever puts a gun in them. I hope they’re only used to show people stones resting at the edge of the path, and never to harm.

[WHOOSH]

I whistle as loud as I can, hope it doesn’t get lost in the tearing wind and hammering rain. I strain my ears for any sound of Meg’s paws in the mud, but all I hear are the confused sheep on the hillside. ‘Meg!’ I shout, like that could reach her any quicker. ‘Meg, come back!’
My voice is small and far away. I see something in the endless dark, a flash of light reflected on the muzzle of a gun. I haven’t seen that. I know it. I haven’t seen anything in forty years. But my heart hammers faster and my hand is closing around the keys in my pocket and even though it makes no sense, I’m fumbling on the ground for a gun that has not been in my hands since the day before they burned my eyes. I know the panic is ridiculous but I can’t make it stop, my palms are turning to ribbons on the hard stone ground as they reach for a weapon I don’t have like I’m back there in the fucking woods alone and cut off and nobody is coming. Nobody is coming.
‘Rhys!’ someone is shouting. ‘Rhys, what are you doing?!’
‘I saw— I saw—’
Distantly, a low, singular gunshot. Both of us go still.
‘It’s the gate,’ says Elio. ‘It’s the gate knocking into the post. We’re here, on your farm near Bangor, we’re here, not there. Nowhere else. We’re here.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘We have to go inside.’
‘No.’
‘Rhys!’
‘I can’t find the fucking dog!’
‘She’s inside, it’s alright! She was hiding in the coal shed from the rain, she’s filthy as anything and sopping wet. So are you.’
The gate knocks into the post again and Elio cringes against me. ‘Fuck,’ he hisses.
‘It’s the gate,’ I tell him, like my heart is not trying to burst its way out of my ears. ‘It’s the gate.’
‘I fucking know,’ says Elio. He hauls me to my feet.
We run back into the kitchen like we’re not already soaked. Elio slams the door, speaking fast and low and furious in Italian so I don’t catch a word of it.
‘I can do that too,’ I spit back in Welsh, ‘gallaf wneud hynny hefyd.’
‘Fuck off,’ he spits, French now. ‘Fuck you,’ he grumbles, in English.
We’re both breathing fast and hard. My whole body hurts. I’m blinking like it’ll clear the fog from my eyes but it won’t, it won’t. I can’t see, I can’t shoot. I’m useless. Then Elio coughs. It sends spiderwebs of guilt across my chest. I find my way to him, leaning over the sink, gripping the edge so tight his arms are shaking.
‘It’s alright,’ I tell him. ‘We’re safe here. Stand down, soldier.’
Elio coughs, spits into the sink. ‘It’s not even the fucking war.’
‘I know.’
Elio laughs but there’s no humour in it. ‘I don’t know it— of everyone I’ve shot he’s the only one I was fucking glad to.’
‘He’s the only one where it was planned, though. Everyone else, it was war, wasn’t it? But not him.’
Elio coughs more, spits again. I listen to the whoosh of air into the one side of his chest that still breathes it, find my way under his sodden shirt to touch the side that doesn’t.
‘I don’t regret it,’ he says.
‘Good.’
He turns to me, and before I can speak, his tongue is in my mouth. A hot thrill of pleasure down my spine. I know, in a dim, far off way, that I should stop him, but I have no will to as his hands roam across my chest, as we clatter backwards against the table. his hands are gone from the small of my back and I hear his belt buckle clatter.
‘Elio, Elio— I—’
‘I know, I’ve seen you naked.’
It’s such an absurd thing to say that I laugh. He arches against me.
‘You’ll have to talk me through it,’ he says into the skin of my neck. It should not be erotic but it is.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘I can do that.’

[WHOOSH]

Your family sits across the table from us. Elio has told me they look like you. I have to trust him in this, as I trust him in so many things. We drink wine and Elio makes conversation. The woman who is your granddaughter is quiet. The girls she has brought with her are not. They speak three languages and think nothing of it, switching between them as they speak to us, to their mother, to each other.
In the car on the way home my chest rumbles and a harsh, wet sound rips out of it. I don’t know why I’m crying. My mind still trips on the thought of you with a child. On the reach of your life beyond the few small parts I knew. How you seemed so alone and yet all those people we spent our evening with had yearned for you, each of them in their own, particular way.
‘Sometimes I worry he wasn’t real,’ I admit.
‘He was,’ says Elio.
The imagined versions of you follow us home, shaped by people who wanted to know you but didn’t. Elio tells me about his sister. He’s told me about her before, but this time it is different. I see the gap between the story he tells and who she must have been, even though she is not there to show it to me, even though there is no way to resolve it. The gap screams, like it screams between you and who those people dreamed you to be. Who I dreamed you to be. Who Elio does.
I do not want you to be a bleeding wound between us. I want you to be real and whole and alive. It is selfish to want. I don’t admit it out loud but I am sure Elio knows as he traces the lines of my face like he is blind, too. I think about the scars on your hands. I wish I didn’t know about them so my dream of you could be something different than what it is. I want to know you. I cannot. The wound bleeds.

[WHOOOSH]

A crash. A dog is barking. My heart is pounding and I’m reaching for my gun but there’s just handfuls of sheets and I can’t fucking see. What is this fog? Where am I? Warm and dry and… the smell of butter?
Shouting. A German soldier? No. Wrong language. He shouts again. Italian. Why? What. I thought Italy was… I can’t make anything line up in my head. The dog won’t stop barking. Why is there so much fog inside? Maybe it’s smoke, maybe everything is on fire, but why can’t I smell it, why— I have to get out. Where the fuck is my fucking rifle?! No time, no time, I have to go, get out, run, why can’t I fucking see, walls, stairs, door, handle, I—
‘Cristo!’ shouts the Italian. The dog is there, her wet tongue against my hand. I pull away, shrinking against the wall. It’s not just butter, there’s bacon, too. Bacon and eggs. The dog is whining, nudging her nose against my leg. I give her my hand back and she licks it again.
‘Meg,’ I say.
She yips. I sink down onto the stone floor and she clambers into my lap, licking my arms, my chest.
‘Meg,’ I say again. My heart’s still pounding. ‘I— the smoke. I can’t see.’
‘Rhys.’
I flinch at my name. Why does he know it? Why did he say it like that? Like he knows me, like he. Like he knows me. His hand on my shoulder, I pull away.
‘Sorry, sir,’ he says. The words sound clumsy on his tongue. I hear him swallow. ‘Maldetto, the breakfast!’
A pan clattering on the stove. A hiss of sizzling fat. He’s making me breakfast. Meg’s tail thumps against my leg. I wind my fingers into her dense fur and she pants happily, a steady rhythm under the ringing in my ears. Her ears are incredibly soft, the way all of her was when she was just a puppy. She’d been roughly the size of her own head, then. My old dog, Bryn, he’d found her so annoying, but he’d taught her quick. Now she knows me just as well as he did.
‘There was me, thinking this would be a nice way to thank you, and I scared the shit out of you,’ says the man. Elio. Elio is his name. It’s Elio.
I let out a shuddery laugh. ‘Just a bit.’
‘I burned my hand on the pan. It’s been a while since I tried to cook like this. I’d been living on noodles and restaurant food, since…’
You, before I made you what you are. When you were still real, still Eddy. Neither of us say his name. We haven’t, not for months, not since Elio left to kill Stephen Grenville. I don’t know what it feels like to Elio, but for me, it feels taboo. Like if I invoke him the careful plan we constructed around Grenville’s death will all unravel. That Elio will be back in the small bedroom where Eddy had slept before his death, silent and unmoving.
‘I hope it tastes good,’ I say.
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. You didn’t have any garlic.’
‘What do you want garlic for at breakfast time?’
‘You English people,’ Elio mutters.
’Not English.’
‘Apologies.’
I huff a laugh. The bacon is burned at the edges and the eggs are too crisp on the bottom, but they do taste good.
‘How is it?’ Elio asks, a real edge of nerves in his voice.
‘Room for improvement,’ I say.
Elio huffs a laugh. ‘Well. Don’t worry. I won’t be darkening your door much longer. I should probably get back to…’
To his life. Whatever it is he does. I’ve only picked up bits and pieces, but I don’t have the full picture. There is an ache in my chest I cannot name.
‘Where will you go?’ I ask.
‘Oh. I don’t know. There’s a long list of people on the… yeah. You know how it is.’
‘Of course,’ I say, though I don’t. I can’t swallow the eggs I’m chewing.
‘I’m sure you’ll be glad to see the back of me.’ Elio laughs.
‘I won’t. See, I mean.’
There’s an awkward beat, then Elio laughs again, soft and warm. ‘No, I suppose you won’t.Still I’m sure you’ve got lots to do.’
‘Yes. Busy. I—‘ I catch myself before I say it out loud. He doesn’t need to know about the rope in the rafters. No need to burden him with it.
‘If you need help, I could give you some money. He, uh. He. Left me some. Quite a lot. ’
‘No, no. You should spend it on yourself.’
‘Right. There’s an apartment, too, in Milan. I’m probably going to sell it. I— I’m sure he. If he’d. You know. If there was more time. I’m sure he’d have left you something too.’
There is a vast, desperate pit in my chest and I can’t keep it from sucking everything into it any longer. The perfectly fine eggs and bacon Elio went to all that trouble to cook for me are splattering out onto my plate and he’s saying my name, mystified, as I push up from the table and clumsily try to clean everything up and I feel so stupid. Meg is winding around my legs like she thinks I’m going to have another attack of shell shock even though all we’ve done is talk about the fucking lambs and an apartment in Milan, I don’t even know where Milan is and—
‘It’s in Italy,’ says Elio.
A cold, numb horror spreads through me as I realise I’ve said all that out loud.
‘You’re not stupid,’ says Elio.
‘Just useless,’ I whisper.
‘Definitely not that.’
I want to throw the plate I’m holding. I want to tear the sink out of the counter and throw it through the window I can’t fucking see out of. I wish I’d managed to die before this stupid morning, before Elio started speaking again. Before he came back from London. Before he left. Before he arrived. Before Eddy fucking died and I couldn’t save him. Before I let him into the house. Before he ever came here to find me. Before I’d left the hospital. Before I’d left the prison camp. Before they burned out my eyes and cut off my fucking dick. Before they found me in that fucking tree. Before I ever went to fucking war.
‘You wish you’d never met me?’ asks Elio, and he sounds so small and sad and broken that I want to scream and put my whole body through a pane of glass. ‘I don’t wish that,’ he says, louder, fiercer. He means it. ‘I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.’
‘I killed him,’ I say, and the words are wet and wobbly and ridiculous. ‘It’s my fault, it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have— it’s my fault. I killed him. I killed him.’
‘No, no, no. It was an accident, Rhys, it was an accident.’ His hands are on my back and they’re so fucking warm. I bet he’s beautiful. I bet he’s the most beautiful thing. God. It kills me. But I don’t die. I keep standing there, letting him touch me, like I deserve it, but I don’t.
‘Did you love him?’ Elio asks. It’s like he’s reached into my chest and clawed out all of my organs, but he doesn’t care. He takes my shoulder, turns me around, and he’s standing there, right against me, so close I can feel his breath on my lips. ‘Did you love him, Rhys?’
‘Yes,’ I whisper. Whatever was left in me that was keeping me standing is gone. Elio catches me, holds me close. He’s so warm, it’s like burying my face in the sun. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Do not fucking apologise,’ he says, and his voice is wrecked and ragged. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’
‘Why?’
‘I tried and I— I tried. It’s not your fault, what happened. That he died. It’s not your fault, Rhys.’
‘If I’d found him sooner—‘
‘It still would have been an hour to the nearest hospital and you can’t fucking drive. You did everything. You loved him. I tried to make him— I tried. I did love him but it. It hurt me so much and I let it hurt him back. Fuck. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t leave,’ I say into his shirt. ‘Please. Just stay here. Stay here with me.’
Elio clings to me. ‘You’d let me?’
‘Please,’ I say. ‘Please.’

[WHOOSH]

Since Elio came back, he’s not spoken. He barely eats. He lies in bed, wound in the sheets. I bring him water, tell him about my day. Meg hops up onto his mattress, rests her head on his chest. I don’t know if I should let her, but he breathes more even when she’s with him. She’s good like that. A kind, clever little dog.
On the fourth morning, I go into the little bedroom behind the kitchen with water and bread for Elio, and the smell of piss is sour and immediate. He’s just lying there in it. I find his face, just under the pillow. His eyes are open.
‘Elio,’ I say. I put my palm to his forehead. He’s not feverish. I wonder if I should call a doctor anyway. It’s the last thing I’d want, if I was in this state, though, so I don’t.
He’s taller than me, and still built for fighting despite his missing lung. My hands don’t like to pull things ever since the marks I made on my arms healed, and my left leg has a nasty habit of collapsing under me when I try to take his weight, but I can’t just leave him lying there in piss stained sheets. He starts trying to help me when I bang into the table, but it’s like his limbs are made of rubber. When we get to the bath, I’m soaked in sweat. I sit Elio on the stool next to the tub.
‘Wait here for me, alright?’ I say. He doesn’t respond. I check his eyes are open, wait a moment to make sure he’s not going to fall off the chair, then go back to the bedroom to strip the sheets whilst the tub fills up. I bundle everything but the pillows into the washing machine, then go back to the bathroom. Elio hasn’t fallen, but he’s slumped sideways a little.
‘I have bath salts,’ I say. ‘There’s lavender in them.’
I pour them into the water and the smell fills up the room.
‘Alright. You can get in now. Come on.’
Elio doesn’t budge.
‘Elio. Please. I can’t lift you.’
Still he doesn’t move.
‘Elio!’
He startles just a little. I take his hands and pull him to his feet. He gets into the water slow and careful.
‘That’s it, soldier,’ I say.
I turn off the taps, hover awkwardly next to the bath. I don’t want to leave him alone, not in the water. ‘I can’t see you, if it’s any consolation,’ I tell him. I know it isn’t. I wonder how much he’s hearing me. I’ve been there before, in that mire, caught in between the now and the remembered. He might be so lost in there that the words don’t mean anything to him. I don’t know.
‘It’s alright, you know,’ I tell him anyway, just in case. ‘What ever’s happening, it’s okay. I’m not angry with you. You know that? I’m not angry.’
Elio moves in the water. I hear wet clothes hit the tiles. I breathe out slow.
‘That’s good,’ I tell him, and I mean it. He doesn’t make much effort to clean himself at first, but when I work some soap into his hair, he sighs. ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘You know it— it’s good you came back. I worried you wouldn’t. That something would go wrong and Grenville would get… I don’t know. Even if he didn’t, I wasn’t… sure if you would. You didn’t say. Y–you just went. And I was glad, I am glad, please don’t think I’m not glad, I just—‘
Elio reaches up, puts his hand over my mouth. I smile into his damp fingers. A fair request.
When he’s roughly clean, I drain the bath, towel him off as best as I can.
‘You’ll have to help me now, soldier,’ I tell him. He grips my arms and heaves himself upwards. I take him through to my bedroom, where he curls up in the blankets. Meg hops up next to him. I turn to leave, but Elio grabs my hand.
‘You want me to stay?’
The pillow rustles; he’s nodding. I sigh and sit down in the chair beside the bed.
Next thing I know, I’m blinking in a room much darker than the one I must have nodded off in. Meg has made a bridge of herself, back end on the mattress, head and forelegs in my lap. There’s a blanket draped over my shoulders.
‘Elio?’ I say.
‘Sorry,’ he croaks. The sound of his voice is like cold water on a parched tongue.

‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’

‘No.’
We’re quiet a long moment, the three of us breathing out of time.
‘Did you mean it when you said you were glad?’
‘About you coming back? Of course.’
‘No. About me going.’
‘Oh.’ I shift in the chair. ‘Is it bad if I say yes?’
‘I don’t— I don’t know. Maybe. He’d have tried to stop me, I think.’
Eddy. ‘Would you have let him?’
‘I did. A hundred times I did.’
‘Then he’s a better man than me.’
Elio sighs. ‘Yeah. He was really something.’
‘Elio… I— I’m s– I– I’m sorry I— should I have— was I supposed to stop you?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. Good. It’s just that I couldn’t do it, the state I’m in. But I would have. So I’m glad you did. Though I am sorry it’s… it’s been this way, that it’s been this way for you.’
‘I haven’t killed a man for thirty years.’
‘So. So your last was after the war, then?’
‘Yes. I have a scar.’ He takes my hand, unbidden, places it on a scar like a tree knot at the bottom of his ribs. ‘My blood was still on the knife when I put it in his throat.’
I shut my eyes against the rush of blood before me like it’ll help. Warm red bursting through my fingers out of such a small hole in Robert’s chest.
‘Rhys?’
‘I— I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise.’
‘Alright.’
Elio exhales long and slow. ‘I made it quick. I wished I hadn’t, on the train back. That I’d strung it out more. But I made it quick. He didn’t even know what was happening. I went in through the window, found him in his bed. I had to sit on his chest.’
‘What?’
’To get the gun in his mouth right, I had to sit on his chest.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘He woke up when I got on the mattress, reached for me, expecting someone else. Then I sat on him, pinned his arms with my knees and—’
‘Please. Don’t.’ I sound angrier than I mean to, try to swallow it. ‘Elio, I’m not— I’m not angry with you, I just don’t want to— please.’ I shut my eyes, drop my head against the wall.
‘Sorry.’
I laugh. ‘No. No. Don’t be. Don’t be.’
‘Alright. Rhys I– the bed. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay. And you’re sure about the plan? They won’t know you were there, they won’t come looking for you?’
‘No. They’ll believe it. They’ll believe he did it to himself.’
‘Good.’

[WHOOSH]

Meg sits with her head in my lap, nudging her cold nose against my palm, checking I am still alive. I curl my fingers around her ears and she sighs. In the evenings, I stand up, feed her, and return to my chair in the corner of the room where he died. It feels like nothing but I will it to. Desperately. I daydream the sound of him breathing. Touch the cotton sheets as though they might still be warm.
I don’t know how long it is before the door clatters open. Exhausted, hungry, perhaps already dead, I stumble to the ground like I’m hiding from a mortar. Heavy footfalls, ragged breathing. He grabs my collar, heaves me from the ground, shoves me against the wall.
‘You did this!’ he barks, and his breath smells like booze. His fists balled into my shirt press against my throat. I pray that he will choke out whatever life is still left in me.
‘Say something!’ He demands. I don’t. I can’t We breathe ragged and in time. ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ he asks. I have no answer. ‘Why didn’t you save him?’ His voice cracks on the last word and so does whatever thing inside of me that’s holding me upright. He lets me fall, sinks with me to the ground. ‘Why?’ He asks.
‘I don’t know, I say. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

[WHOOSH]

Meg’s claws click-clack on the stone floor of the hallway. ‘I brought bread,’ I call, as I close the door. ‘I thought maybe we could have soup. Those carrots are huge. They’ll probably last us all year. I’ll show you how to bury them in sand, later, so they can stay fresh.’
When I set the bread down on the counter, the house is quiet, except for Meg’s insistent whines. I follow the sound to Eddy’s door. She scratches at it. I knock. There is no answer. ‘Eddy?’ I call. Still nothing.
Meg barks and I jump. She licks my hand, apologising. ‘Did he go back out?’ I muse, fussing her ears. She licks my wrists, scratches at the door again, desperate now.
Frowning, I turn the door knob. It’s quiet inside. There is a strange smell, sour, like vinegar. Meg takes my sleeve in her teeth, pulls me towards the bed so harshly I stumble and have to put out a hand to stop myself from falling.
It meets cold, damp flesh.
I jump back. ‘What the fuck?’
Meg barks, winding circles around my legs, pulling the hem of my trousers. My heart is in my ears and my throat and has fallen deep into some vast pit inside of me all at once. I’m crouched in the snow looking for dog tags. I can smell blood and sweat and cold. There’s gunfire in the distance. But there isn’t. It’s quiet, and close, and there is sweat on Eddy’s arm when my fingers find it again. They climb a few inches, knock into something hard and even colder than your skin. A needle, still pressed into you.
My body moves, unbidden, clattering into the chest of drawers where you kept your things. As I try to keep myself steady, my hand slips on a piece of paper. It sticks to my damp palm, with your sweat or mine, I don’t know. The Braille is messy, but legible. Thank you, you wrote. Back soon.

[WHOOSH]