A. M. Johnson

Red

 

Viewer discretion advised

 

To summon your Second Self: 

 

Sit in the center of a cold bare floor. The room should have one window, and a ceiling fan. Watch the blades of the fan beat their way into oblivion. Then, close your eyes. Recite the following: “There once was a girl, with a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very good, but when she was bad.”

 

~

 

I saw Red for the first time on the other side of a pane of strange glass. I was leaning over the counter, one finger holding one eye shut. I drew a straight black line against the pinkish skin of my eyelid. My hands were steady. And then I had the thought that I should wedge the eyeliner pen into the cavity of my eye. 

 

I suppose I didn’t think of this myself -- that implies control. Rather, I had a vision. In this vision the pen was lodged beneath the slick white bulb, the wet ball with pinkish lace, into the red flesh beyond. I was convinced, briefly, that I had made some divine discovery. Like a Q-tip, I would slip myself into some hidden, sensitive place, and scratch the unscratchable itch. I would pull, like a shovel breaking fresh ground, and instantly I would deny myself every painting, every rainbow, every sunset left on earth. I held the pointed black thing so close to the gloss of my open eye that tears welled and fell. I heard a desperate vibration somewhere behind my ears, inside my skull. And then I was crying outright, the pen dropped, the vision gone. 

 

My hands were smeared black. The tears mixed with mascara into a fine grey film that coated my eye. And it was through this haze that I saw her. Red was pretty, and laughing. Red was sorry, but not really.

 

~

 

If you asked me to tell you what Red looks like, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know. I see her, but that word, ‘see.’ It is such a weak word. The eye itself sees nothing. There is no organ in the body to sense her. Nevertheless, she is there and appears to me as a human-shaped thing in the room. Some days she is leather-clad, with vampire black curls and blood red lips. Some days she is the outline of a woman, barely there, made of static from a broken TV. Some days she is a dry zombie, irradiated and sick, with gray lank hair. At best, she is thirty, drinking lemon iced tea. No matter what, she stands behind me and talks. I know her by sight the way you know your mother in the other room. Nothing to see, nothing to hear, and yet, you know. 

 

Red sits on the bathroom counter while I cut my own hair. She chews bubble gum, or smokes, or talks. On good nights, the conversation is cutting and pegging, cocaine and blood. Sometimes I listen, sometimes I don’t. It’s a matter of disposition. Usually Red speaks in a low, constant voice, which is articulate and pleasant to hear. Red is very cool, and has a way of making everything sound fun. I like hearing fun ideas. I like to be entertained while the hair from my head falls in itchy clumps from the clippers to my shoulders, and then to the sink. It’s better than a podcast, of course; anything is better than a conversation that will never be mine. But Red can get very animated about the gore of the world. If I let her, Red can grow. Powered by sheer unfiltered reality, Red can stretch herself into a vast amoeba, coating the walls of the bathroom. Her eyes grow huge and wet, a color only shrimp can see. Venom drips from her fangs, burning the flesh of my arms. She will eat me whole then, if I let her. And I always do. I can’t explain. Somehow, I am always curious about what her insides look like, and what’s on the other side. 

 

But if I catch her in time, if I glare at just the right moment, she’ll roll her eyes and start again. She’ll shrink and say something like: aww, c’mon, chica. Let me have the hands. Just this once, okay? The hair grows back fast. 

 

~

 

Generally speaking, Red is courteous. She does not come when she is not called. That’s the rule of the ritual, really -- you get what you invite. At school or work, she rides around in my backpack, taking a nap beneath the books. She is well-behaved in public -- she understands that I work in the realm of long term. That being said, Red has made herself known in public once or twice. Or at least, she has tried. At the library, the restaurant, the hospital -- it’s a twitching in the hand, most times. She dances in my fingers, flailing, trying to get out through my palms. Either that or it's a noise, a gesture, a choice with none of the fun. Red will make me bite the side of my hand, so the teeth leave a dent. She’ll close up my throat and open my mouth, so the spit dribbles out. Or perhaps she will send me the urge to fall on the floor, or to shout a nothing word. It doesn’t matter. I don’t blame her. She just wants her life. But I can’t let her. At home, we can roll on the floor, and pinch our lips shut, but out here, they will eat us alive.

 

Red longs to be public, to do what she wants. I hate to tell her no. I feel like a mother, an iron hand around her waist that prevents all games and fun. I’m not opposed to fun. I like fun. I’m not an old woman yet. But the games Red would play with our body are unacceptable, because they would end my own. Somehow they contradict each other at every turn. I want to play with a partner; she wants to play orgy chess. I play tennis with my health; she wants to play slots. Red dreams of ponies and their tranquil darts. I refrain from such things. She likes golf clubs and cricket bats. I guess I like butterfly nets. Can you blame me? I want to live long, and well. I suppose Red does too. We want our life so bad, in such different ways. 

 

And it’s not fair to her, that I still hold the keys. But I do. So I drive her around in my backpack, I take her to practice in my blue minivan. I am the soccer mom of my own wildest dreams, a tyrant of scheduled fun. And every day, I hope to cave to Red’s tantrums of will. 

 

~

 

But tonight is different. Tonight I am trying to get closer to Red. I am trying to erase the villain in my mind. I don’t want to wrap her in medical chains and say it's for her own good. I want to live as friends, as roommates at least. This body feels so crowded when she’s mad. So I wait for my parents to fall asleep. At three in the morning, I schedule time for her to play.  Let go of synapse. I, I, I try so hard to relax, to give her full range. The body, I think -- not mine, ours. Whatever she wants for tonight. It takes a moment. Like falling asleep, or remembering the word you forgot. One moment you’re grey haze, searching, pushing through unseeable murk. The next, Red’s in your shoulders, buzzing like blood in your hands. 

 

It’s fun for a while. In the cold light of the open fridge, she puts a raw egg in our mouth and bites through the shell. I take the cracked corpse off my tongue, laughing at her sense of humor. I can feel her smirk -- she loves to impress. Watch this, she says. And I do. I watch as she crawls down the hallway from the kitchen to my room. Our hands like aching claws. Thighs burning and bent. Our legs are thick with hair, matted and clean, our skin dry from fragrant soap. It’s such a relief. For a moment there, I was afraid that I had invented Red somehow. But crawling past the bathroom, dragging nails on the walls, mouth black and open and dry...being the beast of our home unalone. 

 

In the bedroom she shows me things I’ve never seen before. She bends our neck deep. We slip from our chair and onto the floor -- it doesn’t hurt. Looking up now, from a dog’s eye view, I can see the ledge of my desk as I have never seen it before, in lamplight, from below. Shadowy and angular like a beautiful jaw. She wants it and for once, I do too. So we move the neck and bite my desk together, sinking the teeth into the cheap, soft wood. The gums ache with the pressure. We feel deliciously our own skull. And I can hear her laughing with me, Red delighted, living fully at last. 

 

This feels good, I think. This is not so bad. I let her curve the spine, snapping it this way and that. The hands at odd angles, the eyes rolling in their box. It takes me a long time to realize she’s showing me something -- a dance. We’re on our feet. I’m dancing with her. It makes sense, briefly. The evil of it all, the cruel side of Red, it’s like...but the metaphor is already gone. She leaps up, stretches out. And I remember at the last moment that there are scissors on my desk. 

 

Lost in translation, I panic. I hide the keys; I run without trust. The body locks, the gun drops, the scissors land on the floor. All I can hear is the breath. The ceiling fan beats into oblivion. And we sit in terse silence, waiting for the other to die. 

 

I was just gonna mime it. I can feel her sit on the bed, her elbows on her knees. I was gonna put it between our ribs and our arm. 

 

Red is always over my shoulder, standing in my blindspot.

 

~

 

On bad nights, Red is a tornado siren inside me, moaning for miles around. Red is a wasp crawling up the inside of my throat, resting on the back of my tongue. Red is the inside of a mini fridge left unopened for too long. Red is The End. She is static, she is pain, she is chewed glass and bleeding gums. But mostly, I think she’s just sad. She cries all night, you know. Begging for my hands and my eyes. Not even for sleep can I give them up. They are all I have left. 

 

On good nights, Red asks for nothing. On good nights, Red listens to me. She listens quietly, and well, and I feel the caring in her eyes. She does not think I’m strange when I bite my arms in terror, when I rake my nails down my face hard enough to draw blood. Red knows the reality of the world. She knows the mind is a sack of fat carried in a backpack made of bone. She understands that this shock in our body is a gift and a curse -- electricity for now. It is a gift and a curse and yet neither, because those words imply God. There is no one around to give us anything. We agree on that, at least, that God is dead, and we are haunted by his ghost.

 

Blah, blah. Sad girl shit. You only need to know this: I can’t get rid of Red. That is not an option for me. Red eats reality, she chews it for me, and her insides translate its song. But she’s quiet now. Red’s been silent since our first date. And for the first time I find myself thinking of her on purpose, wanting to summon her again. 

 

~

 

I tell my mother about Red, quietly, at the kitchen table. We share a pot of jasmine tea on a day that is too hot for such things. But it’s raining and we are alone, and this is how we come to terms with our Selves. She tells me that she feels a presence in her mind, a presence that is not her. It tells her evil things and she resists. She believes that this voice is the Devil, and I do not tell her it is not. Instead, I tell her about my own voice. I tell her that I am segmented, like an earthworm. And she laughs and tells me what I already know, that when I was a child, I saved worms from the sidewalk after the rain. I want to tell her, I still save worms. I want to ask her, what does that say about me? I want to ask her if it's okay, Mama, to want to plunge the kitchen knife into your belly, between your ribs and twist. I want to know, is Red okay? But the moment has passed, and just like that, I am alone again. 

 

~

 

It’s midnight and a week later when I hear Red’s voice again, over my shoulder, as always:

 

Do you regret doing the ritual?

 

I’m laying flat on my bed when she says this. Taking up half the space. I’ve always slept like this, tidy, ready to share.

 

Why do you say that? Why would you say that?

 

No response. 

 

What Red does not understand is, if I could, I would give this body to her. If it were up to me, I’d spend every Saturday night on the wrong side of the glass, drawing with pencils, playing with dust on the floor. I’d lay on carpet and daydream while Red went out and fucked and drank and died. I would be happier that way. So would she. And it’s not that it’s impossible. It’s that I can’t, and anyways, it would only be her body for a while. Till sunrise, at most. 

 

And it's before sunrise, after a long and sleepless night, when I think of Red the most. You think of people the most when they’re gone. And she’s long gone -- she sleeps inside my arms and will not wake before the next sun sets. She’ll be back. But in this private time, I can stare into the cobalt pre-dawn sky and think, freed and prisoned by solitude. Mostly it's a drag. You get so bored of yourself. But some nights, crazy thoughts come from the blue: I will ask Red to marry me. I will kill Red. I will eat Red raw and become her somehow, and we will become new. The thought comes to me, that if I could, I would name this new body Blue. Blue would be beautiful and terrible and all would love her. Blue would foam saltwater at the mouth and bound down the highways at night on her hands and feet. But Blue cannot exist. I cannot become one in any way, with or without Red. We are both too far gone. 

 

So I suppose the answer is that I must have already been Red, or that Red was me all along. But this much cannot be true, either. We are both alive and therefore separate, sharing this warm, fickle room. We have our sides of the glass, of course. We have our realms. I can only pray that one day we will look each other in the eyes, and nod, and slam our heads together, shattering for the rest of our lives. 

 

A. M. Johnson (they/them, she/her, he/him) is a writer from St. Louis, Missouri. They have been previously published in The Green Fuse, The Oakland Arts Review, and Rhodora Magazine. They enjoy tea, books, and relative quiet, even at the best of times.

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