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Christopher Buehlman

THOSE ACROSS THE RIVER

HE CAME OUT to see me in the cage because I belonged to him.

I was like a new racehorse he still found interesting enough to visit at night, when the others were asleep. He sat there cross-legged on the wet ground, unmindful of the light rain that was falling on him. It wasn’t enough to extinguish his cigar, but it was enough to keep my ruined back waterlogged; enough to make me think my bones were made of cold pewter.

I had drifted in and out. He might have been there an hour before I noticed him.

“Yo u’re going to die out here,” he said.

He didn’t say it to frighten me.

He just said it.

“Yes,” I said.

It occurred to me for the first time that they might eat me. Then I shook that thought away; if they meant to eat me, they wouldn’t have let my flesh get this rotten. They wouldn’t have left me with so little food. I wasn’t good enough for them to eat.

“I’m not good enough for you to eat,” I muttered into the rain, too tired to choose between thinking and speaking. You or I wouldn’t have heard it. But their ears were very good.

“Maybe just your heart,” he said, without irony or double meaning. It wasn’t like speaking with a person. He was just a shadow against other shadows.

“Okay,” I said.

Having my heart eaten sounded good and final. I wanted to lie down with the dead. I wanted to be numb and blind and without memory. But that’s not what happened.

I kept my memory.

Especially the parts I didn’t want.

CHAPTER ONE

THIS IS HOW it started.

Eudora and I pulled up the drive with the sound of gravel under the tires. When the house came into view she squealed.

“Is it ours, Frankie? Is it really all ours?”

“That’s what the paperwork says. ”

“It’s such a fine yellow. I think I’ll call it the Canary House. Will you call it that with me, or will you feel silly?”

“The Canary House suits me fine. ”

She grinned and gave me a flash of her mismatched eyes; one lake-grey, one shallows-green. The most bewitching eyes I ever saw, or will ever see.

“Let’s just sit here and look at it for a moment. We’ll have some gay times in that house, but we don’t know what they are yet, so let’s just hold on to that. The potential, I mean. ”

“Alright. ”

“Or, better yet, let’s imagine all the things we want in that house. Can you imagine making love to me on the staircase? Within the hour?”

“Easily. ”

“Will you carry me across the threshold?”

“Let’s save it for the wedding. And only if nobody’s looking. We’re already married, remember? At least as far as our neighbors are concerned. ”

“Neighbors. How soon will our neighbors be our friends, I wonder. Can you see us having friends over for dinner?”

“Yes. ”

“What about as old marrieds sitting on the porch? Holding hands with our closer hands and swatting flies with the free ones. Can you see that?”

“Not at all. ” I laughed.

“Well, perhaps I don’t care to swat flies with you, either. ”

And then she kissed me so hungrily that we never made it to the staircase.