Yesterwary

“How was it?” Bastian asked, walking from the end of the pathway with two brown, paper bags in tow, while Demi sat alone on the swing set.

“I got fired,” she murmured, toeing at the gravel.

“What?” he asked dryly, wrapping his jacket around her as he offered an arm to help her stand. “How’d you manage that on your first day?”

“I made a sandwich and told a kid a story,” she said, absentmindedly weaving her arm through his, much like she used to do with Margo on bad days. And there had been many.

“Uh huh…” Bastian hummed, deep in false contemplation as he led her away from the terrible, sandwich-hating, story-despising place. “Well, aren’t you just the regular outlaw?”

“Is it true?” she asked. “There aren’t any second chances? I have to be a non-conformist, now?”

“Technically, yes,” he said. “But don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.”

Demi stopped and yanked her arm to her side, lashes nearly blurring her vision as she squinted. “Why are you taking such an interest in me?”

“What?” His eyes narrowed at the sudden change of tone.

“It’s obvious that this isn’t typical behavior for you.”

“And what makes you say that?” he asked, crossing his arms. “You don’t even know me.”

“In all of your time in Yesterwary, how many newcomers have you taken to the roof of the library? How many have you taken out for dinner after their first day of work? How many do you help ‘figure it out’ when they’ve lost their jobs after their first day of work?”

“To be fair, you’re the only person I know of to be fired on the first day,” he said, voice low as he carried on his path without her.

“Don’t change the subject.

“I don’t keep track.”

Demi followed close behind. “Give me an estimate, then.”

“I don’t know,” he muttered.

“Just give me a damn number!”

“None, okay?” he snapped, stopping for only a short, frustrated moment before carrying on, hunched over, now, and glaring straight ahead. “None.”

“So, why me?” she prodded, taking long strides to keep up.

“I… I’m just…” he stammered.

“You what?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted, turning to her with fierce eyes. “You’re different. And don’t ask me why,” he said, cutting her off as she opened her mouth, “because I don’t know that either.”

“You sure don’t know much, do you?” she said as more of a statement than a question. She felt so small as she glared up at him, and hoped that it didn’t show.

“I know you’re the first person who has ever made me want to laugh, here. You make me want to smile—really smile—and to be happy,” he rambled in outburst. “I want to be around you, and I have no idea why. All day, the only thing I could think about was seeing you again. I barely know you and, already, you make me wish my chest wasn’t broken and empty,” he said, voice lowering to something near a whisper, in case the emptiness around them was somehow judging his desire to feel. “I know that I want to help you, because I don’t think you belong in Yesterwary. You don’t think the way others do, here. And… I know that I want to talk to you, and listen to you, and just… be near you. That’s what I know.”

Bastian tried to calm his rapid breath as he waited for Demi to say something—anything. If his heart had been beating at all, it surely would have been pounding so forcefully that his sternum would have been in serious danger. Anxiety often feels stronger than bones.

“Oh,” Demi whispered. No one had ever said those kinds of things to her, before. Bastian’s words made her feel important, and needed, and wanted. All the things her family had always tried to make her believe she wasn’t. And with Margo gone, he very well could have been the only person on the planet who gave any sort of damn about her. “Okay, then.”

“’Okay, then?’” he repeated, lowering his eyebrows as she wrapped her arm back through his. “I lay it all out for you, and all I get is an ’Okay, then?’”

“What do you want? A round of applause? A sigh and a swoon, maybe?”

Bastian immersed himself in thought as they walked. He led her past the unsteady clock tower, past the Wok Lament building, past something that was trying to pass for a grocery store, all the way to the farthest end of town, where pointy black houses creaked and moaned against the clouded sky.

“A story,” he said, leading her up the treacherous stairs of a house, to a porch that wrapped all the way around the sides, but looked as if it hadn’t been trodden on in decades.

“What?” she questioned.

“That’s what I want in return for spilling my guts,” he said, digging a key from his pocket and unlocking the rickety, old door. Beautiful stained-glass had once lined the edges, but so many broken panels were covered by rotting, wooden planks it now appeared to be the most depressing game of Tetris ever played. “You said you’re a writer. I want you to tell me a story.”

“Do you live here?” she asked, excitedly observing every dark and decaying surface of the porch.

“Yes,” he said, holding up the paper bags in his hand, before ramming the jammed door with his shoulder in the most discreet manner that he could manage, and leading her into an unlit hallway. “I’m going to make us dinner. But it’ll cost you one story.”

“Fine, yeah. I’ll tell you a story,” she said in a breathy voice, eyes widening as they landed on a set of dusty, ivory keys in the first room to the right. “You have a piano?”

“I have something that wishes it were a piano,” he muttered, carrying on to the kitchen down the hall.

The countertops were a dusky marble, and everything felt heavy, as if it had all been designed for a being that was made of lead and lava. It looked more like a place for preparing dead bodies than a place for preparing food, but at least it had a stove, ancient though it may have been, and it had cupboards with actual doors on them. Not that cupboard-doors are terribly necessary. Really, they just add two extra steps to the task of retrieving something: Step one – open door; step two – stare at contents of cupboard; step three – wonder why you have so many different types of pasta; step four – decide on item to grab; step five – grab item upon which you have decided; step six – close door.

“I hope you’re not a vegetarian,” he said, fishing a package of pork chops from one of the bags, followed by a variety of exceptionally-wilted greens.

“It wouldn’t matter,” Demi mumbled, distracted by all the sights of someplace new. “I’m not really eating, right?”

“You know, we have no idea what effects Yesterwary has on the body in the old world,” he retorted, turning one of the various knobs on the oven. “This pig was slaughtered here. It could have easily dropped dead in the old world when the butcher cut its throat.”

“That’s a comforting thought,” she said, voice thick with sarcasm. “But no, I’m definitely not a vegetarian.”

“Good,” he said, dropping the pork chops into a pan, which he promptly shoved into the oven. “Now, how about that story while we wait?”

Demi leaned against the mahogany table, which seemed excessively large for one person. “Do you live alone?”

“Yes, I do,” he mumbled, quickly glancing at the table from the corner of his eye. “Are you avoiding holding up your end of the bargain? Because I can turn the stove off.”

“Not at all. I’m just curious. Give me a tour, then I’ll tell you a story.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this deal was starting to tilt in your favor,” he sighed, but still, he obliged. Extending his lanky arms out to the sides, he said in an obvious tone, “This is the kitchen.”

Bastian carried the bag that hadn’t contained dead pigs, and Demi followed him down the hallway into the room with the thing that looked like a piano, but, according to him, was not a piano. Morbid little knick-knacks, all of which looked like the stuff of children’s nightmares or of a psychopath’s dreams, scattered the surfaces of the room and made the air feel dense, as if these non-living things were breathing up all the oxygen.

“This is the sitting room,” he said, crossing the dark, hardwood floors to a winding staircase.

“The not-piano,” Demi said, pointing and nodding as she passed the baby grand on her way.

She clutched the railing as she ascended the staircase, certain that each ominous creak would land her in the basement, where there were probably many carcasses of rodents long-passed.

“Bathroom,” Bastian nodded to an open door, from behind which peeked a dingy claw-foot bathtub, which had probably been white at some point. “Spare room, I guess…” he said, nodding to another door, almost seeming confused by the layout of his own house. “And my room.”

Demi popped her head inside the bedroom, gazing longingly at the four-poster bed, which looked infinitely more comfortable and sanitary than what was waiting for her back in her own apartment.

“It’s nice,” she said. “Smaller than it looks from the outside, but nice.”

“It’s home,” he shrugged, setting the bag behind him as he took a seat at the foot of his bed. Demi glanced over his collection of dusty, blank books, all resting upon a dresser against the wall.

“Why do you have these?” she pondered curiously. She recognized most of the covers, and, in fact, had read most of them many times over.

“I remember reading them in the old world,” he said. “Sometimes I stare at the pages and try to picture what they said. These are how I know the library is only here to torture us. I don’t recognize most of the books there, but these ones… I know these ones haven’t been forgotten. They’re not unloved.”

Demi nodded, and picked up a copy of the book Margo had given her on her twelfth birthday. It had been relatively inappropriate for a twelve-year-old, which was the main reason she’d read it, at first. The reason she’d read it the second time had more to do with her need to understand what she’d just read, and the reason she’d read it the third time was relating to the fact that she felt her heart might explode if she didn’t hear the words play out in her head once more. Every time after that, well… the only reasonable conclusions would be that she was either mad, or in love. Both, perhaps. And, often, one in the same.

Bastian glanced over as Demi sat beside him, clutching the book with eyes closed. She was the first female to set foot in his bedroom, and now she was uncomfortably close.

“’All we have to believe is our senses: the tools we use to perceive the world, our sight, our touch, our memory,’ ” she recited.

“’If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted.’ ” Bastian finished Demi’s quote, and by the time she’d opened her eyes, his face was only inches from hers, and he was staring at her in exactly the way one would never be caught staring at their Great-Aunt Rita.

“I met Neil Gaiman, once, you know,” she said, fidgeting awkwardly in her seat at the sight of Bastian’s closeness. Finally, she returned to her feet and placed the book back on its shelf. “He was doing a signing. My sister drove six hours just so I could meet him.”

“Who’s Neil Gaiman?” Bastian asked, clearing his throat in an attempt to remove the flush from his cheeks.

“Are… are you serious?” Demi huffed, pointing at the book she had just replaced. “The author of American Gods?”

“Oh,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t really pay attention to who writes the stories. I know it’s not true, but I’ve always imagined that they just, sort of… write themselves.”

What a wonderful world that would be, Demi thought, where words were responsible for themselves. But what a terrible world that would be, she thought, where words wouldn’t need her as she so desperately need them.

“I mean,” Bastian continued thoughtfully, “do writers want people to think, ‘ah yes, so-and-so wrote this,’ or do they want them to be so immersed in the story that they forget there was actually someone responsible for its existence?”

Demi’s mouth fell open, and then closed again, baring a striking resemblance to that of a fish that couldn’t quite get a grasp on breathing outside of water. He’d just been swimming along one day, as fishes tend to do, when he caught sight of this delicious-looking worm dangling in the middle of the ocean. Fish are notoriously trusting, of course, so he went in for a bite, thinking nothing of a worm dangling in the middle of ocean, where worms tend not to dangle. Two days later, he’d found himself gasping for water on a shiny, metallic surface in a brightly-lit and oddly-smelling room, and who is that nice-looking fellow with the knife and the funny-looking hat?

“That’s a good point,” she whispered.

“I know,” he agreed, tone bordering on arrogant. “So?”

“‘So’ what?”

“Immerse me.”

Demi sighed, having already forgotten about her end of the deal. “What kind of story do you want to hear?”

“Tell me your favorite story,” he requested, curling his legs up beneath himself on the bed like an excited child.

“I don’t have a favorite story,” she huffed. “That’s like asking someone to recall their favorite breath of air.”

“Then tell me the one that got you fired.”

Demi picked nervously at the fraying wood of a bed post. She wasn’t quite ready to tell him the story she’d told Michael, who had been too young to understand most of it, anyway. She took a deep breath and returned to his side, though a bit further away than she’d been before.

“Once upon a time—”

“Really?” he cut her off, lowering his brows in judgment.

“Do you want to hear the story, or not?” she asked coolly.

“I’m sorry. Please, continue.”

“Once upon a time… in a world far and different from here, there was a sound more beautiful than anything your imagination could ever think into existence. This sound made the stars weep, and the clouds shake. It brought mountains to their knees, and it forced oceans to boil, and it made suns burn so brightly they froze.”

“Suns are actually stars, so—” Bastian whispered.

“Shhh,” Demi snipped, glaring at him. “It was as beautiful as the songs of angels, and—”

“You said it was more beautiful than anything I could imagine. There are some major inconsistencies in this story,” he joked.

“Okay, no story for you,” she said, crossing her arms with finality.

“No, no, I’m sorry. I’m done, I promise. Please?” he said, hanging his head as he jutted out his bottom lip and looked up with wide, sad eyes.

Demi glanced at him from the corner of her eye and continued cautiously, pausing every few words to see if he would interject. “The sound didn’t begin with time. It didn’t even begin with life, but, one day, it will end with it. In one last breath, one final whisper, the sound will leave this universe behind, and it will be lost in the cold and the dark. But, for now, the sound is loud in quiet rhythm. The unacknowledged soundtrack of the world far and different from here.”

“A heartbeat,” Bastian said softly, eyes wandering to Demi’s cracked chest.

“Of course,” she said, shifting nervously at his stare.

“I like it,” he said with an affirming nod.

“Words are kind of difficult for me when they’re coming from somewhere other than my fingertips,” she said apologetically.

“Hey, no… it was really good. If it were in a book, I’d add it to my collection,” he said reassuringly.

They stewed in an awkward silence, which could mostly be contributed to Demi’s inability to accept a compliment.

“I should check on the food,” Bastian said. Reaching for the bag behind him, he added, “This is for you. I thought you might like a change. It’s not much, but it should hold you over until you get to the store.”

Demi opened the bag to find a set of new-ish clothes, and caught him just as he was about to leave the room. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“Well… Thank you,” she said, but he was already halfway to the stairs.

Donning black trousers, a ruffled, oxblood blouse, and the oddest corseted overcoat she’d ever seen, Demi lingered in the sitting room, while Bastian clinked away at the stove in the kitchen. She kneeled down rigidly, flexibility slightly impaired by the corset bones, and inspected the face of a stuffed cat, which looked as if it might jump down from the mantle and curl up into a ball in front of the soot-stained fireplace.

“Food’s ready,” Bastian said, only inches behind her.

She jumped at the sound of his voice so near to her, and caught her foot on the corner of the couch, tumbling over backward. Bastian was quick to keep her from falling, and she inevitably found herself fully supported in his arms.

Staring up into his eyes, with his arms wrapped tightly around her middle, she said, “You’re very strange.”

“Thank you?” he said, helping her to regain her balance.

“I mean—” she mumbled, stammering at her unintended accusation, “your stuff. Your stuff is strange.”

“You don’t like Mr. Goggles?” he asked, scratching behind the ear of the very-dead feline. The dark rings around the cat’s eyes did slightly resemble goggles, but the rest of it mostly just resembled a dead cat that had been taxidermied to resemble a live cat.

“It’s just… strange.”

“For a writer, your vocabulary seems a little limited,” Bastian joked, making his way back to the kitchen. Demi followed. “All of this shit came with the house, anyway.”

“And redecorating was too much effort?” she prodded, taking a seat at the table.

“Exactly,” he said, sitting opposite from her.

Demi looked down at her plate with mild concern. The entire kitchen should have smelled delicious, but it didn’t really smell at all, other than cigarette smoke and the muskiness of time. Nonetheless, she nodded in thanks and cut a piece of meat into a tiny square. She really hadn’t meant, or wanted, to be rude, but as soon as the pork touched her tongue, she made a face similar to that of someone who’d just been forced to eat a rubber duck, and a sound similar to that of someone who had been forced to jump from an airplane without any assurance that their parachute was functional or even attached to their body.

“Well, that’s not insulting…” Bastian trailed off, chewing on his own food with no similar reactions.

“I’m sorry,” she said, gripping a napkin from the table to clean out her mouth.

“No, it’s fine, really. A lot of newcomers have that reaction.”

“Reaction to what?”

“…Food.”

“Are you telling me all of the food tastes like this?” she gagged, suddenly remembering the particularly flavorless granola bar she’d eaten the day before.

“I’m telling you all of the food tastes like nothing.”

If you’ve ever had the displeasing experience of finding yourself so congested that food has lost its flavor, then you’ll understand the discontentment Demi felt at that moment. She grimaced, trying to eradicate the sensation of pork-chop texture without even the slightest hint of pork-chop taste. It was far less enjoyable, and borderline disturbing.

“This place sucks,” Demi muttered, leaning her elbow on the table and resting her chin in her hand.

“I think that’s kind of the point,” Bastian said.

“Wait… this can’t be right,” she said, sitting up straight as she glanced down at her plate.

“Afraid it is,” Bastian said, taking another bite. “It’ll be more tolerable in a few weeks, once you get so hungry that the kitchen sink starts to look like a sirloin.”

“No, I mean… When I made that sandwich for the kid in the orphanage he could taste it.” Michael’s reaction to his midday snack suddenly made sense.

Bastian scoffed, staring at her in disbelief. “That’s impossible.”

“I swear. He said it was the best sandwich he’d ever had. I thought he was just exaggerating. But he said he could taste it.”

Bastian thought for a moment, eyeing the half-eaten pork chop on his plate. He looked to the leftover ingredients near the stove. Rising hastily to his feet, he pulled Demi from her seat and led her to the counter, staring intently.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“Make something,” he suggested, nodding toward the wilted greens.

“What am I supposed to make from old lettuce and spinach?”

“I don’t know. Salad?”

Demi shook her head and reached for the greens. She slapped it all onto a plate and stared at it for a moment, at a loss for what to do next. The thing about salad is that there’s very little involved when making it, other than moving ingredients from one location to another. Sure, you could get feisty and add a dressing or croutons, but when the location of said-croutons was at the other end of town, in a grocery-store-like-place that had already closed for the evening, the effort required to retrieve them would greatly outweigh the benefit of having food that still tasted of lawn clippings, but happened to be slightly crunchier.

“Ta-da!” she said, awkwardly waving her hands in the air.

Bastian pinched a piece of spinach from the plate, and dropped it into his mouth. His face remained blank as he chewed.

“Demi… this is… this is amazing,” he said, eyes beaming.

“I’ve never really been a fan of spinach, myself,” she mumbled, looking down at the plate.

“No, the spinach is disgusting. But I can taste it,” he said, shoveling another handful of greens into his mouth. “It’s so gross!” he said excitedly, chunks of dark, slimy green clinging to his teeth as he spoke. His jaw ceased its chewy-endeavors as the light of an idea spread across his face.