Selina Mao

Dreamer

Chloe slams the brakes. There is a stop sign in the middle of the road. A blackbird stands upon it. 

“Keep going,” Ze instructs, not bothering to lift her eyes from her book. She’s reading 红楼梦 in Chinese. The characters line the pages in neat shapes, in a language Chloe is bound to by blood but does not know. It’s a story about a family’s tragedy inside a dream of a dream. Very convoluted, Ze explained. And Chloe thought, like you. 

“Look at the bird,” Chloe says. She squints at it, disturbed by its gaze. She’s almost sure it’s hostile, although she can’t explain why beyond a gut feeling. 

What is it they say about black birds? Sluagh. The unforgiven dead. Crow which teaches brother how to bury brother. The thief. The nine dead suns. Birds who remember. Birds of corpses. Birds of a flock, darkening the sky and bringing an omen of dea—
“Just drive,” Ze says sharply. “Don’t think.” She reaches over and pinches Chloe’s cheek, acting like they are five and Ze is still the bully who made her cry. 

Chloe frowns, but she listens and swerves around the stop sign. And the bird.

O

Chloe has driven six hours across the city chasing the sun. It does not descend. Scientifically, this seems like a problem. But Chloe trusts Ze. Trusts the edge to her voice when she said: we need to go, now. She asked Ze where they’re going, but all she’s received are vague answers. Home. To the edge of the world. Away. Just keep going. 

Childhood friends are a weird existence, especially one that has tormented you and loved you too. Chloe will look at Ze, blink, and be cast back into a version of herself. A version before her parents began to hate each other. Before leaving their little town surrounded by the trees, carefree and careless. On the dark side of a cliff, peering down at the waters where Ze cuts through the surface like a blade. A swimmer from birth. Chloe remembers believing with her whole heart that Ze could never drown. 

A weary pink drips across the sky, severed by electric lines. The sun is molten gold and unmoving even as the sky shifts around it. Against this backdrop, Chloe, Ze, and their trusty little beige Beetle are alone.

At dusk something begins to burn in Chloe’s womb. Chloe allows the discomfort to deepen until she has to acknowledge it. 

“Do you have a tampon?” she asks. 

“Why would I have a tampon?” Ze says, exasperated. 

Chloe recalls, right, Ze does not consume water or food, and so does not excrete more than air and the faint scent of dust.

O

They stop at a convenience store. A murder of crows crowd the parking lot, watching her. Chloe tries not to look at them. She picks up what she needs and a packet of dried mango, drops her selection on the cashier conveyer belt.

“Your total is twenty-six eighty,” the cashier says. Chloe taps her card to pay. 

She does a double take when she sees the cashier’s face. It’s like a photograph come alive. He has round eyes and thin lips, features that Chloe shares. Features she inherited from her father, who inherited them from this man. The man smiles, and Chloe gets an odd urge to stay. Ze’s hand finds the spot between her shoulder blades.

“Are you seeing this?” Chloe whispers.

“Quickly. We have to leave.” She herds Chloe out of the convenience store, not allowing her to look back. The wind has picked up, and casts containers, flyers, and gravel about. The crows hover above the chaos. They slip into the car, back onto the road. Ze does not offer to drive, even though Chloe’s hands are trembling. 

“What was—” she starts. 

“Shush. Take a left at the next intersection. We have to arrive before midnight.” Ze says. “I came all this way to get you. So I’m not gonna let you fuck this up.”

“But that was—?” she says. The face is unmistakable. Her grandfather looked like that the day he married Grandmother. Their wedding photo hangs above the fireplace.

“Your grandpa isn’t here. His altar is by the window. At home, remember?” 

  Chloe pictures home. On Friday nights she goes home instead of to her apartment. Her parents need her, Dad’s eyesight is going and Mom slipped a disk. The two of them sit at opposite ends of the house, bitter and mortal. When you come from a culture of sacrifice, it is hard to forgive, even when there is love. Worse when you are angry, you have crossed the sea for paradise, found nothing, and the rest of the world has moved on. 

Chloe would cook them dinner, then do the chores they haven’t done. She would help her father to bed and kiss his cheek, fill the bath for her mother, light the moxa sticks along her spine and read to her until it’s too late for her to think, to remember, to feel pain, too late for her to whisper to Chloe that this is all for you, I love you. 

Chloe is calmer. The memory grounds her, even if the answers aren’t there. Friday night, and then Ze told her to go, and the man in the store can’t be her grandfather because Grandpa is at home, safe. The road is fluid in the dark, fragments of asphalt, cobblestone, and soil. The sun is still up, a circle of gold against black. It is not how light works, but Chloe registers this as how it should be, here. 

Ze rolls down the window and smells the air. Salt. The sea. Behind them a cloud of feathers follows. There is no sound but the beating of wings as they close in, bit by bit. 

From Chloe’s ankles, coldness moves up to her knees. She shudders.

“Don’t be scared,” Ze says. Her eyes are water and mercury. “Remember that night we got lost in the mountains? Remember when I told you not to let go of my hand? You have to trust me.” 

Chloe remembers that night. But that night, Ze had not been there... “That was August. When I got lost. And you, by then.” She falters. The knowledge slips in. June 21, 2010, Girl Drowned at Sea, Body Not Found. By August, Ze was dead. The ache in her stomach spreads, blankets over her. A stop sign appears, two starlings rest upon it. This time, without thinking, Chloe drives over it.

O

Mama used to tell Chloe stories by moonlight. They were strange tales, cast a shadow over the space they were spoken in. 

Mama told her there are three kinds of death. The death most people die, returning to the earth. The death some people die, returning to be reborn. And the death that no one should die—not a death, a stolen death, when the dying walks between the forked road instead of on either side, moving but moving nowhere. A meaningless trip that only a fool would make. A fool of rage or debt or love. Chloe thinks she is all those things. 

On Friday she got off work. She’d drunk three cups of coffee and hadn’t slept in two nights. She drove the half hour to her parents’ house, and during the drive, went through the motions in her mind, the routine once she arrives: cook, complete tasks, tell lies. But at some point in the bend of the road, she slipped and the little Beetle went off its path. And then what happened? When did Ze appear? Where was she? “The place we’re going—” Chloe says. Her foot comes off the gas pedal and still, they hurtle forward.

O

When the little beige Beetle arrives at the sea, blasting past the edge of the road and into the sand at full speed, the birds still and turn back toward the land. Chloe steps out on the pale gold. She falls to her hands and knees. At this hour, the sea and sky are indistinguishable. A moment ago she was chilled to the marrow.

She looks up at Ze, searching. Every pore in her body burns.

When Chloe was a girl, she watched Ze drown. At some point, she lost herself in the love her parents gorged her with. She carries these things with her. 

On Friday, Chloe never made it home.

“The trick is to know, but never understand,” Ze says. She bares her teeth, each sharp, like needles.

About the Author

Selina Mao is a SFF writer, amateur tarot reader, hot pot enthusiast, and Columbia University MFA candidate in Fiction from Vancouver, Canada.